Hwy 341 (Day 34/365)

Posted on by Dale

Those of you who read the Atlanta Journal Constitution might have been amused or intrigued by the big editorial in this morning’s paper on the plight of schools in south-eastern Georgia: “Georgia Strands Its Rural Schools,” by Maureen Downey.

Her hook? “The four-lane highway leading into Hawkinsville in rural Pulaski County boasts an ambitious epithet: ‘Georgia’s High-Tech Corridor.’ But nothing along that stretch of U.S. 341 hints at a budding bastion of technology, unless you count the motorboat on blocks in somebody’s yard.”

We laughed. Apparently Ms. Downey missed the “boiled peanuts” sign.

Decatur Book Festival (Day 33/365)

Posted on by Dale

I didn’t do anything creative myself, but I did go watch others be creative at the Decatur Book Festival, people like Roy Blount, Jr., and Mike Luckovich.

The Festival had a lot of booths set up around the square with lots of book stuff going on. The local libraries were there, university presses, the Ferst Foundation, small presses, and an amazing number of self-published authors.

These all seemed to be pushing either their murder mystery/thrillers or memoirs. All of them seemed to be about 230 pages long. (Is this the limit for self-publishing? Would Leo Tolstoy have been out of luck?) Having been exposed to several self-published works before (Vampires of Dixie, anyone?), I hesitated to stop at any of these booths.

There was one booth which was a federation of literary magazines. That was very tempting: dozens of titles, filled with poetry, short stories, literary gnoshes just waiting to be sampled. But how do you choose?

All in all a fun time and worth doing again. Word of advice: if you want to see a particular author, get to the venue at least 30 minutes early to get a seat.

Brief rants

Posted on by Dale

Before I head off to work on my transition to the recapitulation of “Milky Way,” I have a couple of rants. I’ve been clipping stuff from the paper, thinking I might comment on it, for a couple of weeks now, but today had two quotes that have moved me to the keyboard.

The first is from a story, “Park Service To Emphasize Conservation In New Rules.” Well, first of all, that’s a shocker in itself, because even as recently as one year ago, the Administration Currently In Office was once again allowing industry interests to write public policy, and the snowmobile folk were making sure that the National Park Service’s actually taking care of our public wilderness took a back seat to the next few seasons of recreational profit.

As the paper says, “In this respect, as in many others, including the emphasis on conservation, the final policy echoes the one in effect at the end of the Clinton administration.”

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As good as nothing (Day 30/365)

Posted on by Dale

I spent the day thinking about where to go from my newly polished climax of “Milky Way” to get to the last two stanzas of the poem.

Last year, when I was finally deciding how to tackle this piece (I had put it off for twenty years), I decided that it would be in a modified sonata allegro form. For one thing, the A theme (the setting of the first stanza) and the B theme (second stanza) would have to be reversed in the capitulation, since the last two stanzas are mirror images of the first two.

So the puzzle I have (it’s not a hard one) is now that I’ve given the listener a really traditional recap, with the triumphant restatement of the opening chords, I have to twist sideways and lead into the B theme, only in a minor key (because of the rat’s grotesque cynicism) and then back out into the A theme for the final statement.

And there will be another puzzle: Ms. Willard has ended the poem not on a transcendant note but a blunt “handful of dirt to the rat.”

Anyway, I was going to get a lot of this worked out tonight, but I got dragged out to dinner with friends. Oh well.

Revamping the Milky Way (Day 29/365)

Posted on by Dale

Well, I cleaned off my drafting table, bought a USB extension cable, moved my keyboard over to the table, got out my manuscript paper, and got to work.

My project, you may recall, was to tackle the faulty climax to “Blake Leads a Walk on the Milky Way,” the tenth and central piece to A Visit to William Blake’s Inn. I transcribed the first measure of the Tiger’s “I shall garland my room” passage and started there.

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Chorus (Day 28/365)

Posted on by Dale

Tonight was the first night back at Masterworks. We have a heavy Christmas program, a couple of smaller gigs, and a concert in the Cathedral of St. John the Divine on March 10.

It was good to be singing again. All we did was sightread, but even that was challenging and fun. The music selection for the November concert is varied and interesting, from Praetorius through Handel up to Britten and Berlin. Nice stuff.

Huge chorus this year! The bass section covered half the back row, and baritones and tenors were not far behind.

It might be nice to write for a chorus like that, but I think I’ll spend my energies on pieces that won’t be performed by imaginary groups rather than ignored by one I’m a member of.

Almost nothing (Day 27/365)

Posted on by Dale

I almost did nothing. I cleaned up my work area, clearing the drafting table to serve as my “away from the computer” composition area. I read more of my CSS book.
In other news, I have a couple of uses for my lottery winnings:

  • Tom Stoppard’s The Coast of Utopia will be opening in New York soon. That’s a three-play work covering the lives of the Russian intellectuals involved in the 1830s revolutionary work. It made no sense to me when I read it (as in, why did he write this?) and I’d like to see if it makes more sense when you see it. So that’s at least three nights in NYC I could spend money on.
  • Also in NYC, Mr. Nebojsa Kaludjerovic is the sole employee of the U.N. mission of Montenegro, which recently, and peacefully, gained its independence from Serbia. He’s the ambassador, the secretary, the bookkeeper, etc. He used to be the ambassador from the combined countries, working out of a mansion on 5th Ave. Now he works out of his apartment, using his son’s laptop to check his Gmail account. The country of Montenegro is multiethnic, multicultural, and multireligious, and yet it has remained peaceful and democratic throughout the bloody breakup of Yugoslavia. I’d like to buy the man some office supplies for his new office.
  • I’d go to Kiva.org and fund all the developing businesses there.

Nothing, Nada (Day 26/365)

Posted on by Dale

Sorry, it was one of those days. I did nothing. I can’t even claim to have cleaned up my study and cleaned off my drafting table in preparation for composing away from the computer. I just read.

I read my book on Leibniz and Spinoza. I think I’m siding with Spinoza at this point. I read Louis Sachar’s sequel to Holes, called Small Steps. Any goodwill invested in our main character Armpit from Holes is diluted by a made-for-Disney plot; it was a good book, but not very believable and certainly not as good as Holes. I read my new book on CSS and how to design websites with it, which is one of my goals for the fall.

But otherwise, nothing. Nada. Zip.