I've had a really nice break so far. It started with a great trip to Canada with Sara. We didn't do a whole lot of sight-seeing or anything, but that wasn't the point. Instead, we did smaller fun things together, like walk on Lake Erie:


And chop down a Christmas tree on the Bakkers' farm:



Then I headed home. Even missing Nate, being here for an extended period has been really nice, and I feel a lot better rested. The Christmas Eve service at church was, as always, wonderful, and Mom, Dad, and Claire played their instruments beautifully. (I sang in the choir.)

Today I'm getting laser eye surgery. That's both exciting and scary! I told Mom, who's also had it done, that I wasn't looking forward to being dopey all day afterwards, and she said, "Oh, you won't even remember it." (They apparently give you some drugs.) Well, I wasn't so hot on that either, but I have a playlist of audiobooks set up on my computer so I can just close my eyes and listen and not get too bored. I'm hoping that afterwards it will have been worth it!

Sorry to be posting to so many other sites, but I thought this was very funny. Some other ideas:

ARS NVA

5 LIN

542TO16

PNTNL

GNA RAIN

TTL SRLST (too many letters, but too good to pass up)

I know you all can think of others. Feel free to comment...

I went to the store this morning to get cookie-making ingredients, but forgot to get parchment paper to bake on. My apartmentmate Craig was kind enough to buy some when he went to the store an hour or so later. He said I didn't need to pay him back, but I insisted and looked over his receipt anyway. I didn't see the parchment paper on there right away, but I saw something that looked funny and figured I'd challenge him on it. At the bottom of the list, right under Kroger Walnut Pieces (KRO WALNT P (1.99)) was:

DICK PRESER (3.23)

"What are you buying, Craig???" I asked, pointing to the offending item.

"That's not my receipt--I didn't buy walnuts. Yeah, that's not my receipt. Did you buy walnuts?"

"Oh."

Well, that was embarrassing. That's the last time I buy Dickinson's seedless blackberry Preserves at Kroger.

The semester's basically over. I have to print out a copy of a paper that never reached a professor via email, and I've got a meeting for the program committee for our upcoming theory symposium, but there's no more really stressful work. Tomorrow I'm off to Canada (!), then on Thursday I fly to beautiful Ioway. I can't wait! (Even though Nate's got me beat, itinerary-wise, at least *I'm* not skipping Christmas with the family.)

I think my paper for History of Music Theory I is really something that's good enough that I'd feel comfortable sending a version in as a conference paper proposal. It's on syncopation in the 14th century, and while there are a number of people who would be familiar with how it works, they are mostly musicologists who aren't as interested in the concept's analytical applications. Anyway, I'm planning on submitting it to Music Theory Midwest over the break. We'll see what comes of that.

One thing that I, like Christy, feel *needs* to be posted: The Twelve Composers of Christmas--the link takes you to the video embedded in her blog.

Finally, I just got word today that my class (MUS-T132) is "almost certain" to exceed its current capacity (i.e., two lectures with 90 students each). You may recall that I posted two and a half weeks ago that the 10:10 lecture is already at capacity; I just checked the 8:00 lecture, and it's up from 64 then to 79 today.

I'm less stressed than the last couple of times I posted. I've been working really hard the past couple of days (though I took a break last night and, to some extent, this morning). My projects are coming along really well. I've taken to keeping a Textedit window open, where I type in rough percentages for how much I have done on each project. A lot of my friends seem to think this would be more depressing than helpful, but I get a nice sense of gratification as I see my (very rough) percentages (almost) uniformly creeping up towards 100 (HoT=History of Theory):

Last spring, my course was so popular (okay, so it's required, but still) that the department had to raise the enrollment limit for each lecture section to 90; I think my final enrollments were around 84 and 87. I just checked my enrollment for next semester for the first time because I got an email from a student asking if I could let her into the class. The 8 AM lecture is already at 64, which is pretty decent, but then I checked the 10:10 lecture, and indeed--it's already hit 90! Holy cow.

It's the most stressful time of the year, as the song goes. I've got six pages of Latin descriptions of 4th-century syncopation that I want to translate, papers to write, a course to plan, etc. I've been feeling really stressed the past two days or so, and my chest is even feeling a bit constricted, though that might be due to the sickness I brought home with me after break. It's a little worrying, but in two weeks or so it will all be done! That's actually probably too much time, because I feel like I need to be done soon: I don't actually think I'll have any trouble getting things done on time.

Anyway, break was really nice. Thanksgiving itself was spent up in West Lafayette, at my Aunt Nancy's new house. She has a beautiful backyard, especially for a scientist of her bent:


And here's the wonderful family:


Unfortunately, I didn't have the presence of mind to take any pictures of the Kern family that we spent Saturday with, but it was all a lot of fun, and I did a nice job of not thinking about work almost the whole time.

The Society for Music Theory conference was also really nice. Baltimore turned out to be a very interesting place to be, and if it didn't feel inherently safe even in the nice area of town, there were certainly tons of police out.

The conference hotel in the background:


The view across the harbor:


The first monument ever erected to George Washington:

This makes me think also of the music theorist's plight. When someone on a plane asks you what you do, if you feel like talking, you say, "musician," and if you feel like shutting down the conversation right away, you say "music theorist."

Thanksgiving break starts tomorrow, and I'm thrilled for some time off and with the family!

Holy cow. This school's opera program is ridiculous. But heck, I'm definitely checking out the production, if only for the set!

In the meantime, I just got back from St. Meinrad Archabbey, one of only two archabbeys in the US and eleven in the world (via Wikipedia). It's a very beautiful building (the picture on the website doesn't even do it justice, especially on the most beautiful weekend in fall in southern Indiana). The Trinity Episcopal Church (Bloomington)'s student group took a less-than-24-hour retreat there, and it was pretty nice. For better or for worse, we live in a very secular society, especially historically speaking (the fact that the "far right" has some clout in politics doesn't really change this a lot), and it's been on my list of things to do for a long time to see what it would be like to live in an almost purely religious society. I imagined going to prayers upwards of eight times a day, silence, and contemplation, all of which sounds pretty cool. Well, it turns out they only pray four times a day, and we weren't there for two of the services. But I got up to go to the 5:30 service as well as mass (it helped that they're one of the crazy Indiana counties on Central Time--for the whole completely insane story, check this out). It was less awesome than I imagined, but it was definitely interesting. There was a lot of chanting, and we even got a mode 4 (that's Hypophrygian for those of you who like to use ethnic names...) chant, which was pretty far out. It was an incredibly echoey acoustic, and the monks (who by several times outnumbered the congregation even at the 7:30 mass, much less at 5:30's Vigils/Lauds) spoke in very deep, very soft voices. I have a hard time reading anything--much less biblical texts--without at least some degree of meaning and feeling, and I have a higher voice, and I was participating where appropriate (there were very few indications, but fortunately a fellow student seemed to know when we could recite along). The monk who kept the congregation in line by holding up chant numbers and appropriate books walked over to my side of the congregation and sat in the row behind me. Between prayers, he reached over and tapped me on the back, and said, "You're a bit louder than everyone else. You're also a little bit ahead. So be a little quieter." Then between prayers he walked back to his seat on the other side of the room. Well, that's the last time I get rowdy at Vigils/Lauds. For the rest of the service I went into full mumbling-conformity-Catholic mode.

All in all it was nice, though. I did a fair amount of walking around the beautiful grounds and surrounding forest, played ping-pong with some friends, and visited the book store (on the back of the casket shop...) with its rows of cloying "Inspirational" volumes and book on John Ashcroft (I bought some tasty-looking jam). It was a nice sort-of-break, but it's also nice to be back in Bloomington. And back to the grindstone. Thanksgiving is looking mighty nice from here...

Unless you like misspellings, misreadings, and downright wrong-ness, please, don't ever read this book. Some highlights from that advertisement/summary:

...the best way to end up a melody is the chaining dominant seventh chord and tonic perfect chord....

...the book explains the building of the musical scale by means of the Circle of Fifths (sketch on cover). This concept has been the platform of all musics throughout the world for 5 millenna. Designed in Mesopotamia, it spread into the antique Persia, then towards the indian sub-continent. Phytagoras brought it in the 6th century B.C. in Greece whose tetrachord scale had only 4 degrees (the 4 strings of their lyra often seen on ancient paintings)....

...The first turning point in Western Europe occured around 1000 A.D. It was the beginning of Polyphony; De Arezzo achieved the definitive form of music writing, and by the same occasion ruled out the quarter-tone of the greec heritage....

...The big Turning Point occured at the Renaissance, due to some theorists who tried to impose scales containing only consonant intervals, very difficult to put into practice. This confusion caused the death of the ancient 7 medieval modes and set the major-minor dichotomy in Western Europe. Only one has been remained in the 16th century : the major (ionian)....

...The Russian and the Orthodox Church have kept on using the ancient medieval modes. The Coptic Church of Egypt, in addition to major and minor, has a great variety of modes (non-western, ancient, often with quarter-tones, etc). So, the western music is all but universal, and has strong cultural features....

...in order to comply with Just Intonation, some scientists (C. Huygens and J. Sauveur) tried to provide the scale with consonant intervals (such as the harmonic seventh, slightly lower than the minor seventh)...

I can't believe what the next couple of weeks look like. This week might be the worst, but I'm not sure. Last weekend I had two gigs, a composition recital that I got pulled into at the last minute and my school choir's important concert; this weekend I also had two, one a church gig in Columbus (IN), the other my local choir's important concert. Next weekend I'm going to a retreat at a monastery Friday-Saturday (I think I'll need it), then the weekend after is my school choir's second important concert and possibly another composition recital, then the next weekend is the Society for Music Theory conference in Baltimore, where I'm participating in a graduate student workshop in analysis of early music, then the weekend after that is Thanksgiving! Thank goodness. In the meantime, I've got lots of work to do. The only work I'm nervous about getting done on time is for the workshop--I'm supposed to have insights by Friday. We'll see if that happens...

Earlier this year, on my visit to Southern California, Nate and I hiked up Santiago Peak. It was a nice, long trail. We had been told about the "communications towers" at the top. But we were still impressed when we got there: it looked like a Siberian missile installation you'd see in a James Bond movie:


Still, there were some really nice views into the valley and beyond:




Well, it turns out the fires in the area are very near this mountain. We're hoping they aren't going to destroy such a beautiful (and cool) place!

Just had a great concert! Pro Arte sang Bach's Missa Brevis in A major (very brevis, actually, text-wise: no credo, sanctus, or agnus; but not so brevis movement-wise) and Schütz's Deutsches Magnificat. I had a little solo in the Bach, and it went quite well. My voice cracked almost right away, but after that I was fine, and the high notes felt glorious. My first IU conductor, Carmen Tellez, came up to me afterward and said in her Venezuelan accent, "Definitely a singer now, eh?" I don't know about that, but it was definitely working today.

Ah, to be here again.

Wow. Once you're on "the list," you never get off. I just received Invitations Nos. 7 and 8 to sing in various choirs, and that's just in this semester (in addition to the two permanent choirs I'm in). Most were for choirs to sing in composition recitals, but the most recent one was to sing in a professional choir with Raymond Leppard in Indianapolis for money. But I'll have you know that I turned that down, just to attend Claire's recital! That's the kind of brother I am. In the meantime, I've signed up for far too many of the others, considering I've got classwork and teaching to attend to, and I'm trying to prepare as well as possible for the graduate workshop in early music analysis for the Society for Music Theory conference in mid-November. It's fun--but sometimes, you (that is, I) just have to say no.

Cape Air has to be the weirdest airline ever. Flights are within four distinct areas:

1. The northeast (VT, CT, RI, MA)
2. The Caribbean (Puerto Rico, Virgin Islands)
3. Florida
4. ...Indiana...?

I've felt a bit like this and this lately, but fortunately a lot less than last fall. It's just a tough class to keep interested, when many of them have failed the class at least once (and sometimes twice) before, and it's at 8 AM.

Institutions should offer degrees in Psychology of Undergraduate Students. I think it'd be a fascinating field. I've even got a case study. I cancelled class on Tuesday and said that instead I expected to meet with all of my students one-on-one, and that I'd still take attendance. So thinking rationally, wouldn't you rather meet with a teacher one-on-one--for a shorter and at a later time--than in a class of 15 at 8 AM? But students have their own psychology: if we have class, they feel like they are required to be there; if class is "cancelled," meetings (even though the consequences of not attending are the same) are clearly optional.

Yesterday I made a fancy meal:

Appetizer: Baked brie in individual puff pastries

Main course: Roasted asparagus, Beef in a balsamic vinegar reduction with carmelized onions

Dessert: Chocolate oblivion with strawberries

I really think I need to set up a restaurant, not go into music theory...

I realized I never posted any pictures of the caving expedition Sara and I went on several weeks ago through IU Outdoor Adventures.

Our somewhat unprofessional guides suggested at the beginning that it might actually be illegal to go into this cave, and though they quickly took it back, it inspired several people to drop out from the trip. We ended up going with only one other person from IU, though several other people met us at the cave, and then yet more met us in the cave. Anyway, the entrance to the cave didn't enhance the impression of the legality of what we were doing:



Even though the entrance was a torn-open drainage grate, the cave was pretty cool. We were walking (and sometimes crawling or slithering) through (and sometimes deep within) water for most of the trip:



As well as narrow passages between cool walls (and, apparently, making bizarre facial expressions):



And climbing under or over little bridges:



Here is the skinniest, scariest part of the cave. That tiny tunnel was maybe ten feet long, and there was the space of about a foot where there was even a ledge coming down from above. Slithering along in shallow water, getting very wet, coming upon that one really skinny part, was pretty scary: it really didn't look like we'd fit through! Fortunately, we all did, and made it out this small opening into a larger room:



It was a really fun trip. And though it never felt that dangerous (just a little claustrophobic sometimes...), if we had gotten in trouble at some point, it turns out we would have been fine, because there was a church nearby with a bus apparently bound to a rather attractive destination:

I really shouldn't be surprised, but boy, do chocolate chips and heavy whipping cream taste good boiled together.

In the meantime, it occurred to me yesterday that a thousand years ago, Guido of Arezzo was alive. It also occurred to me that in 2033, it'll be the thousandth anniversary of his death. (Okay, the date after which we're sure he died.) I mentioned this to Sara, and she seemed unimpressed:

Sara: Where will you be?
Tim: At one of the celebrations, I imagine.
S: Like I said, where will you be?
T: Well, I'm sure I'll have to choose one of the many.
S: Uh huh.

Still unimpressed, I guess. But seriously, without Guido, The Sound of Music wouldn't have been possible. (One of my colleagues has suggested an alteration to the famous song to more directly draw on Guido: "Ut, the sound a French owl makes; re, a drop of golden sun;" etc.) He was the founder of modern Aural Skills, and that solfege system that everyone knows today is amazingly similar to his, considering it's had 1,000 years to develop. And seriously, staff notation? That was pretty brilliant, and revolutionary.

In 2033, I'll be holding a celebration no matter what anyone else thinks. There'll be read-throughs of "Ut queant laxis," giant hands on sale, and even maybe an imaginative reenactment of whatever it was he did that made the other monks so mad at him. So who's going to celebrate with me?

When we were in Aspen, Mom asked me if IU was like that: lots of conservative music programming to satisfy the (generally) older, rich people who seemed to be in control of everything. I told her no, or just a little bit, but I think I'm revising my opinion. Certainly the New Music Ensemble is much more visible here, as is the Early Music Institute, but that's partially a product of our size. I was at a concert last night of the IU Philharmonic Orchestra (holy cow are they good), headlined by two of our "big names" (Sylvia McNair and Leonard Slatkin) doing pretty conservative music (some light piece by an unknown French guy, Elgar, and Barber), and the "upcoming orchestral events" revealed a lot of not-so-adventurous names: Berlioz, Vaughan-Williams, Berlioz again, Dukas, Verdi, Sibelius, Beethoven, Grieg, Rossini, Brahms, Wagner, Schubert, more Verdi and Beethoven, more Sibeluis, Smetana, Dvorak. I've skipped a few names, to be fair: Joan Tower is on there, as are Shostakovich and Stravinsky, and a few names I don't know (who I assume are living composers). However, all of the pieces by these people (who themselves are not exactly avant-garde) are pretty short or "accepted" pieces: Tower's Silver Ladders, Stravinsky's Fireworks, Shostakovich's Festival Overture, etc. Even Mahler would be welcome to me (though they did a lot of his symphonies over the summer), but I'd love to see some Bartok, Schoenberg, more Stravinsky or more Shostakovich, Prokofiev, Berg, Adams, I don't know, anybody... To top it off, Sara and I were sitting right in front of about 20 seats reserved for "guests of [IU] President McRobbie" as well as guests of Music School Dean Richards and whoever the Provost is. These guests were a bunch of elderly, rich people. As you might expect, nobody else gets reserved seats.

On the plus side, Pro Arte's listed on there with some Bach. Our concerts are Oct. 21, where I'll sing the tenor solo in the Bach Mass in A major, BWV 234 (it's a very short solo, don't worry) and Dec. 2, when we'll sing Bach's Cantata 10 and a Magnificat for Baroque orchestra and choir by IU composer and all-around extremely strange man Sven-David Sandstrom. (He looks exactly like that picture.)

I'm pretty sure this is my favorite blog, and posts like this one as well as incredible analyses are the main reasons.

It's a beautiful weekend! Just what I needed after a stressful week. Kyle, Sara, Sara's friend Adriana, and I went out on a hike in Brown County State Park yesterday, and it was gorgeous. I really like the cool weather, even when it's too cold: at least for now, the cold is made bearable (and even refreshing) by the knowledge that later in the day it's going to get warm again.

Crazy story--this morning in church, I got there late and sat in a side pew: someone else got there even later and moved in with me. At a lull in the service he leaned over and said:
"You have a really nice voice. Are you a music major?"
"Thanks! Yes."
"We need to talk."
After the service and the postlude he introduced himself as Vance George, the Emmy and Grammy winning former conductor of the San Francisco Symphony Chorus. (I couldn't quite hear, so I asked, "Vince?" "Vance--past tense.") Pretty cool! He went up to see who had built the church's organ and I left, but then when he saw me sitting outside with the student group after the service, he come over and invited me to his presentation for a conducting class tomorrow. I'm definitely planning to go.

Slight disaster recently--somehow I got to talking to Sara about the Beatles (or, really, more blathering/rambling on and on--as I tend to do when talking about something I like). I decided my favorite album was Abbey Road. So when I got home I wanted to listen to it. To my horror, my CD case was empty! I searched for it on my computer to burn a new copy, but it wasn't there either! It didn't occur to me at the moment, but once when I was visiting Sara I thought to check our university's streaming audio system. It was there! But in the middle of the third track, it started breaking up, and nothing I could do could fix it. So I tried on my own computer when I got home, and the system denied me access! Turns out there's a four-hour period each week when they do maintenance to it, and that just happened to be that period. Clearly, I am not meant to listen to this album ever again. But in defiance of all odds, I am finally listening happily to Polythene Pam....

Finally, Nate, you're right that our respective Nerd Scores clear up who's the superior brother. I invite you to simply look at the statistic at the bottom of the chart. In the meantime, I'm waiting for Claire to take the test and, even more intriguing, Mom and Dad...

I originally had a post here about how frustrated I was about certain courses I'm taking. Upon rereading it, it was a bit harsh and sounded more frustrated than I really was (which was enough anyway). Anyway, suffice it to say that it's frustrating when professors seem to need to take your pedagogy courses more than you do. (Or, for that matter, when they pretend they're more expert in their field than they really are.)

This morning:


Craig. I'm losing my mind!
Tim. How so?
Craig. I've put both of my contacts into one eye!
Tim. Wow! Weird!
Craig. And I'm trying to figure out which one!

As if to prove my previous post, I've been intrigued by a text difference between "Ave verum corpus" settings by Mozart and Josquin. (Craig says that Elgar's setting, and a few others', agree with Josquin's.) The text is:

Ave Verum Corpus natum de Maria Virgine.
Vere passum immolatum in cruce pro homine:
cuius latum perforatum aqua fluxit et sanguine.
Esto nobis praegustatum in mortis examine.

(Note that "A" is the first letter of the first line, "E" the second of the second, "I" the third of the third, and "O" the fourth of the fourth; there's a fifth line not set by Mozart that continues "O Jesu dulcis...")

The first three lines are approximately as follows (my translation, a bit free with the cases, which don't translate well in this text):

Hail true body born of the Virgin Mary,
Who truly suffered and was sacrificed on the cross for mankind:
Whose side was pierced, and water and blood flowed forth.

The last line is both harder for me to translate and where the textual discrepancy lies. Josquin switches the words "in" and "mortis":

Esto nobis praegustatum mortis in examine.

The first part of the translation is no problem; "Esto nobis praegustatum" is "Be for us a foretaste." However, the rest I have trouble with. Various sites have the different translations. This site has a literal translation which, while mostly correct, doesn't help much with the subtleties of meaning:

Be / for us / foretaste / in / of death / testing

And it also has a bizarre nonliteral translation, which interprets a bit:

Be for us a foretaste of heaven, during our final trial

This site has the translation I found most places, which I really dislike for its sing-songiness; it also alters the meaning, not only for interpretation's sake this time, but also for singsongy rhyme:

be a foretaste sweet to me
in my death's great agony

So I've been trying to figure it out on my own. It's mainly a matter of figuring out which words go together. "in examine" is definitely a semantic unit; examine is the ablative form of the noun "examen," which means, among other things, "weighing, consideration." (That's why I say the literal translation above is only "mostly" correct; it relies on a synonym of a cognate, rather than a dictionary, for this word.) Ablatives and understanding the subtleties of prepositions like "in" are very hard for me. "Mortis" as a word isn't hard at all; it's the genitive form of "mors," and means, "of death." So I have two theories, each of which finds some evidence in one of the textual variations (though of course word order in Latin isn't rigid, so either could go with either meaning).

Theory 1: "Be for us a foretaste of death upon contemplation"; ie, when we think of you, let that be a foretaste of when the same thing will happen to us. This matches up very well with "Esto nobis praegustatum mortis in examine" (Josquin, Elgar, etc.), and seems to me to mess with the meaning of "in" the least.

Theory 2: "Be for us a foretaste of the trial of death." This one matches up best with the translations I've read, and would support Mozart and putting "mortis after "in," with "examine," since they'd be a semantic unit (the trial of death). However, while I can justify "trial" because the "trial" of death could be God's weighing of us, I have a hard time justifying translating "in" as "of."

Well, I think I should email my old Latin instructor about this, but of course it's more fun to write a blog post and get all my thoughts out in writing.

In case anyone had any misconceptions.

This phrase is much funnier in Latin (found at The Word Detective, though I've put the "V"s in):

SEMPER VBI SVB VBI

This has truly been the Summer Of Camping, between two trips to Colorado, one to even-more-southern Indiana, and finally a trip last night to Morgan-Monroe State Forest. Sara and I briefly thought about Brown County State Park (I haven't been there for a long time) or McCormick's Creek SP (haven't been there ever) but realized that on Labor Day weekend these were likely to be mobbed, while Morgan-Monroe is usually very quiet. Well, we headed up, and checked out the campsites, but they weren't that great, mostly really open with maybe a single tree between successive sites, and plenty of large men with scruffy beards and tattered clothes standing over grills with suspicious looks on their faces. So after doing the 1-mile "Dendrology Trail" (for those of you non-scientists, the map translates that as "Tree ID Trail")--Sara did really well at dendrologing, I didn't even try--we headed to the "back country area" and walked our equipment in to the first site we found. It was basically just a flat space on the ground, but it worked out great, and this morning we did the ten-mile Low Gap Trail through the back country area, past the rock shelf I've visited with Mom, Dad, Nate, and Heather, and back to our site. All in all, a beautiful trip, and the weather was spectacular, compared to the roastings we've been getting lately.


Unfortunately, in the past couple of weeks I've felt the least excited I've ever been for a semester to start. This is partially because my degree stretches out before me like a lonely road.


Well, okay, so there are a few cars heading that way with me, and a few back at home, but still, it really hit me this summer as I completed my master's degree that I have more to go than I've already done (of graduate school, that is). However, and this is worse, I wasn't really excited about any of my classes. My advanced music theory pedagogy class looks to be much like my music theory pedagogy class from the same instructor last semester, and while she knows about as much as anyone in the entire field, I am not a huge fan of the format of the class, which entails a lot of discussion of minutia and doing of assignments with multiple parts with multiple subparts ad infinitum (nice Latin there).

My history of music theory class is worse off than this, considering that it is, if anything, less advanced than the history of music theory class I took from the musicology department last semester. (Ah, but requirements are requirements.) My current instructor has admitted that, given the choice, he'd gladly take the musicology version, and our first class, on Greek music theory, was a good example of why: he didn't even mention tetrachords, Pythagoreans and Aristoxenians were classified as if there were no gray area, students who'd read no more than a 14-page introduction to "Greek music theory" were passionately saying things like, "I think a really important aspect of the Pythagorean school is...," and for no apparent reason we have to calculate ratios for all the chromatic intervals through the octave for next week, even though ratios for sevenths (and maybe even sixths) are kind of irrelevant.

But worst of all is my Bartok class, with our expensive books and disorganized classes. One of the books the instructor had put on order isn't even in print anymore, but we still have plenty of readings from it (not awful, though it kind of is awful that she had no idea until someone emailed her after the first day of classes--and it'll run up the copying bill). Then on the first day, she had us write information cards about ourselves, which were to include "one thing you know about Bela Bartók" and "one thing you want to learn about Bela Bartók." Okay, a bit silly already, but then she taught from these cards for 15 minutes, going into little enough depth on each subject that we didn't really learn anything but enough to waste a fair bit of time. And we have two group projects, culminating in... five minute presentations. I wonder if she remembers the difference between undergraduate and graduate students...

Oh well, I'm trying to get the most I can out of my materials. And teaching is going fairly well, though I still hate teaching at 8: I and my mind make it to class no problem, but that's more than can be said for most of the students. I've managed to be quite industrious already--I've even worked ahead a little--and Pro Arte is singing a beautiful Bach (redundant) mass. So, onward down that road!

Sorry it's been a while, and sorry that that'll require a quick post.

I had a terrific vacation with my family to the Aspen, Colorado area, camping, hiking, enjoying beautiful music, and even taking a shower now and then. We photographed the (apparently) most-photographed peaks in North America, saw beautiful meadows, and stood on high ridges...




...and that was only the first day. (Sorry, Nate, this was the one day you and Heather were behind, so my picture is of Claire.)
[Edit: the third picture isn't showing up for me, though it's definitely in the source code. Sorry, Claire, maybe Blogger doesn't want you on my site.]
A few more nice ones:





Since then, I've proctored a lot of entrance exams. (About eight hours' worth, and that's just the one-on-one ones.) The weather has been extremely hot until today, which I took advantage of by making bagels, and managed to improvise a quite nice whole-wheat bagel recipe with the surprise of finding whole-wheat bread flour at Sahara Mart. Craig--who has moved in (and we're getting along great)--helped a bit, and even bought some sesame seeds to put on top. They turned out better than last time, and I have some pretty good ideas for making them even better next time.

Now, I can't believe that school's starting today! That's kind of awful. It doesn't have the same sense of excitement that I've had in past semesters, but maybe that'll change once I actually get into classes and, especially, once I get back into the hang of teaching. (I think my choice to hardly teach over the summer will haunt me--I felt ridiculously nervous even speaking in front of the assembled music theory graduate students the other day about my class, and feel at a loss whenever I put a lesson plan in front of me to be revised.)

A Tafelmusik concert of music inspired by Ovid has got me going back to my Ovid text and trying to translate. Boy, is it slow going, and after hours of giving tests I haven't mentally been up to it much lately, but hopefully on my light days. We'll see. Here's the great opening paragraph, with just a tiny bit of help from an English translation I found online. I've got a literal and a meaning-centered translation, both, because the rhetorical effect is *definitely* lost in the English translation: you get a sense of the appropriateness of the beginning ("In nova") and the exciting flourish of the end ("perpetuum deducite tempora carmen!") from the literal.

Latin:
In nova fert animus mutatas dicere formas
corpora; di, coeptis (nam vos mutastis et illas)
adspirate meis primaque ab origine mundi
ad mea perpetuum deducite tempora carmen!

Literal: Into new moves me my soul changed to speak of forms bodies; gods, beginnings (for you have changed also them) favor my and first from the genesis of the world to the current my epic spin out time song!

Meaning: My soul moves me to speak of forms changed into new bodies; gods, favor my beginnings (for you have changed them also) and spin out my epic song from the first genesis of the world to the current time!

You can call me cheap if you want, and you would be right, but I just really like getting free and cheap stuff. So when I went to the library's used book store today on a whim, imagine my delight when I found myself able to purchase:

-Two Brandenburg Concertos in mini-score
-Strunk's Source Readings in Music History--the complete version!! of course, also the first edition, copyright 1950, but still...
-Both volumes of The Norton Scores: An Anthology for Listening ("Gregorian Chant to Beethoven" and "Schubert to Davidovsky")
-the Norton Anthology of Western Music Volume II: Classic-Romantic-Modern
-Stefan Kostka's Materials and Techniques of Twentieth-Century Music
-and the novel Cold Mountain by Charles Frazier

...all in excellent condition, for $9.
Also, the latest dumpster acquisition is a lamp. I thought it looked rather ornate and pretty, so I picked it up. When Sara was over, I hadn't even plugged it in yet, so I hadn't thought much about it, but she pointed out two things. First, that it's one of those lamps where you just touch any part of it and it turns off or on! That's awesome! Second, that it's "kinda girly." I hadn't thought about that, either, but, upon further inspection, she's right, as usual.

"While I was looking at the earth stupified, when I regained my senses, I said, "What's this sound, which fills my ears so greatly and so sweetly?" [My grandfather] said, "This is that which, separated by different intervals, but still rationally distinguished according to a fixed plan, is caused by the striking and motion of the orbits themselves and, tempering high with low causes various harmonies equally. Indeed such motion could not be effected in silence! And nature brings it about that the extremes from one part sound low, from another part high. For which reason that greatest starbearing course in the sky, whose turning is very quick, is moved by a high and loud sound, while this small lunar course sounds the lowest. For the earth, the ninth sphere, remains immobile, always fixed to one place embracing its center. Indeed, these eight courses, two of which move with the same force, create the seven sounds distinct by intervals, which number is the crux of nearly all things. Learned men imitating this sound with strings and songs open a return for themselves to this heavenly place, just like others who pursue divine studies by excellent skill during their human lives.

"The ears of men, filled with this sound, have become deaf; indeed, there is no sense that's duller in you, just as when the Nile rushes from the highest mountains to that which is called Catadupa, the tribe which dwells by that place lacks the sense of hearing because of the magnitude of the sound. This sound truly is so great in all the world because of the great swiftness of its turning that the ears of men are not able to capture it, just as you are not able to look at the sun and its rays overcome your sense of sight." I wondered at this, but nevertheless I kept turning my eyes back towards the earth repeatedly.

"Then Africanus [my grandfather] said, "I see that even now you contemplate your planet and the home of men; if it looks so small to you (as it is), always regard these heavenly things; despise those human things. For what renown can you attain among the talkings of men or of that glory which is to be sought? You see that the earth is inhabited in scattered and confined places, and where it is inhabited, as if by spots, vast solitudes are placed between, and those who inhabit it are not only scattered about so much that nothing is able to pass between them one group to another, but live partly in every other zone of each hemisphere, and from them you can certainly expect no glory."

-Mark Tully Cicero, on the music of the spheres

I don't know if what Claire refers to as "dumpster diving" actually involves throwing one's self into a trash receptacle; as you may imagine, I find that image distasteful. I certainly wouldn't want to be rummaging around within one of those smelly things. But as people are moving out of my apartment building (most leases here expire within the next 10 days) they are bringing unwanted or untransportable items down to our dumpster and leaving them, often right outside the dumpster rather than in it. When this is the case, I have no problem picking up some useful item, when it is in good condition. (I've noticed the same is true for others--I'm usually one of the first people to pass it every day, since my stairway/exit is the closest, but anything I don't claim often disappears later. And others aren't anywhere near as picky about disdaining things within the dumpster itself.)

Some of the things I've acquired from next-to-the-dumpster non-diving:
Two nice desk chairs with hydraulics (one was almost unusable but restored to excellent condition with 30 cents' worth of screws)
One nice dinner table (perfect but for some stripped screws, making it a bit wobbly--this will be replaced soon)
One very nice desk (finally, I have a desk with drawers!)
Three nice bowls
A nice cup full of pencils, pens, markers, and, hidden within, a card good for one free espresso or coffee at Panera
A scale (sadly, for humans, not cooking items)
A stack of post-it notes
A full-length mirror (not my full length, but you know what I mean--a nice long one)

Well, there was certainly one very nice reaction to our performance the other day! Peter Jacobi reviews for the Bloomington Herald-Times. He tends to write rather dry, factual reviews, rather than actually comment on the performance, so I take what little he said as high praise:

Vocal balm for the ears
By Peter Jacobi H-T Reviewer
August 2, 2007

On Tuesday morning, in preparation for next Sunday’s “Show Times” section, I took note of, with regret, the dearth of choral music during the summer season, happy then in being able to point to a partially compensating IU Chamber Choir concert this coming Monday.

So, what happened a few hours later, on Tuesday evening? As if responding to my initial regret, the Early Music Institute’s Concentus program in Auer Hall turned out to feature, among other items, three choral numbers sung by a beautifully voiced ensemble of 11.

What one heard was balm for the ears. First, the group offered Claudio Monteverdi’s “Cor mio, non mori?” (“My heart, are you not dying?”), a madrigal and delectable expression of longing for a love now moving in but a single direction. How starkly different was Carlo Gesualdo’s intense, often dissonant, setting for the Lamentations of Jeremiah, in which — under the guidance of director Timothy Chenette — the choristers delivered a carefully stitched, incantatory weave of
time-spanning chant. [We chanted a few verses of the Lamentations in between the responsories to give some context.]

Still to come at program’s end were the “Litanies de la Vierge,” by the 17th-century French composer Henry Du Mont, a churning plea for mercy from the Holy Trinity, but mostly also from the Virgin Mary, whom the text addresses with a flourishing array of praise and the music apostrophizes in accord. The Concentus singers, with William Hudson leading them, infused their reading with commendable intonation and a strong sense for meaning.



...Nothing like "commendable intonation" as a compliment. The review goes on to talk about the instrumental portions of the concert in essentially factual terms, which seems appropriate: the "beautifully voiced" (whatever that means) "ensemble of 11" performed by far the most substantial music on the concert. Still, everyone did well and it was really fun all around.

Reactions to music are funny. Since the second Concentus concert, I've talked to several audience members about it, and many have said about the Gesualdo that they "couldn't digest it" or "didn't quite get it." But to me there's not really anything to "get": when I listen to a recording, the effect on me is very immediate and direct. Even those wild chord changes seem to make sense, perhaps because so often the directed motion is so strong. If there's anything we sang that I didn't get, it was the Marenzio madrigal that has seemingly random chord changes and, to me, much stranger passages. It (the Gesualdo) could, of course, have had something to do with our performance: we all thought it was perhaps our best time through, but it's so hard that maybe that wasn't quite good enough to carry it off with conviction. (And there were of course problems: I know I for one was kind of wildly off-pitch at least twice.)

But they're such beautiful pieces, and treat the texts so wonderfully. There are tons of wonderful moments. The beginning of the second responsory (these are mini-pieces sung in between the lamentations of Jeremiah at Tenebrae on Maundy Thursday in Lent) begins with:

Tristis est anima mea usque mortem.

The words of Jesus before his betrayal, "My soul is sorrowful even unto death." Although a more literal translation would be "Sorrow is my soul even unto death." That would be an incorrect translation, of course, meaning-wise, but it's really interesting to think about. It's beautifully, delicately set, in very loosely imitative entries, with the motive of two descending steps appearing all throughout the texture. It's a ridiculously simple motive, without even an interesting rhythm, but for some reason it's all I want to listen to there, more color than melody.


sustinete hic, et vigilate mecum: nunc videbitis turbam, quae circumdabit me:

"Stay here, and watch with me: now you will see the crowd which will encircle me."

Throughout this section, the motion increases steadily, leading to a climax on:

vos fugam capietis.

"You will flee."

And finally a dramatic change of texture, moving from a D major chord to E major; a full, disjointed polyphonic texture to a thin, high, legato monophonic texture; playing around with one chord to chromatic windings:

et ego vadam immolari pro vobis.

"and I will go to be offered up for you."

My favorite moment, though, is at the end of the third responsory, the last for this set. It ends with the words:

cuius livore sanati sumus.

"By his wounds we are healed."

This is the text that Handel, in his Messiah oratorio, sets as "and with his stripes we are healed," with the dramatic, painful downward leap of a diminished seventh to "stripes." (My dictionary has "livor" as "leaden color; bluish color; black-and-blue mark," so I think Handel's translation is better than the more common one. It's related, of course, to "livid.") But here, as with "vos fugam capietis" vs. "et ego vadam," Gesualdo breaks the line up. Rather than one severe affect for the whole line, as in the Messiah, "cuius livore" is set to a twisted, chromatic ascent in limited imitation moving from D major through wild chords including an augmented chord up a step to E major, and it looks like it's going to stop there:


But Gesualdo, as always seeming to seek cleansing for his twisted conscience, seems to suggest that that isn't all: the third line down hasn't finished its word yet, and what sounded like a resolution was merely preparing a dramatic shift directly up a half step (though he cleverly avoids literal parallel fifths and octaves) to the true resolution on F major!


To me, Gesualdo shows his mastery here. It's a madrigalian characteristic to chop up lines and do specific text-painting for each part, often destroying the sense of continuity (of the piece and even the poetry) in the process. But here the technique doesn't have this effect. The twisted, chromatic "cuius livore" (that's where I was out of tune in the concert... oh well, it just sounds more painful, right? Plus, we did it three times, and only once was bad) resolves to the contrasting "sanati sumus," and the contrast shows that the whole point of the phrase, to Gesualdo, is that we are healed. And from there to the end of the piece he just continues these wild, glorious flourishes up and down the scale, reveling in the healing effect of F sort-of-lydian. Isn't that beautiful, and as immediate as music gets?

Studying for my test tomorrow:

From there [another marriage] through the immense sky, Hymen [god of love], wrapped in a saffron cloth, departed and headed for the lands of the Cicones [people of Thrace] and was called by the voice of Orpheus for nothing. He indeed was present, but not solemn words, nor joyful expressions, nor auspicious omen did he bring. The [marriage] torch too, which he held, was continuously hissing with tearful smoke and no fires were produced when it was shaken. The result was even graver than this omen: for while the new bride wanders through the grass accompanied by a crowd of naiads, she falls down, having received a bite in her ankle from a trod-upon snake. When the Rhodopeian poet (Orpheus) had mourned her sufficiently to the upper sky, lest he leave even the shades untried, he dared to descend to the Styx through the Taenarian gate and through the insubstantial populace and the ghosts from the grave he approached Persephone and the lord of the shades who holds sway over the unpleasant kingdom and strumming his strings with his song says this:

"O deities of the land placed below the earth, to which we all sink, any who are created mortal; if it is permitted and with the windings of false mouths put aside you allow truth to be spoken: not to here, that I might see shady Tartarus, have I descended, nor that I might bind the three throats, hairy with snakes, of the Medusa-like monster: the reason for my journey is my wife, into whom a stepped-on viper injected his venom and took away her budding years. I wanted to be able to endure, and I will not deny that I tried: Amor defeated me. This god is well-known in the upper world; whether he is so here, I am unsure: but even here I guess that he is, and if the story of the ancient abduction [of Persephone] is not made up, Amor joined you also. Through this place full of fear, through the huge Abyss and the silences of the enormous realms, I myself beg you, reveal the speedy fate of Euridice. All of us are indebted to you, and having delayed a little later or sooner we are sped to one final seat. We all head to here, this is our final home, and you hold the longest reign over the human race. When, mature, she too will have completed her just years, she will be in your power: we ask for use rather than a gift; but if the fates deny this favor for my wife, I am decided to refuse to return: rejoice in the death of both of us."

I've been using bread flour instead of all-purpose flour in my bread recently, just to see if it makes a difference. (Of course, I still use about 25% whole wheat flour, which adds flavor and nutrition.) I've been really happy with the results both times I've done this, though I may have to try once more with a-p flour just to make sure it's not just that I'm doing everything else right, especially since bread flour is a fair bit more expensive...
Anyway, having bread flour around made me think of this bagel recipe, which I'd found long ago and decided to make at some point in the future. Well, yesterday I had some time, so I went for it. It turns out bagels are really easy to make! (At least if you're used to making bread.) I would highly recommend this recipe to anyone wanting to have fun and make tasty bagels, with two quick modifications: first, some of my bagels seemed a bit on the big side, so I might squeeze a good 18 out of the recipe instead of just 15; and second, I wouldn't let the formed bagels rise quite 10 minutes before boiling, because if the first ones rise for ten minutes, then because only a few can be boiled at a time the last ones sit around for a long time (this, I'm sure, contributed to the size problem). Actually, there was one other problem: the bagels got marked up, first from my picking them up off the counter, then from the spoon I used to turn them over in the pot and take them out (I also tried a spatula and a pair of tongs, with similar results), and then possibly from my boiling water (it's supposed to be hardly moving, but it's hard to keep a constant temperature when you keep putting things in and taking things out). But the marks are mostly superficial: except for the bagels I somehow accidentally flattened, they turned out great. Anyway, just for fun, I photo-documented the whole process.


Bagels Rising. Obviously, the ones in front were formed first. At this point, they look perfect: round and pleasantly, rustically lumpy. I knew they'd rise a lot, so I made the holes really big; but to no avail, as they closed up anyway. As you can see, I was also making yoghurt (in the Salton, much easier to make...).


This picture was going to be labelled, "Holy Bagels, Batman!" But they don't look as humongous in the picture as they did in person. These first two, especially, were too big, and squeezed each other a little bit into oblong shapes.


Okay, so I didn't document the whole process: they were too ugly to photograph before putting them in the oven. But here's the first batch cooling afterwards. I'll just pretend the obvious spoon marks are a new style... maybe this'll catch on? I'll charge extra for those ones. The two middle ones in the top row are bottom-up from when they were rising, as you can tell from the lumps: those are where I pried them off the counter. (Maybe I'll grease the rising surface next time...) Note Cicero's Somnium Scipionis (Dream of Scipio) and a Latin dictionary in the background. Those, of course, are integral to the cooling process.


The first one to be disposed of. For the True Bagel Test, I had to do half just normally with cream cheese, and half toasted with tons of butter. Both were delicious.


And finally, the Leaning Towers of... Bagels. As you can see, some are unfortunately flat (though they're actually not too overly dense... definitely still edible). Nate, the whole purpose of this post is of course to get you to visit earlier: you never know, I'm already down to twelve, and those could disappear in a week and a half...

I'm not reading the newest Harry Potter book (don't worry, I intend to, possibly on our family vacation), but it seems like everyone I know is. Seems that's also true for someone at a blog I've started reading and enjoy a lot called Language Log, as this person posted here. The neatest part of the post for me was the link to the "notae variorum" ("notes of variations"--I translated that without a dictionary! from "nota, notae" and "vari-us, -a, -um"--there's a bit of a problem, though, in that "notae" and "variorum" are both plural, but the former, like most first declension nouns, is feminine, but "orum" is the masculine plural genitive ending: perhaps it's really "notae variarum?" Or maybe they don't have to agree, since variorum is a substantive genitive, not used to modify "notae." Actually, that's probably it. But why should variations be masculine? I like them better agreeing).

There are some really interesting differences between the British and American editions of various Harry Potter books. From the strange, perhaps attempting-to-be-PC additions:

(from Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone)
British: "...three people left to be sorted. 'Turpin, Lisa' became..."
American: "...three people left to be sorted. "Thomas, Dean," a Black boy even taller than Ron, joined Harry at the Gryffindor table. "Turpin, Lisa" became..."

to the strange complete rewritings:

(from Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets)
British: "...A second later, Harry spotted something that made him hit Ron over the hand with his pruning shears... Harry was pointing at the ground a few feet away. Several large spiders were scurrying across the earth.... Harry watched the spiders running away."
American: "...A second later, Harry spotted something.Several large spiders were scuttling over the ground on the other side of the glass, moving in an unnatuarally straight line as though taking the shortest route to a prearranged meeting. Harry hit Ron over the hand with his pruning shears... Harry pointed out the spiders, following their progress with his eyes screwed up against the sun... Harry's eyes narrowed as he focused on the spiders. If they pursued their fixed course, there could be no doubt about where they would end up."

(was that one just rewritten to put in more of a "Western" feel with the Clint Eastwood-style "...with his eyes screwed up against the sun... Harry's eyes narrowed?")

and the sections that would have been disastrous without "translation":

(from Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince)
British: "...I got off with McLaggen..."
American: "...I hooked up with McLaggen..."

There are a lot of interesting things: "forwards" turning into "forward," "the" dropping all over the place, "which" becoming "that," "a team of healers... is" becoming "a team of healers... are," etc., in addition to all the obvious colloquialisms getting smoothed over.

Had a nice vacation #2 this past weekend. I'd been noticing recently that the water levels in the rivers of southern Indiana had been high for this part of the season, and the weather looked to be terrific, and I felt it'd be a shame to just sit around in a hot apartment in Bloomington. So Sara and I went camping in Southern Indiana, in the Hoosier National Forest. Our site was nice and private for the first night, as our only fellow-campers were over a hill, but there were farms around, and we were awoken by roosters. In addition, something was sniffing around our tent as we went to sleep, and then along with a few friends joined us for breakfast:



They also decided to follow me up the hill to the bathroom before bothering the other campers for a while:



The next morning, we drove to Milltown to go canoeing on the Blue River. Turned out the canoe rental place was a huge operation, but as we opted for a longer trip than most, we had a few miles of solitude, during which we came across a stream that led a few hundred yards to a beautiful (and cold!) spring:



The river was beautiful, and would clearly have been really exciting at Spring water levels. As it was late in the season, we had to get out a few times to let the canoe drift over some rocks, but surprisingly little for mid-July. The only really unfortunate aspect was the popularity of the river on a beautiful day in midsummer. Once we passed the put-in point for the shorter trip, five miles in, we probably passed more than fifty other canoers or kayakers. There was a total of about 30 seconds from that point on when other canoes weren't visible. But it was still pretty, and nice to be out in such beautiful weather.



Next on the agenda was Marengo Cave. Like the canoeing, a bit pricey, but it really impressed me. I expected it to be touristy, but it was really beautiful.



This was pretty cool. If you just looked down, the quality and stillness of the reflection in the water meant you saw what looked like another, extremely deep room through a hole.



After the cave we headed back to our campsite and worked on a crossword, made a nice dinner, and built a great fire to roast marshmallows upon.
This morning we headed out for a bit of a hike. Unfortunately, the heat and especially the humidity really kicked in today, so we cut it a bit short (also, the stream we hiked to was entirely dry...), but we saw a huge number of these beautiful butterflies all over:



I'd really been hoping for some beautiful views over endless forests on our hike, but that didn't happen. Still, the drive, on both the way there and the way back, gave us the views I was looking for if not at the time I wanted them, and I snapped a shot of one vista (missing, of course, many much better ones). Southern Indiana sure can be beautiful.

Bike number 1 (not ever, but for this story) was, I think, a Giant Boulder. I took it with me to college 6 years ago, and it served me well. I didn't use it that much, though, and a friend sometimes borrowed it. (That is, he borrowed it once with my permission, and I told him the lock combination, and then he'd borrow it at will.) Once I was in a hurry to get somewhere and saw him walking the bike: I was surprised, but with his permission reborrowed my own bike and rode to where I needed to get. There I realized I'd left the lock with my friend. So I left it unlocked, because it was Kenyon. Then I forgot about it for two days, and it was gone forever.
Since then I've gone through numbers 2 (didn't work well), 3 (unreliable, got tons of flats), 4 (worked okay, but I didn't work with it well), 5 (stolen), and two belonging to Grandpa Chenette (he's repaired them both, fortunately); I'm now on to no. 6 in as many years, and it had better work well. For what it's worth, I'm back to the Giant Boulder. It's a cheap bike, as bike-shop bikes go, but it should be reliable and good in the snow, and I bought a nice lock.

To continue the Twin Peaks hike pictures, here's an abandoned mine we found. Click to enlarge and see the fun promised by the sign! You'll also get some idea of the steepness of the trail from the sweat pouring off our faces--and this was a shaded trail at 8:30 in the morning!:



Here's Sister Peak, looking back towards Ouray's valley:



And finally from Twin Peaks, here's Courthouse Mountain, a good 1500 feet higher and a destination of one of our most beautiful group hikes ever, 7(?) years ago:



Here are Dad and Nate at the top (Nate got a good group picture with his camera, but I haven't gotten his pictures yet):





And here's the other direction, towards Mt. Sneffels (we think), one of the area's over-14,000-foot mountains (the famed "14ers," which are spread across only four US states--none of us Chenettes have ever climbed this high, but I think it would be exciting, and I know Dad's talked about wanting to):



Finally, the morning of my departure, the 4th, the celebrations included the "Ourayce," a 10k. Nate pulled in an impressive 8th out of about 160, right after the first woman, who happened to hold the two top women's times for that race. Not bad for one of the few people who usually lives well below Ouray's almost-8,000-feet elevation (Nate, not the woman: he currently resides in Atlanta). Here he is after crossing the finish line:



Since getting back, things have been less good: I left my half-working iPod in Colorado, got dramatically sick last night, and when I went to ride to an appointment with my Latin instructor on Thursday my bike (about a year old) had disappeared. But it's okay: I've got good memories behind me! And honestly, the only really horrible thing in that list is the loss of the bike (which I'm aggressively following up, needless to say: I'm borrowing Sara's bike for the time being, since it beats walking for 20 minutes to get anywhere and she doesn't use it on a regular basis, but there are no gears, and it uses inefficient backpedal brakes, and--well, let's just say I'm anxious to get the old one back or buy a new one!). Just when I thought my horrible luck with bikes was changing...!