I passed!

As you can tell, our corn is in a celebratory mood:


Our tomatoes also seem basically pleased:

We had a great, if warm, visit from Mom and Dad:


And even Oliver managed to have some fun:

On to other projects!

I took my test yesterday!

There were a few things that didn't go so well. In particular, I had intended to use voice dictation software, to take it easy on my wrists--the graduate office had gone to the trouble of borrowing a laptop from the Adaptive Technology center, installing everything, and meeting with me to make sure it worked--and then an important feature that I use at home happened to be turned off! I remembered that this was the default setting, and that you could change it somehow, but I couldn't for the life of me remember what it was called, so I messed with it for about five wasted minutes, and then just typed the rest.

I also said that Datemi pace by de Rore in 1557--one of my "unprepared score identification" excerpts--was by Willaert in 1550 (oops), and one of my essays was rather bland, unfocused, and (I know from meeting with my test-writer) not what was wanted.

But I think I probably will pass, and I have to keep in mind that with a timed exam, not everything can be perfect.

Regardless, I'm relishing the freedom from studying! It was very satisfying to put away the thousands of pages of notes, scores, and textbooks I've been working with for the past five months.

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In the meantime, here are some edible experiments we've been trying lately. Sara's family gave us a food dehydrator--it's used and may not last long, but made some delicious "sun-dried" tomatoes:



(The tomatoes are sadly not from our garden: our tomato plants are full of tomatoes, but they're all still green, and many of the plants are showing dramatic signs of wilt.)

The tomatoes at work, along with our first batch of pesto from garden basil:



Wood sorrel, which grows all over our yard and which we have been using to make a distinctively lemonade-like sorrel tea:

I have my first qualifying exam in less than 3 days, so that's weighing on my mind lately. But at the same time, I'm getting excited for the course I'll be teaching this fall! It'll be the final course of the required Music Theory curriculum at IU, and covers 20th- and 21st-century music and analytical techniques.

Very often such classes have an element of "look at all the crazy stuff people have done!" to them. This is especially true once you get past about 1970--generally people invoke the idea that "history has not yet made its judgment" about this period, and veer from unique piece to unique piece, talking more about characteristics or generalities than theories, structure, harmony, rhythm...

I can certainly understand this, and there's something to be said about exposing students to a bunch of crazy music. But in my classroom, I want every piece to be taken seriously; I want students to know that there's always something specific, musical, and interesting they can say about a piece of music; and I especially don't want to be lecturing all the time.

I really want students to feel they have to work hard, to get practice writing detailed, analytical prose, and to take ownership of the material.

These are all difficult goals, but ones I'm getting excited thinking about. Clearly, there's no "off" time in academia...

The first parsnips of the season! The smaller ones really aren't worth much, obviously, but they were in with the strawberries, which, frankly, are much more important, so they had to go.

Considering how early it is in the season (hardly July), I think things are looking promising on the parsnip front...