It's a beautiful morning (10 AM and not even quite 70 degrees!) so I was just outside checking out the garden.

Not everything is going well. The blight has completely killed two of our tomato plants, and is affecting every one. (It looks like, though we got an average of about one a day for the last two months, we won't get any more for a while.) Our greens--broccoli, cabbage, and collards--were all nearly destroyed by those annoying worms, though they've since disappeared (and it looks like the plants are coming back). The corn is affected by both worms and, because we have a small plot with uneven sun, poor fertilization.

Nevertheless, we ate a lot of corn from our garden yesterday:




We have lots of (seemingly blight-unaffected... knock on wood) beautiful peppers, some of which are starting to turn red:



And our leek and parsnip are getting large and delicious-looking:




Raspberries seem to be forming on the plants, and we just started some more salad mix and arugula to carry us through the end of the season. Things just keep growing!

And, because no post is complete without a cat picture, here's one. We let Nadia sleep with us the past two nights, a privilege she hasn't had for months, and she was so happy she actually joined her nemesis on his favorite chair for several hours:

My latest diagnosis (for a swollen arm) is Thoracic Outlet Syndrome.

Sometimes, I feel like a less contented version of Master Yü:

"All at once Master Yü fell ill. Master Ssu went to ask how he was. 'Amazing!' said Master Yü. 'The Creator is making me all crookedy like this! My back sticks up like a hunchback and my vital organs are on top of me. My chin is hidden in my navel, my shoulders are up above my head, and my pigtail points at the sky. It must be some dislocation of the yin and yang!' Yet he seemed calm at heart and unconcerned. Dragging himself haltingly to the well, he looked at his reflection and said, 'My, my! So the Creator is making me all crookedy like this!'
" 'Do you resent it?' asked Master Ssu.
" 'Why no, what would I resent? If the process continues, perhaps in time he'll transform my left arm into a rooster. In that case I'll keep watch on the night. Or perhaps in time he'll transform my right arm into a crossbow pellet and I'll shoot down an owl for roasting. Or perhaps in time he'll transform my buttocks into cartwheels. Then, with my spirit for a horse, I'll climb up and go for a ride. What need will I ever have for a carriage again?
" 'I received life because the time had come; I will lose it because the order of things passes on."
-Zuangzi

"I observed a custome in all those Italian Cities and towns through which I passed, that is not used in any other country that I saw in my travels... The Italian and also most strangers that are commorant in Italy, doe alwaies at their meales use a little forke when they cut their meat. For while with their knife which they hold in one hand they cut the meate out of the dish, they fasten their forke which they hold in their other hand upon the same dish, so that whatsoever he be that sitting in the company of any others at meale, shoulde unadvisedly touch the dishe of meate with his fingers from which all at table doe cut, he will give occasion of offense unto the company... This forme of feediing I understand is generally used in all places of Italy, their forkes being for the most part made of yron or steele, and some of silver... The reason of this their curiosity is, because the Italian cannot by any means indure to have his dish touched with fingers, seeing all men's fingers are not alike cleane."
-Thomas Coryat, 1600s

A year ago today, I became the happiest man in the world.

A few months ago, in the middle of a large notation-based project, I finally broke down and updated to the most recent version of Finale music notation software. Finale is one of those programs that is updated every year, charges more than $100 to upgrade, and seldom makes improvements designed for me (the academic user and semi-professional typesetter, I guess). And another annoying aspect is perfectly captured by the Finale 2011 brochure/advertisement I just received, which states, among other things,

"And you'll never accidentally lose these edits by changing something else."

Shouldn't this be a bug fix???

I teach my first class as visiting lecturer two weeks from today!

This class, Music Theory and Literature V, has a broad mission: to teach students a core repertoire of 20th- and 21st-century music, to learn techniques of analysis for this repertoire (particularly pitch-class sets and serial techniques), make them aware of major musical, aesthetic, and philosophical trends of this period, and maybe even get them to like some of this music. We meet for almost 4 hours every week for 15 weeks. In short, it's a lot of responsibility, but I also anticipate it'll be really fun. I love the repertoire and really look forward to testing my ideas about teaching it.

In the meantime, I have a few long-term projects that I'm working on. My hourly test-designing job for the school has been extended by the family emergency of one of the professors who I'm consulting with. I have to give a paper at this year's meeting of the Society for Music Theory (really, get to do so, but while I'm writing the paper, it feels like an obligation): they have such an early deadline for proposals (I think it was in January) that I'm quite ready to be done with this particular topic. And I have a year from mid-July to finish all my qualifying exams and my dissertation proposal. Each one of these tasks is relatively long-term and self-directed: theoretical/speculative papers, theoretical/speculative dissertation proposals, tests, and classes are all things on which one could spend an infinite amount of time preparing and never feel quite done. So I'm starting to feel that frustration, and the difficulty of prioritizing between long-term projects. But all of them have some amount of excitement (at least when I don't let them bog me down) and I think it'll all work out well.

---

Two and a half weeks ago Sara and I went on a quick tour of some interesting sites in southwestern Indiana. This trip feels like old news by now, but I have to share some pictures:

Vincennes, Indiana, is pretty unknown today, but at one time it was the capital of the large Indiana territory; and from 1804-1805 William Henry Harrison governed all of the Indiana and Louisiana territories (that is, the entire western half of the US) from here. It was also the site of the Battle of Vincennes, the only major Revolutionary War battle west of the 13 colonies and north of the Ohio River that was won by the Americans, and thus the primary reason that the United States acquired all the land between the Ohio River and the Great Lakes (sorry, Canadian friends).

The town is a bit rundown now, but they have a cute downtown, as well as a rather incongruous National Park with a (70 foot tall?) neo-Classical monument:



The monument houses 30-foot-tall murals, including one depicting the settlement of "the West" by, among others, a distant Chenette relative by the name of Boone:



We also toured the mansion of William Henry Harrison, a rather interesting figure and the shortest-serving President in our nation's history:



Then we headed to New Harmony, host of two utopian settlements in the early 1800s. The short version, as told by the interpreters there, goes something like this. A bunch of German immigrants, expecting the coming of Christ in their lifetimes, gave all their money to their leader, George Rapp, and moved here; they were celibate and led lives of austerity, work, and prayer; and their handcrafted goods were so highly prized that they left after ten years to go back to Pennsylvania for access to eastern markets. They sold the town wholesale to Robert Owen, an idealistic British industrialist, who wished to create a utopian society of artists and intellectuals. Unfortunately, no one really knew how to farm very well or how to fix things, and with a bunch of artists and scientists you're bound to get a few big egos, and this community was a flop in about 3 years. However, the Owen family was tightly connected to the town until Jane Owen's death about a month ago (actually, maybe even still).

Unfortunately, we didn't get any pictures of the neat old houses, barracks, etc. (children moved out of their parents' homes and into barracks at age 14). But we did get a taste of the old in the labyrinth:




and the new (there's a lot of idealistic modern art and spirituality there now) in this structure, the central focus of the "Roofless church," which houses a Lipchitz sculpture:



We camped that night in Harmonie State Park, which was decent but sadly didn't open their pool for us the next morning; still, we got to see the sun set on the Wabash:



And on the way home we stopped at Hemlock Cliffs, an "area of particular beauty in the Hoosier National Forest," which certainly lived up to its billing:



This (at the time mostly dry) 70-foot waterfall with a walking ledge behind was particularly spectacular (though, sadly, they did not allow rock climbing):



It was a lot of fun!

We arrived home from a great trip to Canada two nights ago, only to find that our corn is about 12 feet tall:



And that we had lots of new tomatoes, bringing our total for the season (we're keeping track, since it's our first garden and we want to impress ourselves) to 31: