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...!

I had an absolutely *terrific* stay in Colorado. I left on Saturday, bright and early, and miraculously met Nate and Mom and Dad in Denver in time to drive the four hours to Aspen and see both Claire's chamber music intermission performance and orchestra concert (first chair!). We had a nice picnic outside of her dorm:



The next day, the four unAspened Chenettes went on a somewhat anticlimactic hike while Claire did her practicing and stuff, then we headed to Ouray in the San Juan range, where we saw lots of Kerns (Mom's side of the family). As always, it was wonderful to see them. On Monday, many of us went on a hike up to Chief Ouray Mine, a hike which started about a block from our relatives' house. Lots of highlights on this hike, including a nice waterfall:



It was a pretty nice view from the top, though I didn't get a good one of the mine itself:



Here are the select few who made it to the mine, minus Annje who must have been taking the picture--the Chenettes (minus Mom), Jeffrey, and Kerry--in front of what was presumably the miners' housing:



And another view of the same building, with more mountains in the background:



Tuesday was my last day, and I asked to do a really neat hike. So Nate, Dad, and I decided to head out early and aim for Twin Peaks (Sister Peak is the prominent peak that's not part of the twins):



This hike started farther away--we had to walk about four blocks to get there (terrible, I know). Obviously, these peaks were not the highest destination in the area, but the trail we headed up was probably the steepest I've ever been on. Dad estimated it was about an average 20% grade. That's including the places where it leveled out slightly. At one of those places, we saw this bird, sitting oddly not ten yards away, in the middle of the path:



After snapping the picture, we headed forwards (the slope was too steep and wooded to get around). The bird finally scampered a little ways up the slope, clucking at us and offering us a view of the treasure she was guarding:



Pretty cute! We stepped over them, and they scampered, but not too far, and we don't think we disrupted them too much. (And considering there had only been one other group on that trail in the entire previous 24 hours or more, they probably had time to regroup.)

The trail also wound through beautiful Aspen forests before climbing steeply again to the top. The views were spectacular, but I'll save those pictures for another post.

"What is home without / Plumtree’s Potted Meat? / Incomplete. / With it an abode of bliss."


"What relation existed between their ages?
"16 years before in 1888 when Bloom was of Stephen's present age Stephen was 6. 16 years after in 1920 when Stephen would be of Bloom's present age Bloom would be 54. In 1936 when Bloom would be 70 and Stephen 54 their ages initially in the ration of 16 to 0 would be as 17 1/2 to 13 1/2, the proportion increasing and the disparity diminishing according as arbitrary future years were added, for if the proportion existing in 1883 had continued immutable, conceiving that to be possible, till then 1904 when Stephen was 22 Bloom would be 374 and in 1920 when Stephen would be 38, as Bloom then was, Bloom would be 646 while in 1952 when Stephen would have attained the maximum postdiluvian age of 70 Bloom, being 1190 years alive having been born in the year 714, would have surpassed by 221 years the maximum antediluvian age, that of Methusalah, 969 years, while, if Stephen would continue to live until he would attain that age in the year 3072 A.D., Bloom would have been obliged to have been alive 83,300 years, having been obliged to have been born in the year 81,396 B.C."


"O and the sea the sea crimson sometimes like fire and the glorious sunsets and the figtrees in the Alameda gardens yes and all the queer little streets and pink and blue and yellow houses and the rosegardens and the jessamine and geraniums and cactuses and Gibraltar as a girl where I was a Flower of the mountain yes when I put the rose in my hair like the Andalusian girls used or shall I wear a red yes and how he kissed me under the Moorish wall and I thought well as well him as another and then I asked him with my eyes to ask again yes and then he asked me would I yes to say yes my mountain flower and first I put my arms around him yes and drew him down to me so he could feel my breasts all perfume yes and his heart was going like mad and yes I said yes I will Yes."

(I'm done!)

The lack of posts recently has been because I'm trying to minimize my computer use--I'm dead set on healing my wrists as quickly as possible. (I'm also not playing piano at all, which is sad.) But quick update: Latin is good, and I've started reading Ovid, though I have to look up about 9 out of every 10 words in the dictionary; teaching is looking fine, and quite easy (turns out the instructor mainly expects me to show up and do the grading); I start "summer early music ensemble" today, which should include some stunning sacred pieces by Gesualdo; I have fruit flies infesting my African violet, which (the fruit flies, not the flower) I set aside a few minutes every day to hunt down, to no avail; it's hot; I'm swimming pretty regularly; ista decent umeros gestamina nostros/qui dare certa ferae, dare vulnera possumus hosti,/qui modo pestifero tot iugera ventre prementem/stravimus innumeris tumidum Pythona saggitis,/tu face nescio quos esto contentus amores/inritare tua, nec laudes adsere nostras!" (Take that, Cupid!)

The Calf-Path, by Sam Walter Foss

I.

One day, through the primeval wood,
A calf walked home, as good calves should;

II.

But made a trail all bent askew,
A crooked trail as all calves do.
Since then three hundred years have fled,
And, I infer, the calf is dead.
But still he left behind his trail,
And thereby hangs my moral tale.
The trail was taken up next day,
By a lone dog that passed that way.
And then a wise bell-wether sheep,
Pursued the trail o'er vale and steep;
And drew the flock behind him too,
As good bell-wethers always do.
And from that day, o'er hill and glade.
Through those old woods a path was made.

III.

And many men wound in and out,
And dodged, and turned, and bent about;
And uttered words of righteous wrath,
Because 'twas such a crooked path.
But still they followed - do not laugh -
The first migrations of that calf.
And through this winding wood-way stalked,
Because he wobbled when he walked.

IV.

This forest path became a lane,
that bent, and turned, and turned again.
This crooked lane became a road,
Where many a poor horse with his load,
Toiled on beneath the burning sun,
And traveled some three miles in one.
And thus a century and a half,
They trod the footsteps of that calf.

V.

The years passed on in swiftness fleet,
The road became a village street;
And this, before men were aware,
A city's crowded thoroughfare;
And soon the central street was this,
Of a renowned metropolis;
And men two centuries and a half,
Trod in the footsteps of that calf.

VI.

Each day a hundred thousand rout,
Followed the zigzag calf about;
And o'er his crooked journey went,
The traffic of a continent.
A Hundred thousand men were led,
By one calf near three centuries dead.
They followed still his crooked way,
And lost one hundred years a day;
For thus such reverence is lent,
To well established precedent.

VII.

A moral lesson this might teach,
Were I ordained and called to preach;
For men are prone to go it blind,
Along the calf-paths of the mind;
And work away from sun to sun,
To do what other men have done.
They follow in the beaten track,
And out and in, and forth and back,
And still their devious course pursue,
To keep the path that others do.
They keep the path a sacred groove,
Along which all their lives they move.
But how the wise old wood gods laugh,
Who saw the first primeval calf!
Ah! many things this tale might teach -
But I am not ordained to preach.

In my last post I mentioned that I'm caring for four different places (a house, two apartments, and a condo), including two cats. Well, today, I biked my whole route, with a stop at the health center for physical therapy (which I just started) for my wrists and a stop at home for dinner. Here, courtesy of gmap-pedometer.com, is a map of Bloomington and my route:

All of the friends who I normally hang out with have left town, as of this morning, and I now have the dubious honor of being not only Master of Music but also Master of Keys to four apartments besides mine, located in all different parts of town, and a few associated mailboxes. So if anyone needs an apartment showing, I've got some contracts, and you can move in anytime this weekend.

Singular, communed the guest with himself, the wonderfully unequal faculty of metempsychosis possessed by them, that the puerperal dormitory and the dissecting theatre should be the seminaries of such frivolity, that the mere acquisition of academic title should suffice to transform in a pinch of time these votaries of levity into exemplary practitioners of an art which most men anywise eminent have esteemed the noblest.
-James Joyce's Leopold Bloom, thinking about the bawdy younger men around him

Kyle needed a ride to the airport last Friday, so Sara and I took the opportunity to visit grandma and grandpa. It was a really nice stay. We took the usual boat ride, and Sara caught a lot of fish. Then the next day we were planning on biking door-to-door from grandma and grandpa's house to the art museum--there's actually a combination of 4 bike paths that would take us the whole way--until about 3 miles in I made the mistake of changing the back gears on my borrowed bike, which promptly stopped moving. The back gear shift mechanism had somehow bent dramatically. In fifteen minutes we'd gotten the wheel to move again, but the gear shifter was hanging off the side, so we walked back and drove to the museum. The museum, fortunately, was wonderful--we toured the whole contemporary art floor and walked around the Lilly House grounds with their beautiful gardens, followed by a trip to Trader Joe's. (Wow, two Chenettes blogged about Trader Joe's in one week.) Then we had dinner with grandma and grandpa and aunt Nancy, which was really fun. This was the third fun weekend in a row: first the trip out to LA for Nate's graduation, then the canoeing trip, and now this trip to Indy. Maybe I'll take a weekend to be lazy next week, but we'll see.

In the meantime, I can't wait for my trip(s!) out to Colorado--first in early July (less than a month!) to Ouray for the Kern reunion and then in mid/late August to camp and visit Claire at Aspen. Both trips sound great. It's been too long since I've seen, hiked, and camped those beautiful mountains!

Ouray:



from the Bridge of Heaven:

I wanted to take advantage of Memorial Day, so last week I tried to plan out a canoeing trip with some friends. The water levels across the state were getting a bit low, but late in the week it became clear that it'd rain over the weekend. Unfortunately, that rain (and thunderstorm) chance got pushed to Monday, and then it turned out that we'd get charged for a 2-3 day rental for each canoe from IU Outdoor Adventures because they weren't open Sunday or Monday, but we still picked up the canoes on Saturday and got together at my place on Monday morning at 8 to figure something out. Involved were my friends Ben and Christy:



(pictured here paddling, perhaps somewhat quixotically, upriver--but hey, it was their first time ever)
Mitch and Tali:



(okay, well, you can see Tali at least)
and Sara and I:



We decided to head out despite the rain and gray skies, and to head for the West Fork of the White River, which was at a relatively average (for this time of year) water level and only a half hour away. So we got in our respective vehicles and headed to Martinsville, where we got out at the bridge and tried to find the entrance to the water. The book I'd checked out recommended the "SE corner of SR 39 bridge." There was indeed a road there leading to the water, but it came off of what was clearly someone's very long driveway and appeared to be marked as private property. I walked down to the water and it had clearly been used as an entry point into the water, but I called Dad, as an experienced canoeist, to ask his advice on what to do. He recommended we ask the farmer if we could use it, as the polite thing to do. So Sara and I drove down the driveway a ways until we saw a sign, "NO UNAUTHORIZED VEHICLES PAST THIS POINT." So we parked the car and walked a few yards until suddenly three fierce, muscular dogs sped at us from the direction of the house, barking ferociously and clearly threatening. We were pretty scared--I thought they might actually attack--but as long as we kept moving back towards the car they just growled. Well, we got in the car and backed out of there pretty fast.
So we drove en masse to a motel across the road, to ask someone's advice. There was a janitor outside looking at us suspiciously, and I got out of the car and had a conversation with him:

Me. Hi, we'd really like to canoe this river, and I was wondering if you have any advice on how to get to the water.
Him. Well, that guy over there, he don't want no one on his property. He'll shootcha. I know him, and he'll do it.
Me. I see. Well, do you have any suggestions?
Him. Well, I don'know. That guy over there, he definitely don't want anyone on his property. It's all signed and everything, he's got security cameras.
Me. Well, I guess he has his right to his property.
Him. Yeah, he's, well, you'll excuse my language.
Me. Of course.
Him. He's a bastard.
Me. Huh.
Him. Yeah, I mow the grass over here, and he's come over and tol' me if I need to get on his property I can do it, but if I see anyone else on there, I have his permission to shoot'em right there.
Me. Wow. Well, do you know where we could get on the river?

The conversation was longer than I would have liked--the guy definitely didn't want us to get away without the impression that we'd get shot if we went on the other guy's land, and he also definitely wanted us to know (several times) about the nearest places in either direction where we might get to the river. He also mentioned that we might be able to use the road I'd originally walked down to the river, but oddly enough we weren't too excited about being anywhere near the property in question. I think I won him over with my Iowa farmboy charm, because by the end of the conversation he was wishing us a fun trip, and to take care of ourselves now, because he knows if he'd get in one o' them canoes he'd definitely get wet, and he's 68, so he doesn't get around much any more. We thanked him and headed downriver to Paragon (pronounced PAIR-a-g'n, and ideally with a strong southern Indiana accent) and took a small road a few miles to the river. There were some people fishing there, and it seemed otherwise pretty deserted and pretty safe.

So we unloaded the canoes, accidentally breaking Ben and Christy's sideview mirror in the process, and Tali, Christy, Sara and I all drove down to Spencer, IN where there was a public access. We headed back in Tali's green Windstar (a good van if ever there was one) to find that as Ben and Mitch had been pulling canoes down to the river, the fishermen/women had left and so had their cooler. They were understandably upset and, I think partially just to vent, filed a police report. Apparently the Paragon sheriff's reaction was, "Yeah, people'll steal anything around here."

This whole time, the sky had been completely overcast and threatening, and it often rained, occasionally hard, though generally just for a few minutes at a time. We expected to have to pull over occasionally for such outbursts. However, by the time we had worked all this out, it was 11:30, and, though the sky continued to look threatening, it didn't rain once (!) after we got into the canoes. So there was one thing that went very right!

The trip was pretty uneventful. It was a good beginner's river (which was good for Christy and Ben)--the water level was plenty high, so we didn't have trouble with shallow water, but the current was still not overly powerful, so even if one was pushed up against something, one would not be capsized. However, it was unfortunately not a good beginners' distance. I was thinking of the previous trip Sara and I had taken, which was 8 miles and too short. So rather than the canoeing book's suggested route from Gosport to Spencer, which it claimed was 8.6 miles, I had us get in at Paragon (suggested by the janitor). I figured that added about 2/3 again of the length of the trip, putting us at about 13 miles. Well, google maps begs to differ (it looks like the book is wrong, and keep in mind that this route shaves off a lot of curves):



We got on the water around 11:40 and took out around 4:50, and Ben and Christy were looking pretty worn out by the end. (To be fair, between circles and zigzags, they had probably gone a mile or so farther than the rest of us...) It didn't help--at least in this way--that about an hour into the trip the sun actually came out and the sky started getting blue, and then bluer, and by the end it was really hot. In fact, the day had been so gray and rainy, and forecast to continue in that way, that most of us hadn't even considered bringing hats or sunscreen or tons of water. Fortunately, we had enough water to barely get us through despite the cooler theft, and Mitch and Tali had brought sunscreen. Still, by the time we realized it was necessary, it was too late, and we're all burned to one extent or another. Ah well.

To close, here's a picture of the whole group before setting out:

Parts of Andrew Lloyd Webber you probably never wanted to hear about.

Would I like a noun and an adjective?

NO!!!!!


Sorry, I've got a Latin quiz tomorrow and I've been practicing declining my nouns and adjectives a fair amount this afternoon. As you can tell, I've gotten pretty good at it. Among other things, I've declined "great sister" (you choose whether great means "awesome" or "large" or both):

A great sister (nominative): soror magna, plural sorores magnae
Of a great sister (genitive): sororis magnae, pl. sororum magnarum
To/for a great sister (dative): sorori magnae, sororibus magnis
A great sister (accusative): sororem magnam, sorores magnas
from/in/with/by a great sister (ablative): sorore magna, sororibus magnis

Other great phrases I've declined are "happy rock" (saxum laetum? no thank you!), "beautiful voice" (vox pulchra? uh-uh), "happy love" (amor laetus? not a chance) and "eternal father" (pater aeternus? well, maybe--okay, no.).

There are lots of fun options. I still need to get to "ancient fire," "harsh mother," "pious brother" (clearly, I'm just going through my family members), "gold mountain," "true light" (ooh--that's a good one, but I think the answer will still be no), "honest foot."

Some nice Latin sentences. First from our first exam:

Femina mala cum nautis pugnavit magnis cum insidiis, sed viri non deleti sunt.
The evil woman has fought the sailors with much treachery, but the men have not been destroyed.

Magnum est periculum poetae bono, sed si magna cum diligentia scribet, magna bonaque faciet ut turba non timeat.
Great is the danger to the good poet, but if he writes very diligently, he will do great and good things that the crowd will not fear.

Si de periculo cogitabunt, incolae multis taedis et saxis magnis pugnabunt, ne inimicis superarentur. Mali enim poenam dabunt.
If they think about the danger, the inhabitants will fight with many torches and large rocks, lest they be overcome by the enemies. For evil men will pay the penalty.

And demonstrating the efficiency of Latin (as, really, have all of these sentences), conveying in two words what we'd convey in five:

Amari opto.
I want to be loved.

Numbers it is. All music when you come to think. Two multiplied by two divided by half is twice one. Vibrations: chords those are. One plus two plus six is seven. Do anything you like with figures juggling. Always find out this equal to that, symmetry under a cemetary wall.... Musemathematics. And you think you're listening to the ethereal. But suppose you said it like Martha, seven times nine minus x is thirty-five thousand. Fall quite flat. It's on account of the sounds it is."
-Leopold Bloom, thinking about music in Ulysses by James Joyce

I have one of those shirts that says "Where the hell is Grinnell?" on the front and "Who the hell cares?" on the back. It's a funny thing: I'm always worried that it will be noticed only by people behind me who will presumably think I'm some angsty guy with a bad attitude. However, I've gotten more grief about the front: it offends a surprising number of people! Just yesterday I wore it to a choir rehearsal, and a fellow member, upon seeing it, looked offended. "Sue and I grew up in Iowa, you know," she scolded. "I grew up in Grinnell," I informed her, and that was the end of that, but it's still funny. Surely if I didn't have a connection to Grinnell, I wouldn't care about it enough to wear the shirt?

...To continue my previous post, here's a picture of the graduate and his family:



While he was packing up, there was time for the family game of Boggle, which Claire apparently finds ridiculous:



It was really nice to see everyone, despite the long travel time. Since then, I've been back to Latin, and cleaning the apartment, which, as you can tell, is very exciting.

I had a really nice trip to California last weekend for Nate's graduation from Harvey Mudd College. It was fun to see Nate graduate, and especially nice to see the family. I hadn't seen Claire or Nate especially in a long time. Grandma came too, which was really nice--we took the same (long) flight(s).

Here are the 5 Cs (Chenettes, or representing the Claremont Colleges, whichever you prefer):



On Sunday morning, we took a walk through Harvey Mudd's botanical gardens. They were nice, and contained many plants that can take a very dry climate. Here I am posing by Poor Man's Timothy:



Fortunately, I wasn't the only one photographed in a foolish pose (thank you, Claire!):



I'd continue with this post, but Blogger is for no apparent reason not letting me upload any more photos... So more later.

Turba nautae feminas taedis terrebant.

---

Off to my first Latin test, then Indianapolis for the night, then Nate's graduation out in California.

I felt really stupid on the first day of Latin yesterday, because I wasn't able to follow the discussion of parts of speech, tenses, moods, aspects, qualities, principal parts, etc. However, after a frustrating day of wrestling with the material, I feel a lot better now, and I'm starting to get excited about translating. We're going awfully fast--we were translating full sentences after the first day and we're getting through 300 pages of material (not counting the review pages and appendices) in 6 weeks. Sentences which I translated today (the second day of class) as homework:

Incolaene dē glōriā patriae tacuērunt? (Were the inhabitants silent about the glory of the country?)

Rēginam dē incolārum īnsidiīs monuī. (I warned the queen of the inhabitants' plot.)

Glōriam enim optāverint. (Indeed they will have desired glory.)

Puellas neque lacrimās neque culpam cēlāverant. (The girls hid neither their tears nor their guilt.)

Pecūniam rēginae ē terrā cēperat. (You had hidden the queen's money from the land.)

And the sentence I failed to translate today (I think I'm close: it sounds like it should be deep, but what I have doesn't make sense):

Sententiās dē animā mūtāre incēperāmus sed sententiās nōn mūtāverātis. (We had begun the thoughts of changing the soul but you had not changed the thoughts?)

Yesterday was my one weekday off from classes before starting the summer session, and the weather was supposed to be amazing, so Sara and I decided to do something awesome and go canoeing. Canoeing was the first order of business, and despite getting lost on the way there (I stupidly got the address of the canoe livery from a list of liveries instead of their own website), got off at about 10 on the Driftwood River near Columbus, IN. The water was high and pleasantly fast, with some points of moderate excitement, and was fairly pretty. Here's where we stopped for lunch:



And here's Sara after 8 miles of canoeing:



And here's where Sara insisted on taking a picture of me in an uncomfortable tree trunk:



Then, since it was only about 2, we decided to make it a *really* special date and head to the City of Love, also known as Columbus, Indiana. Columbus, despite its heavily-accented population of 39,000, was apparently ranked 6th in the nation in architectural innovation and design in a list which included NY, Chicago, Boston, and many other much bigger cities. It's kind of baffling that a city with this honor would be located in the middle of Southern Indiana, especially considering that most of the locals we talked to could not really have been called by any stretch of the imagination "highly cultured." But then, it's also kind of baffling that one of the world's greatest music schools is also in the middle of Southern Indiana. So we went on a self-guided walking tour, starting from the 19th-century Visitors' Center. Here's Sara within a Henry Moore sculpture, in front of a striking church:



And me in front of the veteran's memorial and courthouse:



There were more striking buildings than these, including a lookout tower, covered bridge, and some stranger churches, but these were the best places for pictures.

Finally, after our walking tour, we were pretty tired, so we went out to Bistro 210 for an altogether too expensive but really excellent dinner, then headed back to Bloomington. About ten minutes from Bloomington I remembered that I had rehearsal for Voces Novae in about 25 minutes.

I had no trouble getting to sleep last night! But it was a really fun day, and it was great to spend virtually all of it outside. The whole time we were canoeing, the weather could only have been described as perfect--it wasn't too cool or hot at *all*, and we were even comfortable wearing our life preservers the whole time. The whole thing was definitely terrific.

I'm all done with masters coursework! That's exciting.

I had my most difficult exam ever last night, in History of Theory. I didn't do as well as I'd have liked in the paper for the class, which was the only other source of our final grade, so I took it really seriously and studied for basically the whole preceding week. And while I wasn't feeling like I'd exactly aced it last night, the more I think about it, the more I think I did well. I think I correctly identified the "unknown sources" (Aristotle, perhaps the Politics and Heinrich Glarean, Dodecachordon) and discoursed intelligently on the Alia musica, the problem of Mode 8, the sedes troporum, ethos, Lodovico Fogliano, and mensural theory 1200-1500 (the Discantus positio vulgaris, Johannes de Garlandia, Magister Lambert, Franco of Cologne, Philippe de Vitry, and Johannes de Muris). I'm hoping, anyway.

Today I entered my final grades, then picked up my course evaluations. Overall, they're very positive, giving me high marks especially for making a "dull" subject (? ...surely not!) "interesting," being well prepared, and being "almost overly" enthusiastic. Unsurprisingly, there was the usual contingent who said the class moves too quickly. More surprising, there was a larger number who complained that I made the tests too easy with hints. Well, fine, I'll change that, and they'll be cursed by generations of T132 students. But some real highlights:

enforce discipline, i.e. assigned seating, no talking, etc. pop music is silly - nobody is in a program about pop music.

You use tons of filler words such as um... uh... and er... after every sentence. It questions your intelligence and is very distracting and annoying.

More extra credit.

I like the daily, beautifully set up powerpoints!

You are a gangsta, who plays his cards right.

I didn't believe it when I read it, but Mac OS X's dictionary widget confirms this is a word:

This was the second email I got today from a Catholic University of America student, and by far the funnier of the two:

Hello Dr.Chenette
I'm a DMA student of Catolic University of America in Washington D.C. who taking Pedagogy of Theory.
I need some information for my final project that comparison between CUA's and IU's curricular of undergraduate core courses. I reserched but I could not know the following information.
Please help me.
Give me the following information:

1. contet of course packet
2. Instructors and textbooks: T231-Musical Skills II, T331-Musical Skills IV

Please let me know ASAP. The due is soon.

I appreciate that.

[name removed]

There was a schedule conflict between what I was supposed to teach this summer (T351, Music Theory and Literature V) and what I was supposed to take (Intro to German). The department tried to shuffle assistantships around a little bit, but it was clear that people's schedules wouldn't really work together. And as our department head helpfully pointed out by email:

"If it makes a difference, we hadn’t worked out how to decide who to “unappoint,” but if we went strictly on seniority, because you are two years behind the others (who are all entering or finishing their third years of doctoral study), you would be the lucky one."

So rather than learn to sound evil and take German, I'm going to learn to be stodgy and academic and take Latin.

I don't even know when it was, but quite a while back I was told that auditions for the IU Early Music Institute's production of Orfeo (to go up during the Bloomington Early Music Festival, in late May) were short on tenors. So at the urging of my friend Craig, who's actually playing Orfeo, I went to callbacks unprepared, and sight-read something. They said they'd like to hear me prepared, and they'd be back in touch next week. Two weeks later I heard back from them that they were holding more callbacks and to sign up. So I prepared the first Pastore aria from the opera and went in and sang it. Almost two weeks later I asked a student who'd also auditioned if she'd heard back--she said she hadn't, so she'd emailed, and they told her if you haven't heard, you're not in. That seemed unlikely to me, since I knew they were short on tenors, so I emailed, but the response was, "Oh yes, sorry, I've been in Europe for a while. But we've already cast that role." Within the week, an email went out that they were short a tenor. I ignored it, thinking if they wanted me, they knew I was interested, and they could contact me personally.
Several weeks later, a tenor friend asked if I'd be interested in participating because there weren't enough tenors and he'd suggested my name to the people in charge. I said sure. I saw him the next week, and clearly no one had really acted on his recommendation.
Two weeks later, another tenor friend emailed:

Hi Tim,
I don't know why I'm the one doing this, but it seems that no one in the administration of Orfeo can actually take the time to get in touch with you. In their infinite wisdom they didn't hire enough tenors...and it took them this long to figure it out! Anyway, if you're still interested in doing chorus for Orfeo, we'd love to have you. It'll be a crunch to learn the stuff, but the choruses are pretty easy...
I've also attached the schedule as it stands now (it changes daily).
-B

I've heard (and experienced!) so much about how disorganized the musical director is, but this friend does say he's having fun, and the director and other people in charge are apparently good. I feel like I might sign up. We'll see.

----

I got my paper back from Dr. Mathiesen today. I don't think I've ever had a paper this ripped apart before. But he's a demanding and extremely intimidating person: in class, Tim B asked him about two pieces of ancient Greek music printed in treatises by Vincenzo Galilei and Gioseffo Zarlino ("The Big Z"). Dr. Mathiesen went on about these obscure manuscripts (The Hymns of Mesomedes and the koine hormasia--to give you some idea, googling "koine hormasia," even without quotes, returns ONE hit, in a jstor article by Dr. Mathiesen) for at least five minutes about the notation, how they appear in different manuscript traditions and in these two treatises, their potential purposes, different editions in which they've been published (with editor's and publishers' names and years of publication), and potential avenues of future inquiry.

I'm feeling better and better about the class I teach (T132). Today there was excellent attendance because there was a quiz. And the students were responding--usually it seems like you tell them things over and over and you assume they know it all, and then you ask an easy question and they have no idea what you're talking about. But we talked through Somewhere Over the Rainbow, and it seemed like, at least for the most vocal ones, of course the melody elaborates a descending scale, or of course I would have no problem remembering ten chords because they just make sense harmonically! It was a good feeling.

I feel like the class has really succeeded this semester in a few ways in particular:
1. Facilitating a relaxed class atmosphere where students feel they can and should contribute, even in the large class.
2. Introducing different kinds of music (today was Gangster's Paradise by Coolio compared to a violin sonata by Bach, and then Somewhere Over the Rainbow as performed on the ukulele by Israel Kamakawiwo'ole), without sacrificing the principles I'm trying to teach (harmonic progression, root motion, good voice-leading, intelligent thinking about music).
3. Helping students to understand the reasons they would want to learn aural skills and the reasons we use the systems we use.

I feel like things could have gone better in other ways:
1. Attendance is always a problem, especially in the 8 o'clock class. I don't really know what else I could have done about this, though.
2. My preparation for class was sometimes later than it should have been, and I'd schedule activities we'd already done.
3. Encouraging or requiring individual student responsibility.
4. I'm not particularly good at being strict with course policies.

But overall I feel the semester's been a success. (No, it's not over, but next week is a practice exam, then the make-up/final exam.)


------


On an entirely different note, I found Respect Wordsworth, a tourism advertisement for England's Lake District, pretty hilarious.

As the more picky musicians may have noticed, I was thinking in the last post of alto clef, not tenor clef--so there's one confusion cleared up. My general objections still stand!

I've been working on my piano hearing materials for Teaching of Music Theory for the past half hour. I'm leaving aside the fact that the assignment seems silly--essentially, testing whether we can do what we teach, which ideally our grades should tell future employers anyway. I can at least understand that. But for someone who's taught pedagogy as long as our professor has, and who won the lifetime achievement award in music theory pedagogy in the past year, this is the most ridiculously pedagogically bad assignment I think I've had to do in my whole time here. Essentially, there are a set of things we have to do at the keyboard, and we have all these instructions in advance. But not just one set of instructions. First there's "Please be able to do the following," followed by number 1, which instructs us to choose two of the following activities, labeled a-c. Number 2 is one exercise, number 3 has component parts 1-4, etc. through number 5. Each of these exercises references pages with music on them, some of which are immediately following in the hearing packet, and some of which inexplicably are at the back of the packet after lots of irrelevant material. Okay, so far so good, I said to myself, I can handle this. Then, immediately below, are "PROCEDURES FOR THE ABOVE EXERCISES." Letter A has additional instructions for number 1, B has more for nos. 2-3, C for nos. 2-5, D for everything in general. Letter E has instructions referring to yet another set of musical examples in the packet which one is supposed to put together "to make item No. 2" (it took me about 2 minutes to realize this meant the number 2 referenced above). Then there's letter F, which further elaborates letter E.

As if this weren't complicated enough, the instructions included are like, "See page S28 No. 2. Be able to play the two-voice sightsinging exercise No. 2 as it would sound if this were written for, and played by, two clarinets in Bb. Also be able to play the bottom line, first system (only) as if it were written in tenor clef with the same accidentals. Play from the music." So wait--if the bottom line, first system (only!) had a tenor clef instead of a treble clef, but was in the same key, the pattern of intervals would be all different, not to mention bizarre: G-F-F flat (!)-E natural-E flat-D flat-C natural-D flat instead of F-E-Eb-D-Db-C-B-C. Not to mention the fact that to read all the instructions for number 2, one has to read the unnumbered text right above it, number 2 itself, and letters B, C, E and F.
Wow. Now I'm even more confused.

This was too good to pass up--Dad pointed out that my picture of Nate in the previous post happened to be at the "pitch-space" of the Iowa State Fair. How can I work this into my paper?

In the admissions/financial aid office the other day, they told me I have the "sweetest" deal in the school of music (not just me personally, but you know, I'm in this category), and Nate's starting earnings at Georgia Tech are twice what mine will be next year. Well, I suppose someone's going to have to bankroll me when I'm unemployed in three years!
(Claire, I don't know if he can handle us both, so you'll need to go into a long extra degree program too.)

Look at him there, all smug:



(The "Quick Fuel" is, of course, a symbol of his coming wealth.)
But of course the siblings Chenettezov will still stick together:

I honestly believe fresh, home-baked bread is one of the awesomest things in this world.

Awesome pictures of my choir, Pro Arte

I find this paper really hard to jump into, when it's just sitting there, open, on my computer screen, ready to be worked on, 24/7. However, once I do make the plunge, just like high school swimming, it's generally fairly easy to keep going. In fact, sometimes it's even really fun. I just finished a relatively large section where I basically talked about how several major scholars were completely wrong. It's always a satisfying feeling to debunk another person's theory, especially when the other person is a big name like Margaret Bent, Andrew Hughes, or Gaston Allaire. (Ah, the petty joys of academia.)

In the meantime, here's Sara on our recent hike in Morgan-Monroe State Forest (the same trail I took with Mom and Dad when they were here):



It had rained all morning, but was completely dry while we were hiking. The clouds didn't make for the beautifullest day, but we still had some nice views.



There were also some gorgeous waterfalls, one of which I climbed up, but none of my pictures of them turned out very well.

I'm sure this is old hat to anyone west of here (and soon to those east as well), but this is now:



It started basically in the space of about 5 minutes and was pouring sheets virtually right away--pretty impressive.

In the meantime, I'm still working on this paper ("Hexachords and Pitch-space in the 14th Century: How Awesome is That"). It's really hard to work on a long project in all your free time, and I'm definitely not succeeding at that.

On my most recent trip to the grocery store, I noticed they had rhubarb.

For those who don't know, my favorite food in the universe is rhubarb pie, made according to family recipe (or, at least the recipe used by my family). So I'm extremely tempted. But I'm also conflicted. Will it taste as good with Kroger rhubarb as with home rhubarb? More importantly, how will I know that I've grabbed enough stems to make 6 cups of 1-inch cubes? And finally, how will I wait out Holy Week without succumbing to the dessert temptation? Rhubarb freezes fine, right?

Fathers out there should feel free to respond.

I guess I'm a glutton for punishment--four different concerts this week (singing on two composition recitals and in the Voces Novae concert, and playing in my piano studio Liszt concert), and then I just set up 12 appointments with students between today and the test next Tuesday. So, maybe no more bloggings this weekend.

One project done: I'm about to turn in my take-home test for Teaching of Music Theory. Now to focus on the other, much less practical current big project: a paper on possible functional thinking applied to solmization in the 14th century.

My baggage finally made it, about 9:30 last night. Just one more funny story from the trip. I was staying in Pittsburgh with my college roommate and good friend Andy, and he was extremely generous to drive me around everywhere I needed to go even if it meant he had to sit around and read while I was doing stuff. So anyway, after attending the rehearsal on Saturday (and running up and down the nearby Cathedral of Learning and writing graffiti on the blackboards on floor 23) he drove me to the director's house for dinner, where the misunderstanding took place as we were being introduced by the director's wife to some of the musicians:

Director's wife. This is Tim, who made the edition of the Benda cantata. And this is his partner, Andy.
Tim. ...in crime!

Andy thought I handled the situation well, but it was awkward for at least a moment. I made sure to call him "honey" a few times over the weekend though.

Finally, my break was nice, but boy am I jealous of Nate.

Rachmaninoff had big hands.

I just got home from a rather eventful flight! I know this happens to people sometimes, but man, it's frustrating! I'll try to keep myself from belaboring too many points here:

Act 1: Pittsburgh
After the concert, Andy got me to the airport almost 2 hours early for my flight, and I had no problem getting through check-in and security. They didn't bother to tell me at that point, but it turned out my flight was delayed. It was coming from New York, so it made sense, with all the weather problems. The people at the desk kept me on the same connection from Cincinnati (my layover) since there was a chance it would be delayed too, but booked me also on a flight the next day. I asked if I could get my luggage in Cincinnati to work on my handouts for class on Monday, and they said yes, no problem, just ask there.

Act 2: Cincinnati
I got to Cincinnati about 2 hours late, and about 1.5 hours late for my flight to Indianapolis. The people at the desk told me that I was actually only on standby for the flight the next morning, and it was completely booked, though I should try anyway. They also told me I couldn't get my luggage because that would be "too hard." However, they gave me a free t-shirt, and put me up in a hotel. Also, apparently not realizing that I had already gotten a meal voucher, they gave me another. Since I'd already eaten, I used the voucher to grab a couple of beers at the hotel restaurant. (It was going to be just one, but the waitress convinced me: "You sure? Your voucher's for seven dollars." "Yes, I'm just heading to bed." "Well, I can get the maid to bring one to your room." "Well, okay.")
Beer and exhaustion put me pretty well out until 6 AM, when I rushed out to the airport to find an unfriendly attendant telling me that my chances of getting on the flight weren't exactly "looking wonderful, just so you know." I had a rather disgusting breakfast (McDonalds would have been better), and then waited. The flight was delayed of course, and finally about an hour after it was supposed to leave and after everyone had boarded, the unfriendly attendant came up to me with a ticket. I got hopeful for a moment, but she just said, "I booked you on the next one. Because you're not getting on this one."
Okay, this act is long enough, so I'll just say the flight was delayed, and then delayed, and then also delayed, for scheduling and then mechanical reasons ("the flight in was bumpy and the bathroom water spilled all over the floor"). The 10:48 flight ended up leaving around 1.

Finale: Indianapolis
My bag didn't show up, apparently because although there had been plenty of time for it to get on one of those flights I was supposed to be on, they weren't entered into the computer.

Well, on the plus side, it's a good story! I'm tired, but I'll get back into the swing of things no problem in the next few days I'm sure. It was unfortunate, still, that I had to miss teaching in Pedagogy class and my choir's recording session.

I had thought Iowa was going to be a fair bit cooler than Southern Indiana. It's probably true, but I certainly didn't mind so much today when I looked at the thermometer and it read 63. I went on a really nice long walk and took off my sweater within minutes.
I'm increasingly struck by Grinnell every time I return. Most of my friends complain about how tiny Bloomington is, but then they've never been to small-town Iowa. I was walking for close to an hour in the early afternoon, and I could almost count on two hands the number of moving vehicles I passed, which made it wonderfully quiet. I really enjoy that, though not so much that I miss it when I'm in Bloomington.
I do miss the look of Iowa sometimes, though. Southern Indiana is beautiful, there's no question, but somehow Iowa's beauty seems more profound. Maybe it's the flatness and thus the sense of largeness: you can see why it was once considered an ocean of grass, in which one might drown. I think it also has to do with the population density and the level of build-up along the roads. I can't think of anything in Iowa analogous to SR 37, leading from Bloomington to Indianapolis, with its packed traffic, ugly intersections (admittedly interspersed with some pretty woods), and progressive build-up. Things just feel more spread-out here, more self-sufficient.
It's a particularly striking landscape now, with snow left in all the shadows, and with the results of the recent "[ice] storm of the century" (to quote Alliant Energy) still all around. Some of the blocks that have been less attended to by clean-up crews have mid-sized hedges of stacked fallen branches lining the length of the road, and the evergreens lining the back of our yard are bent over and pointing every which-way.
I wish I could post pictures, but I left my camera in Bloomington, and mom and dad's is in the shop. Oh well.

I'm remembering, as I often do, that blogs are not a good place for subtle thinking--the kind of extemporaneous writing they facilitate doesn't lend itself to subtlety and I realize my earlier post about the place of religion is no exception. Ah well. Interestingly enough, that doesn't mean it can't work, and I've really enjoyed reading some of the posts linked to here today.

I actually took a nap today. It was surprising--I almost always have such trouble getting to sleep, and I probably haven't really napped in years. But somewhere in the middle of "Chromatic Alteration and Extrahexachordal Intervals in Fourteenth Century Polyphonic Repertoires" my eyes started glazing over, so I put the book aside and fell asleep on the couch. I only slept 20 minutes, but I'll have to be careful--it's a slippery slope, and if I don't watch it, I may end up like Claire or, worse, Maple!

Finally, a preview of the image I prepared for Thursday to convince my classes (especially the 10:10 one) to sit in the first couple of rows, something I do to facilitate a positive atmosphere in class:

A student asked me today if I was her ear training teacher. I was ashamed that I was unable to answer either way, though less ashamed considering she had to ask. (Turns out the answer is yes.)

On the plus side, I've gotten a lot of compliments on my appearance today, largely due to my awesome blue shirt, a birthday present from some awesome parents.

I've been thinking some recently about the role of religion in our society and our lives. It's interesting to just observe what goes on at a church service. If I takes the perspective that religion is an entirely human-made phenomenon, I can see why it could seem creepy: the ritual, the "blood," the communal speech, and the kneeling all smack of the spooky cults one sees on television and in movies (or even stories for that matter--the Da Vinci Kod?). But there's a beauty in it too, even if we've made it all up. Ritual has a bad rap in our society, but the conception of a higher meaning is wonderful, as is the idea that one's duty is not to one's self, but to others.

Still, it's clear that many--perhaps most--of the people I know in the academic world view Western religion as a somewhat toxic phenomenon. The simple word "church" has a negative connotation, and any advertisement or attempt at evangelism is derided and viewed with utter suspicion. Now, I don't know what my opinion on the whole evangelism thing is, and I tend to think that people in other religious faiths probably have about as much Truth as I do in mine, but I don't see why conversion would seem like an automatically bad thing. (The use of force is of course entirely different.) I'd never go so far as many and say that Christians are persecuted in our society, or that evil "secularists" are trying to undermine our morals: I think that's ridiculous. But the view of religion as a poisonous influence seems just as dangerous.

I really think the worst problem is lack of education. I think most people don't even know the Moslem concept of "People of the Book" (wikipedia it if you don't know)--so many people think of Moslems and Christians as natural mortal enemies. This concept, though, puts the divisions between sects of Christianity into perspective, at least for me! If we are in important ways similar to our Moslem neighbors (though there are complications in this line of thinking), how can we seriously tell each other we're so different? And I think many people don't approach the texts of religion as texts, but as preconceptions. In reading the Bible, the history of Western religion seemed utterly fantastic to me (fantastic in the sense of "strange"). A way of living and understanding the world for a single homogenous society turned into a powerful kingdom, then was scattered, and defined itself in opposition to the ruling culture. Then Jesus preached a way of living within that culture. A number of his disciples thought he would return right away, and started religious communities that lived as if the end of the world were indeed right around the corner--and then had to deal with reality, and how they could continue to survive, administratively, dogmatically, and intellectually. Now we mash all that together and think we can define it in any simple way??

I apologize that this post is so rambling, but there's so much that's interesting to me here. Our lack of experience with other religious cultures and lack of religious education, stereotyping the "other," the strange history of Western ideas of religion, the compelling nature of religion. And then, the exoticism of the unknown "other"--it's funny to see how compelling Buddhism and Hinduism were in the West when they were first seen as viable religions and even today, as well as to see the initial successes of missionaries in China (though not so much more recently, obviously) and Japan, but then to see how disfigured these new manifestations of these religions are from their origins. And, then, to think about how different the Christianity of today is--predominating in the Americas, Africa, and to some extent in Europe--from its first communities in modern-day Syria, Israel, and Egypt. There are fascinating parallels to Buddhism, which must have undergone massive transformation from its origins in India (where it is a very distinct minority religion today) to China and Japan and other Eastern Asian countries.

Okay, that's enough seemingly random, unconnected thoughts for today. They sounded more coherent in my head, but I think they're interesting enough issues that I'm leaving them for now. They're so important--we avoid religious discussion today to the extent that simply calling one's self a "Christian" or posting a passage from the Bible (as I did!) in one's blog can feel distinctly uncomfortable, even though, if done sensitively, it should harm no-one.

I was listening to WFIU this morning, and they were reporting on local news. The story was about IU's moves toward starting a program in Public Health, and one of the benefits was apparently the possibility of collaborations with Purdue. My favorite quote:

"Collaborations with Purdue University would be particularly beneficial in studying the connections between the effects of disease on humans and animals."