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...!

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: