Here’s a long overdue blog post. I have been one busy camper. This morning before Eileen got up, I finished the final touches on my trumpet organ piece and emailed it to the players. Sunday, Rhonda told me that she and the trumpet player were planning to meeting this Friday (tomorrow). I freaked and worked all evening on finishing up what I could and emailing it to them. Unfortunately, there was one section in the first movement that I had to mark “Still under construction.” This was an extended organ section which I wanted to add to give the trumpet player enough breaks in the movement. Plus I did have several ideas about how to write it, but it wasn’t ready to send off.

I have been remembering the first time a teacher commented on my composing. It was at Ohio Wesleyan in what they called a Theory Zip class. In other words, a no credit required class to bring people up to speed in theory. We had an assignment to write a piece. I wrote one (something I still think is a good piece). Mr Lawrence, the teacher, asked me what my procedure had been, what was my theoretical rationale. I stumbled and told him I didn’t really have one. I just wrote what I thought sounded good.

I now know that a smart rejoinder to that would have been to ask me why it sounded good to me. I don’t know if I could answer it then but I could answer that question now about my writing.

Monday I did other stuff including working on some organ music. Playing Distler this past Sunday inspired me to get back into playing some decent organ music. I’m working on some Buxtehude and some Elgar. I think my people would like Elgar.

Yesterday, I went to the IMSLP site and printed off so much music for my piano trio that I went through an entire cartridge of black ink. Sheesh. It was work it. I found nine volumes of selected movements for piano trio. We are playing from this stuff on this Sunday. The trio was fired up about doing some different stuff including Tchaikowsky, Corelli, and a goofy French romantic pizzicato piece.

Here’s a recording of the Tchaikowsky arr. by some young people.

And here’s the goofy French piece. We don’t play quite as drunkenly as this group. But it is a fun piece.

We have a couple nice Corelli pieces ready to play outside weather permitting.

I made bread this morning also. I’m a tired dude this afternoon. I recently finished Emily West’s translation of The Odyssey. I have been working on reading it in the Greek using some cool new resource books. I also returned to reading Don Quixote recently.

My son in law bought me a new tablet. I (ahem) broke the old one a while back. He also purchased insurance on it so if I abuse it and ruin it, I can get a new one.

My phone is dying. I have ordered one and it should arrive in the mail very soon.

I discovered that I may be the only person in my house that still likes South Park. My boss mentioned that it’s one of her guilty pleasures. She  described a recent episode that she found funny. It was not the one below.

It turns out there is a nice rejoinder to the insane comment that China sent us Covid 19. Actually, Randy did it when he and Mickey Mouse fucked a bat in Wuhan. You have been warned. Despite the slight disapproval from Eileen and Jeremy, i think this is hilarious.