Autumn and rippling piano keys at NPR

A soft, melodic piece of music is picked out on the piano keys; softly hammered, almost seeming as if plucked, on stretched steel wires in the piano case. Tones continue to resonate through the sounding board as the dampened vibrations are deftly evoked at the pianist's touch. There is no discordancy. Reflective, not determinedly marching along, and delicate against the sounds of a muted orchestra. I am listening as I compose this. I guess it was composed in the classical way, with beginnings and endings conforming to the concerto form. Even, may be an English or German composer, no doubt more recently from the last century.

Unlike the repetition of centuries-old drawing room entertainment, it is modern in rhythm with a few syncopated beats. It seems to meander along like a brook after a soft rain early in November in temperate regions. The notes pick out colorful leaves; some damply desiccated with a mildewed underside, ground cover in a oak and elm woods. Perhaps one can smell the musty liveliness of the fungal spores perched on stumps, and the rotting vegetation when scuffled along the forest floor.

But, mildew in itself is a form of life that takes its sustenance from once-living concepts like leaves, and re-creates life in another form.

Then, the composer changes the mood, and the tune scurries along like a little field-mouse lugging acorns, and seeds of maples to an underground den. Quickly now, chipmunks and squirrels are out also, still looking to increase winter stores. And, then the piece is over and audience clapping.

The radio announcer the name of the piece. By Dmitri Shostakovich, piano concerto no. 2 was composed in 1957 for a son's 19th birthday. What a marvelous use of talent. Wouldn't it be wonderful to possess such skill in creating the lasting artistic expression in honor of one's child?

Presumably not an example of Shostakovich's typical heavy stuff, it seems even a bit cheerful in my imagination for Russian music. Despite the birthday celebration in May, the piece is a tribute to naturalism and well-suited to a day in November. Maybe, I'm thinking so as the heater has just kicked on, and it's threatening to rain on this November day.

I'm not a music aficionado. I love music, but the notes go in and out my ears, and nothing is retained. Merely the memory of enjoyment in the moment. However, I am not totally clueless. I can recognize a piece of music I've heard before despite not being able to recreate the tune without a 'cheat sheet'.

I have a friend who says her husband knows the words of all the popular music but sings it all in the same the tune...something like 'Old McDonald'. I am fortunate to possess a somewhat similar talent, but more oftenly there it is a tuneless rendition if the words are in front of me.

I was a member of my church choir to help lend support to my sister's singing talent. Although she sat next to me, she was careful not to get too close. We were altos, and sang right in front of the tenors, and in back of the sopranos. Because Martha Hall, and later Mr. Shirey played the organ so masterfully, I don't think anyone caught on that I sang everyone's parts at the same time, until I was 'promoted' to the position of page-turner for Ms. Hall.

I guess the special ability doesn't need to be held to such high regard and threateningly over my head--as I cannot recreate the Mona Lisa in great detail either from memory, and consider myself artistic to a degree. For that matter, memorization skills elude me. I cannot remember poems beyond snatches of the onomatopoeic elements.

Throughout my life there have been school memorization assignments.

In second grade, there was the childrens rhyme about squirrels, "whisky, frisky, hippity hop, up he goes to the treetop, whirly, twirly round and round, down he scampers to the ground, dadedada dadeda .... broad as a sail, and that's it! I could not and still to this day cannot recall another word.

In primary school I backed out of performing Robert Louis Stevenson's poem about swinging with Mary Edith Kallenberg, instead dancing the Mexican Hat Dance with another group. Mary E. had no problem memorizing the three poem verses, but my mind stopped after " How do you like to go up in a swing, up in the air so blue? Oh, I do think it the pleasantest thing ever a child can do". That's all that I could accomplish with recalling words in a particular order.

Mary Edith took the brunt of memorization of that poem and if there was a prize for a solo project, surely she deserved it. Later, in leaving for college, marrying, and moving far away I did not keep up with her or any other childhood contacts, except for a best friend who moved to Georgia. I wonder if Mary has remained a single career woman all these years, perhaps a lawyer, or writer, or historian. As an intellectual, if she did marry, it's hard to imagine her potty-training toddlers and attempting to reasoning with her own teen-agers.

My sons have the ability, especially evident in the younger one, to retain aural conjectures and transmit them accurately as memorized snatches. Heck not merely snatches. I've heard my younger one practice violin concertos as he wanders from room to room, pausing to look at a picture in an open book, gaze out the window, and put on his shoes (an exaggeration!). The music can probably be compared to that played on stringed extension of the human voice. After all, people can shower and sing at the same time.

Sometimes I wonder if the musicality is something inherited from their father, and other times I imagine the skill is an ability to clothe oneself in a particular musical experience, so as to make it part of one's persona.

I recall when my little one was playing a solo at 5 or younger. In the audience front row, I was so nervous for him that I was tapping the rhythm with my foot audibly to him. During a break, he whispered, 'Mom, don't tap your foot, I can't hear myself. Besides, what do you think about how it would look when I am in a concert hall, and my mother is in the front row tapping her foot?"

When I used to encourage my younger son's many musical performances, I tried to give him good advice, advice that held a reliably generic truth not to set him up for impossible standards. (Over the years, until he played for gigs in high school, his only monetary reward for playing was the reception afterward sure to have some of his favorite sweets, although that was not an incentive after his symphony debut at age 9!). My advice always was to relax and play the piece from his soul or being, and not worry about notes. After sufficient exercise, rehearsal and a good nights rest, at the moment of performance, in that slot of time in all the world it was his piece, to do with as he willed and express it in his own way.

I know it's personally selfish, i.e. for my own enjoyment, but no doubt others would find comfort and beauty in his music performance. I hope that someday this young musician finds a way to contentment and returns to performances, if only for himself, family, and friends.

My older son's interests are in other fields, and his great talent is summarization of difficult topics for teaching others. Someday, he will find the perfect way to use that skill and enjoy his work. I am confident in that. Sometimes, it takes more time than anticipated, as each of us travel our own time-lines.

August came and went, and I was there all the time riding the bucking bronc, reins in one hand and the other outstretched trying to maintain balance. Nahh, it wasn't that wild. Just unpredictable to a certain degree. Several times I thought about mentioning something of importance but the opportunities quickly slipped away.

It's somewhat astonishing, about the autumn months. All throughout summer, there's an inner anxiety to enjoy the long days of summer, so much so, that in cramming as much as possible in the daytime, it seems nothing is fully accomplished which is depressing and leads one down the path of 'why bother?' That little list so that nothing gets missed; just seems the items don't get checked off quickly enough. Perhaps, the old trick of breaking goals into doable tasks, and ticking those off one by one.

Actually, we did accomplish quite a bit.

We tried to change behaviors. We attempted convalescence and we took a week-long trip to the land of birth, a different place altogether from where we now live, and for which we'd not been back for more than 20 years. We tried to establish some new self- and other-person valuing behaviors. Not without sinking to some of the depths, and there's quite a way to go for reaching another plateau 'up from the ashes'.

Time marches on and our little dog's health is one measure of life well-spent, the time of a life-span. She came to us as a spunky 10-month old pup, but by dog years she was already 6-7 years old and her third home. A little girl. Adorable. An American Eskimo, not unlike a Japanese spitz in appearance. Intelligent and loyal. Already fiercely instinctual in her duties of protecting her latest family.

Teaching her feral owners some of the niceties of civility and basic lessons in self-pride, honor, and respect. Intensely loyal to those whose actions showed themselves a caring and considerate. The vet described her temperament as 'high-strung' not unlike a pediatrician would describe her younger 'family'.

Always ready for a romp, a walk, a run in an open field. Until her owners took obedience class, she was allowed to run ahead investigative nose leading the way to the right and left this way and that. Poor vision, but excellent sense of smell. A rabbit could fool her easily by standing downwind.

She is still a fierce rabbit hunter. At the corner of the front yard near the street a brazen female bore her litters of bunnies year after year under a bush just 2-3 feet beyond from where our little lady's leash extended from the pear tree knowing that she could provide warning and illusion of protection. But, it was always a roulette when the bunnies were learning to hop. If they strayed too close to our little dog's territory, they were fair game. Unfortunately for rabbits.

Her hearing phenomenal Her vision poorer at certain times than others. Bright lights, moving objects, but she could always appreciate Saturday afternoon opera. Singing along with the best at the Met, and joining in with Jacques (Brel), Luciano, and Jussi, and the male tenors in the household...o sole mio, and ave Maria, songs about love, loss, and yearning. Totally into musical expression. Understandable with a resident violinist.

Then, the humans she was in charge began a series of fracas at night, evolving in confrontational and loudly unloving interactions which upset her greatly for a period of time, disrupting her sleep and equanimity, causing surges in corticosteroid production and riling circadian rhythms.

First, she was thirsty, and barking for water, then when sated, left puddles, and had to stay outside at night. And the cycle continued for months in her reaction to her human's behaviors. Stress. She developed cataracts which cause her vision blindness. Running into low-hanging branches damaging the surface of her eyes. A thorn on her front pad took a long time to heal, and required gram negative treatment with gentamicin ointment. Very shortly after was diagnosed with diabetes.

The diabetes means her diet is strictly detailed. One cup of prescription food in the morning with her 2 units of N insulin and one cup at night with 2 more units of N insulin. She's doing okay. But, now, we take note that she seems as if she's older and frailer with the weight loss and drowsing all curled on the living room floor, all the windows open and whole-house fan changing the air, with NPR in the background.

A twist on the phrase, 'My dog has fleas' for tuning a four string guitar, comes to mind, with 'my dog has diabetes'. But, her current state of health makes mockery of the old poem 'Sunning' as she's not got a lazy bone in her old body, and deserves any measure of rest and pleasant dreaming.

From James Tippett, "Old dog lay in the summer sun, much too lazy to rise and run. He flapped an ear at a buzzing fly. He winked a half-opened sleepy eye. He scratched himself on an itchy spot, as he dozed on the porch where the sun was hot. He wimpered a bit from force of habit while he lazily dreamed of chasing a rabbit. But old dog happily lay in the sun much too lazy to rise and run."

Grand July has arrived

Covering for friends at work, along with the heavy-duty humidity of this landlocked mid-eastern cornfield country, has left me pr't'near worn out. Well, it was the work and weather, and now I find some degree of obstructive sleep apnea--not just being wery wery wicked. "There's no rest for the wicked."

July arrived with heat and sunshine (corn stalks nearly five foot high) and another birthday. And, aother chance to redeem my soul for the wickedness of the past three or four or five decades.

Little brother and his son went climbing the 'big one' turning back at 17,500 feet. Smart guy has kept himself fit and enthusiastic all his life. Says the snow and ice got boring after a bit, sunburns off the glare. Imagining peeling facial skin and his prominent nose. But, so much relieved that was it. Summer climbs always have the danger of melting snows and slides, though storms might be less than in winter climbs.

In any case, there's a special angel in heaven who succumbed 22 years ago during a mid-winter climb. How I wish she were here in person to meet her nieces and nephews. Sometimes, it's enough to say one's belief in heaven exists in legacies of loss.

Younger son was reluctant to enjoy the fireworks, so 'went out for pizza' and he got to view the magnificence in the skies, something of beauty, beyond his control, and a wonder to behold, taking him beyond 'himself' if for only a few minutes. Older son took videos, and it was wonderful, as it took him out of 'himself' as well, in an effort to think of others and their enjoyment.

Fireworks, invented by the Chinese, and such an ephemerally short occasion of beauty and grandness, a nanosecond of the blossoming of the stargazer lily, evoking summertime, often considered a state of mind; a time to be looking forward all the cold times of the year when an icy wind blows, but a time to curse the lack of sleep it engenders. Summertime is a time of grand enjoyment of everlasting green lit by fireflies, cold watermelon and symphony fermatas echoing in the trees of air-conditioned evenings, far far from mosquitoes.

June, wonderful June--ne'er a rare day in June

June arrived within the last week, and already the first firefly sighted in the heavy evening air. We record the first firefly of the season as well as last sighting when the evening air is less heavy with warm humidity---

At this time I do not like to recollect cold-tinged autumn air fraught with molds and decaying deciduous leaves set against the brilliant clear azure blue. For many years, the chill of an autumn afternoon evoked the ancient rhythms of life playing out in the havoc of blood flow through slightly constricted vessels and bringing on an increased heart rate of anticipatory school assignments. This feeling of thinning air could also come about even on an evening stroll in light twilight at 11:30 PM up the local mountain at a time close to the longest day of the year, to view Fourth of July fireworks on Point Woronzof.

Here, the fireflies flitting in the grass of the backyard, drone of cicadas, and waning light of evening dusk bring to mind a time of 'lazy' summer. No agenda. Just a bowlful of ripe cherries or cold wedges of watermelon to enjoy and engage in seed-spitting competition off the back stoop. (I wonder why we never see emergence of baby cherry trees or a watermelon patch.)

end of May

another end to another month...hard to say whether am on the way to or from...summer's on the way in
getting ready to grill beef like shish kebabs for supper...corn on the cob's been great so far...maybe baked potatoes and grilled beef...maybe just the baked potatoes and beef with onions and mushrooms...Kikkoman shoyu seems to dress up meat whenever it's used...a little brown sugar and bonito flakes
gotta get motivated

And so we come to the end of April

It's not the last day or even the last week, but it is fairly coming to the end of April after the first blush of pinkening magnolias and the chromium yellow of the forsythia, just after the crocuses, then the pink blossoming, and yaller daffodils, purple hyacinths and wind flowers. My second son's magnolia, his because he used to climb it and sit in the crook of the first branching boughs, catches my eye every time I look out the kitchen window as if a new coat of snow has blanketed the trees, and by the time I get used to looking past to the green buds, I can see the pink and white of various trees in neighborhood yards: chokecherry, apple, plum, and the Japanese pears out in front of our house.

The pawpaw is even bedecked with the dark purple of its zebra butterfly attractants. When we first read about this home-grown 'exotic local' in the local University School of Agriculture Extension office, we found mention of its very few pests, exclusively the zebra butterfly. This seemed an ideal situation in our yard as a prior decision to use lawn pesticides had made the fruit inedible to us with our super-sensitivities--not inedible to the ravens that decimated the crop of apple-pears the first year. Once the pawpaws became firmly ensconced in their present location currently, even after 4-5 years their trunks are still surrounded by chicken wire because the rabbits gnawed them badly the beginning of their first winter which unfortunately does nothing about the moles which seem to somehow have caused the death of rhododendrons--no flowers, brown buds, and limp stems and branches--and, furrows which could only be made by an active mole family, only to be plagued by another unmentioned pest. The pawpaws survived as small grafted plants shipped to us in coffee-can sized plastic containers as they find it difficult to transplant. Five trees survived the first year, only to attacked by relentless Japanese beetles. This thought of the Japanese beetle campaign my husband will have to wage all summer is daunting. He has to be out with the beetle smasher as soon as the sun rises, even climbing on a ladder to reach the tallest branches, in order to result in those delicious fragments of a mid-eastern summer close to the heartland. I mean there's pawpaws in Happy Hollow Park growing as wild as one would ever please. Looking forward to better times when we're all getting better!

March and Spring Break from School

My first brush with textbooks were the ones my father kept on a high shelf in the house from which he developed his school lesson plans for his junior high kids. (I remember a spanking for climbing precariously on a stool placed on a trunk to reach them at age 5. )

When little, I remember the intensity of discussions in our home. There were four of us girls only two years apart in ages, and throughout our elementary school years we were often enrolled in each others' classes in various combinations and in high school in years which electives were only held every two years, we ended up competing with each other for the highest grades in the class.

Truly, we girls were uniquely different from each other, and we absolutely never could study with each other for anything except if when we taking turns giving each other spelling words. But, there was always the intense concentration to do better than each other.

Anything we read, we had to give an opinion. I remember our discussions on biblical passages, religious themes, shortest way to Kasilof, who could curl their tongue, the validity of Kon Tiki, and Amundsen's trip to the South Pole, alternate routes up McKinley (before the more poetic Denali), Black Like Me, Up the Down Staircase, Dante's Inferno, Cartoons from the New Yorker, and Charlotte's Web.

One recurring discussion was whether or not it was wise for kids to learn to read early. Sisters argued whether we were stunted by having to wait to learn to read or not, and what would've happened if we'd attempted to figure it out on our own. As I was the eldest, our parents insisted I wait until I joined the other little Bluebirds in first grade, but there was no holding back anyone else once I'd mastered it. Pretty much we four girls all learned to read that year, and moved quite quickly beyond Dick, Jane, and silly Sally and their trip on the train to Chicago. Heck, in '64 we rode the Mooser Gooser along the coast, and would never have gotten except that the ride was over and we're going to the Old-Fashioned Ice Cream Parlor. I guess Pa didn't want us touching his school textbooks, because he was afraid that our schoolteachers might be stymied by the time we were in school.

And, indeed, as a teacher's kid I spent a lot of time before and after school helping the librarian put away books, running off tests for class on the hectograph copier or ditto machines. I think there was a mimeograph machine, too, one could use if the copy was typed. (But, I was happy to use the new Xerox for pep band parts when it was installed in the office.) Yes, I once rolled my thumb under the revolving drum of the ditto machine to elicit a red-purple color where the blood spurted out from under the cuticle.

When there were 3 minute timed math combination tests, I was the one that got to watch the clock while the teacher stepped out Yes, after the first one and half minutes, I often lost concentration and gave an extra one or two minutes. (I was too proud to tell anyone I had no idea of how to tell time and to me it was either the long or the short hand, not that there was any difference between the hour and the second hand--which was the first and which the second hand was beyond me, and for that matter after 1.5 minutes, actually if I stared hard enough the hands started to revolve the opposite way, and so got mixed up how many times they had gone around.)

Yes, but by sixth grade, I was the one that got to stick my chewing gum on the blackboard with my nose sticking to it while everyone else did their classwork. By that age, I could not sit still at the desk if Henry and Ricky and Charles were whispering in back of me while working to finish assignments from the previous day.

Anyone remember the darkened classrooms and teacher writing on an overhead projector? Nap time. If there was reading at the desk, I had to ask permission to barricade myself in a corner. Nor, could I focus on working on the next day's assignment in class after the lecture. Math classes were usually scheduled last period. Meredith Mills and Cindy Adams always finished geometry homework during class, so they could skip off to basketball practice without a heavy rucksack and assignments to complete. Adele Powell always finished analysis assignments before we left for the day. I could never sit still long enough to do math in the presence of others.

When I brought the book home, I never remembered the way it was shown in class, and had to come up with some more intuitive way to solve the problem. For a few years before I started having brain problems, I could actually solve problems without knowing how I did it, just by letting my head do its thing. Later, after surgery, math was meticulously deductive.

Homework went home in a big cloth bag. But, after a certain age, it was difficult to even study in the house. Brothers and sisters sat around the living room table. I have pictures in my mind of one of the twins helping younger brother with math. Some times I could not even concentrate to study in the house where there was a sound. Sometimes, I had to follow the moose dropping out to the big rock in the woods (for the first could weeks after school started anyway), and other times, it was to the radio shed before Pa got home where he had all his ham operator equipment and a nice quiet if only staticky background noise, and sometimes, in a houseful of kids and parents and cats, I had to make a fortress behind my sister's bed and study in the quiet there. I still remember dry eyes after hours under hot incandescence of a study lamp.

Later, ..in assembling summer math work-outs for my children when they were in elementary grades, (had to be fun and challenging) I picked up old textbooks at library jumble sales. These old books often had a theme; practical math, technology-based, or consumer math, etc. It was a bit of a challenge to plumb the depth of 4-5 textbooks to come up with different problems illustrating a similar concept for different reasons using each different book, to provide in-depth variety and challenge on a certain theme.

English texts in the 60's were pretty standard grammar references, and the information hadn't gone out of date when I snapped up at library sales. I remember 6th grade grammar, past tense, present, future, and the complexity of different parts of a sentence. We hit the basics pretty hard in Mrs. Hildeman's class in 4th grade and everything after that was merely a different fancier layer, sometimes more esoteric than conceptual. Actually, many of the content of the study was not applicable until studying a foreign language.

Geography, yes, a terribly boring subject, best studied under the guise of non-fictional references consulted for National Geographic magazines! My husband would pick up books or videos about children in other lands, and we could often make that the focus of our learning. I think, as a blanket statement, people from other countries that move here often have a sense about a cultural place in the world and certain common themes from history than we do.

As for science text...my house as I was growing up was full of them. Since my learning style could at best be called Bohemian, I found all types of basic science discussions to the learning. I could only focus on one topic at a time, and study of any topic--started with checking out books and books, starting with beginner simple books to as in-depth as as possible to learn all about a topic such as with muscles: calcium ATP, bones, blood, Krebs cycle, voltage, potentials and electricity.

Studying science from a textbook was too lightly scattered. The encyclopedias and references were oftentimes much better than trying to read paragraph after paragraph in a science book. I remember another way we would study was to look at nature and try to find out as much as possible about it. For example the abalone shell on the dresser resulted in discussions about life cycles of mollusks, bottom fish shrimps, lobsters, and oyster beds along the East Coast, grading pearls and forming nacre, makng pearl buttons and trading on the lower Manhattan, barnacles, shipbuilding, the Theme from the Pearl-Fishers, reading The Pearl, Venus in the scallop shell and Three Graces, Shell gas, dissolving eggshells in vinegar, fluoridation, and pearlescent lighting. I think we even talked about the lustre of opals.

And, that was the way my children easily learned, too.

I don't really know how kids can stand to learn anything at all from textbooks.

In college, I tried to sell the texts back as soon as possible if it wasn't referential. Remember the data is at least 5 years old by the time it's published, and older by the time some school contracts to purchase it.

What I always had in the back of my mind for a good class textbook was a collection of pamphlets, leaflets, or journal articles to assemble in a loose-leaf folder. That style of education, is probably too labor-intensive, though, and requires a standard lecture.