previous months: 1/1/2011 -- 7/31/2011 
8/17/2011   8/28/2011   9/11/2011   9/16/2011   9/30/2011   10/17/2011   10/27/2011  
10/28/2011   11/5/2011   11/11/2011   11/23/2011   12/4/2011   12/8/2011   12/11/2011  
12/14/2011   12/21/2011   12/23/2011   12/24/2011   12/26/2011   12/26-12/31/2011  
1/1/2012 -- next page  

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8/17/2011

Despite, or perhaps "redeemed by", specific things that happened this summer -- the happy graduation of nephew Stefan, the very nice retirement of my father, a recent (just last week!) visit to see mom and dad in Indiana, and a nice day in Chicago on the way back home (Daniel is looking at the University of Chicago as a possible college-choice. We had a delightful dinner with good friend Gregory Taylor at the famous Berghoff restaurant. Gregory used to go there with his father when he was young) -- this has been a fairly depressing summer. It's now drawing to a close. I can hear it in the katydids outside at night, and I can sense it in the waning of the sunlight as the days get shorter. Fall is coming, getting set for classes, one final summertime trip to Uruguay and then it all cycles again.

I'll start with the fatuously personal and expand outward from there, sort of following the trajectory of disappointment and sadness that formed the past few months, and then wind up with the not-so-fatuously personal.

After a pretty rough spring (start/end), I decided that mortality was making its presence known. I felt that I needed to become a contributing member of society again. Rally the troops! I'm a-gonna change the world, yeah! So I worked up a couple of articles chock full of great pearls of wisdom. One I submitted to a fairly well-known publication. Several of my former students had written for it, so I figured "Hey! I can do this too!". The reply I received was reminiscent of the many rejection letters for various conferences and shopping-around My Music Book or My Book of Dreams. Not real ego-boosting stuff. (For what it's worth, here is the article. I may submit it somewhere else, but perhaps I'm just delusional.) I also believe that I wrote that particular article for the wrong reasons. I sometimes buy into the notion that the purity of intent behind an action dictates the reception of that action. Silly indeed. I am invested in the content of the text, but to be honest I wanted the publication to function more to show my family, friends and colleagues that I still do worthwhile stuff. The substance was secondary, it was more that I wanted Jill and the kids to be proud of me. I'm finishing another article, a bit more 'academic', but I don't even have a clue where to try to publish it.

I also submitted two proposals for workshops using the new iRTcmix package that Damon Holzborn and I have been developing, thinking that it might be useful for others working on iPhone/iPad audio applications. Both were also rejected. Yikes! How pathetic I am!

Given these things (May/June), I probably would have wallowed in self-pity for awhile and then picked up and muddled on. But then the world started going seriously awry. I learned of two good friends who were diagnosed with brain tumors. This was followed a host of truly awful things happening.

I was very disillusioned by President Obama's apparent willingness to concede our national budgetary priorities to a small and obnoxious minority of selfish jerks. I was saddened that the Wisconsin recall elections didn't return control of the WI state legislature to more sane individuals who could oppose the governor's radical trashing of that fair state (and don't get me started on Gov. Christie here in NJ...). But it was the Norway terror that really got to me. I wrote a piece -- I don't want to say it was 'inspired' by the horror, more like my feeble 'response' to it -- while thinking back over the past few months. Here it is:

Bringing things back to the personal again, the other discouragement this summer was that the addition of Velcade hasn't put me into remission. I had hoped to start this next segment of my now-whiney(!) blog with a proclamation of REMISSION!, but it hasn't happened. Perhaps it still will, and Dr. Pearse is pleased that at least my stats are stable with no use of steroids. And they are very low. I want that stupid cancer gone again, though!

So fall approaches, and I do need to 'pick up and muddle on'. I did manage to clean out a few of our closets, so that's something. Great pride in small accomplishments. I am an academic.

8/28/2011

It is a beautiful fall evening tonight, one of those that makes you want to breathe it in and hold it for as long as possible. Jill's burning some wood in our chiminea just down below me. I'm on the upper porch listening to the frogs and cicadas sing. I say "fall" even though we're still in the waning cusp of summer. Fall is how it feels. The summer is ending.

And (as I've noted above) what a summer this has been. The last week, however, has really capped it off. Things became so strange that it even knocked me off my ego-whining self-abnegation and made me realize: things are really bizarre!

What things? Well, the reason Jill is burning wood in our chimenea is because they are branches that blew down during Hurricane Irene, one of the worst rain storms to hit the northeast in the past century. Earlier in the week -- and this is really bizarre -- we had a sizable earthquake! (!!!!!!!) Yikes!

I was in the kitchen when the earthquake hit. I felt the ground rolling beneath my feet and thought "uh-oh, bad chemo-reaction again", but noticed that one of our suspended lights was swinging back and forth. This was just like earthquakes I had experienced in Japan. I figured that not too many others may have noticed and I would have a hard time convincing Jill and the kids that it actually happened. It turned out out be a fairly major event. Jill was even evacuated from the DEP building at work.

The hurricane was pretty bad, but we did ok ourselves. The swale we put in to mitigate flooding problems in the past worked unbelievably well. We had a few minor leaks in the roof, but other than that we survived without too many problems. We didn't even lose power during the storm, unlike most of our neighbors in town. Jill and I drove around a little earlier today and realized how lucky we were. Most of Hightstown is under water, and many of the area roads are blocked because of flooding/downed trees/downed power lines.

The final end-of-summer randomness is that I'm not in Uruguay as I had planned. The travel agent in Montevideo messed up my tickets, and I didn't receive confirmation of any airline reservation until the day I was to leave. There was also no confirmation of return tickets, and I decided not to go. Darn! This is the first time I had to cancel something like this (kind of a major thing, I was to be one of the keynote speakers for the event, plus my friend Luis and I had planned some classes for his University). I felt bad about it, but I know believ that I need to be a little more circumspect about possible health issues that could go wrong. Probably if I were the younger Brad, I'd be there now. I suspect that everything probably would have worked, BUT if it had gone badly it would have been really bad. I think back to the fun little episode I had earlier this year. So here I am.

To be honest, it's probably good that I was here for the storm. I was able to get a lot of our downspouts and gutters in shape, and that probably helped with our potential flooding situation. Luis has also said there's a good possibility that he'll be able to get me down there later this academic year. That way I can assuage some of my cancellation-guilt.

Plus I would not have been here to experience just how weird this summer could get. Now it's time to stop whining and pick up the pieces. Good things ahead in the coming term -- some great students, a really nice friend and colleague teaching at the CMC (Jean-Baptiste Barriere), the new sound-arts program finally getting in place, some planned events, and of course a lot of music yet to be made. Onward!

9/11/2011

I was driving up to Columbia last week with the windows slightly down in the car. A gust of wind came through the opening, slightly chilly but fall-crisp. A few leaves that had 'turned' early were drifting down from the trees along the road. These physical occurrences, combined with the slight frisson of anticipating the first class of the new term, sent a wave of remembrance through me. The past times I've been in same-but-slightly-different situations, experiencing a similar slant of sunlight, noticing a recurring color of blue in the sky, they all came together in that moment to form a dense layering of time and experience. How can this be? How can it end? I was here. Again and again.

When I was younger, my mom used to say that autumn was her favorite season. As a kid I could never understand this. Summer was ending, no more swimming or late-evening fun in the neighborhood, winter wasn't here so no sledding or ice-skating, spring always brought warming days and the anticipation of summer vacation. September had almost nothing to recommend it. Worst of all, fall brought the dreaded return to school. As I get older, though, it seems that autumn is the season primed for this immanence-of-memory phenomenon. Maybe it's the feeling of a return to 'real work', or maybe it's the realization of the cycle of decay and renewal (and the location of 'fall' in that cycle), or maybe it's the awareness of change; unlike the change of spring it is wrought from observations of things growing older. Whatever it is, as I grow older I find myself more and more attuned to the memory gifts of fall. Perhaps there is a kind of outside-time immortality in remembering. I find that thought comforting.

Today, of course, has become a national day of rememberance, displacing the officially-named "Memorial Day". 9/11. 9/11. Ten years ago today. Unfortunately the memories dredged by these two numbers are both good and bad, and they serve continuing purposes both good and bad. Never forget! Why? The answers, both good and bad, continue to reverberate through our national discourse.

9/16/2011

Another tragedy has rocked our little town of Roosevelt.

When I came back from Columbia about 4 PM yesterday, there were four police cars along the road entering town. There is "woodsy" patch just before you get to the Borough Hall. I saw that a car had run off into the woods and was really smashed against a tree. When I got home, I asked Daniel if he knew anything about it, but he had only seen the same thing I had.

Jill and I went to (our last!) "back to school night" at Biotech High School. When we returned home, Daniel said that our friend and neighbor Jeff Ellentuck had called, and the car belonged to Sara Tulloss. Sara was the 21-year-old daughter of Rod and Mary Tulloss, both also neighbors and good friends. Apparently yesterday afternoon Sarah and her boyfriend somehow swerved off the road into the woods. Sara died at the hospital, and her boyfriend is in critical condition.

Last month another of our neighbors passed away, Leon Barth. Leon was a former mayor of Roosevelt, and his wife Helen was an administrator at the Roosevelt Public School for years. Our kids knew her well. Leon was a genial, decent guy. His death was sad, but he had lived a full and complete life. But when young adults on the cusp of life die, what is the sense of that? Emily Silverstein, and now Sara Tulloss... I know this isn't the first or (lamentably) the last time this question is asked. The terrible realization that there is no good answer doesn't ever lessen, either.

Oh my, our hearts go out to Rod and Mary, and to the world in all its painful temporality. It was such a beautiful fall day today, such a very, very beautiful day.



9/30/2011

I was driving home from Columbia yesterday, very late in the afternoon but not quite dusk yet. The day had been stormy -- hail, thunder, lightning, rain. My parents were supposed to fly into Newark at 4 PM, but the flight was cancelled (they're here today). The rain had passed, and there was only a single cloud in the sky, white at the edges and fading to a dark/dirty white in the middle folds. The sky was the kind of blue that the word "cerulean" was invented to describe.

I was listening to some music, I think it was the old pop song In the Air Tonight by the band Genesis (nice use of vocoder effects!). I looked to the left and the sun was sparkling across a small lake. It was that moment -- the sparkles, the sky, the engraved cloud, the slowly-shifting vocal harmonies on the car stereo -- it all seemed so there. This was a moment of eternity. It actually happened.

Usually when I become aware of these 'moments of immanence' the impression gets destroyed. This time as I thought about the happy time-and-timelessness thoughts I was having, the feeling intensified. I was there.

If we had a contest for the most beautiful day of the year, today would definitely be a strong finalist. Crisp and clear autumn weather. I thought of taking a few photos, but they wouldn't do it justice. It's raining again tonight, though.

10/17/2011

What a weekend! The semester has definitely 'taken off', lots of activity happening. Classes are going really well, our students are doing superb work, and all of us on the faculty are just one big boat-load of happy people (I'm only being half-facetious about this; we actually do seem to be getting along very well). Our visiting faculty, Jean-Baptiste Barriere and Akira Takaoka, have been terrific, Jean-Baptiste has been fully engaged with our students and Akira is getting settled in quite nicely.

But this past weekend: we put on a fabulous show at the CMC on Friday night. Cycling '74, the company that makes the software used by most of us involved in computer music work, decided to host a second Expo '74 conference, this time in New York (I was one of the keynote speakers at the first Expo '74 gathering held in San Francisco several years ago). My friends in the company suggested that we [Columbia] host a 'keynote event'; an opening reception for the Expo.

We decided to showcase as much as we could of the diverse activities we do at the CMC. Ultimately we had eight(!) performances by students and faculty at the CMC along with nine(!!) installations and demos of our software and hardware work. In order to show how energized things are at the CMC, I had this notion that we would run the performances and demos/etc. simultaneously. Kind of like a big circus of computer music. Food and drink were available, of course.

This is one of the few times when my vision of how the evening might go was matched by the reality of the event. We had tremendous attendance, enough to fill all the performance and installation/demo spaces as people circulated around, but not so over-crowded that it was impossible to spend time with any presentations of particular interest. We even had a few Real Live Luminaries of Computer Music attend -- they liked it! they really liked it! As well they should, the works we presented were -- in my humble judgment of course -- outstanding. Great things are happening yet again at the CMC.

One of the best aspects of the evening for me was the chance to reconnect with old friends, and also to meet a few new friends. Yeah, very cliched, but it was real. I had a nice talk with Tom Zicarelli (David Zicarelli's brother -- David is the CEO and owner of Cycling '74) and his wife. It's always fun to spend time with Gregory Taylor and Darwin Grosse (we all performed [with Terry] as "PGTGr"):

There were many good friends throughout the evening. Also, earlier that day I had lunch with Judith Shatin, her partner Michael, Mari Kimura and Akira. Mara Helmuth was visiting the night before from Cincinnati, and Rick Bassett -- one of my first grad students at Columbia -- showed up unexpectedly at our Expo event. It was like a CMC homecoming! What a great time!

And the weekend didn't stop there... Jill was down in Washington DC having a rip-roaring time with her group of friends from grade school. Daniel and I held down the fort at home, and he finished his application to Columbia. Go Lions! Go Daniel! Lian, oh my daughter -- ran her second Nike Women's Marathon "Race for the Cure" marathon! When I spoke with her on the phone right after she finished, she thought she didn't do as well as last year. She had a long and intense prior week at work, not as much training this year, etc. But the official results:

report that she ran almost the exact same time. Wow!

At one point the reporting system showed the following:

I thought: "My daughter is made of neutrinos! She can travel faster than light!" Our kids can do anything. I am a happy and proud dad.




10/27/2011

I sent this e-mail to Luke DuBois and his friend/collaborator Dana Karwas today: Luke, Dana and I were on a panel together for the Expo '74 Conference; that's probably what triggered it:

10/28/2011

Perhaps this is an artifact of aging, or maybe a sign of a minor underlying OCD-ness (I think all composers probably have some degree of this), but I have developed a routine-of-sorts I do each morning. After breakfast and all that, I answer e-mail, check the weather, read the headlines, then write letters, work on code, music, whatever. I'll deviate when I have things that have to get done, or if I have early meetings planned (obviously!). But I find a kind of comfort in a structured day.

Why do I mention this? Because one of the things I do after reading and answering e-mail is to fire up a small "dashboard thesaurus" application and randomly think of a word. Then I read the synonyms. Oh what great fun. I'm pretending to keep my mind sharp. I try to think of a word that somehow relates to what I'm doing, or perhaps represents a hope for a possible future, especially if I'm slogging through some administrative gunk. In fact, "hope" and "future" have been my "words of the day" often (I do allow repeats).

Anyhow, the word for today was "beautiful", because this fall season has certainly been that. In addition to the traditional profusion of autumn tree-colors, we've had some uncommon occurrences. One was the blooming of an iris in our back yard, typically a plant that blooms in June. I think this plant actually had bloomed in June, and now here it is again in October:

   


Even grey and rainy days have had a chromatic appeal. This was the view from our bedroom window one morning earlier in the week:



Tomorrow we are supposed to receive an inch of snow. Snow! The forecast for my sister and her family in western Massachusetts is up to a foot of snow. SNOW!!!!!!!

11/5/2011

In the interest of "completeness", there are a number of things I haven't written here that perhaps I should. Here they are, along with some documenting photos:


I've been having odd feelings of time-shifts during the past few months. When the weather or the sunlight is set just so, it suddenly seems as if I'm in another season, with different sets of expectations and a strangely altered sense of where I am situated. I thought it was simply the result of an overactive memory-imagination, but with snow in October, the world actually is now very strange. Looking out on a scene with green grass, brightly autumn-colored leaves, and SNOW on the ground is just plain weird. You look, and your mind tells you: "this isn't correct..."

We were lucky and only received about an inch or so of snow. My poor sister in western Massachusetts got almost 2 feet! With the leaves still on the trees, they had major branches falling and huge power outages as a result. They were without electricity for nearly a week. One branch also broke through their kitchen ceiling as it fell. Not fun.

It all continues, though, and we wonder how the coming winter will be. Things are hectic but exciting at Columbia this term, hence my falling behind in 'informational' postings here. Am I caught up with things now? Do I want to be?

11/11/2011

Busy, busy! I think about writing in the ole blog a lot, but then I don't. By the end of the day I'm usually falling asleep, or something. Here are a few more things I have neglected to mention:

Appointment with Dr. Pearse about a week-and-a-half ago. Everything is still 'stable', no changes in my cancer stats one way or the other. Given that my cancer activity is fairly low, and that I seem to be tolerating the drugs well (although "By the end of the day I'm usually falling asleep..."), Dr. Pearse thinks I can keep on going this way for the foreseeable future. Fine with me, although my drug costs now exceed twice my annual salary. I have an insurance company that probably hopes I die soon, but I have two (yay!) pharmaceutical companies that hope I live loooong time. Go Big Pharma!

When I go into Weill-Cornell, they check IDs and I usually flash my Columbia ID card. This gets me through fairly quickly, and I also partly-pretend that I'm not really a patient here, I'm on-staff, I'm one of the insiders. Nope, no health issues with me! I'm clean!

Jeez, who am I kidding? The guards? Me? The cancer-gods? I guess it's nice to imagine an alternate reality. One where I can't feel the drugs working on me always, one where I'm not so tired always.

Actually things aren't that bad, in fact quite good. I'm just in one of those moods tonight. I still stop by the little chapel on the way out of Weill-Cornell. It's nice to sit there, removed from everything, and think about all the things I can still do.


Nice week this week, though. Saw lots of good performances, good dinners, good people. Douglas Repetto gave a terrific presentation in our Wednesday graduate composition seminar, reminding me of a lot I need to keep in my head. My TA Natacha Diels put on a wonderful show at Issue Project Room, colleague George Lewis was featured in a dynamite concert at Miller Theater, Jill and Daniel and I went to see a Ping Chong show at LaMama Theater (with a delicious "New York" meal ahead-of-time, involving a descent down several sets of stairs in this hidden restaurant in the East Village), and to top it all off I got to visit Doug Geers' and Maja Cerar's new (one week old!) daughter: Dariah Simone Geers. Yes, I am tired, but goodly so.


One more thing: Daniel and I were sitting in the living room of our apartment Friday night after the LaMama show. Jill had gone to bed. I looked up at the clock and noticed it was 11:10 PM. When it turned to 11:11, Daniel and I counted out 11 seconds, and we did indeed 'celebrate' 11:11:11 PM on 11-11-11.

11/23/2011

I was thinking about anticipation today. It was a cold, grey, rainy, very November-like day. In the morning I cleaned our apartment in New York. If weather is good and all seems set, our plans are to take Mom and Dad up there this weekend. The anticipation: they are arriving tomorrow afternoon for Thanksgiving dinner, and Lian will be at the airport early tomorrow morning from Seattle. My sister and her family will stop by on Saturday.

I really like this time of year, just on the cusp of holiday and family times. Each year it seems to get more layered, richer in meaning as time stacks them all. At the same time, the annual return of the feeling is also surprising. The aspect that has shifted is a discovery that I almost like the 'day-before' better than the event itself. Late November is one giant 'day-before' the whole holiday season.

When I got home to Roosevelt, I sat and worked in our good home, listening to music, awash in this anticipation. I felt warm inside against the cold clouds outside. For some reason I had a vivid recollection of another November from my past. It was a time when I was home in Indiana with my sister. I was probably in seventh or eighth grade, because Mom and Dad had gone out for the evening and Brenda and I were home alone. Our house is situated on a hill overlooking the lake below. As we played games, we were aware of the late afternoon grey sky becoming blue and dark blue through the big back windows with the approach of evening. Then we both noticed the snow. We turned the lights on the back of the house and watched as the few flakes turned into a flurry, then a fully-fledged snow shower. The season, it was coming! The excitement we felt, the expectation of happy times ahead -- there is something miraculous about November snow.

12/4/2011

There is much to write here, and I haven't been doing it! Thanksgiving, family times, still holding steady with stats (visit with Dr.Pearse last week), end of the school term... and I'm lazy. More coming, I promise!

12/8/2011

What a GREAT day this was! Last day of classes for the semester (applause from students again!), a really interesting dissertation proposal defense for Ryan Carter (Ryan's an NYU student who has been taking a lot of CMC classes), and... the big news... Daniel was accepted into Columbia!!!!!!! He's really thrilled, and the joy felt as a parent is beyond compare. Seriously. I got the text from him during Ryan's committee meeting, and then called home while standing next to a Christmas tree under the Washington Square Park arch. I think I like New York now.

Daniel was really hoping to go to Columbia. Jill and I both suspected he would have no trouble getting accepted, but ya never know. It is sheer delight to share in his excitement. My memory flashed back to this past scene. These parts of life are precious indeed. Jill said Lian also had some good news today, but we haven't heard any more yet.

Speaking of more, I have more to write here, including photos from this year's Christmas lights. But right now I'm going to relax and be happy.

12/11/2011

It is interesting how circumstances can change quickly, and the resulting shift alters your entire attitude. I was really depressed a few weeks ago, almost dreading the whole holiday season, figuring "what's the use of even trying to decorate/get into it all/do the seasonal nonsense". Jill's work has been really unpleasant for her lately, and even though Columbia has been very gratifying, I've been tired. Minor health things have cropped up for both Jill and myself. I always wonder what the point of my musical existence is. Even though I've more-or-less reconciled to the fact that there really isn't any, sometimes it does get a little bleak.

Then Daniel got the news about Columbia (yay again! go Lions!), and Lian called with news that she has been selected to participate in a 'young leaders' conference for only 50 or so employees at Amazon. Her VP told her she was chosen because of her "exceptional talent and leadership potential." My oh my! This summer she gets to spend a week-long retreat at the Cave B Inn & Spa in central Washington State. She could stay in a cave! In a yurt! A yurt in a cave!

Seriously, what Jill and I heard from Lian and Daniel rearranged our outlook, or at least it did for me. So bring on the holidays! I love this time of year! Here are a few pictures of our outdoor display:



Lian came up with the idea this year when she was home over Thanksgiving. It's a data cloud. See the downloads?

Our Christmas trees are also up, and we're all set to drive to Brenda's for the early family holiday-fest next weekend. Tuesday night is the final presentations for my class. Bring it all on! I'm ready now!

12/14/2011

The school term more-or-less finished today. Last night we hosted a substantial 'presentation'-event at the Computer Music Center for students in our classes. We hadn't done something like this for quite some time, and as the evening unfolded I decided that we needed to resurrect this tradition. I think we stopped having this event when so many of our students were involved in a lot of performances on their own; a CMC-show seemed redundant. But after sitting through an extraordinarily pleasant and interesting 3 hours(!) of music and software presentations, I think that something about seeing the breadth and scale of what we do is worth exhibiting. People had created ground-breaking improvisational pieces (I'm not kidding -- imagine a jazz chart based on real-time timbral analysis of descriptors like the spectral centroid or kurtosis measurements), elegantly-crafted 'tape' pieces, snazzy guitar DSP pieces, a new design and hardware realization of digital DJ-tools, video interactive tracking and performance, even a fledgling musical instrument based on lasers by a freshman undergraduate. Yikes. Between this and the earlier CMC Night, I'm pretty high on the CMC these days. Of course, this doesn't really differ to much from other days. I like where I work! Today we also had our end-of-term Departmental meeting and holiday party, also lots of good feelings all around.

But not everything has been happiness and joy. Life, life... I learned not too long ago that the partner of one of my closest friends and colleagues has advanced breast cancer. He told me today that they had just found out that it had significantly metastasized. I'm cautiously optimistic, though. I know first-hand (yeah!) that cancer research is accomplishing amazing things now. I hope that they can also be positive beneficiaries of it all.

Not everyone can, though. I also heard that one of my childhood friends, Gregory Pacheco, died from a brain tumor just two weeks ago. Greg was the identical twin brother of my best friend Geoff, the drummer in the high-school musical trio we had formed with my other best high-school friend Pat Kennedy. The group was called Vindication, and I recently put the music from the record we made on-line here.

Geoff, his twin Greg and their younger brother Doug became heavily involved in Christianity (you will hear this in the words of the record above, Geoff was our 'librettist'). There were many written condolences to Greg and his family on Greg's Facebook page, most containing expressions of strong, fundamentalist Christian faith. My "faith" -- if that's even the correct label -- isn't like that, and my statement of sincere wishes to the family probably seemed a bit pale next to THANK GOD YOU'RE NOW IN ETERNAL BLISS! or WE ARE SO HAPPY YOU NOW ABIDE WITH CHRIST! Geoff, Greg and Doug were all three a big part of my youth. I had just reconnected with Greg at our 35th High School Reunion a year ago last summer (no sign of brain cancer then). I was looking forward to talking more with all of them, deepening our lives through remembrances of our early experiences. I was not thankful or happy about Greg's death. I was sad, very very sad.

12/21/2011

Solstice morning today. Cycling the light again. This morning has had a special resonance for me the past twenty-five years, though, because on the winter solstice of 1986 I drove back from a night of intense magic at the Princeton Medical Center: Lian was born one-quarter century ago at 11:50 PM, 12/20/1986. Happy Birthday Lian!

12/23/2011

The end of the term! The end of the year! My oh my, getting stuff done again! I sent the following e-mail out to friends, mailing lists, whoever I felt I could spam a little bit with some musical nonsense: 

Hey everyone!

Got some end-of-term time that finally broke loose, so I managed to finish off a few things:

--  new piece, "sometimes chords":

  http://music.columbia.edu/~brad/music/mp3/sometimes_chords.mp3 -- 17 mins
  http://music.columbia.edu/~brad/music/commentary/sometimes_chords.html -- commentary

--  new improv by me + Terry:

 http://music.columbia.edu/~brad/PGT/PG-MIDIclass2011/index.html

--  the PGTGr performance at the Expo74/Columbia-night (photos & video, too!):

  http://music.columbia.edu/~brad/PGT/PGTGr-expo74/index.html

And of course there's always the cats...

The last comment ("there's always the cats...") referred to a very silly [but loads of fun to do] video I made for our Christmas gathering up at Brenda and John's house in Longmeadow, MA: There's a whole story to go with it involving the infamous 'holiday joke of the year'. I'l post more on this later, beware! Right now it's been fun to see if the video will "go viral" (almost 800 views and still counting).

My mom also did her holiday photo captioning-thing and sent me a bunch of pictures from the trip last weekend:

A very nice trip. The only missing element was Lian, and she's arriving here tomorrow! YAY!

12/24/2011

Christmas Eve again, and life is good again. Lian arrived this morning, Daniel is still riding a wave of euphoria from his Columbia acceptance, Jill has been home and has been relaxing, nice visit last weekend with Mom, Dad, Brenda + family in Longmeadow, general goodness all around. I'm listening to the Christmas Eve Byzantine Monks, enjoying being here.

I read through the last five years of Christmas Eve blog entries. Jeez, I sure did lay it on thick sometimes. Oh well, I guess I'm that kinda guy.

Somehow this -- the five-year anniversary of my myeloma diagnosis -- seems, or did seem, important. When I first read about multiple myeloma, most of the stats would mention things like "5 year mortality rate" and then give a figure between 30 and 50 percent. Of course, the median age of diagnosis was 70+ years, and the stats did not include the incredible recent advances in treatment. At the time, though, I remember being intensely worried that I wouldn't live to see Daniel graduate.

So I had it set in my mind that if I survived the five years I would have beaten the odds a little. Now a complacency sets in, the intensity has lessened, life has normalized. Here I sit, listening to the monks (more mainstream Christmas music all day). I'm drinking some wonderful Eiswein Jill brought back from her Canadian trip last summer, and it is indeed all good. Merry Christmas!

12/26/2011

Here are photos of our Christmas tree this year:
These were taken again ("traditionally"!) on Christmas eve.

I really love this time of year, even with the hassles and what-not. We have some amazing family times coming up, too. I wish, I wish... well, I just do!



12/26-12/31/2009

The next few days'-worth of entries are being done 'after the fact'. I didn't have good internet access, but it was for a good reason. Amazing family times, indeed! Read on...

This year we planned a Secret Trip! For years my sister has wanted us to come to visit them in Florida over the Christmas break. She and John bought a condo on the Gulf coast in Englewood about 12 years ago. We had visited once awhile ago over the July 4 holiday, but had not been back since. Jill was feeling sad that we hadn't really had a good family vacation this year (college trips, graduations, etc.), and Lian and Daniel (well, me too) were interested in the new Harry Potter Theme Park at Universal Resort in Orlando. Jill's vacation-mantra was also: "I want to go someplace warm!". So Florida loomed large.

My sister had passed the 50-year-old milestone this past summer, and John had surprised her with a trip to Mackinaw Island. Although we were able to participate vicariously, we weren't as involved in the "SURPRISE!" event like the one that Brenda had visited upon John when he turned 50 a few years back. Brenda and John really like the surprises, so we hatched a plan with John to sneak up on her at the beach. Ho ho ho!


12/26-27/2011

We flew into Tampa late -- midnight -- between Christmas Day and 12/26. My 12/26 entry above was posted from Orlando, where we stayed in the "Royal Pacific" resort outside the Universal theme parks. Good fun, good food, wonderful to be with Jill and the kids. We rode rides, we drank 'butterbeer', we experienced virtual reality, stood in amazement at the mass of humanity. Fortunately we had we had 'express passes' because of our lodgings in one of the Theme Park Resort Hotels, so our typical wait-in-line was about 15-20 mins instead of the 1+ hours(!) for general admission park-goers. Yikes. We gained early-access to the main Harry Potter attraction (Hogwarts Castle! Whoo-hoo!) with about a 20-30 minute wait. When we left the ride, which was amazing by the way, we stood and watched the "wait time" counter flip continuously upward until it settled on 150 minutes. Double yikes.

At times I felt strange about being surrounded by "mainstream" (if such a thing exists) American culture. Walking along the Universal "Main Street" promenade and seeing the Official NBA-themed restaurants or NASCAR bars, I thought of my reading years ago of Umberto Eco's book Travels In Hyperreality or Jean Baudrillard's America -- they both wrote about encounters with Disney World and the dislocation the experience engendered. I wasn't quite riding the po-mo train on this trip, I really did enjoy the food (oh my!), the constructed experiences, but several times I would look around and think: "Whoa! This is just bizarre!" For example, here is Jill riding the "Caro-Suess-el" in the Islands of Adventure Park:

(more pictures here of the whole trip)

So while feeling apart from the mainstream, I was simultaneously in the mainstream. This is one of the best aspects of 'America'; the ability to embrace wildly divergent perspectives, paradoxically unifying them through a narrative of national individualism. I hope we can maintain this odd sense of identity. Sadly, the points of divergence seem to be fragmenting, a fragmentation fueled by sensationalist media and take-no-prisoners political postures.

There were also surprisingly few scenes of jerk-like behavior. People were enjoying themselves, even with the long waits. Of course there were a few, but not as many as I had feared. One encounter that Jill and I had while returning to the hotel after dinner was mildly unpleasant. We were trundling back along the path, when we passed a youngish couple speaking in a highly agitated manner. As we walked by them, the woman said: "So I gave my mom a f#$%ing black eye! Now I get blamed for everything!" Jill and I looked straight ahead, and a bit further down the path we heard her yell: "I DON'T CARE IF THEY HEARD ME! I WILL NEVER SEE THOSE PEOPLE AGAIN!" and we looked at each other and realized she was talking about us. I was able to get Jill to laugh when I suggested that we circle back around to walk by them again, waving and saying: "Hi! It's us again!" Jill said we would probably be the recipients of black eyes after that.

Even with the occasional unpleasantness like this (and the fact that my feet were giving me a hard time throughout...), it was a wonderful vacation. On the one (academic-like) hand, it was fun to speculate about the depiction of technology-run-amok in rides like "Terminator 3-D" or "Jurassic Park", and on the other it's simply impossible not to be happy watching your son being chosen to play a part in a "disaster movie":

Heck, we even timed it so that the only rain occurred while we were in the "Three Broomsticks" eating lunch (we managed a similar feat of timing the last time we visited the Universal Theme Parks years ago).

The only thing I feel a little badly about is that I had to tell a smallish white-lie to my parents and my sister about our location. I had been pretty good, telling my mom we were "heading up towards New York" while in actuality planning to stop at Newark Airport as we approached NYC. My parents became extraordinarily concerned about some paperwork related to our family farm in Iowa, and the second day we were in Orlando all our cell phones lit up with voicemail and text messages. I became concerned that something had gone seriously wrong, so I called my mom and my sister from the main area in the park. They could hear the commotion of the crowd in the background, so I had to think quickly and blurted out: "We're in Times Square -- the kids wanted to see the Christmas Tree." Beside the fact that the big NY tree is located at Rockefeller Center, not Times Square, I wondered what mom and sis made of the screams of terror coming from the roller-coaster rides in the background.


12/28-30/2011

On Wednesday, we drove to Englewood for the Main Event. We were in touch via text-message with John's sister Elsa. It was a gorgeous Florida day, and she and John and my nephews had taken Brenda to the beach. Elsa excused herself to "go get some drinks" when we were a few minutes away, and she met us at their condo. We then grabbed some beach chairs for ourselves and walked over to where Brenda had camped.

It was AMAZING! We totally surprised her! We came up to where sis was sitting from behind, and Elsa went to take her seat next to Brenda. I walked right up next to John and set my chair down adjoining his; Lian, Daniel and Jill followed suit. At first Brenda was totally oblivious. She looked right at us and didn't say a word! She was asking John what he thought about a particular drink that Elsa had brought. At this point several minutes had gone by, and nephews Stefan and Bo were laughing out loud. John was worried that Brenda might never (ha ha!) realize we were sitting next to her. He took the drink, handed it to me and said: "Hmmm, what do you think?"

Brenda did the classic double-take, and then shouted: "WHAT ARE YOU DOING HERE?!?! WHAT ARE YOU DOING HERE?!?!" Here she is:

(My sister tends to get quite emotional...)

It was a fabulous visit. Everyone had a great time, and it was the perfect wind-down after the Universal Studios insanity. Daniel got to drive a boat, I had a delightful time visiting with in-laws Brian and Elsa Murphy, John Sr. and Margaret, and (of course) my sister, John and my nephews. Lian and Jill got to shop, relax, and we all ate waaay too much good food.


12/31/2011

The only big sadness that occurred was a note I got from Perry Cook. This past spring I learned of two friends who had been diagnosed with brain tumors. Just a few weeks ago, I received the bad news that one of them, childhood friend Greg Pacheco, had died. On Thursday, Perry wrote to me that Lucia Rikakis had also died. Lucia was the second of the two with the terrible cancer news only six months ago. She was the sister of Thanassis, for a large portion of time one of my closest friends. Thanassis, Perry and I did a lot of work together in Greece in the 1990's. Thanassis was the Associate Director of the CMC with me, and Perry had just joined the faculty of Princeton University. The times we had! The adventures! The fun! And Lucia was a part of it. I can still see her sitting on her veranda at her house on Andros, or in her office in Athens (as stylish and up-scale as you might imagine a renowned Greek media producer would have). Jeez, I will never get a chance to talk with her again.

Times change. Thanassis is now the Director of a substantial media/arts/engineering program of his own at Arizona State University, Perry is semi-retired and living in the mountains outside Portland, Oregon. We've drifted apart, but our past is still there. As with Lucia. Thanassis now has a darling daughter of his own. The future continues to unroll. Right now I'm home with my own family, New Year's Eve 2011. All this too, our Christmas at home, our week in Florida, our breakfast together this morning, Lian and Daniel playing video games with each other as I type this, will become part of "the past", and I am hugely happy for it.



1/1/2012 -- next page