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In the past, as reported in this blog, we've had a family "joke of the year" contest. The jokes started with generic puns we would share while at Brenda and John's for the Christmas holidays, but through the years the puns began to center around Christmas carols as befitted the season (see here and here for examples). In recent years, we've started to run out of holiday songs to use, so the contest has more-or-less fallen by the wayside. Plus it's been more difficult to get the whole family together -- kids growing up and living in far-flung(!) places, travel becoming more difficult. Paradoxically, though, the pandemic showed us how we could again all gather to share things like the "joke of the year". Zoom!
I thought and thought, and I identified a seasonal tune we had not used before. During our virtual family zoom-gathering, this is what I said:
The only problem was that some of the wiring used for the LED pins was visible -- not too much, but enough to make Armand worried about the overall effect. Coupled with the bold leather addition, he wasn't sure if he should enter the dress in the show, or if it would torpedo his career.
One of his friends suggested that he have a well-known fashion critic take a look at the dress ahead-of-time, and give Armand his opinion about whether or not the dress should be shown. After examining Armand's work, the fashion critic rendered this opinion:
The leather outside -- insightful The wire, it's just a trifle But how those pins do glow... Let it show! Let it show! Let it show!
These all intersected during that short traverse of the road. Time became four-dimensional. I hope I can live all these good moments again, like that.
It was all incredible, and not in a good way. Like many, I really hope this serves as that proverbial wake-up call to show how far down we've gone. Today was a better day, though.
I am worried, though. Tomorrow has been targeted as a day of protest (i.e. insurrection) by the insane Trump supporters. I am seriously concerned about the level of violence that may happen. Many of my (probably former) evangelical/conspiracy-theory childhood friends are really 'jonesin' for a holy war. This is evil.
Yesterday I walked down on the beach for the first time in several weeks. The tidal rhythm had precluded walks during the day. At one point, the sun came out from behind the clouds, warm against my face. I drove home with my car window down. It felt like March, but it was still January.
It's been rainy and cold here the past week or so. No nice sunrise/sunsets lately, just grey. But with good news: Jill got part one of her vaccine this past weekend! We were lucky, somehow. The news reports had said all COVID-19 vaccines on Whidbey Island had been cancelled because of a shortage in the supply. However, Jill never received a 'cancellation notice' for the time-slot she had selected, and in fact got several reminders to be sure to be there. She took a chance and went in, and sure enough -- vaccine! We're breathing just a teensy bit easier now. It looks like I probably won't qualify for a vaccine until later this Spring, or possibly even Summer. The main criteria is age, the cut-off being 65 (I'm 63, Jill just turned 65). But dang! Myeloma's not a good thing to have with a nasty coronavirus lurking about. I will have to wait. A small bit of forward progression, but life still seems pretty much in stasis. I think we have been here before. We haven't really gone anywhere.
It's all melted now. The sun was out after I ended my Zoom class for the day. The tide was low, so I took a walk down on our beach. The slanting rays of the sun glinted off the smooth sand. The look of it reminded my of post-thunderstorm sidewalks in St. Louis when I was young. I could smell the wet pavement.
It's about time. This winter has really turned into a slog, with COVID (I still don't qualify for a vaccine!), with bad times at Columbia, as everywhere, with things that need fixing in our house, with general feelings of depression and worthlessness.
Hey, though, it's March 1! All will get better! And.. today is my mother's birthday!
Lian was expecting our granddaughter to be born at the end of May. However, her water 'broke' this past Friday. Freak out time!
But there were two good things that happened: Lian did not go into labor, so they are now keeping her in the hospital, keeping an eye on all the stats, etc. She's doing fine. Usually when people are in the hospital you hope they get out as fast as possible. In this case we want her to stay there as long as possible! Each day/week she can keep "Baby Sister" inside will help.
The other good thing is that even if she were to give birth now, there is a > 90% survival rate. Modern medicine is amazing. We hope for the best...
Itay has been spending as much time with her in the hospital as he can, so Jill and I are scrambling to take care of Shai. Fortunately we have flexibility, and things are all ok with him.
There is one bit of silver-ish lining: In Washington State, even with a CANCER OF THE IMMUNE SYSTEM(!) I don't qualify for a COVID vaccine, BUT if I'm a member of a 'multigenerational household, for example a grandparent looking after a grandchild' I do indeed qualify. I got my first shot of the Pfizer vaccine today.
Lian and Itay are so brave and strong! Daniel has been looking up every paper he can find about autoimmune responses and premature delivery. Jill is a rock. I am so proud of my family. Stay happy and healthy, Baby Girl Sister!
We had a wonderful zoom seder with Lian/Shai/Itay and their friends last night. Lian from her hospital room, of course.
I love this photo of Shai. The world is vast, and it's his to explore:
Here's Shai blowing out his 5th birthday candles:
Zosha DiCastri and Ellie Hisama, two good friends and colleagues at Columbia, put together a symposium titled UNSUNG STORIES: Women at Columbia's Computer Music Center spanning yesterday and today. It involved organizing panel discussions, roundtables and presentations from former students and colleagues -- mainly female, obviously -- who had worked at the CMC through the years. It was a real tangible evaluation of how well we had succeeded in creating the kind of culture we hoped to promote through CMC activities.
There were a few muted versions of the old battle-lines: musical "quality" (apparently my open aesthetic did serious damage to the "quality" of works coming from the Center), what actually constitutes "real" music, what is "legitimate" compositional craft, etc., and there were a few stories that made me sad (young Brad hadn't realized how difficult some of what we did was for people to learn), but by-and-large the event was a real affirmation of what we had worked to achieve. Words like "open", "nurturing", "inclusive", even "family" were used by the women coming though the CMC to describe their experiences. I felt like we had done something good. This was the kind of world I had wanted to construct. Yes there were and still are problems, but I believe we are on the right track. It is a small corner of existence, but hopefully it matters.
Today showcased a cloudless sky of deep blue, offset by the new-spring green of leaves on plants and trees. I drove around, running errands -- supposedly I have COVID antibodies now! -- and the world seemed new, refreshed. Surely it is, with Naomi now a part of it. Life is good.
Twenty-seven years old! I told Daniel that's the age I imagine myself to be, always. When I actually was 27, I was part-way through my first graduate school year at Princeton, Jill and I had just gotten married (ha, Daniel!), and things were pretty wonderful. Plus I'm hanging out with grad students at Columbia a lot, and this is about their age. So, obviously, my age too, right? But then I look in the mirror...
Naomi is doing very well. She's gaining much weight, and working hard on her 'job' (i.e. learning to eat, etc.). The hope is that she will be able to come home within the next two weeks.
I've begun to shift and think about projects I want to get done over the summer. I'm already working on a 'for fun' song to start, and then we'll see after that. Of course, our whole travel-plans are completely contingent now; we hope to be able to get over to see Daniel, and it's not clear what Lian and Itay will be able to do getting to Israel to visit Itay's family with Naomi and Shai. What a world, what a world.
In the meantime, life is good. I think. There were more than a hundred sailboats out on Puget Sound today. I don't know if it was some kind of regatta or race, but it was nice to see.
I remember seeing one of the very first videos we saw of Naomi sent to us by Lian. She was breathing so hard, so fast... what a determined young baby girl. And now, here she is -- her 'hard work' paid off. Of course we don't know what the future may bring, but my non-rational instinct tells me it will be grand. Oh Shai, you have no dea how wonderful this will be! For all of us, too.
It's like a magic of some kind, the kind that writers of fantasy and sci-fi stories would call a 'deep magic'. Like when Mt. Rainier appears, floating above the horizon.
But it was shortly after that that the total heart-ripping scene happened. Itay had turned off his iPhone video, so it will live forever in our minds. Shai looked down at his little sister and said "Naomi, I love you to the moon!". Back at home on Whidbey Island later that night, this rainbow appeared right in the direction of Naomi's new home:
I think about my high-school friends Geoff and Pat, and how we've (apparently) wandered very different life-pats (duh!). But we have our past together, although it is rooted in a time a half-century ago. Who woulda thought? Who woulda thought?
Even reading what I wrote in my earlier post about the Quadrophenia passage. How did I write that? It seems so... thoughtful, somehow. Sometimes I feel so shallow. But then I hear that neopolitan sixth chord, and the world seems wide-open again.
Here's the 'fun' piece I did last week to get that start started:
I've been in computer-configuration-land, working to get things set up on my Windows machines for continued VR development, and also setting up a new Macbook Air (M1) so I can 'stay in the game' with Apple products, although that 'game' is now severely diminished. It's a lot of sloggish-work, deciding the best formatting for external hard disks, trying to figure out where to put data directories, all that happy stuff.
I have projects I want to do! Part of the problem with them, though, is that I can see too much of what is involved prior to doing the work. I imagine what to do, and then it seems like I've done it. This is why Paul Lansky stopped doing computer music, I figure. It became routine. You knew what you were doing. The real kick comes from exploring/learning new things. It keeps ya young. For me, this is the 'kick' of working in VR. I really don't know what I'm doing. And it's glorious fun! I need to carve out the time to do it.
Sitting out on our back deck just a bit ago, looking out over Puget Sound. This is the first real patch of nice weather we've had here this spring, although it was still a bit cool. I had a sweater on and the fire-table going. The sky was, seriously, 'sky-blue', with traces of sunset pink. The water was a deeper, more three-dimensional blue. The trees were a vibrant and fresh green. The flame of the fire-table danced orange. Every color seemed to come from a different dimension, with almost no interconnection between them. It made it all seem, not surreal or hyper-real, but sort of multi-real. Intersecting worlds of color. A construction from many disparate places.
I got a goodly amount of work done in the past several days, though, and I'm starting to feel a bit more engaged. Here's one example of my prior disengagement: Nothing here about the summer solstice! It was actually quite nice... a few days ago. I thought about 'spoofing' an entry in the blog now, writing as if it were then, but I want to try to remain true to my original idea of recording life as it happens. Somewhere in this blog I wrote about that idea, but I can't find it now.
The good news is that even though I didn't write about it, I did document it:
The 4th was fine -- good fireworks out here on Whidbey July 3, and that war-zone phenomenon around Puget Sound on the evening of the 4th. I have photos! I'll post them! Now I just need to get motivated and do stuff. I'm making some progress, but it's slow.
Flying over Oregon and lower Washington state I saw the devastation from the wildfires last year. This year looks potentially even worse -- we flew over one active fire in Oregon. The scale of human activity is just immense, and it's not generally good. What can I do? I have an idea for a 'global warming' piece, but that's a pretty pathetic response.
We've been watching the Olympics during the past week. One of the interesting aspects is how the games can serve to make choices apparent that we make in our own lives. Perhaps not 'olympian' choices, but for each of us they do loom large.
The gymnast Simone Biles, for example, chose not to compete even though she was the heavy favorite to sweep the women's gymnastics gold medals in the Tokyo games. Several things were striking to me about the fallout from her decision (I won't go into the details, endlessly debated on various media platforms). One of the first was the charge of being a 'quitter'. Surprisingly, or maybe not so much, the 'christian' evangelicals that were former friends from my high school days roundly condemned Biles for this apparent sin. What compassion they show! What human understanding and forgiveness! Needless to say, these self-proclaimed followers-of-Christ are also strong Trump supporters. Jeez. (literally)
I should confess: I am a 'quitter'. This obnoxious label was used to try to get me to continue doing things that I knew were wrong for me. Did I quit the work that was personally important? No. And it took a lot of that hard work. I did quit, however, or self-sabotaged, the work that was wrong for me. Everyone should be able to make that choice. I respect Biles for her willingness to make that difficult choice as she realized that she could not personally do well. Condemn her as a 'quitter'? I don't think so.
Not sure why I felt compelled to write this down. There are many other features of the Olympics I could highlight. The joy of seeing people who have worked hard at something they want to do, and the payoff that sometimes accrues, the happiness at acknowledging the pursuit of excellence at an endeavor that the world essentially ignores (except for two weeks every four years) -- these are part of the fun of watching the games. And at least a nod at the universal condition of being human, even though it is filtered through our imperialistic Western eyes (hi Daniel!).
Speaking of Daniel, it looks like Jill and I will be able to get over to see him in September. It's been over a year-and-a-half. Daniel points out that this is the longest that any of us in our family have been apart that we can recall. We know this, all too acutely.