mm-blog(38)/Brad Garton

previous months: 1/3/2025 -- 7/27/2025

8/1/2025 8/2/2025 8/15/2025 8/24/2025

8/1/2025

Way back when I first started this blog (waaaay back, yeah!), I noticed that after several months of writing it would soon become very unwieldy to scroll down to the latest entries. I decided to split the blog into 6-month segments, although my timing was a little off and the first half of each year has become a 7-month segment. This time-slide did allow me to put my first 7/18/2007 remission announcement on the original blog web page.

Back in January 12, 2007. shortly after I had first learned of my cancer, I wrote this:

Yikes, this blog is becoming longer than I honestly expected, and to tell the
truth I hope it gets a whole lot longer(!).  Eventually I hope it might spin
off into a dwindling bunch of arcane ramblings about music, life, whatever,
and that years from now I'll go back and read it and say "My goodness!  That
was certainly an interesting time in my life!"  I originally envisioned this
as a linear vehicle for 'getting things down', but I'm not sure if that
structure will work as the scrollbar on the web browser gets smaller and
smaller.  I may change the format slightly in the future.

Hence here I am now, shifting everything to my 38th 'blog index'. Woo-hoo! And I mean that in a good "woo-hoo" way, not the semi-ironic tone often used with that particular cheer.

I really fell behind in reporting even basic stuff that has been happening recently. I'll try to do a recap, but not now. Maybe tomorrow. Ha!

8/2/2025

Yes, yes, I haven't been doing a good job keeping up this blog. Except for a few "lots has been going on!" postings and birthday remembrances, there isn't a whole lot of content here. I don't really need to keep this up, but to tell the truth I enjoy going back and reading about parts of my life that were beginning to fade away. What was I like? How did I get here? (Talking Heads fun reference: "My god, what have I done?")

I think a part of my reluctance to write too much has to do with the current state of the world. Most nights Jill and I listen to the news recap on NPR, and we just shake our heads in dismay. If I were to write what's truly on my mind in many cases, it would be a litany of disgust at what Trump is doing to our world. As it is, when I look back through the recent springtime posts, quite a few do indeed express my hatred for what is happening. I will try to calm down, but... arg!

I was on sabbatical for the past spring term, part of my slide into retirement. This coming fall term will be the last I teach at Columbia. I spent most of my sabbatical time out west at our Whidbey home, but I did come back to New York for a time. Mom's birthday was March 1 (91!), and I had a number of invitations to speak at different places. It seems people are realizing that I'm leaving and have decided it would be fun to hear some of my silly stories one more time. Ha! I'm not dead yet! It's been terrific to see and hang with my former students, now good friends and colleagues. Plus I do like to tell those stories.

As I described earlier in this blog, April is 'birthday month' for our family. Shai! Naomi! Me! Daniel! Jussi! Here's a photo of Shai and Naomi at their joint birthday party:

It was held at a place that was essentially a giant space filled with trampolines. Perfect for a group of forty(!) energetic 9- and 4-year-old kids.

Of course Jill made my favorite chocolate banana-cream pie for my celebration:

Daniel and Jussi also had good birthday times in Finland.

We've been doing a lot of traveling recently, too. I've only barely mentioned some of these trips, but they've been excellent. Jill went with our friend Cindy Tsuji to view grey whales in San Ignacio, Mexico (Baja Ecotours). Cindy is the same friend that travelled with Jill to Madagascar in October, 2023.

I had a nice trip to San Jose to see my friend/collaborator Doug Scott and his wife Julie. Exquisite food and wine; up the Russian River Valley. Then at the end of May, we took a short trip with our good friends the Ellentucks to Ireland:

Ireland! It just sort of came up, and there we were. I've always wanted to go to Ireland, and the trip did not disappoint. Lots of music, really good food and drink, and a great time with Sharlene and Jeff.

The BIG trip, however was the 'Disney Cruise' we took from Vancouver up to Alaska at the end of June. Daniel and Jussi came over, so the core family was all involved. We had planned this trip in 2020, but smallish things like a GLOBAL PANDEMIC interfered. We were able to apply the refund we received for that trip to do this one. It was actually better, because Naomi was old enough to really soak up the Disney-ness. Shai, of course was totally able to do this.

It was an amazing trip! Glaciers! Helicopter rides to land on a glacier and then ride around on a dogsled team! A real, woofing dogsled team! Incredible shows (the theater-tech was astounding)! Breathtaking totem poles! Wonderful food! Glorious family time together! And Disney characters and music (oh the songs of our youth...) everywhere! Yeah, we were totally manipulated, but we loved it!

I need to figure out how to make web pages with photos from these excursions, because there are too many to post here easily. I'll put up two of my absolute favorites, though. The first is Shai as a Jedi knight:

The second is Naomi after her 'princess makeover':

As Naomi would say it, she is a princess! Vancouver was lots of fun, too. We went back to the Capilano Suspension Bridge Park where we had been with Shai years ago. Naomi was utterly fearless.

After returning from our Alaskan excursion, we had a really good 4th of July celebration -- Daniel and Jussi were still here, and several other friends joined us for the fireworks.

We then had some visits by more friends, Sam and Elena (Jill used to work with them) flew out, and Seth and Jennifer spent a few days here. It's nice having people stay here. Jill and I get to re-experience the sense of our place when it was still new to us.

Mom and Dad are doing ok. It's still difficult to deal with things sometimes (getting their tax returns filed and paid was a real nightmare), but they're both now in good places. Brenda and I know we'll have more tough times ahead.

But here are two emblems of GOOD times. Me with my grand-nephew Johnny:

and I like this selfie of me and Daniel taken on a train-ride trip in Canada:

It was too long between times seeing Daniel! What a fabulous time we did have when we finally were able to get together! Pandemics and... Daniel completed his dissertation!!!! Now the wait until the defense, but he's on-track to be Doctor Daniel this fall.

Additional really big news was that we sold our childhood Wood Lake home. The people who bought it seem very nice. It was quite a slog to get it cleaned out and ready to sell, but it had to be done. So many memories! I did write briefly about it here a few months back, but no amount of writing can capture the whirl of emotions associated with this time. This is life, these are the things we live through. I wrote a piece:

HOME

I listen to it now, and it did seem to capture some of that 'whirl'. What a life we've had!

We're all relatively healthy. Doctor visits by Jill and I have been blessedly uneventful. Our kids and grandkids are sheer joy, Brenda and family are well. Mom and Dad are... ok. Jill and I are gearing up for my retirement and the life-transition that will entail.

I've been doing a lot of music. I've brought my personal web-page pretty much up to date, so most of what I've been doing is there under the "music" listing.

8/15/2025

The weather here! It's not the old adage "if you don't like the weather, just wait" that we used to say back in Indiana. That was referring (I guess) to sun vs. rain. Here in Whidbey it seems to shift from one entire season to another every other day.

We started the week with temperatures in the 90's -- extraordinarily hot for the Pacific NW. Two days ago it returned to our 'normal' summertime temps: highs in the low-to-mid-70s with it nice and cool at night. Very, very dry, though. We haven't had any rain to speak of for over a month.

Then yesterday it felt like autumn. The lack of moisture has a number of the trees turning their leaves already, so it all conspired to make me feel like school was starting. Then today, an 'atmospheric' river, it's like November here, but not quite as cold. Shuffle, shuffle.

The autumn day had me living in the future. I've been working on my syllabus; it will be a very different term. I'm planning to play lots of my older pieces as demos of the various computer-music topics. Hey, I've been doing his stuff for 40+ years! Hopefully it will be fun. So, living in the future by revisiting my past. Columbia beckons. Oh, Columbia.

8/24/2025

More weather: we're having a major heat wave here in the Pacific Northwest. Of course, in the PNW that means it's getting near 90° F. For the rest of the world, oh my. Lian/Itay and family just got back from Israel where a high-temperature record was set. Itay told me that their cars left in the sun reached an interior temperature of 140°.

I'm in that transitional state where I'm projecting into the future, but drawing on the past to construct my semester plan. I leave for New York in three days... it's a moment of apprehension and anticipation. This year it's layered with the knowledge that it is the last time this will happen. How will it go? Add to that the world-chaos being wrought by evil Trump and (to quote a Beatles song) "it's all too much!".

I'm listening to the back-yard concert we (me, Darwin Grosse, Terry Pender, Gregory Taylor and Dan Trueman) did at our home in Roosevelt in 2009 as I write this. I've been going through a lot of my older music to get ready for my graduate-class plan. What a life.