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I second those wishes and congratulations and good thoughts for our Apple, from California. I'm so glad you're back with us.

I do hate to disappoint Robin, but I have to report that Backcountry Weekend did not require the services of any firetrucks or ambulances this year. Unfortunately, it was very successful: 1000 people and no emergencies--- not even any complaints, which is unheard-of. Nearly perfect weather, no fistfights, no one tripping over her panties and breaking her arm (what a good story that was, though).

Given time for reflection, I realized that my mother, who was a reporter for the daily newspaper, used to have the fire department as part of her beat. She knew all the firedaddies by name, and used to tell me about them. She used to have cocktails with the ambulance drivers, too--- off-duty, of course. It was the kind of medium-sized town where you could know a lot of people like that.

Five days far-off in the backcountry. Luckily, I have mastered the secret of completely comfortable camping. No weddings (though there might have been engagements), no newspapers, no firedaddies, no television. You end up having conversations with actual people. You end up watching the stars, and letting your eyes rove over the landforms. You end up wishing it could keep going on.

But, no; now the backcountry lies behind two locked gates. They may even close our park altogether--- or, they may realize that we can no longer financially afford to ignore or make unwelcome the park's natural allies and user base. Will the double-locked fiefdom fall? Stay tuned...

Okay, I'm getting nervous. Greg was out on medical leave, then Jeff, and now Apple. It seems to me I could be next. I did break my toe three weeks ago, but that hardly counts. I will be careful. Mainly I just have to make it to Sunday. I have all kinds of snazzy people showing up at this book launch concert. But no firedaddies, at least none that i know of.

Clef, sounds like I would have loved your mother. Cocktails with the emergency rescue workers? My kind of gal.

I do hope your park stays open for all to enjoy. How I long for a week like that right now. I am so pleased you had a good time, Clef. You deserve it! Please tell, did you sing around the campfire? Or were the stars in the sky enough of a show?

Well....as long as it isn't a groom saying that .....;)

It seems to me you're leaving out some details about that broken toe 'that didn't count.' Whose butt did you kick so hard that you broke your toe, and what did they break? Enquiring minds want to know.

Our lives are both fragile and robust--- there is no point in worrying about tomorrow; whatever you want to do in your life, do it today. Keep your health insurance paid up, and make sure that the people you love, know that you love them. As exasperating as PW can be, that is one gift that it has delivered. I could not have foreseen that I would come to care about some of our members, whose lives are so different and so far away from my own... but, you just can't help it. And you can't help but recognize the talent of our members, even though I might not ever recognize their faces.

It would be hard to say that our illnesses have come through a lack of care, although coming back from them has required our care and others'. Destiny is mysterious, and we're not always in a position to understand the higher purpose that is being served. My personal feeling is that it's not really a clockwork mechanism that calls for "a toe for a toe." As the long-distance runner's t-shirt says: "Eat right, exercise, die anyway." Herb Caen wrote, about San Francisco, "This is a heedless, headstrong city, forever dancing on the edge of disaster."

Well, that is life in all its unlikeliness. But hey, there's nothing wrong with it if you want to eat your vegetables, take your vitamins, get your beauty rest, exercise moderately, keep your mental health good, and do a good deed once in awhile.

And you'll be happier if you make sure your shoes fit.

_________________________
Clef


PS-
Socializing over cocktails (for the big people) was a way of life in my hometown--- after all, as they say, "There's not much to do in a small town, but what you hear makes up for it." At my age, I was allowed to mix cocktails, but not drink them. Still, it loosened tongues up and a young person could overhear plenty.

I have forgotten (or dare not repeat) most of it, but I do remember what the lady who owned the ambulance company said when I stopped the car and looked both ways at a railroad crossing. "I am so glad that you stopped and looked," she said, "and I hope you always do it. Trust me, it pays."

I figured she knew what she was talking about. Come to think of it, my mom had the police and car crash beats, as well as the fire department and the Lion's Club lunches.

It's hard to say if you would have liked my mom, but maybe. As much as kids see of their parents, adults know them in a completely different way, which is a dark mystery to their children.

Robin, that's so unfortunate about your broken toe! Can you pedal with it? [Monica is trying to envision footwear that would be compatible with the Piano Girl wardrobe that is also conducive to swollen toes, and failing.]

I'm eager to hear how your book launch goes, especially if you can post video of the bathrobe part.

Everybody else: Robin's book is now on amazon, and has been reviewed by yours truly, not to mention Frank B. himself. And I'm also eager for the release of the accompanying Waltz of the Asparagus album, as that is definitely on my iTunes list. Looking at the track listing on amazon, I see some great covers there (Comptine..., River Flows in You), but it's "The Tattooed Bride" I'm most looking forward to hearing.

Speaking of mothers--this may be a little O.T., but we *were* talking about moms--here's a link to what I think is the best Mother's Day song ever...



huh... my youtube embedding isn't working, and I don't know why. Oh well, just copy and paste the URL, or search for "biologist's mother's day song."

That makes me chuckle a little. When life seemed especially "fragile", I got the usual compensatory wisdom. Petty worries fell away, allowing me to see the important things more clearly.

Now that I have re-entered regular life for the most part, I find that old habits, personality traits (OK, flaws) and petty worries are quite "robust", having just lain dormant for a while. Perversely, I have decided to take that as further evidence of my recuperation. I asked for my life back, and I got it. All of it. [if there is an emoticon for a wry and ironic grin, imagine I inserted it here]


A very peculiar facet of modern life that is. And the reverse as well - I could never have foreseen the effect that good wishes from people I had never met could have on me.

But maybe we have "met", and perhaps more comprehensively than we "meet" most people we encounter in person. Better still, we "meet" those more interesting portions of ourselves that seem to emerge when we sit and compose a bit of writing.

The robustness, perhaps more accurately called "stubbornness", of our personalities does seem to have some cracks in it. I have emerged from a long and pretty dark period with a few minor improvements. I have started to do some moderate exercise, mostly consisting of walking 20 or so miles a week. Better fitting shoes are becoming a necessity.

And vice versa. We visited the Anne Frank House when we were in Amsterdam two years ago. My daughter was pretty close to Anne Frank's age at the time, and the pictures and drawings that are still on the wall of Anne's small room looked hauntingly like the things any girl that age might decorate her room with.

But what stuck with me the most was a quote from Otto Frank, who, after reading his daughter's diary (after her death), said that he doesn't think parents ever really know their children. I see that more and more these days. Our daughter has started to have a life and thoughts that we only get snippets of.

That makes me fell wistful, of course, but it's got to be what we want for our kids, doesn't it?

A few years ago I had occasion to play a couple of gigs after I had contorted my right ankle into a configuration that nature did not intend.

I usually stand when I play, but I think I brought a stool to those gigs. Still, the prospect of bending and unbending that ankle many dozens of times per song, for maybe thirty songs, made me wince just to think about it.

I was convinced that trying to pedal with the left foot would be like trying to drive a car with the accelerator and brake reversed, but after grimacing my way through the first couple of songs, I gave it a shot.

It was surprisingly easy; almost natural, in fact. I really didn't find that I had to devote much concentration to it.

I tap on things in rhythm. Desks, all manner of resonant objects, my own chest and thighs. My wife just loves it. But even though I'm not doing any "fingering", there are certain rhythms that I simply can't switch hands on.

I occasionally have the same problem when I try to play a horn line on my second keyboard with the left hand. I've become passable at that skill over the years, but there are certain combinations of rhythms that I can't play, even if neither hand is inherently difficult. In some of those cases, I can do it with the hands reversed.

So I'm not sure why pedaling - an "automatic" task that you would imagine requires years of repetition - translates so easily to my left foot, but it does.

Try it sometime.

Oh, BTW - my pedal is a separate, movable unit that sits on the floor. I put it under my left foot for those gigs. It might be considerably harder on an acoustic.

a case of plantar fasciatis (acquired after diving for a while.. (springboard diving).. was great incitive to switch my pedalling foot to the left one..

not ideal, but definitely doable.

It is really surprising what works and what doesn't.

I am very strongly right handed.

Some years ago I broke my right ankle parachuting.

I put the cast in the passenger seat and drove left footed (I had an automatic at the time, fortunately. Dodge Charge with the 383 and slapstick transmission, if it matters)

It was awkward at first but really not that difficult.

Fast forward about three decades, and I developed a rotator cuff problem in my right shoulder. I could no longer play trombone right handed.

So I switched to left. A straight tenor can be assembled either way, though models with a trigger cannot. This was more difficult - technique on a trombone is somewhat challenging anyway. But with some dedicated slide technique exercises I quickly got to community band level, anything short of a circus march. If you're going to call Rolling Thunder I'd switch to right handed, but i could play Sousa all day.

What disappeared, and i have no explanation for this, was my ability to play scales.

Long ago i was determined not to be thrown by an unfamiliar key signature. So I spent a long time, maybe a year, patiently doing a scale a week. Throughout the entire range i could play, working high and low, playing two notes at a time as fast as i could all the way up, then three, then four, then five, etc. Trombone is a very asymetric instrument and for a given key there is usually an optimum choice of fingering, which i drilled until it was instinctive. The mystery of key signatures was gone.

Until I switched to left handed. Key understanding disappeared. And not just the muscle memory patterns - i could not think in sharps, could not put together an A major scale in my brain with the horn in my left hand.

My shoulder is much improved and I'm back to right handed, but I just finished a 3 hour gig playing pit for Beauty and the Beast, and the shoulder is killing me. Some motrin, a beer, and an early night for me. (I'm transposing a french horn part on the fly, in both treble and bass clef, with the usual incomprehensible changes of key signature you find in a musical. I think if I played it left handed I would have no clue what note came next.) r

Yeah. When gigging I use a volume pedal (quite essential when a variety of sounds are to be used and a musical balance is required). This I DO find easier to work with my right foot (though with a little practice I could cope left-footed of course). But moving the sustain pedal to the left was absolutely seamless - I don't think I ever noticed.

I play brass as well. Mainly trombone, but I can get around on the valved instruments. First time I picked up a French Horn, there certainly were issues. It's an animal apart from the rest of the brasses in several ways. But the fact that it's fingered left-handed was, again, barely noticed.

Hi everyone!

Today is my official launch day for the book. I am in whirling dervish mode right now (big concert tonight), but I wanted to take a second to thank you, the members of the esteemed Wedding thread for your support, enthusiasm, and friendship. I've been working on Waltz of the AP for as long as I've been posting here, and your words have been a great source of inspiration for me.

THANK YOU.

Frank Baxter has started a thread for the book on the non-classical forum, and I've just posted an excerpt there.
Mr. President, excerpt from Waltz of the AP

I'll post The Tattooed Bride story here on Weddings later this week, just because it belongs here with all of you.

More on the toe later (yes, it' a ridiculous story). I'll be thinking of all of you this evening. Much love from Germany!

Is it not fascinating, and telling, that the topic of circus marches has come into the 'Let's Talk Weddings' thread...

This is more interesting than it may sound, on its face. For some reason, the finale of 'The Sound of Music' comes to mind, when the nuns, making a joyful noise unto the Lord, figured out how do you solve a problem like Maria. Not that it was exactly like a circus march, with the brass, reeds, and percussion pumping out "The Entrance of the Gladiators," at a brave forte or even "The Daring Young Man on the Flying Trapeze" (whose trio has more to recommend it than some people think, and more in common with weddings, too--- surely I don't have to spell this out).

No; for the wedding service, this is all subtext... though the church organ and the steam calliope are such close cousins that one can be hard-pressed to say what the difference really is (and--- perhaps stretching the point--- their second-cousin, the carousel's orchestrion).

Real circuses are not what they were. Blame television if you want, although my favorite 'pretend circus march' was telecast from Australia at the conclusion of the Olympiad a few years back, with all the Olympic athletes, gladiators and heroes doing a slow-march around all three rings. What fun! If more weddings were like that, I'd be sneaking into them.

how very nice of Frank.

I am so looking forward to that asparagus people Robin.. I'm thinking a MAy 12th arrival.. I see Monica and Frank have already ordered and reviewed the book. cool.

Oddly, I am going out now, to plant the future asparagus bed.. I am just a bit behind in my projects. nmf.

I am gratified that you are so busy, Robin--- I'm having a busy spring season myself. Everything in nature is busy--- such a wonderful and intoxicating surge of vitality. All the plants are busy; the asparagus maybe a little more so than expected... but not too busy to wonder about your toe. I realize the absurdity even as I type it: your toe, in Germany, and all the way to California people stop, wonder, wait to hear about it.

My neighbor is busy with her wedding preparations, and she is a bit puffed with it They are using a DJ. Oh, dear. Luckily, I did not mention your CDs. But I did tell her about my niece's very ambitious and lovely wedding, which you have already heard about. No doubt it took some doing... but she had such a great time at her own party. Not only that, she went to every single one of the hundreds of guests and even the staff and musicians, to make sure they knew how much she appreciated their being there, and to make sure they were having as wonderful a time as she was.

So I offered that to my neighbor, for what it may be worth, with my hopes that it might be like that for her and her guests.

I need hardly say that the institution has taken heavy fire lately in the media: "Bridezillas," "Wedding Bloopers," "the running of the brides" at Filene's basement, "Wedding Wars" (no, I haven't watched that one, being busy with actual things to do), and many entertainment shows that present weddings as a hazardous and expensive disaster. The last category is so large that I have not enough fingers to count, not if I had ten hands. Yes, I've even been guilty myself--- at least I admit to laughing heartlessly at "Wedding Bloopers."

But never mind all that. Robin's toe...?

There's no absurdity, really. Certain people know how to tell an entertaining story, whatever the topic. When someone like that hurts a toe, or changes a light switch, or maybe just reads a cereal box more carefully than most, humor may result.

We played a gig Friday night. Our guitarist was absent; we played with a "sub" instead. I don't know much about the portion of the music world that makes use of charts and rehearsals, but when we use a sub we pretty much throw him in the deep end and hope he can swim.

It may seem like a dicey proposition, but with the right player it can actually be fun. It wakes you up a little to hear a different "take" on songs you've played a few hundred times.

The guy we used last night is a really good fit. He's a solid player and he knows a lot of the material. He has played with us a bunch of times over the years, including a number of gigs on bass guitar and even one on keyboard in a last-minute emergency.

Most of the subs we use these days are pretty good; we've got at least one or two capable replacements we can call for any of the rhythm section players. But that wasn't always the case. It used to be pretty hit and miss, and some of the misses were, well, like stubbing your big toe; painful at the time, but good story fodder once the pain wears off.

One guitarist in particular stands out in my mind. He arrived from a "distance" of at least two or three degrees of separation: enough that none of us, nor anyone we knew, had ever worked with him. "Ed's friend Bob knows a guy whose uncle sold this guy a guitar..."

Okay, I'm sure I don't need to mention that his command of his instrument was weak. Surely you could see that coming. I can probably also omit his near-complete unfamiliarity with our material. He claimed a repertoire from the same era, and our list is pretty long, so I'm not sure what songs he did know, but even that was not his most prominent failing.

No, he was special. How so? Let me tell you a little more about what makes a good sub. It's not just chops, or knowledge of our specific arrangements. They have to have have a certain musical common sense, which starts with an accurate assessment of their own grasp of the song at hand. In short, they know what they don't know, and hang back a little when the more problematic parts come around. In fact, they tend to play a little conservatively in general.

Consider it the Substitute Musician's Hippocratic Oath: First, Do No Harm.

Not so our One-Gig-Wonder. He didn't know what he didn't know, and that was plenty. And he was loud. L-O-U-D loud. His guitar tone was like a dull chain saw tearing through corrugated tin. It was all upper-midrange annoyance frequencies of the kind that signal alarm in the human brain, like sirens, colicky babies and screech-owls.

The great thing about his guitar sound was that it was equally "appropriate" for any style of music. He certainly thought so; He set the controls to "Rusty Knife" at the beginning of the gig and left them there the whole time.

He wasn't bashful either, feeling no need to settle into a support role. And he was pretty unobservant as well; completely oblivious to the wincing and pained facial expressions all around him. Even afterward he seemed quite confident that he had nailed it, man; he'd be hearing from us again, that was for sure.

We typically play three sets of music. All of the above was evident by the second song, with 28 more to go.

Guitar is in some ways an easier sub to handle than Drums or bass. The bass player doesn't have the luxury of playing on the second beat of the measure when he doesn't know the part. He's got to make his best guess and live with it, as does the band. So a bad fit on bass can make for a long night. And a bad drummer, well that's one of the lower circles of heck.

We've had nights like that. But it's this guitarist that still stands out like a sore...toe, mostly for the sheer audacity of his playing. He wasn't about to hide his glaring, blinding, searing light under a bushel.

Well, if you had to break a toe, Greg, it would be in a good cause if it happened booting that noisy poseur offstage. And, they say a broken bone that has healed is stronger than one that has never been broken. After all, we have to think of our future. Our eardrums. Our tempers.

'Audition H e l l'--- another Wedding Jeopardy category falls like manna from heaven, with a juicy plop. Maybe 'Audition Perdition' would attract fewer angry letters from the Bible Belt. I wonder if Simon reads this column--- you know, the one who tells those American Idols With Feet of Clay where_they_are_at. Where are the Audition Police when we need them.

Light? Bushel? No, they never know, until they see the lack of groupies at the dressing room door. I organized a No Talent show a few years back, which attracted a surprising number of people who actually had talent. But, one gentleman hogged the stage (and was so bad) for so long that even the other performers were beginning to complain loudly. He thought he was doing us a big favor. If only I had known where the breaker box was. Short of breaking a toe, blowing a fuse is the only resort.

Yeah, what is it with "Heck" being substituted in many messages originating in our ex-colonies? It's the same meaning. Do they think there's some magic in the actual letters? Would the magic not be in the original Hebrew (or whatever) word, rather than in an English translation? Odd.

I thought that was odd as well. But upon reading my own bowdlerized post, I decided that "one of the lower circles of heck" is a pretty funny turn of phrase. I wish I'd thought of it myself.

Yes. Mocking compliance often works better than argument :-)

I just wish "lower circle of Heck" could be used with humour, meaning "I don't REALLY want him to suffer" rather than "I can't be bothered to fight censorship".

Just checking - do you understand that the "editing" was done by the forum system, and not by me?