Way Overdue

Maggie has already posted a summary-in-pictures of our Thanksgiving weekend in South Jersey, but I'd like to spend the next few posts focusing on various parts. The first one is devoted to Plasticville.

One of my dad's great delights was setting up the trains he'd played with as a child (Lionel gage O), as well as the miniature town that went with them. 

Over the years, he acquired new buildings and eventually another antique train (American Flyer), as well as more track and things like switches (just like in real life!). 

Part of the point was to entertain children, starting with me as soon as I was old enough to operate the trains. This entailed wearing the conductor's hat and scarf, and pushing the dial on the control evenly and cautiously. 

When I was old enough, I was allowed to help him design the track layout and put together buildings. This fall, my dad's niece and nephew (Sandi and David) and their respective families got the process started. Upon our arrival, Maggie and I worked with my mom to get everything up and running.  The goal was to have Plasticville - the name of the miniature town - completely constructed by the time we left. 

I didn't think we could do it, but again, Sandi and David and families provided reinforcements. By late Saturday morning, this is what the town looked like:

Commercial/Industrial Zones

Close-up of homes and school

See if you can find the farm, the airport, the house under construction, the two signal towers, the custard stand, the trailer park . . . 

Oops

It's officially a month since I last posted - my bad.

I'll try to make up for my inactivity by catching up on all the great things that happened over Thanksgiving weekend, and all the nifty news of now. (I love alliteration.)

Panda update: she has a new bone, and she's gnawing away at it right now. Good times. 

I leave you with a five-minute musical that is exceedingly clever, well-executed, and socially conscious. Enjoy.

"Prop 8 - The Musical" starring Jack Black, John C. Reilly, and many more... by Jack Black

Memorial Scholarship

My mom and I are going to set up a memorial scholarship at my dad's high school. So far the idea is to gear it towards students who want to pursue careers in public and civil service (broadly defined). If anyone knows anything about setting up a scholarship fund or has ideas about what should go into the application, let me know. I'll keep you updated as we move forward on this. 

(Dad and I testing out my new webcam, circa 2003. The date is based on the size of my 'fro.)

Anecdotes

This weekend, I took the bus down to NYC to see friends and then the train to Princeton to see the new Triangle show. On the bus back to Boston, instead of reading, I spent the 4+ hours listening to my ipod, staring out the window, and thinking.  Naturally, I thought about my dad.

I remembered the day I got my "Yes!" letter from Princeton - it happened to be my dad's 51st birthday. Dad came home from work, and my mom told him to go see me in the office, where I was probably playing some computer game in celebration. As per our usual routine, he says, "Greetings, earth creature!" I say, "I got in to Princeton!" He says,

"Really!!??"

in a tone of voice that made it clear that he was genuinely surprised. He spent the next few minutes explaining himself: it's not that he thought I couldn't get in, he just thought I wouldn't get in. No offense meant, and I never took any from it. Dad knew not to take anything for granted.

I also thought about the parallel between my first day of college and a telephone conversation this past summer. I had moved in a week before the "first day" to go on a whitewater canoeing trip (freshman orientation/team-building type stuff). The day we got back from the trip was the first night of Rosh Hashanah, so I had to go right back home for services. My parents brought me back to campus the morning of the second day so we could attend services on campus and so I wouldn't miss any more orientation activities. This day, more than when my parents moved me in prior to the canoeing trip, provided that definitive moment when we "said goodbye," even though it would only be a matter of weeks until we saw each other again. 

The last thing my dad did was pull me aside - out of earshot for my mom - to tell me, "No matter what, you call your mother at least once a week. If you feel like going a month without talking to me, that's fine - but you call your mom."

This summer, after my mom had already (secretly) told me about dad's plan to have surgery, my dad formally asked me if I would come home. Normally it'd be a no-brainer, but my parents knew how stressed I was about generals, and at the time no one thought it'd be a serious thing. Still, I had already decided I would come home to take care of my dad for the first few days after the surgery. 

Once again, though, my dad wasn't taking anything for granted. He felt he had to apologize for taking me away from studying for generals, and justified his request this way: "I know you have a lot of studying to do, but I want you to come home at least the night before my surgery so you can be with your mom while I'm in the operating room. You can leave right after if you want, but I need you to sit with your mom at least for those few hours."

I don't know if he was just being chivalrous, or completely selfless, or if he simply didn't expect me to stay around and help him convalesce. But it felt just like that first day of college, and I hear him say "you call your mother" just about every day now. 

If anyone has any stories they'd like to share - especially ones I don't know - I'd love to hear them. 

Xkcd.com

Dad would have liked this one.

Generals Questions, finally

I promised a long time ago to post my generals questions. Before I do that, some info on the basic format:

1. We had to choose eight topics total. 
2. Six were meant to correspond to six broadly defined periods in music history (Medieval, Renaissance, Baroque, Classical, Romantic, 20th Century). 
3. Of the other two, one was supposed to be a theory/methods/historiography topic, and one was supposed to be a popular music/ethnomusicology topic. 
4. After choosing our eight topics, we were instructed to choose six on which we would be tested through a series of two-hour essays. 
5. Another topic would be turned into a syllabus for a graduate seminar, and the last topic would become a 10-minute oral presentation, to be given at orals (where the faculty question us "live" about our previous answers on the essays, our work on the syllabus, and an analytical portion of the test taken halfway through the summer).
   

Here are the questions I chose to answer for each topic, the titles of which follow the historical period designation.  (I've omitted the questions I chose not to answer, which tended to be the "harder" ones.)

Topic 1: Medieval: Trouveres

Long Essay: Is trouvere music modal? (You may interpret "modal" in the rhythmic as well as melodic sense.)

Short Essays: 1) Sources of trouvere music; 2) Major works of scholarship on trouveres

Topic 2: Renaissance: Cantus Firmus Masses in the 15th Century

Long Essay: Discuss connections among the complex of fifteenth-century masses based on L'homme arme. Do these masses support the claim that "emulation" and "competition" were operative concepts for composers in this period? How else might one characterize these composers' engagements with one another's works?

Topic 3: Baroque: The Italian Sonata

Long Essay: Discuss the European influence of Corelli as teacher and composer, until 1800.

(I have to include the question I didn't answer, just because it's so ridiculous: "Discuss the aesthetic issues involved in the repertory of early solo sonatas (e.g., Marini and Castello), including today's revival among performers (e.g., Manze)." I hadn't studied any of those people, and I still have no idea what "aesthetic issues" means.)

Topic 4: Classical: London in the 1790s

Long essay: Discuss the impact foreign performers, composers and impresarios had on musical life in London in the 1790s. In what ways did the situation in this decade differ from what it had been earlier in the century?

Topic 5: Methods/historiography: Historiography of French Musical Nationalism After 1793

Long Essay: "What is a [musical] nation?" (<-- This is actually how the question was written, quotation marks and brackets and all. It's an allusion to an important speech given on nationalism in 1882 by Ernst Renan.)

Short Essay: Wagner as Other

Topic 6: Rock: The British Invasion of the 1960s

Long Essay: The "British Invasion" is a term used to describe the overwhelming popularity of rock and roll groups from the United Kingdom in the 1960s United States. Groups such as teh Beatles, Rolling Stones, the Kinks and the Who were so much a part of everyday American cultural life that they became almost American in the eyes of their audiences. Why were the British Invasion groups so appealing to American audiences in the 1960s? How were the British Invasion groups themselves influenced by American popular genres (R&B, Motown, Rock) and vice veresa? In what ways did musicians and their music become icons of larger social, political, and cultural trends?

I created my graduate seminar syllabus on my Romantic topic, "The Piano Miniature. "

My oral presentation was on my 20th-century topic - and the main contender for a dissertation topic - "Patronage in Interwar France."

__________________________________________________________________

Good times, eh? 

A Sunday Walk

Panda saw a squirrel just before I shot this, so she was too occupied to mug for the camera. People keep saying she's gotten bigger, but I can't tell.