The All-New Bunrab

I went to the US Army Band Tuba-Euphonium Workshop this past week - and discovered that I enjoy it for its own sake, not just for Steve's memory, and that other people look forward to seeing me there for my own sake, not just because I'm Steve's widow. That was an interesting discovery.

There are a lot of things to enjoy at such a conference, even if one isn't a tuba player. It's a whole bunch of music for free. Recitals by excellent professionals, evening concerts by the Army's professional groups - Army Blues, the concert band, etc. And some of the sessions that were lectures or recitals-with-talks were interesting for any musician. The morning warm-up for tuba players included suggestions about breathing and maintaining embouchure that were surprisingly relevant to a bari sax player. And the conversations in the lobby and the bowling alley dining room (the only place for civilians to eat on base most of the time) and at restaurant meals are with people that share a lot of interests in discussing music of all sorts, and griping about community band conductors, and building a music library, and lots of other stuff that isn't just for tubas.

I got to make lots of ophicleide jokes with people who understand ophicleide jokes and have more in turn. There were vendors who recognized me, and wanted to chat. And I bought a cleaning kit for the bass trumpet, and a swab of sorts meant for cleaning a euphonium that I think will do a much better job on the bari sax neck loops than what I'm currently using. And a couple of euphonium mouthpieces which will fit into the sax neck, which is part of the ophicleide jokes. And I am going to practice the bass trumpet more, and maybe even borrow a euphonium to bring to next year's workshop, to participate a bit.
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One of the things I don't like is the process of getting there. Even though Ft. Myer is less than 50 miles away from me, the routes that all the mapping services and GPS suggest are roads that I particularly hate. The BW Parkway is poorly maintained, especially when it crosses into the district and becomes DC-295. Here's one of the more disconcerting steps in the Mapquest directions: "Southwest Freeway/I-695 N becomes I-395 S." That was at least equaled, if not exceeded, in weirdness, by driving right under a sign on the way home that stated that the road that I was on was "I-295 S/ DC-295 N" - really, really disconcerting.The entrances and exits of DC-295 aren;t in the same spots NB as SB. Neither are the entrances and exits to the George Washington Parkway. And neither are the entrances and exits to US-50. All of which means that one can NOT reverse directions to get home.

Saturday night, driving in the dark, I decided on an entirely different route. Since the concert got out early enough that we could still get out by the Wright Gate (the north gate to the army base, which closes at 9 p.m.), I went straight up Ft. Myer Drive which ends directly being an entrance to GW Parkway going Northwest, straight to the west side of I-495, the Beltway. No need to read dimly lit local street signs, no need to watch for intersections or parking lots or pedestrians once I was on GW. That route winds up being some 20 miles longer, total, to get home - but being so much simpler, with so many fewer turns, and more time on higher-speed highways, that it takes no longer - and is MUCH less stressful. I think next year I'll use that route to go TO the fort, right off the bat. Yes, it sounds bizarre, yes, it uses up more gas, but so much easier on my sensibilities (avoiding US 50 altogether has a LOT to recommend it) that it'd be worth the extra $2 worth of gas.

In other news, I finished Rage is Back (see previous post) and also Albert of Adelaide, an adult fable about a platypus who escapes from the Adelaide Zoo to go looking for the Old Australia, where animals are all free and live naturally. Instead he meets up with an arsonist wombat, and they have adventures which unfortunately include a bunch of killing. I think the takeaway is supposed to be something about the power of friendship and mutual support, but the lesson I got out of it was more that the supposed good old days were actually violent, and lives were uncomfortable and short, with violent ends; modern "captivity" is actually a hell of a lot better quality of life. That's just me; you read it and see if you get more of that touching "buddy" feel out of it.

Did you know that? If you weren't sure it was true, I'd be happy to send you some of the rabbit fur collecting in corners, as proof - yes, our dust bunnies are made out of real bunnies!!

I did some repairs to wooden toys this afternoon, with mending plates and angle brackets. An internet seller of rabbit play tunnels and such was going out of business, so I ordered some of the last of their stuff (half price!), and, as in previous orders, one piece arrived broken - which may explain part of why they went out of business. Well, no refunds or returns, so I put the tunnel aside for a few weeks. But finally decided that I needed a clearer living room floor, so it and a previous "play station" that had a leg broken off got fixed. We had previously tried gluing the broken leg, but it didn't hold up for long. Metal mending plates should be able to withstand a four-pound rabbit. I traded around who has what kind of tunnels and toys - now Chippy chin has the smaller play station, since the Funnybunnies didn't like it so much; the Funnybunnies have a second litter box to chew on and scatter around; Fern has the refurbished large play station, instead of a tunnel where she can hide herself too much; and the repaired tunnels are now what's between cages - one between Fern and Funnybunnies, one between FBs and Gizmo, and one between Gizmo and the big plastic bin that keeps the hay and Carefresh more or less safe from rabbits. Fern actually seems to like the new setup - she jumped up and down and up again from the new tunnel, and perched on it for a while, which she hadn't when it was in her cage; she had only ever gone under it.

Wednesday MVCB had just a library work session, not a rehearsal, so I didn't have to bring my bari sax. So I emailed my teacher that I was gonna bring my soprano sax for my lesson instead, and then bungeed said soprano onto the back of the bike and rode over there, instead of using the cage. Great weather for it. A big accident on I-95 diverted me onto an exit I wasn't familiar with, so I even got in a little wandering around on strange roads. And after lesson, most of the staff of the music store where I take my lessons had to come out and admire the bike; I am not sure they previously believed me when I said I rode, as they've only ever seen me when I've had to be carrying 30-something pounds of nearly 4-feet-long assymetrical bari sax, which does NOT work on bike. (I have calculated that if I were 6 foot 2 inches or taller, and weighed at least 200 lbs, then I could carry the bari back-pack style and it would not significantly screw up my balance, center of gravity, or wind resistance. But as I am 5'4"...) My Evolve fish carrying a wrench was their favorite of all my assorted stickers and stuff. Then I ran a bunch of errands, since I had a couple hours before the band session. Had to carry the sax in to various places, since I couldn't just leave it bungeed to the bike; it's not a super-expensive sax, but I still don't want it stolen. Luckily, a straight soprano in a grey plastic case looks pretty innocuous. Silver Diner at LakeForest Mall (avoided rest of mall). Gaithersburg Library. CVS. Then Stedwick Community Center. I wasn't expecting Steve - but he decided why should I have all the fun, and rode his bike out to join us, so then we could ride home together - which we did entirely on back roads, no highways at all, during the very long dusk at this time of year. Lots of lightning bugs everywhere; it's so neat to ride through a whole flock (?) of them on a bike! We stopped at the Double T in Ellicott City, on Route 40, for supper. I was pleased to get an overall 60 mpg on this most recent tank, including as it did the stop-and-creep caused by the traffic accident, and the slow riding behind what seemed like every cement truck in Montgomery County.

I told Perry, if rain will kindly hold off on Wednesdays, he can expect me to bring the soprano to lessons for the rest of the summer. Gonna work on some Baroque oboe concerti!

and now they go past yours via Twitter:

• 21:58 vanity plate: SCANS #
• 23:27 major accident on I-95 south of exit 35 a couple miles; most emergency veh. are on southbound but a few are on left ln of northb. #
• 23:28 at least 3 fire. 2 ambulance. 2 hwy patol on our side (north) and 4 or more hwt ptrl on south side. South traffic major delay. #
• 23:30 glimpsed one veh. in median ditch, appeared to be SUV, right side up - but there must be more to warrant that turnout. #
• 23:31 for random T readers, the preceding refers to I-95 in Maryland. Prince Georges Cty near Laurel #
• 23:36 thankful for 20 yrs rehearsing w/ Dick Floyd in Austin - sometimes at rehearsals here, one can tell that S & I are only ones watching co ... #
• 23:37 too long? THAT WAS: thankful for rehearsal habits Dick Floyd/ ASB drilled into us over 20 yrs. #
• 23:39 this eve, S & I *only* ones who noticed tempo change at 1 point. #
• 23:41 I am getting better still at reading bass clef bassoon parts; STILL cant transpose tenor clef parts on the fly, though. #
• 15:57 dynamic sign: Use caution caution/ Road work ahead. #
• 15:59 Nannie Helen Burroughs Ave. #
• 16:24 well, we are finally past the roadwork, the everybody-out-of-the-way for a cavalcase, amd the major accident closing 2 of 3 lanes. #
• 16:24 we certainly won't make the 4:15 pm recital #
• 19:33 The Trombone Workshop seems much more orchestra-oriented than the Tuba conference. #

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Charles Stross, Merchants War - fourth volume in the series, and it's a muddled mess. Has devolved entirely into milfic, bows and arrows against machine guns, who's got the nuke, and bunches of ridiculous CIA abbreviations. Stross is better when he's being funny; this series started taking itself too seriously, and there's too much action - can't even keep track of how many characters there are any more, let alone who is on whose side and who is spying on whom. Difficult to finish - and it's still not done, either.

Homo Politicus: The Strange and Scary Tribes that Run Our Government by Dana Milbank - done in a hokey anthropological study manner, it's really just an excuse to retell all the scandals that have happened inside the Beltway in the last 30 years. There's not really anything new here, nor any deep insight - mildly amusing, at best. Does include dirt on all sides of the political fence - it's not just against the current administration.

Gastroanomalies by James Lileks - making fun of horrible food from the '50's. Very funny. No redeeming social value, just fun. His new captions for pictures from old cookbooks are wonderful.

Conscientious Objections by Neil Postman - I remember being quite impressed and provoked to thought by this when it first came out in 1988, so when I spotted it on the library shelves, I thought, what the heck, let's reread it. It hasn't aged all that well in 20 years - parts of it are quite dated; Postman did not have an accurate forecast of what computers would do to us or how much stranger politics would become. His insights on why teacher education sucks are still valuable, though.

Are We Rome?: The Fall of an Empire and the Fate of America by Cullen Murphy - the answer is: in a thousand ways, no; in a couple of very important ways, yes. Murphy makes the point that pretty much every civilization since Rome fell (which he puts at AD 476) has compared itself to Rome, and pretty much every one comes to the same conclusion: "yes, but we're better! And we're not going to make the mistakes they did!" and that there are still plenty more mistakes to make. History repeats itself, but not exactly. His comparisons include social, cultural, political, and military, and for each he points out what's different, what's similar.

In the Ellipse just south of the White House stands a granite Zero Milestone, intended to be Washington's version of Rome's Golden Milestone, the symbolic central reference point from which all things are measured. Well, it isn't our central reference point at all - no one has ever heard of it, though you could argue that modern America began on this very spot. This was the place from which Lieutenant Colonel Dwight D. Eisenhower, in 1919, set out to lead the army's "transcontinental motor convoy" across America. By the time Eisenhower reached San Francisco, sixty-two days later, he understood that America needed what Rome had possessed, a network of good public roads. When he became president, he created the interstate highway system. Tourists pay no attention to the Zero Milestone at all, and yet our own descent into hell started right there. [emphasis his]

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That whole stretch of the Italian shore was vacationland for the Romans. Museum drawers are filled with ancient beachtown baubles of glass or clay: "Souvenir of Neapolis, " they might as well say, or "This Mule Climbed Mount Vesuvius." Villas crowded the lush volcanic hillsides, Sluice gates brought the renewing sea into the teeming fishponds that each great estate would have; the truly rich were known as piscinarii, "the fishpond set."

(And he then continues to call the rich among the Washington crowd the piscinarii.)

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It will be a while, I hope, before tourists stroll among weeds poking up through the Map Room and the Oval Office, or pose before the scenic remaining columns of the South Portico. In Rome today you see leathery men in cheesy centurion's garb posing with tourists in front of the ruins. I'm not sure I want to know what the Washington equivalent will be - Green Berets, maybe, or TV reporters or special prosecutors.

I bet you can tell which of these books I liked best.

Saturday was the Navy Band Saxophone Symposium, down at George Mason U in Fairfax. (Well, it started Friday evening, but we had those symphony tickets. Incidentally, the Baltimore Sun's reviewer pretty much agreed straight down the line with my opinions on that concert.) So down we headed to Fairfax, halfway around the nest of evil that is the DC Beltway.

Community saxophone choir rehearsal: the usual bunch of high school kids who think they're hot sh!t, attacking all notes and blithely disregarding all accidentals. But some fun stuff to play, several arrangements by the guy who was conducting the session, Rob Holmes, who plays bari sax, amongst other things, in the Navy Commodores, the jazz band. Since the saxophone is the saxophone, the whole symposium is tilted more toward jazz than toward classical/concert band.

Vendors' room: not enough vendors. But I did grab a moment to speak to the guys from L&L about test-driving some soprano saxes on Wednesday afternoon. The Baltimore SB is doing de Meij's "Lord of the Rings" this spring, and the soprano sax solo is mine if I can do it.

Interservice Saxophone Ensemble: great group, great stuff. A bass sax player, who is also an arranger; they did one of his arrangments which was called "Nick at Night" and was a medley of every corny sixties cartoon and comedy show that's now in eternal syndication. Of course he wrote some great bass sax lines into it!

Whine: next recital we wanted to attend was the Marine Band Sax Quartet; two faults with that: (1) It was in another building, way uphill from the main building, and (2) they played Albright's "Fantasy Etudes." Is there some rule that says someone has to play the Fantasy Etudes every year? I didn't like that piece 10 years ago, I didn't like it last year, and I still don't like it. It consists mainly of "sound effects" rather than music, and just because something can be done on a saxophone doesn't mean it should be done. (Words to live by for many disciplines, including HTML.) Anyway, that said, they certainly did it very well.

The next thing we wanted to go to was cancelled, so it was over to the Thai restaurant across the street for a snack. We seem to wind up there every time we're in Fairfax.

The Community Sax Choir performed in the lobby before the big Commodores concert. It went OK, for something that had had 25 minutes prior rehearsal, had several people who weren't at rehearsal show up and sight read, and about half the people who had been at rehearsal didn't show up. We had fun, anyway, and the audience applauded.

The Commodores concert was fantastic. The guest soloist was Chris Potter, who has an awful lot of awfully good notes stuffed in that horn! He plays tenor sax. My favorite was his composition "Ruminations." He was dressed in "musician casual" which means "whatever you were hanging out in, with a sports coat thrown over it," in this case an untucked shirt, worn jeans, and scuffed boots. I suppose someone that good gets to wear whatever he wants. I really admired the way he could change the tone without changing mouthpieces or even reeds. Plus, did I mention, a whole lotta notes?

A good time was had by all, and we stopped at the Silver Diner for pot pie on the way home. Sunday, we go right back down there for an entirely separate Marine Band concert, and then we're stopping by my brother G's house which is not too far off our route home.

ETA ( pictures of the community saxophone choir )