There's really only one regret I've had in life, and it has to do with my education. My older sisters told me that when I was a few years old, I used to stand on the platter of an old kiddy record player I had been given, and I'd spin around and around on it while pretending to conduct an orchestra. I remember the record player, but not that particular incident.

Years later, my sister Linda became an elementary school music teacher and occasionally would give me piano lessons at home using the simple sheet music she had (including the ubiquitous Schaum series). But shortly after that she moved out of the house.

My father hosted chess players over the house each week for informal games. He had been doing that for about a decade. One of the players was the person who taught him how to play chess, Eli Bourdon. Bourdon was an aluminum siding salesman from Holyoke who loved chess and formed the Western Massachusetts Chess Association. He was also involved with the Springfield Symphony Orchestra. Somehow, Bourdon knew I liked music and when I was about ten or twelve years old, he offered to give me piano lessons, picking up where Linda had left off. He brought some scores with him and I diligently practiced the lessons he gave me. As I progressed, he told me when I got good at the piano, he was going to teach me how to play other instruments of the orchestra, starting with violin. One day while Bourdon was walking me through a lesson, my dad approached him and said, "If you're not here to play chess, get out of my house." That ended my music lessons.

All during my childhood I was surrounded with music. My mother had a beautiful voice and was often singing popular songs from her youth (the 1930s and '40s) as she baked or did her household chores. My sisters were always listening to current popular music on their stereos. And I was saturated with music on network television. I could quickly memorize music used on shows and advertisements, and still can remember most of them note for note. I wondered why there were some tunes that I immediately loved and others that I couldn't stand. I particularly loved a lot of the soundtracks by Hoyt Curtin, written for the Hanna-Barbera cartoons, which introduced me to modern jazz music and harmonies. I remember how electrifying it was when I first heard Henry Mancini's Peter Gunn theme. (Actually, I first heard it as a Dwayne Eddy cover via one of my sister's LPs.) I also remember an old western called The Iron Horse. I loved the theme song (actually a rip-off of Elmer Bernstein's Magnificent Seven soundtrack) and it was the first piece I can remember writing out in score form.

When I entered high school, I never considered joining the school band. I never realized it was an option. Instead I found friends in the drama club. I also focused a lot of my energies into creative writing. I did have a friend, John Palecki, who was into modern railroading, astronomy and classical music. He was really smart and got me into classical music through Isao Tomita, who had created synthesizer versions of popular classical pieces. That got me curious about the source material and I began acquiring a large library of classical music. I also began listening to public radio which ran a five-hour morning classical program hosted by the affable Robert J. Lurtsema. That exposed me to hundreds of pieces I otherwise never would have heard. Palecki also introduced me to the music of the great Peter Schikele, and his alter-ego PDQ Bach. Over the next two decades I was a musical sponge, soaking up a wide variety of styles and influences.

When I headed off to college, I decided to audition for the fall theater musical production, Anything Goes. I had never auditioned for a musical before and had no idea what was involved. I had no vocal training at that point. For some odd reason, I chose "O Holy Night" as my audition piece. I had never sung with an accompanist before. So, predictably, it was a horrible audition. At least I made everyone laugh. After I got off the stage, the music director, Dan Oberholtzer (who was also the chair of the college music department), approached me and said, "Let me give you a piece of advice: you have no talent. Don't bother auditioning for any more musicals. You'll never get cast." So from that point on I assumed I wasn't a musical person.

Ironically, from that point on I also began composing an enormous catalogue of music. I moved into a small apartment in Holyoke and acquired a Jewett upright piano. I knew some basics of how to write a score, but mostly just made it up as I went along. I would go to the college library and research scores. I also acquired the complete piano music of Debussy and the complete piano sonatas of Beethoven and used them as guides. I wrote a lot of incidental music for plays at the college. I attempted to write orchestral music, but struggled because I had no frame of reference. When I left junior college and transferred to the University of Massachusetts, I was still in theater but I spent much more time in their extensive music library. I would spend hours there listening to classical recordings while following along with the score. I got up the courage to meet with the university's head of music composition. I had given him copies of some of my piano pieces. He was kind enough to meet with me and suggested I try writing for more melodic instruments, like flutes. So I went home and cranked out the Sonatina for Flute and Piano. It was pretty terrible, but it did get me thinking about writing for instruments that were less percussive than a piano. UMass was also where I created my adaptation of Carl Orff's Carmina Burana. I also performed it there and one of the people in the audience was a graduate student in directing, Bill Pullman. He approached me afterward and told me how impressed he was. That was the encouragement I needed to hear. Oberholtzer's words faded into the past.

When I left the next year for Columbia University to again major in theater, I ended up rooming with Steve Freeman, a British trombonist who was attending the Manhattan School of Music (which is really where I should have gone). During my time at Columbia, I wrote more music than worked in theater. In that one short year, I wrote incidental music for two shows (playing for one of them) and music and lyrics for a musical that was performed at the lower east end. I wish I had known about all the music clubs in Manhattan; I probably would have spent most of my time there. When I left Columbia, I stayed away from schools for a few years to earn money and then I headed off to the University of Mississippi, again for theater. On breaks from Ole Miss, I would take a long bus ride back home and brought blank sheet music books with me. Along the way I would composed pieces and play them when I either got home or back to the school. During that time some friends exposed me to the exploding New Wave scene, with bands like the Fixx, Thompson Twins, Dead Can Dance, Cocteau Twins, Eurythmics ... their novel electronic sounds fascinated me. When I finally graduated from the university, I decided I was going to be a pop star. So I taught myself how to play guitar and threw myself into writing synth-pop music.

So what was my big regret? It was that I never got a formal music education. During all those years I was composing page after page of music without really knowing what I was doing. It was like a mouse going after cheese in a maze, bumping into walls and hitting dead ends without a clear path. I knew there was this thing called music theory, but I had no clue how to learn about it without going back to school. And at that point, I was burned out on schooling. Local libraries didn't seem to have much to offer. It wasn't until the advent of the Internet that things started to change. I began discovering more and more sites that talked about music theory principles, and I gradually began filling in the missing pieces. When I would write, I'd inevitably hit a point where I knew the result I wanted, but I had no idea how to make it happen. Theory gave me some of the answers.

Then came my quarter-century teaching electronic media. I was still composing off and on, but nothing like my earlier years. I would challenge myself to create two short soundtracks each year for the animation class I taught. But it wasn't until I retired that I threw myself headlong into composing, first with the Mass in A Major and then with the Mount Tom Suite. I was still struggling with a lot of aspects, usually key changes. But by that point I was beginning to learn some of the fundamentals I was lacking.

That change occurred when I happened upon the Music Matters YouTube channel. I had been hunting around for music theory courses and most that I found either seemed to assume I already knew a lot of music theory, or were there just to try to sell me more advanced courses. Gareth Greene on Music Matters was different; he shared his extensive knowledge in an easily-digestible way, with very clearly constructed lessons on specific aspects of music theory. I finally was getting the music education that I had wanted since I was a child.

What I eventually discovered, though, was that it really didn't change me much as a composer. It turned out I already knew what I needed to know; I just did it instinctively rather than methodically. So maybe I didn't need a full education after all. A lifetime of writing music was my education. I also discovered that there were many successful composers who weren't formally trained; they learned on their own, as I had. The most frustrating aspect was composing pieces that languished on paper, seemingly with no hope of getting them performed. That's one way a music education would have been really helpful, giving me access to resources like a variety of instruments and performers who could breathe life into my pieces. And it would have introduced me to a network of musicians and composers, colleagues with whom I could form professional and personal relationships. I've finally begun doing that now, about fifty years behind schedule.

I'm glad I didn't pay too much attention to Oberholtzer's off-putting comment. He could have said to me, "You seem to like music but you could use some work. Why don't you take some courses in the music department?" If he had, my life might have followed a very different path. But that didn't happen. And back then I didn't know any better and just continued doing what I'd been doing ever since I was a toddler, going around in circles with music filling my brain.

March 5, 2024

Springfield's Tuesday Morning Music Club has been around for over a century. Originally formed as a social gathering to hear classical music performed in a sort of parlor setting, it now attracts dozens of music lovers to Asbury Hall in the massive edifice of Trinity United Methodist Church in Springfield, MA. As the name states, the concerts are on Tuesday mornings (actually, every other Tuesday) at 10:30. This obviously limits most of the attendees to retirees. The club keeps an extensive roster of area musicians and performers. Each season, the program features performances by musicians chosen off that roster. Many of them got their start musically by participating in the club's youth programs.

Last season, Kara Noble was voted in as President of the club, and her husband Clifton J. Noble, Jr. ("Jerry") was voted in as Program Director. His job was to line up all the performers. Karen had known Jerry for a long time. In fact, nearly everyone connected with music in the Pioneer Valley knew Jerry. He was a well-know composer, performer (often with his wife) and for decades also wrote a music column for the local press. I knew him as an acquaintance through Karen.

So I was quite honored when last autumn, Jerry invited me to participate in a new type of program that he wanted to present. He chose a set of instrumentalists and invited a few area composers to write a new piece using that ensemble. There was no restriction on the subject matter or style; the only requirement was to stick to those instrumentalists. We could use as many or as few of them as we wanted. They were: soprano, baritone, flute, French horn, piano, violin, viola and cello. Around that same time, Jerry introduced me to the poetry of Rabindranath Tagore. That served as my inspiration. I chose one of his pieces that drew me in with its final line: "In the meanwhile, the air is filling with the perfume of promise." I found that to be a surprising and lovely turn of phrase. So I set to work.

The combination of instruments was an interesting challenge. I decided to use them all except for the piano, since Jerry was acting as the pianist and he already had plenty else to do. The challenge was how to balance the timbre of the instruments. The horn could easily obliterate all the others, plus it had a similar range to the viola. And pairing the two wind instruments might not work that well. I figured the best approach would be to have a motif that the instruments could pass around between them. I would keep a continuous background texture with the string section, and then have the winds punctuate various passages. I also had to be careful because the vocalists needed to be heard clearly above the ensemble.

I wanted the opening to seem a bit mysterious and untethered, like being in a fog. I originally structured the piece to be in 6/8 time but found that to work against what I was trying to do. So I changed it to simple 3/4 time, but had the instruments enter on the off-beats, so the listener wasn't sure where the rhythmic center was. I created a simple but instantly indentifiable motif on the violin, which the soprano then picked up. That became the thematic "glue" for the piece. I tossed it around from instrument to instrument. I knew I wanted the climax of the piece to be the line, "the happy moment will arrive when I shall see." The only problem was that the last word had the worst vowel for singing loud and high. I preferred having an "ahh" or "oh" sound. But I wasn't about the change the text. It took me about a month to finish the piece. For much of it, I plotted out the chord progressions in advance to create the feeling I wanted. I also managed to work in two completely incongruous Easter eggs.

In February, Jerry scheduled two rehearsals with the performers. I was confident that was going to be plenty of time. All of the performers were seasoned professionals. I made sure I gave Jerry all of their parts with cues marked in them. I asked Jerry if he wanted me to conduct it, or whether he wanted to, and he opted to do it. I suggested conducting it in one at the beginning, since no one had a solid beat to latch onto. If he wanted, he could switch to conducting in three after "the breath of the evening breeze is sweet," where the instruments all finally join together in a waltz. Jerry and I met ahead of time with Anita Anderson Cooper, the soprano, to run through the piece, since she would have to miss one of the other rehearsals. As I did with the Mass last year, I watched to see how she negotiated the piece, where any trouble spots were. Jerry tried to replicate the orchestral textures on a piano, which was a challenge. Counting was definitely going to be an issue, because of how every instrument entered on a different beat. It reminded me of one of the pieces I was rehearsing for the spring Greater Westfield Choral Concert, Gaudete Omnes by Jan Sweelinck, which had very similar issues.

The first full rehearsal on February 25 was missing the French horn. Much of that session was working out timing and cueing, and getting the players to wrap their heads around the piece. They did play it remarkably well for the first time. I had sent Jerry a MIDI version of the piece so that the players could hear some semblance of how it all went together. For the next rehearsal on March 3, everyone was there except for Cooper. So I sang her part. The performers were a lot more confident at that rehearsal and it was pulling together nicely. They all rehearsed once more the morning of the performance. On the program, my piece was the finale. The program opened with Tiyptych, a complicated piece by Zeke Hecker that made my piece look like child's play. Michael Nix submitted two cowboy songs that were sung by Peter Shea. Mark Fraser, the cellist, had three duos for flute and cello. Anita Anderson Cooper composed two pieces. Then two of Jerry's pieces were performed, both of them based on other Tagore poems. And finally, my piece, This Is My Delight.

All of the pieces were very well received by the audience, and many said how they hoped something like that would be offered again. So congratulations to Jerry on taking a chance on something a bit different. It was fascinating to see how different composers approached the challenge, bringing out their own unique voices.

July 18, 2024

I've been composing music since I can remember. One of the first pieces I transcribed was the theme to the old Iron Horse TV series. I wrote it out on a scrap of notepaper, drawing the staff and adding the notes. A relative who worked at the National Blank Book Company began bringing me books of staff paper. And for two decades that's how I composed, just like composers centuries before me. I'd sit at the piano and work out melodies and harmonies and then write them down. I didn't have access to very many instruments, so I had to guess as to what they'd sound like in my scores. And in those early years when I had no music education, the result was usually not too good. I listened to a lot of music during that time and studied orchestral scores on my own, but for me the process of writing a score was mostly a guessing game. I didn't have a frame of reference, and I didn't have access to musicians who could tell me what I needed to fix.

In 1988 I had an early computer. A friend gave me a software package that I think was called CopyScrip, though I can't find any modern references to it. The software worked in a similar way to its successor Lilypond: you had to blindly type in cryptic computer code to create your sheet music, which in those days was output on a dot matrix printer. The result looked better than a hand-written score, but it took far longer.

It wasn't until graphical computers became affordable that I began to see the benefits of digital composition. One of the first advanced software packages I purchased was MIDIsoft Studio. It still ranks as one of the best music production tools I've ever used. It was intuitive and, for its day, quite powerful. It could be used as a full-fledged notation program. It could print out professional-looking scores. And it could play back what you wrote, albeit in pretty cheesy General MIDI sounds. It also had a Digital Audio Workstation (DAW), where you could add in pre-recorded audio samples and multi-track them. I used that for over a decade, until computer operating systems no longer supported it. From there I moved on to N-Track Studio, which was a powerful DAW, but it had no notation capabilities. At that time, the only viable notation software remaining on the market was Finale, which cost nearly $1000.

In the 1990s, I finally got what I needed. Sibelius was an affordable (though still expensive), intuitive and powerful notation program. And that's all it did: you could write, playback and print music. The playback was much more advanced than MIDIsoft, though still fairly cheesy by today's standards. But finally I had software that was able to support my creative ideas. I began composing prolifically. The software actually made it easy for me to compose. Contrast that with Finale (which I eventually ended up teaching years later), which would fight me every step of the way.

Sibelius kept improving as the years went on, until 2006 when it was acquired by media giant Avid. Within a few years, the software became an incomprehensible mess. I wrote to the company about my concerns and they replied, "We're sorry you find our software ghastly." But they continued to make it worse. Basically, they hid all the functions that I used all the time, making it harder for me to compose. So I began searching for a replacement. Fortunately, I had output all my Sibelius scores as PDF files, so they were preserved. But getting different software meant I would never again be able to go back and edit them.

Over the next several years, I purchased literally every notation program on the market. And by that point there were a lot of them. They all had some strong points, but they all had glaring weak points. And for most of them, their weakest point was a completely unintuitive interface that took me months to wrap my head around. When I finally understood it, I decided it simply wasn't worth the effort. I wanted something that was as simple to use as the old Sibelius.

That's when I discovered Noteflight, which had the simplest interface I had ever encountered. It also wasn't nearly as versatile as Sibelius. But it was entirely online so I didn't need to install or update any software. I signed up for it and found it was a great tool for sketching out ideas. The sounds were pretty basic, but they were serviceable. So I used that for a while.

Then I rediscovered Musescore. That notation software had been around a long time but when I originally tried it, it was nearly unusable. It was slightly more versatile than Noteflight, but not by much. Around that same time I was watching a presenter on YouTube, Tantacrul, who was a graphic designer. He began releasing videos critiquing all the different notation applications on the market. His videos were both hilarious and brutal. And in one of those videos, he took aim at Musescore. So the developers reached out to him and asked him if he wanted to be on their team. He accepted, and since then Musescore has advanced by leaps and bounds. In my opinion, it's now the best notation software on the market. And it's free! It also has a sound pack that can be downloaded which produces some of the most realistic orchestral sounds of any digital software on the market, even those costing thousands of dollars.

So Musescore is now my daily driver. Like any software, there are still a few bugs here and there. But the company has a robust and responsive online community that constantly works to improve it. As Musescore has developed, it's gained an enormous amount of additional functionality. And somehow, they've kept the interface streamlined and manageable.

So what is my process like when I compose? It varies. Usually I'll begin melodically, coming up with a motif on the piano like I used to or sometimes just dropping notes randomly into Musescore to see what they sound like, a technique Frank Zappa used to call "eye candy". The theory is that if it looks interesting it might sound interesting. Sometimes that's true and sometimes not, but it helps start the creative process. If I like the motif, then I build out its harmonic structure. Sometimes I'll drop chord labels at the top of measures, which play back as piano chords. That gives me a quick way of trying out different harmonic patterns with the melody. Sometimes I'll already hear the harmony in my head and simply add different instruments to flesh it out. It's generally an organic process where I add and subtract elements as needed.

With programmatic pieces (like tone poems or choral works), things usually fall into place quickly. The story in a tone poem gives me a ready-made structure, as does the text in a choral work. But with my first symphony, I chose to break out of that and challenge myself to allow the music to evolve on its own, shifting emotionally but with no preconceptions to guide it. That took me a lot longer, mostly because I didn't trust the process at first. But as I got used to working that way, each subsequent movement took less time to create. I'm pleased with the result.

No matter which approach I take, the technique I use is similar: once I develop a motif, that becomes the musical basis for the entire work. So for instance in my Requiem, the melody in every one of the twelve movements is nothing but a variation on the opening organ statement. One of my favorite composers is Stephen Sondheim who admonished composers for making things more complicated than they needed to be. He wondered why any composer would want to create a work with lots of original themes. His philosophy was to pick just one theme and then create variations on it over the entire span of the work. He did this brilliantly in Sweeney Todd; the opening chimes of Big Ben form the musical foundation of the following two and a half hours. It's like building a giant puzzle, and that's one of the aspects of composing that I love.

I also like challenging myself with "Easter eggs". Those of you familiar with computers and gaming might know that reference. They're little hidden features that are usually throwbacks or homages to past technology. And they're usually very hard to find. The programmers put them there for fun. In a similar way, I like incorporating musical Easter eggs into my pieces. Sometimes there's just one, but sometimes more. (In the symphony, I think there are eight; I lost track.) For me, the challenge is to interweave a musical quotation that has absolutely nothing to do with the piece I'm working on, the more incongruous the better. The trick is to integrate it so well that no one, not even the instrumentalist playing it, is aware it's there (which is the reason I often can't find them after I've written them). Since I have really eclectic musical tastes, I draw from a huge variety of sources. My aim isn't to highlight the incongruity (at which Peter Schickele was so good), but to bury it so deeply that it's invisible. It's just a little technical challenge that makes me smile.

So that's been my journey in composition. I still maintain that anyone can be a composer as long as you're willing to put the time into doing it. The techniques aren't hard to learn and with the current software on the market you can get the instant gratification of hearing what you create. If you're fortunate to know some willing musicians, you can even hear it outside of the digital world. And that's the greatest satisfaction of all.

September 19, 2024

What will ultimately be the ruination of society is not a virus, a world war or political malfeasance. It will come down to selfishness, the increasing epidemic of people obsessed with themselves and little else. Society developed through interdependence, the realization that humans need each other to survive. There have been wars since recorded times, usually started by rulers who thought they were akin to God, able to inflict their will on others. They were abetted by like-minded associates who either shared their views or manipulated the rulers into adopting their views.

But currently it seems as if the general population has adopted a ruler's mindset. All that matters to them is them. The only reason to relate to others is to have their own mindset reinforced. This is egregiously evident on social media platforms, where people engage with content that agrees with their own views and hate on differing views. I'd be fine with that if people kept that behavior online. But it's increasingly spilled over into off-line behavior as well.

I began thinking about this while Karen and I made our annual visits to the Eastern States Exposition recently. These visits were different from the past in that I had fractured my leg and couldn't walk. So Karen had to push me around the grounds in a wheelchair. And what I discovered from that perspective was that the people crowding the midway and the narrow corridors throught the buildings didn't seem to care if anyone else was there. They would walk right in front of us as we were hobbling along, completely oblivious to our presence. On many occasions I had to abruptly signal Karen to stop or we'd collide with people in front of us who would suddenly stop dead in their tracks or even back up without bothering to look at their surroundings. These weren't people on their mobile devices; they just appeared to have no interest in anything around them. There were very few people who, if they noticed the predicament, apologized. Normally we were the ones apologizing just to wake them up out of their stupor. Interestingly, the people who were most aware and polite were those in the same situation: those who had to push handicapped people around or those who were themselves confined to wheelchairs or skooters. With a few exceptions, they were attentive and alert (most likely out of necessity). But nearly every other person on the grounds was off in their own little world, as if they were the only one at the fair awash in a sea of non-entities.

To me, this explains a lot about the current stark divisions in this country. When you're attentive to and aware of the needs of others, there's rarely time to think about yourself. Maybe what this country desperately needs is a return to the volunteer ethic, where people selflessly offer their services at soup kitchens or homeless shelters or civic organizations (which have seen a precipitous dropoff in membership). It's amazing what happens to a person's outlook when they do good for others who are less fortunate. It makes them a better person while improving the quality in others' lives. That's one of the things I love about our church: its extremely active missions committee which emphasizes exactly that. In a country that loudly professes to be a Christian nation, what's more Christian than looking out for the well-being of others?

October 2, 2024

I'm on intellectual property overload. Increasingly it's looking as if holidays are nothing more than opportunities for media corporations to pad their bottom lines. As Halloween season approaches, I'm reminiscing about how different things were when I experienced holidays as a child. Usually at Halloween, my sisters would make my costumes for me. Those were often cobbed together with whatever craft supplies were lying around the house. That never bothered me; I looked forward to the thrill of getting dressed up in a costume of any sort. One year it was a robot made out of cardboard boxes and tinfoil. Another year it was a package of cigarettes, again made out of cardboard boxes. House decorations were usually little more than pumpkins that we got at a local farm and then carved ourselves. Some people hung sheets outside their homes as ghosts. Some people had cardboard skeletons. When we went trick-or-treating, we'd get some Mars bars or Snickers, but we'd also get lots of fruit and homemade goodies.

Christmas was similar. My father worked in a steel mill. Every December, the mill gave out bags of toys to its workers, so that they'd have something extra to put under the tree. It didn't matter what the toys were. It was just the fact that we had something. The 1960s saw an upsurge in Christmas marketing, with toy companies competing for parents' dollars. But all the toys were developed in-house by each company. Marx had "Big" toys: Big Wheel, Big Bruiser. Mattel had the Strange Change Machine. Transogram had Green Ghost. Parker Brothers had board games. The toy companies invented unique products that made them stand out. I remember how awed I was when I got Green Ghost. It was unlike any other game I'd played, even though the rules weren't exactly original. And most of those toys were fairly affordable. There were also the ubiquitous Lincoln Logs, erector sets, yo-yos and card games. Outdoor decorations were simple wreaths and (if you could afford it), colorful lights and a snowman. The holidays were often homemade and inexpensive affairs, but brought us great joy.

All that is a distant memory. When I now look at homes during the holidays, I see corporations promoting their "IP". Yards are filled with objects associated with popular movies and television shows. People are no longer celebrating the holiday itself; they're celebrating the merchandising associated with the holiday. Tim Burton came up with a brilliant marketing idea: create a movie based upon the two most popular holidays (Halloween and Christmas) and mash them up. So his IP is now inescapable from October through January. Halloween costumes for kids (and adults) have gone a similar route. Rather than generic hobos or princesses, costumes are now mostly tied to popular horror movies (for teens and adults) or characters from Disney movies (for little kids). And even if you're not into IP promotion, why bother making your yard display yourself out of cardboard when you can go to a big box retailer and get a 12-foot-tall plastic skeleton for $200? Or spend hundreds of dollars hanging Halloween lights all over your home, only to have to take them down in November and replace them with Christmas lights? Charlie Brown said it way back in 1966: Christmas is becoming too commercial.

As for me, I stubbornly stick with my old ways. We get locally raised pumpkins for autumn. I have a few simple Halloween decorations that I made with my 3D printer, and those are for us to enjoy in our home. I have an old plastic light-up pumpkin that I set outside. For Christmas, I have a few solar light strings on some bushes outside and an old plastic light-up snowman. Inside we have our tree with old-style garland, twinkle lights and some ornaments that have sentimental significance for us. But that's it. We enjoy celebrating the spirit of the seasons, and feel no need to spend our life savings promoting media corporations. The true joy of the holidays for us is in how they remind us of our carefree childhood. I'm not sure I'd get so misty-eyed being reminded of someone else's IP.

Ocotber 7, 2024

It's been a month and a half, but the cast is finally coming off my leg. After I broke my leg, I had tried to get around on crutches but couldn't get the hang of using them (and fell twice). So I got a knee scooter for around the house. That gave me a lot more freedom, except for the one-inch-high thresholds that separated each room. Karen nicknamed me the "kerplunker" because any attempt to travel from room to room would be accompanied by two loud thuds, as I had to hoist the scooter over the thresholds. Isolated at home, life was a bit more inconvenient but I got along okay. It was when we ventured out anywhere that my eyes were opened to a different world.

When the Holyoke Merry-Go-Round was being installed in downtown Holyoke, there was a man in charge of the state's office for disabilities. He was adamant that someone with a handicap had to be able to get onto the ride unassisted. That was a tall ask for a ride built in 1927. They tried to accommodate his request by adapting the chariots so that a wheelchair could back into them. As for getting onto the ride, which floated about a foot above the floor, the state at first insisted on a ramp that went halfway around the ride deck. That didn't work because when the ride would spin, it would rip the ramp to pieces. So the solution ended up being a small portable ramp that could roll into place when needed. I thought that was a much more reasonable solution.

But when I was confined to a wheelchair, I discovered just what the man from the state was talking about. I mentioned how Karen and I went to the Big E, with her pushing me around in the wheelchair. There were many areas and buildings I couldn't access because there were curbs or stairs. There were many seemingly accessible areas but the doorways and corridors were too narrow to fit through. Thankfully most of the restrooms had been modified to allow wheelchair access.

At our church about a decade ago, I oversaw the installation of concrete ramps at each doorway. But the church ran out of money and couldn't replace the doors at the end of the ramps. So now the church looks accessible. But if someone gets to the top of the ramp in a wheelchair, there's no way to open the door and get into the building. Even with the supposedly accessible bathroom, it's extremely challenging trying to open the big heavy metal door. Many of the interior doorways are barely wide enough and would pinch my hands as I tried to pass through them.

So what I discovered is that there's a lot of lip service paid to accommodating the handicap. But since accessible architecture is usually built by people who aren't handicapped, there's a lot that can slip under the radar. The church bathroom was built following the state code for accessibility. The door is plenty wide enough; there's just no way to open it without it slamming back into you as you try to enter. There are two grab bars next to the toilet, but one of them is behind the toilet, which doesn't do much good unless you have prehensile arms.

I think the next big home project I undertake will be getting rid of those thresholds. We're not getting any younger, and I might as well be proactive about clearing out some of the hurdles I've found. I'm glad we had our bathroom remodeled with a walk-in shower a few years ago. That was a big help. I know I'd never be able to use a wheelchair inside the house; our doorways are just 28 inches wide. But at least I can take care of a few little things ... once I'm able to walk again.

December 30, 2024

As the year draws to a close, it's a beautiful sunny day with the temperature about 60 degrees. That's a bit unusual for New England in the dead of winter, but I'll take it. I've been looking back on what was accomplished in 2024 and once again I'm a bit disappointed in myself. I managed to complete just four pieces of music in that time, though I had high hopes of finishing many more. Even though one of those pieces was a symphony, it wasn't of Mahler proportions. So in my mind, I should have finished it much more swiftly. I did manage to write one piece in just four days and another in three days; I'm capable of composing quickly. Sometimes my creative faucet just drips; other times it's like a firehose. So what's going on?

I think it's simply a matter of my priorities, the choices I've made. I was a member on the boards of six different organizations. Some of those demanded a lot of my time; some didn't. But I've had to reevaluate my priorites. I've resolved that I'll remain on those boards that are in alignment with my focus on music. But for other boards I'm tendering my resignation. The fewer distractions I have, the better.

Another distraction I had was my garden railroad, which consumed far more time than I expected (nearly four years in total). But I knew that once I finally completed the layout, I'd be able to move on from it and simply enjoy running it in my fleeting leisure time. I nearly met that goal in December, with only a few minor modifications to make in the spring when the ground has thawed.

Then of course there were our numerous amusement park excursions. Although it's something I really enjoy, that too will need to be scaled back. I'm still editor of the Western New York Coaster Club's Gravity Gazette, so I'll continue to attend their events (which currently number just three a year). I'm also a member of other amusement park groups, but I'm going to have to admire those events from afar. There's only so much time (and money) in a year.

Mainly though I think the issue is that composing is a solitary effort. I could easily sit in my room writing away from sunup to way past sundown. But I'm not a hermit. I have family and friends. If I chose to compose non-stop, I would be prolific but also extremely lonely and isolated. And I don't know whether an increased output of my work would create music of any worth. I'd rather write a few good pieces a year than fill file drawers full of garbage. I think the key for me is to find time to write a little each day. My problem is that when I sit down to write, I feel compelled to finish a whole movement in one sitting. Many of the world's greatest composers have stressed the importance of the habit of writing, making it part of a daily routine like exercise. So for the new year, I want to set aside just a few hours a day to write. Like having a steady trickle of water from a faucet, hopefully it won't take long to fill my musical bucket.