Adieu, mes amours
Today, the breakfast conversation was about animal husbandry. Sadie, our youngest participant, plans to be a veterinarian and is beginning college biology study in the fall. She also milks 60 cows twice a week. After a good dawdle, I went to school to test my learnings on my own shawms. Joan's reed played wonderfully on my alto (it plays better than Rotem's alto) but after a week of 460 the instrument seemed dark, like some kind of pommer d'amore. The soprano was a different question; I could play the bottom octave with the good control I had learned, but above that the instrument very much wanted to have its own way. The Cronins are reputed to be quite bright up there. And I couldn't get a stable written upper A to save my life.
Then on to the final concert dress. I gave Laura a CD of my compositions, and have a choral one for Andrew tonight. All went well, though vocally I was not where I wanted to be. Afterwards, I felt a great sadness, being parted from new friends. It's very odd and creepy to have the afternoon off. I walked to Teddywedgers for a pasty (got a whole, should have gotten a half), which was right at the edge of the weekend art festival. I didn't much feel like joining the sea of people oozing widdershins around the Capitol, though certainly ritually banishing the Wisconsin state government seems like a good thing to do. I started back and poked into side streets. I found a wonderful natural pharmacy (even if it was a "worker-owned co-op"), had some good gelato, and then, in a used bookstore, I found a copy of Morrison's Feeds and Feeding for $10 (This is the bible on feeding animals homegrown feed...it gets referred to a lot in writings on organic animal husbandry, and it's out of print). Popped into Pipefitters, a real old-time head shop, and back into the Exclusive Company (the classical record store). Then I headed back and spent some time in the library looking at music periodicals (They have 2 different polka newsletters there! Plus the new SAM journal and Sacred Music, and the stuff that CIM gets that I'm behind on reading.) Then to my locker to bring instruments to my room, and to my room to tidy up.
Big party after the concert. I'll be out as soon as I wake up...which may be later than I want, if I'm up late. I'll certainly miss the festival, though I certainly need a break from the single-minded focus on music. As for Madison, I saw a T-shirt that said something like "Madison: the escape from reality". And it's true: a lovely place to visit, but one with a rather blinkered (or maybe rose-colored) view of reality. I really got the feeling that everyone in town was a member of Democratic Underground. Everywhere, one saw blatant disrespect of the President. Now, of course I don't give the office of the Presidency much respect, but this was personal. And all over town there are historical markers. Most are about leftish concerns (first African-American community, campus riots, the Wisconsin Plan and Fighting Bob LaFollette). And the one I saw that seemed critical of its subject was also big-government: the story of Prohibition in Madison, which had declared a half mile around campus to be dry in 1907, and in 1917 had banned all alcohol sales. Cleveland is a far more balanced place...but it needs the nightlife of the Mall (think Coventry on steroids).
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