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Dear Ralph and Caroline,

Thought I'd drop you a brief line to tell you that I was mostly very pleased with the performance of my Concerto for Trombone and Chamber Ensemble. Jeff Reynolds plays trombone like a real musician, and the orchestra sounded quite decent also. Altogether it came off better than it did on my Doctoral Recital, though it would have been better had the acoustics been a little tighter (too much echo). I'm kind of anxious to hear the tape.

Sorry you couldn't make it, but I imagine you were all fagged out after your San Francisco trip. It was nice to see Bea and Gary, though.
Without being immodest, I think it was the high point of the evening. The Corelli was o.k., mind you, and rather charming. But the …2nd guitar concerto is a DOG! It would be hard to imagine a more uneventful, unexciting , bland, soupy, and repetitive piece. The guitarist was very young. He played clearly and accurately, but with no "fire". But even if he'd played like a troop of Hell's Angels it couldn't have helped this turkey of a piece. My own concerto just had to feel like a masterpiece by comparison. The Schubert 3rd symphony, which concluded the program, is a sprightly and pleasant work. The 2nd and 3rd movements are fine. The other movements just don't have the interesting key schemes and "turns of phrase" that his other symphonies have, however (As a matter of fact the main subject of the first movement has no interest whatever, except in the manner of its instrumentation. ) No. 2 is a better symphony in its other movements. But it was nice to hear No. 3-none of the Schubert Symphonies are overplayed, not even the B-minor (no. 8) these days, but No. 3 is never programmed, so it was a good idea for Bogidar to play it. (of course I guess you know that Schubert is my very favorite early Romantic composer. I think he was more talented than Beethoven; he orchestrated better, toward the end of his life, and his melodies are genuine authentic melodies. His dramatic concerns may not have been as profound as Beethoven's, but his architectural genius is just as great. (without the same sense of planned inevitability as Beethoven had.) Schubert really approached music with the same natural talent as Mozart, whereas Beethoven was more a fashioner of music, like Haydn. Beethoven was more seminally influential on the Romantic side of the 19th Century-particularly because of his extravagances and eccentricities, musical and personal. But Schubert is the more direct antecedent of that greatest of 19th c. composers, Brahms, whose third-related harmonies and key schemes owe an awful lot to Schubert.

It was very gratifying to hear some of my own music again. It was particularly good to be reminded that "fashion" and surface concerns aren't really important in the long run: my concerto still feels like a real piece of music, while some of the other better known pieces from around the time the Concerto was written already feel dated, and seem to be silly experiments.

Enough for now.

Dear Caroline and Ralph,

Thanks for a very pleasant New Year's evening. I think that by now you will have earned a first-class pilot's license with your glider, Ralph, and anything Caroline makes, including soups and sweets, always merits gravest consideration. Good companionship, good company, good evening.

I must have wrenched my back a few days ago, because I could hardly walk. But taking a small page from the indomitable Ted Thomas, I refuse to give in to these physical things. Anyway, that chair felt damned good. If I were writing music for that chair I guess I would write things with quite pungent bass lines. Next will have to come the mid and high frequency high-energy beaming, which could and should be detectable on the skin! With the right set up one might even achieve thermal effects without damaging the ears, perhaps even deep muscle relaxation with heat, giving new meaning to the concept of 'hot music', and 'the cool school'.

Thanks again for thinking of me. Happy New Year!

Dear Ralph and Caroline,

Thanks so much for making a warm, wonderful afternoon while your mother was here. It was great being with her again, and meeting Veronique, and Kelley's husband , and all.

Thanks also for continuing to share the progress of the piece with me, Ralph…. It's good to "see' the various stages of development, and to hear you talk about them. I think your processes of feeling/evaluating what needs to be done are the same as mine, more or less, regardless of the differences in mediums we employ.
(You are de-mythologizing the world of synthesizers and synthesizer music for me, Ralph, giving me the thought that someday I might like to try my 'hand' in this area, on a modest scale.) Another good thing is that when it comes time for performance there will be a few, like myself, in the audience who will be able to anticipate features of the musical events and perceive it as a composition, not just a first-time experience (I have to hear it some more first, though) Of course it's only an audio piece for me right now, and I tend to forget that there is another level to be added. The visuals may come as a kind of shock!

Just for the hell of it I am drawing you the last movement of this viola piece I'm working on. It may not mean a thing, but it will be interesting to me to know if this seems to reflect the piece as heard (by you) whenever it finally goes into performance. My internal representation of the piece can't be drawn, exactly, but this does show something of the way I think about the organization, anyway.

Caroline, you've seen the lamp base I have commissioned Harriet Stevens to make for me, and which I like so much. I realize you aren't working in the area of pottery or ceramics and such right now, but I will still want you to make a serving bowl, or a bowl as aesthetic object only, whenever you get back to doing pottery. As a semi-starving college teacher I can offer you only $40 in commission, which I will send or give to you whenever you agree that you will do it, assuming that you might wish to someday. You have total artistic control, of course, but I would like it to reflect or represent whatever you have to say to me through this medium

Alas, those marvelously touching pinch pots which Heather and Nicolle made, together with Mom's (Caroline) thoughts, met an untimely end - or maybe it was actually a timely end, since time had something to do with it. They grew rather fragile with age, like much in the world of perishable art, and were evidently handled without the proper care by some guests who saw them sitting on the table and misunderstood their purposes ( I don't really know what happened).

My road to "recovery" seems fraught with setbacks, as you obviously perceive, but things are actually better in many areas….I should be getting some money to go into therapy and a surrogate program (that's not certain, but likely), also a good step. I am doubtless in the midst of clinical depression but still manage to mostly function and even get pleasure from some things, like seeing you guys. Really, if I couldn't vent myself to you now and again I really would go crazy. As it is, I think I'm probably certifiable about 40% of the time, which isn't a very good average. Better than the reverse would be, though, and I do keep some umbilicus to the rational even so.

Besides the experiment at drawing the principal outlines of the last movement of that unaccompanied viola sonata you will also find enclosed a bunch of stuff I did for Nicole, who is one of my bridges to the happy child inside, just as Erik is one of my bridges to the understandable adolescent. I sort of think of Nicole as an "occasional" Dutch daughter. Anyway, I got carried away while thinking about that crazy octopus she showed me (I've got to get myself one.), and the letter to her explains everything.

Incidentally, Erik is now only about an inch shorter than I am, with no indications that he has stopped growing. 'Tempus fugit', and all that. He saves money, like a well motivated miser, and currently has something more than $200 in a clean caviar can - maybe it's a replica, because it's larger than any other caviar can I've seen - money which he's earning and saving for a motorcycle. He makes around $20 to $30 selling flowers on a street corner, which he does as often as he can. That he remains a lovable and affable fellow is a kind of wonder to me, and of course I always find him a pleasure to be around. When he finishes high school I may ask him if he'd like to live with me for awhile.

My folks both look better to me than they have for awhile. I'm going to ask them up for a bit in the relatively near future (in May , toward the middle); we will try to coordinate a time for a visit of some sort with you. I know they would like to see you again, so maybe you could come over to dinner or something that.

Thanks again, for being so good to me.

Dear Caroline,

You may share as little or as much of this as you may wish with Ralph. I'm visualizing you, and thinking of you as I write this particular letter, though, so you needn't feel this as any kind of group or generalized letter.

Dennis, the folks and I are in Vero Beach with Adeline and Wilbur (Please tell Ralph I did greet Adeline and Wilbur for him. They were very pleased because he was very impressive to them, and because he was one of my chums they remember quite well.) We've mostly been sight seeing on day long trips past everglades, mangrove swamps, banyan trees, beaches, cane fields, etc., and to/through Miami, Ft. Lauderdale, etc., etc., including Lake Okeechobee. Tomorrow we're off to St. Augustine, Daytona Beach and points in between. The air is unbelievably clean-all the time-I suppose because of prevailing winds, and because heavy industry is almost non-existent here. I haven't seen such beautiful heart-wrenching sunsets since I was a kid in Patagonia, Arizona, nor such luminescent buttermilk skies at night. Were it not for hot, humid summers, and the lack of my kind of culture, I'd seriously consider moving here-at least for awhile.

But this letter really isn't about Florida, or the ca. 16 hrs. it took to get here because of snowstorms, missed connections, aborted flights, etc. I am going to try to answer questions you posed about a year and a half ago when I was really at a nadir….I couldn't answer them satisfactorily then, but I have a little better handle on them now, even if they aren't all resolved yet (and possibly may never be).

You said, as I sat there enraged and in pain, that you didn't see why I just didn't let her go, which would have been the correct thing to do, of course. There are so many things to be said here about that, and if it weren't so I guess I would have accomplished this, more rapidly and more easily.

For one thing, I think my own perception of time and who and where I am must work differently from the way it works for folks who are more "now" oriented. I study history, I make connections with past and present as part of my professional discipline, I collect books of historic photographs, and even in my own family we've spent time in North Dakota looking for trees on which my father carved his initials 50 years ago. It takes the max for me to make a past into something unimportant or indifferent. And, truly, if twenty years ago, or ten years ago, or yesterday don't matter, then today is meaningless and not worth shit, however you look at it. Tomorrow is nothing, because it doesn't exist, and hasn't existed, except as an imagined potential, and except as the result of a continuum of envisioning, planning and making (creating). (Unless, of course, one is a sort of flake who bounces around with no regard to structural premises and the long sweep: such people never became anything except by accident, which is no way to live for a guy like me who is mostly nothing except for the things I make. ) Anyway, it's not at all easy to give up 9 yrs. here, 8 yrs. there, simply cut them out, destroy those connections, flush all the investment down the toilet, and say, "great: I never wanted anything but momentary things and quick thrills anyway. A life like a Swiss cheese is just fine." You know that I mean no insult to you in saying that I think you'd have to be suddenly and traumatically removed from context(s) to know how hard it is to actually sort out what was real from what wasn't , to give up someone you love and in whom you had invested eight years, and so on. You'd have to have given up the most of Heather and Nicolle because you had no choice nine years earlier, and experience a real good rejection or two, you see, in order to know how hard it is to get past these things.

…..I have great anger because…it just isn't forgivable to practice protracted deceit and that's the main issue, outside of not being loved in the first place…My own personal journey is such that I seem compelled to make a full circle, returning to the place where I was initially, as a singularity, wrestling my own sphinxes. It's a given, you see, that making things is the most important thing to me, and that is consonant with what is and has been the most important thing anywhere, anytime, even when contexts are such that they have to be subdued first in order to do that. What I want from a woman is love, sex, understanding and supportive companionship. And tenderness for heaven's sake. That is also all that I can offer a woman. She can no more add to or help in the making of things that I do than I can add to or help in the making of hers, because creating is individual and a duel between one person and his/her conceptions. (anything else, like farming, etc., is perfectly fine and o.k., but is basically functionary or facilitative) I guess my fantasy ideal would be a lady who paints beautiful, ugly strong conceptions and I do mine, and we are in each other's presence without interfering. We do whatever is necessary in the practical sphere to make money and so on, negotiate the things in the mundane spheres of home maintenance etc., and give those things already mentioned to each other. And how important that tenderness is, Caroline. I am sick to death of hard asses, and women who blame men for standing in the way of what they want to do without being able to paint a vivid picture of what it is they want to do, who think futzing around with random attempts at "discovery" will substitute for making and creating the self; discovery is for information, and necessary too, but, in the end, making is based on decisions and commitment to do that, and being somebody isn't taking this or that from a smorgasbord all the time. Anyway, tenderness is lost in all this blind floundering around, and not knowing, after the proper early ages for discovery are past, just makes other people pay your prices.---Well, what a masterpiece of incoherence and polemics all the above is. I am sure I'd be embarrassed to re-read it, so I shan't.

Still, you know, respect comes from how well one does battle with the personal sphinx, and that's all alone. And tenderness really is important, whether learned or innate.

Maybe I've answered a part of what you asked about 1 ½ years ago. Good questions. Not very good answers, but you get my drift.

Someday I'll go into why I think that for a lot of ladies the enemy in what seem to be the latest rounds in the 'battle of the sexes' is really misidentified, and point to Pogo's (Walt Kelly's) statement, "We has met the enemy, and the enemy is us" , applies.

For now, dear friend, a big hug and much affection from the lonely manticore. The part I don't see will be made clear by people I trust, like you. And you are a great mental wrestler, Caroline, and will retort or set me straight where your perceptions are different from my own.

See you soon I hope. Love,

Dear Caroline and Ralph,

I recognize that beautiful script of yours on the Auction list, Caroline, and it was very thoughtful of you to send it. Even though this isn't the type of material I collect I found the list very interesting to read, and I passed it on to Gary Hammond who will probably put in a bid or two. He told me about one artist on the list who used to regularly record such songs as "Eat My Wiener Blues" when I read some of the list to him over the phone, and of course he collects "jass music" and southern preachers (no kidding) on those so-called "Race" records.

In other areas, as long as I take the Zantac I seem to do O.K. in re: incipient ulcer, while the Doc assures me that the hiatal hernia is just something I have to learn to live with. About the rest of the miscellany, well we'll see. These things just support the rightness of my decision to leave LMU and take a year off from Academe…

….my personal countdown is on (unless I'm mistaken, I now have teaching days to go). Most (not all) of the students I will miss the most will have graduated after this semester, and I've sort of been pulling out from other sorts of involvements there, and actually felt a great surge of freedom the other day just thinking about how nice it will be to not feel responsible to/for so many people anymore.

I was on KUSC the other day with Jeff von der Schmidt on Gail Eighenthall's program. Just about 20 minutes having to do with Halsey Stevens, who turns eighty this December. He's looking worse these days, and now H tells me that on some days his mind wanders a bit. He was very lucid when I visited him a few days ago, but he has his good and bad days I guess. I heard a very powerful composition for orchestra called THRENOS which he wrote in memoriam Quincy Porter, a work which Dan Lewis is planning to do with the USC forces. It's one of those which just hasn't been played at all (to speak of) before, not a truly "new" piece since he is not capable of writing anymore. But it's much the most ballsy and sinewy orchestral work that I've heard from him, and it speaks in the tones of, "Do not go gentle…"

It really does make the heart bleed to see him fall and have to drag himself across the floor. He cannot really control some aspects of salivation now, which must leave this proud man feeling a bit mortified. I think the sheer frustration and the feelings of boredom and being ineffectual would be enough for me to seek some non-painful kind of suicide if I had this damnable condition. It shows you that he really is a tough old bird inside.

I hope to see you all real soon. Maybe at Sunday's retirement party?

Keep well, and we'll all think kindly of and about each other even when contact is seldom. Out of sight is definitely not out of mind for me.

Much love to your whole family,

Dear Friends,

The three days spent in Boston…were really very nice. Orientation activities generally lasted from 9:00 AM to 3:00 PM, but beyond that our time was our own. Fanueil Hall was quite an interesting experience. (Maybe I spelled it wrong; it hardly matters, since those Bostonians don't pronounce it as French in any case.) Located by colorful government buildings, it is like an international foodery, with Mexican dishes being considered quite exotic. One of the nights Mother Nature favored us with an hour's display of some of the most impressive lightening I've seen in years! I love electrical storms, and have seen some grand discharges in North Dakota and in Arizona, rarely in California. I would rate the Boston storms right up there with the best.

Yes, what they say about New England weather is true. It can be sunny and warm, and suddenly up come cold squalls, followed by 20 minutes of rain. Then it all blows away, and, except for residual moisture, you would not know anything had happened. For the last two days it has been drizzling and raining in our part of New Hampshire. No wonder it is all so green here that it could make you weep. Ashes, oaks, maples, pines, balsams, aspens all abound, with every kind of green underbrush, Eastern wildflowers and ferns. 60% of New Hampshire consists of protected forests and lakes, so at least this is one state that the loggers and developers will not be able to spoil. The population of the whole state is not much greater than that of Long Beach, California, so as you can imagine, it is very rural, with pretty little villages and isolated small farms, reached by two lane roads .In a way, I wish we could continue to live here, but it is just too far for a steady commute to Boston.

…..In winter Meredith's population is about 7000, while summer brings all the tourists who stay in the motels, rent the cottages, and so forth, drawn by the lake and surrounding environs. Lake Winnepesaukee is the second largest lake totally encompassed in the United States, and is loaded with islands of various sizes, some inhabited, some wildlife preserves, and others up for sale. When I still had some money several years ago, I was tempted to buy Dollar Island, which has a little wood and a large, cabin-style two story house. (such things are incredibly affordable here.) The chief disadvantage of living on an island is that for two weeks a year the forming of the ice makes access impossible by boat. Then for ca. two weeks in the spring the ice is breaking up, and therefore will no longer support the weight of automobiles or other vehicles. During the winter people drive all over the lake, have races, ice fish, and all the rest. The whole area is very much like what you saw in ON GOLDEN POND, which was filmed at Squam Lake, about 20 minutes away.

I have to tell you that since the time I was a kid, living in Arizona and California deserts, I dreamed of living in a place like this, where vegetation is lush, abundant, and beautiful. To my way of thinking, even the German and Austrian forests, lakes and mountains do not beat it by much. And here everyone speaks English, there are no gangs, grafitti or angry minorities, or any of the rest of the horse shit we had to put up with in Los Angeles. It's a bit on the redneck side for my tastes, but you can't have everything, right?

What I do miss, and will continue to miss, are the good friends…the faculty I have met at Berklee are warm, wonderful people, and I know that many of them will be good soulmates. But no one can ever replace someone you've known and loved for over thirty years. No one.

…..Despite all the vicissitudes, I'm still feeling reasonably upbeat, and, as my brother Dennis says, "At least nobody vomited on me today". (It actually happened to him once, from the person behind him in a theatre.)

I think of you often - at least twice a day - and wonder if the Grierson super-synthesizer set-up (How's that for alliteration?) is near completion. The day can be envisioned when you will require your own personal power station to feed the electronic wonders you will continue to acquire.

Thanks again for the inestimable help, consideration and love you've given me. What an interesting treat it was to live with the Grierson family!! Things are quite different now, compared to the years-ago time when (we) lived with you for a couple of weeks on Chandler Boulevard. You have since become an international youth center, an electronic mogul's paradise, and a space age center for medical practice, to say nothing of the changes wrought by age and experience. From the bottom of my heart I thank you for your assistance in what have been, for me, really desperate times. I marvel at how accommodating and generous you are with personal space, your life, yourselves…

Please write, when you can, to your old buddy,

Dear Ralph,

As you can see by the date on the check, I thought this had been mailed a while ago. Well, better late than not at all. Sorry it could not have been more……

We followed the course of the fires on CNN, hoping none of our friends, such as you, would be imperiled. So far only Barry Brisk was directly threatened, and that not because of his home but because the school where he teaches was one ridge removed from the original fire in Calabassus (sp.?) Anyway, keeping our fingers, toes and other extremities crossed evidently did some good.

I managed to "sproing" a major tendon in my right foot/leg, and thus was hobbling around using a cane when Jill, John and little Kelsey Ann were here for their visit. Now each time after my two day madly impacted teaching stint in Boston my foot swells up alarmingly, and it takes me two additional days to recover. No big deal, I guess, but it's a damned nuisance….

I've got to run. Please write, or call, and reassure me that my great old friends are still well, and happy.

Much love,

Dear Caroline and Ralph,

Thanks so much for having (us) as house guests. I t was wonderful being able to spend a bit of time together again, though it was all too brief. I always feel warm, loved and appreciated when with you. It's a friendship which has worn as well as any friendship could, I think, and over so many years, with changing circumstances and mutable contexts.

The trip back was fraught with anxiety, since the flight from San Diego departed nearly 20 minutes late, imperiling our making a necessary connection in Pittsburgh. And if US Air Flt 86 is anything like typical, this airline has really slipped in the service department. As but one example, the movie had already been running for nearly half an hour before the flight attendants began renting and distributing headphones! We did make our Pittsburgh-to-Manchester flight on time, and the rest of the trip was uneventful. We were in Meredith by 1 AM, met by clear, 11 degree weather, and an enthusiastic Max.

I've been watching an informative and interesting series on The Learning Channel called "Quest for Healing". Tonight's episode was concerned with Japanese, Chinese and Tibetan methods for achieving a balanced body. It's like carrying coals to Newcastle for me to recommend this series to you, but if you aren't watching it you might want to check it out….Anyway, the attitude taken seems unbiased with respect to traditional medicine, homeopathic medicine, ancient and modern medical practices in the Far East, etc., and has refreshingly direct but non-judgmental-or should I say "broadminded" but level-headed answers to questions in the "But does it really work?' department. The series keeps one's attention, while educating.

Of course there have been several very fine medical series on Discovery, TLC, PBS, etc., and some individual programs on such topics as autism which have been memorable. But I'll just have to confess that I find too disturbing the eight-hour surgery marathons to last them out for a whole evening. One of these days they'll probably have an enema marathon, or show electro-shock therapy treatments "live". My own frailties aside, the Discovery Channel series on the brain and the nervous system was super, I think.)

I'm just finishing "The Battle for Dien Bien Phu", and will begin reading "Overlord" directly. Like everything else about the era of the Third Reich, Stalinism, and Fascism, I find the chronicles of the battles to be fascinating. Your gift is a very welcome addition to my war library….

I must soon begin the tedious job of correcting papers-a veritable mountain of them-on which I was only able to devote one day of time before departing for the West Coast. Grades are due on the third, so thank goodness for fax machines. Otherwise I'd have to drive the 120 miles to Boston in order to turn my grade sheets in on time.

Please keep in touch.

Dear Caroline and Ralph,

As always, it was a pleasure to visit with you , despite the brevity of our time together…

My own flight back was uneventful in a negative sense. What was supposed to have been a layover of about an hour and twenty minutes in Philadelphia became a three and a half hour delay….I have to say that the airport in Phillie is rather boring. I sat in the one and only smokers' lounge in the whole airport, a wine and beer serving establishment, reading my book about the minds of serial killers and drinking Cokes. All's well that ends all right, I suppose, and I did finally end up in N.H. after flying over New York on the right with lightning and storms showing on the left side of the plane…

John and B.J. are now settled in Salem, Oregon, where I take it he will begin his organist duties immediately. The commute to Lynfield College won't begin for another month. I'm uncertain about when his duties as an employee of the Willamet Valley winery will be taken up…

Speaking of duties, this letter, the writing of it, was delayed by the necessity of correcting and grading of papers, final exams, projects, and so on, for the not-so-patient Registrar's office, a large package-full that was in the mail when I least wanted it. This took three days.

Per your probable interest, Gary Hammond is nearly recovered form e. Coli, which I guess is one of those diseases from which you either recover or you die.

I just finished reading an excellent history of American art music ("legit" music, "formal" music, whatever you want to call it).

Struble, John Warthen: THE HISTORY OF AMERICAN CLASSICAL MUSIC (Macdowell Through Minimalism): Facts On File, Inc., N.Y., 1995 ISBN 0-8160-3493-1

Though such texts can't substitute for individual biographies of composers, all the major composers from Francis Hopkinson and Billings clear through to Phillip Glass and others are given brief biographies, and their roles vis a vis the local and national historical sweep of things are well delineated. (Only a few U.S. composers have really established an international presence.) Sociological and cultural contexts are covered, and in the final chapter he does a bit of prognostication based on current trends and likely outcomes. Turns out that the author lives in Wolfboro, NH, which is all of 20 minutes away from where we live, so I'm going to give him a call and invite him over for an afternoon or evening of chatting about such things. One thing I was delighted to see in his text was the inclusion of the accomplishments of such film composers as Bernard Hermann, a branch of music which has been uniformly slighted by every prior historian except for those writing topical histories…

Well, I'd best get to cleaning up my basement den of music and iniquity. Tonight our local piano and clarinet prodigy, a shy lad who is a bit like a stranger in a strange land in these parts, will be coming by for an evening of listening to music. I try to encourage him all that I can, because he really is very talented, and super-intelligent. The music he composes is an awful lot like New Age pap, but praise is due for even having the motivation to try to create something beautiful in this day and age when most kids are content to listen to adolescent entertainers who scream over the din of constant percussion and two chords whacked out on electric guitars. (With this kind of music the norm, no wonder our kids are turning out to be intellectual midgets,) (He) will be a Senior in High School this Fall, but he already knows more about music history than most of our Berklee college Seniors.

I love you both. The very best to your lovely daughters.

Dear Caroline and Ralph,

It seems such a long time since we communicated. I'm sure that I owe you a letter or two, so here it is.

My father is staying with us right now, and should be here until about July 15. It's a pleasure having him here, and I must say that he's doing very well for an 81 year old man who has lost his wife of 57 years and his younger son. My poor Papa has a pronounced 'S' curve in his back, causing him to walk in a stooped fashion, and which is a source of pain if he has to walk any distance. But he can still look after himself, and seems bent on helping us with yard work, which is fairly extensive given the size of the property. As I mentioned in passing in my last letter to Nicolle, it's a bit like painting the Golden Gate Bridge in terms of environmental upkeep I'll just get done with mowing and trimming, which requires at least three days, and then it's time to begin all over again.

…you've indicated a willingness to come for a visit in the near future, perhaps as a stopover on your next trip to France. Naturally I'd love to see you, and hope that this is more than just good thoughts. Our Summer, which arrived a bit on the late side this year, is a beautiful thing to see, and I don't say that lightly. Besides just hanging out and chatting, there are other good things to see and do nearby. Of course we'll take a cruise around the lake on the Mr. Washington, maybe take a 2 ½ hr. ride on the Winnipesaukee & Pemigewasset Valley Railroad, visit the Wright Museum if you have an interest in militaria (all of their tanks, etc., are fully functional, including an excellent example of the BMW motorcycles used in the Afrika Corps), and so forth. I hope you will plan to stay for a bit.

I'm taking a short breather from the copying of the organ composition (A SALEM MUSIC) that I wrote for John Ranney, who'll play it in a few months. For some reason I got a hair up my bum to write an old-fashioned march, with just enough kinkiness to keep things interesting. I'm almost done extracting the individual parts, and will give it to Greg Fritz for possible performance by the band at Berklee during the upcoming year. I'll send a copy of the score to USC. Perhaps Bartner or someone else there will find it interesting enough to program it at our Alma Mater. It's a bit too involved to be used as a field march, but they have at least two concert bands now, though they may not call them "bands" anymore….

I was gratified to hear that Gary Hammond paid you a visit….Gary told me that you were hot in the middle of a project - possibly the film scoring that you told me you might do. Hey, I hope it's something like that. Even commercial projects can bring forth creativity, something I know that you don't always have the time to exercise.

I wrote to Mercury Living Presence, seeking information about planned upcoming reissues and indicating the interest of some of us old time collectors in the mono material recorded by Hanson, Dorati and Paul Paray. "It can't hoit", and they may need to be reminded that the kinds of collectors who are currently buying the Mercury CDs aren't unmindful of the pre-stereophonic recordings. We'll wait and see if they will send a response appropriate to the particular questions I ask, or if they'll just send a kind of Xeroxed form letter. At least I included a self-addressed stamped envelope.

Nicolle is turning out to be a good correspondent. She sent postcard-type views of Paris near her current residence. No poetry so far, but I look forward to reading whatever she may choose to send.

Good old George Goyer responded to my queries with a catch-up letter, and indicated that when he gets some zorgs together he might pay us a visit. I should think that these environs would be conducive to painting, since I gather that he's in a more naturalistic phase at this moment, but I don't suppose he'll bring that kind of gear with him.

Louis Lopez, our Ecuadorian friend who bought our Sunland condominium, came here for five days. He's a very sweet guy, and it was fun being able to get back into boxing and World War II again, interests which we share. He collects uniforms, caps, and the like from the Wehrmacht and other branches of the Hitler-era services, something for which I have neither the money nor the specific inclination. But I have to say, even though he and I would both be on the SS hit-lists, for different reasons, he looks kind of cute in his general's uniform.

Dennis' ashes continue to repose in the small but heavy box in the guest room, on which is written "Cremated Human Remains" Dennis Dean Southers". (We) went through the box of his artifacts that Dad had saved for us. It amounted to a review of his whole life in the theatre, with playbills from things he'd acted in, posters, his publicity shots from various times, and so forth. I was gratified to see that he had participated in more productions than I had remembered. Perhaps such memories took some of the edge off of the feeling of failure that he had about his life. I know that he enjoyed living the life of a Bohemian poet, until he was no longer able to do anything, and that his friends valued him and he them. But he also had sense of deficit in terms of his own accomplishments, which no amount of competent indexing could assuage. I sure wish that I could hug the skeletal body that he had become, and tell him that I love him. Life had few pleasures for him during the last year or so of his life, and that takes some of the sting out of his going; I can't wish that he were still alive in the condition he was in the last time I saw him. Naturally I wish that he had outlived me, in decent health….

I hope that both of you are finding some time just to enjoy life, and to reflect on how good it is to still be around.

Waldo sends his best, and insisted that I enclose a copy of this newspaper. He seems little concerned that when his name is mentioned it is in a negative way. He must feel that bad publicity is better than no publicity.

Love

Dear Caroline and Ralph,

We are very much looking forward to your visit at Thanksgiving time. The enclosed map should help you find….once you are in New Hampshire. It is ca. 78 miles from Boston to Concord, New Hampshire. (Don't let anyone direct you to Concord, Massachusetts!) You will recognize Concord, NH because it is the next city after the Toll Plaza where it will cost you 75c to continue up I-93. You will see the oldest statehouse still in use for legislative purposes on your left, with its gilded dome……If the weather is not too bad I'll try to have naked maidens dancing at the head of our driveway, and small children bearing flowers…

I will enjoy hearing and seeing how the music you sent me fits in with the scenes in THE HIRED HEART, which is broadcast at 9:00 tomorrow night in our area. I really liked the barn dance music, and the road house type music.

Must get back to my work now. Again, we're very much looking forward to your visit….

It's beautiful here right now. Can't promise you a thing but gloom and the nondescript season in mid to late November. Bring a few warm duds.

Your old buddy,

Dear Ralph and Caroline,

Seems like an age since we saw you. It's very different here now-green all over, but oddly cool to cold, and windy.
Emmett will be here in a few weeks. Stacey will be graduated in NY, so he'll naturally attend, and will stop by our digs before returning to wherever.

My typewriter's in the shop, hence this laboriously handwritten and brief letter. I was able to squeeze out one more story for Waldo before it became erratic and faint. His two latest are enclosed.

Berklee is not in session now, so I have time to copy the parts for Five Contrapuncti for Woodwind Trio. With only one eye this is quite a chore. But I've finished the Flute part (13 pages), and have started the oboe. I certainly hope that the Prescott Trio comes through for me. The last four pieces I've written have yet to be performed. In a way I can appreciate why you prefer electronic media, Ralph. That way you don' t have to rely on the good will and desire of others. Since Linda Love has asked me to write something for her I believe that I will do that. I know that she will play it. If you have any interest at all I will send you a copy. (This may take most of the summer to compose. I haven't written for piano in thirty years.)…

Hope that everything is as close to what you'd like it to be as possible. That extends to offices (s), music, home, especially the things that give you satisfaction.
Back to copying now.

Love,

Dear Ralph and Caroline,

Many thanks for many things. For giving me the computer and computer lessons. For bringing the nice treats. For giving me the loan that allowed us to come here in the first place. Most of all, thanks for coming to visit us I had been looking forward to your visit for years - with both of you. It's been a long time…

As you saw, two days ago, after we parted company near Berklee it began snowing in Boston, once again. This continued all afternoon and evening, but with no accumulation there. The wind, and the temperature, which was slightly above freezing, did not permit it to linger. It was a somewhat different story in Meredith….Gusts were well past 50 miles per hour, temperature was 27 degrees F but with the wind chill was ca. -3 degrees F, so that had I been driving the Toyota I would have been blown all over the road. Today was not so bad. Yes, it was snowing a bit as I was driving to Concord at 4:30 AM, but coming home tonight there was only the wind, which whipped me around a bit, but that wind had also dried up any snow or ice on the highway so that all that was blowing was that salty de-icing compound (I can still taste it on my lips). Anyway, it's quite different living in an area where weather almost always has a real meaning for about six months of the year. I hope that you will come again very soon, an that it will be in the early summer when everything is just incredibly green. And when you do come we can take you to other than commercial establishments and such.

….While you were, I hope, enjoying some of the sights of Boston in the afternoon the movers were at my/our house delivering my mother's piano and about 38 boxes that my dad had packed. Some of the things reside in the garage for this moment. But the piano, and the very heavy statue of Venus are now in their places in the living room. Plus the music cabinet, with the purple glass panes amidst the oak, that my dad built for Mom, is also in the living room back where my Brunswick acoustic gramophone used to stand…. We may have more of the things that used to contribute to the atmosphere in Chula Vista than actually remain there now. It turns out that the big kitchen cabinet that my grandfather Hawk built will be shipped to a museum in North Dakota at some in-the-future time. My Dad is a lot less sentimental and enamored of "things" than was my mother. I think that I'm more like Mom because I value those things, for what they mean and have meant to me, and for what they are just as themselves……

Dear Ralph and Caroline,

It's certainly been along time since I've written you a letter. And you're probably thinking, "Well, it's about time." And so it is.

So much has happened in the very recent past. One of my last remaining aunts died. There's only one left now among what were my mother's ten brothers and sisters, and only three sisters left among my father's eight siblings. My father remarried, a lady I've not met but by all reports is a good person. She makes him happy anyway, and that's the main thing of course. (Dad was so secretive about it for awhile. I was the last to find out, second-hand, what had transpired, almost a spur of the moment thing, when they went to get the license.) To avoid complications as a result of remarriage Dad deeded his property over to us. (We) now own a house in Chula Vista and a farm in North Dakota. My granddaughter is in first grade. Jill and my soon to be ex-son in law, John Pankratz, will be getting a divorce. Erik will be graduated, for the third time, this time with his orthodonture specialty, from USC. I believe that his tuition bill is now something around $200,000, which will require him to install one hell of a lot of braces. He'll be going into partnership immediately with another orthodontist who already has established a practice, one in greater Los Angles with a second office in Long Beach. It's an odd confluence of events.

Enclosed you will find a tape of the first performance of something new of mine in the last six years. I was going to save this for Mike Vogel and his trio to give it the premiere, but nothing has happened in that direction in several months, and I was invited to have something performed on the Spring Composition Faculty Recital at Berklee, so I said to hell with waiting. Another faculty member arranged for the student performers, since I'm only in Boston when teaching, and bless their souls, they had to learn this very difficult music on their own. I had only one hour with them at one of their rehearsals, so their playing isn't as pointed as I would like, and lacks the fierce accentuation that I prefer in my music. But with a few live performance imprecisions and errors set aside, the music is there. These were as taxing, vexing and exhausting to compose as anything else I've written, despite the sparse forces involved. In great measure that was because of the mechanics of the pieces - trying to maintain control of all the harmonic, linear and dynamic factors, and everything else in a context in which the changing of one note meant changing a note elsewhere in two other parts, which would impinge on the tonal fabric, requiring changes elsewhere which would themselves back up and down the line, in a seemingly never ending chain, while often having to think forward and backward at the same time. It was enough to give me mental hemorrhoids! The more difficult thing was also writing music having personality and character, some heart as well as head, while satisfying the requirements of the processes without fudging. It's my bent to do these things, in part because when I'm gone, and if anyone should ever care to analyze any of my music I'd want them to find good and interesting answers to any question that they might care to ask. Good craftsmanship, with drawers and doors that open and close properly without squeaking, is very important to me, and is a property in all the music that I enjoy the most.**The Five Contrapunti

Right now I'm finishing up a more friendly composition - more friendly to me writing it, and probably more friendly to the audience - a Serenade for the same forces Mozart called for in his wind serenades (2 oboes, 2 clarinets, 2 bassoons, 2 horns) but with the addition of a pair of flutes. It's complete with a little march for bringing the troopers into the courtyard, though I don't actually expect it to ever be used in that functional way (unless maybe the instrumentalists have two or more left feet, and are capable of being a bit virtuosic while on the move). A compressed and quieter version of the march will see them out again, attached to the end of the Finale, as they sleepily wend their ways home to be tucked into bed….

I think Spring has finally arrived, a very brief transition that occurs sometime after we've gone onto Daylight Saving time (another bit of foolishness, since we go off of it near the beginning of winter, right when it's needed the most. That means that the moles are having a great time partying under my yard right now. They move on in just a few weeks, so it's no big deal, but it means poking down the little mounds of earth that they leave behind, and reseeding over them. Full on Summer will soon be here, meaning it will be yardwork time again, and I still have to teach or starve to death. Double drat. But still, the only thing worse than having a job is not having a job, and I'd rather be teaching eight hours straight than not having any income.

I'm going to have to cease bending your eye now. It's time for me to become productive (writing letters is not non-productive, but feels like a pleasurable indulgence compared with preparing end-of-the-semester examinations and such). I sincerely hope this find you both well, happy, and finding some time to do the things you want to do.

Your old pal,

May 23, 2000

Dear Ralph and Caroline,

Dinosaur that I am, I'm sending you a long overdue letter via old fashioned snail mail. I still like the feel of typewriter keys, and the clatter of the striking, preferring these to the non-resisting feel of the computer keyboard.

First, I want to assure you that you'll be paid within this year. We'll either be selling the Chula Vista house, or taking a loan against it. I'd prefer to sell it, but that picture is complicated by the fact that so much of the additional building type work that Dad had done was done without permits. And then there's the matter of landscaping we'll need to have done, since in one of Dad's odd fits he had all the trees torn out. In any case, it will be a load off of all of our minds when the loan you so kindly gave me so many years ago has been repaid, with interest.

Healthwise, you should probably know that I'm not in very good shape. I'm anemic as Hell, and taking the prescribed iron doesn't seem to be doing very much. My red cells are too small, and so on. There is some evidence of internal bleeding, but the endoscopic procedure and the colonoscopy that was done this past Friday revealed nothing. (but I must say, the morphine injection and the Versed drip certainly did their jobs. I don't remember swallowing the one tube, or having the other one jammed up my butt, but I'm told that I was a good patient.) Anyway, my internist is calling for other tests, perhaps involving bone marrow. I've already given enough blood to float a Red Cross drive. Fortunately there is no evidence of such things as veinous or arterial problems, and my blood pressure is great, staying right around 110 for the upper number. I'm in no particular pain, other than the types of discomforts one expects at 58 years gong on 59. I'm just exhausted all the time. For this reason I cancelled my summer school teaching contract. This represents the first time in many years that I will have an actual vacation. What a joy to be able to write music again, even though being out of the classroom for about two and a half months leaves me feeling guilty.

And speaking of general health matters, my good friend, Bogidar Avramov, had the damndest thing happen when he was in Bulgaria for the purposes of conducting concerts and visiting with his father, now in his 90s. During rehearsal he must have given a particularly violent upbeat because he managed to jam his baton right into his ear, through the eardrum. He fainted dead away, fell off of the podium, and suffered a concussion. Ilke has a cousin who is a neurosurgeon in Sofia, and he arranged for immediate emergency treatment, involving grafting a skin flap over the ruptured eardrum. (I don't know whether or not any tinkering in the inner ear had to be done.) Of course Boshka wasn't allowed to fly for some time so he had to miss having Christmas with his family. On returning he consulted with a specialist in L.A., who assured him that the surgery was expertly done. His sense of balance wasn't affected, and he can hear quite well, but now he is afflicted by buzzing sounds, activated by loud noises at particular frequencies, with occasional tintinus. Isn't that the damndest thing? I'm thinking of buying Boshka a very short baton, and attaching a skull and crossbones, with instructions stating, "Use at your own risk"….

I understand that you guys have been suffering from a heat wave. No such problems here. It's cool, everything is green again, all of our appropriate trees have blossoms, and it drizzles every couple of days, so that the soil is nice and moist. Soon C. will be putting in another garden, and when my energy level permits, and the grass is a little less wet, I'll fire up my mower and begin taking care of things. First we'll have to find someone to help us put back the stones that snowplowing knocked out of our fence during the winter. All that in due time. Right now, I just keep falling asleep, and try to keep up with cooking and in-house maintenance.

Briefs from other fronts, Mike Vogel is on his way to California to play chamber music in Camino. Jeff Hunter has finally got his own pad, which he's furnished rather elegantly to judge by the images he's sent via e-mail. Tom Schnauber is working on his two dissertations in Michigan (composition and music theory), and should have his doctorate within this year. John Ranney and B.J. now live in more suitable digs in Salem, OR, and sometime this year he should play my SALEM MUSIC on the newly enlarged cathedral organ.

Guess I'd better "ring off" for now. FINALLY received copies of the CD of Mozart's music for flute and orchestra, played by Claudi Arimany, Rampal's prize pupil, for which I wrote the program notes.. They're expertly done, in that light French manner, with Rampal conducting the virtuosi of Hungary. Anyway, it's kind of fun to see my name in print again. Count "For Ralph Grierson", this is the fourth DC for which I've provided the annotations.

Much love, and warmest feelings,

Nov 9, 2000

Dear Caroline and Ralph,

Well, the American Federation of Teachers Berklee chapter did not go on strike, though one was authorized. I received the phone call at 10:00PM Sunday Night advising me that we would be teaching the next day, as per usual. The negotiations worked out, I can only presume, with compromises, to wit something in slight excess of 4% in salary increases and a one-time bonus scaled to the number of years served. The increase is retroactive to Sept., 2000, so I guess it's not such a bad deal. In other regards, I'm probably not helped at all by the new contract, since it deals with HMO issues etc., and all such facilities in which the school has entered contracts are in Massachusetts.

How about this elections mess? New Hampshire was the lone state in New England to go for George Bush…but the lead was only 1%. Given the population base here, I think if I had registered our two lhasa apsos, their votes might have carried the state he other way. Anyway, even if NH had been solid for Gore he still needs to have carried Florida. Only Maine and (I believe) Nebraska do proportional voting by their Electors. The other are all "winner take all" in the Electoral College, though there is a small chance that an elector pledged to vote one way could defect and switch his vote. (It has happened, but rarely.) Anyway, about all this, if I were a crusader I would try to gin up support for proportional voting in the Electoral College in my adopted state. Since it is a matter for individual states to decide, someone else would have to crusade in the others. (Imagine what a difference this could make in the voting of such states as California and New York in the Electoral College!)

How are you Ralph? I was so pleased to be able to talk with Caroline the other night, and find out about "Train Your Brain", Heather's overlapping film work, and impending visit by Nicolle and friend. She also told me that a strike seems to be looming among the screen actors, bad news for you some months down the line if it comes to pass. Well, maybe it will backfire on them as did the AFM Local 47 strike of some years ago. They can send work overseas, using actors like Marcel Mystique and Helmut Krautfleish, or send it to Utah, using such actors as Monica Mormon and Joseph Smith Moroni, and send it to Seattle where such actors as Ramon "Lum" Burr and Pugh "Jet" Sound might grace the silver screen. Anyway, I'll keep my extremities crossed that nothing happens to disadvantage you.

My god, Caroline. I don't know where you store up the energy to do all that you do. You are an amazing woman, as I said on the phone.

On this front, I seem to be getting better and better, little by little, with respect to the anemia. Dental work is the next big area. C and I look like rats when we eat, because I have only one lower molar on one side now, with gaps between, and one of my canine teeth, no it's actually the incisor right next to the "eye tooth", broke off while eating a bagel in McDonald's three days ago, a very crunchy experience, and not really a super hard bagel. Anyway, these things have to be taken care of or I'll soon look like a gapped tooth Jack o' Lantern.

Unless something happens to "queer the deal", and of course something could happen from the buyer's end. The house in Chula Vista should be sold on a short Escrow. Evidently the non-English speaker buying the house wants to move in even before the termite fumigation, a distinctly terrible idea-those termicides are nothing to play around with-and doesn't understand Escrow and the finer points of formalizing house sales. There is no problem about financing, since the bank has approved her up to something approaching $300,000 and we have settled on $220,000. Of course we don't see a lot of that, since Uncle Sam takes a hefty cut and we have to pay back the loan we took out on the house in order to survive the summer when I couldn't work. Anyway, cutting to the chase, you should receive the money I owe you within the next few months, presuming the sale is realized. That will be a great relief to me, and a concern taken off of your mind also, I imagine…

I must cease bending your eye on this particular missive. I have enclosed a few of the yarns that I turn out of an afternoon when my psyche demands that I get away from music, school work, household chores, property maintenance, and all the other "musts", and their significance so far as any reader is concerned, will have been accomplished. For me, the writing of them was simply a kind of necessary recreation. One new Waldo missive enclosed also.

Don't be strangers.

Much love,

July 25, 2001

Dear Ralph,

A two-parted letter, the second part to be written later tonight. First, I promised you a tape with some live performing by our much-lamented pal Al Dominguez. I no longer remember if I made you a tape with some of this material before but that probably doesn't matter much. I'm certain that some on here will not have been in your library before.

Sorry to do it to you with respect to having to turn the Dolby On and Off, but that is the reality of the tapes from which these are taken. On Side A. The Schoenberg Ode was recorded with Dolby. The Mozart that follows will seem a bit dull sounding if you leave the Dolby on, so it should be turned off, but if that's inconvenient, you'll just have to adjust to the less brilliant sound. The Brahms f minor piano Quintet on Side B) was recorded with Dolby, and seems to have been "mastered" higher than the rest. The engineering isn't too bad, when you consider that the mikes were just sort of set up without a lot of testing. I've trimmed out most of the dead spaces between movements and so forth.

End of part one.

On the Nonesuch label 'lp' recording of Schoenberg's Ode to Napoleon Buonaparte the narrator did a rather inaccurate job of rendering Schoenberg's rhythms, linear direction and height indications, and sounded dull for my tastes, though the other performers played quite beautifully. I tried to give Schoenberg his due by observing everything he wrote, and in the review of one of the performances we gave, was criticized by the reviewer for not giving the poem enough expression. Oh well. I just think Schoenberg was floundering a bit in terms of his handling of the English language, putting acCENTS on the wrong sylLAbles sometimes, and placing emphasis on the wrong words sometimes.

Halsey Stevens told me that the Quintet in E-Flat for Piano and Winds was Bartok's favorite composition by Mozart. Despite its live performance flaws, I think we gave this piece a performance with a point of view, not the namby pamby, carefully played generic Mozart one all too often hears.

Do you know that even though there's obviously no oboe, or other wind involvement, this f minor quintet by Brahms is among my favorites of all chamber music? I think Al and the crew gave this a good, sturdy performance. My favorite commercial recording of the piece is no longer available, that with Leon Fleischer and the Julliard quartet. (Of course there's very little of Brahms' chamber music that I don't think is very fine. Of his music I'm a little less enthusiastic about his piano sonatas, but for his no.3.) I don't remember the names of all the performers in the string component, but Jan Karlin played viola, and Richard Treat is the 'cellist. (I wish that there hadn't been quite so much involvement by an audience member in unwrapping cough drops in mvt. 2 in the Brahms on this tape, but that is the risk one takes in live performances.)…..
About where (we ) stand. As you know, I've been an enforced celibate for about seven years now, not by choice, but after awhile the impulse kind of goes away when one is rejected in this capacity. Finally, one night a couple of months ago, I had more or less had it. Coincidentally, it was about that time that I re-established contact with my high school girlfriend in a letter writing and occasional phone call way… Of curse (what a Freudian slip) I should say, of course this is coincident with her (C's) old high school boyfriend leaving his wife, taking her to NY to translate legal documents from French to English, and taking her to France to set her up as a kind of hostess for cooking-culinary tours…. All I can say at this moment is that I've been twisted around like a pretzel, internally, and don't know how much of a heart I'll have left to give or to break at the end. It would feel damned nice to feel really wanted again, I know, but my left brain says, "Proceed cautiously". So there we are.
Now I must knock off. I feel so little motivated to do any productive work, but in the end that may save my sanity. That and listening to sturdy music

Best to all,

December 6, 2001

Dear Ralph and Caroline,

Forgive typos, promiscuous spelling and the like. The pain pills that I'm obliged to take from time to time can leave me a bit addled, and prone to such errors.

Though made on a boom box rather than really good equipment, this tape that I transferred from the CD I was sent will give you a pretty good idea of my Serenade for 10 Wind Instruments (double woodwind quintet). Yes, the 1st hornist is sharp a good deal of the time, and there are some understandable live-performance flaws from time to time, but all told these mostly non-professionals do a decent job. I may make a few minor revisions in certain passages, if I can ever get to my music or anything else that remains ensconced in boxes that are unliftable by me, but mostly I'm pleased with the composition itself. It's not a piece designed to "push back the envelope" in any way, but rather is intended to be enjoyed, by the composer, the players and any listeners. If I can hie myself to a Xerox machine prior to mailing this, I'll include the program notes, as printed in the CD container slip.

Most of the time, but especially after returning from Boston late at night, the house feels awfully empty, filled with nothing but me. If it weren't for Jackie's calls each day, the most of a month could go by without my speaking with another human being, except at Berklee. Cooking for one - what a tasteless enterprise, even though I could have filet mignon every night if I wished to do that. Of course I require some solitude each day, but this is getting to be ridiculous. Those antediluvian Connecticut divorce laws are designed to drag things out as much as possible, insure an adversarial relationship between those separating, and keep the lawyers in funds. Well, I've been through longer time tunnels than this one, but the idea of actually being with Jackie for an extended period of time is beginning to feel mythical, a product of overworked imaginations rather than a reality for which we continue to plan.

Yes, C and I still miss each other some. And when we do get together, which is on an irregular basis, maybe twice a month, we often end up weeping together, more for the shared past that we have to tuck away than for the actual present probably. But you just can't squeeze that toothpaste back into the tube again, and I believe that it would be impossible to be together as before at this point in time, if I wanted that.

News. Just found out that Jill is remarrying later this month, a Joseph Meshegow, whom I've not met…My understanding is that the ceremony will take place in Hawaii. Meanwhile, they're selling the house in Stevenson Ranch, and are buying another in south Torrance. John, Jill's ex, has sold his in Santa Clarita, and will be moving toward the south also, to be nearer to their children….
Right now, besides school responsibilities, keeping the house tidy, and talking with Jackie by phone, I'm mainly re-revising my Symphony no.3, though at odd moments I might be found listening to CNN, in order to keep up with the war, while playing Solitaire.

    Yeah, Ralph, did you know that Al Kayda has teamed up with Ben Loudin, and that them Tallybrands are holed up in CandyBar? Boy, if that Ben Loudin ever merries Anne Thrax it will be keratins!
             Thanks, Waldo

Rather than asking questions, I'm going to assume that you'll give me a call one of these evenings and catch me up on everything - you, Caroline, Heather, Nicole (I don't know how she spells it now), and Amy, whom I'm sure you see from time to time. Just remember that I'm not to be found here on Mondays and Wednesdays.
I guess I should really make myself something to eat. Only had a fried egg sandwich all day. Maybe my spine will hurt a bit less if I digest it myself, but so far my juices don't even seem to reach to the tailbone.
You'll find a couple of Waldo's latest enclosed, enough to maybe jolly up an evening some.

Your old buddy, and feeling older all the time,

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