Big news in my town

Big news in cloudy town, originally uploaded by TedSher.

Everyone who is someone will be there.

Hayden’s trumpet concerto is a warhouse every trumpeter wants to master. Even I in my brief career as a neophyte cornetist gave it a shot (too hard, gave up after two months). But for those can play it, it’s a been there done that task. The piece is a cold fish.
Until this morning. While dogging the oval track at the rec center, I heard a version on radio that sent me into the stratosphere. Sounded like no one I knew in the boys’ club of classical trumpet players. The player, I discovered later on the MPR playlist, is Alison Balsom who, as this picture suggests, isn’t in the boys’ club.

Guideposts

I prayed a lot in those day...prayed that my young wife would survive the cancer, that my tremor would go away,that Sylvia would touch me there, but none of these things happened. I quit praying and shortly after was awarded tenure and a promotion.

Opening of "Painting Before and After Words" at the Mpls Institute of Arts

Opening of "Painting Before and After Words" at the Mpls Institute of Arts, originally uploaded by TedSher.

Paintings of Margaret Wall-Romano

Interview with Paul Desmond, University of North Dakota student union cafeteria, Oct. 13, 1956.

TS: I’d like to welcome you to the University of North Dakota, Mr. Desmond...
PD: Thank you.
TS: How was your trip here? Do you have a band bus?
PD: No no, no bus, station wagon, a Ford. You really don’t need a bus with a quartet because a quartet isn’t a, er a band, I guess you’d say. Station wagon’s are good.
TS: Gets kind of crowded, isn’t it?
PD: Yea, well it would be easier if we left Joe and Norm home, ha ha you know with all their things, but...heck...the bass goes on top and the drums in the back. It works out okay, even if we’re jammed in there.
TS: The bass is on the roof of the car?
PD: Oh yea, it’s okay. It’s in a hard case and tied down pretty well.
TS: Aren’t you afraid someone will steal it when you’re at a diner or something? Seems strange that’s all.
PD: Oh yea?
TS: Well I mean that’s an expensive bass I bet. Wouldn’t take very long to cut it loose, would it?
PD: It’s alright, okay? No one steals bass fiddles between here and Chicago.
TS: Okay.
PD: Have you ever heard us before?
TS: Not live, no. Hard to hear live jazz up here but I have your Basin Street album though. Love it. I mean really. You guys are far out.
PD: Thanks. That one’s the latest, like it alot, specially college kids. Anything you like special?
TS: The Judy Garland song, the one that has bells, clang clang...
PD: Trolley song.
TS: Yea.
PD: Nice to be interviewed by someone who knows what he’s talking about. Doesn’t happen very often, you’d be surprised.
TS: Your jazz is too far out?
PD: Well sometimes we go where angels guide us so to speak. I put my trust in unseen things, things we don’t know what they mean or if they’re crazy or what not. Being out there is sometimes weird. Goddam. Being in your mom’s stomach is the other way around in many ways...leave the form and structure in outerspace. Goddam.
TS: What’s your role?
PD: Getting Dave back on track when he wanders out there.
TS: What’d you do before you joined the quartet?
PD: Starved man.
TS: Yea.
PD: Gotta split. They’re getting ready for the next set. Nice talking to ya young man.

April 19, 1993

April 19, 1993, originally uploaded by TedSher.

Now you take Heathcliff

As the sun is about to rise over the eastern horizon of my neighborhood, Duane locks the backdoor of his house next door and heads for the garage. He's off to early mass at St. John Cantius. It's 5 below so he's wearing his heavy dress coat and scarf. He would never wear a parka to mass because he's of that generation that dresses up for the Lord, even when most others don't.
I don't go to church except for a funeral or a wedding, but Lord thoughts do come to mind from time to time. Not this morning though because as I watch Duane from my kitchen window and after his car leaves the garage, I notice animal tracks on a new layer of snow. When the sun emerges low, I go out and look.

Now you take Heathcliff

Definitely a rabbit.

Now you take Heathcliff

We see them in the summer munching on grass and flowers. The one the live trap captures I take across the river to release. Rabbits can't swim. Some say the eastsiders do the opposite and release them on our side. Still, when your garden is overrun, what are you going to do?
In wintertime, the livetrap is put away and the rabbits are night creatures. I've never seen a rabbit around here during the day in winter but the tracks reveal a busy night.
You can see the raspberry bush on the windmill was a busy place last night, tracks going to and fro.
The other location of rabbit interest was a stuffed animal wintering in our backyard.

Now you take Heathcliff

Now you take Heathcliff.
He or she was in my step daughter's collection of stuffed animals for some 40 years. When Mary grew up and married a Norwegian, she moved to Oslo to begin a new life and learn a new language. Among the childhood possessions she left behind was this stuffed bear whose name Mary forgot. She could afford to ship only a few dolls and directed me to do with the bear whatever I wanted. I put him in the adirondack, named him Heathcliff after an Emily Bronte character, and he hasn't budged since.

Now you take Heathcliff

The tracks indicate at least one rabbit and Heathcliff were in each other's company last night. I would not want to make too much of that, unless you're a child.