Yesterday�s news

Yesterday was absolutely beautiful, the perfect summer day that we had been missing. We cleaned up the remains of the felled pine, raking up the twigs and branches, and threw everything into the woods behind our house. The area cleared is really very bare now. I thought a neat way to fill it would be to plant an English-style hedge maze. The only problem: I sure as hell don�t want to be the one looking after it.

Friends of ours have sold their house and are moving to Nova Scotia where one of their sons lives with his family. We have known A. and S. since we moved here. A. was head of the English school board for many years, and at one time was quite an accomplished pianist. He continued to give lessons after his retirement and came to all the concerts at the music department, sitting as a juror on scholarship auditions. I shall miss these folks mightily.

When A. broke the news to Hubby, he dropped by the house with a stack of mini-LPs (48 rpm-sized records that run at 33 1/3, having perhaps 10 minutes of music per side) issued by CAPAC in the mid to late 1970s advertising its member composers. Many of those composers are now deceased, some were actually famous, and others I have heard of but were not household words. Then there are those names I have never seen before, people whose biographies describe them as up-and-coming, who have many credentials behind them and nothing but promise ahead of them. What became of these composers? Did they get caught up in the academic grind and stop composing? Were they crushed by the public disdain for new music in general and sought other ways to make a living? Were they just not good enough at their m�tier and decided, wisely, to do something else? I suppose I could find out, but somehow the mystery is more exciting than the disappointment of the inevitable answers.

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