https://www.theguardian.com/news/2017/aug/10/adele-vocal-cord-surgery-why-stars-keep-losing-their-voices

In spite of all my preparation, I still missed my first class. There were 2 parking areas I had scoped out ahead of time, thinking that they would have vacancies (because now there are parking garages on campus). Nope. I drove around for about half an hour, getting more and more upset. Barely avoided a couple of fender benders. Finally I got off campus proper. On the way in, I had noticed some parking by the athletic fields; I checked that out. By permit only. (What kind of permit?) Still further away there was some parking on the side of the street on Martin Ave. I parked there and it looked safe and legal, but I had no idea how far from campus I was.

I went home and checked Googlemaps. It’s about a mile. OK, that’s a  possibility. Would be difficult walking a mile in the rain / snow though.

Another possibility is to get up at 5 am, drive in at 6, and be in the parking lot at 6:30 — then sit there and wait to see when the lot starts filling up. The problem with this idea over the long term is that 1) I am unable to drive in the dark and 2) if I wait too late to make the drive, I’ll run into work traffic.

A third possibility is public transportation. When I sat in on a class 5 years ago there was a free shuttle bus that came from a nearby shopping center. The free shuttle bus has been discontinued (because of the new parking garages), but it’s possible that there is a bus with a similar route.

In the meantime, my car’s brakes were acting up this morning. So my lovely husband has volunteered to take me to / from campus til my car is fixed. This will mean getting there early and leaving late, but that’s fine!

What a disaster! Well, it could have been much worse (brakes failing in the parking lot, having an accident). And it was Lecture 1 that I missed. Would have been worse to miss, say,  Lecture 17 on the history of Diminished and Augmented Chords.

I feel ashamed and humiliated — “If I were a better driver or was able to think faster on my feet I could have found a way to make it to class. How did all the other students do it? I’m so incompetent.” But then — I thought of one of the students who had spoken at orientation on Friday. He talked about how much he had grown over the past 2 years; when he had his first performance lab he got partway through and then could not remember the rest of the lyrics of the piece he was performing. He had to walk off the stage. But he came back, and the next attempt was better.

I finally found the classroom locations. It’s right on the registration page (where you sign up / pay for classes). There’s a scrolling sidebar on the left, and you have to make an additional click to reveal the location.

That is the only place I’ve been able to find it!

If you search online for HCC  + location of classes, first it directs  you to the catalog (which tells you the campus only), then reassuringly says there is a notice in the lobby of each building.

Classroom locations for each class are published in our Schedule of Classes brochure. Specific room numbers are posted in each building lobby on the day of class and can also be found on our daily class schedule for classes that have started.

I had held out hope for the daily class schedule webpage, but I just found out it is for “Continuing Education” only — non credit classes.

I’m just grumbling. Back in the old days you received something in the mail. That you could hold in your hand as you wandered around campus. While clutching your map. IN YOUR HANDS. None of this online stuff.

I remember finding the Physics building on the PSU campus — ALL the way down the N-S road from the dorm, then turn right and go east for a few miles. It took me a very long time before I dared to go diagonally. When I did finally head out into that unknown territory, I found a small Sweetgum tree that had unusual colors in the fall — instead of the usual reds / yellows it turned a sort of magenta-pink. Pinkest tree I had seen before, or since.

Anyway, here I am awake SEVERAL HOURS earlier than usual, just grumbling. I wonder what will be this semester’s Pink Tree.

Pink tree (and other colors too!) available here. I’ve purchased trees through this artisan and they are beautiful.

https://www.etsy.com/listing/253919900/bashful-spring-beaded-wire-tree?ref=listing-shop-header-2

George Walker, first African American composer to win Pulitzer Prize, dies at 96

Dr. Walker, who died Aug. 23 at 96, at a hospital in Montclair, N.J., found limited success as a concert pianist, despite early critical acclaim and support from leading pianists such as Rudolf Serkin, his instructor at Curtis. He said he faced racial discrimination — “a pressure-resistant stone wall” — from managers, talent agencies and orchestras who passed over him for white performers. At the same time, he suffered agonizing stomach pain, ulcer attacks that left him hospitalized for as long as a month. Yet Dr. Walker went on to establish himself as a revered composer, a pathbreaking music teacher and a powerful critic of racial discrimination in classical music. In 1996, he became the first African American to win the Pulitzer Prize for music, for his song cycle “Lilacs,” set to stanzas from Walt Whitman’s poem “When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom’d.”

Note — on looking this up — it’s a long poem in free verse, written in 1865. It is an elegy for Lincoln, though he is not mentioned by name in the poem.

One of his best-known works was also his earliest: “Lyric for Strings,”which was written in 1946 as the second movement of his first string quartet. The piece was inspired by the death of his grandmother, a former slave.

With mixed success, he sought to be viewed simply as a pianist-composer, without a racial label attached. When he did begin alluding to jazz standards and spirituals in his work — after attending a 1968 music symposium in Atlanta, where he said he met another black orchestral composer for the first time — he buried the references in atonal pieces that utilized complex time signatures and nontraditional chord progressions.

“He took these simple, elemental melodies and abstracted them so that only someone who knows what to listen for can perceive they’re buried in the fabric of the music,” said his son Gregory Walker, a violinist and former concertmaster of the Boulder Philharmonic Orchestra in Colorado. “You could think of that as a metaphor for his life. There he is working in this white, classical European idiom and mastering it. But he has a grandmother who was a slave, and is part of [African American] culture.”

Photo from Washington Post — taken in 1996

I needed a shorthand title, like LOTR or ST:TNG or ASOIAF.

Provisional title “Last of the 300 Worlds”

I had taken a long break from No Man’s Sky but when I found out that the game world was wrapping up in July 24th, I jumped back in for the last 2 weeks. “I’m up to 200 and some, why not aim for an even 300.” During this time I recorded about 20 hrs of footage. When I make the final videos I think it would be fine to insert some footage from the previous exploration (ex. if I want to do an episode on ALL the kinds of Gervays), but for the most part I want to rely on, well, the last of the 300 worlds.

It really was a nice survey of planets — I did find several of each type. Also, it was amazing that I FINALLY found a planet that had three of my favorite things on it — lush grasses and plants, wide oceans, and Gervays. Still hard to believe I found one like that; I doubt I will ever find another!