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RIP Bonnie Tyler
Jul. 12th, 2026 04:45 pmRehearsal:
As a part-French duet ("Si Demain"):
At Miscast 2026:
As a part-French duet ("Si Demain"):
At Miscast 2026:
reading, singing, and watching
Apr. 29th, 2026 11:00 amI'll be reading "Let There Be Fashioning" on the Thursday, April 30 Rattlecast. (The show had to be delayed from Monday because of a tech outage.) The prompt was: "Write a poem that uses the present tense as one of the ways in which it creates tension."
Organizing my mom's sewing box for the last time, 2008
The direct link to the live show (8 pm ET / 7 pm CT): https://youtube.com/live/nyJJLxIBX_U
Upcoming singing:
Tennessee Statehood Day - Saturday, May 30
Nashville Symphony Chorus (you can spot me to the right of the yellow overlay on the banner)
Free community concert, June 7. The program will include some Alleluias (Elaine Hagenberg, Randall Thompson et al.), Alice Parker/Robert Shaw settings, and the like.
Recently watching:
I've been sitting in on a fair number of student recitals this semester, in part to color in some corners of some creative projects in other realms, and in part because the kids are great and there's a ton of fabulous repertoire I hadn't previously encountered. Last night's harp recital by Phoebe Lin ended with a cover of Teresa Teng's "Ye Lai Xiang" (Tuberose) that I frankly liked better than the original; Riley Hale's percussion recital last Sunday included Vasco Mendonça's "Small Print," which is impressive and fun to see live:
Organizing my mom's sewing box for the last time, 2008
The direct link to the live show (8 pm ET / 7 pm CT): https://youtube.com/live/nyJJLxIBX_U
Upcoming singing:
Tennessee Statehood Day - Saturday, May 30
- Old Harp (New Harp of Columbia) singing at Tennessee State Museum, 10:00 - 11:30 am
- Sacred Harp singing at Tennessee State Archives, 12:30 - 2:00 pm
Nashville Symphony Chorus (you can spot me to the right of the yellow overlay on the banner)
Free community concert, June 7. The program will include some Alleluias (Elaine Hagenberg, Randall Thompson et al.), Alice Parker/Robert Shaw settings, and the like.
Recently watching:
I've been sitting in on a fair number of student recitals this semester, in part to color in some corners of some creative projects in other realms, and in part because the kids are great and there's a ton of fabulous repertoire I hadn't previously encountered. Last night's harp recital by Phoebe Lin ended with a cover of Teresa Teng's "Ye Lai Xiang" (Tuberose) that I frankly liked better than the original; Riley Hale's percussion recital last Sunday included Vasco Mendonça's "Small Print," which is impressive and fun to see live:
My first accidental project of the year: pandoro - literally "bread of gold," festively Veronese Christmas cake, and absolutely not what I'd planned to spend the first day of the year on, but having volunteered on New Year's Eve to bring a dessert to dinner on New Year's Day, I wanted to try something new, and its mention in Nigella Lawson's recipe for "Easy Holiday Trifle" (in Feast) caught my eye.
Fortunately, I am at this point experienced enough that I picked up a box of cake mix when I hit the store, and I did indeed end up assembling the trifle with backup cake rather than the pandoro, which was slow to rise and ultimately would have been too dense for a dessert that depends in part on syrup and time melding together stewed fruit and spongy carbs. I will confess to being inordinately pleased with how the pandoro turned out, though -- it smelled fantastic while it was baking, it tastes great, and rolling all the layers into it was a heck of a workout.
The trifle (apricots stewed in cardamom syrup) before the toppings (whipped cream, bourbon honey, pistachios and almonds) were added:
Fortunately, I am at this point experienced enough that I picked up a box of cake mix when I hit the store, and I did indeed end up assembling the trifle with backup cake rather than the pandoro, which was slow to rise and ultimately would have been too dense for a dessert that depends in part on syrup and time melding together stewed fruit and spongy carbs. I will confess to being inordinately pleased with how the pandoro turned out, though -- it smelled fantastic while it was baking, it tastes great, and rolling all the layers into it was a heck of a workout.
The trifle (apricots stewed in cardamom syrup) before the toppings (whipped cream, bourbon honey, pistachios and almonds) were added:
reading: "Insult to Injury"
Dec. 30th, 2024 11:21 pmThis poem appears in George Bilgere's 2024 chapbook, Cheap Motels of My Youth, and also online at Rattle.com. The narrator, a man in his sixties, comes across the air gun he used to shoot at cans when he was a teen, and tries it out on "a volume of poetry, slim,/ but not slim enough,/ by a poet I never liked":
... at which point I cackled at the savagery and decided to post about it here.
The pellet, as it happens,
made it farther than I ever did,
stopping on page sixty-two
... at which point I cackled at the savagery and decided to post about it here.
new poems in Tabula Rasa
Sep. 19th, 2024 11:43 pmOne fueled by rage over COVID ("Apostate"); the other, AIDS ("A Brief History of 歌 [gē]").
The issue (2024) can be read or downloaded for free at the Tabula Rasa site. (The 2022 issue remains available at that page, and has three earlier poems by me.)
The issue (2024) can be read or downloaded for free at the Tabula Rasa site. (The 2022 issue remains available at that page, and has three earlier poems by me.)
a 3 x 3 summing up of my summer
Sep. 2nd, 2024 06:33 pm
3 happy things
1. Autumn Sky Poetry Daily featured my sonnet "Paean to the Pommel Horse Guys" on August 15.
2. I successfully auditioned for the Nashville Symphony Chorus. I'll finally get to sing Beethoven's 9th! (And also some Vivaldi, Ravel, Mahler, and Handel, among other things.) This has been on my bucket list since I was a teenager, and the timing has never worked out before now.
3. Several visits from my honorary big sister, her partner, and their menagerie.
3 vexations
1. I tested positive for COVID for the very first time on July 13. Odds are high that I caught it from the dancers at New London Assembly, as I masked for virtually everything at the festival -- including when singing in performance -- except for meals, and I had lunch with that crew right before five tested positive that afternoon.
2. It's a month and a half later and I'm still coughing violently several times a day. This is not a surprise (this is why I was so bloody vigilant for literal years). I'm on all my usual meds and hopeful that it will be gone by the time I go onstage for the Vivaldi, but it is literally tiresome.
3. Pilea mollis (Moon Valley) is structurally significantly different from Pilea peperomioides (money plant). I did not know this before dividing my formerly healthy Moon Valley plant, purchased a year and a month ago in Philadelphia. It was not an expensive starter, and screwing up is part of the learning curve, but still. *sniffle*
July 2023, in my Muehlenberg College dorm room
The same plant in August 2024, after a year in my sunroom
3 topics I plan to post more about later
1. The 2024 San Francisco Early Music Society Baroque Workshop
2. The 2024 Amherst Early Music Festival Spring Break Workshop and Summer Festival (week 2)
3. The other pilea, which also holds sentimental value (it was a farewell gift from a museum colleague).
more joy over the water
May. 22nd, 2024 10:08 pmJoanne moved back to Nova Scotia a few weeks ago. For the send-off, I picked a couple of lines from her work to put on cakes:
It was a fun gathering. A bunch of us ended up in an impromptu knitting/crocheting half-circle at one end of the patio, discussing con-running, costuming goth weddings, and other past and future mayhem.
It was a fun gathering. A bunch of us ended up in an impromptu knitting/crocheting half-circle at one end of the patio, discussing con-running, costuming goth weddings, and other past and future mayhem.
sonnets and cake
Feb. 4th, 2024 02:13 pmI don't hop on my personal Twitter accounts regularly anymore (professionally ScienceTwitter is still a thing, but the students are more visible on Instagram, and I'm working out systems to post more frequently on and direct more traffic to the department website), but I peeked in this morning, when Paisley Rekdal posted on what makes a sonnet a sonnet. Tl;dr: it's the volta...
The discussion naturally brought forward other sonnets, among them Sam Cha's Motherfuckers talking shit about American sonnets.
( story a-sprawling / cake baked and frosted )
ETA: today's rabbit hole - discovering how the pinyin for "u" with the third tone will appear with the caron to the right of the u regardless of copy-pasting versions of it with the caron directly over the u, typing in unicodes, etc. Ah, typesetting/coding. And it's good to be reminded that the u+haček in Baltic/Slavic languages is a different critter.
The discussion naturally brought forward other sonnets, among them Sam Cha's Motherfuckers talking shit about American sonnets.
( story a-sprawling / cake baked and frosted )
ETA: today's rabbit hole - discovering how the pinyin for "u" with the third tone will appear with the caron to the right of the u regardless of copy-pasting versions of it with the caron directly over the u, typing in unicodes, etc. Ah, typesetting/coding. And it's good to be reminded that the u+haček in Baltic/Slavic languages is a different critter.
a fist in the air
Jan. 31st, 2024 10:13 pmErica Reid's "The Raft" is a banger. Two excerpts:
....we are all drowning these days, are we not? Don't you wake up
feeling you've reached your limit, that the worst must be past,
only to discover you're at the top of a spiritual Guggenheim,
a cool, white spiral of descent still awaiting you?
... No matter who you are, your very life
is rebellion, your love is a fist in the air.
Komm, Jesu, komm
Jan. 28th, 2024 02:01 pmThe most recent project I sang in:
[audio only for the first 7 1/2 minutes, then video-mosaic for the closing chorale]
[audio only for the first 7 1/2 minutes, then video-mosaic for the closing chorale]
recent-ish reading (poetry)
Dec. 10th, 2023 10:28 amGiles Andreae and Guy Parker-Rees, Giraffes Can't Dance (Orchard, 1999). A rhyming picture book about Gerald, a giraffe who's mocked mercilessly for poor dancing, but finds the right music with the help of a kind cricket. (This hits a very personal note for me, as someone who was made fun of in junior high for not knowing how to dance. Which, as noted elsewhere, is no longer the case.)
Arthur Russell, At the Car Wash (Rattle, 2023). A chapbook by a New Jersey attorney and landlord, about his youth and family in Sheepshead Bay, Brooklyn. The poems that stood out to me were "New Year's Eve," about his mother ("'You guys' was an actual color of light in her eyes"); "The Heavier Stone," which begins with "My dad died eight years ago. / Our relationship has improved a lot since then"; and "Unencumbered," a long poem about what we carry:
Coincidentally, Russell wrote today's "Poets Respond" feature - "Gravity in Jerusalem."
(Coincident because I'm typing this while waiting for my phone to finish recharging so I can venture out to Novelette and the book shop in hopes of wrapping up [so to speak] this year's Christmas shopping. That was the plan yesterday, but tornado sirens woke me from my nap, so.)
In Rattle's Fall 2023 issue, José A. Alcántara's "To a Friend Who Does Not Believe in God" bears witness both to unbelief and faith.
Arthur Russell, At the Car Wash (Rattle, 2023). A chapbook by a New Jersey attorney and landlord, about his youth and family in Sheepshead Bay, Brooklyn. The poems that stood out to me were "New Year's Eve," about his mother ("'You guys' was an actual color of light in her eyes"); "The Heavier Stone," which begins with "My dad died eight years ago. / Our relationship has improved a lot since then"; and "Unencumbered," a long poem about what we carry:
... I've learned that emotion conducts
some memories to the left and others to the right;
that feelings brand events for keeps
and segregate archival stuff from what
is only "by the way." The more that you remember,
the more there is of life, the more of time there is;
but time gathers in the past and drags you
back by the belt;
and when I think of how much trouble
I have had with emotion, I remind myself
of a stop sign in a hurricane...
Coincidentally, Russell wrote today's "Poets Respond" feature - "Gravity in Jerusalem."
(Coincident because I'm typing this while waiting for my phone to finish recharging so I can venture out to Novelette and the book shop in hopes of wrapping up [so to speak] this year's Christmas shopping. That was the plan yesterday, but tornado sirens woke me from my nap, so.)
In Rattle's Fall 2023 issue, José A. Alcántara's "To a Friend Who Does Not Believe in God" bears witness both to unbelief and faith.
A poem punched me in the face earlier tonight. I stopped by Novelette in search of a birthday gift for a friend. On opening Franny Choi's The World Keeps Ending, and the World Goes On (Ecco, 2022), these lines in "I Have Bad News and Bad News, Which Do You Want First" hit me:
COVID has been around long enough to show up in printed books of poetry distributed by mainstream publishers. Goddamn.
The library is about to reclaim its copy of Queen of Physics: How Wu Chien Shiung Helped Unlock the Secrets of the Atom (Union Square, 2019), a picture book with text by Teresa Robeson and illustrations by Rebecca Huang. Robeson is Chinese-Canadian-American and a mentee of Jane Yolen, none of which I knew while reading the book. I had encountered Wu's face and name via the 2021 Forever stamp in her honor, but hadn't remembered anything else about her before now. The book is well done.
The back pain and foot injury are still significantly (and literally) cramping my style, but I did venture out, masked, to a dance presentation last Saturday that included an in-progress version of Ink, choreographed by Jen-Jen Lin. I spent much of the evening pondering how I might draw the dance -- cobalt blue and yellow light stands, dancers in black and red on a black surface, the swooping white ribbon of Jen-Jen's solo -- and while I have not put pencil or marker to paper since leaving the studio, dwelling on the lines did engrave them a shade deeper in my memory.
One week ago, my mother had two COVID patients.
Now, she has thirty. What? I say. When did that happen?
though when's not the question I mean.
COVID has been around long enough to show up in printed books of poetry distributed by mainstream publishers. Goddamn.
The library is about to reclaim its copy of Queen of Physics: How Wu Chien Shiung Helped Unlock the Secrets of the Atom (Union Square, 2019), a picture book with text by Teresa Robeson and illustrations by Rebecca Huang. Robeson is Chinese-Canadian-American and a mentee of Jane Yolen, none of which I knew while reading the book. I had encountered Wu's face and name via the 2021 Forever stamp in her honor, but hadn't remembered anything else about her before now. The book is well done.
The back pain and foot injury are still significantly (and literally) cramping my style, but I did venture out, masked, to a dance presentation last Saturday that included an in-progress version of Ink, choreographed by Jen-Jen Lin. I spent much of the evening pondering how I might draw the dance -- cobalt blue and yellow light stands, dancers in black and red on a black surface, the swooping white ribbon of Jen-Jen's solo -- and while I have not put pencil or marker to paper since leaving the studio, dwelling on the lines did engrave them a shade deeper in my memory.
This book was published in 1970 by Delacorte (Seymour Lawrence imprint). The woman on the cover reminds me of tennis player Kim Clijsters, and the photo is my favorite part of the book.
Poems I bookmarked while getting ready to return the book, in their entirety:
Critical Can Opener
There is something wrong
with this poem. Can you
find it?
Lions Are Growing like Yellow Roses on the Wind
Lions are growing like yellow roses on the wind
and we turn gracefully in the medieval garden
of their roaring blossoms.
Oh, I want to turn.
Oh, I am turning.
Oh, I have turned.
Thank you.
April 7, 1969
I feel so bad today
that I want to write a poem.
I don't care: any poem, this
poem.
All Secrets of Past Tense Have Just Come My Way
All secrets of past tense have just come my way,
but I still don't know what I'm going to do
next.
a current brainworm
Jun. 4th, 2023 10:44 pmDifferent takes on the tarantella del Gargano:
With dancers:
With zest:
I dig this band:
On a sofa:
With castanets:
The late Owain Phyfe (our Renfaire and caroling gigs coincided for a few seasons):
Lyrics
With dancers:
With zest:
I dig this band:
On a sofa:
With castanets:
The late Owain Phyfe (our Renfaire and caroling gigs coincided for a few seasons):
Lyrics
2 recent videos I'm in
Feb. 17th, 2023 04:34 pmNew London Assembly, in two demos, plus the close of "Halfe-Hannekin":
(There's a longer clip of us practicing "Elspeth" on Flickr.)
Stay at Home Choir Polyphony Project (singing soprano throughout, on-screen very briefly):
Between deadlines, back issues being a literal pain in the gluteus medius, and feeling utterly fed up with people acting like COVID's no big deal, I am more my own society, my own fever and pain, etc., these days. Will this help tame the ever-burgeoning TBR pile? To be continued ...
(There's a longer clip of us practicing "Elspeth" on Flickr.)
Stay at Home Choir Polyphony Project (singing soprano throughout, on-screen very briefly):
Between deadlines, back issues being a literal pain in the gluteus medius, and feeling utterly fed up with people acting like COVID's no big deal, I am more my own society, my own fever and pain, etc., these days. Will this help tame the ever-burgeoning TBR pile? To be continued ...
meandering to Mastodon and other mayhem
Nov. 13th, 2022 12:51 pm
While I'm keeping "zirconium" at Twitter for the foreseeable future, I've set up http://mastodon.sdf.org/@zirconium (AKA "zirconium@mastodon.sdf.org") to get familiar with the landscape in case #ScienceTwitter and other key circles head on over. As with this blog, updates will be irregular and I don't -- can't -- read every item in my feeds, but establishing and keeping open lines of access is part of the battle.
I actually spent the bulk of my morning on handwritten correspondence, including this season's first holiday card, which is going to a Scandosotan friend I was reminded of when another friend (based in Stockholm) recommended Sallyswag, describing them as "the queer folk soul brass dancehall hip hop band":
(Yes, it's rather early to be sending December holiday cards, but this one is an Advent calendar, and given reports from other friends about letters taking scenic routes to, say, North Carolina, I am not sanguine about this one even arriving before Trinity term. Now that I've said it, watch it arrive before the GOTV postcards I put in yesterday's mail to Georgia...)
In the Department of Plus Ça Change, still feeling crummy but functional. Full-blown respiratory woe has sidelined me from work gatherings and choral commitments (and heavy-duty cough syrups now give me splitting headaches, great). But my sunroom remains a gorgeous sanctuary, I have lamb and Taiwanese spinach stew on my stove, Aaron Tveit is covering "Take Me Home Tonight" on the YouTube jukebox, and being home means other things get tended to, including the sorting of tomatoes (this year's harvest was entirely from volunteer plants, descended from seedlings Miel gave out last year). I'm planning on making green tomato-cheddar hand pies later today or tomorrow.
extended expiration dates for kits
Oct. 29th, 2022 01:40 pmIt took some digging, but I've ascertained that our COVID-19 testing kits (two via the university, two via the government) have extended expiration dates. Because they come from different manufacturers and lots, the ones originally good through mid-August now expire in February, and the ones with a June 2022 date now expire at the end of March.
Potentially helpful links:
https://www.fda.gov/medical-devices/coronavirus-covid-19-and-medical-devices/home-otc-covid-19-diagnostic-tests
https://diagnostics.roche.com/us/en/products/params/sars-cov-2-pilot-covid-19-at-home-test.html#expiration
https://accessbio.net/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/CareStart-COVID-19-Ag-Home-Test_Exp-Date-Extension-Notification_05_15M_V2.pdf
(The second and third links reflect the further digging required because neither lot number showed up on the FDA round-up.)
I am feeling a bit crummy at the moment, so I'm extra glad about holding firm on not signing up for things for a while.
In other news, the Poppea deal mentioned in the previous post turned out to be too good to be true -- what I received was not a score, but a small book of French essays and the libretto. But the vendor promptly gave me a refund, and IMSLP has a Russian edition, from which I've put Acts 1 and 2 on an iPad. My first playing-from-a-tablet! All sorts of milestones this year, I tell you.
And on that note, so to speak, it's back to the last batch of GOTV postcards. I've been listening to a lot of Merula, Handel, and Purcell while I work and write, and while this arrangement of "Would You Gain the Tender Creature" wouldn't be an audio-only favorite with me, I love how expressive the fellas are -- even with masks on, they're a joy to watch:
Potentially helpful links:
https://www.fda.gov/medical-devices/coronavirus-covid-19-and-medical-devices/home-otc-covid-19-diagnostic-tests
https://diagnostics.roche.com/us/en/products/params/sars-cov-2-pilot-covid-19-at-home-test.html#expiration
https://accessbio.net/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/CareStart-COVID-19-Ag-Home-Test_Exp-Date-Extension-Notification_05_15M_V2.pdf
(The second and third links reflect the further digging required because neither lot number showed up on the FDA round-up.)
I am feeling a bit crummy at the moment, so I'm extra glad about holding firm on not signing up for things for a while.
In other news, the Poppea deal mentioned in the previous post turned out to be too good to be true -- what I received was not a score, but a small book of French essays and the libretto. But the vendor promptly gave me a refund, and IMSLP has a Russian edition, from which I've put Acts 1 and 2 on an iPad. My first playing-from-a-tablet! All sorts of milestones this year, I tell you.
And on that note, so to speak, it's back to the last batch of GOTV postcards. I've been listening to a lot of Merula, Handel, and Purcell while I work and write, and while this arrangement of "Would You Gain the Tender Creature" wouldn't be an audio-only favorite with me, I love how expressive the fellas are -- even with masks on, they're a joy to watch:
our heart's joy reclineth
Oct. 12th, 2022 07:48 amThe budget-minding gods have smiled on me lately. A pair of eight-pound hand weights at a yard sale for $2. The Bärenreiter score of L'incoronazione di Poppea for $4.50.
And, a playable-enough harpsichord for $500:
This has been good fortune in several respects: I had planned a trip to Virginia in November to attend a ball and try out two other instruments (if they were still available by then), but the timing hadn't been ideal and got borked entirely by some other obligations. I am way less jittery about learning how to maintain and repair an "entry-level" instrument than I would be with something costing thousands of dollars. Collecting it made for a lovely road trip with the BYM, who was a very good sport about all the driving and hauling and has been both entertainingly curious and notably entertained (so to speak) by our new acquisition (Why is this piece in 6/2? What you just played isn't on the page, what the heck? [Adventures in figured bass!]). And Frank Hubbard's Three Centuries of Harpsichord Making is quite entertaining. I read the beginning of Ralph Kirkpatrick's foreword aloud to the BYM; he's a motorcycle mechanic, and it definitely resonated with him:
In other news, three of my poems appear in the new issue of Tabula Rasa, with "Learning Curve" as an Editor's Choice.
And, a playable-enough harpsichord for $500:
This has been good fortune in several respects: I had planned a trip to Virginia in November to attend a ball and try out two other instruments (if they were still available by then), but the timing hadn't been ideal and got borked entirely by some other obligations. I am way less jittery about learning how to maintain and repair an "entry-level" instrument than I would be with something costing thousands of dollars. Collecting it made for a lovely road trip with the BYM, who was a very good sport about all the driving and hauling and has been both entertainingly curious and notably entertained (so to speak) by our new acquisition (Why is this piece in 6/2? What you just played isn't on the page, what the heck? [Adventures in figured bass!]). And Frank Hubbard's Three Centuries of Harpsichord Making is quite entertaining. I read the beginning of Ralph Kirkpatrick's foreword aloud to the BYM; he's a motorcycle mechanic, and it definitely resonated with him:
At some time in the late 1940s, on the occasion of a concert in Cambridge, I was told of two graduate students in English at Harvard who had built what I believe was a clavichord. Such reports usually arrive with an invitation to inspect a cherished and totally unplayable instrument. Having contrived politely to dodge the invitation, I never found out what the qualities of this instrument might have been.
In other news, three of my poems appear in the new issue of Tabula Rasa, with "Learning Curve" as an Editor's Choice.
