nostalgia (198/365g)

reminiscing today on the patio Papa told a few entertaining stories about Uncle Lenny, grandpa's brother, who I didn't really know very well, despite his living in syracuse and living longer than my grandfather.

The story goes that Uncle Lenny was extremely intelligent and very quick to learn, but rigorously opposed to showing off. He would answer questions correctly on tests until he got to where he knew he passed and then just stop answering from then on. He passed all his classes with the barest minimum. This kind of behavior got him sent to the army, where, with his academic background, they wanted to make him a lieutenant, but he told them he'd rather be an enlisted man, and begin as a private. He had to learn to drive a tank despite being 6foot five and very broad, and barely fitting in the tank. His team had to learn how to extricate him from the tank in an emergency, by breaking his legs, but that never ended up happening.

His wife, Esther, after having been married for several, perhaps 10 or 15 years, in the family, pointed out one day to my great grandmother, lenny's mother, that she had never heard her play. Her first job was playing for silent films, and there was a piano in the room. Papa was there too, it was just his grandmother, Aunt Esther and him, and his grandmother sat down and said, "these are wildflowers" and played, "not any kind of specific piece, but it sounded like wildflowers."

...

It was a lazy kind of day, except for Brian, who ran 21km round trip in the blistering heat to Auburn, right next to the mass pike, to update his ez-pass, and return our 20 year old transponder that is no longer connected to any account.

I went through old papers in the basement this morning, and stumbled across some photocopies of music that I played with Theodore, Henry and Edward. 

Centa was wearing my dress to work, which was a weird thing to see - the one I bought for Danielle's wedding - I guess it's just hanging in the closet.

The wildfire-haze is still hanging over the NE, which just feels weird. The kids played pool and risk and  lots of basketball (i was awakened at 7am by dribbling outside the window), and I read the book Phil gave me and took photos, and fell asleep in the greenhouse for 3 hours.

hoops and dreams (197/365g)

many days missing for technical reasons.

but here i am again, here we are again. we have landed in the usa and are ready to begin our summer of paradise beneath the wildfire suns (there are wildfires in canada which is making the air hazy here, and the sun appear strange - appocalyptic, rainer calls it).

due to jet lag we were up at 5 am. 

first thing (with coffee) was to play a bit of the new banjo.

EVERYTHING IS BIGGER HERE!

(also the thrift stores!) walking around savers with henry and edward i ran into christine who was there with her kids walter and donald, donald celebrating his 13th birthday today. what a coincidence. i bought 10 books for no particular reason.

reading: all my friends are dead

for edwards birthday LAST year, he had gotten a sweet basketball hoop that just needed assembly. no problem, would go quickly - a few minutes. ended up taking edward, henry and me 4 hours, and we needed all the help we could get from grandpapa, brian, theodore, felix and rainer.

cooked dinner in the evening, and then went off alone to have a spot of beer and download some open source programs for my new laptop. 

still don't know how to use my cpl filter, but i'll figure it out i hope. now i will just read one of these new books and fall asleep.

supposed to be able to control reflections

like a line (98/365g)

i went to vienna to see renate's ausstellung in page 84 - actually the office of an advertising agency with the motto "„Out on the edge you see all kind of things you can’t see from the center. Big, undreamed-of-things – the people on the edge see them first.“ their name and motto they got by opening vonnegut's Player Piano to a random page (page 84)... Her ausstellung was really beautiful.

talked to maria organ about henry and found some possibilities for him to play but she was thinking they are too difficult - we'll see what he ends up with. 

right when i got to vienna, otto was waiting for me at the oenb, where he had pre-reserved a piece "kassandras ruf" for me at the musiksammelung. we spent some time photographing the score for personal reasons only, and then went together to a lovely coffee shop in the sun, where we payed more than 30 euros for 2 coffees and a single kaiserschmarrn. i had invited magda(lena) from contra to the gallery, and so we hung out together a bit, including for a pizza dinner. altogether i spent 5 hours in the train today, almost all of which was updating and editing my blog. there are no quick tasks. but i did it and now i feel good! - next up, pictures!

tuesday is the new monday i guess (97/365g)

the whole day today felt like monday. now the week feels too short! also, today was the first day since the time-change where we had to really wake up early enough. the workers for the rollos got here at 7:30 and hammered and banged around till the afternoon, finishing the job in record time. i went to work and then to ysop with only 2 people (not including philipp came over for a little bit in there) and we argued about payment, because i really don't want them to pay extra when not so many people come - i feel like that's not fair. this time i won the argument. 

theodore practiced calling a contra dance when he got back from singschule after 9pm. 

felix had a soccer tournament at school and apparently his team won every match. that was pretty cool for him. 

sadly vacation is over already (96/365g)

easter monday was fun and stress-free. 

mary and her family headed out in the afternoon after a wonderful walk to the mur where we fed the ducks and threw rocks in the river. we did a woodcut photoshoot where theodore got to release the shutter of the hasselbad. we played some tunes and got ready for some contra stuff, and also tried some songs for a potential gig.

easter sunday (95/365g)

first easter in years that i had no gig of any kind. first easter in years with nice weather. honestly the best and nicest easter in years. 

brian sang mass in the morning, i got all the kids to even go with me! it was an absolutely perfect day. we waited to eat until mary and family got here. the kids made an egg hunt that may have been a bit too difficult for jacob, but he was excited about it just the same. got jacob to eat vegetables (apparently that is amazing!). watched the pirate, an absolutely terrible movie, but everyone watched the whole way through, so i guess that's something.

we made the world's shortest easter fire 24 hours late: everyone threw one piece of christmas tree in the fire and we sang dona nobis pacem, then i put the fire out and we all went back inside - i was more nervous than usual about the rules. 

the easter bread is rising beautifully shortly before midnight (94/365g)

worlds shortest session with phil - brought him fisher's hornpipe the book to read, and we played a song or two before he had to leave for hauptbahnhof. 

we started the easter bread, wrote on easter eggs. theodore and i went online shopping for a banjo on craigslist in worcester. ended up ordering one online to be delivered. this summer trip is getting expensive - fiddle stompbox banjo etc.

we didn't make an easter fire. mary called after 10pm telling us that they were arriving tomorrow after all, so we were overjoyed. these holiday preparations always take a strong toll on my mental health, i realize that i am the only one who cares enough to make the things happen, but i am totally sad if they don't happen, and i wish anyone else cared about something enough to make it happen at any cost.