November 15, 2015

This week I had a couple gigs ushering for Philharmonia Baroque. They were playing Brandenburg concerti and there was an interesting observation in the program notes:

Friday I organized a group expedition to Golden Gate Park. There were five of us, a nicely sized group, and we had a very enjoyable dynamic.

M "smacking" a packet she found in a cache. When you smacked the package it was supposed to explode and a balloon would jump out and inflate. We are all standing back.

M on top of a tree stump she insisted on climbing

View from the tree stump (we all made it up eventually)

This guy isn't a cache!

Some tree sap icicles

Majestic

I am currently reading three books and they are all non-fiction, new for me. The first is a huge book about Stravinsky and the Russian traditions that I read at home because it's too big to carry around. The second is a book about solo Bach; it's a performance guide with music history mixed in. The third is about wildlife in rivers. There's crazy stuff in there. Life is just crazy. So alpine brooks flow really quickly and are always falling over rocks; they have no backwaters, no surface film and very little sediment on the bottom. But the larvae of some insects can live in brooks by spinning little silk mats on rocks to hold onto, or spinning nets that catch food particles. Caddisfly larvae build protective cases from rocks or twigs that also act as anchors in the fast water. Cases that are made of rocks include long narrow stones inside for ballast, and twig cases have "rudder" twigs on the ends that keep the case facing upstream towards the food. And all this is high up in the mountains where you wouldn't think anything could live. Crazy. The whole book is like that. It's better than a novel.

Yesterday I went to Berkeley early to do some caching on the UCBerkeley campus before my ushering duties.

The University Library

Tree's leaning on the concrete

This afternoon I performed a Vivaldi concerto (Il Favorito) with the SFCM baroque orchestra (on a concert with three solo and three orchestral concerti). It went over really well - a highly successful performance. Even Ian liked it. The patrons were very enthusiastic and I fielded many compliments. The band has really pulled together and it's awesome fun to play together.

- Antisocial Violinist