First day without official outside appointments in quite a while, so finish up the San Francisco Composer's Chamber Orchestra press release for the June 7 concert, styled as Variations on the Ghost of Sousa Dancing (info at markalburgerevents.blogspot.com).
Note this is not exactly Ghost Dancing (the 1890 movement evidently had one of its last strongholds in the South Dakota Badlands, at top),
but one wonders what the visually staid John Philip Sousa
or his band, would have looked like in a similar situation.
The farthest afield wander today is to the local Chevron (founded 1911 as Standard Oil of California) to pick up newspapers (hm, isn't that what much of the fighting is about?, as below).
Finish up the June 2008 issue of 21st-Century Music (online now at 21st-centurymusic.blogspot.com and soon at 21st-centurymusic.com) and begin the July. And speaking of finishing, reminds one of "Finishes burst" from San Rafael News: Conference Room Technique, based not on the pseudo-militarism of Sousa, but evidently the real thing, in setting a declassified C.I.A. document (suspect that the dude[s] above would have difficulty clandestinely making their way to their goal therein). Harriet and I rehearse AIDSong and CRT in preparation for May 9 show (info also at the events site above), and record the latter.
Enters room quickly but (and) quietly
Stands in the doorway
Opens fire on the first subject to react
Swings across the room toward center of the mass
Covers group to prevent individual dangerous reactions fires burst of rounds
Finishes burst commends (commands) shift
On commend (command) shift
Opens fire on the opposite side
Finishes burst commends (commands) shift
Kills the survivors with two-round burst
Leaves propaganda
(the rest from an old military handbook)
How to Survive on Land and Sea
In the air
In the water
In a worldwide war of movement
You may suddenly find yourself stranded
In unfamiliar situations
Lost in the arctic
Or in the ocean
Or on an island
Or jungle
Or the desert
You may tend to magnify the hazards of these foreign occupations
These unfamiliar situations
Do not panic
Ah, the trials of life, as the looking-rather-Christ-like Briton Riviere (1840-1920) Prometheus Bound would testify -- just in case you were wondering about that blog title....
