The Geek Squad

On Sunday, after cleaning up from the cookout/party the night before, I received a somewhat distressed phone call from composer Ezra Sims.

He explained that his five-year old IBM ThinkPad computer is on its' last legs and quickly dying. No smoke yet, but the fan appeared to stop working and it was generating excessive heat.

Sounding rather despondent, Ezra explained that he needed to get the notebook repaired or to purchase a new one ASAP. Frankly, he was in a state of panic and I could immediately relate to his feeling of helplessness. These days, a composer without a computer and Internet access is like a fish out of water. I suspect that the recent heat wave we have been having was a contributing factor as well.

I hopped into my Honda and dashed over to his pad in Cambridge where we then strolled two blocks over to BestBuy at the Galleria Mall to see what they could do for him.

His mission was to discuss his repair or purchase options with a representative of the "Geek Squad" and take appropriate action. My role was to function as his 3rd-party independent computer consultant, translator, and cultural ambassador. I think I was also summoned to act as psychological proxy, since buying modern technology is a daunting task for anyone. It's a major purchase for Ezra, and it involves change and lots of stress.

As Ezra will readily admit, he is in his 80s and could benefit from assistance on some matters. He was concerned that he would have trouble relating to the 20-somethings from the Geek Squad, since the young people wearing the blue shirts on the BestBuy sales floor seem prone to ramble on in an unknown alien language. They are make assumptions about what you need, and jump to premature conclusions. Whatever the language, the Geeks talk rapidly and converse at a decibel level that is far too soft for Ezra to hear. Even in the best of circumstances it would be difficult to hear what they are saying over the blaring rock music the store pipes in through the public address system.

First we brought his terminally ill notebook to the Geek Squad ER for triage. A nice Russian fellow delivered the grim news. It didn't have much life left in it, repairs would be expensive and "not virth it."

Facing reality, Ezra decided to purchase a new PC. The Russian guy referred us to a young fellow with long dark hair who works on the sales floor wearing the requisite blue BestBuy polo shirt. We had a little trouble understanding the sales associate at first because of his tongue ring.

The technical sales guy was very patient with us, and looked at Ezra in amazement as he explained what he needed a computer for. Ezra talked to him about the early days of computing at Marvin Minsky's original MIT Artificial Intelligence Lab, and about the one of a kind MS DOS-based microtonal sound synthesis program he would be using on the new notebook. Ezra is also dependent on the IBM "TrackPoint" pointer, and that narrowed down his selection.

IBM ThinkPads are now manufactured in China by Lenovo, and the business division of BestBuy sells them online. The Lenovo product line is not available in the store, but the sales associate led us to a computer monitor where he looked up and displayed nearly 300 options and standard configurations. Ultimately, Ezra, the sales associate, and myself narrowed it down to a model that fits Ezra's modest budget. It comes with Windows XP and appears to have all of the features he will need. Ezra entered his customer information into the webpage at the store, and was told that the notebook will be shipped directly to his apartment.

The next phase of this story will occur later in the week when I head over to assist Ezra in transferring his old programs and data from the dying computer to the new one. It will be interesting to see how easily that goes.

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Composer Cookout

This past weekend provided an opportunity to reconnect with some old friends that belong to the universe of composers.

We had them over for a cookout on Saturday, just before the torrential rains passed through the area. The storm system was related to hurricane Bill, which did not make landfall, but passed by without major incident. Intense and tropical summer weather was the order of the day, and the heat and humidity remained in the atmosphere long after the heavy downpours.

The composers at the gathering included John Watrous, Herman Weiss, Pasquale Tassone, Eric Schwartz, Armand Qualliotine, and myself. The accompanying "civilian" population included our beautiful, kind, tolerant, and sympathetic spouses as well as a mutual good friend Lora Martino. The common theme was that Lora's late husband Don had been our teacher at one time or another.

Occasionally related and random teenagers would stop by to grab a hamburger and look puzzlingly at the assortment of people crowded onto our small deck behind the house. The old folks talked about violinist Rudoff Kolish, his Orgone energy collector, choral conductor Lorna Cooke de Varron ("Cookie"), and many other people or musical connections that are common between us.

Renowned composer/orchestrator Conrad Pope dialed in with Skype from California to video conference with the us. He has been working hard as usual in that business. For the past 25 years or so, Conrad has labored around the clock and on weekends to meet deadlines for Hollywood movie productions. If you have been to see any movies in the past few decades, you have heard his soundtracks.

The cookout was a success, and somehow I was able to manage being a host and the Skype video conference in addition to grilling chicken, hamburger, chicken breast, fish, and vegetables on a charcoal grill located well behind the house. We used a basket on a rope to periodically deliver the cooked (and over-cooked) food items up to the hungry composers waiting on the deck above. Everyone brought wonderful side dishes, and nobody went home hungry.

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Dee Effers Swarm 09

According to Wikipedia: Swarm describes a behaviour of an aggregate of animals of similar size and body orientation, generally moving en mass in the same direction. The term can be applied to fish, insects, birds, various microorganisms such as bacteria, and people.

Dee Effers refers to a swarm of friends that formed a strong bond and community in the 1960s and early '70s. The social unit was initially based in a suburban town in New York State colloquially referred to by its residents as "DF" (the abbreviation of Dobbs Ferry). After graduating from DF Public High School, members of the Dee Effers systematically dispersed across the globe, making their mark on global politics, contemporary art, literature, drama, music, science, and technology. They infiltrated the highest ranks of society, and established a silent but global presence. The highly-decentralized organization maintains contact via email and social-media such as LinkedIn, Facebook, and to a lesser degree, blogs and Twitter.

While their powerful organization is not known to the general public, the Dee Effers convene regularly in regional subgroups of the face-to-face space to periodically discuss the state of the world, its culture, and politics.

While most of the earth's population was distracted by the high-profile international G-8 Summit meeting Italy, on Saturday July 11th a secret enclave of the New England Chapter of the Dee Effers was called to order to discuss and find solutions to the formative social, cultural, economic, and ecological issues facing humanity.

Here is a very rare photo of regional Principals of this secret organization. From left to right: Corky, Jim, Susan, and Kim. Their last names are being withheld to protect their true identity.

The secluded venue for the semi-annual meeting was the beautiful home of Kim and his wife Susannah in Concord MA. Their contemporary house is located in a quiet community embedded in a natural enclave that feels and looks like Vermont, even though it's not far from Boston proper. Kim and Susannah were joined by their two teenage children (Ellissa and Cray). Their huge friendly dog Haley kept watch over the surroundings. Susan came with her husband Tom, Corky with Kathy, and Jim with Willemien were accompanied by their 17 year-old son Joseph.

Joseph and Cray, both into baseball, spent some of the time playing catch in the back yard.

Soon after arrival, we took a short stroll over to the private pond nearby....

From those who took a swim, the report was that the water was fresh and surprisingly warm for New England. This particular pond was once a cranberry bog with seven fresh-water springs feeding it. It's also a secluded fishing hole, and a gathering place for neighbors in the community.

Back at the house we continued the conversations in the kitchen and began snacking on hors d'oeuvres and sipping on wine.

The action moved out to the outside deck, where the summer weather was idyllic and the food was scrumptious. Special mention should be made of Kim's superb gazpacho soup, Cathy's salad, and Susan's tart yet sweet nectarine pie - although everything on the table was delicious. After it got dark, we moved inside again to feast on Susan's pie and vanilla ice cream.

I can not reveal the specific content of the Dee Effers conversation, since it is highly confidential, but I can say that it covered 40 years of history and a lot of good laughs. What struck me about the discourse was the interesting perspective we shared from our unique but individual experiences of world developments. The meetings of the group have impressively evolved from a nostalgic waxing of 1970s redux, to the discourse of a real-time interactive community that proactively thinks about and reacts to important ideas and issues of the present.


It was a very productive meeting of the minds, and I think that even the associate members of the group (spouses and children) felt the good vibes that emanated from the Dee Effers discourse.

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Lunch at Bertucci's

On Wednesday I had lunch with Kim Novick at Ristorante Bertucci's at the Alewife MBTA station in Cambridge.

Kim is a high powered Internet marketing executive and consultant who specializes in hybrid-experience design and brand strategy. I've known him for about 40 years - since High School.

http://www.knovick.com/

Kim is just back from a business trip to NY, and is full of great ideas, enthusiasm, and all-around insightful information. We talked about technology, world affairs, the environment, and potential areas of business opportunity and professional career development.

I ordered the sausage and pepper focaccia sandwich, and Kim went for a bowl of minestrone soup and a large side dish of broccoli (without cheese sauce).


Oh yeah, Kim is a certified Deconstructing-Jim blog addict.

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Dinner with Friends

Last night we had some good friends over for dinner. It was an opportunity to celebrate the recent birthdays of two of our guests: composers Ezra Sims (1/16) and Robert Ceely (1/17).

Sims and Ceely have known each other since 1954 when they were classmates at Mills College in California studying with Darius Milhaud and Leon Kirchner. Both composers ended up moving to Boston, where they have become local icons and resident gurus of the new music scene. I met them both when I moved to here in 1973, and have remained in contact ever since.

left to right: Ezra, Jim, Bob

Our conversations over dinner covered a host of interesting topics, and brought back a lot of memories. It was interesting to hear stories about their student years, the teachers that they had studied with (such as Bob's late teacher at NEC, Francis Judd Cooke), and about mutual friends and acquaintances (such as composer David Rakowski and pianist Tim McFarland).

The Ceely's said they will be attending the upcoming Opera Boston's production of Shostakovich's surrealistic opera (based on a short story by Nikolai Gogol) titled The Nose. Rarely staged in the U.S., the work was suppressed by Stalin in the U.S.S.R after its 1930 premiere. Ezra hypothesized that Stalin's objection related to with a particular gesture in the trombones.

The conversation turned to the post-war craze of orgone energy collectors, and Bob mentioned that composer Ralph Shapey had a large box known as an orgone accumulator at his house in New York. Bob had rented a room from the rough-around-the-edge composer for $30 per month. (Shapey probably got into orgone energy through violinist Rudolf Kolish who was an avid follower of Wilhelm Reich and his outlandish theories). Shapey also would listen to his metronome endlessly.

Bob expressed strong opinions (as he often does) regarding the recently published autobiography of composer John Adams and about his opera "Dr. Atomic" which he saw at a local movie theatre broadcast from the Metropolitan Opera performance. We also had a spirited discussion about Broadway composer/lyricist Stephen Sondheim and his studies with Princeton 12-tone composer Milton Babbitt. As usual, the name of Elliott Carter came up too. It was said that Babbitt's music is more "tuneful" than Carter.

Bob asked Ezra about a theory book by Serge Inanovitch Taneiev (1856-1915) titled "Convertible Counterpoint in the Strict Style." In 1962 it was published in the US in a translation by G. Ackley Brower who was disciple of Dr. Percy Goetschius. Ezra had apparently studied with Brower. The book, at least in translation is rather incomprehensible and full of mathematical symbols. Ezra explained the the original intention was to include a circular decoding calculator along with the book, but unfortunately the extra expense related to the post-war paper shortage made publishing the book along with the transposing wheel impractical.

Somehow we got talking about Dr. Charles Burney, the famous English music historian (1726-1814). One of my teachers use to call me "Dr. Burney" for reasons that to this day are still unclear. Jonatha Ceely, an expert in English history and culture, explained that Dr. Burney was the father of novelist Frances (or "Fanny") Burney. Ceely is very familiar with Fanny Burney's life and work and relayed some interesting history.

Upon our request, Jonatha Ceely inscribed copies of her two books: "Mina" and "Bread and Dreams" both of which are published by Delacorte Press. At present she is finishing her third novel.

The dinner consisted of a fresh garden salad prepared by Willemien, lasagna which I baked, assorted antipasti, plenty of Chianti, strong coffee, and birthday cake.

Links:

http://www.ceelymusic.com/

http://www.ezrasims.com/

http://www.jonathaceely.com/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francis_Judd_Cooke

http://home.earthlink.net/~ziodavino/album1_001.htm

http://www.operaboston.org/operas_nose.php

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Burney

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frances_Burney

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stephen_Sondheim

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Nose_(opera)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wilhelm_Reich

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Power Lunch

I just returned from a nice "power lunch" down the street at Panera Bread. I was meeting with an old friend who I hadn't seen for years. Eric and I go back to my first days in Boston in 1973, when he was studying composition as an undergraduate with our mutual teacher Don Martino at the New England Conservatory. I wasn't at NEC myself at that point, but I knew him tangentially from compositions that were regularly performed at student concerts. He always wore a black turtleneck, thick glasses, and a big smile.



Here is a photo of Eric at a party at my house in 1991. It was a reunion of sorts, since he, myself, and our teacher Martino had a chance to meet again and catch up.

Flash ahead 35 years... the turtleneck is gone, but he has kept the glasses and smile. Eric and I are slightly out of phase with regard to our age. He is a bit older, and served in Vietnam in the mid-1960's. That's where he took up computer programming, and was assigned to an administrative function where he punched cards to program mainframe computers in assembly language.

One day after a night of guard duty, he was called into the office of the General and asked "Have your ever heard of Robert Tucker?"

Eric replied "No Sir."

The General looked at the memo on his desk again "...err, I mean Richard Tucker."

"Yes sir! I've heard of Richard Tucker. Sir."

"Well, he needs a piano player" replied the General.

Richard Tucker (1913-1975)

Tenor at the Metropolitan Opera

In short order Eric was whisked off to travel the war-torn country as Richard Tucker's accompanist. The State Department was not real keen on Tucker making the trip, and tried to talk him out of it, but he persisted and finally got permission. It was not an officially sanctioned USO tour - not even a sideshow for Bob Hope and his troupe of dancing girls. Tucker had to pay his own way, and was not allowed to take his own accompanist to Vietnam with him. That's how Eric got the gig.

I asked Eric how many troupes attended the concerts, and he said it ranged from a dozen to a few thousand. Fortunately, they avoided getting shot at in their travels.





But the most hair-raising experience was flying to the US aircraft carrier Bon Homme Richard on a jet fighter plane to give a concert. The take-offs and landings were particularly exciting given the short runway.

Tucker's repertory for the Vietnam tour included Italian arias and some show tunes.

The following blurb in Time Magazine describes Tucker's trip...

He looks nothing like a dame, and the U.S.O. thought so little of the idea that he had to pay his own way. Even so, Metropolitan Opera Tenor Richard Tucker, 52, insists that he made almost as big a hit as a lot of the Hollywood starlets who have gone to Viet Nam to entertain the troops. Back in Manhattan after a two-week singing tour that took him from Saigon to Danang and included presiding over a couple of Passover Seders, Tucker said the boys thoroughly enjoyed the arias from Pagliacci and Tosca. "They're a very, very intelligent caliber of boys," he said—and very, very early risers too. Aboard the aircraft carrier Bon Homme Richard, he wailed, "they told me my first show would be at 8 a.m. Eight in the morning! A singer like me doesn't even spit before midday." (Time Magazine May 12th, 1967)

Tucker died in 1975 from a heart attack just before a performance (an interesting bit of trivia is that he is the only person whose funeral has been held right on the stage of the Metropolitan Opera).

Here he Tucker acting the role of Canio in Pagliacci in 1970. The tenor was approaching 60 years old at the time!

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After the Vietnam war, Eric came to Boston to study music at NEC during the exciting Gunther Schuller years. He accompanied the chorus for "Cookie" and managed the new music concert series (composer Lee Hyla wanted to mount a work calling for 12 percussionists playing on 12 timpini - each tuned to a different note of the chromatic scale. It proved impossible to find that many timpini). Eric is also known for making the piano reduction for Donald Martino's monumental operatic work Paradiso Choruses. This mammoth orchestral score was reduced to a piano-vocal edition for rehearsal purposes, and Eric could play through the thickly notated score with ease.

Strangely enough, I knew Eric better from the business world in the mid-1980's. We worked together on an electronic funds transfer application when he was a senior programmer/project manager at the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston, and I was working at NEACH.

But Eric has many talents aside from being a talented musician, composer, computer programmer, and fabulous pianist/sight-reader. He use to be a hardcore crossword-puzzle competitor (winning third place at Stamford) and is a former New England champion. But he hasn't competed in the crossword-puzzle circuit for more than twenty years. His current serious activity is tournament bridge, where he holds the rank of "Gold Life Master" and travels in circles that include the likes of Warren Buffett and Bill Gates.

It was a very pleasant lunch, and we caught up with a lot of distant and recent history before heading off again into the cold, ice, and snow.

Links:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Tucker

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Poison Ivy

It turned out that we were in the Ivy League, and didn't know it.

For years we had diligently watered the green plants in our front yard, but had unknowingly cultivating an impressive garden of three-leaved plants known as Toxicodendron radicans (commonly known as Poison Ivy).

Fortunately Laura, our visiting friend, spotted it in an instant and kindly offered to put on several layers of protective clothing and dig up the insidious plant. She likes "gardening."

I made myself useful by staying as far away from the dangerously toxic plant as I could, and documented a small piece of the operation for this blog.

If you want to sing along with Laura, Poison Ivy was recorded by The Rolling Stones. Ring tones are available on the web.

Useful sites:

http://www.poison-ivy.org/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poison_ivy

http://www.keno.org/stones_lyrics/Poisonivy.htm

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About my friend Lou

To follow up on my previous post, my good friend Lou died on January 3rd of this year. I was invited by his family to speak at his memorial service on 1/19/08, and the text below is excerpted and adapted from my prepared remarks...

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...I had been in contact with Lou by email just recently, and we were about to schedule a lunch or dinner meeting to just talk and get caught up on things. But over the past years, he and I had communicated often by email. I knew that he was finally retiring and was looking forward to spending more time with his family and playing on his prized Steinway.

I first met Lou in August of 1993, where he designed and taught a three-month comprehensive Novell training course for a now defunct company in Waltham. He was an amazing teacher, and he had an in-depth grasp of the subject-matter and an innate ability to communicate it. It was one of the best organized and run classes I've even taken. Over time, we stayed in touch, and Lou brought me to the investment house Scudder, Stevens and Clark to work on his team. Lou's technical and interpersonal skills were immediately evident to senior management. Not only did I have the best time of my life working under him, I learned volumes about what a manager should be, and what professionalism is.

One day he asked me fill out an evaluation of him that was related to a Steven R. Covey Leadership and Management program he was taking. I was amazed that on every single evaluation point - from time management, to communication, to ethics - he got my highest rating. He was exemplary, to the point where I almost wondered if he had any faults at all.

The powers at Scudder knew that they had a live one in Lou. While not born into the same social class as them, he was such an expert communicator, clear thinker, and natural leader, that he in affect rose to the top of the company's hierarchy in no time. He had an ability to defuse tense situations, and the skills to mediate between warring parties. He transcended the entrenched corporate culture to work effectively with everyone - at all ends of the spectrum.

At one point management offered him the position of "Chief Technical Strategist" which essentially would have put him in the technical driver's seat for this enormous international company. He declined that offer, feeling that it would not allow him to build and nurture his hand-picked team.

Working in both stressful and relaxed situations for a long time with an individual, such as I did with Lou, allows one to see a person's character. Lou had plenty of it. I'm not understating myself when I say that Lou became my mentor. He was about 10 years my senior, so this was a natural, almost "big brother" role. I learned much from him about how to deal with a complex and changing world, and to balance work-life with one's personal and family obligations and aspirations. For example when I missed a day of work because of back trouble, he immediately made time to call to see how I was doing.

Of course we discussed and explored any and every subject of interest – including, but not limited to - technical concerns. On many occasions (post Scudder) several of us would meet at Bertucci's (our regular hangout) for dinner and to engage in a free-ranging soirée. We'd have these incredible, long-winded, and in-depth discussions about music, philosophy, politics, education, micro and macro economics, cyberspace, and culture that were simply mind-blowing. Whatever subject came up, Lou not only had a well-thought out position, but had done his research and conveyed his thoughts with an erudite elegance that one could simply not argue with.

When the topic turned to sports, I had to concede my ignorance, but it was clear that Lou was not an amateur in that arena either.

A life-long commitment to self-education was another one of Lou's trademarks. After an exchange of some fascinating email regarding late Stravinsky, I was impressed with how informed he was on the subject (I did my doctoral studies in music composition at Brandeis). After inquiring how he had learned so much about the topic, he replied that he had taken an audio course while driving in his car. It was yet another example of his using time efficiently. Lou was a good model for how one should structure and utilize one's resources efficiently and to good use.

He also read profusely, and enjoyed history in particular. His experience as a jazz musician was yet another communality between us. Lou's writing skills were just as sharp as his verbal skills. From corporate to personal communications and to the technical book he wrote but never got published - he had a gift for words.

Recently, Lou volunteered to serve on the IT Advisory Board for the college that I work at. His contributions were extremely insightful, and everyone was elevated by his intelligence and dedication.

Whenever I needed encouragement, advice, or just plain help, I would pick up the phone and give Lou a call, or fire off an email. The response was both immediate and valuable.

Just the other day Lou had kindly offered to help me by being available as an employment reference.

There are probably only a handful of people I have met over the course of my life that have impressed me as much as Lou did. I had nothing but the utmost respect for him, and came to rely on his caring and persistent nature.

It is sad to know that a diabetes-related heart attack prevented him from living longer than he should have, but the wide and dramatic impact that he made on the world is far more than most people can hope for. We are all enriched by the time we had with him.

Going forward, I feel privileged to have been associated with Lou, and I will take those fond memories and wonderful lessons with me into the future.

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