First Monday with Characters

Our new calf, Midnight

Edited by 
Morris Dean

Bettina Sperry, calving

With all the snow and sub-zero temps, the days on Franklin Hill Farm have been spent ensuring that the newly arriving and newly born calf was greeted by the warmth of a cared-for mom. Beginning on Valentine's Day, I spent every morning and evening hauling water and hay to the cow. Finally, on Thursday, Feb. 19th, in single-digit temperatures, she calved her little one. Franklin Hill Farm has four more calves on the way in the coming few months. Our small business thrives.

Midnight with mom on their first winter walk together

    We spent a later weekend sending our first mare in for foaling, due on March 17. Updates soon to follow!
    As the year progresses, it'll get easier and easier. Next winter will be easier, too, as I now know how to prepare better. All this work keeps me healthy.

The Rogers, to a new house in two weeks

We were recently burgled for the second time since we have been in Costa Rica. We love where we are but it is too easy for people to come in from the jungle side without being seen. So we found a new house closer to town and will move in starting the 15th of March. We'll lose the view of our beautiful valley but we will be more secure.
    I had hated the idea of going into the big city of San Jose to apply for a new passport but to my surprise it was easy and faster here than in the States. In less than two weeks we had our new passports.
    That's about it from CR.
                                –Pura Vida

The Midyetts, visited from afar

    Having never seen the West, they crossed the desert and came to visit our fair city of Bunbury. Here are a few photos they took on the way here:
    It has been wonderful to catch up with them again. We shared many laughs together in Queensland and have been looking forward very much to seeing them again. BBQs are in order!
    Others who have also said they would visit us again here, but these folks are the first.
    They took better photos of their trip west than we did:

Abravanel Hall

Geoffrey Dean, around Salt Lake City

It has been a very mild winter in Salt Lake City, with no lasting snowfall at all. Well, maybe a little back in late December, but we weren’t here then, so it doesn’t count. Last week the un-wintry conditions made it easy to do a kind of alternative walking tour of the Temple Square area of the downtown. Armed with a cello, I set out from our apartment five blocks north of the Square and made my way to the Tabernacle, where I joined the Spivey Hall Children’s Choir (SHCC) from Atlanta in a lovely Spanish-style song by choral composer Joan Szymko. SHCC was in town to open the national convention of the American Choral Directors’ Association.
    From the Tabernacle, we walked a block and a half to the Salt Palace Convention Center to warm up for a repeat performance at Abravanel Hall, home of the Utah Symphony and named after the conductor [Maurice Abravanel, 1903-1993] who transformed a community orchestra into a full-time professional ensemble. It was an honor to work with a very talented and dedicated group of young vocalists and to experience the nurturing guidance and consummate musicianship of SHCC founding director Martha Shaw.
    On Friday, my walking tour continued as I walked four blocks east to the Utah State Capitol Building, constructed entirely of materials native to the state of Utah, to play at a benefit event for CMV [Cytomegalovirus] awareness. I just increased my own awareness of CMV by reading some information on the Mayo Clinic website, and encourage Moristotle & Co.’s readers to do the same: "Diseases and Conditions: Cytomegalovirus (CMV) infection."

André Duvall, around Memphis

Current reading: I've gradually acquired a collection of various biographies of many of the major composers. I've now decided to start delving into this section of my library a little at a time. I've started reading Chopin, The Reluctant Romantic, by Jeremy Siepmann. It looks to be a great read.
    New eats: This month, I discovered Lisa's Lunchbox, which in addition to featuring healthy homemade sandwiches and soups, serves a variety of delicious smoothies made from a base of almond milk, cashews, vanilla, and molasses.

    Music in Memphis: On the first day of February, I had the pleasure of hearing all six of Bach's cello suites, which I discussed in a Second Monday Music piece. On the final day of February, I attended a masterworks concert of the Memphis Symphony Orchestra. It was a wonderful program consisting of a Mozart piano concerto, Variations on I Got Rhythm for piano and orchestra by George Gershwin, and Rachmaninoff's Symphonic dances. After intermission, the Memphis Symphony chorus provided a prelude to the dances with a surprise performance of selections from Vespers by Rachmaninoff, sung from the balcony while the rest of the hall sat in darkness.

Kyle Garza, on a break recently

Last week I was off work for winter break, so I was with my fiancé during her school days at CSU Northridge, usually sitting in the back of the room grading my students’ work. She is a mechanical engineering major, so I sat in on Differential Equations, Calculus 3, and some sort of computer programming class. I had absolutely no idea what was going on in the lectures (the lengthiest of them was three hours). I knew she was intelligent on the other side of the brain, but I didn’t know just how intelligent! She received several quizzes back on the first day I visited – all A’s. One of them was only three problems long, but it was several pages: mind-blowing to me.
    After her school days, we went apartment “shopping” for the first time. It’s looking like we’re just going to have to keep checking in on apartment complexes every month until something is open. We have until June to figure out a place that is closer to my work and her school, so I’m confident something will open within our budget.
    I also wrote my first essay of the new semester for my MA program, which will be published this Thursday on Moristotle & Co.
    I’m in a class studying contemporary cultural issues that often come up in Christian-atheist debates, like abortion, gay marriage, euthanasia, and celibacy. It’s actually particularly interesting in one regard because my professor is Catholic and opposed to the use of contraceptives (as many Catholics are), whereas I’m of the mind that doesn’t see a problem with certain kinds of them. I’m feeling quite comfortable with this semester so far because I’ve studied all these issues on my own time, but now I’m just getting a great reading list added to my starting grounds.

"Christina of Sweden,"
by Jacob Ferdinand Voet

Chuck Smythe, in concert

I performed Bach's titanic Mass in B minor at the Boulder Bach Festival Friday and Saturday, and the Seicento Baroque Ensemble began its Concert Week Saturday, featuring music this coming weekend that was inspired and commissioned by Sweden's flamboyant mid-1600's Queen Christina.
    Then I'm heading to Guatemala to visit an old buddy who is a snowbird.

At the MMA's "Battle in the South," February 28

Allen Crowder, two for two
    Congratulations to Allen Crowder! As he told us he would last month, he had a kickboxing match on February 6 in New York City and an MMA fight on February 28 in Greenville, North Carolina, and "I feel more ready than ever." It seems to have paid off: he won both bouts in the first round.
    Allen was interviewed by MMA Mayhem Radio on February 27, the night before Saturday's contest:

So I'm 5-0 now MMA, and 1-0 Kickboxing. I got more beat up before Saturday's fight then I did during it. I was holding pads for a teammate and caught a knee to my nose and lip, and I hit my Sensei elbow while I was warming up, but the fight went well. My opponent [William "Mac Truck" Baptiste] tried to take me down to the ground (like I figured he would) but I stuffed it and took his back. Then I decided I wanted to move. I took side control and dropped some body shots, then some vicious elbows to his head, splitting his forehead open. The ref called the fight. William had to get 23 stitches, but as soon as he heals we are going to start training together to get ready for our next opponents.

Susan C. Price, in status quo

I do not seem to have any changes in my character.

Jim Rix, in memoriam

My not-so-much-older (12.5 months older) brother Dan died on February 11, of complications arising from a life-long low-carb, high-protein/fat diet coupled with blind-faith in physicians.

Morris Dean, fallen afoul
    I fell afoul of a norovirus (apparently) about eight days ago. To describe its symptoms would be to hazard the social offense of providing TMI (too much information). Let it suffice to say that the norovirus is sometimes known as "the winter vomiting bug" in the UK, and that it is perhaps the main reason that people who go on cruises end up wishing they hadn't gone.
    I probably got the virus either from something I ate on Saturday night (the 21st) or from shaking hands with someone (and failing to wash my hands well).
    The worst was over by Tuesday – well, by Sunday at 7 a.m., if you count the vomiting as the worst (which I personally do). The gaseous bloating on Monday night was the most painful, however. But the three-day progress of the malady did parallel a doctor's description of the symptoms as "starting high (in the stomach) and working their way through and out." But there I go, providing TMI.
    I was luckier than my friend who told me he had what he called "the ten day crap" over his birthday (in January) that was "the worst flu I can remember." And also luckier than what some friends of a friend experienced over Christmas and New Year, which "wiped them out for ten days! And both [of them] sheepishly told us they had not taken flu shots." I don't think flu is what I had.

Copyright © 2015 by Morris Dean