Highways and Byways: Going 5g

By Maik Strosahl

A few weeks ago, the Sprint tower two properties from our house was upgraded to a T-Mobile 5g tower. That news would have been great when we first moved here and had our service with them. We had to change providers due to all the dropped calls in our own home, let alone the myriad times I had no coverage on the road. But it’s upgrade also got me thinking about what is next for me.
    As I look back on my writing, I can see a progression of four phases. Lately, in large part because the Covid shutdowns have so limited face-to-face interactions, I have been feeling like I need to explore some new creative venues to push my writing further. It’s time for an upgrade, and I am going 5g.

Goines On: Artificial friends

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Are they not real?

The third morning after returning from France, Goines asked Siri to turn off the garage light. Within a couple of seconds, the light went off, and shortly thereafter Siri began to acknowledge the request and provide status, but Goines clicked his phone off before she was half finished.
    He immediately regretted his discourtesy, for Siri had ever been patient, courteous, helpful – even friendly. She behaved like a friend, artificial or not.

Goines On: Ethical qualms

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On his way to have blood drawn for his annual health exam, Goines recalled a horrible thought he had entertained when he ate that curried chicken the day before – of those helpless, innocent chickens caged up, overfed, injected with whatever, deprived of light and exercise (not to mention freedom), for the sole purpose of being eaten, or of laying eggs – and he grieved anew at their plight, wondering how frightfully they perceived it. Of course (or hopefully) not as frightfully as a human would perceive it, because a chicken’s brain didn’t seem capable of supporting the psychology. Psychology … the word’s root was psyche... soul.

All Over the Place: Viet Nam, Daybreak

By Michael H. Brownstein

We wake to a milky milky sky,
the slight discolor of cream, 
a spackle of brown sugar 
and the first orange glint of dawn.
Already the air has color to it,
and we cough, pause, laugh
our lungs still not used to Hanoi.

From the Alwinac: “Soak ’em”: Thomas Edison’s Advice to a Cellist

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[The Alwinac blog is part of the schroeder170 project, honoring the life and musical career of cellist Alwin Schroeder (1855-1928) and exploring the history of cello playing in the US.]


The following anecdote in an item from the Lewisburg (PA) Chronicle (Oct. 15, 1891, p. 3) concerns an Edison engineer who was also a fine cellist. It also mentions railroad executive Henry Villard, who was also an amateur cellist. My question to string players using unwound gut strings: Does Edison’s remedy work?

Edison and the “Fiddlers”
    We were sitting on the piazza of Thomas A. Edison’s boarding house at Ogden, New Jersey, a few evenings since. Dinner was just over, and the great inventor, surrounded by a dozen or more employees, was enjoying a cigar.
    “Bring out your fiddle, Theodore,” said the wizard, settling into a rocking chair and addressing Mr. Leman, a young civil engineer, who, by the way, is a protege of Henry Villard.
    The fiddle proved to be a splendid violoncello, and “Theodore” proved to be the master of it. Schubert, Beethoven, Servais, and a dozen other authors were exploited, but the air was damp and the catgut stretched. Leman looked vexed, tightened and retightened the strings, but the discord came again and again.
    “What’s the matter?” suddenly inquired Edison.
    “These strings stretch in the damp air,” was the reply.
    The big gray head dropped down into its favorite position on the uplifted right hand and rested there a minute…..

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Copyright © 2021 by Geoffrey Dean

Goines On: For the whiz-kids

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A not-so-simple formula…

Even after Goines realized that he had been drawing figures and assembling tables of yearly cyclical calendar patterns only to satisfy some obsession or compulsion within his own self, he continued working at it. But when he got done – or done enough, because more could be done – he decided to set that aside and be done with it. He’d wrap it all up by specifying the steps that a computer program could take to find the day of the week for any given date within the period covered by the Gregorian Calendar.

From the Alwinac: “Sing, Cello Sing”: Jane M. Mattingly’s “The Cello”

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[The Alwinac blog is part of the schroeder170 project, honoring the life and musical career of cellist Alwin Schroeder (1855-1928) and exploring the history of cello playing in the US.]


In the early 1920s, the Willis Music Company of Cincinnati, Ohio, published “A Happy Journey for Little Fingers,” a set of six Practical Piano Pieces by Jane M. Mattingly, part of a larger series of pedagogical piano miniatures by women composers. No. 6 of Mattingly’s set is “The ’Cello,” a waltz-like piece in G Major with lyrics (presumably by the composer) serving as a rhythmic aid. The words are printed above the melody in the left hand:

Sing, Cello sing
Sweet music bring
Sing, Cello sing
Each bass note ring….

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Copyright © 2021 by Geoffrey Dean

Highways and Byways: Dear Friends and Gentle People

For Stephen Foster

By Maik Strosahl

Stephen Foster was a creative genius. In his early years, he taught himself to play the clarinet, guitar, flute, and piano with no formal instruction. At twenty, he started writing songs that have survived since the 1840s to this day. One of his first successful songs was “Oh! Susanna,” which was sung by 49ers panning for gold and was still belted out by out-of-tune 1970s grade schoolers such as myself. In his short 37 years on this earth, he wrote many others, including “Camptown Races”; the Kentucky state song, “My Old Kentucky Home”; and Florida’s state song, “Old Folks at Home (Swanee River)” – a song that Ray Charles recorded a version of for his first pop hit, “Swanee River Rock (Talkin’ ’Bout That River)."

Goines On: Glad to be home

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Goines had occasionally felt depressed during his first few days back from France. He was sure it wasn’t because he was no longer in France; he was too glad to be home for that. Whatever the reason was, the feeling was deep, for he had even emailed a friend that on his walk the previous morning he had felt as though he might keel over dead before he reached home, and that he was thinking of telling his new primary care physician, when he met her in a couple of weeks, that he hoped he wouldn’t tarnish her record by dying before the end of his first year under her care. Was he depressed because he thought he would die soon?

From the Alwinac: Schroeder Student Spotlight: Hugo Schlemueller

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[The Alwinac blog is part of the schroeder170 project, honoring the life and musical career of cellist Alwin Schroeder (1855-1928) and exploring the history of cello playing in the US.]


One of Alwin Schroeder’s students at the Leipzig Conservatory was Hugo Schlemueller (1872-1918), the son of a Leipzig music critic. There Schlemueller also worked with Julius Klengel, graduating from the Conservatory in 1891. In the 1890s he played briefly in orchestras in Leipzig and Munich, toured Germany and Russia as a soloist, and taught at the Conservatory in Gotha, where he might have worked alongside cellist Luise Wandersleb-Patzig and may have studied with her. (Or he may have studied with Wandersleb much earlier, before his Liepzig education; a brief 1903 Schlemueller biography that he likely wrote himself makes no mention of Wandersleb-Patzig.) In 1898 he became a disciple of Hugo Becker, and from 1902 he taught alongside Becker at Dr. Hoch’s Conservatory in Frankfurt.
    It must have been an interesting reunion when his earlier teacher Alwin Schroeder returned to Germany and took over Becker’s Frankfurt cello class in 1907, upon Becker’s departure to Berlin. (1907 was the same year that the young Frankfurt-born Paul Hindemith took his first Hoch Conservatory audition.) Schlemueller remained on the Hoch Conservatory faculty until 1917, when he enlisted in the German army. It isn’t clear whether his death the next year was due to any injuries he might have sustained in the war....

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Copyright © 2021 by Geoffrey Dean

All Over the Place: I’m the Security Guy

From My Teaching Book

By Michael H. Brownstein

When the principal asks me to help out after school and be the security guy, I do it.
    A large group of children start walking down the street. I can always smell a fight. I start following them. Hey, I’m the security guy.
    “Mr. Brownstein,” they ask, “why are you following us?”
    “I want to watch a fight,” I answer, and they laugh—but it doesn’t matter to me. I’m going to follow them until the fight begins or dissipates on its own.

From the Alwinac: Encore: More Music by Hermann Heberlein

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[The Alwinac blog is part of the schroeder170 project, honoring the life and musical career of cellist Alwin Schroeder (1855-1928) and exploring the history of cello playing in the US.]


Listen to the first part of Heberlein’s Concertstuck, Op. 8

Heberlein and other cellists performed this work in Detroit during the 1890s. I have also found references to other performances during Heberlein’s lifelime that took place as far away as Australia….

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Copyright © 2021 by Geoffrey Dean

Simple Kindness, or a Slam?

By Victor L. Midyett

Is it the social caste system or simple human kindness that has endured?
    I remember one day in Bangalore, Southern India, I was riding my bike down a long, gradual hill while a rickshaw man was struggling to peddle his rickshaw up the hill with two adults in it. One of his thongs (flip flops) fell off. I came to a screeching halt, picked it up, and started back towards him with it in my outstretched hand.
    He came unglued and started yelling at me to put it down. I had touched his dirty thong, and even though I was a boy, I was white and way above his standing in the social caste system. Because others on the road witnessed this, I had – in his mind – drilled his social standing home and made it worse by touching his “dirty” property and social unworthiness.

Loving – 1975 (a poem)

By Shirley Skufca Hickman

When wisps of fear
encircle all my thoughts
and turn my thinking
into tears:
My husband gently
kisses me.
My small boy brings
blue candy to my bed
and tells me stories
of his school,
about the way he
makes his A’s,
about the magic
of the seeds in fruit.
And all my friends,
those whom I hold most dear,
bring poems to me, and flowers.
and I, so full of love
from them,
can find no room for sadness or despair.

Copyright © 2021 by Shirley Skufca Hickman

Highways and Byways: Inside Trader

By Maik Strosahl

I have to admit to being a bit pessimistic about my future as an American worker. With the days of pensions long gone for most of us and the future of social security anything but secure, I cannot see that I will ever be able to retire and enjoy whatever time would remain. My current plans are to work until I drop, trying to find enjoyment in the here and now because tomorrow is never guaranteed.