No Cantabile meeting tonight

I actually probably feel better than I have either of the last
two weeks, but I now have a diagnosis (pneumonia) that justifies
feeling crummy. So I’m going to cancel the meeting tonight, to
avoid being tempted to clean or transcribe music or cook when I
should be napping instead.

Unfortunately, there will also not be dropin meetings on either
Tuesday, September 7 or Tuesday, September 14, because some of us
will be rehearsing for a concert on September 19.

So the normal dropin meetings will resume on Tuesday, September
21, at 7:45 PM at my place.

I’ll attempt to call people who normally come and who might not read email between
now and this evening. If you’ve been coming regularly, if you can let me know that you got this,
it will save me trying to dig up your phone number.

Report on the August 17, 2010, meeting

We played:

Schedule

For the month of August, we’ll be having dropin meetings as
usual on Tuesdays at 7:45 PM at my place.

Report on the August 10, 2010, meeting

We played:

Schedule

For the month of August, we’ll be having dropin meetings as
usual on Tuesdays at 7:45 PM at my place.

My Hugo award votes

The posts were thin for a while there, and one of the things I
was doing instead of posting was reading all the Hugo award nominees so that
I could vote by the July 31 deadline. Here are my votes, with some comments on why.

Best novel

  1. The Windup Girl by Paolo Bacigalupi. I
    actually probably enjoyed a couple of the others more than this
    one, but the writing was so good I decided it was more award-worthy.
  2. Wake by Robert J. Sawyer. If you want to cite
    a good example of “computer-science fiction”, this would be it.
  3. Julian Comstock: A Story of 22nd-Century
    America     by Robert Charles Wilson
  4. Boneshaker by Cherie Priest. The description I
    had of this before I read it was that it was a steampunk vampire
    novel set in 19th century Seattle. Based on that, I wasn’t
    expecting to enjoy it, but I actually did. Partly because it
    isn’t really a vampire novel, but a novel about the kind of
    communities that can form in the face of danger (which in this
    case is vampires).
  5. The City & The City by China Miéville. I had
    heard of China Miéville as an impressive writer, and this was
    the first thing I’d read of his. The writing is very good, with both
    characters and images that stick with you, but
    I downranked it as an award winner because the plot never really
    made much sense.
  6. No award. I like this part of voting. You can not only
    vote for the ones you like, but vote against the ones you don’t
    like by rating them after “No award.”
  7. Palimpsest by Catherynne M. Valente. This is
    the only one I didn’t manage to finish, so my apologies if
    something wonderfully exciting happens after page 150. It
    wasn’t very interesting, but the writing was very dense, so it
    was taking a lot longer than the typical novel of that length
    takes, and I wasn’t enjoying it, so I stopped reading it and
    voted against it.

Best Novella

  1. Vishnu at the Cat Circus by Ian McDonald.
    Another good example of “computer-science fiction”. Set in
    near-future India.
  2. Act One by Nancy Kress
  3. Shambling Towards Hiroshima by James
    Morrow
  4. The God Engines by John Scalzi. Well-written
    by an author I usually like, but a somewhat unpleasant
    atmosphere.
  5. No Award
  6. The Women of Nell Gwynne’s by Kage Baker. This
    seemed like steam-punk for its own sake.
  7. Palimpsest by Charles Stross. A time travel
    story without much I could see to recommend it.

Best Novelette

With these shorter forms, I wouldn’t have read them except for
the Hugo voting, but they’re really pretty good.

  1. The Island by Peter Watts
  2. Overtime by Charles Stross
  3. Eros, Philia, Agape by Rachel Swirsky
  4. One of Our Bastards is Missing by Paul Cornell
  5. Sinner, Baker, Fabulist, Priest; Red Mask, Black Mask,
    Gentleman, Beast     by Eugie Foster
  6. No award
  7. It Takes Two by Nicola Griffith. I wasn’t at
    all sure that this was a science fiction story at all, so I
    voted against it.

Best Short Story

  1. Bridesicle by Will McIntosh
  2. The Bride of Frankenstein by Mike Resnick
  3. Non-Zero Probabilities by N.K. Jemisin
  4. Spar by Kij Johnson
  5. The Moment by Lawrence M. Schoen

Best Dramatic Presentation, Long Form

Luckily, the ones of these that I wouldn’t have made a point of
seeing anyway were all on Netflix Watch Now, so it didn’t cost me
anything except the time.

  1. District 9 Screenplay by Neill Blomkamp & Terri Tatchell; Directed by Neill Blomkamp
  2. Moon Screenplay by Nathan Parker; Story by Duncan Jones; Directed by
    Duncan Jones. This was the most like a real science fiction story,
    although it wasn’t as good a movie as District 9.
  3. Star Trek Screenplay by Robert Orci & Alex Kurtzman; Directed by J.J. Abrams
  4. No award
  5. Avatar Screenplay and Directed by James
    Cameron. I didn’t go to the theater to see it in 3D, but I
    don’t see how even better special effects could have redeemed
    the banal plot and characters.
  6. UpScreenplay by Bob Peterson and Pete Docter; Story by Bob Peterson, Pete Docter & Thomas McCarthy; Directed by Bob Peterson & Pete
    Docter. Disney tear-jerker. I don’t know why it’s science fiction.

Summary

Some day I’ll be organized enough to start the reading early
enough to vote on some of the other categories. But if you want
to know what’s happening in science fiction, you can do a lot
worse than get an associate membership to the convention of the
year (Aussiecon,
this year). It cost $50 this year, and they gave me free electronic
versions of all the print nominees.

Pictures from Amherst

It was a pretty busy week, and I only had the little camera, so
I couldn’t do the butterflies, and I was usually carrying too much
to make it easy to stop and take pictures. But here’s what I
got.

Marker putti

This statue was how to identify the building a lot of the
classes were in:

[Putti at Connecticutt College]

Putti at Connecticutt College
[plaque identifying Putti]

Plaque identifying Putti

Two serpent players

One of the cornetto players had always wanted to play serpent,
so he spent some time with mine, and we took pictures of each
other.

[Laura playing serpent]

Me playing my serpent
[Michael playing serpent]

Michael Yelland playing my serpent

Report on the August 3, 2010, meeting

We played:

Schedule

For the month of August, we’ll be having dropin meetings as
usual on Tuesdays at 7:45 PM at my place.

Excerpt from the Amherst Evaluation Form

I didn’t wrap up the Amherst experience because I was busy
writing the evaluation form. And by the time I was through with
that there were other things I wanted to think about.

But I did promise to let you know how it turned out. You’ll be
glad to know that the Saturday concert was really good, and lots
of people (including world class faculty members who didn’t even
know me) came up to me at the party and told me how good the
serpent playing was.

I’m not going to give you the parts from the evaluation about
individuals, but here’s something I wrote about the workshop in
general:

Beginners

This is from the section that asked for comments about the
daily schedule and kinds of classes. I wrote:

I was concerned that there didn’t seem to be any classes in anything
suitable for beginners. I don’t mean beginners in the sense that they
don’t know the fingering of a soprano recorder, but people who haven’t
previously had the opportunity for the kind of ensemble experience
that Amherst offers. I notice a lot of the people who were beginners when
I first came 20 years ago are now populating the advanced classes.
But we’re all going to die sometime, and if you don’t do beginner
classes now, where will the advanced classes come from 20 years from
now?

I would think the faculty should be more aware of this problem, since
presumably most of them make a substantial portion of their income
from teaching, and if there aren’t places where people who want to
learn something can meet the teachers, where will they get their
students?

Those questions come from someone who doesn’t have an association with
a university. I’m aware that if you know as a teenager that music is
something you want to study, and you go to the right kind of high
school (I didn’t) and college (I did, but of course nowhere was that
good forty years ago for early music), you can get a lot of what I’m talking about from
your academic experience. But one of the strengths of Amherst, and
the early music movement in general, used to be that people who
hadn’t had that experience in school could take it up later in life.
It’s not clear that that’s still happening.

And of course if there’d been brass ensemble classes for beginners,
there would have been a place for a low-level cornetto player, even if
nobody wanted to touch a serpent. My cornetto playing isn’t
performance quality, but if you had a beginning loud wind ensemble
with people who couldn’t count, it would have been easier to teach
with me in it.

Report on the July 27, 2010 meeting

We played:

Schedule

For the rest of August, we will be having our normal dropin
meetings on Tuesdays starting at 7:45 PM at my place.

Report on the July 20, 2010, meeting

We played:

Schedule

For the next few weeks, we will be having dropin meetings as
usual on Tuesdays at my place
starting at 7:45 PM.

Other events

There’s another Wakefield Summer Band concert, with me on Tuba,
this Friday, July 23, at 7 PM, at the bandstand on the Wakefield town green.