In just thirty short minutes, I head out the door, walk for approximately 94 seconds and attend my local neighborhood meeting.

My hope, dare I say it, my dream is that something slightly more productive than neighbors ranting about the feral cats that seem to be overtaking the neighborhood (hey, at least they’re only cats, and not Starbucks stores).

On the positive side, the neighborhood does seem to have its act together insofar as we’ve successfully gotten overnight parking restrictions to be enacted on our street (keeping non-residents from parking vehicles long term in our precious parking places). Not only this, but representatives from both the LAPD and the LA City Council often grace us with their presence at their meetings. When little communities start to make noise, the folks in power start to listen.

My hope is that noise is something a bit more than “MEOW!!!!”

Apparently there’s plenty of Mets fans in my neighborhood as evidenced by the plethora of Mets caps, jerseys, and t-shirts worn by those filling the seats at Dodger Stadium this weekend (I wore this shirt for two of the three games I attended).

And although I did have to painfully watch the Mets lose two out of three games (they also lost Thursday), I got to watch some excellent baseball, with some amazing, low-scoring, great defensively played games. But, being the ever-optimist that I am, I have faith that the Mets will turn this offensive slump around, figure out how to hit the baseball, and start winning again.

“At least they’re running a stable OS”, he said as he wandered past the flight departures display.

This picture makes me want to get up off my butt and go explore L.A. I get to do that a little bit this weekend, as today and tomorrow take me on:

Three

Separate

Trips

to Griffith Park, an amazing oasis of pines, trails, and views in the city.

You’ve all heard this bit of Beethoven before, likely more times than you’d care to given its cultural familiarity and prominence in the canon of Western music.

But this past Sunday, an old re-run of RadioLab’s episode on “Time” pointed me to a recent project that has re-imagined Beethoven’s famous Ninth Symphony, not with a re-instrumentation, or a re-arrangement, or even a re-recording, but with a revolution in the relationship between the music and time.

9 Beet Stretch is a recording of the Ninth Symphony that has been digitally slowed down to fit not into the space of a typical 70 minutes, but rather into an entire day! That’s right, in this recording, each of the notes, chords, and rests lasts approximately 24 times its normal length without pitch alteration. The whole symphony takes an entire day to be heard in this recording, and the result is not what you’d expect. I’ve been listening to this thing on and off for the past couple of days (the entire work is continually streamed across the internet), and I’ve got to say, I’m hooked.

Rather than simply dulling the magnificence of this work by the pace, 9 Beet Stretch allows the listener to hear things in the work that have never been heard before as he literally basks in the sonic landscape that is Beethoven. At every moment, you are fully aware that yes, this must be Beethoven’s Ninth, but you entirely find yourself lost in the time of it. As music played for ambient effect, there’s not much that begins to top this.

In short, turn the lights down low, turn the speakers way up, grab a glass of wine, and give a listen.

It’s definitively summer now, and time has been filled thus far with such activities as sleeping in, not sleeping in, attending graduations, playing bananagrams, silly summer movies, visiting colleges, and enjoying the muggy atmosphere of the Northeast.

And while I still have never completed a cross country trip (which would be quite fun), I get to participate in about half of it as tomorrow I leave for a family reunion in Iowa (which very well might be the location of the above photograph). Perhaps amidst the 12+ hour drive, I’ll be able to put a significant dent in my current novel, Les Misérables, which is thus far amazing in both characters and plot movement. Only 1000 more pages to go…

In yet another sign that the apocalypse will soon be upon us, my “little” sister graduated from high school. This is the same little sister that was barely 7 the last time that I lived full-time at home.

The graduation ceremony was nice and, despite having to read the names of nearly 500 kids, moved along quite quickly, with short speeches, recognition of honors, and musical selections.

What also made it quite memorable is that graduation this past week was not just my little sister, but also members of the first class that I ever taught at Mt. Vernon Middle School (recently named Johnnie Cochran Middle School).

I suppose that the feeling that these past six years of teaching (and ten of being out on my own) is a good one in the sense that time flies when you’re having fun, and I can certainly describe the bulk of my last decade of living with that adjective.

To put a further point on things, the day after the grad ceremony, I traveled with Ali to her summer orientation for beginning the fall at SUNY Geneseo, realizing that the new friends she has been making over the past two days were born in 1992. 1992!!!!

….almost got this white boy dance.