… And MORE Star Trek!
Well, as might be expected, my summer 2016 travel plans have undergone some adjustments. And the odds are quite high that there will be other changes (hopefully only minor–and better option–ones) even as RB and I are on the road. In this case, I’ve added Riverside, Iowa, as my first stop so I can attend their annual Trekfest. If you are a fellow Trekker, I don’t need to tell you that Riverside is known as “the future birthplace of Captain James T. Kirk.” Even though Riverside is just 75 miles away, I’ve only attended one previous Trekfest, the one in 2009 when they featured Nichelle Nichols (Uhura-TOS), George Takei (Sulu-TOS), and Walter Koenig (Chekov-TOS) as guests. I had a great time that year and am looking forward to whatever they are planning for this 50th anniversary year (perhaps they’ve finally been able to get William Shatner to come). Hey, I’d…
Summer Plans: A Little Work… And a Lot of Star Trek
Starting to formulate plans for summer vacation. First, RB and I can take a fairly leisurely ride through Arkansas, Mississippi–with potentially a brief stopover in New Orleans, and Alabama, which would finally give me the last three contiguous states I need. Visit some Civil Rights historical sites, add a little research,… and hey, if I can get in a performance and/or lecture, so much the better. Then, into Florida to visit friends in Tallytown and attend the 50th anniversary Star Trek convention in Miami. Final stop on the way back, get in a site I recently missed. Only about 3,700 miles driving distance–2,000 less than RB and I covered in the same time frame in 2014! Sounds like a plan. And a busy two weeks.
You Study Long,…
Monday, March 7 I woke up in a hotel bed in Bloomington, Indiana. I had one purpose for my stop-through there: to begin filling the holes in the information I had gathered on recordings of Negro Spirituals. At this point, I’ve identified more than 4,000 entries that met my criteria for the project, but quite a few are missing data that I believe are critical to making the results useful to the singers and voice teachers I hope to inform. Although a very early start would have given me more time to study, I decided not to push it since I was still tired from the MLA conference I’d just attended. Still, I was pulling into the parking lot a block away from the School of Music at the Indiana University at around 11:15. (Two things here: one, the students seem unconcerned about the potential of being run over by…
Look Out, Cincinnati… The Music Librarians Are Here! (Part 2)
Saturday, March 5 Over the many years that I have either presented or attended a lecture, I have learned that you have to allow time for setup, especially if you are depending upon the available technology to work properly. Well, for this lecture, I was heavily depending upon not only whatever equipment was available in the room, but my own computer–a two-in-one I had fairly recently purchased for occasions just like that. Let’s just say I was unnerved and not a little pissed that my computer decided to do a 20-minute-long update only 25 minutes before my presentation was scheduled to start without asking me if that was okay. IT WASN’T!!!! The MLA American Music Roundtable had invited me to give a demonstration of my nearly one-year-old online resource, The Spirituals Database. I talked about how the site was organized and who the primary audience was–voice teachers and singers–plus how…
Look Out, Cincinnati… The Music Librarians Are Here! (Part 1)
So, let me start by saying “I missed RB!” Since the trip for the Music Library Association conference was work-related, I decided to get a rental. They gave me this monstrous six-passenger mini-van that I had to get used to driving. Discovered halfway there that I had put the van into S4, which is better suited for mountain driving and burns gas like crazy. The vehicle was okay, but I just didn’t have fun driving it like I normally do with RB. This is, basically, the trip route: Anyway, the conference was headquartered at the Hilton Netherland Plaza in the middle of Cincinnati. Arrived much later than I’d planned–partially due to missing my I-74 exit in Indianapolis and taking a much longer trip around their beltway than expected, so I missed visiting the Underground Railroad museum (will have to make a later trip to get it done). Thursday, March 3…
2016-On the Road Again,… I hope
My travel plans for 2015 kept changing, which forced me to postpone adding my last three of the contiguous 48 states to this year. Had my 35th college class reunion–the official photo to the left, traveled to visit family, and I saw some sites around Iowa (covered on my Iowa?!? blog). Otherwise, a pretty quiet travel year. Hopefully, that will change in 2016. First driving trip on the agenda is for the annual Music Library Association conference. This year’s conference is in Cincinnati. Northern climes in early March, oh joy!! Forecast is for rain and highs in the 40’s. Not great when I’d love to go somewhere warmer this time of year, but it could’ve been colder and snow. This looks like a busy conference for me. I’m scheduled to perform Margaret Bonds’ Five Creek-Freedmen Spirituals on Thursday, coordinate the Paraprofessional Interest Round table and host a dinner at a…
Afterthoughts about Goin’ West 2014
This is the map of my 16-day, Goin’ West 2014 trip: This surpassed my previously longest car trip from Grinnell to Newfoundland and Labrador, Canada, by a whole 17 miles!! I stuck pretty closely to my original route, with some new additions–especially Little Bighorn National Park and North Cascades National Highway–and only two major deletions. After the magnificence of Yellowstone, I didn’t feel the need to deviate 250 miles from my westward trip to see Glacier National Park in Montana, although I’d heard many wonderful things about it. I also didn’t cross into Canada to visit Vancouver. The trip included visits to seven national parks: Little Bighorn (Montana), Yellowstone (Wyoming), North Cascade, Olympic, and Mount Rainier (Washington State), Redwood, and Yosemite (California). The parks were fantastic and more than worth the cost of the annual season pass. My favorites were Redwood and Yosemite, but none disappointed. There were other parks…
Day 16: Back to the Old Homestead
Final day of Goin’ West 2014, which was a 1000-mile dash for home.
Day 15: RB and the Need for Speed
Interstate 80 runs from San Francisco to Teaneck, New Jersey. This highway will be very prominent in my now two-day dash to get home. The short drive from Carson City to Reno brought me to a casino in town. I’m not a gambler–I hate to lose and can think of fewer, more ridiculous ways to lose money than sticking it into a slot machine. However, in honor of my mother, I walked into Atlantis with a $20 bill and my car keys, figuring it would take me about 30 minutes to lose it in the quarter slots. To say I didn’t know what I was doing would be an understatement. With three presses of a button, my money was gone!! The customer service person explained that the button I was pressing was the max bet, so I was wagering $6.00 on every push! No, I didn’t get more money. As…
Day 14: Yosemite Sa… Randye
While my vacation time was fast drawing to an end, I still made time to visit Yosemite National Park. I chose a route that took us through Modesto and the Napa Valley area. The prominence of vineyards I passed in this famous wine region weren’t surprising to me, but the significant presence of almond tree groves was. There was a museum in Modesto I’d hoped to visit, but just as the unplanned nature of my journey sometimes meant I arrived at a site too late to be able to do more than capture a few shots, it also occasionally caused me to arrive too early. In this case, I felt it was necessary to be at Yosemite by the museum’s scheduled noon opening time. The drive into the Sierra Nevada Mountains had both eye-catching scenery plus attention-demanding twists and turns in the road. Upon reaching Yosemite, I followed my established pattern of…