Health: Everyone is vaccinated and healthy. Let’s hope we stay that way. Bucking pandemic trends, I’ve lost 15 pounds and I’m a minute faster running a mile than I was a couple of years ago. How did that happen?
Work: I retired at the end of June. Now doing consulting part-time with the company. Works for me! I’ve always liked my job, but it took up a lot of time. Now let’s do something else! Like…
Writing: I threw away the novel I had started in 2020. The pandemic made it seem irrelevant. These things happen. Now I’ve started something else. Probably equally irrelevant, but so far I’m having fun.
Piano: I’ve started taking piano lessons again, after a gap of about half a century. So much to learn! I still want to explore jazz improvisation, but for now I’m going back to where I started, which is the standard classical repertoire. And now I have time to actually practice!
Red Sox: They’re in first place! How did that happen? I went to my first game in a couple of years a couple of weeks ago. They beat Gerrit Cole and the Yankees. How did that happen?
New York Times Spelling Bee: I’m spending entirely too much time with this stupid game. I’m really good at it, but who cares? (Well, I do, first thing every morning.) And finally . . .
America: So much stupidity. So much evil. I am not optimistic about America’s future, or the world’s. I feel like I’m living in 1859, and everything is about to blow up. Don’t you?
Richard Bowker 
How did it happen that the Sox beat the Yankees (and in fact haven’t lost to them this season)? It’s simple. THE YANKEES ARE BUMS!
When I started taking lessons again (also after a half century lapse) I was fortunate to find a jazz piano teacher with a strong classical background so he could transition easily from Monk to Goldberg. Indeed he once showed me how to improvise in variation 4. What are you working on these days?
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The Red Sox are facing Cole again tonight. Let’s see if it was a fluke. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a ball hit as hard as the one Devers hit off Cole in the first inning. They also beat DeGrom. How did that happen?
I am now trying to memorize Debussy’s Girl with the Flaxen Hair. It’s only 39 measures, but it’s slow going. I’m also learning Mozart’s Rondo K.485. Never learned much Mozart. Also some Bach Inventions and Preludes.
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I don’t know if I’m as good a pianist as I was back in the day. Apart from everything else, arthritis limits the flexibility of my fingers. But one thing I definitely can’t do any more is memorize. I tried memorizing the first page of Maple Leaf Rag and had to give it up. I take consolation in the fact that Sviatislav Richter often played with the score in front of him.
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Like 1856 but with electricity, refrigeration, medicine and modern bathrooms, sure! 😉 I do feel very concerned about climate change, however I also feel that there’s so much attention on it with people researching solutions that there’s a good chance of fixing it. Glad to hear you started a new novel!
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