July 2002

Howes Things
Snowy times at the Spring Mountain Climb!
All-Day Music Lessons

Howes Things
LocSec Carl Howes

Please join me in welcoming New Hampshire Gifted Children Coordinator Bob Reed.

The two programming positions are still open. Please contact me if you are interested or want to discuss possible approaches to either position.

The Programming officer would put together a group sponsored event on a regular basis. When it was last happening, it was a speaker each month. Quarterly has been suggested as a more reasonable target these days. This position is open to interpretation by the member who takes it on.

The Young Mensa officer would put together programming targeted at child members and children of members. This one is more of a challenge, as the target population has a wide dispersion of maturity and the sorts of activities that might be of interest. Also, most of them are dependent upon parents for transportation.

No space for an editor's column this month, so I'll mention here that Calendar Editor is still open.

Snowy times at the Spring Mountain Climb!
David Heimann

During the years of the Mountain Climb, we've had various weather. Usually, it's been bright and sunny, or cloudy and a bit cool, great for hiking! Sometimes we've had a bit of a drizzle or occasional showers; no match for inveterate hikers! Every once in a while it has rained solidly the whole day; a definite match for inveterate hikers such as ourselves! However, this Spring Mountain Climb we had a first — it snowed!

While we occasionally have had patches of snow on the trails at higher elevations during the spring hikes, we had not encountered waking up Saturday morning to look out the window at snowflakes dancing outside! Nothing accumulated on the roads or trails or in the wood and very little stayed on open ground, but, we all wondered, what do we do in weather like this?

Well, seven brave souls decided to rough it and defy the weather! We got into our trusty metal enclosed hiking shoes (commonly called cars), and went to Bretton Woods to have lunch at the Mount Washington Hotel on the occasion of its centennial anniversary. The food was wonderful; Sue [Hill], here's a place to go to when you graduate! As we finished, we saw that the snow had tailed off to flurries, so we decide to hike after all. Some of us hiked the cross-country ski trails around the hotel while others went to Crawford Notch and went to a wonderful viewpoint a short trail-length away. It was only a couple of hours instead of our usual heart of the day, but we did hike!

So we indeed worked up appetites, despite the snow. Appetites that were more than satisfied by our hidden-talent chef, Brian Lerich, with his delectable thick barley soup and pasta with homemade sauce including secret herbs and spices (OK, not so secret, but how Brian combined them like a symphony conductor!). After that, it was an evening of chatting, games, and camaraderie, with a few people slipping out into Woodstock to hear a live band at the Woodstock Inn.

A wonderful weekend, even with the snow!

All-Day Music Lessons
David Kaslow

Years ago, while writing Living Dangerously with the Horn: Thoughts on Life and Art, I had an epiphany. As I was pondering allopathic and homeopathic medical systems for the chapter dealing with "health," for the first time, I realized that if the macrocosm that we call the universe is simply an organism containing myriad interconnected aspects, then unknowingly I had gained musical knowledge and wisdom from the implications of every past discussion, situation, or activity in which I have ever been involved — no matter what its ostensible subject or focus. Reinforcing this thought, also I recalled that the music of American avant-garde composer John Cage is based on the idea that so-called differences between music and non-music are illusory — i. e., that every sound is music.

Without meaning to look this particular gift horse in the mouth(piece), also I realized that this must have been true in both directions: that also I had learned much about the universe in the process of learning to be a musician. For instance, I saw that the color and projection of the sound of a railroad horn had taught me much about the color and projection that I need for playing low notes on a French horn. Similarly, I perceived that my studies of athletic training methods had taught me much about approaching the athletic aspects of playing the horn; that the contradictions of crustiness and creaminess I had tasted in freshly-baked baguettes had at the same time taught me how to approach the delicious crusty/creamy contradictions in the music of Francis Poulenc, and that the passion I encountered in reading Juan Ramón Jiménez's Platero and I had taught me how to play the passionate compositions of Carl Nielsen.

In turn, I saw that by being "around" Beethoven's titanic spirit, I had learned much about my sprit; that I had brought my understanding of the complexities of Bach fugues to my understanding of the many roles, functions, and relationships that I play and experience in everyday life; and that I had brought my experience of the intensity in John Coltrane's free jazz to myriad extra-musical aspects of daily living.

More than ever — and for this, I am grateful for Russian mystic and philosopher G. I. Gurdjieff's "Work" — I see that by constantly striving to be more responsive and reactive to every musician and to every non-musician, as well as to every musical and to every extra-musical activity, my past music lessons continue to be transformed into lessons in extra-musical living; and that (seemingly) mundane daily moments still become transformed into all-day music lessons.

David Kaslow is the author of Living Dangerously with the Horn: Thoughts on Life and Art and With Aspirations High: Discussions and Exercises for Musicians.