At the rate I'm working through it, I will finish the book "Pianoforte: A Social History of the Piano" when I'm 67.

The epigraph for the chapter on Beethoven will carry me for several years:

"Beethoven is Lucifer's good son, the demon guide to the last things." -Ernst Bloch

So, some days I want to be the Trout Quintet and some days I want to be Beethoven.

East of Town

I love visiting N- and J-, who live east of town, down a long gravel driveway with grass between the wheeltracks. Their small house is calm and simple, heated only by a woodstove and surrounded by semi-tamed meadow and forest.

As I drove down the lane, I slowed so I could hear H-, their dog, galloping alongside the car. Laundry hung on the line and little watercolor drawings lay on the back porch table, where N-, J- and baby C- must have eaten all summer, as they had no usable dining room until recently.

While C-napped upstairs, N- made cups of peppermint tea and served mine in Fiestaware that matched my blouse. Sometimes talking with her is hard, because we have so much to say and I change subjects more slowly than she. Pauses in the conversation--which I need--are rare. But today was slower. The dog nuzzled my legs and we both watched her for a moment. The fire whispered and then it was time for me to drive west, back to the city.

The November afternoon lay down its sun and shadows across the road. If music has geometry, Loreena McKennit's voice on my car's stereo was the same angle as the slanted light. I was late picking up 1 from school, but not so late that it mattered.

Two Cute Stories About a 4-Year-Old That Happen To Be Entirely Different in Tone

At supper last night 2 asked, out of the blue, "Do you know what I wish for most, besides Thanksgiving going on forever, and wings?"

I was so disarmed by the question, I can't even remember what her answer was.

---
About a week ago, 2 was pestering 1 to get off the toilet so she could use it. 1 finally finished and hastily flushed, but it didn't take. From the living room, I heard some commotion in the bathroom, then little footsteps tearing down the hall and a panicky voice, "SOMEBODY GET A PLUNGER!"

Some Chicks

These are the survivors of the science class incubator. 1 brought them home over Thanksgiving break, and even dug a few worms out of the compost pile for them.

Clockwise from top: Ronnie, Nolan, and Too Cute To Name

Bailey was the lone quail hatchling. Dwarfed by his boxmates, he would try to clamber up on their backs when they sat down to sleep and push his head under their wings.

Bailey died as Thanksgiving day dawned, lay in state in a tin breathmint box for two days, and was buried beneath a daffodil bulb on Sunday morning.

My Absolute All-Time Favorite Liner Notes

This is the last paragraph of the anonymously written notes that accompany a recording of Schubert's Trout Quintet by the Endres Quartet with Rolf Reinhardt:

"It is amusing to note how almost every commentator, severely picking holes in the formal structure of the Trout, abjectly surrenders to its musical charm. In short, Schubert may not have made the greatest intellectual or emotional contribution to music with the Trout Quintet--but he went ahead and composed a work of genius, one that is so spontaneous, so lyric and free-flowing, that criticism remains pedantic and impertinent."


You may guess for yourselves why this analysis is so dear to me, with the italics-added portions standing as your clues.

No Returns

Last fall as I drove down M- Ave. under the yellow and red maples backlit by afternoon sun, I passed a hearse waiting to enter the street from the parking lot of a church. It pulled out behind me, then two blocks later, a different hearse crossed the street in front of me.

"A hearse in front, a hearse behind," I thought, and it sounded so good that I wrote it down on the back of a receipt at the next stoplight. It was an easy lyric to let flit through the air, what with all the sunshine and autumnal color.

I rarely think about death, not even my parents', and I'm not going to now. I'm glad that hearses pass by on our public roads, so I can remember death without having to consider it. But I have kept the receipt.