Our first grant for Eigenvalues

Some good news came in the mail today: we've been awarded a small grant from the Puffin Foundation for Eigenvalues. We've got two other proposals pending for this project. We're going to create a new, fairly large-scale work built from texts taken from Supreme Court decisions. Particularly dissenting opinions from the court's worst-decisions-ever. That will include the ridiculous Bush v. Gore case in 2000, and we'll put that in context with other historical missteps made by the court such as Dred Scott, Plessy v. Ferguson, and a handful of others that may not be quite so widely recognizable.

In a few days, we're having a rehearsal for the Low End String Quartet - it's been almost a year since we played together, it will be very exciting to finally start playing some of this new music that I've been working on. It's always gratifying to actually hear music that previously only existed in my head.

Spring is here and I have the allergies to prove it. I spent yesterday like a good suburbanite working in the yard. Fired up the lawnmower for the first time of the season. Happily, it started right up. Then I spent about an hour doing my spring/summer ritual: the dandelion meditation. That's what I call it when I take to the yard with my weed hound and pull up dandelion's one at a time. It's, how-do-you-say, Quixotic? But I really don't want to use chemical fertilizers or herbicides so I stand out there for hours pulling up each little plant.

Yesterday, I timed my dandelion session by listening to the new Silver Mt. Zion record "13 Blues for 13 Moons." Despite what Pitchfork had to say about it, this is a fine fine recording. Pitchfork got all caught up in a discussion of political whatnot, but I think the album succeeds largely on the power of the instruments. The lyrics aren't necessarily the focal point (at least for me). In any event, the political content of the lyrics is cast mostly in metaphor - at least enough so that it doesn't weigh down the music. It's not like they're playing Billy Bragg songs or anything... If I wasn't so broke, I'd order the 2-disc vinyl version. They do a lovely job of incorporating strings (2 violins and cello) with loud electric guitars, no easy feat in my opinion. The last track, "BlindBlindBlind,"is especially awesome.