Last night I ventured forth to ascend Lookout Mountain in the midst a developing ice storm. The Chattanooga Symphony & Opera String Quartet and Wind Quintet presented a concert of chamber works by Mendelssohn and Nielsen. During the wind quintet by Carl Nielsen I tried to guess his nationality from his name and the music--it he Norwegian? I concluded that he was Scandinavian and wasn't Swedish, but beyond that I was clueless. It turns out that he was a Danish composer, and people in Denmark still sing poems by Danish poets set to music by Nielsen.
After the concert, the other concert-goers who'd come up the mountain and I faced the prospect of driving down on possibly icy roads. Sanderson parking lot was pretty much an ice sheet- it was trick to walk without slipping. As I scraped a quarter inch of ice off my car windshield the freezing rain was accumulating ice on my coat, hat, and ears. We received word from a guy who'd just driven up the mountain that the salt trucks had just been out, and that if we were gonna drive down to go soon, so I slowly crept out of my parking spot. Sanderson parking lot was the worst part of the drive, because once I was on Scenic Highway things were fine, though I did only go about 20mph most of the drive down the mountain.
Upon descending the mountain I proceeded to the Hackenshack with Bekah Sotelo following me. The inhabitants of said shack were there, along with Harold Tuggy, David (a music major who I met upon arrival), and after a little while Tyson and his friend Lee showed up.
We'd been invited down for dessert, games and possibly sharing of favorite poems and portions of books. I glanced at the spread of desserts and thought there was some sort of mistake. A cat litter box, lined with a plastic trash bag, and a 'clean-the-litter-box' scooper, and what looked like used cat litter in the box, were sitting on the dessert table beside a varied assortment of sweet breads, cheesecake, and other goodies. The Cat Litter Box Cake was actually a chocolaty cake with some pudding mixed in, and tootsie rolls on on top for aesthetic effect. "Would you like some crap?" "No thanks, I've had enough today already." When was the last time you heard that question at a party?
We played the poetry game afterwards, and my second poem was titled "The Shorter Ballad of the Peopel of Bampf." Its not really worth putting up here, and neither is the first one, but the first one was short, so I would have posted it, but I left the paper.
Well, last night was the first of four Fridays of concerts I'm hoping to go to. Two of them are the Atlanta Symphony, and one is Courtney Rayburn's Senior Recital up at Covenant College.
This morning our yard was an icy wonder; tree branches glistened with moist ice, and isykles hung like frozen teeth from the eaves.
Posted by swanson at januari 29, 2005 2:13 EM