Journal of a Sabbatical

February 17, 2001

tubarama and more used books

Today's Reading: In Audubon's Labrador by Charles Wendell Townsend, Budapest: The City of the Magyars by F. Berkeley Smith, Whittier by Anna Lucy

Today's Starting Pitcher: Pitchers and catchers report !!!

Tubarama at URI. The URI campus at North Kingstown is nearly an hour's drive from Providence, which is an hour and a half drive from my house, so there was no way I was going to be able to get us there for the start of workshops and stuff at 8:30 AM. We decided to just take in the afternoon concert and the evening recital and whatever we could between those.

On the way to URI we passed a used book store that I'd never noticed before in North Kingstown. My used book radar must be cranked up by the impending loss of Olde Port. I immediately knew what activity I was going to choose between the afternoon sessions and the evening recital: a used book binge.

We missed the 1:00 PM performance of Music of Rhode Island Composers, but did manage to catch the 3:00 PM concert by the URI Symphony Orchestra featuring:

Concerto for Euphonium by Alexandre Potiyenko - Danny Vinson on euphonium

Five Movements in Quotation Marks by Kamillo Lendvay - Sheri Santos, horn, Christopher Mundo, trombone, Mark Stickney, tuba

Concerto for Tuba by Jan Kryzywicki - Gary Buttery on tuba

And of course the 7:00 PM concert featuring Mark Stickney, from which I saved the program so I could write down what they played in my journal, but now cannot find. Too many things on my mind. Anyway there was a tuba concerto by Vaughn Williams, some Bach, Haydn, Arban, and somebody else. Mark Stickney was incredible. He put his whole being into the music. The tuba became part of him. It was wonderful. On the way out of the hall I thanked him.

In between times (before the 3:00 concert, after it, etc.) Nancy listed to rehearsals while I checked out the art gallery, then we both took in the Figure/Disfigure exhibit in the main gallery, bought some cookies from a fraternity bake sale, checked out the CDs for sale, and so on. And then it was time for used books (oh, and dinner too - but we spent more time on the books).

The poetry section was chock full of 19th century American poets including 3 different editions of the complete poems of Whittier along with Tent on the Beach and a few other small collections, 5 different editions of the complete poems of Oliver Wendell Holmes, stuff like that. Even the poems of Bayard Taylor (but alas not the travel books of Bayard Taylor). I read aloud to Nancy from Whittier and Holmes and the bookstore owner got a big kick out of it. She said she enjoyed my reading.

I was actually pretty restrained. I didn't just buy everything that caught my eye. I read and browsed and chose carefully. Even in the bird section. The Massachusetts section only had one book about the Merrimack River and it's one I already own, so I wasn't tempted there. In fact the literary landscape of Massachusetts on the shelves consisted of Boston, Cape Cod, and Nantucket. There was one book about the Merrimack Valley as I mentioned and one book about Worcester. Kind of a funny map of Massachusetts. Anyway, I came away with three purchases:

Whittier, 1899, an album of photos collected by Anna Lucy illustrating every place and some of the people mentioned in Whittier's poetry, with appropriate quotes from the relevant poems. There are some wonderful old photos of the Merrimack River at various spots. We went through the whole book when we got home from Tubarama, sort of flopped down on the couch trying to picture what each place looks like now. I am amazed at how unchanged Deer Island and the Chain Bridge look. Some of the views I can't place at all. Some obvious differences: in the 1890's there were still elm trees in Massachusetts. No elms now. Downtown Haverhill completely different. Stuff like that.

Budapest: The City of the Magyars, 1903, a wonderfully weird tale of the author's trip to Budapest in search of a comic opera. He seems to regard all of Hungarian culture as something of a comic opera. The whole thing is pretty funny.

Mute Swans of the Atlantic Coast, OK this one's recent but it's signed by the author, who is from North Kingstown and was inspired to write this study of the population of mute swans along the Atlantic coast by watching the swans in Wickford Harbor. He does mention swan populations other than the ones in Wickford Harbor, but inexplicably I couldn't find mention of Watchemoket Cove, the epicenter of the Rhode Island swan explosion. One illustration shows the swans in a "salt marsh" with canvasbacks, Canada geese, mallards, black ducks... almost the cove but without the buffleheads, mergansers, and wigeons, not to mention the common black-headed gull. Must read this more closely when I get back from Budapest. This book I'm leaving with Nancy so she can learn more about the swans while I'm gone.