Since I last wrote, it has been a quiet couple of weeks, so this will be short. I’ve spent many moons laboring in the salt mines of Gondor, which is what I call tediously editing the conductor’s score for the first movement of my new Symphony No. 3, posted here last time. That movement was subtitled: “Upon a Walk in the English Countryside.” Subtitles for two of the three remaining movements will probably be “The Lady of Shalott” and “Stonehenge.”

Crystal is now in rehearsals for her next show! But the cast list has not yet been announced, so I still cannot say what show or where it is. But I can say that today is her first day back on the job as the music teacher at St. Edward School in Nashville. Today is just registration, and in two days the teachers will be in meetings and in their rooms preparing for the students to return on August 7. It was a nice summer vacation this year and somehow even felt a bit longer than the mere six weeks or so that it was.

On the garden front, we keep on being surprised at the new arrivals in the garden, like these huge hibiscus blossoms that just keep coming and coming. Suddenly we have had hummingbirds returning for the first time this season and chipmunks rollicking around and chasing each other. No critters have attacked our tomatoes yet, fortressed in screen wire as they are, but yesterday I discovered an entire chive plant that had been munched off to the ground! I hope that critter then went over to our stand of mint to get rid of his onion breath. It has been a crazy time alternating 90F-degree sunshine with severe but brief thunderstorms. During the last storm, as the thunder and lightning boomed several times very close by, Baby Fawn was running frantically around in circles in the meadow, apparently from fear.

This week I entered my previous album with Symphony No. 2: Tales from the Realm of Faerie into the upcoming Grammy Awards. Having been released on Oct. 14, 2022, it was released too late to enter last year but falls within the eligibility period for this year’s awards. That’s just a matter of entering it, which anyone can do. Then there are rounds of votes to whittle the list down in all the categories, plus committees to do that in some categories. (I have served seven times on the classical nominations committee in Los Angeles.) I am quite certain my symphony will not make it into the five “nominees” (finalists) for best new composition. By the way, just entering does not make you a nominee, only making it to the final five. So, having dutifully entered, I can now dutifully forget about it.

I must confess, there is a temptation to discouragement as a person working in the old-fashioned fine arts in today’s culture. Not much market for music like mine. Few even know the genre exists, and the “melody” of some “songs” now consists of three notes repeated over and over and over to a beat. But it is plenty of reward for me if even a few people appreciate my work, because I just enjoy doing it. Just remember:

“Many of life’s failures are people who did not realize how close they were to success when they gave up.”

— Thomas Edison