Al Dimond's Journal: Clarinetting

Playing today was really good... I think I'm starting to get it together in terms of stringing phrases together with continuity.

I've been working on the second movement of the Mozart Concerto (it's in nice easy keys; I want to get my fingers back under me before doing "hard" stuff). The middle of that movement is just fucking beautiful, and there's so much you can do with it.

Other than that, life is ok. Work has been OK, running has been OK, frisbee has been OK. When I see Jessica I've been happy. I wish our situation this summer was such that we could be together for more of the other things we enjoy, since we don't exactly *do* a lot of the same things. We do somewhat similar things, and we do them in similar ways. Once we get back to school and our time together isn't at such a premium, I think it'll be a lot easier.

My mom got a letter in the mail today "from John Kerry". Among other things it mentioned his "grass-roots" campaign... which just cracks me up. If, say, Howard Dean called his campaign grass-roots, I'd maybe almost buy that a little bit. If Dennis Kucinich called his campaign grass-roots I'd say, "what campaign?" (Kucinich is one of my favorite politicians, and I'm glad he's in Congress, but I don't think he'd make a great president, and apparently everyone voting in the primaries agrees). But John Kerry is an establishment candidate in an establishment party who gets his money from big corporations and big labor, appears to have gained power by appealing to the party elite (rather than directly to the people), and gets his publicity through all the traditional means. He believes in his party. I read the big Time Magazine story on "WTF is this John Kerry anyway?", and he seems from that to have some qualities that I appreciate in my leaders. He supposedly is intense and studies things independently. But he hasn't seemed to do that very much recently in the Senate. He goes by the party line and was elected in the primaries for his electability. He could be many things, but not "grass-roots".

allright, time to get crackin' on the LFS system.

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