2006 September

It’s difficult not to imagine water during the evening’s introductory piece, Liadov’s The Enchanted Lake. It somehow shimmers and ripples, and I can understand why Kahane wanted to give his favorite piece by a lesser known composer some attention.

The pianist for the main attraction, Prokofiev’s Piano Concerto No. 2, is a twenty year-old Van Cliburn Competition winner, Joyce Yang. She is not at all showy. She sits down and lets the music do the talking while she is consumed in it. This music, which debuted only months after Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring, caused almost as much uproar in Pavlovsk as Stravinsky did in Paris. Other than making use of some dissonance, though, I find it an entirely different experience to listen to. The images churned up by the piano and orchestra are juggernauts to me - giant machines and violent battles. Between these clashes softer passages reach out to we human listeners to remind us that these are inevitable parts of our experience, painful as they be. And even in the pain there is beauty. I found myself extremely moved by the piece.

Even after the intermission I wasn’t quite ready for Tchaikovsky’s Sixth and final Symphony. I let myself drift through it. Sometimes the themes of love, disappointment, and death reached through to me, and other times the music carried me through my own daydreams of rock climbs and autumn hikes.

We’ve been living our 33-foot fifth wheel for well over a year now, and I can only think of one thing I truly missed. This week our generous friend Alan came to my rescue with a built-to-spec desk that holds all that our previous desk did, and one more thing: my keyboard. I didn’t realize until was back how much I missed it. I can now resume one of my favorite pastimes - staring out the window and making noise on the keys. Thanks Alan!

I’ve been honored to put up a new website for fellow outdoor adventurer Paula Constant: constanttrek. She has put together an expedition from scratch that is almost beyond imagining, surviving a split with her husband and months of searching for funds to continue her walk across the Sahara desert, which she is now ready to resume. I’ll remain involved with the web site, and hope it enables Paula to effectively share her journey with the rest of us.

There are a lot of concepts at work in this film. I probably would have liked it if there had been fewer. The idea of a film noir set in a high school is intriguing. What kind of smoky dramas might take place in a modern urban school district? You don’t find out here, because the drama isn’t inspired by the setting, it’s like a textbook study of the hardboiled detective genre. The quick, slangy, cryptic dialogue that ensues turns the high school kids into strange puppets saying lines from some forgotten Dashiell Hammet novel. The contrast is pretty funny at points, and it could have made a good noir parody, but it doesn’t commit to this fun perspective either. You don’t get parody, and you don’t get believable characters. The unfortunate end result is a clever, slick, but seemingly pointless series of cinematic manuevers.

certified fresh

After enduring some icky Fall weather that made me feel like curling up in bed for the weekend, I needed a clear, crisp day like this to draw me back out. After making a particularly frigid crossing of the Poudre River Ann, Sean, and I are treated to a gorgeous day of climbing at the Palace. I’m excited to finally have a full day to explore this place that seems more vibrant and alive with colors and smells than ever before. It’s one of those days when good climbing still takes a back seat to being alive in the perfect spot.

A 5.9+. We try the first route you come to on the trail, a slabby-looking pillar. It has a deceptively hard, bouldery start that bucks Ann & Sean. After that I find it pretty easy, but amusing.

Escalera 5.8. Sean and Ann both take a stab at this on lead, but come down from when they can’t reach the bolt that protects the crux. I find a couple of hidden holds on the left that make the clip and the thin face moves solid. That’s followed by a hand traverse, then some exposed but easy stemming to the top. Everyone makes it up on TR.

Rapunzel, Rapunzel 5.10a. I enjoy this varied route intensely, and it raises my heartrate a few times despite being very well protected. Pumpy moves take you over a bulge on The Citadel, a prominent pillar that towers over the river. Some thin face follows, then a puzzling hand crack, a committing finger crack lieback, then jugs to the top. Everyone makes this one too, leaving us all ecstatic.

The orchestra begins with a world premiere performance of a piece it commissioned from University of Colorado composition professor Daniel Kellogg, Refracted Skies. It’s inspired by the front range landscape, and combines dissonant and melodic themes as it journeys from the plains to the rugged peaks. The imagery works for me, but not Ann. Hearing a premiere is a worthy cultural experience either way, I think.

André Watts is probably the biggest name pianist I have seen perform. The distinctions become obvious soon after he launches into Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto No. 2. At 60 years old he is absolutely commanding, exuding mastery of his instrument as he plays. At the same time, he is completely attentive to conductor Jeffrey Kahane, as if ready to turn the performance in any direction if given the cue. He plays with an occasional coreographed flourish, while keeping every note distinct in the piece’s flurries. It’s humbling to see such honed playing, yet I don’t think it will lessen my enjoyment of (relatively) more reckless players that appear to flirt with the limits of their abilities.

Kahane keeps the season opener big by adding a full choir to the orchestra to perform Suite No. 2 from Maurice Ravel’s Daphnis and Chloé, which quickly throws me into a daydream full of lively nature scenes. As usual I’m a bit worn out by the end, but still enjoy the lively España by Emmanuel Charbrier, a piece inspired in 1883 by “Andalusian behinds wiggling like frolicsome snakes!”

Sean and I cross the river at last to explore this area we’ve been gazing at all summer from Crystal Wall. We cross the river carefully and find the trail up to The Citadel, a small tower. There are a trio of guys from Santa Cruz here who have a free guidebook from Dr Topo. From this I pick out Not Enough, a 5.9+ on Wall With A View. Nice steep climbing, lots of sidepulls. I toprope Party Mixer also, a 5.10c with an overhanging crack at the top. Fun stuff. We go down the back side. There are climbs everywhere, and this little grotto is lush and isolated. We agree we need to come back here.

I’ve made enough small fixes and patches to warrant a small release. No new features, mostly help for those having trouble. Get it on the download page.

• Added log messages for debugging, and an option to display them.
• If there are no posts with coordinates, center on lat,lon 0,0.
• Order geo queries by post date instead of id.
• Changed the plugin link to use the installation URL instead of the blog URL.
• Explicitly set the status header to recover from changes by other plugins.
• Adjusted for PHP setups without ‘.’ in the path.
• Encoded query args in show_on_map_link to be XHTML compliant.

It feels early before 7 am, like I’m pedaling through the remains of my dreams to reach wakefulness once more. The misty air smells damp, and creatures who prefer to do business in the gentle morning light fade in and out of it. Even the sun has to work its way through the mist in a red cloak to reach the waking world unclothed, once more too bright to look at.

I finally manage a clean ascent of the 5.10b I’ve been working on. I do it first, slipping into just the right meditative state of mind. It feels really good. Ann has a hard time with this one due to a big reach at the bottom, but we sample some of the new route to the left on toprope, and she manages more of that. I try it too - very nice edges and sidepulls. The part I climb feels like maybe 5.10d. There are frogs croaking on our descent, and the air is filled with the perfume of some flowering plant. We’re glad we came.