I brought the bowl back to the dorm this morning. It’s awfully heavy. I continually fear I will drop it.

The cracks are now a feature, not a bug. When I think back on the puzzle of what to do with the interior, I am reminded of the line from Casablanca: “It seems that destiny has taken a hand.”

I spent an hour with a string quintet this morning reading through and working on Waltz for string quartet & bassoon. A cello subbed for the bassoon. It was great fun, and I was able to help them hear what I heard and to play it. I think that with actual rehearsal it would be a very presentable piece indeed. My friend and colleague Stephen Czarkowski plans to program it this fall, so maybe we’ll get a YouTube video performance of that.

There were three places that I wasn’t sure were effective, and I found that I was right about those as being weak. I was able to fix one of them on the spot, and the other two are simple doubling issues, i.e., I need more oomph at two spots that sounded bare, so all I have to do is copy and paste some notes. Done, for a ducat!

I haven’t blogged about this because it’s been touchy, but for the past week here at the Land of Pan-Dimensional Mice we’ve been under “social distancing protocol” restrictions due to the flu. No one could sit directly next to each other, everyone was issued hand sanitizer, etc., etc. (There is no hand sanitizer in the city. Tomorrow there will be no Sharpie markers.)

The “no touching” thing had some interesting repercussions. We canceled Field Day and the Saturday night dance. (Everyone dressed up in their 80s finery anyway.) I canceled my Grand Ball. We had to cut seating at peformances in half, which meant we had to double the number of performances, which meant increased monitoring duties for me, which meant less time to get the program ready to close out. It was very stressful.

The worst was facing the fact that we were going to have do the final Prism Concert twice, cancel the Friday night Graffiti Dance (the kids sign each others’ t-shirts in a last paroxysm of bonding), and somehow split up Saturday morning’s Convocation. What kind of good-bye is it when half the people you love are not there? And the idea that we were going to keep these kids from hugging each other was ludicrous. The increasing anxiety about this very real downer was getting to everyone.

Last night, however, the word finally came that since we had not had anyone register any symptoms since our only case ten days ago, we were free of restrictions. We could end our summer as we should. And there was much rejoicing.

All in all, we were magnificent. We responded quickly and appropriately, and the kids were fantastic in their good-spirited compliance with the protocols. They were actually grateful that they were still at GHP, and many said so. All the final events were kept on the schedule, and as far as I know no one was turned away from something they wanted to see. We deserve much praise.

Two days, one hour, two minutes until GHP is over.