John AC4CA passed away

 It was a sad news. John AC4CA was dead.

This morning, without any reason, I have remembered of Alan AC2K and Glen NN6T, both I have lost last year. They have been good friends of mine for a long time. Respectable people.

Facebook reminded me of a post by Jack KN7Y a couple of years ago, who told there that he had pleasantly heard me working with Alan. Sharing it, I told how much I miss him as well as Glen. Lee K5LY gave me a comment telling Alan used to be an FOC sponsor for him and Glen let him to join CWops. 

I have asked Lee how John AC4CA and the couple N3BB were doing. In the reply, Lee let me know of John's passing. It was Feb 12th as he said.

I have known John quite well especially for the past several years. My log told me we had had QSOs for 46 times since 2013. He has had a rare malignancy of neuroendocrine tumor and has been under treatment at MD Anderson in Houston. He has visited there at certain interval of few months. His wife Jackie has had Alzheimers for years, which urged her to be in a facility for the last several years. He should be lonely at home but enjoyed ham radio so much. It was his joy to go around his home and to make bird watching with the company. 

What made our QSOs unforgettable and worth spending time together was that he loved music. Especially Chopin. He often told me he had practised his pieces by himself. Whenever I told of the work impressive to me, he always tried to listen to them. Sharing the same interests in music with him was a special reward for me.

Last night, I was listening to the Well Tempered Klavier of Bach played by Svistolav Richter. Listening to it as a nourishing material to my mind, I thought being able to listen and experience such great works is a kind of blessing to me. I should not take it granted to be able to do so. Life is limited in time.

I haven't known of John in his detailed life history but sure found a friendship of soulful relationship. Every QSO with him was so impressive that I had written about him in my Japanese blog for a few times. Such posts told me I had been touched by such QSOs in real depth.

I remembered of his last mail given to me last fall, which told me he would revisit MD Anderson soon and try another treatment protocol since the present one turned out not so effective as before. He didn't sound very positive. Worrying about him, 5 days later than his death, I sent an e mail to him. No answer. It was why I asked about him to Lee. If I should have heard of his hardship, I could not do anything of course. Ｍaybe, I could have heard of his murmur in his mind. Too sad I could not do that.

RIP, good friend, John. 

Tomato budding

  A couple of days ago, I have layed seeds of tomatoe on a wet paper in a plastic box. It was to induce budding. It is placed on a small hot carpet. They say wet environment plus warmth is required to have them bud out. It is my 1st ever experiment. I need its seedlings earlier than they are sold in shops. Because they should bloom and bear fruits before the rainy season starts in June. Tomatoes are originally from the high land in South America and require dry and modestly warm weather. Rain could damage them badly as I have experienced for a few times in the past.

Anyway, the 1st step was successful. I am really excited to see some of the seeds budding. Very tiny budds. It may sound a bit too exaggerated but it sure is the miracle of life. They say water penetrates the wall of seed and activates gibberellin, a plant hormone, which accelerates budding. Epigenetic/genetic processes are involved in the cascade. That miraculous processes are occurring in this tiny seed. Not well focused photo of the budding seed here.

I would grow them in pots in a simple "green box". In the end of April or the beginning of May, I may plant grown tomatoes on the ground.

Nothing is better than home grown matured tomato. Expecting them in June, I am feeling quite excited again. Hopefully, I would keep them growing until it gets frosty late in fall. 

Half a century have passed

I have received a broadcast email from an alumni guy of a professor at our mother school a couple of days ago. It told me one of the class mates, 69 in total, has died last month and his family didn't hold a funeral ceremony publicly for him due to the pandemic still blazing, even if it was going to be settled. He was 74 years old and was enjoying research work and climbing mountains until last spring. Sadly, even though I still remember who he was, I haven't talked to him in the school days. He was a quiet person who won't belong to any groups spontaneously occurred in the class. So far as I remember of him, he might have graduated from another university before being enrolled in our mother university and possibly has gone to basic medicine laboratory after graduation. I believe he has spent all his life in research work.

I realized it has been half a century since I passed the entrance exam and was enrolled in our mother school. It took me a couple of years to prepare for the exam since starting it at graduation from another college without any accumulation for that. Medicine was one of the most popular specialities those days. This is a photo on the day when the result of the entrance exam was published. In March of 1972. By this time, I have passed an entrance exam of another university in a countryside. I was intending to go there already having lodged an apartment. Unexpectedly, I passed our mother school and would spend med student life there. The entrance exam multiplier was over 40, even though the actual number was over 20. It was impossible for me to imagine I could pass it.

This is a photo taken at the entrance of Dept. Dentistry, why not Med, I don't know. Shabbily dressed, worn even sandals and with messy hairstyle, I was looking far away. This outlook tells that I haven't expected passing the exam at all. I have been there alone and accidentally met a friends of mine from the preparatory school, who told me I had passed it before I saw the display of the exam result. He deprived me of the chance to find the result on the board by myself! I would live in a dorm of the preparatory course in Chiba for a couple of years and then came back to home while being educated at this place in the center of Tokyo. I have become crazy at cello and orchestra. When kidding my mother telling her I would go to a music school quitting medicine, she was seriously worrying about that. Such a doting mother! I can't remember who took this photo. This was the moment when I was destined to spend this life, even though there have been a string of choices in it.  

I should have talked to that guy passing away recently. I would ask him how and what life he has spent and if he was satisfied with it. At our age, we often ask about that even though it won't be given any proper answer at all.  

That email sender classmate told that he would hold a class meeting after absence for a few years due to the pandemic. Before I could not go for such an event, I should attend it to see them and listen how they have lived.

MiYoTa by Takemitsu

Nagano prefecture is located in the center of the main land of our country. It is a mountenous area. Route 18 runs north west from Karuisawa, a famous resort, to Ueda. It is located in the skirt of a volcano Asama mountain to the north with a big river named Chikuma river flowing on the opposite side. Driving that route, we could enjoy grand view of the big valley along that river. 

I have enjoyed driving that route for many times. Twice with my wife and once with my mother. Most often alone. When I quit working at a med school hospital, I had had a month long break until I started working at another hospital. During that period, I have visited there 2 or 3 times by myself. It was in late 80's.

It was not too long ago when I knew Toru Takemitsu had spent summer at a cottage in Miyota town those days. I was always conscious of the town with peculiar name when I went through there. It was a small town next to Karuisawa. It is the place where he has produced a lot of masterpieces. It reminds me that he has been a contemporary composer to me.

In 1996, when he passed away, another renowned composer Toshiro Mayuzumi made a speech. Takemitsu used to be an assistant to him in his young days. Composing music for a movie together, Takemitsu hummed a tune before him, which Mayuzumi, a supervisor for him at that time, thought too beautiful to make use for the movie. At the funeral, Mayuzumi has introduced it humming before the attendees and told it was the saddest tune he had ever known. A close friend of Takemitsu's, a poet Shuntaroh Tanikawa, has written lyrics to it. The title is MI・YO・TA. Of course, after the name of the town he used to stay every summer. The lyric refers to recollection of an important person, possibly of a girl friend in young days. No, the objective was Takemitsu himself. The sunray filtering through the trees is a key figurative word in it. Takemitsu used to walk around the forrest there, as he said, trying to listen how the nature sounded. Tanikawa must have known of his creativity in the forrest.

This is  MI・YO・TA, a chorus version. There are a lot of different versions. I am not capable of translating the lyrics by myself. As Mayuzumi told at the funeral ceremony for Takemitsu, the tune sounds sad but, at the same time, peacful at least to me. This double meaning won't bring us down but lift our minds up to higher place, I believe. It is always a characteristic for Takemitsu's works.

 

Writing this post, I have investigated on his life again. I knew he had lived with serious illnesses throughout his life. In his young days, he has had tuberculosis which urged him to be hospitalized for a few times. Later, he has suffered from collagen disease. Complicating cancer has made him deceased at pretty young age. As I wrote, he had lived life in close relation with death, as we say, lived life side by side with death. That should be the reason why his music sounds that way, dual meaining apparently in contradiction. 

It is the 27th anniversary of his passing today.

Pork fried with ginger

Pork fried with ginger. It was coupled with ginger soup. Yes, there was a big ginger in the kitchen which urged me to cook these dishes. Pork dusted with flour retains the seasoning of ginger, sake, sugar and soy sauce. A small amount of vinegar could have been added to them. Maybe, next time.

I have used pork domestially produced as well as imported. Imported one has been attractive due to its low price. But I have been concerned with possible contamination of antibiotics or growth promoter including estrogen in imported one. Considering of the risk in balance with own age, though, I often buy imported pork. The imported one is getting more expensive due to currency depriciation of JPY. Soon, it would cost as high as domestic one. 

As I iterated in this blog, we are suffering from bad inflation. The government as well as BOJ could not take measures against the inflation, that is, quantitative tightening. They are still carring on the opposite policy of quantitative easing. Quantitative easing once enforced would cause financial debt in excess of the internal reserves for BOJ and larger amount of interest payment for the national bond. BOJ has bought 40 trillion JPY of the national bond to oppose to the attack by speculators. It is quite difficult for BOJ to get out of quantitative easing. 

Looking at the price tag of pork at a super market, I am sighing and wondering which pork I should buy. May my retirement days be peaceful. 

A heritage in medical profession

I have a nephew, that is, my sister's son. He has been to our parents' home quite often with his mother. I used to take a walk with him in his babyhood on a stroller. It was when I was preparing for the entrance exam for med university around 1970.   

As depicted before, our aunt has brought the tradition of involvement in medical service into our family before WWII together with belief in Christianity. She had managed a small sanatorium for poor people with tuberculosis, destined to death at that time, at this place that we are living now around WWII. Without effective antibiotis, most patients were only waiting for death. In her autobiography, there came a scene where a patient in agony about to die asking her how long it would take before dying, which was a shock to me. 

Nevertheless, it was a peacful place. Most of the patients were in faith in Christianity. Every morning and evening, there were some people singing hymn acapella together. Their song coming through pine trees was one of the earliest memories for me. I might have told this memory in a previous post. I am still grateful to have spent such a time in the youngest days of my life.

At the sanatorium in 1953. I was before my father in the front raw. There were fewer patients by this time. and this facility, very poor and simple, was closed in a year or two. 

 

Our aunt and mother used to work as nurses at it. My mother had been working throughout her life as a nurse since we moved to Tokyo. When she died 12 years ago, she was put on with a nurse uniform at her funeral. She looked so vivid at work anytime, I remeber. It must have been a real calling for her.

My sister has taken over nursing for her profession and has spent years with patients as well. Now retired.

It was late last year when I received a news from a nephew that his daughter was going to be enrolled in a nursing university. I have heard she used to be hospitalized for a trauma for sometime several years ago and, seeing how nurses could be of help to patients, she wanted to be nurse. I thought it might had been only a kind of dream in childhood. But she has made it. 

Nursing is a kind of hard work. Doing with dying people or working through night at the inpatient ward etc. But it is worth working as a nurse. Nursing is the work to encourage patients and to stay side to them when they need her. I don't think she has chosen this profession to go after the others in our family but she might just find it deserves working as a nurse. Even without being conscious of that, she is still in the passage of heritage in medical service. I could not help feeling something beyond our intentions or thoughts.

   

One of her photos taken last year in a trip to Kansai.

I am not intending to brag this girl or our family at all. I am just pleased to have her going to be engaged in medical profession. Her great grandmother must be also pleased to know that in heaven.

 

Canola flower rice

Rice mixed with canola flower and salted kelp. Bitterness from canola flower and salted kelp bring the harmony of taste in early spring. Sesame is added.

 

I believe ancient people have enjoyed this simple dish everywhere in the countryside in our country for hundreds of years. Canola flower might be a symbol of early spring as well as such as ume flower or magnolia. 

I am not a good cook for such traditional dishes. However, I would try them and trace what ancestors have gone through. 

Canola spicies are rather stout as vegetable and are easily mated spontaneously. They would grow with spontaneous seeding. I would harvest and cook their flowers this spring. They could be simply boiled as a kind of salad. They are often materialized for pasta as well.

Snowfall Depressive state or Preparation for the End of Life

It's been snowy since early this morning. It is not unusual for us to have snowfall this time in a year. Not too chilly with high humidity. 

I still have been plowing the ground and making farm ridges for the vegetables in the upcoming spring and summer. Caring for my bluntly painful back, I stand up on the soil and imagine that there won't be anyone doing with this property in 20 or 30 years. It is most likelily abandoned then. It will return to be a forrest covered with deciduous broadleaf trees as it used to be decades ago before my aunt started the small sanatorium for tuberculosis at this place. The fallen leaves would grow the next generation of lives there. It would be a silent and peaceful place then. 

A good friend of mine in ham radio since '80s has asked me if I was getting depressive when I decided quitting ham radio. Without overt or occult depression, I won't do that with my life long hobby nor even imagine such a thing, he would say. I am still busy preparing meals and doing house chores. Listening to music and reading attract me a lot. Psychological energy is not depleted in my case. I don't believe I suffer from the depression as psychiatry defines. But my friends might be right as for my depressive inclination. Getting older, we should get ready to say farewell to the things in the world or to the world itself. Who could be spared having subtle depression or feeling indifferent to certain things in that circumstance? It is not the depressive state exhausting psychological energy but feeling free from the so called common sense necessary to live in the society and meaningless pursuits for fame, goods or fortunes. I have repeatedly told about this sense in this blog before. I won't rationalize it for myself but aging is such a process of life, I believe, we should go through. 

It might be self-complacent in contemplation but I think composers like Beethoven in their very last part of lives have left works resonant to such an idea. This sonata Nr12 by Beethoven is, I believe, expressing such a world. Not only the content but also the style of this sonata is irregular from the other ones. 

Horszowsky's touch is gentle and beautiful for all notes, nevertheless. 

 

 

Dinner Dishes Tonight

 This is a dinner here. How much would you play for these dishes?

A plate of Sashimi will be added to this. Red bean rice, that is, red rice in Japanese is popular in our country. Boiling the beans is a bit complicated process. On a whim, I purchased red beans, which I had not had any plan how to cook. This is the 2nd trial of red rice. A bit better than the last time. Beef is cooked with radish. This radish and the potatoe in the sour tomato soup are the only vegetables harvested in the garden farm this time. I should have tried growing cabbage very useful for a number of menu. Salad featuring boiled egg is a regular dish for dinner here. 

I am apt to cook too many dishes at one time. When starting with them, I get conscious of that and regret it. Always too late.

Anyway, I have done with my duty today. 

Piano Trio OP10 by Jongen

 Joseph Jongen is a Belgian composer who has been active from the last years in the 19th century to the first half of the last century. One of so called the Franckist school. He has started the career of musician, a pianist/organist and a composer, very early in his life. He seems to have regained fame in this century.

This piano trio, possibly composed in his young days, has flourishing melodies. Inclined to melancholy. As a Franckist composer, he takes the form of cyclic technique. Later, he has become a teacher in harmony and counterpoint at his mother school, Royal Conservatoir of Liege. Counterpoint is not conspicuous in this work. I believe his young talent has composed this piece as it wanted to. Monopoly of melodies and the contrast between strings and piano are remarkable. It is not a defect at all but tells us how he composed it in youth.

Several other composers' first works have been with the style of piano trio. Beethoven's 1st opus is composed of 3 works in this genre. Jongen's teacher, Franck, also started his composer career with OP1 piano trio in f minor. Chopin's only piano trio is given OP8 which tells he has composed it in his young days as a composer. I don't know why but they have started composing chamber music in this genre. Practically, piano trio with only 3 performers must be easy for them to access to. I don't know what musicological motivation they have had for this genre. 

As an amateur cellist, piano trio is a kind of hard genre. It requires cellist proficiency with his/her instrument comparable to piano and violin. Simply, audio dynamic cello is always behind the other two instruments. But piano trio has been a fun for me to challenge with. Like Nr1 piano trio by Mendelssohn, Nr1, 2 and 3 by Brahms, Faure OP120 or the famous Archduke by Beethoven etc. I have enjoyed playing them in my cellist career even if not always very successful. 

One more thing. Very personal. When listening to this piece with this recording at bed room, the violin sounds far from me. I was a bit sad to realize my auditory ability had been worsened for the high range of audio. It has been real in fact. But, listening to it with a better audio set with a 3 way KEF speaker, it sounds much better with the higher portion of audio. This KEF has only a coaxial tweeter but sounds better than a bookshelf speaker set by Onkyo. I am inclined to set a better set with bigger speaker at bed room. It won't be too long before I could not appreciate good music. A better speaker may deserve it.  

Ume is coming out

It was the day when the gardener whom we always asked for gardening came here. Looking around the garden, I accidentally found one of ume trees started blooming. It has been so cold this winter that they came out one or two weeks later than usual. They still seemed to sense the arrival of spring even if it was subtle. Or they would usher in spring earlier than the other plants.

This ume tree in front of the other house our parents used to live bloom earliest among a few other ume trees. It is located south of the house and enjoys sunray most. As I told about it before, it was planted by my father almost 40 years ago. i am sure both parents have enjoyed its blossoms around this time in a year. 

My parents would love this blossoms. I would imagine they were watching it together with me.