tinkering with clocks

It seems ironic that we are back on "standard" time -- ironic because we spend more of the year now on the other sort, and it will get worse next year. What'll it be then, close to eight months of daylight savings time and four of standard time?

I understand the motivation to re-align the window of daylight to fit one's preferences, but that's doomed because we don't all have the same preferences (so the strongest lobby wins) and it's not as if clock-tinkering can actually extend the amount of light in the day. It might be wiser to just admit that noon comes at noon and sometimes that means dark mornings or dark evenings, and suck it up. Do we really need sunsets at close to 10PM in June? Does that get you anything that you can't get enough of with a 9PM sunset? And what's the harm of a 5:30 sunset in late October instead of a 6:30 one? If you work normal hours that extra hour of light probably doesn't let you do anything enjoyable (you're on your way home or eating dinner, most likely), and kids have been out of school for a couple hours by then so they've had plenty of running-around-outside time.

On Thursday I drove to morning services in pitch dark, and I had to consciously dawdle in leading the service so that the sun would rise before the first prayer that must be said in "the morning" hit. I don't know what this group will do next year, when DST continues through November. The minyan is when it is so people can get to work on time.

writing music

An SCA friend wrote a poem that I decided to try to set to music, because we'd like to perform it at Darkover at the end of November. My partial draft went over well at the last practice, so I just sent out my first complete draft.

I decided to start by seeing if there was a period-appropriate melody that I could adapt. I went looking for Troubador/Trouvere melodies, but on the way I bumped into a (German) minnesang that worked pretty well as a base. The first section is almost a straight copy of the minnesang -- just a little tweaking to fit the text. The other two sections I wrote in what I hope is a compatable style, and then I wrote a simple bass line (that is, an instrumental line to go under the singer) using contemporary models. The original melody contained no Bs at all, leaving open the question of whether they would have been flat or natural if present. I've had my head in renaissance (and later) music too long; this should be obvious, I suspect, but I haven't been spending many cycles on medieval lately. Drat.

Writing/adapting this felt good! I wonder if it has broken the block that I've had for a long time with another text I've been wanting to set. For the longest time I just could not come up with a melody that fit both the period and mood of the text, but it's been a couple years since I tried so it's time to pull it out again. (No, author who might be reading this, I haven't forgotten.)