Well, can you hum a few bars?

Today I wrote to two senior students to inform them they had not made sufficient progress to complete their honors thesis. If had to guess, the reaction of the only male in the class of seven will be equal measures of disappointment and relief. The other student will probably cry. Christ.

Today is the first day of the Haj, the pilgrimage all Muslims would like to make once, and a holiday for the university as well as the laboratory where I had hoped to get some blood drawn. But I am done all my student’s research papers grades and completed my last grade report this morning. Dec. 19^th. Now I can catch up on everything I put on hold as the semester crested and pushed everything else of off the table.

I will teach the jazz history and culture course again in the spring and it will be supplemented with a mini-festival of local jazz talent, including a vocalist who works at the university, in April and possibly even a few hours a week of some jazz programming on the school’s underused internet radio station. By the way, congratulations to Eric Porter, who is guest editing a special issue of Jazz Perspectives focused on “Rethinking Jazz Studies Through the 1970s.”

The initial contribution to the AUCA jazz library was made by Peter Pohly, a retired NYC businessman who has been volunteering as a systems troubleshooter for the last few months. He returns to New York this Saturday and I will miss his thoroughly Manhattan sensibilities, tastes and sense of humor. We will stay in touch, my friend.