Just to spice things up a bit, and get the confessions started, here is probably the stupidest thing I ever did.
The first serious prize I won was quite unexpected. I had entered a composition called (how original) “Composition for Piano, Brass, and Percussion” in the 1974 Symposium for Contemporary Music for Brass at Georgia State University. When the piece was accepted I arranged to go to Atlanta for the performance. At the time I was romantically involved with a young woman who lived in the area and I arranged to meet her there. I would go to the performances as required, but my real reason was so that we would have a few evenings on the town in Atlanta. Imagine my surprise when the judges, who consisted of the members of the New York Brass Quintet, voted my piece the winner. The prize consisted of a cash award for writing a piece to be premiered by the NYBQ the following year at the 1975 Symposium. I was totally unprepared for this honor. There was, however, a hang up. I was to be the guest of honor at a reception to be held in the evening after the Symposium was finished and my woman friend and I had other plans. So I informed the people at the Symposium that I would not be able to attend their reception. You can imagine how that went over. Well, we had our evening in Atlanta and I went home to compose the work for the NYBQ.
The Quintet were all gentlemen about the slight I had handed them in Atlanta. They gratefully accepted the piece I wrote and, not only premiered it the following year in Atlanta but also put it into their repertoire for the next few years. However, when I went to Atlanta the following year for the premiere, there were those at Georgia State University who were just a bit icy in their welcome. I had learned a serious lesson with this escapade, and I never again mixed my personal life with my professional responsibilities as a composer. Looking back now, I can’t believe I would have acted the way I did. However, it reveals a characteristic of mine, which is that when I make a plan I really like to stick to it.
5 comments:
Or, you can look at your personality another way. You slighted a truly great musical group for just another piece of
a--. Shame on you. Does that make you feel properly chastised?? Now you can get on with your life (and go to the Greek Isles).
Do you ever remember some stupid or thoughtless thing you did in the past, slap your forehead, and shout to yourself--0h NOOOOO,how could I have done that? Well here is my initial confession. There may be more to follow. Squemish people should skip this.
After graduating Vet School in 1955
where I recieved my 1st Louie commission along with my DVM I awaited my call to active duty which came in July of that year. I was to report for orientation with the USAF at Gunter AFB in Alabama. After orientation I recieved orders to report to Chateauroux AFBase in France. This was a large Air Material Base (kind of a warehouse) and the USAF didn't bother to assign the the brightest airmen to this station. My Squadron was the 7373rd USAF Hospital, which recieved air evacuation cases from all France, Spain, and N. Africa.
Along with my obvious duties, which were caring for the guard dog detachment and Supervising food sanitation, I began to be assigned other preventive medicine duties. One of these "extras" was VD Control Officer. The 4,000 airmen--not the brightest bulbs remember--would be visited by working ladies from Paris who packed the trains to "Chat" on each payday. Five to seven days later there would usually be a goodly # of Clap cases. The drill is that the airmen would report on sick call and be seen by one of several young MDs who always sent them to the lab for a gram stain of the exudate smear. They were then given an injection of penicillin if positive for Gonorrhea. Then they reported to my office so a history could be taken and hopefully sources of infection could be reported to the French authorities. The problem soon became obvious, that once given the antibiotic, many failed to report to the preventive medicine office. It was decided that the penicillin would be administered at my office after the history was given. This was fine with the sick call Drs. as they gave pretty short shrift to these unhappy youngsters anyway.
Long story short--treatment failures and non specific urethritis cases began drifting back to our office since we were more "sympathetic" than the sick call clinic. I was doing a few gram stains for the lab and sending some treatment failures directly to a couple of sympathetic MDs.
One day a short, obviously rural southern lad came in saying he wasn't cured. I told him OK we would make a stain and go from there. "Undo your pants and milk some exudate onto this slide" I told him. The poor lad was very poorly endowed and also he couldn't expel any exudate. I thoughtlessly said, "You haven't got much there have you?" I was refering to exudate of course but naturally he thought I was referring to his manhood. I'm sure he had self esteem issues enough without the gaff on my part. Before I could recover and realize what I'd done, he sobbed and bolted out the door. I never saw him again, but he taught me a good lessen--think about what your words might do before you utter them.
So every once in a while on sleepless nights when my mind goes into my past life, I have to slap my forehead and say---Oh NOOOOOO!!
Great story, Don!!
Yes, wonderful experiences in our Armed Forces. I seem to remember many more problems with the G.I.s wanting to be off duty because of foot problems, so they would come in with all kinds of nasty looking "stuff" growing on their feet and between their toes. But, I guess you must have cured all the V.D. in Europe, because I saw very few cases. Maybe German girls were just "cleaner" than the French. They did have hairier legs.
Tsk Tsk Wayne be careful what you utter (or in this case, blog). I'll bet several of our fellow blogger ladies have German ancestry.
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