May 15, 2021

To us, this date has special significance: it is our 50^th wedding anniversary; it is also my 80^th birthday. Dee (who is sometimes known as Adene--her given name) has chosen to mark the occasion by enhancing the appended website. I am endlessly grateful for all of her efforts toward that project. After all, of my 80 years, at least 73 have been spent, in one way or another, in music. Slightly more than 50 of them have been spent teaching music at Vassar College, from which Dee graduated, as a music major, in 1969. Without Vassar, we would never have met (in an elevator, in fact).

I don’t really want to turn 80. But the only palatable alternative is one my mother adopted: she had her age legally changed, dropping off five years. This is harder to do if one is a composer. Nearly all programs list one’s birth year. So I turn my attention to the happy fact of being married to Dee for 50 years—what a blessing that has been.