The Wisdom of Not Chasing Storms in February (or, Gee, I’m Glad I Practiced My Sax Instead!)

When it comes to chasing early-season severe systems, I’m getting better about reining myself in. Today was the big test. With a whopper of an H5 jet max–upwards of 120 knots–pushing through northern Kentucky into southern Indiana and Ohio, it was tempting to make the drive down to Xenia and parts thereabouts. True, the whole thing looked to be a massive straight-line wind event, but you never know, right? Particularly when you’ve been cooped up all winter with a nasty case of SDS (Supercell Deficiency Syndrome).

I’m patting myself on the back for not going. In fact, I didn’t chase squat today, not even the grunge that was drifting north from the border and offered at least the possibility of a little lightning. That would have been nice to see in February, but I just couldn’t muster the enthusiasm, and now I’m congratulating myself for my restraint.  The wind event did in fact materialize, but way to the south, down in southern Ohio, Kentucky, Tennessee, and on to the east, and not a solitary tornado report do I see in the whole batch of SPC storm reports. So I’m very glad I managed to ward off the temptation to grasp at straws. Not only am I not presently driving the long 350 miles home, wondering what on earth I was thinking that brought me down there in the first place, but I invested my time into practicing my saxophone, a much more profitable activity.

I worked with my new copy of Emile and Laura De Cosmo’s book The Diatonic Cycle, which arrived today in the mail. It’s fun to work with a practice book again. These days, I do so much of my practicing straight out of my head, and the De Cosmos‘ well-conceived, organized, and interesting approach comes as a welcome new way to work on my scales and keys. It should keep me occupied for a few months as I work my way through all twenty-four major and harmonic minor scales as presented in the book.

Opting for practicing my horn over chasing storms was a smart move today. Yesterday, on the other hand…well, if I lived 500 miles closer to Oklahoma, I’d have been all over yesterday’s severe weather. Sadly, that weather marked the year’s first tornado fatalities. It appears that the sirens weren’t working as a large, violent wedge rototilled the town of Lone Grove, Oklahoma, west of Ardmore, doing EF4 damage and taking fifteen lives. According to reports, some people were caught out in a parking lot. How awful. February is not a time when folks in the Great Plains expect such things, and I’d imagine that many people were caught off guard.

Looking ahead, the Gulf of Mexico appears to be opening up for business in Dixie Alley, but we won’t be seeing any of that moisture this far north again in the foreseeable future.  Tonight we plunge back into snowy conditions. This is, after all, February in Michigan.

Emile De Cosmo and the Polytonal Rhythm Series

I got a most pleasant surprise today while checking my voice mail. A gentleman named Emile De Cosmo had left a message saying that he had run across my post on jazz contrafacts while researching the topic online, and inviting me to call him back. Emile mentioned that he is a jazz educator who has written twenty-six books, and wondered whether maybe I’d heard of his material.

Are you kidding? Heck yes, I’d heard of his books, and of Emile. I’ve known of Emile since back in my college jazz studies days, when I first encountered an ad in Downbeat for his Polytonal Rhythm Series and ordered one of the books from that series.  Good grief–Emile De Cosmo, calling me? What an honor!

Of course I returned Emile’s call, and we had a most enjoyable chat. Besides being a passionate and thoughtful jazz educator, Emile is a genuinely nice, warm, down-to-earth guy, easy to talk to and well worth listening to. Unfortunately, our conversation got cut short by a bad signal on my cell phone, but I look forward to reconnecting with Emile and picking up where we left off. At 84 years old, he’s still going strong, writing books and developing his didactic concepts in jazz. He may be retired from university instruction, but the educator in him doesn’t appear to have taken so much as a breather.

Having visited Emile’s site, I’m struck by how much thought and time the man has invested into perfecting his ideas about helping others develop a fluent technique and “big ears.” The Polytonal Rhythm Series was a magnum opus in itself, but Emile and his wife, Laura, have developed more material over the years. With my interest reawakened, I purchased The Diatonic Cycle and have my sights set on The Path to Jazz Improvisation. I’m also intrigued by The Tritone Cycle, but that can wait. I expect that I’ll have my hands full for a while with the first book once it arrives. The timing is perfect; I’ve been wanting something to help me expand my saxophone practice in a different direction.

Emile, if you read this post, it was great talking with you! I look forward to our next chat. Keep up the great work!

Significant Tornadoes, by Tom Grazulis

Man, what a busy day it has been! It’s amazing how occupied I can be without hardly budging from my La-Z-Boy couch. But then, my couch is as much my office as it is a piece of living room furniture. More, for that matter. With my computer keyboard in my lap and my screen parked on a stool to my left, here is where I earn most of my living as a freelance writer.

I’ve spent most of my day hammering out copy for a couple clients. I just finished a project a short while ago. I still have a chewy assignment that I haven’t even begun yet, but that can wait till tomorrow. This weekend will be a busy one, but in this tough economy, it’s great to have the work, and I can say in all honesty and with much gratitude that I have some truly wonderful clients. I am richly blessed, not just with consistent work doing what I love to do, but also with good relationships with people who, besides clients, are friends and brothers in Christ.

But the working day for me is over, and I am now turning my focus to other things. In my spare time, I’m acquainting myself with cPanel and–now that I can actually access the code–revamping the metatags for my Stormhorn.com website. The switchover from GoDaddy to Tablox as a web host, and from b2evolution to WordPress for blog software, has freed me up to take a more hands-on approach to my website and blog, and the next phase of the learning curve for this non-techie has begun.

And that’s just what’s happening on the sidelines. Today I went to the Hastings Public Library and picked up the copy I had requested of Significant Tornadoes, 1680-1981, by Tom Grazulis. It’s a formidable volume–the authoritative, exhaustive record of virtually every significant tornado in United States history that can be traced. Grazulis’s work is nothing short of remarkable, a real labor of love, and the result is a book whose poundage alone is enough to impress. This is one you want to load on a pack mule if you plan on taking it anywhere, but the information it contains is priceless.

And I need that information because I’ve been working on a book on the 1965 Palm Sunday tornadoes. I’ll tell you more about that some other time, but if you’ve followed this blog for a while, then you know that the Palm Sunday tornado outbreak has been a recurrent theme. There is a reason for that, and the time has finally arrived for me to do something about it. I wrote the prologue a couple months ago, and now, after a bit of a delay, I’ve written about two-thirds of the first chapter. I expect to have it completed within the week, and then it’s on to the next phase, which will consist of a fair amount of research.

And that’s enough on that topic. I’ve done enough writing for the day, and my bowl of cottage cheese and mug of abbey ale are demanding my attention.