jupiter jenkins in holland michigan

 

Eileen gave me some time to practice organ after we went to the Farmers Market yesterday. She was anxious to get up to the Hatch reunion. While I practiced, she prepared the fruit we bought for the shared meal.

I had emails from Hope college about the death of the former chair of the Music Department, Stu Sharp, which informed me his funeral would be at my church on Monday. Yikes. Before the day was out I had a clarifying email from my boss that he was not a member of our church and that he didn’t have a “home church” and we were letting them use our building for the funeral. This was actually a relief to me since I wasn’t exactly looking forward to doing a Hope college music faculty funeral. Sunday mornings are already too reminiscent these days of my grad school experience when I played the weekly Eucharist and was guaranteed that many critical and unfriendly teachers would be in attendance and scrutinizing my every note.

I should add that contrary to my grad experience, I now suspect the music faculty barely notices that I’m there.

 

But I notice they are there.

I have a busy week ahead anyway. Tomorrow I am planning to go take a look at the synth or whatever it is that the Holland Symphony plans for me to do some performing on next Saturday.  I wonder if I will only be playing it or if they will also have some sort of piano for the piano parts. The performance will be outdoors in a park so one never knows.

Then Tuesday morning I have my semi annual check up.

I am dreading this because I  have gained a few pounds and can’t seem to shed them as easily as I used to.

And of course my blood pressure is always high at the doctor’s office even though it usually runs within acceptable norms when I take it at home.

Right after my appointment, I have to go and get my Mom and take her to the neurologist who is in the same building as my internist. Then on Thursday and Friday evening I have rehearsals with the Holland Symphony. They only pay $47 dollars per service (rehearsal or performance). When they hired me they hinted that they could pay more if I charged more but I stupidly went with the $47 figure. It’s what they pay the principal players. I’m probably no better than them.

The reunion was the usual experience. People are extremely polite. I think it’s hard on Eileen but she wants to be there. I try to be sociable enough and then I sit and read and take the occasional picture and post it on Facebooger.

I finished the ebook of Kiese Laymon’s How to Slowly Kill yourself and Others in America.This is the second of his books I have read. His writing works for me. He is an interesting combination of literacy and hip/hop social stuff. He teaches at Vassar and I “follow” him on Facebooger. I quite like his writing.

2 thoughts on “jupiter jenkins in holland michigan

  1. YEAH that you are playing that Holland Symphony gig! Is that one I passed your way? See, once you became friends with the famous Rhonda Edgington, and she was happy to pass on to you all her extra gigs, suddenly you got a lot more popular in Holland, Michigan. heh. I’m sure you’ll be playing their electronic keyboard, for whatever you do outside for them. I have been distracted with my life lately, and haven’t read your blog in awhile, so just saw that you aren’t playing the funeral today. I don’t think I’d want to play a music prof funeral either! Too much stress… Have a good week. R

    1. I do think that having you as a friend and colleague has raised my Reformed credentials considerably. This is nice, but I mostly value having you as a colleague more than these residual side effects. I am grateful for that mostly. I delude myself that if it was my goal to become more one of the gang at Hope or in the white people Holland community I could probably do it. I just couldn’t do so with integrity before you came around. At any rate, I am certainly happy that Rhonda Edgington is here in Holy old Holland.

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