Eileen has already left for her day long Weaving workshop she and a friend are attending in Grand Rapids.

In my dreams last nights, there was weeping. First, I wept when someone gave me an original manuscript of Mozart. For some reason it was very emotional for me in the dream.

In a later dream I was talking to a precocious little girl.

She and her mother and father were in a room with me. She was telling them that she was “new” meaning young I gathered in the dream. I told her that she was “new” and I was “old.” She began weeping presumably out of pity for me. For my part, I wanted to explain to her that this was how life worked and that it was wonderful.

I guess she was the child in me? Who knows?

Today I am meeting with a flute player from church. This woman is very interesting. She has pretty good skills on the instrument. At the same time she was nervous throughout our entire session on Thursday. She and her husband both have Parkinson’s. His is more advanced than hers. They met at a Parkinson’s support group. I find that very cool and romantic.

As we prepared to do some playing, she launched into a long memorized version of “I am a poor wayfaring stranger.”

After she finished playing it she told me that while she and her ex-husband had been stationed in Mannheim, Germany, she had played a beautiful flute in a shop there. She had played this same arrangement of “I am a poor wayfaring stranger” (by James Galway her hero).

Sometime thereafter she was contacted by someone from the Mannheim Symphony Orchestra who had heard her play in the shop and offered a position (an audition?). She turned it down she said because she had babies and could not stay in Germany.

She was not able to read accurately the music I put in front of her. Today we are going to go over the flute part for the choral anthem scheduled for a week from tomorrow. It’s kind of tricky. I have decided that if it’s still giving her problems today I will tell her that it’s not falling together quick enough for her to play it this time.

In the meantime I was looking for something for her to play at the beginning of communion, something to show her off and build her confidence (which is understandably kind of shaky).

Thursday, we landed on another Galway arrangement of a piece called “A Spanish Lovesong.” She only had the piano part so I photocopied it and put the flute part into a finale doc for ease of use.

Since then it has occurred to me, that the piece she played in Mannheim is probably the piece to schedule. She has it memorized and a history of performing it in public. I’ll see what she thinks of this idea today.

That way, even if the anthem flute part is not ready I will still ask her to come and play that piece at the beginning of communion and also play along on the sequence hymn for that day. During Lent there are no preludes since we begin with a gather Taize chant. Otherwise I would have her play in the prelude as well.

My blood pressure machine quit working yesterday morning. It showed error messages. After my morning audition I went to the grocery store and bought a new one. While there I took my blood pressure. It was sky high (155/99). I came home and took it with my new machine and it was 143/97 then 149/111. These are pretty high readings.

This morning I took it twice. The first time it was 157/107. After making coffee and cleaning the kitchen it was 140/104. That last one is a bit better but still high. The good news is that it looks like my new machine’s accuracy is confirmed by the grocery store machine.

I am in the middle of a stressful few days. Hopefully this trend will not continue.

I ran into a friend and regular reader of this blog at the grocery store (Hi Jonny!). He was perplexed that my blood pressure is high since I am vegetarian. I think it’s connected both to aging and my obesity.

My weight is falling a bit, but not enough. Jonny has lost weight for health reasons.

I keep telling the child in me that being old is not a bad thing. In my dreams, she weeps.

The Governing Cancer of Our Time – The New York Times

This  David Brooks article is being passed around on Fakebook. It is becoming increasingly clear that we the people are the problem, not our leaders or would-be leaders.

Here a couple sections of this article I read out loud to Eileen.

The antipolitics people elect legislators who have no political skills or experience. That incompetence leads to dysfunctional government, which leads to more disgust with government, which leads to a demand for even more outsiders.

The antipolitics people don’t accept that politics is a limited activity. They make soaring promises and raise ridiculous expectations. When those expectations are not met, voters grow cynical and, disgusted, turn even further in the direction of antipolitics.

The antipolitics people refuse compromise and so block the legislative process. The absence of accomplishment destroys public trust. The decline in trust makes deal-making harder.

The point is that we have met the antipolitics people and they is us.

The Party of ‘No Way!’ – The New York Times

This has a handy table of justices confirmed in the last year of a president.

Sedition Arrests in India Inflame Old Free-Speech Tensions – The New York Times

 Crackdowns on Free Speech Rise Across a Europe Wary of Terror – The New York Times