Well, I put up a new look from WordPress. Spent the last hour or two trying to get it to not look like a template. Still figuring this thing out…. Sheesh

Did I tell you I changed my google home page? I made one tab for conservative news sites and one for liberal news sites. This should be interesting to check out once in a while. Yesterday, Eileen brought home the book I interlibrary-loaned, “Words that work: It’s not what you say, it’s what people hear” by Frank Luntz.

I heard him recently on Fresh Aire and decided he was worth checking out. His point on the radio was that liberals need to listen to conservative media and conservatives need to listen liberal media.

This morning on “On the Media,” one of the people they were interviewing starting naming off conservative and liberal radio/ tv people. I only recognized the conservatives.

This is probably because they are more popular and have more of a public presence (Bill O’Reilly, Fox News).

Luntz is a certified conservative, I believe. He seems to have been part of the whole conservative move to frame (read lie about) issues to make them more palatable to people whose interest they do not werve.

He might have gotten religion since this interview with Samantha Bee on the Daily show. (Warning it’s just the transcript. I checked Youtube and couldn’t find a video)

Read “A New Story for America” by Bill Moyers in a recent Nation magazine. I read the print version. I see that online it is retitled “For America’s Sake.” I think the first title is better because it is actually what he is writing about.

I use this metaphor myself quite a bit. What stories do we tell each other and ourselves? That woman is bully. That president is stupid. My parents hate me. Stuff like that. Stories help me but they also need to be examined.

Moyer’s point is if Democrats (or anyone else for that matter) are to do some good in leading this country they need to recapture the story that is actually a bit more historically American. The relatively new story that needs to be examined, challenged and replaced is the one of capitalism and economic free market and profit margins ( this story covertly seems to think that “greed is good” and so is commodification. It reminds me of the quote I read once from an advertising executive: “People like advertising.” This is so not true for me. Heh.)

Moyer believes the more historical and essentially redeemable American story is one of equal power. It is that the promise of America leaves no one out.

Some things that jumped out at me in Moyer’s article:

Economic growth… by its very nature is valueless.

Reagan’s story of freedom superficially alludes to the Founding Fathers, but its substance comes from the Gilded Age, devised by apologists for the robber barons. It is posed abstractly as the freedom of the individual from government control–a Jeffersonian ideal at the root of our Bill of Rights, to be sure. But what it meant in politics a century later, and still means today, is the freedom to accumulate wealth without social or democratic responsibilities and the license to buy the political system right out from under everyone else, so that democracy no longer has the ability to hold capitalism accountable for the good of the whole.
(emphasis added)

Freedom… is “considerably more than a private value.” It is essentially a social idea, which explains why the worship of the free market “fails as a compelling idea in terms of the moral reasoning of freedom itself.”
(here Moyers is quoting from John Schwartz’s book, Freedom Reclaimed: Rediscovering the American Vision)

He also mentions two other books that he says that in a just world would be on every desk in the House and Senate. Freedom’s Power: The True Force of Liberalism by Paul Starr and The American Dream vs. the Gospel of Wealth by Norton Garfinkle.

My local library system doesn’t own any of these. But GVSU owns one and is processing another of them. So maybe I can get a gander at them that way.

I worked hard on my lecture for today’s class, but didn’t feel as effective as Tuesday. As I drove home, I recognized the feeling of sheepishness that sometimes comes over me after I babble for a while.

I saw the inside of my office for the first time today because a student asked to speak to me. There did seem to be a computer in it but I didn’t turn it on.

I have been laying on the couch reading old New York Times (I am now caught up to yesterday) and gathering strength for this evening’s Mens sectional and subsequent choir rehearsal.

I received my new job offer (these things can’t really be contracts if they can just change them at will, right?) in the mail today. I suppose this means I will not only get paid less this term (since I am only teaching one class) but also will miss the first pay period since my paperwork is arriving on the fourth day of class.

What I have learned from this is that my concept of college as a community of scholars is as defunct at GVSU as I suspected it was. I have taken to referring to myself as a subcontractor.

Anyway, even though I don’t think I was especially brilliant today, I still enjoyed it. And I think this class might be responding more than usual. They talk. Cool.

I made quiche for supper. Eileen and I ate by candlelight (something we’ve been doing)

Now I’m surfing and finding these links:

Leaping Mandarin Ducks on video.

This sure gives meaning to leaving the nest.

Nina Simone sings Four women

I love Nina Simone.

Finding Nemo Mission Impossible trailer

1984 Larry Flynt for Prez Ad

I’m just going to blog here for awhile, even though I’m unhappy with the whole design thing.

It is easy. And I like it when people leave me comments.

Thank you everyone who has done that.

I just ordered 3 DVDs. Two of them I will use for sure in my class.

I know this is a bit quixotic, but whotthehell, archie.

The first one is of the The Freiburg Baroque Orchestra performing all six of Bach’s Brandenburg Concertos on period instruments in Cothen.

Last night after my second student left (I have 2 new students – one piano, one guitar), I investigated the computer I have on loan from Jeremy in my front room. Lo and behold, just as I suspected it had a DVD player in it.

I made myself a drink and put on my Netflix copy of the above group playing the Brandenburg concertos. I was immediately impressed. They are sort of musician music videos. By that I mean, there are only shots of musicians playing.

I was especially blown away by the horn players. They were playing early French Horns with no valves. These guys are truly virtuosi. Man.

Anyway, I flipped to the music that I teach in my course from these pieces and decided to order a copy (if I could afford it). If you clicked on that link above, do not have a heart attack. I did NOT pay $99.00 for it. It was more like 10.00 on DvdEmpire.com.

I also bought a DVD of Karajan conducting Beethoven’s Fifth. This is another piece I spend quite a bit of time with in my course.

Finally the third purchase was the most expensive ($20.00). I broke down and bought Touch the Sound featuring the incredible Evelyn Glennie. When I watched this I was totally blown away by her (and other musician’s) performances on this DVD.

I know it’s dumb to sink 40 bucks into a course at GVSU when they have convinced me that I am truly not part of the community of musicians there. But I don’t care.

I had a great class yesterday. It was the best first class I ever taught. Some of this has to be this particular group of people at this particular time. But I was very happy with the way I did this class.

The chair kind of grunted a begrudging hello to me in the office. I said, hey.

I have an office in the music building this time.

But there’s no computer in it, as of yet.

Heh.

Class went very well.

On the way home, I heard the tail end of Frank Lutz talking on Fresh Aire. He was very conservative and reactionary. But I liked what he said about conservatives need to listen to liberal media and liberals need to listen to conservative media.

Came home and made an extra page on my google home page. Clicked on The Conservative Voice web site and read this:

We are to be convinced that Iran, with no air force or navy to speak of, an economy not 2 percent of ours, which has not started a single war since the revolution, 27 years ago, is about to give to terrorists, to use on us, a nuclear bomb it may be 10 years away from even being able to build.

I have been thinking about this. I think we are preparing to attack Iran. Interesting to read something like this on the so called conservative media.

Hey. I guess Lutz has a point.

By the way he was plugging his new book,Words that Work: It’s not what you say, it’s what people hear. Maybe I’ll check it out.

I’m ready. I have been up for hours preparing lectures and homework for today. I actually am incorporating some of my musings about David Byrne’s blog from yesterday.

He classifies music reproduction in terms of the amount of information: LP most, CD less, MP3 least.

I added Live music to this list as an example of the most information. Mentioned that LPs are analogue and the rest digital. Kind of fun stuff.

Most kids I dare say listen to MP3s. I can predict that the jump from MP3s to live experience will be a significant one for many students.

Ran our new dishwasher this morning. Eileen received her new porcelain crock (kitchen compost canister)for kitchen refuse in the mail yesterday. She told me I could put the whole coffee filter with grounds in it.

Life is good.

Phipps, the GVSU Music chair, left an email in my GVSU email inbox late Saturday evening. In it he explained that he would only be able to offer me one of the two original classes this term. I accepted. Fuck it.

Received this just in time. I was preparing to go over to the Holland GVSU campus and make syllabi for both courses.

I immediately emailed the two students who have asked for closed class permits for this course. I informed them that I would be their teacher.

It’s frustrating because I strongly suspect the faculty person will not teach the theory class well at all. But I’m not the chair. My main concern is the students and the money. As long as I accept these teaching assignments, I will do my best.

I read David Byrne’s post, “1.2.07: Crappy Sound Forever!’ this morning. It is a response to reading a book I sometimes mention here: “Capturing Sound: How Technology Changed Music” by Mark Katz.

Since Byrne doesn’t have a comments link on his website (not sure I would have the guts to engage him anyway), here’s some of the interesting things he says with my comments.

Byrne remarks that he finds the lighter vibrato of pop singers

“more accessible and less weird than the fuzzy pitching of contemporary opera singers who sometimes exaggerate the wobble so much you hardly know what note they’re supposed to be singing unless you know the tune already.”

This has always been sort of my take as well. I sometimes dread working with so-called “trained” singers knowing that I will have to tone them down considerably in order to get a pleasing sound. And even then they tend to rebel in public and revert to that wobble thing.

Later commenting on the idea that the length of songs was determined by the length of 78s and 45s, Byrne writes:

To me a song length between 3 and 4 minutes seems natural, inevitable; I can hardly conceive that it could have ever been otherwise, but maybe it was. I dunno, though — even folk songs and blues, most of them don’t have too many verses….

Hmmm. I guess he hasn’t looked at many folksongs. I can walk two steps to my bookshelf and come up with hundreds of long folk songs with many many verses.

I liked this:

Artists began to use the studio as an instrument as well

He remarks that he can hear the influence of software like Akai, Pro Tools and Logic in music written in the last 10 years. He is refering to the “uncanny perfection.”

Also

In hip hop, which might be the most radical popular music around, there is no relationship of the composition to the live performance anymore — everything, every instrument, is processed ….

Except of course for the group, Outkast.

Byrne observes that mixtapes are a kind of composing. Or recomposing.

and that MP3s return music to experience rather than being things…

Would that this were so.

MP3s, which is how many of us hear music now, are in a way like virtual music. The compression that allows their smaller file size eliminates what the software decides are redundant frequencies and sounds the ear probably doesn’t hear and won’t miss. Maybe. There is less ‘information’ on an MP3 than on a CD, and less on a CD than an LP. Where does this road end, and does it really matter that sheer information and recording quality is going down?

I love questions like this and think about them myself from time to time.He ends up pointing out that he

first heard rock and soul songs on a tiny crappy-sounding transistor radio

and it changed his life completely….

I confess that recently I bought his weird little book, The New Sins, which is written in both English and Spanish and uses a devotional format for witty and sharp comments on the modern condition.

Had cheer up contacts from my Calif fam and my England daughter yesterday. I think I’m doing okay.

The music went very well at church yesterday. I am beginning to have my doubts about the general direction of the priest, however.

I’m afraid we are sort of floating. Maybe I am expecting too much too soon. But I sure wish the bulletin looked better. And I wish the priest had attended the highly successful music minister party. I wish there was more of a coherent direction in general. I will voice some of this to my boss in our meeting this week.

Eileen suspects that due to my getting jerking around at college I am on extra critical mode. She’s probably right about that.

But I still think that my insights about parish life are salient. In the meantime, I am trying to resolve to accept the situation and ignore the parish stuff and just do the music.

My boss took a two week Xmas vacation and came back all tan and still the music was pretty top notch yesterday. I guess the message is that I can do well when left on my own. But I find it troubling to be what I call a liturgical juke box. But maybe that’s what I am. It could be worse, I guess.

There is a new musical called The Beastly Bombing re-opening in East Los Angeles on Jan 19. It’s sort of a modern Gilbert & Sullivan treatment of what would happen when some skin head terrorists bump into to some Al Quada terrorists. Both groups planning to blow up the Brooklyn bridge. They discover their mutual hate of Jews and sing and dance their ways into each other’s hearts.

A bitter reaction to current antisemitism.

There is a generous selection of mp3s of the tunes on their website.

Titles include “The Song of the Sensitive White Supremacist” and “The Bravest President.”

NYT article for more info (this is where I ran across it).

I managed to figure out how to get WordPress to insert pictures yesterday. Progress, slow but sure.

Choir party

My choir threw it’s annual costume Epiphany/12th night party last night. I’m not much of a party animal but these people did well.

Two new members came dressed as We Two Burger Kings. The man had applied a false beard to himself.

The host was dressed as a jester.

One couple came as a shepherd (he kept saying his name was Yassar Arafat) and an angel complete with electric candle.

They gave a prize for best costume. It went to another two kings couple who were very solemnly dressed and were carrying wooden boxes with actual incense it. One of them had a bishop’s Mitre hat on.

One not quite this fancy.

These lucky people received a slinky.

There was also a pre-announced limerick contest. The host insisted they be clean. The winner wrote three pages about the choir and his frustration with having to write a clean limerick finishing off with three that got more and more naughty.

Along with great food and drink, this was a pretty impressive evening. It was a shame the priest was not there. I only hope she saw her invite.

The gift I got my priest finally came in the mail yesterday. I bought her a collection of readings from the ancient fathers (and mothers…. truly: Egeria, Julian of Norwich).

I was looking at my copy this morning and realizing I have owned this book for fifteen years. As of late it has been gathering dust. But I realize that my theological notions such as they are probably grow largely out my liturgical understandings which are strongly expressed in the writings of Egeria, Julian, Augustine, Cyprian. God help me

Okay, I just sent a long email to Danny Phipps the chair of the Music Department at GVSU. I reminded him that he had taken away a class from me in the previous term.

I told him I was beginning to doubt the wisdom of last minute negotiations that redound to his benefit and my detriment.

And that I would show up Tuesday with materials in hand to teach the classes on the original agreement and we could discuss what was actually going to happen.

Eileen is adamant that it would be better for me not to teach than to continue to get jerked around in this way. I am prepared to just not teach rather than continue to wonder just what I am going to teach and when and why.

The class that they took away from me seems to have been reassigned to a teacher who said to me that he like MU 129 classes (Music Theory for Non-music Majors) because there was no prep.

No prep. Sheesh.

After sleeping on it, I am leaning toward at least asking the chair of the music dept to honor the contract he gave me.

This is the second time this chair (who is relatively new) has renegotiated my contract to his benefit and my detriment. Last term I had a contract for three classes. I got the phone call the week before asking me if I would mind cutting back to two. I agreed.

Am I getting punished for being co-operative (read sap)?

I am considering going ahead and making materials for the two classes on my contracts. Then Tuesday I would have syllabi (and info sheets and skills assessments for my theory class) for the two classes I have been prepping for.

The worse that would probably happen is the chair would say sue me I don’t want to honor that contract and you’ll never work in this school again. I think I could live with that.

He may on the other hand give me something that looks like what I was expecting (two tues thurs classes, one Music Ap, one Music Theory) after he reads my email refusing to teach a once a week Tuesday evenings class that he suggested as a possibility in our brief phone call.

It’s possible that I will end up with something like what I was expecting like Friday morning…. possible, but not highly probable.

12:36 PM
How discouraging

Just got off the phone with the same office assistant I spoke to this morning. Apparently the executive administrator is taking the day off (The Friday before classes start. Good.) And the chair won’t be in until Tuesday (Classes actually start on Monday). So nothing is happening about getting my correct class online.

Even more discouraging

3:49 PM

It turns out that my scheduled classes were changed and no one bothered to notify me. They took away my theory class which I have been sweating bullets over and gave me a Thursday evening class which I cannot teach.

The chair (who is suddenly Dr. Phipps instead of Danny Phipps. I’ll have to remember and call him Dr. Phipps, I guess) called me from Washington (DC?) to tell me this. He actually wasn’t sure what my schedule was but he was sure that the Blackboard courses were the ones I would be teaching.

I had to check myself online and then call him back in Washington on his cell.

We talked for a bit and he told me some of the difficulties he is facing in last minute faculty problems. He asked me to email him exactly when I could teach and if I would teach a Tuesday evening class.

I called Eileen and briefly asked her what she thought. She thought, “no on Tuesday,” so I felt comfortable in telling Phipps that.

He assured me I would use the syllabus I told him I had prepared with much effort and diligence in the fall. Right.

Dang. I was looking forward to teaching some theory.

The chair doesn’t get back into town until Monday evening. So this means I will get in the car on Tuesday and not have a clue what I will be teaching this semester other than the one Music Appreciation class.

Great. I bitch because I don’t have ways to discuss ideas with people and then I blog about goofy trivial day to day shit. Seems like my dissatisfaction might be my own responsibility, eh?

Anyway, I logged onto the college web site yesterday (Blackboard) and discovered that I was set up with an incorrect class online. Instead of setting me up with my Music Ap class and my Music Theory class, the powers that be had set me up with two Music Ap classes. This was my original contract offer which was changed for the convenience of another prof by the department.

I waited until after 8 AM to call them this morning. No answer by the phone message cheerfully invited me to call back between 8 AM and 5 PM Monday through Friday. After a little persistence I got an office assistant on the phone. She took my info and told me she was the only one in the office (sooprise sooprise). I hope they can fix this before Monday so I can get the materials I have been preparing up online.

Choir rehearsal went pretty well last night. I am beginning to think that the choir is suspecting that I might know what I am doing. I have felt like they support me emotionally and all that kind of stuff since I started. But they are beginning to treat my attempts at rehearsal procedure with a bit more respect. Nothing too earth shattering. I had more people talking directly to me in rehearsal last night than usual. They would request to go over a line that they (or tactfully someone nearby) was having problems with.

Also for once when the late people came in (people who actually had the courtesy to phone me ahead of time to tell me they were running behind) the group didn’t drop everything and make room for them.

This was hard for them. But I continued relentlessly rehearsing (my usual procedure when someone comes in late) and this time it was evident people were trying to keep up with me. A small thing, but significant in the arena of building rehearsal discipline (and hence better choral sound). Cool beans.

Yesterday’s project was picking anthems for tonight’s rehearsal. This is complicated by the fact that I have thrown out so many single copies of anthems I used to have. And I don’t collect new ones as much as I used to.

So the resources laying around the house are much more meager when I go to do last minute planning. Given a week or two, I can come up with anthems that fit the readings, challenge the choral resources appropriately and will usually hold the interest of the singers.

Lately, I’ve added another criteria: can I stand the piece or even like it.

Yesterday I began the morning going through the readings at home. I am force to do this because my church computer is not connected to the Internet and is old and slow anyway. I like the fact that if I am looking at an anthem and not sure about the origin of the text, I can usually figure it out on google.

Anyway, I spent the morning reviewing anthems in the house (which included a semi-complete master file of anthems the church owns). Then went over to church in the afternoon and made final decisions. This process included manually flipping through the four file cabinets of anthems the church owns. I have cataloged them, but the silly database program the church owns is pretty awful and does not allow flexible searches of anthems.

I ended up picking about 11 anthems out.

This took me until about 5 PM which is when Eileen gets home on Wednesdays. I came home and we went to Margaritas for supper. My mental health is worrying Eileen a bit so she is being extra thoughtful I think. I enjoy her company always and I’m not sure what’s going on with my head but life goes on, n’est pas?

Came home and read “The Trial” by Kafka while Eileen went upstairs and worked crossword puzzles and watched TV.

This morning I have to go to church and prepare for this evening’s rehearsal. This includes photocopying anthems (mostly legal photocopies… all ethical)… ordering anthems… stuffing the folders (which I do in order of performance which is also how I usually rehearse…. this procedure still baffles a good number of choristers).

I have a funeral this afternoon (Greek Orthodox people using our building). I would dearly like to begin my Music Appreciation syllabus today. I am beginning to feel the crunch

So. I am trying to fix my comments section and make it more user friendly. If you have time and patience, please leave me a comment so I can see if it’s working properly.

My goal is to allow instant online comments. Hence the word, “discussion,” that WordPress uses to categorize this section. Ahem.

Yesterday was pretty much entirely taken up with writing a syllabus for my Music Theory for Non Music Majors class. It took so much timer primarily because there is a new edition of the text and I had to also write a “75 minutes for two days a week” syllabus versus a “50 minutes for three days a week” syllabus.
I also got the bright idea to write a teacher’s syllabus in which I recorded my ideas about how I was going to teach each session. Just a few sentences like “Collect Homework. [give]7 pts. [credit for this assignment. There are now] 63 [homework] pts. Remaining.”

This ends up being a mini-lesson plan as well as syllabus. Helpful when I teach it but a contributing factor to why it took me so long to do it.

I found my copy of “The Trial” by Kafka last night. I sort of had the idea to try to finish some of these books I have been reading before next week. I read a bit in it, but I’m not sure I’m going to get it finished. Also just about done with “The Pickwick Papers.” I do like Dickens.

I am feeling more isolated recently (as I think I stated below). Not sure what’s up with this exactly. Everything is really okay in my life. It’s just I have a diminishing number of people that I feel like I can actually talk to about ideas. I guess it’s basically down to Eileen, Sarah and Elizabeth.

It feels like too much weight for family relationships.

I am increasingly conceptualizing relationships with dead people like Kafka, Bach, Dickens, Bartok. Also, as I mentioned yesterday, I find myself in conversation with my old teacher, Ray Ferguson. He really was the best teacher I had. Very helpful at many levels. Probably the most gracious person I have known. And, of course, eccentric as hell.

I think it’s silly to choose to live in Holland Michigan (or probably most places in the US right now) and kvetch about companionship. It’s a strange world and most people seem to be preoccupied with stuff that doesn’t interest me (money, religion, confused ideas about the world).

I know this is arrogant, but I can’t help how things seem to me, right?

And I do have the teaching which should help. But increasingly I am trying to be a better teacher and less self-indulgent in how I approach it. Better teaching, but a bit less colleagial pay off. In other words, students just watch and don’t talk usually. They are reacting on the INSIDE. I guess.

I looked over last years, student evaluations for the Music Theory class. It turns out I remembered most of them anyway.