So the daughters rented a dumpster and we spent a good portion of the morning filling it with damp junk from our basement.

I knocked off around 10:30. By noon it was filled and on its way.

Most of the debris was from one room where we had stored stuff that was Elizabeth’s and Sarah’s. Unfortunately we learned later we had also thrown out some of Eileen’s grandmother’s old chairs. We rationalized that they were probably moldy. They probably were. But we did manage to accidentally throw away some stuff Eileen didn’t want us to (I found out this morning). The worm farm. Some other things. All replaceable (I hope)>

Elizabeth made this cool collage of pics.

I was sore right after doing the work but this morning I feel rested and relaxed. I did manage to treadmill a bit. Not the full 45 minutes but still the 35 minutes I managed to get in seems like a good amount for a busy day. I quit because I was beginning to feel quite tired.

Sarah pulled her neck even before we started hauling trash out of the basement. By the evening she was laying in her room in the dark trying to rest up for going out to eat. Elizabeth walked over to Shaker Messenger to buy gifts to take home to China. I tried to convince Sarah it was not necessary to go out. We could just order in. But she seemed to want to go out. So we three walked over to greet Eileen after work and we drove to CitiVu for drinks and dinner.

Good times.

Earlier in the afternoon I rehearsed Mendelssohn with my piano trio.

We have taken to rehearsing well under tempo. This helps me, but I suspect it’s not as satisfying to the other players. I think we are going to learn a couple new movements: the first movement of the C minor and the Finale of the D minor. Of course we are always saying shit like this in rehearsal. However I came home and rehearsed the C minor movement. They will require some serious practicing. Rewarding both to rehearse and perform.

Near the end of our rehearsal the organ guy showed up to tune and repair the organ. He said it would take him a bit of time to get going and gave us ten more minutes which coincided nicely with our usual allotted time. We continued rehearsing Mendelssohn.

Later I chatted with him. He mentioned that he enjoyed listening to us rehearse and that he actually enjoyed listening to musicians rehearse more than perform.

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Cursed Pirate Girl recording outtakes – YouTube

I haven’t had a chance to listen to/watch this. But I remember being curious when it was happening. Unable to listen because of copyright restrictions. I guess outtakes are okay. Cursed Pirate Girl is the work of Jeremy Bastian who is married to my lovely niece Emily.

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Justices Consider Lawyer’s Misstep and Find More – NYTimes.com

Supreme Court Justices discussing unicorns. Doesn’t get any better.

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http://www.axisofawesome.net/

A colleague of mine on Facebook put up a video by this Australian comedy music group I had never heard of. They are kind of funny.

My old organ teacher, Craig Cramer, emailed a link to the interactive map of religions pictured above. (click on the pic if you want to go there) Not sure why. He thought it was interesting. If you scroll across the map it gives you the breakdown state by state.

I myself have been feeling a bit distant to religion in general and the community I serve in particular.

There are good parts, however. Last night the “Christian Practice” my church was exploring at the Wednesday meeting was “singing.” After supper and the shortened evening prayer we adjourned to the choir area of the sanctuary and people called out hymns they wanted to sing.

Two of the kids choir members (which was not meeting due to the “singing” Christian practice thingo) called out numbers so quickly that soon the adults began calling out numbers as well just to be part of things.

I was surprised when afterwards so many people mentioned how much they enjoyed it.

I need to remind myself how unusual regular music making is in people’s lives. People do not get a chance to do what I do almost daily on a regular basis.

It reminded me of my nursing home trips where I will sit at the piano and ask people to call out numbers in the hymnal to sing. There never seems to be a lull.

As I was blogging yesterday I was surprised when my beloved nephew Ben came down the stairs to chat me up a bit before I went to work. As I wrote yesterday my expectation was that I might miss seeing him and Emily my niece due to my own schedule.

As it worked out I was able to do both my usual rigorous Wednesday schedule and still get a chance to chat with Ben and Emily.

Elizabeth made up plates of veggie marinara sauce with spicy veggie sausage which was quite tasty. I made up a plate of veggie carpaccio for my niece Emily who has been avoiding all gluten in her diet. Eileen joined us for lunch and we had lively conversation all around.

I do miss the Jenkinses.

Eileen skipped most of the Wednesday experience at Grace and went for food and drinks with the group.

At the end of the day I was exhausted. Wednesdays are long days I guess.

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Tzipi Livni Forms New Party to Oppose Netanyahu – NYTimes.com

This would be great but looks unlikely at this point.

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Yasir Arafat’s Body Is Exhumed for Poison Tests – NYTimes.com

The Rise in Exhumations – NYTimes.com

A couple of related news stories.

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France Says It Will Vote in Favor of Palestinians’ U.N. Bid – NYTimes.com

Such a perplexing situation.

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Tibet Protesters Hurt in Crackdown – Self-Immolations Continue – NYTimes.com

Did you know people were burning themselves up for this cause? Elizabeth mentioned this.

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Undisclosed Finding by Mars Rover Fuels Intrigue – NYTimes.com

I find the underlying outrageous movie plot lines hinted at in people’s comments hilarious.

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A Needless Charge for Prison Families – NYTimes.com

Over charging for prisoner phone use. Figures.

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Break Up the Telecom Cartels – NYTimes.com

On average, for instance, a triple-play package that bundles Internet, telephone and television sells for $160 a month with taxes. In France the equivalent costs just $38. For that low price the French also get long distance to 70 foreign countries, not merely one; worldwide television, not just domestic; and an Internet that’s 20 times faster uploading data and 10 times faster downloading it.

If I had more time this morning I might goof around with the colors on my new web site design. I don’t think the gray quite does it. But we’ll see.

I have the usual packed Wednesday routine today. This means it’s quite likely I won’t see my niece Emily and nephew Ben who probably arrived late last night. I say probably because I went to bed exhausted expecting to arise early this morning as I did.

This morning I finished off two of the books of poetry I have been reading: A Village Life by Louis Glück and The Stag’s Leap by Sharon Olds. I segued into another Glück and read several poems in her volume Ararat.

I was surprised to see that I have several volumes by Glück sitting on my shelves. Recently on Facebook my daughter Elizabeth posted a picture which showed my crazy stuffed bookshelves in the background. These caught the eye of one of her “friends” and they commented on the books. Elizabeth then said that before she left home she hadn’t realized how “bountiful” our home was.

“Bountiful.” I told her (in person) that she was kind with this adjective. More like “cluttered.”

My boss pointed out to me that my visit from my two daughters seemed to be creating no stress for me. I agreed.

It is pleasant even luxurious for me to have them here. I forget what it is like to have someone besides Eileen sort of “get me” and listen to me so well. But of course that’s not the only good part. I do like having them here. Elizabeth is thinking of coming and staying a bit in December. This seems to have to do with her situation in China. I think that would be very cool.

I mentioned Laurie Spiegel’s compositions recently. Here is a link where you can listen to this entire album. You can even buy it if you want.

Yesterday I chose some organ music for upcoming Sundays in Advent. I picked a little Toccatina by Alan Ridout to match the chorale prelude I have been learning by him on Sunday’s opening hymn: “Lo, He comes with clouds descending” (HELMSLEY).

Then for Advent II I decided to play a Scherzo by Adolphus Hailstork on WINCHESTER NEW for the prelude and a hilarious little piece by Charles Ore on BEREDEN VÄG FÖR HERRAN for the postlude.

The latter tune is paired with the hymn, “Prepare the way, O Zion,” in the Hymnal 1982. 

I feel pretty disconnected to church lately. I like the work but religiosity and its accouterments leave me cold. It doesn’t help that I understand it so well.

I continue to read Chris Ware’s Building Stories in my spare time.

It is amazing how he builds a narrative with discrete parts in no particular order (as far as I can see). Each little piece of his book (which comes in a cool box) provides a part of the story in way that can be understood intact but contributes to the overall story. In a way this reminds me of David Foster Wallace’s last book (which I am reading) The Pale King.

It seems that Wallace wrote the sections much the way Chris Ware’s stories work: each sort of intact but contributing to an over all story. The posthumous editor then decided as well as he could how Wallace might put them in order.

Maybe they could an edition in which each chapter is separately bound and could be read in random order.

That’s what Ware did and it seems to work.

So I  didn’t actually read poetry after blogging yesterday. Usually I write and then do the pictures. This took longer than I anticipated. But this morning I did do the poetry thing.

I am reading several poets right now.

Louis Glück.

A Village Life.

Demetria Martinez

(re-reading her Breathing Between the Lines).

Sharon Olds.

Stag’s Leap.

Charles Bukowski. 

The People Look Like Flowers at Last.

I tried to lay low yesterday. My cold is still with me. My daughters did the grocery shopping so all I had to do really was go to church and practice organ then treadmill.

In between I found some time for Scarlatti and Prokofiev on the piano.

The daughters decided at about 8:30 Pm they would like to go out to eat. I was too tired to accompany them but they met Eileen at work and she decided to join them.

Today they all three drive up to Whitehall and go shopping with Eileen’s Mom then lunch.

I have to do church stuff today. Pick a postlude. Submit info for the Advent I bulletin. Call some instrumentalists. Stuff like that.

My Mom canceled out on her shrink appointment yesterday. Her stomach was bothering her. We had planned to try to get her out to lunch again but that was all a no go.

I made a playlist of some of the composers from the NYT article and listened to them on Spotify.

Rediscovering the Electronic Music Godmothers – NYTimes.com

I liked Laurie Spiegel quite a bit.

Elizabeth found her album online for digital purchase.

I will probably buy it today after I check to make sure we are doing okay for money.

Elizabeth found her link on the site Band Camp. I just checked and

it’s also on Amazon.

I have one class today at noon. Then a church meeting at 1 PM.

I am enjoying having my daughters around for chats.

Sarah installed carbon monoxide detectors and smoke detectors yesterday. It helps her worry less.

Sarah and Elizabeth have rented a dumpster for Thursday and plan to clean out their stuff from the basement, stuff which is mostly damp and unusable.

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What Should Children Read? – NYTimes.com

Discussion of what reading is for. Like everything else the teaching of reading is slipping  into the nonsense utilitarian world of how much money it will help you make. Good grief. Some interesting comments from teachers in the comment section.

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Sunday Dialogue – Is Classical Music Dying? – NYTimes.com

I read this. I think the violinist letter writer and some of the other letter writers see music much differently than I do. I think that music is such a part of being human it is no danger. Our concepts change (symphony orchestra, rock band), but music continues to contain the possibilities of  fun, joy, sorrow and sundry profundities to me.

Some of the writers seem to make the assumption that there is a corpus of music that is the canon of received human art. This kind of canonic thinking is not aware of its own romanticism and ultimate shifting in the face of all human change.

Whippy skippy. I said to my ladies group I recently played for that music is what keeps me going.  It’s not all that keeps me going but it’s definitely an important part for me.

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As Bombs Fell in Gaza, a Rich Cactus Lover Could Cultivate Only Patience – NYTimes.com

A bizarre portrait of a man living in Gaza. In Arabic, “cactus” comes from the same root as “patience”: sabra.

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Republican and Lesbian, and Fighting for Acceptance of Both Identities – NYTimes.com

I have often said that sexual orientation (to use a catch phrase) does not have a causal relationship with liberal politics.  Gay people are people. Therefore in my mind they can have all the virtues and foibles available to any human. Including identifying themselves as Republicans.

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Close Guantánamo Prison – NYTimes.com

The USA continues to pursue unsavory and evil practices. Maybe it’s just inherent to having a state in the first place. Kafka might say so.

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So here’s my snazzy new blog design from my daughter Sarah and an updated WordPress software. More adjustments will probably be forthcoming as I figure out how to run this thing. 

Yesterday I took Eileen’s Blackberry to work and recorded some of the service.

I set it on top of the organ console and recorded what was happening right next to the organ while I played the prelude.

Usually I concentrate as hard as I can on the music I am playing and ignore everything happening around me. It was unusually quiet at the beginning. I did notice that but soon lost track of anything but trying to play the music.

There doesn’t seem to be much hubbub in this video while I am playing. Interesting to know.

Unfortunately Eileen’s little Blackberry made a soft but distinctly audible beep as it began to record.

I taped the next two musical parts of the service.

The opening hymn:

I did this mostly for myself to observe how well I accompany and my tempos and such. The sound is pretty bad but still it does seem that people are singing. Again with the beep in silence. Yikes.

Then the Gloria.

I do a very spare accompaniment to this and allow the congregation to carry the melody without any reinforcement. I was wondering how it sounded. Even with the bad sound I can tell that the group carries the melody pretty well. But again with the beep. I decided to quit taping because of it.

During the sermon I went in the chapel and tried to change the settings but was unable to do so. Later Eileen showed me how.

I want to tape the service music I have written in order to see how the congregation sings it. I guess that will have to wait since we will switch service music next Sunday on Advent I.

That’s the way the cookie crumbles.

At least now I know how to mute the beep.

I have had a very bad chest cold since Thanksgiving. It feels a bit better today. I am enjoying my two daughters’ extended visit. Since they chose to be here for a couple of weeks there is much less urgency about connecting, more normal relaxed time.

At least it seems that way to me. It’s hard for me not to think that there is stress visiting for them that I can’t detect since being the parent I’m involved in it (mostly unknowingly). I know I often found my parents pretty stressful,

but my relationship to them did(does) differ from my relationship with my kids.

At least that’s how it seems to me. At the minimum my parents did not understand me at all and my kids seem to.

Parenting. The impossible task.

I jumped on to the web earlier than usual this morning because I was curious if I could get a post going in the new design. I think I will wrap up and go read some poetry.

TODAY’S LINKS

Rediscovering the Electronic Music Godmothers – NYTimes.com

Bookmarked to check out some of the composers mentioned.

Indian Prostitutes’ New Autonomy Imperils AIDS Fight – NYTimes.com

“Studies show that prostitutes who rely on cellphones are more susceptible to H.I.V. because they are far less likely than their brothel-based peers to require their clients to wear condoms.”

Tech creates new problems such as increased prostitution and less protection against AIDS in India.

New Senate’s First Task Will Likely Be Trying to Fix Itself – NYTimes.com

Inner workings of Senate arcane but important.

White House Presses for Drone Rule Book – NYTimes.com

There are some transparency suggestions in this article I strongly agree with. I’m not sure how there will ever be a just legal process to license this kind of behavior. It feels like assassination to me. And murder by the state.

Mo Yan: “Bull” : The New Yorker

Entire text of a short story by the new Pulitzer Prize winner from China.

I’m doing my page on my daughter’s version of my web site because the old one doesn’t load this morning. Presumably the switch in domain we requested has taken place and Sarah needs to make some pointers or something so that you dear reader arrive here.

In the meantime, I will blindly blog here. I do sometimes journal off line especially if what I have to write is private.

This morning several Bukowski poems struck me. Since my friend Rhonda recently mentioned that she liked some of the poems I put up, I am encouraged to continue sharing poems.

the harder you try

the waste of words
continues with a stunning
persistence
as the waiter runs by carrying the loaded
tray
for all the wise white boys who laugh at
us.
no matter. no matter,
as long as your shoes are tied and
nobody is walking too close
behind.
just being able to scratch yourself and
be nonchalant is victory
enough.
those constipated minds that seek
larger meaning
will be dispatched with the other
garbage.
back off.
if there is light
it will find
you.

Charles Bukowski

“If there is light it will find you” are oddly positive and comforting words to me. Bukowski is a brutal poet. I find him to be an antidote to bland.

I’m putting up these few poems in retrograde order from when I read and noted their beauty so this is the last poem I earmarked this morning.

Here’s the beginning of  a poem that hit me before I read  “the harder you try”:

from Salty Dogs

got to the track early to study the odds and here’s
this man coming by
dusting seats, he keeps at his work, dusting, most
probably glad to have his simple job.
I’m one of those who doesn’t think there is much difference
between an atomic scientist and a man who cleans the seats
except for the luck of the draw—
parents with enough money to point you safely toward a more
generous life.

Again in reverse order, I liked this one.

inverted love song

I could scream down 90 mountains
to less than dust
if only one living human had eyes in the head
and heart in the body,
but there is no chance,
my god,
no chance.
rat with rat dog with dog hog with hog,
play the piano drunk
listen to the drunk piano,
realize the myth of mercy
stand still
as even a child’s voice snarls
and we have not been fooled,
it was only that we wanted to believe.

 -Charles Bukowski

This time it’s the the phrase “If only one living human had eyes in the head and heart in the body…”

Finally a few days ago these little five lines from his poem “people as flowers”:

I decide that the only definition of
Truth (which changes)
is that it is that thing or act or
belief which the crowd
rejects.

Well it’s 8 AM now. I have to slowly prepare my heart and soul to go do church. Last night Sarah asked me if I wanted her to attend. I told only if she wanted to. She said she felt hypocritical going to church. I said fine. I told her that if it was just a matter of hearing the music I do I would want her to go but it’s the stuff in between. I am amused how people who are not religious take it so seriously though. I don’t feel or believe anything regarding Christianity deeply enough to make me feel hypocritical. I feel hypocritical when I do something dishonest or inconsistent with what I think I believe.

At any rate, I have to go over my Bohm prelude. I did tape it yesterday. I would embed it here but I’m not sure it would work with this particular URL (which is temporary and also inaccessible to anybody who doesn’t have the weird URL address Sarah has put this in).

It’s over 6 minutes. It went very well in rehearsal yesterday but I think I need to practice some little tricky parts this morning.

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Mo Yan: “Bull” : The New Yorker

Online short story by recent Pulitzer Prize winner.

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So I had fun hosting and cooking yesterday.

This Thanksgiving was the first time my Mom met Eileen’s Mom. Sarah brought “crackers” which didn’t pop very well but did have fun hats.

I made a traditional sweet potato casserole for my Mom.

Green beans for my wife.

A bit of bruschetta for hors d’ouvres.

Mostly kept moving around in the kitchen while cooking.

The kitchen was chaotic.

But the table looked pretty good when laid out.

And even better with the people seated around it (all except Eileen’s sister Nancy who is taking the picture).

Note the four clocks for the four time zones where my nuclear fam live.

A good time was had by all including Edison the cat.

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India Police Arrest Student Over Facebook Post – NYTimes.com

Frightening.

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Egypt Leader and Obama Forge Link in Gaza Deal – NYTimes.com

Some behind the scenes details about how the recent cease fire went down.

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Michigan’s Burdensome Amendment – NYTimes.com

My stupid stupid Google news has decided that my location doesn’t really have coverage. So I turn to other sources even the national papers.

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Members of the 112th Congress Depart, Quirks in Tow – NYTimes.com

As the 112th comes to an end here are some nice personal portraits.

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Justice Alito, Citizens United and the Press – NYTimes.com

Some pertinent distinctions between general corporations and the media.

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Online Course Opens Minds to World Music – NYTimes.com

I just can’t get over  online college courses. I suppose it’s only a matter of time (or retirement) before I do one of these.

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So today is Turkey day. I have tons to do before the meal. Eileen’s Mom and her sister are joining us. They are driving down from the Whitehall area where they live. We will go over to the nursing home and get my Mom. My two adult daughters are visiting. They have been very helpful. We will have more of a crowd than usual.

Yesterday after class, Sarah and I went to the farmers market and then the library.

I picked up a book waiting for me and found some other books of poetry.

A. M. Homes new book, May We Be Forgiven, begins with a Thanksgiving day scene. It’s as brutal as she usually is. I was on a wait list and my number came up.

I also pulled a volume of Bukowski I hadn’t read. This kind of reading (Homes and Bukowski) is a mild antidote to living some place so bland.

Then I came home and finished cleaning the kitchen and bathroom floor. After lunch I began working on pre-Turkey day cooking. I cooked up squash and sweet potatoes. Wild rice and balsamic rice. Made Momma Stamberg’s cranberry sauce.

Eileen, Sarah and I went back out to run more errands. Sarah took this cool picture:

By the end of the day I was too tired to treadmill. Sarah recorded my fatigue:

Now I’m trying to build up the energy to begin preparing stuff for today (Turkey, mashed potatoes, gravy (meat and veggie), sweet potato casserole, green beans, Brussels sprouts, squash with wild rice, fresh salad all served with sweet rolls). Eileen’s sister and Mom are bringing pumpkin pies.

Finished reading Mary Oliver’s little book of poems A Thousand Mornings.

Here are a few I liked.

The Mockingbird

All summer
the mocking bird
in his pearl-gray coat
and his white-windowed wings

flies
from the hedge to the top of the pine
and begins to sing, but it’s neither
lilting nor lovely,

for he is the thief of other sounds–
whistles and truck brakes and dry hinges
plus all the songs
of other birds in his neighborhood;

mimicking and elaborating,
he sings with humor and bravado
so I have to wait a long time
for the softer voice of his own life

to come through. He begins
by giving up all his usual flutter
and setting down on the pine’s forelock
then looking around

as though to make sure he’s alone;
then he slaps each wing against his breast,
where his heart is,
and, copying nothing, begins

easing into it
as though it was not half so easy
as rollicking,
as though his subject now

was his true self,
which of course was as dark and secret,
as anyone else’s
and it was too hard—
perhaps you understand—
to speak or to sing it
to anything or anyone
but the sky.

I like that one in a personal way. Also this one:

I HAVE DECIDED

I have decided to find myself a home

in the mountains, somewhere high up

where one learns to live peacefully in

the cold and the silence. It’s said that

in such a place certain revelations may

be discovered. That what the spirit

reaches for may be eventually felt, if not

exactly understood. Slowly, no doubt. I’m

not talking about about a vacation.

Of course at the same time I mean to

stay exactly where I am.

Are you following me?

And one more.

THE MAN WHO HAS MANY ANSWERS

The man who has many answsers

is often found

in the theaters of information

where he offers, graciously,

his deep findings.

While the man who has only questions,

to comfort himself, makes music.

Do I have to even say why I relate to that one. Egotistical I know.

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Sree.net: Sree Sreenivasan * @sree

Digital media expert at Columbia. Elizabeth pointed him out to. Thank you Elizabeth.

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A Real-Life Invisibility Cloak – NYTimes.com

Watch out Harry Potter. First microwaves, then lightwaves.

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Inside Syria, a Grandma Faces Down War – NYTimes.com

On the ground in Syria. Thank you Nicholas Kristoff.

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Struggle Over, Philip Roth Reflects on Putting Down His Pen – NYTimes.com

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You Can’t Say That on the Internet – NYTimes.com

How do you teach the idea of “fair use” to an algorithm?

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SongwritingWith – Soldiers Eases Way for Soldiers – NYTimes.com

This reminds me of my own relationship to song writing which has often been one of personal therapy.

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Anybody Notice a Pattern? – NYTimes.com

McCain was so desperate to sound the alarm that he missed a classified briefing on Benghazi to hold a press conference complaining that he had not been given enough information. Which clearly he hadn’t. He knew nothing! Nothing whatsoever! And what was the administration going to do about that?
“It is essential for the Congress to conduct its own independent assessment,” said the senator, demanding that Congress form a special committee to look into Libya. This would be a double benefit, helping to inform all the members who missed their normal committee briefings while also addressing the continuing national crisis over the shortage of congressional committees

Warning. Article by and for damn liberals.

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Beware the Big Data Campaign – NYTimes.com

Basically increased efficiency in turning out votes is surprisingly not necessarily good for democracy.

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Courting Jim Crow – Opinion – Al Jazeera English

Worth reading even you find it too liberal at first.

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Moshi Monsters – Adopt Your Own Pet Monster!

Social media for little people. Thank you to Sarah for this link.

I have been reading poetry in the morning. My blood pressure spiked at the doctors last week. Then it was high for a couple days in a row. It’s back down this morning. I hate thinking so much about this. It feels like an unhealthy preoccupation with my own stuff. Like the invalid who is constantly taking his own temperature.

On the other hand, I want to be grown up about taking care of my body so that when I die it’s not entirely because of my own long range stupidity about how I lived.

I think I have found a new poet to read. A few posts back I put up a poem by Demetria Martinez. I inter library loaned her book Breathing Between the Lines.

I have read this book and was so impressed I ordered a copy from the Paperback Swap (a web site where you mail other people books you have made available and they will mail you books they have that you want, all free of charge expect senders cover postage).

I also found her novel, Mother Tongue, on the site and ordered it.

She has written several more books and I will probably pursue reading them.

I was amused to read the following passage in her afterword in Breathing Between the Lines:

I made it a habit to go to a restaurant or outdoor cafe and read first thing in the morning. I opened a book of poetry at random, waited for the caffeine to strike and for a stanza to reveal some secret of the universe. It always did, in imagery that was a far cry from the supply and demand which I had tried learning at Princeton.

My kind of writer. And reader.

I woke up this morning thinking strange quiet thoughts. I have often puzzled over how I fit into what family systems people call my “family of origin.” This morning I wondered if I was an “outsider” in an outsider system. Both my father and his father were outsiders of sorts. Both men threw themselves against a church system that was inflexible and largely anti-intellectual. I think of both of them as thinkers in a non-thinker church.

They were not terribly deep thinkers. But still I heard stories of my grand-father in which I could get a whiff of his struggle. He was in the first wave or two of ministers in his denomination (The Church of God) to go to the little church college in Anderson Indiana.

When my grandfather got a pastorate in the south, church members called him “the book-learnin’ preacher” or some such thing.

There are family stories of the way he stood up to bullies and the Ku Klux Klan. I suspect he is idealized in these but there is probably some kernel of truth in his stubborn approach to life from the outside.

My father also became a minister in this denomination. He attended the same college as his Dad in Anderson, Indiana. I was born while he was in undergraduate school there.

His story also involved struggle. He moved from a small Tennessee church ministry to the more urban ministry in Flint Michigan in 1963. The church was about half teachers and half factory workers. Before he was done we had anonymous death threat phone calls about his stands from the pulpit.

He eventually turned away from this denomination. But not before he had suffered some petty little humiliations like being removed from the church state directory of minsters (or something like that… this is all my strange quiet memories this morning… ).

I myself grew up loving poetry, literature, art and music. Neither of my parents loved these things particularly. Mom studied art when she attended the same small denominational church college as my Dad.

Dad’s father and mother gave him a multi-volume collection of poetry on his 24th birthday.

I now have them sitting on my shelves.

They are not particularly well thumbed. The black on the spine reflects a time when my Dad cataloged his books in an obscure system.

You can see the inked-in classification in my Dad’s hand writing: 7-P/A – 23.

P = Poetry?

A = ?

I also have been remembering that when I was in my very early teens I bought little books about artists. People like Degas and Rodin.

I remember looking and admiring paintings of ballet dancers.

I wrote a song once about a music box ballet dancer.

I see the irony as I sit as a 61 year old outsider improvising music for ballet classes. I have fallen into a dream in my youth.

I haven’t blogged much lately. I’m expecting to blog less with my lovely daughters visiting and that is proving to be the case.

Elizabeth arrived safely and in good humor (as usual) on Thursday. We had a nice meal out together. Sarah will be coming in this evening. It will be fun to have them both around.

Elizabeth has recommended I think about purchasing a laptop instead of a new net book. She about has me convinced (not that she’s trying to convince me).

She recently purchased a laptop which is very fast, light and compact.

She paid around $900. My church is buying me a new netbook. I emailed my boss and told her I was thinking of switching from net books to lap tops and maybe the church shouldn’t buy a net book. I ran the idea of them purchasing me a new lap top. Or going in half with me on mine. Or not.

Went to the doctor yesterday for my six month check up. I was actually working on a blog there but somehow didn’t save it. My blood pressure zoomed up but my doctor was convinced that it was just “fear” since my daily readings were much much lower.

Over all she seemed pretty pleased with my health.

Listened to my heart and told me it sounded good (I have some damage in my heart that she found via a sonogram thingo a few years ago).

I have upped my treadmill time goal to 35 minutes of elevated pulse time. This means that I will warm up for 5 minutes, do 35 minutes of elevated pulse and then warm down for 5 minutes.

I changed this because one of my ballet teachers made the comment that 35 minutes were necessary to receive the most cardiovascular benefit. My doctor confirmed it.

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Michigan’s Affirmative Action Ban Is Ruled Unconstitutional – NYTimes.com

Getting my Michigan news from New York Times.

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Xi Jinping Offers Few Hints of a Shift in Direction in China – NYTimes.com

Li Keqiang Named China’s Prime Minister – NYTimes.com

Two informative reports about the recent political meeting in China.

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Israeli Attacks Are Test of Loyalty for Egypt’s Morsi – NYTimes.com

I didn’t realize that Egypt had refused Hamas requests to allow them to cross border.

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Killing of Student Further Sullies Kenyan Police – NYTimes.com

Wow. Kenyan police sound corrupt.

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BP Will Plead Guilty and Pay Over $4 Billion – NYTimes.com

Will be interesting to see if this actually plays out.

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Adultery, an Ancient Crime Still on Many Books – NYTimes.com

I learned the etymology of “adultery” from this interesting article.

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I’m feeling extraordinarily lucky this morning.

My daughter, Elizabeth, just phoned a while ago. Her plane had landed in Detroit. She sounded chipper after a 12 hour flight from Beijing. I will be picking her up in just over an hour when her second flight arrives in Grand Rapids.

It will be nice to have another person around whom I love and chat with.

Also my boss and her partner gave me a fantabulous gift.

Chris Ware’s new graphic novel. It comes in a beautiful illustrated sturdy box.

Inside are treasures.

This is an amazing generous gift. And I am so flattered that my boss, Jen Adams, and her partner, Beth Trembley, know me well enough to know how much I like stuff like this.

I’m also feeling lucky because yesterday I had a very long satisfying day. It was all stuff I enjoy doing: ballet class, meeting with boss, getting gift from her, practicing organ, preparing for rehearsals, then doing kids choir rehearsal and chamber choir rehearsal.

The kids were lots of fun. I did a ton of prep. I had adapted a song from the St. James curriculum that uses colors to teach the church year. So we started learning that.

We started a new composer: Handel. I made a take home sheet which we read and then we listened to the beginning of “Comfort ye” from Messiah.

I also made a “Cracking the Code” note name worksheet.

Notice I accidentally left out an “n” in (B)(A)njo. Ahem.

Anyway, the other daughter, Sarah, arrives Saturday. Blog posts will probably be sporadic for the next few weeks as I spend time with these two. So that’s what’s going on.

Not sure how much blogging I can get in this morning before it’s time for my morning ballet class, but here goes.

I spent a lot of time yesterday preparing upcoming bulletin information for the church secretary to have in her hands before she leaves for a vacation. This now involves preparing a psalm to be sung each Sunday. There were also a couple other inserts I had to do. One for a choral setting of Psalm 93 by David Hurd. This will be our anthem for Christ the King (Nov 25 this year). It has a congregational refrain which I had to put into a Finale file and then insert into a doc.

The composer would probably object to this since though we own multiple copies of his anthem, he didn’t provide a bulletin insert so this is technically a copyright violation.

My opinion of Hurd was lowered after an email exchange in which I politely asked him if I could adapt one of his chorale preludes to my instrument’s limited range. He declined and suggested I do a different piece.

I did so but with a bad taste in my mouth. Fuck these guys.

Yesterday I was choosing music for this Sunday. I thought it might be cool to do some Hurd organ music. I had purchased some before the email exchange.

I looked at all the stuff I owned but decided I had already performed the good stuff. The remaining works seem pretentious to me now, but that might be a subjective reaction.

Probably not.

Instead I chose to schedule a postlude by another now deceased Episcopalian Alec Wyton based on “Crown Him with Many Crowns” and a rousing Capriccio by George Böhm which I have never performed.

I especially like the closing section which begins like this.

And goes to an exciting (IMO) fugal like climax.

I came home in the afternoon and put on several recordings of it to treadmill to.

Most of them were on harpsichord but I did find one on organ.

I have changed about listening to recordings of pieces I am working on. I now do almost all of my listening for pleasure.This includes when I am studying. So I put on the recordings because I like the pieces and enjoy hearing them as much as observing other people’s interp.

The idea that I would ape recordings (which used to be my objection to listening to pieces I was learning) is diluted also by the fact that I usually listen to several different recordings. Thus I don’t consciously or unconsciously begin to think of one of them as a definitive interp I should emulate.

Or so I tell myself.

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Valerie Eliot, Wife and Editor of T.S. Eliot, Dies at 86 – NYTimes.com

I have been reading Eliot’s work in the morning. So when his second wife died last Friday and her obit appeared in the NYT I was very interested in learning about him and her.

A lot of the obit was drawn from this linked interview of her.

I have just arrived at The Waste Land in my reading.

I have been slightly annoyed at how many allusions literary and otherwise he puts into his poetry. At this stage of my life, I feel a strong impulse to run them down on the internet.

Fortunately where The Waste Land is concerned I found two sites with hyperlinked notes.

The Waste Land by T. S. Eliot with Annotations

and

http://eliotswasteland.tripod.com/

very cool.

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Kafka in Beijing – By John Garnaut and Sanghee Liu | Foreign Policy

Kafka indeed. A young privileged woman claims to have been raped and runs into the same brick walls all Chinese do.

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Pressing the Pentagon – NYTimes.com

Very few Americans are held publicly responsible these days. Except of course they get caught fucking the wrong person. This editorial quotes Paul Yingling, a recently retired Army colonel, who “noted during some of the darkest days of the Iraq war, a private who loses his rifle is punished more than a general who loses his part of a war.” What a country.

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Mr. Hamilton’s Growth Strategy – NYTimes.com

Another history lesson.

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America’s Addled Puritanism | Via Meadia

America is simultaneously a licentious society as well as an uptight one. If you doubt this just think about the transmission of STDs which I believe remain at record numbers. Someone has to be fucking around, right?

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Waiting with my mother in the Pain clinic, I was reading through Issue 20 of The Baffler which I purchased on Amazon in a Kindle format.

I have been linking some of the online articles in it. I am excited to find a publication that is so interesting to me.

It seems to be a literary journal critical and anti-market. Just up my alley.

Here are some fun quotes.

Bill Hicks on the military.

“You never see my attitude in the press,” Hicks once observed. “For instance, gays in the military. . . . Gays who want to be in the military. Here’s how I feel about it, alright? Anyone dumb enough to want to be in the military should be allowed in. End of fucking story. That should be the only requirement. I don’t care how many pushups you can do. Put on a helmet, go wait in that foxhole, we’ll tell you when we need you to kill somebody. . . . I watched these fucking congressional hearings and all these military guys and the pundits, ‘Seriously, aww, the esprit de corps will be affected, and we are such a moral’—excuse me! Aren’t y’all fucking hired killers? Shut up! You are thugs and when we need you to go blow the fuck out of a nation of little brown people, we’ll let you know. . . . I don’t want any gay people hanging around me while I’m killing kids! ”

Hicks’ quote and the following passage were the quotes that I decided were too inflammatory for some of my “friends” on Facebook on Veteran’s day.

” It’s this quality of avoiding danger, of seeking the safety of consensus, that characterizes the aesthetic of Stewart and Colbert. They’re adept at savaging the safe targets—vacuous talking heads and craven senators. But you will never hear them referring to our soldiers as “uniformed assassins,” as Twain did in describing an American attack on a tribal group in the Philippines.

George Carlin on education.

“There’s a reason education sucks, and it’s the same reason that it will never, ever, ever, be fixed,” Carlin once said, though not on The Daily Show. “The owners of this country don’t want that. I’m talking about the real owners now. The real owners, the big wealthy business interests that control things and make all the important decisions. Forget the politicians. The politicians are put there to give you the idea that you have freedom of choice. You don’t.”

These all come from Steve Almond’s savaging of Jon Stewart and Steven Colbert: The Joke’s on You

I like how the writers in this magazine elucidate the hypocrisies of contemporary life. I also find it instructive when they critique intelligently.

Although I do enjoy listening to This American Life, I found myself agreeing with Eugenia Williamson’s analysis in “O the pathos.”

Most of the time, in fact, the stories on This American Life fall under Milan Kundera’s definition of kitsch: “the translation of the stupidity of received ideas into the language of beauty and feeling [that] moves us to tears of compassion for ourselves, for the banality of what we think and feel.”

In “Cash and Carry Aesthetics,” Jed Peel blew me away with his description of his response to the contemporary art scene. (Unfortunately this article is not online)

[L]aissez-faire aesthetics mimics the reach of popular culture, although without the democratic idealism that gives the best of pop culture its essential power. It is the very essence of popular culture that the intense feelings a song or a movie kicks off in one person are also experienced by many other people, almost simultaneously. When somebody refers to “the summer we fell in love and everybody was playing our song,” they are describing one of the essential pop experiences—the sense that the individual is connected with the group.

When people find something lacking in even the best contemporary painting and sculpture, they may actually be saddling this work with an unwarranted assumption, widespread today, that all major works of art are going to have the pervasive effect that we know from some of our great experiences with popular art—with movies and rock music. The result is a flattening of all artistic experience.

Jed Peel also shed some light on Matthew Barney’s weird series of movies that I was curious about and managed to see.

The nurse at the pain clinic asked me what I was reading when I started laughing after reading this:

the Cremaster cycle, a series of five phony-baloney mythopoetic movies, accompanied by dumpster loads of junk from some godforsaken gymnasium of the imagination.

Eileen and I watched a dark little flick written and directed by Bobcat Goldthwait last night.

It’s a violent little flick in which the main characters kill annoying people.

They end up on the set of Amercan Superstar (American Idol). Joel Murray who plays the main character occasionally spouts some odd monologues that seem to be explicitly what the movie is trying to say. Example:

‘America has become a cruel and vicious place. We reward the shallowest, the dumbest, the meanest and the loudest. We no longer have any common sense or decency. No sense of shame. There is no right and wrong. The worst qualities in people are looked up to and celebrated. Lying and spreading fear are fine. As long as you make money doin’ it. We’ve become a nation of slogan-saying, bile-spewing hate-mongers. We’ve lost our kindness. We’ve lost our soul.

If what he was saying wasn’t so satisfying to me, this might have been cloying. I notice that it was released on September 11, 2011. Fitting.

I wore myself out yesterday.

I gave it my all at work as usual for the service. We sang a crowd pleaser arrangement of “This Little Light of Mine.” I worked out an interp that involved me adding some gospel piano to the intro and the ending. The choir did a pretty good job. The congregation applauded afterwards which is simultaneously encouraging and discouraging.

They had just shown a clever little fund raising video of parish kids talking to the camera about what they liked about Grace.

The crowd was in a very informal mood after that. I think that might have had something to do with the applause. Plus the ending I did was very pop/gospel and probably called for applause.

I was surprised.

After church I had arranged to rehearse with instrumentalists and invited choir members (most of which skipped) to come and sing their part along with them. Unfortunately one of the instrumentalists had not looked at her part and had difficulty reading it. This requires me to stay supportive to the person unprepared but sensitive to the fact that giving her too much time is not fair to the rest of the group. This takes energy.

After we had rehearsed as a group I worked with the person who was unprepared for another half hour, helping her (I hope).

Came home and made recordings for one of my dance teachers.

She devised a combination that needed alternate measures of 5 and 6 beats. 5/4 and 6/4 was how I thought of it. While we were doing this she asked me if I could somehow record what I was improvising so she could work on it on the days she didn’t have a pianist. I consented.

Unfortunately this turned into another time and energy consuming project even though I tried to make it easy for myself. I took a Ron Carter jazz waltz and dropped a beat in every fourth measure which created the needed rhythm pattern. This was supposed to be an advanced (not as obvious) version.

This came off in one or two takes.

But I found that when I improvised something simple as I had in class I had problems. I sped up. I dropped beats.

By the time I was done I was exhausted.

I have another full day today which ends with me giving a mini recital at church to the St. Martha’s Guild.

Whew.

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America’s Addled Puritanism | Via Meadia

We are simultaneously the most licentious and sexually open society since Nero was fiddling around in Rome, and the most uptight and rigid country this side of Saudi Arabia.

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The Joke’s on You | Steve Almond | The Baffler

I know I have put this link up before. If you believe as I do that military’s main purpose is to kill people and that this very rarely if ever is justified there are some fine quotes from Bill Hicks and Mark Twain in this article. I almost put one up on Facebook yesterday then I remembered it was Veteran’s Day and some of my reactionary friends who not appreciate it.

On Saturday I was standing in line at the Farmers Market. The person in front of me was asking the old man who was selling vegetables about his heater. It was a warm day. The old man said that ever since he had served in the army his hands were always cold. The customer asked him if he had served someplace cold. No, he said, two years in Vietnam. It was the Agent Orange that left him debilitated.

Ay yi yi.

Both the customer and I wished him a Happy Veteran’s Day.

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Today after church I have a rehearsal with instrumentalists who are going to play the next Sunday. I was experiencing some uneasiness about the accuracy of their parts on the anthem by Byrd which I copied by hand into a Finale file. So, this morning I carefully went over my finale score comparing it to the one I had worked from. No mistakes. It’s so easy for a little inaccuracy to slip in, so this kind of proof reading is important.

I then made a score for me with missing instrument part (I called it cello 1) and the vocal part. That way I can reinforce the singers in the performance as well as provide the missing part. The original was scored for five viols.

I will have violin, flute, viola and cello to cover 4 of these parts.

I read another essay in the Hymnal 1982 Companion Volume One. This one was about the techniques Winifred Douglas used in his Gregorian chant adaptations.

I didn’t know that he consciously imitated the way anonymous medieval chant composers put together new chants. Very informative.

I also read a bit in David Byrne’s How Music Works.

I find his book delightful. Byrne has a wonderful blend of goofiness and elegance. As I read I hear the prose in his dry twangy voice that he uses in his movie “True Stories.”

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A record 20 women will serve in U.S. Senate | Texas on the Potomac | a Chron.com blog

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What Americans Keep Ignoring About Finland’s School Success – Anu Partanen – The Atlantic

Thanks to the DAVEPAUL for recommending this link. Like several I’m linking today I haven’t read it entirely yet.

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Direct Democracy: Results of Ballot Propositions Across the Country

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Too Smart to Fail: Notes on an Age of Folly | Thomas Frank | The Baffler

The Baffler is a new online source for me. It’s a mag but does put some articles online.

“We have become a society that can’t self-correct, that can’t address its obvious problems, that can’t pull out of its nosedive. And so to our list of disasters let us add this fourth entry: we have entered an age of folly that—for all our Facebooking and the twittling tweedle-dee-tweets of the twitterati—we can’t wake up from.”

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China: Worse Than You Ever Imagined by Ian Johnson | The New York Review of Books

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The Politics of Fear by Mark Danner | The New York Review of Books

Silence in the election about the Middle East Peace process.

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On to the next one | Marc Lynch

Foreign policy observations post election.

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The digital challenge, I: Loss & gain, or the fate of the book by Anthony Daniels – The New Criterion

This goofy articles keep sucking me in.

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Book review of Jack Zipes’ The Irresistible Fairy Tale | Open Letters Monthly – an Arts and Literature Review

The filter site that pointed me to this (Arts and Letters Daily: http://www.aldaily.com/) said this article talks about how Disney has ruined the Fairy Tale.

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Three I plan to read on the Baffler site.

Omniscient Gentlemen of The Atlantic | Maureen Tkacik | The Baffler

The Joke’s on You | Steve Almond | The Baffler

This critiques our tv best comics: Steward and Colbert.

Oh, the Pathos! | Eugenia Williamson | The Baffler

Chronicles the “This American Life” screw up of featuring a false report.

How to Devise Passwords That Drive Hackers Away – NYTimes.com

Ever since reading this article about how experts approach passwords I have been thinking about my passwords.

Several of them are highly unsatisfactory. Their nature reflects my own lack of patience with the number of them needed to function online.

This morning I was laying in bed listening to “On the Media” online and a good solution occurred to me. Use a book code. I understand that one of the hardest codes to decipher are codes that use two copies of the same book. This was part of the plot of a book I read recently.

It would be simple to devise a method to keep track of multiple passwords using one book.

Cool.

One could incorporate a pattern or patterns using pages in the book. Lengthy passwords would be easy to generate. Length is important I think.

Anyway, that’s my insight for this morning.

Last night Eileen and I attended an appreciation dinner for staff and volunteers at Herrick library.

I was struck by the fact that both the pianist for the evening and the caterer were acquaintances of mine.

I know few people at the library.

The ones I did know were sitting far away from me.

Finished reading What Animal a book of poetry by Oni Buchanan. I also read part of a review of this her first published book of poetry.

I think that I’m pretty eccentric in my tastes in poetry and literature. I have now read two books of poetry by Oni Buchanan and two books of poetry by her husband Jon Woodward. In both cases I found myself losing interest in the work. I keep suspect Buchanan of consulting a thesaurus.

Whether or not this is fact the actual case, the way she uses words and ideas sometimes seem clunky to me. I was not always able to understand just what she was getting at, who was speaking and the context of the images. Probably this reflects my own orientation more than anything.

The reviewer thought she was great.

On the other hand I ran across a lovely poem yesterday on Three Quarks Daily that inspired me so much I looked up the author and inter-library loaned a book of her poems.

I’ve also started reading Louis Glück’s A Village Life. I own several books of her poetry and think of her as a poet my brother admires. I am finding her more understandable than Buchanan or Woodward.

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Why Math is Like the Honey Badger: Nate Silver Ascendant | Cocktail Party Physics, Scientific American Blog Network

I continue to be fascinated by people’s superstitious belief in how science and math works. Facts are facts. You don’t really get to make up your own facts. If you choose to disbelieve a fact. It reflects on you not the fact. I heard Republican pundits contesting Silver’s computations before the election. I head Silver talk about how he arrived at his numbers and he was clear and coherent.

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‘The Fractalist,’ Benoit B. Mandelbrot’s Math Memoir – NYTimes.com

Speaking of math and science, this memoir looks interesting to me. Too new to inter-library loan. But I have it in mind to look at sometime, if not read.

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When Is a Mandate Not a Mandate?

286 electoral votes = a mandate.

Interesting take on use of this language about the election. I especially found Krauthammer’s inconsistency satisfying since the few times I have listened to him speak he seems rabidly polemic and relatively content free.

303 to 332 electoral votes = not a mandate.

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In Syria, Missteps by Rebels Erode Their Support – NYTimes.com

Some interesting on the ground reporting in this article.

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New York Subways Find Magic in Speedy Hurricane Recovery – NYTimes.com

Also an example of top notch coverage of a fascinating set of events.

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Wixom, Mich., Shooting Suspect Is Arrested – NYTimes.com

Looks like they got the guy who was shooting up I-96 in northwest Detroit. Good police work!

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Californians Say Yes to Raising Their Taxes – NYTimes.com

Once again Californians lead the way for the nation. I support taxes because I support governmental services. Like FEMA. Like building roads and bridges. And especially education.

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Let’s Not Make a Deal – NYTimes.com

Krugman is definitely my kind of thinker. Us soft headed liberals stick together.

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Can the Federal Reserve Help Prevent a Second Recession? | The Nation

William Grieder is another dude I have read who has helped me understand stuff. Notice this article sounds many but not all of the same notes as the conservative business community. Who’dah thunk it? Right there in the communist rag, the Nation (the digital version of which I subscribe to)

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A middle aged woman with the body of an aging athlete leans toward me.

“I’m grumpy on the inside,” she says, “I’m always grumpy on the inside.”

I have to laugh.

* * *

Two women are talking to each other. One has asked the other for help. I could help but I hold back. They are sitting and talking. One leans toward the other and smiles reassuringly. I can remember watching them literally fight each other. It’s satisfying to see this moment.

* * *

The child is out of control. Like so many children when the parents look on helpless and embarrassed. He is of course brilliant in his own way. Winning smile. As he dashes from one corner of the room to the other happily yelling, I wonder how he will grow up. Will he continue to try to manipulate those around him with his aggressive charm? Will it work?

* * *

The man behind the desk has stopped smiling. His skin is leathery and red. Earlier he had turned on the charm. But now he puts his hands on the surface in front of him and looks down, disinterested.

* * *

I am supposed to give a presentation for a meeting of a ladies group at church on Monday evening. No one has specified what they expect. Yesterday I decided it would be easier to play a little piano recital for them.

I am thinking of it as “My favorites and yours.”

I read through pieces yesterday and came up with these.

The Mysterious Barricades by Francois Couperin

Essercizi in G minor by Domenico Scarlatti

Prelude and Fugue in G minor (from WTC II) by Bach

Three Mazurkas by Chopin

Intermezzo in A major by Brahms

Clair de Lune by Claude Debussy

“It don’t mean a thing if it aint got that swing” and

“In a sentimental mood” by Duke Ellington

These are mostly pieces I have performed before. I have been practicing the Bach because I’m in love with the fugue. And I am still reading my way through of all of Scarlatti’s essercizi (I’m on volume V) so I just chose one from that volume that I had marked as an especially charming one (they are all good in my opinion).

In addition I am playing for a Veteran’s ceremony at my Mom’s nursing home this morning.

I played for this last year so I have the theme songs for all the branches of the service together in one place where I can just grab them and go.

Yesterday I finally found some music for my instrumentalists to perform for the prelude and postlude a week from Sunday. I was sure I had some music somewhere that we could just use instead of me preparing scores (which is fun but time consuming).

I ran across a two volume set of Purcell: “Spielmusik zum Sommernats-traum” fur vier streich-oder blasinstrumente und basso continuo.

Which I take to mean something like “Music for a Summer Night’s Dream for four strings or other instruments and basso continuo.”

Anyway my yellowing aged copy has separate parts for instruments including one in alto clef for viola. I took it to the piano trio rehearsal yesterday. The oboist showed up that I had invited to join us and we read through several. I chose four for the prelude and one for the postlude.

Nice stuff. Picked it up used at Encore Records in Ann Arbor.

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Netanyahu Rushes to Repair Damage With Obama – NYTimes.com

Netanyahu backed the wrong side in the election.

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Argentina – Chevron’s Assets Are Frozen – NYTimes.com

This case of seeking damages for raping the environment keeps plodding through world courts.

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Michigan Voters Kill ‘Emergency Managers’ for City Finances – NYTimes.com

Local coverage is pretty spotty. I found this article helpful.

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Happy Days, Even With the Cliff – NYTimes.com

This is an Op ed, but I was most impressed with this comment in the comment section.

I’m a retired, white baby boomer who is also a Vietnam vet. I was exposed to Agent Orange while serving as a medical corpsman in Vietnam. After more than four decades of indifference, the government that sent me to Vietnam has finally recognized through clinical tests I had a legitimate claim for disability compensation. President Obama and retired general Eric Shinseki, his Secretary of Veteran Affairs, got the VA bureaucracy to approve my heart condition as a valid claim. But over 100,000 Vietnam vets like me were also approved for compensation, of which 68,000 are still alive.
I guess you could interpret my being awarded in September, 2010, a disability claim from the VA as just another American voter “wanting stuff.” I see it as the government finally honoring its commitment to me when I served my country as a young man. So it meant a great deal to me more than just getting some stuff.
This personal issue was just one of the reasons I voted for President Obama. He talks the talk, but he also walks the walk.

George Hoffman,
Stow, Ohio

I have been noticing that when reactionaries use the word, “entitlement,” they can mean different things. When stoking the mob, they can be evoking the mythical Reagan “welfare queen.” When talking a bit more calmly they seem to mean Social Security and Medicaid/Medicare.

I find this confusing since even though these programs are in trouble, most of the recipients paid into the government all their lives. The “entitlement” must come in because of the huge increase in the number of people these programs need to serve and the increase in medical costs. And of course since the money they paid was used to fund the program then, there are fewer people paying in than it would take to keep these programs solvent.

Try putting that on a bumper sticker. Not so easy.

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Can Republicans Adapt? – NYTimes.com

This is partisan leftist, but I think it’s eloquent.

Examples:

Republicans became obstructionist on immigration and then veered into offensive demagogy in opposing the nomination of Sonia Sotomayor to the Supreme Court. The Hispanic vote tumbled by increasing numbers into the Democrats’ laps.

The paternalistic comments about rape by a few male Republican candidates resonated so broadly because they reflected the perception of the G.O.P. as a conclave of out-of-touch men. As Representative Todd Akin of Missouri might put it, when a candidate emerges with offensive views about rape, “the female body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down.” Namely, they vote Democratic.

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How to Devise Passwords That Drive Hackers Away – NYTimes.com

This article is a little crazy but still it’s interesting to hear what the experts do.

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This morning after reading some poetry I found myself checking out the reaction to yesterday’s election.

I tend to use filter sites to do stuff like this.

I favor Google News, Real Clear Politics and many individual sites.

I have been very interested in how conservative (reactionary) thinkers are responding.

Last night on C-Span I watched some thoughtful commentary from people from the National Review. I only watched one panel, but was impressed with their analysis and comments.

I have admired C-Span since its inception. I love the unadulterated taping of lectures and other events they do.

Here are some more articles that I have been looking at.

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Juan Williams: Obama’s Daunting Demographic Message for the GOP – WSJ.com

Demographics seems to be a big deal in most analyses I have been reading.

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BBC News – US election: A vote for the status quo

Some good analysis from the BBC.

“The negativity and lying that marked this campaign was not a new low for American politics. It was a very old-style low, but with new volume, thanks to new technology – and billions of dollars.”

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George Will: The winner is the status quo – The Washington Post

Though I rarely agree with him, I do think George Will is brilliant.

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The Daily Caller » What Happened »

Tucker Carlson and his co-author Neil Patel surprise me with their analysis. This is a link to the print version to avoid page jumps.

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GOP House leaders begin outlining parameters to avoid ‘fiscal cliff’ day after election | Fox News

I was surprised by the election results. Maybe congressional Republicans will surprise me and start to govern.

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How Obama Won – NationalJournal.com

Interesting that I thought National Journal was a conservative site. Maybe not. Anyway, this is clear analysis.

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Dow drops 313 points after election, anticipating the Fiscal Cliff | Washington Times Communities

I think this is more evidence that looking at our lives solely through the economic lens is part of the problem. Yesterday I heard a businessman blame the fall in the Dow on MISTER Obama. I didn’t confront him but was very surprised that he blamed the President for winning. Sigh. I also am discouraged that so many people no longer respect this office for its own sake.

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If there’s anyone angrier than a liberal who has just lost, it’s a liberal who has just won | The Daily Caller

I link this as an example of the noise that fills up the Internet. Jim Treacher has to reach deep to find his angry liberal (that’s why I clicked on it…. I am more aware of reactionary anger than liberal anger, but there is high emotion on both sides). He is fortunate that the actor he quotes gives him more fodder in his own comment section. This strikes me as stirring up something out of nothing. Certainly I didn’t learn anything at this link, except to add the Daily Caller to my list of conservative sites to keep an eye on. Oops. Just checked. It’s already there.

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In China, Unwelcome at the Party – NYTimes.com

Lastly a link unrelated to the election. The writer of this article is putting himself in danger as he goads the authorities with his actions and this article. I only hope his high national visibility might protect. As usual I find myself hoping, but not optimistic.