It may be that the sheer volume of all that is available these days causes people like myself who are interested in historical music, poetry and books that deal with the difficult to feel that our interests are fading and marginal.

This must be illusory. But this illusion is reinforced when popular culture is so loud, academic culture so narrow-minded, and those we come in contact so distant and uninterested in things like classical music and poetry and articulate writing.

It can feel a bit like being squeezed. Or maybe the parts that I love that others don’t is squeezing out those things.

Is this what aging means? Could be. Common points of reference diminish to the point that it is often better to be silent than attempt to explain one’s reaction.

As my friend, the ballet instructor, said to me last term when I was trying to explain something with a cultural reference, “You might as well be speaking Chinese.”

I liked that. Partially because two people I care deeply about (daughter Elizabeth and her significant other Jeremy) do speak Chinese.

Anyway.

Yesterday Eileen’s back was hurting so I helped her put in some simple fencing to discourage neighborhood children and dogs from trampling her plants.

I probably would have helped her anyway, but she pooped out rather quickly and I had to make multiple trips to Menards by myself.

Farmer Jupe.

My violinist begged off joining me at my Mom’s nursing home to perform for their ice cream social. This was not particularly problematic. I continue to attempt to get other musicians to play music with me (either privately or in performance). I do enjoy that, but can persist alone.

I find it satisfying to perform for the nursing home. I see it as a combination of edification (for those who are alert and interested),  a dash of education and a chance to allow people to make their own music via singing hymns or huming/singing along with pop tunes they recognize (“It’s only a Paper Moon”).

My violinist called a few hours before the performance, so I put together a little program of pieces I felt I could pull off without prep. This ended up looking a lot like a list of pieces I had done with the dance class.

Theme from a Bach Brandenburg (no. 4), Orientale by Cui, and a piano piece by Gwyneth Walker.

In the case of the latter two, I performed the entire piece which was satisfying. The dance class only used sections of it.

I sprinkled in a happy Mozart piano sonata movement and that was my classical stuff for yesterday.

I did use Ellington’s “I’ve got it bad and that aint good.” I do a rap with the audience as I play. I told them the Duke was one of my favorites. And he is.

We spent almost a half hour singing hymns. The response was pretty enthusiastic for a bunch people in a nursing home. There were times when I played very minimal piano to allow the singing to take over. Inspiring to me.

It struck me later how contrasting the enthusiasm of this audience is with other audiences I play for. Both are extremes that have little to do with me personally.

Eileen madly prepared for the choir party all day yesterday. She was brilliant but it did wear her totally out.

The party went well. Listening to people talk about their lives is always interesting to me.

We did some singing, but not too much. We only made it to page 38 (of 78) of “Trial by Jury” a “cantata” by Arthur Sullivan. I had the feeling that much more would have tried the patience of some of the members. There were some that were probably as crazy as me and ready to sing it all the way through for the heck of it.

But less is more as they say.

I’m kind of tired myself this morning come to think of it. Getting to blogging a bit late. Spent the morning wrestling with Greek.

Doing a little reading and other stuff.

I just sent off the music for Pentecost for the church bulletin. It’s a day late by my own schedule.

I am feeling less and less free to rant and rave here. Many of my observations on people and their behavior are probably not appropriate to air publicly.

Today, Amy Piersma, my violinist friend, and I are scheduled to play for an ice cream social at my Mom’s nursing home. I’m hoping the  novelty of having a violinist along will suffice so that we can basically play the program we played for a recent gig. Probably need to add a few hymns.

Amy and I meet at 2 PM today. Then we’ll go over and play at the nursing home at 3 PM.

In the meantime, the house is as straight and as clean as it has been in a long time. Easy clean up from last night. Eileen is lazing around recuperating. She is threatening to go help a friend with her yard work today sometime.

Life goes on.

The Test Exercises at the end of the first section of my Greek text have convinced me I do not know the grammar as thoroughly as intended. Sigh.

I have returned to the beginning sections to analyze them more closely in terms of the case and gender of each noun.

Eileen has been frantically working in the yard, draining her pond and weeding. I think she wore herself out on Monday. Last night I suggested we go out to eat in hopes it might distract and relax her.

We are hosting the choir party this evening.  But that should be pretty easy. The house is straighter than usual.

I dreamed last night about finishing  installing the new jacks in my harpsichord. I miss it quite a bit. Maybe I will be inspired to do this this summer.

I met with a bride and her parents and the “wedding planner” yesterday. It seems to me that one of the functions of  a “wedding planner” is to inject large amounts of anxiety into a situation. Good grief.

I had an interesting chat with the father of the bride after they had figured out what organ music they wanted.

He indicated that he was involved with a “progressive” CRC church as head of its council. He bemoaned the fact that the “praise team” had attempted to remove the organ. He had encouraged them to use it once in a while on hymns but said they were resistant.

The older people in the congregation were so happy to have young people that they had given in about not using the organ. However, the praise team did not manage to have it removed.

The father of the bride said that when they did manage to convince them to use it, many people in the congregation were complimentary.

He also indicated that he was no longer involved with the church council though he was still part of the congregation.

I had forgotten how like an audition it is to meet with wedding people.

Later in the afternoon I decided I would play Buxtehude for Pentecost: a chorale prelude on Komm, Heiliger Geist (BuxWv 200) and the Jig Fugue (BuxWV 174). I could also use these for organ music for the upcoming Confirmation service which my church is hosting for the diocese this year.

1. Veterans Fire Back at Letter by Senator – NYTimes.com

Shameful to politicize the needs of veterans.

2. The Dark Room Collective: Where Black Poetry Took Wing – NYTimes.com

Many poets in this article that I will want to check out.

3. Herb Jeffries, a.k.a. ‘Bronze Buckaroo’ of Song and Screen, Dies at 100 (or So) 

Smooth throated singer dies. Again I was able to access his music while reading his obit and treadmilling.

4. Really Good Books, Part II – NYTimes.com

David Brooks continues to recommend summer reading.  It surprises me how much I agree with his recommendations.

In his comment section, this person’s observations blew me away:

“When I was young I struggled with dyslexia which makes it difficult to comprehend the words on a page. I learned to love music and other forms of art, but the struggle of reading led me to love reading as well. Now I am mostly blind and literature comes to me through listening which has opened another world, a different sight, to me.”

I spent a couple hours yesterday cleaning my porch. It has grown into a hodge podge of stuff combining several layers of junk. All my CDs are out there and that is quite a number. Also boxes from my parents.

Thumbing through the stacks and boxes of papers that mostly needed discarding I found little notes that my Mom had made to herself, many throughout Dad’s decline. Many of these are prayers.  Some of them are left over from her stay in a psych ward.

Reading them makes me wonder where that woman went. Is she still there in the person sitting quietly in her nursing home room not far from here?  Mostly likely she is. But she rarely speaks of her faith and struggle now.

This morning I discovered that the writer Samuel Johnson also wrote prayers to cope with his struggles with depression.

He did so conscious of the beauty of the collects that Cranmer wrote for the Book of Common Prayer. 

Eileen and I stumbled across a pretty interesting movie last night.

I find myself less and less drawn to movies and tv. I tell myself it’s because I can’t relate to the ones being made. Of course it is probably also about me changing as well.

“The Pervert’s Guide to Ideology” drew me in pretty quickly.  I didn’t realize until this morning that the person speaking throughout was not a film maker, but a public intellectual of sorts, Slavoj Žižek, a philosopher, cultural critic and psychoanalyst. It’s kind of goofy, definitely preachy, but I think I like this movie quite a bit.

Throughout the film, Slavoj Žižek is seen speaking seemingly extemporaneously in the mode of a professor about ideology. The film uses movies to make its point  and the film maker has inserted the lecturing  Slavoj Žižek into the film sets themselves. Above, he is sitting in the bathroom from “Full Metal Jacket” where one of the characters commits suicide.

Here’s a trailer in case you’re curious

Eileen and I watched it on Netflix, it seems to be on YouTube as well.

Now to check out some of the movies it uses.

1. Final Word on U.S. Law Isn’t: Supreme Court Keeps Editing – NYTimes.com

I had to catch up on my NYT yesterday, since I neglected to treadmill two days in a row. Skipping exercising also seems to mean skipping reading the paper.

This link is disturbing. More and more,  I am learning how our government keeps itself secret from us.

2. Jeb Bush Gives Party Something to Think About – NYTimes.com

Interesting portrait of Jeb Bush including a partial list of the books on his Kindle. I love this kind of shit.

My nephew Ben Jenkins visited this weekend. This meant I had  someone to talk to (listen to me?) on Sunday morning. Hence no blog yesterday.

Ben joined us for a lovely meal with the Edgington fam last night.

Then he attended church with Eileen and me. I don’t remember when someone from my extended family came to church with us. It was kind of fun.

I tried to get my Mom to come over for a cookout, but her leg was hurting her so she demurred.

We had a great cookout. Eileen BBQed ribs and I cut up a bunch of veggies and made rice.

We went over and said hi to Mom. Ben hung around a bit and chatted and then took off.

My cup runneth over with good conversation and company.

This morning I got up and made little egg souflés for Eileen and me for breakfast.

I am baking strawberry tarts as I write this. Here’s what they looked like before I put them in.

I think summer is here.

Last night was the AGO potluck. Eileen didn’t go even though spouses were invited. The evening was pleasant and people seemed to be having a good time.

I come away from these kinds of social events vibrating with snippets of conversation and impressions.

These continue to rattle uncomfortably in my brain. I often rehearse conversations I participated in and wince at my own inanity and possible insensitivity.

I file all this under the fact that I am painfully aware of misimpressions I can give people and also that I probably am more “intro” than “extro” vert.

These painful recollections make it difficult for me to relax and rest.

This is all exacerbated by my lingering burnout.

I tell Eileen that I am basically happy. But that little annoying things become amplified by my burnout.

Then I tend to fixate on them. But there’s nothing in my life that I would necessarily want to change. I just need a vacation.

One of those moments that kept echoing in my head was a discussion with a member of my choir who is also a member of the AGO. In the course of discussing an anthem I had to cancel, the chorister said that he noticed that I never complain about the challenges of working with the ever changing numbers in the choir.

I guess he doesn’t read my blog, eh?

1. Really Good Books, Part I – NYTimes.com

I love articles that recommend reading. I have read a few of these but I always appreciate being exposed to how other readers are looking at their own preferences.

2. I, Too, Will Stand Up for Tiananmen – NYTimes.com

What interested me most about this article is the way collective memory of an event alters so quickly.

3. An Appeal to Europe, From Ukraine’s Ambassador – NYTimes.com

Hey. The ambassador from Ukraine wrote a thoughtful interesting letter to the NYT. Cool.

I had an insight yesterday that was helpful. I was quite depressed after spending time with the wonderful organ builder and his side kick who came to Holland to talk to our Organ Committee.

My church is in the process of purchasing a pipe organ. I should be ecstatic. Instead I feel weirdly skeptical about the ultimate outcome expecting roadblocks or something I guess.

I am 100 % behind the idea of installing a superb instrument (world class) in the church where I work.

I think that my own technique might become more apparent to listeners, certainly the music I learn and perform will be much better served by a decent instrument.

I think I might surprise some people who tend to see me as a third rate hack largely I suspect due to my demeanor and appearance.

Or not.

Whatever.

The insight comes from the depression. It depresses me to be reminded how poor the instrument is that I perform on. Having people around me (the builder and his side kick) who have such passion about excellence in this area can leave me deflated as I persist with my  inferior instrument.

I did try to explain to the young side kick that the timbres of sound have never been as important to me as the actual structures of the composition.

This probably made no sense to him. But later I was thinking that my own passion for beautifully made music is as strong and real as the admirable passion of the two men I spent Tuesday with, namely the construction of quality instruments.

This hit home to me as I reflected  on the actual repertoire we discussed as a threesome. Some of it was clearly not to my own taste. I would even go so far as to say it was probably pretty poor music that I would not choose to perform or listen to.

So I am a bit of musical snob in my own way. Beauty, playfulness, honesty, and my own simple attraction to music draws me into a wide variety of music styles. I recall the conversation I had with a now dead concert pianist years ago when he referred to certain styles of  music as “drek.” This lead to my own eventual composition of a tune called “drek” after realizing that what this fine musician was talking about was music that I valued.

This amused my (now) son-in-law who comes from a Jewish background and knew the yiddish term. He enjoyed the idea that two goy musicians were tossing around a yiddishism.

I had a gig last night. I and my violinist, Amy Piersma, performed for an anniversary celebration of a local church. It was held in the former study hall of a refurbished school building here in Holland.

I was provided with an electric keyboard (which I guess this church uses in its worship). The sound was pretty bad (pace to all who use these instruments). But Amy and I performed a wide variety of baroque sonatas and jazz tunes for about an hour.

It was fun. Hopefully she will drop off my check for $75 today.

1. Online Library of Liberty

Found this link this morning. Historical books that you can down load in Kindle format.

2. Seven Books You Should Read This Summer | Village Voice

Lots of Nixon books coming out.

3. Depressed, but Not Ashamed – NYTimes.com

High School editors get censored. But they get published in the NYT.

Eileen and I went to Best Buy and bought a new laptop. For some reason the fucking thing will not load websites like Facebook and Comedy Central on Chrome. This morning I got up and used Explorer and the Facebook log in came right up. I simultaneously opened Chrome and it refuses to load. I suspect the security software it came with (McAfe) is fucking up Chrome. But Windows 8.1 makes it so difficult to get to panels where one can adjust such things.

To add insult to injury the laptop keeps automatically loading programs that start blathering away, talking!

Ay yi yi.

I am experiencing burnout again. I am sparing anyone kind enough to read this and just deleted most of a whiny blog post.

1. The Limits of Armchair Warfare – NYTimes.com

Did you know our idiot government tried to create a new award that purported to be more prestigious than the purple heart for cyberwarriors who run drones. There was an understandable outcry. What were people thinking?

2. Springtime for Bankers – NYTimes.com

Further evidence that the USA is an oligarchy which protects monied interests and ignores families.

3. Poverty Is Not a State of Mind – NYTimes.com

Blaming poor people for being poor is the result of lack of imagination and compassion.

4. The Republican War on Workers’ Rights – NYTimes.com

This article quotes the darling of the right, Adam Smith, who wrote in his Wealth of Nations: “Whenever the legislature attempts to regulate the differences between masters and their workmen, its counsellors are always the masters. When the regulation, therefore, is in favour of the workmen, it is always just and equitable; but it is sometimes otherwise when in favour of the masters.””

So I changed the blog a bit just to clean it up. In the world of WordPress this is called changing a theme. I can remember years ago when I first had the idea of having a website where people could come and read and then leave comments, hopefully have conversations.

I built the thing from scratch then. Much easier to use an interface like WordPress these days.

It’s pretty easy to switch back and forth between these premade designs so I’m not sure I will stick with this. But I have to say I like it better.

I picked up a couple books of poetry on impulse last week when I made my weekly library visit to pick out large prints books for my elderly mom to read in her nursing home.

I can remember in the sixties going to the public library in Flint and always stopping at the new book shelf of poetry.  I remember it now as being huge. I wonder how accurate that memory is.

I have somehow developed a life long love of poetry. I think it is connected inside me to my love of music, books and reading. I puzzle over how I got this way. I think the main thing my parents did to nurture this (that I remember anyway) was give me freedom.

They rarely censored my reading. Actually I’m not even sure how much they noticed what I was reading.

Once my Dad asked me not to play a Frank Zappa record because a woman in a monologue said the word, “Fuck.”

I find this amusing in retrospect when my Mom once made the startling comment to me, “I don’t swear. Your FATHER swears.”

I don’t remember hearing him swear.

Anyway, the poetry book I have been working on is “The Boss” by Victoria Chang. I am enjoying her poems. I love it that I picked her up randomly on the new book shelf.

I count 45 poems in this book. Eleven of them (again by my count, they are not numbered) take their titles from paintings by Edward Hopper. The poems describe the paintings and riff on them, either speculating on the circumstances or relating them to lived life presumably Chang’s herself.

This morning I began googling them.

Which brings me to my continuing point: if one is curious and seeks to understand shit and is alert to the pitfalls of bad web sites, the Interwebs is a wonderful place.

Looking at the paintings is very helpful in understanding Chang’s poetry.

I’ll close with a wonderful example.

EDWARD HOPPER’S NEW YORK OFFICE 

by Victoria Change

Maybe the letter isn’t from a lover the letter is a layoff letter
a lay aside letter a lay into letter maybe the
letter says you are an employee of me and I certainly
expect you to come to the meeting

about me my two-year-old says me don’t have candy
me me me me my tooth hurts my head hurts my foot hurts me have
boo boo here and here and here and here
I can never see them these boo boos

cannot see anything maybe her letter is a DMV letter telling
her to pay the registration fee the license fee the
weight fee the special plate fee the city county
state fees the owner responsibility fee the smog

abatement fee maybe if the DMV didn’t send so
many fees the woman would be free to work in a
different building with a different window in a
different city for a different boss

1. Jeb Magruder, 79, Nixon Aide Jailed for Watergate, Dies – NYTimes.com

I followed the original Watergate hearings as they were being televised, but I didn’t realize that Magruder had said that Nixon initiated them before he died. Who knows if it’s true? But there it is in his obit.

2. What Is This Child Doing in Prison? – NYTimes.com

Good question in a troubling and well written report.

3. Sudan: Woman Sentenced to Death After Refusing to Renounce Her Faith – NYTimes

Can’t believe this is happening now. Sounds like something in the distant past, unfortunately this shit persists.

4. Ideology and the Court – NYTimes.com

Some salient observations critical of our Supreme Court from a Letter to the Editor writer. I especially like his observation that “The fundamental problem isn’t left versus right or liberal versus conservative. It’s an inability — or at least an arrogant unwillingness — to listen authentically.”

I am amused that I continue to read and think about religious stuff. After finishing Charles Taylor’s A Secular Age, I find myself on the second chapter of The Rivers North of the Future: The Testament of Ivan Illich. I have to admit he seems a little crazy. It reminds me of reading Philip K. Dick. But like Dick, Illich makes a crazy kind of sense which I find fascinating but pretty much unconvincing.

Illich says that when Paul writes about the “mystery of wickedness” in the second chapter of Thessalonians he is referring to how the young faith is corrupted by those who try to organize it. Either that or Illich means that he sees the ultimate good of the Incarnation as containing the seeds of ultimate evil.

Science fiction, no?

Anyway, I opened up my bible with a smile and read this chapter this morning as well Illich.

What the fuck am I doing I wondered idly as I then pulled out a book on the history of The Book of Common Prayer? This reading led me to some other religious books. The Bibliography of the Book of Common Prayer: 1549-1999 by David N. Griffiths. When I googled this book I found a very weird thing: a YouTube of a review of it read in a robot voice.

Life is good.

On another note I continue to be amused at how badly techies are at designing and thinking about tech.

Yesterday after reading the manual online of the hard drive I purchased, I jumped in the car and drove to Best Buy to ask a Geek dude whether I had actually purchased an independent hard drive or a back up system since the fucking thing was named “Back Up Plus” and the online manual was all about this stupid stupid interface (dashboard) which would let the user automatically back up his pics from Facebook and Twitter.

The young man behind the counter assured me that I would be able to access this drive in the usual manner. My confidence was restored until he added that he knew about these things because he had been doing them “for years.” 

I left. I couldn’t help but muse that I had been doing computers longer than this little fucker had been alive.

God is good.

I find a small solace when I realize there are still a number of people who are interested in the arts, the life of the mind, and the beauty of words.  Many if not most people’s listening habits do not include classical music. Nor do they seem to range over the many wonderful different styles that one can pull up these days and enjoy.

I find myself being drawn deeper and deeper into many styles of music.

My recent rehearsals of violin sonatas of Bach and Mozart with violinist Amy Piersma have been delightful.

These men’s music is in turns profound and playful, moving and insightful. I love it that somehow emotions of such rewarding nature have been embedded in the scribbles of people who lived centuries ago can still be revived and experienced.

I ran across some interesting pop music yesterday.

There was an article about Lily Allen in the New York Times I was reading. I love it that I was able to pull up her album “Sheezus” on Spotify and sample it. Cool. I love sarcasm in pop music.

Yesterday I had some amusing interchanges with people. At the Farmers Market there was a well dressed man soliciting signatures for a petition. The petition was to put our state legislature on a part time basis. I am more selective than I  used to be about signing petitions for public referendums or what not. I used to feel like elevating questions to be voted on was a worthy and important part of democracy.

Now that I think democracy in America is pretty much gone, I don’t really want to sign petitions of things that are too nutty. However this didn’t seem too nutty to me.

On the lapel of the pastel suit coat of the man was a gold plague that read something like Chairman of the Republican State Committee. I teased the man that I would sign it even though he was Republican. In fact, I confided, many of my friends were Republicans.

He replied grimly, “Government has just gotten out of hand.”

I sighed and handed him back his clip board signed.

At the library yesterday I ran across this book, checked it out and brought it home and started reading it. I am interested in the Book of Common Prayer these days. I think the beauty of the generations of language in it are fascinating. I am attracted to things said beautifully and find it satisfying to run across people and resources dedicated to exposing and discussing them historically.

I have a stake in the Episcopal church because it helped me not entirely reject Christianity out of hand. I remember my first contact with it in Oscoda Michigan.

It was a revelation to me that one could have such deep beauty of words and music in church having been raised on the banality of the faith of my childhood.

The banality ends up serving me as well. I am as comfortable with popular music as academic music. I can find music in both areas that I enjoy, listen to and perform. I think that’s good. Many people don’t have that luxury.

Ivan Illich thought that modernity was corrupt. In fact he that all modern institutions in Western Civilizations such as governments, church, schools and the medical profession are corruptions of and grew out of Christian notions.

He builds this idea on a reading of the parable of the Good Samaritan. First of all, the story is about rejecting organizational notions that pervade our lives. Illich maintains that people listening to Jesus tell this story would have been scandalized by the way it turned upside down the way their lives worked.

The idea behind this parable was not that people should take care of others. The young man who asked Jesus the question that prompts the story did not ask how one should behave to one’s neighbor. He asked who one’s neighbor was.

Illich sees that this parable is mostly misread. “Dictionaries recognize the good Samaritan as a friend in need. The United States has so-called Good Samaritan laws, which exempt you from tort actions, if you inadvertently do harm while offering aid,” Illich says, “This familiarity disguises the shocking character” of the tale.

The Samaritan “steps outside the embrace of the community” the “we.” He rejects the institutionalized notion of purification which was basic to his listeners who would not have seen anything untoward in the passing of the wounded person by the Priest and the Levite.

Illich says the moment we organize our self around charity we have lost its essence. Rules constrain and change the situation radically.

The Samaritan chooses something that breaks rules. It is one person suddenly seeing the other and acting in love. “A new dimension of love has opened, but this opening is highly ambiguous because of the way it explodes certain universal assumptions about the conditions under which love are possible.” You know , like church or family or people who look and think like us.

“There is a temptation to try to manage and, eventually to legislate this new love, to create an institution that will guarantee it, insure it, and protect it by criminalizing its opposite. So along with this new ability to freely give on oneself has appeared an entirely new kind of power, the power of those who organize Christianity and use this vocation to claim their superiority as social institutions. This power is claimed first by the Church and later by the many secular institutions stamped from its mold.”

These are Illich’s words. He believed that the “corruption of the best is the worst.”

It’s a hard thought, but one that  makes Christianity more palatable to me. I have never rejected the radical Christ only the muddle made of his prophecy and ideas since he walked the earth (if indeed he was a historical person at all).

In a funny way, Illich reminds me of Phillip Dick. Phillip Dick seems to have gone insane and started believing a notion that permeated some of his novels. Namely, that we are living in a sort of stopped time of illusion that began and was a response to the early Christian church.

Both Philip K. Dick and Ivan Illich saw modernity as a corruption of Christianity. Wow. Talk about strange bedfellows.

I’m in the middle of three days without scheduled events. This is helping immensely.

Yesterday I finally finished reading A Secular Age by Charles Taylor. This book has helped me immensely. I am slowly beginning to get a glimmer of understanding of the current chaotic array of choices for people in my society regarding how they understand and live their own lives. Taylor brilliantly and evenhandedly traces our current confusions about faith and meaning through history and philosophy.

He devotes several pages near the end to Ivan Illich. This led me to purchase and begin reading my next book in this line of thinking: The Rivers North of the Future: The Testament of Ivan Illich Paperback by David Cayley (Author), Charles Taylor (Foreword).

Illich has hovered on the edge of my consciousness as one of those thinkers I would like to understand better. Now is the time. I am resonating even more deeply with Illich’s ideas than Taylors’s.  His Deschooling of Society has sat on my shelves for years. I have dipped into it but had not understood what Illich was all about. Now I’m setting out to learn more about him. The Rivers North of the Future  is a compilation of remarks buy valium hong kong Illich made regarding his ideas about the evils of institutionalism.

Specifically Illich had quoted the idea that “the corruption of the best is the worst” (Corruptio optimi quae est pessima) surprising the interviewer, David Cayley, who had “made a careful review” of Illich’s published work to prepare for the CBC program he was recording (which apparently is still available for purchase and listening). Intrigued Cayley eventually got Illich to agree to a series of conversations which look to have summed up much of Illich’s thought.

At this stage I see Illich as critiquing how institutions such as church (he was a priest), education, medicine and others had been corrupted by their very attempts to organize and perpetuate their original ideals.

From his obituary: “His critique of modernity was founded on a deep understanding of the birth of institutions in the 13th century, a critical period in church history which enlightened all of his work, whether about gender, reading or materiality. He was … significant as an archaeologist of ideas, someone who helped us to see the present in a truer and richer perspective…” Andrew Todd and Franco La Cecla, The Guardian, Sunday 8 December 2002 21

I see Illich as another seminal thinker in my life like Friedman (family systems guy). I look forward to learning more about his ideas and understanding them better.

My boss and I agreed yesterday that we both need some time off. I’m afraid that I am not that easy for Eileen to be around lately. I am testy and yell at the computer often. Yesterday it balked completely when I attempted to open Finale and RiteStuff simultaneously. I finally had to reboot just to get my cursor back.

Then I opened software consecutively and it worked if very very slowly.

I had several absences at choir last night, plus three new singers one of which was completely unexpected. It is difficult to maintain any kind of choral integrity of sound in this kind of situation. I spent a good portion of the rehearsal doing vocal exercises in attempt to nurture some sort of choral sound. I hope some of these people return in the fall. We only have one more Wednesday rehearsal and four more Sundays.

Next week John Boody of Taylor and Boody is scheduled to meet with our organ committee. Jen is out of town so I will be hosting and making sure he gets his lodging and meals. We also have a field trip scheduled now to take the committee down to South Bend and Elkart to hear some organs.

Recently I decided to learn two pieces from the Fitzwilliam Virginal book to perform on the organ. They are both by Giles Farnaby and are quite charming.

I could really use some time off. It’s coming.

The Farmer’s Market had its spring opening day yesterday. I purchased onions, parsnips, beets and asparagus. Roasted parsnips with carrots and garlic. Eileen complained about the smell. She doesn’t like most of these vegetables. I ate the veggie mix for supper last night. Also roasted the beets for future use.

1. Recipes as a Guide, Not a Command – NYTimes.com

Review of a cookbook that sounds interesting.

2. Top Court Champions Freedom to Annoy – NYTimes.com

New York courts confront the actions of the son of a Dead Sea Scroll scholar. Fun times.

3. 26 Percent of World’s Adults Are Anti-Semitic, Survey Finds – NYTimes.com

Over half of the respondents in this study had not heard of the Holocaust.

4. Exercising the Mind to Treat Attention Deficits – NYTimes.com

Mind exercise more promising than drug regime.

I was reading yet another angry diatribe against lazy poor people on Facebooger. “Lazy poor people” seems to be code for people of color.

Blaming the victim is fashionable right now.

God knows many people are being inflamed by radio and tv pundits to hate the “other.”

This leads me to think about how easy it is for anyone to substitute one’s own anecdotal experience for clearer thinking. It occurs to me that if one has experienced or witnessed behavior that confirms or initiates a feeling about people who are different from one’s self, that it takes an act of clarity to see beyond that when confronted with clearer perspective.

However reaching beyond one’s own experience to more coherent thinking and even statistics requires a kind of thinking and clarity that results from practiced attempts at logically digesting and understanding reliable studies and reports.

Glib checks on Google can result in distorted perceptions that reinforce one’s own preconceived notions much less listening to your buddy next to you on a figurative bar stool (I think the social media/internet echo chamber effect resembles people bitching over a beer).

Learning how to be literate in a time of such explosions of access requires constant updating of discernment skills. Ask Howard Rheingold.

There is of course fuzzy thinking on all sides of issues being debated today.  I wish the goal on all sides of questions was clarity. But unfortunately we have been infected with the idea that if we are clever enough (and actually distort presentations enough) we can convince people who we disagree with.

This is the idea of “framing.” I find it cynical and self serving. The result of this kind of distortion is that many do not develop skills of thought or logic. Instead, they jump to what seem like unexamined conclusions that support their preconceived notions.

When I was a kid, I was taught that to search for a bible passage that backed up ones own prejudice was a no-no. Better to start open minded and seek wisdom.  The former practice was called “proof texting.”

Coming to conclusions without enough information (anecdotal procedure) is very similar.

I see where having a bad experience with people whom one doesn’t identify can lead to this kind of thinking. But a trained mind can do better.

I hope I can be more trained and discerning than not in my own thinking.

Not easy and a work in progress in any case.

It’s sometimes hard for me to imagine who reads my blog. I do know that specific family members and friends are looking here from time to time because they mention it to me. Since I basically write here for my own amusement, it does occur to me to wonder just how interesting it could possibly be for whoever reads it.

This wonder is intensified by my continuing experience of disconnectedness with what I see as larger movements of thought and being in the society around me.

In her book, The Stone Gods, Jeanette Winterson postulates a hilarious dystopia where reading is reduced to “single-letter recognition.” Describing vehicles in this future she writes:

“Outside there’s a line of Solos and a line of Limos.

S is for Solo – a single seater transport vehicle. L is for Limo, a multi-seater hydrogen hybrid. S is for short distance. L is for long distance.”

I suspect Winterson feels a similar disconnectedness as I do.

Anyway, yesterday I was reading Gardiner’s book on Bach. He was talking about Bach’s cousin, Christoph. It’s tricky when learning about the extended Bach family because there are many musicians and many duplicate names. Bach’s brother was also named Christoph as well as many other Bachs in the family tree.

But Gardiner thinks that cousin Christoph would be more prominent in musical history and importance if he did not live in his famous cousin’s shadow. To support this he describes at length a couple of Christoph’s compositions and footnotes one of them thus: “SDG 715.”

I eventually figured out Gardiner was pointing the reader to a wonderful recording he had made of some of Christoph’s music.

I accessed this recording on Naxos online and listened to it. The music and the performance are wonderful. Gardiner makes his case for the worth of the music and I once again feel privileged in my ability to connect dots via the interwebs.

This morning I read Charles Taylor’s section on Ivan Illich in his book A Secular Age. Illich is on my radar. I have looked at but not read in its entirety his book Deschooling Society. Taylor quotes at length from a book which brings together Illich’s thought published in 2005, The Rivers North of the Future: The Testament of Ivan Illich.

Taylor’s lengthy discussion of Illich fascinated me so much I wanted to look at the book. Hey, it has a foreword by Taylor. And it looks great and is in Kindle format. Pop it goes on my list of books to consider reading after Taylor.

One thing leads to another.

1. EMA Performs New Music at Rough Trade NYC – NYTimes.com

I thought I better put some links up since I haven’t been doing that. It’s not like I haven’t been scowering the Interwebs for the usual fascinating articles. I’ve just been too lazy to share here. This article is the kind of article I bookmark to give me names of new musicians to check out. I use the tag, “Spotify,” to help me do this.

2. A Lesson in Farming, Classroom to Cafeteria – NYTimes.com

I think it’s cool that this school in Indiana has quit buying ground beef and is growing its own as part of the curriculum. O yeah, this article also mentions Montague Michigan which is the twin city of Whitehall where my lovely wife was born and raised. Right in the New York Times. I put it up on Facebooger.

3. A Devotion to Language Proves Risky – NYTimes.com

Imprisoned for teaching Uighur.

4. European Candidates See Opportunity on Extreme Edge – NYTimes.com

Right wing extremism not limited to US Haters. Scary disturbing shit.

5. Why Americans Don’t Like Jazz — DYSKE.COM

This article elicited several responses when I linked it on Facebooger. I’m always interested in thinking about how people are listening these days. DYSKE SUEMATSU  the author of this blog post from 2003 observes that Americans are losing (have lost?) the ability to listen to abstract music (without words) or appreciate abstract art. We need the visual or the words.

Well that’s enough. See you tomorrow.

I went a bit early to church yesterday to time the prelude.

Good thing I did because I was underestimating the time considerable, thinking it would be about four or five minutes. Instead it came in at seven and half minutes.

The choir was challenging to lead yesterday. I attempted to warm up voices and get them ready to do their anthem. When I began there were no second sopranos and only two first sopranos. This was critical because we had a divisi part in the anthem for the day. I instructed the singers present to simply sing what they had been singing. It would have worked that way. About halfway into the pregame a second soprano showed up. After continuing with my rehearsal I went back and went over the section where she had a part. She came up to me after the pregame very distraught (not unusual). I tried to reassure her and calm her as best as I could.

When it came time to sing the anthem in service, I looked up and didn’t see one of my altos. Unbeknownst to me she had stood up early and was standing behind the organ out of my sight. She did this because she is having difficulty standing up and wanted to be prepared to move into place for the anthem.

I on the other hand thought that I would conducting a different group of singers in service than in rehearsal at that point, missing one of three altos and adding one soprano who did not attend the pregame.

I was surprised when I surveyed the lineup and the missing alto was back.

The anthem (“Loving Shepherd of Thy Sheep” by John Rutter) went pretty well. I sang along with the sole tenor in a couple places where he wasn’t loud enough. There was a little train wreck led by the soprano who has skipped the last two Wednesday rehearsals. I watched the parts diverge and looked for a chance to bring them back together which I did in a few measures.

Ay carumba!

Despite my misgivings, the organ prelude went very well. Even though I missed my Saturday practice on it, the two weeks of work paid off. I meant to put a note in the bulletin explaining that I was going to play a chorale before each setting. This meant that there were actually six parts to the prelude (no wonder it was seven and a half minutes).  I sometimes wonder if Bach’s Orgelbuchlein is a bit distant from the listening experience of many people at church.

I love these little settings myself. But it helps that I have been playing them for years and that I am familiar with most of the hymn tunes they are based on. Yesterday I played the three settings of Christ ist erstanden. This was also the tune for the opening hymn which the cong sang with gusto.

The postlude was another setting of this chorale by Harald Rohlig, an obscure Lutheran composer I admire.

After church we came home and Eileen made bouquets for her Mom and mine. We delivered the flowers to Mary and then drove off to Whitehall for the annual Hatch Mother’s day meal. On the way I managed to get Skype loaded on my phone and we talked to Sarah in England despite the road noise of Eileen’s mini.

At the end of the day I mustered the energy to treadmill. Whew. Another crazy Sunday.

I discovered yesterday that it is possible to download articles from the New Groves Dictionary of Music to my Kindle to read. When I mentioned this to Eileen she said I should be teaching Hope people how to utilize their online resources. Flattering, but I do wonder how many profs utilize the extensive stuff available or are even aware of it. I hope I underestimate the number that do.

I am feeling pretty discouraged this morning. The wedding I played yesterday was a nightmare. I hesitate to bitch too much here. Part of my hesitation is realizing that the event held a lot of meaning for the people involved, especially (hopefully) the two people getting married.

I think of this kind of wedding as the “church-as-a-backdrop” type wedding. I knew we were in trouble when I walked in and a couple young kids were banging away on my congas and piano. During the course of the afternoon I had to intervene a couple times to keep them from hurting the instruments.

My trepidation was confirmed when the visiting Presbyterian minister advised the jean clad videographer to think of the wedding as a  “Princess Bride” wedding. I seriously doubt if the young man knew  what the fuck he was talking about. Unfortunately, I did.

Predictably we began late. The wedding was scheduled at the exact time the huge Tulip Time High School Bands Parade was to begin. This usually stops all local vehicle traffic. The minister whipped by the piano and leaned over and asked what my last name was.

He then went to the front of the church. “How bout that piano player, Steve Jenkins?” he said or something like that prompting unenthusiastic polite applause but effectively quietening them down probably out of curiosity to see what in the world he was going to say.

He then proceed to tell jokes to kill time while we waited to begin.

I am not making this up.

I think maybe a lot of my discouragement comes from not knowing exactly how to proceed musically for this group. I began the prelude with some happy Mozart and Bach. But before long I began improvising. When I improvise, sometimes I watch people. This influences my improvisation when I do this. I respond to the people I see. Yesterday my improvisations kept getting more and more banal. I couldn’t help it.

I think I nailed the pop songs the couple requested. But I’m not totally sure. When trying to render a contemporary popular song with just a piano, I often wonder what part of the original song attracts listeners. I am of course unable to replicate their listening experience of a recording which often includes many musicians and special effects. Even the basic timbres elude me at the keyboard. I hope that the melody means something to them and try to play it the way I hear it from the recording (not from the sheet music although that is a guide).

All this discouragement was made complete when I read a discussion on the Facebook organist page.

Basically dozens of organists (103 comments) complained about how snobby some organists are who refuse to play Gordon Young’s music on the organ. I don’t know why but I blotted out their names above even though this an open public group.

 I am one of those that doesn’t play Gordon Young nor use his choral compostions. I actually held a position in Detroit which was Young’s for years: First Pres downtown.

You can see First Pres to the left of the burning Unitarian church (pic from yesterday).

I believe I have the robe Gordon Young is wearing in the picture above hanging in my basement right now.

I remember meeting Young at a Detroit AGO meeting. He asked me if I had seen his latest organ composition. I remember him saying something, “Boy have I got the piece for you!”

I do however sympathize with the commenters who complain that snobby organs were very uncomplimentary to them about playing Young. I didn’t enter the fray myself. Who cares what these organists play?

All in all, a pretty discourage day musically for me. I tried to get some practice in after the ceremony yesterday but the room quickly refilled with the rite of taking pictures. It was so crowded and weird (I had to advise a young person that he should not “hit the piano keys but play them.”) I just went home.

So this morning I will be playing my prelude and postlude without my last solid Saturday practice.  It will probably go fine.

First I want to tell about my dream last night. I have been having disturbing dreams about family that I won’t share here, but last night I dreamed about an orchestral concert I was attending. In the dream I knew they were playing a Brahms symphony  (although it wasn’t actually Brahms they were playing only a symphony from my own imagination). This symphony I knew (in the dream) ended abruptly and beautifully. The orchestra ended. The conductor turned to the audience. There was dead silence. No one applauded. I tried to clap my hands but no sound came from my clapping. Finally only a faint sound emerged from my clapping but it was overwhelmed by the silence of the rest of the audience. The conductor turned away and began the next selection.

Deep, eh? Not so hard to understand this one. I find that the music I love has little meaning for many other people who like music, mostly pop music I guess. Today I am playing a wedding which has only popular music choices in it. I have managed to come up with piano versions of “Beautiful Day” by U2, “Come Away with Me” by Norah Jones, and “A Thousand Years” by Christina Perri. I usually play a prelude as people are being seated. Often I play lively Mozart and/or Bach. Today I wonder how well this will be received by people whose musical taste is so rooted in bland popular music.

I guess I’ll find out.  These choices cut off two sources of music I usually draw on for public prayer: classical music and religious music. I wonder what makes this wedding today prayer. Maybe the prayer has been drained away and leaves only a civic kind of ritual, which is hollowed out by not connecting to historical communal rituals. Rather it’s the whimsical invention of people trying to make some kind of meaning with the tools of their understanding. Yikes.

Eileen and I got serious shit done yesterday. First we had a nice breakfast at Simpatico despite the fact that the baristas forgot parts of our order and had to be reminded that we had paid for but not received my yogurt parfait and Eileen’s lattee. Sheesh.

Then we went to my Mom’s bank and I opened a second Money Market account in my and eventually my brother’s name. These accounts have a clock on them. If Mom’s death occurs five years after we open an account, this money is protected and is in Mark’s and my name.  If she needs the money in the meantime it’s there for her use.

Mark seemed to think that we had formed a trust for our previous account. I’ll check with the lawyer next week since he is not in the office on Fridays.

In the afternoon, Eileen and I met with our insurance guy. Many years ago I signed up for a $150k life insurance policy on myself. Understandably as I have aged, this policy has increased in price. Originally I thought of it as in lieu of savings that would protect Eileen when I died. Now our situation has changed drastically. The house is paid for. We are rapidly becoming debt free. Eileen has retired early and we need to trim as many costs as possible.

So after a discussion the insurance guy, we trimmed a hundred dollars off our monthly insurance bill. It should now be down to about $250 monthly which covers car,  house and life insurance for both of us.  Of course this doesn’t count our out of pocket health insurance. But what the heck.

Getting shit done.