We made it to the cabin. It’s nice that we have internet (via my Windows phone since it’s the only one that gets a good signal out here). But the water situation is dire. Eileen has told us we shouldn’t count on the pump for laundry and that it could burn it out if the toilet ran too long. Oh well. One can’t have everything. It is relaxing here nonetheless.

In Broward County, Fla., Spate of Judges in D.U.I. Arrests – NYTimes.com

I read sections of this amazing story to my brother yesterday as I treadmilled.

Even for South Florida, where absurd news events are routine… [this is an unusual story]

I can see why conservatives hate the New York Times.

In the Keys, a judge who was replaced on the bench after dozing off told a local news reporter that Ambien made him hallucinate about “ ‘Fantasia’ and the dancing brooms.”

But still, this stuff is funny if sad.

Records posted online by the Judicial Qualifications Commission, the independent agency that investigates misconduct by state judges in Florida’s 67 counties, show that 17 percent of the 62 formal disciplinary cases filed against sitting judges since 2001 have been in Broward.

Those figures do not include two judges who were recently arrested or those who resigned before a case was made public, such as Judge Lawrence L. Korda, who, in 2007, after presiding over parts of the Anna Nicole Smith case, was caught smoking marijuana in a park. (Not to be confused with Larry S. Seidlin, the Broward judge who sobbed on the bench during a nationally televised ruling on where the reality TV star should be buried.)

I am continually amazed at how real the celebrity culture seems to some people.

“Tell me one other courthouse that at any time ever had three judges pending criminal charges, a fourth judge disbarred by the Supreme Court and another judge awaiting removal,” Mr. Finkelstein said. “And that doesn’t include the naked judge!”

But wait, there’s more.

In 2001, a Broward County judge was arrested on charges of public intoxication after being found drunk and naked from the waist down at a resort that was hosting a state judicial conference.

Finally this little tidbit:

Mr. Bogenschutz, who has represented dozens of Florida judges, recently married one of his clients. His wife, Ana Gardiner, is the former Broward judge who was disbarred by the Florida Supreme Court this month for lying about an “emotional relationship” with a prosecutor during a 2007 case. (The defendant was granted a new trial and is now serving a life sentence instead of being on death row, as Ms. Gardiner had ruled.)

Voter-Fraud Claims and Activist’s Suicide Add to Turmoil in Mississippi – NYTimes.com

This is a tragic and bizarre story. Have you been following it?

My favorite sentence:

“Instead of making wild accusations which stir up social media with cries of fraud and corruption, it would be much better for all involved — the voters, the candidates, the 500 poll workers in Hinds County — if we let facts enter into the conversation,”

Mary Rodgers, Author and Composer in a Musical Family, Dies at 83 – NYTimes.com

Mary Rodgers had an amazing life. She also wrote much music and many children’s books.

I love this quote from her: ““I had a pleasant talent but not an incredible talent,”

At a dinner she met … Leonard Bernstein, who hired her to help write and produce the television shows of Bernstein’s New York Philharmonic Young People’s Concerts, a job she held for more than a decade.

Things are what they seem. I have heard this disturbing phrase used to describe reduced understandings of people. In an age of superficiality reducing subjects and people to simplistic concepts might be common but in doing so one loses much of the tasty and interesting parts of being alive.

This reductiveness renders complexity into stereotypes.

I was thinking about the word stereotype. I immediately think of stereophonic. But the original meaning of the Greek word στερεός is “solid” and refers to an accurate rendering of something (a “type” τύπος).

Initial quick reactions to a situation are probably part of the protective survival instincts that helped us survive. I know that we are unable to control our instant typing of people. We perceive and judge race, gender and other things automatically.

Our better judgment then can kick in and help us clarify and analyze. I say it “can,” but reactivity is such a strong part of our culture that even attempting not to react is difficult.

I wonder about being on the receiving end of stereotyping. Could people’s confusing reactions to me be more about my appearance or how they perceive me me.

I always thought that having long hair and a beard as an old man would be quaintly  dated or old fashioned since it’s the style of my long lost youth.

Instead when people are reacting oddly to me, I wonder if they think I’m a drug dealer or worse yet a LIBERAL.

I can’t do much about that but I can work on my own prejudices and try to remember there is more to people than meets the eye.

1. This Will Make You Smarter: 151 Big Thinkers Each Pick a Concept to Enhance Your Cognitive Toolkit

a book review but still pretty interesting.

 2. So Much for Obamacare Not Working – NYTimes.com

I keep wondering if people benefiting from Obamacare notice or vote.

3. The Supreme Court’s Powerful New Consensus – NYTimes.com

Unanimous decisions in over 60 per cent of cases. Defies stereotype (see blog above).

4. Howard H. Baker Jr., ‘Great Conciliator’ of Senate, Dies at 88 – NYTimes.com

Described in this obit as “unfailingly courteous.” I wonder what that’s like in a politician. I guess we’ll never know.

5. The Iraqi Friends We Abandoned – NYTimes.com

Same as it ever was.

Flight home from California was extended by numerous delays. The flight itself was at first delayed about an hour due to storms in Dallas (our layover destination). Then after we had boarded, we had to deplane so that a pump of some sort which malfunctioned during the last check was repaired. Finally we flew out.

We missed our connection in Dallas arriving after 10 PM. We were assured at Ontario as we boarded that we would receive hotel vouchers. We stood in line for a good two hours. Eileen phoned and managed to change our flight on the phone for the next day, but was unable to receive a hotel voucher over the phone so we had to stand in line.

The woman in front of us was trying to reach her dying nephew. It reminded  me how the delays we were experiencing could make drastic differences in peoples lives.

I walked down to the next American Airlines counter where people seemed to be getting waited on as well. I asked a person in line if this was a rebooking counter. She told me that her  husband traveled a lot and that he said you could go up to any counter and get rebooked.

After the line went down a bit I walked down and got in the much shorter line. The woman at the counter quickly confirmed Eileen’s rebooking and gave me a taxi and hotel voucher. Actually she said very little to me and just punched information into her computer and then handed me old fashioned punch card confirmations.

Earlier I had mentioned to a young man who joined the line late that there was phone number one could call to make rebookings. Eileen gave him the number and he called. Apparently that worked. He also followed me down to the other counter and managed to get his rebooking information printed up as well.

When he thanked me I told him that a pilot had stopped when the line was longer and encouraged people to use the rebooking number.

Eileen and I immediately caught a taxi to Fort Worth and spent the night in the Sheraton there. Though we didn’t have a meal voucher (the people from the airport ahead of us did…. different airline? or level of booking?), they gave us toothbrushes and tooth paste which was very nice.

We grabbed a few hours sleep. I got up and took a shower. We didn’t have a change of clothes with us of course so we put on the same old clothes and caught a taxi back to the airport.

The second taxi driver had a caribbean accent and pleasantly chatted us up a bit as we made the long drive. His meter read over 50 dollars. I tipped both him and the taxi driver from the night before. It seemed like the protocol for some reason to me.

Our new booking rerouted us through Minneapolis. Eileen and I were begin to feel fatigued around this point.

I began reading Burgess’s Abba abba on this flight just for a change of pace. I do love Burgess and do not remember ever reading this fictionalization of how the dying poet Keats met the eccentric Italian poet Beli in Rome.

After we landed in Minneapolis, I downloaded two free ebooks from Amazon: Keats Poems published in 1821 and Life of John Keats His Life and Poetry, his Friends, Critics and After-fame by Sidney Colvin. I read some in each of them on the next flight. Keats’ death both as fictionalized by Burgess and described by Colvin reminds me so much of a death by AIDS. Keats was tended by a friend as he died. Burgess grabs on to many interesting facts in his description like how Keats  threw the bad food he was being served by his Italian landlords out the window and subsequently received better food thereafter.

Burgess has Keats fantasizing about sex with Pauline Bonaparte, younger sister of the emperor. He did meet her in Rome according to Colvin. The young man tending to the dying Keats, Severn, wrote letters telling how the legal authorities came to the dying man and told him and Severn that after he died they would have to burn his belongings and all the furniture in the room and pay to replace it. This also was true. Severn complained in his letters that they were running out of money but apparently he was mistaken in this idea and didn’t realize there were funds forthcoming. Burgess puts all this in his lovely novel.

I began writing this as an off line entry in my journal. I now see that there is nothing inappropriate here for the blog and that’s why you are reading this (if any reader gets this far).

Our flight from Minneapolis to Grand Rapids was delayed as well. This time it was because President Obama was flying in to Minneapolis and all planes were temporarily grounded as he landed and embarked. Fascinating to see people’s response. The young couple across from me began laughing hysterically at the announcement.

There was a time when the actual presence of a president would seem to affect people. Now I think that people have much less respect for the office, even hatred for the man that it is odd to watch their reactions.

I chatted with Sarah on Facebook as we waited to finally embark. This time when we traveled there was free WIFI in every airport we spent any time at (Dallas, Ontario, Minneapolis, Grand Rapids). This certainly improves travel.

At Grand Rapids, a miracle happened and our luggage was actually waiting for us.

Eileen drove us home.

Our flight was late out of Ontario California last night. We were delayed due to bad weather in Dallas. Then we had to deplane while they worked on a bad pump. We arrived late in Dallas. Missed our connection of course. Managed to get a hotel and taxi voucher. I have to say that American Airlines was pretty loose here in Dallas. The workers were very unconcerned about the line of people inconvenienced. Nice.

Sitting in a Starbucks after mistakenly trying to have breakfast in a airport bar. We will spend the day in airports. Ah the jet set life.

There seems to be a lot more free WiFi in airports than the last time I traveled.

This morning’s Writer’s Almanac poem seems appropriate. I’ll put the whole thing here since I don’t see a way to link into a permanent URL for the poem for the day (only older poems).

Again I resume the long
lesson: how small a thing
can be pleasing, how little
in this hard world it takes
to satisfy the mind
and bring it to its rest.

Within the ongoing havoc
the woods this morning is
almost unnaturally still.
Through stalled air, unshadowed
light, a few leaves fall
of their own weight.

The sky
is gray. It begins in mist
almost at the ground
and rises forever. The trees
rise in silence almost
natural, but not quite,
almost eternal, but
not quite.

What more did I
think I wanted? Here is
what has always been.
Here is what will always
be. Even in me,
the Maker of all this
returns in rest, even
to the slightest of His works,
a yellow leaf slowly
falling, and is pleased.

“VII” by Wendell Berry from This Day. © Counterpoint Press, 2013

I set my windows phone down in the bathroom at the Ontario airport and left it. Remembered it minutes later. Spent a frantic ten minutes or so running it down after returning and finding it gone.

I always thought that Blance Dubois said that.

Witty internet.

1. The Map Of Native American Tribes You’ve Never Seen Before : Code Switch : NPR

 &

2. Native American Tribes Map

Can’t vouch for these but it is interesting. I included the first one since it has Mexico as well.

3. Music for Concertina and Piano

Looking for the composer Stephen Jackman who wrote the piano duets I played with my Grandson I ran across some compositions by someone of the same name at this site. Still haven’t figured who this dude is. Nom de plume?

4. Study smarter, learn better: 8 tips from memory researchers – Vox

Always looking for learning tips. Eileen liked the one about math.

5. The Case for Reparations – The Atlantic

Haven’t read yet but looks good.

I’ve been thinking about the coverage of the current Iraq crisis. I wonder why we are so interested in this one conflict when there are so many going on around the world.

It’s hard not to conclude it’s about oil resources. There are and have been many  cataclysmic conflicts in our world. (See the helpful Wikipedia article that keeps a list of ongoing conflicts). But so few of them make the news coverage here in the USA.

Weird.

So we went to the movies yesterday. [WARNING: some slight spoilers follow.]

I am not really a movie person these days. I have liked movies passionately in the past, but rarely does a new movie interest me that much.

But of course I am happy to sit with people I love and watch a screen.

This was the same movie theater we were at when I received word of my father’s death.

Movies and visual images seem to be quickly becoming the dominant language of our culture judging from how they pervade everything.

I was surprised the “maleficent” was actually a real word.

I admit to resenting Disney’s approach to protecting its intellectual property especially when it’s based on fairy tales.

In this case, Disney gave itself credit and also the french short story by Charles Perrault. No credit to their mutual source of the fairy tale.

The weirdest thing about the movie for me was the fact that in this version the new heroine, Maleficent, is the one who wakes up Sleeping Beauty with a kiss of true love after the prince’s kiss fails.

I think that is very odd.

I notice the internet is having fun with the lesbian potential of this. That’s funny.

pictures omitted here

At the end of the movie I found myself wondering about how the touching moment that seems to end so many movies. It made me wonder about the word “catharsis.”

Not sure artistic endeavors in movies these days quite rise to Aristotle’s idea.

I think I enjoyed the movie we watched together on TV the other night more.

It was a surprise how witty this movie was. It sure didn’t take itself as seriously as Maleficent.

My favorite character was the Morgan Freeman dude.

Admittedly Batman was a close second.

Anyway, we get on a plane this afternoon and fly back to Michigan.

Anthony Burgess mentions Titus Groan in his 99 Novels: the Best in English since 1939. I am enjoying reading it on vacation.

I’m about half way through Gormenghast the second of the trilogy.

I have started playing Words with Friends  (Fake Scrabble) with my two grand daughters. They are using their Dad’s log on (and in Catherine’s case, his Nook) to play with me.

Difficult to handicap myself with the online version. When we played in person (Eileen, Savannah, Catherine and me), we gave Savannah one extra piece and Catherine three. Not sure how much that helped but it was an attempt to make it a bit more even.

Catherine sees playing online like playing in person. In other words, I told her that I would reply when I can but not necessarily right away. Still she sits patiently with her Dad’s Nook watching for my response.

Nicholas and I played more duets yesterday.

We did one goofy old-fashioned one and then we worked on the Jazz Rondo by Stephen Jackman.  Tried to find him on Twitter/Facebook/Linked In. I found a Stephen Jackman who is a musician and teacher in the U.K. but he tweeted me back that he was not responsible for the duets on IMSLP.

Nicholas and I also worked on improvising. We set  up the progression and then I encourage Nicholas to “play melody.” I think the best way to learn this stuff is to just do it. He of course plunges in and plays away. Lots of fun!

Savannah and Catherine had swimming lessons last night. Eileen went with them again. I stayed home. Nicholas and I watched “Ender’s Game” while I treadmilled. Nicholas didn’t seem to know about the Ender books. On second viewing I found the movie better than the first time. It’s always a shock to see a book visualized. I tend to picture characters differently than they get cast. Ender is a case in point.

I am using my new Greek ebook texts. I put them up on Kindle Cloud Reader which allows me to flip back and forth between them. I also have them on my Kindle so I can refer back and forth that way as well. Fun stuff.

Tomorrow we fly home.

I’m enjoying the visit, but will be glad to get back to Michigan.

1. Letters: ‘No Place to Hide’ – NYTimes.com

Letters to the editor from a member of the Band Kiss and Eric Alterman (a hero of mine).

2. John Waters on Hitchhiking Across America – NYTimes.com

Waters did this in order to write his new book about it. He remarks dryly of the experience: “It was very Studs Terkel.” I love this man.

So yesterday everyone in this house was either making a Tiki mask or designing one (Grandpa Butch).

Nicholas’s Tiki mask. He was the last one finished.

David’s.

Cynthia’s.

Savannah’s.

Mine.

Catherine’s.

Eileen’s. Somehow I forgot to get hers up on Facebooger yesterday, but I rectified this omission this morning.

1. Raymond Carver : The Poetry Foundation

I can see why people read Carver after spending some time in California. One needs a bit of darkness in this sunny sunny place. I do like him.

2. Primary Sources: “Beginners,” Edited : The New Yorker

This is a cool version of a short story by Carver that shows corrections and edits.

3. Rite of the Sitting Dead: Funeral Poses Mimic Life – NYTimes.com

All of my links are darker this morning. Greets from the sunshine state.

This is the area of Southern California where my son and his fam live and where Eileen and I are currently vacationing with them.

Corona is nestled in the mountains. You can see by the green shaded areas that are there several mountain ranges in this area.

A few years ago I was poking around looking for books on southern California online and ran across a book by John Muir.

I must have downloaded it here. It’s also available online to read.

I enjoyed reading a few pages while visiting then. Before coming for this visit I noticed it was still on my Kindle and began reading in it again.

The prose is gentle and talks about the geological history of this area. I found it pretty interesting.

I began wondering about Muir. I found out that he was one of the founders of the Sierra Club.

I like reading local history while visiting a place, so this is very cool. I found another book by him that looks to be a bit more breezy in its prose:

Muir died in 1914 right after WWI had begun. He was born in Scotland and moved to the US in 1849 with his family. He seems like a fascinating character to me and I quite like reading him. Who knew he was so famous?

The mountains even here in Corona are a beautiful back drop wherever one goes. Very cool.

1. With World Cup in Headlines, a Debate Continues on What to Call the Game – NYT

Soccer originally a British term probably derived from the word, association, in “Association Football.” Who knew?

2. Islamic State in Iraq and Syria? Or Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant? – NYT

You say ISIS, I say ISIL, let’s call the whole thing off.

3. Martin J. Sklar and the Search for a Usable Past | New Republic

As the headline reads: “Meet the Sarah Palin enthusiast who may have been the best American historian of his generations.” Wow.

4. Sheet music sharing | MuseScore.com

This is the free music notation software my grandson uses.

Yesterday Nicholas and I read through some simpler duets together.

I talked to him about improving one’s reading skills by sight reading music that is easy but doing so accurately. At least that’s what I had in mind. Not sure how much of it made sense.

I printed up some goofy duets where his part was pretty easy. We read through a bunch of them. We also began working on one called “Jazz Rondo for Piano Duet” by Stephen Jackman.

It’s a clever little thing that is more interesting than the goofy teaching duets. Jackman designates the A, B, and Coda section. The players skip around and play them in a Rondo order. Interestingly this is exactly how Couperin (Louis and François), Rameau, and other French Baroque dudes lay out their rondos.

We learned sections A and B yesterday.

After that we improvised.

I went to the other (much worse) piano and comped the chord progression from the day before. I

kept this going and gave Nicholas some time to do whatever he wanted to. I really think this is the way to learn this sort of playing.

After a bit, I suggested we change keys. So we worked in F for a while, then G.

This was one of the more fun parts of yesterday for me.

Another happy moment was when I managed to get a more up to date version of the Gormenghast trilogy for my Kindle (thank you, Mark).

I think I am beginning to shake my burn out a bit.

It helps to get out of town.

JUPE GETTING BACK IN THE GROOVE

Each year we take our three grandkids to the bookstore and have them pick out some books for us to buy them.

This year the amount we allotted each kids was a bit lower than usual ($30) since we are on a tighter budget. Of course, this didn’t matter to them.

They seem to relish this part of our visit and there certainly is a bit of happy ritual about the whole thing.

I dropped the gang off at Barnes and Noble and then set out to purchase sheet protectors, binders and paper clips for Nicholas’s music sheets.

When I came back, I waited for the crew with an iced coffee and read. Or at least I attempted to read Gormenghast on my Kindle. It froze up and refused to go past a certain point in the book no matter what I did (restart, ask it to go to a location past that point in the book). After a moment of vague paranoia wondering if B & N had hacked my Kindle and wrecked my reading experience, I realized that Gormenghast was one of the bootleg copies I had received. Oops. That’s probably what caused this.

Anyway, I remembered that I own a hard copy of it at home and resisted purchasing a real ebook of it and decided to read something else on vacation.

In the meantime, we bought our books and found a Five Guys restaurant to have lunch together.

Came home. Nicholas and I put his loose music into sheet protectors.  We also did some duet playing again. This time I laid down a basic 16 bar chord progression and encouraged Nicholas to doodle which he did. That was fun. I even moved over to the old piano sitting next to the new one and gave him the whole keyboard to himself for improvising.

The second piano was a whole step flat so I transposed our little chord progression so it would sound the same.

Eileen said that Nicholas was considered as a pianist for a High School ensemble called the Madrigals. Apparently, they don’t usually consider ninth graders for this position, but had hear Nicholas play and auditioned him. Unfortunately, it required more sight reading capability than Nicholas has.

Hearing this, I printed up a bunch of very easy piano duets for us to play through. The way to improve sight reading is to read easy stuff. I mentioned to Nicholas already that the duets I would suggest for us would be much easier than the music he usually plays. I had avoided some of the cutesy very very simply duets. But now I was looking for anything he could easily sight read. I found a bunch and printed them up.

After this I jumped on the treadmill then joined the rest of the crew in the pool.

Life is rough in California when you’re on vacation.

Yesterday I spent some quality time with my grandson Nicholas. We organized his many sheets of music he has printed off the internet. I am planning to purchase some sheet protectors and help him arrange them so he can use them better.

We  also looked at, printed out and played through some duets together.

I am thinking of possibly arranging something for us to play as well, preferably one of the pieces he already knows. His repertoire consists mostly of movie and video game music. These genres are highly developed these days and some of the ones he knows are pretty interesting.

He plays them well.

Eileen was busy with Savannah and Catherine, working on crocheting and stuff with them.

Nicholas and I went to Trader Joe’s to buy some food.

This is looking like a typically excellent visit to the California Jenkins branch.

I am beginning to relax a bit as well.

I began reading Italo Calvino’s novel, The Nonexistent Knight, on the flight out here to California after finishing A Dance with Dragons by George R. R. Martin.

I finished it yesterday. I was attracted to the idea of a main character who doesn’t exist. He is simply an empty suit of armor. But he has a name, Agilulf, and a definite personality.

There are literary echoes through out the book.

Don Quixote comes to mind as related to Agilulf even though Agilulf’s personality is much more A.D.D. than Quixote.

He is compulsive and a perfectionist not shirking supervising the smallest tasks in the course of keeping his honor as a knight.

When Charlemagne assigns another outlandish character named Gurduloo as Agilulf’s squire, the similarity to the Quixote story intensifies.

Gurduloo is a perfect foil for a non-existent knight, since he constantly is losing his own identity and mimicking whatever he encounters be that a duck or a fish, or a pear or a king.

I’m also reminded of Alice in Wonderland as the plot becomes more and more outlandish.

There is a strong dash of Voltaite’s Candide especially in the way the book concludes.

I am working on a little outline of this book because it is so charming and has these many resonances.

After finishing this, I decided maybe I should pick up the second volume of Mervyn Peake’s Trilogy.

I reviewed the plot of Titus Groan, the first volume which I have read in the past and began reading Gormenghast the second it last night.

I am intrigued by this trilogy not only because of the unique imagination of Peake which is somewhere between Dickens and Tolkien.

My reading tells me that in volume three the main character, Titus Groan, emerges from the fabulous fantasy kingdom of Gormenghast into a more contemporary type society. I am interested to see if and how Peake pulls this off.

Eileen and I arrived last night at around 9 PM local time here in Corona, California. The flights were okay. From Dallas to Corona our seats were not next to each other so that was not as fun as it could have been, but still it was okay.

I was poking around yesterday  online and discovered that not only are the texts I have been using to study Greek available in Kindle books, they are in a newer and better edition.

The  original group of texts was developed in the late 70s.

A second edition was issued in 2007.

I immediately decided (with Eileen’s input) to go ahead and purchase Kindle versions of the second edition.

This text is in two books. One book basically has Greek texts to be read and understood. The other has the Grammar and Exercises.

While researching the editions, I discovered there is a third volume developed specifically for people working independently. Bought that one also.

All three texts are cross referenced.

The Greek texts which have been cleverly devised to lead the student quickly to original Greek texts seem to be unaltered in the revised edition.

The secondary material however is vastly improved.

One of the prefaces indicated that the original texts were designed for students who had already taken enough Latin to understand a lot of grammar. That changed.

I am reworking my way from the beginning again. Repetition is key in this kind of learning anyway.

The Greek texts have been broken up into smaller sections. Also the text volume now contains vocab. Before one had to refer back and forth between the two main books.

I figured this was to get readers in the habit of simply confronting a text and then figuring it out.

But I like the changes a lot so far.

Since I purchased my Greek texts for Kindle, I only traveled out here with one book. One book! I cannot remember leaving home to travel with only one book before.

The book is The Stone Gods by Jeanette Winterson which I have to say is turning into an amazing read. I’ll probably talk more about in this space after I finish it.

In the meantime, on the flight over here, I finished the last available Game of Thrones novel: A Dance with Dragons by George R. R. Martin. I have basically lost patience with Martin’s ability to plot coherently, but I have invest a small amount of time and effort in reading and will probably purchase the next one when it comes out and read it.

My grandson, Nicholas, and Anthony Wesley, my nephew Ben’s significant other, have both read the series. I like that. It’s probably enough to motivate me to read Martin just to see some of what people I care about are reading.

So today is vacation day one. I am looking forward to doing some serious nothing for a week or so.

1. Big Boo Is The Butch Lea DeLaria Has Been Waiting To Play Her Whole Life

Eileen and I watched “Orange is the new Black” for a while. I wasn’t too impressed. I don’t remember this actress but she seems like an interesting person.

2. Hillary Rodham Clinton: By the Book – NYTimes.com

I love reading lists of what other people are reading. Hey! Clinton reads Dona Leon! Cool.

3. Robert Kagan Strikes a Nerve With Article on Obama Policy – NYTimes.com

I think of these power people are pretty warped in how they think other people should be dying for their ideas. I just don’t get it.

4. Casey Kasem, Wholesome Voice of Pop Radio, Dies at 82 – NYTimes.com

Kasem died of Lewey Body Dementia which is what killed my Dad. The end of Kasem’s life looks to have been messy with family members squabbling over him, his care and probably his fortune.

5.Ultra Violet, Warhol Superstar, Dies at 78 – NYTimes.com

Worth reading this obit just to discover that Ultra Violet became a Mormon. Can’t make this shit up.

6. Seeking Justice for George Stinney – NYTimes.com

Youngest person ever executed. Probably innocent.

7. Politics Grows More Partisan – NYTimes.com

Just chatting with my son about his experience of exploding Medical subscriptions here in Riverside County. He said they went from 11% of the population they service to 60%. His supervisor is predicting  close to 100 %.

This is I guess the result of changes in federal and local laws. Laws that some on the right are rabidly opposed to. Hard to say what will come of all these changes and hate in response.

Weird. I have just been ranting and wandering in my blogs lately. But I am getting more hits than I expect. It’s hard to tell what it means, if anything.

Since I am flying away to California soon, I began to feel flooded with relief yesterday morning even as I prepared to go play the service at church.  I have been carefully preparing the little prelude by Peter Hurford on the hymntune Nicea. I went a bit early so i could go over it once again. That and the psalm and hymnody and service music.

I discovered that the name of the prelude didn’t make it into the bulletin. Instead last year’s Trinity prelude was retained which was a trio movement by Distler. O well. The last thing I said to my boss was a reminder that the prelude was incorrect for this Sunday.

Also there were other errors in the bulletin. The number for the Lamb of God was incorrect. I didn’t figure this out right away. During the peace I pegged several parishioners whom I knew sang and pointed out the correct number to them.

After service, John Tiemstra, the guy I have hired to sub for me next week, came up and introduced himself to me (See his article linked below). I found this pleasantly surprising. He said that his daughter takes him out for a meal and movie on Father’s Day. He suggested to her that they attend Grace so he could scope it out a bit. Very cool.

He pointed out that we prayed for the wrong bishop (Robert instead of Whayne). Oops. Another mistake in the bulletin.

It was satisfying that Tiemstra attended that particular service. It went very well. It was the first service where we sang the psalm as a congregation without choral leadership on an honest to God Anglican chant.

Leading Anglican chant on the organ is a bit tricky. One has to adapt the chant to every verse of the psalm. I mean to add rehearsing the upcoming psalm to my daily rehearsal but haven’t quite managed to do this yet. Yesterday I had time to mark it up and rehearse it before service. That helped.

The prelude (the unknown prelude by the unknown composer) went well. The congregation sang well. It was especially fun for me that we sang “I Bind Myself Unto this Day” for the offertory.

We broke out a couple verses for men only and women only. I varied the organ accompaniment quite a bit. It’s a long but beautiful hymn and the congregation seem to sing it with vigor and enjoyment. Fun for me. Glad Timstra got to be there for that.

Today I have a long list of things I have to do before we fly away to California tomorrow. Eileen pointed out how much preparation it takes for me to take time off. More work. She said it was like that in teaching as well. Makes sense.

1. Calvin Economics: Envy and Greed by John Tiemstra

The guy who is subbing for me next week teaches economics at Calvin. Here’s a thoughtful blog post he did recently. Cool.

2. Jimmy Scott, Singer Whose Star Rose Late, Dies at 88 – NYTimes.com

This guy has to remind one of a jazz castrati type. I plan to Spotify this music so I can hear what he sounded like.

3. Bergdahl Critics Didn’t Howl When Bush Freed Prisoners – NYTimes.com

Obvious inconsistency. Unfortunately this kind of incoherence is not limited to one political point of view.

4. Off with their heads! Eric Cantor, the Tea Party guillotine, and the certainty of conservative sell-out

Thomas Frank gives a coherent analysis.

5. An Ornette Coleman Tribute at Celebrate Brooklyn! – NYTimes.com

This sounds like an incredible concert to me. John Zorn and others.

6. Paris Review – Bloomsday Explained, Jonathan Goldman

Bloomsday is coming. I think this guy sounds a bit grumpy about Joyce. Time for me to read a bit  more in Ulysses.

7. Elodie Lauten, Who Wove Opera From Allen Ginsberg’s Poetry, Dies at 63 – NYTime

I YouTubed some of this composer’s work. She died discouragingly young (one year younger than me).

8. Triplets of Belleville

Eileen and I watched this movie last night on Netflix. I forgot how much I admire it.

Eileen was unsurprised when I arrived home after my second wedding and said, fuck it,  it’s our anniversary, let’s go out! We had left up in the air since I have been so frazzled about stuff lately and wasn’t sure how yesterday was going to go.

It all went fine.

The piano tuner got there in time to tidy up the piano for the visiting pianist. Although I still heard a couple of out of tune moments. At least I think I did.

The visiting pianist at the first wedding was very friendly and played well. He began with a slow movement by Beethoven. It was instructive to me to see how people basically ignored the beautiful sounds he was making. He also played a lovely Chopin piece. I play both of these pieces and found it very interesting to hear another person’s interpretation. He interspersed classical pieces with standards like “Fly me to the moon.” He seemed to be playing straight from charts (as we say…. that is, he wasn’t improvising but instead played what was written even on the standard tunes). I could be wrong about that since I didn’t scrutinize him constantly but did some other stuff like put the hymns up on the hymn board.

At the end of the prelude, he asked me if I could “doodle” until the bridal party was ready.

Doodle I did.

The place was pretty full. I had pointed out earlier to my boss that the hymn number for “Now Thank We All Our God” was the number for a slightly less familiar version of the hymn. She asked me if it was the Lutheran one. I replied that all versions of this tune are Lutheran (maybe not exactly true but the hymn is of Lutheran origin). She said let’s go with what’s in the bulletin. I said, you da boss.

The congregation sang the two hymns well. That’s always satisfying to me.

After the exit music, I noticed the pianist standing near the piano. According to my instructions he was going to do post exit music. He looked at me. I looked at him. I said do you want to play? He indicated that I should play. I said, let me know if you want to play and began doodling.

Unfortunately I was not prepared (warned?) for this moment and  had to scramble a bit. I improvised until I could pull out some Buxtehude.

The bride and the groom meanwhile had returned to dismiss the congregation. This usually takes quite a bit of time. I judged the energy would benefit if I kept wailing away at the organ and did so.

As I was playing, someone brought an envelope with my fee in it.

Excellent.

The afternoon wedding was a bit different. I didn’t know anyone there.

In the morning I had recognized not only the couple but several of their guests.

I tilted the console at Dimnent so I could see the wedding party and bided my time while the string quartet played the usual wedding stuff. They were pretty good, but I thought I heard some odd notes from time to time. Maybe it was just the arrangements they were using.

I had sweated a bit over the basic “Trumpet Voluntary” one plays at weddings these days. This is one that is variously attributed to Clarke or Purcell. I changed versions. Actually I returned to the old pompous version which is not quite in the spirit of the way I hear the music, but fut the whuck.

I played this at both weddings and it went fine. At the second wedding I had been asked to play Widor’s Toccata as the room emptied. I did so and it went well. But when I finished I looked out and the room was still half full of guests. Very quiet guests.

Yikes. I began improvising. My organ music was several feet away so I had to play music in my wedding folder or improvise. I filled up the time with Bach harpsichord pieces on the organ (I usually play them on the piano at weddings and have them in the folder). I interspersed improvisations. Having a few more sounds to choose from on the larger organ at Dimnent made this fun.

Again I got paid.

Excellent.

My daughter Sarah (Hello again baby!) needed the exact date she originally moved to the UK in order to apply for citizenship there. I had been meaning to check my journals which I was keeping at the time (2001) to see if I could give it to her.

Unfortunately, since I moved my book collection my organization of materials has basically gone to hell. I had found a few of my journals but nothing as far back as that.

Yesterday was “get shit done day” for me.

I promised myself to go through every piece of mail laying around and deal with it. Eileen volunteered to redo our home files as I did this. As I sat down to begin I remembered Sarah’s request and went off in search of journals. After some considerable moving around of books and such I actually found them!

I realize that blogging has replaced my previous impulse to journal. But I have journals stretching back to when I was twenty or so. Before that I have many poems and written pieces that I have preserved. These go back to high school. Sheesh.

What I would actually write down varied considerably. But of course I felt freer to write in a private journal than I do in a public blog. This is mostly out of consideration for my fam and friends, a bit out of concern for myself regarding inappropriately public admissions like where I hid the bodies. Heh.

Anyway, it was a personal triumph to find the journal entry below.

Some time ago Eileen was upset because she could not find a gift certificate given to her for Readers World around the time of her retirement. I was pretty sure I had “recycled” it in my enthusiasm to begin to organize our lives better.

But yesterday it turned up adding to my feelings of satisfaction. Yay!

I did manage to go through every piece of mail (which was quite a lot) and deal with it. This took some time. I found several pieces I needed to scan in and email to family members. This was necessary because it was their mail or information that had arrived at my address.

Eileen balanced check books (ours and Mom’s). So you can see we were getting shit done.

On Thursday, I met with my boss Jen and the outgoing Christian ed director. In the course of the conversation I figured out that the visiting pianist for this morning’s wedding might actually be a professional type player. Omigod.

The piano is not in tune. I had figured it would probably be fine for the usual friend of the bride who is going to play. But once I suspected otherwise I started attempting to get the piano tuned.

As I write this on the morning of the wedding the tuner (who borrowed my key last night) is probably tuning or has tuned the piano by now.

Getting shit done.

I am trying desperately to turn my eyes towards some R and R on the upcoming vacation. Relaxing to get out of town for sure.

Like last weekend I have a busy weekend of playing ahead of me. I have two weddings today and tomorrow of course is church. The weddings are weird because I am only doing the traditional organ pieces. What I call walking in and out music. For this morning there are  also a couple of hymns I am to lead.

Despite this I have been madly trying to make sure I can play the scheduled stuff well.

I think my concern is more evidence of burnout because, hey, they’re just weddings!

O and today is Eileen’s and my 39th wedding anniversary. My work has pretty much dampened any celebration for today. I think we will probably go out after church tomorrow.

Studying the history of how prayers and hymns are often patchworks of previous material brings to mind the silly notion of intellectual property as conceived by companies like Walt Disney and the music industry tyrants.

Cranmer the man who compiled and even wrote a lot of the 1549 and 1552 Book of Common Prayer was a great thief by contemporary standards.

But I do admire his ability to take the best of previously composed prayers and improve them into classics of beautiful language.

This beauty surprised me when I first encountered it in the seventies and it still draws me in despite my firm endorsement of theology of understanding what one is praying which led to changing the language.

I think I have mentioned here recently realizing that people who crusade to retain the language of the King James Bible and the old Prayer Book make a silly mistake in hearing “thees and thous” as more formal when the intent of these words was intimacy, “thee” and “thou” being the familiar form of “you.”

Anyway, since I’m ranting about Prayer Book stuff I also find it interesting that the Book of Common Prayer is actually no longer a book or common. Authorized rites are so copious that they are no longer gathered under one physical cover. Plus there is not really a “common” prayer of one rite prayed by all but rather a bunch of them provided for use.

Another fun fact along these lines is that before 1963 (Vatican II) the Anglican rite was unique in that it combined a single universal authorized rite with the notion of translating the rite into many languages. This was influenced by the many languages spoken by people in the British empire.

Finally, if you’re still with me (heh),  I was surprised to read this epigraph to V.S. Naipaul’s Among the Believers: An Islamic Journey.

“Now, in earlier times, the world’s history has consisted, so to speak, of a series of isolated episodes, the origins and the results of each being as widely separated as their localities.  From this point onwards history becomes an organic whole:  the affairs of Italy and Africa are connected with those of Asia and of Greece, and all events bear a relationship and contribute to a single end.”

Polybius (died 118 B.C.), on the rise of Rome, translated by Ian Scott-Kilvert

So the idea that entire world is connected is not exactly a new one.

(Since this makes you happy: Hi, Sarah!)

1. Anger Over Plan for Electronic Music in Staging Wagner’s ‘Ring’ Cycle – NYTimes.co

Weird all the way round. I think the musicians threatening is the weirdest part, personally. But this may come from my tendency to think of art as art and not commodity or even primarily a profit thing.

2. In Virginia, Eric Cantor Trounced by David Brat – NYTimes.com

The “trouncing” of Cantor is fascinating. It’s hard not to think that one cannot be that bright to go into public office these days. Our public discourse has devolved into junior high school style cat calls and put downs. Discouraging to watch. I will still vote but it is always an act of futile idealism.

3. Sexism Persists, Even Among the Enlightened – NYTimes.com

Study cited that shows that hurricanes with feminine names kill more than those with masculine names. You know. Because people don’t take women seriously. Ay yi  yi.

4. Prisoners at Guantánamo: A Tally of 149 Cases – NYTimes.com

A letter to the editor with a pretty convincing legal tally of the cases that shows the continuing tragedy of America violating its own principles in the name of fear.

I continue to faithfully read nonfiction daily. I have always had wide ranging interests (from the sublime to the mundane) and my reading reflects this.

For example right now I am in the following places in the following books:

A Dance with Dragons by George R.R. Martin (Location 15871 of 19495)

The Rivers North of the Future: The Testament of ivan Illich as told to David Cayley (page 78 of 253)

The Complete Stories of Flannery O’Connor (Location 2118 of 9057)

How to Slowly Kill Yourself and Others in America by Kiese Layman (Location 1744 of 2084)

The Secret Piano: From Mao’s Labor Camps to Bach’s Golberg Variations by Zhu Xiao-Mei (page 230 of 311)

Bach: Music in the Castle of Heaven by John Eliot Gardiner(page 118 of 558)

Thomas Cranmer by Diarmaid MacCulloch (page 416 of 632)

Domenico Scarlatti by Ralph Kirkpatrick (page 126 of 323)

One Hand Clapping by Anthony Burgess (page 182 of 216)

The Stone Gods by Jeanette Winterson (p. 98 of 207)

And these are just books I sort of think of myself as currently reading. I have left off in dozens of books that I sometimes put back on the active list, perusing them to convince myself I still kind of remember what went on before.

This eclectic passion and silliness for wide range reading  may have something to do with knowing a young troubled genius type guy in my youth named Les Oliver. I’m quite sure Les is probably dead by now since he had a taste for the dissolute lifestyle of sex and drugs quite young. But he was also brilliant. At least I thought he was.

In our teens we ended up living together in the basement of a friend’s family.

I was there because my family had decided to move away from Flint Michigan where we were living in my senior high school year. They generously allowed me to remain in the city. This ended up being how I left home. I sometimes say that home left me.

Les and I had many “deep” conversations during this period. It was in this same basement that I (with many many helpers) built my Zuckerman harpsichord.

Les’s father had been a high power attorney who according to Les’s reluctant admissions or story had argued cases before the Supreme Court and at the same time was a  heroin addict. Les had found his father dead from suicide before he was sixteen. I have a picture in my brain of a man hanging from a rope in a suit. Nice stuff.

So Les was brainy but messed up. He influenced my reading greatly being extremely well read himself.

I bring him up because he loved to pick up random books at used book stalls and read them.

He loved finding a good obscure author. He loved sci fi and poetry and novels. He was a huge influence on me at the time even though he was a few years younger than me.

So somehow over the years I have picked up the habit of basically attempting to read anything that strikes my fancy.

I have finished several books in the last week.

Recently I have finished two mysteries. Last night was Patricia Highsmith’s clever A Suspension of Mercy. Highsmith was an excellent writer of unpredictable and thoughtful books that are not quite served by the description of mysteries.

For example, she is known as the author of the book, Strangers on a Train which if you know the movie is a perverse little story.

Speaking of perversity the Ripley movies are based on a series of her novels as well.

In a Suspension of Mercy Highsmith herself devoid of mercy for her readers toys with us as she describes how an aspiring TV script/book writer comes under false suspicion of murdering his wife who has just gone off for time away from him.

The main character himself is a repellingly attractive portrait in nuttiness. He fantasizes (sometimes with his co-author) about the murder of his wife after she left. He play acts in order to get inside the head of a murderer. This is useful information for a writer but his play is often disconcerting both to the reader and to himself.

For example, soon after the wife departs, he actually rises early and buries a bulky carpet capable of concealing a dead body. Of course the neighbor notices him. This all becomes a sick comedy of errors as the wife stays hidden and people begin to miss her.

I’ll stop there so I don’t give more away. Highsmith kept me guessing right up until the last sentence of the book on how it would all unravel.

According to Google Analytics yesterday my hits were back up to 30 (up from 5 on Sunday).  I guess I won’t throw in the towel on blogging for a while.

Yesterday I futilely wasted an hour or so trying to systematically dislodge the flat tire rusted to the wheel of our Subaru. Finally I had to follow Eileen’s recommendation that we just call someone to come and do it. Not sure how much this will end up costing, but that’s what we did.

A cheerful man arrived and used a large piece of timber to bang the rusted tire off. He then put our spare on for us and took away the tire to be repaired. The spare is good enough to just replace the flat tire, so after I get it back repaired I will use it for a spare.

I was frustrated because this took up so much of my day. Despite this I managed to choose hymns for the next six weeks or so, submit them to the boss and get some organ practicing in.

Eileen worked on fixing our dryer. It has been making an awful sound. We contacted the place we bought it and they sent out someone who told use it had been incorrectly installed. A hose had been left out. This was causing the noise but no damage.

Eileen then called our contractor who had installed the washer/dryer. He assured us last week that one of his workers would be by to fix it.

This was sometime last week. We gave up yesterday and Eileen purchased a hose to fix it. I am embarrassed because we had a hose, but I put it in one of the boxes of things I was taking to give to the thrift shop since I didn’t think we needed it.

The replacement hose cost 50 bucks.

One of the good parts of my day yesterday was being allowed to play some piano duets with my friend Rhonda.

We played some original Mozart four hand pieces including a very clever fugue, a movement from Beethoven’s Eroica transcribed for piano duet,  and some original work by Satie. I had fun. Thank you, Rhonda for inviting me and thank  you, Eileen, for occupying Rhonda’s kids while we played!

I am afraid I continue to be sort of burned out.

We came home from Rhonda’s house and I cut up and grilled a bunch of veggies, made rice and cooked up two hamburger patties Eileen made.

I seem to be on edge and unable to relax. Hopefully it will come soon.

1. The New Right – NYTimes.com

David Brooks is making a bid I think for being on the intelligent center right. This article made me think a bit. Usually the rhetoric of the American right that I am exposed to is full of hate and distortions but little reasoning.

2. A Quiet Cheer for Solitude – NYTimes.com

Frank Bruni fanatasizes on what it would be like if our political leaders dipped more inside themselves.

Nice quote: “This isn’t necessarily a matter of being unplugged, of ditching the hyper-connectedness of our digital lives. It’s a matter of ditching and silencing the crowd.”

3. Kabul’s City on the Hill – NYTimes.com

I’m a sucker for a well written feature article about people in other places and their struggles. Reading this one, I was intrigued that one of the people in the article mentioned making a traditional Afghan recipe with radishes instead of lambs. Hmmmm. I found a recipe online that I might consider doing this with: Afghani Kabuli Pulao Recipe

4. Moving On by Moving Around – NYTimes.co

This article talks about the benefit of changing the arrangement of furniture to help people move on in their lives, especially grieving elderly spouses. Interesting.

Today I must fix the flat tire I noticed on my Subaru on Sunday. I gave myself yesterday off. Of course it looks like rain today. Before Eileen retired, I would be tempted to simply hire this task out. But now money is tighter. I should at least get the dang tire off today, rain or no rain.

The church finally issued a check for wedding I played over four weeks ago. Despite repeated requests for this check, it has taken this long. At the same time they reimbursed me for organ music purchases and wining and dining the organ builders.

This sort of delay hurts more when our income has been so diminished. People don’t seem to see how humiliating it is to continually ask for one’s pay.

My cross to bear, I guess.

So I took yesterday off. But I have other tasks today besides getting the tire off the Subaru. I need to get planning on picking hymns. My last Sunday with the hymns already chosen was Pentecost (this past Sunday).

I also need to get my Mom more books from the library.

I weirdly spent time on the piano yesterday with Grieg and Rimsky Korsakov. Whenever I play Grieg (which is not often) I think of the Mom of an old high school friend of mine  who loved Grieg. I found an interesting suite by him called “From Holberg’s Time.”

Holberg was according to the inscription in the music “the Moliere of the North, the father of modern Danish and Norwegian literature.” His dates are 1684-1754 roughly the same time as what Gardiner calls the class of ’85 (Bach, Scarlatti, Handel, Mattheson, Rameau,
Telemann).

Less weirdly, I played through some Handel suites and Platti sonatas.

I did go practice organ as I am playing a Peter Hurford piece based on Nicea (“Holy, Holy, Holy”) Sunday. I also rehearsed upcoming wedding organ music. I am changing my Trumpet Voluntary arrangement back to the old Concordia one which is more pompous and less stylistic. This is more what they are looking for this Saturday at Dimnent.

I have been banging away on Bolcom’s “What a Friend.” This is a tough little nut to crack which I put down for a while and have now returned to.

I see my readership is dwindling (“You’re the only one today”). It was down to 15 yesterday.  if it gets down to zero for any length of time, say a few days, I might just discontinue the public journal and only journal privately.

The benefit of this to myself is that I would not have to restrain myself to appropriateness the way I attempt to do so here now.

At any rate, I’m still suffering burn out although now I suppose one could it’s sort of post season burn out.

1. An American Life, Lived in Shadows – NYTimes.com

I read a lot of hate messages on Facebooger from people I know and people in my extended family. They seem to be slowly intensifying. It’s good for me to read stuff I don’t agree with, but it’s also uncomfortable. Especially when I compare it to this fine human interest story about people living in shadows.

2. Peaceful Nonreconciliation Now – NYTimes.com

The proposals for Israel and Palestine in this article seem reasonable even after reading the strident if coherent criticisms in the comment section.

3. Jimmy Giuffre’s Music Finds New Appreciation – NYTimes.com

Spotified this dude and was surprised at the sounds he was making in the sixties. If he hadn’t disdained the classical music scene at the time I think his music would have fit right in with the dissonant contemporaries.

4. Musical Dissonance, From Schumann to Sondheim – NYTimes.com

Haven’t read this one yet, but it looks like it might have some handy language to explain the concepts in it.