I skipped blogging yesterday, something I have rarely done since I began writing daily online, an activity which predates the term, “blogging.”

Eileen and I had company. My nephew, Benjamin Jenkins, gets up almost as early as I do. He, his partner, Anthony Wesley (Tony) and his sister, Emily were visiting for Thanksgiving. I had not anticipated how pleasant it would be to have these people around. I forget what it’s like to be in a room with people with whom I can easily talk and are interested in my ideas or at least listen patiently to them.

I don’t really have a lot to say today either. I was disappointed that after three days off in a row I once again found myself exhausted at the end of the day yesterday. Maybe this had something to do with the stress of doing family things with Eileen’s fam and the physical exertion of trying to keep up with Emily, Ben, Tony and Eileen as we did our running around yesterday. After breakfast, we went to see my Mom. Then to the Farmer’s Market. Then to downtown Holland which seems to hold some nostalgic interest for this group.

I had neglected to take my Kindle with me. But I was tickled that I was able to download a book I have been reading, Ulysses by James Joyce and tag along with the group and sit and read while they shopped.

After people left, I met with my violinist, Amy Hertel, and we rehearsed for this morning’s service. She is playing a Mozart violin sonata movement. I think think it is a particularly excellent one. But after learning about the musical tastes of Ben’s significant other, Tony, (Black Metal) and being reminded of the tastes of my friend Jonathan Fegel after running into him on the streets of Holland yesterday, I have to wonder how many people appreciate this music at all.

This morning is the first Sunday of Advent, the beginning of the church year. But at my church there is an overshadowing “tradition” of celebrating St. Andrew on this day since his feast is Nov 30. Amy, a long time previous member of this community, was reminiscing about this yesterday. It’s her “favorite Sunday” at Grace even though she has joined a different Christian community (Lutheran Missouri Synod). I didn’t have the heart to talk to her about Advent starting on the same weekend.

The previous rector is celebrating his 50th anniversary to the ordination of the priesthood today in Allegan. Both Jen (my boss and priest) and I thought it was weird to overshadow the first Sunday of Advent with this kind of a celebration. But this dude also presided over some pretty dubious practices at Grace so it stands to reason I guess.

Well as you can see, my brain is pretty empty this morning.

In Northern Ireland, a Wave of Immigrants Is Met With Fists – NYTimes.com

There are people who hate in every country.

Hong Kong Clashes Flare as Protesters Return to Camp – NYTimes.com

This struggle continues even though it is slipping from the forefront of discussion like most other complicated protracted issues.

In a Twitter Post, Malaysia Airlines Sends the Wrong Message – NYTimes.com

Tragi-comic tweets from a desperate corportation.

U.N. Panel Cites Concerns With U.S. Security Practices – NYTimes.com

Our shameful practices held up for deserved if ignored scrutiny.

A Jordanian Spins Comic Book Tales to Counter Terrorist Ideologies – NYTimes.co

One of the things I like about this story is that the dude received an epiphany while talking to a child.

Japanese Newspaper Prints Apology for Using the Term ‘Sex Slaves’ – NYTimes.c

The world continues to plunge into the madness of obfuscation and willful wrongheadedness.

Doing Some Heavy Lifting – NYTimes.com

And if you thought that the battle for women’s rights was won, read this.

The Pain of the Watermelon Joke – NYTimes.com

President Obama and his kids just bought Brown Girl Dreaming, a book this woman wrote. Daniel Handler (the author of Limony Snickett) comes off like a stupid white person in this story.

I’m listening to Mozart’s G minor string quintet (K. 516).  Reading Dylan Thomas’s poem, “Ceremony After a Fire Raid,” and  in William Tindall’s commentary on it sent my mind into many various nooks and crannies including a reference to this string quintet.

Listening to this piece of music makes me wonder what people get out this stuff these days. I’m planning to accompany a Mozart violin sonata movement on Sunday for the prelude for Eucharist. Learning it and performing it with my friend Amy Hertel has been an amazing experience for me. I do wonder how much meaning it might have for the average listener (whatever that is).

Reading Tindall’s commentary is an odd experience. The commentary itself sometimes seems as profound and thought provoking as the poems he is writing about. The Mozart reference presumably illustrates the way this particular poem moves from darkness to light. The last section of the music moves into major from minor.

For me I like the way Mozart sometimes pits two sets of two instruments against each other occasionally in this piece (2 violins against 2 violas).

“Ceremony After a Fire Raid” hit me pretty hard this morning. First of all I have been thinking about the death of Michael Brown because of the all the hoopla about the recent grand jury finding of insufficient evidence to try his killer.

I don’t mean to infantilize Brown. The poem is about the death of a baby. But it does get at the grief of the death of an offspring which can be applied to Brown’s death.

But beyond the headlines, I was also struck by the ritualistic nature of the poem. It outlines a church service in its movement.

“The first part …. is a requiem chant of despair…. The second part combines collect and sermon. The third part combines gloria, communion and organ voluntary.” William Tindall on Dylan Thomas’s poem, Ceremony after a Fire Raid

Ritual is finally for me the only way I can pray at all.

“… we who believe without belief…” William Tindall on Dylan Thomas’s poem, Ceremony after a Fire Raid

Each year around Christmas I pick up Robert Southwell’s poem, “The Burning Babe” and read it.

Tindall mentions both this poem and another favorite of mine by T. S. Eliot, Ash Wednesday.

 “Only a ritualist would burn a baby or, fascinated by such sacrifice, continue to celebrate it” William Tindall on Dylan Thomas’s poem, Ceremony after a Fire Raid

It was also startling to me to pick up my daily Dylan Thomas poem and find references to church and organ music.

I was struck at the end of the poem where Thomas writes “The masses of the infant-bearing sea Erupt, fountain, and enter to utter for ever Glory glory glory.”

Tindall writes of the recapturing of the lost sense of “glory” sitting next to Thomas reading this poem in a studio broad cast. Wow.

I also heard the echo of the three fold Sanctus of Isaiah and the Holy, Holy in the Mass in these lines.

Finally, Tindall once again mentions James Joyce and relationships between Dylan Thomas and Joyce. In this case, apparently Leopold or Molly Bloom also admired a work by Mozart that reflects the same movement from darkness to light, the violin sonata K. 11.

Eat Turkey, Become American – NYTimes.com

In the 50s a Minnesota town rallies around a Korean immigrant to get him a renewed visa. Told from the point of view of his kid.

Shakespeare Folio Discovered in France – NYTimes.com

I didn’t realize these folios often have information that tells us how the plays were done. Some handwritten notes such as changing gender of characters and other alterations by the prints in between printings. Very cool.

A Call to Save a 12th-Century Minaret, Heard Far and Wide – NYTimes.com

Interesting story. Good headline writing.

I’ve been thinking about the poem, “In my craft or sullen art” by Dylan Thomas. (3:45 on the video above). I have been reading this poem since my teens. I think it has helped shaped my outlook on aesthetics and my own relationship to art and composition.

When the speaker in this poem says that he labors “Not for ambition or bread Or the strut and trade of charms On the ivory stages,” it helps me understand my inexplicable lack of ambition coupled with a passion for my art.

And when Thomas concludes the poem this way: that he writes “for the lovers, their arms Round the griefs of the ages, Who pay no praise or wages Nor heed my craft or art,” I am reminded of my weird ability to make beautiful music in the presence of people who don’t seem to be paying attention and manage not only not to despise them, but to enjoy their presence while I do what I do.

Yesterday was another full day. In addition to my usual schedule, I took Eileen out to purchase some drinking glasses for today’s meal and pick up her Mini. After choir rehearsal, I weakened and went and purchased gin. There has been no gin in the house for several days. I’m hoping I can continue to cut back on my drinking and snacking as I have been, but last night seemed to be a good night for a martini.

While I was at the liquor store, one of the clerks asked me what I was thankful for since tomorrow was Thanksgiving. I smiled and said, “I’m thankful to be alive.” It’s true.

Ruth Ozeki writes in her novel, For the Time Being, that the “Zen nun Jiko Yasutani told me in a dream that you can’t understand what it means to be alive on this earth until you understand … what a moment is.”

The nun in the dream explains, “A moment is a very small particle of time. It is so small that one day is made of 6,400,099,980 moments… a snap [of  your fingers] equals sixty-five moments.. if you start snapping your fingers now and continue snapping 98,463,077 times without stopping, the sun will rise and the sun will set, and the sky will grow dark and the night will deepen, and everyone will sleep while you are still snapping, until finally, sometime after daybreak, when you finish up you  98,463,077th snap, you will experience the truly intimate awareness of knowing exactly how you spent every single moment of a single day of your life.”

I am up early this morning doing dishes and laundry. I need to prep the Psalm for Advent II to take along to ballet so I can work on it in between classes. I would like to have both it and “Vito’s Ordination” ready to use this evening. In the case of the latter tune, my goal is to introduce the choir to the basic tune this evening. I am beginning to wonder if the notated pop rhythms might be hard for my literate crew. I guess we’ll see.

All this means I have less time than usual this morning before work for blogging. I read a chapter of Greek out loud and listened to Dylan Thomas while I washed dishes. I quickly read a bit in the bio of Mao I am reading. I think of these as morning ablutions. Literally washing my brains out a bit before facing other humans.

Eileen and I went over and looked at Mom yesterday. She had another fall. No physical harm done but of course we are concerned. I made an appointment with her psychologist since we seem to have fallen off their radar due to cancellations. He mainly monitors her mood meds. I don’t think they are what’s going on with her but it doesn’t hurt to have him look her over since her condition seems to be deteriorating slightly. Her doctor has ordered in home physical therapy which has begun. They are evaluating her probably to see if her care is sufficient. One of the nurses yesterday told me that workers are helping her get to the bathroom at night if she rings.

We are hosting some of Eileen’s fam for Thanksgiving tomorrow. We have an interesting history with this extended group. Eileen’s parents rejected our marriage and did not attend our wedding. Since her dad died, her mom has done a bit more reaching out to her. But inevitably connecting with them is a bit stressful complicated by the fact that despite efforts to accept me most of Eileen’s fam finds me an anomaly (sound familiar?… Mister Outsider…. Jenkins stuff).

So Eileen and I have been  madly preparing for this. We initially said we would stay in Holland so my Mom could come over for Thanksgiving. That doesn’t look like it’s going to happen. Eileen called her friend Barb yesterday to find out if we could do Thanksgiving in Whitehall (where her Mom is). Barb said she could. So Eileen called her sister and discussed what would be best for Dorothy her mom. Apparently it will be better to go with plan A, so that’s the plan Back to cleaning.

I’m about half way through For the Time Being by Ruth Ozeki. It is an amazing work. Ruth Ozeki is a Zen Buddhist priest according to the blurb on the back. The book is a maze of references to time and Buddhism replete with a large dose of pop Japanese Manga culture. I love reading books that seem to be happening in the same world I am living. By that I mean the interwebs and other modern stuff as well as the foreboding of the coming of the end of humans on the planet due to our own stupid preoccupation with carbon based fuels.

Turkish President Says Women Shouldn’t Be Considered Equals – NYTimes.com

This would be funny if it wasn’t so evil. Last sentence of the article is illuminating: “The president’s remarks on Monday came a week after he claimed that the Americas were discovered by Muslims at least 300 years before Columbus.”

In Same-Sex Marriage Calculation, Justices May See Golden Ratio – NYTimes.co

Comparing the number of states where same-sex marriage is legal to the ones where interracial marriage was legal and other issues before the Supremes ruled. A tipping point?

Last night I had one of my anxiety dreams. I was playing for a large apparently Roman Catholic service. I had my harpsichord and had played a piece on it for the prelude. Unfortunately, this had ended way too early and there was time for more music. I thought maybe I could improvise on the first hymn if I could just find it in the hymnal. I began leafing through the hymnal.

The room was for some reason darkened. The congregation was very faceless and became more and more restless.

My anxiety was beginning to rise when I thought something like, “You know? Fuck it. I’m not going to play this anxiety game. I’m outta here. Goodby all.” Then I left the church.

Satisfying to think of on awakening.

Yesterday I had a funny thing happen to me in ballet class. I have been working on writing down an improvisation from last Friday. It seemed to have made an impression on the teacher and the class. Yesterday I repeated this improvisation during an Adage for the pointe class. I thought maybe the teacher at least would recognize it after her strong approbation last week. Nope.

Nobody said anything to me about it. Just shows to go you, I guess.

The  music probably is not as important or as significant as I thought it was. No biggie. I still like playing. And I still will probably finish writing out the improvisation. It’s quite easy. I am thinking it might be something that would amuse my grandson, Nicholas, as he could play it probably on sight.

Will Texas Kill an Insane Man? – NYTimes.com

I like the statement in this editorial: “A civilized society should not be in the business of executing anybody.” Civilized or not, I believe that it is immoral for a state to kill. I know this is an opinion not many in our country share, but it has been mine for all my adult life.

Bigger Than Immigration – NYTimes.com

My boss preached on “us and them” Sunday. I would link in her sermon but it’s not online yet. Charles Blow has some clear insight into the people who hate Obama and immigrants. They are losing power and they know it and are resisting.

In her novel, A Tale for the Time Being, Ruth Ozeki has her main character Nao (pronounced “now”!) mention that she quit blogging: “… I stopped doing that a while ago. It made me sad when I caught myself pretending that everybody out there in cyberspace cared about what I thought, when really nobody gives a shit.”

I on the other hand who am older than the fictional age of this character and have followed the Interwebs since its youth, think of blogging not as talking to everybody in cyberspace, but sort of the equivalent of busking, playing music on a street corner.

Just like real life for an old guy in the USA where most people don’t see me or what I’m doing. My fam and friends might drop by. That’s good enough for me. And of course it’s all public and not sad at all.

In the book, Nao is writing in a diary that Ruth, another character, has found on a beach in a Hello Kitty lunch box and sometimes reads to her husband. She footnotes his reaction to this passage: “I never think anyone gives a shit,” Oliver said, “Is that sad? I don’t think it’s sad.”

Anyway I’m seriously in to this book now and enjoying the hell out of it. I first ran across it on our local library’s streaming audio book page. Eileen and I sometimes listen to books at night on this site. The recording is actually read by the author, Ruth Ozeki, which was very formative in my impressions since I think it’s important to pronounce the Japanese name of the main character, Nao, in order to further understand the whole “time being” thing.

But I’m reading a hard cover and discovering that Ozeki put much more into her book than can be easily understood in an audio book. This is illustrated by the fact that she footnotes the diary of Nao sections with reactions from the character Ruth who also happens to be a writer like her namesake Ruth Ozeki.

She uses much more Japanese in the written text with explanatory footnotes on the language which I’m pretty sure she doesn’t do so much in the audio book, I think she sometimes just substitutes English to help a listener better understand the story.

My choir sang well yesterday. Unfortunately I made a couple of glaring mistakes while playing the organ both in the prelude and the anthem. Not that big a deal, except I suspect I was affected by the presence of some music profs from Hope College. I hate that it affected me, but have to face it and work on it.

My guess is that the people that I worry about probably didn’t even notice my mistakes. In the prelude i screwed up the melody in the pedal once. They most likely weren’t listening (like most everyone else). In the anthem I made a glaring mistake in a pedal line that was probably only perceptible to the choir or someone who knew the anthem.

Fuck a duck.

We did the Carson Cooman piece which has some faux minimalism in the organ accompaniment. I did have a parishioner tell me he was surprised at how good the organ sounded on it. Everything’s relative, I guess.

I came home and spent a couple hours working on transcribing a lead sheet of “Vito’s Ordination Song” by Sufjan Stevens.

I

I was laying in bed early this morning thinking about Dylan Thomas’s recording, “An Evening with Dylan Thomas.” This record probably strongly influenced my love of Dylan Thomas especially as a young man. I still have the vinyl somewhere but couldn’t lay my hands on it after I got up. I do however have the complete Caedmon recordings of Dylan Thomas on CD which includes this record on CD.

Before coffee this morning, I transferred that recording to my laptop and began listening to it. I have read most of the poetry of Thomas Hardy. This is probably because Dylan Thomas reads a poem by Hardy on this record.

Yesterday was my Mom’s 88th birthday. Eileen joined me for an early trip to the grocery store. We picked up some stuff to help Mom with her birthday celebration including a ridiculous Turkey cupcake cake.

Then we joined her for lunch at her nursing home.

I ended up making a little album of pics from all this and putting it on Facebooger. I know that some of my readers (assuming anyone at all is reading, ahem), don’t do Facebooger so I put a couple up here for them.

I took the silly cake around to all the people in Mom’s small cafeteria (about 20 people). After our lunch, I offered each person a cup cake. In order to make the silly thing, the cooks at Meijer dumped so much frosting on it that it leaked down in huge amounts  in between some of the cupcakes. One person pointed to a huge lump of chocolate frosting and asked to have that. She was very tickled when I put it on her plate.

Mom is doing better but she is still not fully herself. At this stage of the game I always wonder how much she will come back from confusion. I always think “quality of life.” Yesterday, she insisted that she only wanted Amish novels to read. This is slightly problematic since she has read most of the large prints one at the library. I went and picked out four that she at least only read once.

The fact that she has started reading again is a good sign.

I ran into Jodi and Christian our curates at church yesterday as I was doing my weekly Saturday prep for Sunday.  They took me up on my recent offer to transcribe and arrange Sufjan Steven’s song, “Vito’s Ordination,” for their ordination. It will be pretty easy, but it will take a bit of work. My goal is to have a working score for the choir to get started on by this Wednesday.

V.F.W. Goes Gender-Neutral, Recognizing Female Veterans – NYTimes.com

About time this happened.

Four Decades of Solitary in Louisiana – NYTimes.com

Outrageous.

The Impeachment of Obama on Immigration May Be Legal — But It’s Wrong – NYT

Interesting discussion. I don’t entirely buy either stance.

Sculptor Offers Another Clue in 24-Year-Old Mystery at C.I.A. – NYTimes.com

Had to pass this link on to my puzzle loving wife.

Most Heavy Drinkers Are Not Alcoholics – NYTimes.com

I’ve been a heavy drinker most of my life (again probably thanks to romanticizing about Dylan Thomas). But I’ve been confused about addiction and alcoholism. This article helped clarify it for me. I think it influenced me to not buy gin or wine yesterday and try and lose some weight. The relationship between these two for me is that when i have a martini or glasses of wine in the evening, I inevitably always snack….. ahem.

Thai Protesters Are Detained After Using ‘Hunger Games’ Salute – NYTimes.com

Also reading George Orwell’s 1984 in public is frowned on.

Suffer Little Children – NYTimes.co

I love it that while Krugman thinks Obama’s recent immigrant stuff doesn’t go far enough, his reason includes the fact that it’s the “right thing to do.” I miss that reason a lot because most of the discussion centers on economy and laws.

The Racist Origins of Felon Disenfranchisement – NYTimes.com

This stuff basically makes me crazy.

How Medical Care Is Being Corrupted – NYTimes.com

Wow. I didn’t know a lot of the stuff in this report. Like incentives to prescribe certain meds.

The Case for Black With a Capital B – NYTimes.com

I love it when people think about language like this.

While reading in William York Tindall’s A Reader’s Guide to Dylan Thomas this morning I realized how I turn to books for conversation. Tindall seems to have a section for each of Thomas’s poems. So after reading a poem aloud and thinking on it a bit, it’s interesting to see what Tindall has to say about it. I find it particularly gratifying that Tindall seems to see Thomas in intellectual relationship to one of my other favorites: James Joyce.

Speaking of the clever shape of “Do not go gentle into that good night,” Tindall says “This tricky shape … pleased young Stephen Dedalus.”

Dedalus is of course one of Joyce’s memorable characters. I am tickled that he, a FICTIONAL character, is cited. Tindall is writing in 1961 before the complete saturation of public culture by the false celebrity and expertise of actors and the characters they play. It’s hard to hear a news report these days that doesn’t reference a movie scene or star.

Stephen Dedalus while obscure is definitely one of the stars of my little galaxy. Cool.

In another commentary, Tindall compares Thomas’s female subject in “Into her lying down head” to Molly Bloom, another Joyce creation.

Speaking of Molly Bloom I am inevitably reminded of her when my ballet instructor asks her dancers to shout “yes.” I keep meaning to mention to her Molly Bloom’s famous monologue that ends Joyce’s Ulysses.  This burst of erotic life force is a poem in itself and has had an enormous influence on my own embrace of the joy of life.

Speaking of the dance stuff, I had an interesting embarrassing experience yesterday. We came to the slow combination that dancers call the “Adage.” The teacher was repeating one they had done in the previous class. Before dancing it, she turned to me and said,  “You weren’t our pianist last class, were you?” “No mam,” I replied.

This can be slightly awkward for a teacher who wants to repeat something. The department for some reason has decided to alternate pianists for the morning classes. The reasoning has never been explicit, but I assume it’s to broaden both the teacher’s and the students’ experience of music.

So going into the Adage I was determined to make a good clear improvisation that fit the combination the teacher had designed. I made it simple and beautiful as I could to help them dance the slow dance. In between repetitions of it, Julie asked me in front of the class if I had made it up or played something from memory. I assured her it was (like most of my playing) made up. She said something complimentary and the class burst into applause.

I was moved. My music is my most vulnerable moment. Playing for ballet most of the time I am in a weird position that I like quite a bit. I am not the center of the moment, but my improvisations can be helpful and even important. In a way, I am illustrating the dancing and the human bodies of the people in the room. It’s an odd objective kind of intimacy. It is a lot like being alone and composing. So I was caught off guard when the class resorted to typical ballet etiquette of applause. This is something they will do when one of them does something particularly well or elegant.

Julie told the class that she wants to make a CD of my improvisations and sell them. I told the class they would all have to buy one. Julie looked at me and said something like you won’t remember that piece, will you? No, I said.

But I came home and wrote down what I could remember. This is the first time I have  wanted to capture an improv on paper for its own sake.

I feel much better this morning despite struggling through a day off yesterday. By that I mean that anything I did yesterday took more energy and concentration than usual. Eileen and dropped Mom’s car off to the dealer. Her car is one of those cars recalled due to a dangerous ignition switch.

I just found myself moving slower than usual yesterday, taking longer to do tasks. My piano trio people both canceled. I waited at home alone while Eileen went to have her hair done (something which she enjoys immensely). To distract myself while she was gone, I went through my resources gathering some info on ordination music. I felt like I was vaguely overfunctioning, working on my day off, but fuck it.  I shared a planning goggle doc with my clerics with some ideas. I was impressed that Jodi responded that she was interested in see a checklist and some suggested hymnody for ordinations I unearthed from Marion Hatchett’s A Guide to the Practice of Church Music.

I guess it’s not too surprising she would be interested in something by Hatchett. He was an enormous influence on the 1979 Prayer Book. I remember meeting him in Detroit years ago and have since read much of his work. My brother studied with him in seminary and I picked up some fun stories, but mostly I learned from Hatchett the scholar in his writing. Most Episcopal priests would probably recognize his name.

I was looking at choosing a postlude for a week from Sunday yesterday. My fatigue caused me to dither. I found a rather lengthy setting of the tune of our closing hymn. I liked the idea that it would call on some actual organ technique to perform and I was sorely tempted to put it on my plate and learn it. It would take some intense daily rehearsal between now and then. But after some lengthy dithering my better sense told me I should choose something a bit easier so I did and found a nice little setting by Walther of one of the melodies of the communion hymns for the day.

After organ, I dragged myself home to exercise. But as I say, I’m feeling much more relaxed today.

I overdid it yesterday. By the end of the day I was pretty exhausted and am still tired this morning. I took my laptop to college and In between my morning classes worked on the psalm for Advent I. This involved loading my laptop with the necessary information before heading out into the snow. It can take me a full hour to do the psalm.

Here’s what it looks like when I email it to church.

I make it with my music notation software, Finale, which the church helped me purchase. We split the cost 50/50 and the church paid for one update.

I am amused that while I am pretty sure I am an outsider in the world of Anglican musicians that I go to such lengths and can produce this insert that enables my congregation to sing in this very Anglican manner.

I am well aware that when the psalms are sung this way they are more often sung by choirs. But it is the intent of the American Episcopal church to encourage their singing by congregations as well.

In fact the Anglican  Chant Psalter issued by the American Episcopal church has two chants suggested for every psalm, one is congregation, one choral.

This is a blurred pic of the tones. Apologies but I’m too lazy to redo it. I just want to illustrate that there are two tones suggested for each psalm. If you look closely you might be able to tell that I used neither of these tones. I used one we  have done before. Repeating tones helps the congregation. Using new tones provides variety.

A blurred picture probably isn’t as offensive a copyright violation, eh?

This makes me think of my conversation yesterday with our curates. Christian kept asking me if something was legal. When I mentioned I could arrange the Sufjan Stevens tune for choir for use for his and Jodi’s ordination, he asked if it was legal. I told him not really. Later I figured out when he asked if something else was legal, he meant was it permitted by the Episcopal Church, when in fact I was talking about breaking the law of the land which is something I do pretty routinely in copyrights since the law is rigorous and almost impossible to follow in many instances.

On Tuesday I composed a descant for King’s Weston (At the name of Jesus) which we are singing this Sunday.

Yesterday, I was actually working on this descant when I looked up at the time and realized I was late for my meeting Jodi, Christian and Jen. Oops.

I find this sort of ironic and a bit humorous, since I often wonder if chronic tardiness represents avoidance behavior. Was I trying at some level to avoid this meeting? Probably. No reflection on my curates. I just anticipated that planning an ordination would be a lot like planning a wedding trying to factor in the curate’s wishes and balance them with the community I work for.

I wrote the descant for this hymn, because every time we sing it I think to myself that it really deserves a descant. I got a little out of control (hence the exhaustion) and wrote two descants for two different stanzas.

It interests me to be so outside the radar of the Anglican musicians and still perpetuating all this Anglican music. Evidence that I am outside of the radar can be seen in a recent conversation on the Anglican Musician Facebook page about hymn tempos and keys. In this conversation one stuffy dude pointed out that Bach had written his chorale version in the key of Eb and that it suffered from being in done in C. Further that Bach never intended it to be repeated three times with different words. His weird idea was to use a setting from the 17th century that represented actual Lutheran practice of the time.

What a ding dong!

I spent most of yesterday with Eileen. Her colonoscopy came out normal. She seemed relieved. I was reminded how deeply I love her as I watched her go through with this test. I do wonder about the invasivness of this procedure. So much of medical evaluations are based on actuarial-like  statistics and it’s weird and oddly disconnected from living. It often feels to me like 21st century superstition to try to take care of your body.

I am of course very glad that Eileen’s colonscopy came out normal and that she was not harmed by the procedure itself (small chance of a puncture can occur they informed us).  And of course I jump on the treadmill whenever I can and try to eat right and watch my weight (not always successfully). But my skepticism is still present even as I too go through the motions of “taking care” of myself. There is the idea that one gets a body and a life and that life is to be lived and the body to be used. There doesn’t seem to be anything wrong with using life up. As Modest Mouse puts it in their song “Ocean Breathes Salty” on their CD “Good news for people who love bad news,” “you wasted life, why wouldn’t you waste death?”

I take this to mean that people don’t embrace living  fully and do not understand death as a logical and beautiful part of life. (Sarah, I’m not thinking of you. Heh.) One way I see this happening around me is the blindness of people to contexts that could inform them. Maybe this is what it is to be older. You know shit. You watch other people who don’t seem to know the same shit and consequently sometimes waste and screw up life.

This doesn’t mean that I haven’t done my share of this kind of wasting and screwing up. It means I feel lucky to know some shit and to be alive and living with a woman I love.

I guess it’s a kind of bittersweet joy of living.

I’m thinking of the joy of touching someone you love, the joy of walking on a snow covered street and looking at the snow and the trees. I’m thinking of seeing past the lies of organized religion and bureaucracies to the living breathing people involved. And of course for me there are the joys of making music and reading.

I have been finding the poetry of Dylan Thomas a great consolation for the stupidity of life in America right now. I follow the news. I voted. But I remember what a high school English teacher taught me: that there is more important stuff in a poem, more life, more reality, than any “news story.”

Partisanship Breaks the Government – NYTimes.com

When I say stupidity of America, this is what I am thinking of. I have to sadly agree with the expert Linda Greenhouse: the Supreme Court of our country “is beginning to look evermore like just a collection of politicians in robes.”

When Government Succeeds – NYTimes

Likewise, Paul Krugman writes in this article: “The real lesson of the Ebola story is that sometimes public policy is succeeding even while partisans are screaming about failure…. American political discourse is dominated by cheap cynicism about public policy, a free-floating contempt for any and all efforts to improve our lives.”

Inequality, Unbelievably, Gets Worse – NYTimes.com

A clear statistical look.

I’m sitting in a a room at Holland Hospital with Eileen. She is getting ready for her third (!) colonoscopy. It’s been a rough 24 hours for her. She has been prepping since Sunday. They have developed a more extended prep so that one doesn’t have to down a ton of the prep liquid all at once. I have had one colonoscopy. It’s not a fun deal, but one remembers very little about the actual procedure.

At Eileen’s last one, we suspect that she had an inept nurse who kept poking her IV. Eileen is a bit skittish about needles and began to faint. Dumb shits. But this time they seem to know that Eileen has this kind of history.

We slept in our downstairs bedroom last night to make it a bit easier for Eileen.

I have my new schedule at Hope. It looks like it will be a bit easier. Only two days a week since they have abolished Friday dance classes. Plus instead of two gaps on Monday and Wednesday as I have now between 10 AM and 11 AM and again between noon and 2 PM, I will only have  the first one. It’s possible I will be asked to do one more class. So far it’s three on Monday and Wednesday. I think that Julie requests me since we work together pretty well. I know I enjoy working with her. But I can work easily with any of the teachers. They are all good.

Tomorrow I meet with my priest and my curates regarding their ordination as priests at our parish. I had an email from Jodi (one of them) requesting what looked like a song by Sufjan Stevens called “Vito’s Ordination Song.” I haven’t had many conversations with our curates. I really have no idea what their theology regarding worship is and have promised my boss to  be easy to work with at this point.

I passed the request along to the boss and replied that I was looking forward to meeting with her and her husband (the other curate) and the boss and figuring out this service.

If they do want the Stevens, I will suggest that I go to the trouble to arrange it for choir and instrumentalists and include as many parishioners as possible. This will be a pain but doable. The sooner I know the better. Here’s an embed of the tune.

I listened to it yesterday. I will purchase the music and transcribe it for my resources. Totally illegal but it’s the only way to do this, since I’m pretty sure there’s not a choral version available. (I just googled it)

Eileen’s IV is successfully installed. It was a difficult moment for her and the nurses, but she just told me that she is as light headed as she was the last time. That’s good news. “Now it’s all downhill,” she says.

I have set the entire day aside to attend to Eileen. If I can I will sneak off at some time and practice organ. I had a good rehearsal yesterday. While I was practicing Rhonda the AGO dean canceled the program we had scheduled for the evening. This meant that I could wash my hair after I exercised and not have to go back out into the cold.

I broke my usual Sunday pattern yesterday and practiced organ after church while waiting for Eileen to teach a Sunday School class. I am learning four variations on King’s Weston (At the name of Jesus) by Robert Lind. I purchased a bunch of his music for some reason i can’t remember. He has published a few volumes of chorale preludes on hymn tunes by Vaughan Williams. The one I’m playing Sunday is not bad. It seems to grow out of Vaughan Williams’ own compositional style. But it may be that Lind’s teacher Leo Sowerby is the influence. I think of it as nondescript.

I will play three variations as the prelude  and finish off with the fourth as the postlude. The postlude has a bit of challenging running pedal part. Nothing virtuosic, but one I will have to practice. I spent a good deal of time with it after church yesterday.

Jen Adams my boss and Christian Baron one of our new curates are convening  parishioners who work for Hope College (faculty and staff) tomorrow evening at a local bar to discuss ministry to the students.

I have decided not to attend. Jen didn’t ask me as music director. If I went it would be to listen to how Hope people see their relationship to the college and the church.

I see a lot of negative energy at Hope and Holland. I am willing to deal with it as a choir director and music director at Grace. But I don’t need to submit my waning energies to it if it’s not necessary.

I am reminded of my first taste of Hope College politics. I was hurting from the intense departmental politics at Notre Dame during my grad study. I was invited into the home of an English professor for an evening with Roger Davis who was then the organ prof at Hope. We proceeded to get a little drunk. Roger was extremely angry and negative about Hope. He also admitted to some dishonest editing of his own teaching manual (he copied from other anthologies without doing the research or giving credit). I resolved to keep a distance from Hope.

Now I experience a lack of rigorousness in many of the Hope teachers. I’m sure they’re pretty competent but they tend to a insularity and lack of a larger context. It may simply be that they choose not to talk that much to me and that’s fine. When Christian asked me if I was going to attend tomorrow’s gathering, I attempted to gently explain to him my position as music director for a church with so much of the music faculty present.

I mentioned my need to keep negative energy to a minimum in my life.

The poor guy probably has no idea what the fuck I’m talking about. Yesterday as part of his sermon he invited listeners to doodle their idea of god on a provided page of the bulletin. Later when he asked them to put it in the offering plate, I was a bit unhappy that if they did so they would be tearing off the second part of the closing hymn printed there. Oh well.

Plus I couldn’t help but not be too impressed with this. I’m not sure of course that there is a god and I don’t tend to anthropormorphize about god. But I’m trying desperately to be supportive of our new curates despite their lack of sophistication (which is probably inevitable in novices). I thought about the idea that I do sometimes pray to god and wonder if I’m heard at all. By this I do NOT mean that like some sort of genie god grants my wish. I just wonder if there’s anyone on the other end listening. Probably not.

I drew an ear. Then I noticed that fittingly my little drawing looked like a question mark. So I also drew a question mark around the ear. I labeled the ear in case any one were to look at it and not discern what it was.

There you have it.

Saturday went much better than I thought it would. Eileen spent the day with me which was very pleasant. We dropped in on Mom. Although her face looked more battered than I was expecting and she was in bed, she was more responsive than she has been. Elizabeth and Jeremy put up pictures of Alexandra my grand daughter onto WhatsApp daily. I loaded them onto my laptop so they would be a bit bigger than they are on a phone screen for Mom to look at. She seems to enjoy this every time I do it.

The good news was that Mom had tested positive for a Urinary Track Infection. This means that her recent personality change is most likely the result of this infection and not (as I feared of course) a loss of faculties. 

Mom hasn’t been reading, so there was no need for me to collect  her books from her apartment and return them and get new ones. Eileen and I ended up having lunch together at Panera.

Then while I did my Saturday prep for Sunday, Eileen sorted and filed music in the choir room.

I barely remembered that they were burying two members of my extended family yesterday. I hope those events went well. In both cases I had lost touch with the dead men and didn’t feel the need to plan a road trip to either funeral. But I am sorry to see them go and hope their families are doing okay.

Landing on a Comet, a European Space Agency Mission Aims to Unlock the Mysteries of Earth – NYTimes.com

Spacecraft on Comet Drills for Data as Its Power Fades – NYTimes.com

I have been following this story. It blows my mind that we have the tech to land something on a body going 40,000 miles per hour. It makes me think of landing something on a bullet which of course goes much slower.

 Millions Due in Back Pay to Dancers at Manhattan Strip Club – NYTimes.com

As an old former bar music, I’m glad to see this. Also another example of tech:

Rick’s, which is a few blocks from the Empire State Building, kept track of the dancers’ comings and goings with an electronic fingerprint scanner. That system provided indisputable evidence of the hours many of the dancers logged at the club, she said.

His Subway Listeners Venture Above – NYTimes.com

Busker takes audience to a better venue. Cool beans.

Yazidi Girls Seized by ISIS Speak Out After Escape – NYTimes.com

I cannot understand this. Terrible.  Slavery condoned by the state.

150 Years Later, Wrestling With a Revised View of Sherman’s March – NYTimes.com

Dr. Cobb said he had sensed a shift in attitudes on his university campus in Athens, east of Atlanta.

“You all the time run into college kids who don’t know which side Sherman was on — and their parents and certainly their grandparents would be aghast to know that,”

Pierre-Laurent Aimard Plays Bach at Carnegie Hall – NYTimes.com

Although I find myself less and less attracted by long definitive performances, this review is fascinating to me.

Decades of Neglect Show Starkly as Indian Schools Cry Out for Repairs – NYTime

This stuff leaves me speechless. How do we as a country continue to allow such shameful stuff?

Harry Pearson, Founder of Absolute Sound, Dies at 77 – NYTimes.com

I was surprised to read Pearson’s later evaluation that digital recording was improving. Who knew?

YouTube Music Key Is Introduced as New Rival in Streaming – NYTimes.com

YouTube pushes into paid content. I wonder how that will play out.

Yesterday I played for combined ballet classes. At least I played for part of the class. The chair invited a young exchange student from Spain to teach the class “salsa.” I played for the warm up which Julie the instructor led. It was extremely unclear how  much I would be needed for the rest of the class. The student of course was off balance since she was teaching a room of her peers in a second language. I don’t think she wanted to use me at all. But  I ended up playing for her while she taught parts of the combination which was not salsa but Flamenco.

Evidently, my attempts at replicating Maleguena type music did not reassure her enough to use me for the combination since she ran out to get her computer to play the music after teaching some basic moves. I was a bit disappointed, but not disappointed enough to hang around and find out what kind of music she ended up using.

I have been feeling like I’m running into a lot of negative energy lately. I certainly don’t blame a 24 year old exchange student for feeling funny about working with fuzzy old me. But I was slightly disappointed.

I have recently acquired an adult organ student. She is a pretty accomplished oboist who wants to learn organ. Her second lesson was yesterday. She told me several sad stories about her experiences a  musician. One in particular stays in my mind.

She was drinking with students and teachers in Europe (France? I know she lived in Germany for a while). One of the teachers confided in her that she (my student) was too much of a word person to be a musician. In fact, that she wasn’t a musician.

My response was to say that I have heard so many stories of academic musician assholes discouraging student musicians. Of course this woman IS a musician. Also, I think that music is an activity which involves more people than the player and the composer.

My Mom has been found on the floor a couple mornings this week. One day she said she “slipped” there. The other time she fell on her way to the bathroom. They are testing her for a urinary infection which sometimes produces disorientation. I hope that’s what it is. Eileen and I will pay her a visit today. I usually go over on Saturday and get her books, take them back to the library and get more for her. I’m interested to see if she got any reading done this week because I know it’s not been a good one for her.

I did have what I think of as Mom time yesterday. I had an appointment with her banker to transfer some funds around. He was late. Somehow we got to talking about my job. I found myself chatting a young conservative Christian dude up about acoustics and congregational singing and pipe organs.

I seem to have found myself up against a lot of negative energy lately. This must be part of what drives me to chat up disinterested parties about acoustics. Ahem.

I found this website in the AGO mag. Very cool. It’s a Norwegian publisher which offers a discount on music that you download (as opposed to purchase through the mail). This is what I’m talkin’ about. I only hope I can find something to download and that it’s any good. I really think this is the way to go with this stuff.

I figured out that I’m over half through the bio of Mao I am reading by Alexander Pantsov and Steven Levine. Once again the design of the Kindle has been unhelpful. It indicates I am only 33% into the book. This is because it counts the collection of photographs, the appendixes and copious footnotes found at the end as part of the text. They begin 59% of the way through. Sheesh. I guess I’m pleased that I’m as far as I am.

The story Pantsov and Levine have told so far is about Mao’s complex and long rise to power within the Chinese Communist Party. They document how Stalin controlled and led this process, eventually ordaining Mao as his choice as leader for the party and consciously creating a Stalinesque cult of personality around him.

Yesterday my lagging spirits were shored up by reading through Mozart piano trios and violin sonatas. I told my trio I needed some Mozart joie de vivre since two members of my extended family have funerals this Saturday. Two MALE members (see yesterday’s whine).

This was after playing a funeral. It was very odd because I also drew on Mozart for the prelude for the funeral. It was unusually quiet. I have a tendency to use piano at funerals and weddings since people relate more readily to a bad piano sound than a bad organ sound. I may change this after I get a good organ sound in couple years.

At any rate I do understand Mozart as a burst of human joy. The piano trio we read through yesterday was pretty dam amazing.

My niece, Emily, and her husband, Jeremy, were sitting in my living room with Eileen when I arrived home after rehearsal. We all had a nice chat and then they set out for home. Unfortunately, they ended up in a ditch not too far down the road. Eileen texted back and forth with them and offered to go get them, but they forged  ahead due to responsibilities at the other end of the road.

Eileen seemed cheered up by their visit. She has been a bit down lately. At least it seems that way to me. She did the grocery shopping for us yesterday which is unusual. This is usually my task. After Emily and Jeremy left she was smiling much more than I have seen her do so lately.

Of course, we did find out that her Mini is seriously sick and will need some serious work done. This will hit our meager savings hard. And she is scheduled for a colonoscopy next Tuesday. So I can see why she might be a bit down.

I tease her that my life is better than hers since I get to live with her which is a pleasure for me while she has to live with me. And I know I can be difficult.

The Lame-Duck Dynasty – NYTimes.com

I found this Gail Collins column on US politics pretty witty. Of course I am a brain dead far left liberal.

Campaign Contributions: Does Money Equal Speech? – NYTimes.com

Letters to the editor, one particularly poignant from FRANCES MOORE LAPPÉ author of Diet of a Small Planet.

“In a crowded hall of bellowing voices (some with electronic megaphones!), those speaking normally can never be heard, even when they are the majority. That’s America today. It is not democracy.”

Recently I was struck by Sarah Koenig’s comment that she is a moron at tech. She is the narrator and maker of “Serial” which is an online broadcast (podcast) I follow.

I don’t think that one can make a radio show these days a be a “moron at tech.”

Why would she say that? My theory is that tech doesn’t work well. For example whenever I try to stream something online I know there is a fifty fifty chance it might stop at any point. Just this morning, I tried to stream U of M radio and This American Life. Both stopped randomly.

Later I streamed Spotify successfully. Last night Eileen and I used Comedy Central’s streaming site as well as Netflix. Both of these worked. The random nature of it is part of the frustration. I miss on/off switches.

My suspicion is that reasonably intelligent people find that tech isn’t user friendly and then decide that they themselves are moronic.

Not so says I.

My wife recently told me that I spend a good hour a day yelling at computers.

This may be. She also said she thinks that’s part of why I have high blood pressure. This also may be.

At any rate, I continue to devise strategies to work with the way tech works (i mean the way it doesn’t work) in my life.

I suppose I should mention something that’s on my mind. When family members die, especially ones of the same age and gender, it’s hard not to take a look in the mirror and wonder about how long one has left (Hi Mark!).

This week my cousin Allan died. He was my Uncle Jonnie’s son. My father and his two brothers all had male kids the same year: 1951. Allan and Fred (my Uncle Dave’s oldest) are both dead. They were actually born on the same day. 1951 is the year I was born. Saturday is the funeral of my cousin Rick, son of Uncle Richard (my Mom’s brother).  He was a few years younger than the other two men.  I wasn’t close to any of these men. I know it’s hard for the families and not really about me.

Both Allan and Fred were in much better physical shape than me. Allan died of cancer. Fred choked to death recently. Eileen insists that I am looking after myself, exercising and watching my weight.  When she said this recently I wondered aloud if I would already be dead if I hadn’t tried to take care of  my health.

Oh and I have a funeral to play for today. 

When I am discouraged about my playing, I sometimes think of Healey Willan’s comment about himself: “Can’t play for beans.” Of course he could. And so can I, but I admire the ruefulness and self deprecation with which he avoids self pity.

I had trouble relaxing on my day off yesterday. Eileen wanted to take her Mini in to the dealer for work in the morning. I also received a phone call that my Mom was found on the floor near her chair that morning.

Eileen and I dropped by Mom’s apartment to check on her. She said she just “slipped.” She wasn’t terrible communicative but seemed okay. She hasn’t been feeling very well. Also, she has been a bit unresponsive and sometimes doesn’t answer my questions. I’m hoping this will pass. Eileen and I took over a nightlight that will automatically come on in the dark.I read recently where some old folks homes have them installed to help people keep oriented in the dark. Mom seemed okay with us putting it in her bathroom for her.

I continued to mess with my books yesterday. I am grouping them by author and trying to get spines out where I can see where they are.

I spent a long time with Chopin waltzes at the piano. A ballet student requested his Waltz in C# minor. I think I know which one she means. It’s encouraging that a young person would ask for something like this.

But after tangling with Chopin for an hour or so, I was tired and pretty sure that I can’t play for beans. This too will pass.

I’m running late this morning so no pics. I will include links however.

Malala Yousafzai, Nobel Laureate, Is Assailed by Schools Group in Pakistan – NYTimes.com

I don’t quite get this except as an expression of ignorance.

Preserving an Accident, the Salton Sea in California, for the Good of Nature – NYT

Part of the point of this article is that from here on out we will have to manipulate our environment in order to save it.

The Truth About the Wars – NYTimes.com

A Three star general has regrets.

Garry Trudeau on Bringing His Political Satire to TV – NYTimes.com

I’m linking this interview because of this anecdote Trudeau tells:

Interviewer: You went to Yale with George W. Bush.

Trudeau: When I was a sophomore and W. was a senior, I illustrated an article for the newspaper about hazing at Bush’s fraternity — D.K.E. had been branding initiates with a red-hot iron. It became a national story. The Times interviewed Bush. And Bush described the branding as no worse than a cigarette burn. His first interview in the national media was in defense of torture.

St. Francis Manuscripts Headed to U.S., in First Trip Out of Italy in 700 Years – NYTimes.com

Did you know there was a webcam pointed at St. Francis’s grave? Weird shit.

I’ve only recently resumed doing my daily Greek the way I was doing it before I received the pronunciation CD in the mail. When that came, I began again at the beginning of the lessons and worked on my pronunciation.

A few days ago I finally reached the lesson where I had left off my previous study. At first this was discouraging because I wasn’t as fluent in my understanding of the lesson. But after a couple days of working with the text, I am feeling more confident.

When I practice reading a lesson, I make sure I read it through carefully out loud four times. The rule of repeating something four times is something that follows me around not only in my language study but also my musical rehearsal.

For example, this week in addition to working over smaller sections of the  pieces I will perform Sunday at least four times each, I will play each piece in its entirety four times. Usually slower the last time to ensure accuracy.

The music this past Sunday morning was well received. I had several compliments. But I felt that my playing was a bit ragged. The sections I had worked on didn’t go as well I wanted them to. The music didn’t suffer too much. The ideas remained understandable. But I didn’t nail it the way I wanted to. Ah well.

The rule of four has lately extended into my daily playing through of music (largely piano music) that interests me. In the past I have played through music like all of the sonatas of Haydn and C.P.E. Bach or all of the Well Tempered Clavier of J.S. and sometimes made a little check by the title to help me remember where I was. When I did this I would play each piece once, rarely more.

But now when I am playing through a piece I linger over it, replaying it and replaying it. I find that this helps me understand more about how the music works. I have found that my technique is more rooted in understanding the music than having quick fingers that whip through the piece.

The more I understand the way the key and harmony and motives are working the more confidently I can render the piece.

This is probably because of the basic nature of my musicianship which I sometimes think of as a bit on the primitive side.

While I can render the occasional piece in a refined acceptably academic manner, I know that I like myself and my primitive musicianship which not only loves Beethoven but loves the Blues.

I can see it when i queue up a playlist on Spotify. Sometimes (more often when I am cooking) I want something meaty to listen to like Scarlatti or Puccinni. Other times (more often when I am exercising or cleaning house) I like music with energy and will listen to Funk or old rock and roll I know.

I am very happy that my aesthetic includes all of this. Life is good.

I found a new blog to keep an eye on. It’s called Abagond. I don’t know much about the author, Julian Abagond, but I like his slogan: “500 words a day on whatever I want.”

I ran across it when following a link on a page with a mildly clever video about white rich people “helping” Africans.

500 words a day is about my limit. Or should I say that I try to limit myself to under that amount.

No, you are not ‘running late’, you are rude and selfish

I ran across Abagond a few steps away from a Facebook link. The above article was posted on Facebook. It’s from VitaminTalent.com and was shared by an old schoolmate of mine from Wayne State right on Facebook. The website seems to be an online business that connects talent to jobs. Their blog is called “Vitabites” and the article above is lifted from an Australian blogger named Greg Savage. 

I have been known to tell choirs that “to be early is to be on time, to be on time is to be late and to be late is unforgivable.” But after reading this article on lateness I realize that I don’t really experience that much of it compared to some of the people in the article.

Also, I tend to just forge ahead regardless of people’s tardiness. After all, everyone is sometimes unavoidably late. Just yesterday morning I reiterated to my Men’s section that when someone comes late I would prefer for them to let me handle it and continue to concentrate rather than break concentration (usually while we are singing) and start making room for the late person.

This is particularly difficult in the sappy atmosphere of how people see church. They are just trying to be considerate I’m sure. But I see it as mildly unhealthy mental health when late comers expect people to stop what they are doing and make room for them.

In fact, people coming in late are probably not conscious of how rude they are being. ‘

I continue to find stuff that interests me online. Believe it or not, I get quite a bit out of Facebooger. I think I have learned what interests me on it. I keep up with friends and family but skim many of their posts that do not interest me.

I found a conversation on the Episcopal Church Musician’s page pretty interesting. Since it is a closed group, I won’t allude to the people by name. The topic was how did you use “For All the Saints” on All Saints. Very interesting to see that some people omit verses or split the hymn up. Also, some groups attempt to lengthen their procession to fit the hymn. I put in my two cents briefly that we sang all the verses in the hymnal and had the choir do verse five alone.

I learned that some congregations do the choral verses congregationally a cappella. I think I might steal that notion for next year.

I also keep an eye on the Facebook Organist’s page. Yesterday Scott Bataglia wrote about having breakfast with a priest. The priest played phone recordings he had made for him. Some were of him. Others were of subs and other organists. Bataglia found the experience eye opening. It seems that he is a bit better than he thought he was especially when compared to the other organists.

This question occurs to me sometimes when talking shop and repertoire with other musicians. Unless we hear each other, we really don’t know how well we play.

Jesus and the Modern Man – NYTimes.com

Speaking of Facebooger, my boss, Jen Adams, put this article up on it yesterday. I found the next link more inspiring.

Gray Hair and Silver Linings – NYTimes.com

I love the picture Bruni draws of the two elderly people in a cancer waiting room flirting. Joni Mitchell is the same age as these people. Makes ya think if you’re as old as me.

Prehistory’s Brilliant Future – NYTimes.com

Good article on topic. Scary quote: “Scientists estimate that because of the current destruction of natural habitats and the disruptive power of climate change, we may lose anywhere between 20 and 50 percent of all living species by the end of this century.”

The ‘Center’ Always Holds — FAIR

Fair rips up the media’s myths on the recent election. Good read for tired liberals.