So maybe it wasn’t the midterm elections that increased my spam traffic. This morning I had over 1600 comments that were directed to my spam cache for me to delete. That’s high.

It’s been odd watching Eileen prepare to teach a Sunday School class. She is very frustrated by the poor quality of the curriculum and the inexperience of the leadership at church. I figure if public and private education in the US is bad, religious instruction is probably worse on average.

Also, I’m convinced that people seek out mediocrity in church situations. It seems to provide a sense of security or something. I have always found this annoying, especially when otherwise intelligent people change gears when they come to church and indulge in poor taste and sentimentality.

I’m pretty sure Franky Schaeffer was on to something with his comments in Addicted to Mediocrity: 20th Century Christians and the Arts.

Still applies.

I have encouraged Eileen to give people constructive feedback about the specifics in the curriculum she objects to (such as the impenetrable length of the bible lessons). I hope she does.

The Before pic…. how the pantry looked a few weeks ago…..

The last few days I have begun sorting my gargantuan book collection. The first goal was to get stacks of books off the floor, out of the way and grouped alphabetically. I cleared the upstairs pantry on Thursday.

The After picture…. the way the pantry area looks right now.

Yesterday I cleared a lot of them from the extra room upstairs.

In the meantime Eileen attacked the pantry, sorting and discarding stuff. This was tiring but satisfying.

I also picked organ music. I sometimes feel like Father Mackenzie in Eleanor Rigby, but instead of writing the words to a sermon no one will hear, I practice music that on one will hear. But what the fuck. At least I get to play some decent music and get paid.

The prelude a week from today will be a charming little fugue by Wilhelm Friedman Bach.

He was one of the Bach boys (sons of Bach). It wasn’t until relatively recently that I realized what an entourage this crew probably was. Talented, hard working and probably all cracker jack musicians.

It’s a charming little piece and shows that W.F. was thinking more gallant than his father.

Doing the above Buxtehude canzonetta as a postlude. I’m pretty sure these are not mediocre but  either way I guess I’m good.

How the Berlin Wall Really Fell – NYTimes.com

You might want to refresh your knowledge about this….. Reagan didn’t do it….

Pregnant, and No Civil Rights – NYTimes.com

This story makes me crazy. Is this really how we want it?

post updated at 11:55 AM Sunday, Nov 9 2014

I was unusually satisfied with my improvs for ballet class yesterday. Given the freedom of originating musical ideas I find myself drawn into popular music languages. Inevitably I come up with a blend of techniques. I muse that this blend would probably not interest highly literate classical musicians who seem content with following the footsteps of the academy at a time when it is losing its credibility with many listeners.

I think I’m probably one of those people, the ones who find the stiff academic approach less and less interesting.

Speaking of musical interest, last night Eileen and I attended a dance concert. I found that much of music used left me pretty disinterested. One choreographer chose a weird version of Gershwin’s Summertime. It seemed to be disco with lots of silky electronic sounds and possibly sung in Japanese. The dancers did tap dance holding fans bringing to mind Southern belles. The huge screen in the back was filled with changing images of yellow flowers, some of which were sunflowers. Eileen like this one. I thought it didn’t work.

Still thinking about the music they used, the final piece utilized what sounded like a Chopin piano concerto and Beethoven’s Ninth. It was an interesting piece of choreography, but I wonder about the music. What did it mean exactly in this context? The choreography utilized an odd moment when the famous melody which set Schiller’s “Ode to Joy” began. The dancers started to chuckle in a sort of rueful way. It was as though they were recognizing the melody and finding it a bit humorous in the context of their dance. This kind of worked. But then they began to laugh hysterically and continue to do so for much of the remaining piece which didn’t work as well for me.

One interesting piece was dedicated to Nelson Mandela.

It was a lengthy mix which utilized a strong South African beat with loops of Obama and Mandela talking.

It struck me as lightly ironic in the  time and context of the moment. Obama’s party just having been lashed in defeat in the midterms.  And then there is the Dutch connection to the white regime of South Africa which is very strong locally.

There were no students of color in this dance.

So when the choreographer had them continually dancing jubilantly and even defiantly, it seemed slightly incongruous, as though the dancers themselves didn’t quite understand what the jubilation was about but were more than willing to dance their hearts out about it.

I was surprised to run across references to popular culture in the bio of Mao I am reading (Mao: The Real Story by Alexander Pantsov and Steven Levine). In 1937, not too long after The Long March, Mao and his forces settle in for the first time in a bit larger city, “Yan’an, the largest city in northern Shaanxi.”

The “extreme left-wing American journalist Agnes Smedley” soon arrives there.

She takes up residence with the rest of Mao’s forces in the loess caves. These caves were man made dwelling dug into the soft mountains. Here’s a pic of them more recently.

Mao and the other high ranking officials of his forces stayed in the city. Mao is quite taken with Smedley’s young beautiful translator, Wu Guangwei. He visits them often.

“Soon he and Smedley conceived the idea of organizing a dance school. They got hold of an old gramophone and several foxtrot records, and they arranged a musical evening at a church that had been abandoned by missionaries who had fled the city. Scandalized by such overt “debauchery,” the wives of the CCP leaders boycotted the dance lessons, but their husbands happily took part.}”

So Mao and the ruthless leaders of the Communist revolution (who have not yet come into power over China but are still battling Chiang Kai Shek and the Guomindang) are happily cavorting to western foxtrot records as they take a bit of respite in Yan’an.

It’s not long before Mao is spending a great deal of time with  Wu Guangwei who is not only  Smedley’s translator but also an actress.

Mao’s wife confronts them and goes a bit nuts, beating on Mao with a flashlight and attacking Wu Guangwei and Smedley as well. Smedley’s give Mao’s wife a black eye and Mao tells her “You’re acting like a rich woman in a bad American movie.”

More Western pop culture references. Wow. Who knew?

As usual Wednesday kicked my butt. I went full speed all day. Put several new anthems in the folders of choir members. It didn’t help that the clock in the choir room was not put back and while I was madly preparing for the evening rehearsal got confused about what time it was and lost an hour. I rushed home thinking it was after 5 PM when it was actually an hour earlier.

The choir was in more than usual disarray last night. It was very much like herding cats. Several people were late including Eileen who barely made the rehearsal. Two members who were not present called me on my cell phone during rehearsal. One texted  just before rehearsal that they weren’t coming. For Chrissakes we only have about 15 members. My determination to give a good rehearsal was unbowed but this morning I am exhausted and deflated.

I have been thinking about Merton quite a bit. The distinction between liturgical worship and non liturgical worship in the Christian church seems to be lost on people who don’t understand quite what liturgical worship is.

In our society we constantly reinvent ourselves especially in our eyes. There is often a vacuum in our consciousness where human ritual once dwelt. Thus we invent public rituals that seem hollow when compared to more evolved human rituals.

Thus the continual need to come up with cutesy shit for weddings and funerals. Humans make meaning. It’s one of the basic things about us.

But when the meaning is rooted in decoration not symbol it does seem more empty to me.

… [w]hile liturgical symbol is a vital and effective force in the life of prayer… mere decoration is inert, confusing, and a kind of dead weight on prayer. It distracts not in the superficial sense of substituting once concept for another, but in a deeper way: by drawing us from the realm of intuition and of mystery into the more superficial level of sentimental fantasy.

Thomas Merton, “Absurdity in Sacred Decoration”

Merton has more to say on this, but I’ll leave it at that.

Jen Adams and I were talking about the lack of awareness of liturgical understanding even amount liturgical church leaders (priests and musicians), how rare it actually is.

I was thinking of the above Merton quote during our discussion. Maybe I’ll email it to her and put something up on Facebooger.

I  am feeling even more discouraged today about US politics. More than the issues that seem to have won the day on Tuesday, I’m concerned how fear and ignorance is driving our public discussion. Surely, this is not as pandemic as it seems. Surely.

My blog spam has fallen the last two days. Today’s was around 900, yesterday’s 1400, the day before 1600. It’s hard not to ascribe it to the US midterm campaign. But who knows?

So a few of the people I voted for were actually elected yesterday. Peters for Senate and several of the College board members. They were all Democrats. But mostly Republicans trounced Democrats here in Michigan as they did in other places.

Millages passed. The wolf proposals all failed. I voted for the millages and against the wolf proposals.

Few surprises in today’s national results. Too bad but there you go.

I tried to relax yesterday. Tuesday is truly my one day entirely off with nothing scheduled. Wednesday is shaping up as my roughest day. I managed to look at some Xmas choral music on Monday between classes. Today I want to print up at least one new anthem for this evening.

Also I just dumped a psalm into my laptop so I can work on that today as well. The goal is to have the psalms for this Sunday and the following Sunday in the hands of singers tonight. That’s probably doable.

I don’t have much time to blog this morning. But I think I want to put a couple of quotes up just in case some of my religious readers happen by and don’t know them.

Thomas Merton was (is?) a long time hero of mine. I have read of tons of his works. He is my kind of Roman Catholic: intellectual, tolerant and insightful. He has also influenced Jupe the church guy:

A bad book about the love of God remains a bad book, even though it is about the love of God. There are many who think that because they have written about God, they have written good books. Then men pick up these books and say if the ones who say they believe in God cannot find anything better than this to say about it, their religion cannot be worth much.

from  “Poets” in New Directions 17, Thomas Merton

and in 1960 he wrote

… [I]n an age of concentration camps and atomic bombs, religious and artistic sincerity will certainly exclude all ‘prettiness’ or shall sentimentality. Beauty, for us, cannot be a mere appeal to conventional pleasures of the imagination and senses. Nor can it be found in cold, academic perfectionism. The art of our time, sacred art included, will necessarily be characterized by a certain poverty, grimness and roughness which correspond to the violent realities of a cruel age. Sacred art cannot be cruel, but it must know how to be compassionate with the victims of cruelty: and ONE DOES NOT OFFER LOLLIPOPS TO A STARVING MAN IN A TOTALITARIAN DEATH-CAMP. NOR DOES ONE OFFER HIM THE MESSAGES OF A PITIFULLY INADEQUATE OPTIMISM. from “Sacred Art and the Spiritual Life” caps added.

I spent my valuable morning off this morning finalizing my choices in today’s election. It is interesting how if you have time and motivation googling can help you understand candidates.

I have been thinking about the  noisy mean-spirited partisan discussions in our nation’s capital and other places. I think they do not represent America. I think that the common values that are needed to have a democracy still probably exist in our country. But that they are drowned out by the unreality of the partisan angry debate.

First of all, if the country was really divided in the way the polls and elections seem, why are we not on the brink of civil disorder, i.e. fighting in the streets. I know there are some street demonstrations, but I don’t think we are looking at the breakdown of society that precedes true chaos.

I think this is because most people are living their lives. And sadly, mostly people don’t pay much attention to government especially these days when people in government are so bad at the job of governing.

For example here in Michigan we have a movement that if the state legislature doesn’t vote on road repair within two months, there are people who want to put it to a public referendum. To me this says to our government, if you don’t govern there are other ways to do the important jobs like taking care of infrastructure like roads.

I believe that more people are reasonable than unreasonable. I admit that I might be “protesting too much.” But I think it’s important to remember the number of people who live here in the United States and who we are really.

To me, America means a fascinating history of many things: the American Revolution, emerging rights of Women, People of Color and the acknowledgement of the validity of many ways to approach sexuality.

In addition we can claim many unique contributions to human stuff like Jazz, Rock and Roll, literature, poetry. These keep me sane.

Of course not only American stuff, but when one is inundated with such anger and mean spiritedness, it’s important to seek the perspective of thinking as clearly and accurately as one can.

So I think I’m ready to vote. I don’t expect to be encouraged by the results of this election. But I still think that rising to the challenges of citizenship is  a  faint glimmer of hope and responsibility that one ignores at  the peril of not only oneself but others in our country.

Yesterday after church, I printed up sample ballots for Eileen and me for the upcoming election on Tuesday. She sat down for an hour or so and went through the candidates. I was planning on basically voting Democract this time. I can remember fourteen years ago when I trusted the system a bit more and I voted for Ralph Nader. Boy do I regret that vote since the Supreme Court went against its own philosophies and handed the government to the Republican nominee.

But that’s history. I have now learned my lesson. Vote for viable candidates not the ones you most agree with.

Eileen has surprised me with a few of her choices (which she said she didn’t mind if I “copied.”) I will now research her choices in a few races. Also she very helpfully found out that Jarnes Hasper has withdrawn as the Democratic candidate for our State House District (90th). I will leave that blank rather than vote for the Republican.

I was surprisingly rested yesterday. Church went well. Today’s funeral was in the back of my mind, but Rev Jen managed to resolve all the stuff before the day was out. We will have two solists, both of whom ran through their solo with me after church yesterday.

It will be a full day no doubt. And I am tireder this morning than yesterday but what the heck.

I had a great dream last night. I was sitting in a garden with a bunch of other people haranguing them. For some reason I was talking about stuff in life I found to be miraculous.  Specifically “fucking” and “red wine.” I also added that I was very glad to have lived as long as I have and would like to live longer.

Wow.

I didn’t mention music in the dream which is kind of funny.

Speaking of music, it all went very well yesterday. The choir sounded good again. The organ music went well even though it was a bit confusing in the prelude since once again the altar servers stood close by and talked loudly.

Eileen said she was talking with someone at this point who wondered why the servers were lining up for the procession. Eileen told her that I had made a pause and they thought the prelude was over. The person to whom she was speaking apparently was surprised I was doing anything over that at the organ.

This reminds me of years ago when I was music director at a downtown Detroit parish. The church was near a home for mentally impaired men who attended service en masse. If my offertory got too loud, they would all stand as a group thinking it was time to sing the Doxology (it was a Presbyterian gig).

Pavlovian, n’est pas?

I cut back my organ rehearsal a bit this week. The week prior to performing the St. Anne fugue, I was rehearsing more than two hours a day on it. This week, I have been practicing not only the upcoming organ music, but also working on other pieces.

I am trying to pace myself energy wise. Yesterday didn’t work out so good for some reason. Part of it was some negotiations with people around the funeral scheduled for this Monday. Our procedure at church is that the family talks to Rev Jen and then she and I work out the details. But I don’t usually have direct contact with the family.

Saturday morning there was an email in my inbox from a family member. I immediately emailed Jen and asked her if I should pursue the request in the email.

She didn’t reply right away. I tried to then set it aside. But in retrospect I think this negotiation which continued by email for much of the day hung over me.  It’s still unresolved exactly what I am expected to do Monday, but I do feel more prepared having found and downloaded an easy of version Howard Goodall’s Psalm 23, the Theme for the Vicar of Dibley (the music in question).

it’s very easy.

Last night I dreamed about Christmas eve. In the dream, I was exhausted. You know. Like real life these days. I also couldn’t find a dress shirt for services then I realized I was wearing it.

Sheesh.

Yesterday I moved the piano away from the front of the choir area. Today’s anthem is one I am conducting from the organ console. When I do this, the choir has to stand further back. This means their sound is muffled by the acoustical bubble behind a huge stone arch.

I’m also not terribly prepared for today. I know the music okay, but not forwards and backwards the way I have been trying to prepare.

I tell myself I’m going for pacing myself. It will probably go fine.

The time change seems to be working in my favor this morning. I feel more rested than yesterday.

The Pitiful Whimper of 2014 – NYTimes.com

It’s hard not to be cynical about Tuesday’s election. What a fucking mess.

Recipe: Pan-Fried Noodles With Some Spice – NYTimes.com

Since returning from China I have been making fried noodles with chili sauce and whatever else is at hand. Yum.

Health Dept. Worker Suspended. One Complaint: He Talked Like a Robot. – NYT

I found this story very amusing.

Recently I’ve started listening to the podcast, Serial.

As Sarah Koenig, its creator and narrator succinctly puts it, it is “one story told week by week.”

The first season is about a murder. Koenig reexamines a situation to find out who is lying about it.

It’s a spin off from This American Life, which I initially enjoyed but tired of due to the unevenness of its quality

.

This morning I bookmarked New Tech City after listening to an episode of it on this week’s On the Media. It also is a podcast. The episode This American Life included was about Ladar Levison and William Binney. Two men who like Ed Snowden are dedicated to exposing the US government’s invasion of the privacy of the lives of its citizens.

New Tech City claims to examine how technology impacts our lives.

I don’t use these podcasts via any service like Itunes (on which they both apparently are carried). I just listen to them on my computer.

I find “On the Media” to be consistently interesting and informative. Besides the New Tech City segment, I highly recommend the first two segments of this week’s show “Elections after Citizen’s United” and “Rocky Mountain Heist.”

The latter segment talks about how an expert on campaign finance disclosure was fooled into appearing on a rabidly anti-Democratic campaign film called “Rocky Mountain Heist” If you like irony, you will enjoy that segment.

American Drone Strike Kills 6 in Pakistani Tribal Areas – NYTimes.com

I thought of the US government’s continuing program to kill people remotely this morning when I read these words in “A Saint About to Fall” by Dylan Thomas

The skull of the earth is barbed with a war of burning brains and hair.

Strike in the time-bomb town,
Raise the live rafters of the eardrum,
Throw your fear a parcel of stone
Through the dark asylum,

Malala Yousafzai Donates Prize Money to Rebuild Gaza School – NYTimes.co

This person continues to inspire me.

Peering Into the Darkness – NYTimes.com

An article about writing. I think the author, Joe Hill, is a good writer.