Eileen had several days this week where she didn’t feel well. She thought she was having a bit of food poisoning, but we couldn’t quite figure it out. Last night my tummy wasn’t right for much of the night. I don’t feel too bad but it’s just enough to feel like I need to stay near a toilet. Great.

I hope this goes away today. I’m taking Meijer Metamucil

So I slept in a bit this morning. Got up and did laundry, cleaned the kitchen and made coffee despite feeling a bit off.

I’m blogging late again. Eileen and I played boggle after our late breakfast. Life is rough.

Rhonda and I had our first meeting about improvisation yesterday. I proposed that instead of paying me (as she originally offered) that she could help me with some questions I have about my organ playing. Yesterday I asked her to listen to the balance of a trio section of piece I am playing tomorrow. Very helpful.

After talking to her about what she has in mind, I think I can probably help her a bit. This is surprising to me. But what she’s looking to do at this time is to demystifying improvising a bit I think. With her skills and talent that shouldn’t be too hard.

Another benefit of meeting with Rhonda is that it will give us a structure to stay in touch a bit more since both of us seem so busy.

Rhonda told me about several musicians she is listening to these days.

I asked her what she listens to for fun, like for cooking. She mentioned the Punch Brothers.

I’m pretty sure I’ve mentioned them here before. Anyway, I recognize them.

But I didn’t recognize Sylvan Esso.

Rhonda said that she and her husband Mark saw them live. I’m always looking for new music. This is cool.

Later she texted me that she is learning this piece.

I Spotified this, but like this YouTube version by Bastian Fuchs better than what came up on Spotify.

I’ve never heard of this composer but I like this piece.

And while I’m embedding videos here’s a new Snarky Puppy one.

I haven’t made it all the way through but I do like the music of this group.

 Matt Haimovitz and Bach, Colonizing Columbia’s Campus – The New York Times

I have been way behind on my New York Times so these links aren’t too fresh. I bookmarked this one because it addresses an experience that I have had, namely making splendid music in a hostile environment.

The Telephone’s Muted Emergence – The New York Times

A little history about the word.

How Texas Teaches History – The New York Times

Initially I skipped this article when it first came out. I could see that it was about misinformation in history textbooks in Texas. This is not a new concept for me. However when I read a letter to the editor in Wednesday’s NYT (that’s as far as I am in trying to catch up), I was intrigued about the use of the passive and active voice and its relationship to obfuscating stuff.

On page 246 of my copy of Finnegans Wake, Joyce makes a reference to the collection of essays Our ExcFactification For Incamination of Work in Progress. I was surprised by this and began rooting around for my copy. It took me a couple of days to find it. I had it filed under Beckett.

Shirley Turkle footnotes this appearance of Louie C. K. in her book on conversation. It’s quite good.

I am blogging late in the day once again so I’m ending here.

I made a meme from a Turkle quote. I’m putting it and the video here and on Facebooger.

Stress is creeping back in my life (although my blood pressure remains good). Yesterday was an example. I was late for two things (I hate being late), a meeting with my boss and my second ballet class.

I am finding ballet class more stressful. Julie is weirdly being very nice to me. I’m sure we see this situation differently—-the fact that she is choosing to lay me off for a semester. She did email me the names of the dance people so that I can research them a bit and sound half way intelligent in a class discussion on Monday.

I enjoy being included in this way. But I find it incongruous that Julie seems to value my work so much, but at the same time does not see a need to include me in a semester.

I am wondering about it. It seems to me that by the time next fall rolls around I am likely to be doing something else that will be more interesting to me than resuming the ballet accompaniment work. Or else I will value my down time and feel that I can afford not to work at Hope College (something I’m not wild about anyway since it is a bigoted institution). 

Anyway, by the time choir rehearsal arrived yesterday I was exhausted and on edge. I gave a good rehearsal however. It was a difficult one since the soprano section was effectively absent. It was literally absent as we began rehearsal: not one soprano. One soprano had texted me she was ill and wasn’t coming. Another announced Sunday she was skipping rehearsal to attend an important soccer game in which her son was playing.

That leaves two. One arrived late and was also ill. Too ill to sing. She came to listen and I supported her and pointed it out to the other choristers. Finally the fourth arrived. She was exhausted and literally fell asleep during the rehearsal (at least that’s what she said, I didn’t notice it).

The difficulty is that the omission of the soprano part makes the remain sections have to weirdly adjust. It’s just not the same without one fourth of the music no matter how I try to play the part on the piano.

After rehearsal I was satisfied I had managed my basic trick which is to be the person in the room who is in the best mood and enjoying himself and keeping people alert and connected after a long day.

Today I have two meetings and three rehearsals. It shouldn’t be too bad a day despite that. I am meeting with a woman who has offered to be a sort of “den mother” to a short term children’s choir. She has said she will talk to parents and feel them out about how realistic it would be to do something like this. Unfortunately she is moving slowly and time is passing.

I am also meeting with one of the curates (Jodi). She asked me for some help looking at music resources for her to use with her programs. This is also easy.

I have been prepping for the Jodi meeting this morning and will do a little prep for the den mother meeting.

Another stress point is helping our office administrator keep the high quality of the bulletin. Yesterday she handed a proof copy (admittedly not finished) of Sunday’s bulletin. She had cut the psalm tone in two and stretched it from margin to margin distorting the music so badly that it was unreadable.

I tried to help her (in between all the other things I had to do). But finally ended up making the choir’s Wednesday rehearsal copy myself. This morning I plan to ask her to start over and not split the tone in two. We’ll see how that works out.

Last Sunday’s bulletin was riddled with mistakes. They were not the kind I expect my office administrator to catch (like inaccurate solo music titles and references to hymns we weren’t going to sing in the Music Notes that I had prepared). But Rev Jen and I have promised each other to keep working on this.

You can see I’m tired. I always find myself talking too much when I’m exhausted. Thanks for reading.

Ironic that I spent a large part of this morning beginning to prepare for an upcoming discussion in my Modern Dance class about the relationship between schools of Modern Dance and the music they choose to use. (Ironic because they are sort of laying me off)

I was surprised to learn that Diaghilev ballets (e.g. Rite of Spring) are not exactly what is meant by Modern Dance. Or at least this is a line that the Online Groves dictionary draws and it probably reflects a general understanding.

I finally got so overwhelmed that I emailed Julie and asked for a list of which dance people the kids will be reporting on.

My inter library loaned copy of Shirley Turkle’s new book, Reclaiming Conversation: The Power of Talk in a Digital Age. I spent a good amount of my morning time reading in it today because it’s a bit expensive for me to purchase right now.

It’s an interesting read so far. Turkle is looking at how people don’t talk to each other face to face and the resulting damage to our psychology.

She points out that the “crawl” (the banner running below many news shows)began during the Iran hostage crisis of 1981. People were trying to stay abreast of this story. The crisis ended but the banner remains. She holds it up as an example the kind of divided attention we exercise in our digital age.

She doesn’t document this but it seems reasonable to me.

Early on, she talks about the Goldilocks effect: “We can’t get enough of each other [only] if we can have each other at a digital distance—not too close, not too far, just right.”

“Technology enchants. It makes us forget what we know about life.” Shirley Turkle, Reclaiming Conversation

“Face-to-face conversation unfolds slowly,” Turkle observes, “It teaches patience. We attend to tone and nuance.”

“When we communicate on our digital devices, we learn different habits. As we ramp up the volume and velocity of our online connections, we want immediate answers. In order to get them, we ask simpler questions; we dumb down our communications, even on the most important matters. And we become accustomed to a life of constant interruptions.”

Turkle seems very interested in people who have lived with this phenomenon throughout their lives. She provides many anecdotal illustrations of her probing and attempts to understand.

“When things complicated, it’s easier to send a picture than to struggle with a hard idea.” Shirley Turkle, Reclaiming Conversation

Her basic point is that online life is “associated with a loss of empathy and a diminished capacity for self-reflection.”

She does footnote this idea to a study by a Stanford U Prof, Clifford Nass. (Media use, face-to-face communication, media multitasking, and social well-being among 8- to 12-year-old girls. Pea, Roy; Nass, Clifford; Meheula, Lyn; Rance, Marcus; Kumar, Aman; Bamford, Holden; Nass, Matthew; Simha, Aneesh; Stillerman, Benjamin; Yang, Steven; Zhou, Michael, Developmental Psychology, Vol 48(2), Mar 2012, 327-336)

DNA of Ancient Children Offers Clues on How People Settled the Americas – The New York Times

I love this shit.

How Hospitals Coddle the Rich – The New York Times

I cross posted this to my Facebooger feed. I did not know about this but it’s unsurprising and discouraging.

Jimmy Carter: A Five-Nation Plan to End the Syrian Crisis – The New York Times

Carter makes sense to me on this subject.

Yesterday, Julie Powell asked me if I minded laying out a semester as a ballet accompanist. Her reason is a bit convoluted, but of course I said I didn’t. Maybe I should have insisted on playing Tuesdays and Thursdays. She told me I was her first choice if I wanted to play. But her reasoning was that she was attempting to increase the pool of pianists by offering two classes on Monday and Wednesday to a pianist driving from Muskegon to “make it worth her while.”

This pianist is someone from Julie’s past who presumably needs the money. I mentioned to Julie that this was the way GVSU permanently sidelined me as an adjunct, by offering me work that I didn’t want to accept (morning and evening classes).

Walking home from this conversation I realized that I felt a certain sense of relief. My energy pie seems to be shrinking a bit.

The ballet accompaniment is not a lot of work, however I often pour my heart and intellect into my improvising. That does take energy.

It finally happened that Songza introduced to me to music I hadn’t heard before but like. “Pavane” (original by Fauré) covered by Hubert Laws began playing yesterday from a songza playlist. Eileen asked me what it was. She and I both liked it.

It turns out Laws did an album in 1971 of just “covers” of classical music.

I’m listening to the entire thing right now on Spotify. I like it.

Besides the Fauré  which begins the album the rest of the tracks are (in case you can’t read the pic above):

Rite of Spring (Stravinsky)
Syrinx (Debussy)
1st and 2nd movement of Bach’s Brandenburg #3.

This music totally fits my mood this morning.

I was thinking about Francis Jackson’s setting of Vaughan Williams tune for the text, “For All the Saints” (Sine nomine) this morning and realized that he refers throughout to other hymn tunes by Vaughan Williams including the melody for “Hail Thee Festival Day” (Salve Feste Dies) and “At the name of Jesus” (King’s Weston).

I think he does this with adroitness and beauty. I have been slaving over this particular little piece (12 pages). It was only this morning that I realized that many of the motives I like and recognize are not from the All Saints tune but the other tunes.

How ’bout that?

Frankly Speaking

I googled Jackson’s work to see if I could find an analysis that takes note of the use of other tunes and ran across this interview with him. Wikipedia says he was born in 1917. In two years he will be a hundred, eh? His music is youthful and engaging.

Everything Doesn’t Happen For A Reason — Tim Lawrence

Another article bookmarked to read. One of the people I “follow” on Facebooger put this link up. I read in it enough to bookmark it.

I used my morning blogging time reading this disturbing article:

A couple passages from my reading rattling around in my head this morning.

From a few days ago:

Luxury, then, is a way of
being ignorant, comfortably
An approach to the open market
of least information. Where theories
can thrive, under heavy tarpaulins
without being cracked by ideas.

This is the beginning of Amiri Baraka’s poem, “Political Poem.”

I keep thinking of it because i see myself as living in luxury. When I forget that I do it is indeed “a way of being ignorant.” My theories do sometimes feel like “tarpaulins” not “cracked by ideas.”

Then I read this passage this morning from Marcus Aurelius’s Meditations.

Betimes in the morning say to thyself, This day I shalt have to do with an idle curious man, with an unthankful man, a railer, a crafty, false, or an envious man; an unsociable uncharitable man. All these ill qualities have happened unto them, through ignorance of that which is truly good and truly bad. But I that understand the nature of that which is good, that it only is to be desired, and of that which is bad, that it only is truly odious and shameful: who know moreover, that this transgressor, whosoever he be, is my kinsman, not by the same blood and seed, but by participation of the same reason, and of the same divine particle; How can I either be hurt by any of those, since it is not in their power to make me incur anything that is truly reproachful? or angry, and ill affected towards him, who by nature is so near unto me? for we are all born to be fellow-workers, as the feet, the hands, and the eyelids; as the rows of the upper and under teeth: for such therefore to be in opposition, is against nature; and what is it to chafe at, and to be averse from, but to be in opposition?

I read that as sort of a guide to how to relate to people on Facebooger. Heh.

Somehow I managed to exhaust myself yesterday.

Not sure how this happened. The day started slowly as we waited for our friend, Barb Phillips, to arrive. After she showed up, we went to the Farmers Market, stopped and got some milk, went to my Mom’s apartment and picked up a stack of books to be returned the library, had lunch. Then I went to church a bit early for my rehearsal with Dawn for today and practiced organ. Dawn arrived and we rehearsed. Back home and entered my Mom’s books into the doc I keep to keep track of what she has seen. Interlibrary loaned three new books for her. Off to the library to turn books in and find new books. Back home and Eileen and Barb joined me for the walk to Mom’s nursing home. On the way back we parted ways and I walked to church to finish prepping for today.

By then I was pretty tired. But I walked home and made the dish I have been meaning to make. Eileen took a picture of it and put it on Facebooger.

Neither she nor Barb tasted it. I had two servings. Here once again is a link to the recipe.  I pretty much followed it, but couldn’t find shallots. Used sliced white onions instead. I purchased the mild Kimchi which was plenty spicy for me.

After putting this dish in the oven, I madly took a shower and then made myself a martini. It was along tiring but satisfying day.

It’s looking distinctly like my church is going to help me get my computers in better working condition.

A while back I quit using one of my laptops because it was running hot.

We had already put one new fan in it and due to our new financial situation I didn’t want to put more money into it.

At staff meeting this week I asked Rev Jen if I could submit a ticket to BandA the service that the church subscribes to that helps with all our computer issues. She said yes. Then I asked about upgrading my other laptop. She also said yes to that.

So I did that. I actually submitted what the service calls a Query about my other laptop. BandA responded quickly to that and suggest that instead of installing a solid state hard drive, I could improve speed by adding memory. I want to confirm that the church will do this before moving ahead. Also I think it might be good to get the older laptop functioning first.

But anyway, that’s cool.

My security software is expiring. We can’t really afford to put our money into computer security software at this point.

I asked my brother about free ones and he was very helpful. He told me what he uses and pointed out that PC mag reviews them.

The Best Free Antivirus for 2015 | PCMag.com

The info is sort of overwhelming but I looked at their page on Panda (which is one of the ones Mark uses).

Panda Free Antivirus (2016) Review & Rating | PCMag.com

I went with that. Downloaded and installed it today and uninstalled my present one.

Our friend, Barb Phillips, is coming to visit today. Yesterday Eileen’s Mom and sister Nancy came to Holland to Christmas shop. I joined them for lunch. I spent most of the day working on church stuff, picking anthems and practicing.

Managed the two mile walk back and forth to see my Mom with Eileen yesterday.

This is a good way to get some exercise in. My blood pressure has been low for a while now. Not sure exactly why (not losing the weight I want to), but it might be related to the fact that I finally got a little vacation.

Two days ago I decided to attempt to learn Francis Jackson’s “Fantasy on ‘Sine Nomine'” for next All Saints Sunday.

As you can see it is reproduced in hand written fashion. It is a twelve page romp and I have been practicing and poring over this piece in every spare moment.

I have a plan B if I don’t feel like it is ready by next Friday or so. I’m also learning a Scherzo by Alan Ridout which is much easier and could easily substitute for it.

I will eventually use the Ridout even if I do not resort to plan B on the Jackson piece.

I finished Silence: A Christian History by MacCulloch this morning. Despite my momentary distaste with his distaste in church music that lacks decorum (see yesterday’s blog), I still have great admiration for this book and its author.

I especially appreciate the way he manages an intelligent criticism of some of the stuff that I think is wrong with Christianity (its historical approach to slavery, homosexuality and antisemitism).

He is careful to show that in order to get to ethical places with these issues one cannot take the Bible as the “inerrant Word of God.” MacCulloch is above all a historian and constantly shows the benefit of approaching his subject through that lens.

There can be no Christianity without the canon of Scripture, and the Christian life has characteristically demanded a searching and researching of it. The great gift of the Enlightenment to Christianity, contextual criticism of the text, has not sought to deny that demand, only to enrich it.

Diarmaid MacCulloch

In distinguishing himself from those who misuse the Bible he quotes this lovely little sentence of Thomas Fudge, “A text without a context is a pretext for a proof text.”

If that needs unpacking for my less religious readers, some Christians go looking in the Bible for quotes to back up their preconceived ideas on, for example, the three issues mentioned above or other things. Quotes used in this fashion are “proof texts.”

I am still slowly working my way through MacCulloch’s wonderful bibliographic essays at the end of the book. He points the reader toward many fine books some of which I am tempted to purchase and read and study.

A Plan to Honor Martin Luther King at a Southern Civil War Symbol – The New York Times

Wow. Check out the origin of these outdoor sculptures.

ChurchPublishing.org: Food Fight : Struggling for Justice in a Hungry World by Chris Herlinger and Paul Jeffrey

I follow Jeffrey on Facebooger. He posts pics as he takes them. Excellent stuff.

In the penultimate section of Diarmaid MacCulloch’s book, Silence, MacCulloch seems to get a bit huffy for a minute. He sympathizes with the reformers Zwingli and Calvin who object to music in communal prayer and especially (and here McCullough seems to be weirdly in full agreement with them) “European Mass settings… which exhibit infuriatingly operatic and deeply inappropriate [!] settings of that congregational plea for peace in the Agnus Dei.”

He goes on to say that Mozart is a prime offender. And then writes this unfortunate sentence: “There is a decorum to be observed in sacred music which such solecisms [such as Mozart’s setting presumably] violate; I will not point to more modern instances in which that decorum has been forgotten.”

Sheesh. Decorum, eh? What about fiesta, dude? And a whole host of musical styles and genres that would be out of place in many a stuffy Anglican setting?

He goes on to cite Michael Tippett’s The Vision of Saint Augustine as an example of a contemporary “transcendent” setting, presumably one that does not violate decorum.

Here’s what I think is the third movement of the piece if you’re curious (like me) what it sounds like.

Hope College owns the CD of this piece. I think I can check it out. And while Tippett’s piece does sound interesting, this doesn’t draw me closer to MacCulloch’s view on this subject.

Other than this, I have found MacCulloch interesting and helpful.

On the other hand, I was drawn to Amiri Baraka’s vision of America in his poem, “Oklahoma Enters the Third World.”

But it’s not decorum, he indites. Rather it is the insipidity of our culture. It’s “candy brain-destroying/ fraud, fakery & Madness…” And “the money-dick slavery/ klan wax nazi white/ supremacy primitive cave/ savage airbrushed, violent/ greedy ignorant culture.”

San Francisco May Let Bicyclists Yield at Stop Signs – The New York Times

I have often wondered about bicycles and stop signs.

Review: ‘Futurity,’ in a Civil War Setting, Wishes for Today’s Technology – The New York Times

This seems to be a bit of an American/Indy thing. The music reminds me a bit of The Decemberists, but a bit more in the musical mode.

Setting the Oven to ‘Broil’ – The New York Times

This inspires me to use my broiler more.

Roasted Brussels Sprouts With Kimchi and Ginger | Serious Eats

Eileen bought brussel sprouts yesterday. Very generous of her since she never eats them. I’m thinking of making this recipe if I can find Kimchi.

The NRA will fall. It’s inevitable. – The Washington Post

Encouraging look at the changing population in the USA that will hopefully lead to weakening NRA’s influence on our laws and culture.

This man (Gigout) was in my dreams last night. I was visiting in his country home in France in the past. He showed me his innovative pedal devise (not something that actually exists) in which the notes were flat black buttons.

Then we looked out the window. In his view were many large trees bundled up like tumble weeds. They were moving over the hillside in a dance of beauty.

I said to Gigout, “Master, do you compose in this country home? These trees remind me of your music.” (This is not as weird as it might sound. French students have been known to call their teachers, maître… “master”)

In the dream I believe I was thinking more of the music of Vierne.

My dream Gigout responded that he did not composer at that place but that I was correct that his music resembled the dance of the tumble weeds.

An earlier dream I had last night found President Obama as Professor Obama reprimanding and encouraging students in the classroom. I looked on.

Not sure where all that came from.

I’m just about done with MacCulloch’s book on silence. I was happy to read that he sees Merton much as I do: as someone who changed from a basically conservative Catholic to one who connected to the entirety of humanity.

Nazi Past of Long Island Hamlet Persists in a Rule for Home Buyers – The New York Times

Keeping it white and Nazi in America since the 1930s.

The Fats You Don’t Need to Fear, and the Carbs That You Do – The New York Times

I bookmarked this to help me remember the good carbs. I was happy to see that I eat more of them.

From the Ear to the Page, the ‘Night Vale’ Podcast Becomes a Novel – The New York Times

This podcast sounds like fun.

My ballet instructor, Julie Powell, surprised me yesterday by asking me to switch to Tuesdays and Thursdays next semester. I demurred. She told me it was easier for the other accompanist to do the Mondays and Wednesdays since she drove from Muskegon and would benefit from back to back scheduling. I told Julie that I would be glad to drop out for a semester.

If that happens it could be the end of my work as a ballet accompanist which is fine. It’s midly disappointing not to be so “wonderful” at what I do that they would want to keep me on. But the prospect of free time outweighs for me the enjoyable work, online resources access and meager pay.

I have told Eileen if she thinks we need the money ($25 an hour) I will do the switch next semester. She is thinking on it.

At any rate the access to online resources will probaby continue for a while. I think they renew it annually.

My copy of Alone Together arrived yesterday. I was not happy to see underlining in it.

I try to purchase used books in as pristine condition as possible so that I myself can write in them. The underlining is very light and in pencil. It seems the previous reader mostly underlined words, presumably ones that he/she needed to either clarify the meaning of or think about.

After copying my notes from my library copy of the book, I read my own copy this morning with an eraser in hand. Not sure I will have the motivation to keep reading it like that.

Joplin and Bolcolm’s “Ghost Rag” kept creeping into my improvs yesterday. This beautiful music is on my mind for some reason. My brother gave me a bunch of files when I visited him. I made a playlist of the first CD of Alan Lomax’s wonderful collection of American music: Sounds of the South: A musical journey from the Georgia sea islands to the Mississippi delta.

For some reason, American sounds interest me greatly right now. I am enjoying listening to this CD (Thank you, Mark!) I have long admired Alan Lomax and his father John Lomax for their groundbreaking work in documenting the music people make in their lives.

Eleen is planning to drive up and see her Mom today. Dorothy (her mom) has been having some physical problems, swelling of her feet which is connected to some heart function which is failing (the upper chambers). Dorothy is 90 and still living alone. Eileen’s sister, Nancy, drops by every day and is very involved in making sure Dorothy is okay.

We left our Boggle game at Mark’s and Leigh’s house. Boggle has become a regular pastime for Eileen and me. Yesterday morning I drove early to Meijer to see if I could buy one. No luck. Eventually Eileen and I located a copy of “Big Boggle” at the local toy store and went and bought it in time to play after lunch (our favorite time for this activity).

Eileen trounced me yesterday at this new version which has more letter cubes.

Quotes from this morning’s reading

“One must sell it to someone, this sacred name of love.” James Joyce, Finnegans Wake

This leaped out at me. Commodification is such a constant drumbeat these days.

In “King Lear” (which I am slowly reading in the mornig as well) when the Duke of Cornwall asks the beleagured but honest (and supposedly exiled) Earl of Kent why his is angry, Kent replies referring to Cornwall himelf (and for some reason reminding me of some Facebooger conversation):

“That such a slave as this should wear a sword,
Who wears no honesty: such smiling rogues as these,
Like rats oft bite the holy cords a-twain,
Which are too intrinse t’unloose: smooth every passion
That in the natures of their Lords rebel,
Bring oil to fire, snow to the colder moods,
Renege, affirm, and turn their halcyon beaks
With every gale, and vary of their masters,
Knowing nought (like dogs) but following:
A plague upon your epileptic visage,
Smile you my speeches, as I were  a fool?”

CHOIR TEST

This is goofy. I bookmarked it to finish reading it because it’s so long.

Lecture Me. Really. – The New York Times

The argument for clear lucid lectures that outline an argument.

Making Pesto? Hold the Pine Nuts – The New York Times

I usually can’t afford the pine nuts anyway.

Finished reading This Day: Collected and New Sabbath Poems by Wendell Berry this morning. I have a mixed reaction to this collection. I like Berry but sometimes found him a bit preachy in this book, a bit religious for me. I like him angry. His “Mad Farmer” series is one of my favorites.

There’s also his notion of “Sabbath” which is a bit sectarian. The first Christians eventually abandoned praying on the Jewish Sabbath and began praying on the first day of the week: Sunday. There were reasons for this one of which was that their Christ was himself the new Sabbath, the new Law and actually embodied the entire notion of their faith as distinguished from the Jewish faith.

This is my liturgical training which apparently is harder to shake than an overall belief in God. I know that Christians now have almost as many notions of Sabbath and Sunday as their are sects/denominations. I take Berry’s notion to be sort of a mix of the Protestant “Sabbath” = Sunday and the more prevalent idea that one can worship better in nature than in a church building.

Nature has definitely been important to me in my life. And it often feels more spiritual than the prayer I experience with other people present.

And I like Berry’s attitude toward nature. I also like his politics. I read this book both from the beginning and working my way backwards from the end  one poem at a time. I am curious to see how American poets and artists manage to make art after the cataclysmic time we have lived through (and  are living through). So I didn’t wait until the end in a chronological ordering such as this to find out.

This odd blend of feelings that I have about Berry’s beautiful work is faintly echoed in my experience of church yesterday. On the one hand, the music went well. The Bach cello sonata movement was well played and is a beautiful piece of music.

My drummers quickly came through with good playing on the service music and the last hymn. It was especially satisfying to watch a young fifth grader acquitting herself with a bit of unusual skill on the maracas in the Fraction Anthem. The choir sounded pretty good on the little Handel adaptation and my Handel postlude showed the hard work I have been putting in on it.

On the other hand, it felt odd to be immersed in the Bach cello piece and surrounded by parishioners talking and ignoring us like a particularly lively restaurant or bar. The closing hymn was “We are marching” the South African freedom anthem.  The drums played along and it was mostly voices and drums (with some reinforcement from the piano during the procession). I could sense that the cong was ready to break out into applause after this.

I jumped on the organ and began the Handel concerto movement. Although most of my attention was on my playing it was hard not to notice that I was competing once again with the congregational buzz.

Having an understanding of prayer as community causes me to appreciate communal moments and congregational buzz as healthy stuff. But I do wonder about the gentle beauty that gets drowned out. I don’t know what that means. For me the beauty is essential. I’m not sure it’s the language of the people I serve beyond the notion that the music is probably “good” music and its interesting that I persist in doing such a wide variety.

It’s weirdly related to Berry’s silence on race in his work or at least in this book of poetry. The history of America is the history of racism. And of course it’s still playing out.

As I write I am listening to a playlist I made this morning. Once again the gentle strains of Bolcolm’s “Ghost Ray” are playing. To it, I have added some of the more gentle renditions of Joplin that I like.

Maybe this is the deal. An old man typing on a computer listening to gentle beauty.

I woke up with this gentle thing in my head (Graceful Ghost Rag by William Bolcolm). I showed it to my brother this week and he remarked that it was beautiful. I have to agree. I just played slowly through it. Unfortunately there is one stretch in the right hand that is too big for my little hands. But I just roll it.

I am feeling calm this morning. Got up and made coffee (blood pressure okay today, but gained a pound). Read in Finnegans Wake. I have added an extradordinary web site to my daily Finnegans Wake reading: finwake.com.

It effectively uses a split screen with hyper links. Finnegans Wake is a natural for the hyper link thing. I am continuing reading the original text, McHugh’s Annotations, and Campbell’s Skelton Key. But I find that this site helps me with pagination and also if I use it as a final read of a section I am reading and studying, it draws the whole meaning together in a way I find helpful.

I am finishing up MacCulloch’s Silence: A Christian History. This dude is very erudite and his footnotes are full of excellent shit. God help me I am thinking of checking a couple more theological writers and their books out: Martin Laird and Rachel Muers. 

A Sunlit Absence – Martin Laird – Oxford University Press

McCulloch quotes from this book: “it has been well said that silence ‘has no opposite and is the ground of both sound and the absence of sound.”

Wow.

Then Mcculloch writes this beautiful sentence: “It [silence] is an ambassador between the mundane and the sublime, solving tensions and miseries which words cannot touch.” p. 218

Then there’s this book.

Keeping God’s Silence: Towards a Theological Ethics of Communication – Rachel Muers

He calls it a further recent development of the discussion of the silence of God. A “theology of communication” interests me.

wandelweiser – Michal Pisaro

He also footnotes this guy and his web site saying that Pisaro has futher wise words on silence. I didn’t find any essay by this guy that struck me yet, but I did find a link on his page to this:

I don’t know if you can read that, but if you’re interested click on the pic to go to this short beautiful little testimonial about Pisaro’s music. It made me want to check it out. I’m listening to this right now:

This reminds me of the beginning of McCulloch’s chapter 9. He introduced me to the concept of “wild-tracks.” These are extra recordings sound engineers make to use to patch up a recording of an interview or panel or something. They reinforce the idea that “every silence is different and distintive.”

Today is the last day of my time away, at least for now. My brother, Mark, and his wife, Leigh, have been gracious hosts this week and last. I have enjoyed the conversation and time together. I miss this sort of thing. Maybe now that Mark is living closer he and I can have these conversations more often.

This second set of three days away has been more calm for me, less desperate feeling. Once again I practiced at St. Paul’s UCC church. This time the musician there did not respond to a request, but the woman in the office was very happy to authorize me for a couple sessions. It was very helpful.

Mark fussed with my lap top a bit and it is running faster. He has offerred to install a solid state hard drive if I buy one. This, of course, would speed things up. We are pretty strapped for bucks right now, so this is not an immediate option. It is nice that he was able to remove a ton of Google Chrome start up options that eats up resident memory inevitably slowing down the stupid stupid Windows 8 operating system.

I am planning one more extensive rehearsal session after driving home today. I am playing a Handel organ concerto movement for the postlude tomorrow. It’s a good transcription by James Engel in D minor. I have a note question about the ending but haven’t been able to identify the orginal concerto and Engel gives no reference. I have a working solution but will probably check my own copies of organ transcriptions and see if I can find this movement. I suspect the original might not be in D minor since all of those in D minor on the IMSLP (Intermational Music Score Library Project)do not seem to have this movement in them.

I’m also rehearsing a gamba sonata movement by Bach I will be accompanying in the prelude. I like these sonatas where Bach writes an interesting right hand part (as opposed to the more usual practice of the time of expecting the keyboard player to improvise the harmony based on the bass line). But due to that, the accompaniment is a little like a six page two part invention. I and my cellist find this piece very attractive.

Tomorrow church should be fun.  I am expecting 5 parishioners to play percussion tomorrow on my service music and probably the closing hymn. Plus the choir is singing a Handel SAB adaptation by Hal Hopson and the prelude will be the cello piece and the postlude the Handel organ concerto movement. Should be satisfying.

Street Artists Infiltrate ‘Homeland’ With Subversive Graffiti – The New York Times

Amusing. Either the people involved with the show couldn’t read Arabic or were too busy to notice the subversive messages the graffitti artists put on the wall. The online comments run the range of evaluation of the show’s racism.

The Downfall of Lamar Odom, Played Out on TV – The New York Times

Amazing story. I know nothing about reality tv. This is a tragic story of real stuff.

Voter ID Battle Shifts to Kansas – The New York Times

Stopping students from voting.

Hilla Becher, Photographer Who Chronicled Industrial Scenery, Dies at 81 – 

When I was young, I made a present for my friend, Dave Barber, by taking pictures of water towers. I think these are cool pics.

MusicBrainz Picard

Mark uses this to organize his mp3s. He says it’s good.

Having a good time at my brother’s house. So good, I’m blogging late and not going to do much of a blog post.

Now it’s even later. I guess this is going to be pretty much a place marker blog so that if you come back you a little something new. It’s been my goal to update this blog daily since before the word, “blog,” was coined (at first I thought of it as my web site built to engender conversation and connection).

It’s 5:26 PM in Gregory Michigan. It’s been a beautiful bracing day. The drive into Chelsea to practice organ had me gaping at the magnificent sky and clouds.

Having a wonderful time, wish you were here!

Fruit of good labours | TLS

I hate to be all bible and shit, but this article is about a recent discovery of a first draft of the King James Translation in the hand of one of the translators.

Build a Website – Squarespace

My niece, Emily, has said that she is enjoying using Squarespace. I bookmarked it to check it out later.

Up early this morning again this Thursday preparing food to take to my brother’s and his wife’s house. Last Thursday I was a mess. This morning I was a tad less of a mess. Also last night’s choir rehearsal was not the disaster the previous week’s was.

My pie crust didn’t fall together very well this morning (a lot like last week… maybe cooking at the break of dawn isn’t always the best thing to do, eh?). But this time I was a bit more reasonable about it and instead of starting over I just put what I had together. It’s not beautiful but I think it will probably taste good.

After cleaning up my mess, I made marinara sauce again. This time I used Eileen’s leftovers from canning. It looks (and smells) to me like it worked pretty well.

I had fun last night at the drum rehearsal. One young man showed up with his mom in tow. I invited her to play (she must have been thinking of doing so anyway because she said she used to be a percussionist). A bit later, a choir member arrived with her grand daughter who told me Sunday she wanted to play. This young person did a good job drumming as well as on maracas on the Fraction anthem. The mom added some nice fills and the young man was obviously skilled.

I was more prepared for the choir’s negativity last night. More patient and beat myself up less afterwards. We spent a half hour on two pieces, one beautiful (and I mean beautiful) renaissance motet by Josquin and the other a newer piece called The Choir Invisible, a setting of lines from George Eliot’s poem. Eliot’s wikipedia article lists 12 volumes of poetry and only 7 novels. Who knew?

It’s 8:50 AM and Eileen hasn’t come downstairs yet. Last Thursday I was dragging. But this morning I am in a much better space and ready to go. Halfway to being recharged, I think.

Somehow I ran across a review of Sherry Turkle’s new book, Reclaiming Conversation: The Power of Talk in a Digital Age. I was intrigued. So I interlibrary loaned a couple books by the author including Reclaiming Conversation.

Alone Together: Why We Expect More from Technology and Less from Each Other (2011) arrived recently. I have read the author’s introduction and am 13 pages into it and am hooked.

Turkle is a clinical psychologist as well as founder and director of the MIT Initiative on Technology and Self. She has written two other books that look interesting.

The Second Self: Computers and the Human Spirit (1984). The title is a tribute to Simone de Beauvoir’s book with the same title.

and Life on the Screen: Identity in the Age of the Internet (1995).

Turkle seems to be in running commentary with what’s happening to our society in the last few decades.

I closed yesterday’s blog musing about the lack of depth in so much of what passes for converation and thought online. Turkle is doing research and thinking about this as well.

From notes on my morning’s reading in Alone Together (written in 2015):

“I leave my story (Alone Together) at a point of disturbing simmetry: we seem determined to give human qualities to objects and content to treat each other as things.”

“I believe in our culture of simulation, the notion of authenticity is for us what sex was for the Victorians–threat and obsession, taboo and fascination.”

“Authenticity, for me, follows from the ability to put oneself in the place of another, to relate to the other because of a shared story of human experiences: we are born, have families, and know loss and the reality of death.”

Some thinkers (notably David Levy author of Love and Sex with Robots 2007) seem “to celebrate an emotional dumbing down, a willful turning away from the complexities of human partnerships—the inauthentic as a new aesthetic.”

Speaking of an elderly woman estranged from her son and petting Paro the therapeutic robot:  “In attempting to provide the comfort she believes she needs (to the robot), she comforts herself.”

Lawsuits in Knoedler Forgery Case Are Set for Trial – The New York Times

One dude made believable forgeries of Pollock and Rothko. He was never identified, but somebody is big trouble now.

Marc-André Hamelin Performs Variations on Paganini – The New York Time

I would be interested in hearing stuff by this guy. Recently I played Schumann’s Study after a Caprie of Paganini which is not even mentioned in this review. It’s a marvelous piece and I said before that it demonstrates how a virtuosic piece need not be empty display.

British Group Says It Found Holigost, a Ship in Henry V’s Fleet – The New York Times

Is this cool or what?

John McCain’s Comments on Bowe Bergdahl Bring Rebuke From Lawyer – The New York Times

Why am I surprised that McCain is contributing the misinformation around this story? Very frustrating.

I got up yesterday morning and was so relaxed that for a while I forgot I had to go to work. I do like having a later begin time with the ballet classes. However, on the walk home from the second class I began to feel tired. I wonder if it had anything to do with the fact that I checked the distance between my home and the ballet class building. It is .7 miles. That means by walking back and forth twice I walk 2.8 miles. It’s enough to make you tired.

Today I have a full day planned even though it’s technically a day off. I am meeting in separate rehearsals with Amy, my violinist, and Dawn, my cellist at 10 AM and noon respectively. Then I have a half hour to get up to my piano student’s fancy house on Lake Michigan to give him a piano lesson. I moved all this activity from Thursday and Friday to today in order to clear the days so that I can leave town again.

I was upstairs messing with my book collection yesterday. I think I would like to have all my art books in one place, so I started bring some more down to join those already in our living room. It seems to me like art books and “coffee table” books need to be somewhere where I can grab them and peruse them easily. If they are available downstairs this will be more likely to happen.

I grabbed this book to look at.

It’s actually an Art Annual. The topic is “The Academy.” And though the primary concept is one of the Academic schools of art, I find the topic fascinating.

The concepts of academy, university and college have always held an attraction for me. What do they mean today? What is the history of the idea?

According to the introductory essay in this book by Thomas B. Hess, the first academy was the one Plato ran near the Acropolis.

The idea reemerges in the Renaissance as an organiztion that challenged the concept of the Guild which had many rules and was rigid in its ideas and conduct.

I find this hilarious. Because if one associates the idea of “Academy” with universities and colleges, they are now the institution weighed down by rules and rigidity.

As I was thinking about this and reading in my beautiful old book, it occurred to me that the resonance of an idea like academy and the ensuing contemplation of its implications is a deeper resonance than can be sustained in the Interwebs.

Helpful to remember.

I am very bad with dates. I have trouble remembering birthdays and anniversaries of the people I care about. I keep getting asked how long I have worked at Grace so this morning I set out to figure it out. I found a copy of the original contract I worked out with Rev Jen. It is dated Sept 1, 2005. How about that? I can see now how very lucky I was to find this gig.

I was looking at an old resume which I prepared for an unsuccessful attempt at getting adjunct work at Hope College. It said that my tenure at the Lutheran church stopped in 2004. I quit my Catholic church job in 1999. This means I wasn’t able to stay away from church work very long. You can see from my resume that if I continue on at Grace for two more years it will be as long as served Our Lady of the Lake.

Wow. I put the anniversary date of my contract into my Google calendar. This is how I keep track of dates.

Yesterday I resumed my work at Grace with a bit of renewed energy and good humor. I attribute this to getting away for a few days and hope I can increase these with a few more days off this week.

The organ music that I practiced so hard did not go perfectly. But as I remarked to Eileen alone after church, just think how badly it would have gone without the intense prep I put in. And it wasn’t bad. I had trouble concentrating.

Between the choir pregame and the service I quietly played through the psalm of the day several times because when I rehearsed the choir from the organ I could tell that I was having trouble concentrating on it. My plan was to rehearsal the organ music before service but didn’t get to that. I think it would have gone better if I had had the chance for a last minute intense prep.

This is odd because my history is not to rely on last minute intensity like that, instead to prep steadly for a long period of time before a performance. I can remember Ray Ferguson telling me that sometimes I would be working on learning a piece thoroughly right up until performance.  He was right about that.

When I think about the fact that I have been working at Grace for ten years and remember that these ten years (and a bit before) represent a sea change in my own attitude towards and technique of practicing, when I think of all that it makes sense to me that I feel like I rehearse perform better at the age of 64 than I have ever done before.

I think I’ve mentioned here before John Hartford’s reaction when he found out he had a terminal disease: he started practicing hard. Less time left.