So church was weird for me yesterday. The music went well. People participated. But I found myself thinking about the story in the gospel and current events.

The gospel story was the story of the Good Samaritan. The preacher yesterday (not Rev Jen) seemed to think that everyone knows this story. Here it is anyway in the brief clear way it’s found in the book of Luke in the Bible.

“A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho, and fell into the hands of robbers, who stripped him, beat him, and went away, leaving him half dead. Now by chance a priest was going down that road; and when he saw him, he passed by on the other side. So likewise a Levite, when he came to the place and saw him, passed by on the other side. But a Samaritan while traveling came near him; and when he saw him, he was moved with pity. He went to him and bandaged his wounds, having poured oil and wine on them. Then he put him on his own animal, brought him to an inn, and took care of him. The next day he took out two denarii, gave them to the innkeeper, and said, `Take care of him; and when I come back, I will repay you whatever more you spend.’ Which of these three, do you think, was a neighbor to the man who fell into the hands of the robbers?

What always strikes me about this story is that Samaritans were the reviled group in the situation. Levites and priests were the decent people of their time. It’s hard to hear it that way, but I think that is closer to the context. So Jesus turns things upside down and makes the pattern for being a neighbor someone who more likely face barriers himself to being treated fairly much less with compassion.

I tend to hear the “good” in the phrase “good Samaritan” as ironic. You know like the “good negro” or the “good cop.”

This man didn’t fit the stereotype of his group. He wasn’t one of those people who frighten “decent people” with their very presence. He was one of the “good” ones, the house slave in the parlance of American slavery. Someone to be trusted contrary to the norm.

I ask myself how Howard Thurman or Thomas Merton might talk to us about what’s happening in America now. They might suggest that it’s not the people on either side of questions that are the problem. It’s the hate itself, It’s the willful ignorance itself, it’s the violence itself, that is driving the situation.

And each one of us has an opportunity to work on this. In ourselves. That’s where we meet the hate, the ignorance and the violence. It is ourselves that we can change not others.

Anyway, church felt weird and hollow yesterday.

We had one young mother leave in a huff, her child and bemused husband trailing behind her during the homily. The preacher had just announced a rally this Saturday in Grand Rapids supposedly to protest police killings. I wonder why these people left. It was sort of emblematic of where we are in America right now, failing to connect with each other despite our differences.

How Trump Can Save the G.O.P. – The New York Times

I have bookmarked this article by Sam Tanenhaus to read even though it looks like he’s wrong about a lot.

Animating van Gogh’s Life With 62,450 Oil Paintings – The New York Times

I seem to remember a short story I read years ago about this very thing, not necessarily van Gogh. In fact I seem to remember the painting animated was Breugel’s Wedding Dance.

Today is Marcel Proust’s birthday. I decided to look at some passages by him that I had noted as I read his great work, In Search of Lost Time. I have been missing reading poetry in the morning. This felt a bit like that for me. Sure enough, the first passage was practically a poem. I liked it so much I made a meme and posted it on Falsebook this morning.

So I’m home, sans Eileen. After unloading the car yesterday, I was surprisingly fatigued. I did make myself go to church, put up the hymn, and go over music for today. I noticed that the Gloria was omitted from the service for some reason. Our celebrant today is Val Ambrose. I will point the missing canticle out to her and tell her she can decide if she wants to omit it or add it. We have been singing a metrical version which is right in the hymnal.

I have Proust in several editions and at least two translations. Lydia Davis seems to have done a fine job. I only own the first volume, Swann’s Way, in her translation. I’m not seriously thinking of rereading this book, even in the new translation. Proust’s ideas, like Bach or Shakespeare, continue to inform and shape my world view.

It is fun to go back to my worn volumes and reread sections, however.

I’m about halfway through Hystopia by David Means. This is his first novel, but he has published three volumes of short stories. I’m finding him as engrossing as David Foster Wallace. I hope he doesn’t drop the ball, but so far it keeps sucking me in.

It’s good to be home, but I miss Eileen, of course. I have already spent some time with Bach on the piano this morning as well as listen to Salonen’s Violin Concerto. I embedded a bit of this last Friday. It makes me want to dig out my Ligeti Piano Etudes which are devilishly difficult for me.

Well, it’s time for me to rustle up some breakfast and then get ready for work.

‘This Has Pushed a Button’: Killings in Kenya Ignite National Outcry – The New York Times

A story I am following.

Staying at the Hatch cabin is a very inexpensive holiday. Eileen is now part owner of it and it seems silly to give the Hatch family a check as we used to do when we used it for the Jenkins get-together. In addition, this time we stopped at the Meijer grocery store in Holland on the way out of town. In past years, we have arrived at Grayling and made a grocery stop. Of course shopping in a tourist area grocery store is usually more expensive than doing so in your local store, so that was a bit of a savings.

The only expense is keeping us connected to the wi-fi via our 4G subscription. I think we have a 5 gigabyte limit per month. So far we have exceeded this by about 7 more gigabytes. At $15 a gigabyte this means our bill will be increased by $105 which is not a bad cost for a holiday.

Eileen and I are planning one last morning together here at the cabin. When Eileen gets up we will have breakfast together and then boggle. After that, we will load up Mom’s car with most of the stuff we brought with us and I will drive back to Holland. Then I will unload the car, go to church and practice and post hymns for tomorrow. I will probably get a grocery trip in there somewhere. I will stop and see Mom tomorrow.

I would also like to work on typing up more of my notes on The News: A User’s Handbook before Eileen gets up, so I’m going to make it a bit shorter here today.

Yesterday I spent a lot of time with Brahms and Distler on my electric piano. After the Jenkins fam left, I discovered that I could plug in my speakers to my electric piano so that I wouldn’t have to wear headphones to practice. Eileen said she preferred hearing what I play to the thunk thunk thunk of the sound of me playing silently. This has made playing a bit more pleasant. I am playing Distler tomorrow for the prelude and postlude. The pieces I am playing are from a collection he did of keyboard pieces for domestic use, not public. They are charming little pieces and I have  played through most of them this holiday. I do like Distler.

So it’s been a good time away. I am gaining some slight perspective and losing some of my burnout. Eileen said we could return any time the cabin is empty to spend more time here. That would be nice.

Artificial stingray is ‘living robot’ – BBC News

No news links today. Like many people, I have been following the Dallas shooting and have been reading my NYT online daily.  When following breaking news, some common sense is important. On The Media has put it this way:

Astronomers discover the first water clouds outside our solar system | ExtremeTech

I love this shit.

Tomorrow I get in the car and drive home to Holland without beautiful Eileen. There is a light fog hanging over the trees just beyond the cabin in Grayling where I am now sitting. This vacation has helped. But last night found me yelling at Judy Woodruff while watching Wednesday night’s PBS New Hour on YouTube (we have difficulty streaming this show at home and it’s practically impossible to do so via 4G here at the cabin, so I was watching the show from the night before).

Woodruff was interviewing Shannon Coffin, former counsel for Dick Cheney, and Stephen Vladeck, professor at University of Texas Law School.  It boiled down to Woodruff blocking Vladeck’s attempt to discuss the facts of the law and the case and instead goading Coffin into outrageous partisan statements and thus giving him most of the air time. Here’s a link to this segment and a transcript.

 It’s so discouraging to see American TV news people be so dumb. It doesn’t help to listen to the BBC where the interviewers are often insightful and articulate. 

We’re using up all the food we brought with us and the food Mark and Leigh left us. Last night I made a quiche using Bisquick for the crust (something I wouldn’t normally do, but I was being lazy). The cheese for the quiche was chevre and chevre crottin. I cooked up some garlic, onions, and mushrooms. We will have leftovers of this for breakfast this morning I am sure. It was pretty good.

We will drive into Grayling today to pick up some more supplies. We will replenish some stuff that the Hatch fam likes to keep at the cabin as well as stuff for Eileen and me to use this evening and tomorrow. When Eileen’s Mom and sister Nancy arrive, I guess they will be eating out more than cooking in the cabin. Eileen is looking forward to that I think.

I have been making playlists on Spotify for the books I have been reading by Alex Ross and Ben Ratliff. I’m sorry to report buy bulk medication online diazepam 10mg that I am beginning to think that Ratliff’s book, Every Song Ever: Twenty Ways to Listen in An Age of Music Plenty, is not impressing me very much. I was hoping for some help in thinking about the amazing musical abundance one can access these days. Instead, he zeros in on small ideas some of which are sort of silly like one chapter entitled “Church Bell Tone: Stubbornness and the Single Note.”

In this chapter he discusses performances in which players like Charles Mingus and Neil Young will play one note for a long time. Sheesh. I know this is something to think about but it hardly seems constituent in creating a “how to listen to music now” book. Especially in the sixth chapter out of twenty.

Ross, on the other hand, continues to draw me in whether he is writing a chapter on Radiohead or one on Esa-Pekka Salonen. In Salonen’s case, Ross describes  his (Salonen’s) exultation at passing on the L.A. Symphony to a new leader and being able to compose full time. This chapter was full of names of composers and pieces I searched for on Google. I listened to compositions by Salonen as I cooked last night.

I find it so refreshing to read about musicians like Salonen and the L.A. Symphony musicians who are post-symphonic and academic classical music idiocy in their approach to music. Ross falls into this category as well. I am grateful to discover people who have a unconstrained new sense of freedom and beauty in music.

Finished The News: A User’s Manual by Alain de Botton. Although Botton is clearly writing from an English perspective (he lives in London according to the bio in the book), he still has a lot of useful insights and ideas about our relationship to the news and how the news could do its job better.

His basic insight (to sum up unforgivably reductively) is that the news needs more of the techniques used in literature and art.

It isn’t the news per se that is the problem, only the ‘life’-inhibiting version of it that too often abounds. However, if Tolstoy, Flaubert or Sophocles were in the newsroom, the medium might well give us more of what we need in order to keep our souls from ‘dying, for what were WAR AND PEACE, MADAME BOVARY and ANTIGONE in their original state but … news events?”

Alain Botton, The News: A User’s Manual

For example when covering economics, the preponderance of coverage is reporting on changes in stock value. This kind of reporting leaves out most of the story of businesses like the hopes and goals of the people involved, for example.

I notice that having finished this book, I look at news reports a bit differently. For example, I read the report in today’s NYT,  “As Britain takes stock of Iraq War, Iraqis grimly Assess its Aftermath”  By FALIH HASSAN and TIM ARANGO. Botton’s ideas helped me see the value in the background material in this report. Botton says that in order to understand world events in better perspective, we as readers need to have a better idea of what is normal in other parts of the world. We need to be able to see people not as others but as sharing our own humanity and frailties. I think this report does a good job of that.

 The Rise, Fall and Possible Renewal of a Town in Laos on China’s Border – The New York Times

Then there’s this report by Sebastian Strangio. He also doe a good job of fleshing out the picture on the ground in this story. This story interests me because Eileen and I visited Yunnan province mentioned in this story. We were visiting Elizabeth and Jeremy in Kunming. This story talks about a proposed high speed railway between Vientiane, the capital of Laos, and Kunming.

Sometimes when I am reading a report in the NTY, I have little patience for rambling background, especially if I think the writer is trying to do the human interest lead in to get me to read the report.

But now after considering Botton’s ideas, I see more value in this kind of reporting especially if it clothes a story that is pertinent in my view.

Mother, Writer, Monster, Maid | Vela

This article by writer, by Rufi Thorpe, is one of the best descriptions I remember of how necessary it is to be a real person if you are an artist, necessary to your life and your work. I like how she ends, quoting, another writer’s mom who told her, “Do what you want!” This thought is profound when we think carefully about what we actually want in life. Many thanks to Elizabeth for posting this in a link on fecesbooger.

BBC – Culture – How India changed the English language

I love discussions of the interrelations of language and the origin of words.

How to Talk to Fireflies – The New York Times

The author and others talk to fireflies using a little flashing light. Eileen and I looked at the accompanying video. Very cool. I love fireflies.

Consciousness: The Mind Messing With the Mind – The New York Times

 Consciousness doesn’t have to emerge. It’s built into matter, perhaps as some kind of quantum mechanical effect. One of the surprising developments in the last decade is how this idea has moved beyond the fringe.

I finished reading The Noise of Time by Julian Barnes yesterday. This morning I typed up my notes on this book. I’ve also started Testimony: The Memoirs of Dmitri Shostakovich as related to and edited by Solomon Volkov. As I read the latter, I am finding the Barnes novel to be a nice sheen on the material. I think I will be able to sort out the Shostakovich of the novel from the Testimony. In fact, I am hoping that is where Barnes got most of his character and story. But we’ll see.

It looks like I am now officially not an employee of Hope College. This is the cause of a slight sigh of relief for me since my experience of this institution has been largely negative. This is despite the idea that Eileen and I were looking for a small town with a college in it when I finished my Masters degree in 1987 and chose Holland and Hope College. The irony of course is that the resources I was hoping a small college would provide to an otherwise provincial situation of living in a small town in America are abundantly available online.

So much are these resources available that the fact that I can no longer access Groves Dictionary, the Oxford English Dictionary, and Jstor online with my Hope staff status does not trouble me as much as I feared it might.

I never quit this position. Just like I never quit my adjunct position at Grand Valley State U. I just turned down teaching (playing class in the case of Hope) for specific semesters. It will be interesting to see if Hope follows GVSU’s pattern of never contacting me again.

In the meantime, I seem to be relaxing into vacation even though it ends for me this Saturday when I drive back to Holland for church on Sunday. I’m almost done with The News: A User’s Manual by Alain de Botton. One of his main points is that news should provide perspective with more in depth and imaginative reporting. Perspective for myself is something I am seeking in my respite this week. I hope it works.

Eileen and I are unlocking the mysteries of technology together. Please don’t laugh but we have figured that if we’re not using the internet our 3G devices should be on airplane mode. Thus we won’t be using up our time inadvertently. We are already 2 Gigabytes over our monthly allowance. The $30 this costs us ($15 per Gigabyte) is well worth it. But it’s silly to pay for it when we’re not using it.

Ben, Tony, Mark, and Leigh drove away yesterday. I’m staying up here until Saturday. Eileen gets a day by herself and her Mom and sister, Nancy, arrive on Sunday.

It was good seeing the fam. And it’s good to have some quiet time alone with Eileen. I have been getting a lot of reading done. This is probably largely what I will do today. Eileen and I had a nice breakfast together and then, sooprise sooprise, played Boggle. We got Tony to join us a couple of times but mostly while they were here, the group just watched (or ignored us) as Eileen and I played.

I haven’t finished any books yet. But I did read all the poems in Mark’s copy of Wendell Berry’s new book (mentioned in yesterday’s post). I’m reserving my second novel (Hystopia by David Means) until AFTER I finish The Noise of Time by Julian Barnes.

Somehow I have lost my Hope College online privileges. A few days ago, I tried to log on and look at the Oxford English Dictionary and it told me my privileges had expired. I will email the dance department secretary and find out if it’s possible to have this back. If not, it’s not the end of the world. I’ll purchase a community Hope College Library card.

I have the music for this Sunday sitting in a draft email. All I have to do is email it this morning. Mary the person who does the bulletins isn’t even in the office for another hour or so.

We watched Brazil last night as a group at the cabin. It was startling to me how pertinent Gilliam’s insights about terrorism and the tyranny of the state are to the present time. The movie was released in 1985, over 30 years ago, 30 years when technology of killing and monitoring populations has exponentially increased in its efficiency.

Mark let me read in his new Wendell Berry book, A Small Porch: Sabbath Poems 2014 and 2015 together with “The Presence of Nature in the Natural World: A Long Conversation.

The second poem in it is “The National Security Agency.” It ends like this:

I’m not going to tell you whether
or when I’m coming back. Don’t wait.
Don’t try to call. I have no phone.
There’s not much left I want to shoot,
but I would like to shoot a drone.

The way states break into the lives of people is well etched in Gilliam’s movie, Brazil. Near the beginning and again near the end, people dressed in riot gear break down doors and capture malfactors whose loved ones are asked to sign a receipt for in the first case. In the second case, the viewer can no longer witness the scene (as it is being told from the point of view of Sam Lowry who is under the horrible straight jacket hood), but we do hear gun shots that presumably were killing the woman of Lowry’s dreams.

I abhor the concept of drones, remote killing. I abhor the concept of killing in and of itself. But when the impersonality of the “state” (US or “Brazil, the movie”) is added it sends a chill into the heart.

On several of the podcasts I listen to, the web builder software, Squarespace, is a sponsor. I find it annoying that they have decided to use the word “beautiful” in their ads and campaign. I counted in one ad the use of the of the word, beauty, 3 times.

I must be a bit of a fuddy duddy luddite, because I can’t envision a “beautiful” website. Beauty is an important concept to me.

Wendell Berry puts it this way in Mark’s book:

Beauty is the crisis of our knowing,
the signature of love indwelling
in all created things, called from nothing
by love, recognized and answered
by love in the human heart, not reducible
by any analysis to any fact.

Sonnet 65: Since brass, nor stone, nor earth, nor boundless sea – Poetry Foundation

Wendell Berry quotes this sonnet in one of his poems in Mark’s book. Very cool.

Citing Safety, Bookseller Pulls Out of Hong Kong Pro-Democracy March – The New York Times

the state successfully represses another voice.

A friend of mine on Fecesbook “shared” this video. I found the choreography amazing. Check out and compare to the original slick video.

I’m up alone at the cabin. I have made coffee and studied a bit of Greek.

I’m happy to report that my BP finally came down today to 131/92. Sheesh. I can’t explain why it spiked last Wednesday, the first vacation day I took it. I guess the deal is to monitor it.

I’m listening to Shostakovich’s Fifth symphony as I type this morning. I have been enjoying Julian Barnes’ little novel based on some incidents in Shostakovich’s life, The Noise of Time. Yesterday I picked up Testimony: The Memoirs of Dmitri Shostakovich as related to and edited by Solomon Volkov. This book was given to me and is inscribed by Larry Curran. Larry is on my list of friends who have dropped me like a hot potato. I knew him in grad school. I should say that I knew and grew to care about him in grad school. But one day after we had both graduated, he, another friend, and I were sitting in my kitchen. Larry went all passive aggressive on us in the conversation. i called him on it and he got up, walked out of my kitchen and out of my life. I followed him to his car calling, Larry, if you’re mad, don’t leave! To no avail. 

He was a funny guy and a killer flute player. I’m sorry he’s no longer in my life, but what can you do? Anyway, I started rereading Testimony in conjunction with Barnes’ book and could see that Barnes had clearly read and drawn on it. Pretty logical that he would.

Shostakovich is definitely a composer with a lot to say to the 21st century. He wrote within the strictures of a repressive state. His music challenges the inhumanity which still plagues us in this century in practically every country in the world, especially my country of the USA and, of course, Shostakovich’s beloved Russia.

I love this little passage in Barnes:

“Art belongs to everybody and nobody. Art belongs to all time and to no time. Art belongs to those who create it and those who savor it. Art no more belongs to the People and the Party than it once belonged to the aristocracy and the patron. Art is the whisper of history heard about the noise of time.”

I also have the score to Shostakovich’s Preludes and Fugues for the piano, which i adore. I have actually performed a few of these at church. I have been playing through them here at the cabin on my electric piano. Great stuff.

I also pulled out an extended compositional sketch I have been working on yesterday and spent some time with that. I hadn’t planned on making myself do much of anything on vacation, but it seemed like the thing to do yesterday and it was satisfying to do it.

How Do You Say ‘Welcome to Europe’ in Maltese? Check an Arabic Dictionary –

I love language stories.

I was peering at this headline this morning utterly confused. It’s a typo. Deer=Defer. Nice way to start the day.

My BP is still high. I guess I will be calling the doctor after I get back if this persists. Nice.

My brother told me that he uses his browser to access Spotify. This is a much better idea for me than using their silly software/application since it seems to eat up computer power and is very very slow on my big laptop. So I uninstalled it from this computer and it seems to work fine via my browser.

Emily and Jeremy went home yesterday morning. We had a quiet day of old people. Ben and Tony arrived after I was sound asleep. I woke and gave them hugs and told them I wouldn’t remember it today but I do.

I had email from a groom getting married in August and from my sub for tomorrow. The day before I had a phone call from my cellist who didn’t get the memo that I’m out of town for a while. It feels like my work stress is dogging me. But I really have no idea why I’m still stressed and have high BP. Maybe Eileen and Mark are on to something by recommending I seek professional counseling.

Eileen kept getting up in the night, asking me to stand up and then using a hammer to bang on our bed frame to keep it from falling apart. I had to apologize to Ben and Tony this morning. I think we are all in agreement that we need to fix this today so there will be less banging tonight.

Wow. The hits to this blog zoomed up to 60 yesterday. Hard to tell what that means. I woke up this morning and listened to the rain on the roof of the Hatch cabin. I got up and wrote in my journal. Listened to this song:

I couldn’t find the Dylan version on YouTube, but Krall captures it well. This is my mood this morning.

Simple Twist Of Fate