Eileen has been helping with proof reading the church bulletin. Yesterday at my weekly meeting with Jen I said I wish I had three more Eileens to look over the bulletin each week. Jen said she thought that was a sweet idea. And then she paused realizing that she might be condoning a sort of polygamy which I hastened to say was not what I was thinking.

However, later I was pondering that it would be lovely to have three more people who listen to me and help me like Eileen does. You know, friends.

I’m not complaining too strongly here. After all, I had the benefit of having my brother visit this past week and we had  many good chats. And yesterday morning I had a very pleasant time playing piano duets with  my colleague, Rhonda (Thank you again for a lovely time, Rhonda!) I value these relationships as they stand.

I keep sleeping in a bit. I think my body is still trying to adjust to California time. This morning I was showering when Eileen got up. I hadn’t even washed dishes yet. She got up early in order to go exercise this morning. That’s where she’s at right now.

She emailed a complaint letter to Lowes yesterday. They had told us that the final installation of the fence would now be mid September. This is two months after when they originally told us they could do it. The workers showed up to install it Monday but the company had sent the wrong parts. This was causing the delay. The workers went away Monday and left a huge pile of trash in front of our garage.

As I was going over to say hi to Mom, the workers pulled in to the driveway and told me they were going to finish installing the fence. Apparently the company had expedited getting the correct parts. It looks like Eileen’s complaint might possibly have had something to do with that. At any rate, our fence is now complete.

In this last pic, you can see an unfortunate bow caused by the tree roots. I say unfortunate but actually like a bit of irregularity like this.

I mentioned to the workers that the area where they had stacked a bunch of stuff from the old fence needed to be swept because of the possibility of nails left from the debris. They were unimpressed and didn’t do it. I plan to do this before pulling my car in.

Jen and I met with the people from St. Peter’s Montague yesterday. I tried to be helpful, but I’m not sure I was. I think it would be fun to connect to another Episcopalian parish, especially one that does a variety of  music and decent liturgy. St. Peter’s may be like that. But I wasn’t left with the impression they would actually use me a resource person despite telling the priest about St. James Press, IMSLP.org and playing snippets of the Widor Toccata for them. They seemed like good people but the priest is not on Facebooger.  I just sent a friend request to their pianist. We’ll see if i can actually connect with them whatever happens with the organ.

How Media Distorted Syrian Ceasefire’s Breakdown | FAIR

A thoughtful examination of the usual distortion of corporate media. Good reading.

Yusuf to Play Shows in New York on ‘A Cat’s Attic’ Tour – The New York Times

This was on my google news feed this morning. This makes me happy because I got the impression that he not only quit performing in public after renewing a commitment to Islam, but had given up music. Cool.

Blogging later in the day again. I slept in a bit. Eileen has left again. I’m writing at about 9:30 AM. She has gone to the Farmers Market and then plans to go blueberry picking. It’s a good thing she chose today to go, because the farm where she plans to pick has notified people that today is the last day for this sort of picking. She has been talking about this ever since getting back from the Hatch cabin where she and other family members picked huckleberries.

I am listening to Bartok’s Concerto for Orchestra. I checked with my record collection to find out what recording I have been listening to for years. It turns out it’s the Herbert Von Karajan one.

It’s on Spotify and Youtube.

It’s funny how you get used to a recording of a work. It’s almost as if a composition slowly changes into or adds attributes of a “sonic sculpture.”

Incidentally, I recently read a foosebooger post by my old friend, Jonathon Fegel, where he used the phrase, “sonic sculpture.” It made me smile. I’m pretty sure he got this phrase from our discussions years ago when we saw more of each other.

I was recently looking for Garry Trudeau’s prescient take on the Donald published over a decade ago. I was browsing at the library, discovering that Trudeau was not shelved with the other “comics.’ Then I spotted some beautiful books on the shelf.  

Mark happened to be nearby. I asked him if he recognized the author, Lynd Ward. Neither he nor I did. I checked out the library copy of the books because of their beauty and the fact that they were edited by Art Spiegelman.

It turns out the two volumes are Ward’s collected opus of six wordless graphic novels. All of the pictures are wood cuts. Wow. Wonderful stuff.

Mark was so impressed with the books he ordered some very low priced used copies. They are cool.

Mark is going to get on the road in about an hour or so. In the meantime we have been relaxing and chatting. Eileen took off to meet some of her family for a field trip to Michilinda the collection of “cottages” that her family was caretaker for for many years.

Mark and I were talking this morning and I discovered he didn’t know about an upcoming movie based on the works and story of Vincent Van Gogh.

Here are a couple more videos that we looked at this morning.

I think we agreed that this looked pretty cool.

Mark did get paid yesterday. Apparently Jen had asked a parishioner to hand deliver the check and they had failed do so. We picked it up while we were out yesterday.

I put off finishing this blog until Mark left. It sure was fun having him around!

Mark is hanging around a couple days after subbing at Grace. It was fun to work with him yesterday. He is such a good priest when it seems that good leaders are getting rarer and rarer. Of course, I’m biased.

We have been chatting this morning so the blog is coming out a bit later today. We are waiting for the fence people to come and start work on our new fence. All four cars (Mark’s included) have been moved out of the driveway so they can pull their equipment in.

I’m hoping that I can get started on planning for the fall soon. I have some challenges coming up such as not having an organ for a while while we prep for our new organ installation. Not sure when the old organ will go away. There are plans to refurbish the back of the church to prep for it. When this happens, the old organ will be in the way and have to go. I’m meeting with some people from a church who might want it on Wed at 1 PM.

Another challenge is several people in my choir (which seems to be getting smaller and smaller)  announced that this year they will be missing more choir. This is challenging. My solution will be to choose material that can be done with less rehearsal. This precludes much stuff that I would probably otherwise choose to do if I had a bit more commitment. At the same time, I have been pondering how to communicate to my members what I expect of them if they plan to meet me half way (attendance is one of those things, obviously).

I’m a bit disappointed that no one bothered to make sure Mark got paid yesterday for his services. Yikes! He told me that not getting paid wasn’t just about me and musicians. I guess he’s right. I just emailed Jen and asked her about this.

Books for me to read seem to keep on coming. This book was mentioned by Jeffrey Toobin in yesterday’s NYT (which i am still working my way through). He said it is the closest thing he knows to a perfect book: “It combines exhaustive reporting, elegant prose and narrative genius to remind us that class, as well as race, is at the heart of the American experience.” I’m in. My library has a copy on the shelf which I plan to check out. It’s for sale for a penny on Amazon. Cool.

When Blood Pressure Is Political – The New York Times

Allostasis? Who knew? Bookmarked to talk to my shrink about when I explain why I’m seeking therapy.

I had a phone call from the wedding soloist yesterday around 10:30 AM. She was on her way from Ann Arbor but wasn’t sure if she would make our noon appointment. I told her to call me when she arrived and I would meet her at the church. Eileen was busy getting ready to go to the annual Hatch Family reunion. She cooked a big piece of pork to take with her. I didn’t accompany her because of the wedding. As is usual these days, the wedding was weird. No singing, of course, even though the one Bible reading was one that mentioned singing. The minister preached. As I said yesterday I was the only pastoral staff person there. The janitor came in about an hour beforehand and wondered where everyone was. He was responsible for the sound system. Fortunately my soloist did not ask for a mike. By 5 PM, the place was full. No programs. After the reading of the one Bible passage the poor dude said, “the Word of the Lord.” Dead silence. The bride walked in to the soloist singing the song embedded in yesterday’s blog. We had to lower it three or four steps to fit her voice, despite my request that she tell me what key she wanted it in (“I sing it just like the YouTube”). At one point, I think she got lost. At any rate I wasn’t with her for several measures toward the end of the song. But she came through like a trooper. I got paid. When I got home Mark was already here. I hadn’t thought much about feeding him beyond thinking that there might be some leftover pork for him after Eileen got home. There was. We shot the shit for a while over martinis. I do enjoy his company (Hi Mark!). I’m still recovering from a different time zone and slept in until 6:30 this morning.

Shostakovich mentions in his memoirs that it is Bernstein which he prefers as American conductor of his works. Having said that I couldn’t find this reference this morning so maybe I read it somewhere else. At any rate, I enjoy this recording immensely and listened to it last night.

Once again I am blogging a bit late. I am waiting for a phone call from the soloist for today’s wedding. She and I were supposed to meet at noon but apparently she is on her way from Ann Arbor and didn’t think she would be here in time.  I told her to phone me when she was in town and ready to practice.

There is no bulletin for today’s wedding. They may have printed up something themselves,  but our office did not do one as far as i can tell. I think I may be the only person from Grace’s staff involved in this wedding. Weird. I dreamed about it last night. Someone from the wedding was handing me sheet music and wasn’t sure where they wanted the piece performed in the wedding.

I’m not too worried about this wedding. The solo is a goofy pop song.

I was rehearsing it in my dreams last night. It’s very easy. When they hand me pop music I don’t worry very much about it. In my dream I was playing it on guitar.

I think I’m going to quit because it’s a little after noon and I’m expecting to be called over to the church soon.

We are expecting a shipment of fence materials this morning. I got up early, showered, did the dishes, made coffee, and then moved the cars out of the driveway. They won’t start working on the fence until next week.

Eileen and I both are still tired from our California marathon.

I ordered a real copy of Derek Walcott’s poetry book above this morning. I was able to buy it used for around $10. His poetry continues to impress me. I own one volume and would like to have the above collection in my library to read.

It’s looking like Trump may have finally stepped over some sort of line with his current behavior.

I only wish that the election was closer so that his current waning support would cost him the presidency. While the fact that there are so many people who would vote for him is terrifying to me, more terrifying is the idea that he would be leader of this country.

On the other hand, Clinton looks more unattractive to me everyday. Trump is definitely being outdanced but I am feeling less and less confident that the Democrats will not continue to hurt the country if elected (drones, privacy issues, campaign finance). Ah well. All governments are jerks. But I still feel that it’s responsible to exercise my franchise and will vote for Clinton.

At the Ontario airport in Corona I wandered into the airport bookshop looking for a magazine to read on the flight. I had brought two magazines with me on the flight there and it had been convenient to have a magazine to read in the cramped quarters. With a magazine in hand I wouldn’t be entirely dependent on my devices and the few books I had brought along for diversion. I quickly discovered that magazines were boring and extremely expensive. Than I spied a paperback copy of Viet Than Nguyen’s novel, The Sympathizer.

This book was on my list of books I intended to read. So I bought a copy and read in it on the way back home.

Viet Thanh Nguyen was born in Vietnam in 1971. His family migrated to the US in 1975 fleeing from Saigon as it was taken over by the North Vietnamese. His novel digs back into the history of Vietnam and the USA. I’m about 100 pages in. I think he is an amazing writer. He has insights that are extremely pertinent for a country still waging wars in other parts of the globe.

Plus it’s a good read. The main character is a communist spy embedded in the South Vietnamese refugee population. It was interesting to me that Nguyen’s main character ended up in L.A. after spending time in barracks at Camp Pendleton. Nguyen, himself, lives and teaches in L.A. Perusing his wikipedia article I found that he briefly attended University of California Riverside. These places are places I recognize. My son was a Marine at Pendleton and I believe he attended U of C Riverside for a while.

I had forgotten that The Sympathizer won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 2016. Nguyen has written a nonfiction companion volume,  Nothing Ever Dies: Vietnam and the Memory of War. His wikipedia article quotes Nguyen’s website: calling it  “the critical bookend to a creative project whose fictional bookend was The Sympathizer”

Vietnam looms large in my life. Not only did I live through the terrible time we were at war there (and have to deal with the possibility of being drafted into the armed services to fight there), but I have known many people from Vietnam including people like the people in The Sympathizer. I am tempted at this point to add Nothing Ever Dies to my list of books to read.

My copy of this book was on the kitchen table when we arrived last night having arrived in the mail while I was in California. McNeil, the author, died last month. I read his obit and decided it might be interesting to read some of his work.

Last night I listened carefully to the first three movements of Shostakovich’s Fifth Symphony.

I am reading his memoirs. I was amazed at how beautiful I found this music. Shostakovich’s life was one of turmoil and continual fear and impending disaster. He walked a fine line of artistic integrity and personal survival in Stalin’s Russia. I recently read a fictionalization of some of the events in his life (The Noise of Time by Julian Barnes). It captures a lot of this fear in the image of Shostakovich waiting by an elevator in the building he lived.

He has his bags packed and is waiting there to prevent the secret service from crashing into his apartment and taking him by force. This does not happen, although Shostakovich did face questioning including an intimidating phone call from Stalin in which he declined to represent Russia in America. 

He did end up coming to America. Unlike many people in Russia and Europe escaping terrible lives, he seems to have hated America. He loved his country but knew it well.

Anyway, I only mention all this to underline the miracle of how I hear his music not only dealing emotionally with a troubled life and country but also containing much that is beautiful and redemptive to my ears.

I embed this recording largely because it has the 2 piano score for the listener to follow. I was surprised to find that I was able to download the complete score and follow it on Scribd on my tablet.

It was random that I found it (googled). Scribd seems to be a paid subscription service for ebooks and audiobooks. Surprisingly they seem to have music scores as well. I am using a three free items offer to look at the score of Shostakovich’s symphony. The monthly rate is $8.99. This gives you access to 3 books and 1 audiobook each month. But also apparently unlimited access to their sheet music collection.

Very stupidly they don’t seem to provide a definite list of what they have. Dumb. Without knowing exactly which scores they make available I have little interest in subscribing.

Our annual California Jenkins visit is coming to an end. Eileen and I get on a plane this morning to go back home.

Whenever we visit California, I have lots of odd associations going through my brain. It’s hard not to think of Raymond Carver.

And just now between listening to Shostakovich this morning and an insistent ringing telephone (the old fashioned ring) I feel like I’m in the movie Barton Fink.

Anyway it’s been a good visit, but I am definitely looking forward to getting home.

Our time in California is drawing to a close. It has been good to see the fam and have some time off. It’s been good to have wifi and a piano to practice on.

I feel a debt of gratitude to Nicholas’s piano teacher. Czerny’s Opus 337 was sitting on the piano when we arrived. There was a little  note to Nicholas from his teacher to do each section 20 times. She was merely repeating Czerny’s instructions.

I waited until everyone was out of the house yesterday and then followed the instructions of Czerny and Nicholas’s piano teacher. Reading in Nicholas’s edition reveals that Czerny was himself a piano teacher of some note and taught 10-12 hours a day if we are to believe the notes in the book.

I found this work online and put it on my tablet. It seems to be something I would like to add to my piano technique rehearsal. Cool. I asked Nicholas if his teacher insists on Czerny’s fingerings which strike me as a bit odd. He said she did. Good enough for me. I also asked him if he had done any of the sections 20 times yet. Nope. I told him when I was his age I didn’t see the sense in the Hanon exercises my piano teacher assigned me. Why do them? I could already pretty much sight read them which is what I did in my weekly lesson. It wasn’t until much later that I began to get more serious about learning to play the piano. Nicholas seems to have tucked a good bit of technique under his belt at this point, certainly more than anything I had before David, his dad, was born.

I finished LeGuin’s little book of poetry I purchased at Farenheit 451 bookstore. It was fun. It reminded me of the verse that sometimes occurs in her novels.

Speaking of poetry, I neglected to mention how fitting Derek Walcott’s Collected Poems were to read sitting by the ocean. He is a poet of craft and uses his Caribbean childhood as a continue wellspring of inspiration.

My sunburn is still itching. It affected my sleep but it wasn’t as bad as it was the first time it went nuts.

I’m blogging a bit later this morning. California is three hours later than Holland Michigan anyway so this is even later than the time lag. I slept in this morning until 6 AM local time. Usually when I get up here in California no one else is awake. This morning someone (Nicholas it turns out) was taking a shower in the bathroom by where we are sleeping. He has choir camp today and tomorrow.

Today is my daughter-in-law’s birthday. She asked  me if I would go with her to Starbucks this morning for coffee for her birthday. So that’s what we ended up doing. David joined us and one of her sisters and nieces stopped by while we were there to wish her a Happy Birthday!

It was good to have a Sunday off yesterday. I do think just being physically out of town helps. We took the kids for our annual bookstore trip where we give them money to buy books. That’s always fun. Eileen and I managed to restrain from buying anything. Then we went to Five Guys for a grandparent/grandkid lunch. Good times.

I am getting some reading and study in. There is a decent piano here so I have been doing some practicing. This morning I emailed the music for this Sunday to this office. My brother is coming to substitute for my boss on Sunday. This will be fun.  He and I haven’t been able to do too much church together over the years since he has been ordained so this will be a treat.

I picked out a prelude which can be done on manuals: David Johnson’s setting of the opening hymn: “How wondrous and great,” tune: Lyons. I have a soft spot in my heart for Johnson. He always writes clearly and with excellent craft. He is dead now, of course. But I do use his material from time to time. I’m planning on an improvised postlude on the closing hymn: “Give Me Oil in My Lamp.”

My nephew, Trevor Jenkins, messaged me on Facebooger yesterday. This was a surprise. At first I wasn’t sure he was a real person. But after a few comments, it became obvious that it was really him. I probably have met him. He is the son of my late cousin, Alan. He’s 33 now and still seems to be adjusting to life. I do like connecting with family.