I finished A.S. Byatt’s Peacock and Vine: On William Morris and Mariano Fortuny this morning.

It is a beautiful little book full of fascinating connections not only between the two artists in the title.

Byatt describes the genesis of the idea of the book, the idea of connecting two interesting people. She is standing in Venice.

The city that surrounds her overwhelms her with its “airy light.” She beholds the city of Fortuny, the designer of unique and beautiful dresses. She closes her eyes and the “aquamarine light” of the waters of Venice reflecting on the beautiful buildings and sees an “English green,” “more yellow green composed of the light glittering on shaved lawns, and the dense green light of English woods, light vanishing into gnarled tree trunks, flickering on shadows on the layers of summer leaves.”

She beholds the reality of Venice. But in her mind, she captures and examines a remembered English beauty. Thus begins a skein of mostly visual associations that are at the core of this book.

Byatt later says in the book that she “can’t hea r music,” and wonders if her sensitivity to color and the visual is “attention I have spare from not listening to sounds.”

As she muses on the stories of Morris and Fortuny, she passes through their lives and captures details and people that came charging off the page at me. Morris’s wife’s lover, Dante Gabriel Rosetti, has captured the late English romantic sensitivity in a painting Byatt puts in her book. In the legend illustrated, Pluto has swept Prosperine away to the underworld. Ceres, her mother, is so distraught with grief that she neglects the earth and all is beginning to decay. Zeus is forced to ask for Prosperine’s return. This is possible only if she has not eaten anything while with Pluto. Unfortunately she has eaten four seeds of a pomegranate. She may return to earth. But is forced to forever return to the underworld for four months a year, the winter season. Jane Morris, William’s wife, is pictured as Prosperine holding the infamous pomegranate.

Morris would leave Dante and Jane alone at Kelmscott manor one of many places described in Byatt’s book where his subjects lived. The painting hung there. Byatt describes the portrayal of Jane as “brooding, sexual, greedy” and says it exhibits Dante’s odd naked feelings and wonders what effect in would have on Morris. The reader wonders who is who in the legend and the Morris triangle.

This is one of many observations which make up this fascinating little excursion into rooms in Venice and England. As I read the book, I thought of my niece, Emily, and my good friend from the past, Dave Barber. I had a stifled impulse to send them copies of this book. There is a chapter on pomegranates in the work of both men. Emily has made some wonderful photographs of this fruit. She also is very interested in historical women’s clothing.

Dave would like the many descriptions of the way both men researched and recreated printing and textile crafts of the past. Emily would too. Maybe I will act on this and send them copies of this wonderful book.

Wednesday is more and more turning into a “hump day” for me. I think part of it is my shrinking energy pie. But I spent another hour and a half with my boss yesterday. She is feeling like she has too much on her plate. Our times together seem to be good for her. We spent a lot of time talking about non work stuff, like books I am reading and podcasts I am listening to. Then we went through a bunch of service music I had prepared to show her and discuss.

This was all good, but afterwards I could feel how drained I was and I hadn’t even done my prep for the evening rehearsal nor practiced organ.

I went into the rehearsal looking for some Friedman sabotage. By this I mean, that I was expecting some possible unforeseen moments that i would need to deflate, dodge or otherwise deal with. Besides “Stewardship the Musical,” there are other things going on at Grace which might precipitate stuff. Discontent in the people living nearby the church seems to be reaching new levels.

After our curates moved out, complaints about their  behavior surfaced at a routine public meeting of the neighborhood to discuss our upcoming parking lot expansion plans. These sentiments slowed the process way down and now there are more public hearings planned to ostensibly talk about the parking lot, even though complaints about how our curates handled themselves continue to come up in these discussions.

Night before last, Jen was involved in a meeting where people in the neighborhood were complaining about our monthly program to feed people, “Feeding America.” According to Jen there was little sympathy for people who come to get food and help. Apparently there were people in the neighborhood who were not happy about their presence.

This program is near and dear to my boss’s heart. A heart which seems to be under a lot of stress and near breaking lately. But this intolerance reflects the country at large.

I pointed my boss (and I point you, dear reader) to a series of podcasts which Brooke Gladstone has just begun about poverty and attitudes towards it in the USA:

The poverty tour – On the Media

This is a great show and Gladstone promises more like it. The perplexing thing is how myths from decades ago about poor people being lazy and exploiting the system persists even after conservatives (thank you Bill ‘the end of welfare as we know it”Clinton) have long ago won the battle and there are people in our country starving and without homes.

Although I assured my boss that my life is more than good these days, I can see I’m a little tired and grumpy this morning. I think I’ll talk to you tomorrow. Have a day.

It’s starting to sink in that Eileen and I are going to get on a plane to England next Monday evening. I have been mostly thinking of this as a chance to meet my newest grand child, Lucy. But, hey. I get to go to England. That’s cool and even exciting.

I love travel and I love England. And Eileen is my ideal travel companion. It remains to be seen how much actual exploring we will do since we will be sort of out in the boonies. But, it still should be lots of fun.

My brother and his wife are in Scotland right now.

I have been reading David Foster Wallace’s essay, “Authority and American Usage,” in the collection, Consider the Lobster. Here’s a link I found online to a pdf of it. The dry title of the essay belies how hilarious I am finding it. It reminds me of the delight I took in reading Infinite Jest. I find Wallace’s asides and prose style very engaging and funny. I recommend this essay. For example when discussing the ignorance of Descriptivists, Wallace writes this delicious sentence: “This is so stupid it practically drools.”

Descriptiivists. in this case, are people who think that dictionaries can only be thought of as authoritative in the way that chemistry or physics or botany books are authoritative “by the acccuracy and the completeness of its record of the observed facts of the field examined, in accord with the latest principles and techniques of the particular science.” (This is Wallace quoting Dr. Charles Fries introduction to Webster’s Third Edition entitled The American College Dictionary) Prescriptivists are people like David Foster Wallace and Bryan A. Garner who find it interesting to think about the most clear and coherent way to use language, especially in terms of grammar and accuracy.

This simplifies the entire discussion but the point is that Wallace’s essay is brilliantly funny and informed.

There’s something to be said about having a collection of music and books in addition to the celestial jukebox and instant access to almost any book one can think of.

My books and records are like old friends that I sometimes forget about. Putting on records lately I am enthralled by revisiting music I own on vinyl and love. There’s something different about that experience I am still pondering.

I spent my day yesterday in a very weird late romantic mood. I listened to Tchaikovsky’s Sixth symphony several times. I pIayed carefully through pages of his piano music. I own a Dover collection of stuff.

I have been thinking about him anyway and changing the way I look at his work. In the last few years I have found his music more appealing. I can see the craft and the inspired melodies. In addition, my reading tells me he was not the morose insane man he sometimes is pictured as being.

Instead, he had a good sense of humor and embraced life with joy. Of course, he had problems but his music is really rather redemptive.

So, I pulled out records of his music I own. I put on one and was very surprised at how well I knew it. I knew it and I liked it a lot. It was the “Pathetique.” I looked through my records and discovered I own at least three recordings of it. It gave me pause.

I did finally get to some exercising yesterday. I listened to the following video as I exercised.

Bernstein is becoming my favorite conductor. Yes, he was kind of a phony. But I believe that he actually loved music. For me, the passion of this kind of love is something I highly value and miss in many musicians I know these days. Plus, he was a composer. I think that composers have a strong tendency to know music from the inside out.

In this recording the audience applauds after the penultimate movement. I can see why. It’s a beautiful rendition, but the poignant slow last movement is truly amazing.

Regarding “Stewardship the musical,”  I did receive a reply from my boss reassuring me that she and I were in “sync” about Sunday mornings. She said she would discourage people from rehearsing before church and suggest they rehearse after church. She encouraged me to contact the instigator directly about when I was needed for rehearsal. She didn’t think I would be needed this Sunday. She also was unclear about where and when the idea of including the choir came from.

I emailed the instigator and the other person leading this effort (copied the boss on, of course) and told them that I wouldn’t be putting together music scores for them due to my own misunderstanding of the time line when I volunteered to do so. I also said that I assumed I wouldn’t be needed for rehearsals until after I got back from England. I received a reply from the main instigator confirming these things.

Why Do People Who Need Help From the Government Hate It So Much? – The New York Times

It’s a book review, but I found the review helpful in seeing why people can support positions I find unsupportable.

 Why Facts Don’t Unify Us – The New York Times

” …. do numbers and figures change people’s opinions?

Apparently, they do — they result in a deeper divide.”

I promised my boss I would play piano for a musical being cooked up by people at church. I met with the main instigator yesterday. I received the script. He has rewritten songs with new words. He has inserted these songs into a Gilbert and Sullivan like plea for money for the budget this year.  He handed me copies of the original songs. He also said the choir is invited to participate in this.

I looked at his music and script and realized that it would be a challenge to get people to sing the music without putting it clearly into Finale. I was under the misimpression he planned to begin in about four weeks. I told him I would get to work on getting his songs into Finale.

This morning I was copied on to an email announcing rehearsals are to begin next Sunday morning between services. I’m unclear if I’m expected at these rehearsals. I’m leaving town in a week for our England visit. Also, there’s no way i can get the scores ready by Sunday. If his lead characters start singing their songs with just the words in front of them they will end up making up their own rhythms to fit to the original tunes (“Time after Time,” “I’ve got rhythm”). It may be that is the instigator’s plan.

I emailed my boss this morning asking her how to proceed. I should at least let people know that I can’t have scores ready by Sunday.  They are planning to rehearse 45 minutes before the choir pregame. I’m slightly concerned about warming up my choir’s voices in that way. Singing pop music in a musical is hard on the voice.

Yesterday we sang a version of “In Paradisum” by Durufle. It’s an arrangement I did a few years back adapting the movement from his Requiem for unison chorus.  It was actually quite lovely. I worked and worked on the sound of the singers before hand. I was satisfied with it. However, if they had just spent 45 minutes singing pop music I’m not sure I could have gotten them to sound that well.

I am obviously being manipulated here a bit. But I did agree to do this. I’m curious to see how this proceeds.

Taking the Stealth Out of Editing – The New York Times

Finally the new Public Editor is doing her job.

For my birthday which passed recently, I decided I would like a record player. I remembered seeing one I liked, priced affordably, at Barnes and Noble once. I did not have high hopes that it would still be on the floor since it was a while ago that I saw it.

Since Barnes and Noble was having a 20 % off for members sale this weekend, Eileen wanted to make a book trip for Lucy (new granddaughter). We combined that with looking for a record player and spending my birthday money.

Success.

Since Barnes and Noble has moved into selling new vinyl records, they are keeping a few record players in stock. With discounts, this one ended up costing me around $130. I’m listening to Glen Gould play the Bach French Suites on it right now. Bliss.

I used up my birthday money and bought books.

I didn’t know that Leonard Cohen had published a new book of poems in 2006. The young woman who checked us out commented that she liked his work and thought his latest album was a good one.

I have mentioned Alan Taylor here before. I have his American Revolutions checked out from the library. It’s his latest one. B and N had a copy, but it’s kind of expensive even with 20% off. I opted to purchase one of his many other books in paperback. I will get back to American Revolutions after I read this if I can find a cheaper copy.

Consider the Lobster and other essays by David Foster Wallace contains the restored version of his essay, “Authority and American Usage.” I believe this is a review of Bryan A. Garner’s A Dictionary of Modern American Usage, an earlier edition of this book. I believe this essay was instrumental in connecting Wallace to Garner.

While I was at it, I couldn’t resist adding another book of essays by Wallace to my collection.

I came home and ordered Garner’s latest edition online at Barnes and Noble. Since I am a member there was no shipping and handling charge. It was discounted and this fifty dollar book cost me about $37.

Boy do I feel spoiled!

To top it all off, I picked up my prescription and was very surprised when there was no charge. My main blood pressure pill (Diovan) costs, I believe, $3 a pill. Insurance has paid $2 a pill in the past. This means my prescription of 90 pills usually costs me $90 out of pocket. But now as I said to the clerk at the Health Canada Pharmacy, it pays to be 65. I’m on Medicare part B. (Eileen takes care of all this, but I think that’s correct).

A Week of Whoppers From Donald Trump – The New York Times

It doesn’t seem to matter to the supporters of Drump, but he continually says things that are not true. This article methodically lists off thirty-on of his lies.

6 Sites Recognized by Britain for Significance to Gay History – The New York Times

This includes sites for Oscar Wilde and Benjamin Britten.

TimesMachine: November 8, 1889 – NYTimes.com

In the article on the 6 sites in Brain, there was this link which takes you back to a report in 1889. You have to click on pdf but how cool is this?

I had fun visiting with Elizabeth, Jeremy, and Alex on their recent visit. We saw them off at the airport yesterday. As of this writing they have texted a safe arrival in Vancouver. It was a long trip for them. I’m glad they made it okay. They are intrepid travelers. I admire their fortitude, stamina and general good humor, Alex especially.

Now that I have successfully installed and used the Amazon Associates kickback stuff, rest assured, dear reader, that at this point, I am not planning on cluttering up my blog with ads. Instead, when I put a link in to a book or music or whatever, I can set up the link so that if you end up purchasing anything I would get a very small kickback.

My copy of A.S. Byatt’s dual meditation on William Morris and Mariano Fortuny, Peacock and Vine, arrived at the library yesterday. I was gratified to read in it that Byatt herself had only heard of Fortuny because of Proust’s reference to him. I didn’t even remember that. Byatt weaves an engaging tour of these two lives and their surprising intertwining in her mind. I immediately pulled out my own William Morris books.

My most prized book by Morris is a numbered copy of five hundred limited copies of his Pre-Raphaelit Ballads. The picture above is not my copy. Mine has a bit more wear on it. Also, if you click on it, you will only be taken to the image I uploaded. No copy on Amazon. However, from now on, if you click on an image of a book I am talking about, it should take you to the book’s Amazon page. This should be true of the Peacock and Vine image above. I chose it, instead of a full book pic, because it was clearer than any of the book pics I could find.

If you don’t know William Morris, he was an eccentric artisan from England. He believed in the beauty of made things. He also was a writer.

I have an old paperback two volume copy of his The Well at the World’s End. They look more like this:

I don’t remember reading them. Recently I purchased a copy of Stephen Coote’s William Morris: His Life and Works.

I started reading Byatt’s book yesterday. I’m about 40 pages in (it has about 170 pages). Byatt writes interestingly about her subjects. I find Morris fascinating. I’m not sure how he entered my radar. When I think of him, I think of well made books, beautiful buildings, and beautiful design. He has a lengthy wikipedia article.

‘Botched’ Repair to China’s Great Wall Provokes Outrage – The New York Times

Eileen and I visited the Great Wall on one of our China trips. It’s fun to read about places you’ve been. However, this sounds like a travesty.

My son-in-law, Jeremy, also has a website. China Law Translate. He mentioned to me that he uses Amazon Associate advertising. If someone goes from his website directly to Amazon and purchases a book he recommends (or actually makes any purchase) he gets a kick back which does not come out of the money paid by the purchaser. I thought that sounded kind of interesting and explored what that would be like for jupiterjenkins.com.

Unfortunately, when I reached the telephone verification stage, I couldn’t get the call to ring my cell phone. It went directly to voice mail which would not work as a verification. I quickly used up my three tries and it asked me to wait an hour.

I tried again later in the afternoon. Same thing.

This morning I got up and looked at it (after doing some Greek). I discovered that my phone number was wrong on my address. It was the old land line number. Realizing this wouldn’t make any difference to my problem, I changed it anyway.

After the first try this morning (which again went directly to voice mail), I googled the problem.

I experimented with the mobile network settings, but it still didn’t work. Ah well. I was just messing with it for the fun of it, anyway.

Jeremy also turned me on to the Google Analytics Live report which tells you how many visitors you have at the moment and where they are calling from. Jeremy has, of course, many more visitors than I do. But still it’s kind of cool.

Real time correction: Elizabeth asked if my phone was ringing at all. I called it from Eileen’s phone and it isn’t. Sheesh. Now I will try to figure that out after I quit blogging.

I finished Jamaal May’s Hum this morning. I like his poetry.

The Best News You Don’t Know – The New York Times

I hate to be all cheery and shit, but lots of important stuff is improving world wide. Jes sayin’

SUCCESS! I seem to managed to link in to a product. Cool. Many thanks to the illustrious Jeremy Daum and Elizabeth Jenkins for their help!

I read some excellent passages in The Sympanthizer yesterday. The main character, the narrator, is a Captain in service to a South Vietnamese general living in L.A. The time period is the years after the fall of Vietnam. The Captain is facile in both the Vietnamese culture and US culture due to his education. He is also a spy for the North Vietnamese planted with the General to keep track of the South Vietnamese movement in the USA.

The scene that has so intrigued me takes place at a meal at a country club. Present are two people from Vietnam, the General and the Captain. Also present are Dr. Hedd, the British author of a book on Vietnam; the Congressman, who has brought these people together with other unnamed important businessmen and lawyers. The point is to raise money fo fund a resurgence in Vietnam from Thailand of South Vietnamese forces. The General and the Captain enter the room:

“Each of the attendees already had a drink in his hand, and it dawned on me that our lateness was prearranged. As the Congressman rose, I calmed the tremor in my gut. I was in close quarters with some representative specimens of the most dangerous creature in the history of the world, the white man in a suit.”

At one point the conversation is stopped by the Congressman’s tactless comment about how the Japanese occupied Vietnam: “Did you know that a million Vietnamese died of famine during the Japanese years?”

“… For a moment everyone squinted at his plate or cocktail, earnest as a patient studying an eye chart. As for me, I was calculating how to repair the damage the Congressman had inadvertently inflicted. He had complicated our task of being pleasant dinner companions by mentioning famine, something that Americans had never known. The word could only conjure otherworldly landscapes of the skeletal dead, which was not the spectral image we wanted to present, for what one should never do was require other people to imagine they were just like one of us. Spiritual teleportation unsettled most people, who, if they thought of others at all, preferred to think that others were just like them or could be just like them.” p. 253

And finally this wonderful passage:

“As a nonwhite person, the  General, like myself, knew he must be patient with white people, who were easily scared by the nonwhite. Even with liberal white people, one could go only so far, and with average white people, one could barely go anywhere…. we probably did know white people better than they knew themselves, and we certainly knew white people better than they ever knew us. This sometimes led to us doubting ourselves, a state of constant self-guessing, of checking our images in the mirror and wondering if that was really who we were, if that was how white people saw us. But for all we thought we knew about them, there were some things we knew we did not know even after many years of forced and voluntary intimacy, including the art of making cranberry suace, the proper way of throwing a football, and the secret customs of secret societies, like college fraternities, which seemed to recruit only those who would have been eligible for the Hitler Youth.” p. 258

Elizabeth, Jeremy, Alex, and Eileen went up to visit the Hatch branch of the family yesterday. I stayed behind. This allowed me to write the bulletin article I mentioned yesterday.

If you’re at all curious, here’s what I submitted:

Music Notes

The organ prelude and postlude today are based on the melody used with the 16th century hymn,  “An Wasserflüssen Babylon” or “By the Waves of Babylon.” The hymn is a metrical setting of the psalm for today, Psalm 137. The prelude, Joel Martinson’s 1992 organ composition, is actually entitled “Variations on a Lenten Chorale: A Lamb Goes Uncomplaining Forth.” He had a different hymn text in mind. But I think that Martinson’s gentle settings also fit the mood of Psalm 137. Bach knew the the 16th century Psalm adaptation as a familiar chorale his church would sing. As usual, his organ setting takes us deeper into the meaning of the Psalm.

Though the text for today’s anthem, “Lord, increase our faith,” is drawn from a 1662 Prayer Book Collect, it also echoes today’s gospel which begins, “The apostles said to the Lord, ‘Increase our faith!” This anthem for many years was misattributed to Orlando Gibbons.

Our opening hymn, “Gracious Spirit, give your servants,” picks up on the idea that Jesus calls us to a life where serving others is the norm (“We are worthless slaves, we have only done what we ought to have done.” the ending phrase of today’s gospel reading). This hymn is addressed to the Trinity but reverses the usual order and begins with the Spirit.  The closing stanza is an unusual rendering of the doxology. The language is inclusive (non gender based) and ends with a beautiful uniting of the Incarnation to mission: “through us may the world be hold you, find your live, your truth, your light.” It is taken from Wonder, Love and Praise.  Our sequence hymn continues this idea of service. “The servants well-pleasing to God” is taken from Voices Found. “This is my body,” our first communion hymn is taken from Lift Every Voice and Sing. Both it and the second communion hymn are drawn from the Holy Eucharist section of each hymnal. “Strengthen for Service’ (Hymnal 1982 #312) is from a fifth century Indian liturgy (Liturgy of Malibar) which adapted the words from the even more ancient Syriac Liturgy of St. James. John Mason Neale made a prose translation which was published in 1859. The version we sing today reflects further renditions by C.W Humphreys and then Percy Dearmer in The English Hymnal. With our closing hymn we return to the notion of service. The author of the text, Rusty Edwards, consciously wrote a mission text that does not reflect the colonial, paternalistic attitudes the church has often taken in its evangelistic outreach to the world. It “makes our own lives the subject of evangelism, not the people of distant lands. At the same time it does not diminish either the urgency of the Gospel or the call ‘to touch the lives of others by God’s surprising grace. [st. 2]'”  (taken from the Leader’s Guide to Wonder, Love, and Praise)

If you spot anything weird, let me know. I still have time to correct stuff before it’s published for a week from this Sunday.

After writing this, I did the Mom book thing (put books in the doc with which I keep track of Mom’s reading, interlibrary-loaned some books for her, then went to the library and grabbed a bag of books for her), practiced at church and then came home and treadmilled. Managed to do all of this before the group got back.  I was just about to take the books to Mom when I received a text from Eileen that they had stopped to see her on the way back. I texted back that I had books for her, but Eileen missed the text. I’ll take her books over today sometime.

Today, Elizabeth, Jeremy, and Alex are meeting Mark and Leigh. All of these family visits are taking a toll on the travelers. And this is all before the big wedding in Vancouver of Jeremy’s brother, Mike. I don’t think this is much of a relaxing time for them, but I am grateful to get to see them.

I finished reading Kill My Mother by Jules Feiffer yesterday. I’m not sure how many people are reading him these days. Neither Elizabeth nor Jeremy seemed to recognize him. I mistakenly said that he had written Where the Sidewalk Ends. Everyone in the room quickly corrected me. I guess he’s in the same part of my brain as the actual author of that, Shel Silverstein.

This is the first in a projected trilogy by Feiffer. He published, Cousin Joseph, the second volume recently. That’s when I got wind of the project and checked out the first volume. 

The Success of the Voter Fraud Myth – The New York Times

Say it often enough, and many will believe.

Don’t Take Osteoarthritis Lying Down – The New York Times

You know you’re getting old when you put up links like this on your blog. I do like Jane Brody. And I have arthritis, but not too bad yet.

I have been trying to put little notes in the Sunday bulletin about the music lately. I have done this before. It takes up a lot of my energy but is satisfying. But my motivation has changed. It has sharpened into wanting people to be more aware of what is happening in the service artistically. I want to invite them deeper into the aesthetic experience in the context of prayer. This means giving them some notions via these notes to help them enjoy and understand the music better.

I didn’t write a note for this coming Sunday. But on the following Sunday the Psalm for the day is Psalm 137. It begins

1 By the waters of Babylon we sat down and wept, *
when we remembered you, O Zion.

2 As for our harps, we hung them up *
on the trees in the midst of that land.

I have an abiding love for the Psalms. They are the poetry of the Bible. This is one I especially love. It goes on.

3 For those who led us away captive asked us for a song,
and our oppressors called for mirth: *
“Sing us one of the songs of Zion.”

4 How shall we sing the Lord’S song *
upon an alien soil.

Wolfgang Dachstein made an amazing hymn from this Psalm that he published in 1525. He wrote both the German versification of it and the tune, An Wasserflüssen Babylon.

Neither appear in the Episcopal Hymnal. But I often play great works based on this tune on the Sunday when Psalm 137 is the Psalm for the day.

Yesterday, I decided to use two movements of Joel Martinson’s “Partita on on the Lenten Chorale: A Lamb Goes Uncomplaining Forth” for the prelude which uses this melody. You can hear them at the beginning of this video. I think they are quite lovely.

These words (technically the hymn) are not in the Episcopal Hymnal even set to another tune.

For the postlude, I decided to learn Bach’s setting of “An Wasserflüssen Babylon” BWV 563a.

I will submit them along with the rest of music for that Sunday today. I am planning on writing a music note between now and next week regarding them. My goal will be to weave an understanding of these pieces into an understanding of the readings for the day. Martinson entitles each variation. I. A lamb goes uncomplaining forth, II. This lamb is Christ, our greatest friend. I am planning on giving the correct title for the variations in the note. Then explain how it all fits together.

I finished Quack This Way this morning. David Foster Wallace is brilliant.

Trump, Grand Wizard of Birtherism – The New York Times

I wasn’t going to bookmark this article by Charles Blow. I admire him and agree with him, but much of the Trump criticism is going over the same futile ground. But then I read this sentence: “He is not only bending the truth, he is breaking the notion that truth should matter in the first place.”

I was reminded of David Foster Wallace’s comments in Quack This Way. Speaking of George W. Bush’s linguistic short comings, Wallace observes “What’s fascinating and really scary is that this appears not to matter—or even to be a plus. Right? …. [W]e’re so far now from a Kennedy or a Woodrow Wilson or an FDR that it becomes tempting to think that our own instincts [he is speaking to Bryan A. Garner] for what language use means about the person, not just about the person’s intelligence, but their character, their forthrightness, are just … everything’s different now. And people like you and me, we just don’t have our finger on the pulse anymore. What people are looking for is not the kind of stuff we’re talking about.”

I can’t help but wonder what Wallace would make of Trump.

I have been thinking about the current fascist movement in the USA. As I watched the towers crumble on September 11, 2001, I remember saying to a friend in the room, “We might as well go get our identity cards now.” I think I was expecting the terrible racism and hate  that is now surfacing in the Trump movement. It just took fifteen years to get here I guess.

Holocaust Survivors’ Needs Grow, and Aid Is Slow to Catch Up – The New York Times

Wow what a sad story this is.

Andrew Sullivan: My Distraction Sickness — and Yours

Bookmarked to read. Would have read when i found it but I was too distracted.

Alex let me read a book to her this morning. She and Jeremy joined me in the kitchen as I cleaned and made coffee. We then moved to the dining room table for a while. I studied Greek until Alex let me read one book to her. She was held rapt by Van Allsburg.

I made yesterday into a long day by going grocery shopping in the afternoon. I was exhausted by work but nevertheless was motivated to stock up our pantry with stuff for us and company.  Church went well. I learned more about my own capabilities regarding practicing and performance. I didn’t have many under-prepared left hand omissions. There were a couple of shaky moments and they were where I would have predicted them. But overall I was very happy with the three Handel pieces we did yesterday (two organ pieces, one anthem).

After I got home from my morning practice yesterday, Eileen told me that Elizabeth had called and they had spent the night not too far away from us at Jeremy’s Dad’s cottage. She proposed meeting us half way and then returning with us to Holland.  In this way, there would less wear and tear on them and they would arrive sooner in Holland.

Eileen agreed to go pick them up. I didn’t ride along due to the fact that I wanted to spend more time at church preparing for this morning. I will be interested to see how Handel comes out today. I continue to refine my practice techniques. The Handel movements, especially the prelude which is the second movement of the concerto in G presented some challenges. The sections which represent the tutti (the full orchestra) do not sound nearly as hard as they are. I have been slaving over them.

I have noticed that when i don’t have a piece prepared enough I will sometimes omit the left hand when the part it is playing is not important. In the heat of the moment this allows me to pull the piece off but in retrospect this is unsatisfactory. Anticipating that the prelude is not quite “ready for prime time,” I have been working hard on left hand and pedal. Nevertheless yesterday morning when I timed a performance tempo execution of the piece, I found that I did, indeed, leave out the left hand in a few places in order to keep it going at tempo. Sigh.

It may be that my preparation is enabling me to perform better with not quite enough rehearsal, but I obviously am still working on this piece and that habit. I returned to church yesterday afternoon to work on this but I had a host of tasks to prepare for today that were unrelated to organ prep: write on the wipe board, put the chairs in order in the rehearsal room and in the choir area in the church, lay out bulletins for the choir on their chairs, post the hymns on the hymn board in the church, look at organ music for a week from next Sunday, rehearse the psalm, and other little details.

I finally settled down at the organ with just about 45 minutes to spare. I was timing my practice so that I could return and treadmill and shower before company arrived. In that 45 minutes I played slowly through both the prelude and postlude. I stopped enough and worked over some sections that it took the entire time. I also practiced today’s psalm and next week’s psalm.

Elizabeth, Jeremy, and Alex all seemed to be in pretty good shape after an international flight. It was a pleasure, of course, to see Alex in person. I am easily charmed by her and it’s fascinating to watch her.

This morning in reading Quack This Way: David Foster Wallace and Bryan A. Garner Talk Language and Writing, I ran across this passage of Wallace speaking:

Apparently quoting himself from an article he had written, he says “… one of the things that’s good about writing and practicing writing is it’s a great remedy for my natural self-involvement and self-centeredness. Right? ‘I am the center of my own world, my thoughts and feelings are more immediate, therefore….’  I mean we all know the drill, right? When students snap to the fact that there’s such a thing as a bad writer, a pretty good writer, a great writer—when they start wanting to get better—they start realizing that really learning how to write effectively is, in fact, probably more a matter of spirit than it is of intellect. I think probably even of verbal facility. And the spirit means i never forget there’s someone on the end of the line, that I owe that person certain allegiances, that I’m sending that person all kinds of messages, only some of which have to do with the actual content of it is I’m trying to say.”

This inspires me. I often think about this daily exercise in writing. What exactly am I doing here? Who am I talking to? I am often led to clarify things that I think are practically self evident when I consider what I owe anyone who stumbles on to this blog. It is then that I begin to see the importance of what Wallace says earlier in the interview: “The reader cannot read your mind.” Very helpful.

I had a good meeting with Dr. Birky, my therapist. He is a good listener, exhibits intelligence and presence, and is not afraid to see the humor in stuff. It feels almost self indulgent to hire him to listen to me and help me.

After our session, I went to the church and worked diligently on tomorrow’s organ music. Then home for lunch with lovely Eileen.  After our usual game of Boggle after lunch, I began to work on hanging the blinds we recently purchased. Eileen had carefully measured and marked where I needed to drill holes for screws to mount the blinds.

Neither Eileen or I are particular handy at stuff like this. She has a much better mind to figure out the best way to do these sorts of things. I told her there was no reason really why she couldn’t drill the holes, but that I was glad to do my part that way.

Unfortunately, by the time I had the holes drilled, the brackets mounted, and the blinds installed, I was dripping in sweat and exhausted. It’s not that easy to stand on a little ladder and drill upwards into hard resisting wood. It seemed silly to just drill the holes and then let Eileen do it from there (our original idea). I screwed the brackets in as well. This way I could see if I drilled the holes properly. Then once the brackets were in, it was a matter of clipping in the top part of the blinds.

I underestimated the time and effort I would use to do all of this. After an hour or so, the task was accomplished (with Eileen helping) and I was sitting on a chair in the kitchen remembering vividly that I was a 65 year old man with a shrinking energy pie.

I showered, went to the library, stopped in to say hi to Mom, and then went back to the church to practice order valium online ireland some more even though I was very tired.

Speaking of going to the library, my copy of the fourth edition of Garner’s Modern English Usage was waiting on the hold shelf for me along with a copy of Quack This Way: David Foster Wallace & Bryan A. Garner Talk Language and Writing.

At the end of the day yesterday I plopped in a chair to examine the first of these two. The first thing that struck me about the book is that it is a large heavy book, very cumbersome to hold and read with a reading desk. Hmmm.

Maybe I should purchase the ebook. My only reluctance is that it might be a cumbersome ebook if the footnotes and ease of access to individual entries is not well designed.

The new book is fascinating in that it combines prescriptive linguistics (deciding what expressions and words are clearest and most accurate in usage) with descriptive linguistics (ideas based strictly on how people actually use language). Ratios derived from Google Ngrams are often at the end of a discussion of alternative usages. For example the current ration of usage for no holds barred to no holes barred is 60:1. That means when actual google ngram search is used there are 60 of the first for every one of the second (which is described as a “misunderstanding” of the wrestling origin of the first wider usage).

I love this shit.

There is also a “Language Change Index” provided for some entries. This is more complex but still very interesting. I’m still learning about this Index, but I can see that Garner and his cohorts divide language changes into five stages (1. Rejected 2. Widely shunned 3. Widespread but…. 4. Ubiquitous but… 5. Fully accepted). For example: The Language Change Index for disenfranchise for disfranchise Stage 5 with a current usage ratio of disenfranchised  to disfranchised of 5 to 1.

Media Narratives Imprison Clinton, Trump — And Voters

Neil Gabler takes a look at how the media traps itself and the candidates in a false narrative.

My weird good mood persisted all day yesterday. I had a good day and a good birthday. Eileen is usually at a loss as to what to do for me for my birthday.  Yesterday she made a gin run for me and later went for take out sushi. Yum! My brother sent me presents in the mail, a CD of piano compositions by Anthony Burgess of which i was not at all aware and Gary Trudeau’s new Trump collection. Very cool. My friend Rhonda dropped by while I was at rehearsals and left me a very cool copy of Carl Czerny’s book on improvisation, A Systematic Introduction to Improvisation on the Pianoforte. My Mom told me to write myself a check for my birthday.

We have changed our piano trio rehearsal times to begin later on Thursdays. Yesterday was our first day of the new times. It was a good session. Bach Violin Sonatas, Beethoven Piano Trios and Cello Sonata. What a pleasure it is to work with these musicians!

Today I have my third meeting with my shrink. These meetings seem to be going well and even helpful.

Although yesterday was a rough day for me, I am feeling surprisingly optimistic this morning,  despite being exhausted.  Today is my sixty-fifth birthday. Made it this far which is farther than I thought I would. Maybe that’s the source of my good mood.

I will try not to destroy my good mood by discretely reporting on yesterday. I was tired from our long Tuesday trip. But my day really took a turn for the worse, when I felt like I had to raise some questions with my beloved boss.  Rev Jen has made it clear that she values my insights even when she doesn’t quite see things the way I do. Maybe i should say she values them most when we don’t see things the same.

We went an extra half hour fleshing out my objections to some ideas she was running with. By the time we were finished, as usual, she had decided to give my objections some thought and profusely thanked me for making her uncomfortable.

This whole encounter drained me.

Jen was a half hour late for our appointment. I checked in with the office. Mary the office manager agreed to send Jen up to the organ after she finished a conference call. I used the time to work madly on my Handel concerto movements for Sunday, something I plan to continue today.  By the time Jen came upstairs I had figured that she had forgotten me and was content to work on my practicing.

After our meeting, I came home and grabbed some lunch. Then i went back to prepare for the evening rehearsal. Mary the office manager is still getting back into the swing of helping me prepare Large Print Versions of the opening and closing hymn (for my aging choir) and supply me the pointed Sunday Psalm one week early so that we can practice two weeks on each psalm. Yesterday, as I was prepping I kept hopping in the elevator (hey I’m a transitional aging dude) and going downstairs to the office to tell Mary several mistakes she made in her prep. She mistakenly gave me a second copy of this Sunday’s Psalm instead of the Psalm for the next Sunday. On the Large Print Version of the opening hymn, she clipped off the lower staff, so there was nothing for the Tenors and Basses to sing.

Since we had the Parish Picnic after church Sunday, Eileen had not filed any of the music from Sunday, so I did that. After putting Sunday’s order on the board in the choir room, I decided we needed a descant on the opening hymn. The choir’s first Sunday really went well. Part of this was a cool choral interlude on the third stanza of “Earth and All Stars.” We also had a lovely descant sang well to our second communion hymn, “The King of Love.”

It seemed weird to follow that Sunday with a Sunday with no descants, so I wrote one. As I did so I berated myself for overfunctioning which made it even more fun.  Then to the organ for a intense workout on Handel.

Eileen had a retired librarian luncheon. When I came home from practicing around 4 PM, she was still not back yet. I told myself I would put the notes into Finale for the dang new descant, then go visit my Mom, which is what I did. Came back and put the words in the music, then printed up copies.

Here’s a link to a pdf of the whole thing: h475. H475 is my shorthand for Hymn # 475 in The Hymnal 1982. The text is “God himself is with us.” The tune name (which is inadvertently omitted in my sheet music) is Tysk.  This descant fits with the hymnal harmonization. It occurs to me that I should put up more of my composed descants. I recently answered a letter from a colleague in Muskegon (Dick Hoogterp) who told me he was also playing my piece on Nettleton. I’m not sure how hip he is to the internet (he wrote me a letter ferchrissake), but I directed him to this web site for free Jenkins music. I also offered to snail mail him some of my other organ compositions.

Before going to my Mom’s, I rescheduled her hearing aid appointment which was originally this afternoon. I’m busy and moving Mom these days means hefting the wheelchair into the car, something a bit difficult for Eileen.

I also answered an email from my cellist who was wondering what time the wedding is that she is playing with me on Oct 1. Also what music she is to play. We know the day and that they want Bach cello suites in the prelude. I emailed her to tell her I didn’t have the info. Then I emailed Rev Jen asking for this info.

I tried to get some rest in before the evening rehearsal. Unfortunately I laid down and read three chapters in a choral technique book by Timothy Seelig.

After rehearsal I wryly reflected to myself, sometimes you eat the bar, sometimes the bar eats you. Although, it was a good and effective rehearsal, by the end of it I was so exhausted and discouraged I was thinking of resigning today. Just kidding.

I did recall the old golf story and told it (once again I am sure) to Eileen.

Two golfers played golf together regularly. Their games were evenly matched enough to make it fun for them. Then one of them started improving. And improving. The other golfer was unhappy to lose all the time. Finally, she had an idea. She gave the winning golfer a golf technique book. Their games quickly returned to a more equitable skill level.

Eileen said, it’s about the choral technique book, isn’t it. It is, I replied.

I have been mulling over what my shrink and I will talk about at our Friday appointment. In our last meeting, he mentioned something about sensitive people being easily misperceived. I have been turning that over in my mind. It has been helpful to think of myself as “sensitive” instead of “over sensitive.”

Not that my sensitive reactions are necessarily always warranted, but it’s helpful to see myself a bit more clearly this way. I have found that it has helped me sort through  my reactions more accurately, separating reasonable sensitive reactions from sensitive reactions that I know do not represent my better self.

I read the introduction to Alan Taylor’s America Revolution yesterday. I am becoming aware of an interesting historical conversation which Taylor uses to document his story. In this research, the history is more accurate. 

Although I was vaguely aware that historians had ignored the experiences of Native Americans, Africans pressed into slavery, and women, Taylor and his colleague go many steps further in analyzing and understanding the situation of history.

You can see this in some of Taylor’s nomenclature. Americans for separation from England he calls Patriots instead of “Whigs.” in older histories. Taylor tries to get his reader to see that the Revolutionary War was as much a civil war as a revolution. Americans were divided and the story is complex.

Taylor rightly sees that African slaves on American soil are actually Americans. They obviously figure strongly in to the our history along with Native Americans (whom he calls as a group simply “natives). More than that, they are us and together there is a complex story to think about. I like this and am learning a lot from Taylor’s book.

I did not know that prior to 1707 when Scotland and England formed a union, there was no “British” colonies only English, French, Spanish and other countries. There was no Great Britain until this union.

It was also interesting to learn that mainland USA was a much less attractive place for European plunder than the Caribbean Islands and Mexico. These areas were much better suited to export sugar, coffee, and indigo (the plant from which the dye comes).

Yesterday  Eileen and I spent three hours in the car going back and forth to the birthday celebration for her Mom.

She was 92 yesterday. When Eileen told a young boy at church how old her Mom was, he replied soon she will be triple digits. However, when her Mom learned about this, she simply said she didn’t think that was going to happen.

I managed to sneak organ rehearsal in before and after our trip to Mears. I have certainly challenged myself to learn Sunday’s prelude and postlude.

Did You Hear the Latest About Hillary? – The New York Times

I met another adjunct at GVSU years ago. He was talking conspiracy theories which he obviously took seriously. I asked him if he went online much. He said no. I told him his conspiracy cohorts were waiting there for him. This article talks about conspiracy theories.

Freddie Mercury Now Races Around the Sun – The New York Times

New asteroid named for Freddie Mercury on his birthday which was also the day Lucy Jenkins Locke was born.

I finally got paid for last week’s funeral. i have failed to impress on my boss the etiquette of prompt payment of musicians. I totally trust her, but wish I could make payment after services the rule.

I managed to treadmill yesterday before lunch. I’m afraid that combined with residual fatigue from Sunday this caused me to shorten the amount of time I spent practicing organ after lunch. I spent a half hour or so preparing a reduced score for my prelude. I need some serious bench time this week to pull off the organ music I have scheduled for Sunday. I am looking forward to rehearsing and performing two movements from Handel’s organ concerto no. 2 in G major. I will need to hit them intensely today and every day between now and Sunday.

Today Eileen and I will drive to Mears, Michigan, for a little birthday celebration for her Mom. This will take a chunk out of the day, but I should be able to get my rehearsal in anyway.

I was tickled this morning when I managed to do a Greek written exercise completely accurately. Often I will make at least one little mistake. The chapter I am working on now introduces three verb tenses over its entirety. I am half way through and have studied past tense and future tense. Next comes what the text calls aorist tense. Yikes.

Here are some links that talk about books that interest me.

Alan Moore: By the Book – The New York Times

This is a very fun interview. Moore is all over the place. I have long admired his comic book writing. I discovered from this that he has written a novel, Jerusalem. I have put this in my cart on Amazon.

Designing Men: The Art of William Morris and Mariano Fortuny – The New York Times

I am interested in Morris. I discovered from this review that Fortuny is mentioned in Proust. This looks like a beautiful and interesting book. My library is purchasing it. I’m on the wait list to look at it.

How the American Revolution Worked Against Blacks, Indians and Women – The New York Times

This one is on the shelve at my library. I have reserved a copy.

Mark Thompson’s New Book on the Use and Misuse of Rhetoric – The New York Times

I have interlibrary loaned this one.

We, the Plutocrats vs. We, the People – BillMoyers.com

Since recently discovering that Moyers was still around and active I have been paying more attention to what he is doing. This is an excellent, lengthy commentary work reading.

About the ‘Basket of Deplorables’ – The New York Times

Charles Blow gets it right. If you support someone who is espousing fascistic nonsense, you yourself are on board with it.

At the New York Times, the blind lead the blind  by Ian Milhiser

This is an incisive critique of what’s wrong with much reporting right now.

Good Journalism Requires a Commitment to Truth

This is a more broad critique, but still correct.

The erosion of truth: Trump’s surrogates are Fox-ifying mainstream television news – Salon.com

I’m pretty sure that TV news is a dead horse. I rarely see or read about competent reporting via the talking head. But this report outlines what sound like increasing insurmountable difficulties.

The choir’s first Sunday went well. I had forgotten how during service it seems that there is almost constant motion among the members. People leave the room. One man constantly pops up and adjusts the sounds system though Rev Jen has repeatedly asked him to leave it to the young person with IPad controls. Of course he was fiddling with dials when it came time for the psalm. I simply waited for him to take his place with the choir before beginning the psalm. Sheesh.

During the opening hymn, the person who does not process (due to infirmity) wandered over and seem to gather the returning processing choir members in front of the choir area (and me at the organ) for the choral interlude we had prepared to sing. I had neglected to instruct the choir where to sing during this interlude. I should have asked them to return to their seats. That way they could have seen me since the interlude was a bit rubato. The way they spread themselves, some of them far away from me on the floor, I had to stand and wave my arms in large gestures as though conducting a 100 singers. There was no disaster. But it reminded me of the difficulty of leading so many strong willed people.  Still, I remained the person in the music area in the best mood.

But by the time I had come home I was deflated.

I spent the rest of the afternoon feeling sad and a  bit inadequate. This is just my inner climate on Sunday afternoon, I guess.

I watched music videos on YouTube. I am seriously considering canceling my Spotify subscription since I find it so full of glitches. I tried to make a playlist the other day and it didn’t register the songs I added on. It moves very very very slowly even in the web browser. YouTube is annoying but much better. I found that YouTube does a weekly compilation of new music as does Spotify. YouTube probably represents a bit more of what’s actually popular since I suspect many people are using it as a way to listen to music.

A final comment on yesterday. I worked hard at getting the choir to make a good sound. I talked to the sopranos about the difference between singing high and singing forcefully. I told the choir the story about Joshua Bell’s teacher who “loved” every note. I equated that with making pure vowel sounds. Using these and other techniques I managed to coax a reasonably decent choral sound from the group. This is difficult but rewarding work. I found myself using the McDonald’s slogan, “I’m lovin’ it!” Oy. I’m a whore for good music and sound.

Poll: Unconscious Clinton More Fit to Be President Than Conscious Trump – The New Yorker

At this end of this article, a “poll” is cited that finds more think an unconscious Trump more fit to be president than a conscious Trump.

Retaliation: Reality Vs. Pundit Fantasy | FAIR

I have often wondered about the efficacy of violence.

Trump’s Latest Campaign Weapon: The Mirror : NPR

Trump has made armchair shrinks of us all.

Tonight the first fall rain washes away my sly distance.
I have decided to blame no one for my life.
This water falls like a great privacy.
Letters sink into the desk,
The desk sinks away, leaving an intelligence
Slowly learning to talk of its own suffering.
The muttering of thunder is a gift
That reverberates in the roof of the mouth.
Another gift is a child’s face in a dark room
I see as I check the house during the storm.
My life is a blessing, a triumph, a car racing through the rain.

This lovely poem by Robert Bly is the poem for today from The Writer’s Almanac.

I remember driving to Ann Arbor to hear Bly read his poetry. It’s odd that I don’t have a volume of his work in  my collection. I like the way this poem works and what it says.

After doing Greek, I read in my 1998 copy of Garner’s A Dictionary of Modern Usage.

Though it is now four editions ago, I think it still represents an interesting codification of thought and stories. I look forward to comparing the 1998 to the 2016 edition.

I notice that I have read in this book before. I can tell because I made notes. Garner’s love of language and how words work in sentences comes through strongly in this book. I love the way he values clarity. I also like his sense of humor.

For example, when talking about being honored to appear in the same issue of Shakespeare Studies with his teacher, John Velz, he cannot resist pointing out his own mistaken use of a word:

“As a 22-year-old budding scholar, I was thrilled to have an article published alongside one by Velz himself in an issue of Shakespeare Studies. Unfortunately, that very article of mine contains a linguistic gaffe that has found its way into the pages of this book: see bequest.”

On page 81, the entry reads: “bequest, v.t., is a silly error that has appeared in a would-be Shakespearean scholar’s writing: “And by so felicitously using the words newly bequested (read bequeathed) to English, [Shakespeare], more than any other writer of the English Renaissance, validated the efforts of earlier and contemporary neologists.” Bryan A. Garner, “Shakespeare’s Latinate Neologisms,” 15 Shakespeare Studies 149, 151 (1982).”

Garner wrote a thesis on the Latin influences in Shakespeare’s language. He says that he used excerpts of it for journal articles.

He quickly accepted my “friend” request on Facelessbookers. Yesterday he put up this link to an 2012 article (debate) by him and Robert Lane Green: