Strangers in Their Own Land

I finished Strangers in Their Own Land: Anger and Mourning on the American Right A journey to the Heart of Our Political Divide. I put the whole title there because I think it helps define the book a bit. I have as yet to read the last hundred pages which are made up of acknowledgments, appendices, and end notes. I plan to give them a careful look.

Hochschild, the author, is definitely on to something. While I think she only has a piece of the truth, it is still an important piece. To reduce her eloquent book: if we are to understand the people who voted for Trump we must look closer at their emotional self-interest and value it even higher than their economic and other self interests. Trump doesn’t enter the book until toward the end, when Hochschild observes his candidacy in action, then returns to her Tea Party acquaintances to find out what they think of him. Spoiler: They all vote for Trump, some enthusiastically, some reluctantly.

She also does a fine job of sympathetically painting people with whom she (and presumably most of her readers) disagree.

I decided to read this book because I wanted to understand better the people who voted for Trump. Now I feel like the country is in a much wider and more dire crisis. I will be reading another non-fiction book, but probably not one about the voters but about the process or the history or something.

Closing thoughts

It’s now in the afternoon. I have had a day. Eileen and I got my Mom back and forth to Miracle Ear.  The Miracle Ear people said that Mom needed her ears cleaned. They were new people. The old people cleaned her ears, but they weren’t supposed to. When i asked about this at Mom’s nursing home they said that a nurse couldn’t clean ears, only a doctor could. It was about this time I realized I had lost Mom’s remote for her hearing aids. I madly retraced my steps. I called the Miracle Ear place but they didn’t see them. Finally we drove back to the shop and I found them in the snow, near where we had parked. Sheesh.

Things have changed

The presidential order to deny access to refugees crosses a line for me.  Now President Trump has actively harmed people. In the name of our country. I don’t see myself as someone who orients their ethics around religion, but today I’m linking in my boss’s sermon and another minister’s newspaper column.

Surrendering Distance – a homily by Jen Adams

It’s not Trump, it’s us by Kevin Aldrich

And this  man’s analysis is frighteningly convincing:

Trial Balloon for a Coup? – by Yonatan Zunger

I took a screen shot of numbers to call. Not sure how much difference this will make in a coup, but one must do something.

Some new old music

Being a musician feels a bit esoteric right now as things are going to hell in America, but it’s really who I am. Yesterday I decided that Benjamin D. Sherman’s book of interviews and commentary, Inside Early Music, is worth a read straight through. Previously I had been picking out interviews to read, but they are so good and so interconnected with the other interviews in the book (intelligently cross-referred), that I thought I would just start at the beginning with Sherman’s interview of Marcel Pérès on Plainchant.

Wow. I was pleasantly surprised to read in print something I have thought about for years, that is that the way Plainchant is often sung most probably has nothing to do with the way it might have been sung when it was created. Also, the acknowledgement that there are two main reasons people sing and/or listen to Plainchant: religious and ambient sound. I think it’s cool that this is part of the conversation now.

Moreover after reading a bit, i sought out some of the recordings Marcel Pérès has made. And I love them. He uses a drone that comes from Byzantine practice (I think, still learning about all this). According to some YouTube comments it’s called an “ison.” I think it makes these recordings lovely. I like the free sounds of the ornaments. Wow. This makes this music come to life for me in a new way.

I rarely embed playlists but the embedded playlist above is one I am listening to right now. I think it sounds wonderful.

Then this morning I got up and continued playing my electric harpsichord. Yesterday i read through several pieces in the Fitzwilliam Virginal Book. This morning I continued with a Pavana by Thomas Tomkins.

Another Wow! I played it through a couple of times, admittedly pretty slowly so I could keep the tempo as consistent as possible. Then I realized that I recognized his name as a choral composer. Hmmm. I definitely will be looking at his compositions to see if I can schedule one this season. Lovely lovely stuff.

This is the Pavana, but it seems to be a different version for viols. Around 3:00 into this video, comes music that doesn’t seem to be in the harpsichord version. As with most of the pieces in the Fitzwilliam Virginal Book, each section of theme is followed by an ornate variation. The viol version seems to be just the themes of the Pavana. At 5:24 the Galliard begins. I hope this is somewhere in the Virginal book as well.

Church report

A quick report on church yesterday since I’m a bit over my usual 500 or so words. The prelude version of my piece didn’t go so well. I think the violinist got lost. We discussed it and couldn’t figure out what had happened. It took us a while to find each other. I was with the cellist, but the violinist thought the cellist had been mistaken and tried to adjust to her. As Dawn the cellist pointed out later, though we didn’t play it the way it was written in the prelude, it didn’t sound wrong. Heh.

The postlude came together accurately. It was fun doing this. The congregation seemed to chat both in the prelude and postlude but the choir and few others seemed to be listening to what we were doing.

John Hurt, British Actor Hailed for His Shape-Shifting Roles, Dies at 77 – The New York Times

Daughter Sarah and i saw this actor in Krapp’s Last Tape on our first visit to the UK.

Donald Trump, the Religious Right’s Trojan Horse – The New York Times

I thought this was an eloquent article (some of the commenters disagree). I liked several sentences (in a horrifying way) including this one:

“President Trump may lack a coherent ideology, but he shares with the religious right a kind of Christian identity politics, a sense that the symbols of Christianity, if not its virtues, deserve cultural precedence.”

2017 isn’t ‘1984’ – it’s stranger than Orwell imagined

bookmarked to read

Place to practice organ

Well, the dude from St. Francis has been very forthcoming with help. He told me that my friend, Rhonda, had a key card to the church and there was no reason I couldn’t get one.  I was welcome to come and practice any time the church wasn’t being used. He emailed the office manager to prepare a card for me and let me know when it was ready. He also asked the administrative assistant to copy me in to weekly schedule emails. Wow! In addition he wrote me that he had not forgotten “the amazing kindness” I showed to him as a “stranger’ when he needed a last minute sub 12 years ago when his beloved grandmother died.

Between St. Francis, Hope Church and possibly the Methodist church, it looks like I should be able to keep my chops up when I am without an organ.

Walking in circles

Eileen told me yesterday that she planned to participate in the local march against the nomination of Betsy Devos as Secretary of Education. I told her I would also go. The march was planned from 11 Am to 1:30. We bundled up, stopped by the library which is near by, then joined people walking around Centennial Park. The crowd seem to be growing as time went on. At one point it seemed that the sidewalk around the park was full of people.

I pooped out after about an hour and half. By that time, it was thinning out. Eileen hung on a bit longer but reported that the crowd continue to dwindle. There’s some interesting information about the legality of public demonstrations in the most recent  Counterspin podcast from  Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (fair.org).  Here’s a link to it:

Mara Verheyden-Hilliard on Inaugural Protest Arrests, David Turnbull on Pipeline Resistance

Here’s a few more links about other stuff.

Reading Shakespeare

I am reading the play, Henry the Eighth. This play is included in the Shakespeare opus but there is much doubt about whether he authored any of it. The edition I am reading traces the story of the play directly to Holinshed’s Chronicle of England, Scotland, and Ireland (1577).

The editors say that it, along with Foxe’s Book of Martyrs,  is not only the source for most of the play, but that a great deal of the play is simply Holinshed’s prose put into verse and cite copious amounts of the source inviting reader’s to compare themselves.

I decided to read this play because I was unaware that Shakespeare had included the story of Henry the Eighth in his historical plays. Now I understand why. But I am still enjoying it.

My Friday

I do enjoy chatting with my therapist, Dr. Curtis Birky. I feel a bit sheepish because my conversation with him compares to conversations I have with anyone willing to listen. Again at the end of the session yesterday I said that we continue to solve the problems of the world together and that I felt a bit embarrassed about that. He smiled and said it was fine with him. It seemed like he thought it was appropriate.

We talk a lot about current events. I keep him up to date with  my activities and interactions with people. What’s not to like?

After I returned to Holland, I stopped off at Grace to pick up some music. My violinist and I have decided to learn (relearn actually) a movement of  a Mozart Violin Sonata. I wanted to get the score so I could add it to daily practice. In addition, I printed up Barry Jordan’s organ piece that he wrote for Rhonda I mentioned here recently.

Then I drove to the Methodist church. It was after 11 AM, the time I was told the secretary would close up the building and leave. But there were cars in the parking lot so I walked up to the entrance. The sign on the entrance said that Friday hours ran to noon not 11 AM. I went in and frightened the secretary. She had not been informed that I had permission to practice and was uncomfortable with leaving me in the church alone as she was just about to close up.

I quickly agreed and left. It might be that I will only be able to practice there while the secretary is present. That makes sense.

I walked across the street to Hope Church where I have been practicing. With a little help from one of the  many construction workers who are refurbishing many areas of the church I got past wet cement and construction zones to the organ.

I have as yet to respond to the Roman Catholic dude who asked for my “schedule” for practicing so he could check the church calendar. I’m not sure what to tell him since I have had the luxury of pretty much practicing when i want and haven’t developed much of a pattern other than doing it daily as much as possible. I need to email him today. I am wondering if I will be able to find a place to practice on Saturdays since most churches are locked up on that day. We’ll see.

Yesterday was another long day for me. But it was a good day. I had a two hour lunch with my friend Nick Palmer. We haven’t seen that much of each other recently. I  fell off the Roman Catholic radar a while back when I quite working for that denomination. The last time I talked to Nick was a few years ago. He was just coming out of the closet. Since that time he has served as the Cathedral musician in Grand Rapids, divorced his wife, fell in love and married his new love a couple of years ago. And he has been active musically in Western Michigan. He has accepted a position at St. John’s Episcopal church in Grand Haven. He told me that since coming to this gig, he had the best December he has had in years last year. He definitely has looked much happier when I have bumped into him occasionally. And he looked happy yesterday.

I hope I wasn’t too incoherent in our conversation. We did talk quite a bit of shop and in our case this covers not only church music but composition and other topics.

I have always enjoyed chatting with this man. He is intelligent, perceptive, well read and a damn good musician and composer. What’s not to like?

He said he would have to have Eileen and I over a meal with him and his husband. He said he doesn’t talk that much to his husband about his colleagues. I suggested that he might want to tell him about me before inviting me. But it would certainly be fun for us to have more time together.

I barely made my afternoon trio rehearsal. It begins with me and the violinist.

Yesterday we decided to work on a certain Mozart sonata movement with the idea we would perform it sometime in a recital after we get the new organ. Then the cellist showed up.

It turned out that my violinist forgot to bring her music for my trio. So that slowed us down a bit. But after procuring another copy for her we rehearsed. I think we are going to give a credible reading of it Sunday. I showed this piece to Nick. We talked about tempo and he said that composers often take their own music too fast and that we would probably be happier with a slower tempo. I passed this on to my players. This piece is obviously a bit easier slower. My goal is to give a decent performance of it Sunday. We get two tries because I have it schedule for both the prelude and the postlude. It should be fun.

This morning I’m meeting with my shrink. My mom’s car is in the shop. Eileen’s mini is off the road for the winter. This means I will need to take my Subaru which keeps on running but is not reliable due to a leaky head gasket. I’m thinking of taking back roads so as to not push it too hard.

Beware hate speech, says Auschwitz Holocaust survivor – BBC News

Some historical reminders.

‘Swimming In A Trance-Like State’: Paul Simon On Philip Glass : Deceptive Cadence : NPR

Glass’s 80th is coming up. NPR is asking some people to write about him. Paul Simon. Cool.

Book review: Taibbi releases dispatches from campaign trail | Arts | fredericksburg.com

Bookmarked review to remember to put this on my list to read.

anxious jupe

After my meeting with my boss yesterday during which we discussed personalities at church and in the choir and their recent behavior, I approached last night’s rehearsal with more anxiety than usual. I wondered if people would act out and how I would handle it. But of course, I was confounded and we had a spectacularly good rehearsal. We are learning some pretty difficult choral music and it’s coming together. I and the group enjoyed this. Go figure.

finding more places to practice

After being rebuffed at Hope College but not Hope Church about practicing I emailed a couple of local church musicians asking about practicing at their church. I have already heard back from both of them. The Roman Catholic dude at St. Francis replied: “Sure… shoot me your times and I’ll check the calendar.” A bit different than the prof, eh? The  Methodist musician said she would talk to her staff about it. Cool.

One of the ironies for me is the apparent indifference of the music department at the college for supporting the arts outside of their halls. I think it’s weird. Sometimes I think I’m a bit thin skinned about local musicians/profs attitude toward my work and abilities. This is almost certainly true, that I am that way. But despite my sensitivity, it may still be true that there is a certain lack of vision in this area.

Free Sheet Music

I listened to Rhonda play some pieces she’s working on yesterday. One of them was a piece entitled “Letters from Lambarene” by Barry Jordan and is dedicated to her.

I quite liked it. I have met Barry. Rhonda invited me to have lunch with him when he was visiting her. He lives in Germany. Here’s a link to his composition page. This piece is there in a pdf.

The piece is based on interpretations of “letters” of Albert Schweitzer. As Barry points out, these are not really letters but reports written to people who were supporting his work in Lambarene.

Pantsuit Politics

 This is a podcast I have been listening to. It is the work of Sarah Steward Holland and Beth Silvers. Holland’s perspective is from the left, Silvers from the right. Their aim is nuance not screaming. I like the concept.

Success

Eileen and I managed to purchase new clothes for me yesterday. We went to a couple of shops. I purchased a new suit, 2 new white shirts, 2 new dress shirts that are not white, and underwear. Fascinating, eh? I mention this success because of my lack of success in yesterday’s secondary endeavor.

Fail

I walked to the music building of Hope College. When I got there, I wandered around trying to get the lay of the land. When I asked a student where the organ practice rooms were, she pointed me to Hew’s office. I peered through the window in his door and saw him sitting at a harpsichord with two students nearby. Though they weren’t doing very much besides chatting I decided not to bother them. Instead i walked around and explored. I walked past all the offices and rooms on both floors of this wing of the building, If this is all there is of the new music building, it seems a bit smaller to me than what they had before. Maybe there’s a north wing that I missed entirely.

i found no organ practice rooms. There was a hall of practice rooms only accessible with an i.d. and a code number. Presumably it housed them.

I went back to Hew’s office and decided to wait until he was between lessons and ask him about practicing at Hope.

After about fifteen or twenty minutes, the two students came out of Hew’s studio. I knocked on the door, then opened it to call to Hew. He was not a happy camper. He told me he was very busy and was sitting at his computer. I asked him about the possibility of finding an idle organ to practice on at Hope. He immediately said that they only had one practice organ and it would not be possible.

I told him I was without an organ temporarily due to the process of putting in our new organ. He did say that he was excited about that. I reassured him that I was hoping to connect with him and his department with our new instrument. I asked him about getting time on the harpsichord since my harpsichord is also defunct. He said he was too busy to discuss that and we could talk about it another time.

Fail.

Disappointing but not too surprising. Only a little daunted I then walked to Hope Church. I knew that the third organist practicing there had mentioned to Rhonda that she wanted to practice on Tuesday and Thursday afternoons. I also thought it was worth the walk to make sure she was using the organ. She wasn’t. I did. Bach consoled me.

Gay Greeks

At the end of the first act of Aristophanes’s “The Clouds,” there is a humorous battle between two characters. These two characters embody wrong argument and right argument and are called Wrong and Right.  Right of course is a pompous ass, Wrong much more shrewd.

When Right points out in the course of their argument that the penalty for unfaithfulness is literally reaming out a man’s asshole with a carrot, Wrong asks, what’s the big deal? Weren’t all the poets gay? Weren’t all the politicians? Wasn’t the audience made up of mostly gay men? All of which Right is forced to admit. Most ironically of all Right when vanquished jumps into the arms of some of the audience pointed out as gay implying that he himself is gay.

I found this intriguing in Alan H. Sommerstein’s 1972 translation. He used the word “gay.” The whole translation is obviously an attempt (successful in my view) to update the play.

A quick perusal of my Greek text of the play and its edition confirms my understanding that homosexuality was seen more as a part of sexuality than as a totally exclusive sexual stance (more the way it is seen today).

From K. J. Dover’s introduction to the Greek edition: “It was universally assumed [in Aristophanes time] that the coexistence of heterosexual and homosexual desire in the same person was natural and sound.”

Eileen has agreed to help me pick out some new clothes. I desperately need white shirts for work. The ones I have are getting too worn. I will look at suits as well probably. It helps to have Eileen along on these trips. Both of us are not excited about clothes shopping. I also need new shoes but that will have to wait.

After lunch I am planning to take my organ music and shoes and force myself to go to the new Music building at Hope and see about practicing.

Yesterday I put in a couple of hours at Rhonda’s church. Her instrument is a three manual instrument which is the basic organ for a great deal of organ literature. I am grateful to Ray Ferguson for teaching me how to adapt literature to smaller and/or inferior instruments. But working on a three manual was helpful in understanding some of the music I am learning more clearly.

There is another organist besides Rhonda who practices at her church. She practices on Tuesday and Thursday afternoons. I would like to have at least two places to go and practice. it doesn’t seem like it would be that hard to accommodate three organists for some practice at Rhonda’s church.

Rhonda and I will probably get together tomorrow for some chat and possibly for me to listen to some of the pieces she is working on. Organists do this sort of thing. it is very helpful to have a pair of organists’ ears out in the room where you are performing. It is also flattering that Rhonda continues to connect with me despite my local outsider status.

It is this status that makes me dread going to Hope’s new Music building.

But I am determine to leave no stone unturned in terms of finding instruments to practice on while I have no organ at my church.

That’s all I have time for this morning.

I think part of suffering from the doldrums yesterday afternoon was the fact that I had to return to church in the evening for an annual meeting. I also have a funeral today. I’m still feeling a bit overwhelmed.

I decided to title my piano trio: “Stirred Hearts and Souls.” I took the phrase from the hymn, “Blessed Jesus at thy word.” I use the melody from this hymn in the B section of the piece. We are singing it next Sunday and I’m planning at this point to perform the piano twice: once for the prelude and once for the postlude.

I admit that I plopped the hymn tune into the trio after basically composing the A section which is repeated after the B the section. I deliberately looked at the hymns scheduled for the Sunday I wanted to perform the piece and chose the tune from one of the hymns. So it’s not related motivicly, but I still think it works nicely.

It looks like I will probably be able to practice organ today at Rhonda’s church. I still plan to approach the teacher at Hope College, but today is already full and Rhonda and I have been texting back forth about this possibility.

Review: Jeremy Denk and His Piano Take a 600-Year Tour – The New York Times

 Six and a half centuries of music in two hours

 Music review: Pianist Jeremy Denk – Richmond Times-Dispatch: Music

This are three reviews of what sounds like the same concert given three different times. I am a fan of Mr. Denk.

And I like creative programming. I hope to do some of this myself soon at my church. I especially like the breadth of his program and that he included a Philip Glass etude. I continue to practice and learn these.

Sunday afternoons are usually not high points for me. But today is a bit lower than usual. The whole Christian thing pales a bit for me sometimes. Usually I’m more tolerant of the whole silly religious thing. Friedman has a theory that if you are being sabotaged it is evidence of effective leadership. I had some sabotage today, but nothing worth complaining about. instead, I am just feeling a usual distance from all things Christian.

Having said that, church went very well again today. The piano trio played the prelude and postlude and though Eileen thought the music was a bit hokey (it was), I was glad to do them even if both movements had bit of a Lawrence  Welk ending with pizz strings.

The strings added immeasurably to today’s anthem which was originally for organ and choir. I think it was as hokey as the prelude and postlude, but still very effective. In fact these two composers, Frank Bridge and W. K. Stanton probably knew each other. Bridge’s claim to fame is that he was Benjamin Britten’s teacher.

Holland High School finally got around to asking me to accompany Solo and Ensemble players this year. I had already talked to Rhonda about this, since I am pulling back from some of these extra things I do. I recommended her to them. Hopefully that will work out.

I walked over to church yesterday. What I have been expecting to happen finally took place: the organ was no longer usable because they have begun work on the back of the church.

This means I will have to get up off my sorry lazy ass and find other places to practice this week.

Rev Jen stood in front of the assembly today at church holding a pipe claiming to have evidence that they have finally begun the work. Clever.

Lying from the git go.

I did manage to get some relaxing in yesterday. Eileen and I didn’t watch the inauguration. I read President Trump’s speech. I am still finding him unpredictable. His rhetoric is simplistic and vague. I think I’ll know more as he begins to govern more.

One thing I have been realizing is the paltry, distorted view that so many people seem to have of events and information. Right now I have heard people for and against President Trump express themselves all mostly completely by statements about an envisioned “other.” On the right, the liberals, on the left, “how could people vote for such a man?”

More than ever, I think we need to take responsibility for our selves and our actions. Also, it would be helpful to diminish our reliance on the superficial cartoon-like defining of each other by our politics.

But I can see that many people are genuinely upset. Reading Hochschild’s Strangers in Their Own Land is helpful to a point.

Yesterday I ran into a young man recently elected to the Michigan House of Representatives, Jim Lilly. I have known him since he was a child singing in my children’s choir at Our Lady of the Lake.  Needless to say, since he got elected in my conservative little town, he is a Republican. I shook his hand and congratulated him on getting elected.

He smiled and gracefully acknowledged my congratulations. “Now the work begins!” He said.

I have no idea what that means. I have noticed a nod to the rhetoric of “bi-partisanship” coming out of our State Capital but I don’t see how this can last in the present environment.

I see it as a time to wait and see.

And stay as informed as I can.

BOOK TALK

I finished reading the small collections of poems, Notes on the Assemblage, by Juan Felipe Herrera (Poet Laureate of the USA) this morning.  I have to say I wasn’t too impressed with it. There is a good line here and there, but I found a lot of it a weird mixture of activist politics and wide ranging erudite allusions.

I’ve been reading Paul Beatty’s weird novel, The Sellout. I’m about a fourth of the way into it. It mixes pop culture with an odd African American view of life and I do mean odd. At first I thought it was taking forever to get started. From the inside jacket description: “Born in the “agrarian ghetto” of Dickens, on the southern outskirts of Los Angeles, the narrator of The Sellout resigns himself to fate of lower-middle-class Californians, ‘ I’d die in the same bedroom I grew up in, looking up at the cracks in the stucco ceiling that’ve been there since the ’68 quake.” Raised by a single father, a controversial sociologists, he spent his childhood as a subject in racially charged psychological studies.”

Sarah Silverman writes a blurb on the back cover: “The Sellout is brilliant. Amazing. Like a demented angel wrote it.”

I don’t plan to stop reading it yet. But it’s not a book I could recommend at this point.

I’m hoping today will be more of a day off than I have had this week.

Yesterday culminated in a rehearsal with my piano trio for Sunday. We also read my new trio. It was fun and interesting to hear it played with real instruments. I think the players are up for a public performance a week from Sunday. I need to edit the score some more to reflect what I learned yesterday. After that I will post the score in my “free mostly original sheet music” section here.

So today is Donald Trump’s inauguration. I read some more in Strangers in Their Own Land by Hochschild. It’s hard not to think that the misinformation in Trump’s campaign was critical to his election. I note over and over again that people who  support him cite odd reasons peppered with false facts about  health care, immigration, poverty, you name it.

It does seem difficult to me to stay informed if you rely on TV and an uncritical use of the internet.

From Headline to Photograph, a Fake News Masterpiece – The New York Times

I just went and looked up this article that I read yesterday. I find it appalling that there is just economic incentive for fraud to be committed in this way.

It completely demeans the idea of educating the people and they will govern themselves.

Then there’s this tempest in a teapot.

Trump’s inauguration plans too ‘traditionally American’ to include Kanye West – LA Times

I read an article about this this morning. I love American music and the eclecticism it represents in my mind. However, the discussions are on a par with fake news as far as I’m concerned. No context and of course no mention of classical music that I have found so far. NPR probably has the best thing I could find on the music at today’s Inauguration.

This has been an intense week for me so far. The burst of composition energy on Monday was followed by hours with Finale. Yesterday i was surprised at how much time and energy it took to prepare a piano version of Sunday’s anthem. I also pulled out some lines in the original composition for the violin and cello to play. I was working on all this up until about  an hour before the evening rehearsal at 7 PM. I had intended to move on to editing and preparing a better version of the Trio I wrote on Monday but that didn’t happen.  That’s this morning’s project. So far I’ve resisted it. I did do Greek and a little poetry, but I am missing my quiet morning time and think I will do a bit more reading before breakfast and then work on editing the Trio after breakfast.

My friend Nick Palmer reached out to me about his new Episcopalian gig. I think we’re going to meet up next week. That will be a delight.

I am going to stop and get back to morning relaxing.

Fox News was the dominant news source in the 2016 election, Pew survey finds.

This article helps me understand how rare it is for people to seek their news outside of TV sources. No wonder this country is crazy. None of these cited are ones that I use. I watch Newshour with Eileen but I think it’s consistently terrible. I look at Googles News regularly which leads me to many other sources. Looking at what sources are doing what stories is very helpful. And then there’s Real Clear Politics. It gives nice overviews of current discussions by simply perusing headlines again noting the sources.

I will need to spend another day working with Finale today. I didn’t finish the piano accompaniment version of Sunday’s anthem yet. And I need to make another pass at the Trio I am composing. I sent off parts to the players yesterday, printed up the piano part and rehearsed it. I found a couple of errors in the piano part, but more importantly I think I need to change all the horizontal accents to tenuto signs. I’m hearing the piece more legato and even a bit quicker than at first.

At any rate, here’s a link to a pdf of the current draft: working.draft.piano.trio.2017. I promised my friend Rhonda I would put it up in case she wanted to look at it. And here’s the finale mp3 again just for the heck of it.

I don’t think these two are precisely matched, but they are close.

Eileen and I actually went out to see a movie yesterday. She has mentioned that she thinks we (I) need to get out more so I suggested we go see “Hidden Figures.” It’s a weird feel good movie about the historical mathematicians, Katherine Johnson, Dorothy Vaughan, and Mary Jackson.

I would dearly love to know what these real people thought of this movie. I’m tempted to read the book this  movie was based on to find out if the movie glossed over the struggles of these individuals the way I suspect they did or if the book does this also turning it into a story about their amazing achievement without arousing the viewer’s ire by showing the obstacles more clearly. Jes sayin.

I think I spent six hours or more composing yesterday. It’s the activity I enjoy the most. It leaves me relaxed and alert. Today I need to spend some more time with Finale. The anthem scheduled for this Sunday, “Christ is the world’s true light,” comes from the Oxford Easy Anthem Book and was composed by Stanton. I put it down a key for my choir. It is written for choir and organ and that is how we have performed it in the past.

I was taught how to conduct a choir and play organ simultaneously by my beloved undergrad teacher, Ray Ferguson. Apparently he was taught this technique when he was on his Fulbright in Germany by Helmut Walcha. It involves thoroughly preparing both the accompaniment and the conducting, deciding how to reduce some sections to free up the conducting hand.

I noticed last Wednesday that playing the accompaniment to this Sunday’s anthem on the piano from the organ score and attempting to cue in the choir at the same time was challenging. I decided I should return to the arrangement in Finale and make a specifically piano reduction of Stanton’s organ part. That’s the project for today.

I had to dash off yesterday’s blog in order to have time to go practice organ. I left out a bunch of links. I’m including those in today’s links.

On the Media Podcast | WNYC

On The Media has offered a five part podcast on poverty. I recommend it. I’m half way through the second installment. This episdoe has a good history of welfare in it. Most of the history I recognize from having lived through it (not the Civil War or even the President Johnson’s War on Poverty).

If you click on the link above, it will take you to the On The Media Podcast page.

Here’s Busted #2: “Who Deserves to be Poor?”

 5 Hidden Features Of Google Chrome : TECH : Tech Times

One has to be careful with these. I did however install the audio mute plugin (or whatever it is). Ironically the first tab I used it on was this Tech Times article which has an annoying little piece of music it plays in the background.

Last night I awoke at midnight and heard the beginnings of a trio piece in my head. Around 5 AM, I got up, took my BP, weighed, fed the cat, and began writing a little piece for my piano trio. This is what I heard in the night”

I quickly decided that the open strings on the violin ostinato wasn’t quite the ticket. So I began revising and making up more of the piece.

Usually I don’t talk about composing when I’m in the middle of a project. It seems to short circuit it sometimes. But by this afternoon I had an entire 148 measure draft done.

I would like my trio to learn this and play it for the prelude and postlude a week from this Sunday. I’m not sure we can learn it that quickly. When I got to the middle of the piece, I checked on the hymns we are singing that day looking for melody for the middle.

We are singing “Blessed Jesus at thy word” as the Sequence Hymn that Sunday.  I decided to loosely base the middle section on this melody.  I think it works.

I’m going to let it sit until tomorrow. Then I might change a harmony, but it’s mostly done I think. Then I’ll email parts to my trio and print out my piano part and start practicing it. If you’re curious, here’s my Finale program singing the first draft in VST (Virtual Studio Technology).

Wow. Comments from three beloved family members yesterday, Sarah, Mark and Elizabeth. Cool.

I finished Ackroyd’s little book on Ezra Pound yesterday. I don’t think I’ve actually read a bio of Pound. It’s a sad story in some ways, but I still find him inspirational despite his malignant anti-Semiticism (which he weirdly always insisted was abstract not personal since he had many Jewish friends and colleagues).

Ackroyd put a lot of Pounds work in perspective for me. I’ll keep plugging away at the Cantos now but also some of his other work as well.

Margaret Atwood is a living writer I greatly admire.

This is the first volume of her first comic (I think comic is probably the most accurate description of this genre). It’s fun. She peppers her story with little factoids about cats. I look forward to reading the second volume

Recently on Basefuck there was an interesting conversation that I sort of lurked through. Gregory Cowell, a Grand Rapids musician, put up a quote from Peter Williams which he interpreted to be a comment on Bach tempo.

Peter Williams was an influential Bach scholar. I regularly return his works for information. He died last year. Here’s the quote Cowell put up:

“The steadier tempo was traditional in Germany, the ‘standard 4/4 found in so much music of the previous generations, when only exceptionally is the crotchet [quarter note] fast. Today, as they constantly search for excitement, many historically informed performers approach the ‘Brandenburgs’ and solo concertos at a speed not at all clearly appropriate to 1715.”

 There were many many responses to this including one from the local organ prof, Huw Lewis. I didn’t comment but read most of the comments.

Cowell did not source his quote. I remember hearing Huw Lewis comment in an AGO meeting a few years back that Peter Williams had advocated taking Bach at a much slower tempo than most people do. Lewis said he thought Williams was right but that he lacked the courage to change his tempos or something like that.

I decided the quote came from J.S. Bach: A Life in Music by Williams published in 2007 and made a note to check the book out sometime. Yesterday I was reading in Williams book on Bach’s organ music and noticed that the 2007 biography of Bach was sitting on my shelf.

I took it down, found the quote and decided to read the book. It seems to be a book length fleshing out of the famous obit of Bach written in part by his son CPE.

A Remarkable Event in El Salvador: A Day Without Murder – The New York Times

When people want to leave El Salvador (as apparently about 40% of the population does) they have some strong reasons.

A Rampage in Florida Shines a Light on Alaska – The New York Times

Some interesting history and information about mental health treatment in different states.

Justices Will Hear Challenges to Mandatory Employee Arbitration – The New York Times

Undoubtedly the corporate friend court will rule against the employees.

Chinese State Media Denounce Rex Tillerson’s Call to Block Island Access – The New York Times

It seems to me that part of what this article reveals is that world wide leaders can see through Trump’s rhetoric and bluster. Trick stuff.

Podcasts from the National Constitution Center – National Constitution Center

This is a bit arcane but I listened to most of the recent podcast. Distinguished scholars talk about how our government works.

This morning my blog is basically notes I have taken on this week’s episode of On The Media.

When you repeat Trump, you help Trump

George Lakoff has made some very important observations about how framing and thinking work. In this week’s episode, he specifically talks about how to analyze and respond to Trump tweets.

Here’s the list I made:

Taxonomy of Trump Tweets

1. pre-emptive framing
2. diversion tweet
3. trial balloon
4. deflection
5. salient exemplar

You can just listen to his comments for yourself at the link above, but I’ll flesh these out a bit here.

1. pre-emptive framing

This is the basic Lakoff insight. “Don’t think of an elephant.”

When Trump refused an answer from the CNN reporter this week and called CNN fake news, this was an example of pre-emptive framing. inextricably linked to this action was the fact that Trump treated Brietbart as real news and had brought his staff with him to actually cheer and clap in the news conference. Apparently this is similar to how Putin handles news conferences in Russia but more on that later.

When you detect framing the question to ask yourself is “What is being avoided?” “What is the actual content?”

2. Diversion Tweet

Changing the subject. Trump’s tweets on Meryl Streep and Hamilton are given as examples. Instead of talking about and reporting on controversies about Trump, news agencies jump in and talk about Streep and Hamilton, much more juicy and content free.

2. Trial balloon

Throw something out in a tweet like a reference to “nukes” to judge where the issue is on people’s radar so that you know how to frame it in the future.

3.  Deflection

A bit like “changing the subject” but much more malicious: Attack the  messenger. This is a favorite of our president elect. The trick Lakoff says is “Keep going back to the substance.”

4. salient exemplar

An “exemplar” is one example, say insisting that when a foreign government rents one night in a Trump motel it does not constitute a “emollient” or gift forbidden by the Constitution.

Saying this is “salient” means that this example represents the entire idea of allowing foreign governments to rent your hotel rooms so that if a government rents rooms for a month it also does not constitute an “emollient” when in face it would.

I like this one a lot because it is rooted in grammar. In grammar there is such a thing as “direct causation.” Lakoff says that languages all over the world have this in their grammar. It is a necessary and clear part of how communication works. But it differs from

systemic causation

which creates a general principle so that the initial direct causation is not just a particular instance or FRAME but is presented as how it functions in a system.

Wow.

Ned Resikoff and Managed Democracy

I can see that I’m being verbose this morning and don’t want to write another 1000 words describing the next two important parts of this week’s On The Media, so here are a couple links that elucidate Resikoff’s comments.

Trump’s lies have a purpose. They are an assault on democracy.

This is basically the content of what Resikoff talks about in the program.

Here are a couple other links.

Vladislav Surkov – Wikipedia

Resikoff mentions the Russian  Surkov’s ideas of managed democracy in the context of incoherent presentations of “truth” whereby eventually what is important is to preserve the right to self expression and to dilute any purchase on actual facts and truth.

in October of last year, the BBC did a documentary called “Hypernormalization” about how governments are capitulating to a “fake” reality. The title comes from a book by Surkov: Everything was Forever, Until it was No More: The Last Soviet Generation. On Nov 2 of last year, this documentary was put up on YouTube. Here’s a link. I’m pretty sure my daughter Sarah recommended this documentary a while back but I didn’t get to it. Now I probably will.

Hope in the Dark

Again in the interest of brevity, I am mostly putting up links about this interview with the author, Rebecca Solnit.

Her book was offered free as an ebook right after the election. it’s still available for $5.99 at this link or $8.26 at Amazon.

Solnit’s basic insight is that the future is unknowable or “dark.” She attributes this usage to Virgina Woolf writing at another terrible time of history that the future was “inscrutable not terrible.” Another book for Jupe to read.

‘We Have to Resist’: A Conversation with Rebecca Solnit : Longreads

I’m blogging in the afternoon again. This morning I had to go to see my shrink. He is a good guy and I enjoy chatting with him, but it feels an awful lot like just bullshitting with a friend. If I’m not working on something in myself I guess it still provides a little relief to Eileen from hearing me talk all the time (not that she complains). Birky (my shrink) says sometimes you just need to talk. He has said that the last two meetings when I have expressed sheepishness about talking on and on about stuff that interests me but is not necessarily about working with my own head.

Today I taught him how a clavichord works, about the origin of harmony in the history of Western Civilization, how Socrates is only mentioned by Aristophanes and Plato (I think that’s true), and a bunch of other stuff which sounds an awful lot like how I have chatted with people for much of my life.

I just googled it and Aristotle and Xenophon also mention Socrates, the latter being a student of his. How bout that?

I have been able to practice organ every day this week at Grace church. I went there immediately after my appointment with Birky and still nobody around and nothing moved in the church area. It’s okay with me because I don’t have to bother people about letting me practice on their organs. I should say that I’m mostly dreading talking to the famous Huw Lewis and that Rhonda (Hi Rhonda) has made it clear that she will arrange for me to practice at Hope Church.,

I had good rehearsals with my piano trio people yesterday. We decided to play some Frank Bridges for church a week Sunday. It’s pleasant, light music and we own the score. What the heck.

You can a taste of the  music if you like from this video. We decided to play the second and third movement. We only need two movements.

Ryan Gosling’s piano playing skills – Susan Tomes

I follow this woman’s blog.  She is a British dyed in the wool classical type, but I enjoy here comments. This is a good one about learning music by ear and why it’s important to be able to read music and have good solid technique.

backing up and redoing some Greek

Sigh. A few days ago, I decided I needed to back up a chapter in ,my Greek studies. The array of verb tenses I am supposed to know at the end of the sixth chapter is daunting. I need to spend more time drilling them (i.e. copying them over and over). I am also planning on re-translating all four sections of Chapter five. In the course of doing this I plan to carefully identify and describe the verbs.

The text is very systematic. The learner not so much. At the end of chapter 6 I figured out exactly how they presented the new tenses:

Chapter 5 sections A and B introduce Imperfect tense  in both active and middle voice. Chapter 5 sections C and D introduce future tense in both voices.
Chapter 6 sections A and B introduce  the first aorist tense (aorist means simple past tense) in both voices.
Chapter 6 sections C and D introduce the second or “strong” aorist tense in both voices.

This is eight different patterns of verb conjugation. Oy veh!

I think I can master them with some thorough (slow) review and study. But good grief!

list of organ music I’m working on

Similarly, I’m lining up some organ pieces to learn during this period of not performing organ music in public. So far, I have been working on the following

Vivace from Bach Trio Sonata in G major BWV 530
The Prelude from the Bach C major Prelude and Fugue (the 9/8) BWV 547
“What a Friend We Have In Jesus” by William Bolcolm
“The Primitives” from Five Dances for Organ by Calvin Hampton
Allegro (mov 1) from the Fifth Organ Symphony  by Widor

No workers have shown up at church yet so i have had unfettered access to the old organ. This will undoubtedly change soon.

This book keeps popping up on my radar. My boss, Rev Jen, has done some reading in it. Apparently it talks about the Devos money as well as the Koch. After I finish Strangers in Their Own Land by Hochschild, it will probably be my next political read.