Episode 73: Malcolm Nance —

Episode 73 of the podcast, “How to be amazing.” I listened to this this morning. Nance is a retired cryptographer and intelligence officer. His story is startling and his take on where we are now in the US is frightening. Only listen to this if you are ready for some frightening reality. He comes from a multi-generational military family from Philadelphia. He speaks many languages. He was on the ground at 9/11 as well as the 1983 Beirut bombing. He saw the Iraq war as a bad mistake before we went there. He is a patriot whose patriotism has been shaken by the election and actions of Trump. His description of a possible war with Korea is terrifying.

No more Writer’s Almanac for jupe. I usually listen to this five minute podcast while I sit before taking my BP. This morning there was not a new one. Bye Writer’s Almanac. If you go to the website there is a statement about this. They are also planning to change the name of the current Prairie Home Companion.  This latter move is one I have thought they should have done anyway if it’s to survive in its new format.

NYTimes: Louvre Abu Dhabi, an Arabic-Galactic Wonder, Revises Art History

This seems to be a clear eyed assessment of a new museum. I love the comments. One commenter pointed out the weirdness of the Louvre selling a franchise of its brand. It is indeed very odd.

NYTimes: The Internet Is Dying. Repealing Net Neutrality Hastens That Death.

I’m reading Bob Schieffer’s book, Overload: Finding the Truth in Today’s Deluge of News. Chapter 7 is about Walter Mossberg, a Wall Street Journal reporter who asked to start a computer column in the 90s. Born in ’47, Mossberg asks the question (quoted by Schieffer) “Has all the new information made us more informed?” He remembers an excitement I shared about being able to access information online.  Even though this kind of access to the Internet is a small portion of its use (Remember, my daughter Elizabeth reminded me, the Internet is for Porn!),  the internet as a functional tool of learning about stuff will probably suffer if not die if it continues in the direction it’s heading especially with the impending FCC ruling.

NYTimes: War Criminal Dies After Apparently Drinking Poison in Court

Wow.

NYTimes: The Masterpiece Cakeshop Case Is Not About Religious Freedom

Jennifer Finny Boylan consistently turns out good writing. Here’s another example.

NYTimes: When Politics Is Criminalized

Alan Dershowitz parsing the problem.

NYTimes: Free Speech, Personified

Pauli Murray spoke up in defense of having having George Wallace speak at Yale while detesting his ideas. She lost but her ideas have since been institutionally vindicated. Oh, and also she was the African American woman to become an Episcopalian Priest. Article written by the current president of Yale.

NYTimes: The Unexamined Brutality of the Male Libido

by Stephen Marsh. Laura Kipnis, on the current “I Have to Ask” Podcast from Slate,says that Marsh is a better novelist than thinker. She sounds pretty smart to me on this podcast. The whole discussion of sexuality seems to be taking a only small bits of this big topic into account. A classic example of the blind men and the elephant mistake.

I don’t pretend to understand sexuality. I just know it’s much bigger than the discussion about abuses now coming to light.

NYTimes: How to Get Your Mind to Read

Knowing stuff helps you read. who knew?

Unsurprisingly, I was exhausted yesterday. Nevertheless I mailed packages to the Northville harpsichord dude, submitted bulletin info for this week at church including a music note, exercised and spent two hours on the organ bench rehearsing.

When I got home, Eileen, Sarah, and Lucy were preparing to walk downtown and have supper and then presumably attend the Parade of Lights (or whatever). I hugged them and apologized for not joining them and staggered into the house.

I have been especially enjoying rehearsing organ music. I am learning a new Bach fantasia prelude and fugue (c minor, BWV 537). Yesterday I also set my sights on another prelude and fugue that isn’t too long (e minor BWV 533). The c minor is especially beautiful. The brevity lends itself to use at church, although I am not above scheduling longer pieces. I öam planning to use the fugue of the c minor as the prelude in a couple weeks and fantasia as the postlude.

In addition I worked over the Sweelinck toccata I am performing this weekend. Taking into account his wonderful echo pieces, I did some registration tricks to allow the melodies in the toccata to sound more prominent. i think it sounds cool.

As do the three little variations by Böhm I am also performing this weekend as the prelude.

This morning my morning poetry read randomly landed on a poem about pipe organ pipes and late autumn.

On the Deepest Sounds

by Lars Gustafsson, translated by Christopher Middleton (I think)

There is a pipe in big organs,
the thirty-two-foot basso, the contrabassoon,

huge vibrating pillar of air, late autumn
when rises in the wells,

the subterranean network of waters and wells,
and it is more a sorrow than a sound.

At this lower limit where the music ends,
something different wants to begin.

Body more than sound, body and darkness,
and late autumn, when the wells are rising,

but since it is lower than earth,
lower than music, lower than lament

—it does not want to begin, it does not begin,
and therefore it does not exist.

Now it is closer, now it is distinct!
Now it will soon be audible, far and wide.

Here’s a link to another translation.

I love the line: “more a sorrow than a sound.”

The beauty of the Pasi pipes is like that for me. A visceral beauty. Tangible emotion. It’s something I have not had a great deal of experience with. My guitar sounds were beautiful. Some of my piano sounds. But organ, not so much.

I have commented before here, I believe, that I derive much of my satisfaction from the beauty of the design of the music more than the actual sound. I have thought this was a good thing for me because it allowed me to take gigs with bad instruments where I could make enough money to support the fam or at least do my part.

I accepted the Grace gig because of Rev Jen, not the organs. Maybe a part of me missed church music. This could be. But now it is clear to me how much I enjoy making music with other people. Playing at church allows me to do this weekly.

Yesterday afternoon Matthew, Sarah’s partner and Lucy’s Dad,  got on a plane to fly home to England. It has been fun having him around. I forget how delightful it is to have good conversations with people other than Eileen and Rev Jen. Sarah and Lucy are staying for an additional couple of weeks.

I managed to pick up my rental car successfully. I had reserved a minivan so that I might transport my harpsichord to the harpsichord shop of Chris Brodersen in Northville, two and half hours away. Matthew helped me get the harpsichord into the minivan.

I got away around 10:40. My phone guided me to the Brodersen shop easily. However, it was a bit dismaying to find the owner so reticent and obviously unhappy to work on  my old instrument.

I have forgotten how snobby musicians can be.

I think that both Christopher and I were not too impressed with each other. He probably saw an aging hippy who didn’t have a clue about harpsichords.

I, on the other hand, experienced him as a grumpy not too sharp snob.

It took quite  a bit of time for him to get around to telling me he would work on the instrument. He ignored the instructions from Zuckermann (fair enough). He asked for the lead weights to reinsert into the keys also he said he couldn’t work on the instrument without the jack rail (which I had forgotten all about). I promised to ship the weights and the jack rail to him.

I do wonder about Zuckermann’s instructions to remove the weights. When Brodersen taped a few weights on a couple of keys they worked very well. Part of my problems with voicing was getting the key to return. This was easily solved by weighting it as was done in the original 1969 design.

Brodersen exhibited little curiosity and problem solving. I am hoping that he is anal enough to do a good job on my instrument. I’m really at his mercy. I don’t have another line on a harpsichord builder. He feels like my last hope before considering sinking considerable money into a new (used) instrument.

I was surprised how much his negative energy affected me. I tried to stay polite and cheerful and probably ended up sounded even more imbecilic to this middle aged Birkenstocked dude.

It was an unpleasant ride home pondering all of this. I got back about 4:30 PM.  This was too late to exercise or practice organ. Eileen listened sympathetically to my report. I did not skip my evening martini (sooprise).

I am feeling more positive this morning. But not about snobs particularly. Just about myself.

I have finished reading several books in the last few days. The way I read books these days is to keep several going and dip into them almost every day. Eventually they get entirely read.

I learned a lot from Tyhimba Jess’s book of poetry based on the life of Leadbelly  As usual Jess makes some beautiful poems. But more than that he helped me understand how little I knew about the man, Huddie Ledbetter. In the picture above you see him as he wished to be seen: a snappy dresser with a smooth and polished performance.

Reading Jess’s poem has changed the way I see the Lomaxes. Leadbelly was hired by John Lomax, Alan’s father, paid poorly and treated with contempt. It is, of course, easy to use our point of view from this age to revile earlier ages when things were much different. But, I have admired Alan Lomax and his father for a while for their collection of so much folk music. Now, I am beginning to see a fuller picture and am planning to do a bit more reading about Leadbelly’s life.

Van Jones’ timely work, Beyond the Messy Truth: How We Came Apart * How We Come together has much to commend it. Jones is doing the tricky act of talking sense and then walking the talk during a time of increasing madness in America. His insistence that we liberals need a coherent conservative opposition on which to hone our own ideas and together move forward is heartbreakingly accurate.

Nothing Personal photographs by Richard Avedon and text by James Baldwin is being republished next month. Baldwin’s prose burns off the page and accuses America of its current sins as well as its historic ones. I have preordered a copy and pulled out my Baldwin books to read and reread.

I think Rhonda gave me the copy of Othello  I finished this morning. Shakespeare’s language sings of course. I had never read this play. It is a discordant and troubling story told in beautiful language.

My morning reading included a three part poem by Lars Gustafsson called “Three Poems from the New World.” This poem is found in his collection, The Stillness of the World Before Bach.

I noted with a smile that the first section is about the Oneida Colony. I can remember writing a paper on this colony in high school. I think I was  intrigued with its combination of free love, communal living, and religion.

Here’s how this part begins:

I. “The Perfectionists” Colony in Oneida, N.Y.

Countless shadows populate this world
mens’, womens’, infants’ voices
small as the crickets under the trees.

I think this has a clear small beauty that reminds me of Japanese poetry.

Gustafsson was Swedish and writing in his own language about the United States.

But it’s the second section of this poem that stuck with me. It’s called Maple Syrup. In it Gustafsson finds that the taste of American Maple syrup (“an acid, clear-yellow liquid, burnt sugar, fresh sap and something else, unknown”) is “the taste of America,” “Concord and Los Alamos, Utica and the killings in Mississippi.”

He goes on:

And the boy hunting squirrels with his gun beneath the trees
This enigma is too hard for me: I thought there was innocence,

but never that it could be thick as prison walls.
I have never felt this acid taste before, this sap,

bu I knew it must exist: here it is everywhere,
in the tepid air, it blends  into the strong neon lights…

… Whoever has felt this remarkable taste,

its acid, will never again take the word “innocence” in his mouth
without feeling how it grows on his tongue, how it slowly
changes . . .

In his collaborative book with Richard Avedon, James Baldwin writes:

We are unbelievably ignorant concerning what goes on in our country—to say nothing of what goes on in the rest of the world—and appear to have become too timid to question what we are told. Our failure to trust one another deeply enough to be able to talk to one another has become so great that people with these questions in their hearts do not speak them; our opulence is so pervasive that people who are afraid to lose whatever they think they have persuade themselves of the truth of a lie, and help disseminate it; God help the innocent here, that man or woman who simply wants to love, and be loved. Unless this would-be lover is able to replace his or her backbone with a steel rod, he or she is doomed. This is no place for love.

James Baldwin, Nothing Personal

This is just a smidgen of the starting insights Baldwin writes in this short book written the year after JFK’s assassination.

When I read these passages this morning I was struck by the connection between the two visions of America.

The acid taste of maple syrup and the word, “Innocence. and the  idea that we in America fail to trust each other enough to speak from the heart and this is no place for the innocent or the lover.

Evergreen Commons is closed for Thanksgiving. Otherwise I would go over and exercise today. I probably would have done so yesterday as well. Instead I went to the library and browsed a bit and found some very interesting books to take home and look at.

I’m already many pages into Bob Schieffer’s Overload: Finding the Truth in Today’s Deluge of News. It is looking at a question I think about a great deal. It was published this year and deals with the Trump phenomenon.

Here are some excerpts.

Dead Cat Strategy

“Whether Trump knew it or not, his was a version of a political strategy first defined by Lynton Crosby, an Australian political consultant who later worked in the campaigns of British prime minister, David Cameron. Crosby called it the ‘Dead Cat Strategy,’ which held that no matter what the conversation at a dinner party was about, if you threw a dead cat on the table people started talking about the dead cat.

“Time and again, no matter what the campaign conversation was about, Trump threw another dead cat into the mix and people talked about that and him.”

Good Analysis of the Clinton Campaign

“Whatever else can be said about it, the Clinton campaign was operating the old way and by the old rules—a huge, consultant-heavy staff focused on raising money and dependent on constant polling to develop policy statements and talking points in an effort to ‘control the narrative.’ By the old rules, campaigns shielded candidates from situations in which they might get unexpected questions or tough follow-ups. Clinton did few interviews, and campaign workers seemed more determined to shield her form voters and reporters than finding ways to connect with them.”

Sort of the opposite of Trump’s constant exposure.

Trump as a “toon”

When Bob Scheiffer interviewed Maureen Dowd she had these comments:

“I usually think of campaigns as Shakespearian because I studied Shakespeare in college, but this one was more like that old movie, Who Killed Jessica Rabbit, which was Toons (animated cartoon charecters) interacting with humans.

“Trump is a ‘toon running against a human,’ and the collision of those two cultures makes it very hard for the press to know how to deal with him.”

“It’s a whole new thing. The collision of reality television and social media with politics…. He [Trump] is dominating every news cycle, stepping on his own news cycle, then tweeting something that ruins the message.

“And it’s funny that it’s a seventy-year-old man who’s introduced Twitter to the campaign…”

More from Schieffer later.

I also checked out the following books.

I also picked an interlibrary loaned copy of Avedon’s 1964 collaboration with James Baldwin, Nothing Personal.

The library copy was rebound with a warning to treat it gently.

We made it through out marathon day 2. In fact, I had time to go over to the church and practice in the morning. Sarah walked over to Mom’s nursing home and then texted me just as I was finishing up. I went over to visit Mom with her and then take her and Lucy back to the house.  We had lunch then packed up to go visit the Hatches for the rest of the day. The visit went very well with all parties on their best behavior and apparently even enjoying themselves.

I have decided to resurrect some cool organ pieces that will sound pretty wonderful on the new instrument. The choir is learning “Maria walks amid the thorns” by Distler. The group that was there Wednesday night showed progress in understanding this subtle and beautiful music. It inspired me to pull out a couple of organ pieces by Distler to also play the Sunday of Advent that we sing this motet.

I began working on the Bicinium movement of his partita on “Wake Awake” and also the first/last movement of his piece on “Nun komm der heiden heiland.” I played the entire latter piece on my bachelor’s recital. I do like it quite a bit although I can remember the organ teacher on loan from U of M making snarky comments about the writing in it.

As I write this Eileen is researching vacuum cleaners on her phone. She is so happy with the little portable vac she recently purchased to replace our crappy one that she wants to get a larger one to replace our regular one. Sarah, Matthew, and Lucy are out walking around. It’s a beautiful crisp morning in Holland Michigan. Earlier this morning we all drove over to the Wooden Shoe to have breakfast. The sky was beautiful with pink clouds off set nicely by the blue sky background and the naked black trees in the foreground.

Podcast #191: Kevin Young & Bunk—Hoaxes, Hooey, Hocum; Cons, Plagiarists, and Forgers | The New York Public Library

I listened to a bit of this. I find Kevin Young inspiring and have already interlibrary loaned his new book.

3000 year-old Urartu castle found under Lake Van in Turkey

There’s not much to this article but I found it interesting. It reminds me of Italo Calvino’s Invisible Cities.

NYTimes: A Conservative Plan to Weaponize the Federal Courts

Bookmarked to read. I’m getting so when I see an article that looks good even in the NYT I bookmark it so I don’t lose track of it. I think this is a flaw in the NYT app, that it is so haphazard in how it allows the reader to access all the current articles available.

Outing the Inside | by David Salle | The New York Review of Books

This is a review of a collection of work by Louise Bourgeois.  I admire her work immensely. All of the pics into today’s blog are of her stuff.

I had a bit of a marathon day yesterday. First thing I spent time with Finale putting in the hymn, “Comfort, comfort ye my people” so that my choir could sing it in four parts and also in the key of G major. It is my plan on the first Sunday of Advent to have them sing a verse before I play three of Georg Böhmn’s variations on it.

Then after breakfast I went to three places before arranging to rent a minivan next Monday to take my harpsichord to the Chris Brodersen’s shop.

After that to church. First I printed up corrected posters of our December recital. I gave Sarah the wrong spelling of the name of one of the musicians. So she had to go back and correct it and email me the new one which I then used to replace the old ones around the church and also on Facebook events.

I madly worked at church preparing for last night’s rehearsal. About half way through my tasks Eileen called and said she needed the mini to take the high chair to my Mom’s nursing home for the birthday party. I dropped everything and went home.

Mark,  Leigh, Ben, and Tony had arrived. We all went over to Mom’s nursing home for a birthday meal together.

Mom lasted about an hour.

Then we went to church so that several of the visitor’s could see the new organ.

After that  we all went back home for a chat and eventually some snacks. We ordered a pizza. Then rehearsal.

Today we do a Hatch Thanksgiving. Marathon Day 2.

Nautilus | Science Connected

It’s always interesting to me to listen to how people are getting their news. Tony, my nephew Ben’s husband, mentioned this site.

NYTimes: Colin Kaepernick and the Legacy of the Negro National Anthem

We sing “Lift Every Voice’ at church regularly. The trick is to not to take it too fast.

NYTimes: He Played Kennedy. Then He Became Himself.

Wow. I remember Vaughan Meader’s recordings well. My fam of origin had some of his records. I think I still have one of them. It is a bit sad to read about him bumming money.

NYTimes: 100 Notable Books of 2017

Dear reader, you know I love book lists. I haven’t finished any book on this list, but am reading a few of them.

‘American mercenaries’ are torturing arrested Saudi princes

Weirdly this link was on Drudge’s “right” list. Right as in “right wing.” I don’t see anything that “right” about the report. But it does mentioned Blackwater as involved in this ongoing weirdness.

I have been thinking a lot about Italo Calvino (1923-1985)..

The New Yorker has two podcasts in which living authors read stories by him. I like listening to them at night. They play over and over on my tablet and enable me to quit thinking and fall asleep.

Here are links to them if you’re curious.

“The Daughters of the Moon” by Italo Calvino read by Robert Coover.

“Love Far From Home” by Italo Calivon read by Salmon Rushdie.

The first of these two stories is one of Calvino’s Cosmicomics. I have recently ordered both the Kindle book and a real book of this collection. I also purchased the narration that comes with the Kindle book.

“The Daughters of the Moon” contains a thinly veiled critique of consumerism and specifically mentions Thanksgiving. Although it was written in the mid 60s, it was published in the New Yorker posthumously on Feb 23, 2009.

Here is a cool excerpt:

“That morning, the city was celebrating Consumer Thanksgiving Day. This feast came around every year, on a day in November, and had been set up to allow shoppers to display their gratitude toward the god Production, who tirelessly satisfied their every desire. The biggest department store in town organized a parade every year: an enormous balloon in the shape of a garishly colored doll was paraded through the main streets, pulled by ribbons that sequin-clad girls held as they marched behind a musical band. That day, the procession was coming down Fifth Avenue: the majorette twirled her baton in the air, the big drums banged, and the balloon giant, representing the Satisfied Customer, flew among the skyscrapers, obediently advancing on leashes held by girls in kepis, tassels, and fringed epaulets, riding spangly motorcycles.”

This is a kepi:

NYTimes: Lyndon Johnson’s War Propaganda

All governments are jerks (and apparently dishonest).

How to Make Potatoes – NYT Cooking

This is kind of interesting. I picked up some tricks.

Here’s what’s coming to (and leaving from) Netflix in December

FWIW

BBC Radio 3 – Saturday Classics, Max Richter

I like that this playlist (scroll down) includes such a wide range of styles. BBC do not leave their shows up indefinitely. This one expires on Dec 17, 2017.

My doubts about yesterday’s recital were completely unfounded. Nick put together a program that was stellar in concept, composition, and execution. It is just the kind of in-the-moment forward-looking kind of concert I am looking to host. Since I did not know Nick’s pieces it wasn’t clear to me quite how the music would sound. I think what we heard yesterday was basically a program that Nick and his husband, Jarek, put together for a performance in Poland. Jarek has a family member who was martyred in the Nazi purge of Poland. I learned yesterday that of the millions of Poles killed by the Nazis half were Christian and a good number of them Roman Catholic Priests. Michal Kozal was one of them.  Kozal is Jarek’s last name. The Kozal family meets annually in Poland to commemorate Michal’s life. It was at one of these meetings that I suspect that the four people who played yesterday performed basically the same recital. I didn’t think at the time to ask Nick if this was so.

Two of the compositions were pieces by Nick. One was a set of organ variations on a Polish hymn, the other, the main piece of the day, “Octave of a Suffering Servant.” The writing was wonderful. In between the violinist (who was spectacular) and Nick performed  Górecki’s “Little Fantasia” for violin and piano.

I am trying to be quiet right now since everyone (including Lucy) seems to be sleeping in so I’m not going to look for a video to embed of this marvelous piece. But I thought it was beautiful and moving and brilliantly composed.

It was a small crowd gathered yesterday. I seemed to have drummed up a few attendees with an email I sent out. I’m trying to build up an email list of interested listeners building on the AGO list. I don’t remember seeing any organists. it’s a shame, but I have decided not to feel bad about my recital series’ weak publicity and also lack of development (as in a “friends of” committee that looks to keeping the funds renewed). Fuck it, man. I can only do so much. Adding the series (and the organ itself) has increased the intensity of my work many fold. It’s rewarding but it is already a lot of work.  I’m not about to add responsibility for doing good publicity or fund raising for this series. I have raised these topics several times. But I actually wonder if there are that many people in this area that would be interested in the kind of quality programs we have been putting on. Certainly many of them haven’t heard of what we’re doing, that’s for sure.

I forgot to go get my daily kiss from my elderly mother in the nursing home yesterday. I know that this won’t matter too much to her. She might not even have noticed. But daily visits do seem to help her and it was a mistake on my part. I realized last night and decided not to mention it to Eileen and Sarah right away. We were all tired. I was tired. No need for other people to feel bad about something we couldn’t change (it was too late to go see her and I was halfway into my evening martini).

The morning service went very well. The choir did a good job.

My prelude and postlude had many notes but I managed to hit most of them in a musical manner. Nick told me that he felt his playing was a bit “off” yesterday. I gently chided him with effusive well-earned praise. Later I thought, sure, I heard some flubs. I almost always do. But he played a lot of notes most correctly and everything was very musical. It reminds me this morning of the brief chat I had with Jarek. He apologized for choking up a few times in narrating the moving story of his family member. I told him that we need the humanity of that sort of thing. I think this morning that Nick’s imperfect playing and Jarek’s tears were part of what I liked about the performance.

Pope Francis awards Arvo Pärt with the Ratzinger Prize – Estonian World

This article says that Pärt “has been them most performed living composer six years in a row.” They don’t say how this was determined, but I guess it’s believable.

Today should be interesting.

It looks like Sarah, Matthew, and Lucy are going to go downtown for an early breakfast.

Eileen is still in bed, of course. It’s about 7 AM. The British fam is adjusting to the time change. Lucy is doing very well with the change as far as I’m concerned.

I’m wondering how the recital will go off this afternoon.  I have known Nick for a long time, but we have gradually fallen out of touch especially since he came out of the closet and ended up as Roman Catholic Cathedral musician in Grand Rapids. We used to compare notes about compositions. I have a feeling that our aesthetics have parted ways, mine becoming more poppy and  radical, Nick’s becoming more conservative, but it’s just a guess. I may know more after this afternoon.

At any rate I am very happy to have him and his husband and friends perform at Grace this afternoon.

I am hoping the choir will sound good this morning.

I was so pleased with how they were doing Wednesday that I announced the pregame would be in the choir rehearsal room. It’s nice when I can do this since it’s a bit less disrupting to the worship when we are not rehearsing when parishioners arrive for Eucharist.

The time before prayer has become a bit more sedate at Grace. It can be quite noisy. Often this noise is coming not from children or even young people but from the older people in the church, usually those preparing to lead worship as adult acolytes or readers. We, of course, have tried to gently encourage people not make a great deal of noise at that time.

I wonder if some of this is connected to a general lack of awareness of etiquette in our culture. I have had some trouble convincing choir members not to robe and disrobe in the church. I think this is a bit weird. But both Rev Jen and I think that this a bit of decorum that we wish to preserve. After all, none of the other people dressed up in fancy robes in the service do this.

I also notice that often choir members are some of the most oblivious people during the prelude and postlude although in general this is changing and lately  I finish the postlude to applause and turn around and see a good number of parishioners listening and waiting for me to finish. Having a fancy dancy organ helps.

So I’m blogging during martini time, something I don’t usually do. Sarah, Lucy, and Matthew are visiting.  It has been very pleasant to have them around. I forget how much I enjoy chats with Matthew. (Hi Matthew!) And of course it’s lots of fun to be around Lucy and Sarah. But I’m not making too much time for blogging.

On Friday, i showed up at my shrink only to discover he double booked my time with a couple he counsels. He forgot me. My violinist pointed out that now he owes me bigtime! He actually was quite flustered and upset. I said that we would just meet in two weeks even though he offered me a couple more times on Friday. I am considering phoning him beforehand to confirm the appoint just to fuck with him.

Today I managed to finish the program for  tomorrow’s recital. Sarah managed to get the poster done a short time ago. I had already decided that I was not going to return to church to make copies and put them up just so they would be ready for tomorrow’s Eucharist. I emailed the final copy to the recitalist and my boss. If there are no changes, I will probably make posters between Eucharist and the recital and put them up. It’s my general goal to have the next recital’s poster up the day of the current recital. But I am at peace with how things have fallen out this time since Sarah only landed in the USA on Wednesday and I’m pretty sure that Rev Jen would prefer me not to stress out about it.

I think our set up is working for the visit. I do fear that it is a bit of stress for the world travelers, but we have it set up that they can have their space. We have set up a second bedroom specifically for Matthew to escape to for alone time. I also have my electric harpsichord in that room so when he’s not using it I myself can escape in there if need be.

I have managed to keep up my regimen of exercising. This morning while the rest of the group was downtown I went over and treadmilled.

Paris Review – Jorge Luis Borges, The Art of Fiction No. 39

This came up on my Facebook feed. I do like Borges.

Examination of Chopin’s pickled heart solves riddle of his early death

Benefits of pickling.

NYTimes: When New York City Was a (Literal) Battlefield

I like this kind of history.

NYTimes: Virginia Makes Every Voter Count

Voting is part of the solution to our current madness in the USA

I have been neglecting my blogging. It’s been a busy time for me for some reason. Part of it has been preparing for the imminent arrival of the British branch of the family.  Sarah, Matthew, and Lucy are on a plane from England even as I write this. They will arrive here sometime this afternoon. Eileen will pick them up at the airport in Grand Rapids.

I have moved upstairs. Previously,  I have been keeping my clothes in the downstairs bedroom out of convenience (easy access to the washing machine and dryer). I also moved my morning ablution equipment (BP machine, scales, toothbrush, and similar stuff) to the upstairs bathroom. This way when I get up in the morning I won’t need to go into the bathroom adjacent to the kid’s room downstairs.

Last night Eileen and I had a date night. We have both been working hard to prepare for this visit so it was nice to have everything ready and spend some time together.

Ta-Nehisi Coates on living, writing, and being black in Trump’s America.

Ran across this recently. I have subscribed to the podcast embedded here. I’m always looking for good podcasts. Coates is a hero of mine. I haven’t listened to this yet nor read the edited transcript at the above link.

NYTimes: Susan Rice: Trump Is Making China Great Again

I find it valuable when players like  Rice weigh in. ahem. I haven’t read this one yet either. Hey. I’ve been busy.

I got up this morning and wrote a quick blog post. However, it struck me as a tad negative so I decided not to publish it. Instead I’m writing this afternoon and I am in a much better place. Church went very well. I nailed the organ music and the choir sang “Keep your lamps” and the first verse of the psalm a cappella and sounded good.

I played music by Johann Gottfried Walther: two arrangements of Wachet auf for the prelude and a prelude and fugue for the postlude. The music strikes me as solid writing. I brought home a volume of his chorale preludes to play for fun (!) on my electric harpsichord. Also, his solidly written fugue was so attractive that I have been finding myself drawn to playing through more fugues.

Eileen and I stopped by the library so I could pick up my copy of Emily Wilson’s new translation of The Odyssey. I have been putting off going to pick it up since I am also reading her book on Socrates and don’t really need another book on my reading stack. But if I didn’t pick it up soon I would lose the chance to check it out. I have been reading the introduction just now and it is predictably very good.

‘We Have to Look at How Tolerant We Are of Violence in Homes’ | FAIR

This is sadly a repeat of an excellent interview from a year ago. I think the women being interviewed displays clarity.

NYTimes: Three Composers on the Necessity and Pitfalls of Political Music

One of the three is Caroline Shaw a favorite of mine. Bookmarked to read.

NYTimes: A Stranger From the Past Confronts Roddy Doyle’s Latest Hero

Roddy Doyle wrote the book, The Commitments.  I love it and in this rare case the movie based on it. His new book looks like fun.

NYTimes: Facebook Is Ignoring Anti-Abortion Fake News

This distortion in our public discussions makes me crazy.

My doctor was very pleased with my weight loss. My blood pressure was okay as well being a tad lower than it had been in my daily morning home check.

I managed to get some organ practice in before my appointment. After I came home, I walked over to Evergreen Commons and treadmilled. Eileen met me there for lunch at their cafeteria. Of course, it wasn’t set up for vegetarians particularly. There is a daily entree and a salad bar. it put me in mind of a school cafeteria with one main meal selection. Eileen said the entree (some sort of chicken with mashed potatoes) was good.

The place was packed. Mostly white people. Old white people. I always wonder who these people are. I have to wonder if they attended Holland Christian High School when it was housed in this building. People are friendly. There was a pianist playing the little baby grand when we came in the room. Mercifully he stopped by the time we had our food and sat down.

After we came home and then drove over to say hi to my Mom, I spent the rest of the day trying to relax for a change. It seemed to work.

Today I don’t have too much planned again. I need these days of goofing off. I’m so compulsive that it’s easy to fill them up with tasks. I will practice organ but that’s the only task for today.

More Reading Notes

Here’s some more of the passages in Van Jones’s that struck me.

Speaking of Republicans of the last thirty years or so, he observes they have become  “a party that is anti-liberal rather than pro-conservative.”

He thinks liberals need conservatives to hone their own ideas on. “[T]he promise of America is liberty and justice for all. My fellow liberals are so focused on justice we too easily forget about liberty. Conservatives can be so committed to liberty that you become blind to cases where injustice curtails freedom.”

Chapter four is called “Whitelash: Myths and Facts.” In it, he begins telling his own story and the story of his recent controversial pronouncement that the 2016 election was “whitelash” (more on this a later time)

“My parents were born under segregation. My twin sister, Angela, and I are ninth-generation Americans, but we were the very first people in our family to be born with all of our rights recognized by America’s government.”

It’s hard for me to realize how recent the calumny of slavery and it’s residual presence is in the history of America.

When I was reading this week’s New Yorker, this picture leaped out at me. It’s from a 1964 collaboration between Richard Avedon and James Baldwin, Nothing Personal, described in the accompanying caption as a “collaborative exploration of American identity.” The man in the center of the picture, the old guy, is William Casby of Algiers, Louisiana, “one of the last living Americans born into slavery.”

The caption quotes Baldwin and it’s worth repeating his ideas here: “It is necessary, while in darkness, to know that there is a light somewhere, to know that in oneself waiting to be found, there is a light. What the light reveals is danger, and what it demands is faith.”

Later in Van Jone’s book, he describes being on the scene of the horrific racist murders in the North Carolina church in June 2015. You recall. The white man wanted to start a “race war” and sat and prayed with people he then killed.

Van Jone’s describes his own fury and despair.

“The next morning, I was still seething. I could barely make eye contact with anyone. I was sitting with CNN anchor Jake Tapper, preparing to go on the air. We were both mic’d up, sweating and sad. The funeral was just beginning.”

“Suddenly we started to hear something—music, coming from across the street, from the church, Mother Emanuel. A big, beautiful, upbeat sound with drums and organ and piano. A chorus of voices, a soaring harmony. Totally discordant with how we were feeling. The camera people began saying, ‘What is that?’ The music swelled around us. It seemed to lift us all from below.”

“It’s amazing,’ Jake said to me, off air. ‘How is possible? They actually sound happy.’

“I smiled a little and sat up.”

” ‘That’s not happiness,’ I told him. I explained that there is a distinction in the black church between happiness and joy. Happiness is dependent on external circumstances, but joy comes from within. Despite the circumstances, we say, “Hallelujah, anyhow.” It’s our way of saying that you’re not going to take away my dignity or my inner knowledge that I have worth, if only in the eyes of my creator. You’re not going to take my humanity. You’re not going to turn me into something other than a beautiful child of God.”

Today I have a check up with my doctor. I have these twice a year or so. I struggle with having high blood pressure readings at the doctor’s office, higher than other places. My doctor thinks it’s “white coat syndrome’ i.e. being nervous around a doctor. I think it’s more about worrying about how much I will weigh this time.

Today should be amusing. I have gained and lost about 10 pounds or so since I last saw the doctor. My blood pressure has been consistently low. Except of course for this morning’s reading which may have been influenced by worrying about my doctor’s appointment. Believe me,  I see the irony in this.

Annotations for Jerusalem by Alan Moore – dateline Northampton

In Alan Moore’s Mansoul, the second volume of his trilogy, Jerusalem, he describes a small gang of dead children in the Upstairs (after life) called the “Dead Dead Gang.” When giving the background on the name of the gang, he says that since they all came from different gangs in the Twenty Five Thousand Nights (another of their many names for when they were alive), they had to think of  a new name for their gang. One of them remembers a book they had to read in school called “The Dead Dead Gang.”

I immediately googled for this book and found the above link to annotations for the Moore trilogy. Cool. Reading through it, I was pleased to see that many of the allusions were not lost on me. But I did learn stuff which I will refrain from sharing here in case any of you three or four readers are reading or listening to  Jerusalem.

Incidentally, I liked one of the dead children’s explanation of their gang’s name: “As for what it means, I couldn’t tell you. All that I could think of was, some people are dead lucky and some people are dead clever, but not us lot. We’re dead dead.” p. 465

NYTimes: What Explains U.S. Mass Shootings? International Comparisons Suggest an Answer

I’m working hard on my own echo chamber these days. I have found some critiques of this report on the right. But I think it makes sense that the extreme proliferation of firearms in the USA contributes to this hideous phenomenon.

NYTimes: A Grecian Artifact Evokes Tales From the ‘Iliad’ and ‘Odyssey’

Year One: Our President Ubu | by Charles Simic | NYR Daily | The New York Review of Books

Dozens of these silly retrospectives have been floating around. This one has an unusual take, however.

NYTimes: Willie Horton, Updated for the Trump Era

Race baiting marches on.

NYTimes: Martin Amis on Lenin’s Deadly Revolution

My NYT app continues to fail me like so much of tech these days. It offers up a confusing amalgamation of articles from the paper. Somehow I missed this article through the app but found it somewhere else. Bookmarked to read.

I’ve done it again. I’ve been thinking about the postlude I scheduled for this Sunday. I decided to scrap it. It was based on the last hymn and written by Seth Bingham. Bingham  (1882-1972) was a prominent American organist of his time serving a big Presbyterian church in New York and teaching at Columbia. But his music is very dated. I don’t mind performing dated music once in a while especially if it represents the tradition. However, It was very loud. I played a loud 20th century piece for the postlude last Sunday. I had considered pairing a toccata or prelude and fugue by Walther with the pieces I am going to play for the prelude Sunday based on the hymn, “Wake, awake.”

Monday afternoon I rummaged through a bunch of pieces by Walther. I have played one of his toccatas. However, the pedal part on this piece is very stagnant. Instead, I foolishly decided to learn a new prelude and fugue by him for this Sunday. This means it will take more rehearsal time.

But I wrote a bulletin article again about this Sunday’s music. I explained that Walther was Bach’s cousin and that Bach was the godfather of Walther’s eldest son. I mentioned that music from this time sits nicely on our new organ. This fact is actually a motivator for me, so it doesn’t hurt to mention it.

This poem impressed me this morning.

THE SONG SPEAKS

by Tyhehimba Jess

an ex-con finds me
when he’s statue still,
“thinkin’ his heart,”
summoning his bones
the way a gambler whispers
luck to the die he’s clenched
and hurled from his palm.

a professor embalms me
in electrified wax,
then exhumes me a 78 rpm
with needle and wire,
tattooing my breath—
less body into wind.

whether i was born in the soil
or from the heat of muscle
against soil, from body-bent
trees or the river they all drink
from; whether i pass down
from callus or calumny,
goddam or gospel,
my birthing way
is always the same.

i heave memory,
want, and will
against lung until
the soul’s meat
surrenders, makes way
for the knee-buckle
load mined
from each moaner’s
private graveyard
of chance.

sticky with god,
i shove and smooth
my way up gullet,
hauling treasure
chest of fingerpop
and footstomp.
i mount the skull:
starward-tilted,
open-mouthed,
praying my name
as if it were its own
into the book of heaven.

from leadbelly

I almost half way through Van Jones’ book,  Beyond the Messy Truth. It is the most sensible thing I have read about the current madness in the USA.

Reading Van Jones, I am reminded of my late Father’s idea about conservationism and liberalism. Dad insisted that in order to function one needed to be both conservative and liberal, that is to “conserve” some things and protect them and to “free” other things and to liberate them.

Van Jones makes an argument that liberals like himself need better conservatives with which to disagree and work together. He makes a good case.

Here are some of my book notes:

The second chapter is entitled “An Open Letter to Liberals.”

Regarding the extreme invective on the left, Van Jones writes critically.

“We must ‘resist’ Trump—yes—and that task includes resisting the temptation to become more like him ourselves.”

To the liberal question, “why do Trump supporters and others vote against their own self-interest?” He asks,

“[W]ant to know the group of white people that most consistently votes against its own ‘economic self-interest’? Rich white liberals” since they support programs which are just but from which they personally do not benefit.

Regarding liberals blindness to the part of Obama’s presidency which reflected non-liberal values:

“Obama did do things when it came to surveillance, drone strikes, and jailing whistle-blowers that progressives would never accept from a Bush or a Trump.”

Destructive progressive elitist attitudes:

“It is elitist to crack jokes that imply all Republicans are insane. Or uneducated. Or  bigoted. It is elitist to assume that anyone who disagrees with us is either a bigot orf a dummy or both. It is elitist to refer to the red states as Dumb-fuck-istan. Expressing pity, contempt or disdain for red-state voters has to stop being the price of admission into the club of liberalism.”

Democrats need black support but do not appoint them to positions of leadership.

“….. not one U.S senator who is a Democrat has a black chief of staff. Ironically, the only black chief of staff in the entire U.S. Senate works for Tim Scott—that esteemed body’s only black Republican.”

Concerning the current Republican’s attack on fair voting.

“Republicans took a shortcut to power through gerrymandering in 2010 riding Donald Trump’s coattails in 2016.”

Concerning conservatives inconsistency about voting and guns.

“[C]onservatives should be just as skeptical when the state makes it harder to vote as they are when the state tries to make it harder to buy a gun.”

He cites a Republican National Committee report following the 2012 presidential loss which outlines actual issues. His outsider advice from the point of view of conservatives in restoring conservative values to the Republican party to follow these recommendations.

Remember these four recommendations from Republicans to Republicans.

First “Republicans should embrace comprehensive immigration reform and end nativist language.”

Secondly, the report concluded “harsh language and legislation targeting LGBTQ Americans hurt electorally.”

Thirdly, the report “determined that Republicans were engaged in an echo chamber of belief—caused in part by choosing news sources like Fox News and onnly talking to colleagues and friends with similar beliefs—that resulted in a distorted understanding of the empirical reality of certain policies as well as voters’ interests.”

Fourthly, “the report warned that the Republican Party was at risk of becoming the party of rich white guys even as America was becoming browner, younger, and as inequality was growing.”

Van Jones correctly describes the Republican party as one that is “anti-liberal rather than pro-conservative.”

He concludes his third chapter entitled “An Open Letter to Conservatives” this way:

“[T]he promise of America is liberty and justice for all. My fellow liberals are so focused on justice we too easily forget about liberty. Conservatives can be so committed to liberty that you become blind to cases where injustice curtails freedom.”

That’s enough for today.

We live in a dark time in America right now. It has been dark before. It is dark again. I am thinking of the open expressions of ignorance and hate which have been enabled by the last election. It is very easy to feel discouraged right now, at least it is for me.

But last night I was reading about slave fathers in The Half Has Never Been Told: Slavery and the Making of American Capitalism by Edward E. Baptist. He was pointing out how the enslaved would choose “to protect their role as husband and father” instead of “protecting their own bodies alone” through running away or rebelling.

He tells one especially poignant story that he seems to have figured out from documents about Joe Kilpatrick. Joe Kilpatrick was sold away in North Carolina from his wife and two daughters, Lettice and Nelly. He ends up building a building to live in on his enslaver’s cotton labor camp near Tallahassee. He takes in a young five year old boy, George Jones, “orphaned by trade.” Jones grows up, gets married and fathers two daughters named Lettice and Nelly. Baptist speculates on what kind of stories Kilpatrick told to Jones as he raised him. He wonders when Jones decided that Kilpatrick’s two daughters were his sisters. Kilpatrick, in raising Jones “sought redemption for his own losses not in domination, nor in acceptance of despair, but in long-term, patient hope.”

Wow. Baptist quotes the author Todorov who wrote about the concentration camps and calls Kilpatrick’s “patient hope” “ordinary virtue.”

Todorov wrote that people in the camps sometimes chose “transcendence by displaying kindness toward other people. Through small, everyday acts that committed them to the survival of other human beings—even at the cost of lowering their own chances—they demonstrated their own commitment to an abstract yet personal value. Although heroic acts were as suicidal in twentieth-century death camps as they were in nineteenth-century slave labor camps, even in hell there was still room to be a moral human being.” (p. 282 of Baptist’s book where he is paraphrasing Todorov)

Ordinary virtue is a good name for what it takes to stay sane and behave with any integrity in the USA right now. And to my way of thinking, even though times are dark, they are not as dark as they were for people in concentration camps and slave labor camps.

This brings me to my second glimmer of hope.

Introduction to Classical Greek

Many thanks to my brother, Mark, for pointing out this fantastic web site.

I was wrong about there being a wedding at church yesterday. It’s not until next Saturday. I went over in the morning anyway, since Eileen got up late and hurried off to her alto breakfast.  When I got back about 11:30 Eileen wasn’t back yet. Actually she had come back and then took off to get a cat prescription from the vet. But I didn’t know that. I thought maybe she had a long breakfast with the other women. I walked over to Evergreen and did my treadmilling.

Eileen texted me while I was on the treadmill. She said we could have lunch together in an hour which is what we did. For some reason I slipped into a bad mood. I am working on keeping my bad moods to myself these days and managed to do so. By the end of  the day I wasn’t ready to skip my martini, which was unfortunate because my weight had been up that morning.

But this morning I am feeling lucky again since I had my drink(s) last night and I still had low BP and even lost a pound. Lucky me.

Before visiting my Mom I went to the library and picked up a book by Emily Wilson and one by Nicolas Slonimsky.

I read the following linked article while treadmilling and was fascinated by it and Wilson.

NYTimes: The First Woman to Translate the ‘Odyssey’ Into English

I am on the wait list of her new translation at the library. Here’s a link to the first of it that was published in the Paris Review.  I’m very interested in Wilson’s work.

I love the discussion of the translation of the Greek word, polytropus by Wyatt Mason (the author of the NYT article) . I told Eileen yesterday that something I have in common with the writer Alan Moore is that we are both “word drunk.” I love words and live in a time of consumption and image not ideas. I know that this makes me eccentric but remember I’m feeling lucky. I am happy to be eccentrically word drunk.

I have been reading a few pages of Othello each day out loud. I read poetry out loud if I am able to. Shakespeare’s words are wonderful. I also enjoy my daily dose of Tyhimba Jess, Amiri Baraka and Derek Walcott.

Life is good.