Doing my morning Shakespeare reading, I came across this passage.

“… But man, proud man,
Dressed in a little brief authority,
Most ignorant of what he’s most assured,
His glassy essence, like an angry ape
Plays such fantastic tricks before high heaven
As makes the angels weep, who with our spleens
Would all themselves laugh mortal.”

Measure for Measure Act 2, scene 2 119-125

Make you think of anybody?

Surely our current president “makes the angels weep.”

I finished Bob Schieffer’s Overload: Finding the Truth in Today’s Deluge of News this morning. One of the things I admire about Schieffer’s book is how easily he turns his pages to swathes of prose written by others.

He finishes the book with this article: David Fahrenthold tells the behind-the-scenes story of his year covering Trump – The Washington Post. He introduces it, commenting, “Rather than trying to define good journalism, [I] present an example.” The article was written in December of last year (2016). It is a good, if discouraging, read.

While I’m talking current events, here’s a lovely pertinent passage by Emily Wilson at the end of her introduction to her new translation of The Odyssey.

“The poem is concerned, above all, with the duties and dangers involved in welcoming foreigners into one’s home. I hope my translations will enable contemporary readers to welcome and host this foreign poem, with all the right degrees of warmth, curiosity, openness, and suspicion.

“There is a stranger outside your house. He is old, ragged, and dirty. He is tired. He has been wandering, homeless, for a long time, perhaps many years. Invite him inside. You do not know his name. He may be a thief. He may be a murderer. He may be a god. He may remind you of your husband, your father, or yourself. Do not ask questions. Wait. Let him sit on a comfortable chair and warm himself beside your fire. Bring him some food, the best you have, and a cup of wine. Let him eat and drink until he is satisfied. Be patient. When he is finished, he will tell his story. Listen carefully. It may not be as you expect.”

from “Translator’s Note” in The Odyssey, translated by Emily Wilson, p. 91

NYTimes: Erica Garner, Activist and Daughter of Eric Garner, Dies at 27

Erica had asthma as well. Remember her father crying “I can’t breath” eleven times before he died at the hands of police officers.

The Washington Post: In a 30-minute interview, President Trump made 24 false or misleading claims

And that was just last Thursday.

I skipped blogging yesterday.  The Mark, Leigh, Ben, and Tony crew went and saw Mom and then came home for a quick lunch and got away close to noon. They were evacuating before a huge snow storm front that showed up on the radar.

It was fun having them around.

I haven’t been over to church since Sunday. The music I am playing is mostly for manuals. I have scheduled Pierre Dandrieu’s variations on “Chanson de St. Jacques.” I wish I knew more about the original melody. There are many variations in this set. I put it in the bulletin that I would be playing “excerpts” from them. This allows me to pick and choose right up to the last minute which variations I will play. I think three variations for the prelude and three more for the postlude is about right. They don’t last a minute each, even with repeats.

Eileen and I walked over to Evergreen Commons and treadmilled yesterday. The season has really slowed down my own exercising and dieting. Typical I guess.

Today Evergreen Commons is closed for the upcoming New Year holiday. I need to go to church and file all the Christmas music and register the Dandrieu. I am thinking it would be good exercise to walk over to church today.

The edition of Dandrieu I found online to play from doesn’t do much in the way of suggested registration the way the old edition I was using does. The suggestions are editorial additions anyway. This morning I got up and found my copies of notes about French organ registration. Ray Ferguson gave his students invaluable pages of photocopies of research about this subject. Although the information is in French, this hardly matters since the vocab is so specialized, it is still extremely helpful.

I am planning to use this material to double check my decisions on registering Sunday’s organ music. I had a couple of notes go dead on me last Saturday. I worked around them for Sunday’s services. I’m hoping they are better today. I suspect bits of dust from the recent rafter cleaning despite having warned them the organ needed TLC in that kind of environment.

I hope that Ron, the handy parishioner, and I don’t have to address this. It would mean someone (Ron probably) crawling up and trying to find out if dust is blocking some reed pipes.  Ron is no spring chicken. I worry about him climbing around up there. I worry about me climbing around up there.

Harriet Tubman’s Hymnal – The New York Times

After reading this article I pulled out my own copy of Gospel Hymns Consolidated, Embracing Numbers 1,2,3 and 4, without duplicates for use in Gospel Meetings and other religious services.

It’s surprising how many of these old hymns are in my brain. The copyright on this particular edition is 1883. That’s about two decades after the civil war.

NYTimes: The End of Trump and the End of Days

I have found the hysteria and ad hominem attacks on the left this past year leave me cold even though I sympathize with the anti-Trump point of view.

NYTimes: Inside of a Dog

Normally, feature articles about pets don’t interest me. But I admire Jennifer Finney Boyle immensely and would even read an article about her dogs with pleasure.

NYTimes: Why Self-Compassion Beats Self-Confidence

I have thought a bit about self-compassion. I phrase it to myself that I would easily forgive in others things that are had for me to forgive in myself. Then I try to forgive myself or at least be more fair to myself. Trying to be self aware is a bitch.

I decorated the tree today. Eileen is snowblowing the driveway. After she finishes I’m going to help her make chili for company. I need to practice right now, but thought I would show readers my tree. I’m proud of it.

I’m finding myself very tired today. Eileen has spent most of the day getting ready for visitors. We are expecting at least four of the Ann Arbor Jenkins clan tomorrow. For my part, I just went and did the grocery shopping. We still haven’t decorated our Christmas tree. Eileen and I agree, it’s quite nice without decorations, but we’ll probably throw a few ornaments on this evening.

I wanted to exercise and go to church and practice, but I’m actually so tired I’m a bit weak. So that’s not happening. Old guy stuff. I spoke to my daughter-in-law, Cynthia, on the phone yesterday. Also spoke briefly with my grand son, Nicholas.

I seem to have left my organ music at church. The pieces I am playing this weekend by Dandrieu mostly don’t have pedal parts, so I could practice them at home.

I just found the piece, “Chanson de Saint Jacques,” on IMSLP. Oops.

There it’s attributed to Pierre Dandrieu. That’s Petrus above. Dang priest. So was Vivaldi.  I have this same piece in a volume attributed to Jean-François Dandrieu.

This is Jean-François. He doesn’t seem to be a priest but he looks a little grumpy to me.

A little checking reveals that Pierre is the uncle of Jean-François.  There is a whole family of Dandrieus mentioned in Groves. Who knew?

It’s more fun music for Jupe. After blogging I will pull down the piece from the cloud and practice it on my fifty dollar synth harpsichord.

I started reading Edward Hirsch’s Poet’s Choice. I like the introduction he wrote very much. It helped me realize how important poetry has been to me in my life and how helpful i find it to spend time in the presences of good poems or at least ones I like. The chapters are articles he wrote when he worked for the Washington Post. They don’t always quote the full poem although  he promises at least one complete poem in every chapter.

This morning online, i found two of the poems that he mentions but doesn’t quote in full.

Here are links if you’re interested.

Our Bread by Cesar Vallejo

 The Black Heralds by Cesar Vallejo

A choir member gave me the Fall 2017 issue of Lapham’s Quarterly for Christmas.

I have been a fan of Lapham’s. He used to edit Harper’s magazine. This is a wonderful gift. Thank you, Nancy!

Eileen and I got up and had a leisurely Christmas morning together. Yesterday was quite the marathon. Sunday morning and evening services for Advent IV and Christmas eve. It all went well. We gathered  food and gifts to take up to the annual Hatch Christmas,,jumped in the car, dropped off a gift to friend and stopped to see my Mom, then headed off.

About two miles north of Holland we hit whiteout. We drove on for several minutes. It became apparent that it was insane to continue so we turned around and came home.

I came home and made a list of stuff wrong with the car (my Mom’s Olds actually) that we need to fix: windshield wipers, leaky wiper fluid holder. tune up, oil change so something came out of the effort.

Apparently the online Groves Dictionary of Music did a complete update this month.  I found it confusing at first. Now I think i can use it, but it’s not clear when one is accessing the Groves. Also I don’t see anything about  how to cite it academically in a paper.  I think it has changed its name to Grove Music Online.

I have been playing music by and thinking about a father son team from Austria: Georg Muffat (1673-1704) and Gottlieb Muffat (1690-1770). Both men wrote charming music for organ and harpsichord as well as other genres. I wanted to learn more about them so I went onto Grove Music Online and that’s when I ran into trouble with the new set up. I did find what looks like the old online access and read up a bit on these guys.

I have been playing through harpsichord suites by Gottlieb and am fascinated by how much the music resembles the music of François Couperin.  Writing in Vienna, Gottlieb’s suite movements seem to call for French interp. And since he is so late, the music is a bit of a blur between baroque and “modern” or more “gallant” music.

The article about him in Groves Online was written by Susan Wollenberg. There is a book about him out, but it’s expensive and I can’t get a college library to interlibrary loan it to me. I guess i see why,

I seem to have one volume each by Georg and Gottlieb. I think I may have picked them up many many years ago when a publisher (Kalmus) put it’s entire catalog on sale for half off before selling out to another publisher (Belwin Mills?).

One of my questions is how the French practice seeped into these men’s lives. Reading on Groves, I see that the dad studied with Lully in France and Corelli in Italy. Here’s a picture of Georg.

I got a kick out of it because he is wearing his wig in the French style. This pic also came up.

It’s Lully. I think that’s hilarious.

This is Gottlieb.

Why I Gave Homer a Contemporary Voice in the Odyssey | Literary Hub

The author of this article is my new hero, Emily West.

Ginsburg Slaps Gorsuch in Gerrymandering Case | The New Yorker

woo

CBS News – Breaking News, Live News stream 24×7

Did you  know there is a streaming version of CBS news going 24/7? I have it on my tablet but haven’t looked at it much. It looks pretty good. It’s designed to be partly phone app, partly desktop, and partly TV Roku streaming.

I was a bit startled this morning listening to the latest On The Media pod cast,  in which they referred in passing to President Trump as The Joker.

This is Salman Rushdie’s metaphor in the book I just finished.

“It was the year of two bubbles. In one of those bubbles, the Joker shrieked and the laught-track crowds laughed right on cue. In that bubble the climate was not changing and the end of the Arctic icecap was just a new real estate opportunity. In that bubble, gun murderers were exercising their constitutional rights but the parents of murdered children were un-American. In that bubble, if its inhabitants were victorious, the president of the neighboring country to the south which was sending rapists and killers to America would be forced to pay for a wall dividing the two nations to keep the killers and rapists south of the border where they belonged; and crime would end; and the country’s enemies would be defeated instantly and overwhelmingly; and mass deportations would be a good thing; and women reporters would be seen to be unreliable because they had blood coming out of their whatevers; and the parents of dead war heroes would be revealed to be working for radical Islam; and international treaties would not have to be honored; and Russia would be friend and that would have nothing whatsoever to do with the Russian oligarchs propping up the Joker’s shady enterprises; and the meanings of things would change; multiple bankruptcies would be understood to prove great business enterprise; and ther and a half thousand lawsuits against you would be understood to prove business acumen; and stiffing your contractors would prove your tough-guy business attitude; and a crooked university would prove your commitment to education; and while the Second Amendment would be sacred the First would not be; so those who criticized the leader would suffer consequences; and African Americans would go along with it all because what the hell did they have to lose. In that bubble knowledge was ignorance, up was down, and the right person to hold the nuclear codes in his hand was the green-haired white-skinned red-slash-mouth giggler who asked a military briefing team four times why nuclear weapons was so bad. In that bubble, razor-tipped playing cards were funny,

lapel flowers that sprayed acid into people’s faces were funny,

and wishing you could have sex with your daughter was funny, and sarcasm was funny even when what was called sarcasm was not sarcastic, and lying was funny, and hatred was funny, and bullying was funny, and the date was, or almost was, or might soon be, if the jokes worked as they should, nineteen eighty-four.

In that other bubble—as my parents had taught me long ago—was the city of New York. In New York for the moment, at least, a kind of reality still persevered, and New Yorkers could identify a con man when they saw one.” p. 249-250, Salman Rushdie, The Golden House

Like I have said here before, Rushdie’s novel is not about Trump, but he does write a tiny bit of lovely frightening prose about him. I’ll stop there but I have to add a quote from David Rhodes, president of CBS, “Rhodes says the criticism [of coverage of Trump in the election] broke down into three narratives, you were taken in by the entertainment so basically you enabled this over the will of the people—it was good for ratings so you went with it.

“Second, you missed Trump. The media are elitist. They didn’t see Trump coming and they missed the story. They thought it was going to be someone else.

“And the third narrative is that the media really didn’t matter. What’s been elemental to Trump’s success and popularity has been his use of Twitter and social media to essentially go around the independent media.

“Well, choose your own adventure here. It can’t be all of  the above.”

quoted in Overload: Finding the Truth in Today’s Deluge of News by Schieffer and Schwarts, p. 100

I’m reading two novels right now that both feature dead people. Mansoul is the second volume of Alan Moore’s Jerusalem. I’m about two thirds of the way through and so far the entire volume has taken place in Mansoul which is a kind of fourth-dimensional after-life. The main actors are a gang of dead children which include a child who choked on a cough drop and died and was brought back to life by the doctors in the first volume. This story is what he experienced during that brief time away. The action goes on and on. He is saved by the Dead Dead Gang. Gradually the reader becomes very endeared to the members of this gang of dead children. I’m enjoying this book immensely.

I have just started George Saunder’s Lincoln in the Bardo. At one point the narrative is conversation between people who have died and been buried in the same cemetery where Lincoln’s young son, Willie, was buried.

I’m also reading Kevin Young’s collection of poems , The Art of Losing: Poems of Grief and Healing.

I sense a trend.

Sidney Blumenthal: The Political Life of Lincoln, 1849-1856 podcast

Coincidentally listened to this recently. Blumenthal didn’t make it, but the lecturer is excellent.

I used to drive out to the edge of the town I was living in,
a Michigan town on the northern shores of Lake Huron.
I used to drive out there to give a woman piano lessons,
piano lessons on a wheezy little electric organ.
I taught her some Bartók, some pop music.
We chatted about both of us dieting, trying to lose weight.
Poop poop she said if you want to lose weight

she looked back at me through the screen door as I was leaving
Poop poop she repeated encouragingly to me through the screen
her face round and her eyes bugging frog-like
Poop poop

a true poem written this morning by me

I finished Salmon Rushdie’s The Golden House two days ago. I picked up this his latest novel because I was intrigued that he uses it for a vehicle to comment on the United States in its current disarray. His thinly disguised portrayal of President Trump as a man he calls The Joker is a very minor part of the book. Unlike some of Rushdie’s other works this novel is pretty light reading.  It’s a very cinematic telling of a story. Cinema itself is important to the entire novel. The narrator is a film maker who is gathering materials for a film by observing a father and his three sons who have immigrated from India under mysterious circumstances. There is more than a whiff of Hitchcock in the air, including references to Rear Window since most of the story takes place in New York neighborhood like the one in Rear Window and there is a lot of snooping going on.

Now some stuff from my morning reading and listening.

San Francisco Sailing on Under Earth

by Lars Gustafsson

When the light falls across the hills
they light up like fire, one last moment,

the whole city drinks the light.

The first white men to see Alcatraz
found the island teeming with penguins:

solemn, comical birds who died easily.

The Chinese were called in by Morgan, ten dollars,
not in wages but once and for all

and died like flies building their railroads—
no Chinese women permitted

but ten or twelve came anyway,
all of Chinatown from eleven Chinese wombs

and the sick young girls from Canton
were locked up in cellars to die.

Emperor Norton, Sovereign Ruler of the United States
Protector of Mexico, Instigator of the Union Square Christmas tree

verdigris running along his epaulets

died easily one winter’s night.

If you keep quiet you can hear the Creoles dancing.

Schooners, galleons, four-masters, barks
whole city districts consist of sunken ships

filled with sand, anchored like sisters
close to on another.

All of the Embarcadero rests on a subterranean fleet.

The Pan am Building, the Bank of America
the skyscrapers are standing on decks far down in the depths

and that fleet sails on under the earth.

translated by Yvonne L. Sandstroem

from The Stillness of the World Before Bach (1988)

From Invisible Cities by Italo Calvinon:

“And when my spirit wants no stimulus or nourishment save music, I know it is to be sought in the cemeteries: the musicians hide in the tombs; from grave to grave flute trills, harp chords answer one another.” p. 48 translated by William Weaver

 Poem Talk

LATEST EPISODE

Kelly Writers House

Seems to be an actual house on Penn State campus in Pennsylvania. Cool links and info.

PennSound

A related site. Tons of recordings of poets reading their work in the archive.

I skipped reading poetry this morning to finish Emily Wilson’s lively, entertaining book, The Death of Socrates. I have been reading a library copy. Sometimes I intensify my reading of  a book simply because it’s due soon. Wilson came to my attention with her recent new translation of the Odyssey. A copy of this book is sitting on my to read stack which is quite big these days and not literally stacked but spread all over the living room.

You wouldn’t think that a book about the death of Socrates would be lively and entertaining, but that’s how I found this one. Wilson shrewdly picks apart many accounts of Socrates from Plato to Satie’s “Socrate” to a comic piece by Woody Allen.

I had never really thought much about how prevalent Socrates is in western art, literature, entertainment and thought. I have read much of Plato’s account of Socrates and it is this Socrates that I think most informs my own idea of him. But Wilson shows how philosophers re-imagine Socrates factoring in their own world view.  She clearly outlines how each thinker’s Socrates comes together and compares and contrasts it to the more contemporary initial accounts of Plato, Xenophon, and Aristophanes.

An added pleasure for me is that in my Greek study I have been reading excerpts of Plato and Xenophon including Plato’s description of the death of Socrates.

Throughout the text, Wilson discusses how visual artists have presented Socrates with an emphasis on the story of his death. There are even a few paragraphs on The Hemlock Society which has apparently changed its name to “Compassion and Choices” to distance itself from elitism and controversy of Socrates the dead white male.

I now have a list of follow up books to check out  including Mary Renault’s The Last of the Wine and the sci fi time travel novel, The Plot to Save Socrates, by Paul Levinson. Time to break out my vinyl recording of “Socrate.”

At yesterday’s pregame rehearsal I wrote the web address of this blog since some choir members were talking about it. I do know that a few of them come here once in a while so here’s a shout out: “Hi Grace choir members! Welcome!”

I have to say my hits here are still pretty low. 23 yesterday.

But speaking of choir, the music went very well yesterday. By the end of the day I was exhausted since Eileen and I went grocery shopping. While we were shopping I was on the cell phone with my daughter-in-law, Cynthia.

This morning I got up and after my usual morning ritual of dish washing and Greek study, worked on upcoming service orders.

In addition I wrote a couple of notes to go in next Sunday’s morning Advent IV bulletin.

For what it’s worth here they are.

A Note on the Anthem after the Second Lesson. My final exam in my Liturgical Year course at Notre Dame was one question. Trace the Paschal (Easter) mystery that is present in every feast of the Church Year. Fred Kaan understood this idea and brought it clearly to bear on his words for “Tomorrow Christ is Coming.” The Paschal mystery encompasses the entire story of Jesus. His presence at the creation of the world. His foretelling by the prophets; his birth, life, death, and resurrection; his ascension into heaven and his promise to return at the end of time. The Eucharist is the feast we celebrate to continue to make Christ present (in the wine, bread, gathered assembly, and proclaimed word) now as we await his return. So the line “Good Friday falls on Christmas” is not as far fetched as it might seem at first. The “corn” in the next line makes us think of the Easter hymn, “Now the green blade rises” (Hymn 204 in The Hymnal 1982). Kaan draws this mystery into the main idea of Christmas which is incarnation, that is that Jesus lives in our flesh as he once walked the earth. I invite you to savor this mystery using the words of the anthem and hymns throughout the next season.

A Note on the Organ Music. Today and next Sunday, I am planning to play French Organ Noels. These 18th century pieces are variations based on French Folk Songs. They were extremely popular in France at the time of their composition. Like so much of the organ repertoire from the 18th century and before, this music sits very nicely on our new organ.

=================================

I decided not to darken the door at church today. The organ music mentioned above is mostly only manuals. I have been practicing it on my $50 synth harpsichord stop.

I’m planning to rest and relax for the rest of today. Tomorrow Eileen and I are planning a Grand Rapids trip to do some Christmas shopping.

 NYTimes: Trump, the C.D.C. and the Peek-a-Boo Doctrine

This made me think of Lucy Locke, my newest grand daughter. She likes Peek-a-Boo, that’s for sure.

NYTimes: Artist Who Filmed Beijing Crackdown Is Reportedly Freed on Bail

This guy  is on my radar.

All motivation drained out of me yesterday. I performed tasks anyway including exercising, going with Eileen to buy a Christmas tree, seeing my Mom, preparing for today at church, and practicing organ.

This morning, waking up, after reading a few poems by Raymond Carver (happy stuff), I read this Paris Review essay: The Tenuous Nonfiction of Clarice Lispector’s Crônicas

Although I had to look up a few  words that were unfamiliar to me (ignis fatuus, corybantic), I thought it was a good essay. Essentially she is thinking about  the need for “aesthetic ambiguity.” I noted that the writer is a staff writer for The Literary Hub. Self described as “the best of the literary buy valium hanoi internet,” this is a web site I want to visit more often. I signed up for email notification of new stuff from both the Paris Review and the Literary Hub.

The Literary Hub also has a pod cast called Fiction/Non/Fiction to which I subscribed and then listened to in part this morning. Good stuff for readers and thinkers. I am finding a wave of new pod casts that are quite good. This one is self described as believing “that nearly every issue that shows up in your twitter feed or on the evening news has already been tackled somewhere in literary fiction.” What’s not to like?

I had a much better Friday than Thursday this week. I had a good talk with my shrink, Dr. Birky. I do like this guy. He told me not to bring a check to the next session.  It would be on the house. We have missed two previous sessions due to him. The first one he accidentally double booked my time. The second he called me a couple days before and reluctantly canceled our appointment due to his own schedule.

I have a lot on  my mind these days. I have had some interesting nightmares. Usually my dreams are not like that. But in the last few days I have found myself cowering with family  hiding from gunmen, having large sumo wrestlers stieal the keys to my car and threaten me and those with me. There have been other dreams but they have dissipated this morning.

Ron Brown, the talented handy parishioner, quickly fixed my broken organ. It was an easy fix as Martin Pasi had hoped. I sat down and practiced for several hours. I did a lot of playing for fun. I do this. I enjoy time at the organ, my fake harpsichord, and my crappy old piano. I read a lot of Bach yesterday. I also have been playing through Widor’s Toccata. Along with the famous D minor Toccata and Fugue (the phantom of the opera one) I think I want to have these pieces in my regular repertoire at church since people do seem to enjoy them and even ask about them. However, I want to move them away from large feasts. With the old organ I regularly played the Widor after the Easter Vigil and sometimes after the Easter Sunday morning Eucharist.

I remember Ray Ferguson telling a story about how he had neglected to schedule the Widor Tocatta one Easter and someone came up to him and said they had driven to church just to hear him play it. Ray being Ray (one of the most gracious and elegant persons I have ever known) sat down and played it for the guy. I can’t see many people with Ray’s ability reacting in that way and it’s one of the reasons he is still a big influence on me and still think of him with fondness and admiration even though he is long dead.

I try to keep a Shakespeare play going in my daily reading. Right now, my play is Measure for Measure.

I have somehow acquired a very cool Oxford edition with copious footnotes that constantly cross refer to my beloved Oxford English Dictionary. Often in the footnotes there is a citation of a line of Shakespeare that occurs in the numerous illustrative quotes in the dictionary. These illustrative quotes in the OED are one of my favorite things.

Another very helpful thing is the online pronunciation recordings. In addition to Shakespeare I read Derek Walcott on a daily basis. His combination of erudition and orientation to the Caribbean (his homeland) sends me to the dictionary to look up meanings and pronunciations.

I find myself drawn into reading authors who write from a point of view that is critical of colonialism and sees the language in a larger context that the USA. Current examples include Alan Moore, Salmon Rushdie, Emily West’s translation of The Odyssey, and Walcott.

Currently the American writers I am drawn to are speaking from or about the history of slavery in the voices of the same. James Baldwin, Kevin Young, Tyhimba Jess, and others.

So words and music are a great comfort to me.

I feel particularly eccentric and disconnected. But my world of words and music is a wonderful one and one I feel lucky to inhabit however solitary my enjoyment of them.

The Duke in Measure for Measure describes his own love of solitude in a passage I read this morning.

Speaking to a friar confidant he says

“My holy sir, none knows better than you
How I have ever loved the life removed,
And held in idle price to haunt assemblies
Where youth and cost witless bravery keeps.”

Act I. scene 3,  7-10

The footnotes wonderfully clarify that “removed” is used in the sense of “retired, secluded,” that “held in idle price” means “considered [it] of very slight value, that “youth and cost” is equivalent to ‘youthful extravagance,’ and that “witless bravery” is “foolish ostentation in the form of expensive clothing” and cites the OED’s 3rd meaning
subsection B.

I am writing on an early dark Friday morning. This sun is just beginning to dimly light things up a bit. I have already washed dishes, done Greek, then walked to Evergreen and treadmilled. By the end of the day yesterday I was unable to muster the will to go and treadmill in the last hour that Evergreen commons was open.  Earlier I met with my piano trio and we had a good rehearsal.

I have an appointment with Dr. Birky, my shrink, today. I have some stuff to talk about.  Yesterday I felt overwhelmed for most of the day. This is probably largely cyclical stuff. It is the silly season, as Rev Jen and I call it.

Yesterday Rhonda texted me and asked me if I was interested in composing a quartet for organ, bassoon, trombone and sax. She and her players need a piece for a February gig. I was glad to do it.

Yesterday as I was finishing up my morning organ practice, I was getting off the bench and my foot slipped and hit a note with a bit of force. It was not too much force. But enough that the note stuck. Also I noticed that the key on the keyboard corresponding to the pitch did not return easily. Oy. I messaged Martin Pasi and he responded promptly. He thinks it’s probably an easy fix. I have scheduled a meeting with Ron Brown today at 1:30. He’s the guy who helped before and probably knows more about how the organ works than anyone else around.

NYTimes: The Glory of Democracy

This David Brooks article is pretty good. He links into his main source for ideas, Thomas Mann’s The Coming Victory Of Democracy. I am a fan of Mann’s. I keep thinking I will reread him soon.

NYTimes: 10 New Books We Recommend This Week

I keep reading these lists for fun. I was pleased to see several on this list on my stack of books to read.

NYTimes: Trump’s Lies vs. Obama’s

I skimmed over the Trump stuff. I know enough of that. I wondered what Obama’s lies were. You have to scroll down quite a ways to see lists of specific untruths.

Neurotic Poets – Neurotic Poets – ‘Mad Girl’s Love Song’ by Sylvia Plath

I was looking at an article in the  NYT in which columnists and reporters recommended books to each other. It was all pretty lame, but one guy recommended this poem. I like it and did not know it.

I moved my 50 dollar synth back downstairs yesterday so that it would be a bit more handy. I use it to play harpsichord music. Yesterday I played quite a bit of the beginning pieces in the Fitwilliam Viriginal book. I am finding this music especially charming.

I needed organ music for Advent IV and the following Sunday, Christmas 1. I pulled out volumes of Daquin and Dandrieu. I haven’t played these in a while. I was pleasantly surprised to find that they sit nicely on my new instrument. In keeping with my morning virginal music, I decided to fill up the two weekends with music by these two composers.

I studied this music with Ray Ferguson who was especially good at this stuff.

He had a habit of writing on my scores, sometimes even on pieces we weren’t learning at the time but just discussing or maybe he was performing himself. These notes of his are invaluable to me.

Wednesdays are usually hectic for me. I had a ton of work to do to prepare for last night’s rehearsal and upcoming services.  The vestry catered a thank you lunch for the staff, so I attended that.  Then Jen and I met. Then I got down to work.

About midway through the afternoon I noticed that it was snowing heavily as it had been all day.  After consulting with Jen, we decided to cancel rehearsal. My choir is made up of mostly elderly people. It seemed silly to pull them out into the nasty snow storm. The streets remained snow covered and slippery all day. I didn’t see a snow plow ever.

After this decision, I quickly finished my prep work for the choir and ended up at the organ bench for a delightful sojourn into Distler, Daquin, and Dandrieu. (I guess I’m only playing music by composers whose name starts with “D” for a few weeks).

I brought the French stuff home and have already played all the way through most of the movements of the two pieces this morning on my 50 dollar synth (harpsichord stop). I am using two of these multi movement pieces for preludes and postludes for the next two weeks after this Sunday.

A week from Sunday I plan to perform Daquin’s Noel on the folk song, “Bon Joseph, écoutez-moi.”

Then the next Sunday I have scheduled Dandrieu’s Noel on “Chanson de St. Jacques.” The gospel that day is the first verses of John. I wish that Jacques was John but unfortunately I think it translates more accurately as James.

After years of playing the French organ Noels on bad instruments I have fallen out of the habit of using them very often. My beautiful little Pasi organ brings them back to life. Very cool.

I played until it was past martini time, then walked home in the beautiful snow storm. I’m feeling very lucky these days if a bit sad.

I got up good and early, showered then washed dishes. I keep banging away at my Greek. I am finishing up the Plato sections and will begin Herodotus next. This will be a while since when i finish the Plato section, I have to work systematically through the grammar via the grammar exercises and tests only one of which have I done.

After Greek, I read poetry from several volumes. Then I turned to Emily Wilson’s The Death of Socrates.

 She got me thinking this morning. Her chapter five which I started this morning is called “Pain and Revelation: The Death of Socrates and The Death of Jesus.”

I had never thought that the writers of the gospels would have read most certainly been aware of  Plato and Socrates. They would surely note the similarities and differences between the deaths of the two men.

Wilson starts there and then works her way through the evolving Christian understandings which often pit paganism (i.e. Socrates) against Christianity.

Apparently early artists picture Jesus with six disciples instead of twelve (I couldn’t find a pic but I like these apostles. Since Judas is usually left out of this group and there are twelve, one of them must be Jesus. Any guesses? I can’t tell.).

The picture of six instead of twelve disciples was a nod to the Socratic death described by Plato. Six of Socrates disciples were present at his death. Plato didn’t make it and is described as ill in the Phaedo (the death story). Six disciples plus Socrates equals seven, “The group of seven echoed, iconographically, the ancient tradition of the Seven Sages, the seven wisest men in the world.” (Wilson)

I’m only half way through Wilson’s chapter on Socrates and Jesus. I can see by the bibliographic essay in the back that Wilson goes on from Justin Martyr (the rare converted pagan who still saw worth in Socrates)  to Erasmus and Montaigne to discuss how Jesus and Socrates were compared. That should be fun.

Roy Moore Loses, Sanity Reigns – The New York Times

A little glimmer of sanity anyway.

What Went Down In The Alabama Senate Election | FiveThirtyEight

I listened to the Fivethirtyeight podcast this morning while doing dishes. Though their podcast like so many tries to be clever and entertaining (mostly failing in those areas) they always have sharp minds (especially Silver himself) talking sense. Micah Cohen suggests that you scroll to the bottom of the link above to see how the race unfolded. I plan to do that later myself.

NYTimes: The White Supremacy Caucus

I have been reading the columns of Michelle Goldberg, the NYT’s newest columnist, hoping against hope that she will be a voice of clarity and reason from the left on the NYT Op Ed. She is new and that’s good. I feel like the Grey Lady relies too much on columnists that are losers (Friedmann – never forgave him for cheerleading us into Iraq, Bret Stephens – Are you kidding me? This guy is a left wing ideologue, I can (and do) find those for myself online, Brooks — endearing but mostly superficial in his understandings and on and on).

I’m still holding out hope for Goldberg despite several missteps.

Goldberg writes, “Trump has shown, when ideologically extreme figures achieve political power, they’re able to push the boundaries of public discourse. Moore in the Senate would send the message that defending slavery — never mind segregation — is no longer beyond the pale.”  emphasis added….  It’s helpful to me to add this insight into my continuing efforts to make sense of t he madness of now in the USA.

Bob Dylan is a modern-day Odysseus | The Spectator

Talks about Dylan’s Nobel Prize acceptance speech that has just been published as well as other books about him. Mentions Emily Wilson (the socrates/odyssey scholar I’m currently interested in).

NYTimes: A Version of Homer That Dares to Match Him Line for Line

I have Wilson’s translation sitting on my to read stack.  I’m planning to finish the Socrates book first.

10 surprising things you need to know about the emergency department

A friend whose sister and daughter are both scientist/medical types linked this on Fakebook. Bookmarked to read.

NYTimes: From 200 Years Ago, a Lesson About Mass Killings

History helps. So does etymology (run amok).

NYTimes: Stop the Manipulation of Democracy Online

17 or more world wide elections in which fake news played a role.

NYTimes: Inside Trump’s Hour-by-Hour Battle for Self-Preservation

Interesting inside stuff. Trump denies that he watches TV this much. You know what that means. He watches TV this much.

NYTimes: Right-Wing Populist Is Blocked From Joining Nobel Peace Prize Committee

Stuff I didn’t know about how this committee is formed.

NYTimes: ‘Brexit’: A Linguistic Guide

I keep trying to understand all this stuff.

Sarah and Lucy are now safely back in their English home. It was fun having them and Matthew around. It is so satisfying to see my daughters making families and along with their partners being such good parents.  Nothing surprising there.

My friend Jordan sent me the following video. I like this recording a lot. It’s not clear to me exactly how this piece works. It looks like and sounds like the solo flugelhorn at the beginning is playing a memorized theme. But it’s hard to parse out from his improv. At any rate I recommend listening to this lovely little piece.

I am still basking in the beautiful sounds Greg Crowell and Pablo Mahave-Veglia  made at the Sunday recital.

They inspired me. They didn’t say anything about Pablo’s cello (other than it had five strings and Vivaldi only wrote for four so he, Pablo, decided it would be cheating to use the fifth string and opted not to). However, I’m pretty sure it was a baroque cello. It appears to be the same one that is in the above photo. It sounded beautiful and had that early music sheen to it. They both played spectacularly. Very musical.

I finished What Happened by Hillary Clinton. After reading many comments and a few reviews about it I have come to the conclusion that her enemies (and possibly some of her supporters) did not bother to read it or read with so much bias that they misheard it.

I think despite the usual inflated politician language that floats throughout some of the book, it is an important contribution to understanding what the fuck is happening to us in America right now and how it seemed to run for president in 2016.

She clearly takes responsibility for her failure. To me, this feels like conducting oneself as an adult in a horrific public atmosphere that has dogged her all her public life. She also manages a lot of wonky prose that analyses the election and our country. I think it’s a must read, myself.

Here’s a good quote from it.

The point of modern propaganda isn’t only to misinform or push an agenda. It is to exhaust your critical thinking, to annihilate truth.”

Hillary Clinton, What Happened  72.9 % of my ebook

I also recently finished The Best American Poetry 2017. The editor, Natasha Tretheway, is a poet I read and admire. She has done an exceptional job of choosing poems.

In the Foreword by the series editor, David Lehman, I highlighted another quote about propaganda. It’s mostly the words of Orwell.

Ours is a great era for hate—what George Orwell called ‘a human barrel-organ shooting propaganda at you by the hour. The same thing over and over again. Hate, hate, hate. Let’s all get together and have a good hate.’

George Orwell, Coming up for Air (1939) quoted in David Lehman’s foreword to The Best American Poetry 2017

more quotes from Lehman

beauty is out of favor, and paranoia and hatred have risen in its stead

I especially liked three poems in this book.

Two of them are online:

Good Bones by Maggie Smith | Poetry Foundation

 “Bullet Points” By Jericho Brown

Here’s the third one:

I didn’t exactly nail my organ playing at church this morning. The prelude was worse than the postlude. Both of them were maiden voyages of some basic good repertoire.  The Fantasia and Fuga in C minor BWV 537 is a beautiful profound work. I enjoyed working on it and look forward to performing it better in the future.

While learning this piece, I was reminded of the priest I worked for at St. Damian’s Detroit, Father Dorr. He hated long drone notes on the organ. He had a point since their organ was one of those terrible unit organs. I remember one time during communion he sent up an altar boy to tell me to stop playing. Nice.

The C minor Fantasia begins with a long pedal tone.

I figured out how to have it not be too loud and then later add the reed via the coupler so that when it has the theme you can hear it clearly. Maybe Father Dorr would have approved. Who knows?

I have a lot on my mind these days and it affects my ability to concentrate and effectively lead the choir. My conducting in the pregame was pretty confused but I did well in the anthem in service.

Right now I am waiting for it to be close to 3 PM. We have a recital at church. Rev Jen forgot to mention it at the announcements today. Eileen said that she thought there were a lot of announcements anyway. I will be  interested to see how many people bother to come to this. I have given up on just emaling the local paper a publicity release because after doing that five times in a row and not seeing it anywhere in the paper there has to be a better way to do that.

I have already been over to the church. I was doing some last minute programs since the program I did yesterday had some mysterious sepia tones in it. I’m not sure why, but I was able to print a clean copy on my little 50 dollar printer and make 30 nicer copies.

The recitalists were already there and madly going through their music. There’s another organ recital happening at 4 PM today by my friend Rhonda at her church. I am exhausted and am thinking I will barely have enough energy to host my recital much less whip over to Rhonda’s church to support her.

I haven’t blogged for a couple of days. It’s been a full week for me. I have been enjoying have Sarah and Lucy around.

Yesterday all of us walked to The Biscuit for a nice lunch. Later Sarah managed to make it to Lake Michigan with Lucy and Eileen in tow. She always tries to see the Lake at least once when she visits.

I exercised and practiced while they did this.

I have been doing a lot of thinking about the recital series at my church. I need to be more proactive about organizing parishioners to help with the publicity and fund raising. I’ll talk to Rev Jen about it next week if I get a chance. After Christmas I think it would be a good idea for me to write a little announcement in the bulletin announcement insert that the church is looking for one or more parishioners to work on these ideas.

I am looking at my work for the recital series as volunteering on my part or donating my time since I am putting a fair amount of effort into this and still not managing to have enough energy and time to touch all the bases.

Today, Greg Crowell, Sunday’s recitalist, is coming sometime in the afternoon to practice. He came Thursday this week for that. On Wednesday I had two significant ciphers (notes that keep sounding). When the second one occurred I phoned Martin Pasi. Pasi offered to talk me and Ron Brown through fixing them. Ron is a talented parishioner who helped Pasi a great deal when he was assembling and adjusting the organ,

Actually Pasi tweeted instructions to me on how to fix a stuck key and that instantly worked so we were down to one stuck note. It was on the largest pipe in the organ. Once engaged it would not cease until the organ was shut off.

Ron came and we worked on it for a while. During the process I noticed that a key on the Great manual was depressed and not returning. I mentioned this. Pasi made us work on one problem at a time. Ron was instrumental in fixing both of them.

Due to all of this I had  much less time to rest up for Wednesday evening rehearsal.

It was about 1.2 miles back and forth to The Biscuit yesterday. I then walked to Evergreen, treadmilled for my usual 45  minutes, then went on the church then walked home. It was probably something like 2.2 miles of walking. I keep track of this stuff so I know how much I am exercising and record it with my daily Blood Pressure and weight. I am managing not to gain too much weight despite all the good eating while Sarah is visiting (we ordered pizza last night). The blood pressure is okay as well, but I am hoping to return to skipping martinis and snacks and losing more weight and lowering my blood pressure after the holidays.

NYTimes: When the Truth Is Unconstitutional

I have been waiting for Linda Greenhouse to weigh in on the current Supreme Court stuff. She rocks!

NYTimes: Liberals Need to Take Their Fingers Out of Their Ears

Good article. Cites The Authoritative Dynamic by Karen Stenner and a recent article by Eric Schuner.

Did Cornel West Come for Ta-Nehisi Coates?

The answer seems to be yes without reading (or maybe understanding) Coates.

It’s not unusual to be overwhelmed at this time of year, but this year feels a bit more intense. It doesn’t help to have a madman for a president. When this is the case, when I’m overwhelmed nothing helps me so much as reading words and making music.

I think I have fallen in love all over again with Sweelinck. I have been cleaning the kitchen listening to his music on Spotify (after listening to some depressing news). Sweelinck is that rare organ composer of early music that I find very attractive.  There is a lot of organ music written for ecclesiastical use that I don’t mind but am not extremely enamored of the way I am of the French Baroque harpsichord music of the Couperins.

But now Sweelinck is falling into this category for me and that is a pleasant surprise.

And of course there is always Bach. I am learning his Fantasia and Fuga in C minor BWV 537 to play this Sunday. I plan to use the Fuga as the prelude and the Fantasia as the postlude. It’s a wonderful piece.

I’ve also been dipping into much poetry including some new volumes. I even wrote a poem this morning which is something I don’t do very often. It’s kind of personal so I’m not sharing it here.

I have been following Kevin Young the new poetry editor of the New Yorker. I ran across this collection and am enjoying it. It’s interesting to see what poems he includes. I recognize a lot of them, but still enjoy reading through them.

The former Archbishop of Canterbury turns out to be a competent poet. Who knew?

I add these poetry collections to the several books of poetry I am keeping going these days. Also I am rereading Italo Calvino’s Invisible Cities which is like reading poetry for me as well.

I am trying to build up the will power to go treadmill.

NYTimes: When Our Thoughts Are No Longer Our Own

This guy has some interesting ideas about the loss of privacy. I’m thinking of checking out some of the books he has written. Sigh. Just what I need. More books on my to read list. But still, this is something I think about.

NYTimes: Madeleine Albright: How to Protect the World From North Korea

I find myself repelled by realpolitik but Secretary Albright knows stuff.

The American Scholar: Why We Need Art – Natalie Angier

Bookmarked to read.

NYTimes: In Dark Times, ‘Dirty Hands’ Can Still Do Good

Some interesting thoughts that factor in the complexity of being human.

NYTimes: What’s a Bigger Threat, ‘Normalization’ or Alarmism?

Some clear thinking from Poland that unfortunately is very apt for America.

Vox Humana

New online journal branching off from the American Guild of Organist mag. It’s hard for me to get excited since so many of these kinds of things represent fundamental different understandings of online tech.