We head back to Michigan today. Our plane leaves in the afternoon and we are scheduled to arrive in Michigan near midnight local time there.

It has been a bittersweet time out here. I love seeing my family. But these are hard times for them due to my son’s alcohol addiction. So I am both happy and sad. But as usual I am very glad to have had time with them, especially my three grand children who continue to mature and show amazing resilience.

Yesterday I sat down and read a couple books my California granddaughters are reading.

Invisible Emmie by Terri Libenson is almost a graphic novel.

It’s the story of a middle schooler who is introverted and loves to draw. Amply and charmingly illustrated, this story is interspersed with a cartoon the main character, Emmie, is making.

The cleverness comes in observing how she uses her real life in the story she is making up. Catherine actually purchased the sequel to this book on Sunday, but had it out to reread in preparation for reading the second book.

Adultolescence by Gabbie Hanna is also illustrated. Hanna is apparently a YouTube personality. Catherine seem to know this right away, but I’m not sure whether Savannah who chose this book for purchase did.

The poems are not terribly well written, but I can see how the point of view would be interesting to Savannah. There are some witty moments and there are some poignant ones.  Here’s a poem, I liked. I also liked the accompanying illustration but was unable to find it online.

Here’s an example of her drawing.

This is Gabbie with her BFF, loneliness.

I hope I’m not driving my grand daughters a wee bit crazy, reading the books they are reading. They seem okay with it. I try to keep the comments to a minimum.

That’s it for today. I think I’m braced for travel.

The Black Panthers still in prison: after 46 years, will they ever be set free?

I have been reading Tears We Cannot Stop: A Sermon for White America by Michael Eric Dyson. It is a source of continuing amazement and frustration to me how the huge fact of slavery and the repression of its descendants is an open secret in the USA.

What the Provincetown AIDS Memorial Leaves Out | The New Yorker

It seems to leave out the important story of the struggle of AIDS. This is a good thing to remember when thinking about the past. Important points and nuances are sometimes ignored or omitted.

Our annual California visit is drawing to a close. On Saturday, we met my son, David, for lunch and then drove him to the home where he is now staying.

It was good to visit with him as he attempts to put his life back together after addiction.

Yesterday, we took the grandkids for our ritual bookstore visit. We have done this for years. We give them a small allowance ($60 yesterday) to buy books for themselves. I sometimes choose an additional book for each person. Yesterday I supplemented Savannah’s books (which were mystery and crime) with a copy of T. S. Eliot’s Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats.

I was surprised to see her perusing the poetry section, so I was inspired to add this book to her collection.

For Catherine, I dug up a graphic novel version of L’Engle’s Wrinkle in Time.

She has read the novel but seemed interested in the graphic novel version. She chose YA novels that I didn’t recognize. For Nicholas, I picked out a collection of Kafka short stories.

I’m not sure if it’s the version pictured above. it was a newer translation. I did this because he has expressed some interest in Philip Glass’s piano piece set called Metamorphosis and said he hadn’t read the short story.

I embed this recording because I suspect this is the one that he listens to. His choices for himself included a CD by Gary Clark Jr.  I found this video by him on YouTube.

I was surprised to see that Clark covering this old Beatles tune. Nicholas also chose included House of Leaves by in his choices.

The clerk checking us out approved of this and said it was like The Shining on steriods. I have looked at this book before but haven’t read it. It’s now on my radar since my Grandson is reading it.

In the evening we took Savanah to meet her Mom at their Sunday night Al Anon meeting. The dang GPS went a little haywire and I had to rely on my wits to get us back and forth but we made it.

Opinion is valued more than fact in this digital era | Roy Greenslade | Media | The Guardian

Though I’m on vacation, I am following the news. It seems as though our usually shaky attempt at democracy in the USA is in deep trouble. Too many people are believing the GOP administration’s distortions and tweets from the Oval Office over their own sense of logica and truth. This is bad.

Expert: Trump’s ‘fake news’ media jab at VFW distorts reality | The Kansas City Star

The expert is Jay Rosen. He is worth listening to. Back in April, I read this article and bookmarked it. Helpful but frightening.

New York Times Publisher and Trump Clash Over President’s Threats Against Journalism – The New York Times

Insane.

Worms frozen in permafrost for up to 42,000 years come back to life

Oldest living creatures on earth. Females.

Jay-Z on ‘Rest in Power: The Trayvon Martin Story’ and Activism – The New York Times

upcoming series that would be interesting to see

How Cloudflare Uses Lava Lamps to Guard Against Hackers | WIRED

They provide random info for encrypting.

I had fun yesterday. My grandson Nicholas and I managed to get some time together. We went out to buy a printer. Then we ended up having lunch together. Nicholas is 18 years old and it was great fun to have him to myself for a bit for some chat.

My granddaughters,  Savannah and Catherine, were off with Cynthia and Eileen shopping having an additional ear piercing.

Then last night we all traipsed over to a nearby outdoor performance of “The Beauty and the Beast” which was startling well done.

Cynthia made sure we arrived early enough to get places on the benches.

The audience gradually grew until sunset when there had to be at least 5K people in it.

The performance was polished and well  miked. There was a full pit orchestra. Watching over 50 people in the chorus/dancers made me realize how effective spectacle can be when well done.

This is a free performance underwritten by local businesses and sponsors.

Today I have arranged to meet my son, David. Eileen and I will take him out for a  meal and catch up.

Zadie Smith’s Right to Be Wrong | The New Republic

This is a confused but interesting take on Smith’s most recent short story in the New Yorker. I read Smith’s story in my own subscription copy of The New Yorker, linked it here, and listened to her read it online. It is a perplexing piece, but I don’t think this critic quite gets it right.

I’m sitting by my daughter-in-law’s outdoor pool early in the morning in California. At this time of day it is quite pleasant, despite the high temps that happen later in the day.

I was wondering if Kindle had improved the Kindle versions of my Greek texts. I only brought the exercise book with me, having photocopied a few pages of the other two texts so that I could keep up with my studies.

Since Kindle books are stored in the cloud and not on any one machine, I tried to download copies of the texts I didn’t bring to see if they had made them usable. When I attempted to do so, it told me I was over the limit of Kindle devices for these texts and that I could either delete a device or re-purchase them.

I went on Amazon and deleted a few devices. This is confusing because despite having “nicknamed” each device, it’s not really clear which one is which. So of course I managed to delete the software on my current tablet. I discovered this when I returned to it.

This meant re-downloading anything in my Kindle library that I wanted to use. I did this including the Greek texts. The previous problem with them was that the parts of the text in Greek refused to respond to font enlargement and are quite small. You have probably guessed the outcome. They are still unusable.

I remember a few months ago browsing on the user reviews of these books and reading the comments. One person pointed out that since the books were useless, that it would make sense for Amazon to issue a refund. Unfortunately, I have had mine so long I don’t think that would work for me.

On the other hand, the interwebs were kind enough to allow me to download and use a copy of the second volume of Bach’s Well Tempered Clavier here. That’s nice.

My BP is lower since coming out here. When we visit I don’t have my evening martini, wine, and snacks. Vacationing is such a weird time that it’s hard to know how your body is doing with things like weight loss and blood pressure.

It doesn’t help that I purchased a package of Babka for our evening meal last night.

I had never had it. I think the particular loaf of Babka we had was a bit dry. It was decadently improved with ice cream.

I’m probably not losing weight.

We made it to California yesterday. The flight was fine. We had a long lay over in Dallas/Fort Worth and found a pretty good restaurant right there in the huge airport.

What I liked about it was that they had the caloric content of the food on the menu.

Then Eileen and I found a spot to sit and play our ritual Boggle game.

My three grandchildren greeted us in the incredible heat when we arrived at their home.  It’s so good to see these people in person. Cynthia, my daughter-in-law, keeps me up to speed with them, but there’s nothing like seeing them in person.

Before long, we settled down into a Scrabble game. I won.

The time change is hard on me. I didn’t try to stay up last night and was in my bed by 5 PM local time. Tonight I have to do better since the group wants to go out tomorrow night.

In the meantime, we have to make first ritual visit to Trader Joe’s to stock up on food for the group.

Cynthia worked late last night. Even Eileen was in bed by the time she got home. This morning Cynthia and I had a nice long chat in the cool morning breeze by her pool.

Now she’s off to another day of work. She’s working full time now.  We’ll have the day with the grand kids. I’m looking forward to it.

You Say You Want a Revolution? The Anti-Capitalist Film “Sorry to Bother You” Shows the Way

Although I was initially disappointed with the movie, “Sorry to Bother You,” I keep thinking about it. That’s usually a good sign. This is not a great article particularly. It’s more about being anti-capitalist than thinking about the plot. It’s the plot I keep thinking about.

NYTimes: Whatever Happened to Moral Rigor?

I have been bookmarking articles. This one talks about James Baldwin who is on my mind a lot.

NYTimes: How Elite Schools Stay So White

I think I can guess what’s in this article but will still read it.

NYTimes: The Comedy-Destroying, Soul-Affirming Art of Hannah Gadsby

I like Hannah Gadsby.

NYTimes: Annoyed by Restaurant Playlists, a Master Musician Made His Own

Musicians seem to be extra aware of the aural environment. I know I am. I bookmarked this to check the dude’s playlist out. It looks good.

NYTimes: When We Eat, or Don’t Eat, May Be Critical for Health

Big breakfast, smaller lunch, light supper. Don’t eat at night. Tall order for Jupe but it makes sense.

Music from Strangers Below — Joshua Guthman

I ended up on this web page while thinking and reading about how the singing of Psalm chants in the English parishes resembled Primitive Baptist hymn singing.  Old Hymns Lined and Led by Elder Walter Evans. Sovereign Grace Records was footnoted by Temperley in his book on English Parish church music. Scroll down on this link and you can here a cut from it. I also recommend scrolling down to the bottom to listen to Louisiana Primitive Baptist Church video. Very cool.

This morning I wanted to listen to Calefax on Spotify. They have done some very cool recordings of fugues that I was in the mood to hear. But they were all gone. I had an empty playlist. Fuck it. I listened to Sting’s The Last Ship instead which I quite like.

Later I went to YouTube and made a Calefax playlist there. There weren’t any of the recordings I was looking for, but here are some cool ones.

Eileen and I are getting reading to jump in a plane tomorrow morning. We are on our way to California to visit the fam out there for a week. We plan to travel light. This is one thing we have learned. Take as little as possible. This is expedited by devices. I downloaded an ebook of the second volume of Lydia Davis’s translation of Proust this morning.

I also want to take as few real books with me as possible. I photocopied the Greek paragraph I am currently studying and its translation. I still plan to take the text with me but this saves me taking the two books in which the paragraph and the translation key are found.

Calefax makes me want to think about composing and improvising again. Vacation would seem to be a good time to compose, but I have been needing it for sheer relaxing and attempting to gain some kind of perspective on my life.

I wanted to simply embed my YouTube playlist but of course I couldn’t figure out how to do that.

While I’m embedding stuff here’s a good video from Robert Reich.

And there’s this.

I will probably continue to blog while in California.

Dam. I do like this group.

On Saturday after the reunion, Eileen and I stopped at Meijer. The day before I had received a text that a new prescription would be ready for pick up after 1 PM Saturday. I didn’t pay much attention to it. Meijer is a bit hit and miss but does occasionally use its text messages to inform me of automatically renewed prescriptions. That’s what I thought this was.

This would be a good chance for me to check with pharmacist and find out if their Valsartan HCT suppliers were indeed the ones from China mentioned in a recent NYT article as dangerous. So I went to the window and told them I was there to pick up a prescription and that I would also like to talk to the pharmacist about the Valsartan recall.

After ringing up my purchase, the attendant went and got the pharmacist. I asked her my question. She wanted to know if I had heard from them (I hadn’t). After a bit she told me that yes, indeed, my drug was being recalled. She said that normally they would just shift it out to another supplier of the drug but that if I would want to switch to a drug close to it she would recommend talking to my doctor about Losartan. She even wrote the name of the drug on my prescription bag.

Then on Sunday morning, I was putting the prescription away and noticed that it was for Losartan. I went on to the MY HEALTH website where I can view my medical information and sure enough, a doctor from my doctor’s office had prescribed it and there was no mention of the drug I was taking. Stopped taking the old drug yesterday and started taking the new one yesterday. So far no reaction.

I have been spending a lot of time with Couperin, Shostakovich, and Prokofiev on the keyboards (Couperin on my harpsichord synth, the other two on piano). Also doing some guitar practice. I am totally self taught on the guitar but since picking it up again am only playing classical music on it. I worked on putting more of my books in order yesterday and tried not to think about work.

Day after tomorrow we get on a plane and fly to California. I am looking forward to seeing the California branch of the fam, but at the same time I will miss the goofing off I have been doing.

I was planning to treadmill today but I’m feeling lazy. By the way, the air conditioning was successfully installed last week. It’s weird having it in the house. Plus my Mom’s old chair broke and Eileen arranged to have it fixed. They took it away last week and returned it today in working order.

At the family reunion yesterday I had two surprising conversations. The first was with  an eighty year old man whom I did not recognize but turned out to be a relative who had driven up from Florida via Kentucky. His name was Al Hatch. He sat down and almost immediately began telling me the story of his second career. His first career had been to be a police captain. The second was regional manager for someone who owned hundreds of thousands of acres of farms spread all over the US.

AL HATCH TALKING TO EILEEN, MARY, AND NANCY

Six months into the job his boss sent him to Indiana to check on the corn, wheat, and soy beans in the silos in a farm there. His boss had called some local buyers to negotiate a sale of his crop locally. The buyer informed him that he had already purchased the crop. This aroused suspicion enough to send his new employee, my relative, Mr. Hatch, to investigate.

When he arrived at the farm, he went over to one of several silos there and tapped on it. Empty. Not a good sign. He didn’t look inside for fear that if it wasn’t empty corn would come pouring out. He went to the farm home and knocked on the door. A woman answered. Mr. Hatch asked to speak to her husband but she told him he wasn’t there and she didn’t know where he was.

Mr. Hatch took her and her baby over to the silos and opened up one. Sure enough it was empty. All of them were. He asked to see the farm checkbook. It showed about 62 dollars. The produce was worth millions of dollars. They then proceeded to the local bank to find out what happened. Mr. Hatch wanted more facts before reporting to his new boss.

The bank president pulled up the records on the computer to reveal that the farm manager had been systematically writing checks to himself draining the account of over 2 million dollars. Now both he and the farm truck were gone. It was time to call the boss.

The boss was of course not happy about this. The first thing he did was change procedures of sale so that buyers wrote checks directly to the larger firm not to the local farm. Then he asked Mr. Hatch to find the thief.

Mr. Hatch turned up the truck at the parking lot of a local airport. The keys were in it. But there was no trace or record of the departed manager. Even traveling under an assumed name, he wouldn’t be able to get far with that much cash. Mr. Hatch ended up in Costa Rica looking for him. He figured that the manager had transfered funds to a different bank in Indiana and then wired the money to himself in Costa Rica.

That’s the really the end of the story. The dude got away. Mr. Hatch returned and under instructions of the boss hired a replacement for the manager. He kept on working at this job for another five years or so. He continued to keep in touch with the owner after he retired curious to find out if they ever caught this guy. Each year the report was that they were on his trail but had not caught him yet.

Last year, he was seen in Columbia. The owner asked Mr. Hatch to come out of retirement and go to Columbia to look for him. Which he did. But the closest he came was a motel room where the guy had stayed a week ago. Of course, no forwarding address.

It was pleasant sitting on the porch listening to the soft southern accent of this gentlemen spinning his story.

Later after I was alone on the porch, I was joined by Lizzie Hatch, a young relative who sat down and began chatting me up. She explained that they were living in Ohio now and had been for a couple of years. She missed her Michigan friends. I was totally charmed and flattered that she was so at ease and seemed interested in conversation with me.

When she left, Lizzie hugged me and said, “Goodbye, Uncle Steve.” So I enjoyed the Hatch family reunion a little more than usual this year.

Bach’s son, Carl Phillip Emmanuel, and his student Agricola wrote in his obit: “His [Bach’s] serious temperament drew him predominantly to hard-working, serious and profound music [arbeitsamen, ernsthaften, und tiefsinnigen]; but he could also, if it seemed necessary, particularly when playing, make himself comfortable with a light and playful manner of thinking.”

The quote is from Peter Williams’ J. S. Bach: A Life. Williams concludes: “The Obituary’s remark was to counter any reputation Bach’s serious music had amongst everyday musicians, especially those engaged in the musical confections being marketed in the 1740s and 50s. But it brings us very little nearer envisaging his own approaches to performance, above all in the mature works where the intended Affekt is by no means always obvious or exclusive. The Aria of the Goldberg Variations is a good example: if it was meant to sound, as usual today, andante, dolce, piano, affetuoso, cantabile e tenero, it seems odd that none of these words (the first five of which were all used elsewhere by Bach) appears in the score. Furthermore, if the Aria were affetuoso, so woul be its ‘prototype’, the G major sarabande in the French Suites. So used now are listeners to being transported by the Aria’s opening bars to a unique contemplative world, especially by modern pianists, that envisaging anything different, anything more ‘light and playful’ is difficult. But not impossible.” p. 297, emphasis added

After reading this, I went to the Aria myself and tried playing it a bit more playful and just a tad faster than Glen Gould (whose name seems to be in the sentence above about ‘modern pianists’). It worked. Then I began playing the other variations. When the theme is not quite so ethereal the variations make more sense to me.

However when I searched on YouTube among the many versions there, I couldn’t find anyone who played the Aria that way. In fact, they sounded strongly influenced by Gould and think they probably are.

This is odd since Williams is a well known expert.

Zadie Smith Reads “Crazy They Call Me” – The New Yorker

This article is in Zadie Smith’s latest collection of essays, Feel Free: Essays. I read it when the New Yorker published it back in March and then again in the collection of essays.

It got me thinking about Billy Holiday. I pulled up the documentary on “Strange Fruit”

I love Billie Holiday and I love the way she sings this bitter song. For some reason I thought she had written it. But it turns out it was written by a white Jewish guy named Abel Meeropol.

If you don’t know this song, here’s a video of Billie Holiday singing it.

One thing I was hoping to get from taking time off was a fresh perspective. I think I might be approaching this a bit. It’s interesting to note that I’m not missing work nor even playing the very fine Pasi organ there. I think this says something about where my own enjoyment comes from. Music is very important to my daily life. It is the water I live in. But more and more in my sixties I live there alone.

My only true colleague with whom I share some understanding is my boss, Jen Adams. This is a godsend and i know it. But though she is an astute boss, she’s not another musician. I share stuff with other local musicians, but I am feeling more and more that my own perspective is way more broad than any muscian I know. Yesterday morning I showered to the dulcet tones of John Lee Hooker. You know. The guy from the Blues Brothers

I admit that he was one of the few musicians in the Blues Brothers that I didn’t know that well, Cab Calloway is the other. I recently watched a “Making of Blues Brothers” video on YouTube and was annoyed with one thing about Jon Landis the director. He said that he had trouble with Aretha Franklin and James Brown because they couldn’t lip sync. This makes me crazy. He got around it by allowing them to perform their part live while the others lip synced. He didn’t mention John Lee Hooker.

Anyway, my musical interests have always been rather wide ranging. From John Lee Hooker to Bartok, from the Doors to Bach, from … well you get the idea.  And they have led me into many interesting pursuits of understanding.  Often I am not able to match other musicians narrow understandings of music. This doesn’t mean I don’t appreciate where we overlap (Hi Rhonda!). It’s just that no one, and I mean no one, in my musical sphere comes close to seeing music the way I do.

This has led me to think of myself as primarily a music lover. I think of it a bit like the idea of a common reader. My understanding of the common reader is they are motivated by the pleasure of what they read no matter where that leads them. Also I think of them as autodidacts (which is definitely the way I see myself).

This makes me wonder if I am a sort of a common music lover. I definitely am not academic. Nor am I primarily a pop musician, a jazz musician, a blues musician, a harpsichordist, an organist, you name it. I guess I’ve gone a bit beyond dabbling in these areas. But my wide tastes make perfect sense to me.

And part of the perspective I am developing is that I can pursue this wide approach by myself even though one of my great joys is making music with other people. So playing duets with Rhonda, playing with my piano trio, even leading a roomful of worshipers in common song is fun for me. But not doing any of this doesn’t seem to surface on my radar as something I am missing or long to do.

I’m hoping that when I return to work, I can convince myself that truly not much is required of me there. I think part of my loss of perspective was confusing my own passion for music (especially as evidenced by learning pieces on the Pasi) with work. It never felt like work to practice on the Pasi. And indeed it wasn’t.  Doing my gig well does not necessarily involve challenging myself.  My job is about showing up on Sunday and leading from the organ and preparing the choir to assist in this.

My task is to help myself understand that when I return to work I can still do a lot of the goofing off I am doing now and even did before.

You know. Perspective.

Tomorrow Jupe shares new thoughts about the Aria of the Goldberg Variations and possibly the song, “Strange Fruit.” Tune in.

Our basement is full of men removing our old furnace and installing a new one. After breakfast I walked over to Evergreen Commons and treadmilled. Then I walked home. But when I went to take a shower there was no water. Yikes. It turns out they had broken a water line. Oh well. Now I’m sitting sweaty in my living room.

I have been reading Kakutani’s The Death of Truth. I have read her reviews in the New York Times for many years. I often disagree with them. It turns out I’m finding fault with her book as well. It seems interesting but cerebral and written from inside the bubble of entitlement and education. I am learning much more from Michael Eric Dyson’s What Truth Sounds Like.

He clarified for me the intellectual relationship between Cornel West and Ta Henisi Coates. I couldn’t understand why West was so weird about Coates’s book. Dyson describes the rivalry between these two and others. Helpful but not that important to his argument about needing to combine the dualities of prophetic witness with politics.

I think racism has brought us to where we are not decontructionism which Kakutani spends an entire chapter on.

It may be the effect of taking a vacation but I am feeling more and more distant from intellectuals and music academics and closer to my own love of ideas and music. Eileen fears that I won’t return to work. I probably will but it does cross my mind that this is a trial run for retirement and I am enjoying the solitude and practicing and study without any contact with my church or very fine little organ.

What can I say?

I typed some more of my Dad’s anecdotes into a google doc. They aren’t all interesting but here’s one that gives a good flavor of the way he would tell a story in sermon.

“Did I ever tell you about my girlfriend, Lorraine? She was 11 and I was 12 years old. Her last name was Firebaugh, and her flaming red hair helped people stereotype her as a FIREBALL.

One day, I had a date with Lorraine….We went together on a picnic to TINKER-BELL swimming pool. I was just learning to swim —- I could stay up for at 4-5 strokes. Well, you probably guessed it. Lorraine and I were playing in deep water, over our heads, along the side of the pool, when suddenly Lorraine got out too far….I looked, and instead of coming toward the side of the pool, she was floundering away toward to the middle of the pool.

Tragedy! But here was my opportunity to be that ALL AMERICAN HERO… ‘Fear not, fair Lorraine. You hero, Sir Paul, is coming to the rescue.’ I swam out to her (using my five strokes I reached for her, very kindly — in a soul-saving manner. AND DON’T YOU KNOW, Fair Lorraine had turned into a tiger. She crawled up my head, and I went down for a pint of wtr. When I came up sputtering she pushed me down again…and you know, the third time? I always heard 3 strikes and you are out. I was desperate.

And then suddenly, from the bottom of th pool where I was struggling for life, i felt Lorraine let go…. and it was as if a gain hand had practically thrown her to the side of the pool… I fought my way to the surface and to the safety of the side of the pool, where I discovered that the lifeguard had seen our situation. He had recognized my bold attempts at saviorhood…and he seen my very tragic limitations….With skill and precision, he dived into the water and it was he who really rescued fair Lorraine.”

NYTimes: Blood Pressure Medicine Is Recalled

This is my medicine. Dam.

I’m struggling with laying low in Holland.

There is a recital this weekend and usually I have a few tasks involved in that like making the program and the poster for the next recital so it can be displayed. I think the program is being taken care of and I just emailed my boss asking her if she (and/or the office administrator) would like to mess with the poster. it’s really just a matter of giving my daughter, Sarah, the info and then she whips up nifty looking poster.

In the meantime, we are bracing for the furnace/AC people to come tomorrow morning and Eileen has scheduled a repairman to come and fix Mom’s chair (it quit working and is stuck in recline mode).

My BP was up this morning. It’s hard not to see as related to some of this. Plus my weight is up. Bah.

On the upside, my copy of Temperley’s two volumed work, The Music of the English Parish Church, arrived in the mail today in pristine condition. I continue to enjoy this work.

I’m nearing the end of Peter Williams’ J.S. Bach: A Life in Music. It is a luxury to dip into these and other books and not have to worry about a gig.

I’ve also been practicing more guitar. It’s weird since I quit playing guitar entirely for several years and despite this my skills seem not only to be intact but improving.

Also I have been attacking my books upstairs and now have almost all of the books in the loom room and our bedroom alphabetical by author (or in some cases subject). Eileen has promised I can move her loom away from the book shelf so that I can work more easily on the bottom shelves. She also volunteered to help move some books around.

Yesterday found me playing through “The Art of Fugue” by Bach admiring the beauty of his counterpoint and also playing some of Domenico Scarlatti’s Essercizi.

Eileen and I went to the Farmers Market this morning and bought fruit and veggies.

So life continues to be good.

more from my Dad:

*******

(margin note: On Honeymoon again; Youthful;) I think it is a shame when a person loses all ability to pretend. I hope my wife and I never get so old that we can no longer have special moments when we pretend…. Occasionally (and I grant you it is a rare occasion), but occasionally we like to go out for a special evening…kind of pretending like we are dollar-rich…like money is no problem, and we can afford anything we want to do… The ability to pretend is a child-like quality which I hope to keep alive. Our grandson came in the living room recently with his blanket over his shoulders – he didn’t know I was there – and I watched a special moment as he was a kind of superman, or a Prince…pretending…. He was in another world! I thanked God for that glimpse which reminded me that some pretension is good…” (margin note: God is Good to have made us this way!)

Two men are in our basement removing asbestos. Beforehand they came upstairs and taped shut all the registers on the main floor. Then they taped off the basement door. Eileen is upstairs working on her loom.

Yesterday we drove to Grand Rapids to see the movie, “Sorry to bother you.” I admit I was disappointed. Some of the best scenes were the ones in the trailer. The movie itself didn’t seem to me to hang together very well. I liked some of the music. Anyway, the main deal was to get my lovely wife into an air conditioned space since she is wilting in the heat. We had the air conditioning fixed in the Alero so the ride back and forth was also good for her.

I am enjoying our new (to us) Roku. My brother gave it to us and helped us get set up on it. It’s a bit embarrassing how the simple fact of making it easier to access increases likelihood that I will use something. We could access any of the things that are on the Roku via a computer browser. However, the dang remote controls seem to make a difference in how willing I am to sit down and watch TV. Thank you, Mark!

Vacation seems to be going pretty well. I’m not losing weight, but my blood pressure has subsided for several days now. The work on the house makes it a bit less relaxing. But it’s worth it to get things going so that Eileen is happier.

I typed some more of my Dad’s sermon anecdotes into a google doc this morning. Once I get enough into this doc, I will share with the fam.

Here’s today’s stories from Paul sermons:

“Some of my fondest memories are of high school years, under the tender nurture of a loving father. I recall when guests would come to the house, my father would call me to meet them. he would introduce me to them as a pal of his, and I would be included in the conversation AS A PERSON. Dad took time off from his busy schedule for us to go fishing together, out at Carvin’s Cove, where we would chuckle at fish that would bite even on gum-drops when they got hungry. Together we laughed with an old-man who whipped his fishing line out of the water and hooked himself in the seat of the pants. The old chap was hard of hearing, and didn’t know he was talking out loud as he said, ‘Dag-nab-it, next time I’ll leave my pants at home.’ Somehow, we didn’t laugh AT the old man — we laughed WITH him… I was treated as a person … by a real person  … my dad.”

*******

(Margin note: Nicholson, the name of a mentor of my Dad)) “You learn to walk with od, BY SHYING AWAY FROM SELF-EXALTATION. *One of the greatest men in prayer that I have ever known was leading a group of us in meaningful worship. Through his ‘shepherding’ we had experienced God, and several in the group praised him. ‘We love to you hear you pray’. His face was one of painful and soul-agony when he replied, ‘your compliments are a danger to me. Jesus said, to whom much is given, much will be required.

*******

“THINGS ARE OFTEN DEVASTATING TO THE HUMAN SPIRIT

This past week, Mark and I were watching a TV show about the treasures of Bolivia…. The churches there, and the wealth of gold and jewels placed in these churches by people of the past…expressions of worship….And Mark commented that this announcer was following a typical American pattern…This object was valued at so many millions of dollars…that one so many thousands….’Americans think of values in dollar and cents’ Mark said. The fact that here were things of beauty…art beyond any measurements of worth…gifts to the Lord by people who wanted Him to be FIRST in their values…THESE FACTS WERE LOST IN $ and ¢ …”

 *******

Man the news is insane. I’m hoping that Trump has shot himself in the foot with his behavior at Helsinki. I haven’t seen anyone compare it to the Neville Chamberlain debacle, but it pops into this libtard’s mind. I looked at Brietbart’s coverage. They zeroed in on comments made on MSNBC by Jill Wine-Banks comparing it to Pearl Harbor or Kristolnacht. It is typical of the right to look for extreme stuff to react to. No one was killed as a result of Trump’s idiotic behavior yesterday so these are weird comparisons. I examine right wing news coverage regularly and am amazed at how important to the coverage are the people with whom they disagree. Reading some comments on this article makes it clear that many people on the right and Trump are convinced by this kind of approach and think people they disagree with are mentally ill or worse.

Well the workers are done, have cleaned up the mess, and have been paid. Onward to installation of the furnace/AC on Thursday!

Trump caved spectacularly to Putin. Here’s what might happen next – CNNPolitics

Some clear thinking.

Chromatic fantasia and fugue BWV 903 PDF

I love the interwebs. I was reading Peter Williams this morning and he was listing off Bach works with beautiful themes. He mentioned the one linked above. I didn’t know it, but now I have played through it. Cool.

Last night I dreamed about my Dad. We were arguing about whether drinking was immoral or not. He insisted it was. Most of the dream consisted of him and me going back with silly comments “You’re wrong!” “No! You’re wrong!” Then I said “Jesus drank!” But this didn’t move him. Finally I yelled at him, “I don’t care what you think!” Then in the dream I immediately retracted this and said tearfully, “I DO care what you think!”

Instead of blogging yesterday I continued putting my books in order. I now have several shelves in alphabetical order upstairs in the loom room. While doing so I came across a stack of stuff I thought was Eileen’s, but discovered it was a mishmash of my own stuff. I began sorting through it. Some of it was my parents’ stuff.

I ran across a folder marked “Memories/Experiences.” In it were clips from my Dad’s sermons with anecdotes on them.

Here are a few:

“I remember Roy, whose anger was making a living hell for his wife and children…
His anger would seek refuge in drink, which only made matters wores…
When he arrived home, everyone was sorry to see him come until that day
when the voice of God called, “ABOUT FACE!”
And the anger seemed to go out of Roy…
A new love came into his face, and a new life-style was his possession.
The family felt it—right down to the family dog….
Where hate had been so strong, now it was love and controlled feelings…
Roy did an about-face!”

“Four times, I have crossed the Atlantic ocean … twice by ship (and I got seasick both times), and twice by airplane…
It was on my first ship crossing that I was privileged to go into the Captain’s
quarters and stand at the Captain’s wheel as if I were guiding that great ocean
liner, the HS Seven Seas, myself (I have a picture of myself at the wheel of
that ship…. not that I was doing anything but posing….but it sure looked
great in the picture)
While we were in the ship’s wheel-house or bridge, we saw the ship’s
radar, a device which provided the ship with a far seeing “eye’/At
night, or in fog and storm, this radar could keep the captain informed
so that he could avoid shore lines….so that he could avoid collision
with ice-bergs or other ships.
We marveled at this wonderful instrument which has saved so many
ships from disaster.
On my second crossing of the Atlantic by ship, one day we were caught in a
storm.. Huge 40 & 50 foot waves were tossing the ship like a toy.
My wife and I were in the dinging area of the ship when the storm hit,
and suddenly all points of reference were lost.  Tables and chairs went
skidding across the room. Fortunately the crew had seen the storm coming
and much was tied down, but everything that was not tied down was a wreck.
Up was suddenly over there, and down was over there …..For a landlubber
(with a landlubber’s stomach) it was awful.
But in the storm, with everything thrown about, and people everywhere
terribly upset…it was comforting to know that the radar was still
functioning…IT WAS ONE OF THOSE HELPFUL DEVICES that made it possible
for the captain to bring us through safely.”

“I listened to a very intimate confession in a small group one day, as a grown man
with tears streaming down his cheeks, told of his anger with a father who played
God in a miserable fashion…
He told the group that as a boy, he would be given the task of raking
leaves…..’And, I would try…Honest, I would try
I remember, I would rake the leaves into a pile, very carefully,
not missing a one of them. I would have the lawn completely clear
of leaves…but by the time Dad arrived home, a few more leaves
would fall….and I would get the dickens…..’
And th pain of having disappointed his father was still there with him as
he wept some thirty years later…..’I couldn’t please my Father’
Oscar Wilde once said, ‘Children begin by loving their parents; as they grow
older they judge them; sometimes they forgive them…'”

Gee, I wonder why I dreamed about my Dad last night.

Maybe I’ll put up a few more of these. I will definitely keep them for the fam.

I learned of Christian Marclay’s 24 hour movie/art installation In Zadie Smith’s essay,  “Killing Orson Welles at Midnight” (pdf of the essay)

If you’re interested I recommend reading Smith’s essay before looking at clips of the movie.

It’s great fun. it’s designed to play in real time so that the minutes that click off in the movie clips would represent the actual passing time. It’s a cool idea. There are tons of clips online. I’ll leave it you, dear reader, to explore them if you want.

The actual installation will be at the Tate museum in London from 14 September 2018 to 20 January 2019. When I pointed this out to Eileen just now, she said, “I’m game.” Maybe we could work it in with Lucy-Sarah-Matthew visit. Who knows?

Hey. A new movie that looks like I might enjoy it. Cool. It’s only playing in Grand Rapids locally.

So yesterday was John Clare’s birthday. I heard about it on the vestigial version of Garrison Keillor’s post sexual harassment Writers Almanac. He sounded a bit familiar. Sure enough he ended up at St. Andrew’s  asylum in North Hampton.

Then I recalled his walk on role in volume 3 of Alan Moore’s Jerusalem in the difficult chapter 8. Perusing his wikipedia entry reveals that Moore has used him in another book, his first novel, Voice of the Fire. I’ve already ordered a copy of it. Heh.

Here’s a cool cover of this book:

I think I’m going to have read everything Alan Moore has written.

The death of truth: how we gave up on facts and ended up with Trump | Books | The Guardian

Another astute looking article on the current lamentable situation in my country. I’ve bookmarked this one to read as well as the Madeline Albright article. So far I haven’t been able to bring myself to read them. But I will! I will!

Today I see my therapist for the first time in four weeks. I’m on about day 18 of my extended summer vacation. I have the rest of July and the first two Sundays of August off. I’ve not been thinking too much about my mental health type issues. However, one thing I have been allowing myself is to follow through more thoroughly on my reading and to allow it to range more widely. Why not?

I’m obviously thinking about this because I will have to report to Dr. Birky in a couple of hours.

Two things have been going on during this period. I am attempting to protect myself from the usual work stress and situations. This involved leaving town for a while. Since returning, it has involved deflecting people a bit.

The second is a gradual realization of how freed up I am during this time. This has led to the rabbit hole adventure of pursuing stuff a bit more than I might if I had to work stuff.

Ironically a lot of it, of course, is related to stuff I do at work. Yesterday I ordered my own copy of Temperley’s book in the history of English parish music. I am about seventy pages into it as of this writing. I have interlibrary loaned a ton of books he refers to including all of the Erik Routley books. I may or may not end up purchasing some of them. They are old, but I realized yesterday that I had never read Routley’s lengthy written material in his 1991 publication, The Music of Christian Hymns. Weirdly, he doesn’t bibliograph Temperley although Temperley used Routley’s books and surely Routley was aware of it.

Anyway, you can see how I am indulging my curiosity. In addition to this I continue to study Haydn and Bach by reading Ethan Haimo’s Hadyn’s Symphonic Forms: Essays on Compositional Logic and Peter Williams’ J.S. Bach: A Life in Music. Yesterday I finished a chapter in each of these books, so I am slowly making progress in them. They both send me back to the actual music, listening and playing.

When I first returned from Unadillo my piano drove me crazy. Mostly this was the bad intonation, but there are some other problems with it. After a few days, this went away. That’s good in a way. No sense being miserable. My adaptability is both a strength and weakness, I guess. I practiced guitar yesterday a bit. My guitar is not that good and the strings are shot. I would want new strings before performing in public.

But I’m  not thinking of public performing so much. Church is really my last outlet for performance. My performing opportunities dwindle and I can’t say I miss them much. I do think I will miss playing music with others soon. But so far I am content to read and study alone.

So far I have had no compositional impulse during this time off. It occurs to me it would be a good time to compose. It’s a better time to scurry down the rabbit hole.

“Running” | The New Yorker

Strong poem in the latest New Yorker. I love it that the mag has the poet record an audio for online listening.

From “Under the Knife” by Krista Franklin | Poetry Magazine

I like this one. Both this and the next poem are better read in a real copy of the mag. In this case, in the mag, the pic is on the left hand page and the words on the right hand.

Lakes Rivers Streams by Michael Dickman | Poetry Magazine

This is a long read. Over 500 lines. I counted them. But apparently not accurately since the poem consists strictly of 7 line stanzas and my final total is not divisible by 7. I mention this because in the link (and in the app) they weirdly follow the presentation of the poem in the mag which is two sets of seven on each page with a dot in between the two. However, the online presentation and the app would be much clearer with a dot after each 7 lines. I bitch because I read it on the app and was so confused I had to look at it in the mag to see its structure more clearly. The poem reminded me of Michigan a lot, but Dickman is  from the Northwest USA.

Eileen hired someone to remove the asbestos from our basement yesterday. Actually they will remove all the ducts that are wrapped in asbestos. They are scheduled to do this next week. Eileen immediately got on the phone and rescheduled the installation of our furnace/ac. Now they will begin this installation on next Thursday and finish up by the following Monday.

Today is Eileen’s 66th birthday. She seems to be having a good one. Yesterday she met with her siblings and Mom for some talk and card playing.

Eileen’s Mom is getting up in years. It’s time for her to quit living alone in the old trailer where she and Clyde lived. Apparently Eileen’s brother Dave was very clear in presenting Dorothy’s choices to her. She chose to move in with Eileen’s sister, Nancy, and sell the trailer. This is definitely good news.

The only proviso was that the other siblings would “alternate” care. It’s not clear how this all will work out, but at least they are not talking about only Nancy caring for Eileen’s Mom. Nancy has been doing the heavy lifting of caring for Dorothy. Eileen says that Nancy always planned to care for Dorothy and Clyde in their old age. But realistically she will need help. Eileen tells me that there are already a couple of nurses making daily visits to Dorothy.

All of this helped Eileen’s mood and outlook immeasurably. She scheduled her mini for maintenance next week. She and I took the Alero over to Ok Tires for an air conditioner overhaul.

In the meantime I have been spending hours with my studying and piano playing. Yesterday I spent a good amount of time with Mendelssohn and Bartok on the piano. I began the day listening the Concerto for Orchestra by Bartok a piece I love.

My piano student called yesterday. He was waiting for a piano lesson at church despite the fact that I’m pretty sure I told him they would be suspended until after I contacted him. I reminded him I was on vacation and told him I would contact him in mid August.

Vacationing is not as easy as one might assume. I also had emails from the July recitalist regarding his poster and program. I’m probably going to have to sneak back to work and print this up. It feels like a good time to stay away from work, so this is a bit of let down.

I went out and bought flowers and gifts for Eileen yesterday while she was in Whitehall. This morning I put the flowers on the pie safe so that the cat wouldn’t disturb them and set out her gifts. She seemed pleased. I think she’s mostly in a good space because of the direction her Mom’s care is heading and we are making a little progress on the house project.

GOP Candidate Normalizes Pedophilia Because It’s in The Bible

I avoid going tit for tat finding weird behavior on the right to match the weird behavior my right wing family and friends point to on the left. However, this report seems substantiated and extreme. Yikes. Hopefully he won’t be elected.

Not only are my Auden books in conversation with each other (see yesterday’s blog), my Basquiat/Kevin Young-art/poetry books refer back and forth between each other. I have been trying to connect Kevin Young’s two books of poetry based loosely on the art of Basquiat to the big book of paintings I purchased. Yesterday I was able to find the painting Young was thinking of in his poem. Today a different poem proved impossible to trace to paintings both in my book and on the interwebs.

Yesterday my reading of Temperley’s The Music of English Parish Churches sent me scurrying around to books in my own library, interlibrary loaning books from the public library network, and looking up articles online. This is a kind of conversation.

This kind of bouncing around from source to source is something I do regularly come to think of it. When I’m not on vacation, I often will pull out the music I am reading about and play through it if possible or listen to it if it’s not available to me in a keyboard arrangement.

It seems like vacation is a good time to dig a little deeper into this kind of learning. I have the time and resources. Cool.

I’m laying low, not practicing organ at church, not contacting people.

 West Gallery Music Association – Home Page

I found this organization poking around looking for Temperley references and sources.

“The West Gallery Music Association is an informal group of singers, instrumentalists and scholars. We share an interest in the sacred music, psalmody and hymnody, and the secular music and dance of the men and women who performed from the west galleries of parish churches, in chapels, and around the towns and villages of England during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.”

The duct people came this morning. We thought we were ready for them. But they took one look at our asbestos in the basement and said they wouldn’t touch our ducts so long as the asbestos is there. This is frustrating and disappointing especially for Eileen. After a few calls, she is thinking of trying to hire someone to remove our asbestos. Then they or another contractor will remove all of our old ducts in the basement and we will replace them with new ones. The asbestos removal will probably be expensive. But what the heck. It’s not safe for it to be in our home anyway.

Eileen is online right now trying to find someone to hire to get rid of our asbestos. This will set us back until that is taken care of.

Mortimer J. Adler’s notion that books are in conversation with each other has influenced my life of reading.

I received a pristine copy of John Fuller’s W. H. Auden: A Commentary  (Princeton, 1998) in the mail while I was in Chelsea (Unadilla?).

Princeton 1998

This morning I ecamined it, his earlier commentary (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1970) which I already had, and two versions of Auden’s collected poems (Vintage, 1991; Random House, 1976). Mark gave me a copy of the Randon House 1976 version which he had replaced in his own collection since the binding was in bad shape.

Random House, 1976

Vintage, 1991

I spent some time sorting through these four books this morning. As you can see from the dates above,  Fuller’s commentary that arrived in the mail is the last book published of these four. Next comes my paperback edition of Auden’s collected poems. It and the hardback Mark gave me are both edited by the same man, Edward Mendelssohn.

Fuller and Mendelssohn, the two men who put these books these books together, knew each other. These four books are definitely in conversation, Fuller having rewritten and expanded his 1970 commentary. In his Editor’s Preface to the Collected Poems, 1991 edition, Mendelssohn says that it is the third of Auden’s major collected works. He describes multiple other volumes of selections of his work.

Mendelssohn puts the poems in chronological order in both volumes, but the later volume has more poems of course since Auden continued to produce work. Mendelssohn was also Auden’s executor as well as his editor (Fuller adds critic and bibliographer to this list).

I am reading my way through the 1991 edition, but Fuller’s commentary tempts me to reread what I have read because of his extensive notes and demonstrated understanding of the poems.

It has taken having all four in my possession to allow me to sort out this information.

California’s ‘foreclosure capital’ to give away $500 a month to residents in experimental welfare program

The idea is that Artificial Intelligence will eventually take over all jobs. What happens then? A guaranteed annual income would help change the social contract.

A man harasses a woman for wearing a Puerto Rico shirt, saying it’s ‘un-American’ – CNN

Ay yi yi. Puerto Ricans are Americans. You know that, right?

U.S. effort to weaken an international breast-feeding resolution has a long history – The Washington Post

At last something Trump and Obama agree on.

I’m up early at Mark’s house. Today Eileen and I return to Holland. After we get back we have to madly start preparing for house improvements to happen this week. We get our ducts cleaned starting tomorrow. On Thursday they are scheduled to install our new furnace/ac. So today after we get back, we have to make sure everything is ready for the duct people, clearing the way to all the registers in the house. Then before Thursday I have some serious straightening to do in the basement, clearing out my old tool room which is the room where the furnace will go. This promises to be an active week!

Yesterday Mark drove me to Ann Arbor. He had some errands to run and graciously included a stop at Dawntreader bookstore and Encore Records. In between, the old men (Mark and I) rested at a lovely Korean restaurant. Encore records keeps boxes of used music on its floor. I always find stuff to purchase. Yesterday I found a bunch of piano duets, cello and violin solos, and a very cool old copy of a special issue of the journal Black Sacred Music: A Journal of Theomusicology. Articles in it by Micheal Eric Dyson, Cornel West, and Andrew Greeley. Topics covered include the sacred music of Duke Ellington, Rap Culture, and the Catholic imagination of Bruce Springsteen and Madonna’s challenge to her church. The last two by Greeley.

This morning after working on Greek, I combed the bibliography of a fancy book of Mark’s called Wayfaring Strangers: The Musical Voyage from Scotland and Ulster to Appalachia by Fiona Ritchie and Douglas Orr.

This led me down the rabbit hole of the interwebs and before I was done I ran across and bookmarked a bunch of interesting stuff.

including:

Hughes, Langston, I Wonder as I wander

Maccoll, Ewan and Peggy Seeger, Travelers’ Songs from England and Scotland Amazon link CDrom version on Peggy Seeger web site

I Wonder as I Wander: The Life of John Jacob Niles by Ron Pen, Rick Kogan

Ron Pen seems like an interesting dude. I requested his friendship on Facebook.

Ritchie, Jeanie, Folksongs of Appalachia Amazon link

I also ran across a very interesting issue of the journal,  American Music

This is not available online, but it’s tempting to purchase. $14 for the e version.