I made the mistake of taking the WordPress software update on its own terms and not at least trying ways that I used the old version. Most of them work. That’s good. I can even see improvement. The help videos were useless to me. My orientation toward what I am doing is so different from techies. I spend most of the time watching help videos waiting for them to get to something that interests or helps me. This is another reason I prefer written help sections.

Thank you, Sarah Jenkins, for pointing out the easy way to do word count on this update!

Elizabeth and Alex arrive this morning. My morning often begins around 6 AM and Eileen’s after 9 and sometimes later than 10, so “morning” is a bit of a nebulous concept in this context. I moved most of my stuff from the study/guest bedroom. I’m still sitting at the desk right now. But it’s around 7:30 AM and Elizabeth and Alex probably wont arrive soon.

I gave my brother Languages of Truth: Essays 2003-2020, by Salman Rushdie and keep forgetting that I did so, to his amusement. I have read the first chapter of it three times now.

First, as an adapted essay in the New York Times Book Review I first read back in May. The online version is fun because of the illustrations that are not in the book. Secondly, I read it as the first chapter of the book. Yesterday I read it for a third time.

As usual I marked some sections.

We are born wanting food, shelter, love, song, and story. Our need for the last two is not less than our need for the first three.

Regarding Randall Jarrell’s notion that “A novel is a prose narration of some length that has something wrong with it” Rushdie writes this beautiful paragraph:

So: If a novel or indeed a play is bound to have ‘something wrong with it,’ then let it be at least a wonderful wrongness, speaking of the strangeness of the world’s beauty, a wrongness that seeks to wipe from our eyes and cleanse from our ears the dull patina and muffling wax of everyday which makes us see reality as monochromatic and hear it as monotonous, and to reveal the rainbow music of how things really are. Let it be a play or indeed a novel containing bright moments, dark changes, living characters, sudden transformations, images of fire and ice, horrifying metamorphoses, luminous insights, comic alterations, and stories that have nothing wrong with them at all.

Incidentally this paragraph seems to be omitted in the NYT version.

A high bar put in wonderfully composed sentences.

Also in this chapter, Rushdie comes up with a concept I find useful, “a personal tradition.”

Edward Bond and his Shakespeare are writers who, like Kafka, long ago entered my personal tradition, the only tradition that’s worth a damn to a practicing writer being the one he forges for himself, that is not laid down by high priests of literature, not a stone-carved commandment brought down from Sinai or the Cambridge University English faculty by a Leavisite Moses but a pagan thing, a melting down of treasures, a golden calf. Or, let’s say, a thing born of thee happy and —even better—the useful contaminations by others of the writer’s reading mind.

The same can be said about one’s personal tradition of music when one is a musician. Musicians are notoriously narrow or seem so because the ones usually interviewed or written about have zeroed in on one aspect of their art in order to excel in it. But I have found that more and more musicians I meet, usually younger ones, don’t have the calcified attitude or so many teachers, professors, and other students I have known in my life.

Salman Rushdie to return to India for his next novel – EasternEye

Something interesting coming from Rushdie.

Thelonious Monk’s 25 handwritten tips for musicians

These are great. I especially like “you got to dig it to dig it, you dig?”

What I learned from an unlikely friendship with an anti-masker | Lif

Getting to know someone you disagree with, always helpful!

Work begins on public observatory at Hemlock Crossing Park

Cool

Revealed: LAPD officers told to collect social media data on every civilian they stop | Los Angeles | The Guardian

Thanks to Jeremy Daum for tweeting this link.

VanRaalte Farm Civil War Muster

Apparently this happens every year. This year it’s Bull Run. Cool.

Serialised novel: A first for Rushdie, staple format for Bengal classics – Telegraph India

Other Bengal authors use this method.

The Telegraph uses “spread of classical music in Kolkata” to glorify conversion and evangelical work that marred Bengal

I love it when one media outlet criticizes another and does it pretty well.

NYTimes: How Sept. 11 Gave Us Jan. 6

Spencer Akermann was recently interviewed on Democracy Now about this.

“Eight months later, there is no political response to the insurrection at all, only a security response aimed at its foot soldiers.”

It occurred to me yesterday that my life in retirement is actually returning to a sort of “normal.” I’m not sure what I mean by that except as I continue to relax and ponder I seem to be returning to a mindset that I haven’t had for many years. This way of thinking feels right and very different from having to do church music.

I still have lots of respect for the arts and history of Christianity. But I feel like I have returned to a previous orientation towards them that is more informed (since I have learned a lot since I last felt this regular.

It was a beautiful day yesterday. A cool fall day. I sat outside and read for awhile. But it was a little too cool so I finally came in. Eileen made blueberry jam so we had it on fresh bread. It was worth every calorie.

I am continuing to slowly lose weight. This encourages me that it’s real weight loss. I am back to abstaining from real gin and not snacking after a light supper. I’m hoping that will continue to let my body shed unneeded pounds.

I have fixed up the guest bedroom as a sort of study. I set it up this way when Mark and Leigh visited so they could stay in this room. I am finding it very helpful to have a desk and a place to sit and work on my computer. I also want to clear out an upstairs room and make it into a music room. I want to move my harpsichord and marimba there. Right now all my guitars and my banjo are there.

I think the mornings are a very productive time for me. I have spent them in recent years stretching my brain a little bit, learning a smidgeon of Ancient Greek and reading poetry both contemporary and more classical. This is when I read my Shakespeare. But this week, after exercising and making coffee, I have sat in my computer room and thought about stuff. I also have been doing some prose sketches. This morning instead of sketching I made a list of ideas that have been rattling around in my head as possible pieces of prose, fiction or nonfiction.

Being systematic is important to me. I have found that when I do something systematically (like read a portion of book on a daily basis or even practice) the eventual accrual is pretty astonishing to me.

I am slowly figuring out to work my new WordPress software I use to create and edit these blogs. I don’t know, dear reader(s), if you have noticed, but there is a tad less clutter on my initial web page. The excessive amount of links have been making me crazy so one of the first things I changed was limiting the links there.

Speaking of links. I have learned how to insert them. So here’s some for today.

Americans Still Oppose Overturning Roe v. Wade

Most Americans favor legal abortion. The reason we are in the current situation is that the right has chosen to seize power in undemocratic ways like voter suppression and more importantly stacking the Supreme Court with right wing judges.

What a revoltin’ development.

Fragments of medieval Merlin manuscript found in Bristol library

New info on Merlin and King Arthur.

The Wonders That Live at the Very Bottom of the Sea – NYT

I link this article for the first paragraph. I didn’t receive my Sunday NYT for a couple of Sundays. This didn’t bother me too much. I basically subscribe to it for the apps and the “replica edition,” the second of which is not available without subscribing to at least the Sunday paper. Consequently, I missed reading the NYTBR (New York Times Book Review) which comes as a section in the Sunday paper.

In this past Sunday’s NYTBR, Lowell Edmunds wrote in the letters column that the first paragraph of the above linked article it was the “best first paragraph in memory.”

Here it is.

“In the deep sea, it is always night and it is always snowing. A shower of so-called marine snow — made up of pale flecks of dead flesh, plants, sand, soot, dust and excreta — sifts down from the world above. When it strikes the seafloor, or when it is disturbed, it will sometimes light up, a phenomenon known, wonderfully, as “snow shine.” Vampire squids, umbrella-shaped beings with skin the color of persimmons, float around collecting this luminous substance into tiny snowballs, which they calmly eat. They are not alone in this habit. Most deep-sea creatures eat snow, or they eat the snow eaters.”

Not bad.

“The Monkey Who Speaks,” by Han Ong | The New Yorker

Speaking of good writing, this short story in the September in the September 13 issue is exceptional. I listened to the podcast. But instead of falling asleep, as sometimes happen my mind started buzzing as the story unfolds. I recommend it!

I interlibrary loaned Ong’s novel The Disinherited.

Ong was born in 1968 in the Philippines of “ethnic Chinese parents.”

He and his family came to the US in the 80s. He is another recipient of the MacArthur Genius grant. I look forward to reading his works.

Bread is in the oven. I have exercised, fed the cat twice, put out the flag, brought in the paper for Eileen (I use the app but don’t usually look at the hard copy), and written about 400 words, experimenting with doing some non-blog prose writing in the morning.

I didn’t figure out how to do a word count in my updated WordPress but I did find it in my Google docs.

WordPress provides videos to help users learn. They are a bit tedious. I started one yesterday after blogging and will probably continue to try to learn more about this new update.

I just took the bread out of the oven. It smells great of course. It’s a nice, cool fall day today. So a good day to heat up the oven without making the kitchen miserable. The bread making is a small task for me. I have learned not to belabor the whole thing. I mix up what is called a sponge which is simply warm water, flour, yeast, and salt. Set the time for 30 minutes. Then, after the sponge has done some rising, I add the salt and the rest of the flour. I mix it in with a kneading motion and by the time it is mixed in, I stop kneading and shape it into loaves. Then a 30 minute rise and pop it into the oven. Easy peasy.

The wind was crazy at the beach yesterday. There was a red flag warning which means no swimming. However, we did see the huge kites in the sky that people use to kitesurf with. We also saw someone walking toward the beach in a wet suit carrying a surf board so maybe that activity is not prohibited.

Eileen and sat out in the wind for a while. We both enjoyed that. It’s pretty exhilarating to sit and let the wind blow over you. It usually reminds me of getting stranded on Cape Hatteras with my family when I was a child. Childhood memories are so tricky. Especially growing up with photos being taken. My Dad was a big photo slide nut. So we ahve hundreds of old slides of family and my parents trips to Europe.

Hatteras was actually an island at the time. Now you can drive along the coast of North Carolina and there is a bridge that lets you get on and off the Cape.

We were traveling with my Grandfather, Pop Ben. Pop Ben is what we called him. He and Grandmother were with myself, Mom and Dad. This was pre-Mark, my brother. I don’t remember too much even with the help of color slides. I know we must have gotten on to the island with a ferry. We were traveling in cars and had camping equipment with us. We may have even planned to stay the night on the island but the family story I remember is that we missed the ferry and got stranded.

We slept in tents and wind howled. I have a memory of fishing right off the Atlantic shore on a cold windy beach. I associate it with this time on Hatteras. I was sitting in a folding lawn chair, holding my rod, when suddenly I was being pulled into the water. I had a bite! Someone rescued me. I don’t remember if the fish was reeled in or not.

Anyway, the memories are all mixed up but that’s sort of how I remember it.

Yesterday the strong winds and sand in my hair and eyes reminded me of this. Eileen and I decided to move to the car to have our picnic lunch because of the wind and sand. We stayed in the car for our daily boggle game but went back outside to continue reading.

Today is the local Farmers Market and I need to stop blogging and go buy some tomatoes.

Although I realize that all my life my appearance has offended people beginning with my parents, I think I have underestimated how it has determined so much in my life. If I consider only my sojourn in Holland Michigan I realize that not “looking the part” has distanced me from some possible colleagues.

I guess this goes back to when I left Detroit in 85 or so. In Detroit I didn’t stand out. Even some of my profs had leftover hair styles from the 60s and 70s. And there were many older students like myself. One prof might have considered teaching me composition if I had not offended him in another way from the moment we laid eyes on each other.

He was giving his first lecture to a theory zip type class where holes in understanding and terminology were to be rectified. He must have disliked me on sight. I sat in the back agreeing with his comments and smiling at his sarcasm when he said to the group something about thinking they didn’t this information. He probably thought I was smugly smiling because he directed his comments directly to me and said snidely that I didn’t think I needed to study the content of the course.

I was furious but remained silent. Unfortunately, instead of reaching out to him in a way that would flatter him and bring us closer as colleagues in the next class I didn’t bother to raise my hand but instantly answered every question he put to the group. He finally had to ask me to be quiet.

Later he hired me to help copy music for a composition he was having performed by the Detroit Symphony. I was very uneasy about this. As I recall I needed the money but didn’t feel qualified to make scores for symphonic players. I had just begun learning how to copy music with a pen. The teacher was clear. He needed me no matter how bad I did the job. I think it was at this point but it may have been in another context when this same teacher told me he would not accept me as a student of composition.

I hadn’t asked him to, but it’s probably another case of my lack of social skills winding me up where I have spent most of life happily: on the outside.

I now believe that if I had cut my hair and paid more attention to my appearance and clothes my connection with Holland and Western Michigan would have been drastically different. I don’t regret this because I am very happy with how things have turned out here.

I have long felt that my hair style and sloppiness are similar to how men sometimes clung to styles long after they were in fashion and look silly.

In addition, I have consciously chosen paths of behavior inconsistent with fitting in and self promotion.

No matter.

Yesterday I updated my WordPress version of software that I use to edit my web site. It looks like a bit of steep learning curve since I can’t get the dam software to do quite what I usually do this morning. Oh well. I’ll have to delve in the help menus which I usually generally ignore until I have a problem.

I’m having difficulty importing graphics. The way one does this is all different in the new version. Also, it doesn’t give a running tally of words written which I find useful. I’m sure all of this is doable. I will just have to learn how to do it.

Today is “date day” and it is a beautiful day. Right now it’s in the 60s and it should be lovely down at the beach by the time we get there.

I managed to get the pic above in this post, but all my other interests like word count seem to require installing plug ins and extra little programs. What a pain!

Also the help menus so far are just public forums. I will look for some tutorials.

Over and out for today.

It’s very odd to no longer have to worry about church work. Being an introvert of sorts, I needed to brace myself for my weekly commitments. This is no longer needed and has been lessening for a while probably going back to the beginning of the Covid Crisis.

On the one hand, the Covid Crisis demanded much less work from me. On the other, it may have delayed my retirement. I did not want  desert my boss during a crisis.

I have just finished exercising and am sitting at my computer working on this post. This is a bit new for me. Usually I sit and read at this point in my day. But if I do begin to pursue writing more seriously, I will probably work in the morning. So this is a nice little trial run to see what this feels like.

I succumbed and let myself have some scotch and wine last night. This led to my usual snacking as I thought it would. It seemed appropriate on my last day of work. So, what the heck!

I learned a couple things. First, I missed being lucid enough to read in bed. Secondly, I can feel it physically this morning. I’ve never had hangovers. But having abstained recently, I have gotten used to having more energy and generally feeling better.

Good health is the absence of something, I have heard said. The same could be said for my own well being. I have been feeling better lately. But this morning I can feel a slight niggling physical fatigue.

This is complemented by feeling some mild shell shock like symptoms of not having to do anything for work.

Ever.

Again.

Morning Podcast Report

This is cool. The banjo playing, MacArthur genius grant recipient I mentioned here recently also hosts the Opera Pod Cast Aria Code. I remember when this podcast came out. I subscribed but when I dipped into it wasn’t that interested. But this morning I listened to the first one from back in 2018. Pretty cool.

I like that in the promo Giddens promises that at the end of each episode they will play the entire aria.  The panel I heard this morning included the singer who sang aria with the Metropolitan Opera, Diana Damrau. Since the role she sang was Violetta, the high class call girl in Verdi’s La La Traviata, one of the other panelists was Brooke Magnanti , a former call girl herself. Cool.

For you opera buffs here’s a video of Damrau singing the aria.

Wow. What a voice! Although this is the same singer and orchestra, this is not the recording on the podcast since she goes up for the ultra high note (not written according to her in the podcast) on the podcast recording but not on the video.

Opera is a good thing for me to study at this point. I enjoy the music and haven’t listened to a ton of opera. I like finding new music that I like. I do like Verdi already but I don’t even know this opera very well.

I sometimes listen to the headlines from Democracy Now. I have followed their reporting for years. This morning I listened to their podcast. Or at least some of it. I’ll save the rest for later. It’s a report on Afghanistan featuring Bilal Sarwary, an Afghan reporter who recently fled the country with his wife and daughter, and Spencer Ackerman, an American journalist and writer.

This wraps it up for my first day of retirement.

It’s my last day of being a church musician. I’m thinking about writing this morning. I wonder if my next thing will be writing. I have always loved words. I don’t really tell stories very well. But like everyone I have a lot of material in my life that lends itself to being put into prose.

So there’s memory.

If I start writing about a memory should I change the names in it right away? My inclination is that I should because I think the rhythm of the sentences is important to me.

For some reason i have faith in myself that if i turn myself to writing fiction that will go well. Or at least i will be likely to be almost satisfied with what I can come up with. The reason for this is I believe in my ability to listen to characters and let them unfold on their own. I’m not sure why I have this confidence but I do.

I think I have had an interesting life. Born into the heartland in Anderson, Indiana, the birthplace also of a weird Christian church that calls itself The Church Of God. Or as I grew up saying it “churchagod.” My young parents were attending the church’s small college that still sits in this midwestern town. Before long, my Mom quit school pregnant with me and Dad finished and became a minister in the church. They moved to the South.

It was years later before I understood about the color lines in our country. Sure I have a vague memory of being appropriately indignant for a little boy about the colored only drinking fountain.

I seem to recall horror in my Dad’s face as he pulled away me from it.

I’m pretty sure if I just rambled to myself on the page eventually after some ruthless editing and cutting down I might come up with some good stuff.

But for now the next thing in my life is to rest up a bit and consider what I want to spend my time doing besides practicing, reading, and studying.

In the meantime I have listening to Zadie Smith’s collection of essays, Changing My Mind: Occasional Essays. They impress me so much that I bought a hard copy of the book to read carefully.

In one of the essay, “That Crafty Feeling,” Smith points out that a writer only really knows what craft works for her. Or that’s what I get out of her comments like “what I have to say about craft extends no further than my own experience.”

She also parses one of my other favorites, David Foster Wallace, in the essay, “Brief Interviews with hideous Men: the Difficult Gifts of David Foster Wallace.”

I listen to stuff like this at night. The point is to drift off to sleep. So I don’t hear everything. That’s why I bought the book. I find Smith saying things that interest me and I want the whole concept to ponder and learn from.

I finished reading Zora Neale Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God last night. This book is the subject of the first essay in Smith’s collection, “Their Eyes Were Watching God: What does Soulful mean?”

As a fourteen year old, Smith rejected books like this. She says she flattered herself that “ranged widely” in her fourteen year old reading and never chose books for “genetic or sociocultural reasons.” Her idea of good writing at that age did “did not include aphoristic or overtly ‘lyrical’ language, mythic imagery, accurately rendered ‘folk speech’ or the love tribulations of women.”

This last list describes Hurston well. Finally giving in to her mother’s recommendation to read it, Smith goes on to be totally converted to Hurston by reading the novel.

At seventy, I had less misgivings than she. But I admit I had to look past Hurston’s rendering of dialog. Reading it aloud helped. Also the fact that when she introduces white people into the story, they speak in “folk speech” so it’s not just some sort of dialect that she is rendering.

But all this stuff falls away when I read Hurston. She is in control. But she also is going somewhere that no one else was going at all in 1937 when the book was published.

Zora Neale Hurston 1861-1960

I get a bit of magic realism vibe when she flips her prose from mind boggling beauty to the mundane and interesting life of Janie Crawford, the main character.

I plan to read more of Thurston’s work. In the meantime, I highly recommend this book. Here are few phrases that struck me as one’s I wanted to remember.’

All quotes below are from Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora neale Hurston.

Janie Crawford’s Grandma is talking:

“So de white man is de ruler of everything as far as Ah been able tuh find out. Maybe it’s some place way off in de ocean where de black man is in power, but we don’t know nothin’ but what we see. So de white man throw down de load and tell de nigger man tuh pick it up. He pick it up because he have to, but he don’t tote it. Hand it to his womenfolks. De nigger woman is de mule uh de world so fur as Ah can see.”

While reading and listening to Hurston’s prose in my head (or even out loud) I was reminded of a multi-lingual prof at Notre Dame named Niels Rassmussen. His first language was not English. Once he was listening closely to me as we were chatting. Mimicking my own pronunciation of “to,” he echoed, “tuh” which was actually how I was saying it. He was trying speak the language like a native.

In the audio book of Smith’s essays, the reader affects an exaggerated movie accent (think of the black actors in Gone With the Wind) when reading the dialect in the excerpts from Hurston. It annoys me so much I often skip past it.

“there’s a basin in the  mind where words float around on thought and thought on sound and sight. Then there is a depth of thought untouched by words, and deeper still a gulf of formless feelings untouched by thought.”

“She knew that God tore down the old world every evening and built a new one by sun-up.”

“So Janie began to think of Death. Death, that strange being with the huge square toes who lived way in the West. The great one who lived in the straight house like a platform without sides to it, and without a roof. What need has Death for a cover, and what winds can blow against him? He stands in his high house that overlooks the world. Stands watchful and motionless all day with his sword drawn back, waiting for the messenger to bid him come. Been standing there before there was  a where or a when or a then.”

“All night now the jooks clanged and clamored. Pianos living their lifetimes in one. Blues made and used right on the spot. Dancing, fighting, singing, crying, laughing, winning and losing love every hour. Work all day for money, fight all night for love. The rick black earth clinging to bodies and biting skin like ants.”

Well, if you read all that, it gives you a taste. Best to read the whole dam book.

My church gave me a gift certificate for Readers World last week. I’m working on an email to ask Readers World to sell me the David Foster Wallace, the 2 Modern Library volumes by Hurston, plus her posthumous publication that came out last year, Barracoon: The Story of the Last “Black Cargo”.

I started this post early this morning. I quit in the middle and did my last church service. Then Eileen and I went out to eat. I came home and finished it.

The service went fine. There were a few less people than last week. I don’t really feel the relief right now. It will take me sometime to get used to not having to work up the psychic energy to do the church thing. In the meantime, I am pondering the next thing.

Readership of this blog continues to dwindle, so thank you for reading!

I am approaching my last Sunday as a church musician with some fatigue. It has seemed a bit of a gauntlet to get this far.

But with any luck tomorrow will be an end of it.

I still have to do a lot of sorting and move instruments from the church to my home. I don’t think there’s any rush about that.

Americans Still Oppose Overturning Roe v. Wade

I have searched Spotify for some albums I ran across on my soon-to-be defunct app, Primephonic. Lo and behold I have been able to find everything there.

This morning I turned on the Primophonic app and it welcomed me and asked me to log in. I moved on to something that works.

I have not had good luck with many things like Primephonic. Innovations often look like a good idea and I want to support them and share with my friends. Then the people who are developing them realize they can sell out to someone like Apple who then invariably fucks up the aspects of the interface that I admire and use the most. Maybe someday I’ll learn not to do this.

I’m killing a little time, waiting to meet with my therapist, Dr. Curtis Birky, in about twenty minutes.

I’m in a much better space today. I had a good day seeing my grand daughter and taking part in the first of day of her birth week. Birth week seems to be how my daughters celebrate the birthdays of their children. Lucy’s birthday is coming up as well and they are already in full celebration mode over in England as well.

The last two days I have played piano before Eileen gets up. This is an excellent way for me to start my day. I asked Eileen if she minded yesterday. She said that not only did she not mind it, but she enjoyed it. Wow. I’ll take that!

Alex painted this painting yesterday with new paints she got for her birthday.

Jeremy is growing a Venus flytrap. He said it ate a wasp. Yikes. It’s much smaller than it looks in this picture. A wasp would be bigger than any of the traps pictured.

Here’s where I broke off writing and did therapy. I had an excellent session with Dr. Birky today. I find this very helpful. He gives me insights and ideas that help keep me as sane as possible and understand myself better. I can’t recommend therapy too much. Of course, it’s important to find the right dude so another thank you to my brother for teaching me to find someone that fits me!

On Sunday my boss, Rev Jen, announced that she was going to post one “Thank you Steve” message everyday this week. I have been keeping an eye on it so far she has done so.

Today seems to be a video I made for her for some sort of meeting she wanted music for. Here’s a link.

On Monday they put up this.

It’s one of the posters that was sitting in the back of church last Sunday.

On Tuesday they posted the clever, sped up video of the installation of the Martin Pasi organ.

I’ve put it up here before, but here it is again.

On Wednesday, another of those back of the church posters.

I’m not sure what they posted yesterday but I think they did one.

Sheesh. All this attention is kind of embarrassing. But flattering indeed.

Sorry I missed you yesterday. I see my hits went down as well. How did the few mysterious ghosts that haunt this blog know that I didn’t write a new post? Beats me.

My head is spinning with thinking about the next phase of my life. My grand daughter Alex is seven years old today. i can’t believe it has been seven years since Elizabeth gave birth to her. Eileen and I are driving over for a birthday party. It’s actually birth week as they will celebrate for a while. We are coming back tonight before dark. Even so, Eileen will probably drive. She has a new awareness of my bad vision garnered from realizing I couldn’t read signs in the grocery store.

I am very glad to still be alive at almost seventy years old. At the same time my mood is glum this morning. I didn’t sleep that great last night. Thanks goodness for a good cup of coffee.

I’m trying to keep my psychic radar clear as I consider what to do with retirement. I know I am capable of making some interesting and well crafted art whether it be music, prose, or poetry.

At this stage of my life, I don’t find  people to collaborate with over the yeas. I find consolation in connecting with strong minds in wonderful prose, poetry, and music. What will this mean in retirement? Probably more of the same with some specific projects here and there.

On Facebook, Janice Ian pointed out that if you use digital music, you don’t really own it. She was speaking about discovering a recording that she listens to digitally had been changed. She was unable to get back to the original. She advises using CDs to preserve the music you want to here.

Recently my app Primephonic was subsumed into Apple. I have a week before it goes away. Apple wants listeners to migrate to Apple music. They will provide a free subscription for some limited time. I don’t think I’m interested in that. It does look like Primephonic will refund the balance of any paid subscription. This is frustrating. But I am most bothered because I gave this app away to several musician friends. Now it will just stop. But now that I think about it, maybe one or two of them uses Apple music anyway. This morning I am seriously considering purchasing some CDs for the first time in years in order to keep touch with music I am listening to and thinking about.

I’ll spare you links, quotes, and poetry this morning. I just wanted, dear diary, to keep this silly blog going.