I am hoping that my body rash has somewhat abated. My legs were not as swollen this morning as they were last evening. I decided to skip the last vestige of my daily exercise and not do my “old-man-running-in-place” this morning in the hopes that my legs will not swell again. Eileen has since observed they are still swollen, but if that is so they are not near as uncomfortable as they were last night. I am hoping to resume my exercising gradually beginning sometime this week. My doctor advised no strenuous lifting for two weeks after my last eye surgery. This precluded most of my daily exercising.

As usual, Eileen asked me if I would stay up for the Halloween Trick or Treaters so she would not have to face them alone. I had planned to make a jack-o-lantern, but there were no pumpkins at Meijer and my physical discomfort increased enough in the afternoon so that I skipped what is usually my annual pleasure at carving up a pumpkin.

I knew that Eileen had been watching Downtown Abbey so I suggested we continue with that while she waited for the doorbell to ring. I generally am not that interested in TV and movies but I had some curiosity about the music for this series. My hopes that the music might be interesting were quickly dashed. I found the music as insipid as the plotting was cynical and emotionally manipulative. But it served the purpose to keep me awake. In fact I sat up later than usual. TV and movies are usually no better than this, at least for me. But this doesn’t mean I won’t continue to watch with Eileen and enjoy.

One of the benefits of surrounding myself with books is the fun of picking up something that interested me enough to purchase and put on the shelf a while back. This morning I spent time with two books that I have had my eye on for a while.

I know that the title of Lionel Trilling’s posthumous collection of essays, The Moral Obligation to Be Intelligent: selected essays made it an irresistible purchase at some point. I filed in my downstairs books under T for Trilling where I would not forget it. This morning I read Leon Wieseltier’s witty and excellent introduction.

In it he writes, “[I]n a withering commentary on Dreiser …. Trilling wrote in 1946: ‘But with us it is always too late for mind, yet never too late for honest stupidity; always a little late for understanding, never too late for righteousness, bewildered wrath; always too late for thought, never too late for naïve moralizing.” Trilling is almost certainly referring to America in general if not specifically of its intellectuals. If you’ve ever waded through Dreiser you can see how he would inspire these observations.

Writing about New York intellectuals in the mid-Century, again Wieseltier quotes Trilling: “[I]n their worship of ‘ideas’ they often failed to observe the difference between an idea and an opinion.'”

Also filed under “T” in my downstairs not to be forgotten collection was A Company of Readers: Uncollected writings of W. H. Auden, Jacques Barzun and Lionel Trilling From the Readers’ Subscription and Mid-Century Book Clubs.

Amazingly these three men got together every two weeks and examined books and each other’s review of them. I read the introduction by Barzun this morning.

The art of Aphantasia: how ‘mind blind’ artists create without being able to visualise

Bookmarked to read. Mary Dora Russell shared this link on Facemetabook mentioned that she herself has this condition.

In The View from Somewhere: Undoing the Myth of Journalistic Objectivity, Lewis Raven Wallace mentions a helpful analogy referring to a “news media habit… described as ‘Hitler’s Opinion.'” By this he means that “[R]eporters would call in a bigot from the Moral Majority or the psychiatric profession for a ‘balanced’ take in any article that mentioned being gay, while presenting gay voices exclusively as subjective and non-expert.”

Wallace is quoting from a 1982 publication called Talk Back! The Gay Person’s Guide to Media Action. While this publication may have coined the phrase, “Hitler’s opinion,” to better understand the insane approach of most of the media in the 80s during the AIDS crisis, I also find it helpful to understand my frustration about the PBS News Hour’s propensity to bring on camera people with extreme positions often on the right to establish some kind of weird balance to the perception that public TV is liberal.

Wallace quotes Sandy Nelson, an early advocate of honest advocacy journalism, “Objectivity is a myth, and it’s usually used as a way to go after people who have unpopular or radical ideas that threaten the status quo.”

I am very interested in learning about Wallace’s ideas about the “myth of journalistic objectivity.” In his book I think he a good job of walking through some recent history of American journalism. It’s not pretty. It was relatively recently before outsiders like LTBGQs received anything like fair and accurate coverage. It was surprisingly late before the New York Times even used the word “gay” instead of homosexual or even (!) deviant.

He quotes historian David Mindich’s five components of objectivity: “detachment, nonpartisanship, the use of the inverted pyramid model for news, facticity, and balance.” [from Mindich’s Just the Facts]

Of these five, Wallace argues in favor of retaining only two and discarding the rest: “My argument against ‘objectivity’ doesn’t abandon facts, truth, or the hope that we will pursue them without undue influence from political parties or corporations. Broadly, I argue in favor of facticity and nonpartisanship.”

He credits radio producer Ramona Martinez with this pithy observation: “Objectivity is the ideology of the status quo.”

I’m not doing a very good job of organizing my thinking this morning. This is due to the fact that my rash is even worse. My legs are swollen and puffy. Last night was the first night that the rash significantly disturbed my sleep. Today I tried to use piano practice as a distraction. Distraction is one of my techniques for dealing with the constant itching and burning. That didn’t work as well as it has.

Eileen was kind enough to agree to skipping the concert last night. I didn’t feel well enough to go out.

I have to survive this for thirteen more days if I can’t get an earlier appointment with my dermatologist. I will be calling them on Monday to see if I can get an earlier appointment. At any rate, I’m probably just going to have to live through this bout of rash. I don’t expect much from the dermatologist. If they couldn’t figure it out before, I don’t necessarily think they will figure it out now. My hope is that he can recommend something that will alleviate the itching, burning, and swelling.

When a Witness Recants | The New Yorker

I recommended this longer article to Eileen because it has a sort of mystery/true crime feeling.

Is Amazon Changing the Novel? | The New Yorker

An inside look at self publishing Kindle books on Amazon. I don’t think Amazon is changing the novel but it is making an impact on a lot of genre fiction according to this article.

My rash seems to be getting even worse. Last night I used a martini and some wine to self medicate. I’ve got to stop doing that. This morning I took a oatmeal bath. We had an envelope of this stuff specifically for easing skin irritation. It helped a tiny bit. Then I called my dermatologist’s office but they still can’t see me before Nov 12. The person answering the phone encouraged me to call again next week and check for cancelations. This is a bit weird because I thought they would call me with this information, but you can bet your bippy I will call again next week.

We have tickets to hear Paquito D’Rivera Quintet at the Great Performance series this evening. Right now, the plan is to order our Friday evening pizza and then go to the concert. The idea of sitting in an auditorium for an hour or so doesn’t sound like a comfortable time for me with this damn rash, but we missed the first one. I have some little tubes of hypo allergenic moisturizer I am planning to bring along. At this point I use a ton of this stuff each day in order to discourage my scratching. This is not working very well.

Last time my rash flared up, they were unable to diagnose it. It simply got a little better on its own. I’m hoping the dermatologist will have some creative ideas about how to deal with this other than just suffer through it.

I finished playing my way through my first volume of Haydn piano sonatas yesterday. I have played all the way through these before but I’m trying pay more attention to how Haydn evolves his ideas about the formal aspects of these pieces. So far they basically work close to a stereotypical understanding of sonata allegro form when he uses this form. I know that he evolved from studying his symphonies.

I also finished Flight to Canada by Ishmael Reed and the third Foundation novel, Second Foundation by Asimov. The copyrights on Asimov’s books are consecutive: 1951, 1952, and 1953. I checked because I think his prose style improves from clunky in the first book to not so clunky in the last. A little poking around on the interwebs reveals that at least the first book began its life as a series of short stories. I found criticism of the ideas in the book but no one pointed out an improvement in making sentences.

Maybe I just got used to his style, eh?

I have a Dr. Birky appointment today. Those usually help my mood. We’ll see.

My friend, Peter, canceled our meeting for today. A couple of his handbell players came down with Covid. Too bad. I was looking forward to chatting with him.

I dreamed about Larry Curran last night. I have not seen him in person since he left Peter and me in anger. We three had been sitting in my kitchen and I offended Larry so deeply that he got in his car and left and never spoke to me again. You may wonder what in the world I did that so upset him. From my point of view, he had been behaving in a weird passive aggressive manner and I called him on it. Even if I was wrong about this, renouncing our friendship for ever because of that seems excessive. Peter’s possible visit probably stirred up my thinking enough to see Larry in a dream. I do still miss him a little bit.

My sister-in-law’s brother has died of Covid and respiratory related disease. This is the same sister- and brother-in-law who previously chose not to get vaccinated against Covid because of a misconception of how fetal stem cells played into the research. I can only hope that the dead brother was not exposed through them. Eileen says this is not probable.

My rash continues to rage. I told Eileen that I think it’s aged me considerably. I am scheduled to see the dermatologist two weeks from tomorrow. I was hoping superstitiously that by getting that appointment the stupid rash would abate somewhat but that is not the case.

But my eyes are working very well. I can read without glasses and use them for TV and driving. Only one more week to worry about lifting restrictions then I can get back to exercising and stretching. My weight has been slowly going up, but the BP is staying low so that’s good.

I listened to most of a recent interview of Fiona Hill this morning on YouTube. You may remember her from her testimony in the Trump impeachment proceedings. She was impressive then and continues to be so. I haven’t listened to the whole interview. Hill sees the existential crisis we are in now in America. She thinks it will only be addressed by more activism on the ground and more courage in national leadership.

Good luck with that last one.

Hill has insight regarding how polarized we are now in the U.S. She pointed out how the basic identification with either the Republican or the Democratic party has permeated our society. I hope she is not right about this but it seems she is. As she points out there is so much more to people’s personality and point of view beyond a simply Red State or Blue State orientation.

Far From a Panopticon, Social Credit Focuses on Legal Violations – Jamestown

Another article by Jeremy Daum. It’s three weeks old but still pertinent. If you have questions this would be a good read. For me, it helps that he defines the social credit system in the first sentence: “China’s social credit system: directories of data inputs and punitive outputs from the General Office of the State Council.” That’s clear enough.

I try to keep a Shakespeare play going for my daily reading regimen. Recently I finished a re-read of Julius Caesar and went on to Antony and Cleopatra which I don’t think I have read before. This occurs in the first few lines:

CLEOPATRA If it be love indeed, tell me how much,

ANTONY There’s beggary in the love that can be reckoned.

CLEOPATRA I’ll set a bourn now far to be beloved.

ANTONY Then must thou needs find out new heaven, new earth.

“New heaven, new earth!” Antony’s Biblical quotation reminded me of my interest in Shakespeare’s use of Bible. I pulled out my Shaheen Biblical References in Shakespeare’s Plays.

Sitting next to it on my Shakespeare shelf was Steven Marx’s Shakespeare and the Bible.

I had forgotten about this neat little book. I had read some pages into but decided I would start from the beginning which is what I did as Eileen and I sat next Lake Michigan yesterday for date day.

While Shaheen has a chapter for every Shakespeare play, Marx uses five of them. He chooses them carefully and cleverly. He then pairs a book of the Geneva Bible with each one. The first play is The Tempest which he pairs with Genesis.

Apparently The Tempest comes first in the First Folio collection done of Shakespeare shortly after his death.

Marx finds some startling and beautiful parallels between the play and Genesis. What fun!

His last choice is also The Tempest which is thought by many scholars to be Shakespeare’s last play. He pairs this with the Apocalypse. In other words, the last book of the Bible, Revelations. The two chapter titles are 2. Posterity and Prosperity: Genesis in The Tempest and 6. A Masque of Revelation: The Tempest as Apocalypse. The first chapter is 1. Introduction: “Kiss the book”.

It’s a short little book and I look forward to not only reading it but other books and poems he has mentioned such as The Pleasures of Reading by my favorite Hebrew Bible translator, Robert Alter; Words with Power, a book I had not heard of by Northrup Frye who wrote The Great Code which is a very cool book; and Jane Smiley’s A Thousand Acres which is based on King Lear.

The poem he has mentioned is “Peter Quince at the Clavier” by Wallace Stevens.” I recognize this poem and have read it but I’m not sure I understood that Quince was a character out of A Midsummer Night’s Dream. I will have to revisit the poem in light of that. I seem to remember thinking that Quince was some fancy harpsichordist I didn’t recognize.

My rash was raging yesterday. I forgot to take moisturizing cream with me to the beach and the sun seemed to irritate the rash. I used my misery as an excuse to have a real martini last night followed by the usual wine and whisky.

Stephen Rumler the new music director for Grace Episcopal Church Holland where I used to work contacted me via Instant Messenger yesterday. He asked if I would agree to meet with him. I instantly texted him back that I would.

It interests me to look back on my life and see that it is a rare occasion when people seek me out as someone worth listening to. (Hi Rhonda!) Rumler’s self confessed mentor was Peter Kurdziel. Peter is one of the few people along with Rhonda who have thought that I was someone worth listening to. He and I planning a chat for this Thursday. I look forward to it.

Though I do look forward to meeting with both men it arouses in me doubts about what I have to offer them at this stage of life. I have lost interest in church and much church music. At the same time I am very interested in other kinds of music and ideas. But I am always good for a rambling chat.

In fact I miss chatting so much that I have been turning regularly to this blog to vent a bit. This spares my captive audience listeners (Eileen and my therapist, Dr. Birky). Plus making sentences seems to be both therapeutic and helpful.

I called my dermatologists office yesterday morning shortly after 8 AM. My rash is out of control. Despite this I manage to continue functioning but I am constantly uncomfortable. They scheduled me for mid November which is much better than the March appointment they gave me last time I called. I’m not expecting much help from this quarter since my previous diagnoses was inconclusive. But I think it’s worth a try.

Eileen is thinking that if the weather is good enough we might skip date day today so she can mow the lawn one last time before winter. She usually has brought in her plants by this time. My recovery from eye surgery prohibits me from lifting for another week or so. This has put a bit of a cramp in Eileen’s style. There is a huge bookcase which she purchased at auction sitting in the Subaru waiting to be brought in the house. Even opening the box in the car and bring it in piece by piece will probably not be sufficient for moving this without me because she is planning to replace several of the living room bookcases with this one, nicer looking shelf. This means not only setting it up but moving a ton of books around.

I was amused to read in Burgess’s This Man and Music that music is itself both apolitical and amoral. I even agreed with that back when I was a church musician.

Burgess begins by describing the 19th century conviction that there was “no doubt of the moral content of the great instrumental works,” specifically the works of Beethoven. He was thought to be the “sublime custodian of ultimate values.” This point of view persisted into the 20th century says Burgess.

“The trouble began with the Nazis,” he writes, “who, being Germans, had more right to Beethoven than anybody, and who found in his work precisely those values discovered by an earlier age of humanists. The commandant of an extermination camp could spend the day supervising the consignment of Jews to the ovens, and then go home to weep tears of pure joy at the divine revelations of sonata or symphony—his flaxen chubby daughter at the keyboard, the fine record-player which was due of his rank.”

Burgess continues, “It was always nonsense to proclaim that Beethoven’s music was about the brotherhood of man, Jew and Gentile, or mystical union with the god of the liberals. If fascists and democrats found, as they did, the same matter for exaltation, then music cannot be about morality.”

Amen says Jupe.

Radicalized at the Workhouse – Inez Bordeaux – Inquest

My daughter Elizabeth “shared” this link on Facebook. It’s quite a read.

Essay: Should We Have War Crime Trials? – The New York Times

This past Sunday’s NYT Book review was one of those retrospective issues which featured excerpts and essays from the past 125 years. This essay by Neil Sheehan from 1971 is good but long.

I have been playing the piano pieces of C.P.E. Bach. I own two Dover collections of them and the later, better three volume edition edited by Eiji Hashimoto.

Despite owning these five volumes, I am not clear about how the keyboard works of C.P.E. Bach are organized. The Groves Dictionary of Music tells me that he wrote over 1,000 separate works over a period of 60 years. Despite saying that his keyboard compositions are “at the heart of his creative work,” unlike Beethoven, Haydn, Mozart and others it’s not easy for me to understand what he was doing in these pieces. I have played all five volumes through at least once. I can see the glimmers of the impending Classical interest in formal aspects of the piece. Not to mention C. P. E.’s facile ability to make interesting and beautiful music.

C. P. E. stands between the baroque of his father’s music and the music of Haydn and Mozart. Groves says that Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven held his music in high esteem but that there is no substantiated evidence of this. Haydn and Beethoven are known to have used his book, Essay on the True Art of Playing Keyboard Instruments as young men. When an English newspaper reported there was tension between C. P. E. and Haydn, he demurred and was quoted that “It is my belief that every master has his own true worth. Praise and blame can do nothing to alter it. The work alone allots praise or blame to the master, and I therefore take everyone as I find him.” Hamburgischer Unpartheyischer Correspondent, 20 September 1785, quoted in the Groves article on C. P. E.

All this arouses not only my admiration but my curiosity. Subsequently I have requested a biography of C.P.E. and a collection of his letters through the MelCat network. I look forward to learning more about him.

In the meantime I continue to re-read and ponder Christopher Small’s ideas in Musicking: The Meaning of Performing and Listening. I can see that he has been very formative in some of my more radical conclusions about music.

A trained classical musician himself, his career was basically a reminder that Western civilization and its musics are one of many.

“Most of the world’s musicians—and by that word I mean, here and throughout this book, not just professional musicians, not just those who make a living from singing or playing or composing, but anyone who sings or plays or composes—have no use for musical scores and do not treasure musical works but simply play and sing, drawing on remembered melodies and rhythms and on their own powers of invention within the strict order of tradition. “

In addition he points out that so called “classical music” is not even a dominant aspect of music in the current Western world. Writing in 1998 he says that “It appeals to only a very tiny minority of people, even within Western industrialized societies; classical music records account for only 3 percent of all record sales.”

I find that all of this puts my own musical life in a helpful perspective. I seem to have more in common with Small than most musicians I have rubbed shoulders with in my life especially including those in my academic training.

None of this diminishes my own love of making music and listening to it. If anything, it confirms it.

Kent McDonald was my first organ teacher. He accepted me as a student a bit reluctantly. I was a hairy bar musician playing part-time at St. John’s Episcopal Church in Oscoda. Helen Swetka was an elderly lady there who pointed out consistently and vigorously that I needed more training and should study with someone like him. This was charitable of her. In my serving as the organist/choir director of this tiny northern Michigan church I avoided the pedals entirely. Mrs. Swetka was not the only one who noticed my lack of skills but for the most part the community seemed glad to get someone compent enough to do the gig.

Finally I approached Kent McDonald. He was a church organist who served in a fancy Detroit suburb and had a cottage in Oscoda. He agreed but insisted that I come to his church in Birmingham for lessons and that I not bother him in Oscoda. This I did.

We had a bit of stormy relationship. Kent was a erudite organist with a degree from Eastman. He taught at Oakland University. He abhorred all music but “classical” music. He once told me that the worst night of his life was spent substituting as the pianist for a dance band. I was an arrogant ignorant young man far too certain of my own potential and abilities.

I bring up Kent because I remember him saying that sometimes he would lock himself in the choir room at St. James in Birmingham where he worked and play through the entire piano sonatas of Mozart.

At the peak of my abilities it took me longer than a day to play through the Mozart piano sonatas. Yesterday I played carefully through the first five.

Mozart is a huge musical presence in my life. I connect with him differently than Bach. Bach is always there to satisfy my need for a certain king of beauty and meaning. I would call it a need for the genius of multiply textured treatment profound melodies combined with a Jazz like insistence of spinning out of rhythms and motives.

Mozart takes me to a different place, a place of holy playfulness and deep love of life.

It’s difficult to describe these connections of course. But they are clear inside me.

I have neglected the piano sonatas of Mozart in the last few years because I found them less satisfying than his violin sonatas and trio sonatas. In some ways this is a bit of a false distinction on my part possibly brought on by a bit of my own mimicking of academic snobbery.

When I returned the piano sonatas yesterday I realized how much they offer the performer/listener.

I am reminded of a quote from the late Christopher Small: “However trivial and banal the [musical] work may be that is the basis of the performance, meaning and beauty are created whenever any performer approaches it with love and with all the skill and care that he or she can bring to it.” (from Musicking: The Meaning of Performing and Listening.

Mozart of course is far from trivial and banal.

In the last few years I have noticed that the more care and love I use when playing, the better I connect with the music. This experience is not one of consciously summoning these but instead I experience a reaction to the music as I am playing that seems to draw me involuntarily more deeply into the music I am making. It feels more like something is happening to me than something I am bringing about. Consequently I find the experience one of being in the presence of beauty and even in the presence of a deep and resonant something speaking directly to and through me.

I am amazed and grateful to have my vision so improved. It was what I was hoping for but you never know. It’s easy to take something like vision for granted.

I have been reading a bit more on the classical side lately. Enderby led me to read some Ben Jonson.

When asked what his idea of a good poem was in The Clockwork Testament , Enderby quoted some unattributed Jonson.

Once again the interweb search comes to the aid of the ignorant (me).

Enderby quoted the first stanza of this poem: Queen and Huntress. I don’t own a volume of just Jonson but I do have a lovely Oxford Book of English Poetry which has a generous sampling.

Ishmael Reed sent me scrambling to find a poem by Walt Whitman.

In Flight to Canada, Reed describes a gala at the White House attended by Whitman. Reed quotes from a poem he calls “Repondez.” I pulled down my copy of Leaves of Grass, but it wasn’t there. No wonder. It was from an 1867 version of Leaves of Grass. I read it here and quite liked it.

It made me wonder about the different versions of Leaves of Grass. I have a nice little Bantam Classic version which follows the last version of Whitman’s life, published months before his death.

It’s the 1892 version. Justin Kaplan’s informative introduction says that Whitman did many very different versions during his lifetime. Kaplan also says if he had continued to live after the 1892 version he likely would have done another.

Jonson has a wonderful poem, “To the Memory of my beloved the Author, Mr. William Shakespeare: and what he hath left us.” It is the source of quotes you might recognize about WS. Shakespeare “hadst small Latine, and lesse Greeke.” He, Shakespeare, “was not of an age but all time.” And so on.

This poem reminded to pick up Julius Caesar by WS and continue reading in it.

Eileen and I just returned from the Farmers Market. I bought mushrooms, apples, pears, and chevre. I have also indulgently done an order from Zingerman’s for us which will not only include a couple of jars of their wonderful pesto sauce, but also cheese, bread, and a small portion of scones.

So my life is going well. My rash is out of control and constantly worrying me. It is hideous to see and covers my legs and arms. I am seriously thinking of contacting my dermatologist on Monday despite the fact that I don’t have much faith that he can help me since he didn’t before.

The last time the rash simply abated of its own volition but never entirely went away.

Madeleine Albright: America’s Opportunity to Lead the Fight Against Authoritarianism

I continue to follow the news about my poor struggling country. We are in trouble. If the Democrats don’t get their shit together and pass a Voter protection measure we are in trouble. David Brooks on the stupid stupid PBS Newshour last night seem to think this wasn’t a big deal. He’s wrong. The Republicans are out to win at any cost including destroying our system. I have bookmarked this Albright article since she is brilliant.

Eileen has cleverly prepared a place for our deaf and blind cat, Edison, in our basement. The porch where he has been living will be too cold for the winter. We have to sequester him at this point in his life to minimize the mess (poop and such). Eileen bought a rug and set up a comfortable room in the basement for him. She placed a remote thermometer sensor down there so we know exactly how warm or cold he is. The room is where our furnace is housed so I don’t think Edison will be cold.

My left eye is healing well. I have been only using glasses for TV. Eileen continues to help me with my daily regimen of eye drops. It’s down to two a day in the right eye and three a day in the left. Bless her!

Last night I tried something different. I had my fake martini as usual followed by a light meal. Then instead of my usual dish of diet ice cream, I had a whisky. This worked. There was probably a similar amount of calories in my whisky as in my ice cream. And then no snacks and to bed still lucid enough to do some reading.

This morning I got up and listened to John Dowland lute pieces and Charlie Parker and made bread. It’s in the oven now and will likely be ready before Eileen gets up. This is the first bread I have made since my eye operations.

I have also been playing Dowland’s lute pieces on the piano. This music is very charming and a life long love of mine. I always think of Philip K. Dick since I believe he also loved this music. I have a very cool edition that is in lute notation as well as in treble and bass clefs.

I have been playing piano variations of Beethoven.

You don’t hear much about these pieces but they are surprisingly wonderful. I own the two volumes published by Kalmus. I see that the picture I found on the web and put above of one of the volumes has a faint stamp of the University Music House in Ann Arbor. That used to be a favorite haunt of mine.

Yesterday’s foray into Beethoven and Burgess inspired me to pick up his This Man & Music. For some reason I had the impression this was all about Burgess’s own compositions and had put this book very low on my to-be-read list. I haven’t found any pieces by him that I like. I wish this wasn’t so since I admire him so much as a writer and thinker. But this book is more about Burgess’s ideas about music and has an entire short chapter explaining his very cool novel based on the Eroica symphony: Napoleon Symphony.

It is a treat for me to find anything by Burgess that I haven’t read. In fact, I enjoyed reading in this book so much that I picked up my Complete Enderby last night and continue a reread.

The pleasure of reading Burgess is intensified these days because when he uses a word I don’t recognize and quick check on the phone usually gets me quickly up to speed. But in This Man & Music, in one instance yesterday this didn’t work.

Burgess uses the word, “porable.”

Here’s the sentence: “The play and the poem and the novel have come to be regarded as primarily visual realities because of the supreme physical advantages of a printed text — portability, porability, privacy.”

Nothing in the OED and nothing in my beloved American Heritage Dictionary. After realizing it was probably one Burgess’s many word coinages, I looked closely at the word. It would make sense if he was using “pore” as in ponder (one of the definitions in my American Heritage). So in essence he meant “ponderable.” I can see why he did so, since the three words trip off the tongue with not only alliteration but a nice first and third syllable vowel in common between portability and porable.

I’ll close with some cool quotes from this book.

“Most art is a failure, but art that does not risk failure is not worth attempting.”

“No one can judge a piece of music by merely hearing it; no one can judge a novel just by reading it.”

And my favorite so far:

“There is something childish about institutional or collective music, with bullying and corky choirmaster quips, o public humiliations over wrong notes, shouting and hockey-mistress cajolery, facetiousness about chippy-choppy rhythms, ‘Don’t you eat ice cream?’ if you fail to spot a Neapolitan sixth. I was, I began to see from consultations with bona fide students of the subject, better out of it, a free autodidact.”

With any luck you can see an embed of the 2021 Anthony Burgess lecture by Laura Tunbridge above. As with so many things I write about here, I’m not sure how many readers will be interested in this. No one probably is as interested as I am with the exception of my brother. But this is a fun lecture. Tunbridge plays excerpts of Beethoven and does talk about Burgess quite a bit.

Tunbridge was asked presumably because of her book on Beethoven: Beethoven: A Life in Nine Pieces. I suppose any lecture that includes Burgess, Beethoven, Enderby, and a recording of Burgess playing a terrible electronic keyboard is one I don’t want to miss. The recording by the way is at the very end of the lecture if you want to skip to that. I found it instructive to listen to Burgess ramble at the keyboard since he describes his piano playing abilities in various ways most of which confuse me.

On a personal note, the terrible sound of the keyboard reminds me of a dream I had night before last.

I dreamt that a church had hired me as their musician. They seemed very pleased to have me and thought I was a bit of a whiz. I was in the church before service. A colleague of mine who shall remain nameless but not unrecognizable was playing at the organ. In real life this colleague cannot stand the sight of me and keeps me at an arm’s distance despite the fact that we have known each other for decades. In the dream he is playing a terrible electric organ whose sounds rival the insipidity of Burgess’s. There is a family of Hispanics in front of him. He is apparently playing something they have either requested or are sure to love. Their pleasure is evident.

I am standing nearby preparing to play for service. As I listen I muse that the first thing I will do is turn off the bloody vibrato and try to get a straight tone. I wonder (in the dream) just how this will affect the good opinion of the community that has hired me and is obviously used to the terrible sound. In the dream it does not matter to me. I speculate that they will just have to be disappointed.

The eye operation went well yesterday. I am scheduled to return this morning for the post op exam. As I write I can see out of my new lens in my left eye. The print on my screen is legible with it but not as clear as the right eye.

The appointment is for 8:00 or 8:15. We have received conflicting notices. I need to call Eileen at 7 which is in ten minutes. She has been extremely helpful with all this. Not only driving me back and forth to appointments, but also she has helped me with my daily regimen of eye drops which is considerable. I have two weeks left of drops in the my right eye and three in the left. These drops are anti-inflammatories.

While we were sitting in the car by the beach on Tuesday, Eileen read the NYT Times article about some of the participants in the January 6 insurrection at the capital that I linked here on Monday. She shared some but not all of my reaction to it.

Paul McCartney on Writing “Eleanor Rigby” | The New Yorker

It looks like David Remnick, the editor of the New Yorker, admires the Beatles enough to not only include the lame article by McCartney in a recent issue linked above, but also to write a different one himself. I’m interested in the Beatles but I’m not sure there’s that much that hasn’t already been said about them. I don’t listen to their recordings that much because I know them too well and don’t often have the urge to hear them again.

My arrival time at surgery this morning was 7:15. I am now back sitting at my desk. I feel a bit more groggy this morning than last time. Maybe that’s the time of day. Eileen has gone back to bed. My left eye is blurry at this point but if it follows the pattern of the other eye cataract surgery it should be beginning to focus today. The right eye is great! I’m going back for the follow up appoint tomorrow morning. These morning appointments are killing Eileen since she’s the driver.

Speaking of old man body stuff, my chronic rash has gradually been reasserting itself this year. I feel like a leper since it’s over most of my body again and is not exactly attractive. Wrinkles I accept, rash not so much. I received a text yesterday from my dermatologist saying that he could not make our March appointment and to please call the office. I did so and set up another exam even later in March 2022, but now I am also on the wait list for cancelations. Unfortunately I do not expect that he can do much for me since we have already had a round robin of tests and examinations which turn up nothing.

Apparently a mystery rash that can’t be diagnosed or treated is not that unusual, but boy is it a pain. Or “boy is it an itch” might be a better way to say that.

I’m still thinking about objectivity and subjectivity and reading Lewis Raven Wallace’s The View from Somewhere: Undoing the Myth of Journalistic Objectivity.

I’ve read the first four chapters. Although I find Wallace charming, the book itself feels a little clunky so far. He doesn’t footnote and relies heavily on other sources like David Minich’s 1998 Just the Facts: How Objectivity Came to Define American Journalism and Michael Schudson’s 1978 Discovering the News: A Social History of America’s Newspapers. I am planning to do further reading and might look at these.

But my problem with the book is that is oscillates between Wallace’s personal journey and people that he has interviewed on the one hand. On the other we sort of look over his shoulder as he discovers the history of journalism in the U.S.

So far he hasn’t elucidated the idea of what it means to be objective and subjective in a manner that I might transfer to other areas of life.

Wallace’s Podcast, “The View from Somewhere,” seems to have dried up after September 2020. Quite possibly for lack of funding. I can’t find much on the internet. Wallace is still tweeting sporadically. I do hope he picks up the threads again and keeps going on his podcast which I enjoyed.

I looked up “subjective” and “objective” in the OED this morning. First use of the definition of “subjective” I am interested in is 1767. This is meaning 4a the definition of which includes the phrase, “not impartial or literal.”

“Objective” in the opposing sense first use cited in 1838. This later definition includes the phrase, “not influenced by personal feelings or opinions in considering and representing fact.”

I know I’m just getting started in my understanding and application of these concepts. Admittedly journalistic objectivity and subjectivity is only one aspect of this consideration. It’s probably not even my main interest. I’m more interested in how judges and even politicians consider themselves objective when they seem so obviously to be pursuing subjective patterns.

I am beginning to see how an educated person who is capable of clear thinking and reasoning can still fall prey to subjective understandings even as they still manage to be able to think clearly and expertly about most of their subject. Chief Justice John Roberts may be like this. Maybe one can think of subjectivity as connected to real life experiences. Justice Sotomayor’s life experience looks to be very different from Justice Roberts. Both of them are obviously brilliant and capable of clear thinking. But Roberts is on record in his opinion on Shelby County V. Holder that things have changed so much that the old Voting Rights Act of 1965 provision of preclearance for changes in voting procedures were no longer needed.

This prompted Ginsburg’s famous quote in her dissent that ” t]hrowing out preclearance when it has worked and is continuing to work to stop discriminatory changes is like throwing away your umbrella in a rainstorm because you are not getting wet.” Both Ginsburg and Sotomayor’s subjective life experiences have exposed them to situations and enabled them to learn lessons that Roberts has not. My first reaction when this went down was that Roberts was living in a white person’s bubble. I would love to know what he thinks now that a deluge of changes in voting procedures quickly were adapted by southern States. Not to mention the many voting registration and procedural changes that have been made since 2020 in so many states.

Anyway, maybe you can see what I’m working on here. I’ll probably write more if my thinking and questioning gets any clearer.

I read Braided Creek: A Conversation in Poetry by Jim Harrison and Ted Kooser in its entirety yesterday. It’s a library book and is due soon. I sometimes use library due dates to spur myself on to finish a book. It’s short, only about 85 pages of skimpy little poems. According to the book jacket, the book grew out of a “correspondence comprised entirely of brief poems.” It also describes the poems themselves as “aphoristic” and “epigrammatic.” That’s a fair description.

After reading it, I copied several in my journal. Here are a few.

Lost: Ambition
Found: A good book,
an old sweater,
loose shoes.

In each of my cells Dad and Mom
are still doing their jobs. As always,
Dad says yes, Mom no. I split the difference
and feel deep sympathy for my children.

I have used up more than
20,000 days waiting to see
what the next would bring.

Come to think of it,
There’s no reason to decide
who you are.

That’s a smattering of what I put on paper.

I was listening to ‎Now & Then: The Rise of Bully Politics this morning. It’s a podcast by Heather Cox Richardson and Joanne Freedman, both historians. I was surprised that they traced the current state of bullying rhetoric to Ronald Reagan’s presidential campaign.

Reagan kicked off his 1980 presidential campaign at the Neshoba County fair in Mississippi.

This was the county where three civil rights organizers were murdered. The choice was intentional. Reagan spoke of “states rights” on the occasion. When Carter called him on this, Carter himself was accused of being “mean.” Richardson and Freedman see this as the beginning of the current tactic of bullying Republicans to paint themselves as victims not bullies.

Tellingly they cite Mitch McConnell’s recent accusation about Chuck Schumer’s speech on the floor of the House of Representatives describing the Republican tactic of threatening fiscal security by refusing to help raise the debt limit.

Here’s an Oct 9th Guardian article about this.

Richardson and Freeman do a good job describing and analyzing all of this. It’s worth a listen.

I learned that the idea that Vietnam vets were spat on by protestors when they returned from the war came from the Rambo movies. I knew it was spurious but didn’t realize that it actually came via the movies.

Finally, my morning listening also included showering to one of my favorite Takemitsu pieces.

If you don’t know it, I recommend it. It’s long but beautiful.

90 Seconds of Rage on the Capitol By Dan Barry, Alan Feuer and Matthew Rosenberg

New York Times, Oct. 16, 2021

This was the headlining article in yesterday’s paper. Since I do receive actual copies of the Sunday New York Times, I read it in the actual paper not online. The reporting is good. These people have done their job. I came away with a sense of some of the 7 people who are currently indicted around Jan 6 incident.

As I continue to try to understand people I strongly disagree with, this article was helpful. My reading of this article tells me that none of the 7 people indicted went to Washington with an idea of what was going to happen other than the opportunity to see Trump in the flesh and attend a rally.

Having been a bar musician I recognize some personality types here. Blowhards and quiet confused introverts. A small number of individuals intent on raising hell. Some people who are obviously more used to talking and complaining than acting. Also, I wonder about the testosterone involved. But what I don’t see is people grimly hell bent on insurrection. While there was lots of incendiary language and posturing, It seems the notions of these six people are mostly vague and confused.

They acted with violence, but it’s not clear what their motivations might have been. The violence it seems to me was more bar fight than military action in conjunction with a strong element of mob mentality.

By mob mentality I mean that groups of humans sometimes do terrible and inexplicable things simply because they are in a group. This sort of action includes of course lynching and killing. But while there is physical violence reported in this article, there is no sense of clarity about its purpose other than the venting of some confused, angry people and awful spur of the moment decisions.

Reading this article did not diminish my personal dismay of what happened that day. But these perpetrators were thinking more like bar idiots than determined militiamen.

I think they should be tried and convicted and pay a price. But I also compare my impressions of the actors described in the article with my ideas from yesterday about comprehension.

Sometimes when I’m driving and I witness idiotic driving behavior it helps me to remember that people are not necessarily functioning coherently. If their attention is engaged, I often conceptualize that they might be thinking along the lines of playing a video game rather than controlling thousands of tons of lethal steel and plastic.

And even that might be too much credit. Self awareness is a rare thing in my experience. Maybe that’s where the subjectivity mentioned yesterday comes to play. It’s not unreasonable to assume that people misbehaving are immersed in a swirl of emotion and misperception.

I’m glad none of the elected governmental officials were hurt in this incident. As with any police venture I feel a lot of sympathy for the difficult role of policemen and security guards. You can bet your bippy that the men and women in uniform trying to control the situation were considering that any moment someone would start shooting at them.

This consciousness must be part of the daily life of police and guards.

Culpability extends from the people who traveled to Washington and got swept up in stupidity to complicit elected people and their staff if complicit all the way to the stupid demagogue and his cronies who goaded them on with equal parts ignorance and malice both that day and in a long campaign of stupidity and fear.

Ultimately this article left me shaken about the direction of my country and feeling sorry for some the people involved and exasperated at the foolishness of others . Admittedly the sorrow and exasperation are luxuries. Not that many people were actually harmed. Our democracy was raped and left in tatters but that has been a daily occurrence since at least 2015.

I keep picturing Kentuckian Clayton Mullins returning to where his wife and sister were waiting after participating in the scuffle: “His stricken face told them that something was wrong.

On the long walk back to their rental car, they later said, Mr. Mullins wept. And on the long, two-day drive back to Kentucky, they said, he was silent.”

The Program for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies (PIAAC) defines literacy as as “understanding, evaluating, using and engaging with written text to participate in the society, to achieve one’s goals and to develop one’s knowledge and potential.” The National Center for Educational Statistics uses this definition to measure literacy world wide and also specifically in the U.S. It’s not a pretty picture. As of 2017 they have determined that 52% of the population of the U.S. read at less than a level 3 ability of literacy.

Setting aside the various definitions of levels (link here to definitions), I find the fact that so many people cannot read with basic reading comprehension is important to remember when trying to understand how we live now.

First of all, if the written page is challenging, surely words on a screen are more so. In my mind, reading comprehension is linked to reasoning, weighing ideas, making or even withholding judgments and conclusions until achieving as much understanding as possible and then continually reevaluating your understanding.

I try to operate on the principle that great books are in conversation with each other. I learned this from Mortimer Adler and his ideas on How to Read a Book.

This is very important to me at this point in my life. Ideally I would love to have conversations with breathing, living people, but this does not seem possible for me right now living where and how I do. But reading and thinking about ideas is possible and it often seems like I am listening to, and learning and conversing with other people in the books I read and the music I play and study.

But this is a far cry from basic literacy. How does the lack of reading skills affect computer and internet literacy. I know from my own experience that reading a screen is very different from reading a book. For example, when I began using email, I quickly noticed that it is easy to read it too quickly or ignore portions of an email if I’m not careful.

Online communication can be problematic. As I read a book I begin to get an idea of the person behind the book. Sometimes I even hear the prose in the voice of the person who wrote it. Either way I began to build up an orientation to the person whether this is completely accurate or not.

But reading online is different. It is easy to misconstrue the emotions behind plain words on the screen.

Taking a step beyond considering the reading comprehension of people I disagree with, what about the ones who are highly educated and could presumably comprehend reading and ideas much better?

This is something else I’ve been working on. This is a reason for me to read educated conservatives. I think that Lewis Raven Black’s ideas about the myth of journalistic objectivity may apply here.

Is it time to ask how subjective we all are despite feeling like we are being clear and objective? Specifically, how did the Right set out to change courts and the government to fit in with their goals and at the same time maintain an understanding of themselves as reasoning objectively. Maybe the answer is that none of us really manage to reason in a pristine objective manner.

This would explain how there are highly intelligent, educated people like Supreme Court Justice John Roberts who can be so clearly wrong about the current state of racism in our country and still be so bright and able to reason.

I am not discounting the many cynical partisans who are manipulating the culture wars for their own purposes. Purposes that can be idealistic but are often rooted in gaining power and making lots of money.

This is a lopsided situation Right now in the U.S. The Right got there first and have been using basic propaganda and framing techniques to support their own values. The left pretty much by definition is more open to give and take. To be liberal is to be tolerant, however, I don’t think the left historically has always eschewed these unethical approaches, but currently it is the Right has moved us closer to fascism and non-representative democracy.

Lewis Raven Wallace as a journalist is not ready to abandon “facticity” and “non-partisanship.” But these are only two of five factors he quotes from media historian David Mindich. The other three are detachment, the use of the inverted pyramid model for news, and balance.

I put that illustration up to show an understanding of the inverted pyramid concept. But I’m more interested in detachment and balance. This is where I see so many breakdowns of so-called objectivity.

Remembering that other people are often operating without the ability to read and comprehend and reason is helpful. Not so that I can despise them but actually so I can be more sympathetic. Also it’s helpful for me to understand people I disagree with. Especially when I know they are smart and educated.

My right eye is seeing better than my left at this point. I have been not using glasses for reading. But I do need them for distance and TV. This was the plan so I’m a happy guy.

I am roasting plantain. Eileen doesn’t like these but I do. I add some cinnamon, garlic powder, cayenne pepper, and salt. I’m roasting at a lower temp and planning to go longer. I’m hoping I can get them a bit more crispy that way.

Today is Birky day. Curtis Birky is my therapist and I meet with him every two weeks. Ever since the pandemic we have been doing this on Zoom. It’s more convenient for me anyway. He has told me that he is resuming in person meetings with people who request them. But I like this better.

Speaking of looking from the right side, I have been doing a lot of processing about how people can be so wrong headed about things like using masks to protect the society and getting vaccinated.

So that was the topic for today’s therapy session. Jupe’s new lens in his right eye and his attempt to understand people he disagrees with.

I read carefully over the following links this morning.

warning…. links to articles I strongly disagree with

The January 6 Insurrection Hoax – Imprimis

This article is by Roger Kimball. He is educated but wow what a slew of slanted stuff he has to present. This was a lecture given at Hillsdale College on Sept 20th of this year. His basic point is that the Jan 6 events have been exaggerated and misrepresented.

If one spends a lot of time reading the propaganda of the side you disagree with it’s inevitable that you read things that are exaggerated and misrepresented. This is why I am reading the kind of article I am. Kimball is a product of upper education in the US including two Master degrees from Yale.

So it confuses me that he can publish a lecture with the following observations:

“…every honest person knows that the 2020 election was tainted.

“… a perfect storm of forces conspired to make 2020 the first oligarchic installation of a president.

“… there is little threat of domestic terror in this country

Plus he used the phrase “Chinese virus” twice.

Then there’s Restoring America by Hugo Gurdon. This is a Washington Times manifesto that manages to support Trump like understandings without even using his name (Something Kimball did not pull off). Gurdon in managing editor. In my aggregate news source, invariably articles linked from it are very anti-liberal.

I think I’m going to quit linking there. It’s obvious that public rhetoric in the US has become debased. I watch for statements of belief and understanding that do not rely strongly on describing those you disagree with in order primarily to challenge their arguments. This is called the “straw man” fallacy. Without it, the internet and the media would be considerably diminished.

Surgery went well yesterday. Fasting for three hours beforehand turned out to be more important than I had realized. I hadn’t read the instruction booklet closely enough to notice that I could have coffee and other clear liquids during my 12 hour fast, but that for the last three hours of the fast I should have nothing but water.

I hadn’t paid that much attention but Eileen and I figured out that my last little cup of coffee was around 10 AM. My arrival time was 12:30 so it was very close to three hours by the time they talked to me. This ended up satisfying the  anesthesiologist but just barely. The poor guy in the prep area next to me wasn’t so lucky. Separated only by a curtain Eileen and I could clearly hear the prep nurse discussing what he had had before coming.

The conversation was translated into Spanish but we could still hear the anglo nurse’s comments and also the sound of the guy’s wife and the translator who seemed to be related. It turned out that the guy had been fasting correctly but his wife was worried that he should have something before coming and gave him mango and strawberry juice. This did not pass muster and they had to reschedule his surgery. Yikes!

They put many drops in my eye to prep. I was wide awake for the surgery. The anesthesia was only to help me to not care what they were doing. I didn’t notice any effect from it. Maybe since I wasn’t that anxious it didn’t have that much effect or maybe I didn’t notice.

. I was a bit disappointed that I couldn’t tell exactly what the surgeon was doing during the procedure. I was hoping to witness more of it. All I could see were many colored lights in motion. The surgeon and the people in the room did not interrupt their conversation about things unrelated to surgery. As far as I could tell they talked constantly to each other about their land investments and building codes maybe only interrupting occasionally to say something about the surgery. The nurse talked to me at first to get me comfortable on the table. But after that I felt like I was in a locker room.

Beforehand the surgeon had talked to me about post op behavior. No lifting and no exercises that involved any strain to my stomach area. Apparently the lifting and the strain can affect the eyes. So this morning I curtailed much of my morning stretches and exercising. I will probably keep that up for the next three weeks at least.

I do not have to keep a bandage over my eye unless I am sleeping. After surgery my vision was very blurry. This morning less so. Despite this I was still able to read with my left eye. This morning my right eye is much less blurry but still not entirely focusing.

The most startling effect is that the light coming through my right eye is much brighter than the light in my left. I take this to mean that my old lens in my left eye is slightly discolored with age. Wow.

I have to call Eileen in a bit. I have my first follow up appointment this morning at 8:45. That’s about an hour away so I will finish up here and wake up Eileen.

In a few hours, Eileen will drive me to my first cataract eye surgery. Today they will do my right eye. A week from today, the left. I am fasting until surgery today. Fortunately, I can have coffee.

My anxieties abated a few days ago. I guess I just accepted the risks and the benefits of this procedure and that it’s something I’m gong to have done.

Yesterday, I began a daily regimen of eye drops. The drops are Prolensa and Inveltys. They are anti inflammatory precautions around eye surgery. The second is a steriod. I am to take Prolensa once a day and Inveltys three times a day. Hoffman, my eye surgeon, provides some nifty sheet for you to keep track of this. I will be doing this for the next four or five weeks.

I managed the Prolensa on my own before Eileen got up yesterday. The Inveltys can only follow after waiting at least five minutes. I did that but wasn’t satisfied with the results. I seem to dump too much in my eye. I asked Eileen to help with the other doses. It’s easier to have this done to you than to try to do it to yourself.

I’m not supposed to lift after surgery so we went to the thrift shop yesterday. Eileen wants to fix up a room downstairs for Edison in the winter. She wanted to get an old rug to lay down. She found one. It turned out not to be very heavy anyway.

We did do our weekly date drive to the lake. We got out there late. It was wonderful. Windy and not too cold. We sat in the car as usual and read, had a picnic lunch, and played boggle. Tough life.

I finished Robin Diangelo’s Nice Racism: How Progressive White People Perpetuate Racial Harm. It’s an interesting book to read at the same time as reading Dying of Whiteness by Metzl. Metzl documents white people’s choice to deny themselves in order to also deny those people they think are cheating them. “Those people” are, of course, all the Black and Indigenous People of Color that Diangelo says have racial harm perpetuated upon them not only by Metzl’s people but by damn liberals like me.

Diangelo describes an incident where she failed to perceive her own racism despite having already written a book about white fragility. If someone as attuned as Diangelo fucks up, most if not all white people do so as well. This includes yours truly.

And if I’m carefully trying not to be a “nice racist” the same goes for “nice sexist.” Misogyny has been on my mind for years. My own first notion of it as I have mentioned here before was aroused when I thought about writing an article for the very new, at the time, MS. magazine. I thought it would be interesting to trace the etymology of gender words and curse words.

I quickly discovered the woman comes from “wife of man.” Misogyny is built into the language much like racism is built into the white world I was brought up in and still live in.

As the parent of adult children I sometimes tell myself that a good goal is to “do no harm.” But doing no harm might basically be impossible in all three cases: parenting, racism, and misogyny. But that doesn’t mean I don’t try to do as little harm as I can figure out how to do.

It’s a constant monitoring of self which can easily slip into solipsism or an over preoccupation with self (said the man who sits down almost everyday and writes 500 or more words about himself and his ideas and his life, ahem.)

This brings me to the next book I’m reading: How to Disappear: Notes on Invisibility in a Time of Transparency by Akiko Busch.

She also talks about having invisible friends as children. She says the thinking has changed from the understanding that Freud and Piaget expressed that invisible friends were pathological. Mental health people now see the benefits of this kind of play. They include according to Busch learning “empathy, invention, compassion,” and gaining comfort.

I bought this book back in 2019 when it was published, read a bit in it, and then forgot I was reading it. Recently I started over in it from the beginning. It’s intriguing. Busch traces the idea that being invisible can have an up side. She clarifies that it’s different from solitude. She talks about being invisible as she scuba dives with a friend. They both blend in and are accepted by the environment and sea animals to the extent that they feel unseen and a part of everything.

In another section she points out that the constant need to shape a public identity can diminish us.

It was interesting to hear a book talk she did on a podcast for writers I stumbled onto on YouTube. The moderator, who sounds annoyingly like Krista Tippett, asks her about the need for writers to self promote and get followers on social media. Busch calmly says that this might be a faulty notion. After having read some of her book, I know she was holding back.

Well there’s my writing for today. I’m not sure exactly how much I will be able to do after surgery. I’m guessing I will still be able to function easily if not read. But I’ll report here on progress if I can. I’m scheduled for a post op tomorrow morning at the eye doctor.

I heard him before I saw him.

“From Holland then?”

My wife and I were sitting in outdoor seating on a Sunday afternoon in Holland, Michigan. We were sipping dark beers and enjoying the warm fall breeze and waiting for our meals. I turned towards the man speaking.

He was holding a plastic bag which had more plastic bags inside it in his left hand. He was elderly, maybe eighty or more. His complexion was ruddy and broken under his straw hat. He wore a freshly laundered shirt and Bermuda shorts. He was standing comfortably by our table on the sidewalk and looked me in the eye and waited for a response.

“Yes, we’re from Holland. You?”

“Born in Zeeland.”

“Close enough.”

Unhesitatingly and in a calm, friendly voice, the old man began to talk about his life in the area. He had worked for Holland police for awhile. He asked if I knew his boss by name. When I didn’t, I told him that we moved into town in the late eighties.

That would be much later when he was Postmaster in Zeeland he responded.

Staring out, he had bought land, nine acres just outside of Holland. Built one house for his family and eventually sold it and the three acres under it. He wanted to build another on one of the remaining three acres plots, but the soil was all clay. The city sewer hadn’t come out that far.

Finally found sand in the forty feet back from the road. Built a new house there. When he sold it and the other property, he made a killing and moved south of Zeeland where he eventually became the Postmaster.

His blue eyes were watery but they remained locked on our faces. He didn’t smile but his face was relaxed like he was used to passing the time with people he didn’t know.

“Wife and I eventually moved to an apartment here in town. That complex over on Sixth and College. That’s where we are now. We were some of the first there after it was built sixteen years ago. Just got back from driving over to church at Faith Reformed in Zeeland. It’s the church where I was married.”

Inevitably he wanted to know if we went to church and where. This is a standard question in this part of the state.

“I’m a recovering church musician.”

He looked at me uncomprehendingly.

“He’s retired,” my wife offered, “He was the musician for the local Episcopal church.”

“What did you do there?” he asked.

“Played organ, directed choirs.”

This seemed to satisfy him. He looked around for the first time then said he would be on his way and started walking away.

“Nice chatting” I called after him.

I watched him as he moved away from us on the sidewalk.

“I can’t imagine what it’s like to live your entire life in one place like that.” I said to my wife.

I woke up this morning extremely grateful that I didn’t have to go play a church service. My evolving new life is already something I enjoy since it is mostly made up of enjoyable bits I used to do in between earning a living. Eileen continues to plot ways for me to add bookshelves by keeping an eye on local auctions. She is busily organizing and tidying up her various loom sites including an entire room upstairs. We are on our way.

I do have some trepidation about my upcoming eye surgery. The odds are on my side that it will be easy and extremely helpful. But it would be silly not to recognize that in a very small number of cases statistically the results can range from unhelpful to disastrous. I think the large number of unknowns contribute to my slight unease.

I will most certainly have to desist some of my daily exercises like sit-ups and weight lifting. The surgeon told me to do no lifting after surgery. Nothing heavier than a milk carton he said. I also don’t know how quickly I will regain use of my eyes. There are two surgeries scheduled a week apart next Wednesday being the first one.

It seems to me I have heard only good things about this surgery from people who have had it including a quick recovery.

I am trying to knock a few books off my reading list by finishing them. I have discovered that in some of my current reading I am not that far from the end of the book. Last night I finished Dying of Whiteness and A Black History of the White House by Clarence Lusane.

Today I plan to spend some time with Rutherford’s Homer.

I only have 15 pages left in it. I’m also over halfway through Julius Caesar by Shakespeare. But I don’t have plans to speed that up. Shakespeare is always fun to savor.

I’ve also been dipping into books by Charles Rosen. In addition to his book on the Classical period he wrote a guide to the Beethoven Piano Sonatas. I also listened to a bit of a 2012 lecture by him on YouTube. He died later that same year.

It’s odd reading and listening to a musician of Rosen’s caliber these days. On the one hand he speaks from the upper echelons of the classical music world. In my experience this world rarely condescends to connect with schmucks like me. For example in the video Rosen says that all pianists begin at the age of 3 or 4 or they “fall off.”

Notre Dame did a number on my head since I learned that the profs there fully expected me to flunk out owing to my poor audition. It was probably a typical music department with motherfuckers and very few humans teaching. I didn’t flunk out. I did well. But I left with the feeling that despite having graduated with good grades I was a second or third rate musician. Oh well. Fuck em.

Since then I think I have learned more about myself and see myself and my musicianship with a bit more clarity. But these unhappy people did not help.

The other half of listening to someone as wonderful and informed as Rosen is how unimportant the entire field of classical music seems to be these days. I have watched major newspapers like the New York Times drop coverage of classical music to a minimum with an emphasis on the contemporary and the noise around popular music is very loud these days, loud enough to drown out coverage of non-pop music.

As with so many things in my life I insist on being connected to both worlds in my own way. By classical music standards my abilities may be limited to some keyboard facility and an understanding of theory and composition. By popular music standards I have had a life of very little commercial potential in terms of popular music eventually even hounded off the streets of Holland as a busker for playing my music too loud (It was a Mozart piano sonata, but nevermind).

It’s hard to know how much my wrinkled appearance has had to do with all this. More than I suspected at the time that’s for sure.

I don’t mean to be so negative this morning. I’m not feeling that way. I am feeling grateful. Not only for not having to do church this morning but for being able to access so much wonderful music and so many cool ideas in my reading. Life is good.

I’ll end with a video of a group that blew me away on YouTube. They seem to be playing electric Urhus (The name means two strings) and definitely doing some throat singing. What’s not to like?