I signed up for a free three month trial today for Amazon Music. I have not been very happy with Spotify. I have many complaints not the least of which is the amount information they routinely do not provide for recordings. When Neil Young and Joni Mitchell took a stand against Josh Rogan and withdrew their entire collection it gave me pause. They are actually two that I do listen to quite a bit on Spotify. Usually Amazon Music only offers a month free trial but they have upped and it’s hard not to guess that it’s because of the Spotify controversy.

What I would love is a good classical music service. This morning after I signed on for the three month trial I was in the mood to listen to Brahms. Poof. Easy peasy. Then I checked Young and Mitchell recordings. Sooprise. Sooprise. There they were.

Yesterday I skipped blogging. I got up late and went right to work making bread. I did a Shipt order and spent the rest of the day goofing off.

I noticed recently that I have been letting my unread copies of the Sunday New York Times Book Review accumulate. I decided to fix that by going through them and clipping reviews that interest me and that recommend books I might want to look at. This takes time which is probably part of why I have gotten behind.

I find the differences between printed papers I look at and online access significant. We get the Holland Sentinel daily and the New York Times on Sundays. I tend to read both of them online instead of in person. Eileen reads the Sentinel over breakfast. I read the online version then as well. We compare notes and find many differences. Mostly in terms of what the paper presents on its front page and the order and coherence of presentation of the online app.

Yesterday Jamel Bouie had an article in the Opinion Section. I wanted to read it since he is someone I follow and pay attention to what they have to say. However the headline in the paper didn’t draw me in. Is Slavery An Evil Beyond Measure? it proclaimed on the front page of the section. Well sure it is. The subtitle clarified a bit but I didn’t look closely at it: “Data science is unlocking new insights about the U.S. system, but there is a danger in trying to quantify suffering.” This does a better job describing the contents of the article but it didn’t register in my pea brain.

I turned to the article and read the first paragraph which quoted a grisly description of what it was like to travel in a ship bring people to the Americas to be sold as slaves. Nope, I thought and turned Viet Thanh Nguyen’s article, “A Disturbing Book Changed My Life.” Nguyen is someone whose fiction I have read and admired so I was already sold when I saw his name on an essay as the author.

Nguyen’s essay did not disappoint. He has a great mind and I like his prose.

But again there was a discrepancy between Nguyen’s headline in the printed paper and what’s online.

Also when I bookmarked the page there was a third variation.

Nguyen’s headlines “A Disturbing Book Changed My Life.” printed version
“My Young Mind Was Disturbed by a Book. It Changed My Life.” the title online
Opinion | What the Battle Over Banning Books Is Really About – The New York Times this is what my bookmarking service, Diigo.com, automatically saw as the title for the article.

Weird.

But in Bouie’s case, the title that came up in my NYT app interested me more than the print and I decided to read the article which ended up being quite good.

Bouie’s headlines: “Is Slavery An Evil Beyond Measure? Data science is unlocking new insights about the U.S. system, but there is a danger in trying to quantify suffering.” print version
“We Still Can’t See American Slavery for What It Was” title online
Opinion | We Still Can’t See American Slavery for What It Was – The New York Times bookmarked title.

There’s Nothing Quite as Distressing as This Piece The pianist Paul Lewis picks his favorite page of Brahms’s late solos, a work of “abject anguish.”

This is the article that made me think I wanted to listen to some Brahms this morning. I haven’t finished it yet but I just checked the Amazon music app and the recordings in this article are available on it. By the way, the Amazon Music app is expanded beyond what comes automatically with Amazon Prime. It usually costs 7.99 a month. This is cheaper than what I pay for Spotify Premium (9.99)

Since a genius like Fanny Hensel spent her entire musical life in the shadows, it inspires me that living in the shadows musically, like I guess I do, is just fine and a worthy way to aspire to be a composer and musician.

I might as well mention my unhappiness with the music episode of the 1619 podcast here. When I first began listening to the presenter, Wesley Morris, narrate his ideas, I was discouraged that it was so anecdotal and a bit vapid. He describes spending some time a friend putting together a meal. They listened to a Pandora playlist the name of which I can’t make out. It consisted of Doobie Brothers, Seals and Croft. Morris was born in 1975 and seemed to relate to the music (as did I). Then he begins thinking about Black influence on the music he was listening to. This somehow leads him to a truncated discussion of the white invention of Minstrel Music but eventually sees Motown as a crowning achievement of Black music.

First I fact checked Morris a bit in my copy of Eileen Southern’s The Music of Black Americans (Third edition), and satisfying myself that he had indeed simplified the story tremendously (How else could you do so in a silly podcast?). Then I decided it would be only fair if I checked out his chapter in 1619 Project (the book). I learned that he can write good sentences which is no mean feat in my book. The music chapter begins much better then the podcast episode with him seeing a temporal connection between Birmingham Sunday (the senseless 1963 bombing of Street Baptist Church in Birmingham that killed young Addie Mae Collins, Cynthia Wesley, Carole Robertson, and Denise McNair) and the Motown music on the charts at the time.

This was more coherent.

Later I learned that Morris is a staff writer for the NYT magazine and critic at large for the NYT. He is the only person to be awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Criticism. And he has done so twice. It is confusing that he was asked to do the music section of this book and part of my frustration is the exclusive understanding of music as primarily popular culture and not art. I’m still reading his essay. I am expecting it to be better than the silly podcast he did.

And more importantly Adam Hochschild in his November 2021 review of the book version of the 1619 project helped me put the music comments in the larger perspective of what the book and the project accomplish. Which is quite a lot.

I am 100 per cent supportive and interested in learning the retelling and correcting of the history America’s slavery and subsequent white racism. And I have to grant that the 1619 Project had bigger fish to fry than my own love of music. Hochshild makes a very friendly, supportive, and clear-eyed critique and argues convincingly that the book and project ended up flawed but still very important. But he didn’t mention music.

So there’s that.

But I promised to mention how Virginia Woolf is helping me thinking about composing as well many other things. In my Thursday blog, I described how R. Larry Todd, the author of Fanny Hensel: the Other Mendelssohn, mentioned an essay by Woolf. His mention sent me up my stairs to see if the essay was in any of the books by Woolf I own. It wasn’t, but I did find a 1929 essay she published in Life and Letters a literary review of which I own a tattered copy.

The title of her essay is “Dr. Burney’s Evening Party.” I read it and was reminded how often Dr. Burney is cited in the biography of C. P. E. Bach I am reading. Burney was a fan of C.P.E and spent time with him. Woolf’s essay is not about C.P.E. but still it continued to expose me to how I can very modestly identify with people (women specifically) who are shunted to the side in our histories and stories. In this case, young Fanny Burney daughter of the doctor and a prolific diaries and essayist as was Burney himself. The difference is that he got all the limelight and recognition.

But this is not near as important as the inspiration I receive from the continual music of Woolf’s sentences. Here are the ones in this essay I quite like.

“But there was, one vaguely feels, something a little obtuse about Dr. Burney. The eager, kind, busy man, with his head full of music and his desk stuffed with notes, lacked discrimination.”

“To his [Burney’s] innocent mind, music was the universal specific. If there was going to be any difficulty music would solve it.

There were others but these are the only two I marked.

Susan Howe continues to inspire. Here’s a quote of her remarks in an interview regarding how she makes poetry. It rang true in my mind and reminded me of what it’s like to compose music.

“You open yourself up and let language enter, let it lead you somewhere. I never start with an intention for the subject of a poem. I sit quietly at my desk and let various things—memories, fragments, bits, pieces, scraps, sounds—let them all work into something.” Susan Howe, The Birth-Mark

I keep thinking about a composition. At this point I am thinking of a three movement suite of sorts. Probably for Marimba/Congas, Violin, Cello, and possible Keyboard. More importantly in my mind I would like to have each of these three movements connect to a particular American expression: I. Native Americans II. African Americans (Spirituals?), and III. Appalachian Americans. At this point I am not thinking of using actual pieces from these traditions. I’m more interested in honoring these traditions that I admire and see as constituent aspects of American music.

It has occurred to me that the three movements should be medium fast, slow, and quick. I am dithering about how to approach this. This kept me awake early this morning. Each movement could feature an instrument such as Marimba/Congas on the first movement, Cello on the second, and Violin on the last. I am thinking of using the Violin in a bit of a fiddle manner.

One idea I am kicking around is to write a good melody and use it thematically in each movement. I haven’t decided to never use pre-existing melodies in my compositions. But it seems that this time I want to see if I could do this without directly using material in each tradition.

My relationship to making up music has been an odd lifetime obsession. The first time I went to college I majored in Music Composition. This was at Ohio Weslyan U in Delaware. By that time I had already written tons of music. But I knew I wanted more skills to help me. But I also remember doubting how helpful college would be to me for what I had in mind. Life intervened. I ended up quitting college and playing in a friend’s bar band for money.

I was still interested in making up music (composing). I continued to do so. In retrospect I can see that I detached myself from ways of learning that might have set me more clearly in one direction or another. I never studied composition formally again. I brushed up against more formal study when I was attending Wayne State where I finally got my bachelor’s degree. But the composition guy was definitely not interested in having me for a student even though I continued to compose and perform music at Wayne State while I was there.

Back when I was in the bar band, a friend told me of an opening for a keyboard player in a fancy Detroit hotel. He said that if I was at all interested in a Jazz career I should take this rare opportunity and go for it. I understood from his explanation that when big name Jazz musicians came to Detroit this was where they would often stay and sometimes came to the venue so that any musician playing there might have a chance to go forward in that career.

This amuses me to no end in retrospect since I know that I barely had the chops to do straight Jazz at that point even if I had been interested which I was not. After I left Delaware, and was playing in bar bands and running a used book store I continued to develop as a keyboard player but not under a teacher. This development has continued my entire life. After quitting bar bands and closing the bookstore, Ray Ferguson at Wayne State helped me the most, but I still see myself as mostly self taught.

To this day I understand myself as a peculiar kind of musician. Music has been my first love and I continue to need a daily dose to this day. In addition music via church music helped me and Eileen earn enough money to raise our family and now be happily retired.

Making up music and poetry and prose are very natural acts for me even if they don’t quite fit into easily understood descriptions. The action of making music, “musicking” if you will, ends up being the important part of my life long understanding of music.

This omits self-promotion and specialized understandings of just what music is.

Susan Howe in her book Birth-Mark, describes a larger understanding of poetic and archived texts that corresponds in my mind to Christopher Small’s enlarged understanding of music. She writes: “… presenting … texts as events rather than objects, as processes rather than products, [convert] the reader from passive consumer into active participant in the genesis of the poem while at the same time calling attention to the fundamentally historical character of both the reader’s and writer’s activity.”

Howe is working toward an active action of reading in which the reader is part of the evolving process. This reminds of how it feels to sit at my piano and play. The result is a “process rather than” a product.

Next time: how Virginia Woolf and Fanny Hensel are helping me process this.

Elizabeth and Alex spent the night last evening. Elizabeth had her first art class and it sounds like it went well to me. One of the things I like about when Elizabeth visits like that is that I tend to get up and have coffee with her. This means good conversation first thing in the morning if she is amenable. Also I don’t have to face exercising and stretching right away upon arising.

I picked up a couple books on hold at the library today. Fanny Hensel: The Other Mendelssohn (2010) by R. Larry Todd is probably a book I am going to want to own. Hensel (as Todd refers to her to distinguish her from her brother whom he calls Mendelsohn) has continued to intrigue me. I only own the Dover edition of her piano music which is all Lieds for the piano. I want to get more music by her but Eileen and I have decided I should hold back on purchases for awhile so I’m not very quick to buy things as I was.

A quick glance at her page on IMSLP reveals quite a few titles that are available there so I’m not that limited.

In Todd’s introduction to his book, he mentions an essay by Virginia Woolf that interests me. It’s called Three Guineas (link to the 132 page pdf of it). It was written after Woolf’s A Room of One’s Own. He observes that Hensel is an example of what Woolf called “women who were denied their own creative space—of how in effect, history erased their voices, their identities.” Todd also says that Hensel is now “widely regarded as the most significant female composer of the nineteen century.” Cool. She definitely has chops, both as a composer and virtuosic pianist.

The Supreme Court Loses Its Chief Pragmatist – The Atlantic

Jeffery Rosen, the author of the above article, continues to provoke my amazement and admiration. His organization, National Constitution Center, which is funded by Congress, continues to be a platform for excellent conversations from scholars and others. Rosen’s moderation of conflicting understandings of his guests is a wonder to behold.

Another snowy day in western Michigan. It is beautiful. My beloved milkweed plants continue to persist despite all the snow we have been having. They are in bad shape to be sure but they are still poking out of the snow. The birds and the squirrels have been fluttering around the bird feeder that we replenish from time to time. I actually did a little snow shoveling today to prepare for Elizabeth and Alex to arrive as well as the Shipt person.

Elizabeth is teaching her first art class today. She seems pretty into it. Alex is okay with hanging around at our house while she does so. They haven’t decided if they are spending the night or driving back to Delton this evening. I know both Elizabeth and Alex would probably prefer to be at their own home this evening but we’ll see what happens. I have cleared the bed in my study where I am sitting so that they can sleep in here tonight if they wish.

I continue to play and study Schubert’s Bb Piano sonata. I added some Bartok today. I have been pondering what music I am going to write. So far, still looking out the window.

Sarah now has Covid as well as Lucy. Still no dire symptoms. It seems to be sweeping the little area in England where they are living. Many kids have it. Eileen was pointing out that if Sarah and company lived here in the U.S. they would probably not be diagnosed since they don’t have many symptoms and tests are more rare. Eileen has ordered tests for us but they don’t arrive until the end of January.

I begged off digging out and going down to the beach today. We are pretty snowed in. The paper either wasn’t delivered or was swept away by the little plow that plows the sidewalks.

With Eileen’s help I enrolled in an extended dental service with my insurance today. This is timely since I am up for some pretty major dental work in March. My dentist thinks I should have a tooth removed because the area around it is mildly infected. Hard to argue with that but what a pain. Not literally a pain, since I have had this infection for a few years and no pain to speaking of. I also haven’t had the filling that fell out replaced yet and they found another cavity besides that at my last visit. I am scheduled for both of these to be fixed in March at my dentist.

I don’t see why it’s taking so long. Eileen decided she should have her teeth cleaned. She called yesterday and they scheduled her for yesterday afternoon. She walked over in the snow. It was beautiful yesterday. We put out more bird seed recently and we are being deluged with birds (and squirrels).

Today seems to be a Schubert day for me. I was listening to another BBC Inside Music program this morning. The musician who was moderating this time was the violinist, Tessa Lark.

I have never heard of her. Her choices were interesting. She hails from Kentucky and plays a bit of fiddle as well as has pretty spectacular classical credentials. She like so many including myself seems interested in integrated all kinds of music into her styles. She played a recording she made with of the movements from David Chase’s Appalachian Suite. These were written with her in mind. They are composed for solo violin and choir. I wasn’t too impressed with it. A pretty typical choral piece but with violin accompaniment.

First of all Chase titled it “This Old Hammer.” It’s really the African American song, “John Henry.” I understand that they were going for an Appalachian kind of deal but why not acknowledge the real background of this tune? I don’t mean to sound too negative about this composition. The best part was an improv that Lark introduced the movement with. She said the Chase “let her” improvise a beginning for each of his movements.

I think this is the recording she played on her Inside Music show complete with her improvised beginning.

I still prefer this version.

She played a recording of Schnabel playing the first movement to Schubert’s Piano Sonata in Bb. I have been listening to recordings of this movement over and over today. I do love it. I also began playing through it before Eileen got up this morning. I don’t usually play piano before she gets up but she has told me more than once that it’s not a bad way to start her day. She reaffirmed that this morning.

I decided to look a bit more closely at this movement. The first thing I do is number the measures. I also pulled out Charles Rosen book on Sonata Form. He refers to this movement twice in the book. I love the music and have played it over and over. My left hand continues to lose the ability to stretch well. But I so far I can still play through music I love. I have found myself leaving out superfluous notes occasionally and doing a lot of quick little rolls to play all the notes with the left hand that are written.

What I like about this movement is how beautifully Schubert seamlessly moves his ingenious melodies from key to key. As I play through the piece I usually just enjoy it, but today I started wondering about its form. Rosen says that it is a tour de force of handling a three key area exposition in a sonata allegro form. This part of the piece moves from Bb to Gb major back to Bb and then to F# minor.

It sounds so clinical to describe it like that since it really is beautiful. Notice that the two secondary key areas have an enharmonic relationship. That means that Gb is really F# on the keyboard. But once again one barely notices that when you are drawn into the beauty of the piece. Lark describes listening to this piece when she was in college. She said the wisdom of it belies the youth of the composer. Schubert only lived to be 31 years old. Google says that Lark herself is only 23 years old. She must have started studying at schools young she has a bachelors and a masters from the New England Conservatory of music plus holds an Artist Diploma (whatever that is) from Julliard.

Here she is tearing up a little bit of bluegrass. Yikes, she can certainly play.

I think she is playing Leadbelly’s Cotton Fields. Again, why not give a little credit?

My mood of doom and gloom was gone this morning for no discernible reason. I did have frustrating dreams about church and choir. Again there was no obvious reason for this. I was distressed to see that Lucy my grand daughter in England has come down with Covid. We chatted with the English group today and they all seemed in pretty high spirits and Lucy was suffering from no ill effects due to Covid. But this, of course, means they will have to alter their behavior for a while. It is likely they will all get before they’re done. Sarah and Matthew are both vaccinated. They are monitoring Alice for any signs of Covid which is complicated by the fact that she has a terrible cold.

I was reading the letters of C. P. E. Bach this morning. He referred to himself as “soft-hearted” when discussing his choice not to set a poem about the death of his adult son to music. This struck me as a better way for me to talk about my own over sensitive nature. I’m just “soft-hearted.” “Soft-headed” is more like it.

It snowed last night. This morning seemed like a good morning to snuggle and read. I read some more of Arvilla Smith’s diary. She and her husband eventually end up in the Holland area and work with local Indians.

Both of them kept diaries. I’m up to Arvilla’s 1838 entries. At this point, I think they are living in a place called Gull Creek not far from Kalamazoo. Arvilla’s husband, George (or Mr. S as she refers to him throughout her diaries) does not begin his diary until the year of 1838 and then very sparsely. I am planning to cross refer more now that I have reached that point in Arvilla’s dairy.

Reading diaries and letters of people is very like spending time with them. It is a comforting thing to do on such a cold and snowy day for sure.

When I was a teenager, I’m not exactly sure how old, I attended a National Youth Convention of the Church of God in Chicago. At this convention I learned the shocking fact that the denomination of my Mother and Father and Grand Parents was in fact half Black. If I had a been a Black teenager this probably would not have come as a surprise. But it certainly was to me. I don’t remember much except shock and anger at not being told this before. It may have been after this when I began sporadically showing up at Black Church of God communities in Flint where my Dad was a minister.

My main memory of this was doing so with a young woman who was mortified when I accepted an invitation to sing in the choir that Sunday. At least this is the memory I have. I’m pretty sure I didn’t invent it.

This memory occurred to me today as I was reading The 1619 Project. The past several years I have learned a lot about American history. Specifically the history of American racism. It has been a slow burn of anger and frustration as I filled in some of the holes in my understanding of America.

I remind myself that I don’t have to continue to identify with Christianity now that I’m not making my money doing music for its worship. Having said that, I notice that I continue to connect with the stories very actively, reading both Thomas Mann’s Joseph series and Moses, Man of the Mountain by Zora Neale Thurston. I like the stories and I like Mann and Thurston.

My battle fatigue with the turmoil in my country continues. I haven’t given up hope and I try to pay attention to how things are unfolding. Nevertheless, when I combine paying attention with learning how time and time again, white Americans have done terrible things to African Americans, Native Americans, and other groups it can be painful. However, I do want to have the information both current and historic.

But for some reason it has left me a bit shaken. Maybe this partly because I am so over sensitive temperamentally. But I do think that a lot of it is a logical reaction to the madness of now.

Music continues to help me. As well as reading both fiction and nonfiction daily.

I have discovered Sibelius’s third symphony thanks to Keval Shah’s Inside Music episode. So far, I am finding it rewarding to listen to a musician’s choice of music he or she likes and why. Shah played the second movement of Sibelius’s third symphony and I liked it and started listening to the whole symphony.

I left a bunch of Sibelius organ music at Grace because I never managed to like it. This may be one case where approaching a composer through music I can play on the piano or organ might not be quite the ticket. Most composers I love left me music to play on the keyboard. This kind of one on one with music is very much how Bach approached much of his keyboard music. Much Bach was written specifically to be played for the edification of the keyboard player as well as listeners but primarily for that wonderful moment of contact with the player and the music and the composer in a intimate beautiful connection of enjoyment.

So music does help. Today I have played some Beethoven and Haydn. My hands continue to worsen but not so much that I can’t eke out the music. I am sometimes reminded of a scene from Hesse’s Magister Ludi. It’s toward the end of the story. The music master who has taught and guided Joseph Knecht sits by himself at the piano and plunks out a Bach two part invention with only two fingers.

So this kind of hope keeps me going. That, and continually being grateful for being so lucky.

Despite it being a Birky day (he’s my shrink), I am struggling with a bit of a low morale today. I attribute it largely to watching and thinking about what’s happening in my country. That the voting rights bills that went down this week bummed out me terribly. I like everyone else didn’t expect them to pass. But still depressing

McConnell’s inadvertent exposure of his own racism was also depressing to watch: Mitch McConnell’s viral Black voter comments cause widespread furor | US Senate | The Guardian

Then when Clarence Thomas held out against the SCOTUS ruling allowing access to archival stuff about the Jan 6 went down. Dang. This exposes the underlying corruption of Ginnie Thomas’s actions and positions. See Is Ginni Thomas a Threat to the Supreme Court by Jane Mayer, New Yorker January 21, 2022. Sheesh.

I talked to Birky about all this. The upshot was he copied the names of two books I recommended: The Cruelty is the Point by Adam Serwer and the 1619 Project. You know you’re in trouble when your therapist is looking to you for updates and readings about the morass of idiocy happening in our country.

But I did listen to a good podcast from the American Constitution Center this morning. MLK, the Declaration, and the Constitution | The National Constitution Center The inimitable Jeffrey Rosen joins William Allen, emeritus dean and professor of political philosophy at Michigan State University and Hasan Kwame Jeffries, associate professor of history at The Ohio State University, where he teaches courses on the civil rights and Black Power movements.

The three of them picked out six or seven of Martin Luther King’s speeches to discuss. At the end of the podcast Rosen suggests that listeners read all the speeches they discussed. Although he promised to link them in in the description section of their podcast, some of the links are to purchases and not to the speeches themselves. I made a list.

Martin Luther King speeches and articles

An Experiment in Love, 1958
Pilgrimage to NonViolence 1960
Letter from the Birmingham Jail 1963
I have a dream 1963
Our God is marching on 1965
Beyond Vietnam (1967)
Where do we go from here? (1967)

I linked in “Beyond Vietnam” because I fond it online. It’s also titled “A Time to break silence.” As far as I can tell all of these speeches and articles are in A Testament of Hope: The Essential Writings and Speeches: King, Martin Luther, Washington, James M.: 9780060646912: Amazon.com: Books. I’m not planning to purchase this right away since I’m curtailing my book purchases and much of this stuff is on line, but I will eventually own this collection, I’m sure.

Adriano in Siria – Wikipedia

I was listening to the Inside Music BBC show from Jan 8. The presenter Keval Shah played an aria from the opera, Adriano in Siria by Vincenzo Legrenzio Ciampi. I was interested in learning more and could only recall the title. I looked it up on Wikipedia to discover there are over 60 operas based with this title. Who knew? Never heard of it.

President Biden’s first year with the press – Columbia Journalism Review

CJR is excellent.

‘Nocebo effect’: two-thirds of Covid jab reactions not caused by vaccine, study suggests | Medical research | The Guardian

Remember placebo and nocebo (the opposite) effects are real. If you take a placebo and get well, you get well, eh? Conversely by drawing attention to the fact that many reactions attributed to the vaccine are not caused by the vaccine does not mean people are not actually having them, just that they are not caused by the vaccine.

Covering the Republican assault on American Democracy – Columbia Journalism Review

like I said above, this source is excellent

NYTimes: The Persistent Gender Gap at the Supreme Court Lectern

At the lectern. This refers to whose arguing before the court.

I skipped blogging yesterday. We have been trying not spend money but Eileen said it would be okay if I went to Readers World and spent a bit. I thought I had ordered How Do You Live? by Genzaburo Yoshino but apparently I had only asked to see it.

It’s a 1937 Young Adult novel from Japan that has only recently been translated. I bought it and also The 1619 Project

Gah-Baed-Jhagwah-Buk: The Way it Happened, A Visual Culture History of the Little Traverse Bay Bands of Odawa by James M. McClurken was waiting for pick up at the library.

I sat down and looked at all the pictures in it when I got home. I’m glad that I have read a bit in The Art of Tradition by Getrude Karath and Jane and Fred Ettawageshik. Eileen noticed that in the McClurken book the white people are called Americans. The book suffers from lack of awareness of the dilemmas in connecting to this part of our heritage. The perspective in The Art of Tradition is necessarily limited but not as bad as the picture book. There are pictures of Fred in McClurken and his son, Frank, and grandfather, Jo. And many of the pictures are credited as provided by Fred Ettawageshik.

I have been pondering getting back to composing for a while. I’m still in the “look out the window” stage of this sort of thing. But reading about Michigan tribal history is helping me think about how to connect to the spirit of American Native Indians, Sorrow Songs, and Appalachian folk songs.

I have put in a request for an interlibrary loan of Philip J. Deloria’s Playing Indian. Michael D. McNally footnoted this book in his introduction as editor of The Art of Tradition. McNally was describing how the writers of the 1955 book became actively engaged in the course of learning and documenting Anishinaabe lore. “They [Kurath and the Ettewageshiks] were at work when the ‘Naming Ceremony at Harbor Springs, hitherto sponsored by an all-Indian organization, came under the support and direction of the Michigan Indian Foundation, a group of non-Native doctors, lawyers, and men of affairs from Detroit who summered in the region and took a hobbyist interest in Indian culture and artifacts. In 1953, under the foundation’s direction, and much of the program was undertaken by white performers, the dancing even ‘taken over by a group of Detroit white boy scouts, the Heyoka Wacipi.’ ”

The last quote was footnoted to Deloria’s book above. I am hoping it will have some philosophy and observations about appropriation of someone else’s tradition.

So I am enjoying learning more about the stories, dances, and music of Native Americans and the Anishinaabe specifically, but I am increasing uncomfortable with directly using material in my own composing. I am thinking that I will probably look hard at using specific material of Sorrow Songs and Appalachian folk songs as well. It would seem that it would be easy to be inspired by this stuff without actually stealing it. Although, I did use Sorrow Songs in the my composition, BLM. Something to think about.

Lastly, we had a visit from Eric Payne today. Eileen was hoping he would help us fix our leaking flat roof and rail and then repair the water damage that it has caused in our kitchen. Unfortunately he recommended the Sharpe Construction company which has done work for us in the past. Eileen was not happy with the disconnect between what the salesman told us we were buying and what ended up being done. But Sharpe seems to be the only company for the job so I am taking over communications with them to allow Eileen not to go stark raving mad. Their rep is coming tomorrow.

I have books that I have ordered waiting for me both at the library and the Readers World. I am delaying going out into the cold since I am madly trying to read in books I already have from the library. I am continuing to enjoy The Art of Tradition: Sacred Music, Dance & Myth of Michigan’s Anishinaabe, 1946-1955. As I learn more and more about this tradition I have increasing reservations about using melodies from it. It feels like appropriation if not very carefully. I am more likely to simply write some music but not use melodies lifted from this book. It has many melodies, dances, and songs. I love the attitude this book exposes: the humor in the tradition and the genius of people who adapt their ideas and traditions into a changing context. Humans are amazing animals that is for certain.

I love the idea that Anishinaabe do not have a clearly distinct idea of sacred and profane.

I am also continuing to read Lives like Loaded Guns: Emily Dickinson and Her Family’s Feuds by Gordon. As proceed into the story of what happened after Emily Dickinson’s death I can see that the main character of this book is her scattered poems and manuscripts which were divided up as a direct result of feuds in subsequent generations. It is the manuscripts that hold my attention especially since the editing of them is still underway.

The Culture War Has Warped the Supreme Court’s Judgment

Another good article in the Atlantic by Adam Serwer.

“If you read the legal language in the Occupational Safety and Health Act… you might think that the Biden administration’s vaccine mandate stood a good chance of surviving the Supreme Court’s review.

But if you watched Fox News at all over the past year, you would have guessed that it was doomed.”

Ms. Lauryn Hill Is Executive Producing A Doc On The Baraka Family

As in Amiri Baraka the late poet.

Look around you. The way we live explains why we are increasingly polarized

Anthropologist, Anand Pandian writes about America for The Guardian.

Eileen and I have spent most of the day messing with her computer. She was struggling with it last night when I went to bed. It’s moving very sloooooow. I got up this morning and worked on it a bit. Last night it took Eileen 45 minutes to get it to boot up. I had the same thing this morning. It kept doing updates. But slowly. Very slowly.

I finally got AVG antivirus installed on it. I discovered that my paid subscription extends to 9 more devises besides my computer. I quickly added Eileen. Or I should say I slowly added Eileen. Then I ran it. This took several tries but finally did get it to run but was surprised when it didn’t find any malware. When I went to bed last night Eileen was convinced she had malware. But no.

Then we proceeded to take off applications and programs. I think that’s what Eileen is still working on right now. It’s an old computer but it has been so slow for several days so that it’s basically unusable. I of course keep urging Eileen to replace it. But now it’s a bit of a challenge.

Despite the computer snafu I did get some reading in this morning. I wisely did some reading before tackling the computer. Eileen didn’t get to bed until late. So she slept in a bit. We skipped the lovely daughter in England Saturday connection. We are dragging today but I think we are determined to beat Eileen’s little laptop (and/or replace the dang thing).

I noticed the headlines describing the fact that the filibuster rule of the Senate will probably not be changed and thus that voting reform is less likely to take place at the federal level. I find this very discouraging. It feels like I am witnessing the erosion of democracy in the U.S.

I also noticed this: Florida Democrats ask Merrick Garland to intervene on state election proposals. But I am so discouraged to watch the Republican party sew up a one party system along the lines of southern Democrats after Reconstruction. I ascribe it to the Republican lock step that began with Newt Gingrich. The Republicans are better at staying on message and following party dictates. Obviously the Democrats don’t do this and while I admire the fact that Democrats are more tolerant, I am unhappy with Senators Sinema and Manchin blocking the change of filibuster rules to allow for federal protection of voting rights.

This all bums out despite the fact that I am enjoying my reading a great deal right now. I watched another Susan Howe presentation this morning on YouTube. She sent me back to a book I stopped reading: Lives Like Loaded Guns: Emily Dickinson and Her Family’s Feuds by Lyndall Gordon. I stopped reading this book after Emily Dickinson dies in it. Now I realize the remaining story of the fights between the Dickinson family and the Todd family are still reverberating in an environment of restoring access to Emily Dickinson’s many letters and manuscripts. So I read another chapter in it this morning. I remember picking it up because I have found Gordon’s work quite good in the past. Now I am motivated to learn more about Dickinson especially on the various versions of her poems and writings.

This is all a bit glum so I want to embed this wonderful video of some amazing musicians.

Inawe Mazina’igan Map Project – Ojibwe.net

Thanks to Elizabeth for sending me this link. I continue to read about Michigan Native people and also to request more of the books now available.

I’m convinced that if I had a hundred years left to live, I wouldn’t be able to read all the books I wanted, play and study all the music I want to, and I wouldn’t run out of things that make me curious and want to learn more about.

This is an amazingly good thing for me and I am grateful.

Today is another of one of those serendipity type days. I listened to a wonderful lecture/poetry reading by Susan Howe this morning. It was given in April of 2019. Howe is 81 at the time. Now 84, I would still love to hear her lecture and/or read her poetry. This presentation at the Harvard Divinity School is entitled “Concordance: An Evening with Susan Howe.” Concordance is the title of a recent book of poetry she has written. She reads from some of it on the lecture but doesn’t make clear when she is doing so. This is very typical of her. She mixes poetry, scholarship, and insights in everything I’ve seen her do, including her books.

I’ve checked out her Concordance from the library.

Before this morning I had only glanced through it and noted that it’s mostly tiny pieces cut out of pre-existing published material presumably concordances.

After listening to her bring up Charles Ives and thinking more about Emerson and other people and ideas she brings up, I decided this morning to read from the beginning of Concordance.

My head is whirring from all the associations she alludes to and evokes in my own head. In the lecture she reads The Snowstorm by Ralph Waldo Emerson. This would be worth the price of admission for me, but she points out that Emily Dickinson copied four words from the ninth line because she admired them so much.

Howe says she also loves the ending line: “The frolic architecture of the snow.”

She also says how working with a composer recently led her to Charles Ives. She describes Ives as a “romantic modern” and then claims to be one herself. She relates to Ives propensity for quotation and again confesses that most of her work is quotation.

She also quotes some beautiful lines from Emerson’s Divinity School Address. Before doing so, she quotes Daniel Webster’s definition of “meteor.” (about 8:27 into her lecture…)

Susan Howe:”I’m just taking that word meteor and I’m going to read it aloud from Noah Webster so you can see what I mean. 

Meteor (noun)– sublime, lofty– in a general sense, a body that flies or floats in the air. And in this sense, it includes clouds, rain, hail, snow, et cetera. But in a restricted sense in which it is commonly understood. Two– a fiery or luminous body or appearance flying or floating in the atmosphere, or in a more elevated region. We give this name to the brilliant globes or masses of matter which are occasionally seen moving rapidly through our atmosphere, and which throw off with loud explosions fragments that reach the earth, and are called falling stones.  We call that by the same name, those fireballs which are usually denominated falling stars or shooting stars– also the lights which appear over moist grounds and graveyards called ignis fatui, and meteor-like flame lawless through the sky (Pope), figuratively, anything that transiently dazzles or strikes with wonder.

I mean, It’s like a poem in itself.” (transcript of her lecture can be found here)

 Then she points out how Emerson uses the word meteor: ” a snowstorm was falling around us. The snowstorm was real– the preacher merely spectral, and the eye felt the sad contrast in looking at him out of the window behind him into the beautiful meteor of the snow.” This is from the Divinity School Lecture.

So Howe, Webster, Ives, Dickinson, and on and on. Cool beans for old Jupe.

I am all excited about two new books. I picked them up from the library today on my way to my dentist appointment. My old dentist has totally retired and my new dentist, Dr. Morin, has completely refurbished the office. They were very careful about Covid precautions so that’s encouraging. The bad news is that I have an ongoing infection which requires the removal of one of the few remaining teeth I use to chew.

Bah. But they scheduled me another appointment to work on my missing filling and another cavity they found. I’m also booked in the local oral surgeon for an extraction in March. Oh boy.

I am very excited about The Art of Tradition: Sacred Music, Dance & Myth of Michigan’s Anishinaabe, 1946-1955. This is exactly the sort of information I have been looking for. The Anishinaabe is the umbrella name for the three indigenous tribes from the Great Lakes Area: Ojibwe (alternatively Ojibwa, Chippewa), Odawa (alternatively Ottawa), and Potawatomi. This book is a publication of the 1959 research of three people including the mother and father of the man who wrote the introduction. It seems to have a good balance of scholarship and good humor. Example: when talking about what sounds like an awful practice of a sort of hodge podge celebration/pageant of Longfellow’s Hiawatha with actual Native Americans, the editor observes: “[W]hile well-heeled tourists admire the romantic wedding of Hiawatha with the chaste maiden Minnehaha, the performers (Native people from Michigan at the time) were smuggling in under the cover of their language the following song:

I wouldn’t sleep if there was something I could drink
I wouldn’t sleep if there was something I could drink
I wouldn’t sleep if there was something I could drink
I wouldn’t sleep if I had someone to sleep with“

I think that’s cool. The book includes music and songs. I am very glad to find this resource published in 2009 and look forward to it leading me to other sources of information about people who lived here before the white people came, both French and Dutch.

The other book is The Antinomian Controversy, 1636-1638: A Documentary History edited by David D. Hall. My interest in this book grows out of reading Susan Howe’s The Birth-Mark. Much of Howe’s stuff is about this very controversy. Glancing over the table of contents I see names and ideas I recognize from reading Howe. Cool.

Wikipedia says this about Antinomianism: “Antinomianism (Ancient Greek: ἀντί, “against” and νόμος, “law”) is any view which rejects laws or legalism and argues against moral, religious or social norms (Latin: mores), or is at least considered to do so. The term has both religious and secular meanings.” It goes on to say that Martin Luther coined the word but that its meaning includes many other ideas such as Gnosticism and Manichaeism. The book is specific to a story about Mrs. Anne Hutchinson being tried for Antinomianism and kicked out of a Massachusetts colony. I don’t think I will necessarily read the whole thing but it should help me understand Howe’s ideas better.

Musically I have been doing a lot of Bach preludes and fugues from the Well Tempered Clavier and a ton of Couperin.

I would like to share this wonderful performance I listened to on YouTube last night. Perfect martini music.

The sax player, Scott Hamilton, is amazing. Listen to how the superb Èlia Bastida on violin picks up on the musical ideas in his improv. Cool, cool, cool.

Eileen and I decided not to go out in the cold today and sit by the beach. I wasn’t looking forward to getting the car going again today. It feels like a good day to sit inside and look out on the freezing cold. This is probably not going to last too long, but it is reminiscent of how winters used to be in Michigan. I am very content to sit inside and read which is not all that different at what I do when we go sit by the lake.

One big difference for me today is that I won’t make the usual picnic lunch. I enjoy doing this, but if we’re home we will just do what we usually do and fix our own meal. Since I am a vegetarian and Eileen a carnivore we usually end up making different food for ourselves otherwise we might share more often. We do usually sit together at the kitchen table for breakfast and lunch and then play Boggle afterwards.

Ah retirement!

beloved, I was driving down by Eleanor Stanford | Poetry Magazine

“Bach makes us
hold one note in mind so
we can hear several as though
at once”

British composer dies at 104 – Slipped Disc

Francis Jackson. I quite like many of his compositions. This short notification came across my Facebook feed.
Here’s another link.

Organist and composer Francis Jackson dies at 104 BBC

Following up on petty complaints from yesterday, I had more success with completing the information for the screen protector warranty today. But not after exhausting myself first. Some of this is probably just being old. I called the phone store early this morning and left a message. I asked them to call me back especially if they knew they couldn’t come up with the receipt number I needed

I know you will be shocked but they didn’t return my call. After breakfast with Eileen, I gathered what little wits are left me and prepared to get in the car and drive to the place we bought my phone. Eileen quietly offered to accompany me but I let her off the hook.

There was not much snow on the car but it was very, very cold when I went out to get it going. We have this piece of plastic that was designed to cover the windshield so that if it snows it’s easy to get your windshield clear of snow. I peeled this off. It was stuck to the windshield and there was all kinds of ice on the windshield as well. The car started up quickly (thank god).

I had cleared off much of the ice and snow at the base of the windshield wipers, but apparently that was not enough because they did not move when I turned them on. Oh no. I hope I haven’t broken the windshield wiper motor, I thought to myself.

I came back in the house and left the heat going full blast in the car. I called the phone place again. I was flabbergasted when someone answered. The first thing I said to them was THANK YOU FOR ANSWERING THE PHONE. After I described my problem, the person on the phone told me they would email me the number I needed.

What?

Can it be that easy?

I returned to working with the silly app the company had made me install in order to qualify for their warranty. This was hilariously cumbersome. The app asked for all kind of information including two obscure numbers from my phone. Also it wanted me to take a picture in the mirror with my phone of the screen using their silly app. These things are never as easy as they sound, eh? (Move the phone closer. Move the phone further away. Tilt your phone.) But I managed to get that done and find the silly numbers and put hem in the phone.

The app also asked me to photograph my receipt as well as enter the number on it. I didn’t have that receipt. That was the whole dang problem. But I took a picture of the email the phone store guy sent me. He only sent me the number that I wanted not a picture of the receipt. That probably won’t work if I have a claim but it satisfied the robot in the app.

I finished the process of registering my phone for a warranty on the screen protector. It told me near the end that the warranty would only cover up $300 damage so I guess I need to break my screen when my phone is almost paid for.

Meanwhile the car was still warming up. I went out and tried the windshield wipers. The one on my right budged a slight bit. This encouraged me that I hadn’t broken my windshield wiper motor. But I decided to wait a half hour of blasting the heat in the car to try again.

This ended up working. So my car isn’t broken and my phone screen protector warranty is registered.

The upshot is that this wore me out. Apparently 70 year old Jupe only has enough energy and emotional stamina to do that much in a day. Good grief.

Oh. I forgot that yesterday I was flossing and managed to dislodge a filling. I have an appointment on Wednesday for a cleaning and an assessment of the damage. This is my first dentist appointment since Covid hit the fan.

In other news, I am continuing to read Groves about Fanny Mendelssohn (more properly Fanny Hensel her married name). It turns out she wrote quite a bit of music and there is a lot of it that can be purchased. I looked on IMSLP of course but there wasn’t too much more there than I already have. But I checked online for purchase of new scores and discovered there is a ton of music that I could purchase. Now I have to wait until Eileen gives me the go ahead to spend some money. Then I will probably buy some more Fanny Hensel.

I have been playing what I have. She has a lovely Lieder for piano in B minor that I have been playing way under tempo. Today Eileen mentioned that she thought that even though it was under tempo it was nice. It reminded her of gently bubbling water.

My public!

I do like the piece a great deal. Even (especially?) under tempo.

Opinion | No Republican should be able to evade these simple questions – The Washington Post

I constantly complain that Republicans are not quizzed about their ideas about the election and Jan 6 to my TV. Nice to see my bitching (some of it) in print.

I had a very busy day yesterday. It didn’t help that I got up a bit later than usual. Eileen had made an appointment for some friends to stop buy and pick up all the leftover stuff from Edison: baby food, cat litter, and sundry items. They came by about 10:30. We did the usual zoom meeting with Sarah. After lunch I set out to register my stupid phone with the makers of the screen protector. Apparently they guarantee its efficacy and will refund the cost of the entire phone if the phone shatters.

I’m not sure if I have that guarantee correct but what I do know is that I promised Eileen I would take care of this. First, of course, you have download their damn little app (grrrr!). Then after I entered the 16 digit thingamabob on the little card that came with the phone they wanted the receipt number of the purchase. Of bloody course they do!

This is how I spent my afternoon yesterday: looking and looking for a receipt. I promised Eileen I would contact the place where we purchased both the phone and the screen protector tomorrow in hopes they can tell me the receipt number of our purchase. Hah! At least I put that off for a day so I could have a bit more normal day today.

Fanny Mendelssohn has been on my mind. I requested several books regarding her from the library today. I am planning on eventually purchase one or more of these books but would like to see them in person. Plus I promised Eileen that I would slow down on non-essential purchase until she determines they are okay with her budget. She did allow me to donate money to National Constitution Center. Here’s a link if you’re interested.

I loved this quote about Fanny Mendelssohn in the Groves online dictionary: “Upon seeing her first-born daughter, Lea Mendelssohn remarked that Fanny was born with ‘Bach fugal fingers’ as reported by the new father in a letter to his mother-in-law Bella Salomon, … thus immediately placing the infant in a rich context of music, erudition, and strong female leaders in the Itzig-Salomon family.”

I have to admit that Covid news, Supreme Court news, and Democracy news are all getting me down. Sheesh. Thank goodness for music, poetry, and beauty. I’m reminded of a cartoon by the late, great Vaughan Bode.

The lizard and one of Bode’s nubile females are falling to what looks like certain death. The lizard proposes that they should make love before they hit the ground. The female points out that he doesn’t have any genitals (although he seems to in the pic above). He replies that maybe they could squeeze this or that while they fall.

Beauty in the face of madness and end times is like squeezing this or that before we crash.

NYTimes: Supreme Court’s Conservative Majority Appears Skeptical of Biden’s Virus Plan

I like what this commenter had to say:

Mark Keller from Portland, Oregon writes on Jan. 8

Sadly, this Supreme Court wants to legislate, rather than apply the law.

The dumbfounding anti-vax comments from Alito and vax-hesitant interjections from others show that the Court’s conservative core eagerly bring personal, anti-science, pro-conservative Christian biases and agendas to their deliberations.

And what of the laws, the constitution and precedent? This not-so-Supreme Court chooses to hunt and peck for a word here and a phrase there to bolster their narrow viewpoints, rather than treat them has coherent, guiding documents and traditions

I told my therapist, Dr. Birky, today that I resisted making a list for stuff to talk to him about since we have not met for four weeks. I resisted because talking to him is not so much a report of what has passed in my life as talking about my own self in the moment. a holiday four weeks hiatus is a long time for staying connected with a mental health care provider.

I did notice that when I talked to him about something that wasn’t all that happy his next question was about playing music with my extended family. When I talked to him about that I told him it was probably one of the high points of the holidays for me. He must have made a mental note to use that to stop me from focusing on the negative too much. Clever man.

Yesterday I played through three of Fanny Mendelssohn’s Vier Lieder für das Pianoforte, Op. 2. I was surprised at how lovely I found them. I have played through them before but my attraction for them was different this time and more profound.

I chose to embed the recording above after listening to a live recording on YouTube. The live recording, although recorded and performed well, didn’t attract me. In fact, I wondered why I thought the piece was so beautiful. Then I found the recording above of Irene Barbuceanu. I think it was partly the tempo but all the simpatico of Irene Barbuceanu’s beautiful interpretation that helped me remember how much I like this piece

.

We had a heavy snowfall yesterday. Eileen and I got into it so that I could take her for her MRI at Holland Hospital. The hospital is not very far from here but we drove. Eileen broke out her snow blower today and did part of the drive. I dragged the Christmas tree to the block through the snow. Today was snow day for all local schools, plus the library didn’t open until noon due to weather.

I continue to read poetry every day. These two poems from the current Poetry magazines grabbed me.

Sparks in the Sun by Kelan Nee | Poetry Magazine

Elegy for the Four Chambers of My Brother’s Heart… | Poetry Magazine

Sounds Like Hate: Red Flags Everywhere

I have been listening to this podcast from Southern Poverty Law Center. It’s a good exposition of the Jan 6 insurrection. I love the SPLC.

Welsh Cakes Recipe | Allrecipes

A recipe for Welsh Cakes came across my Facebook Feed today. This looks like fun.

After chatting with Dawn on the phone yesterday I had several dreams last night which included a marimba. In one of them I was preparing to play a Bach two part invention with another instrument. This is funny because one of the first pieces I played on my marimba was the Two Part Invention by Bach. I played one of the lines on my marimba and I think that my friend Dave Barber played the other on flute. I also recall that we performed this at my Dad’s church in Flint. But who knows?

In one of the other dreams I was playing marimba with other musicians. But it seems that we were all standing on a flimsy balcony like situation which was threatening to collapse and was moving in a dangerous way.

I realized today that my dupuytren’s contracture would not affect my marimba playing since one holds mallets when playing. I am planning on practicing marimba as well as think more seriously about composing music using it and other instruments. This composing was also part of my dreams and thoughts last night. Sheesh!

I forgot to mention that Dr. Doug Strong reached out to me on Facebook recently. His brother, Dave, died last year. The three of us lived on the same street in Flint Michigan. They were both a bit older than me. Dave played trumpet and Doug played reeds. Dave went on to be a shop steward in Flint like his Dad I believe. Doug went to U of M and studied premed. He also played in U of M orchestras or bands or something.

I had surmised that David had died. Like so many things on Facebook it wasn’t quite clear and I only figured it out well after his death so I didn’t sent flowers, otherwise I probably would have. Doug informed me that Dave indeed died of Covid. I thought maybe he had since he and his wife attended a fundamentalist church. Dave continued to do music all his life. After I figured out he died I did a playlist of tunes that made me think of them. They were mostly Tijuana Brass but I remember Dave doing an arrangement of the Rolling Stones song, Paint It Black, while it was still being played on the radio.

My current Shakespeare play I am reading is Timon of Athens. This morning I did a search of podcasts and found one about this play. The person narrating it played a section of rehearsal from a current Royal Shakespeare production of it. Then he played some recording of rehearsal. As I listened I realized that the role of Timon was being played by a woman.

Cool beans.

I noticed I had a significantly higher number of hits on my blog yesterday. It went from 12 hits on Tuesday to 39 yesterday. I didn’t check further about where the hits were coming from. When I have an unusual number of hits I figure that something triggered search engines to send more people than usual to my blog.

I am blogging earlier in the day today. It’s about noon. Eileen has an MRI this evening. They are checking her right inner ear for a benign tumor that might just possibly explain the differential between hearing loss in her left and right ear. This is a long chance but Eileen and her doctor decided together that it was worth finding out.