I was thinking this morning how poetry is a bit of an antidote for living in such a bland little corner of the world.  The quote in the pic is by John Donne. I found it here.

Adrienne Rich’s poetic essays help me remember the real world. The world of racism and death of the trapped and helpless. This morning I finished the lovely and disturbing essay she wrote called “The Hermit’s Scream.” (It’s not online but here’s a link to an essay on it in Google Books that gives you an idea if you’re interested).

Sexton reminds me that madness is sometimes the most real thing about being alive. (See “HURRY UP PLEASE IT’S TIME“). Her words trap religion and life and torture it.

Updike’s wry intelligent poems broaden me beyond my local desert where I can find few people who read the books I read.

The arts locally seem to have forgotten or never been informed by art that is honest.

It may be, of course, that I miss the good stuff, the stuff that grabs you and leaves you exhausted and changed. I think this might be why I have been drawn deeper and deeper into what I think is excellent music.

I keep spending time with Prokofiev and Shostakovich at the piano.

I wonder if it has something to do with the fact that they themselves were trapped in a love/hate relationship with the monolithic USSR where the arts were usually subordinated to the weirdness and awfulness of the government.

Prokofiev and Shostakovich somehow transformed this into art.  Sometimes they slyly put their figurative finger in the eye of the “authorities.” At other times they lamely sought approval from the “powers that be.”

It is this doubleness in their nature that appeals to me. Seeking profundity in the face of bland fearful mediocrity.

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Open Proceedings at Guantánamo – NYTimes.com

A small flame of hope in the face of this terrible act of America.

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Citigroup’s Chief Rebuffed on Pay by Shareholders – NYTimes.com

Wow. You don’t read articles like this often these days.

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Fang Lizhi, Chinese Physicist and Dissident, Dies at 76 – NYTimes.com

China’s Andrei Sakharov by Orville Schell  Atlance May 1988

Obit and Atlantic essay about this fascinating dissident.

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Booked a flight to New Hampshire yesterday for May. This will be my first time off in a while. I definitely am in need of it.

Going to visit my brother and his wife in Keene. Sorry my wife can’t go with me. But I need to get out of town.

This morning I only managed to read some poetry by Adrienne Rich (have also been working my way through Sexton and Updike collected poems). I spent the rest of my extra morning time trying to learn the music for a waltz from Swan Lake for today’s Ballet class.

The instructor asked me Tuesday if I had this with me. Sheesh. She was annoyed that the anthology I regularly carry to her class only had the main theme from the ballet, not this waltz. I checked out a piano transcription of the entire ballet yesterday.

In church music, I was taught that it’s only polite to give a week’s notice of score prep for event the best musicians.

I have since noticed that many professionals pride themselves on not rehearsing before a gig.

And I have heard many performances that seem to indicate a lack of prep. On the other hand when one does a gig, one tries to do whatever is required.

Anyway, I have been up and practicing this scene.

I just hope she uses it.

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Frenzied Hours for U.S. on Fate of a China Insider – NYTimes.com

Some good background on this evolving story.

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Ted Nugent’s Remarks Reverberate Against Romney – NYTimes.com

Ted Nugent makes me crazy. Go Michigan.

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The Big Spill, Two Years Later – NYTimes.com

Interesting background on this incident. Much credible challenge in the online comments. Check out Dr. Richard Grippo from Arkansas State University. I googled him and he seems for real.

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And the Winner of the Pulitzer Isn’t – NYTimes.com

The nice thing about this is learning about books I don’t know about. It’s a shame the Pulitzer didn’t aware one posthumously to D. F. Wallace. I think he was an excellent writer.

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Chose some interesting music to play this weekend at church. I’m still working on learning “Danse” by Debussy. I can play it. But I’m trying to get a deeper mastery of it for the actual performance. It feels good to dig a bit deeper into it and learn it more thoroughly.

Instead, I’m planning to play 4 variations on the tune of the opening hymn, Puer Nobis Nascitur, by Jan Pieterszoon Sweelinck. It’s kind of funny to play this at this time of year since the tune name refers to its original use around Xmas.

But the words we will sing are “That Easter day with joy was bright.” Interestingly these words in their original anonymous 5th century Latin precede in origin by 1000 years the “ancient” tune that Sweelinck set and we will sing.

I have always wondered why organists who play in the annual Hope College Tulip Time organ recital/marathon don’t play more Sweelinck. Recently a local church has hired an organist who seems to be talented and doing stuff. Since she is also a staff accompanist at Hope maybe she will play more Sweelinck in a Tulip Time recital (if they invite her…. usually it’s just alums). Her name is Rhonda Sider Edgington and here is a link to her web site. She had a recital this past Sunday which I missed. Looking at the Hope Sentinel press release on it, it looks like she played a piece by William Bolcolm.

I have thought about trying to meet her. The best way would be to attend one of her recitals or show up at an AGO meeting. The upcoming meeting on Dutch buy tubs diazepam organ tours looks pretty deadly to me. As my brother recently pointed out, we Jenkins love to stand on the outside and look in and feel excluded. I do feel pretty isolated locally. I suspect that a younger musician who is not pedigreed from Hope College might have a bit of a different flavor than most of the other locals I rub shoulders with (or don’t as the case may be).

At any rate, I want to stop blogging and go practice.

My postlude Sunday is pretty goofy. It’s by the German composer, Johaness Matthias Michel, and is from his collection “Organ, Timbrel, and Dance.”

It’s based on the tune for Sunday’s closing hymn, In Dir ist Freude – words – Day of delight and beauty unbounded by Delores Dufner.

It’s dedicated to Leonard Bernstein and uses the hemiolic dance rhythm of “America” from “West Side Story.”

Hey I said it was goofy.

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For Economists Saez and Piketty, the Buffett Rule Is Just a Start – NYTimes.com

These French scholars have been tracking the world economy for two decades. Discouraging that the U.S. is such a leader in inequality.

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Mali – Ancient Books Stolen – NYTimes.com

This stuff always interests me.

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California – Teenager Held to Ensure Testimony in Rape Case Is Released – NYTimes.com

Looks like cooler heads finally prevailed in this.

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Turning the Tables on Russia – NYTimes.com

Interesting little scandal involving U.S. politicians and businessmen trying to expose corruption in Russia. Reading the comments is very fascinating. It looks like the NYT left out some of the connections between the people exposing the scandal and their own self interests. What a mess.

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I recently received a Facebook message from John Adams, a young man who played bass for me for awhile and then ran away to rock and roll. He is booked for a Sept gig locally and asked if I had a band going and would I play on the venue.

As I replied to him begging off, I realized that I haven’t been doing my Bad Paul Simon songs, haven’t been playing guitar, and haven’t been writing in this genre for a few years. Honestly, I don’t miss it. I enjoy what I am doing musically now quite a bit.  I feel that I do what I do from self motivation and that I have a very small audience.

It’s just big enough that I feel I’m not totally self-indulgent or alone when I play at church or any place.

The audience question can be confusing. But I understand myself to do music for the sake of doing it. I only need a few ears to hear what I’m doing to complete the art. I get that at church and in the ballet class right now. I will probably schedule a recital in the next year at my church for myself and my piano trio and whatever else I come up with.

I didn’t mention yesterday that Sunday’s music went very well. Early Sunday morning found me stuffing the last anthem of the season into the choir slots. I played all 15 or 16 sections of Dandrieu’s Noel on O Filii et Filiae for the prelude. It had timed out at 9 minutes but took less time in the performance. I think that I moved more quickly between the various registrations and that was the primary difference. Also, I was much more conscious of the musical pacing of the pause between variations.

I don’t remember ever accompanying the hymn, O Sons and Daughters (O Filii et Filiae), quite the way I did Sunday. I noticed that there were banner carriers preparing to carry in the banners with small bells embedded in them. At previous vigils the banner carriers shook these so vigorously their volume competed with the organ and the full throated singing of the congregation.

Despite this, I had decided to accompany the tune with light flutes due to its chant-like nature. Happy to report this worked out well. The congregation sang, the bells rang but not too over powering, the flutes on the organ sustained the voices nicely. Totally worked.

Saturday after my fam left, I registered (picked out the sounds of the organ pipes to use for) the anthem. The anthem, “Psalm 150” by John Harper, was an example of late 20th century hoary old Anglican mildly dissonant mostly unison anthem.

Definitely written for organ and voices, it required my skill of working out the best sounds both timbre wise and volume wise to fit my singers. It was really quite easy and came together quickly with little preparation for the singers.

The vestigal flowering of the cross took place during the slot where we sing the anthem (the offertory). I say vestigal because I think it’s not that Episcopalian a practice. I know it’s a Roman Catholic practice. Anyway, it’s a lovely harmless devotion. I improvised for most of it since the anthem was short. I used motives from the anthem transposed to C major and played snippets of the hymn, “Lift High the Cross.”

When I indicated to the choir it was time to stand and switch to the anthem, we proceeded with a slight pause. As we began singing I realized it was much slower. I had improvised the motives slowly. But it all worked out. Eileen said she didn’t even notice that it was slower.

The rest of the service went well. I found myself being grateful to work in a church where the music was fun to do and for the most part well executed. Finished off with a respectable rendition of “Christ lag in Todes Banden” by Bach as the postlude.

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California Prosecutors Defend Detention of Teen Rape Victim – NYTimes.com

There has to be a better way to handle this.

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From the Birthplace of Big Brother – NYTimes.com

The U.K. marches into the bright fearful future.

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The Sweet Spot – NYTimes.com

Is there a middle political ground anymore? Bill Keller things so.

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Full Show: An Optimist for Our Times | Moyers & Company | BillMoyers.com

Video of a recent Bill Moyers interview…. haven’t sat through it yet.

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Europe’s Economic Suicide – NYTimes.com

Common sense continues to be avoided in political rhetoric on both sides of the Atlantic.  Shrinking government and turning to austerity despite the clear need for better ideas.

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Africa’s Free Press Problem – NYTimes.com

China and Africa return the press to functioning to aid the government but not protect the public good.

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Eight Hours for Work, Eight Hours for Rest, Eight Hours for What We Will!

Thanks to daughter Elizabeth for pointing out this fascinating piece of history. I especially liked this quote:

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The more I read of the late Adrienne Rich’s poetry, the less attracted I am to it. I have been reading it chronologically in my collections. She is obviously classically adroit and uses many allusions. I love her politics. I am simultaneously working my way through her book of essays, What is Found There. These are wonderful.

The essay I was reading this morning (“The hermit’s scream”), alluded to two people I found interesting.

Rich points out that Nobel Peace Prize winner Alva Myrdal connects the arms race and “its needless excesses of armaments and its aggressive rhetoric” with “an ominous cult of violence in contemporary society.” (link to Myrdal’s 1982 Nobel Lecture, Disarmament, Technology and the Growth in Violence)

We surely are living in a country whose personal violence, fear and anger is on the rise. I think it’s telling to connect this with global war and violence.

I wonder with Rich: “Why do I go as if poetry has any answers to that question [of violence]?” But go on I do.

Then she quotes in full a wonderful poem by Suzanne Gardinier.

It’s called “to Peace” and I can’t find it online. Basically it addresses “Peace” and excoriates it as though it were a enemy. Since Gardinier is a living poet who chooses to keep her poetry offline, I will only quote a bit of it:

Peace I have feared you hated you scuffed dirt
on what little of you I could bear near me
scorned you called you vicious names…

Coward I have watched you buckle under
nightsticks and fire hoses You have
disgusted me slipping flowers in guns
holding hands with yourself singing to bullets
and dogs…

I have just interlibrary-loaned a couple of volumes by this woman.

She impresses me and I would like to know more.

Back to Rich’s poetry.  In my morning reading, both she and Sexton used the noun: “mica.” Since it was serendipitous it caught my attention. I noticed that it nicely contrasted the poets:

Rich:

“Late afternoons the ice
squeaks underfoot like mica,”

from the poem, “Holding Out”

Sexton:

“On this island, Grandfather, made of your stuff,
a rubber squirrel sits on the kitchen table
coughing up mica like phlegm.

I stand in your writing room
with the Atlantic painting its way toward us
and ask why am I left with stuffed fish on the wall,
why am I left with rubber squirrels with mica eyes…”

from the poem “Grandfather, Your Wound”

The two poems in their entirety illustrate to me why as poets I respect Rich but love Sexton.

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Dorset Police Solve Mystery of Invisible Manuscript – NYTimes.com

Blind woman begins to write a novel with a pen with no ink…. police tech to the rescue…

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A Veteran’s Death, the Nation’s Shame – NYTimes.com

“For every soldier killed on the battlefield this year, about 25 veterans are dying by their own hands.”

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I didn’t have time to learn my postlude today (Christ lag in Todes Banden BWV 695 by Bach) with a soloed out melody in the pedals.

I went through it yesterday that way and found a few mistakes in my new version. It’s not really unusual to find mistakes in freshly made copies of music. It’s another reason to have rehearsals before performances.

Then I went through the original manuals version (no pedal part) and discovered it was easier at this point to perform it that way. I will still correct my manuscript, maybe even throw it up here.

I missed my morning poetry reading and blogging time yesterday because I was hosting my brother and his wife. They left after lunch. This morning I have had time to read and am now blogging (after slowly going through “Christ lag” on the electric piano to ensure more accuracy of today’s performance).

I also wrote a little poem. Lately I have found that the poetry I am writing might be painful for my loved ones to read. So I just keep it, emily-dickinson-like, tucked away. Not that I have the effrontery to compare my meager efforts with her opus.

I guess if one keeps reading poetry and learning music, it’s not too weird to keep making up one’s own. At least that has been my life.

I am in dire need of some time off. This need seems to come and go. I haven’t really had much time off since way before Xmas. I am thinking of getting on a plane by myself (Eileen can’t get off) and flying to New Hampshire to visit my brother. I haven’t seen his new digs.

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Sustain Your Mortal Existence Without Facebook – Wired How-To Wiki

Amusing little article. At least it looks like it, I haven’t read the whole thing.

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Connecting Music and Gesture – Interactive Feature – NYTimes.com

I had a buddy when I was young who knew nothing about music technically but loved to pretend to conduct his record player. At this time, I thought it was pretty silly. But now I don’t know. I think of music more and more as aural gesture. In this video there is beauty both in the music and the representations of the conductor’s movements and his verbal descriptions. Worth the eight minutes it takes to watch, in my opinion.

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How to Listen to Music: A Vintage Guide to the 7 Essential Skills | Brain Pickings

Never hurts to think about this stuff.

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Prado Researcher Finds Insights Beneath Copy of Mona Lisa – NYTimes.com

It looks like someone painted a copy of the Mona Lisa simultaneously to Da Vinci creating of it Justice for Trayvon – NYTimes.com

… very cool.

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Justice for Trayvon by Charles M. Blow – NYTimes.com

I am growing very fond of this columnist’s writing.

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Bo Xilai Scandal and the Mysterious Neil Heywood – NYTimes.com

I find many of the reader comments interesting in this article.

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Why Trees Matter – NYTimes.com

Amazing stuff I mostly didn’t know about trees.

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Beware of Faulty Intelligence – NYTimes.com

This seems well reasoned to me.

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Still getting up and doing work instead of relaxing. This morning,  I did manage to read a poem each by Adrienne Rich,

Anne Sexton

and John Updike.

These are the three poets I am reading these days.

Then I settled down to transcribing Christ lag in Todes Banden BWV 695 into a Finale doc. I converted the original two stave version to a three stave version with the alto melody in the pedals.

My brother and my sister-in-law arrive today for an overnight visit. I managed to get our bills done before Eileen needed the computer to finish our taxes.

Yesterday, I started reading in Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman.

Kahneman (along with his recently deceased colleague, Amos Tversky) has spent a lifetime studying how we decide about things.  In his introduction he says he is aiming his book at the kind of conversations that people have around the water-cooler, namely gossip.

This might seem an odd way to approach this for the winner of the Nobel Prize 2002 in Economic Sciences. But it’s actually quite logical. The intuitive way we judge affects our understanding and our opinions. Kahneman thinks that we can begin to see how others are coming to inaccurate conclusions and then we can turn the light on ourselves

Initially he approached experts in many fields with the idea that the way we make decisions and assessments about statistics are often completely inaccurate. He and Tversky would win over experts by showing them how they were coming to false conclusions about facts and statistics.

He would do it like this.

Consider Steve taken from a random sample:

“An individual has been described by a neighbor as follows: ‘Steve is very shy and withdrawn, invariably helpful but with little interest in people or in the world of reality. A meek and tidy soul, he has a need for order and structure, and a passion for detail.’ Is Steve more likely to be a librarian or a farmer?”

“The resemblance of Steve’s personality to that of a stereotypical librarian strikes everyone immediately, but equally relevant statistical considerations are almost always ignored. Did it occur to you that there are more than 20 male farmers for each male librarian in the United States? Because there are so many more farmers, it is almost certain that more ‘meek and tidy’ souls will be found on tractors than at library information desks.

“However, we found that participants in our experiments ignored the relevant statistical facts and relied exclusively on resemblance. We proposed that they used resemblance as a simplifying heuristic (roughly, rule of thumb) to make a difficult judgment. The reliance on heuristic caused predictable biases (systematic errors) in their predictions.”

Kahneman aims to “improve the ability to identify and understand errors of judgment and choice, in others and eventually in ourselves, by providing a richer and more precise language to discuss them.”

My copy of this book is an inter-library loan one which is due soon. Since other people want to see this book, I am unable to renew it. I read in it yesterday to get a sense of it. Now I’m pretty sure I want to somehow own a copy to read.

Fascinating stuff.

So it turns out Dandrieu wrote two organ pieces (at least) based on the Easter tune, O Filii et Filiae. One is a Noel and one is an Offertoire. I have scheduled the Noel as the prelude this Sunday. I printed off the Offertoire linked in the previous post. It is the Offertoire that is being played in the Youtube video I embedded yesterday. I find an interesting difference in the melody in this pieces.

The Noel begins with the Alleuia phrase, the Offertoire puts the Alleluia phrase at the end of melody.

Both pieces elaborate on the melody in multiple sections. The Offertoire seems a bit more systematic in its variations for the most part getting more and more complex. The Noel however provides more contrasting variations. And it’s shorter.

I am thinking next year I will perform the Offertoire. I wonder if the Noel is incorrectly attributed to Dandrieu as it is not included in the IMSLP version. I will have to do a little research and see if I can find out.

As I prepare Sunday’s postlude, I have been wondering what was in my mind when I scheduled Bach’s lovely little setting of Christ lag in Todes Banden. It seems to be most effective when registered on 4 foot stops (these sound an octave higher than written).

Unfortunately it will probably be drowned out by the congregation’s chatter during a postlude. I may just do it anyway. I have been known to stubbornly play postludes that weren’t very loud.

I am still feeling post Holy Week fatigue. In fact, I think I have been much more tired this week because there was no adrenaline flowing like last week.

Today my Mom goes for a post Hospital visit check up. The only time I could get her in coincided with my ballet class this morning. The ballet department chair was kind enough to let me skip class.

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Briton’s Death Is Thrust to Center of China Scandal Over Bo Xilai – NYTimes.com

Ni Yulan, Rights Advocate, Given Prison Term in China – NYTimes.com

China in the news.

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To Stop the Killing, Deal With Assad – NYTimes.com

Sensible if frustrating solution.

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I chose some organ music for this weekend yesterday.

Dandrieu’s organ pieces based on folk tunes are usually referred to as Noëls.

This is because most of the tunes he uses in them are French Christmas songs. But he did throw in a few other things like the one I plan to play Sunday. It’s based on the tune, O Fili et Filiae (pdf of the music). The Easter hymn sung to this tune is “O Sons and Daughters.”

Unfortunately, my little organ sounds nothing this magnificent one. But it will still sound pretty good and be fun to play.

I just found another online version of the piece which seems to be different from my old Kalmus edition. I linked it in above. Printing it up to examine and possibly use.

For the postlude, I am going to play “Fantasia super Christ lag in Todes Banden” BWV 695 by J. S. Bach.

It is written for manuals. The melody is oddly in the alto. Yesterday I registered it with the melody in the pedals. Listening to recordings of it online today, I am reconsidering. The melody seems to be entirely audible even if it’s not on a separate stop. Hmmm.

I like this Youtube not for the sound but the ease with which one can see the fugue around the melody.

I like this recording better.

Unfortunately, embedding of this particular recording is disabled. Hence the link.

I do enjoy doing good music at church.

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Geriatric Emergency Units Opening at U.S. Hospitals – NYTimes.com

ERs with a more calm approach for us confused old people.

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Caregiving as a ‘Roller-Coaster Ride From Hell’ – NYTimes.com

I love Jane Brody. She wrote this one and it’s worth reading.

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Israel Bars Günter Grass Over Poem – NYTimes.com

Poetry in the news. Here’s a link to a translation of the poem:

Gunter Grass’s Controversial Poem About Israel, Iran, and War, Translated – Heather Horn – International – The Atlantic

I admit I didn’t read it yet.

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Jillian Hessel | Pilates Exercise | DVD – Videos – Books

Yesterday at Ballet class, we watched a video which led us through a floor bar. Afterward I was talking with a visiting prof and she said that Hessel was teaching Alexander Technique like concepts at Julliard. At least I think it was this person.

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I skipped both my morning poetry reading and blogging this morning.

Instead, I put together a list of suggested hymns for the next two weeks for the office at church. As I emailed it, I received an email from my boss with hymns for Sunday. We must both have been working on it at the same time.

This is really the first moment I have had to truly take a breath since Holy Week and even before. I have nothing scheduled for the rest of today. But I do have tasks.

I found this book sitting on the new shelf at the music library at Hope.  It’s a collection of essays. I was surprised by this one: “The bigger picture: Ligeti’s music and the films of Stanley Kubrick.” I first heard of Ligeti through Kubric’s movie, A Space Odyssey. It’s interesting to see scholarly articles about the connection.

It turns out that Kubrick didn’t even secure permission for use beforehand. He used four pieces by Ligeti but only credited three. Ligeti first heard of it from a friend and went saw the movie. Ligeti ends up suing and getting a token payment.

Kubrick later redeemed himself by using Ligeti’s music in other movies (Eyes Wide Shut and The Shining) and, in the words of the article, provided “generous remuneration” this time.

I’m on the emailing subscription list of NPR’s “The Splendid Table.” They usually have some interesting recipes right in the email.

In the middle of Holy Week I received an email from them with two very interesting recipes: “Mexican Corn Tortilla”

and Veggie Burgers (Both are available for a short time at this link).

I was so attracted to these recipes that I’m seriously considering purchasing their source: The Homemade Pantry: 101 foods you can stop buying and start making.

I also ran across Jubilate, Amen!: (Festschrift Series) A Festschrift in Honor of Donald Paul Hustad, by Paul A. Richardson and Timothy W. Sharplast week:

I love festschrifts.  I met Hustad at a Hymn Society Convention, probably in the nineties.

He was teaching people to do white gospel music more literally. His insistence that this was more appropriate than changing rhythms and adding flourishes had a big influence on me. It pulled me away from my own experience of this music as a child and into a larger and more meaningful context. It has influenced the way I play this music ever since.

A little pricey at $50 (used!), but I will still probably buy it.

I have dearly loved Casals’ recording of the Bach cello suites. The subject is enough to tempt me to purchase this book.

The author of this book is an Episcopalian composer whose solidly written service music we find ourselves using at Grace. This book, the Festschrift, the Casals book and  the next book were all in the American Guild of Organist’s mag April column, “The Organist Bookshelf.” It’s a list of books without comments.

Music on the famous Mount Athos. Who knew?

I think I have a pattern that after an intense time of engagement I seek refreshment in looking at new book titles. I often did this when I was going to college. First thing after a term was over, I was hitting the used book stores just to relax.  Now I guess I browse online.

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Banker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy – NYTimes.com

I found this history surprising and fascinating. J. Edgar Hoover tracking spies in the government and how it affects our present position with global monetary organizations.

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A congregation of Theological Coherence

This is a religious link. My boss sent it to me and I passed it on on Facebook. I like the idea that my work could actually make sense. Hey. It could happen.

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Yo-Yo Ma was in my mind, yesterday during my musical work. Christian Lane wrote a pretty good article in the April issue of “The American Organist” (“Yo-yo Ma and Performance”). Unfortunately I can’t find it online to link in. The gist of it was to use a recent concert he attended which Ma played with the Boston Symphony Orchestra.

Lane dissects Ma’s ability to take the orchestra and the listeners into the musical phrase despite his own celebrity. He even points out how Ma transcends this obstacle by eye contact with the rest of the players and exhibiting an authentic love of what he is doing as he does it.

A very good reminder for me, since despite my own musical inadequacies (Ma is a musical genius… there is no doubt in my mind), one thing I do attempt is to connect to others through music and help them connect between themselves as humans doing something beautiful and authentic and/or perceiving same.

I think I managed to do a little bit of that throughout Holy Week.

Yesterday, I included some slow playing of the final pages of the Widor in my own personal pregame prep. I also photocopied them and made them a bit larger than the score I used Sat night (which one parishioner pointed out was amazingly small and at the same time offering to page turn for me next time).

It was fun to have an accompanist for the choral anthem. For each choral performance this week I was very conscious of attempting to get a decent sound from my singers. I think I managed to help them do a good job on the anthem yesterday.

Somehow at the end of the service, despite my age and exhaustion, I managed a creditable performance of the Widor. I did think of Ma as I played. He is definitely an inspiration.

Now I’m looking forward to the end of the ballet classes and eventually finding some time off from my silly schedule.

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The Mystery of the Flying Laptop – NYTimes.com

What exactly is the different security risks of the many devices people use and travel with? It’s not clear.

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5 Face Trial After Chinese Teenager Sells Kidney – NYTimes.com

This is a heart breaking, weird story. The teen sold his kidney to buy an Ipad and an Iphone.

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Why the Old-School Music Snob Is the Least Cool Kid on Twitter – NYTimes.com

I have this bookmarked to read.

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It turns out that my energy finally ran out last night in the middle of the Vigil. I’m rationalizing that it was my usual bedtime habits that did me in. We started this service at sundown which was around 8:45 PM last night. Ahem. I am usually prone at that time, if not asleep.

About half way through the service I realized I was feeling fatigued. The only thing this really affected was the postlude. About 90 per cent of the way through the Widor played cleanly, I realized that I had failed to remove my dress coat.

The ending of this piece requires the organist to reach with the left hand and play on an upper manual, thus crossing the hands. Reviewing the ending prior to service I realized that my coat restrained me in this process. I even mentioned to the choir members that I was reminded of the advise of  my teacher, Ray Ferguson, to always rehearse at least once in the clothes you plan to perform in.

I don’t think my dress coat did me in, so much as I got distracted enough that I lost the concentration and needed energy to sustain the perpetuum mobile of Widor’s popular little piece. I had a bad few moments at the ending.

This morning found me searching through Finale files for a descant to this morning’s Baptism hymn, “We know that Christ.” Yesterday I could visualize this descant on the page but couldn’t find copies in the church’s descant drawer.

No luck in my old Finale files. As I waited for my coffee water to boil, I found the descant at another use of the tune in the Hymnal 1982.

I used to wonder what my colleagues were actually so busy with during Holy Week, since my practice was to prepare stuff weeks and weeks before hand.

This past week has found me scrambling with last minute rehearsals and requests of parish musicians (who mostly said no).

Now on Easter Sunday morning I find myself putting a descant into a Finale file and printing it up.

Good grief.

All in all it has been a good Holy Week. My Mom’s anemia was diagnosed and treated. We took her home from the hospital yesterday. I survived the juxtaposition of church and college duties. I even kick started the tax people for Mom’s taxes (unfortunately not quite done, but that’s for tomorrow).

The music went well at all services so far and I expect this morning to be the same. Despite the intransigence of most of the talented people in my congregation, I have managed to involve several people in the music this week.

After church, Eileen and I jump in her Mini and she will drive us to the annual Hatch Easter Egg Hunt. Whew.

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A Free Web & Mobile App for Reading Comfortably — Readability

Found a new app yesterday. Not sure if it will really be something I use. But it seems to save articles in very readable formats and will save them to a Kindle. Unfortunately I couldn’t get it to save them to my Kindle software for my PC. But still it’s kind of cool.

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When Eddie met Haile – FT.com

Article by the insanely funny comic, Eddie Izzard, on his training with the great runner, Haile Gebrselassie.

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“The Errors of Their Ways” by Rachel Giese | The Walrus | April 2012

I bookmarked a bunch of articles to read yesterday (playing with readability.com). This one about fatal hospital mistakes in Canada.

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Two related links about psychology. I love the quote.

How Western Psychology Needs To Rethink Depression | CommonHealth

“You know, we had a lot of trouble with Western mental health workers who came here immediately after the genocide, and we had to ask some of them to leave…They came and their practice did not involve being outside in the sun like what you’re describing – which is, after all, where you begin to feel better. There was no music or drumming to get your blood flowing again when you’re depressed and you’re low and you need to have your blood flowing. There was no sense that everyone had taken the day off so that the entire community could come together to try to lift you up and bring you back to joy. There was no acknowledgement of the depression as something invasive and external that could actually be cast out of you again. Instead, they would take people one at a time into these dingy little rooms and have them sit around for an hour or so and talk about bad things that had happened to them. We had to get them to leave the country.”

Jerome Kagan: Psychology Is In Crisis | Radio Boston

Transcript (and audio) of interview of author linked in first article.

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A plea for beauty: a manifesto for a new urbanism – Society and Culture – AEI

This article caught my eye. I’m always interested in public spaces and beauty.

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Why The New York Times Will Disappear As We Know It By 2015

Power point slides pointing to causes and the exact moment of the Grey Lady’s demise.

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Angry Birds, Farmville and Other Hyperaddictive ‘Stupid Games’ – NYTimes.com

There is actually a game on this page which is a gas. You can zap pictures and ads on site with a little rocket that flies around. More fun than reading.

New high score: How the NYT created its “stupid game” » Nieman Journalism Lab

And this is a story about the game.

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Woke up rested and with a bit more perspective this morning. These past few weeks have been crazy. When I anticipated Holy Week, I wondered how I would juggle my church duties and my ballet class. I wondered how my energy would hold up and how well I would do. It has turned out that even though I attempted to anticipate stuff by getting my Mom moved into assisted living completely by last Sunday night, serious shit hit the fan.

So when I add in my Mom being in the hospital (while certainly more of an ordeal for her than me), it’s been an awful lot of stuff and some stress.

And I’ve done well.

I see my Mom’s hospitalization as essentially a positive occurrence, since it ended up probably giving her some strength back as a consequence of raising her hemoglobin level.

And despite my fatigue last night, I look back on the day and see that I am getting a bit of my groove back. I played well. And I managed to get the choir to realize its potential a bit in terms of blend and general musical sound.

So today I have a few things to do, but essentially it’s a leisurely planned day followed by the first Saturday Vigil service my church has done in years.

It’s not as extreme a change as it might be, since they have been doing a vigil as a sunrise service. So the rite is pretty much there. It will be interesting to see how it goes. The music will be fine, I think.

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Robert Simpson (composer) – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Alex Ross mentioned this composer in a review in the New Yorker. I was surprised I had never heard of him. He is from the U.K., died in late 90s. Composed 11 symphonies. Worked for the BBC. I listened to some of his stuff yesterday. It reminded me of Vaughan Williams.

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Jim Marshall, 88, Maker of Famed Fuzzy Amplifiers, Is Dead – NYTimes.com

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Obama Concedes That Courts Can Review Acts of Congress – NYTimes.com

Obama seems to be mistaken in some of his comments recently. This article cites corrections by Politifact (one of my favorite quick site visits) .

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In Russia, a Watch Vanishes Up Kirill’s Sleeve – NYTimes.com

This article and story has so many hilarious ironies. Can’t pick out my favorite.

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Scottish Leader Pins Hopes for Independence Vote on a 700-Year-Old Fervor – NYTimes.com

Will Scotland become independent of the United Kingdom once again in our lifetime? Sounds like it might.

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This Triduum has been a bit more stressful than usual for me. I found myself worrying about stuff in the wee early hours this morning. Laying in bed I realized that I had told the rector some incorrect information regarding the Easter Sunday bulletin to be printed this morning. I also decided I would call the pianist who consented to accompany the anthem on Easter Sun morning and ask her if she had time for a last minute rehearsal with the two of us before this evening’s post service rehearsal of same.

Good grief. I have already emailed people about this stuff.

Interestingly, I find myself a bit disappointed in my choice of choral music for this week and also my preparation of the singers. Last night we did an arrangement of mine of “Humbly I adore Thee.” I originally wrote the arrangement as a compromise anthem to utilize scant resources. The choir liked it, so I thought I would schedule it.

In retrospect I think it would have been better to schedule an anthem more about the theology of service linked to Eucharist than devotion.

It’s amusing I even care, since right about now my personal faith is dwarfed by any mustard seed I’ve ever seen.

The anthems we have scheduled for this evening, Sat and Sun are all anthems from the choral library at church. The choir likes them and they are fun. But I don’t know if I’m going to be able to pull together as fine a performance as I usually attempt with choral music.

This is probably just Good Friday morning blues when your elderly mom is in the hospital. (See previous posts)

On the upside, I do feel like the organ music I am playing is slightly redeeming. This evening even though the boss pulled the hymn from the service at the last minute, I am playing a lovely set of pieces by Ernst Pepping on “O Sacred Head.” I didn’t protest when she changed things earlier in the week. My reasoning is that now is the time for survival not leisurely discussion about choices.

I did ask her yesterday why she did it. She replied that using a hymn before and after the sermon felt long to her last year. So she dropped a hymn. Makes sense I  guess. If I had known that she was going to do this I would have suggested singing “O Sacred Head” this past Sunday.

Ay yi yi. I know, I know. It just doesn’t matter.

On Easter Sun morning I am performing a lovely little piece by Gerald Near. It’s based on snippets of chant and hymn.

Also doing Widor’s Toccata as the Vigil and East Sun postlude. This is more like the choral music. But I tell myself it’s respectable enough and am practicing it diligently so I can do a decent job of it.

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Ex-New Orleans Officers Sentenced in Post-Katrina Shootings – NYTimes.com

This tragic story (the shooting of innocent people and the cover-up) keeps emerging in the news.

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Men in Black – NYTimes.com

Maureen Dowd gets a bit serious in her takedown of our nakedly political current Supreme Court. Couldn’t agree more. Favorite quote: Could the dream of expanded health care die at the hands of a Kennedy?

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Holder: Obama administration respects the Supreme Court

Interesting interaction between government branches. The letter that the judge ordered the president’s office produce is linked to this article in a PDF. I admit I didn’t click on it.

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Use of Strip Searches – NYTimes.com

Here’s the entire letter to the editor at this link:

The Supreme Court’s latest 5-to-4 ruling debases morality, repudiates privacy and transgresses the sanctity of the Fourth Amendment. The flaw in the majority’s perception of justice lies in the blanket applicability of the decision to arrestees (not convicts), who are clothed in a presumption of innocence.

See the previous indictment of this court by Dowd. What a mess.

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Calling Radicalism by Its Name – NYTimes.com

Since I’m being all partisan, I second this editorial that supports Obama in calling out the extreme nature of his opposition.

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I skipped blogging this morning. Too much to do. Dropped in on my Mom with flowers. While I was there, the nurse came in and said that Mom’s morning blood test had shown her to have low hemoglobin.  She needed to go in to ER. The ambulance had already been called.

I think this blood test was part of Mom’s move from independent living to assisted living quarters.

When I asked Mom if she wanted me to go with her to ER she said if I had time. Since I didn’t have anything specific scheduled until my noon ballet class, I told her I would meet her there.

Ran home and grabbed my netbook and a few books (in case the wifi goes down). Went to the ER to wait and began posting updates on Facebook.

At this point they have diagnosed Mom with MICROCHROMIC MICROCYTIC ANEMIA with a low hemoglobin count of 5.6 (presumably per decaliter). She will have to spend the night in the hospital so they can slowly give her transfusions. The doctor told me that sometimes blood can be given too quickly and that was the reason for the hospitalization.

Mom of course is not thrilled with that. But I’m hoping that bringing her hemoglobin up to snuff will make a difference in her strength and dizziness. She has been showing signs of improvement in her new digs already. Plus they caught this hemoglobin deficiency. Cool beans.

So now I’m sitting in her ER room blogging as she rests.

Polished off Rich’s volume of poetry, An Atlas of the Difficult World, this morning. It’s bound in with a volume of her essays and another larger collection of her poetry.

I find myself admiring her work.

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Rev. Ruth Hawley-Lowry: MLK, Trayvon and Jesus

This woman attends my church.  This is a good article. She is extremely supportive of my work as a church musician and constantly (almost embarrassingly) compliments me.

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Britons Protest Government Eavesdropping Plans – NYTimes.com

Who needs strip searches?

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Respect the Future – NYTimes.com

This is a troubling story of a man who attempted to nurse his wife suffering with Alzheimers and then ended up killing her and himself. The comments are pretty interesting as well on this one.

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Tyler and Trayvon – NYTimes.com

This article expresses reservations about hate crime laws. This is something that has troubled me for ages. Clearly people who break the norms of our society need to be sequestered. But there are already laws against killing and other things. My freedom ends where your nose begins kind of thing….

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Pink Slime Economics – NYTimes.com

Paul Krugman says it’s an insult to Pink Slime to compare it to the Republican House Budget just passed. Conservatives beware. This article will probably piss you off. But I think he makes sense.

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When It Comes to Immigration, Privatization Can Kill – NYTimes.com

More examples of the harm privatization can cause when applied incorrectly.

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Does It Matter if the Orchestra Isn’t in the Pit? – NYTimes.com

Visceral experience of music is definitely enhanced when it doesn’t come via electronic reproduction. Of course, I’m totally biased about this.

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My used copy of Collected Poems: 1953-1993 by Updike arrived in the mail yesterday. He has completely re-ordered his poems chronologically. Also he divides them into “poems” and “light verse.”

“Poems” come from the “real world” and “light verse” from “the man-made world.” It’s a bit confusing. He also omits a few poems from his collection. I have traced the first twenty or so poems of The Carpentered Hen and find that they fall in all three categories (poems, light verse, omitted).

He has notes in the back to some of the poems. So I found out that “March: A Birthday Poem for Elizabeth” which I mentioned and linked in my March 30th post, was actually wrong. The Elizabeth in question though expected in March was born on April 1. Updike vindicates himself a bit, because she was born in the U.K. and it was still March in the U.S.A.

Hah.

Another busy day yesterday. Unusually a choir member apologized to me for her behavior the previous day. I find forgiveness pretty easily, but her behavior had added to the weight of my own crazy interior anxiety which caused me to toss and turn on Sunday night. I slept much better last night.

I handed in all the information for the upcoming four services in Holy Week. This means I decided on the organ music and sent the secretary the titles and words to the choral anthems.

On Good Friday I will play a triptych of interesting pieces by Ernst Pepping on “O Sacred Head” for the prelude. The Vigil postlude and Easter Sunday postlude will both be the tried and true “Toccata” from Symphony 5 by Widor. I ran through this Sunday after choir rehearsal and convinced myself I still remember it. I have performed this piece many times including an undergraduate jury.

Musicians have to play in a test situation. Usually several faculty sit and listen and then grade you. That’s what a jury is.

I can remember that a visiting organ professor said that I played Widor in a very impressionistic manner. This was a typical veiled slam. My teacher had advised me to ignore the staccato markings over the incessant sixteenth notes.  He said that Widor put them there to off set the rolling acoustics of his church. I bought it then, but now I’m not so sure.  I am rehearsing it in a staccato manner, but will probably play it legato.

For the prelude on Sunday morning I have scheduled “A Prelude for Easter Morning” by the living Episcopalian composer, Gerald Near. It draws on Gregorian chant (Haec dies) and the Easter hymn, “O Sons and Daughters.”

I also managed to schedule a rehearsal for my string trio. The children’s choir director who is a phenomenal pianist consented to play a hymn at Maundy Thursday and the accompaniment to the choral anthem on Sunday.

This all looks pretty doable.

Today I have a class in a half hour and I have to prepare scores for the strings after that. And practice.

Tuesday in Holy Week.

Once again I am harvesting and storing the junk of my parents. In order to clear my Mom’s old room, Eileen and I sorted out what she needs now in her new smaller room and discarded some stuff she will probably never need. The remaining stuff is sitting in my house (and temporarily in my car).

This is the third time I have brought my parents extra stuff to my house. I think this will inoculate me so that if I don’t die a sudden death or become an invalid I will probably divest myself of a lot of my own junk before death.

It could happen.

warning… remainder of post boring church stuff, no pics, no fam stuff

Anxiety at church is rising. Since we have the Vigil on Saturday, I have asked the choir to come out for all three days of the Triduum (Maundy Thurs, Good Fri, Sat Vigil) plus Sun Morning. Most of them are okay. One is skipping services. One is angry and thinks this is not a privilege but too much to ask of the choir.  I have been repeatedly turned down when I have asked for help for Holy Week from the many instrumentalists at my church. I do think I will probably have enough people for a string trio on Maundy Thurs and a solo violist on Good Fri and an obbligato Violin at the Vigil. I plan to invite an excellent pianist to slip in and play the piano on the anthem for Easter Sunday.  Also I have a bass player who is up for anything.

Service went pretty well yesterday as will all the upcoming ones.  I especially enjoyed working with the kids. The children’s choir director has given notice that this will be her last year as director. I have told my boss that I am willing to take on this duty with a slight increase pay.  I am getting sucking in more than I originally intended I know, but I would like to see what would happen to this struggling group if I was the director.

The three kids from the children’s choir who showed up yesterday responded very well to my leadership and seem to have a good time. Basically all I did was teach them handbell technique and then have them do a very simple ring on the Hosanna.

I enjoyed playing the little Bach postlude. Once again I’m pretty sure this stuff falls on deaf ears. I understand the design of the Palm Sunday service to be one of moving from triumph to the solemn. So I accompanied the last two hymns pretty quietly. Then played a medium loud but solemn postlude. The music was there to frame the prayer if the congregation chose to use it.

I asked my choir to rehearse in the basement after church since that is where we have most of the Maundy Thursday service and where we will perform our anthem.  I think it might have helped their blending possibilities for the Thursday anthem. Like most church basements our basement is pretty forbidding to music: carpet, low ceilings, long room. I will have them perform in a circle and try to get some kind of choral blend. Silly me.

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Dr. John’s New Album ‘Locked Down’ and BAM Residency – NYTimes.com

New album at 72. Wow. I love this guy.

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Fatal Car Crash in Brazil Spotlights Class Division – NYTimes.com

I have trouble believing that Brazil had 40,600 traffic deaths in 2010. That can’t be right.

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Where Have All the Neurotics Gone? – NYTimes.com

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A Sontag Sampler – NYTimes.com

Excerpts from upcoming Sontag published journals and diaries.

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A Native Caste Society – NYTimes.com

Blacks are the target of the highest number of hate crimes in the United States, according to the Federal Bureau of Investigation — higher by a wide margin than any another group of Americans by race, ethnicity, religion, sexual orientation or disability. While blacks make up 12.6 percent of the country’s population, they were 70 percent of the victims of racial hate crimes in 2010.

from the linked article

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About All That War Buzz – NYTimes.com

Many American professors of politics and history (most notably Juan Cole of the University of Michigan, an expert on Shiite Islam) could disabuse your readers of their constant diet of misinformation relating to Iran having hostile intentions (it has not started an aggressive war in two centuries) and threatening to “wipe Israel off the face of the map” (the original Persian of that oft-cited phrase related to time not place — “the Zionist regime would pass” — and was expressed in the passive voice, implying no agency on the part of Iran in bringing that about).

Occasionally consulting a Persian-speaking source like Professor Cole could help you a lot.

from the linked article

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So I’m staring at Holy Week and wondering how things will go. The response to my call for musicians to come and celebrate this week has been very small. Many people are out of town. One young man is playing in a different church in town. Others simply don’t respond. I’m trying not to care. The music will go well, I’m sure.

I once attended a lecture about some esoteric performance practices in the Baroque period. As I was walking away with my teacher, Ray Ferguson, he was commenting how ironic it was that these kinds of controversy just don’t matter. In my heart, I knew he was right. One can play music in many ways. Ray taught me that the important thing was that you gave a convincing performance not it’s correctness. A valuable lesson.

Likewise, music at church, I think. So many ways to get from A to Z in church music. When I look at the New York Times sampling of music being played around at churches in New York, I am both encouraged and discouraged. Encouraged that I see pieces that I myself am doing and will do this week. Discouraged because I’m pretty sure that (in the words of the Bill Murray character in Stripes) “It just doesn’t matter” what I do, most of it probably makes little difference to the people in the room.

I’m pretty sure I will have a string trio for Maundy Thursday. I plan to keep trying to entice a non-choir instrumentalist for Good Friday. If I can’t get one, I have a choir member who has been bugging me to play the obbligato on the anthem. It’s hard to spare any singer with such a small group, but right now this musician is my back-up plan for Good Friday.

At the Vigil, I want to add a violin part to the Mozart Alleluia we are singing. It will sparkle.  That should all fall together.

And in the end, I can pretty much do all of this stuff myself providing the choir shows up, which it will.

My blood pressure is up. Sooprise. Sooprise.

Being a musician in the 21st century in America is an odd thing for me. Celebrity has pretty much drowned out reality. My wife once told a sixth grade class she was teaching that her husband was a musician. They were impressed. They were sure I was rich.

Even in academia I find that perception trumps reality. If one has the right degree, schmoozes the right way, and conducts oneself with a certain circumspect yet unmistakable air, one is often assumed to be competent. Never mind if that is the case or not.

Oh well, excuse the early morning Sunday bitching. I still am very happy to be in close contact with great music. This morning I will close the service with a lovely Bach chorale prelude from the orgelbuchlein on Jesu, Meine Freude. We are closing with a hymn based on this tune (“Would You Share Christ’s Passion?”).

I’ll close with another bitter little but lovely quote from the late Adrienne Rich which seems a bit appropriate.

“For a mass audience in the United States is not an audience for a collectively generated idea, welded together by the power of that idea and by common debates about it. Mass audiences are created by promotion, by the marketing of excitements that take the place of ideas, of real collective debate, vision, or catharsis; serve only to isolate us in the littleness of our own lives—we become incoherent to each other.”

from “The Space for Poetry” in What is Found There by Adrienne Rich

Capacity 26 Passengers
– sign in a bus

Affable, bibulous,
corpulent, dull,
eager-to-find-a-seat,
formidable,
garrulous, humorous,
icy, jejune,
knockabout, laden-
with-luggage (maroon),
mild-mannered, narrow-necked,
oval-eyed, pert,
seductive, tart, vert-
iginous, willowy,
xanthic (or yellow),
young, zebuesque are my
passengers fellow.

by John Updike

I have to admit I didn’t catch the alphabetical order reference of the words at first.

I mostly was interested in trying to figure out what “xanthic” and “zebuesque” meant.

Updike tells us that xanthic means yellow. It actually refers to a chemical by the same name and a skin pigment color.

The web site called Dictionary of Difficult Words associates it with these:

xanthochroid, n. & a. fair-haired and pale-skinned (person). xanthochroism, n. condition in which all skin pigments except yellow and orange disappear.
xanthoma, n. skin disease causing yellow patches.
xanthopsia, n. optical defect causing everything to seem yellow.
xanthous, a. yellow- or red-haired; yellow-skinned.

Cool. And about that “zebuesque.” Couldn’t raise anything online so I was reduced to pulling out one of my collection of dictionaries. It was there that I figured out that the word is zebu-esque. And refers to a Zebu.

My dictionary mentioned the hump on the back and described its ears as “pendulous.” So the passenger Updike is describing must have a hunchback and funny ears.

Finally, it took this entry of a teacher on a web site to cue me in that “U” is missing. I figure that’s for Updike.

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A Moderate Conservative Dilemma – NYTimes.com

Amazing man described in this article. He is so sensible it’s hard to believe he’s a politician.

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Broccoli and Bad Faith – NYTimes.com

It looks like the Supreme Court is gearing up for another bad ruling (like Bush V. Gore). What bothers me about this is not the partisanship but the obvious confusion on the part of people (supreme court justices!)  who are critical of the Affordable Health Care Act.

When people choose not to buy broccoli, they don’t make broccoli unavailable to those who want it. But when people don’t buy health insurance until they get sick — which is what happens in the absence of a mandate — the resulting worsening of the risk pool makes insurance more expensive, and often unaffordable, for those who remain.

Here’s what Charles Fried — who was Ronald Reagan’s solicitor general — said in a recent interview with The Washington Post: “I’ve never understood why regulating by making people go buy something is somehow more intrusive than regulating by making them pay taxes and then giving it to them.”

from the article above

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The Gated Community Mentality – NYTimes.com

Article by a guy who is writing a book on Gated Communities.

Gated communities churn a vicious cycle by attracting like-minded residents who seek shelter from outsiders and whose physical seclusion then worsens paranoid groupthink against outsiders

Mr. Martin’s “suspicious” profile amounted to more than his black skin. He was profiled as young, loitering, non-property-owning and poor. Based on their actions, police officers clearly assumed Mr. Zimmerman was the private property owner and Mr. Martin the dangerous interloper. After all, why did the police treat Mr. Martin like a criminal, instead of Mr. Zimmerman, his assailant? Why was the black corpse tested for drugs and alcohol, but the living perpetrator wasn’t?

from the above article

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Burning Man’s Cry for Help – NYTimes.com

This link is for you, Sarah J. It looks like even Burning Man can be corrupted.

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And Now, the Wait for the Health Care Ruling – NYTimes.com

Some excellent letters to the editor at this link.

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Adrienne Rich died this week. I’ve admired her poetry and essays over the years, as well as her clear-eyed political understanding of this poor country.

Adrienne Rich, Influential Feminist Poet, Dies at 82 – NYTimes.com

So last night I checked and was annoyed that my collection of her work was not filed correctly in my poetry books. Damn. This morning I got up and poked around until I found it in a stack of books waiting to be filed.

My collection has three books of hers bound as one. What is found there (1993) is a collection of essays. An Atlas of the Difficult World (1991) and The Fact of a Doorframe (1974) are poetry collections.

I began my morning reading with Rich. I found this lovely sentence in an essay in the first volume:

“To read as if your life depended on it would mean to let into your reading your beliefs, the swirl of your dreamlife, the physical sensations of your ordinary carnal life; and, simultaneously to allow what you’re reading to pierce the routines, safe and impermeable, in which ordinary carnal life is tracked, charted, channeled.”

from the essay, “As if your life depended on it” by Adrienne Rich

Perusing her poetry this morning sent me to the dictionary numerous times. Actually to the internet which is my dictionary of convenience.

Did you know a “corm” is the swollen, underground stem base of flowers like crocuses and gladioli? Rich used this word in a striking image: “This is the desert where missiles are planted like corms…” (from her poem, “Here is a map of our country”).

Girasol is another word for sunflowers which as also called Jerusalem Artichokes

and Sunchokes:

“the girasol, orange, gold-petalled/ with her black eye, laces the roadsides from Vermont to California…”

When I turned to read Updike this morning, I ran across another poem with a reference to sunflowers, an entire poem, in fact.

Sunflower
by John Updike

Sunflower, of flowers
the most lonely,
yardstick of hours,
long-term stander
in empty spaces,
shunner of bowers,
indolent bender
seldom, in only
the sharpest of showers:
tell us, why
is it your face is
a snarl of jet swirls
and gold arrows, a burning
old lion face high
in a cornflower sky,
yet by turning
your head we find
you wear a girl’s
bonnet behind?

from The Carpentered Hen and other tame creatures by John Updike

I need to quit blogging and go clean up my Mom’s old room at the nursing home. But one more poetry reference.

I was tickled to run across a poem entitled “March: a birthday poem for Elizabeth” which Updike wrote to his daughter. I have a daughter named Elizabeth who was born in March as well. I emailed her a link to the poem.

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Refugees Say Neighbor Shoots Neighbor in Syrian Crackdown – NYTimes.com

Yikes. Neighbor shooting neighbor.

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Earl Scruggs, Bluegrass Banjo Player, Dies at 88 – – NYTimes.com

Great musician died.

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‘Theft’ Law in the 21st Century – NYTimes.com

The information in this article is pretty familiar to me, but as the author points out it doesn’t inform the scandalous rhetoric of the music/movie moguls.

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