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My 60 year old body is a bit sore this morning. I managed to get my Mom set up in her new room, but there is a horrendous mess waiting for me in her old room. I have tons of stuff to sort through, saving what she needs and getting rid of the rest. That’s tomorrow.
Today I have pretty full schedule. Class at 9:30, meet with boss at 11, then back to my Mom’s nursing home. This time to play a little mini concert. I could probably pull of the Debussy piece I have been practicing, but I think I’m going to play music that I know a bit more thoroughly and can do in this exhausted state. So they will get Bach and Mozart for their classic portions. Maybe a Scarlatti piece. All stuff I play regularly at weddings and funerals. Good stuff. In addition. I will play pop music from the forties and of course we will sing hymns.
Contemplating not playing Debussy’s “Danse” at tomorrow’s mini-concert at my Mom’s nursing home. Most of yesterday was spent moving my Mom’s stuff. So I didn’t have time to practice piano or treadmill. I have many other piano pieces up my sleeve that I can perform tomorrow. Today I want to move the rest of my Mom’s stuff into her new room.
I did do some church stuff yesterday. It makes me a little crazy that I can’t get my church to keep a master calendar. On the Sunday bulletin, it said that there would be a Movie Night on the Wednesday of Holy Week. On the church’s google calendar (which is supposedly the master calendar), there was no mention of this. Of course, I later noticed that the Maundy Thursday service and the Good Friday service were also missing. The Easter Vigil was there, but then I remembered putting it on myself during a Worship Commission meeting.
Calendering probably seems like a small thing to you. But it makes it difficult to plan if there is not master plan. Whippy skippy. I emailed my boss and she told met that there was indeed a Movie night planned, but that I should go ahead a schedule a rehearsal as she didn’t foresee much overlap between the movie people and the music people.
Sigh.
This morning I finished all the John Updike poems on http://www.poetryfoundation.org/ . I think I will order a large book of his poetry. I own a couple of small ones (one that I purchased as a teen). I am thinking of re-reading them until a new arrives. It turns out that I have had a practice of reading poetry books all the way through, just not huge collections.
I also finished Payback by Margaret Atwood. Part of “Mom day” yesterday was convincing her to go to her shrink appointment. At the end of the appointment he finally talked to me about mom. It’s her third appointment with him. I have tried to cue him in to her history by mentioning the psychological base test they did several years ago when I dragged my parents to the area (he has access to her files through the Pine Rest network to which he belongs). He told me that Mom didn’t really want to come today. I laughed. I told him he wasn’t the first shrink she has resisted. I began saying that she cycles through depression and described for him her attempted suicide (not a terribly serious attempt admittedly… mostly she took a few tylenol and then said she took the bottle… ) and her stay in the Pysch Ward in GR. By this time he was saying they should have another appointment in three or four weeks. I then told him that her previous talk shrink (psychologist) invited me in at the close of the appointment for a three way discussion. I told him I was open to that but was comfortable with however he wanted to proceed.
Dope.
Anyway, sitting in the waiting room while Mom was in the appointment gave me an opportunity to read Payback.
It’s an interesting book, but more on that later maybe.
Yesterday morning was busy for me. After relaxing for a bit, I went to see my elderly mother. She and I made a list of stuff in her room she wants to move to her new room and stuff we can get rid of. I’m planning to try and get her in by Wednesday evening. This gives me some time to box up stuff she is discarding and take it to the thrift shop. She has lost the little emergency button that was hanging around her neck. They gave her a new one and asked me to watch out for the old one as we move her.
I came home and discovered that my noon class had canceled. I emailed Amazon help because the Kindle deal cookbook I attempted to purchase on Sunday didn’t load properly. By the time I received their reply it was working. I also emailed Gateway, the people who manufactured my netbook. I have broken it again and am hoping they will replace the screen for a reasonable price (as they did before when it was under warranty).
I called the American Medical Response of Michigan company. They are the company whose ambulance took my Mom to the ER back in January. I received a bill saying that they couldn’t get Aetna Medicare to pay f0r it. I tried to call them last week, but they put me on hold so long that the twenty minutes I had allotted for the call was insufficient and I had to hang up on them.
Yesterday I borrowed my Mom’s Aetna card, came home, called AMR of M and put them on speaker phone while I typed up the list of what furniture my Mom wanted to keep and discard. Clever steve. Eventually they came on and I cleared it up by providing more up-to-date insurance info for them.
Today is both church day (the day I think about upcoming church stuff like Hell week) and Mom day. Eileen is going to go over and pack a few boxes to go to Bibles for Mexico this morning I think.
After class, I plan to do some of this myself, as well as maybe move some of the furniture into the new room.
I am playing for the March birthday party at my Mom’s nursing home on Thursday. When I do these kinds of gigs I try to mix it up. Most of the music doesn’t need prep but I include some substantial music each time. This Thursday I am planning to perform “Danse” by Debussy as well as a few other classic pieces which I haven’t chosen yet. “Danse” is something I have been practicing and think I can pull off by Thursday. I think it sounds like Spring.
I finished Woolgathering by Patti Smith and am thinking of a second poet to read besides Ann Sexton.
John Updike (1932 - 2009)
This morning I read half of the poems by John Updike on the Poetry Foundation site. I like Updike and have read tons of his novels. I bought a little book of his poetry when I was young and still remember poems I read then. Here are a few I enjoyed this morning.
Bookmarked this musician’s blog. He was mentioned in a NYT review as a composer who delineates his work into classical music and popular music. I find this amusing. Reminds me of Graham Greene’s designation of his work as either entertainments or literary stuff. I think this kind of thinking is a bit artificial. As Duke Ellington said (paraphrased) “there are two kinds of music, good and the other kind.”
“…. we seem to be turning into a country where crony capitalism doesn’t just waste taxpayer money but warps criminal justice, in which growing incarceration reflects not the need to protect law-abiding citizens but the profits corporations can reap from a larger prison population.”
The key is to determine who was standing his ground and defending himself: the boy with the candy or the man with the gun
More reflections on Trayvon Martin’s death. I had a Facebook “friend” put up a reactionary link about Gun Control yesterday. A link to a blog post about an incident in the U.K. last year to prove that anti-gun liberals want to destroy the fabric of our society. I had to respond. Allowing things I so disagree with to stand unchallenged is part of the problem of the echo chamber. So I replied, “What this particular soft-headed anti-gun liberal wants is for people not to shoot someone carrying skittles and wearing a hoody….” The Gun people were undaunted of course. But I just had to write something.
My internet connection kept failing this morning. So when I came across a good quote in Payback by Atwood, I found myself pulling out my old journal to jot it down.
This helps me understand my own blogging habits. I have kept journals on and off for literally forty years. As my brother pointed out to me recently writing is part of a process of thinking and reasoning. It has certainly been that for me.
Blogging has constrained me a bit to be more appropriate since it is technically a public forum. I get about 40-50 hits a day (according to counter) which is low for web sites. But there is still the possibility that anyone with an internet connection could read what I write. My constraint is borne out of consideration for others. Privately I write with little constraint.
But I still find this helpful. A release, if you will.
Anyway this morning’s quote from Atwood:
“In narratives involving irrational and obsessive hatred, especially of some person or group, such hatred—say the Jungians–is the mark of a person who has not come to terms with his or own Shadow.”
Margaret Atwood, Payback
It’s tempting to use this kind of thinking when trying to understand others’ hatred and confusion. Better, I think, to look in the mirror.
While I was jotting in my journal I came across a poem I wrote last year: “Apologies to my 2nd Grade Teacher.” I decided to polish it up a bit and post it.
I keep making up music and poetry.
I often think of a friend who in my youth read my poetry and ruefully shook his head and said with a rueful smile, someday it’s got to get better.
Maybe not, but I still like making up stuff.
That’s my attraction to the dance class. It’s a place where I can sit and make up music.
The music went well yesterday. I noticed earlier in the week that I had made a note to myself last year in the margins of the music for the prelude: “Fell apart. Practice more next time.”
I don’t remember how it had “fell apart.” My suspicion was that in attempting to replicate the piece on my tiny organ I had over planned the extra-musical stuff like stops and crescendos and diminuendos. Whatever it was, yesterday I played it pretty accurately. Until I arrived at the last statement of the melody in the right hand and accidentally had the wrong stop. I smiled to myself and finished the phrase without changing the stop. Still. I played it and the postlude well.
I think I have found a new author to read: Antonya Nelson.
Checked this out of the library and am thinking of reading it.
She has a short story in the new New Yorker (March 26 issue) called “Chapter Two” which I quite like.
What I usually do with the fiction in the New Yorker is read the first paragraph or so. If it doesn’t bore me or annoy me, I go on. This story is the story of someone telling a story. To her A.A. group. About her very eccentric neighbor. And it hooked me in. I would link in the full text but the New Yorker has made it available online to subscribers only. Since I subscribe I have access to the New Yorker online but it annoys the heck out of me with its antiquated simulated magazine interface.
You know the kind that simulates the turn of a page and has no links in the index or anywhere else for that matter. Nice exploiting of the technology!
Good grief. So I never bother to use it. I just read the magazines when they come in the mail.
Eileen and I went to see Hunger Games yesterday.
I was surprised to find myself enjoying it… much more than the volume of prose it was based on. I continue to maintain the first volume of the books starts weak. I don’t have a copy to re-examine but I do know it took me several tries to get going in it. I recall I was annoyed at the simple-mindedness of the prose style and the fact that there was a cat called Buttercup. Buttercup!
The movie began stronger with a different scene. I believe it was Flickerman the M.C. interviewing the Gamemaster.
As the movie progressed I realized that the subject matter that interested me in these books held some very real possibilities when it became a screen play.
There’s nothing like watching a reality show. Throw in enough bizarre stuff like Wizard of Oz haircuts and outrageous costumes and you have a mirror of just how inane our society can be.
It’s my hope that as they make the next three (3!) of the planned movies that they get nastier about the fact that the pampered rich obtuse people in the Capital who benefit from the work of the people in the outlying Districts are really a portrait of the people actually sitting in the theater and watching the movie.
I have been spending a lot of time with Debussy and Beethoven on the piano. There are a couple of piano pieces of Debussy I have long admired and played but never really learned thoroughly enough to perform: “Danse”
and “Passepied.”
I have been concentrating on them for over a week and thinking maybe this time I’ll learn them.
Last night after rehearsing today’s prelude and postlude I found myself drawn into Bach’s D minor trio for organ.
I love this music. It’s ironic because the slow movement is really the first Bach trio I learned years ago. I concentrated on the more challenging outer movements. Again I’m feeling perversely like I should learn this music and perform it. Maybe I will.
“…even a police officer is held to account for every single bullet he or she discharges, so why should a private citizen be given more rights when it came to using deadly physical force?”
It’s a gas to pick up a book and begin reading with no context, just to take it pretty much on its own terms. My daughter, Elizabeth, recently mailed me this little book by Patti Smith. I recognized the name, had a vague idea of Smith as a punk rocker/artist…. after googling her I recalled she was involved with the Mapplethorpe set in New York.
So I didn’t have much orientation but happily started reading. The books is dreamy bits of prose with many many obscure references. I like this in the day of being able to run unknown words and references down online. Smith refers to music I don’t know. Right now I’m listening to this:
As I first listened to this, I somehow had Tosca playing in the background. Earlier in the morning I began a play list of Smith music references. I inadvertently must have began playing the long aria, “Vissi d’arte” which Smith refers to in Woolgathering.
Later I began playing the Patty Waters YouTube (since she didn’t seem to be on spotify). I thought they were the same recording with Tosca being pretty much in the foreground.
How unusual and 60s and John Cage like, I thought. I even wondered how this recording got past me since the juxtaposition was so striking: Puccini and folk music and jazz…. the use of a recording in a recording….
As I poked around, I couldn’t find anything about this unusual use of Puccini. I started to suspect that either the YouTube video wasn’t the Patty Waters recording or something else was going on. Sure enough, I was playing Spotify and YouTube at the same time.
I’m now listening to the Patty Waters and it still sounds pretty determinedly avant-guarde for the time. I just went over to Amazon and bought the whole album in MP3s for the grand total of $8.99. What a bargain! Plus I love the immediacy of the interwebs. Discover it. Think about it. Preview it. Purchase it at a reasonable price. Listen to it.
The jokes on me for the supposed juxtaposition I guess.
I must be a soft headed goofball, because I am enjoying the Waters recording a lot now without Puccini simultaneously playing.
I was entranced with the Tosca aria because it begins with these words: “Vissi d’arte, vissi d’amore” – I lived for my art, I lived for love…
I quite like that.
I look forward to running down other references in Smith. I have added the little book to my morning poetry reading.
Speaking of which, I did talk to the doctor about getting up early and reading poetry as part of the lowering of my blood pressure.
“You’re going to laugh at me,” I told her. She took on that professional nothing will perturb me look that doctors have to know.
She wasn’t embarrassed until I asked her if she knew the work of William Carlos Williams. She murmured about not knowing much about poetry. I told her I only mention it because Williams was a doctor. I thought but did not tell this handsome 45 year old American Hispanic that Williams’ mother was Hispanic and that his middle name Carlos was the name of his uncle.
Some things are beyond the medical consultation room I guess.
I try to do what my doctor tells me.
But I think of it as having a modern witch doctor (not to disparage the profession). One superstitiously follows their advice, exercise, attempt to eat right. It’s all magic anyway. And luck. Maybe one will be spared a bit longer and get to taste life. Maybe not.
It reminds me of Dylan Thomas’s dedication to his poetry:
“I read somewhere of a shepherd who, when asked why he made, from within fairy rings, ritual observances to the moon to protect his flocks, replied: ‘I’d be a dam’ fool if I didn’t!’ These, poems, with all their crudities, doubts, and confusions, are written for the love of Man and in praise of God, and I’d be a damn’ fool if they weren’t.”
This paragraph which I read in my youth has had a huge influence in my ability to embrace the idea of believing at all…. believing in the doctor or the priest… I often find myself thinking of Dylan Thomas’s shepherd.
As Richard Hofstadter pointed out in his classic 1964 essay “The Paranoid Style in American Politics,” crazy conspiracy theories have been an American tradition ever since clergymen began warning that Thomas Jefferson was an agent of the Bavarian Illuminati. But it’s one thing to have a paranoid fringe playing a marginal role in a nation’s political life; it’s something quite different when that fringe takes over a whole party, to the point where candidates must share, or pretend to share, that fringe’s paranoia to receive the party’s presidential nod.
I have a doctor’s appointment at 10 AM. It’s my semiannual check-up so I am fasting for the blood work. My blood pressure is up a bit this morning so I’m probably worrying about whether my blood pressure will be high at the doctor’s office.
This makes me crazy. Worrying about worrying.
I also plan to ask her about my ears. My ears have been stopped up several times in the last few months.
It feels a bit like a cold and I can’t hear very well. I fear that I am losing more of my hearing this way and would like to have an ear doctor look at it.
Eileen is spending the night in Ann Arbor. I ended the evening last night with Beethoven at the piano then off to read myself to sleep.
Earlier I had jumped from bed to figure out a hymn tune my new Episcopalian colleague I met with yesterday was looking for. Ironic because it comes from the Roman Catholic practice and reflects the Roman Catholic background of the Episcopal priest she is working for. I tossed most of my Roman Catholic reference books and hymnals when I quit working for them full-time. But with a little searching I think I managed to figure it out.
I finished volume 8 of Sandman yesterday and also the Icelandic murder mystery, The Flatey Enigma by Viktor Arnar Ingolfsson.
About half way through Payback by Margaret Atwood
and The Influencing Machine by Brooks Gladstone.
Both good reads. Atwood is an eloquent hymn to the human concept of debt. Gladstone is an insider’s examination of media in America, both presently and how we got here.
Citizens for R & E have done extensive research on the money congresspeople spend on themselves and their relatives. Mostly legal. Mostly questionable. Have fun and look up your state or take their witty little ethics online quiz.
Clear essay about the lack of protection of rights in the USA.
Income inequality isn’t just about justice; it’s about freedom, too. One view of freedom minimises the state’s role in an individual’s life and maximises markets so that individuals are free to risk whatever they want to risk to be whatever they want to be. Another view sees the obligation of the state to hedge against the risk of the marketplace so that individuals can feel secure enough to be what they want to be.
Obviously, the libertarian view favours someone who can afford risk; the socialist view favours someone who can’t. One view has confidence in the market while the other is skeptical. One view sees income inequality as natural while the other sees it as politically oppressive.
Whew! I find that when I finally take some time off, I basically feel exhausted. That’s what happened to me yesterday. It’s happening today as well. I tried very hard not to do much yesterday. Basically spent the day reading and practicing. Finished Jacob’s Room by Virginia Woolf. I enjoyed this book.
When I finally got to the U.K. I had fun because I had read so much about it in novels and other books. Now that I have been there, when a novel like Woolf’s Jacob’s Room draws on a setting I have actually seen like Cornwall or London, that’s fun too.
It’s intriguing how Woolf writes a story about a character with brief glimpses set in between more general prose about other stuff and other events.
I think she might be writing about her technique when she says:
“It is thus that we live, they say, by an unseizable force. They say that novelists never catch it; that it goes hurtling through their nets and leaves them torn to ribbons. This, they say, is what we live by—an unseizable force.”
Virginia Woolf, Jacob’s Room
Also finished off Sandman volume 8 by Neil Gaiman recently.
Checked out the next two yesterday.
I also began reading The Elementary Particles by the French writer, Michel Houellebecq. It immediately grabbed my attention. Martin who is the main character is a “clear sighted and deliberate engineer” of a new paradigm shift in human history (presumably the application of quantum theory to everything). Houellebecq wickedly and wittily tells his story. Lots of irony.
Eileen left the house this morning around 5:30 AM to go to a two day workshop in Ann Arbor. I have three tasks today: appointment with my Boss, piano trio rehearsal and a meeting with another Episcopalian church musician who thinks I might be able to connect her with some resources….
Not sure what that last one is about, but what the heck. She is the first Episcopalian musician to contact me in Western Michigan since I moved here in 1987. It’s weird because when I lived in the eastern side of the state I knew many Episcopalian musicians and the collegiality, networking and common vision was phenomenal. How phenomenal I didn’t know until I moved here.
You know you’re in trouble when the people at your Mom’s nursing home quickly agree that you need a day off (today) and your Mom’s tax lady asks you if you are alright.
Ay yi yi.
I put a lot on the schedule yesterday so that I could clear today of everything. So I planned to drop off my Mom’s taxes and get her back and forth to the pain doctor.
Then I went downstairs and discovered water all over the floor. The hot water heater had given up the ghost. So I added the plumber to the list.
The taxes of course required some more leg work so I ended up calling a bunch of people to get more information to file. Turns out one my Mom’s IRAs doesn’t routinely report interest for tax purposes unless you cash it out. Why is that, I wonder? Also, they don’t really have a web site and couldn’t give me the numbers over the phone. But they are mailing it. Good grief.
Finally met my Mom’s pain doctor. I stayed with her through most of the appointment (they took her to another room for the actual epidural). Lo and behold, it was the shortest appointment ever. I blocked out 2 hours thinking it might even go 3 as it has in the past. But this time we were in and out in close to an hour and a half. And the doctor lowered the drug (Gabapentin) that I suspect is significantly contributing to her weakness and confusion even more than his assistant did at the last appointment.
After getting Mom safely back to her room I had time to go to church and choose music for the weekend. Supper with Eileen at the library and home to treadmill. A full but productive day.
Today I plan to read, relax and practice. Thank you to Mark for being concerned that I take some time off. I’m trying, dude.
This isn’t just art that exists in the market, or is “about” the market. This is art that is the market – a series of gestures that are made wholly or primarily to capture and embody financial value, and only secondarily have any other function or virtue.
Observations about evolution of application of law. What begins by prosecuting, convicting and sentencing “violent racist thugs” ends up over punishing “stupid but nonviolent young people.”
I’m still feeling pretty burned out. Spent most of yesterday tending to Mom. She agreed to have lunch with Eileen and me at the library cafe. I pushed her everywhere in a wheelchair, but she was still exhausted right at the outset.
By the time we have made it through her doctor’s appointment, she was in bad shape: even more exhausted and her back was hurting her like crazy.
She, I and Dr. Nykamp (her psychiatrist) agree that it is time for her to move to more supportive care.
I informed the facility where she is living. This will only mean moving two rooms down the hall but will provide her with much more personal attention.
Today, I am seriously thinking of taking her tax info to the tax person. Her bank failed to do the mandatory disbursement of her IRA so this will be even more complicated than usual. Oy.
Then in the afternoon I am planning to go and sit with her at her pain doctor so that I can monitor her care there.
I am feeling a lot of physical and mental fatigue. But if I get this all done today, I will have literally nothing scheduled tomorrow.
Warnings from the former editor of the NYT who bit the Iraq invasion hook line and sinker but now regrets it. He raises 5 questions and 2 caveats about going to war ever again.
I am seeking lethargy. No ballet classes this week. But I seem to have other things to do. Like get my Mom back and forth to doctors. And myself as well on Friday. Meetings at church.
In the mean time, I seem to be slipping into a vacation mood. I do what I usually do: read, practice. But I am thinking I have less places I have to be less times.
Finished Berryman’s The Dream Songs this morning. Not sure exactly what I think about them, except that I enjoyed reading them.
Brain scans are revealing what happens in our heads when we read a detailed description, an evocative metaphor or an emotional exchange between characters. Stories, this research is showing, stimulate the brain and even change how we act in life.
I have been wondering if my morning poetry reading is part of why my blood pressure is down. I look forward to saying this to my doctor on Friday. If for nothing else to watch her reaction.
Once again the net book is left out of the discussion. I read on my netbook. But that doesn’t seem to be on the radar in the talk about the death of the book and the birth of the digital reader.
I loved this novel Trollope wrote late in his career.
I also find it odd that people speaking in defense of the book feel so threatened and seem to misunderstand that it’s probably a good thing that people read whenever they bother to and however they can.
This is the web site of a militant call girl. I linked into it via a Tweet of Nicholas Kristof. He pointed to it as critical of his series on sex trafficking.
I am libertarian enough to think that if someone chooses to sell their body this is totally their business (theirs and their customers). But I also am soft headed enough to be concerned when people are drawn into situations beyond their control.
Also I read some of this stuff because I am trying to reach out of my own echo chamber of sources.
But frankly, The Honest Courtesan seems more coherent than the article by Laura Augustin which begins with paragraph after paragraph reviling Kristof. I see more content in the former than the latter.
In both cases, I am in a learning stance. I guess do-gooders like Kristof inevitably open themselves up to charges of paternalism and “soft imperialism.” It does seem however that if he has developed the game that Augustin describes it’s pretty goofy.
Good grief. It looks like this is the deal. Click on this to go to the free online game. If you want to.
I think this blog is pretty cool. It seems that Markson scans in pages of books he is studying with his marks in them or his name in them with a date. Then there is some prose regarding the concepts he is thinking about….. I like it.
I think this is a brave and wonderful telling of the early “tribe” of AIDS activists.
“If you come at a problem in a way that’s just disruptive and iconoclastic, but you don’t know what you’re talking about, all you are is a nuisance,” said Anthony S. Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, when we talked last week. Act Up’s leaders, he told me, knew what they were talking about. As a result, they “cracked open the opaque process” of drug development, altered the patient-doctor relationship and “changed the whole face of advocacy,” he said.
Started reading Margaret Atwood’s Payback: Debt and the Shadow Side of Wealth yesterday. A Facebook friend recommended the movie based on it. I was surprised to find it sitting on the shelf at my local library.
I’m not particularly good at money. I pay my bills and all that. But there is a limit to how interested I am in the whole deal. And now it seems to be a serious blight on my country…. the whole money thing.
So maybe I can learn something from Atwood. I like her approach which is historical and philosophical and not practical.
I was amused in the second chapter when she launches into a discussion of memorizing the Lord’s prayer as a kid. She immediately focuses on the use of the word, debt, versus trespasses in the “forgive us our ________ as we forgive others their ___________.
Atwood, a Canadian, writes: “The word ‘debt’—blunt and to the point—was well fitted to the plain, grape-juice drinking United Church, and ‘trespasses” was an Anglican word, rustling and frilly, that would go well with wine-sipping for Communion and a more ornate theology.”
I remember when the new translation in the 1972 Book of Common Prayer (Episcopalian) settled on the word, sins, for this section, that I was uncomfortable with it. That is, until I picked up enough Greek to realize that it is indeed the word, sin, in the Greek.
Atwood goes further and says that in Aramaic (the other language that Jesus and the disciples spoke) the word used had both the meaning of “debt” and “sin.”
The 10 points:
How reliable is the source of the claim?
Does the source make similar claims?
Have the claims been verified by somebody else?
Does this fit with the way the world works?
Has anyone tried to disprove the claim?
Where does the preponderance of evidence point?
Is the claimant playing by the rules of science?
Is the claimant providing positive evidence?
Does the new theory account for as many phenomena as the old theory?
Are personal beliefs driving the claim?
There are apparently going to be four movies of the trilogy. Good grief. According to this interview the three actors playing the lead roles had all read The Hunger Games before coming to this project. Go figure. I didn’t know actors read books. Cool.
“Real or not real?” This is the question Peeta begins asking after he has been brainwashed by the bad guys in Mockingjay the concluding volume of The Hunger Games trilogy. I had difficulty getting started in the first volume of this work. But after the third volume, I think there is some elegance in the plot.
And I especially like the way the author, Susan Collins, poses some important questions about what’s real and what’s fake. Throughout the book, most of the actions take place before an unseen audience. The Hunger Games and their rituals are broadcast to the entire country of Panem as a sort of combination of propaganda, circus for the masses, and a warning since each “district” must select a “tribute” to participate in fight to the death. (Echoes of Shirley Jackson’s story, “The Lottery.”) That audience’s perceptions are often what matter most. Hence the characters include a brave fashion designer who designs costumes for the people in the Hunger Games. There are a trio of people who administer make up and dress Katniss, the main character.
The omniscience of the broadcasting and recording camera is a nice touch. One that echoes a lot of places right now, especially England where the population is routinely monitored via Closed Circuit TV (CCTV).
And the question of what is real and what is not real is an important question to ask. “Crap detection” as Howard Rheingold has called it is an essential tool for survival both online and offline.
I like it very much that this Young Adult sci fi novel is asking some of these questions. I feel like the quality of the writing evolved. I still think the first pages of the first novel are weak. But by the end I was forgiving the unevenness of the writing because I got caught up in the concepts and the plot.
My used copy of Brooke Gladstone’s The Influencing Machine arrived in the mail yesterday. I am thirty pages into it and unsurprisingly it is excellent and informative.
From the introduction:
“We hunger for objectivity, but increasingly swallow ‘news’ like Jell-O shots in ad hoc cyber-saloons. We marinate in punditry seasoned with only those facts and opinions we can digest without cognitive distress.
Sometimes we feel queasy about it—queasiness we project back onto the media.
But we don’t really get agitated until we encounter the other guys’ media. Those guys are consuming lies. They are getting juiced up. Their media diet is making them stupid.
What if our media choices are making us stupid? What if they’re shortening our attention span, exciting our lusts, eroding our values, hobbling our judgment?
I admit that I think that TV news makes people stupider. “The more you watch, the less you know.” So I think that Gladstone is describing me in this paragraph to some extent. Great stuff.
One more thing on this subject. Although I abhor Rush Limbaugh, I am troubled by people who want to force him off the air. But, I am much more troubled by his and Anne Coulter’s and other crazy hate filled people’s popularity. In a free speech zone, we will always have people selling their hate, it’s the number of buyers of this hate that worries me.
Amazing stupid laws about not teaching Mexican literature in Tuscon’s public schools…… Tony Diaz, the author, strikes back and plans a book tour, smuggling books into America.
Yesterday, the ballet instructor asked for a tarantella. The class before she had asked if anyone knew what a doppelganger was…. I like these words: tarantella and doppelganger. I wrote a poem or two using the latter word when I was younger.
The language of ballet is different from the language of music. The ballet dictionary defines tarantella this way:
“A fast Italian dance in 6/8 time.”
The music dictionary defines it this way:
“A Neapolitan dance in rapid 6/8 meter, probably named for Taranto in southern Italy, or, according to popular legend, for the tarantula spider whose poisonous bite the dance was believed to cure. In the mid-19th century it was frequently composed (Chopin, Liszt, S. Heller, Auber, Weber, Thalberg) in the style of a brilliant perpetual mobile. See M. Schneider, “La Danza de espadas y la tarantela”
Neither definition is much help in attempting to improvise one that would suit the needs of a ballet instructor.
I had mistakenly received the impression that the theme for the Alfred Hitchcock TV show was a tarantella. I think this was from quickly glancing at a list of them on Wikipedia. Ah, the dangers of taking in information too quickly.
What did help (as usual) was to watch the instructor teach the character dance to the class. “Imagine you have a tambourine…. move like this…..” She alluded to spiders several times as she outlined the routine. She even incorporated body slaps. When 15 or so ballerinas slap their body there is a sound. When teachers put sound in the dance I often treat it as a rest which enhances the unspoken dialogue between the dancers and the music I am improvising.
This worked okay, until about the third time through this vigorous routine, the dancers began to be a tiny bit late with their slaps. Unsurprisingly, the teacher told me not to slow down, so I quit leaving the beats on the slaps up the class.
This was the last class on the last day before spring break. I think it was wise of her to end class with this dance. It kept the students attention right until she dismissed them. Smart teacher.
There seems to be quite a bit of reaction to Greg Smith’s article in the NYT. I still think the original article rings true. But I am critical of institutions like businesses, universities and churches.
I’m writing a little later in the day, today. I got wrapped up in my reading this morning and before I knew it was practically time to go do class. I was struck this morning by the sound of birds singing. Relaxing.
I guess I am now on Spring Break from Hope College. I could use some down time. It looks like I will have plenty of other tasks during break: Mom has two doctor appointments, I am planning to initiate getting her taxes done, meetings at work…. so it goes.
A passage in Virginia Woolf made me think of Debussy yesterday, that and the beautiful weather we are experiencing here in Western Michigan. So I’ve been playing through some of his piano works. I do like his stuff.
I continue to be amused that most if not all reference books have errors in them. This article cites a comparison done by Nature magazine in 2005 between 42 comparative passages on Wikipedia and in the Encyclopaedia Britannica. Wikipedia averaged 4 errors per article, Encyclopaedia 3.
Nevertheless this is a milestone (publishing the last print edition).
I do object to Wikipedia’s criteria of only using secondary sources and not factoring in better answers if they are not available in them. See the recent scandal of a scholar who had trouble correcting a widely held misconception:
Good quote from Secretary Hilary Clinton in this article:
“Why extremists always focus on women remains a mystery to me,” she told an adoring crowd at the Women in the World Summit at Lincoln Center on Saturday. “But they all seem to. It doesn’t matter what country they’re in or what religion they claim. They want to control women. They want to control how we dress. They want to control how we act. They even want to control the decisions we make about our own health and bodies.
“Yes,” she continued to applause, “it is hard to believe that even here at home, we have to stand up for women’s rights and reject efforts to marginalize any one of us, because America needs to set an example for the entire world.”
These are letters to the editor. Some great comments:
It’s time to leave. Let us bring our soldiers home and help them heal. Let us learn a lesson as a nation, lessen our hubris, expand our global awareness, get over our self-centeredness and cease our aggressions.
MICHAEL WALSH
Denver, March 13, 2012
It has been said that “the first casualty of war is truth.” In fact, as demonstrated by our soldiers burning the Koran, urinating on the dead and massacring innocent civilians, another casualty of war is the humanity of “the enemy.”
TIM IGLESIAS
Oakland, Calif., March 13, 2012
The disaster of the invasion and occupation of Afghanistan becomes more apparent day by day. The shock and anger of 9/11 trumped reason and judgment as the United States blindly struck out, formed alliances with corrupt warlords and ended up alienating the entire population.
I have a very full day today. Planning to exercise at 9, practice organ at 10, 10:30 staff meeting with a private meeting with boss immediately following. Then ballet classes (with an hour off for lunch) until 5:30. Then pick up Eileen at 6 and off to drinks and food probably at the pub.
Yesterday I chose organ music to perform this weekend for the prelude and postlude. Am doing a couple of movements (II & IV) of Handel’s Organ Concerto in G minor, Opus 4 Nr 3.
This music sounds very English to me. For some reason I think Handel wrote them for English organs (which had a much less developed pedal keyboard than the continent). At any rate they are lovely little chamber like pieces. Traditionally when played by the organ alone one registers the solo instrument on a different manual (the original solo organ part has no pedal parts anyway).
This has to be a short post because my day is beginning. It looks like it’s going to be up in the seventies today. Woo hoo!
Thinking about writing and blogging this morning I found this lovely passage in Virginia Woolf.
“For centuries the writing-desk has contained sheets fit precisely for the communications of friends. Masters of language, poets of long ages, have turned from the sheet that endures to the sheet that perishes, pushing aside the tea-tray, drawing close to the fire (for letters are written when the dark presses round a bright red cave), and addressed themselves to the task of reaching, touching, penetrating the individual haert. Were it possible! But words have been used too often; touched and turned, and left exposed to the dust of the street.”
Virginia Woolf, Jacob’s Room
I like “penetrating the individual heart” and the entire last sentence: “But words have been used too often; touched and turned, and left exposed to the dust of the street.” The Interwebs is, indeed, a place where “individual hearts” can be penetrated and where words are “used too often” and are “exposed to the dust of the street.”
This past Saturday when my web site went down for a few hours, I had in mind this poem for my blog post:
Dream Song 258
Scarlatti spurts his wit across my brain,
so too does Figaro: so much for art
after the centuries yes
who had for all their pains above all pain
& who brought to their work a broken heart
but not as bad as Schubert’s:
that went beyond the possible: that was like a man
dragged by his balls, singing aloud ‘Oh yes’
while to his anguisht glance
the architecture differs: he’s getting on,
the tops of buildings change, like a mad dance,
the Piazza Navona
recovers its calm after he went through,
the fountain went on splashing, all was the same
after his agony,
abandoned cats had what to say to you,
lovers performed their glory & its shame:
Henry put his foot down: free
John Berryman
The pics are the Piazza Navona in Rome.
I love it that Berryman mentions Scarlatti, Mozart and Schubert, all favorites of mine that I regular visit at the piano.
I finished the section of Anne Sexton’s poems which contains her book, “To Bedlam and Part Way Back.”
The next section of her complete poems is her book, All My Pretty Ones. I was struck by this epigraph she uses:
“… the books we need are the kind that act upon us like a misfortune, that make us suffer like the death of someone we love more than ourselves, that make us feel as though we were on the verge of suicide, or lost in a forest remote from all human habitation—a book should serve as the ax for the frozen sea within us.”
from a letter of Franz Kafka to Oskar Pollak
I know that books are a very minor pleasure for most people, but for me this quote sums up something I have felt about books and sometimes even experienced with them since I was a kid.
After that last high falutin quote and comment, I admit that I purchased and read Margaret Atwood’s new short story, “I’m Starved for You.” It’s a fun little piece that reads like a chip off of The Handmaid’s Tale by her. Only $2.99 and as far as I can tell only available in e-book form. Recently published.
I also bought the Kindle deal for the day yesterday which was Viktor Arnar Ingolfsson’s The Flatey Enigma. I’m about half way through it. Ingolfssohn is apparently an Icelandic mystery writer. Flatey (or FlatØ) is a real place being one of zillions of little islands off of Iceland.
I have attended a concert at the Crystal Cathedral. It is a breath taking piece of vulgarity. Sound passes through much of the plate glass window making a huge space with odd acoustics. Schuller went to school at Hope College. OOrah.
All governments are jerks. (I know I know this contradicts my usual insistence that government is not the enemy but is the community, but it is a quote from a friend I knew who escaped with her family from Romania in the 70s…. hard not to remember)
After church yesterday, Eileen and I grabbed something to eat then went off to Meijers to purchase a house warming gift. We were invited to an open house celebrating the purchase of a new residence for some friends.
Church felt pretty weird yesterday. The retiring assistant was the star of the show. He did a forum in which he played DVD recordings of Simon and Garfunkel (at least that’s what he said, I didn’t attend). Then some people asked if they could play music for him on his last day. So they did the prelude and postlude. He ended his sermon with a recording of Pete Seeger singing “We Shall Overcome.”
I felt pretty disconnected the entire service which is not that unusual I guess.
It was odd to have so many compliments directed at me when I had so little to do with most of the service, I accompanied the hymns and the service music as usual. Whippy skippy.
The open house was a very odd blend of people, church and college. The retired former chair of the music department at Hope was there, but he was busy drinking and chatting with other people. I’m not sure he remembers our little conference several years ago just before he retired in which he assured me that Hope needed me as an adjunct. Never happened. Both Hope and GRCC managed to lose my resumes at that point. Interesting coincidence but probably that’s all it was.
Another prof who is also connected to church asked me if I was still teaching at GVSU. Haven’t done that for several years. I told him working in the dance department is therapeutic for me. He said something about improvising in the style of Chopin. I was at a loss to explain that was not quite the deal. Certainly the chair of the dance department occasionally asks for something like that, but she really means something a bit more watered down. And I find myself improvising in many different styles and forms which keeps me interested.
I noticed how the people at the open house sort of divided themselves up into the old people and the young people. I guess that’s natural. Most young people at church seem to barely see me. This is sort of how I experienced the open house, but admittedly I was exhausted as I usually am on Sunday afternoon.
Came home and found this music video online:
I quite like the sound of this group and quickly found them on Spotify.
This morning Eileen has already left for a dentist appointment. I have read my usual poetry and then played some Scarlatti on the piano.
I feel pretty strongly that states should not kill except in the most dire of circumstances (like a dam war that is unavoidable…. something we haven’t seen since WWII and even then I think war is to be abhorred must less the clinical ordering of a remote death).
I continue to be amazed at the confusion regarding the Republican rhetoric that somehow equates deregulation of corporations with liberty of citizens.
Never mind that reams of Congressional testimony, market analysis and academic research have shown that regulation has not been an impediment to raising capital. In fact, too little regulation has been at the root of all recent bubbles and bursts — the dot-com crash, Enron, the mortgage meltdown. Those free-for-alls created jobs and then imploded, causing mass joblessness. quote from above link
“In 2013, we’re going to prosecute the first cases,” Steven M. Wise, a lawyer and president of the Nonhuman Rights Project, recently told me. “Their goal will be to use the latest science to help persuade state court judges that such creatures as whales and chimpanzees should be accorded common law personhood and rights.”
So if all the criminals who took plea bargains went to trial the whole thing would collapse. It’s apparently prosecutors not judges who are running things.
Couldn’t get my website to come up this morning so I wrote offline. So now I’m posting late, so no pics today.
Eileen and I used our day off for tasks instead of relaxing. She worked on taxes. She got our federal mostly done, but stalled trying to figure out the interest we paid on one of the four student loans for our youngest daughter, Sarah. I went to church and worked on picking out anthems.
My enthusiasm for church (and family stuff) has waned recently. Some of this is because I am acutely aware of how at my church I cannot really function as music director in the present situation. ‘Nuff said.
Anyway, I managed to choose anthems for the rest of the year which is a load off my mind.
I was having problems with the interwebs this morning. My web site wouldn’t come up. My admin page wouldn’t come up. Bluhost (the server where my web site is hosted) is upgrading their OS. I suspect that might be the problem since I can’t logon to Bluhost.
then I tried to bitch about it on Facebook and Facebook wouldn’t let me. I managed to circumvent its reluctance by putting the bitch in a comment instead of a status.
Sheesh.
Otherwise this morning is going well. Put most of the clocks an hour forward. Read poetry and Virginia Woolf. Played some Schubert on my electric piano with headphones on.
And now of course my web site is back because you are reading this.
I got a free copy of Nation in a PDF since I filled out one of their surveys. This totally worked as I am seriously considering resubscribing via online delivery.
This article is an example of why…. I like how it talks about evolving consciously of individuality via painting….
Also that a book it referred to was available in a free ebook:
I changed my pattern a bit this morning and followed up reading poetry by Berryman and Sexton with reading a bit more in Viginia Woolf’s novel, Jacob’s Room.
I started this book yesterday. It was one of Alexandra Harris’s five recommend books in her Fivebooks interview. I have been a reader of Woolf in the past, having read A Room of One’s Own, Orlando and To the Lighthouse. I have also read in her collection of essays entitled The Common Reader.
I think I was ready to read some fiction that was a bit more adult than The Hunger Games and more meaty than my typical light reading.
I am benefiting a bit from my travels. Jacob’s Room begins in Cornwall where I visited.
It moves eventually to Cambridge which I have not visited but can visualize somewhat especially after walking the streets of her sister college town, Oxford.
Woolf is known for the beauty of her prose and its streaming of images, ideas and plot. Reading Jacob’s Room is somewhat like reading poetry the words fall together so nicely.
It seems to be just what I need right now. I will continue to read Mockingjay (Hunger Games volume 3). But it is a bit like watching a movie in its depth. Very different from reading Woolf.
I also found myself dipping into Prokofiev’s Piano Sonata 3 this morning. I have studied and played through the first two which have a lot of beauty in them.
I must have it in for Russians right now since I continue to think about and play through Shostakovich’s Preludes and Fugues Opus 87.
The Calefax Reed Quintet transcription of this opus arrived in the mail yesterday. I ripped it to my hard drive. Then I did what I have been doing and made a play list on Spotify dumping my own ripped tracks into it. But Spotify went a little nuts and mis-identified several tracks confusing me.
It took me a while to realize that the mis-labeled tracks were accurate in everything but their labels. I went to re-label them with the Spotify edit function and found that they were labeled correctly there. But they persist in being labeled wrong in the playlist. I didn’t delve into the i.d. tags which may or may not be where they are mis-identified. Fuck it.
I also read an essay by Nicholas Cook this week entitled “Music as performance” found in The Cultural Study of Music: A Critical Introduction, 2nd edition. There is some interesting thinking going on around this topic trying to locate music somewhere beyond the composed text and combining text with instances of performance and apprehension.
I am interested because of my own strong conviction that for me music is something one does. So when my former teacher was bragging that he was learning music by just sitting and studying the scores in a chair, my first reaction was ‘where’s the fun in that?’ since the physical rendering of the music is one of the things I enjoy most about it.
I like “looking under the hood” of course, but am cognizant that the deeper understanding of how music is constructed is not always that related to how I hear and perform the music.
The visiting dance teacher said something to the class yesterday about the fact that dance is not always connected to music, but when it is one must dance it clearly and with life.
I found his teaching technique pretty interesting, since he did not use images the way the other teachers in the department do. Instead, he used his body. He would ape mistakes in a way that made the class laugh and then demonstrate the better more artistic moves.
It was fun working with him. At the end of class, ballet etiquette kicked in and the ballerinas lined up to curtsy one at a time to him. He murmured something to each dancer about her technique instructing them to keep working on this or that. Very cool.
America is basically run by dead people: We elect new representatives, but continue on with policy from decades ago. To go forward, Congress needs to confront the past.
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