I survived the stress of the added work of the ballet class accompaniment for the May term.  My blood pressure was a bit higher yesterday and I think this was mostly stress. I’ve also put on a few pounds this week. Bah. Hopefully I can address this better when my schedule clears a bit.

Unfortunately next week I have another little project that will take up a bunch of time and effort. I have been hired by Grand Haven High School Choral department to accompany auditions for the fall musical, Phantom of the Opera.

Yesterday I played all the way through the 6 or 7 audition numbers. All the copies of the CD of the soundtrack are checked out of the local library. I listened to excerpts on Amazon and got an idea of some of the tempos (which are not marked in the scores I am looking at).  Most of the tunes are not hard, but there are a few tricky parts that I will have to practice.

Today and Monday should be basically badly needed days off for me. Tomorrow I have the usual church stuff: 2 choir rehearsals and a service. Then in the afternoon I am scheduled to show up at Zeeland High School for a recording session for Barefoot Jazz Quartet. That will be a long Sunday for me.

Somewhere in there I am planning to grill some salmon and veggies for Eileen and me.

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Shows Shed New Light on Life of Gertrude Stein – NYTimes.com

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Hubert Humprey, America’s Forgotten Liberal – NYTimes.com

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Windows 7 Starter: A Comically Bad Idea | Cult of Mac

Pete Mortensen writes about the bad things about Windows from the point of view of an admitted Apple fanatic. He loses me when he calls the hardware “elegant.” I can see that Apple designers are more aware of the style of what they make than PC designers. And Mortensen probably knows much more than I do about operating systems and such. But I have always had a sneaking suspicion that both Apples and PCs are more about the companies than consumers especially when it comes to coherent user end design. I would use Macs and Apple products in a heartbeat if it was necessary. I started out on PCs for the simple reason that they were first and continue to be cheaper. I considered switching when I began using music notation software (which was developed on Macs). By then everything was so expensive (software and hardware) that I couldn’t really afford to actually buy stuff only recommend purchase for churches I was working for.

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Anyway, I thought today’s post could be  links and some comments on them. Most of these links are articles I haven’t read yet.

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BookExpo America Underlines Industry Shifts – NYTimes.com

Did you know that the book business is actually a growth business these days? Not just publishers but there are more independent booksellers opening.

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All Radio, All the Time, and Free (for Now) – State of the Art – NYTimes.com

Tivo for Radio. I also bookmarked DAR.fm Digital Audio Recorder DAR which is the site that is enabling this.

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Raiding a Brothel in India – NYTimes.com

Story of a rescue of a few slave-prostitutes. A small victory in a tragic losing battle.

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In House, Obama Policy in Libya Is Called Violation of War Powers Resolution – NYTimes.com

As far as I can tell this is the first Times story about this. Other journalism outlets I read online have been complaining that most of the US media is not asking this question.

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Egypt to Open Border With Gaza Strip – NYTimes.com

Interesting development in an interesting time in Northern Africa.

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Mohandas Gandhi And The Problem With Purity | The New Republic

A critical look at Gandhi via a review of a new book about him.

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Paperwork Explosion by Ben Kafka

“Media historians have long recognized the astounding versatility, portability, and durability of paper, which is in many respects the ideal material support. As a corollary, the paperless office has been dismissed as a “myth” by social scientists, information engineers, and corporate consultants alike, who predict that paper’s many affordances will continue to make it indispensable. And a myth it is, but not (or at least not only) in the simple sense typically employed in these contexts. The paperless office should also be interpreted as a myth in the Lévi-Straussian sense of the term, that is to say, an imaginary resolution to real contradictions.”

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Why Privacy Matters Even if You Have ‘Nothing to Hide’ – The Chronicle Review – The Chronicle of Higher Education

Our data, ourselves – The Boston Globe

Two looks at the question of privacy from opposite points of view.

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The Moral Economy of Guilt: The curious process by which notions of sin and guilt have become both illusory and omnipresent.
by Wilfred M. McClay
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Michael Paterniti Goes Behind the Scenes at Al Jazeera English: Newsmakers: GQ

I continue to find Al Jazeera English a good source of clear reporting and information.

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Chris Hedges: Why Liberal Sellouts Attack Prophets Like Cornel West – Chris Hedges’ Columns – Truthdig

I find the conversation around West’s recent criticisms of Obama interesting.

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I have to share these wonderful pictures my daughter Elizabeth mailed to Eileen and me. I love her work. I’m biased I guess. But still. It is lovely stuff.

Tomorrow evening I will “stagger across the finish line” of this three week ballet class dance marathon.

Last night I think I showed my fatigue a bit. I wasn’t very happy with my last improvisation of the evening and then in what has become an unlovely aspect of my aging personality had difficulty letting this go and put it into perspective. It was a combination of physical and mental fatigue.

Yesterday morning I drove out to my one piano student’s house and gave him a piano lesson. I managed to get my new netbook to talk to his home wireless.  I find teaching this person pretty fascinating. He is learning some Scriabin, Faure and Schumann piano pieces. When we went to schedule our next lesson he pulled out his Ipad and I, my netbook. He could look at his calendar on his Ipad but said he had to use his computer to enter info in it.  I’m pretty sure there’s probably a way to enter information on it. It seems to me at this point that Iphones and Ipads would not be good for me because I find the keyboard such a necessary adjunct to my interacting with the screen.

The touch screen doesn’t attract me that much, at least the way it is designed now. I think it makes for a limited interaction. It looks novel and fun. But I will be more interested when it responds to voice commands. Even then I can picture myself spelling out words my computer doesn’t understand or gets wrong.

After my lesson I came home and treadmilled. The day went pretty quickly and it was soon time for me to play at my Mom’s nursing home. My Mom wasn’t feeling well so she stayed in her room, but the birthday party (for which I was playing) went well. I started off telling them the story of the Goldberg variations sort of like this:

“Bach had a student named Goldberg who worked for a Count. The Count had trouble sleeping and he asked Bach to write some music that he could listen to at night when he was awake. Goldberg, the Count’s servant, stayed in a bedroom nearby. When the Count was restless at night, he would call out to Goldberg to come and play some of his variations (which is how the Count always referred to them).  There are 30 variations but I’m only going to play 2 for you today. I hope you don’t fall asleep.”

Cute, huh? Oh well you have to be entertaining in every walk of life these days. I didn’t add the fascinating fact that the Goldberg Variations are often performed with the theme at the beginning and end of the performance. This brings the total movement number to 32 which is how many measures there are in the theme. Good old Bach!

I also played a bunch of popular tunes like “Hello Dolly,” “Sunny Side of the Street,” “Harbor Lights” (this one was one requested the first time I played there), “(They long to be) Close to You,” and “Who’s Sorry Now?” Later I played Debussy’s “Clair de Lune” explaining that the title translates as “moonlight” but that the literal meaning is more like the “color of the light of the moon.” After Debussy I played “Moon River.” Clever, huh?

I was surprised that when I passed out hymnals and took requests I didn’t get “In the Garden.” It might be the first time I have done this kind of piano gig in a local nursing home where they didn’t ask for it.

The audience sang along on the popular songs and also the hymns. I checked in on my Mom before I left.

Today I only have the evening Ballet Class to play for. I hope by then I will have managed to stop obsessing over my poor performance last night. Oy!

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Although I like my new netbook, I’m not wild about Windows 7 Starter, the operating system that came with it. At first it kept me locked out each start-up until I entered a password. I managed to disable this. Then this morning I thought it might be nice to change the background on my desktop and discovered that there is no personalization with Windows 7 Starter. There is a workaround but it involves downloading a program called “Oceanis” which then will have to stay up and running all the time to correct this simple simple little thing. Good grief. Screw it.

I’m working on a playlist for my little concert I am giving at my Mom’s nursing home today.  I chose a couple movements from Bach’s Goldberg variations: No 13 & 19. I’ve also decided to play these two movements as Sunday’s prelude and postlude, prelude on piano and postlude on organ. That way I get a little more mileage out of getting the pieces in my fingers.

I am thinking that contrary to my usual practice, I might not take the repeats on the 13th variation at the Nursing home. It’s hard to judge, but my sense is that not everyone is a fan of classical music there. Since I do a variety, they may be patiently waiting for the “good” stuff. No need to try such good natured patience with, in effect, doubling the length of a slow piece.

At church however it’s just a matter of starting the prelude a bit earlier so I have time to do the repeats.

Also planning to play Debussy’s “Clair de Lune” at the nursing home.  I have to perform this in June at a wedding, so it’s pretty much in my fingers as well.

The good news is that when I stopped by the nursing home yesterday and checked out the piano I found it relatively in tune and in pretty good working order. Last time I played this was not the case. I had made plans to bring my electric with me today. I set it up and fiddled with the amp. I am still not satisfied with the sound, but at least got it in working order. Now I won’t have to lug it over there.

I had an interesting thing happen while I was working with my elec piano and the amp. I plugged in a mic and did some singing. I was pretty much appalled at the sound of my voice. Not that it’s getting worse, just that I found the sound unattractive and frankly embarrassing. Not that big a deal. I’ve never thought of myself as much of a singer. But I usually enjoy singing. But working with a crappy amp made listening to my own voice singing my songs a bit uncomfortable.

This is unfortunate because the Barefoot Jazz quartet wants to do some Jenkins tunes. We have a recording session Sunday and the manager (Keith Walker, a local high school band director and dad of Nate Walker, the bass player in the band) emailed me to bring some of my own tunes.

I always have to practice my songs because there are so many of them and I sing them so rarely that I don’t remember them well. I will pick a few, prepare them and take them along. Maybe Nate can sing them. I know he enjoys singing in the High School “Vocal Dimensions” ensemble. Or maybe I’ll sing them or we can look at doing them instrumentally. I don’t think the melodies to my songs are that strong that they hold up as instrumentals, but what the heck.

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Literary Stockholm Syndrome — Great Writing — Utne Reader

This essay compares the compulsiveness to read long books like Ulysses and Infinite Jest to falling in love with your kidnapper. Witty.

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Utne Reader Music Sampler May 2011

From the same site as the Stockholm article. This mag puts up free mp3s temporarily each month of new music. I have found some interesting new stuff there from time to time.

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How Piano Wires Changed Through Centuries : Discovery News

I thought this was interesting, but I play piano. Heh.

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Nuclear proliferation: Disarmament and democracy are natural allies. – By Christopher Hitchens – Slate Magazine

My favorite complicated-war-hawk-conservative-liberal-dieing-antheist writes another interesting article.

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Elevator Repair Service Performs at New York Public Library – NYTimes.com

This recent theater performance piece involving writings of Hemingway, Fitzgerald and Faulkner sounds pretty cool.

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Got up this morning and changed my pattern a bit. Instead of blogging, I chose hymns for this Sunday again. I’m behind in my planning due to my increased schedule load, but the end is sight. This Friday is my last evening of ballet classes for the summer. Hooray!

Having said that, I am still enjoying this work quite a bit. The third instructor is pretty delightful. She has a gentle southern accent and a typical droll southern wit that puts the dancers at ease instantly. And of course she inspires them to dance better.

Last night she asked me if I was staying for the “foot class.”

I told her that I was there if she needed me and she replied that she wanted to make sure I got paid for my work. This totally endeared her to me.  She told me to take a ten or fifteen minute break and come back. I did so. Then I sat at ease and waited for her to ask me to play. She only did this once in the hour. I had to suspect she did it so that I would get paid for the hour.

At the end of both classes she seemed very  happy with my work, so that is good.

I made a list of the dance moves and exercises labeling them the way Paul Lewis did on one of his CDs:

Pre Plie Stretch slow 3/4
Pre Plie Tendu slow 2/2
Plies slow 3/4
Tendu moderately slow 2/4
Tendu from 5th moderate 2/4
Balancoir fast 3/4
Degage moderately fast 2/4
Fondue with Pique lively 2/4
Rond de Jambe slow 3/4
Fondu slow tango 2/4
Frappe fast 2/4
Barre Stretch slow tango 2/4
Petite Battements moderate 2/4
Rond de Jambe en L’air moderate 3/4
Gran Battements moderate march 2/4
Tendu moderate beguine 2/4
Traveling Tendu moderate tango 2/4
Adage slow 6/8
Pirouette 1 moderate tango 2/4
Pirouette 2 moderate waltz 3/4
Changement lively 2/4
Petite Allegro moderate 2/4
Grand Allegro moderately fast 3/4

I call it my “Ballet Cheat Sheet.” I printed it up and had it in front of me last night. I basically know this stuff, but it sure would have been good information when I first did this kind of work.

So I’m blogging from my Mom’s shrink’s office like I thought I might today. Had no problems logging on with my new laptop. Instead of Windows 98, it uses “Window 7 starter” whatever that is. I find each ensuing version of Windows I use is all that more cumbersome in that it tries (and fails) to anticipate my user needs. Sometimes it’s kind of a puzzle which is fine if I’m in the mood.

I figured out how to take the dang password off from the log-on yesterday, so that’s good. Could have used my little laptop last night while I was on break at college. But I hadn’t yet figured out how I got on the wireless network at Hope.  Figured this out this morning, so I’m set for this evening if my teacher does another “foot class” (that would be “pointe class).

After church and grilling burgers for Eileen and her friend Barb (who is visiting), while they went off to Whitehall, I went and bought myself a new netbook, yesterday.

The biggest difference between this one and my old one is the battery life is 4 hours instead of 1. The keyboard also seems a bit bigger.  I was very happy with how quickly I was able to install Chrome and then sync the browser so that all of my bookmarks and passwords were instantly on my new computer. This comes from “living in the cloud.” I was able to open the box and then use the computer for my usual treadmill reading within fifteen minutes or so. Cool.

Today begins the home stretch for my May Ballet term, five evenings to go. Last Friday I borrowed some dance CDs from one of the instructors which have been developed by Paul Lewis, the pianist for the Joffrey Ballet Company and the dance teacher, Judy Rice.

I am especially interested in that each track gives the name of the movement exercise, the tempo and the time signature, e.g. Tendu from 1st Position – Moderate 3/4 to Faster 2/4 (Poulenc).  I find this organizes in my brain some information I have been gradually assimilating.  Unfortunately, he doesn’t always tell the exact piece he is uses if it’s a classical piece, just the composer. But still I am finding it helpful.

When I first began playing for ballet, I alternated between improvising and playing pieces by Chopin, Bach, Schubert and others. The problem with this is that composers do not always write 4 and 8 measure phrases and I found that I would sometimes have to change the music a bit to make it work for class. Also tempos can be a touchy thing. The dance prof needs the music at a certain tempo, sometimes this contradicts either the intention of the composer or my interpretation. It requires flexibility in these areas from the pianist.

One of the things that startled me about the recordings of Paul Lewis is how much liberty he sometimes takes as he plays the pieces on the CD. This actually reinforces something I have discovered which is that the more musically sensitively I play the better it seems for the dancers and the teacher. Good to know.

I’m not sure the instructors want me to use a lot of the kinds of pieces Lewis puts on his CDs. It seems that recorded music is a second best solution for dance class. The reason for this is that when I improvise a little tune for an exercise I can tailor the music to the exercise. Also I can watch the instructor more easily when I’m not looking at music and make subtle adjustments she indicates to me.

I’m working right now at my new netbook and find that I can use it a bit more fluently than my old one. The keyboard is just a tad bigger as is the screen. And the computer is also a bit faster.  Whoo hoo! Nice improvement,.

The weather is lovely here today in western Michigan. Typical cool summer day with a nice breeze.

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‘Music for Silenced Voices’ – NYTimes.com

This is a link to letters responding to a recent article about Shostakovitch. I like it that they seem to contradict each other.

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Book Review – 2030 – By Albert Brooks – NYTimes.com

The actor/director/writer has written a novel. It looks like fun.

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Our Irrational Fear of Forgetting – NYTimes.com

No you don’t have Alzheimer’s. You just forget stuff.

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intelligent homosexual etc by tony kushner

This is actually just a bookmark to the New York’s “Public Theater” page.  It currently seems to have some video excerpts from Kushnber’s new play, so I bookmarked it to come back to and check them out.

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Bin Laden’s Gone. Can My Son Come Home? – NYTimes.com

Accused American terrorist has a dad who wants him freed. Moving story from the other side of this question.

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Was It Something I Wrote? – NYTimes.com

Interesting story of a writer who was threatened by Russian secret police types…..

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How Good Are American Colleges? – NYTimes.com

Better than you think, apparently. But the writer does boil it down to this:

“A student can get a wonderful, or terrible, education at just about any institution, depending on the courses she takes, the professors from whom she learns and the amount of effort she invests.”

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My netbook seems to have died. I tried to keep it going as long as I could. It was a first generation netbook and Eileen and I had to drive to the nearby city of Grand Rapids to purchase it when they first came out. Now I can go buy a replacement at the local grocery store.  I treasure the portable access and convenience this machine has given me to articles, books, news, and my own ideas recorded in online docs. I am not as happy with the inability to repair something like this and make it last longer. I probably will go buy a replacement today or tomorrow.

I quickly caught on to the idea now sometimes described as “living in the cloud.” Weird metaphor. It’s neither exactly “living” or a “cloud.” But the idea is that I use the netbook as a window and access to stuff that’s not stored on it particularly. This means that essentially I can purchase a new one and regain the same access. I will have to load it with the basic softwares I am using (Chrome browser, Kindle reader for PCs, Adobe, and so on). Then I will begin to download and save stuff on it that is sitting online for me to regain access to like books and articles.

Regarding yesterday’s ideas about information which Ray Hinkle comments on, I thought it was interesting that Peter Day one of BBC’s business guys had a program for May 21 called “Global Biz: For Your Information” (link to MP3, link to Peter Day’s Podcast page). I find business people’s use of language dizzying sometimes (see the video I recently embedded, the Collegehumor video: Hardly Working: Startup Guys for funny use of language).

Language and words have always been a big love of mine for some reason. It hurts me a bit to see words hollowed out and lose essential meaning. This love of language definitely colored my reading and thinking about theology (back when I did that). I listened to this interview this morning of the biblical scholar, Walter Brueggman.

One think I really like about Krista Tippett is the way her web site is a deep source on any topic she touches. In this case, she interviewed Brueggemann and instantly threw the tape up online.

Brueggemann is one of those poets of the bible that had so much meaning for me at one point. I still enjoy listening to him and others once in a while about these ideas. Metaphor and poetry is really my basic access to articulated spiritual meaning. I guess that’s why I’m a church musician. Heh.

I just chatted back and forth with a good friend in China. He asked me to google something for him. He said China has restricted access to google and gmail. Hard to imagine the numbers of people this affects over there. The size of China boggles my mind.

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Bill Moyers: ‘We’re Almost Out of Time’ – Truthdig Radio – Truthdig

It makes me crazy that Truthdig doesn’t have an mp3 for me to download, only podcast and transcript and streaming. Oh well. I’ll probably get to this sometime.

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Charges Against the N.S.A.’s Thomas Drake : The New Yorker

If you think you and information are secure, you should read this story about how the government has been monitoring all of us illegally for years.

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Debunking the Top 7 Myths on Iran’s Middle East Policies | Truthout

Interesting counterbalance to stereotypes about this complex country.

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“data + information, compiled  & organized = information”

I have been pondering this phrase ever since I heard it on “On the Media” ‘s segment on the “Quantified Self” from their May 13th show about data.

I’m honestly not sure what the phrase means, if anything.

Here’s  some definitions I found using the google “define:” command:

DATA

1. Facts and statistics collected together for reference or analysis.
2. Things known or assumed as facts, making the basis of reasoning or calculation.

INFORMATION

1. Facts provided or learned about something or someone

KNOWLEDGE

1. Information and skills acquired through experience or education; the theoretical or practical understanding of a subject

Both definitions of “data” and “information: talk about “facts.”  I wonder what the speaker on the radio really meant by his little phrase describing his own use of quantifying his activities.

Maybe something like statistics & facts (data) and learned about something (information) compiled and organized help basic understanding (knowledge).

I still have the uneasy feeling that the phrase doesn’t mean much due to the lack of clear definition of the terms of the speaker.

Makes me think of this video my daughter recently shared on Facebook:

I find it humorous and mildly disturbing how much of the gobbledygook spoken in this video actually made some sense. Yikes!

I do know that the idea of collecting data about my activities is something I do. Every morning I record my daily weight & blood pressure. Later on the same sheet on my fridge I make a note of how many hits this web site has received in the last 24 hours (I check the counter and write down the number…. as I mentioned in recent comment to Ray Hinkle, I get about 50 hits a day).

Recently in response to some of the ideas on this particular “On The Media” show, I have started back in doing some exercise in addition to my daily treadmilling.  I have started recording a combined total of minutes exercised each day. For the last five days it has been 40 minutes on the treadmill and 6 minutes dancing in front of the Wii using the “Just Dance” program we borrowed from friends.

Later in this same segment, Gary Wolf, co-founder of the website: “The Quantified Self,” points out how inter-related human behavior is. Each of us is a complex of habits and behavior. It’s difficult to make a large change in one part of our web of activities in isolation. He gives the example in his life of trying to significantly increase the amount of time he exercises. For a while, it worked. But then for weeks he went to zero exercise. His conclusion is that the advice to “go for it,” can be unhelpful. Better to add, in his words, as little as possible to your routine. You will be more likely, he implies, to sustain a small increase than a large increase.

I noticed that this had been true for me. I looked over my records on the Wii Fit plus software and noticed that although I continued to treadmill, I went from 20 minutes a day of Wii Fit plus activity to zero. Just like this Wolfe guy. So I decided to try to add 5 or 6 minutes a day instead. We’ll see if that works.

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Mary Rowell – Violin | My Ears Are Open

Rowell is a violinist with the string quartet,  Ethyl. I bookmarked this interview to listen. I warn you that the only way I could get the mp3 to play was to download it. When I clicked on the site it was silent.

I’m listening to online excerpts of  this interesting recording by Ethyl of compositions by 11 young people. I like the ones you can stream so much that I just purchased the CD. I think this music sounds very cool and look forward to hearing the rest of the compositions when this CD arrives.

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Chinese Student’s Defense of Internet Freedom – NYTimes.com

Student threw eggs and shoes at the man who apparently is most responsible for restricting web use in China.

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The Siege of the Freedom Riders – NYTimes.com

Essay about the time Martin Luther King Jr. discouraged armed black cab drivers from attacking a white mob attacking a church filled with unarmed non-violent Freedom Rider types. Recommended.

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If you don’t see anything, scroll down for an explanation.

This is a video of Bill Washer playing guitar with Gato Barbieri in 1984.  As I mentioned yesterday he’s the husband of the ballet instructor I am working with this week.

Here’s a more recent video (if you don’t see them, you might want to reload the page…. that’s what I had to do or here’s a couple of links to them:  link, link):

I like these videos quite a bit. Obviously the man is an adept player. Trinette told me a few entertaining stories about her and her husband last night on break.  She even complimented my playing by telling me she had passed on to her husband that she was grateful she had a good pianist for this gig. Very flattering.  She asked for my “card” to pass on to her husband. I goofily confessed I don’t have one…. just a local yokel….

So one more night of ballet class this week. I am pretty exhausted this morning. I’m having trouble resting up in the afternoon for these evening gigs.

Yesterday I played Angry Birds for an hour before time to go to work. It’s sort of relaxing but it’s not the same as napping.

Today I’m taking my Mom out for lunch. Yesterday, I finally managed to contact her doctor’s office and pass on her psychologist’s misgivings about her current dosage of Vicodin.  The doctor agreed to lower the dosage from four pills a day to three pills as needed. Mom takes these for pain, but her shrink thinks they might be contributing to her constant fatigue.

Also met with my boss at church. This is a good thing for me. I canceled my piano trio rehearsals and turned down the chair of the dance department who wanted me to come to a two hour brainstorm session for an upcoming Global warming protest dance. I told her my schedule was such that I had to beg off on things like that…. so that this 59 year old old guy will live to be 60. She has asked me to compose something for this event so it’s not unreasonable to include me in planning, but the last thing I need next week is another scheduled event to drain my shrinking pool of energy.

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Broadband data from the FCC is notoriously inaccurate. Measurement Lab can fix that. – By Benjamin Lennett and Sascha Meinrath – Slate Magazine

This article asks “How hard can it be?” Comes with map that might interest FCC regulators if they weren’t captives of the industry. Ahem.

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California – Circumcision on Ballot – NYTimes.com

This appears to be a real news story. Some things  you can’t make up.

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Getting Smart on Aid – NYTimes.com

Proven Impact Fund | Innovations for Poverty Action

The first link is to another intelligent essay by Nicholas Kristoff in which he reveals that an effective way to improve education of kids is to deworm them. The second link is to a charity he recommends where one can donate money for this cause.

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Banner Gaffe Embarrasses Forbidden City — Beijing Journal – NYTimes.com

More fun from the news. Apparently someone put up the wrong ideogram on a sign that sounded similar to the intended word but changed the  meaning in embarrassing ways.

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Trinette Singleton is the instructor I have been working with. That’s her on the cover of this 1968 Time magazine.

She looks more like this now:

Last night when I got to work, she was madly dancing around (she’s 65 years old) to wild Vivaldi music on the sound system.  She was checking out some choreography she is developing for a dance troupe.

She was pretty subdued for the first two hours of class last night. Considering the fact that she was vigorously dancing around beforehand I can understand where her mood may have come from.

She worked the dancers very hard, saying only what was needed to cue them in to what she wanted them to do. She had an influx of about six new dancers last night. Her technique was to concentrate on the three dancers who were repeats from the previous classes and build on what she was teaching them. She also used them to demonstrate combinations in full rather than giving dancers instructions herself. She then invited the newbies to dance the combination.

Ballet is a very brainy discipline. And Trinette is a brainy and clever teacher. For the first two hours last night her reticence and obvious mental activity resembled a zen master at work. At least that was my impression.

This was the first ballet class where I noticed dancers literally dripping in sweat.

During the break, Trinette lay on the floor with a foam roller tube dancers use to massage themselves. I played through Debussy’s lovely Sarabande for the heck of it. After I finished, Trinette continued what she was doing but she clapped and yelled “More!” I took this as cue to chat her up a bit (piano players are sort of like servants in the dance arena…. usually I only speak when spoken to… ).

Suddenly she sort of came to life and starting chatting. She told me her husband, Bill Washer, was a jazz guitarist.

That he had played for years for Liza Minnelli. She said he had a website but couldn’t remember the name of it (it’s http://www.billwasher.com/ . It’s a little creaky but does have music clips.) She mentioned that they were both 65 years old and that they had met when Bill had played in the orchestra for the dance company she was working in (This is the prestigious New York Joffrey Ballet company… she has this company in common with Amanda Smith one of the profs I have been working with and others…. dance is a bit of an incestuous business by necessity).

Anyway, she got up to do the last hour of class and noticed that none of the repeat students stayed for the pointe class. You could tell she was thrown off a bit by this. But she quickly recovered reminding me of a comment she made to me earlier in the week when we were discussing low attendance: “It is what it is.” I really like that reaction.

Then she sprang to life for the three dancers who chose to remain and work on their pointe technique. She was like a different teacher and cajoled and inspired these three. It was an interesting change to witness.

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The Wild Kingdom: Brought to You by Mutual of Omaha (and YouTube) | Open Culture

Marlin Perkins is now on YouTube. Go figure.

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ElfQuest online

This entire fantasy comic book is now  online. I read the first one yesterday.

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California – Honor for Immigrant Activist – NYTimes.com

Encouraging to see an “illegal” immigrant receive an honorary doctorate. I have linked in stories about Isabello Castillo before. I am impressed by her courage and character.

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Senate Blocks Bill to Eliminate Tax Breaks for Oil Companies – NYTimes.com

Same shit. Different day. Corporations win. Everyone else loses.

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I figure this evening marks the half way mark of my May term contract with Hope college as a ballet accompanist. I promised them fourteen evenings of thee hours of rehearsals each. Tonight is number seven.

I am scaling back all my other activities in order to survive this little stint of work.  Yesterday I picked Sunday’s hymns and made myself choose easier organ music for the prelude and postlude. Both will be based on the closing hymn Sunday, “Come away to the skies.” Prelude is “Prelude on a Kentucky Hymn” by Russell Schulz-Widmar and postlude is a setting by one of my idols, jazz pianist, the late George Shearing. Schulz-Widmar is an influential Episcopalian musician who is now living in retirement in Germany.

I picked up Shearing’s autobiography, Lullaby of Birdland, which was sitting on my shelves. I had read about half of it last year.  First I looked up his organ music.  Unsurprisingly it wasn’t mentioned. It has to be a small part of his opus and probably not one he brags about particularly. Then for kicks I read the next chapter.

I am seeking out some jazz recordings to make a playlist of Barefoot Jazz Quartet repertoire. This is for my own purposes. First I have been keeping a list of tunes so I know which of the thousands of jazz tunes out there might come up for me to play with them. Now I am casually getting a bit more info on them. This is a direct result of continuing to be surprised by which tunes are chosen and which subset of jazz style the tune is in, not to mention that most of them are presented in the Real Book with the idea that players are familiar with recordings of them.

I include in this list a recording of an original tune by Jordan we do called “Blues for Rylee (2011).” This way I can put the tunes on and exercise or cook and listen at the same time and become a bit more familiar with the renditions I am able to find.

Ran across a lovely paragraph in Shame by Salman Rushdie. I started reading this novel recently when I realized that it takes place in Pakistan. Mahmoud has a cinema which has pissed off both Hindus (vegetarians) and Muslims (non vegetarians) by showing movies that offend each group. Everyone quits going to his movie house. Finally someone bombs it.

“Don’t ask who planted the bomb; in those days there were many such planters, many gardeners of violence. Perhaps it was even a one-godly bomb, seeded in the Empire by one of Mahmoud’s more fanatical co-religionists, because it seems that the timer reached zero during a particularly suggestive love scene, and we know what the godly think of love, or the illusion of it, especially when admission money must be paid to see it … they are Against. They cut it out.  Love  corrupts.”

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Put this up on Facebook yesterday.  The link actually came to me via an email from Moveon.org. What Pariser has to say is important. He points out how the internet begins to shape an environment around user that doesn’t challenge or take him or herself out of their comfort zone. The result is a filter which can diminish one’s education and use of the resource. He recently published this book:

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Demjanjuk in Munich – NYTimes.com

A little more on this dude. Why his trial is important. I’m convinced.

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The Need for Greed – NYTimes.com

Opinionater by Timothy Egan

“In essence, Republicans would break up the population between an I’ve Got Mine segment and The Left Behinds”

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Justices Allow Search if Police Hear Evidence Being Destroyed – NYTimes.com

Supreme Court continues its march toward limiting the rights of citizens.

Justice Ginsburg dissents eloquently based on the text of the Fourth Amendment:

“How ‘secure’ do our homes remain if police, armed with no warrant, can pound on doors at will and, on hearing sounds indicative of things moving, forcibly enter and search for evidence of unlawful activity?”

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Libyan Officials Threaten to Use ‘Human Shields’ to Thwart NATO Bombings – NYTimes.com

“Barely 36 hours after The Sunday Telegraph in London published its interview with Gen. Sir David Richards, Britain’s chief of the defense staff, foreign reporters in Tripoli were summoned to a news conference at which Libyan telecommunication officials announced that they would deploy human shields.”

It’s like the Qaddafi thugs read the newspaper. Hmm.

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Santana is Booed for Using Baseball’s Civil Rights Game to Speak Out for Civil Rights | The Nation

“The reason Atlanta was such a brutally awkward setting for a Sunday Civil Rights setting, was because Friday saw the Governor of Georgia, Nathan Deal, sign HR 87, a law that shreds the Civil Rights of the state’s Latino population.”

And of course these people booed Santana.

Found it difficult to pace myself yesterday. I had some energy and did quite a bit of piano practicing before going to my three hour ballet class. I quite enjoyed the time I spent at the piano practicing. After scanning The Boston Musical Intelligencer » Phenomenal Sheng on Chopin’s Favorite Piano I was motivated  to carefully play through Chopin’s first two Ballades for piano. Then his F minor Nocturne. All mentioned in the Boston article. Such lovely stuff, really.

And though my new visiting ballet prof for the week was a study in clarity and calmness, I found myself tiring toward the third hour.  I’m hoping this is a Monday phenomenon that follows on the heels of my weekly pouring myself into my church work on Sunday mornings.

Speaking of… Sunday went very well. Despite the fact that I only had the actual group of singers who were to perform the anthem  for only about 15 minutes before church. This was due to the fact that singers trickled in one at at time well after the 9:45 call time. This was pretty stressful to the director (that’s me) since we were singing a more difficult piece that was very under rehearsed (“Loving Shepherd of Thy Sheep” by John Ruttter).  I managed to keep the group morale up but stay challenging despite this.  And we actually sounded pretty musical in service. At one point in the pre-service rehearsal I had to ask the group if everyone in the room had been through the anthem with me at least once that morning. Heh.

An interesting thing happened in the middle of this rehearsal. That was the point I spent a good five minutes or so on vocalises  (choral technical exercises to improve relaxation, resonance, breath support and vowel formation).  Then I went back to the beginning of the piece to improve the musical shape and sound of the initial phrase. I was astonished that it was suddenly about ten times more beautiful and well sung. Hey. I guess that vocalise stuff works, eh?

A few of the other musical highlights from Sunday’s service for me were the singing of the opening hymn (a classic historical hymn to the tune, Christ ist erstanden), dropping out of the last stanza of the closing hymn (“Savior, like a shepherd lead us” sung to the usual tune, Sicilian Mariners) and listening to my congregation sing enthusiastically in four part harmony, and managing not to murder my Bach postlude (I give myself 95 out of a hundred on this one, it wasn’t quite as solid as I wanted but still pretty good).

I’m going to once again attempt to pace myself a bit today, but I have to pick hymns and organ music for Sunday today.

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The Daily Climate

I was listening to Fair.org’s podcast this morning and Miranda Spencer mentioned the The Daily Climate as a good aggregate website of links to green news stories that are missed by the US mainstream media.

Here’s a sample about airships.

Floating into the future — The Daily Climate

I think this is a very cool idea and have wondered more than once why this is not being developed more.

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Chris Hedges: The Obama Deception: Why Cornel West Went Ballistic – Chris Hedges’ Columns – Truthdig

Cornel West rips on President Obama in this article. I respect West quite a bit and find his criticisms interesting.

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Held Hostage Over the Debt Ceiling by Paul Krugman- NYTimes.com

Krugman is mentioned in the Hedge article on West above as someone Obama could have appointed to his cabinet as a compromise person who would at least factor in the needs of the weakest in our society.

In this article he continues his observations about the weaknesses of Obama’s caving in over the extension of the Bush tax cut. I have to admit that I thought it was the lesser of two evils when Obama caved, but Krugman has a point.

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Obama and Immigration Reform – NYTimes.com

These are letters to the editor. I like this one:

“By targeting the wrong immigrants and pushing them into the shadows, and distracting police from their real job, Secure Communities is a misuse of taxpayer dollars. Furthermore, rather than making us safer, Secure Communities undermines the trust-based police-community relationship our neighborhoods need.

This is just another example of the failed Bush-era enforcement-only measures that do nothing to secure our borders while worsening conditions across the country.

Rounding up the people who clean offices, take care of the sick, baby-sit and do a host of important jobs does not make us any more secure or help our struggling economy, and it runs counter to everything we aspire to as a community.”

from Hector Figueroa, secretary treasurer of Local 32BJ S.E.I.U. representing building service works in New York city.

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Options for Bringing Down the Cost of Health Care – NYTimes.com

More letters.  Scroll down and you’ll see that Aaron Isaacs writes from The Netherlands and describes a health care system that is working. Read it and weep.

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As Libya Buries Airstrike Victims, Mourners Hint at Deception – NYTimes.com

Another well written report by John Burns. He looks beneath the propaganda purpose of a funeral and sees a bit clearer than the intentions of the Qadaffi regime.

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Kate Swift, Writer Who Rooted Out Sexism in Language, Dies at 87 – NYTimes.com

I have thought a lot about the inherent ideas in our language (the word “woman” has it’s roots in the phrase “wife of man.”) Interesting to read about this person and her work in this area.

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I call it the loyalty oath.  In order to get tenure at the local Christian college, one apparently has to sign a sheet of paper that avows one’s belief in the divinity of Christ. At least that’s sort of how locals talk about it. I tried to find specific info on www.hope.edu to no avail.  The closest I could come was the fact that Open Faculty Positions page describes these requirements:

GENERAL REQUIREMENTS: Ability to combine excellence in classroom teaching with scholarly or other appropriate professional activity; commitment to the character and goals of a liberal arts college with a Christian perspective and specifically, to Hope College’s Mission.

link to

The missions statement (referred to in the bold above) is:

The mission of Hope College is to educate students for lives of leadership and service in a global society through academic and co-curricular programs of recognized excellence in the liberal arts and in the context of the historic Christian faith.

link to page

This sounds pretty innocuous to me. Not like an adherence to a specific theology of Christianity.

But yesterday I was talking to a colleague who elucidated the reasons for a couple of talented professors who are leaving the college, namely their inability to get tenure due to the requirement of signing some paper about their beliefs.

FWIW I find this practice weird, provincial and ultimately self-defeating for an institution that seeks to “educate students for lives of leadership and service in a global society.”

The practice is that it can be a test of people’s integrity. I could rationalize lying in order to feed the people I love. But people with more integrity than me might find it difficult. Like those two profs.

On another topic, I spent some of my Sunday-afternoon-exhausted-leisure-time yesterday looking at some tunes my sax player asked us to play on Friday evening. Specifically

“Lucky Southern” by Keith Jarrett

and

“Fee-Fi-Fo-Fum” by Wayne Shorter.

Thank you to Jordan for linking these version to me in an email!

I didn’t play these tunes very well the other night and thought it might a pleasant diversion to check them out on Sunday afternoon.

“Lucky Southern” was pretty easy to pick up after a listen or two. “Fee-Fi-Fo-fum” however was more interesting.

My first and eventual response to this tune was to think about the evolution of Jazz from an aural art to a literate art. When I listened to Shorter’s recording of his composition I realized that there was much more information needed to play his piece than could be garnered from the usual Real Book treatment of melody and chords.

First of all, the over all sense of the piece is very laid back and subtle. In music notation a brief comment like “Gently” or “Dolce” can be very telling. Real Book limits this to terse comments like the one in “Fee-Fi-Fo-Fum”: “Swing.”

Also I immediately noticed the shaping of the phrase which can be notated for literate musicians – an indication of how loud the piece is to be played and where gradual crescendos and decrescendos occur.

Then I noticed that in Shorter’s composition as notated in the Real Book written silences are just that: silences. Rests often indicate a strong beat for the rhythm section to be followed by melodic gestures on the upbeat. This is pretty usual procedure when the chord symbol is written over the rest as it is in this piece.

But a quick listen to the recording reveals that all music should suddenly stop at the rest. A much different effect.

Finally I started looking a bit harder at the harmonies in this piece. On the recording Herbie Hancock plays a beautiful introduction that is nowhere on the Real Book page.

I started goofing around with it and realized it was pretty complex. A quick look at my Jazz reference books pointed me toward the subtlety and complexity of this passage as played by Hancock.

The introduction was referred to this way in Chapter 23 “Loose Ends”  of Mark Levine’s illuminating book: The Jazz Theory Book:

The Limitations of Traditional Theory

“Early on in this book I said, ‘there’s a reason they call the subject music theory, and not music truth.’ Theory attempts to rationally explain what is essentially a nonrational experience. As such, terminology especially chord symbols, can only approximate what we hear as music. As an example play the chord in figure 23-22. Herbie Hancock plays this dark, rich chord in the first bar of the intro on Wayne Shorter’s “Fee-Fi-Fo-Fum.” The chord symbol is …[technical explanation omitted out of mercy] …. In other words the chord symbol only gives you a rough idea of how to improvise over this chord.”

Unfortunately Levine does not indicate the rest of the chords in the introduction.

In another place he makes this comment about this tune:

“Seen for the first time these changes [in the first four bars of Fe-Fi-Fo-Fum”] can seem difficult even to experienced musicians.”

I took a bit of consolation in this phrase and began to soften my self-criticism about my inability to grasp this piece quickly at sight Friday from the Real Book page.

What struck me most was how far the notation was from the intention of the composer. Literate musicians can be instructed in much more detail about these intentions. This would probably clutter up a Real Book melody/chord rendition. But at the same time it would enable better understanding of the composer’s intention.

Last night was the first night in several when I didn’t have to go somewhere to play. So I laid my weary head down early in the evening for a long rest. Woke up earlier than usual.  I’m pretty rested this morning. Life is good.

Here’s some pics from my gig on Friday in case you didn’t see them on Facebook:

Eileen borrowed Just Dance and Just Dance 2 from a friend at work so we could see what they are like. After treadmilling yesterday, I had a little extra energy and tried out “Just Dance.” It was kind of fun. I admit that I basically just maneuvered my arms like the avatar since it actually only tracks the little thingie you hold in your right hand. I managed at least 50% or more on the tunes I tried to dance.

Dance seems to be a theme with me, eh? Weird.

Yesterday I listened repeatedly to a recording of this cantata, “The Heavens Laugh! The Earth Rejoices.”  I think I like this YouTube Toopman rendition of the first movement much better than the recording I have (Helmuth Rilling’s rendition). Rilling treats the the first three eighth notes of the piece evenly. I think it gives the illusion of a downbeat instead of what it actually is: two upbeats. Toopman’s recording is much clearer to my mind. (As far as I can tell, the person who uploaded this video simply got the BWV number wrong.)

The translation in my little piano vocal score was confusing. It is probably a “singing” translation, but it changed the basic meaning in many places.  The first line is an example of this. My little Kalmus score translates Der Himmel lacht, die Erde jubilievet: “The heavens rejoice! The earth is filled with gladness.” Much better is “The heavens laugh, the earth rings with joy.”

In many places the English turns away from the earthier original.

Original German

Der Herr hat in der Hand
Des Todes und der Hölle Schlüssel!
Der sein Gewand
Blutrot bespritzt in seinem bittern Leiden,
Will heute sich mit Schmuck und Ehren kleiden.

Bad Kalmus translation

The keys of death and hell unto our Lord and King are given,
He who for us the bitter shame and agony endured,
today is throned above in heavenly glory.

Better rendition (cobbled by myself with the help of my meager knowledge of German, other translations and an online German-English Dictionary)

The Lord has in his hands the keys of death and hell.
[He], his robe with blood splattered in his bitter passion
will today be attired in jewels and honor.

It’s a great cantata and I recommend the entire thing for listening.

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Early Therapy for H.I.V. Found to Sharply Cut Spread – NYTimes.com

Encouraging finding that retrovirals reduce the spread of disease.

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The Andy – NYTimes.com

“The statue, which looks a bit like the young Mr. Warhol dipped in silver paint, is fast becoming a favorite downtown attraction. One visitor said she thought it was one of those painted humans who startle tourists in Times Square. She kept waiting for The Andy to move.”

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Bernard Greenhouse, Acclaimed Cellist, Dies at 95 – NYTimes.com

Founding cellist and long time member of the Beaux Arts Trio. I love their recordings of the Haydn piano trios.

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Demjanjuk Taken to Nursing Home – NYTimes.com

I remember following this story over the years. It turns out he wasn’t actually Ivan the Terrible, but still pretty terrible.

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Poet Javier Sicilia Condemns Mexico’s Drug Violence – NYTimes.com

This poet has given up writing poetry due to the death of his son. But not his activism on his son’s behalf.

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Juan Cole: The New Sputnik – Juan Cole’s Columns – Truthdig

“Last year Beijing installed three times as much new wind turbine capacity as the United States. It added 18.9 gigawatts of new wind power-generating capacity in 2010, or about half of all the new wind installations in the world.”

Unfortunately the USA is not responding to this challenge like it did to the Soviet Sputnik.

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Scholastic backtracks on curriculum funded by coal group – May. 13, 2011

Follow up good news to previously linked story:

Coal Curriculum Called Unfit for 4th Graders – NYTimes.com

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At last an entire day off today. The idea of improvising for five evenings in a row has left me wondering about my own mental and physical stamina. I am getting older (59) and energy and cognition do deteriorate as one ages past a certain point. I’m pretty sure I’m past that point. It’s one of the reasons I began treadmilling: to keep my thinking parts working as best they can as they get old and creaky.

Yesterday I spent several more hours completing my string quartet arrangement of “Yellow” by Coldplay. I emailed the parts and an MP3 of the original tune to the viola player. I am very curious at how successful this adaptation will be. Looking forward to some feedback from the players.

We had electricity problems at our gig last night. Two times the battery we were using seemed to die. At the last instance, we gave up. We went through two of my old batteries. I now have a new one.

I mentioned to Nate the bass player that at future gigs, I could furnish my own instrument. They are used to bringing equipment for the keyboard player. I like playing their instrument, but feel a bit guilty about not bringing my own “ax.” I am thinking of bringing my larger amp and also running my voice through it so I could sing a few tunes. Last night, Jordan asked me to sing “You are the Sunshine of my Life.” I told him I had no mic and didn’t really know the words by heart (they are not in the Real Book version of this tune). But I do think singing would add a bit of variety.

This particular grouping of musicians has never rehearsed, only performed. I think it might help us (I know it would help me). But we sound fine, all players are good at their skills and we can pull together for a gig from the Real Book like we did last night and do a decent job. My fatigue was showing I’m afraid. But probably not all that detectable from a listener point of view. I just know that my creative juices were a bit low.

I put myself on email subscription lists to several of the news sources I listed yesterday. This came in my email about the pending resignation of Jim Lehrer from the News Hour. FAIR asks the question if the reporting will improve with his departure and offers this summer of their recent examination of the show:

Unfortunately, the NewsHour‘s programming largely replicates the elite bias of network newscasts, featuring the views of powerful interests (military, government and corporate officials) while mostly sidelining citizen groups, public interest advocates, labor unions and the like.

FAIR’s 2010 study of the NewsHour (Extra!, 11/10) found:

• Sources drawn from elite institutions and occupations predominated, providing 74 percent of total sources. These were mostly current and former government officials, including military officials, who accounted for 44 percent of total sources. Corporate voices provided 10 percent of the NewsHour‘s guests, while public interest advocates provided just 4 percent.
• Women made up just 20 percent of the total sources–and were three times more likely to be “general public” sources rather than experts. Non-Hispanic whites accounted for 82 percent of U.S. sources.
• In coverage of the BP oil spill, a prominent story during the study period, oil industry representatives appeared four times as often as environmental advocates.
• On the Afghan War, 70 percent of sources were current or former government and military officials. TheNewsHour featured no guest identified as an opponent of the war or expressing antiwar views.

Pretty startling, eh?

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Interesting segment on On The Media’s current program about data. I was reading some of the listener comments reacting negatively to the idea.  I often suspect people’s ability to analyze and think about issues like extrapolating empirical data. We live in an echo chamber of nonsense in the USA. It takes some thoughtful reflection to sort out one’s subjectivity. I don’t see people doing that sort of reflecting.

Even just looking at the data above about the narrow reporting of the News Hour, one can see how careful counting and thinking about the numbers can inform understanding.

So listening to the above segment had me googling and finding the following links:

http://quantifiedself.com/

This is a blog about the idea of keeping records about one’s behavior. Then using that information to understand one’s self and one’s ability to alter one’s behavior. Interesting idea. I get up every morning, weigh myself, take my blood pressure and record the results. This quantification allows me to be more clear about my health. I show the list to my doctor every check-up. She has taken to photocopying the handwritten list and putting it in my file.

http://www.texastribune.org/

Brooke Gladstone (of On the Media) interviewed these people about their fascinating web site. This web site is all about gathering stats about Texas and putting them into creative digestible form and user apps.  Ground breaking stuff.

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http://www.radicalsoftware.org/volume2nr3/pdf/VOLUME2NR3_art10.pdf

This is an odd link to an odd anonymous sci-fi short story on a record found in an elevator in 1969. It was tweeted by William Gibson.

The record is in the papers of American composer, song writer and actor, Clark Geisner. (I never have heard of him before this). A quick search of the list his papers that are housed at Princeton U show both the record and the document linked above.

The gist of the story is that the recording is something sent to the past from the future.

Here’s an MP3 excerpt of the recording.

Fun stuff. I’m listening to this right now.

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Whew! After only four evenings of playing for a visiting prof I find that I am pretty exhausted.  I am scheduled to play five nights a week for the next two visiting profs and am wondering how I will do it energy wise.

I managed to do a good job for my final two classes last night.  I accomplished this by trying to not only play the way I thought the teacher wanted me too but also putting a little creativity back in the melodies I was improvising. This made the evening a bit less stressful for me.

I have a gig this evening but playing with a little jazz quartet will be a breeze after four nights of intense concentration and molding my music to fit the needs of a demanding ballet expert.

I went out and bought some equipment for tonight. I purchased another battery only to come home and find that after many days of charging one of my batteries was showing that it was finally fully charged. Just as well because the new battery takes 28 hours for its first charge. That means it will be fully charged just about in the middle of this evening’s gig.

I also purchased a power converter so that I can use the battery like a household outlet. I have one of these but I can’t find it.  These two items set me back about 70 bucks. As I understand it this evening we are getting paid $50 for the whole group. I guess that means it’s a $12.50 gig.  I never cease to marvel how under valued my work as a musician is money wise. Fortunately I’m a wild-eyed idealist who loves what he does even though so many people either under-value it or think it’s simply not all that good.  Whippy skippy.

In all fairness, no one asked me to purchase equipment for this particular gig. And these silly people are even providing me with a keyboard so I don’t have to bring anything but the batteries, my Real Books and some spare instrument cables.  I still can’t get over being flattered about the fact that these musicians have asked me to play with them. It will be fun.

I continue to work on the string quartet arrangement I am doing of “Yellow” by Coldplay. I discovered that I had omitted a couple of sections of it. It helps to listen to the recording all the way through, I guess. Ahem.

Tulip Time is truly a nutty time in Holland. I spent about fifteen minutes trying to go two or three blocks yesterday.

I also had my first piano lesson of the season with my student, Rudy Prudens. He spends half the year here and half in DC home. When he’s here he studies with me. Came home and pulled out piano scores of Scriabin and Faure that Rudy is learning. It’s helpful to me to have him for a student because he pulls me into piano literature I would probably otherwise not be so interested in.

Today’s goal is to rest up for this evening. Eileen and I recently broke down and bought a gas grill. She is talking about cooking out today since she has the whole day off. That would be fun.

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Links today are all over the place. I listened to Bob McChesney interview Fair.org founder Jeff Cohen. (link to MP3) Cohen recommended a bunch of news sources that he thinks are more fact based than anything else out there. I got up and bookmarked them:

Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting (FAIR)

Truthout | Fearless, Independent News and Opinion

Truthdig: Drilling Beneath the Headlines

Glenn Greenwald – Salon.com

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Then there’s Angry Birds.

Chrome has just released a free version of this for use with their browser. I emailed this link to Eileen and when I came home last night she was playing it. Later we watched John Stewart’s show taped from the night before and there was a reference to it.  The night before we wouldn’t have had any idea what they were talking about.

It’s basically a phone app, I guess (link to site)

And it also appears to be an addictive way to waste time.

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Catholic Professors Criticize Boehner in Letter – NYTimes.com

Boy is this one tricky. I personally abhor both the authoritarianism of the Catholic church and most of the the political stands of Boehner. At least the profs weren’t calling for him not to speak at the upcoming commencement.

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Texas Passes Bill to Make Some Fish Tales a Crime – NYTimes.com

Hmmm.

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Coal Curriculum Called Unfit for 4th Graders – NYTimes.com

It blows my mind how vapid and biased commercialization of education gets a foot hold like this.  God help our kids.

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Mr. Gingrich’s Intolerant History – NYTimes.com

Nice little run down of Gringrich’s weird history.  It’s my first bookmark for the Election of 2014.

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A Rite of Torture for Girls – NYTimes.com

More excellent stuff from Nicholas Kristof. This is a wrenching update about female circumcision.

“Is it cultural imperialism for Westerners to oppose genital mutilation? Yes, perhaps, but it’s also justified.”

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New Roles for Callista Gingrich and Maria Shriver – NYTimes.com

This is a column by Connie Schultz, a columnist for The Plain Dealer, is the author of “… And His Lovely Wife: A Memoir From the Woman Beside the Man.” It’s encouraging to find out that Shriver called Schultz to encourage her not to quit her day job for her senator husband.

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It’s a beautiful, gentle morning in Michigan. The air is fresh and a bit wet from the night rain. So glad I can finally open windows in the house and let the breeze in.

Last night was the third night of working with the first visiting ballet instructor. Several more students showed up. They seemed to be recruited from some local ballet schools. I didn’t recognize any of them from my work with Hope.

I am finding this work a bit less rewarding than my experience with the Hope teachers. I suspect this teacher has an accompanist that she has worked with for years and can anticipate exactly what she needs. She often only tells me the step involved in the upcoming combination. From that I am to deduce tempo, style and an appropriate melody.

I am pretty good at this but it takes immense concentration and not so much creativity.  We went for three hours last night since several of the new students were ready for a pointe class. At the end of the evening my teacher called for the piece I have been learning from Raymonda, the Glazounov ballet.

Once again she attempted to talk to me about the tempo of the piece. This is kind of funny because it’s sort of a gypsy number and there is a great deal of rubato throughout.  She seemed to accept what I was doing better after I sort of ignored her and tried to play the piece with expression.

Here’s the video I worked from to first determine exactly which three minutes of this lengthy opera was requested and then to get a bit of the style and tempo. This is also the dance the teacher is teaching the students.

I tried to take it easy yesterday in preparation for another evening of rehearsal. I did finish a draft of a string quartet adaptation of the tune, “Yellow,” by Coldplay. And of course practiced organ and piano.

The result of all of this is that I am pretty tired this morning and looking at two more nights of gigs. This evening is my last ballet class with this particular visiting prof. Tomorrow evening I am booked to play with the Barefoot Jazz Quartet for Tulip Time. It turns out we are playing in the street which is blocked off for the evening. I can only hope they haven’t jammed musical groups close together as they have in the past. This close proximity of other musicians is one of the main reasons I ceased playing in the Holland Street Performer Series. The other is that I couldn’t find anyone to play with me and this sort of thing is so much more fun with company.

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Anish Kapoor dedicates Leviathan sculpture to Ai Weiwei | Art and design | The Guardian

China is cracking down on artists and dissidents. Anish Kapoor is expressing solidarity via his unusual art work.

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Disabled people to march in London against cuts to benefits and services | Society | The Guardian

The UK has instituted many austerity measures and is following the Grover Nyquist admonition to take their government to the bathtub to drown it. Tough times in Great Britain.

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Aircraft carrier left us to die, migrants say | World news | The Guardian

Nick Clegg backs decision to not open Britain’s borders to Libyan refugees | UK news | The Guardian

Lebanese police send fleeing Syrians back to face Assad regime’s violence | World news | The Guardian

Wars create refugees and victims. Now they are called immigrants, a pejorative in many countries including the good U. S. of A.  These are three links that all appeared recently describing sad stuff.

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Donald Trump: Developer has thrived with government’s generosity – chicagotribune.com

Why is it not surprising that Trump has received many government handouts? Like so many people, self-interest is what drives this man. Of course he promises it would be different if he were king. Right!!

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Arts education: President’s Committee on the Arts and the Humanities issues report – latimes.com

Here’s an encouraging development! Did you know yesterday was poetry day at the Whitehouse?

I didn’t watch this yet, but I downloaded the mp3 of it to put on my player. Click here to go to whitehouse.gov.

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Steve Lopez: The president’s speech as seen through the eyes of illegal immigrants – latimes.com

More from those dam immigrants!  Excellent reporting, actually.

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Rajaratnam Found Guilty – NYTimes.com

Did you know that Rajaratnam is the 35th insider trader to be convicted?

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Ran across this passage last night reading Twain:

“What a wee little part of a person’s life are his acts and his words! His real life is led in his head, and is known to none but himself. All day long, and everyday, the mill of his brain is grinding and his thoughts, (which are but the mute articulation of his feelings,) not those other things, are his history. His acts and his words are merely the visible thin crust of his world, with its scattered snow summits and its vacant wastes of water—and they are so trifling a part of his bulk! a mere skin enveloping it. The mass of him is hidden—it and its volcanic fires that toss and boil, and never rest, night nor day. These are his life, and they are not written, and cannot be written. Every day would make a whole book of eighty thousand words—these hundred and sixty-five books a year. Biographies are but the clothes and buttons of the man—the biography of the man himself cannot be written.” Mark Twain, Autobiography of Mark Twain: The complete and authoritative edition, vol 1

This passage leapt out at me and reminded me of the other author I was reading lately, James Joyce. Joyce would agree with this sentence I think. Except for the part that a life can never be written, since that is the point ofUlysses… to record a complete fictional day of human life.

Yesterday turned into another full day for me. I’m feeling a bit creaky this morning.  I chose Sunday’s organ music: a piece by Bach and a very interesting setting by church music composer, Harald Rohlig. I have played a few of his compositions and have always found them distinctive and interesting. A quick google reveals that he is a professor emeritus in an Alabama college (Huntingdon).  He was born in Germany and disturbingly was drafted into Hitler’s air force in WWII.  Here’s a link to 2004 lecture notes for a lecture he gave entitled, “Living under an unjust regime.”

Anyway. Both pieces I am looking at for Sunday are based on the opening hymntune: Christ ist erstanden. Rohlig and divide up their settings into sections labeled versus.  I am planning to play Bach’s third versus. Haven’t decided how much of Rohlig to schedule. It’s good music but playing all of it for the prelude might be a bit lengthy, not to mention more music to learn for this Sunday.

In the afternoon, my violinist and  I met with a bridal party for an upcoming wedding at Hope college. The bride was probably nine or ten years old the last time I saw her. This turned into a full fledged music consultation as I recommended psalm settings to a singer (who has never been a cantor before but “sings at her church”), demonstrated piano, organ and violin music for the group.  Watched the bride’s mother (who is a friend) tear up while we discussed the particulars.

Came home and worked a bit on putting the psalm in Finale so I can adjust the key for the singer. Why do people sing so low these days? I think the answer is that they are unschooled.

At ballet class my strategy of including melody in the introduction seemed to be the ticket for most of the evening. The instructor is more rigid than I am used to. One move called the frappé involves a short series of vigorous jumps. I often play a improvisation that is as much rhythm as melody. So I didn’t do much melody in the intro. Immediately the teacher began indicating a slower rhythm. Then after she explained to me that I should begin the introduction with the last phrase of the melody I planned to play. This is fine except that I often don’t know exactly where a melody is going until I play it.

In fact, my approach differs from this in church work where I have made sure for years that congregations clearly hear the beginning of the melody I am asking them to sing. It is a bit old fashion to make the introduction the last four bars of the phrase.

You can be sure tonight there will be a melody in every introduction. I am a bit more used to being treated like a member of the team than this woman can pull off. Nevertheless her temperament is very calm and matter of fact, not bullying. I think I can get through this first week and do the job if not well at least adequately for her.

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Never Mind the ‘Vast Wasteland.’ Minow Has More to Say – NYTimes.com

“…[I]n exchange for free and exclusive licenses to use the airwaves, bona fide “public service” programming should be provided by broadcasters, whom he addressed and angered at their national gathering in Washington. “

Then FCC chair Newton Minow pissed off the media when he maintained this in 1961. I think it’s still true.

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30-Year-Old Capital Case Returns to Court, With Defense Alleging Bias – NYTimes.com

Interesting history of appeals and mischief caused by prosecutors.

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Mixed Reviews for Brownsville Ban on Plastic Bags – NYTimes.com

I remember when I first took plastic bags to recycle at Meijers a few years ago. The clerk thought I wanted my 5 cents per bag and began throwing them away. She barely understood that I was trying to reuse them. Now Meijers sells fabric bags to reuse for a dollar.

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Despite Government Efforts, Tainted Food Widespread in China – NYTimes.com

We ate great when we were in China. Including the street vendor buns mentioned in this article.

Not sure the “May Term” is working out that great for the Dance Department at Hope. I put it in parentheses because as far as I can tell, the college itself is on break.  The Dance Department has invited three profs for a one week class each. Unfortunately last night only one student showed up.

I was a bit off my game of improvising. This is understandable because I wanted to make sure I could do what the visiting prof needed. I find that simplifying helps me control what I am doing. Sure enough, the prof complained that some of my introductions (called “preparations” by dancers) were quicker than my tempos for the dance (which she typified as correct).

This sort of thing is tricky. Walking home I reflected that I probably have been letting my introductions at church get sloppy tempo wise. If for no other reason that the tempo of the introduction doesn’t seem that critical to a group of lay singers whose collective sense of tempo often wavers.

During class my solution to the instructor’s admonishment was to make the introductions have more melody to them. It is my impression that dancers listen mostly to the melody, some to the chord progression. Rhythmic aspects are curiously lower on their perceptions than melody and harmony. The rhythms are like a bonus to their dancing.

It’s counterintuitive until you realize that so much of dancing is mental, remembering routines in order and giving silent directions or corrections to yourself as a dancer.

This makes it very important to know where you are in the melody.

I also think that what was happening last night was I was correcting my tempo instantly after the introduction to reflect what the teacher wanted.  To get a sense of what is needed I watch dance instructors closely, especially their body language. And I adjust pretty instantly if my improvisation feels like a wrong choice.

Anyway.

The teacher didn’t seem too dissatisfied with my work.  She mentioned working with the famous dancer, Nureyev.

I had the music she requested ready to play (a scene from the Ballet “Ramonda” by Glazounov). She didn’t call for it.  She stopped the class after an hour and half. The chair of the department danced along for most of the class, drawing the line at some pretty vigorous steps due to age and an old knee injury.

I managed to pace myself yesterday and was still refreshed in the evening. Of course I am tired this morning and am looking at three more evenings of dance class and an evening gig on Friday.

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Women Against the Hangman by Roger Cohen – NYTimes.com

Challenges being faced by brave women on the ground in Libya.

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Mothers We Could Save by Nicholas Kristof – NYTimes.com

Needless deaths in Somalia due to poor pre-natal care and no contraception. Kristof’s Mother’s Day column.

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Why We Celebrate Killing Bin Laden by Johathon Haidt – NYTimes.com

Haidt is a Psychology professor who claims that it was patriotic not nationalistic for Americans to celebrate the death of bin Laden. I don’t think he quite has this right.  While I don’t think the jubilation seen in America over the death of bin Laden warped us, I do think it is humans behaving badly.

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Shampoo Free!

My niece Emily just about has me convinced to start washing my hair with baking soda and then rinsing with vinegar. I stopped by the local Natural Foods store last week and tried to purchase some things I needed there. Unfortunately the costs were astronomically greater for recycled products than cheapo Meijers versions (recycled napkins = $10 for a package, Meijers cheapo napkins = $1.50). Had to go with the cheapo, of course.

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Watery Grave, Murky Law – NYTimes.com

Interesting explanation of the history of Islamic burial practices.

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The White House’s Bedtime Bombshell – NYTimes.com

I put this link up on Facebook. I think it’s interesting how newspapers arrive at how they report a story, especially factoring in websites.

For visuals on this same story:

The Times in Overdrive – Arthur S. Brisbane – The Public Editor – The New York Times – NYTimes.com

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Why Should Teachers Be Blamed? – NYTimes.com

Some interesting letters to the editor about recent education reporting. I especially liked the first one:

“Ironically, the poor treatment teachers endure in America has to do with the high hopes we vest in them. We widely believe that, no matter what forces shape a child’s life outside school, teachers can level the playing field, neutralize the negative effects of poverty on learning, and raise every kid to proficiency in every standard. But this generally doesn’t happen.”

T. ELIJAH HAWKES
Brooklyn, May 1, 2011
The writer is principal of the James Baldwin School in Manhattan.

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My break is over and it’s back to the playing for Ballet classes this evening. I’m not as exhausted as I was but I’m still not fully rested. Pretty normal for a Monday. Interested to see how I do with increased hours and unfamiliar teachers in the May term.

In addition to church and ballet I have added playing with the Barefoot Jazz Quartet this summer.  We played last week and have another gig this week on Friday from 5-7 PM. It’s flattering to me that this group of musicians has reached out to include me in their group.  This is in contrast to my usual treatment by local people who would be logical colleagues for me (organists, composers, musicians).  I told Eileen this week that if I had to choose between being having local church or college musicians keep me on their radar as a respected colleague or playing with people like the Barefoot Jazz Quartet I would instantly choose the latter.

I find it a bit curious that local musicians keep me at arm’s length even when I make the rare attempt to connect with them. I’m not much of a schmoozer and over the years the local artistic community seems to perceive me as “odd.” But what do I expect? Much of this is my own doing. It’s probably even a bit of my heritage on my father’s side. Both he and my grandfather were intellectuals in an anti-intellectual denomination (Church of God, Anderson Indiana). The point is that I’m more comfortable with those who are eccentric (like my church people) and passionate (like the people in Barefoot Jazz Quartet).

After riding home from the Hatch Mother’s day cookout and chatting briefly with my son in California on my cell on the way, I plopped down on my new lawn chair, sipped wine and read a chapter each in James Joyce’s Ulysses and Mark Twain’s recently released autobiography.

I have read Ulysses but still enjoy returning to Joyce because each time I catch things I missed before. I think one of the points he makes in this book is that each person’s life is a sort of deep and resonant story that has it’s own secrets and beauty. Ulysses you recall is the story of one day in Dublin. It basically follows Stephen Daedalus and Leopold Bloom throughout the day. Daedalus is a sort of Icarus/son figure who is also the the main character of Joyce’s Portrait of an Artist as a Young Man. Bloom is the Ulysses/father figure of the book.  Joyce begins the book in his sort of stream of consciousness technique and then moves through myriad uses of language, parodying writers mercilessly and applying an encyclopedic array of use of words. I find that I can dip in anywhere (like I did yesterday) and enjoy it.

I’m hoping to get more done on my string quartet arrangement of “Yellow” by Coldplay today. Also need to practice ballet music since one of the instructors has requested a scene from Glazounov’s ballet, “Raymonda.” I have been learning it, but need to polish it more. Tomorrow I and the violin player meet with a wedding party. I need to do some prep for that as well (find some music and practice a couple of Debussy piano pieces the bride has requested).

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Today’s links are a bit on the liberal side of partisanship. I apologize to the conservatives who visit.

Obama Administration Plans Corporate Tax Cut in Year of Record Profits | The Nation

Pakistan’s K Street Connections | The Nation

After Osama bin Laden’s Death, an End to ‘Bad Guys’ | The Nation

Do They Dream? Spelunking With Werner Herzog | The Nation

My Friend Len Weinglass | The Nation

Guernica / Noam Chomsky: My Reaction to Osama bin Laden’s Death

I find this last article a bit troubling. My daughter, Sarah, linked it in on Facebook. My wife read it. Chomsky can be excellent. I have found him more shrill as both he and I age. In this case he seems to misrepresent the Osama bin Laden caper a bit. His phrase, “virtually no resistance,” seems suspect to me since people were killed in the initial gunfight. He second guesses the situation strictly from a narrow point of view and then says that President Obama lied about “quickly” learning that al Qaeda was behind 9/11 . I don’t find his comments any more helpful than that of, say, Rush Limbaugh or Dick Cheney.

Hmmmmm.

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Yesterday on the Writers Almanac site, I found it curious that they posted a poem about fathers. Had to be on purpose.

Weeds
by Wesley McNair

In my fifty-fifth year,
kneeling in my garden
to pull a weed,
I discover my father,
whom I hardly knew,
lying down in his garden.
His heart so damaged now
no doctor would remove
the cataracts that spoil his sight,
he has no other way to see
what he is doing. With him again
in his sad dimness,
I don’t want to lecture him
about the smell of booze
or talk about the seed
he left long ago untended.

link to entire poem