The Haydn went very well yesterday. I was rehearsing it before service and a woman asked me about it, saying it was very beautiful. I talked to her for a bit about Haydn. He is often underrated. If you bothered to click on the recording in yesterday’s post, I guess you can make your own mind up about the piece. I think it’s lovely and also defies a bit of stereotype about this composer.

For the postlude I played this Chaconne by Louis Couperin. I couldn’t find a Youtube video of it as fast as I played it. (There are however several different ones available). This performer at least seems to understand French music a bit more like I do, but wow is this a heavy interp to my ears.

The soundtrack to the movie, “The End of Violence,” is one of my favorites.  Yesterday after a typical morning at church I was a bit frazzled as usual. Eileen and I hadn’t gone out to eat for a week. Eileen skipped church but we went out for lunch at the pub. I had two martinis and started feeling a bit more human.

When we came home I was delighted to discover the movie, “The End of Violence,” was playing on the Independent Channel.

It’s kind of a goofy movie, I guess. Not that great, but there are some scenes burned into my memory and it was great fun to see them again. Also,  since originally seeing the movie, I have played the soundtrack a lot. So I know the music much better and was interested to see how much of it was actually used in the film.

I especially like Ry Cooder’s work on it.

This is one of many on it that I like.

Also this one, although this video is admittedly dumb.

Of course the Tom Waits video at the top of this post is also one of the tunes.

I was discouraged to get up this morning and find an email in my inbox asking me if I could rehearse today in Grand Haven with the high school singers. I was hoping for a day off since the ballet class is on break along with the rest of the little Christian college in this town. Shit.

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Here’s links to some recent online reading. Haven’t finished them all.  I like to read online while I treadmill so I sometimes save things for that.

First a few Egypt links:

Egypt: brave new Arab world | Editorial | Comment is free | The Guardian

When Democracy Weakens – NYTimes.com

Fall of Mubarak Shakes Middle East – WSJ.com

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Sometimes, Justice Can Play Politics – NYTimes.com

Good quote from this one: “Does anyone seriously think Justice Thomas would become more constitutionally conservative (if that were somehow logically possible) as a result of his wife’s political activism?”

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The Weather Isn’t Getting Weirder – WSJ.com

Seems to be Global Warming Denier proclaiming from the European desk of the Wall Street Journal. Interesting.

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Race, Religion and Other Perilous Ground – NYTimes.com

I always read this column if I remember to.  The New York Times hires respected journalists and gives them a platform to critique their journalistic performance. This column shows how an error slipped into the paper.

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WikiLeaks Show WMD Hunt Continued in Iraq – With Surprising Results | Danger Room | Wired.com

Quotes from this article:

“An initial glance at the WikiLeaks war logs doesn’t reveal evidence of some massive WMD program by the Saddam Hussein regime — the Bush administration’s most (in)famous rationale for invading Iraq. But chemical weapons, especially, did not vanish from the Iraqi battlefield. Remnants of Saddam’s toxic arsenal, largely destroyed after the Gulf War, remained. Jihadists, insurgents and foreign (possibly Iranian) agitators turned to these stockpiles during the Iraq conflict — and may have brewed up their own deadly agents.”

“The WMD diehards will likely find some comfort in these newly-WikiLeaked documents. Skeptics will note that these relatively small WMD stockpiles were hardly the kind of grave danger that the Bush administration presented in the run-up to the war.”

I can remember following the progress of our troops up the road to Baghdad being terrified that Hussein was going to unleash nerve gas or something at any point and kill many of our soldiers.

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CURRICULUM VITAE Steven Earl Jones

This link was passed on to me by my son. Jones is a physicist who has valid questions about the science of the Twin Towers- 9/11 attack. There are links in his CV:

K. Ryan, J. Gourley and S.E. Jones, “Environmental Anomalies at the World Trade Center: Evidence for Energetic Materials“,  Environmentalist, August 2008.

This is just an abstract but you get the idea.

S.E. Jones, et al. “Fourteen Points of Agreement with Official Government Reports on the World Trade Center Destruction“, Open Civil Engineering Journal, April 2008.

Haven’t looked at this yet.

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ORG Zine | Video: An interview with Neil Gaiman

My brother posted this one on Facebook.

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Exercise & Physical Activity: Your Everyday Guide from the National Institute on Aging

Hey. I’m an old guy who has started exercising in the last few years. I need all the info I can gather.

I have been noticing that a mild change has been coming over me in the last week or so.  I am feeling more confident in my own judgments and ideas. Not that I don’t still question them. But I realize that I have been living in an environment since the late 80s in which I am very often underestimated and misunderstood.  I attribute this to a myriad of causes  and not just my anachronistic appearance. Like my appearance some but not all of these factors are self-inflicted. Others are the result of people not seeing me accurately or even noticing me (hence my fondness for “invisible” metaphors). I am trying to reduce the self-inflicted ones and see myself more clearly and act more like who I really am.

This is ironic because when I think of my young adulthood, I think I was overestimated and misunderstood by many people in my environment and that I also often more easily fell into the trap of overestimating and misunderstanding myself.

Now I feel a bit better self assessed. In addition I sense that my judgments and perspective have a bit more validity than maybe I have been giving them personally.

I know this probably sounds strange if you know me at all.  I am sometimes perceived as over confident if not overbearing and suspect that I intimidate people.

I think discovering Andre Schiffrin the publisher contributed to my ongoing realization about the wider cosmopolitan perspective and continual learning I have pursued in my life.

This has definitely been impacted by my use of the Internet.

Yesterday I was sitting in the coffee shop with Eileen. She was relieved to get out and do some normal things I think after a week of convalescence and discomfort. So we lingered at the Internet table that the coffee shop provides for laptop users.

During this time, I perused the back catalog of Schiffrin’s publishing house,  The New Press.

Schiffrin has said that he set out to remedy the bad current situation, one in which conglomerates are buying up book publishers and insisting on more and more profit and less and less beneficial exposure of ideas. He said his idea of creating The New Press was to create a publishing equivalent of NPR or PBS.  I learned this from listening to his comments on C-Span. I am now about a third of the way through his book, The Business of Books: How International Conglomerates Took Over Publishing and Changed the Way We Read.

Anyway, I was able to look at his press’s catalog online. After I saw a book that looked interesting, I would then go to the local library’s online catalog and see if it was available.

This online use of catalogs is one that I have done since before the World Wide Web. I used to do it via Telnet which was an early Internet connection mode.

For me, the internet is not so much an immediate source of primary information but much more often a way to research how to obtain more primary information.  It can act like a cosmic catalog in which I can make some preliminary evaluation of materials to obtain to learn more.

Admittedly I have begun to use the Internet more and more as a source for primary information, especially news.

But yesterday while sitting in a coffee house I checked on the following books:

I have been aware of Studs Terkel for years and dipped into his books and heard him speak. I did not know how Schiffrin had approached him after he had been blacklisted and encouraged him to begin to make the books he made which are oral histories. Schiffrin tells the story in The Business of Books.

I thought Will the Circle be Unbroken: Reflections on Death, Rebirth and Hunger for a Faith sounded interesting. Also Hope Dies Last: Keeping the Faith in Difficult times.

Last night I read the introduction, personal notes  and the first interview in Hope Dies Last.  Schiffrin’s and Terkel’s populism attracts me. They are literate but still interested in popular culture and history. Here are couple quotes from Hope Dies Last:

Quoting Thomas Paine, Terkel says that what Paine said in 1791 is on the button in the 21st century and particularly and ironically in America where these ideas were once espoused.

“Freedom has been hunted round the globe; reason was considered as rebellion; and the slavery of fear has made men afraid to think. But such is the irresistible nature of truth that all it asks, and all it wants, is the liberty of appearing… In such a situation, man becomes what he ought. He sees his species not with the inhuman ideas of a natural enemy, but as a kindred.”

That is from the introduction of Hope Dies Last.  In his Personal Notes, Terkel quotes a radio broadcast made on V-E day, May 8, 1945. The broadcaster, Norman Corwin, “had written a one-hour program” to celebrate the end of the war.  Terkel quotes his works and they make me think of what happened in Cairo this week.

“Let the singing fade, the celebrants go home. The bowl is drained and empty, and the toasts are drunk. The guns are still, the tanks garaged, the planes rest in the hangar. Only the night remains. Outside the dew of morning glistens like a hope.”

This book has gone on my list of books to finish reading.  Several Terkel books were sitting on the shelves of my library.  There were other books and authors that caught my eye. Like Gunnar Myrdal.

Myrdal seems to be a modern Swedish Tocqueville providing some fascinating looks at the problems of American life in the 20th Century.  In The Business of Books, Schiffrin writes

“… Myrdal was the most perceptive critic of the trap into which American society had fallen, a combination of racism and economic inequality…”

I was so interested in these last two books I ordered them with my credits at PaperBack Swap. They will be coming free in the mail soon.

I can see I’m going on a bit at length. My point is to expose some of these titles and at the same time demonstrate how the Internet can work like a card catalog to a cosmic bookstore/library/free book swap “dealy.”

Here are few more The New Press books that interested me and were at the local library.

I read the first chapter in this book last night as well. Published in 2004, it describes Marcus’s ringside seat in the early days of Amazon.

This one was for Eileen. I interlibrary loaned it at her request while we were still sitting in the coffee shop.

Read the introduction to this book last night. It is a bit more polemic than the others but it connects to and updates the Robert McChesney’s historical analysis of media in our country which I read several years ago, Rich Media, Poor Democracy.

I tried not to look too much at other books at the library since I knew I was already going to take home a stack. Books on either side of the ones I was looking for beckoned. I didn’t recognize this title by Capote and have read a great deal of his work and admire it. Oh well, I added it to the stack and checked it out. It is published by Random House. I RANDOMLY ran across it while I was pulling the other books from the shelves at the library. Which just shows to go you that there’s nothing like browsing in the meat world. Heh.

I decided I would perform a Haydn piano sonata movement this Sunday as the prelude.  I’m going through a bit of a rough patch at work. Probably not totally appropriate to talk about it here, but suffice it to say it’s not that serious or anything. But I chose the Haydn because it is a beautiful work and I will enjoy performing it and it will soothe me in a trying situation. It’s kind of an indulgence I guess, but it will make a lovely moment in the service.

Here’s a Youtube video that begins with this lovely movement well played.

At 3:30 (3 minutes, 30 seconds) into the video the movement ends and the player begins the finale. This player (who doesn’t seem to be identified anywhere) doesn’t repeat the two sections in the piece as per Haydn’s instructions. This probably gently violates the nature of the form this piece is written in (sonata allegro). I am planning on doing the repeats but I am taking it just a tad faster. My edition suggests a pulse of 108 per minute which is quicker than this player is playing. It’s also a bit quicker than I am planning on performing it as well.

I am managing to get back to exercising.

Started using our new WIIfit plus a couple days ago. It has some handy new features like being able to build a routine that moves immediately from exercise to exercise and some new exercise games.

And I started treadmilling again.

Eileen went to work yesterday and seem tired but satisfied when she got home. I spent some time on Skype with my lovely daughter, Sarah for a bit yesterday, catching up with her. She and her partner, Matthew, spent her birthday in Disneyland in Paris.  It sounds as though it’s a replication of the U.S. Disneylands with Tea Cup rides and roller coasters.

I got up this morning (actually was laying in bed) and checked out world reaction to Mubarek’s resignation yesterday.

I checked these web sites:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/

http://www.guardian.co.uk/

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/index.html

The Daily Mail is pretty useless. Very much an Enquirer type.

http://english.aljazeera.net/

I heard one of the editors of Aljazeera talk about journalism last year. This international news organization does some excellent reporting.

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Protesters Defeat Mubarak: The West Loses Its Favorite Tyrant – SPIEGEL ONLINE – News – International

I haven’t finished reading this last article, but thought it had an interesting title and the first few paragraphs convinced me it wasn’t just a diatribe against the US.

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Did you know you can change the setting to different countries on Google News? Pretty interesting to see what Switzerland or Brazil papers are saying. And of course you can use the translate button that pops automatically if you are using Chrome.

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Is George W. Bush above the law?

on the Canadian Edmunton Journal web site. I put this here in case readers miss the comments to the previous post (link).  I think I was a bit glib in describing some of my ideas and when prodded by my son’s thoughtful comment tried to fill in a few of the blanks. This article is one of several I looked at about Bush’s recent decision not to go to Switzerland.  I put it in my comment and am also putting here as a link.

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This is silly, I know. But my Mom has a bunch of magazine subscriptions that keep coming to my house. At first I took each issue to her, but she didn’t really look at them and told me she didn’t want them. I haven’t gotten around to canceling them so they just keep coming.

Now I look at the covers and decide whether to recycle them or put them in the bathroom to read.

The March issue of Woman’s Day has an article called “The Caregiver’s Survival Kit” by Gail Sheehy. I was skimming it. It’s kind of what you would expect, easy reading. But I have done some caregiving in the last few years and realize it has affected me deeply.

Click on the title to read an online synopsis of the article. But the main reason I’m putting this up is that in the magazine (not on the web for some reason!) Sheehy mentions this web site:

I do find myself trying to find good medical information online and hadn’t run across this government web site…..

http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/

worth bookmarking

Eileen and I ordered this book and it came in the mail yesterday.  I read a bit in it and discovered that the entire book was published simultaneously on line [link to site].

I find this extremely encouraging.

I was also surprised to learn that Twain actually left a coherent implication of how he wanted his autobiography published. I always thought it was just a huge collection of preparatory manuscripts.

This makes me even more excited to read this book.

I listened to a hilarious satirical song yesterday on the Capital Steps website called Lirty Dies [link to site, link to mp3]

Lirty Dies: Tough Rimes of 2010 mp3

I love the Capital Steps. They even have an entire web site dedicated to “Whipping Flurds” as they say [link]. I especially like: “Licky Weaks, the poo tarty system & the pee tarty…”

Yesterday’s report includes information on the recent cancellation of George Bush’s trip to Switzerland due to possibly being confronted as an international war crimincal:

“…on Monday, the Center for Constitutional Rights and the Berlin-based European Center for Constitutional and Human Rights issued a 42-page document they call a preliminary indictment against Bush. Human rights lawyers say Bush could now face a lawsuit wherever he travels outside the United States. (from the report)

I have to say I support this and have been saying for years that Bush and Cheney should be held responsible for their reckless behavior in office that resulted in the deaths and torture of so many people, not to mention lying to the American public about Weapons for Mass Destruction in Iraq.

Since I am allowing myself to express my radical political views here, I might as well go whole hog and recommend a report I plan to listen to this morning: Noam Chomsky: How Climate Change Became a ‘Liberal Hoax’

It’s been very interesting sorting through the hundreds of files of my compositions and arrangements.  It contradicts my self image of a composer who is not doing much composing. In fact, it seems that I do quite a bit of it when I look at all the pieces that I have written even in the past ten years or so.

I’ve also been thinking about Schiffrin’s contention that the intellectual environment in the US is one of provincialism and general ignorance that actively censors new ideas and thinking.

Eileen and I watched a bit of TV news last night and I continue to be appalled at what passes for public information. As reactionaries attempt to dismantle government at national and state levels, the local and national reports we watched last night did not mention it. There seems to be a dearth of TV reporting  on ideas or public interest in local and national news with the exception of PBS and C-Span.

This is amazing.

Having said that, I just did some looking for a list of the specific cuts the Republicans are proposing to the national government budget and found it via a FOX news web site link to the Committee on Appropriations proposal.

So they must be reporting it somewhere on FOX TV news as well.

I still prefer Democracy Now.

The 70 services that government provides that Republicans feel should get less money include

Flood control
Nuclear Energy
Office of Science
Collection of taxes via the IRS
International Trade
Economic assistance
Standards and Technology Institute
Drug Intelligence
Law Enforcement Wireless Communications
US Marshalls
FBI
Juvenile Justice
NASA
EPA
Food Safety and Inspection
Rural Development
Smithsonian
Fish and Wildlife
National Park Service
Job Training
Community Health Centers
Poison Control
Amtrak
[Link to entire list]

A. B. Stoddard on The Hill Website suggests that the strategy is to get congress on board with these relatively small cuts (to what look like to me as mostly essential societal services) “to decrease defections for the coming fights, which will matter far more.”

I heard a congressman on the radio explaining that by cutting the governmental spending Republicans hope to stimulate the economy and create jobs.

I can’t help but wonder about that. It seems more likely to me that reduction of government in general is the goal. Grover Norquist‘s 2001 remark still sums this view up nicely: “I don’t want to abolish government. I simply want to reduce it to the size where I can drag it into the bathroom and drown it in the bathtub.”

Public welfare is not clearly addressed by this ideology.

In my lifetime over and over I have seen when public welfare is left to the mercy of the free market, it is diminished.

The hole in the free market argument is that the purpose of business is not public welfare but profit margin.

When combined with the prevalent fear and ignorance in the US,  the present hysterical environment ensues and the entire culture is suffering.

I also see it happening in the U.K. right now.

Prime Minister David Cameron just issued a broadside that blames racism and terrorism on minority communities there.  Here’s a couple of links about that:

Cameron’s confusion on multiculturalism The Guardian

Club Britain: Access denied Al Jazeera

Last evening my rehearsals with high school singers for an upcoming recital and Solo and Ensemble Festival turned into a marathon. I arrived at 3 PM and rehearsed solidly until 7 PM, 8 rehearsals about 30 minutes each.

This is my second rehearsal with all but one of these kids. After some initial haggling, the choir director contracted me at a flat fee of $50 per student. Each time I schedule a rehearsal I am doing more for to earn this amount.

The voice teacher asked me for one more rehearsal with each kid. If this happens, it will mean for fifty dollars I will have commuted 5 times for 5 different services in each case.

I enjoy working with the kids. They seem to appreciate my presence and contribution.  It is a hard pill for me to swallow, however, that of the adult musicians involved I am pretty sure I am paid the worst. I am no less skilled than them. But once again I have positioned myself outside of more conventional working situations and commiserate compensation. Sigh. It’s my own doing.

I have had an intense few days. Watching Eileen go through her recent fall and convalescence has been an exercise in helplessness.  Going back and forth from caring for her and other activities like church meetings and the rehearsal last night requires both physical and psychological stamina.

I have another church meeting today. This will be our first staff meeting for this year. In many ways we are running in place as a staff. I was thinking this morning of what I could contribute constructively toward this meeting.

I found myself thinking of trying to help make the calendars more accurate.

This is exactly the topic I brought up in our first staff meeting a few years ago.  Ay yi yi.

It’s a good thing that I enjoy this work and working with my boss. The organizational end seems to flounder as much as function.

But I’m probably just tired this morning. Heh.

I burned a CD of this Democracy Now report from 2007 to listen to on the drive back and forth to rehearsals last night.

March 28, 2007 interview with Amy Goodman on Democracy Now discussing “A Political Education”

A Political Education is a memoir by Andre Schiffrin, the book publisher I mentioned in yesterday’s blog. He contends that the conglomeration of book publishers has limited the proliferation of ideas via the publication of new books with ideas that challenge and critique the government and the people who fund and benefit from it (the corporations and conglomerates). Schiffrin is a mild mannered highly educated radical and I am quite attracted to his analysis.

The Democracy Now report begins with some interesting reporting about how congress was legislating about the war that year (2007). I was surprised at how the reporting seemed to me in retrospect to be so accurate and insightful, not two words that occur to me about much of the reporting I read and hear and see.

I have subscribed to its podcast. Part of my motivation is that I am beginning to suspect that dialog, analysis and coherent public conversation is almost non-existent in the public arena in the USA.

On a NPR report this morning about the pending legislation tightening up the government restrictions on abortion, the reporter pointed out how the Republicans had responded not to a coherent discussion of their bill, but to the savaging they received on Stewart’s Daily Show.

Rape Victim Abortion Funding – The Daily Show with Jon Stewart – 02/02/11 – Video Clip | Comedy Central

I admire satire and I admire and find Stewart’s show funny. But it’s a sad substitute for accurate information, adult analysis and discussion.

Neil Postman years ago observed that Entertainment standards were changing all public institutions in the US. The chapter titles in his 1985 book, Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business neatly synopsize the idea. “Now This” was about the disconnect in sound bytes in TV and Radio. “Shuffling of to Bethlehem” was about organized religion’s conversion to Entertainment language and theology. “Reach Out and Elect Someone” for politics.

Unfortunately now Entertainment has replaced public coherent intelligent discussion and reporting. We are distracted by the entertaining way public speakers unfairly “frame” issues and vilify each other. It is our ‘bread and circuses.”(Follow this Link to Fallacious Arguments for a veritable guide to 99.9%  of what passes for public conversation in the US right now)

Anyway, I took my sorry ass over to the library yesterday and checked out Schiffrin’s The Business of Books: How International Conglomerates Took Over Publishing and Changed the Way We Read. I look forward to browsing through it, if not reading it cover to cover.

I was actually in the book business for a few years.  I still enjoy listening to insiders talk about publishing and books.

Sunday evening I was trying to relax a bit so I listened to Andre Schriffin be interviewed on C-Span.

Schiffrin was director of the publisher, Pantheon, which brought Pasternak and Foucault to English readers.

In the C-Span interview, he discussed how publishing has changed and how it works to the advantage of people who want to control or stop the flow new ideas.

I enjoyed his ideas on several levels. He is a book person. He is cosmopolitan.  I share some of his political ideas. And last he gave the impression of someone who knows stuff but also knows that he is not relevant to people who aren’t aware of history and words.

So of course he is now on my list of thinkers to check out.

In between taking care of my wife and all the other things I have been doing, I have been organizing my composition files. I think I have figured out a way to put these hundreds of files in folders on my exterior hard drive where I will be able to access them.

It’s a good mindless-type task.

Eileen continues to mend, feeling a bit better everyday.  I will be driving up to Grand Haven this afternoon for another round of rehearsals with the young singers I will be accompanying in a recital and Solo and Ensemble festival. Plus my 8:30 AM ballet class this morning.

In between I will be making sure Eileen has what she needs.

Life goes on.

As Eileen left for church yesterday morning, she stepped onto the icy back steps and fell. She fell squarely back on the steps and hit her upper back on them.

I was right behind and also slipped but caught myself so I didn’t fall hard.

Eileen was immediately aware that she had hurt herself pretty badly. So we took a few minutes to calm down and assess how badly. After a bit we realized she would need to go to Emergency.

She didn’t seem to have any broken bones. She could move her extremities. It crossed my mind that if her neck or back was broken it would be better to call an Ambulance.

But she was not hurt so badly that she couldn’t slowly stand and make her way to the car.

Since it was Sunday morning, we stopped and I let my boss know what was going on. She urged me to do what I needed to do and that the Sunday morning service I usually play at would take care of itself.

It is clarifying when someone you love is hurt. Trivial things in life seem truly trivial, important things are suddenly clearly important.

After Eileen got checked in and settled in to a room in the ER waiting for a doctor, she told me I should leave her and go play my silly service. By this time, she was in pretty good spirits even though she was silly hurting badly. So I did go back and play the service.

I canceled my post-service rehearsal and went back quickly to be with Eileen. By this time they had given her some tylenol for the pain and ran tests on her (Cat scan, X ray).

They had discovered that her fourth and fifth thorassic vertebrae were exhibiting “mild” compression fracture.

This condition is either caused by osteoporosis or a fall. Since they were in the area that Eileen had hit her back, the doctor concluded they were the result of the fall.

There is no real treatment to speed the healing process of this kind of injury. Only the pain can be treated.

So they sent Eileen home with prescriptions for drugs for pain (Percocet and Motrin) and told her to make a follow up appointment with the neurologist who had helped the ER doctor read the xrays and determine the extent of the injury.  She was not to go to her job until she saw the neurologist.

I spent the rest of the day taking care of her and running around trying to get the silly prescriptions filled. They gave her her first pills at the hospital so that she barely made it through lunch before she was groggy and needed to lie down.  Apparently Percocet is not only a mild narcotic, it does not have a generic brand making it kind of rare. Meijers (where we do a lot of our shopping and all of our prescriptions) didn’t have any.  The dude at Walgreens said it was my lucky day because we cleaned him out.

Eileen had a previous doctor’s appointment for this morning so she will be seeing her internist (Dr. Fuentes) then.  My Mom is scheduled to spend the morning see her psychologist and psychiatrist, back to back, in Zeeland, the next little city over.

I think I will spend the morning, at least, running them back and forth to these appointments.

I installed the 2010 version of Finale, the music software I use, recently. The church paid for the update. Bless their hearts.  I have already spent a couple hours this morning reorganizing the many files I have of compositions and arrangements. I figure I’m about 1/4th of the way done. What a huge job.

Instead of reading news articles online yesterday as I treadmilled, I read in The Study of Fugue by Alfred Mann.

I continue to think about fugal writing. Mann’s book is a classic in the area and I haven’t read it before.  I was reading it on Google Books when I came to a page that wasn’t “part of the preview.” I turned off the computer and pulled out my copy to see if I could read it while I exercised. Sure enough, the type was big enough.

Ironic, that even though I own a copy I wasn’t able to access it online. Seems like if you own a piece of copyrighted material it would be fair to allow you to access it online for convenience. Silly me.

I also adapted the Hatch family recipe for meatloaf to a lower calorie version.

Then I made it.

Calories in Meatloaf recipe

Ground Beef 650 calories for 17 ounces

3/4 C oatmeal 225 calories
1/4 C egg beater 30 calorie
1/2 grated onion 32 calories
3/4 C non fat milk 68 calories
3 T ketchup 45 calories
2 T dried parlsey 8 calories
1 1/2 t salt 0 calories
1 1/2 t (1/2 T) of shortening to grease pan 55 calories

total calories 1113

Combine and bake in greased loaf pan for about an hour at 375 degrees
1/5 slice as a serving therefore has about 227 calories

I determined the calories by looking at the handy-dandy labels and also using this web site:

Eileen has not tried the final product yet. If she likes it, I’ll probably post it on Facebook because I am connected to so many Hatches on it.

02 All upon the altar by jupiterjenkins

My brother asked me to email him a copy of this recording yesterday.  Our father sang in this group as a young man.  My brother’s copy of this particular track seemed to be giving him trouble, so he asked me to send him a new copy.

Isn’t the Soundcloud embed nifty?

I have been running across these little embeds and finally somebody mentioned the web site by name so I ran it down and used it. I like the way you can see the entire recording. This is the way the editing software I use shows it as well.

Both the soundcloud and the editing software are free. Click on the pics for a link.

Thanks to “David & Paul” for emailing me a link to this man’s photographs and art.  The artist is Liu Bolin. The photo above is called “Hiding in the city No. 63-Gray’s Opening Ceremony 2008.” The web site is a collection of photographs and art by Bolin. In many of them he is  standing ill or well disguised into a background. The mood of these shots and the one above in particular is one with which I can identify. I see them as quietly humorous but also dark in their implication of invisibility.

I think about invisibility from time to time.

I think one of the things I like about playing for ballet class is the fact that the music I improvise is a very small but real part of what is happening. I say this but yesterday I had an embarrassing moment.  The “Bar Stretch” exercise requires a long slow steady piece of improvised music. It is important that this music be gentle and relaxing. Last week I did a slow country waltz. But yesterday I lost myself in a improvisation during this time. It’s hard to describe improv, but I developed a slow jazzy theme and then played that with my left hand and added quicker lines with my right hand.

When I came up for air one at the end of the young dancers remarked that what I had just done was beautiful. I thanked her but was totally embarrassed.  I think that my personality is such that I am comfortable with the vulnerability of improvisation and music in general. But I can easily be shocked back into realizing how naked this makes me and how much of myself  I put into such silly little things like improvisations.

Still I do like being a little visible. It seems to be part of the animal of music. That it is perceived.

I continue reading in Niebur’s Leaves from the Notebooks of a Tamed Cynic for some reason.

Speaking of his criticism of preachers at revival meetings, in his 1924 Notebook entry he says this:

“If you don’t simplify issues you can’t arouse emotional crises. It’s the melodrama that captivates the crowd. Sober history is seldom melodramatic. God and the devil may be in conflict on the scene of life and history, but a victory follows every defeat and some kind of defeat every victory. The representatives of God are seldom divine and the minions of Satan are never quite diabolical.”

Writing between the wars in America and living in Detroit as a young evangelical pastor, his words seem prophetic of and salient to today.  Of course now in America we often only say “drama” to describe overreaction. And we also demonize the “other” very quickly seldom recalling that our reaction is often a mirror of our own failings and that those around us are “seldom divine” and “never quite diabolical.”

In 1924, he writes:

“…[T]he real clue to the tameness of a preacher is the difficulty one finds in telling unpleasant truths to people whom one has learned to love.

To speak the truth in love is difficult, and sometimes an almost impossible achievement. If you speak the truth unqualifiedly, that is usually because your ire has been aroused or because you have no personal attachment to the object of your strictures. Once personal contact is established you are very prone to temper your wind to the shorn sheep. It is certainly difficult to be human and honest at the same time.

I recognize myself in this quote.

Mostly how I have sometimes used the truth because I was angry. Not proud of that. I try not to do it.

I had a very good discussion with my boss at our weekly meeting yesterday.  I laid out for her the motivation for my wanting to talk about my professional relationship with Grace church. Then outlined for her my priority of the value of my ability and work for this community.  For her part, she described her and the vestry’s continuing efforts to address bringing the staff’s compensation more in line with acceptable standards.

I described my motivation in different ways. One clear synopsis of it was that I have three problems.  Lack of awareness on the part of the community of the professional nature of my work; the disparity between my salary and a fair remuneration commiserate with my credentials, experience and abilities; and the fact that as a 20 hour a week poorly paid employee I am doing too much.

It is the combination of these three that gives me despair. If any one of them were to be addressed, I would be less motivated to continue to try to initiate a discussion.

After we discussed the situation in regards to my own morale, I outlined the value of my work for this church as I see it. Again I boiled it down to three areas. First, my work as a primary leader of worship in the weekly services themselves. This includes preparation of myself and others that I lead. Secondly, the consultative, collegiate nature of my team work with my pastor herself. Finally, my work in the area of educating the community, of helping Episcopalians be better Episcopalians.

My boss’s response throughout all of this was that she sees both my motivation and the prioritizing of my values in a very similar way.  I believe her. We meet weekly and have frank delightful discussions about our work together as colleagues. My comments were ones I had made before to her in these conversations, so nothing I said would have surprised her.

What was different was I pressed her for clarification about how she as my boss saw me as an employee. She has always been extremely helpful and supportive, but I was asking how the way I see my work relates to the way she sees it.

The next step is think of ways to emphasize the areas where I am being effective in these value and de-emphasize those where I am not.  My language again, but still I think Jen (my boss) agrees and finds my analysis and summations helpful in figuring out how to manage me.

We did all this is in the first half of our meeting and used the rest of our time reviewing options for the upcoming season of Lent. This was my idea. I think Jen was ready to take the entire time of our weekly meeting yesterday and address my concerns. I told her I thought we could do that but still have time to do others stuff, which we did.

The funny thing is that I was totally out of the mood to talk about church stuff.

I get all worked up and think about solutions and ways to look at an idea that is bothering me. Then by the time it gets addressed, I often am in a completely different space.

Yesterday I was thinking much more about fugues and composition.  I continue analyzing Bach fugues.  I worked carefully through two of his organ fugues yesterday, paying close attention to the structure.

Then later I played through two of the four canons in the Art of Fugue and discovered that the second one is not a strict canon.

BOREDOM WARNING, RELATIVELY CONFUSING EXPLANATION OF THE COMPOSITIONAL PROCEDURE FOLLOWS. CAN BE EASILY SKIPPED.

After  25 measures of the upper voice mimicking the lower voice five notes higher, it ceases to do so for 8 measures. Then it begins an idea that the lower voice mimics at a distance of 8 measures. The lower voice imitates the upper voice with exact pitches. Though this canon is labeled as a Canon alla Duodecima in Contrapunto all Quintu, Which means a canon at the 12th (an octave plus a fifth) in counterpoint at the fifth, it actually is a canon at the octave for many measures.

This was a revelation for me. I quickly googled it to see if I could find an analysis that explained why Bach did this. To no avail.

My violinist had to stay home with her kids yesterday due to school closing, so we weren’t able to meet. I took advantage of his time and did some cooking and grocery shopping and exercising.

Then out for a great meal at the locally owned Mexican-American restaurant we love, Margaritas. As we went up to pay the check, the owner (who always remembers me as Mr. Jenkins) chatted us up. He told us that the schools had already announced they were going to be closed the next day (Friday). He said he thought they were closing because the machines that usually plow the sidewalks couldn’t handle the amount of snow and were in fact breaking down. This meant a large number of students who walked to school would be forced to walk in the street and that this contributed to the closing.

Who knew?

LINKS (PRIMARILY NEWSY STORIES I BOOKMARKED YESTERDAY)

First I found this pic on Boing Boing and totally loved it:

Click on the pic to go to the Boing Boing article about it.

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Health reform repeal: Fixing the mandate | The Economist

I think of the Economist as a conservative international financial mag. I know they have good analysts, but I find their point of view sometimes confusing or discouraging. I was surprised to read that an important idea in the health care reform bill came from a guy on a G.W. Bush commission: “He’s an economist named Mark Pauly, and he proposed the individual mandate idea to President George H.W. Bush in 1991.” Interesting.

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Egypt’s Bumbling Brotherhood – NYTimes.com

You may have heard of the Muslim Brotherhood as the dire bogeyman in Egypt’s current troubles. Much mis-information seems to be bouncing around about this organization. Here’s a good source of info on it.

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Undiagnosed Diseases Program Solves Its First Mystery – NYTimes.com

I found this article fascinating. The science intrigues me. Plus I love a good mystery.

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Game Over: The Chance For Democracy In Egypt Is Lost | The Middle East Channel

Haven’t read this one yet.  It’s on Foreign Policy’s website. Looks like worth reading.

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Will Arab turmoil spread to oil-rich Gulf? | Jay Bookman

This is from the Atlanta Journal-Constitution website and is a topic on a lot of people’s minds. Also haven’t read yet.

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I seem to be playing my way through Bach’s “Art of Fugue.” I am using the edition above by Beethoven’s teacher, Carl Czerny. For years I have studied this work in score, which is the way that Bach wrote it out.  My edition of the score has a keyboard reduction underneath but it is very very small.

By writing these 14 fugues in score it’s not clear how or if Bach intended this music to be done by any particular instruments. It is often played in arrangements for many different kinds of ensembles.

I have also played movements on the organ. I long wanted a larger clean keyboard version, but the most up to date edition was over $40.00 and I kept telling myself I could just make an edition from the scores myself.

Finally I broke down and bought the lousy edition by Czerny. I say lousy because many 19th century editors brought their musical sensibilities to any music they edited. So while Bach never wrote a crescendo sign

or a long slur,

Czerny clutters his edition with superfluous markings.  If you look below at the first page you see a great deal that is not Bach but Czerny (Andante Con Moto, sempre legato and the “P” sign, none of which Bach wrote just in the first measure).

The many volume edition of Scarlatti’s Ezzercisi I bought from my teacher, Craig Cramer, is the same way. When playing these editions, one has to remind one’s self constantly to ignore the markings and just look at the notes since that’s all the composer actually wrote.

I find this most difficult to do with articulations (accents and staccato markings especially) because I automatically follow them.

Anyway, having played all the way through many different works like Bach’s Well Tempered Clavichord and Haydn’s piano sonatas, I realized that I was doing the same thing with the “Art of Fugue’ now that I have Czerny’s edition laying around. I’m all the way the fourteenth fugue.

These works are an encylopedic working out of a beautiful melody. The melody of a fugue as it is stated for the first time is called the “subject.”

Here’s a link to free mp3s of Chris Breemer playing all the movements.

On Tuesday morning, as the ballet teacher came in the room, I was playing a suite movement by Bach on the piano (the prelude from the G minor English Suite). The movement is in 3/8 and I was playing it through a bit slowly for accuracy’s sake even though I have learned and performed this piece many times.

She began dancing and talking about how the music would make a nice dance. I pointed out that I was playing it under tempo. We then had a discussion of how 17th and 18th century musicians and dancers thought about tempo and the relationship of one dance to another.

She then proceeded to give the class a short lecture on the historic origins of ballet in the French court emphasizing the baroque nature of the dance. I thought it might be nice to play a little Bach for their first exercise, so I quickly scanned the Minuet II from the F Major French Suite of Bach. By scanning I mean that I made sure that it fell evenly into four measure phrases.

I began playing by sketching out Bach’s melody and making it more simple so that it could be easily perceived by dancers. This seemed to work okay but was a little complicated in places where Bach like any good composer avoided obvious groupings of the melody and made it more subtle.

The teacher mentioned to the class that they were getting authentic baroque music for their dance today. Then she said that she loved using Sarabandes for dancing and said that she preferred the melancholy minor ones.  I started flipping through trying to find one.

I did find one and used it for the next exercise. Unfortunately, she had not been asking me to do one, just telling me and the class how much she liked them. She walked over to the piano and said we were going to have to dispense with Baroque music for the day.

She was extremely gracious (as all the teachers I have worked with have been) and I told her it was no problem and immediately began improvising more appropriate music.

It is so much easier to improvise music that I can tailer and alter to the needs of the moment.  But Bach is pretty wonderful even if he is complex.

I am thinking this morning I will take the music of Louie Couperin along in case this same teacher calls for a melancholy Sarabande to dance to.  Uncle Louie (as I refer to him since he is the uncle of the more famous  Francois Couperin) makes beautiful little dance movements that seem a bit more simple in their structure.  I say it that way because they are ever bit as elegant as Bach’s suite movements and even more subtle in places in their simplicity. It’s great music I have been playing for decades. It makes me want to get back to work on the harpsichord.

LINKS

Post-Minimalism and Folk Ballads Fuel a Composer  ALLAN KOZINN on composer and Bang on a Can founder, Julia Wolfe.

Most of today’s links are articles I haven’t read yet.

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Lorraine Adams on The Truth Behind the Headlines | FiveBooks | The Browser

Princeton educated Lorraine Adams was a staff writer for The Washington Post for 11 years and won a Pulitzer Prize for investigative reporting. She is the author of Harbor, a novel about the experience of young Arab Americans, and more recently The Room and the Chair, a book that deals with US newsrooms, cockpits over Afghanistan, intelligence headquarters and the way the truth about violence can be manipulated, glossed over and forgotten. In a democracy, she says, you can’t go to war when the public has been so unreliably informed by the media and will poll accordingly.

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Barnett and Foley: The Nuts and Bolts of the ObamaCare Ruling – WSJ.com

It is a common phenomenon that we see the bias we disagree with and are blind to the bias we agree with. I find many op-ed articles in the Wall Street Journal speak from a very different point of view than I have. This article begins by labeling progressives who don’t take challenges to the health care law seriously as “smug” thus performing a neat ad hominem one-two punch: people the authors disagree with are stupid AND also smug in their ill-conceived understanding. FWIW, I think it’s very likely the Supreme Court will rule against this law.  But I guess I am smug. Heh.

These two writers are worth reading. I plan to read their article even though it starts the way it does.  A quick Google reveals that Barnett is a libertarian and Foley a bio-ethics expert. They are both highly educated and articulate. What more could you want from a conservative when you are a smug progressive? Heh.

Anyway, I make it a point to read and listen to the most coherent people that I disagree with.

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Amira Bennison on Science and Islam | FiveBooks | The Browser

Deputy Chair of Cambridge’s Oriental Studies Faculty reveals her selection of books that show how Islamic scientific discoveries underpinned much of the European Rennaissance

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Explain yourself: George Lakoff, cognitive linguist | Explainer.Net

For Lakoff, language is not a neutral system of communication…

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Why Julian Assange Hates the ‘New York Times’ | The Nation

So what sparked the rift with Assange?

For one thing, Assange was upset that the Times refused to link directly to the WikiLeaks site. Then there was a shaky profile last summer..

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Daniel Bell, Ardent Appraiser of Politics, Economics and Culture, Dies at 91 – NYTimes.com

My ten rehearsals ended up being seven rehearsals (2 dropped out, 1 ill). I was finished by 5:30 PM and drove from Grand Haven to Holland in the beginnings of the blizzard.

I was impressed by the quality of the songs these kids are preparing. Interestingly they also seem well within the grasp of the musicians. I often see teachers assigning difficult (and to me often boring) music to young musicians. Nice to play composers like Schubert, Menotti and Paul Bowles. I haven’t had much exposure to Bowles as a composer. I know him more as a writer of prose.

Several of the students were suffering with colds and respiratory stuff. I notice that singers seem to often have these problems. It makes me wonder how connected they are to over all anxiety.

There was plenty of anxiety in these singers yesterday. Almost to a person they apologized for how badly they were about to sing. Many of these kids know me from my work with the Grand Haven musical. My reputation seems to far exceed my actual abilities. So I think some of them may have been a bit intimidated.  The rehearsals were in the choir room and most of them sat around watching like doomed people while I and the vocal teacher worked with each singer.

I did my best to relax each singer and get them to connect to what they were doing musically. Fortunately, the vocal teacher was okay with that. Sometimes people can get a little huffy when the dang piano player starts mentioning musical stuff.

So today is a free day for both Eileen and me.

Herrick Library actually closed due to the blizzard as did Hope College. My church staff meeting was canceled early on last night. Eileen’s library let them out an hour early.  I’m sure Eileen will want to get out and use her new snow shoes today.

I emailed my boss yesterday giving her a heads up that I would like to have a conversation about my professional relationship to my church.  About 18 months ago, I asked my boss to formalize the fact that I am underpaid. I realize that the church can’t really pay me more. But wanted to at least raise the awareness of what church musicians should get paid so that eventually (maybe even after I am not working there) they could address the inequity.

At this time, I gave my boss a very conservative description of how I use my time for Grace. It came out to 24 to 26 hours. I think they consider me half time (20 hrs weekly). My salary last year was 25.2 K.

The American Guild of Organist recommendations for 2010 for someone like myself with a Master’s degree in Sacred Music working 20 hours a week was a Base of 28.8 K – 39.6 k, Benefits should be an added 10.6 K to 14.6 K, totals: 39.5 K to 54.3 K.  The lower range was for “musicians with fewer than five years experience.” Higher amounts were for “those with greater experience.” I surely fall in the latter category. Not to mention that I’m good at what I do. I am just wondering how valuable it is to my boss (who I am convinced appreciates me) and my community (many of whom are very complimentary and supportive).

In addition I have added duties in the last year that were not included in my last figuring like recruiting, composing for and rehearsing an instrumental ensemble.

My proposal to my boss was that we prioritize in importance how she sees my work and lop off some of it. I see my value as primarily a leader of worship, trainer of volunteers and liturgical/professional consultant. But we’ll see how she sees it, I guess.

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LINKS

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PrideSource – Chick-fil-A sponsors anti-gay marriage conference

This is an online article by my nephew, Benjamin Jenkins. I’m very proud!

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Free online PDF converter

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Saw this guy on tv recently. I was very impressed with his grasp of history in relationship to the present time. Here’s a link to the recording of the discussion he participated in.

I’m interested in his book. Link to excerpt.

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And for you conservative types:

I was always loyally opposed to William F. Buckley. I admired him and have read many of his books but objected to many of his crackpot ideas and his racism. James is his brother and is still alive. He sounds more coherent than his deceased younger brother. Here’s a link to recent C-Span appearance which I found fascinating.

Here’s his book, which also looks interesting to me.

I guess I do watch TV, eh?

I broke my morning pattern a bit this morning and started a recipe to feed Eileen today.

The recipe is “Honey Glazed Spiced Pork Tenderloin” from Devin Alexander’s cookbook,  The Most Decadent Diet Ever. I substituted  Pork Shoulder Blade after a bit of research. I bought it on sale and when I froze it, I could tell it was very tender so it should work just fine.

I threw a couple of potatoes in the oven as well. My plan is to get all this done and ready for Eileen to take to work and heat up tonight.

I am booked through her meal break and won’t be able to bring her supper like I usually do. I will be meeting with student vocalists and going through their pieces for Solo and Ensemble. They are also performing these pieces at a recital next Wed evening.  I think the recital is a good idea.

Each student seems to be preparing two pieces. Which means I have twenty accompaniments to prepare. I’m not complaining. I taped the photocopies together and went through about 3/4ths of them yesterday.  There is actually some pretty good music in the selection. Works by Menotti, Schubert, Strauss and Paul Bowles. I am looking forward to this.

After starting my recipe, I sat down to email the members of my piano trio.  We decided to read more of the Haydn piano trios before we settle on which ones we want to learn. Once we have decided, I will research a decent edition of them. I bought Peters editions of Mozart and Mendelssohn Piano Trios and have regretted it. They are dated. I’d like not to make the same mistake with Haydn.

My violinist has also promised to listen to recordings of the Bach violin sonatas and pick one for us to learn if I would email them to her. I thought I had recordings of these but I must have been thinking of the Mozart violin sonatas. So I purchased and downloaded a set of them and am emailing her the first one. Woo hoo! An excuse to buy Bach recordings.

Even though I tried to take yesterday morning off, I found myself pretty busy all day.

Ran some errands for my Mom (got her computer working again and a trip to the Dollar store for her),  and some errands for myself.  Then 2 & 1/2 hours of ballet class. Home to exercise for an hour or so.  The day was over. So I don’t have a ton of links even though I did read online for a while.

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Links

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Weighing the Unknowns in Egypt – NYTimes.com

Good synopsis of the history of the relationship between the Egypt and the US by Ross Douthat

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Milton Babbitt, Composer Who Gloried in Complexity, Dies at 94 – NYTimes.com

Obit of the influential complexity composer who wrote the article “Who Cares if You Listen?” Though influential, I’m afraid he represents an approach to composition that has never interested me all that much, namely the Schoenberg technique.

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A London Salmagundi

This is an interesting web site which describes itself as

“Being a Hotch-pot of gallimaufry of divers things. to which there shall be posted a variety of links, pictures, tweets, videos and other kickshaws. By H. Rutherford author of that much admir’d blog, heraclitean fire, and of the photoblog Clouded Drab. Also including such Thoughts and observations which are to found to be too short for that esteemed organ; and not short enough for twitter.”

The picture above came from it.  A friend of mine emailed me a link to this website. Very cool!

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Read online “True Grit ” by Charles Portis. Instant free e-book download at OnRead.com.

I am seriously planning on purchasing Portis’s book. In the meantime I found this link to it online. I think the whole web site is suspicious. I downloaded it’s proprietary software and found AFTER I did so that there was a charge. I don’t see how they can charge for access to copyrighted material like Portis’s book and still be legal.

I woke up listening to this book being read on the radio this morning.  I was impressed with the author’s grasp of Buddhism and its application to her life.

After poking on the web, I found out more about the way she is living.

She has been chronically ill for many years and has found a way to live her life with loving-kindness (metta), compassion (karuna), empathetic joy (mudita), and equanimity (upekkha).

loving-kindness: “the act of well-wishing towards yourself and others”

compassion: “reaching out to help alleviate the suffering of ourselves and others”

empathetic joy: joy in the joy of others

equanimity: mental calmness and evenness of temper, especially in a difficult situation

It seems to me that her search for “how to live a life of equanimity and joy despite my physical and energetic limitations” is related to my own search.  All four of these Buddhist concepts make very good sense to me and in fact articulate much of what I have learned in my life.

It probably looks like I think I have achieved some kind of sainthood, but that’s not at all what I mean. The experience in my day to day life is one of struggling towards something.  It is trying to cultivate my own responsibility for myself and my gradual changing. If you ponder this stuff, you see how badly you do it. Then you can look for ways to make small changes in how you live in these directions. That’s all.

To me, these ideas and others are antidotes for the dishonesty and lack of self awareness I see in myself and around me in my culture.

Church work went well yesterday. The choir resisted my interpretation of the anthem, but finally relented.  Someone has recently described to me the high levels of anxiety and confusion one experiences at church as a “clusterfuck.”

I think this describes the activity of my group yesterday.  I had late comers, people who didn’t show but didn’t let me know, people dealing with personal issues, people ducking out during service and returning, skipping the post service rehearsal. Into this confusion I try to bring a measure of good humor and calm. It takes tremendous energy.

The anthem consisted of two ideas: one was a composed melody with these words:

Christmas Joy by Mark Schweizer

When the song of the angels is stilled,
When the star in the sky has withdrawn,
When the kings see their prophesy rightly fulfilled,
When the princes and shepherds have gone;

Then the true work of Christmas begins,
To find the lost,
To heal the broken hearts,
To feed the hungry,
To free the prisoner,
To rebuild the nations,
To bring peace among all people,
To make music in the heart.

from a poem by Howard Thuyrman, alt.

The melody to these words was made so that in sections it could coincide with a triple treatment of the great Epiphany chorale: “How Brightly Shines the Morning Star.” My interpretive idea (not in the score) was to downplay the chorale melody by having altos and basses sing it softly while the sopranos and tenors sang the other part gently over them.

The choir eventually did this and I thought it really worked. A parishioner commented on the juxtaposition of the music in the piece and seem to agree that it had been effective in being gentle.

Whippy skippy I know, but this is the stuff of my work and I do enjoy it. I played Bach for the prelude. An ornamental chorale prelude based on the opening hymn (Liebster Jesu, BWV 731). The postlude was a clever rhythmic treatment by Charles Ore of the same melody.

Even though people wandered in and out of the post service rehearsal it went pretty well I thought. I ended up with just altos, tenors and basses and sort of had a sectional with them.

After church, Eileen and I went to see the new movie, True Grit.

I enjoyed it, but the music got on my nerves a bit since much of it was based on a drippy version of the hymn, “Leaning on the Everlasting Arms.”  There was not a trace of Ives in the reworking of this, more of a quasi Americana new age thing. Anyway, it was probably just me, but I didn’t think it worked.

Also, I thought the epilogue where the actor playing the main character was shown as an adult didn’t work visually, since the actor who played her so effectively in 95% of the movie suddenly was gone. Probably works better in the book.

Speaking of, I think the main character in this movie is the lovely lumpy 19th century American style dialog.  Contractions omitted and eloquence heightened. I was charmed. I should read this book as well as the one at the beginning of this post.

This morning I get some time off that I badly need.

I do have to review the accompaniments for the soloists I am meeting with tomorrow evening in Grand Haven. It looks like I will be driving through a snowstorm. Sheesh.

Toujours gai, Archie, toujours gai. There’s some life in the old gal yet.

The roads were one-lane, snow-covered and slippery for my little morning jaunt to Grant, Michigan. I had not been paying attention to the weather, so I was dismayed when I left, having only allowed for normal driving time.  After seeing a couple of cars in ditches, I relaxed and slowed down and drove the weather. Somehow I did arrive early for my 9:30 playtime.

My violist was nervously waiting in the warm-up room. I am convinced that this Solo and Ensemble playing is some of the most harrowing performance experiences a musician is likely to have in their lives.  The students are usually pretty normal people who also play an instrument. Due to their age they often already feel like everyone is watching their every move and that they are constantly screwing up.

This young musician acquitted herself admirably in my opinion. She basically nailed all the notes, played with expression, confidence and tone.  After she played, the judge first asked her if she was nervous, saying it was important information for the the judge to adequately respond.

She then gave the young player a free lesson, talking to her about bow technique and tempo.

The parents were surprised by the judge’s response since they could tell their daughter had played well. They questioned me afterwards. I pointed out the value of learning that can occur in this situation. I told them and their daughter that she probably got her “1” (the highest rating), but that actually wasn’t as important as the music and the experience.

She did get her “1”.

While I was at the festival, I was approached by several parents and a teacher who told me that their accompanist couldn’t make it.  This was ironic because the guy was a Hope professor and supposedly lived not far from me.  I told these people up front, that I was available, but my fee was $75 (This is what I charge for doing this service. I make it a flat rate so it covers all rehearsals and the performances. Besides being a fair wage for a musician with my training and experience this allows students and parents to arrange for as many rehearsals as are actually needed instead of what they can afford.)

There were three students and their parents readily agreed to pay my fee if I would fill in at the last moment. Which is what I did.

So instead of being done around 9:40 AM, I had to hang around and play for some extra students until about noon.

One of the students was performing the first hundred measures or so of Saint–Saëns’ Cello concerto.

I found this particular accompaniment challenging to sight-read.  But I managed to pull it off.

This accomplishment was very satisfying to me. As well as making a little extra money when we need it.  The whole experience was a good one for me.

After I came home, I once again went over to church and practiced organ.

After performing that cello concerto, I thought it might be interesting to pull out some Saint-Saëns organ music. I’m not a fan of this dude. My feelings were reinforced by playing through some of his music. The Cello Concerto is very flashy and it is fun to hear someone play the cello so well. But I don’t find the music that interesting.

Instead, I read through more Bach organ trio sonatas. I am thinking that I like some of the movements a lot more than others and that they would be good for me to spend some time with and maybe perform at church.  There are six sonatas with 3 movements each and I have learned and performed many of them.  But they have been lying dormant for a while and my technique continues to improve as I age, so it is a very fun task to give myself.

Just a few links today.

I sometimes like reading music reviews. Yesterday I was reading Serious ‘Rite,’ Sultry Tango and Skillful Solos – NYTimes.com when the author mentioned that the NYT chief music critic had rated the top ten composers of all time. I was curious so I checked it out. Here’s the link: The Greatest Composers – A Top 10 List – NYTimes.com

Bach is 1. I can buy that.  He rates Beethoven as 2.  Which I don’t agree with particularly. Beethoven is definitely in my top 10. Just further down. Mozart is 3. I think he should be 2. I know this is kind of dumb exercise but it’s fun for me.  I think leaving Haydn out was a serious omission. And wouldn’t put Verdi or Wagner in the top 10 as he does.

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And finally:

Why Does Roger Ailes Hate America? – Esquire

I’m getting a bit curious about how people get their news. I think most people are in echo chambers of connecting with sources they agree with. I know that I am in danger of that myself and try to continually sample a wide variety of online print sources. I am convinced that the New York Times does the best job journalistically in the United States, but there are other good papers like the L.A. Times, the Boston Globe, the Christian Science Monitor (which I believe has ceased publishing a paper version and is only available online).

TV news is awful. I can barely watch it. Once in a while I watch the PBS Newshour. I prefer reading my news, I guess.

All this is to say that I have bookmarked the above link on Ailes to read knowing that it looks pretty biased. On the other hand, Ailes has consciously tried to influence the USA through his personal and business stuff, so it might make interesting reading.

I mailed off my manuscript to New York yesterday after having attempted to make the notation as consistent as possible. This involved a lot of changing of little details like how dynamic signs like FF are written and where little crescendo lines and accents appear on the page. Very tedious. This tedium somewhat relieved with the help of my wife’s very excellent proofing skills.

I still think that my music is as likely to strike a judging committee as weird as my pajama pants do people from Western Michigan (and others, I know, I know).

After an hour and half of intense improvising to the intense teaching of my ballet teacher yesterday,  her one comment to me was surprisingly, “I like your pants.” Yes, I was wearing some very nondescript black with gray stripes pajama pants. I thought they were probably conservative enough to not be detected as such. Oops. But I was totally amused.

Bills and grocery shopping were not all that fun for me yesterday.

Money is not going as far I would like even with added income.

I have been mulling over the money stuff at my church. I decided I wouldn’t up my pledge until after the community acted and restored minimal COL raises to the staff.  This will probably happen and then I will up my pledge the amount the financial people requested parishioners to do.

It’s kind of moot because I under pledge by 50% to give myself some breathing room money wise. So even raising it 10% will still be less than I plan to try to give.

I was so moody after bills and shopping that I took solace in Bach’s organ trios for about an hour before Ballet class. This music is pretty wonderful if technically kind of advanced. I once heard another organist say learning them was the equivalent of a master’s degree.  But I love the music and it did lift my spirits. Returning as I do to the same difficult music over and over gives me a measuring stick of my continued technical progress as a player. I’m pretty hard on myself as many musicians are since the advent of recording. A lot of the times I feel like I’m not that great a player. Maybe it’s true, but when I am more myself I can assess my abilities fairly well and know that I can play my instrument pretty well.

When I returned to the Bach organ trios, there were moments of delight when I was able to play difficult sections with more ease. This, of course, is not my main delight. The main joy for me is simply rehearsing wonderful musical ideas.  I do like Bach.

After Ballet class, I rehearsed a Vivaldi piece with the high school viola player I have been working. This morning is the festival (an hour and a half away…. so I will be jumping in the car soon). Last night my viola player was pretty stressed. She knows the piece but is dealing with performance anxiety and mental fatigue.  High school students can be so driven these days to achieve. She kept stopping despite my admonitions to not do so. I gently said she was rehearsing doing this, when she should be practicing not stopping no matter what happens.

She has a lovely sound for a high school player and has been obviously practicing the hell out of this piece. Her mother is very involved in her student career and was vocally coaching her through every meeting. This makes me crazy but didn’t seem to bother the violist much.

I will be interested to see how she does this morning. She is most likely going to do well, but there’s always a risk to a musical performance. This risk is increased by rehearsing stopping in the middle.

LINKS

My son asked me what I thought of the State of the Union. I responded in the comments of  the post from yesterday (link). Here are some more links regarding this topic:

Obama delivers State of the Union address | In Obama’s Words | The Washington Post

A transcript. Although I did listen and watch some of the speech, I mostly read it.

I plan to read some of the following reactions and comments.

on the left side of the political spectrum:

Obama Reassures Democrats (Mostly) in SOTU Address | The Nation

Mingling but No Tingling at State of the Union | The Nation

on the right side:

The Old (Liberal) Frontier | The Weekly Standard

Henninger: A Presidency to Nowhere – WSJ.com

I have already read these:

In State of the Union, Obama Pushes Projects to Stay Competitive – NYTimes.com

State of the union address: not classic but effective | Michael Tomasky | Comment is free | guardian.co.uk

In this last link, a commentator from the UK says that Obama is speaking to the entire public, while the Republicans are only addressing their base.

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writing in public: All art comes from art

I have been following the compilation of blogs called “Writing in Public.” This particular post looked interesting.

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THE MINIMALIST – FREEZE THAT THOUGHT – NYTimes.com

I continue to read old articles Mark Bittman has recommended from his years as the Minimalist. I even spent extra time yesterday in the frozen food section due to his comments in a previous linked article (Frosty the Vegetable )

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Greed Said to Be Throwing Feng Shui Off Balance – NYTimes.com

For real.  In Hong Kong:

Villages are entitled to ask the government to pay to repair any adverse changes to the landscape caused by such projects. That covers not just environmental damage as commonly understood but also the possibility of ill fortune brought about by tearing down a tree or placing a road in a way that might disturb the local qi, the energy that some Chinese believe pervades all things. Qi is a crucial factor in determining feng shui.

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Financial Crisis Was Avoidable, Inquiry Concludes – NYTimes.com

Hindsight is always frustrating but enlightening.

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25 Years of Digital Vandalism – NYTimes.com

Article on international hackers and viruses by the sci fi dude, William Gibson, I have bookmarked to read.

I should make this brief today because I have to put on the finishing touches to the manuscript I am mailing out for a silly contest.

After ballet class, I met with my boss. I quite like my boss and my job, but it is occurring to me that I need to be smarter with this gig. I am putting a great deal of effort into it, which has a lot of payoff for me personally. But at the same time, I notice that the community is not really doing its part for me. I am underpaid.

Which shouldn’t matter to the guy who says money isn’t real, right?

But I think it says something about the priorities of the community I work for. When I say I am underpaid, I mean that factoring in my skills, experience and training, any pay scale I have seen says I should be making quite a bit more money.

I can’t even get my community to address the pay scale.

My boss has been working on an Human Resources committee but it’s not off the ground.

In addition to the lack of respect I think this kind of thing means in our money based way of thinking, Eileen and I do struggle with money. I am a sort of a classic struggling music guy whose income is pretty low. I struggle with other people who don’t want to pay me what I am pretty sure my efforts are worth. For example, the Grand Haven High School teacher who offered me half of what she eventually said she would pay me to accompany students. She only raised her price when I refused to work for such low pay. Also, I am accompanying a violist at the Instrumental Solo and Ensemble tomorrow. Another student called and inquired about using me as an accompanist. His band director recommended me. I told him my fee was $75. I never heard back from him and the festival is tomorrow. I can’t help but suspect that his family thought that was too much.

Oy.

Of course when the plumber came and fixed my toilet, his labor was much more than that. I don’t begrudge him his wage. I just wish people understood my work as worthy of hire.

Poor me, eh?

Anyway, I spent most of my time with my boss yesterday advising her on some matters and recommending different hymns and service music for her to consider for the upcoming season of Lent. I also sent her an email which briefly gave an over view of the upcoming readings for Lent, as well as reviewed with her what we did last year.

It occurs to me that I do well at my job. Frustrating that I remain invisible in so many places in my life.

But not that frustrating, fuck the duck. I still know how lucky I am to have my family and my music.

The trio had a good rehearsal and my colleagues enjoyed reading through one of the Haydn trios that Charles Rosen says are some of his best work. We decided to read through another of the trios Rosen has singled out next week. Eventually we will learn one. But the reading through is lots of fun.

And my violinist has agreed to pick a Bach violin sonata to learn. If she does this, I will have motivation to work on my harpsichord. I love the Bach solo sonatas.

After rehearsal I came home and exercised and cooked.

I went a little nuts with cooking:

Herb Cheese Muffins,

Bacon wrapped broiled tilapia,

stylin’ steak fries,

corn,

artichoke hearts

and blueberry pie.

All of this from what we have on hand the day before I do grocery shopping.

Not bad. And most of the recipes were low fat. And tasty.

Like I say, life is good.

Finished the contest version of my composition  “Dead Man’s Pants” yesterday. I would like Eileen to look over it for anything that looks weird but am not sure she will have a chance. I should mail it today.

Also spent some time prepping for my meeting with my boss this morning. She is looking for ideas on how to tie Lent together this year. I went through all four volumes of the Episcopal Hymnal (Hymnal 1982; Wonder, Love & Praise, Lift Every Voice and Sing II, & Voices Found). I found some stuff but nothing that I am sure she will want to use. I also reviewed the readings for Ash Wed and the five Sundays of Lent.

This morning I want to glance over what we did last year.

At Ballet Class my improvisations seemed to be better than usual for the first two hours. At its best improvising seems to allow me to enter into the present moment in a unique way. However, in the last half hour the students were struggling with a particular exercise. It involved crossing the floor and doing challenging moves while wearing the dreaded pointe shoes which makes dancing incredibly difficult. The teacher kept slowing the music down. That made it more challenging to me to be creative and continually adapt the tempo. I began to feel a bit bogged down. Oh well. Sometimes you eat the bar, sometimes the bar eats you.

Last evening a vocal teacher from Grand Haven High School showed up unannounced with music scores for me.

I was a bit surprised to see him. I have been emailing him for a few days and was thinking I would have to get more aggressive about contacting him today.

I am afraid sometimes people think I am available at all hours of the day. That’s why I protect myself with a good answering machine and guard my privacy. I like to think there are times, I’m not really open for business. Other times I make a point to be available.  And I try to return any communication, phone call or otherwise, within 24 hours.

I didn’t ask the teacher in.

He seemed to want to have a conference about scheduling rehearsals in Grand Haven next week. I told him I would email him and he readily agreed. I already have done so this morning.

I try to make other people’s lack of planning and foresight their own problem not mine. Usually people are so unconscious of their own behavior that they don’t even notice it when I do this. And of course I try to be diplomatic but not allow their lack of self awareness to affect me.

Last night I dreamed I was playing harpsichord and marimba dangling from a precariously improvised balcony.

The instruments kept slipping off. I would grab them and dangle and watch hinges bend with my weight. I wasn’t the only one on the platform. We were all accompanying a play that was happening at the front of the auditorium.

I managed to get myself down at one point and told the organizer (who seemed to my priest) that I wasn’t going back up. She and many others seemed disappointed in me.

LINKS FOR TODAY

Still haven’t listened to the State of the Union. Have decided to make an MP3 of it and put it on my player. That way I can listen to it.  Here’s a link for what it’s worth to the Youtube version.

The State of the Union – NYTimes.com

This is the NYT’s editorial about the State of the Union message. I have bookmarked it so that I can refer back to the programs and ideas that the President proposes.

A lot of the time, I have noticed that the grand ideas in a Presidential State of the Union get quickly forgotten, much less acted upon. I know Obama was out pushing his message yesterday in Wisconsin. Nevertheless, I want to have a record of what he said on Tuesday and the NYT editorial is a sympathetic list of his intentions.

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David Wojnarowicz Ruckus, as Viewed From Britain – NYTimes.com

The prudishness of the USA is an interesting thing to view from abroad.  This article contrasts the reception of an artist’s legacy between an important US museum, the Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery, and the excellent Tate Modern in London.  Both of these are national galleries. The artist in question, Wojnarowicz, whose work seems mildly controversial to me.

The Smithsonian quickly capitulated to conservative political pressure to drop his work. This actually worked out pretty good because US regional galleries who were ignoring the work picked it up.  In Great Britain, where the galleries are much more nationalized and under government funding and control, the article describes how rare this kind of pressure is.

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The Minimalist Makes His Exit

THE MINIMALIST – Frosty the Vegetable – NYTimes.com

Mark Bittman, a food writer for the NYT, is stopping his “Minimalist” column.  I found his article about this pretty interesting. I also bookmarked an old article that he wrote about turning to the frozen food section in winter for better tasting vegetables. I think I’m gonna try a bit of that.

Tune in tomorrow for more Jedi Jupiter Jenkins blather.

This recent studio recording I ran across this morning seemed a happy way to start the day. Plus I like the lyrics:

Why would I make that face? oh, why would I?
Why would I test my faith? oh, why would I?
Oh, whoa, I see that rain cloud coming right for me

Why would I say my name? oh why would I?
When I’m so far away? oh why would I?
Oh whoaa I guess I’ve always been a bit of a fighter

Chorus
From now on wear my love for you loose
From now on I am just passing through
From now on just my feeling is true
From now on call me Royal Blue
oooh

Why would I stick around? oh why would I?
Why would I get burned out? oh why would I?
Oh, whoa for me I’m always waiting in shadows
Oh, whoa for me I’m always looking for a way out

Chorus
From now on with the sky as my roof
From now on let the risk lead me, too
From now on somewhere I never knew
From now on call me Royal Blue

guitar solo

Hey .. yeah yeah yeah yeah

Chorus
From now on fly as high as I want
From now on I’ll show my weak spot
From now on in all that I do
From now on call me Royal Blue

From now on wear my love for you loose
From now on I am just passing through
From now on just my feeling is true
From now on call me Royal Blue

I think it’s weird they don’t show the drummer in the video. Is that him back behind that glass wall behind the singer/guitarist?

Last night, I didn’t have it in me to wait up to hear Obama’s State of the Union. First one I’ve missed in a while. I admit that I am very tired of seeing life through the lens of money and trying to factor understanding government through politics.  Mostly I was tired.

I have added 30 minutes of silly wifi fit exercises to my daily regimen. It’s good because it strictly times your exercising and not the time in between, so it’s a solid real 30 minutes of yoga, strength exercises, aerobics and balance games.

Yesterday before class the chair of the dance department mentioned that she wanted to talk to me about doing some composition (!) and also would I be free in May to work with the visiting profs who are doing weekday night sessions for three weeks.

I told her I was probably free but asked her to send me the dates.

She also mentioned that one of the profs wanted music from a specific ballet for her exercises. The ballet was Ramonda by Glazunov.

I found the entire piano version of this ballet online yesterday. It looks like is 150-200 pages long. That’s a lot of printing up and of course I wouldn’t probably need but a few sections.

The score is for sale for fifty dollars online. I’m tempted to purchase it except that I’m not really attracted to the music yet. I will do some listening and research before I buy the score.

But what an honor to be asked to do more work for the ballet department! And what a contrast to the way the music department seems to see me (if they even see me at all).

I’m at peace with that, of course.

I read this review of new recordings yesterday and then purchased Amos Lee’s new CD, “Mission Bell.” At first I thought he sounded a bit like James Taylor. But as I listen to the cuts, I’m still only lukewarm in my attraction, but what the heck.

I wrote the little article for Sunday’s bulletin, I sometimes try to write.

Then after ballet class, ran some errands for my Mom and then stopped at church and picked out the prelude and postlude for Sunday. Playing two settings of the melody,  LIEBSTER JESU. One by Bach for the prelude, (link to Youtube guy playing BWV 731… it’s a bad recording, but it’s a good interpretation) and another very fun rhythmical treatment by Charles Ore for the postlude. We are singing this hymn as the opening so lah da dah and yawn.

More links:

Palestinian Documents Provide Peek at Peace Talks – NYTimes.com

This really interests me. The Middle East seems stuck for sure.

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Raising False Alarms – NYTimes.com

Quote from article:

As the Economic Policy Institute has explained, Social Security “is emphatically not the cause of the federal government’s long-term deficits, since it is prohibited from borrowing and must pay all benefits out of dedicated tax revenues and savings in its trust funds.”

Franklin Roosevelt couldn’t have been clearer about the crucial role of the payroll taxes used to finance Social Security. They gave the beneficiaries a “legal, moral and political right” to collect their benefits, he said. “With those taxes in there, no damn politician can ever scrap my Social Security program.”

What’s a citizen to believe? Rhetoric out of control and lots and lots of bad information flowing past my eyes. Can’t help but wonder just exactly what is true.

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Classical Music in Review – NYTimes.com

All three concerts reviewed sound very interesting to me.

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Republicans Try to Abolish Arts Groups – NYTimes.com

It seems to me that politicians are making small ideological swipes at people they would like their dollars not to go to like Artists and poor people and ignoring the larger amounts of money that flow freely in DC. Just how it seems in my living room in Holyland Michigan.

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More to a Smile Than Lips and Teeth – NYTimes.com

This is a fascinating discussion of recent research about basic human interaction. I especially liked the part where people were unable to distinguish between false and real smiles when they held a pencil in their mouth which prevented them from unconsciously mimicking the face they were look at.

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On Navajo Reservation, Poem Helps Broach Topic of End-of-Life Care – NYTimes.com

Poetry helps the dignified Navajo People bridge the gap between their historical culture and contemporary help for the dying. Lovely story.

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Congress Passes Socialized Medicine and Mandates Health Insurance -In 1798 – Rick Ungar – The Policy Page – Forbes

This is a fun look at how history can fuck you up. I linked it on Facebook. Two people commented. Both organists. Interesting.

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One Small Revolution – NYTimes.com

Did you know the historical Carthage was in Tunisia? Fact filled history of a changing country.