Just have time for a quick entry this morning. I didn’t have dance class yesterday. One of the instructors is out of town this week. So they are combining classes yesterday and tomorrow. Hence, they only need one of two pianists. I play tomorrow but was asked not to show yesterday.

But I filled up my day with stuff to do.  Besides shopping at the farmers market and grocery store, I treadmilled, gave a piano lesson, made pie and made another batch of pesto. I now have 6 containers of pesto in the freezer. Will make one more Saturday. I think that might be enough to feed 100 guests at my niece’s wedding.

The Monday and Tuesday auditions went pretty well except for the Tuesday evening session. This session started about 45 minutes late. The teacher had neglected to reserve the auditorium so we were unable to use it and were forced to use the stuffy choir room. Plus unlike the previous day, I had to wait through some reading of the script until the people auditioning needed piano accompaniment. Made for a tedious tiring ending of a long day.

Yesterday was my 59th buy mano-diazepam birthday. I had a nice one. Very low key. Eileen and I went out to eat. It was warm enough that we could sit outside at the pub and eat. That was nice. There were a lot of weird bugs, but still it was good to eat outside (probably one last time this summer).  Eileen then insisted on checking out some grills at Lowes and Menards. She wanted me to pick one out for my birthday, but I didn’t see anything that I wanted to purchase right away.

Oddly enough I didn’t practice yesterday. I had church tasks on my list of things to do (make follow up phone calls, choose anthems, prep for Sunday’s first choir rehearsal), but decided not to do them.  I still have some time before it’s too late for this stuff.

My Thursday dance class starts in 40 minutes. Then I meet with my boss, take my mom to the hearing aid place,  rehearse with my trio and go to the oral surgeon to discuss having some teeth implants.

Eileen just asked me how it feels to be 59 years old. I replied, “Pretty much the same.”

It has been a frenetic few days and promises to continue. Hence not too much time to write here.

Despite the schedule, I finished Not for Profit: Why Democracy Needs the Humanities by Martha C. Nussbaum yesterday. Last night and this morning I was typing notes and quotes from my reading of it.

I won’t put all of them here, but I will quote her a bit. She says that the “American Dream” continues to need its “dreamers.” People with imagination developed by first hand contact with the arts.

Here are three of the shorter excerpts I typed out this morning to keep in mind:

“… [A] catalogue of facts, without the ability to assess them, or to understand how a narrative is assembled from evidence, is almost as bad as ignorance, since the pupil will not be able to distinguish ignorant stereotypes purveyed by politicians and cultural leaders from the truth, or bogus claims from valid ones.” p. 94

“Knowledge is no guarantee of good behavior, but ignorance is a virtual guarantee of bad behavior.” p. 81

“[C]hildren do not just move in a predetermined way from stage to stage, but actively ponder the big questions of life, and … the insights they come up with must be taken seriously by adults.” p. 73

from Not for Profit by Martha C. Nussbaum

Neglected to mention on Friday, that my self confidence is ebbing back as a direct result, I think, of my Thursday meeting with my boss and my trio rehearsal on the same day.

Didn’t blog yesterday because I was too busy.

Washed a third of the kitchen floor and then went to the farmers market while it dried. It was raining. I think I like the market in the rain even though I feel a bit sorry for the people who do the stands and inevitably lose a bit of business if the weather is bad.

Found enough basil to make two more large batches of pesto to freeze for my niece’s upcoming wedding. (Didn’t have time to do that yesterday but am planning to do it today). Came home from the market and left the vegetables and fruit in the car while I came in and spent another hour or so cleaning the kitchen floor and the doing the dishes and cleaning in general.

Did the bills, treadmilled and snuck in some practice both on piano here and the organ at work before Eileen came home. We drove up to Muskegon to meet her sister, Nancy, Nancy’s husband Walt and Eileen’s mom for  a low-key birthday celebration for Eileen’s mom.

My first dance class went well. The teacher probably didn’t realize how she went up in  my estimation when she informed me she had permanent “visiting professor” status because she didn’t have a  degree. She was excellent.  The college students looked younger than I expected them to.

The routine was petty much what I experience at the summer Cecchetti dance camp I play for each year.

Eileen and I had what could be our last cookout for the season on Friday evening. I roasted eggplant and Portabello mushrooms and made hamburgers for Eileen.

Today I introduce the new Holy holy to congregation. This is one of my own compositions and I’m interested to see how it goes with a live congregation. Today is kick-off Sunday which means there will be a picnic right after church.

I am planning to take a list of the people I mailed invitations before vacation and get their RSVPs in person. The invitation was to take part in an evening of music and learn the new Holy holy on instruments and asked for people to let me know if they are coming. So far about three people (out of around 40) have responded.

Choir starts next Sunday after church.  I turn 59 this week. Life is good, but it probably doesn’t make a real interesting blog entry.

I did read half of this puzzling article yesterday: “America’s Ruling Class–And the Perils of Revolution” by Angelo Codevilla on the American Spectator website (link).

Professor Codevilla writes eloquently about the history of the American ruling class but he omits (so far) the culpable military-industrial types. So far the ruling class is the liberal elite which consists of  people who have degrees but are still mostly uneducated but behave in ways that grant them entry into the ruling class (Political correctness? atheism?). I knew something was a bit reactionary about his article when he remarks that social science and humanities profs have taken over American universities.  This must be anecdotal conclusions, because I’m not really aware of this trend.

It reminds me of a comment someone made to me recently about how the economic troubles were being exacerbated if not caused by professors who don’t take cuts in salary. This person went on and said he had heard of a CEO who only took a dollar in salary last year.

Right. I did try to civilly disagree with him. When I hear remarks like this I wonder where people get their information.

Just as I wonder about Professor Codello’s observations which basically blames the troubles of the US for the past century or so on the dang liberals.

There sure are a lot of ways to see contemporary life in the world these days.  I fear that hate radio and stupid TV are not helping give people any clarity especially when they are they primary source of information.

Before going on vacation, I read an email about some dissatisfaction with my work at church. I misremembered this as being sent to me by my boss, when in fact it wasn’t.  It sort of cast a slight cloud over my attempts to relax. When I mentioned some of these comments yesterday in our meeting, she insisted that she had not said that to me in an email. I checked online as we were sitting in our meeting and sure enough she was right, it was someone else.

That was a relief.  Family systems calls this kind of anxiety generating behavior “hit and run.” They are parting shots one receives as a jolt from people behaving badly. I was glad that my boss was not the one who delivered this one.

Family systems also came up when we were discussing a little burst of controversy that arose while I was gone. It’s not related to my work particularly but when I pointed out to my boss that it’s never the content of the controversy that is the heart of the matter, more the anxiety and reactivity, she smiled and thanked me for the reminder saying that she had forgotten that little notion temporarily but it did apply.

My trio rehearsal was delightful. We read all the way through Mozart’s first piano trio. We rehearsed under tempo which satisfyingly allows parts being read to interlock in coherent and (in Mozart’s case especially) beautiful ways. Very satisfying.

Then off to give a lesson to my one piano student.

Also managed to pick a postlude for Sunday. My boss and I strategized a bit and decided to change this Sunday’s prelude to an instrumental version of the new “Holy holy” I am teaching the congregation this Sunday.  This allows me another week to rehearse the Shostakovich prelude and fugue I was thinking of doing.

I even managed to pick a few choral anthems for the impending season.

Eileen and I went to our favorite Mexican restaurant last night (Margaritas).

Life is good.

Today I face my first dance accompaniment class at Hope. I don’t feel too anxious about it, but I did have a funny anxiety dream last night in which I was late for this class because I couldn’t find the right clothes to wear.

I kept asking for people to help me find my clothes in the dream but they were too busy. Earlier in this same dream a colleague of mine dropped by to visit. He was a man I respected a great deal when I knew him in Detroit. In the dream he admitted that he was no longer practicing music. Instead he was involved with administrative details. He left without saying good-by before I was able to talk to him about all I wanted to. Dreams. Go figure.

Not too much to talk about today. I did make pesto and blueberry pie last night (I mean I made two dishes: one pesto with pasta and another a homemade blueberry pie using my frozen blueberry stash). Also invited Mom over to sit in my kitchen and have lunch with me since she didn’t feel well enough to go to a restaurant. Made her look at all 77 pics I took in California.

By the time I put the pie in the oven it was almost time for Eileen to get home and my feet were hurting too much to treadmill, so I skipped it.

I was gratified to read recently that Dylan Thomas admired Bela Bartok’s music. One of my favorite poets and one of my favorite composers, although both lists are very long.

Cooked to Beethoven piano sonatas yesterday. Getting pretty familiar with these. Good stuff.

Today I have another busy day. Meet with the boss, then piano trio rehearsal, then I drive out to my student’s lavish home and give him a piano lesson. Somewhere in there I need to choose an easy postlude for Sunday.

Tomorrow I have my first dance class. I hope the teacher likes me okay. My self confidence is a bit shaky these days. But like any old guy, I can put on a pretty good front.

10ish and I’m sitting in my Mom’s shrinks’s office for the second day in a row. Yesterday she had an appointment with her psychologist, Nelson Zwaanstra. Today she has her six month (or so) check in with her psychiatrist, Dr. Nykamp.

It’s been a busy morning for me already. Mom agreed to phone me before 8:30 AM if she would like to join me for breakfast. While waiting for her to call, I gathered all the cash in the house for a Farmers Market trip. I found $24 and decided I would zip over and check for basil. I figured if Mom called she would leave a message on the machine. I also kind of figured she wouldn’t call.

Miraculously found basil at the market. Spent all my money on it with the idea that I will make pesto today. I am freezing this ahead for my niece’s upcoming wedding. Since we are watching our pennies right now I figure I will  save a bit of it for Eileen and me to have this evening (instead of going out to eat as we have been…. ahem). Also am thinking seriously of making a blueberry pie.

Returned home and was unsurprised to see no message light from Mary. Considered going over to the church to pick a postlude for Sunday. Yesterday I decided to play a Shostakovich piano prelude and fugue for the prelude. I am planning to do  the D major from his Opus 87. (link to mp3 of this piece)The prelude is a charming chordal little thing and the fugue is a 20th c. rendition of the North German “knocking fugue.” That is, its theme utilizes repeated notes. It also is pretty charming. Not sure I can play it as fast as the recording by Sunday. It’s marked to MM=138  (that’s 138 quarter notes per minute). But still I think I can do a credible job.

I looked over the hymns for Sunday and immediately saw how to write an interesting (interesting?  anyway interesting to me…) bulletin music note for this Sunday. (subtitled “Minnesota to Zimbabwe” because the opening hymn is the Lutheran  “Earth and All Stars” and the closing hymn “If you believe and I believe” sounds goofy, but has its worth restored a bit by the fact that the tune was appropriated by Zimbabwe singers from the British colonizers and given anti-colonial words (“The Holy Spirit must come down and set God’s people free….”) Also it is on record as being sung by imprisoned anti-apartheid freedom fighters in South African jails.

So that one practically wrote itself.

Earlier I started recording my reading notes on Christopher Hitchens’ Hitch-22. I finished reading it last night. I enjoyed it tremendously. I was explaining him to my mother by saying to her that he pissed off the liberals with his pro-war stances on Bosnia and Iraq and pissed off the conservatives by his popularizing of atheism. Or as he himself said, he offends both absolutists and relativists. My kind of guy. Plus he is highly literate and can turn one hell of a phrase. I enjoyed his memoir immensely and have a bunch of notes on it.

Structural analysis is something I seem to do almost automatically in music and poetry.

I have been systematically reading straight though the poems of Dylan Thomas sort of aping my approach to lengthy musical works like the collected sonatas of C.P.E. Bach and Haydn.

I tell myself if I do this I will not have missed any poems by Thomas before I die.

Yesterday I was working on the first part of his poem, “When, like a running grave.” (link to poem)

Usually I am first attracted to surface images and the way he uses words: “Love in her gear is slowly through the house,/Up naked stairs….” Then I might notice his very eccentric use of rhymes and more likely near rhymes. “Stairs” occurs in the middle of the quoted line (line 4), but rhymes with “scythe of hairs,” which ends the second line in the poem.

After examining the rhyme scheme in the first five lines (quintain? as opposed to quatrain…), I notce that he changes the rhyme scheme in the subsequent stanzas. Then I notice that the entire poem is divided up into ten sections of five lines each making the entire poem a neat fifty lines.

The first 25 lines are one sentence. They are followed by an 8 word sentence: “Time is a foolish fancy, time and fool.”

I found out much more about the first half of this poem, but I can feel your eyes lidding over as I write….. if you even have read this far…

Anyway, I mention all this because I noticed myself dragging my poor wife to the piano to explain to her some structural ideas that Shostakovich uses in one of his preludes in his opus 87 which is made up of 24 preludes and fugues.

No. 12 is in G# minor and is a chaconne or maybe more properly a passacaglia… These two forms are very similiar and involve a repeated pattern over which the composer develops musical ideas.

In this case, Shostakovich uses a 12 measure pattern:

Since it is in 3 and has a lumbering bass that repeats, I think of it more easily as a passacaglia (from the Spanish, passar to walk and calle street) than the elegant Chaconne which I think of as a bit more dance like. Both are slow. When I look up Chaconne I find that the etymology is not known. A couple sources speculate that it is the onomatopoeic rendition of the sound of castanets. This reinforces it’s dance like character. (Interestingly castanets comes from the Spanish for chestnuts which I guess were used to make primitive castanets or reminded people of them.)

Anyway.

I was taken with the way Shostakovich cleverly began an iteration of the long theme in one voice one measure too early at one point. Thus instead of imitating the theme in a usual baroque echo-like way, he seemed to create a foreshadow of theme. Very clever writing, not to mention beautiful. Here’s a link to a recording of this piece. I’m listening to it right now and think that the miking is poor but at least you can get an idea of it.

So even though I tell myself that musical analysis does not equal musical understanding, I find myself over and over drawn to trying to figure out how music works….. likewise poetry….

This does not remove the mystery and beauty for me. It’s more about my curiosity than anything.

I guess I should mention that I was hired yesterday by Hope College Dance department as a rehearsal pianist for two classical ballet classes this fall.

The chair of the dance department called while I was in California. I returned her call yesterday and agreed to play for these classes.

So now I am again affiliated with a educational institution.  I begin on Friday. This involves getting up and arriving at 8:30 AM every weekday. They pay $26 dollars an hour and I think I am working about 8 hours a week. This will continue the entire semester assuming they are happy with me and I am happy with them.

Also began prep for accompanying tryouts for Grand Haven High School’s upcoming musical. The tryouts begin next Monday.

Today I have to get going on church tasks.

Summer is over I guess.

I think I may have had food poisoning or something yesterday. About midday I started feeling bad: cramps and aches and pains. Went to bed for rest of day. Woke up fine this morning. Probably more than you want to know, eh?

I keep getting fuddled at other people’s online communications and comments. I think that it’s sometimes hard for people to understand the nature and context of platforms like Facebook or websites. Hence comments are often cryptic, especially when they are made rarely.

Found a couple of interesting comic book links recently:

Whatthingsdo.com is an online compendium of comics. Very cool.

The Imp is a short lived magazine which discusses and reviews comics….  click here to get three pdfs of this interesting magazine.  I recommend exploring the rest of Dan Raeborn’s web site. He is a writer and puts a lot of his stuff up to read free.

Taylor Branch the civil rights historian had an interesting take on Glenn Beck’s recent DC rally yesterday: “Doctor King’s Newest Marcher.”

Guilty pleasures: reading the NYT mag article on William Shatner. Actually sort of thought provoking for me. I like Shatner’s existential comments about playing himself playing a role.  “The Many Iterations of William Shatner” by Pat Jordan Don’t miss the video on this page. It’s kind of fun as well. I like it when he says he keeps learning stuff as he gets older. Just now learning how to act. Cool.

Before I started feeling bad I made fruit muffins yesterday using the raspberries and blackberries I had left in the fridge. Supplemented with some frozen blueberries. Also fried up some cooked potatoes. I don’t think this is what made me sick. Eileen had some and she was okay.

Ended my vacation music fast with a bunch of Brahms and Bach on the pianer. Ahhhh. Good to be back on the keys.

Eileen took me for my first ride in her new (used) Mini Cooper. I don’t really like cars all that much but am very very happy that Eileen has her dream car. I was afraid she was going to have to wait for my death and use the insurance money to buy it. Nice to actually see her get it.

I hope I can do some relaxing today. I don’t feel like I gained the perspective that can be afforded by a good time away from stuff. But what the heck. I’m glad I went and did the annual California Jenkins fam visit.

So I’m back.  Yesterday’s flight involved two layovers, one in Houston and one in Cleveland. Then a short drive home.

My son is a little antsy about what is posted about his fam on the internet, so I’m not posting stuff here. Check my facebook for more pics.

I’m afraid even though my visit with fam in California was relaxing I’m still stressed.

Ah well. At least I don’t have to do church today. A sub has been hired.

I want to concentrate on relaxing with lovely wife for the next 48 hours. Then back to the grind I guess.

Had a couple of books waiting for me when I got home, both by the scholar C. L. R. James.

My copy is not this cool. I love the cover of this one however. The blurb on the back says that it’s “A classic and impassioned account of the first revolution in the Third World.” This refers to the Haitian Revolution of 1791 which was apparently inspired by the French Revolution.

Christopher Hitchens knew this guy and mentioned these books in his new  memoir, Hitch 22. That’s how I got a line on them.

The second book by C. L. R. James waiting for me when I got home was Beyond Boundary and is a book about the game of cricket which I know nothing about despite the fact I have been reading English novels for years that talk about it.

Apparently this book uses cricket as a foil for some interesting philosophic observations.

Puts me in mind of the current cricket scandal (link to google news search).

In one of my dreams last night, I was in a theater and trying to find a place to sit. I saw some people I knew and an empty seat near them. I raced another person to it and actually beat them, but relinquished it in the  name of being polite. I looked around for a near by seat. There was an empty one and I asked if I might sit down. The woman said no, she didn’t want to have to put up with that. I found another seat.

The night before I had an involved theater dream in which I was an actor. As a teen who did some acting in high school, I began having anxiety dreams around forgetting lines that have persisted over my entire life. But that wasn’t the point of this dream. It was more about sheer onstage confusion. Plus the actors and I improvised as we stalled on stage for someone to make an entrance.

I am doing a lot of nothing on this vacation. Spending time with family. Reading and splashing about in my son’s pool.

I made Lebanese flat bread on David’s grill yesterday afternoon for the heck of it. It just so happened that there was a recipe for this in last weekend’s New York Times. (link to recipe)

I am beginning to miss daily practice. I didn’t at first. And I am still disentangling my head from my silly day to day stuff back at home.

Luckily I have been distracting myself well in the in between times of dreaming and worrying about stuff.

Followed the release of Tony Blair’s memoir, “A Journey,” on this Wednesday.

Looked at  a copy of it yesterday in the bookstore. I might read it at some point. Here’s some interesting links about it: link to New York Times review, link to The Guardian interview with Blair on Brit newspaper web site & link to The Guardian editorial about it .

Then there’s David Corn’s bitter little article about a meeting with Bush Blair omits: link to “Tony Blair’s Big Lie of Omission” by David Corn on the Mother buy diazepam 15 mg Jones web site. Plus the old New York Times article (3/27/2006) that broke the story on the memo in which the leaders discuss last minute ideas on provoking the Iraq war. (link)

Very disturbing.

This morning’s reading included “Of Two Minds About Books” by Matt Richtel and Claire Cain Miller (link to article NYT 9/1/2010). It’s about e-reading and e-readers. Discussion of this rarely mentions reading on netbooks. It’s usually about the stereotypical idea of whether electronic reading devices are better or are going to replace books.

This always strikes me as missing the point. I haven’t read any discussion of what makes up a book: words? ideas? stories? paper and glue? Spending time with words seems to be below the radar or beside the point in many of these discussions.

Again yesterday at the bookstore I looked at Barnes and Nobles’s e-reader. The young woman came up to me and asked me if I wanted help. When I said no she proceeded to show me what a page of prose looked like on the reader (something I had already done before she approached me).  I thanked her and moved away from the reader.

I find myself much less interested in buying hard copies of books from bookstores and much less interested in browsing in them. This is definitely because of the increase in access I have to them via the Internet. Besides ebooks, I routinely use the Web to interlibrary loan books from my library or purchase them used (usually from a bookseller on Amazon) not to mention accessing and reading tons of articles.

Plus the Web allows me to follow my ideas and interest much more quickly and thoroughly than I used to. So that being a room full of books is much less of a singular opportunity to run down books and concepts I have been thinking about.

I console myself with the idea that the used books I purchase online are purchased directly from used book dealers. If I was still dealing in used books I would insist on having an online presence hopefully through Amazon.

Finished reading second volume of the Fablehaven series last night. I do like these quite a bit.

Spending quite a bit of time in my son’s pool with fam.

Mr. Rosenthal (my daughter-in-law’s Dad) made fried eggplant for everyone last night. Mmmmm. good

The vacation is going well.

Used my son’s fancy grill yesterday to make grilled pesto pizza.

Used this recipe for the dough: link to dough recipe It was fun to cook in my son’s fancy kitchen. Plus his grill is also pretty fancy. I was able to use different temps to initially grill the dough and then by shifting it to another area on the grill allow the cheese to melt and dough continue to cook over a milder temp. Very cool. link to suggestions I used to grill pizza Made 6 little pesto pizzas and 2 little tomato sauce ones.

Listened to President Obama’s speech this morning on an NPR site as I lay in bed. link to page with stream of the speech Then got up and accompanied my daughter-in-law to the gym and did some treadmilling. She has a membership and my son printed up a free pass. They gave me another free pass so I can return while I’m visiting.

Nicholas my grand-son furnished me with volume 2,3, & 4 of the Fablehaven series. I don’t think I will finish all of these but I will read in them while visiting.

Managed to sun burn my belly in the pool yesterday. I guess I’m really on vacation.

Eileen and I hung around the house yesterday . Eileen watched and played with Catherine.

I cleaned the kitchen and made pesto.

As per instructions we picked up the other two grandkids after school and headed off for the bookstore.  They tend to associate Eileen and me with bookstore trips.  We usually take them out and buy them books when we visit.

When we got to the bookstore, I walked Catherine around in the stroller for a bit while Eileen and the other two grandkids looked at books. Then Eileen took her out of the stroller and they looked at books together.

Since the advent of e-reading and the World Wild Web (used books and all kinds of articles and prose)  I don’t enjoy bookstores near as much as I used to. It’s fun to browse but I tend not to want to buy near as much as I used to.

I got a chance to talk with Nicholas about what he has and has not read. He hasn’t read Sounder or much Edgar Allen Poe. I think he might be more of a Robert Louis Stevenson’s person, but mostly just asked questions.

He is reading the Narnia series and seems to like them. I mentioned the Madeline L’Engle “Wrinkle in Time” series to him. I found a good graphic novel take on Bradbury’s Farenheit 451 and bought it for him.

He chose a large book about Star Wars for purchase.  Both Savannah and Catherine chose one book for themselves and Eileen chose one each for them.

Wacky Wednesday for Savannah and

Mister Brown Can Moo for Catherine.

We came home and all sat around and read for a while.

I borrowed Nicholas’s copy of Fablehaven and managed to read the entire thing yesterday. It’s pretty interesting and held my attention even though it’s a YA book.

Nicholas promised to bring me the second volume in the series home from school (where he had it stashed) today so that I can continue reading this series.

It’s really pretty good.

So the visit is going well.

So David got the wifi working and I now have total access to the Internet via my little netbook.

This morning I found myself listening to this weekend’s On the Media. The theme was myth busting and mis-perceptions. This is something I like to think about.

I find myself on guard quite a bit as I shift and consider information and news. I try to balance skepticism with understanding. But over the year I have found myself correcting my own mis-perceptions.

The first couple on the show were not news to me. I knew for example that Rosa Park’s image as a little old lady whose feet hurt and was just so tired of discrimination that she sort of spontaneously refused to give up her seat on a crowded bus to a white man did not exactly describe what happened. She was a political activist all her life and never an advocate of non-violence.

I may have corrected my own confusion by reading her obit when she died. Hard to know.

On the other hand, by listening to “on the Media” this morning I learned that my idea of the Kitty Genovese murders was pretty much totally wrong.

Kitty Genovese was stabbed to death on the streets of New York in the 60s. Supposedly her murder was witnessed by 38 bystanders who ignored what was happening.

This story is cited as evidence of the apathy and insensitivity of Americans at the time.

The real story is much different. Genovese was cruelly murdered by a maniac. But there were few witnesses. It was in the dead of night. No one knows where the number 38 comes from. The entire correct story (and its subsequent initial mis-reporting by the New York Times) is fully covered in the On the Media story. Here’s a link to the segment. Transcripts should be available at this link sometime this afternoon. The Wiki article also seems pretty accurate….

This really interests me because the myth of (American) apathy has dogged me all my life. Commentators point out that this was four months after the death of JFK and that there was a sense of public guilt in the air. My hero family psychologist Ed Friedmann insisted that the “stuckness” of the US society dates from this period.

By “stuckness” I think he meant a free floating anxiety that has caused (and continues to cause) severe damage to our societal and individual psyches.

I haven’t finished listening to the entire show. I usually stream this show weekly sometime.

Right now I am typing in my son’s lovely dining room, sipping coffee. The internet is such an important luxury in my life.

Now that I have easy access on  my vacation I plan not only to do my usual online reading (news reports and other articles), I now can study musical scores by accessing them online.

This vacation is sort of a musical fast for me because I am without access to a keyboard.

So instead of spending several hours daily rehearsing and studying I must simply not do so. It’s probably healthy since I am so obsessed with this part of my life (musicians by definition are sort of honorary sufferers of obsessive compulsive disorder, if not actually mentally ill in this way), a hiatus is not a bad thing.

But the musical side of me (which has to stay quiescent in this situation) is also a healthy side of me that gives me what little perspective I can muster.

A couple of years ago, I bought a little guitar while visiting in California and then had a decent instrument to rehearse on while I was vacationing.

But unfortunately, my interest in guitar has waned a tad and I didn’t even bother bring a guitar or a banjo with me this time.

My son and daughter-in-law do have an antique piano.  It’s not in great working order. Sort of  in tune, but the middle D doesn’t work at all which makes any playing difficult.

No biggie. Not sure how much playing I would do with a full house around anyway.

Anyway, having a great time… .wish you were here…. heh.

So we made it to California with no problem. Four AM was a bit on the early side for rising. But since we were only driving to the Grand Rapids Airport it was no big deal. Eileen and I were both a bit stunned to be up that early.

Not much to report out here. My son’s fam is good. His new house is luxurious and everyone looks good.

Trying not to think about my work. I feel that I am a bit on the burned out side. It’s good to be somewhere I have no responsibilities and no place to go.

My son has a huge HD tv on the wall and cable. As well as a beautiful pool in his backyard. I jumped in last night with him and the grand-kids and their cousins. Pretty much wore me out.

David managed to get his wifi working for us….. cool beans.

I’m reading my grandson’s copy of the second volume of the Percy Jackson series…. He has told me that the third and fourth volume are the good ones, but that I need to read them in order.

I have a ton of work to do today to prepare for leaving on a jet plane tomorrow. I am going to mail invites to a Sept meeting of musicians at my church that I jocularly call “Grace Electric Light Orchestra” or sometimes “Grace Episcopal Light Orchestra.”

I think I prefer the first one because the second sounds like Miller Lite….

The boss gave me the final okay yesterday on the invitations and poster. The new renovation at our church has weirdly prohibited 8.5 x 11 posters. The only bulletin board left is set up to neatly accommodate about 6 or 8 five by eleven spots. I pointed out that this is an odd theology and disagreed with my boss when she said it was creating more clarity.  But frankly when organizations spin off into space I lose interest. So this is not exactly my problem.

I also pointed out how the communications at church seem to be diminishing.  The web site is pretty static and has not incorporated much that makes it workable. The bulletin has gone pdf which is a cumbersome way to communicate online. Announcement time at church is so long and boring and predictable that I don’t bother to have announcements made then due to the way people cease to pay attention.

She is allowing me to send a letter to every member of the parish so that’s pretty direct communication. I have written the letter and will mail it in Sept. The boss has read and approved the letter.

I think I’m ready for some time away from this.

I have been trying to get my Mom out of her building this week to no avail. Yesterday I dropped by to give her a watch I bought for her.  She’s not feeling well physically. I guess it’s nothing serious. She describes it as “cramps.” I hope she feels well enough to get out today.

I also have to do laundry and pack. Clean the kitchen. Do bills. The usual stuff.

Here’s a couple more essential links I use to try to stay organized and up to speed.

This is one I turn to quite a bit if I’m looking for info on a specific story. http://news.google.com/

The story of my using this online bookmarking service goes back to when I used to clip stories physically from the New York Times.  When New York Times upgraded its online services to include a way to bookmark archived stories I started doing that instead. Then a year or two later they dropped the service and passed on customers (I was a paying customer then) to an online bookmarking service. Eventually that service folded and passed me on to Diigo. I quite like being able to access stories this way. And it definitely is “living in the cloud” because I can do it from any computer. As of this counting I have 1387 bookmarked stories many of which go back ten or more years. I routinely bookmark obituaries. Wednesday when I was preparing to make peach pie filling, I couldn’t find a recipe. I checked my Diigo bookmarks and sure enough there was the recipe I used last year bookmarked.

http://www.diigo.com/index

So Eileen bought the car. She talked them down a thousand or so dollars and got a pretty good price on it. She seems very pleased with it. Also a bit guilty. Heh.

I sat in the backyard last night waiting for her. It was lovely weather. I read my Sept AGO magazine. In it, there was an ad for a piece of music by Cameron Carpenter.

There are always young brilliant organists coming up.  I have noticed that this guy is trying to break some barriers. Admirable.

He has published his first composition.

I am going to order a copy. I especially like the ad copy when it says the performance notes on the piece “say simply: ‘No regisration; just dynamics and signs to observe or omit.”

Wow, pretty different from my email conversation with David Hurd when I asked him I could re-register a piece he had written.  This means use different sets of pipes than he asks for in the performance notes. The reason I asked him was each organ is different and my organ doesn’t have some of the stops he was asking for.

He asked me not to perform his piece.

Sheesh.

I didn’t.

I have a pull down folder marked INT NEWS (International News).

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

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/radio

I regularly listen to the BBC online. For news I recommend the World Service (not in the picture above). For online cool stuff like dramatizations I  check BBC 7 & BBC 4. Good stuff.

I like the Guardian’s web site. This particular link is good because it’s one page with good brief synopses and pics on each story. One of the best online news pages for that reason. Much better than any US web site I have seen.

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

Started reading Aljazeera online after I heard the editor interviewed (on the BBC?). He seemed to espouse excellent journalistic ideas. They have people on the ground all over the world including many in Washington. Hey, I read the right wing conservative & left wing brain dead crazies from the good old USA so why not Ajazeera?

http://english.aljazeera.net/

I like this site because it rates anyone who gets their attention. They have been tracking the president’s promises with an Obamameter:

It was on this site that I learned that the mosque proposed to be part of the Park51 center near where the World Trade Center was destroyed was indeed a mosque. I also learned what makes a mosque a mosque (prayer 5 times a day).

http://politifact.com/truth-o-meter/

I’d like to put up more but I have a busy day planned. Onward and upward.

“It’s like falling in love” my wife said. She has fallen in love with a car and I dearly hope we buy the silly thing.

Spent a good deal of time yesterday and the day before, designing a poster and invitations to musicians at my church to attend a Grace Music Jam. Would like to get this done before leaving Saturday for Calif.

Meet with the boss tomorrow to finalize design and announcements on this.

I downloaded a couple of books from the notorious Burgomeister’s web site yesterday (http://www.truly-free.org/). This guy rationalizes that sharing books one has purchased is totally ethical and has set up a site to share books that gets around copyright prohibitions with a feeble legal rationalization of distributing review copies.

I usually don’t succumb very often to it because even though I think it’s ethical, I’m pretty sure it’s not legal.

But I have a trip coming up, so I decided to think about e-books. Much easier to transport my little netbook chock full of books than my usual bag of books.

Interestingly Michael Connolly makes the same point about his e-reader in an article on the Wall Street Journal: “The ABCs of E-Reading by Geoffrey A. Fowler & Marie C. Baca.

This discussion of the phenomena of e-reading  omits any mention of how I e-read, which is on my netbook. It seems so obvious to me that the netbook is superior to any e-reader I have seen. Mostly because it’s so flexible and just as portable and back lit. (Although apparently the Ipad is back lit as well, but of course it costs a lot more than a netbook.)

I wonder if the e-readers will really catch on. I  much prefer my netbook.

I read a good deal of the first novel in Anthony Powell’s Dance to the Music of Time series last night.

It is a series of novels I have thought about reading before. Looking for books to suck me in for the upcoming trip. This one is tucked into my netbook. The problem is I’m about half done with the first one already. Hmmm.

I also pulled down Night Train by Martin Amis

and The Anti-Death League by Kingsley Amis.

These writers are son and father, respectively. I have read and admired works by both of them. The father is dead, but the son is still alive and writing and thinking.

I may purchase Kindle versions of other books I am reading for the trip. These can be read on my netbook because last year (finally) Amazon released an app that allowed pc users to read Kindle books on their pc.

Even while not traveling, I do this occasionally. It feels a bit indulgent because often it is not the most economic way to get access to a book. Library interlibrary loan or even used copies online are of course much cheaper. But it is quick.

I finished playing through the first of three volumes of CPE Bach’s Sonatas with Varied Repetition yesterday. I have mentioned this three volume series before in this blog.  I have fallen in love with one of them. It’s very charming. I find this satisfying because I have long wanted to like CPE’s music. He wrote a very charming book about playing keyboards which I have consulted many times.   But I have found his music not that attractive.

But these volumes so far have some very nice stuff in them.

Also I began playing through the English Suites of Bach. I know this material quite well and have even performed many of them in public. Still it is satisfying to play them.

Also have been slowing working my way through Shostakovich’s lovely 24 Preludes and Fugues for piano, Opus 87.  They are obviously a commentary of sorts on Bach’s 2 volumes of 24 Preludes and Fugues (The Well Tempered Clavier I & II), but they also have some interesting and beautiful writing. My hero, Keith Jarrett, has recorded them all. I am avoiding listening to his recordings right now because they will have too strong an influence on my understanding of these pieces.

So that’s the news, gentle reader. I actually think a couple of people have been reading me lately due to the incontrovertible evidence of comments on yesterday’s blog. Cool! This site has averaged about 30 hits a day for the last year. I am totally satisfied with that which makes me an odd duck on the internets since bloggers and other sites measure their success in thousands if not millions of hits.

But a hit is not a read. Either way, I write first to air my own silliness and to attempt to start little online conversations or spark thoughts in people who bother to read me.

Today I hope to find some ripe peaches at the Farmer’s market and freeze some peach pies.

Life is good.

I do a lot of whining on this web site. This is in contrast to how I try to behave in person (except with my loving and patient wife). The church committee meeting I attended yesterday afternoon was an example of me attempting to be constructive and not too  intense (godforbid, I should whine!).

It’s my goal to be a relatively calm presence at these meetings.

More importantly I try to make constructive comments and get people thinking a bit out of the usual “what color should the toilet paper be” mind set of church committees. It takes tremendous energy.

My boss and I often sort of “team teach” these committees. She and I spend hours in conversation analyzing and speculating about how this community does church. Our relationship of course can annoy other staff members who (like many in the community) mght think I’m a bit “too big for my britches.”

I wonder if some people I annoy would be more comfortable if I did the typical posturing and gave the appearance of knowledge and expertise.  Instead I choose not to cater to “you are what you appear” and simply “be.”  So I get misread and underestimated a lot. And since I don’t fit an easy identifiable pattern others sometimes get defensive and uncomfortable with me.

Toujours gai, archie, toujours gai! There’s some life in the old gal yet!

Besides whining (Was I whining again? Oops! Sorry!) I also use this blog to explain myself to myself. I’m afraid that I sometimes am not very good at this. But I it is my purpose to elucidate my point of view and my experience of life and art here as a sort of personal therapy and invitation to conversation.

Speaking of elucidating….

Yesterday I only  mentioned two news sources that I utilize.  I actually check many sites online regularly as well as follow sites (and reporters) on Facebook and Twitter.

Today I thought I would link in a few of these.

In no particular order:

The Browser: writing worth reading

This is one of those sites of links to other sites. It’s purpose is to “recommend writing of lasting value to the intelligent general reader” (from its about section).

This morning I used the site, Big Questions Online to link to an interesting article by Susan Jacoby with this memorable quote:

Somehow, “I love you” isn’t the first thing that would come to mind if I were being held down by female relatives while my clitoris was maimed or if my father told me I had to marry a stranger. from “Multiculturalism and Its Discontents”

I have been watching C-Span since its inception. The very idea that any citizen can watch broadcast of the US House or Senate is very attractive to me.  http://www.c-span.org/

This another compiler site. I like it because when I check it I get a sense of what are the current topics being bandied about in the Editorials and commentaries in the press. Tends to link to Op Ed type articles on several sides of any debate.  http://realclearpolitics.com/

I started checking this site more regularly when my quasi-son-in-law Jeremy Daum mentioned that he thought it was one of the online sites that did breaking news best. Drudge is slimey and hates liberals but also a must for trying to track a story. http://drudgereport.com/

What can I say? Like others of my online sources, I used to read this before the Internet. Now I think they have quit publishing and are only available online.  Excellent clear-headed well written journalism.  http://www.csmonitor.com/

Another great institution in our country.  http://www.washingtonpost.com/

I subscribed to the paper version for a few years, before the New York Times delivered to my little city.  It was during this time that they ran the series (that eventually won the Pulitzer prize) about the disgraceful DNA discoveries that so many felons on death row in Illinois were wrongfully convicted. It’s not as good as it was but still a good paper. http://www.chicagotribune.com/

I got interested in the LA Times after reading it a few times on visits to California to see my son and his fam. I was surprised at how excellent some of the writing and reporting it contained was. Definitely a must read to get out of the East Coast and Beltway bias. http://www.latimes.com/

I end today’s selection with one I have been following online the longest. This is the brainchild of Denis Dutton author of The Art Instinct. I was reading it before I ever heard of him. It is a compiler and well worth checking. Only updates during the week. http://www.aldaily.com/

I have many more bookmarked. More later.

“I suppose it is tempting, if the only tool you have is a hammer, to treat
everything as if it were a nail.” Abraham Maslow

Fortunately for serious minds, a bias recognized is a bias sterilized.
Benjamin Haydon

Our blight is ideologies — they are the long-expected Antichrist!

Carl Jung

What persuades men and women to mistake each other from time to time for gods or vermin is ideology. One can understand well enough how human beings may struggle and murder for good material reasons — reasons connected, for instance, with their physical survival. It is much harder to grasp how they may come to do so in the name of something as apparently abstract as ideas. Yet ideas are what men and women live by, and will occasionally die for. Terry Eagleton

By “nationalism” I mean first of all the habit of assuming that human beings can be classified like insects and that whole blocks of millions or tens of millions of people can be confidently labelled “good” or “bad.” But secondly — and this is much more important — I mean the habit of identifying oneself with a single nation or other unit, placing it beyond good and evil and recognizing no other duty than that of advancing its interests.Nationalism is not to be confused with patriotism. … By “patriotism” I mean devotion to a particular place and a particular way of life, which one believes to be the best in the world but has no wish to force on other people. George Orwell, “Notes on Nationalism” 1945, link to entire essay

I have been thinking about bias a lot lately. Or “point of view.” Specifically I have been thinking about journalistic bias. It is so obvious to me that the more diluted forms of journalistic thought (tv, bad radio) exhibit a bald bias that makes their reports suspect.

Harder to determine is the bias in sources one respects and presumably agrees with.

I approach the New York Times as the best American news source. It continues to boggle my mind when intelligent people I know prefer the Wall Street Journal to it.

I have read good and bad journalism in both papers. But of late I have found the Wall Street Journal to be more reactionary and provincial. But I think I am getting more critical of people who seem to reduce life to its monetary aspects.

The only bias one really need struggle with is one’s own. Others biases are obvious to the observer who is paying any attention at all.

In fact the process of maturing is continually examining one’s biases and deciding if they really reflect one’s conscious intentions.

In addition these days even reasonable sounding sources need to be examined for their starting assumptions. Easily done with the Internet at your fingertips.