I’m blogging a little later than usual on this my last Monday off for a while. I slept in a bit and then got up leisurely, sipped coffee and did my morning reading.

I want to be sure and say something about the compliments I received yesterday. I bitch and moan so much in this space about how many of the the local musicians don’t seem to notice that I’m doing music much less respect my work.

Yesterday before church a Jazz aficionado who is a parishioner chatted me up briefly. He concluded by telling me that he thought I played Jazz well. Then during the peace (where the members of the church generally go around and greet each other), one of the several trained choir directors who are parishioners and his wife both made a point to come up to me and shake my hand. They both thanked me for my work with the choir at Grace. I was pleasantly surprised.

I was sitting in the choir area yesterday during church and thinking that when I examine the many people in the church one by one I can see that they appreciate my work there. I think my occasional sourness comes from my own extremely critical assessment of my abilities and execution combined with a few specific instances of weirdness that stick in my craw. I hope to let these silly little things go as much as possible this year.

Having said this, yesterday’s service did seem to go particularly well. I did a lot of vocaleses in the pregame. Every choir member was also present at the party the night before at my church. Their voices were tired from singing and staying up and partying. This requires some TLC in the warm-ups. Judging from the sounds in the service the warm-ups helped.

Even though the music was of modest quality yesterday, nothing earth shattering, it was all pretty well executed and musical. In addition it was one of those Sundays when everything hung together in a coherent way. The prelude and postlude were based on the opening and closing hymn. The anthem was well sung and related to the day. The hymns all were good solid choices.

I came home and treadmilled to one of Bach’s Epiphany cantatas, specifically  Cantata BWV 65 “Sie werden aus Saba alle kommen.”

I quite like this cantata and it made good treadmilling music.

I’ll end with a poem by Lucille Clifton from this morning’s reading session. I relate to it.

the light that came to lucille clifton
came in a shift of knowing
when even her fondest sureties
faded away. it was the summer
she understood that she had not understood
and was not mistress even
of her own off eye, then
the man escaped throwing away his tie and
the children grew legs and started walking and
she could see the peril of an
unexamined life.
she closed her eyes, afraid to look for her
authenticity
but the light insists on itself in the world;
a voice from the nondead past started talking,
she closed her ears and it spelled out in her hand
“you might as well answer the door, my child,
the truth is furiously knocking.”

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After Years in Solitary, an Austere Life as Uruguay’s President – NYTimes.com

Some world leaders live in palaces. Some enjoy perks like having a discreet butler, a fleet of yachts or a wine cellar with vinta

ge Champagnes. Then there is José Mujica, the former guerrilla who is Uruguay’s president. He lives in a run-down house on Montevideo’s outskirts with no servants at all. His security detail: two plainclothes officers parked on a dirt road.

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Jared Diamond: what the tribes of New Guinea have to teach us | Science | The Observer

Diamond is an amazing man. If you haven’t read him, I recommend doing so.

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Barack Obama and the ’empathy deficit’ | Science | The Observer

Always interesting how the rest of the world sees Obama.

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Pro Patria Fans’ Racism Prompts A.C. Milan Walkout, and Outrage – NYTimes.com

Soccer game called due to racism. Amazing.

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China Says Reporter for The Times Was Not Expelled – NYTimes.com

Following public discussion of visas in country where two members of my family are now living.

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Escaping Slavery – NYTimes.com

“Today there are more African-American adults under correctional control — in prison or jail, on probation or parole — than were enslaved in 1850, a decade before the Civil War began.”

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Central Africa’s Wildlife Rangers Face Deadly Risks – NYTimes.com

Poachers use military expertise to slaughter the people protecting animals.

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I spent the entire day yesterday preparing for the choir party in the evening. I did manage to get the house clean and straight.

Had a chance to chat with lovely daughter Sarah while I emptied and refilled the dishwasher (Hi, Sarah! My BP is down this morning in case you were worried, heh). I went to church to prep for this morning. I also grabbed hymnals and 8 copies of an anthology of Christmas anthems I recently bought at Bibles for Mexico for 50 cents a piece.

Then stopped off at Meijers and grabbed more stuff for party. Came home and made bruschetta and little salami sandwiches. The bruschetta toast was still hot as guest began to arrive. The evening seemed to go well. After eating and drinking and talking for a while we settled down to singing hymns from the little Willcocks anthology I purchased at the thrift shop. Then we sang from the African American Hymnal, Lift Every Voice and Sing. People seemed to enjoy it. I kept dropping out from the piano and letting us sing a capella.

Yesterday I found a descant for “Brightest and Best” in the files at church. I looked at it and decided it sucked. I got up this morning and wrote a new one. I also put a descant by Erik Routley (for “As with gladness, men of old”)  into Finale and printed both up already this morning.

Off to church in a bit for Epiphany.

I am avoiding cleaning up the house for  tonight’s choir party by blogging. Soon I will have to get going on this. Also I am planning to make snacks. I will go over to the church later, practice and pick up some hymnals and choral music to provide entertainment this evening.

Yesterday I finally got my Mom over to the optician and ordered new lens and frames. This should help her with her reading.

I couldn’t get the check book to balance yesterday. Eileen then worked on it for several hours and finally figured out we had written down one transaction twice in the ledger. Thank goodness she’s there to help.

I feeling a little overwhelmed this morning.

The house is a wreck. I have no motivation to get ready for tonight so I will have to force myself to do so in a bit. I will put on music. That helps.

Eileen and I also went out looking for covers for our Kindles yesterday. She found one at Odd Lots. I found one  at Staples. There were both 5 bucks a piece. Not bad but by the time we were one looking I was pretty tired. Came home and made myself go practice.

This was good since I spent a good amount of time reading through Bach preludes and fugues. I have been reading again in Reinventing Bach by Paul Elie. I am finding (and making notes of) more mistakes. Initially I found where he said that the tune for “A Mighty Fortress” was derived from a Gregorian chant. This is true of many Lutheran chorales. But I don’t think it’s true of that one. He mistakenly referred to the number of ranks in an organ as the number of pipes. Big difference. He also said that Mendelssohn was Jewish using it to make a point. Weird. Mendelssohn was a baptized Lutheran and only Jewish by heritage not faith or practice.

Anyway despite these errors I am finding the book pretty inspiring in its enthusiasm about Bach. It goes into quite some detail about Albert Schweitzer and is inspiring me to consider re-reading his book on Bach.

I read it once straight through when I was about twenty. Since then I don’t think I’ve made it all the way through again. But have thumbed through it many times. Even though his scholarship is inevitably dated, I find his insights still pretty valuable.

Oh well, time to get cleaning.

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James Meek reviews ‘Breaking Bad’ produced by Vince Gilligan · LRB 3 January 2013

This review made me think of rewatching this series. Also the reviewer puts “Breaking Bad” in the same high quality category as “Mad Men,” “The Sopranos,” and “The Wire.” This makes me think Eileen and I might enjoy watching all the way through “The Sopranos” one series we haven’t been that attracted to.

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With Accessory, Officers Looking Sharp and Staying Safe – NYTimes.com

The history and advantages of clip-on ties for law officers.

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Is It Time to Scrap the Constitution? – NYTimes.com

Letters in response to an article I recently linked.

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A Guide to the Senate’s Freshman Class | RealClearPolitics

FWIW

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Peter Blaikie: Guns, gun culture, and madness in the United States

A conservative from Canada talks sense about this topic. Thank you for pointing this out on Facebookistan to Ken Near my friend who lives in Quebec.

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In her bio of T. S. Eliot (one of two I am concurrently reading), Lyndall Gordon points out that a title of an unpublished poem by him is the source of the first recorded usage of the word, “bullshit,” in the OED. Sure enough, there it is.

Gordon also wrote this lovely sentence a few paragraphs earlier in the book.

Who can now determine the exact ways people of the past bent their inclinations
in order to construct gender according to absurd models of masculinity and femininity?

My whole life I have had difficult fitting into models of masculinity. Gordon is writing about Eliot’s relationship to a man he knew in Paris, Jean-Jules Verdenal. She points out that his relationship to Verdenal “was devoid of the ostentatious masculinity American men felt compelled to construct” and that Eliot’s letters to him are “devoid of that bravado he went in for buddies like [Conrad] Aiken.”

Eliot apparently was struggling with his own sexuality at this stage in his life at the age of 24. He was in Gordon’s words “an inspector of vice” but not a “participant.”

This distance gave him the advantage of the poet and he poured it into “obscene” poems that remained unpublished in his lifetime.

I am warming up to Gordon’s understanding of Eliot. She resists the 20th century understanding of him as moving from darkness into the light of Christianity. She calls the 20th century a century of extremes and seeks to understand Eliot on his own terms which I suspect combine understandings previously held.

It’s helpful to read Ackroyd alongside her. He can’t help seeing it from the stuffy Brit point of view. They both seem to miss things the other picks up. I am going back and forth between them trying to roughly line them up chronologically.

I have just ordered Inventions of the March Hare: poems 1909 to 1917 which contains this previously unpublished work ($6 on Amazon including S & H).

I have also been reading straight through Eliot’s selection of  his own work he wanted to preserve (Collected Poems 1909-1962) and have just reached his final masterwork “Four Quartets” which I have read many times and am re-reading.

Eliot’s careful restriction of access to his unpublished work and his recently deceased wife’s resisting scholars use even of quoted published material makes reading about him intriguing and frustrating. There are letters written to and by him which were sealed by his wife only to be revealed in 2019. So the scholarship is evolving. Gordon seems to do a pretty convincing job of making a coherent story in the midst of this.

Ackroyd is just Ackroyd a writer I love and also find frustrating and oblique. He weirdly inserts himself into his bio of Dickens in the manner of the post-modernist (or whatever label you want) he is. I have also read some of his fiction. I like it that he knows so much more than I do and find reading him opens my head a bit. His bio of Eliot is very preoccupied with the ideas Eliot was working on as a student of philosophy as well as Eliot as poet.

After blogging yesterday I spent the entire day (10 AM – 4 PM?) picking out final choral anthem choices for the rest of the year. I had roughed in the entire year in the fall so it was a bit easier but I did take pains in choosing them. At 4 PM I went to church to look quickly at some anthems, pick out organ music for a week for Sunday (thus staying a week ahead in what I submit for the bulletin), and practice organ a bit. Back to the house to treadmill.

While I treadmilled I finished the New York Times and then read my Kindle copy of Reinventing Bach by Paul Ellie on my laptop using the Amazon cloud reader. When I got to the part about Bach visiting Buxtehude, I put Buxtehude up on Spotify. Life is good. This morning when I fired  up my Kindle and synched it the note I made on the cloud was there. Cool.

Yesterday I emailed the chair of the ballet department that I could do the scheduled she had offered me. Emailed music ministers to remind them of Saturday’s Twelfth Night party at Casa Jenkins.

Finished The Game of Boxes by Catherine Barnett.

Here are a couple poems from it I liked:

******

Chorus

We didn’t believe an elephant could squeeze into church
so we went to church and waited while the priest
kept saying listen and forgive and the animals all around us
listened, or didn’t listen, some strained against leashes,
some wore disguises that made them look like people we knew,
people we should forgive or be forgiven by,
we didn’t know which, even the elephant
looked like someone we knew, flooding the doorway
like a curtain of light, swaying from side to side.
Her hide was cracked down to her feet and her eyes,
they shone like glass before it breaks. She looked
like she might fly but only walked down the aisle
in a dirty gown of wrinkles, so wrinkled and slow
and vast and silvery, the whole galaxy shivering.

*********

The Right Hemisphere

Late at night the mind quiets, or
when listening to Mozart. All the studies
say so, they show maps of the brain
when you’re having chills listening
to something beautiful the way a man’s cry
is beautiful to me I’m ashamed to say.
The part of the brain where music gets processed
is close to my memories of a few men
in flagrante, or whatever that is
when they open their mouths and cry out
and for a moment the brain lights up.
“Present,” I might have said
though for most of those nights I wasn’t,
not really. I wanted to be.
I don’t like to think about the past,
I was afraid to say “here”
though there I was listening.

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Huizenga Moves Out – 1450 WHTC Holland’s Hometown Station

My Congressman says having a local office in Holland  is not as important as it used to be  “most of his constituent work is now done online or via the phone, as opposed to person-to-person in past years.” Wow. I wonder what “redrawn district” means in this article.

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  I may have gotten a bit of TV religion last night. Eileen and I watched three episodes of “Game of Thrones” on my new laptop. Ever  since I saw this huge self contained monitor/computer at Best Buy Ihave been wondering whether we might be better off watching TV online and getting rid of Cable. It’s on sale for about $500. It has a 20″ screen and would make a good TV for Eileen and me. I found the program on http://www.cucirca.com/ along with tons of others. Since we just spent a ton of money on my tooth and Christmas, I think we will delay purchasing something like this for a while. In the meantime, we will continue to see what we can do with just accessing TV programs with the laptop. Finished a volume of Mary Oliver poems this morning. I think I like this poet quite a bit and will continue to read her. Have begun volumes of poetry by Ursula K. Leguin and Lucille Clifton. These are two interesting poets to read simultaneously. Clifton died last year. My brother was familiar with her work, but I had never heard of her till I picked up her book last week at the library. Le Guin is a long time favorite writer of mine. I have read many of her novels but little of her poetry. Both books are collections which are sort of an overview of these two poets’ work. I think they proceed chronologically through each poet’s opus. I have to say that Clifton seems so far (about 80 pages in) to have one basic voice and that Le Guin is more literary and wide ranging in her poetry writing than Clifton. It’s probably comparing apples and oranges. Yesterday (and today so far) was a Bach/Shostakovich day at the piano. I have playing from both of their collections of preludes and fugues. Shostakovich  obviously has Bach in his head as he writes his collection of preludes and fugues. I think Shostakovich does a good job coming up with beautiful and interesting music in this genre. And of course playing Bach is always an unbelievable experience. Yesterday I played the Prelude and Fugue in Eb from Book II of the Well Tempered Clavier over and over. Each repetition revealed something new to me in the music. That’s how I experience Bach. I move deeper and deeper into his music and find more and more in it even after an initial dizzying experience the first time through. *********************************************************************************************************************

Mike Auldridge Dies at 73 – Lent Dobro Fresh Elegance – NYTimes.com

As I was reading the New York Times yesterday and treadmilling I utilized my laptop to look up music on Spotify as I read about it in the obituaries. Marva Whitney, 68, Singer in the James Brown Revue – NYTimes.com       The result was a whimsical playlist

Ray Collins of the Mothers of Invention Dies – NYTimes.com

I read in the obituary of Ray Collins that one of the first records Zappa released was Hey Nelda.

Ned and Nelda were Zappa and Collins. And there it was on Spotify to add to my whimsical list. Joy by Zadie Smith | The New York Review of Books Then there was this essay by Zadie Smith which mentioned all kinds of music I didn’t recognize. I especially liked “Can I Kick It?” by a Tribe Called Quest and music by Q-Tip and The Streets. Man do I feel spoiled to be able to so quickly access the music I read and am curious about. *******************************************************************************************************

Times Reporter in China Is Forced to Leave Over Visa Issue – NYTimes.com

Elizabeth mentioned this to me. Also that Philip Pan, the NYT bureau chief whose wife she recently had lunch with and whose book In Out of Mao’s Shadow she has read and which I am reading, is also in danger of not having his visa renewed. ********************************************************************************************************

Protester Wounded by Gunmen in Egypt – NYTimes.com

Government thugs in other countries have been background noise in the news ever since I have been paying attention. *********************************************************************************************************

California Man Held in Burning of Homeless Woman – NYTimes.com

This kind of violence on the helpless and unwanted seems to me to be an action on the evil extremes of humanity. ********************************************************************************************************

Another year begins. I have been avoiding the end of year perspectives that so many of my sources lapse into at this time of year. It may be my own jadedness but I hear and read so many banal discourses empty of insights that I don’t feel like picking through the retrospectives for the gems.

Yesterday my daughter and Elizabeth and my son-in-law (no longer quasi as he used to refer to himself) borrowed one of our cars and drove off to Chicago. They both have flights home to China today. Jeremy’s leaves from Chicago, Elizabeth’s from Grand Rapids. She will drop him off and drive up to Holland (or Grand Rapids). It has been a lot of fun to have them around for an extended time.

Besides sheer companionship and joy in their presence, I have benefited by their guidance (mostly Jeremy) into purchases that have increased the quality of my life a bit.

My old netbook computers were never loud enough to actually use them to listen to music to.

But as I write this blog on my new fancy laptop I am listening to Rubenstein play Chopin at the same time on my new fancy laptop.

Earlier this morning I put some more books on my new Kindle Paperwhite. Yesterday I spent quite a bit of time reading on it. I like its feel and use and especially the convenience of its portability.

As I treadmilled the last couple of days I have used my laptop to both read the paper and listen to music. Very cool.

When I go out to run errands and require something to read, the Kindle Paperwhite is nice to slip into my pocket and have something to read available.

I am reading Super Sad True Love Story: A Novel  by Gary Shteyngart on my Kindle. He had a blurb on the back cover of Homes’s May We Be Forgiven which I have recently read. Both Elizabeth and Jeremy have read it and recommended it. My Kindle tells me I have read 36% of it so far.

Jeremy was talking about Charles Stross’s collection of short stories, Accelerando. I had previously downloaded it (it’s available online free) but didn’t remember reading it. It’s now on my Kindle and I have read the first chapter.

I skipped organ practice (Sunday’s music is not as hard as last Sunday’s). I will do church things tomorrow when Eileen is at work. I have to pick the rest of the anthems for the year and let the Sunday School teachers know when I am planning to have the Kids’ Choir sing. This will be pretty easy since I have already sketched in anthem choices for all choirs for the rest of the year. Now I just need to nail them down.

I was in an odd musical mood yesterday. It took me away from Beethoven,  Haydn, Scarlatti (the guys I have been playing) and toward the French: Debussy and interestingly Fauré. For some reason Fauré was drawing me in. I have printed up many of his pieces from online sources because my one student Rudy seems to be intent on learning all of his piano music. But yesterday I was drawn to their elegant beauty and spent time with with several barcarolles.

I am glad to be alive for another year.

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Embodied Cognition: Our Inner Imaginings of the World Around Us Make Us Who We Are [Excerpt]: Scientific American

How our brains make meaning, not only with language but also with experience.

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Japan’s New Premier Backs More Nuclear Plants – NYTimes.com

It seems that more and more democracies are moving rightward in their leaders. This guy wants to roll back recent reluctance about nuclear plants and rescind apologies. Sheesh.

*******************************************************

Let’s Give Up on the Constitution – NYTimes.com

Some surprising musings on just exactly what our country needs.

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F.A.A. Rules Make Electronic Devices on Planes Hazardous – NYTimes.com

This article points out that the real hazard is bodily harm from other passengers who feel unnecessarily threatened by your Kindle.

******************************************************

Finished this book of poetry this morning. I am a fan of Carver short stories. And of course there was a pretty good movie made of a compilation of plots from them:

 So I was pleased to find that I like his poetry as well.

I nailed the prelude which was enough of a concern for me to practice it daily prior to performance. A composition by Pamela Decker from 2009, it was based on “Joy to the world” our opening hymn. I have tons of easy to medium easy music I can pull out of my hat with little practice but this procedure has been less and less satisfactory to me lately. So even though this piece of music puts the familiar melody prominent in the ears of the listener what is happening around it (a running obbligato and a walking bass in the pedals) requires my attention as a performer and is interesting enough to learn and schedule it.

So this medium challenging prelude went well. This was good because the day before I felt like bloody hell all day. Aches and pains accompanying my cold precluded me from a really thorough rehearsal that day.

I managed to find some time to play through some Beethoven and Schubert at the piano yesterday. This seemed to clear my head a bit. I started out with headphones on the electric piano and then later after everyone was awake on the acoustic piano.

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Afghan Police, Betrayed in Sleep, Suffer Losses – NYTimes.com

A startling story of murder and sex slavery.

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China passes new law requiring real names for Internet services | Digital Trends

Daughter Elizabeth says she had to show her passport to sign up for internet in China. Maybe that’s just for foreigners.

Here’s another report along the same lines.

China Toughens Restrictions on Internet Use – NYTimes.com

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The Wilson Quarterly: Beyond the Brain by Tanya Marie Luhrmann

Newer insights about mental illness combining physical science with other factors. Haven’t read yet. Bookmarked to do so.

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The Once and Future Liberalism – Walter Russell Mead – The American Interest Magazine

Another unread bookmarked article. David Brooks says Mead points out the two brands of liberalism which dominate American politics (according to the article).

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The American Scholar: Death by Treacle – Pamela Haag

Sentimentality crippling private emotional life. Bookmarked to read.
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How Your Cat Is Making You Crazy – Kathleen McAuliffe – The Atlantic

Son-in-law Jeremy says it’s more interesting that cat urine has a chemical effect that causes mice to be less afraid of cats. (He says this is not an entirely accurate quote so I say google it if you’re interested)

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Paul Berman: The Thought Police | The New Republic

Book review.

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Falklands War Caused Rare Friction for Thatcher and Reagan – NYTimes.com

Surprisingly Reagan tried to dissuade Thatcher from the Falklands tragedy.

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A Perfect Mess by Mary Karr : Poetry Magazine

The Obscenity Prayer by Mary Karr : Poetry Magazine

A couple of poems I like I found online. I also decided that Poetry Magazine doesn’t have many poems in it that interest me these days.

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Le Morte D’Arthur, vol 1 by Thomas Malory – Free eBook

Put this on my new Kindle.

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Snow Fall: The Avalanche at Tunnel Creek – Multimedia Feature – NYTimes.com

Interactive thing. Haven’t read but looks like nice graphics about a ho hum story.

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Senate Votes to Extend Electronic Surveillance Authority – NYTimes.com

Same as it ever was. Big brother has been watching you for decades.

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Nonprofit Operator of New Jersey Halfway Houses Paid Millions to Founder – NYTimes.com

Daughter Elizabeth pointed out this as a story she has been following. Corrupt profiting from non-profit organization.

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Instructions for living a life:
Pay attention.
Be astonished.
Tell about it.

This is from Mary Oliver’s Red Bird. I know it’s kind of goofy but somehow it’s a good epigraph for a blog entry.

I am sick. Yesterday morning I got up out of my chair in the living room and felt more aches and pains than usual. Soon I had figured out I had what I think of as a body cold. Yuck.

My brother and his wife drove away in the morning. Jeremy and Elizabeth are still here. Jeremy is planning to get down to Chicago tomorrow to see his sister before flying home to China. Elizabeth leaves the next day for China.

I received an email from the chair of the Ballet department. She is offering me the same schedule as the fall plus three more hours per week. The fall schedule had me dragging but the extra hours will help money wise. At this point I have sort of decided to take whatever they offer me. I start on Jan 7.

I dragged myself over to church to prepare for this morning’s service. I really needed to rehearse the prelude more thoroughly but what can you do if you’re ill? I am playing a piece by Pamela Decker based on “Joy to the World.” I have had to practice it daily in order to perform it well today. I have also been practicing daily the other organ pieces I am going to play today and next Sunday. Today’s postlude is the lovely “In dir est Freude” by Bach from the Orgelbuchlëin.  This along with “In dulci jubilo” seem to be ones that I play annually around Christmas. I have decided in this time of banality a little repetition of what I think is quality doesn’t hurt. “You know, for kids.”

I have also been preparing a couple of pieces based on Epiphany type hymns: one by Sue Mitchell-Wallace on Dix (As with gladness men of old) and one by Alec Wyton on “The First Nowell.” It has felt odd during the holidays to dutifully sneak away and practice organ and instead of immersing myself in great art I am preparing goofy pieces based on recognizable Christmas melodies. This is the first year in a while I have done this. Usually I fill the Christmas preludes and postlude holes with French Noëls for organ. I love this corpus of organ repertoire and play it along with the Masses of these composers. It’s lovely music but I’m not sure how much it means to listeners at church (I know. I know. This is assuming they notice I am playing.)

Finished The People All Look Like Flowers by Bukowski this morning.

It seems like this is the third or fourth “last book” I have read by the late Charles Bukowski. He died in  ’94 but books just keep coming out of his work. He was nothing if not prolific I guess. I find that his mildly rough approach to life is a bit of an antidote to living in little old Holy/helland.

I have randomly ran across another poet: Catherine Barnett.

Checked her the game of boxes from the library.

Here’s a poem I like:

*****

HANGMAN

When did he start to play in reverse,
erasing the figures line by line now
they’re shadow and blank space and fragrance?
Sometimes he calls the vowels so quickly
it sounds like he’s laughing,
erasing limb by limb,
finger by finger,
until only the word is left.

Ably assisted by my brother, Mark, and son-in-law, Jeremy, I went out and bought a new computer and a Kindle yesterday. In fact I’m working on my new computer right now.

It is fast and the screen and keyboard are a good size. I have never had a laptop before that wasn’t a netbook (which is about half the size of what I am using right now). We also ran across the new Kindles which are lit up (NOT from behind my brother kept insisting, there is a layer of LEDs that shoot down on the surface you are looking at, he says).

I got up this morning and took it out of the box. Tech does seem to be getting easier and sleeker. Very nice. The computer was about $300, the Kindle $119. I feel very spoiled this morning.

Yesterday we did a Jenkins Christmas.

My nephew Ben, his boyfriend Tony, my niece Emily, and her husband Jeremy were not feeling well enough to come over to the west side of the state. We missed having them around for the festivities but shouldered on. Around 5:45 Mark and I went and got Mom and brought her to the house. Eileen arrived about a half hour later and we all ate the wonderful food we had laid out for munching and serious eating as well. Then we did stockings and gifts. By 7:15 Mom was tired so Mark, Elizabeth and I took her back.

Part of our stockings were miniature “crackers.”

This is an English tradition my daughter Sarah (who lives in England) has taught us. We found them at Meijers weirdly enough. One pops open the cracker hopefully making a pretty good “pop” sound. Then looks inside. There is a toy, a joke and a paper crown which everyone usually puts on if they don’t rip them.

I wore mine to the nursing home as we took Mom home. As I leaned over to kiss her goodbye she said  “Take that thing off your head!”

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Hardly a day goes by that I don’t access the OED. Today I read a poem by Bukowski and he used the world, dactylozoid.

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Iran Raises Level of Islamic Law Enforcement – NYTimes.com

Iran has decided that planes cannot fly during the prayer times.

According to Islamicfinder.org, which provides information on daily call-to-prayer times worldwide, they vary significantly in Iran. In Tehran, for example, they are at 5:38 a.m., 12:03 p.m., 2:40 p.m., 4:58 p.m. and 6:23 p.m. In the holy city of Qom, they are 5:42 a.m., 12:08 p.m., 2:45 p.m., 5:03 p.m. and 6:28 p.m.

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Signs of Changes Taking Hold in Electronics Factories in China – NYTimes.com

China companies beginning to respond to international standards of treatment of workers.

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A Don’s Life: My Christmas Puzzle

A blogger I read puts up an interesting Christmas challenge: trying to figure out a 19th century political Christmas cartoon.

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Evidence shows starvation did not cause saber-tooth cat extinction | Research News @ Vanderbilt | Vanderbilt University

I’m a sucker for these clarification stories.

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The secrets of Cézanne | TLS

New book on Cézanne. Haven’t read this review but it looks informative.

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All We Can Eat – I Spice: Curry leaves

Son-in-law Jeremy brought home curry leaves from Meijers. Not curry powder. A different thing as the linked article makes clear. I added them to a curry as I was heating the oil and cooking the onions. They got brown very fast so I took them out and put them back in at the end of the cooking. They are a part of the taste but you still need to use other spices with them it seems to me.

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Finished Homes’ May We Be Forgiven yesterday sitting in the dentist chair waiting for my new tooth.  I’ve watched my grandson finish a book and immediately dive back into it, sometimes at the beginning but more often at random throughout the book. It is how we will continue to read a book long after the first read.

I did a bit of that yesterday with Homes. I had debated taken a second book with me to the dentist but was a bit self conscious about doing so so I didn’t. At the end of the book Horace Silver (the main character) says something about not fearing the other shoe falling, that he’s not even wear shoes.

The book comes full circle from one Thanksgiving to another and takes place in one fantastic year of events and changes.  Jane who is saddled with preparing the Thanksgiving meal for a large group of mostly unconscious people including her sadistic self obsessed violent husband George has been murdered by him. George is sequestered in state facility of some sort. Horace ponders what kind of Thanksgiving meal George is experiencing this year. He thinks of “pressed turkey breast,

jellied cranberry slices still bearing the ringlike indentations from the can,

lumpy gravy,

and glutinous white-bread stuffing.”

Silver wonders “Is there pumpkin pie in prison? If there is, does it have any flavor at all?”

For me these are potent musings at the end of a long and weird wonderful book. As the blurb by Rushdie (who made the Acknowledgments at the end of the book as did Zadie Smith) on the back of book says, the book “starts at maximum force.” The first hundred pages are brutal. But the reader spends the rest of the book inside the spinning head of Horace Silver as he feels his way to a new life of connection to people who seem to fall into his life almost at random but with charm.

Near the end of the book even sitting in the dentist chair I began to feel that Homes maybe went too far with her redemption thing. After the initial brutality the most intense moments are moments of comic genius studded throughout the unwieldy and complicated narrative. The surreal bar mitzvah in which Silver gathers a community around his nephew (that’s right, George’s kid) and makes a pilgrimage to a South African village is fraught with screaming foreshadowing that ANOTHER TERRIBLE THING IS ABOUT TO HAPPEN.

The air goes out of this balloon and nothing terrible happens just surreal comedy and commentary. In fact there is a bonding between and a deepening maturing that Silver observes in the young people of the book that continues back in their lives stateside.

I wonder about the lack of a second terrible thing in the book. I wonder about the obvious point Homes is making at the end about the trajectory from a typical dysfunctional Thanksgiving at the beginning of the book and then an odd unreal happy Thanksgiving at the end of the book which includes turning off The Mighty Joe Young on the TV (also playing at the first Thanksgiving) and the absence of screens in the hands of the youth. Silver feels “a distinct absence of tension” that to me is a tad unconvincing.

Nevertheless I did like the book.

Yesterday walking with Elizabeth and Jeremy, a young man called to us from across the street. I recognized him as Nathan Walker. He is a friend of mine and an excellent musician I have played with in the past. He is now attending U of M and is pursuing a performance music major in double bass.  He and his companion crossed the street and gave me a big hug and chatted us up a bit.

Seeing him home from school reminded me that he is another in a growing list of people who reach out to me and value my work as much as I value theirs. While I have subsisted very well locally for many years with little of this, having it is sweet.

Yesterday was a pretty relaxed day. Eileen had to work. Elizabeth, Jeremy and I played santa elves and went to Meijers and bought a bunch of stocking stuffers for upcoming family visitors. We checked on Mom and got hugs. Then had a nice (in reality it was excellent) pizza lunch together at a relatively new downtown restaurant.

I did manage to stay on track with practicing and treadmilling.

More family arrive today (my brother Mark and his wife Leigh). As you can imagine we are madly prepping for them to arrive.

Also I have an appointed to get my new front tooth at 11 AM.

Life is good.

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Charles Durning, Character Actor in ‘Tootsie,’ Dies at 89 – NYTimes.com

I loved this guy’s work especially in Coen brother movies.

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Museum Seeks to Update Thomas Mann for Age of Texting – NYTimes.com

I didn’t even know Thomas Mann had a literary brother. Fascinating description of the Mann museum and well as the Gunter Grass museum.

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Corrupt Chinese Officials Draw Unusual Publicity – NYTimes.com

Evidence of possible change in China.

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Barack Obama needs to explain drone strikes – Hina Shamsi and Vincent Warren

Another argument for transparency around drones. We kill our own citizens. Children.

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Blame for Our Record on Treaties – NYTimes.com

Letters regarding this. First one was from the inimitable Representative Barney Frank (who was also profiled on the PBS News Hour last night).

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Yesterday after everyone in the house got up we opened presents. Adult Christmas is kind of a funny thing. At this point, I don’t think anyone is looking with great expectations for getting stuff the way one does as kid. It’s more like the fun of giving other people stuff.

Having said that, I cleaned up.

To be fair I sometimes let Eileen know where am I at in my progress of getting her stuff for Christmas. I do this because I know it will slip her mind and then feel bad if she doesn’t get me stuff if I get her stuff. Tricky, eh?

Anyway about a week ago, I mentioned that I had spent around 60 bucks on her. A few days before Christmas she asked me point blank what books I would like for Christmas. Not a definitive list, mind you. But since my reading is so wide ranging and I am always in the process of procuring the books I’m interesting in, I can be very difficult to buy for.

Having made a few trips to the local bookstore myself I had the experience of looking at the books and realizing the shop was carrying many titles I am interesting in. So I tried to pass some of this info on to her.

The result is I got a bunch of cool books for Christmas from Eileen including the following.

This is my third book of poetry by Mary Oliver. I am finding her work pretty attractive. She is almost a bit too religious or sappy for me sometimes but always seems to step back away from goofy (I find that Louis Glück doesn’t always take that step back). Anyway I have been holding back on purchasing more work by her or checking out another book from the library. Have already used this one for this morning’s morning poetry reading session.

These are two writers that interest me and these are their new books. They are now on the floor next to my reading chair.

This was in the package Sarah left for me in the house when she returned home for England.  How ’bout that? Thank you Sarah and Matthew!

I was sitting in the room with three people all of whom received email gifts from me (and in the case of Elizabeth and Jeremy—me and Eileen).

I got Eileen a subscription to the New York Times crossword puzzle app. Unfortunately there is not one for her devise of choice—the Kindle Fire. But she did play with it yesterday and printed out puzzles for her and Jeremy to work.

Elizabeth and Jeremy were scheduled to receive gift certificate emails which they did.

After sating ourselves with opening gifts we went into a fury of trying to pull the sound off of Eileen’s video she had made for her Mom.  We were trying to make a CD of Eileen reading of a book she had bought for her Mom. This took up most of the morning. We finally gave up and everyone but Eileen vacated the main floor and she just made a new recording directly on the desktop  in the dining room.

After that we zoomed over for Christmas hugs with my Mom (who really wasn’t up for a drive to Whitehall or we would have taken her with us), drove to Whitehall and had a crazy inter-generational Hatch Christmas. It amazes me how much I enjoy these things.

By the time we were home and things were winding down (I did practice and treadmill by God) I felt like I was living in a Christmas movie.

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Literally Unbelievable

Woot

New links from son-in-law Jeremy Daum. The first is funny. It compiles The Onion stories that are taken for real on Facebookistan. The second is a site which provides Internet shopping with flat 5 dollar shipping. Daily deals.

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Walter Kirn: Confessions Of An Ex-Mormon | The New Republic

Ran across this article. Bookmarked to read. Did not realize Kirn had this background. He is a writer I like.

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The Innocent Man, Part One :: Texas Monthly

Also bookmarked this one to read. Looks like good reporting.

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American Indian Adoption Case Comes to Supreme Court – NYTimes.com

This is the story of conflicting legal and moral stuff.

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Old South Church in Boston to Sell Rare Psalmbook, Stirring Dissent – NYTimes.com

I own a replica copy of this book. Hey they have two.

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Alcatraz American Indian Occupation Graffiti Preserved – NYTimes.com

Guilt based historical preservation brought to you by you (if you are a taxpayer). I think it’s cool, actually.

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Real and Virtual Firearms Nurture Marketing Link – NYTimes.com

Take that, N.R.A!

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The Christmas eve services went well. The choir sounded pretty good and I mostly nailed Messiaen. Today I have more family holiday stuff to do and not too much time to blog, so here’s my annual airing of my favorite religious Christmas poem:

The Burning Babe
BY ROBERT SOUTHWELL, SJ (c. 1561 – 21 February 1595

As I in hoary winter’s night stood shivering in the snow,
Surpris’d I was with sudden heat which made my heart to glow;
And lifting up a fearful eye to view what fire was near,
A pretty Babe all burning bright did in the air appear;
Who, scorched with excessive heat, such floods of tears did shed
As though his floods should quench his flames which with his tears were fed.
“Alas!” quoth he, “but newly born, in fiery heats I fry,
Yet none approach to warm their hearts or feel my fire but I!
My faultless breast the furnace is, the fuel wounding thorns,
Love is the fire, and sighs the smoke, the ashes shame and scorns;
The fuel Justice layeth on, and Mercy blows the coals,
The metal in this furnace wrought are men’s defiled souls,
For which, as now on fire I am to work them to their good,
So will I melt into a bath to wash them in my blood.”
With this he vanish’d out of sight and swiftly shrunk away,
And straight I called unto mind that it was Christmas day.

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All the World’s a Game, and Business Is a Player – NYTimes.com

Gamification hits businesses

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In Aiding Quake-Battered Haiti, Lofty Hopes and Hard Truths – NYTimes.com

Excellent lengthy report by Deborah Sontag

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Let me spit breath mists of introspection, bits of me,

So that when I am gone, I shall be in the air.

from “Jail Poems” by Bob Kaufman,The Outlaw Bible of American Poetry 

This little quote from a Kaufman poem seems a fitting description of why I blog (which I have been doing via the interwebs since before the term was coined).

I believe I nailed the Handel organ concerto yesterday at church.

The video that I posted here (and on YouTube) helped me believe a bit more in my own sense of tempo than the metronome’s.  I concentrated on the emotion of the piece (which I thought of as sort of jazzy driving joy). That seemed to help tie the whole thing  together.

I spent the night alone last night since Eileen and Elizabeth drove to Ann Arbor to have a meal with family then spend the night near the airport so they could pick up Elizabeth’s partner, Jeremy, this morning. In fact they have probably already met him and are driving back to Holland as I write this.

I finished reading Neomonicron by Alan Moore last night.

This was the graphic novel a South Carolina library pulled from its shelves recently. That’s how I found out about it. I like Moore’s work. This book is built on premises and ideas from H. P. Lovecraft’s work but it has its own little clever twist to it. Very clever in my opinion.

And the rape scene described in the article was not as depraved as I feared it would be. There were actually much more disturbing scenes of mutilation that went unmentioned in the Guardian article I read about it. Figures.

I practiced Messiaen on the piano yesterday. Have already worked on it some this morning. At this point it feels very good that I have chosen something a bit more challenging to do at the later service this evening. It helps keep me engaged. Otherwise I find myself very distant from the societal Christmas experience.

This is probably something I have fallen into over the years as I have been called on to lead prayer around Christmas.

I have a sad memory from my youth of stopping at a Howard Johnson’s restaurant in mid-Ohio and seeing a man weeping over his meal on Christmas day. I still think of him each year and wonder about the high expectations and emotional implosions that occur around this time of year.

Add to that the inevitable incongruity of doing church and I have difficulty connecting to the season.

Walking home from church yesterday Eileen said that she sees what I do at church as the practice of an art. I told her I did too and it was one thing that kept me engaged.

I’m not sure if many people understand my work as an art, but I do and I guess that’s what matters.

I also spent some time with Schubert piano sonatas yesterday, playing them carefully. As I age I play and rehearse more and more carefully. I believe that many of the local trained musicians see me as a hack.

Sometimes I think they may be right. Certainly my playing rarely rises to my own aspirations of excellence. And I seem to have been dropped by the coffee house scene.

I suspect I am too old for them.

Nevertheless whatever my abilities perceived or real, I continue to improve via careful work. It puts me in mind of when John Hartford received a death sentence from his doctor.

It was cancer or some awful thing. His response was to practice harder and more often. Like he knew he didn’t have much time left to savor being alive.

So I continue to savor and cultivate care in what I see as my art and craft.

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Cats at Hemingway Museum Draw Tourists, and a Legal Battle – NYTimes.com

Battle of the six-toed cats in Key West.

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Mormon Women Wear Pants to Church – NYTimes.com

At Western Wall, a Divide Over Prayer Deepens – NYTimes.com

Mormon and Jewish women take stands.

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Senators Say ‘Zero Dark Thirty’ Torture Scenes Are Misleading – NYTimes.com

I guess it’s much easier to publicly disapprove of a movie of torture than the actual scandalous torture itself.

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Looking for Lessons in Newtown – NYTimes.com

Facts in this article include pointing out there are more annual suicides by gun (19K) than murders (11K) in the USA.

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Arrests in Freshman’s Drinking Death at Northern Illinois – NYTimes.com

More depressing facts in this article: 18K college students age 18-24 die in alcohol related deaths per year in the USA.

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Use of Death Sentences Continues to Fall, Numbers Show – NYTimes.com

I end with a bit happier link, but can’t help but cynically observe that this reduction is more about cost effectiveness than morality.

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Christmas approaches and as usual my teeny tiny bit of faith gets beaten down by sentimentality and sadness.

I think it might help to have children around at this time of the year. But alas, none are here. I did spend some time with children of Rhonda a couple nights ago and that was nice (thank you Rhonda for inviting us over).

Eileen and Elizabeth are driving over to Ann Arbor this afternoon for a meal with my nephew, Ben, his boyfriend Tony, and possibly niece Emily and her husband Jeremy B.

Then they spend the night with Ben and Tony and rise early to pick up Elizabeth’s partner Jeremy at the airport. I have to remain behind to preserve my energy for Christmas Eve. Bah.

The Messiaen is coming together nicely. I have high hopes for a good performance tomorrow evening. This morning I get to perform seven minutes or so of Handel (organ concerto). That will be fun. This morning’s Advent IV service is a service of Advent Lessons and Carols. I suppose it will be good. At least my congregation will sing, the choirs will probably sound okay. All will go fine.

Here’s the poem I liked from this morning’s poetry reading.

*****

dog

is much admired by Man
because he believes in
the hand which feeds
him. a
perfect
setup. for
13 cents a
day you’ve got
a hired killer
who thinks
you are
God. a
dog can’t tell a Nazi from a
Republican from a Commie from
a Democrat. and, many times,
neither can I.

Charles Bukowski from The People Look Like Flowers

*****

Aint it the truth.

I finally managed to get back to treadmilling yesterday. So here are a few bookmarks from that and other reading.

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Is President Obama Really A Socialist? Let’s Analyze Obamanomics – Forbes

I put this up as a sad example of how distorted political discussion is in the USA right now.

The OED says this about socialism: “A theory or system of social organization based on state or collective ownership and regulation of the means of production, distribution, and exchange for the common benefit of all members of society; advocacy or practice of such a system, esp. as a political movement. Now also: any of various systems of liberal social democracy which retain a commitment to social justice and social reform, or feature some degree of state intervention in the running of the economy.”

Even in this definition one can sense a shifting of meaning from “collective ownership” of the “means of production, distribution, and exchange” to “social justice and social reform.”

But, Peter Ferrara, the author of the linked article, doesn’t start out calling Obama a socialist, rather he insists that he is a Marxist (it was here I admit that I first quit reading the article and came to the conclusion that the rhetoric was extreme and involved in stupid framing instead of analysis).

The OED says this about marxism: buy diazepam online china “Central to Marxist theory is an explanation of social change in terms of economic factors, according to which the means of production provide the economic base which determines or influences the political and ideological superstructure. The history of society can be viewed as showing progressive stages in the ownership of the means of production and, hence, the control of political power. Marx and Engels predicted the final revolutionary overthrow of capitalism by the proletariat and the eventual attainment of a classless communist society.”

Unfortunately, the “means of production” in the USA are the big corporations not the government (which would probably also be disastrous). In fact the corporations now own our government, not the proletariat or as I sometimes like to call them: the people.

Both socialism and marxism borrow heavily from Christian values especially St. Paul in their communitarianism. This must make religious communist haters uncomfortable when they also identify themselves as Christian. Or maybe they just don’t know or care about the story of the early Christians as one of a community which held things in common.

Anyway, I deplore intellectual use of ideas to fan the flames of  ignorance which is what I think this article artfully does. (I did read more in this article but will spare you further critique).

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The Problem of Evil | RealClearPolitics

I admire the courage of this writer to frame the current discussion of the gun madness in terms of evil. I think that’s probably salient. I disagree with his either/or proposition at the end of the article that we must either believe or perish. There are other more nuanced ways to think about this. I did find in the comments linked here:

The Problem of Evil | Comments | RealClearPolitics

a very interesting pointer to C.S. Lewis book (first chapter linked below). I have a hate/love relationship with Lewis. I liked his Screwtape Letters better than anything else he wrote. I loathed his victorian approach to sex in his work but now think I might check out The Abolition of Man.

 Men Without Chests

from  The Abolition of  Man  by C.S. Lewis

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The N.R.A. Crawls From Its Hidey Hole – NYTimes.com

I bookmarked largely because it pointed out that at  Columbine there was an adult with a gun. He fired four times at the killers. He missed them.

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Robert H. Bork, Conservative Jurist, Dies at 85 – NYTimes.com

I watched the Bork hearing on TV and shuddered to think of this mind as a Supreme Court Justice. Now he would fit in nicely in a horrible way.

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Deaf Officers Keep Watch Over Crime in Oaxaca – NYTimes.com

Lip reading and more observant, deaf officers make a unique contribution.

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Why the US media ignored Murdoch’s brazen bid to hijack the presidency | Carl Bernstein | Comment is free | The Guardian

Bernstein and Woodward back at it.

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If you checked my blog yesterday you may have seen a pretty weird sight/site. My daughter Sarahwho has been helping me with my blog “left a whole bunch of [my] old files (pdf and stuff) uploading from [my] old website to [the] new one – and it included an index.html file – which happens to act as a default main page! oops…! [but she has] fixed now [obviously].

I’m kicking myself for not taking a screen shot of it to put up here today.

My days have been so full since Wednesday that I have not had enough hours in the day to do everything I wanted to. One day I practiced much less than I meant to, all three days (W-F) I ended up skipping my treadmilling.

This also means I didn’t read the New York Times for those days (my standard reading material when I treadmill). This morning I finally gave up and checked today’s New York Times telling myself I would read deeper into the past three days when I treadmill today (which I WILL do by gosh and golly).

Yesterday Eileen asked me if it has occurred to me that I am a writer as well as musician. I was a bit amused that she wasn’t remembering (though I’m pretty sure she has heard several times from me)  the stories of my high school ambivalence between being editor of the high school newspaper and active in music department (trumpet, jazz piano).

The way I remember it, a young woman I had a crush on pointed out to me that she could see I was interested in writing/journalism and music and was surprised when I seem to be pursing the latter more than the former in my waning high school years.

From this vantage point I can see that I would have been a good writer (am one?) especially writing prose. I enjoy putting sentences together and thinking about meaning, ideas and clarity which is the way I see prose writing.

The feedback I get about my musicianship and my own assessment has led me to understand myself as someone who intensely enjoys music and is maybe medium to occasionally mildly good at it.

Admittedly my standards are sky high in these areas. I know that. Almost all listeners of any ilk these days compare us poor live musicians to recordings. Often (if not most of the time) this is an inaccurate comparison.

I have said in this space before that I think recordings are a completely different art from the art I practice in music (see the bad videos below of my practicing). I see myself as composer, improviser, analyst and live performer of music. I see recording as essentially “sonic sculpture.” I also see as an interesting and developing art, just not my art which is more along the experiential lines.

I knew an excellent player who was temporarily entranced with learning his music away from his instrument (with his MIND). When I was told this by a third party my reaction was “that takes the fun of out if for me which is largely derived from DOING music.”

This a prejudice I have mentioned here before: Music is something you (I) do.

Speaking of “doing music” I managed to find time to tape myself practicing three upcoming pieces I will play at church:

This Sunday’s Prelude

The Postlude:

We are using this tune with a very interesting text, “Mary, when the angel’s voice.” The first stanza is about Mary (Jesus’s Mom) and I am going to have only women in the room sing it. The second is about Joseph so just men will sing. The third is about Elizabeth the fourth starts “God whose name we magnify, all your children matter.” Three and four sung by all.

Here is the Messiaen I have rehearsing mentioning. Planning to perform it Monday evening in the Choral service that precedes the late Christmas eve:

Not sure how much I will be blogging in the next few days.

My daughter Elizabeth waited patiently at the airport yesterday for me to pick her up. Her flight unfortunately precisely coincided with a much needed eye doctor appointment that I had to take my Mom to. I was sorry to make Elizabeth wait but she was very gracious about it though she had spent many many hours getting from Beijing to Grand Rapids.

The stuff that was bothering me yesterday all was resolved with the help of some clear profession direction from my brother and the good leadership of my boss. Whew.  A thank you goes out to colleagues (Hi George and Rhonda!) who heard me out during this process.

Today the wind is blowing hard here in western Michigan. They have been predicted a terrible snow storm will move in from the southwest but so far nothing.

I finished reading Mary Oliver’s Winter Hours  this morning and resolved to read more of her. The last lengthy prose poem uncannily rhymed a bit and commented on the blowing wind. It also moved around in spaces where my head often goes especially this time of year when one is forced to confront the ideas of religion bouncing around everywhere in stores and media.

Here are a couple passages:

We hear on the forecast that it may snow, or it may rain, and there will be high wind. Certainly there is wind. The rest passes out to sea, but wind is sufficient. Clap of invisible hands and all the winds together, those breezy brothers, they are on their way.

Speaking of the ocean near where she lives, Oliver writes this beautiful clear passage:

Sometimes the surface takes on a tarnished glow, as it heaves and throws the white spume skyward. One could be standing in the same place, by the same sea, a thousand years ago. In spite of the motion and the noise, that glow releases something strangely peaceful. It is not unlike the calm that one reaches in the deepest influence of great art, where the spirit senses that purest of mysteries: power without anger, injury without malice. For nature and art are in this way twins: they are both beautiful, and dreadful, and in love with change.

Post script: I loaded this blog to find that daughter Sarah had changed the color to green (something I had asked her to do). I think it looks great! Thank you, Sarah!

I woke up disturbed by some stuff at work.

But I really can’t talk about it here. Yesterday was a long church work day and left me exhausted and a bit off balance.

I met with my boss and we planned several services. More services than we usually look at at one time since she is taking a two week trip to the Virgin Islands during her Xmas break. As a result of this meeting I spent some considerable time choosing organ music and preparing information for the bulletins for these services. It’s work I enjoy but it definitely took up a lot of the day.

I continued carefully preparing organ music with an emphasis on “Les anges” by Messiaen.

I also spent a chunk of time writing a descant for this church’s Gloria which they will sing on Xmas eve when it returns (The Gloria is omitted during Advent in liturgical churches).

I was working on it at the computer and looked up and found that it was time to walk to church and practice organ some more before the weekly communal meal and evening prayer.

The children’s “whateveritis” rehearsed last night after the meal. I say “whateverits” because it’s hardly a choir, I had two new kids under age so I had four children, one in first grade, one in second, one in third, one in fourth. They even wanted to sit this way. Also the religious ed director had sent out an email to parents encouraging them to consider having their children come early to the Xmas eve service and play any Xmas songs they have learned on their instruments. The email said that it would be good if they came last night and played through their piece to prepare for this. So that was the reason for at least one of my new last minute singers. His mom and dad brought him even though he did not play an instrument. He seemed interested in singing so I encouraged him to stay.

One family that responded to this actually came early (as invited) and shared the communal meal and prayer before

I adapted my rehearsal to this situation (mixed ages, new people, 2nd and 1st grader who I could not assume could read).  This was made easier because of the time of year.

I pulled out Xmas carols with refrains to take the group’s temp ability-wise. The 2nd grader was very sharp and read like a 3rd grader as far I could tell. My wife assisted the 1st grader as needed to help her cope with not being able to read everything quickly.

The warm-ups I do with children are very interactive so that was no problem with such a range. Then I alternated pieces that had refrains (Glo-o-o-0-oh, o-o-o-oh, o-o-o-oh oria, een eggshellcease deh oh) with pieces the two who had attend before would know.

Repetition of familiar anthems and music is basic to teaching children.

I especially had fun last night playing my Messiaen piece for the kids.

We talk each week about a composer. The past few weeks we have been talking about Handel. I did this again last night and had them “Joy to the World” (again) and notice Handel’s name on the page as a composer.

Part of demonstrating organ for children is teaching them that I play with my feet as well as hands. So I played  a bit of Sunday’s prelude which is a movement from a Handel organ concerto so the new kids could see me using my feet. Then later in the rehearsal I called them back to the organ and played the entire Messiaen piece for them stopping and commenting on how Messiaen using music to help us see angels flying. At one point the music descends in a fluttering like pattern to a low note. Dame Gillian Weir has this lovely program note which I sort of quoted to the kids:

“Les anges” (The Angels): “a multitude of the heavenly host, praising God, and saying Glory to God in the Highest!” The music explodes into a kind of ecstatic dance, as the angels exult and the sun flashes on their jewel-studded wings, beating jubilantly. They swoop lower and lower over the crib, and for an instant are still; then soar into the sky again, circling ever higher until, in a cascade of trills, they are lost to view.

 

I like these observations so much that I also will quote them in the bulletin for the late Christmas eve service.

I usually write this blog pretty early in the morning, as Adrienne Rich put it, the time of morning, one shambles  “into another day, reclaiming itself piecemeal in private ritual acts.”

I recently added another of these private ritual acts and began posting the daily O Antiphon to the Grace Music Ministry Facebookistan page.

Also I seem to be getting up a bit later. I don’t have three 8:30 AM ballet classes anymore so I can sleep or lay in if I’ve a mind to do so.

It seems that family matters are heating up.

Yesterday I communicated with family in England, California, and West Virginia. I’m trying to connect my Mom to her older sister who is living in West Virginia. Mom has expressed a desire to talk to her. Yesterday my cousin, Jerry, my Mom’s sister Ella’s son, emailed  me his cell phone number. I put it in my Mom’s cell phone. She immediately took it and dialed it. Yikes. Jerry didn’t pick up. I was sort of relieved because I was pretty sure it wouldn’t be a convenient time for him.

I decided yesterday to play Messiaen’s Les anges at the Christmas eve service. I was planning on playing Bach’s In Dulci Jubilo from the Orgelbüchlein as the postlude for the late service. I noticed that I played it last year. Seems like a good thing to repeat.

Playing Messiaen next Tuesday means that I will have to practice it pretty carefully between now and then. Today I have already slowly played through what Messiaen himself referred to as the “perpetual movement” of the last page.

Another private ritual I guess. Like scales in the morning.

Finishing up Mary Oliver’s Winter Hours. The title prose poem has some lovely stuff in it about morning:

“Morning for me, is the time of best work. My conscious thought sings like a bird in a cage, but the rest of me is singing too, like a bird in the wind. Perhaps something is still strong in us in the morning, the part that is untamable, that dreams willfully and crazily, that knows reason is no more than an island within us.”

Another later section of this prose poem caught my attention as well:

After describing how important the natural world of her seaside living is to her, how what she wants to describe in her poems is the “nudge, the prick of the instant, the flame of appreciation that shoots from my heels to my head when the compass grass bends its frilled branches and draws a perfect circle on the cold sands….” she goes on: “[L]iving like this is for me the difference between a luminous life and a ho-hum life. So be it! With my whole heart, I live as I live. My affinity is to the whimsical, the illustrative, the suggestive—not to the factual or the useful.”

She is definitely singing my song.

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Amid the Whiz of Bullets, Seeking Comfort in Song – NYTimes.com

This is the best report on this awful incident I have seen so far.  I note that it was written not in the passion of the first coverage but yesterday after a lot of the initial bad reporting was slowing down.

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Man Pleads Guilty to Defrauding Education Department – NYTimes.com

Mind boggling corruption. Faking helping to get funds and bribing officials to speed up the process.

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Daniel Inouye, Hawaii’s Quiet Voice of Conscience in Senate, Dies at 88 – NYTimes.com

This amazing man’s life shows that it can be done: one can be a statesman in America.

Good quote:

Mr. Inouye said. “Vigilance abroad does not require us to abandon our ideals or the rule of law at home. On the contrary, without our principles and without our ideals, we have little that is special or worthy to defend.”

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