This morning I read portions of the 11th book of the Odyssey as translated by Pope. It occurred to me to have another look at the first of Ezra Pound’s Cantos. I remember that it is mostly a translation of the beginning of the 11th book. I had the odd experience of reading the first Canto by Pound and basically understanding most everything in it. His second Canto is partially based on one of Ovid’s Metamorphoses. Sheesh. After another discipline foray into Latin I guess I’ll be more ready for that one. I should live so long.

I have been trying to learn my guitar transcription of Bach’s bourree in A minor for unaccompanied violin.  I have decided to delay scheduling it for another week. This gives me more time to get it solidly under my fingers. My guitar skills are behind my keyboard skills. My guitar playing has been mostly of the Paul Simon variety: interesting but not as involved as playing the guitar classically. I have always loved the sound of the guitar, classical or otherwise. But returning to it after a lengthy hiatus I find that while I remember most of my skills, they weren’t exactly classical so it’s quite a stretch to attempt a medium difficult piece such as the one I’m learning.

I played guitar for the postlude on yesterday’s church broadcast. It was a much easier piece than the Bach and I still had some moments (sins of omission instead of commission…. I left out some notes that weren’t probably missed by many).

I bought Akiko Busch’s How to Disappear: Notes on Invisibility in a Time of Transparency a while back. I’m about forty pages into it.

She makes an interesting case for the usefulness of invisibility. I like it. This morning I ran across this passage:

Invisibility is about “pleasure, knowledge, the growth of the psyche, discovery, privacy, discretion, silence, autonomy, keeping one’s own counsel, being quiet in a raucous world, and being still in a world that is moving too quickly.”

My experience of aging is one of gradually becoming invisible to many around me. I have expressed some dissatisfaction with that in these online entries. But Busch has helped me see it as also a plus.

It has bothered me when people I care about or am interested by have relegated me to the inconsequential category in their lives. I usually guess as to why they have made this choice and it’s not pretty. But I think Busch would probably point out that this way of looking at it is upside down.

I love my books and my music (and my family).

I also learned a new phrase today: jardin secret.

In French, this is literally secret garden however it is an idiom which means more: Busch talks about this way: Jardin secret “is a kind of psychic cloister, anything from a small personal ritual to a state of mind, some private thing, idea, or activity that people keep to and for themselves. It might a particular view through a window; a haven or retreat; an early morning walk; a spot on the river near a bridge; a table in the cafe; a piece of music; or a private collection of feathers, stones, books, or fans. The idea of privacy is intrinsic to the jardin secret.”

“A piece of music” … “a private collection of books”…. hmmm. That’s me alright.

In my house, we refer to my weekly online church stuff as “the broadcast.” Since I am doing live music for it the house has to be as quiet as possible. So far this has worked pretty well. I played banjo and guitar this morning and it seem to go well. Today is Pete Seeger’s birthday. According to Garrison Keillor’s Writers Almanac, Seeger’s parents were professional classical musicians and he rejected that heritage and wanted to be a painter. Then he heard the banjo and fell in love with the sound. I must say I can understand that because I have a fondness for the sound myself and so do the people at my church..

I have been thinking a lot about the precedents for Dante’s Commedia. In Book XI of Homer’s Odyssey, Odysseys visits Hell and speaks with some dead people he knew included Achilles. In Virgil’s Aeneid (Book VI), Aeneas does likewise. Dante did not read Homer but he did know Virgil’s works.

“Dante, Homer, and Virgil in Raphael’s Parnassus, 1510-11”

Kent State and the War That Never Ended | The New Yorker

2 Killed in Jackson, 4 Killed in Kent, 6 Killed in Augusta in 1970, The anniversary is upon us and Jill Lepore intelligently expands and fills in the notions about the difference between only seeing the white anti-war demonstrators and missing the real picture. She is my kind of historian. Excellent read.

Presence of guns escalates protests across country

These two links are related, eh?

You might assume that the title of this post, “Still Alive,” refers to the Covid 19 pandemic, but it doesn’t.

I have been thinking about how lucky I am to still be alive.

Eileen had some good luck this week with her pain clinic appointment. They were surprised that she was still suffering so much. They reassessed their diagnosis. As I understand it, there is some arthritic inflammation in her spinal cord that is causing the nerve to be pinched. After a lengthy discussion they ended up giving her six shots which provided some instant relief.

Of course, she is still sore and having some pain, but it has ebbed significantly.

My hands are getting worse. I noticed yesterday  that my left hand just barely can stretch an octave due to my Dupuytren’s (du-pwe-TRANZ) contracture.  I can still compensate and continue to play keyboard, guitar, and banjo. I spent some time with Scarlatti at the piano and the upcoming guitar pieces I have scheduled. This did not lessen my sadness, but at least proved that I can still put myself in the presence of beauty.

I was surprised that this depressed me as much as it did.

I have had a matter of fact reaction to this diagnosis. I assumed that my many other interests would balance off the loss of the ability to play well. Those other interests are what I am spending a lot of my days doing recently.  I have been reading and studying Dante. Philip Larkin and William  Blake seems to be just what the Trump mania/pandemic needs. Or at least what I need.

As I said, I am still alive and that is lucky.

Yale offers old free online courses complete with syllabi and transcriptions of the lectures. I stumbled across this listening to a lecture about Dante on YouTube this morning. I’m not quite certain how their resources work. You have to download a zip file with all the stuff in html format which is not as convenient as it could be. But I’m planning on working through the Dante course and the Don Quixote course. I have already ordered some books from the syllabus of the Dante course (the translation the teacher recommends for the Divine Comedy, Via Nuova and Virgil’s Aeneid. Very cool.

And I just discovered this:

Yale offers several free online courses. My daughter, Elizabeth, just remarked that she has signed up one of these before. I guess you can submit work and get a grade. I guess you have to pay if you want credit. What a deal.

I am planning on working on the Dante and Quixote stuff. The teachers of these older courses have put up at least some of their lectures on YouTube. Somehow one should be able to access all of the lecture videos through the Yale download stuff but I haven’t figured that out yet.

I’m trying to get a jump on preparing for weekly live broadcasts of Grace Church Sunday liturgy. We are settling in to presenting portions of the Eucharist that seem to work on screen. This means Prelude, Collect, 1 reading (Acts during Easter), Gospel, Homily, Prayers, Postlude. I think this is an acceptable attempt and my boss seems happy with it.

Last week I didn’t know exactly what Rev Jen would be asking from me until mid week. I had in mind some harpsichord pieces but only bore down on learning them after getting a confirmation. The prelude was easy enough to come up with since the French Classical organ composers have settings of the tune for the Hymn about Doubting Thomas. For the postlude I had thought about Rameau’s La Joyeuse.

It’s quite charming, but when I considered the pressure of performing it live for what then becomes a permanent video online, the pressure went up a bit. Saturday night I had a recurrence of an old performance anxiety dream.

A play that I actually did in high school is being re-performed at the last minute.  Of course, I don’t remember the lines or the blocking. The variation in this dream is that I and my fellow student actors are actually our present age. And no one would loan me a script to review. The director, Mr. Lee, however, was his youthful self from my high school days.

I was amused by this dream and wondered how well I would be able to perform under the weird pressure of inviting present and future viewers into my living room to hear me play Rameau on my $30 synthesizer. I prepared well and played musically and accurately. That’s satisfying.

This experience reminded me of learning much harder organ and piano pieces over the years. Using the opportunity of preparing music for church to challenge myself.

It is very odd to deliver the performance sitting in my living room.

So I have been trying to think ahead for upcoming Sunday broadcasts. This week I have transcribed a Francois Couperin setting of the sequence hymn, Lauda Sion. Here’s a link to a draft of the a music note about this. I did a music note last week and Rev Jen seemed to think it was a good idea. I wonder what she’ll think of this one.

On Easter IV, I am planning to try to play a banjo and guitar piece for the prelude and postlude.

That’s about it for today. I’m trying to do this blog quickly so I will have some time to read and study.

This book came in the mail today:

I was tickled that a previous owner tucked a newspaper article in the back this pristine used copy. I know people do that. I like doing that myself and often pair up articles and reviews with books.

I thought I would put a post up in case anyone comes by.

The cyber Triduum went okay. It was definitely a weird experience of church. I don’t think I am drawn to doing church in this manner. I like working with live people. But I do like my boss and my community so I’m hanging in there and trying to help.

I have been doing a good amount of reading. This morning I stumbled onto a charming audiobook of Harold Bloom’s book on Falstaff on our library’s Hoopla.

I was looking for something to listen to as I exercised. Bloom wrote this when he was 86 years old. He reminisces about his friendship with Anthony Burgess regarding their conversations about Falstaff.

Bloom had an idea that it would be interesting if Socrates were to come to England and go to the inn where Falstaff presided. Bloom said he couldn’t do the scene justice but he thought his drinking buddy Anthony Burgess would do well but he failed to convince him.

This made my day.

I have been enjoying Garrison Keillor’s take on living in quarantine in New York City. In his April 7th online writing piece, he quotes Nate White in this charming paragraph:

“It’s an easy life compared to what many people are going through and skipping the news lets you ignore a president who, as the British writer Nate White points out, “has no class, no charm, no coolness, no credibility, no compassion, no wit, no warmth, no wisdom, no subtlety, no sensitivity, no self-awareness, no humility, no honor and no grace” and now, in a national crisis, shows himself to be an ignorant  bumbler and con artist focused on weeding out non-yes-men in the White House.”

That about sums it up.

In the column for today, he observes that for his wife ” To say, ‘I feel no need to leave the apartment’ is to say, ‘I feel no urge to strangle you in your sleep and grab a cab and catch a flight to Lisbon.'”

Again, nice one.

I have found myself listening to Gorecki’s beautiful Symphony 3 (especially movements 2 and 3), Carl Orff’s Carmina Burana, and Schubert’s Winterreise as beautiful rendered by Dietrich Fisher Diskau and Gerald Moore at the piano.

I’m also playing quite a bit of Schubert and Francois Couperin. All of this, in between reading, cooking, and cleaning the kitchen.

I continue to enjoy my house full of people. I am feeling very spoiled.

So it turns out that quarantined Jupe is a busy guy. Weird. It’s just beginning to look like we have the Triduum under control for presenting online. Good thing since it begins today at dusk (technically).

Rev Jen added me for her Palm Sunday live stream. That went okay. Since then we have been working on what we will present online for the Triduum and Easter Sunday. For this evening, the Maundy Thursday presentation will just be her and me. I will improvise a prelude, sing “Will you let me be your servant,” and play “Stay with me” on the guitar at the end of the service. The rest Jen is handling.

For Good Friday we are adding a husband and wife team who are both regular readers (Jay and Karen Bylsma). They will be streaming together from their home.

It doesn’t look like you can multi track a stream. If more than one person tries to talk, it doesn’t work. This basically leaves out doing music from more than one place live. Also, if everyone in a stream tries to give responses it doesn’t work.

Jay and Karen will give the responses and since they are in the same stream, this should work.

Jen and I have worked out what she wants me to do musically for the Good Friday live session.

I met with Laurie Van Ark and Kris Pierce to go over a reader’s digest version of the Exultet. I say “met” with them but of course we met up online. I think this should work for the vigil.

I am planning to do the rest of the music for the Vigil and Easter Sunday on keyboard which is to say it should be easy with lots of improvising.

Like I say, this all takes surprising amounts of time.

I’m also chief bottle washer at our house and do most (but not all, Hi Elizabeth and Eileen!) of the dishes.

This morning I got up very early to exercise and make coffee. I managed to get two hours of reading in before the day began. I have decided to try to read some of the books I have inter-library loaned since no books are going back to the library right now and I will have them for an extended period.

This morning I put a good dent into Erich Auerbach’s Dante: Poet of the Secular World. I learned some fascinating stuff from reading in it and Plato this morning. In the 10th Chapter of the Republic there is a complete version of an afterlife experience that looks very much like the Christian one that came later. There is judging of the dead and sorting them into differing afterlives according to the way they conducted themselves when they were alive.

There are even permanent servants in the after life which are described as “fiery.”

Who knew?

Auerbach quotes a lot of Greek so I get to practice that as I read as well.

This afternoon I managed to finally finish Black Leopard Red Wolf by Marlon James.

This is a helluva read and I’m looking forward to the other volumes in this projected trilogy. I have to say it’s both dark and fantastic. Lots of violence and sex but in a very unusual way.

It’s a good thing I finished this one because yesterday I started Don Quixote in the Edith Grossman translation. It is a gas.

I also picked up Akiko Busch’s How to Disappear: Notes on Invisibility in a Time of Transparency.

This seems like a good quarantine read. I’m about 30 pages in and loving it.

Eileen is still fighting her sciatica. It is a trying time for her in many ways not the least of which is the debilitating nature of her suffering. At a time when she should have all the time in the world for her weaving and other projects she is unable to function very well. Not happy stuff.

The Chinese Branch of the fam seems to be making the best of being stuck in our house. Jeremy continues to work online. Elizabeth has been cleaning the yard, organizing activities for Alex, and cooking.

I still find it rewarding to have them around. I hope it doesn’t drive them (or Eileen) too crazy.

I’m already crazy so this is not a problem for me.

2020 Hugo and Astounding Awards Finalists – Locus Online

Arundhati Roy: ‘The pandemic is a portal’ | Free to read  

Some brilliant writing from India.

The Amusement Dark by Mike Buckley : Clarkesworld Magazine – Science Fiction & Fantasy

Biologist Is Surprised To See Yeast Being Hoarded, Decides To Teach People How To Make It At Home | Bored Panda

The Killer Flu of 1918: A Philadelphia Story – The New York Times

Some excellent writing from last Sunday.

Andy Beshear and his Wholesome Meme Messengers – Melissa Ryan

Elizabeth J. pointed me to this article. She knows the author and Beshear is the governor of Kentucky who is one of those governors exhibiting actual leadership right now.

I am preparing to participate in a stream for Grace this coming Sunday morning at 10:30 AM on Facebook. Jen  and I worked on it yesterday afternoon.  Unsurprisingly,  we haven’t been able to satisfactorily record my acoustic piano. This is a shame since it would give me more flexibility if I could use it. Jen has some more ideas about how to record it which may prove successful but so far I have specific ideas about using guitar, banjo, and my little electric keyboard. I’m a bit intrigued in how this will all go since Jen and I have had several conversations about what can happen authentically on a screen. It was my suggestion that the part of the service which has the changing, seasonal, readings (the Liturgy of the Word) might be best served up on a screen. Others in the Episcopal church quickly went to Sunday Morning Prayer as something could be done in a sort of fakey communal way online. Jen has ideas of including other readers this Sunday. Since the gospel for Palm/Passion Sunday is one of the three synoptic gospel stories of the death of Jesus and is lengthy. I have encouraged to consider cutting it down, but we’ll see what she comes up with. At least now, I feel more like I’m earning the money they put in my bank account every two weeks.

As happens sometimes, my reading has had some nice serendipity lately.  After listening to Harold Bloom talk about Whitman and Jazz I decided to read (reread?) “When Lilacs last in the Dooryard Bloom’d.” Bloom says it contains some of the loveliest poetry in the English language. This is a bit typically over-the-top talk by Bloom but there is some lovely stuff there.

Within the same hour my eye fell on T. S. Eliot’s second section of his “Portrait of a Lady” which begins

Now that lilacs are in bloom
She has a bowl of lilacs in her room.

Christopher Ricks connects these lines to Whitman’s poem in a footnote and shares this lovely Eliot quote: “When Whitman speaks of the lilacs or of the mockingbird, his theories and beliefs drop away like a needless pretext.” (Quoted in Ricks edition of Eliot from “Walt Whitman and Modern Poetry”)

Along these same lines, Homer is teaching me about the English language. You may recall that in the Odyssey, Penelope commits a bit of a subterfuge on the suitors hovering around her home and consuming all the food and drink waiting for her to pick one of them to wed. She weaves a shroud for Laertes, Odysseus’s father during the day and unravels it at night.

Homer uses the Greek word for web to describe what she is making. I was intrigued by this and discovered that this usage actually predates the idea of what a spider makes.

Both usages are quite old according the OED (1300s). Who knew?

One of the OED quotes illustrating “web” was from the 1382 Wycliffite Bible in Job vii. 6 “My daȝes swiftliere passiden than of the weuere the web [L. tela] is kut of.”

I immediately looked it up in Alter’s translation to learn that the Hebrew (and the King James) do not use the word web. Instead Alter’s translation reads

My days are swifter than the weaver’s shuttle.
They snap off without any hope.

His  footnote is a good example of why I enjoy his work so much: “The shuttle moves back and forth rapidly, and illustrates the Job poet’s remarkable resourcefulness in drawing figurative language from unexpected semantic fields, including technology. His virtuosity is also evident in an untranslatable pun: the word for ‘hope.’ tiqwah, also means ‘thread.’ Awareness of the pun dictates the  choice of the verb ‘snap-off’ in the translation.”

Cool, eh?

Finally, this morning I stumbled across a stunning 2018 lecture by Phillip Pullman. My copy of his The Book of Dust: Volume One La Belle Sauvage  is on my to-read shelf. I especially liked his interaction with young people in the Q & A.

This is actually more serendipity because I have been reading a bit of William Blake lately. I didn’t know that there was a William Blake Society much less that Pullman is (was) president of it.

My copy of Alter’s The Hebrew Bible was sitting on my doorstep this morning despite the fact that I clicked the “no-rush” button on Amazon.  When I first got interested in Alter my brother suggested I buy the entire collection instead of purchasing it piece meal. In retrospect he was completely correct.

I ended up realizing that the only way to get access to Alter’s Isaiah is through his complete version.

Besides my lovely wife and extended family, I have been spending time with some fascinating, wonderful people.  I have been reviewing Chopin’s Mazurkas and remember why I like them so much.

Also spending time with the Bach Goldberg Variations.

I am so lucky that the piano and keyboard have such a wide repertoire of fantastic literature. It feels unending to me.

I also spent some time reading Emerson and Whitman today. In fact writing about this stuff makes me want to leave the blog and go get some more reading in.

Our day to day routine in the time of Covid 19 is not too bad. This particular collection of people is just thoughtful and quirky enough that it’s working. So far.

I read Boccaio’s intro to his Decameron last night. This is good plague reading for me.

Time to go read.

Yesterday was Elizabeth’s birthday. We celebrated. Part of her day was getting away from us all by herself to grocery shop. She was careful to dress properly.

This morning I got up and made cornbread. I have been eyeing a recipe to use with my cast iron skillet.

It has to cool for ten minutes. I substituted honey for sugar but other wise followed this recipe.

In my dream last night, someone asked me how old I was when I received my bachelor’s degree. I couldn’t figure it out in the dream. This morning I decided I was thirty-five.

I had two college dreams last night. In the first I was returning to school now to get  a third degree. I think it was another masters degree and not in music. In the second I was simply starting a semester and trying to find my way around.

I listened to this podcast/YouTube still video this morning. I admire the way Arendt’s mind works. Her understandings are very helpful in the current madness of our world.

I read (re-read?) her preface to Antisemitism: Part One of The Origins of Totalitarianism this morning.

Here a couple of quotes that hit me.

Regarding the necessity of facing what is happening in the world with as much clarity as possible. Arendt (writing of understand antisemitism). says “Comprehension…. means the unpremeditated, attentive facing up to, and resisting of reality—whatever it may be or might have been.”

She is careful to sort through misconceptions and I find that helpful.

“Totalitarian politics … use and abuse their own ideological and political elements until the basis of factual reality from which the ideologies originally derived their strength and their propaganda value …. have (sic) all but disappeared.”

Remind you of anyone? Ahem. I found the ideas described in the podcast very helpful as well.

What Our Contagion Fables Are Really About | The New Yorker

Jill Lepore rocks. In fact this recent issue of the New Yorker had some pretty cool stuff in it.

I liked these:

Self-Isolating: A Pandemic Special | The New Yorker

Chris Ware does a nice comic strip.

Today I finished reading a chapter in Finnegans Wake (Book I Chapter 5). Part of the way I read this book, is that I read in the corresponding section in Joseph Campbell’s commentary first.

Then I read a page in the Oxford edition whose  numbers correspond to many of the reference books I use.

Then I go to my old Viking book club edition and make notations including indicating the Oxford pagination.

I then consult the McHugh’s Annotations to Finnegans Wake (Third edition).

I began this process a while back in the middle of the book and am now about done with one entire pass in this manner.

This sounds so much more serious than the way it feels since I find Joyce endlessly hilarious and rewarding. One of the insights I have had is realizing the true depth of meaning in words. To limit words to simple clear definitions is a bit reductive, since a glance at dictionaries and etymologies shows the resonance that already exists in them before Joyce starts to cut them up and patch them together for his own ends.

I’m also at the point in Ellmann’s bio of Joyce where Joyce has begun serious work on Finnegans Wake. This is a great biography.

I have been thinking that social distancing or even intellectual distancing is the way I live. I know no one who loves the stuff I love, like Joyce, Dante, and Shakespeare. I find Harold Bloom is practically a living, breathing teacher for me, if not a bit of a ghost companion.

Anyway for all you Joyce fans out there (sarcasm) here is a lovely, lovely interview with Sylvia Beach, the proprietor of Shakespeare and Company Bookshop in Paris which was a haunt of Joyce’s and also published Ulysses.

One of the commenters says that this was filmed the year she died. She is charming and this video is worth watching even if you don’t like Joyce.

The chapter I just finished in Finnegans Wake draws on Edward Sullivan’s 1920 publication of The Book of Kells. I ordered a cheapo reprint copy and it arrived just in time. I have been reading in it and seeing the relationship of Sullivan’s written commentary to Joyce’s prose about the “letter” in the trash heap which corresponds a bit to The Book of Kells. Fun stuff.

Church stuff

It’s been a weird week for me regarding my church job. We had another Zoom staff meeting Wednesday. Rev Jen tried to draw me out a bit regarding my understanding of web sites since we are working on a Covid-19 update of it. After this meeting I began to feel over whelmed by a sense of guilt since I’m receiving a paycheck from Grace and not doing very much to earn it. I was torn by noticing that no one on staff really has the understanding and experience I have making web sites and using WordPress. I reached out to some of the people on staff who are working on it but they did not respond.

Mary Miller gave me her log on and I did enough poking around to realize that I could be helpful. I don’t really want to be the web master.

Jen and I had a meeting scheduled for Thursday with a staff meeting to follow (all on Zoom of course). I spent the morning boning up on the liturgical theology of Holy Week. In this meeting, Jen clarified for me that I would only be responsible for helping provide content for resources for our parish online and that others would be responsible for actually putting it in the web site. This was a relief.

I was able to help Jen a bit in her preparation for how to lead Grace Community through this time via screens and resources. Unsurprisingly, there are some very fine things happening online like The Episcopal Church in Colorado Resource Page and Building Faith: A Ministry of the Virginia Theological Seminary. 

There are also some cool videos on YouTube from the latter on doing the Triduum during Quarantine starting with this one.

By the time our staff meeting ended yesterday I was feeling much better about  my role in my job during this weird time.

Eileen Update

Yesterday, Eileen and I got up earlier than usual for Eileen’s 8 AM appointment with Michigan Pain Consultants. I was asked to wait outside the clinic but be around if needed. I sat in my car until around 10:40 or so. Eileen came out groggy. They gave her an injection of Miazolam, to help with a further injection of Fentanyl Citrate Soin which seems to be a steriod to treat her pain.

Finally, we have some direction on relieving her incessant pain. The injection can take up to five days to provide relief. She has the follow up appointment on April 30th.  Unfortunately, the doctor could not rule out eventual surgery. I think the process is for Eileen to continue physical therapy and massage and exercise in hopes that her condition improves.

She has been putting an ice pack directly on the spot she received the injection since it is painful.  She reports relief this morning, but now has a new pain in her knee which she thinks is related to the pinched nerve condition. Oy!

Poetry Talk

Lying on my kitchen floor, babbling to my beautiful daughter, Elizabeth, this morning, I recalled a discussion from my early teens I had with Mr. Griffith. Mr. Griffith was an English teacher at Carman High School. I never had him for a course, but I had many conversations with him and other students after school, usually about poetry.

Mr. Griffith proclaimed to his students that poetry needed to be read much more than the news. It was more important. It would shape our lives and give pleasure and beauty.

I’m sixty-seven years old and this has been mostly true for me all my life. Thank you, Mr. Griffith!

These ruminations were brought on by listening to Harold Bloom’s September 7, 2006 Yale lecture on the “Art of Reading a Poem: The Poems of Our Climate” by Wallace Stevens on YouTube (audio only).

Stevens has always been a difficult poet for me. Bloom’s lecture inspires me to return to Stevens and do some reading, if only the title poem of the lecture.

On Monday, I was also reminded of Mr. Griffith’s maxim when Garrison Keeler chose the beautiful poem,  The Only News I Know, by Emily Dicikson for his daily Writers Almanac show. 

827 The Only News I know
by Emily Dickinson

The Only News I know
Is Bulletins all Day
From Immortality.

The Only Shows I see—
Tomorrow and Today—
Perchance Eternity—

The Only One I meet
Is God-The Only Street—
Existence—This traversed

If Other News there be—
Or Admirabler Show—
I’ll tell it You—

Dickinson is much on my mind as I continue to plow through Lyndall Gordon’s masterful, Lives Like Loaded Guns: Emily Dickinson and Her Family’s Fueds.

Gordon has helpfully cross indexed her work to two of extant collections of Dickinson’s poems including one that I own. I like looking up every poem she quotes and reading it slowly. Gordon bases a lot of her story on the poems themselves, just as she did in her book on Eliot (which I admire greatly and have read).

I’m basically stuck home at this point, leaving only to get supplies. Eileen has been diagnosed as having a disc protrusion. She has an appointment with a pain clinic tomorrow.

Here’s a link to a page of discussion and explanation,  if you’re curious.

Stuck at home? Jupe loves being at home with his books and music. Like pig heaven.

I don’t mean to make light of the seriousness of what is happening in the world right now but my life is good.

We had our weekly staff meeting at church via Zoom today.

It was my first use of this App. My laptop’s camera did not cooperate, so I ended up listening to device and using another to connect.

Some of the staff seek a bit rattled by what is happening to us. However, the major feeling of the group is good humor with a dash of disappointment as we watch programs and services get canceled.

This next Sunday, Rev Jen will probably do something similar to what she did last Sunday. (link to video)

This “video” is only audio. I’m only about half way through it, but I seem to be on a sort of Harold Bloom kick. In this video, he vindicates himself a bit to me by talking intelligently about Jazz and Ralph Ellison.

Apparently he knew Ellison. He thinks very highly of The Invisible Man, as do I. He mentioned that Ellison was very of his full name: Ralph Waldo Ellison. Cool.

Bloom also speaks highly of another favorite of mine in this video, Flannery O’Connor.

I also love his reading of three sonnets by Shakespeare. Did you know “hell” was Elizabethan slang for “vagina”?  See Sonnet 129 and Sonnet 144

I note with amusement that traffic here has reduced to a trickle of readers. This makes sense. I have been very unreliable at putting stuff up here. Eileen and I chatted with Sarah yesterday and she told me she checks my web site  regularly. That’s enough to motivate me to post more often. Plus now I have more free time since my church has canceled most activities including services.

I had a dream last night that I barely remember. It seemed to be a brilliant insight when I woke in the night. In the dream, somehow I and some others were given pieces of a sculpture as mementos. In my case I remember holding some fingers that seemed to have been broken off of it and given to me. In the dream and afterwards in my drowsy wakefulness, I remember that there was a strong contrast between the triviality of getting a souvenir and the importance of art.

Now more completely awake, I think about the number of times I have put forward what I think of as art, only to observe how trivial it is to so many. Inevitable, probably. It think this is probably not only true of music but of great books.

This leads me to embed this video again now that I have watched all of it.

I find Bloom inspiring. I’m still reading his chapter on Dante in his Western Canon which he mentions in the video above.

I like how he sees Dante. I think he is describing his own predilection when he uses the phrase “preferring poetry over doctrine.”  He is using it in regard to understanding Dante’s fierce original vision. Theologians struggle with it more than people who “prefer poetry over doctrine.”

I have requested the two translations that Bloom prefers: one in terza rima by Laurence Binyon and one in prose by John D. Sinclair. Bloom quotes this marvelous statement from Sinclair’s prose translation: “You were not born to live as brutes, but to follow virtue and knowledge.” Cool.

I have been thinking a lot lately about my relationship to music and literature. I think that I have spent my life loving music, poetry, novels, and beautiful prose. I’m not a musical virtuoso by any means, but I am definitely a lover of music and poetry and prose.

I picture Bach as having the talented amateur (lover) of music in mind when several times in dedications he says his pieces were “composed for music lovers, to refresh their spirit.”

This is kin to Bloom’s feelings about the joys of reading and thinking.

Both music and literature continue to refresh my spirit.

Yesterday, my boss followed the advice of her bishop and canceled church for the next three Sundays. I met with her for about an hour and we talked about what to do instead. Tomorrow she is planning to do a live stream intro via Facebook to a stream from the National Cathedral (presumably Eucharist).

I suggested to her that the next two Sundays after that we could do a sort of hodge podge live stream that would include parts of the Eucharist that people listen to. This would include the readings, the homily, and maybe a choral anthem and a sung hymn. We are  meeting Monday to further think about and probably decide.

Our local bishop is doing a live stream of Morning Prayer tomorrow which was also Jen’s first impulse. But she liked my idea of a Liturgy of the Word stream because it can keep us connected to the church year. We had some other fun ideas as well like a drive-in Eucharist and treating the entire parish like shut-ins and taking communion to them.

I did some research about copyrights and streaming yesterday. It appears that my previous notion that when you stream it’s like a live performance and not subject to the same sort of copyright as a video distribution was basically erroneous. I guess Facebook (and other platforms like Twitch and Zoom) will take flag and/or take down stuff they determine to be an unlicensed use of copyright material. This extends even to inadvertent inclusion of copyrighted music in the background.

On the other hand, I remembered that part of our licensing through St. James Press does give us permission to stream any of their choral arrangements. In addition, the licensing web site, One.License, whose copyright permission for publishing in our bulletin we already subscribe to  is providing a streaming license free for the next few weeks. Finally, anything that is public domain is okay to stream. This could mean streaming older versions of hymns that are out of copyright instead of versions available in the highly copyrighted Hymnal 1982 of the Episcopal Church.

Eileen had an MRI on Thursday and then we went out to eat. She is suffering terribly and I wish there was something I could do to help. She ordered a bed frame for our new mattress and it came yesterday. Normally she enjoys assembling things like that. This time I had her direct me and I did most of the grunt work while she was the brains. I don’t think that worked too badly. Now our bed is a bit higher and easier for both of us to get in and out of.

Yesterday, a young woman rang our doorbell and introduced herself as the grand daughter of the man who used to own our house. It was fun for Eileen and me to take her around the house and show her what was original. She doesn’t have a memory of the man, but is very interested in her own family right now.

Finally, I thought it might be fun to embed a few videos I have watching.

This is one Eileen and I watched together. Good stuff.

I like to listen to a jazz video with my evening martini. This was last night’s and I think it’s quite good.

This is kind of long, but I loved it. Duchamp rocks!

I haven’t finished this one yet. I do enjoy Bloom and am reading his chapter on Dante in his Western Canon tome.

Traffic on this site is predictably plummeting. When I first started posting in the late 90s, I promised myself I would do so daily. Until recently this has been the case. However, I am finding myself more interested in my own reading, thinking, and practicing than writing stuff here.

I feel connected to my “tribe” (fam and friends). Previously I was trying to start conversations online about stuff that interested me. Boy, was I naive! Then with my two daughters, and their significant others living abroad and my son and his family in California, it seemed like a good way for them to check in on me without having to deal with me.

Eileen is still suffering from pain. This is definitely no fun for her.

Off to read.

China Just Outlawed Clickbait and Sensationalist Headlines 

Another article from March 4th that mentions my son in law.

Detroit Archives: On Hello

Led Zeppelin did not steal Stairway To Heaven riff, appeals court rules

I drove Eileen to her physical therapist appointment yesterday.  She was hoping that she would meet with her originally assigned person whom she found helpful. Previously, this person had not been able to make her appointment and had a sub meet with Eileen. And yesterday she also had a third person meeting with her since the first person was out ill. Apparently this wasn’t too bad as the third person is a permanent sub and was sensitive to the difficulty of meeting with someone who didn’t know the history of your problem as well.

This morning Eileen is at her wits end with pain. She has emailed her physical therapist about re-consulting with Dr. Fuentes who made this referral. She talked to her medical masseuse and he recommends an MRI. She is waiting to talk in person with her physical therapist tomorrow since today is her day off and she apparently doesn’t respond to emails. This doesn’t seem to be getting better and is seriously impeding the quality of Eileen’s life. Bah.

I have finished Dorothy L. Sayers’ intro to her translation of Dante’s Inferno. Yesterday I began reading her intro to her translation of the Purgatorio while waiting for Eileen at the physical therapist. It has a dedication “To The Dead Master of The Affirmations Charles Williams.” I decided to find out more about him and looked at this Wikipedia entry. It describes him as “a British poet, novelist, playwright, theologian, literary critic, and member of the Inklings.”

My reading online suggests that Sayers’ use of the phrase “Master of Affirmations” has something to do with Charles Williams work on Dante.

His novels look interesting and I have requested Descent Into Hell  via inter-library loan.

I have never head of Charles Williams but he according to the Wikipedia article he was well thought of by T. S. Eliot, W. H. Auden, and C. S. Lewis. He knew Lewis personally (both were Inklings).

I glanced through the bibliography and found that Charles Huttar who sings in my choir co-edited what looks like a festschrift on Williams, The Rhetoric of Vision: Essays on Charles Williams.

I think that’s cool. I also looked at Dorothy L. Sayers’ Wikipedia article and learned some new stuff about her including that she support herself for a while working for an advertising agency.

Not only is she credited with coming up with the phrase, “It pays to advertise” in her novel, Murder Must  Advertise, in real life she did wrote the following ad.

I have found reading Sayers’s translation of Dante and her notes and essays has reminded me how much I like her writing, she goes back on the front burner of people I plan to read soon.

Jeremy played this chilling video for me yesterday. He thinks it was released as an attempt to embarrass Trump into not pardoning Stone. I hope that’s what happens.

China cracks down on ‘sexual innuendo’ and ‘celebrity gossip’ in new censorship rules | World news | The Guardian

Speaking of Jeremy, he was quoted recently in this article:

NYTimes: Why the Success of The New York Times May Be Bad News for Journalism

NYTimes: ‘This Land Is Your Land’ Is Still Private Property, Court Rules

Listen: The Sound Of The Hagia Sophia, More Than 500 Years Ago : NPR

I’m sitting and listening to a record of Lawrence Moe playing Frescobaldi on the organ. I have scheduled six short pieces by him for two weeks from tomorrow. Thank you for reading and checking here for updates from my life. I have been unusually off balance and busy. But right now I’m alone in the house. Eileen is attending an alto breakfast. She is find some slight help between her physical therapists and her medical masseuse. But each day is filled with pain.

Since there is no snow on the ground I offered to use the Mini to drive her to the coffee shop. Elizabeth and Jeremy took our Subaru to visit the Ann Arbor Jenkins clan. But walking actually helps her, so she opted to walk to this as she usually does.

I have managed to get some reading done. I finished J. K. Jemisin’s The Fifth Season.

Jeremy recommended this. I am now on the second volume of The Broken Earth Trilogy of which this is the first volume. I am pretty much riveted at this point.  The Fifth Season is very cleverly plotted. I checked out the second volume, The Obelisk Gate, before finishing so I could move directly into it. I love finding a new writer.

I have finished reading two versions of Dante’s Inferno, the wonderful saucy readable treatment by Birk and Sanders and Dorothy L. Sayers translation.

I took this opportunity to read Sayers’ introduction. It is rather lengthy, so I decided to go ahead and begin the two versions of Paradiso. In the intro to the Birk/Sanders treatment, Marcia Tanner quotes Birk as saying they wrote their version to be read in tandem with a straighter one which is exactly what I’ve been doing. Also, I have read most of it outloud which Sayers recommends doing in her intro to The Inferno.

Well, I’m going to quit so I can continue reading. I do have to include an important link, however, to the current On The Media broadcast. If you happen to prefer not to listen to Bob Garfield, one of the cohosts, you are in luck, he’s on vacation this week.

And here’s a link to the article mentioned:

The Wuhan Virus: How to Stay Safe by Laurie Garrett

I have had  a very full few days. Two presentations on the Martin Pasi organ within the last week, the arrival of loved ones from China, Eileen’s debilitating back pain (sciatic), hurriedly choosing four more anthems for the choir to rehearse for Lent, then preparing them for last night’s rehearsal, last night’s rehearsal, and that’s just what I recall right now.

I have been wondering if my online presence is winding down. I find social media increasingly vapid expect for connecting to friends and loved ones who are not physically near. My time to do what I prefer to do is becoming increasingly valuable to me. I have never had the sort of dialogue here that I envisioned when I first began doing a web site  years ago.

Hmmm. We’ll see. I am feeling especially happy and grateful to have Elizabeth, Jeremy, and Alex around. I miss having family nearby and I enjoy the company. It could be that I’m just spoiled right now and that’s another reason not to blog.

We did skype with Sarah today. She is doing okay. I know she would like to visit us more and/or see Eileen and I or really any of the family more often. I do miss her and I know that she checks here periodically to get updates on the Holland branch (Hi Sarah!).

I finished Roccanon’s World by Le Guin. It is good solid writing. It makes me want to read more of her which is the plan.

I also finished The Whole World in His Hands: A Pictorial Biography of Paul Robeson by his grand daughter, Susan Robeson recently. The Robeson story is amazing. He was way out in front on the human and civil rights issues, way before the 60s. He sounds like an amazing man and I am tempted to find out more about him. Susan Robeson’s bio is what you would expect from an adoring grand daughter. But what’s wrong with that?

My new hardback copy of Watchmen arrived at the local news stand from whom I ordered it. I was disappointed that it didn’t date from after the TV series, but it’s still a nice book and I plan to read it a third time.

My son-in–law, Jeremy recommended Grant Morrison’s comic books, Animal Man. Like so many of these series, he didn’t do all of them, but apparently his run was from about 1988 to 1995. I am reading some ebook versions of them. Jeremy mentioned the independent story by Morrison called “The Coyote Gospel.”

It’s kind of fun. Wile E. Coyote as a Jesus of sorts.

The China branch of the family had a road trip planned for today to Chelsea to fraternize with the Ann Arbor branch of the Jenkinses but the weather is a bit snowy so they opted out and are still here.

Life is good on the home front except for Eileen’s pain. I went with her to the physical therapist yesterday. This PT person was a referral from our doctor and Eileen was favorably impressed with her. Hopefully she will get some relief soon.

NYTimes: The Supreme Court in the Mean Season

Dear Reader,

I see it’s been a while since I have posted here. My life has been busy. Eileen got back safely from China and was followed in a few days by Elizabeth and Alex.  Last Thursday, Jeremy Daum arrived, so all my family is now safely in the USA. Eileen has been suffering from sciatic pain and has finally managed to get in to see a physical therapist next Wednesday. She also brought back a cold of sorts from England.

Elizabeth,  Jeremy, and Alex are staying with us. Their provisional return flight on Feb 28 has been canceled. Jeremy felt he should report into Yale in New Haven but they have asked him to wait two weeks at least before showing up.

This week, we are all planning to go visit extended family and stay with my brother in Chelsea for Thursday and Friday night.

I am enjoying having family around.

Last Thursday I did a presentation for Hope Academy of Senior Professionals. It was also a mini-recital. I played several pieces. Rhonda performed a piece that she had done at all three of these local organ presentations.  Even though, I could have easily improvised my way through this presentation, I chose instead to perform pieces and give a prepared presentation. This meant that I had to spend some time learning or relearning pieces. Consequently, I didn’t have time to choose new music for the choir. I did this yesterday.

The point is that between family, work, and trying to keep up my reading and studying I have been too busy to blog.

We skyped with the English branch of the fam on Feb 7th which is Sarah’s birthday.

I am finding that I feel a bit less of a need to blog when I have this much contact with people I care about.

Maybe I will blog more after retirement. If I ever get to retire. I do enjoy the musical end of my work immensely. So I’m not feeling burned out or ready to stop. But I do miss my boss who has been ill and not around.

The Last Time Democracy Almost Died | The New Yorker

Thirteen (Well, Ten) Ways of Looking at an Impeachment and Acquittal