It turns out the afternoon can be prime time for me to sit and read. That’s the case today. So, here’s a short little blog.

Malcolm Nance is a former United States Navy senior chief petty officer specializing in naval cryptology. From his point of view as former military expert on ISIS and other stuff, he has some very convincing things to say about how we are in big trouble right now. I highly recommend listening to this video.

He has several books out.

There’s also this:

Malcolm Nance on the Danger of Conspiracy Theories | The New Yorker

WooHoo! Time to go read!

I have been finishing up books. Besides Rushdie’s Shalimar the Clown, I finished The Road to Unfreedom by Timothy Snyder. This latter book I found extremely helpful in the face of the madness of the everyday news in America right now. Snyder was friends with the late, great Tony Judt and I find myself returning to his Reappraisals: Reflections on the Forgotten Twentieth Century.

This is a book I have laying around and have read in. After having read On the Road to Unfreedom I felt it was worth looking at again. Judt and Snyder were colleagues and even collaborated. They are rare  voices of sanity.

I’m almost done with this book. I had this idea of sending books to my grandkids, kids, and my brother and sister-in-law. This is the book I sent to my grandson, Nicholas. All the books I have sent to people, I have inscribed. I know that means they can’t return them, but I know how much my inscribed books mean to me, So I thought especially in the case of my grand-kids, it would be nice to do that. I haven’t sent anything to Lucy inscribed yet, but I will when she gets a bit older. (Hi Sarah!)

I watched another couple of videos on YouTube.  I searched for Marlon James on YouTube. The first thing I found was an interview he did with Rushdie. I watched that. It was okay. They are two peas in a pod though Rushdie is older. They both have an excellent perspective on America and England and use English with a lovely lilt that reflects their origin.

I found a better video of James and began watching it this morning. I struggled a bit getting started with his Black Leopard, Red Wolf. I was very interested and motivated, but the syntax threw me off a bit. He has a thick Jamaican accent and is intentionally writing an English that uses rhythms and myths of Africa. On my second attempt I read aloud. That helped.d Then I heard him say that he, himself, reads his work aloud. It does help.

I’m back to feeling a bit isolated. I think I turn to YouTube for literary companionship. I know this is a bit pathetic but it does help. I am looking forward to seeing family at Thanksgiving. We will go to Chelsea to be a part of that branch of the family’s Thanksgiving. That will probably help me a bit. But I think not rubbing shoulders with people who like what I like in books, music, and poetry is just a given of my current life. No matter. I find it very rewarding to read and think and play music and continue to be grateful for that.

Impeachment hearings: America’s epistemic crisis has arrived – Vox

NYTimes: The People We Fear Are Just Like Us

Alan Lomax’s Massive Music Archive Is Online: Features 17,000 historic blues and folk recordings

I’m isolated, sure. But the interweb has fantastic things like this link and the next one. The actual archive link is here. Lomax has had a huge influence on me.

Over 100,000 Vinyl LPs Are Being Digitized By the Internet Archive

Malcolm Nance on Trump, Ukraine, and Russia

I have been reorganizing my books since getting some new shelves and making an office for myself in the guest bedroom on the main floor. I decided it would be helpful to have a shelf where I keep recently finished books. The picture above is that shelf.

I’m beginning to see a pattern in how I read fiction. The last three major works I have finished (Song of Solomon, Pale Fire, and Shalimar the Clown) have left me wanting to talk to other people who have read them. I filled this need with YouTube. This worked but of course it’s not as fun as being with live people.

When I was in China, Jeremy and I were talking about Alan Moore. When I brought up Jerusalem, after listening to Jeremy’s comments on it, I asked him if he had read it. He replied, “You gave it to me!” I remembered that but was surprised anyway. Unreasonably so, because one of the many things I admire about Jeremy is that he, like me, is a passionate reader.

I was watching a 2005 presentation by Rushdie on Shalimar this morning. One of his comments registered with me. He said that he was comfortable with people who felt he was a vulgarian. In fact, he owned this title. He pointed out the etymology of vulgar was vulgas the common people. This is helpful to me. I know that my tastes are wide. Rushdie pointed out that he enjoyed both Homer Simpson and Homer the author of the Odyssey and the Iliad. This seems very logical to me. The “both-and” thing is something that is an integral part of my life long tastes in music and books.

A VPN is a Virtual Private Network. It fools the internet connection you are using into thinking you are someplace else. Say if you are in China which blocks a lot of internet, you try to convince it you are in Los Angeles. I used one in China.

Saturday I had to update my Windows. This involves restarting the computer. Apparently VPNs automatically turn themselves on when you restart.

I did not know that.

I couldn’t figure out why all of a sudden my laptop could not communicate with my modem and my internet connection. My and Eileen’s other device worked fine.

After much fussing about with complicated fixes accessed on my phone, I called my brother. He asked about the VPN. Sure enough, that was the problem. Sheesh.

Eileen and I are both recovering from our trip. Saturday morning, I accidentally got up at 3 AM thinking it was 5 AM. I didn’t discover this until it was about 9 AM. I think this set back my recovery from jet lag considerably.

Church went well yesterday. Eileen stayed home. I coughed all night Saturday and ruined her sleep. That and jet lag induced her to skip church. The choir was very understanding of my jet lag and subsequent impaired functioning.

I felt like my improvisations were very effective but that could have been the jet lag as well.

I have a student coming round soon. Time to get offline and do some reading before he arrives.

Eileen and I are safely back in Holland. The trip yesterday was long. The person driving us from the airport to our car parked in a motel parking lot guessed correctly that we had been going for 24 hours. Even though both of our flights to China to and fro were the same airline, the experience was very different returning. The seats were less comfortable and there was less space. The food was lousy.

That’s not unusual. Airline food can be lousy. But on the trip over it was okay. Or maybe I was less critical. I have had some tasty airline meals and they are definitely unusual ones.

I was very glad to spend time with my family members who live in Beijing. I am surprised that being with them and my family in the UK was so viscerally important to me this time.  The wonderful ability to connect with people around the world online does not include touching them and being with them in the same room. I especially appreciated the opportunity to do that this year.

I enjoyed reading long passages of Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass to Alex. For a five year old she seemed to follow the  wonderful stories closely and like them.

She also likes to make pictures, of course. The picture above is a portrait of herself, her mom, and her dad that she made specifically for us to take home with us.

I do love the way kids make pictures.

These are all pictures by Alex that I took photos of.

So we’re back. Life is good if a little jet lagged.

Today we went to “Music” street and searched for a piano. It turns out to be much cheaper to buy a piano than to rent one. So we bought a new Yamaha full keyboard electric piano for about $350.  Elizabeth hired a van to drive us and it back to her apartment. I was relieved when the driver agreed to carry it up the six floors for an extra fee.

The late afternoons are the worse time for jet lag.

I have been reading to Alex. Yesterday I read to her from Harold Bloom’s Stories for Intelligent Children of All Ages. Some Lewis Carroll, Edward Lear, and Aesop. It holds her attention well. Today I offered to read picture books to her instead. She seemed surprised that I would do that as well as read from books with no pictures.

Unfortunately we spent some time in her bedroom on the floor and my back is now aching.

But of course it was worth it.

This morning I purchased an audio book version of Snyder’s The Road to Unfreedom: Russia, Europe, America. I plan to read it anyway, but it holds my attention well as I exercise.

I find it interesting that Snyder points out that Thucydides wrote the History of the Pelloponnesian War while it was still happening. This contradicts the idea that history is something that is written about the distant past. Likewise, Snyder is bringing historical insights into the dystopian present.

The Humanoid Stain | Barbara Ehrenreich

We had a much less eventful trip to China than we did to Dublin earlier this year. We are safe and sound in China. It is so good to see Elizabeth, Jeremy, and Alex in person after mostly seeing them online for the last year or so.

I am jet lagged. Eileen wasn’t sleeping great the last two nights before we left. She managed to get a good night’s sleep last night. I skipped exercising on Monday morning before we left. This was good because I wouldn’t have had time since I spent the morning attending to last minute packing details.

But this morning I got up and did some exercising despite the fatigue.

With the help of Elizabeth and Jeremy, I have good access to the internet with all my devices. I was prepared to do without, but that’s not the deal.

Before leaving I managed to finish two novels, Who Put This Song On? by Morgan Parker and Flieschman is in Trouble by Taffy Brodessor-Akner.

The Parker book which seems to be directed at teens initially interested me because the teenage character mentions a lot of music she and her friends are listening to. I made lists of music and then made playlists of it on Spotify. Many of the groups and songs she mentioned I recognized. This made more sense to me when I discovered that Parker loosely based the book on her own life. She is about thirty years old, so when she was seventeen many of the groups kids were listening to seem to be groups I know like Weezer, and Radiohead. But there were many groups and songs I didn’t recognize, so it was fun to check them out on Spotify.

Both books were informative to me about how people are using tech. In the Flieschman book, one of the main characters in the divorce (Flieschman) explodes onto the single scene via hook up apps that let participants know who is within a reasonable distance and is ready to have sex.

This is outside of my experience of course so it’s interesting to read about.

I found myself having a bit of a prudish reaction to the Parker book because the main character, Morgan, who is quite likable in the midst of her ongoing clinical depression and troubles, is also quite flippant about high school sex. Specifically, blowjobs.

Eileen and I were talking about this. Both of us were not hip to blow jobs in high school However, it occurs to me that my grand daughters would probably know what blow jobs are. I think it’s a bit different now and this novel informed me about this sort of thing. However, I would be very hesitant to pass this teen novel to my grand daughters.

This is a bit new for me. I prefer openness about sex and recall Lenny Bruce’s comment that typifying gay people as cocksuckers was a misnomer since in his opinion it would describe any woman he would want “know.”

Bruce was (is) a huge influence on me. After my father saw the ficitonalized bio pic starring Dustin Hoffmann he remarked that I made a little more sense to him after that.

I miss my Dad.

It was fun to give Jeremy and Elizabeth a bunch of books. They read a lot of ebooks since they are easier to obtain than real copies, especially stuff from the states I would imagine.  So I like to think that real books are good gifts for them.

Well, the old guy (me) is tired so I’m going to stop here and work on staying awake all day today (this is the recommended operating procedure for dealing with the drastic time difference).

I see it’s almost been a week since I’ve posted here. I have been spending my time reading, studying and playing music. Yesterday and today, I was a in a Beethoven mood.

I have been finishing books. I won’t bore you with all the books I have finished this week. I will say I finished a biography of T. S. Eliot and am almost done with a second biography of him I was reading at the same time.

I mention Eliot because the biographer said that he was fond of listening to Beethoven’s String Quartet in A minor, Op. 132. And that it was this music he had in mind when he was writing Four Quartets. So I began listening to that wonderful string quartet (and some other ones). It wasn’t too long before I wanted my hands on some Beethoven, so yesterday I read through two complete sonatas. Today I have played a couple movements of another sonata.

Eileen and I are thinking a lot about our upcoming trip to China. I have been thinking about what books I want to read on the flight. I have found that it is a very good time to read. It’s fun to think about this and peruse my library for books that might be possibilities. I am thinking of some light reading like P.G. Wodehouse and Arthur C. Clarke and some heavier stuff like a new translation of Kafka’s The Trial that has been sitting on my shelves. Also Shalimar the Clown by Salman Rushdie.

Politics & Prose Bookstore has released a video of an appearance by Rushdie. In it, he looks to me like he is getting a bit tired of talking about Quichotte. But it did remind me how much I enjoy his books and that Shalimar is one of many sitting on my shelves waiting for the mood to hit me to read them.

I have been doing a lot of thinking and reading about Dante. In the video of Rushdie, he comments that when he starts enjoy a book he slows down. I have found myself doing that with Dante. I am beginning to savor his work. And though I look forward to re-reading the entire Divine Comedy in a more user friendly translation and edition, I continue to enjoy the beautiful little books I bought through the mail. I’m on canto XI of Paradiso.

I got the biggest kick out of reading Juan Luis Borges’ article on Dante in The Poets’ Dante. Borges talks about the first time he read Dante and then describes purchasing exactly the edition I am now reading. He talks about the long slow bus trips from the north side of Buenos Aires to the library in town where he was working. It was during these trips that he read the entire work in the version I now have.

In another essay in this collection, James Merrill blew my mind by pointing out how the terza rima construction (ABA BCB and so on) was a miniature mirror of the larger 3 volume structure of the work. Wow.

My daughter Elizabeth suggested that we install a VPN while we are still in the USA. I worked on that a bit today. I have it functioning on this laptop and Eileen got it working on her phone. But it’s not working right on my tablet or my phone. I have a message into the support team of my VPN.

I’m getting antsy to get back to my reading and playing music. Time to go.

Saturday, I worked on choosing choral anthems for the upcoming season. I am now planned through the beginning of January. This is a load off my mind.

I am working at putting some distance between me and  my job. This means that I’m trying to actually take days off. Yesterday I cooked.

Watermelon radishes (I bought mine at Meijer on impulse)

I made bread, roasted watermelon radishes, and cooked up some lovely mushrooms I purchased at the farmers market on Saturday.

I think the mushrooms are beautiful to look at as well as tasty to eat.

My two days off were complicated by having blood drawn on Monday morning and then seeing Dr. Fuentes this morning for my annual “wellness” visit (check-up).

She was running late today which worked fine for me since one of the activities I am trying to do more of is read. I had a book with me and was (as I told the nurse) a happy camper.

Fuentes noted my gradual weight loss with approval. She finally decided to address my chronic high blood pressure. My BP went up when I had to go off of a drug due to a severe reaction the vestiges of which I am still dealing with. The rash on my body is much, much better and I have a cream to treat it.

She upped my current drug, amlodipine, from 7.5 mg daily to 10. She warned me there might be side effects of some leg swelling at my age. She also added a water pill back into the mix.

I’m to report back to her in three weeks via the app that Spectrum provides. She always tells me to contact her directly if I experience any dire symptoms (like chest pain).

I reported to her that am feeling like I’m in a bit better shape since I have begun exercising daily.

My lab reports were also good, Despite the fact that I eat quite a bit of cheese, my cholesterol is down.

Well, this is a lot about me but I feel like I have been neglecting the blog so I wanted to do something today. Now to go read.

I have been neglecting this blog. When I first began doing daily entries online it must have been in the nineties. I was under the influence of the Internet idealists who  felt that it would be a way for people to connect with each other and have discussions online.

Boy, did we have that wrong.

Anyway, this little blog has evolved into primarily a way for the people I love to keep track of me. I have family dispersed all over the world and this has occasionally been a low impact way for them to keep up with me without having to actually deal with me.

But now my three adult children all are living lives that demand  most of their attention. I don’t feel this blog served the purpose that it once did. Now if I need to connect with someone or they need to connect with me, we simply reach out to each other and that’s that.

So now this blog is running on inertia.

In addition, I am assiduously trying to build a daily life that is adapted to my evolving needs. I am downplaying over functioning at my church job and emphasizing the things I like to do like read and play music. This is working out pretty well.

But I find myself choosing between reading and doing my blog and lately the blog has lost.

So apologies. If you need to connect with me, please feel free to email me at jupiterjenkins@gmail.com. I try to check email at least once a day and will try to return a response within 24 hours.

A lot has happened since my last blog entry. I have been to two excellent recitals, one was the Great Performance Series featuring the guitarist, Jiji,teamed up with the inimitable string quartet; Cuarteto Latinamerico.

That’s Jiji on the right above. Man, can she play.

Then I heard my colleague and friend, Rhonda’s excellent Japanese music performance: Music of Japan. She is planning to repeat it twice soon, once in Grand Rapids and once in Kalamazoo.

Eileen and I walked to both of these performances. I am doing more walking partly in order to exercise and not use the car and partly with an eye on my upcoming visit to China.

I continue to run across interesting ideas and books.

Timothy Snyder wrote this book just before Trump was elected. Here’s a link to the Politics and Prose presentation of its inaugural release. I think it is fantastic and the video presentation is worth checking out.

Yesterday I went to the library and browsed. I realized that I would enjoy doing this more often. As Eileen said it’s like going to a bookstore without having to buy anything and still be able to bring books home. When she said that I added that yes and the collection of books is better than most bookstores.

Anyway, Harold Bloom died. Once again I am preoccupied with someone as they shuffle off this mortal coil. I grabbed several  more of his books yesterday to look at. I didn’t realize that he and Anthony Burgess were such mutual admirers.

I had a great meeting with my therapist, Curtis Birky, on Friday. He even gave me a couple of titles of books to check on. I told him I loved having assigned reading.

Life is good.

Harold Bloom’s old C-Span Book TV interview reminded me how much I used to enjoy C Span. We can access it via an app from our cable provider so I have been checking it lately. I also checked to see if they were streaming it live online yet. Nope. I understand that Brian Lamb founded C Span with the idea that the cable providers would allow them airtime. But, since it is the only way I know Americans can watch Congress it seems like it should be as available as possible.

(P.S. Looking online just now it appears that you CAN stream C Span online…. )

I did find that the C Span website keeps old stuff up and available (link). So that’s good. I watched most of a recent Book TV presentation in honor of the three year anniversary of the founding of the National Museum of African American History and Culture. Lonnie Bunch has written a book about his experience organizing this museum, A Fool’s Errand.

He tells some cool stories in the C Span video.

I am going to break my pattern of improvising the prelude and postlude every other week. Next Sunday we are singing Orlando Gibbon’s lovely “O Lord, Increase my Faith.” I couldn’t resist scheduling a prelude and postlude by him as well. I tried to find things that would be fun to listen to and to play but wouldn’t require too much prep. For the prelude I am playing a piece entitled Almaine (Almande?) and for the postlude A Voluntary.

I have a new student. He is about my age and has asked me to teach him about improvisation. He is coming today at 3 PM for his second lesson. This is fun for me so it doesn’t feel like work.

“Poem of Names,” by Robert Pinsky | The New Yorker

This is an amazing poem in the latest New Yorker.

Native-Land.ca | Our home on native land

I have always wondered who used to live in the Holland area. I haven’t met many Native Americans living in Michigan but I know there were people here before. This map allows you to zero in on your part of the country and find out who lived here.

Juan Williams: Trump, the conspiracy theory president | TheHill

Bookmarked to read.

Harold Bloom mentions many different writers and thinkers to check out in his 2003 C Span Book TV appearance. I’m keeping lists of people recommends. One of those persons was the late Richard Rorty. Rorty died in 2007 so he was still alive when Bloom taped this appearance.

So I was surprised when Rorty was mentioned in this week’s On The Media episode. On The Media isn’t very web friendly with its links to its podcasts, but I bet you can easily find the latest one if you want to.  The whole episode is very fine and even better than their usually good fair.

Rorty wrote an article (or was part of an article) in the New York Times in 1996 in which he envisioned looking back at the 21st century from the year 2096. Apparently he also put this his ideas in his book, Achieving Our Country.

I’ve already requested to see a copy of it via interlibrary loan.

What’s so startling about what Rorty wrote? He predicted we would be in the situation we are now in the USA. After the 2016 election, there was an article in the NYT that I missed.

I had a very odd day yesterday. The entire day I seem to be disconnected in a quiet way from everything. I didn’t feel excited about anything, no motivation. Fortunately, I continue to function with or without conscious motivation, so that’s was fine.

I noticed it most when I worked on choosing new anthems for the choir for Advent and Christmas. I had difficulty finding works that I found interesting and rewarding and that I would guess would also be so for my choir. I did find some, but usually this process resembles composing, improvising, or writing.

By that I mean,  I inevitably find myself in a bit of a “zone” or a low state of exhilaration. But not yesterday.

The evening rehearsal went fine. As I say, I still functioned.

Today I’m more myself.

I interlibrary-loaned several books by Daniel Siegel. Having finished his rather dense book, Mind: A Journey to the Heart of Being Human and watching  numerous presentations he has done on YouTube, I decided to read Brainstorm, his book on and for adolescents. It’s also directed at adults who either live with them or want to understand more about themselves.

I have three adolescents on my radar at this point in my life: my California grandchildren. I’m considering sending a copy of this book to my grandson, Nicholas, asking him to read it (if he has time, he’s attend college and working a part time job). Then, if he thinks its worthwhile to pass it on to his sisters.

I”m also reading Morgan Parker’s YA novel, Who Put This Song On? Parker is a poet and this is her first work of fiction. It’s the story of a 17 year old who is the only African American in her Christian high school. She is in therapy and also likes music a great deal. Her tastes seem to tend to emo and Indy groups with a dash of hip-hop.

I was attracted to the fact that it’s a book about someone who likes music. As I hoped, she mentions many songs and groups. I’m making a list.

I say Taffy Grodesser-Akner on a Politics and Prose Bookstore YouTube video. She is a hot shot magazine writer who has profiled many people.Counter-intuitively (since she’s obviously involved in the world of celebrity) I found her charming and interesting. She is interviewed by her friend, Jake Tapper on the linked video. This is her first novel. I’m about a hundred pages in and so far it’s fun and well written.

‘Completely untrue and illogical’ – News

This is a Holland Sentinel article about some local conservative candidates running in the next local election who seem to be anti-gay. I just put it up on Facebook. As I say there, it’s better written than I remember articles in the Holland Sentinel being.

Somehow, my email that I sent last Wednesday to the office correcting the anthem for this past Sunday was ignored. So, the anthem in the Sunday bulletin was incorrect. Rev Jen was nice enough to announce this for me. Too bad. The one we sang fit the readings well.

While waiting to return to church for the annual Blessing of the Animals, I finished reading two books: Nabokov’s Pale Fire by Brian Boyd and Quichotte by Salman Rushdie.

Boyd failed to convince me entirely of his idea that Pale Fire purports to be a creation from influence of dead characters on living ones. His theory is that Hazel Shade, the dead daughter of John Shade influences Kinbote to write a crazy commentary on Shade’s poem called Pale Fire. And that after his death, Shade joins her to further influence Kinbote’s crazy commentary.

None of this is explicit in the text of the story, only deduced. While Nabokov was fond of puzzles and hidden meanings, I’m not quite sure that what Boyd thinks is there is there in quite the way he says.

But the book, Pale Fire by Nabokov, is a beauty. And so are the crazy reverberations throughout it. Boyd gets these, but goes another step that confuses me.

Rushdie, on the other hand, has written a very enjoyable book. He has inspired me to go back to Don Quixote. Rushdie reread it a new translation. I have not read this translation but a copy of it is on its way to me via AbeBooks.com.

I have been having weird, vivid dreams. For example, last night in one of them Salman Rushdie and Leonard Cohen had collaborated to write a very cool, highly stylized, Tango like, prayers of the people. I was very impressed in the dream. Rushdie and Cohen were in it. Cohen was stockier than I ever saw him in photos. He also had shaggy shoulder length hair and couldn’t keep his hands off a woman in the dream.

How did I miss this? Terry Gilliam did a 2013 movie and I only just heard about and watched it. I found it on Kanopy which I have access to via the local library. I enjoyed it immensely but need to watch it again.

Opinion | In the Land of Self-Defeat – The New York Times

This is an excellent article published in Sunday’s Times. The author interviews people in her small county who engage in a fight over funding for a local library.

How Seamus Heaney Became a Poet of Happiness | The New Yorker

I picked up a volume of Heaney when I was in Ireland. I have been reading in it since then. I have bookmarked this article to read.

The 8 Best Fact-Checking Sites for Finding Unbiased Truth

I’m always on the look out for these kinds of sites. I recognize many of these but not all.

Immigration in Holland: an Interview with Maggie Houseman

A former student of Hope talks about her studies.

Overlooked No More: Robert Johnson, Bluesman Whose Life Was a Riddle – The New York Times

These “Overlooked No More” obits are cool.

Wednesday

Wednesdays are one of my fullest days. I have added a weekly hour and half meeting with Rev Jen and our two new members of our pastoral team, Amber and Sarah. I am finding these meetings rewarding and enjoyable. It’s fun to reexamine Grace’s approach via new eyes. Neither Amber nor Sarah bring a ton of Episcopalian experience with them although they are both obviously sharp and already skilled in their areas of spiritual formation (Amber) and youth ministry (Sarah).

Jen and I have added our weekly meeting back in as well. Combine this with me trying to use Wednesdays to do my planning and other tasks plus prepping for and executing the evening rehearsal, I am a tired little camper by the end of the day.

But exercising seems to have enlarged my energy pie a bit so that helps.

Thursday

Eileen has been getting up and going to exercise classes on Mondays and Thursdays. I am usually a bit fatigued after Wednesday, but enjoy piano trio rehearsal on this day. Last Thursday evening, Eileen, Rhonda, and I drove over to Grand Rapids for a poetry reading. That was lots of fun. It was the kick-off the GVSU Fall Arts Celebration and was quite the event. There was a reception before hand with wine, cheese, hors d’oeuvres, and fruit. You could carry your wine into the room where the reading took place. There was dessert and coffee afterwards.

The poets were Kevin Young and Ellen Bass.

Young is who motivated me to attend. Both poets read from their work and I decided that listening to poets read their work may have limited interest for me these days. I admire Young’s work a great deal but I know from his podcast how interesting, educated, and articulate he is and would probably have preferred something which included poetry reading AND discussion or lecture or something.

I wasn’t as impressed with Bass, but this morning I opened up a book of hers that I interlibary-loaned and was blown away by it. It probably helped me to listen to her reading some of her own stuff.

Here it is:

Everything on the Menu
By Ellen Bass

In a poem it doesn’t matter
if the house is dirty.  Dust
that claims the photographs like a smothering
love.  Sand spilled from a boy’s sneaker,
the faceted grains scattered on the emerald rug
like the stars and planets of a tiny
solar system.  Monopoly
butted up against Dostoyevsky.
El techo, a shiny sticker, labeling the ceiling
from the summer a nephew studied Spanish.

Mold on bread in the refrigerator
is as interesting as lichen on an Oak—
its miniscule hairs like the fuzz
on an infant’s head, its delicate
blues and spring greens, its plethora of spores,
whole continents of creatures, dazzling our palms.

In a poem, life and death are equals.
We receive the child, crushed
like gravel under a tire.
And the grandfather at the open grave
holding her small blue sweatshirt to his face.
And we welcome the baby born
at daybreak, the mother naked, squatting
and pushing in front of the picture window
just as the garbage truck roars up
and men jump out, clanking
metal cans into its maw.

In a poem, we don’t care if you got hired
or fired, lost or found love,
recovered or kept drinking.
You don’t have to exercise
or forgive.  We’re hungry.
We’ll take everything on the menu.

In a poem, joy and sorrow are mates.
They lie down together, their hands
all over each other, fingers
swollen in mouths,
nipples chafed to flame, their sexes
fitting seamlessly as day and night.
They arch over us, glistening and bucking,
the portals through which we enter our lives.

From:  “Mules of Love”

Friday

Then there’s Friday. We recently received notice from the passport visa service we hired that the Chinese Consulate in Chicago was requiring me to present my application in person.

Fuck.

So yesterday Eileen and I left the house around 7:30 AM and drove to downtown Chicago. My confidence in apps was shattered. It turns out that the app we used to book our parking (Parking Hero) didn’t manage to convey that the entrance to the place was actually underground on North Lower Michigan Avenue. If it hadn’t been for a friendly delivery driver I don’t know if  we would have found it.

Then we had difficulty walking and using our GPS app to find the passport visa service. We ended up being conned by a charming street person who helpfully misdirected us and then asked for some money which we gave him. We only figured out later that he had no idea where the passport visa service was.

But we did manage to find it, pick up my app (already filled out by them), and take it a few blocks to the Chinese Consulate.

The consulate was on the crazy side. The place was packed when we arrived and after going through a very loose security check, I took a number. We sat and waited for a couple of hours. As the local lunch hour neared the calls to the Plexiglas windows, where processing seem to be taking place, sped up.

When I finally was called, the woman behind the Plexiglas examined my app in detail only asking me if my previous visa had expired.

Then she asked me to put my fingers on a little screen that took my fingerprints and also took another picture of me (there was already one of these in the app).

My best guess is this rigmarole might have had something to do with the fact that I put on my app that my profession was “Church musician.”

Before requiring me to come in person, the consulate had required me to sign a statement that I was not going to do any church stuff while in China. I did this, but they still asked me to come in person.

At the end of my session, the worker handed me a pink slip and informed me my visa would be ready any time after next Wednesday. The passport visa service person (Lindsay) had prepped us for this. “Just bring that pink slip back to me,” she had said, which is what we did. She said they would pick it up and mail it to us.

After that, we crashed at a little restaurant and discovered we were exhausted. Sooprise

A Personal Note

Part of what kept me motivated to go through with all this is the fact that I find myself missing my family. I like the fact that Elizabeth and Sarah have chosen unique places to live. And the California crew is also one that I like to go to see. But lately I have been feeling very disconnected from my loved ones around the world and in the USA.

Last night I had a very surreal dream. My Mom was alive and in a nursing home. She was weirdly unhappy about the fact that the Hispanics there were getting better service than she was. I yelled at her about this. Then later in the dream, several members of my family and I were watching a screen where somehow my Mom was playing out a surreal scenario that related to what she was thinking and going through. I remember thinking it was very cool and being afraid to try to record it because I might lose connection.

At this point in the dream, my daughter, Sarah, calmly told me that all I would have to do would be to return to how I connected in the first place. I found this reassuring.

Later my Mom and I discussed (in front of the rest of family there) her relationship to her mother. My Mom had flipped about the Hispanics and was blaming her own mother’s chauvinism for it. It seemed that she was deciding she didn’t love her mother. I told her it was possible to love someone and still hold them accountable. It was obvious to everyone I was talking about myself as much as Mom.

So anyway

So anyway, I had an excellent visit with Sarah and fam this year and enjoyed seeing the California branch. Now I look forward to having a bit more time with Elizabeth, Jeremy, and Alex in November.

Every morning I am spending almost an hour exercising and stretching. I like to have something playing on the computer that keeps my attention if possible. Today it was this:

Harold Bloom has had a huge influence on me, especially regarding Shakespeare. I love to read him and listen to him.

This video kept me company this morning. If you like Shakespeare, you can do worse than listen to it even if it dates from 2012. You know. Way back when Bloom was the young age of 81.

Now in his late eighties, Bloom has published another book this year, Possessed by Memory: The Inward Light of Critcism . I have been reading in the library’s copy of it.

I was pleased that in his Western Canon: The Books and Schools of the Ages he includes both Nabokov and T. S. Eliot. Nabokov only gets two books in Blooms list of works in the appendix. Eliot also gets two entries but they are “The Complete Poems and Plays” and “Selected Essays.”

Although Nabokov seems to have a dislike of Eliot and God knows Eliot was highly opinionated himself, I am pleased that Bloom (who in the lecture above describes himself as “a reader” if not a critic) includes both of them in his canon.

The whole concept of canon is not one I subscribe to. But if it is defined carefully to mean what makes Western Civilization itself, I can go further with it, especially when it includes the post colonial explosion of global interconnectdness.

I’m nearing the end of Rushdie’s Quichotte. I can’t help but speculate how much of the book reflects Rushdie’s life. I believe he had a sister die recently and there are two dying women in the book. Also, one of them is named Salma and Rushdie pointed out the similarity to his own name.

The book is dedicated to Eliza and I suspect this is his dead sister but I could be wrong. I haven’t found more info about this and it doesn’t matter that much to me since I am enjoying the novel immensely.

I finished Purgatorio by Dante yesterday. I am enjoying it much more than I thought I would. Now onward to Paradiso.

I have also been dipping into my copy of Adam Gopnik’s A Thousand Small Sanities The Moral Adventure of Liberalism.

Gopnik has sent me back to my college copy of Mill’s On Liberty.

This isn’t a picture of my copy but it is what it looks like.

I am one lucky guy to be alive and reading and playing music.

Church went fine yesterday. My plan of spending more time reading and playing music at home seems to be working out okay.  It still needs some tweaking.

I am struggling with Bryan Boyd’s Nabokov’s Pale Fire. I am almost fifty pages from the end and have learned a lot from this book. But I find myself disagreeing with some of his conclusion even while trying to keep an open mind.

One of the characters in the book is named Gradus. Boyd mentions the concept of Gradus ad Parnassum. The phrase means “steps to Parnassus” and is used in various ways historically. It caught my attention because of Debussy’s piano piece, “Doctor Gradus ad Parnassum.’ Boyd doesn’t make the connection but some others do.

Using the interwebs I discovered that Nabokov had a Golliwog doll when he was a kid. You know. Golliwog of “Golliwog’s Cakewalk” which is in the same collection as “Doctor Gradus ad Parnassum,” The Children’s Corner.

I think this is significant for Pale Fire because the novel revolves around a father/daughter relationship and Debussy wrote The Children’s Corner for his daughter. This cannot have been entirely lost on Nabokov. I’m still poking around to find the connection.

I did find a very interesting take on using Golliwog’s Cakewalk when teaching piano these days. Ionarts: Golliwog’s Cakewalk Essentially the dude approaches a bit like Mark Twain’s n-word books. Teach it and grab the moment to learn stuff from students as well as being as honest as possible about it. I like that.

I listened to James Carville’s June 17th Oxford Union talk. Here’s a link but I’m not necessarily recommending it since he does his usual stream of consciousness rambling. I like Carville. I was happy to hear he thinks that the Democrats will win the presidency bakc in 2020. I wonder what he thinks now that we are in the throes of impeachment.

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I was surprised that my newest edition of Finnegans Wake has an extensive intro, synopsis, biblio, and list of online links. This is one. I have already found it but this inspired me to go back and check it out again. I am working hard on slowly rereading  Finnegans Wake. I’m having lots of fun with it.

And then there’s this.

Don’t Panic: It’s only Finnegans Wake. Great little video on how to pronounce the first thunderword. I didn’t know that the thunder words in the book are made up of words for thunder in languages. Very very cool.

I went over to church before lunch today and prepped for tomorrow. i am playing a couple of organ pieces by English composers, John Bennett and Charles Burney. They both served St. Dionis, Backchurch London.

Wikipedia tells me that this was a Christopher Wren building that went up after the Great Fire of London and then was demolished in 1878.

Volume 35 of the Tallis to Wesley organ music is entitled Three Organists of St. Dionis, Backchurch, London. It contains the pieces I have learned.

I love these small volumes. The music in them is usually quite good.

They seem very appropriate to perform at an Episcopal church since it’s the English tradition.. I like the two that I am doing tomorrow.

It seems that my attempt to devote a bit less time to preparing for church work is working. I skipped rehearsal of these two pieces and the choral anthem yesterday. We are singing an arrangement I did of In Paradisum from the Durufle Requiem. Lovely stuff, but not all that hard.

I have been using my spare time to play piano and do some reading and, of course, Greek.

Schubert has been my passion this week. At our Thursday rehearsal , the piano trio read through a piece by him I purchased recently. It is a bit more difficult than most of the music we play through, but Dawn and Amy seemed to enjoy it as much as I did.

I have been playing through other piano pieces by Schubert this week and listening to him while I clean the kitchen and so on.

It’s odd but I just get in the mood for a composer and there you are.

NYTimes: Overlooked No More: Robert Johnson, Bluesman Whose Life Was a Riddle

NYT has been doing this thing of rectifying omissions of obits over the years. This is one.

“The Climate,” by Annelyse Gelman | The New Yorker

Nice poem this week in the New Yorker.

Review: Edward Snowden and the Rise of Whistle-Blower Culture in “Permanent Record” | The New Yorker

After watching Trevor Noah interview Snowden on the Daily Show, I’m thinking of reading his book sometime. This link to Lepore’s review.

Will Hunter Biden Jeopardize His Father’s Campaign? | The New Yorker

I admit it. I didn’t read this article when it was in my actual copy of this issue. But after listening to the author on this week’s On The Media and Trump’s phone call, I’m glad it’s online so I can read it.

Today is a work day and I don’t have time to blog, but I found something online that I want to share.

Apparently there was a play based on Finnegans Wake made and performed. There was also a movie. A movie! I have watched some of this and it’s lots of fun. Subtitles are helpful.

It seems to have been an active week for me. A funeral and a wedding. The wedding was scheduled to be outside yesterday but about a half hour beforehand they decided it was too rainy so we did it in the church.

I have had a couple of funny moments with  music yesterday and today. The first page of my Pachelbel canon was missing for the wedding. I ended up going online and printing up something so I would have it.

Today I reached for the music for the Proulx Gloria we do all the time just before service. It was missing the first page. I played from one of the little congregational versions that are pasted (legally I believe) inside the hymnal. Sheesh.

Yesterday at the wedding a woman came up to me who I recognized from the string section in the Holland Symphony Orchestra. She told me the bride was a former student of hers. That accounts for the fact that she requested Mozart’s Sonata in A major the first movement (which is lovely by the way and was fun to perform).

Afterwards, she made a point to compliment me on my playing. That was nice of her. It’s fun when I manage to get a comment from another musician.

Well, it’s Sunday afternoon and I am tired. I think that my energy pie is a bit larger than it was before vacation. I attribute this to daily exercise.

Now to go read until Martini time.