As usual I’m very tired on Monday morning. Last night was our church’s annual meeting. I had to be there even though thankfully I didn’t have to do anything. The past year has been a banner year at my church: organ, parking lot, house purchase, family from Cuba arrives to be housed, just to mention the first few off the top of my head. I have been involved in the organ and the recital series. I need to be at the meeting if only to be seen as supportive, as of course I am.

Tonight at 8:30 PM the group that is playing my new piece, “Breath Dance,” is meeting to rehearse. I am invited to attend and give feedback. Rhonda (the person who came up with the idea of me writing a piece for them) is very understanding about an old man’s bedtime and gave me an out if I thought it was too late for me (I did).

She texted me this morning and invited me to come early on Sunday for feedback. Unfortunately, we have a possible Grace Notes Recital this Sunday. I say possible because what we have scheduled is a recital of students from Huw Lewis’s organ studio at Hope. Huw has not responded to any emails regarding this and I have sent him a few. My boss decided that she would attempt to contact him last week. She has a sense that he is going to come through but I am beginning to be doubtful about that since it would seem that anyone planning to perform in public would want some time with the instrument to prepare registrations.

I told Rhonda that the recital might fall through. If it does, I could go early for feedback. If it doesn’t, I’m planning on rushing over to Rhonda’s church so that I could hear my piece since it’s the ending piece of the program. The Grace Notes Recital is scheduled for 3 PM. I believe Rhonda’s is at 4 PM. At least I hope it is.

I do love my work. And I love practicing. But I’m feeling like I don’t get much time off. It’s absurd that my gig is thought of as part time. But I don’t really care since it’s so rewarding to me. however I would benefit from some vacation again. Oy.

Cohencentric: Leonard Cohen Considered 

Interesting fan site. It’s where I found yesterday’s picture.

It’s the (Democracy-Poisoning) Golden Age of Free Speech | WIRED

I’m very interested in the author of this piece, Zeynep Tufekci. She was on the most recent On The Media podcast. Good mind. I found this article and bookmarked it to read.

NYTimes: Of Course the Christian Right Supports Trump

Drawing the obvious connection between bigotry and Christianity in the USA.

NYTimes: What to Say When You Meet the Angel of Death at a Party

I liked this one so much I posted it on Facebook.

NYTimes: Reclaiming the Past in the Internet’s ‘Infinite Present’

This is a review of a book I ordered this morning.

The above is from Leonard Cohen’s Book of Longing which I am reading and was reading when he died. 

The book is full of poems and drawings.

Eileen and I were walking through our local library recently when my eye fell on a familiar site: a Loeb Classical Library volume. I had forgotten about these. It occurred to me as I perused the library copy that it might be a good way for  me to finally read Homer. I went home and ordered two volumes of the Odyssey. They contain separately books 1 – 12 and 13 – 24 of the poem.

I have been bearing down on my Greek, trying to learn it more thoroughly even as I continue to progress through the course I am studying. I have declensions of  (the definite article) and καλὸς (beautiful, good) along with the conjugation of the verb, βαίνω (I go, am going, do go) taped on the bathroom mirror.  I pretty much have this information memorized but it bears constantly practicing and reviewing.

I’m beginning to wonder if I might simply dive into Homer while I am continuing to learn the language. The Loeb Classical Library has Greek and Latin classics printed with the Greek or Latin on the left page and an aligned translation on the right.

With a basic understanding of the grammar and some vocab I am hoping I can start on the Odyssey as soon as the first volume arrives in the mail. The second volume came yesterday.

In June of 2013, Ursula K. Le Guin posted an essay on Homer called “Papa H.” I just checked and it, too, has been removed from her web site. It’s a bit odd but the web site has this essay being written in 2011. The June 2013 comes from the book I am reading, No Time to Spare.

I ran across the Homer essay this morning and was pleased to see it since it combines two of my current obsessions, Le Guin and Homer. Here are the passages I highlighted for myself this morning. They aren’t particularly about Homer. I just liked them.

[W]ar [is] a wasteful, useless, needless, stupid, protracted, cruel mess full of individual acts of courage, cowardice, nobility, betrayal, limb-hacking-off, and disembowlment.

Le Guin points out that Homer describes war with out taking sides or making it Good vs. Evil. I have actually read this idea in other essays about Homer.

[G]eneralities can be useful in criticism, [but] I mistrust them as fatally reductive. “Ah, the Night Sea Voyage!” we cry, feeling that we have understood something important—but we’ve merely recognized it.

I found it useful to add this distinction to my repertoire: recognizing something is not understanding it. I like that quite a bit.

Well enough. I have to eat breakfast and get ready for church. I don’t think Eileen is joining me this morning. She is still recovering from jet lag and a cold.

If it had not been for the stocky woman helping me, my Mom would have ended up on the cold cement outside the doctor’s office building. I don’t think that Eileen and I together could have managed it. Eileen was home still recovering from jet lag so I was alone with Mom on this visit. Mom was so weak she couldn’t stand as she exited the car and took me a bit by surprise. I was there holding her, of course. But she went entirely limp and was all dead weight. She just recently had a hospital stay for bronchitis. This was her follow up visit with her GP. I thought later that this is what she does when she falls, she goes with it, goes limp. That’s why she keeps not hurting herself too bad when she gets dizzy and goes down.

The woman was not wearing a coat since we were experiencing a beautiful sunny winter day that was not too cold. She said something like, “Need some help?” I have said no to that question too often and regretted it not to say yes. Luckily she was stronger than me.

For the rest of the time out, I anticipated better that Mom would need extra help to get in and out of the car and her wheelchair and there were no further mishaps.

Jack Gilbert ~ Music Is in the Piano Only When It Is Played | Fierce:Fragile

Today I’m linking in three poems from Kevin Young’s anthology, The Art of Losing: Poems of Grief and Healing.  Jack Gilbert uses musical images as well as others to point to something. I especially like these lines.

Like the song that exists
only in the singing, and is not the singer.

 And Yet The Books – Czeslaw Milosz

Yet the books will be there on the shelves, well born,
Derived from people, but also from radiance, heights.

Weekly Poem: ‘Redemption Song’ | PBS NewsHour

By Kevin Young himself.

Grief might be easy
if there wasn’t still
such beauty

The more I think about the use of bass trombone on “Breath Dance,” the more I think it doesn’t serve my original composition very well. It would have been easy to compose or recompose the entire piece for use of bass trombone instead of tenor. But by the time I found out that the bone player wanted to use his bass trombone, there was not enough time to do this recomposing.

I resisted changing the other instrument parts for practical reasons as well. I didn’t want to sloppily rewrite parts last minute and then re-issue the entire piece for the ensemble. They already now have a complete compositions they can use. The last minute bass trombone part doesn’t change the piece that much. It just doesn’t serve my original ideas the way I would have done it if had known that bass trombone was the preferred instrument. If I can, I will go hear the performance or even attend one of their rehearsals, if invited, and give any helpful comments I can think of.

It’s funny. It’s not unusual for me to fall out of love with a composition after a while. But this time I seem to be retaining a belief in what I originally wrote. I also don’t really care that much about how these performers need to perform it. I’m lucky when anybody is interested in what I do. But it’s too bad I didn’t know what instruments I was composing for. I didn’t occur to me to ask if I could specify which trombone the player would play like I did with asking for soprano sax. I will do that next time.

I finished reading Lawrence Joseph’s book of poetry, So Where Are We? I found it a useful mix of clear contemporary despair and urban beauty. The poems seem to emanate from New York City, Detroit and even Flint Michigan in one poem. The language can be stiff even formal in a weird way (I just found out he also a lawyer), but that seems to me to serve the poetry. Published last year, there is a sensibility of reality in Joseph’s poems that kept drawing me in. Often when I read a poem it feels like the poet is living in some sort of blindness of what life is like for many humans at this time of history. Joseph’s eyes are open and they help keep the reader in touch with the horror and the beauty of being alive now.

On Utopia Parkway by Lawrence Joseph | Poetry Magazine

Poem | In Parentheses | Commonweal Magazine

I couldn’t find my favorite poems in this collection on line (entitled “Visions of Labor” and “Is What It is,” but I did find the two above in case you want to dip into this man’s excellent work.

I do like the ending of “In Parentheses.”

An Interview with Lawrence Joseph | Commonweal Magazine

I’m about a fourth of the way into this interview. It says things much more clearly about his work than I have in my slap dash blog.

By the end of the day yesterday I realized that I was dealing with an inordinate amount of stuff. I am coping and functioning well, but it just seems that I had to dodge over reacting and mishandling stuff like a game of dodgeball.

Here’s the list.

1. My son entered an alcohol rehab center
2. Organists from Kalamazoo wanted to come and see the organ today
3. Meijer called about renewing a prescription
4. I realized that I had mis scheduled Widor for this weekend
5. I texted the trumpet player and asked if he could play this weekend (he can)
6. the trombone player who is playing my new piece asked if I could adapt it for Bass trombone (I did)
7.  my daughter in law from California called and we chatted about stuff she and the fam are going through
8. I chose organ music for the last Sunday before Lent (by Alec Wyton who composed the anthem we are singing that day)
9. I filed all the music from Sunday
10. I made large print hymns of the opening and closing hymn for this week end
11. I stuffed them in the slots along with the psalm for a week from Sunday
12. I walked to Evergreen Commons and treadmilled

Hmm. Only 12 things. Oh yes. I met with my boss in the afternoon and led choir rehearsal in the evening.

The Wyton pieces are amazing music. They are very obscure. I suspect  not many people play his music since the Episcopal church can be the snobbiest church on the block. Thankfully mine’s not.

It’s 8:16 AM and I have already sneaked over to church and put in an hour and a half at the organ on the Wyton pieces.

I’m hoping to coast through the rest of today.

NYTimes: How to Take Care of a Cast-Iron Pan

Apparently I’m doing this right.

NYTimes: For Ursula

A poem for the recently deceased.

NYTimes: One Day Your Mind May Fade. At Least You’ll Have a Plan.

Dementia is on my mind. Some good ideas here.

NYTimes: Afghan Pedophiles Get Free Pass From U.S. Military, Report Says

Unfortunately this travesty is not surprising. Notice it took place before Trump.

FACT CHECK: Did the Kochs Contribute $500,000 to Paul Ryan After the GOP Tax Plan Was Passed?

“Sort of” is the answer.  In fact many politicians were given what is called her as possible “illegal gratuity.”

Eileen is suffering from jet lag. She is resting right now. I am very glad she’s home and sorry to see her working on adjusting to the extreme time change.

I realized early this morning that this coming weekend is not the weekend I wanted to perform Widor. I wanted to match it up with an anthem by Bruckner. I sort of see them as both late romantics. Widor lived 1834 to 1937, Bruckner, 1824 to 1896. I was surprised  looking up their dates to see how long Widor lived past Bruckner after they were born ten years apart.

Anyway, I texted Michael Spliedt, the parishioner/trumpet player I have been meeting with and asked him if we could switch his first weekend to this weekend. He texted me back later that would be fine. Admittedly, I will benefit from another week of practicing the Widor pieces, but I’m confident I could have performed them this weekend.

So Ursula K. Le Guin died Monday. She is the second author who has died recently while I was reading their work (Leonard Cohen was the first). I have books of hers in my to read (and reread) stack.

Her’s a couple of quotes that have struck me in her book of essays I am reading, No Time to Spare: Thinking About What Matters.

A decision worthy of the name is based on observation, factual information, intellectual and ethical judgment. Opinion—that darling of the press, the politician, and the poll—may be based on no information at all. At worst, unchecked by either judgment or moral tradition, personal opinion may reflect nothing but ignorance, jealousy, and fear.

Ursula K. Le Guin, No Time to Spare, p. 15

And this from the same essay, “The Diminished Thing.”

Thinking about the comment “You’re not old!” Le Guin observers, “To tell me my old age doesn’t exist is to tell me I don’t exist. Erase my age, you erase my life—me.

Of course that’s what a lot of really young people inevitably do. Kids who haven’t lived with geezers don’t know what they are. So it is that old men come to learn the invisibility women learned twenty or thirty years earlier. The kids on the street don’t see you. If they have to see you, it’s often with the indifference, distrust, or animosity animals feel for animals of a different species.” p. 14

I am working at becoming used to being invisible. I think I’m making progress or as I said to Eileen yesterday about people who don’t see us, “Fuck em.” I feel like my life is a lucky one and I enjoy things of the mind and music and poetry and art and literature and such stuff. I would like to be part of conversations with the living (besides enjoyable ones with Eileen) but my life feels worthwhile in the presence of great art and written conversation and living with her. Hey. Life is good, goddamit.

Eileen arrived safe and sound last night on the train from Chicago. It was an odd time for me having her away. I sorely missed her companionship. At the same time, my solitude encouraged me to do the composing I had set out to do. I like to think that if she had been around she wouldn’t have inhibited this in any way. But I might have sought some solitude to do the composing, Or maybe not. Anyway, it helps me to realize how important she is to me. I’m very glad she’s home.

I tried to coast through yesterday, resting. I treadmilled around noon, had lunch, then stalled a bit before going to see my Mom and practice organ. The purpose of my organ practice yesterday was to convince myself of my plan to perform two pieces by Widor this weekend.

The Widor “Toccata” is a popular piece that is admittedly overplayed. However, it is incumbent on me to perform it because so many listeners in my community enjoy it.  Playing the old organ (which didn’t make that good a sound, you recall) I scheduled the Widor “Toccata” around Easter, often performing at the end of the Easter Vigil and even again on Sunday morning.

Now that I have a real instrument I would prefer to use other organ music around the high holy days. I’m not that interested in big projects for these feasts particularly. Since I am also the choir director there is much to be done in these rituals. My role as organ soloist needs to take a back seat to my leadership of the choir and the congregation.

But I was satisfied with what I came with this year for the Advent/Christmas season. The music was charming and well written and showed off the beauty of the sounds of the organ.  I would like to do that with Holy Week and the Easter celebrations.

On the other hand, I feel like it would be silly not to play a piece like the Widor “Toccata” sometime. I see it as a band wagon going in the general direction of appreciation of organ music. I would be foolish not to hop on and perform the Widor “Toccata” at least once a year in my remaining years as musician for this community.

I did sit at each of the three instruments our organ committee traveled to hear and pounded out some sloppy measures of the Widor “Toccata.” I was bemused to watch my colleagues, Craig Cramer and Rhonda Edgington look on slightly appalled. I think it was Rhonda (Hi Rhonda!) who said something like, it would not be her choice of repertoire to demonstrate these instruments.

And, indeed, the piece doesn’t sit that easily on the sounds of the instruments that we looked at. In order to register it for this Sunday I have had to make the adaptations I am learning to sometimes make in order to have some music work on the Pasi that might not be one’s first choice as repertoire suited for it. I like to perform as wide a range of material as I can muster.

Yesterday my main goal was to convince myself I could play a little excerpt (6 pages worth) of the second movement from the same organ symphony as the more popular toccata.

I have had my eye on this movement for a long time as one I like enough to learn and perform.  It has some very tricky spots despite being slower and more lyrical. I have been working on it for a while.  I can’t play it at tempo, however, I think I can make it convincing at a slower more user friendly speed, especially if I manage good solid daily practice between now and then. It’s good to have goals, eh?

The visits to this site have plummeted. Yesterday, it was twenty. Google Analytics only tells me yesterday’s total hits on my blog dashboard. One has to click through into their site to get more detailed information such as how many are looking at it at the moment and what part of the world are they from. I rarely go clicking in search of that kind of stuff.

So, to you, my dwindling batch of readers and/or bots I persist in casting out this silly blog and thank you for reading it.

Speaking of blogs, I went to the library yesterday and checked out Ursula K. Le Guin’s new book of essays, No Time to Spare: Thinking About What Matters. The essays are  presumably drawn from her blog which she seems to have stopped updating. She was inspired by José Sarmago’s published blog posts, written when he was 85 and 86 years old and put  into a book called in English, The Notebook.

I am inspired by Le Guin. I liked the essay “Would You Please Fucking Stop?” which seems to have been taken off her web site. I guess she and/or her publishers want you to buy the book. Or check it out of the library. The essay is about the devaluation of cursing into basically “fuck” and “shit.”  Le Guin reminisces about when language was actually more colorful and widely varied, especially in terms of swearing.

I’m disappointed that she has blocked access to this and presumably other essays. But everyone does tech differently I guess.

For my part, I share stuff.  Of course, I’m no Ursula K. Le Guin. In fact, I don’t think I have much commercial potential of any kind. But I weirdly persist in making up stuff.  I do like making stuff up.

Speaking of making stuff up, I did complete and deliver the music composition, Breath Dance, yesterday. I did my best to polish the manuscripts. My software only goes so far in creating good clear notation. Finale, the notation software I use, requires a vigilant eye so that the final product is coherent. Since I had a deadline I probably left errors in.

I put PDFs of the score and parts up today on my sheet music page. This is actually the main reason I am blogging right now. Here’s an embed of my software playing my piece. It’s crappy but I thought one of you might be curious enough to listen to it.

It’s raining. Eileen is on an airplane coming home. I am drained and exhausted first thing in the morning. I’m looking forward to her being back, but am feeling less social than ever.

But I do love the rain.

I did manage to finish a complete draft of “Breath Dance” yesterday. It took most of the day. As a precautionary measure as the piece unfolded I printed up a pdf of what I had done so far and uploaded it to my Google Drive. I didn’t want to lose it to a tech glitch of some sort after putting all this work into it.

I had to cheat my church duties a little bit because by the time I got to the church to do my usual prep for Sunday I was exhausted. The main thing that I would have done differently if I had had more energy would have been to rehearse the prelude and postlude a bit more thoroughly.

My prelude was written by a fellow classmate at Notre Dame, Lynn Trapp.

It’s based on “Pescador de hombres” (“You who came down to the seashore”).

I’m not sure about the history of this song. I do know that the Roman Catholic version(s) are superior to the Episcopalian one. The music is all the same. It’s the words. Both the English version and the Spanish version differ in each case. It’s a pretty little sentimental melody and I admire Lynn for writing a piece on it. He pulls it off pretty well which confirms an impression I had of him that he liked all kinds of music, not just your basic classical music.

The postlude is Buxtehude’s E minor Ciaccona. I love this piece. it will be the first time I have played it in public. I have both pieces pretty much in my fingers but would have felt better if I had had more practice yesterday.

I inserted proofing and editing “Breath Dance” into my morning routine today (after doing dishes, making coffee, and doing Greek).  I have really pushed myself on this composition. Usually I let pieces ruminate over some time and find ways to improve them. This morning I looked carefully at the piece and noticed that I left a phrase out of the return of the A themes. I then decided it was better for its absence especially since it would add a bit more time and maybe wasn’t that strong an iteration of the theme. I think the performance time is going to be close to 3 minutes or a bit more.

I printed up my draft and sat and red penciled it. This afternoon I will put these edits into the doc on Finale, extract parts, print it all up and deliver it to Rhonda.

I don’t know what I think about it. At least I haven’t had that experience where you look at it the next day and hate it. Yet.

Eileen comes home tomorrow evening after a long flight. I am looking forward to having her back (to say the least).

I was about two hours into composing when Eileen texted me from China yesterday. She was wondering about a large check we had received in the mail for our son-in-law from Harvard. The last time I had seen it was on the fridge. It wasn’t there. I began frantically to search for it and did so for at least two more hours. Finally I texted back to her that we must have lost it because it was no where to be found. By this time, she was sound asleep in China as it was night there.

Needless to say, this left me feeling incompetent. I did manage to revive my composing after a while. But I’m still unsure I will have it done in time. Pushing a composition leaves no time for the usual back and forth about whether it’s any good or not. I can only forge ahead and trust my creating as it happens with little time for deep consideration of what it’s worth. I guess that’s a luxury anyway.

I calculate I have about two and half minutes of music so far, not all of it completely sketched yet. Rhonda asked for three minutes.

I’m pretty sure I can make this piece. I’m just not sure I can polish it in time. I will probably hand over whatever I have when at least one version is complete.

This morning Eileen told me that she remembered she had mailed the check to Yale to forward to China even though we were supposed to hang on to it. Whew.

When I sit in the morning in my living room reading poetry, I tend to read it aloud. I like the sound of words and find that much poetry benefits from this. Recently I realized that since Edison the cat insists on sitting on my lap in the morning, I’m sort of reading to him.

So he gets nearly daily doses of Homer, Shakespeare, Leonard Cohen, Derek Walcott and others. Quite the erudite cat!

I gave myself yesterday off from composing. I was exhausted anyway. I had an early dentist appointment followed by piano trio rehearsal. The piano trio rehearsal went very well. We have some pretty cool music we are working on (Ravel’s Pavane pour une infante défunte  in transcription, Mozart, Clara Schumann).

I found it particularly rewarding that the trio allowed me to rehearse the Mozart way under tempo. I stopped half way through and made sure I wans’t driving them crazy. Both of my fellow musicians seem to appreciate this kind of rehearsal. We are well matched in that way.

We are also discovering what an excellent composer Clara Schumann was. The first movement of the trio we are working on is stunningly beautiful, a small masterpiece. We also played the second movement which is also excellent. It inspires me to check out more of her work.

I have designated today and tomorrow as work days on my composition. If I can’t get it substantially done by then I don’t see how it will be performed.

In a time of ‘Fake News Awards,’ here are 11 real, imprisoned journalists – The Washington Post

11 out of 262 compiled by the Committee to Protect Journalists in 2017.

Ta-Nehisi Coates on Cornel West’s One-Sided War – The Atlantic

Short article with a video I didn’t look at. I also noticed that West’s comments seemed to show he hadn’t read the book. I’m still reading it. I tend to read it when I treadmill.

Another busy day yesterday. I did manage to choose anthems for the choir through Palm Sunday and get them in the folders for last night’s rehearsal. I also put in time on my new composition tentatively called “Breath Dance.” Since the performance at which this piece  might be played is early in February (I think it’s Feb 2), there is a good chance I won’t  have it done.

Today, I need to recuperate a little bit. But I have Friday and Saturday free to finish it or at least have a version of it ready for the performers to have in their hands by this weekend.

My copy of the Library of America’s volume of selected James Weldon Johnson arrived in the mail yesterday along with a box of music. I only had about an hour and half between prepping for last night’s rehearsal and the rehearsal itself. I spent that time happily looking over my new book and music.

I am interested in James Weldon Johnson largely because I have recently realized that my love of Negro Spirituals is a subset of my love of poetry as much as music. This morning I was reading in my new book and realized that one of the selections was Johnson’s introduction to the Second Book of American Negro Spirituals.

I own both books bound in one volume. I pulled it out and continued reading but in the introduction to the first book. Although it’s not clearly attributed I believe it is also by Johnson. He points the reader to is in his introduction to the second book.

He is writing in the 20s and his prose is dated but I find it lovely. I am aware that the author is a poet of some considerable ability when I read “[T]he Spirituals were literally forged of sorrow in the heat of religious fervor.”

Johnson brings me closer to Christianity by his emphasis on to what he calls “a reversion to the simple principles of primitive, communal Christianity.”

I struggle with the idea of belief. I recently told my shrink that poetry does for me what religion seems to do for some people But I do not struggle with what Johnson calls its Cardinal virtues: “—patience—forbearance—love—faith—and hope”  nor with the beauty of Johnson’s poetry or the poetry of the American Negro Spiritual.

It is one of the ironies of my life that I continue to circle back round to Christianity, this time via my love of non academic music of all sorts. Many of these draw from the well of Negro Spirituals without which there would be no blues, no jazz, no rock, no hip hop and on and on.

My Life as a New York Times Reporter in the Shadow of the War on Terror

James Risen was interviewed in a recent On the Media Podcast, A Journalist of Consequence. This is the article they mention and this is the book.

So taking time off yesterday didn’t work out so well. I practiced organ in the morning, so it would be free if Peter Sykes and Greg Crowell dropped by in the afternoon so Sykes could see it. After that I dropped in on my Mom at the hospital. She was not a happy camper. She was ready to go home.

Her room was under a C diff quarantine so I had to gown up and put on gloves to enter. She was barely coherent. I checked with the nurse about taking my tablet in to Mom’s room to show her pics. They said I could if I swabbed it down afterwards. They agreed I could clean the screen myself after I got home.

So I showed Mom some videos of Lucy and pictures of Alex. She seemed interested and a smile played on her lips. As I was leaving, one of the nurses said that crankiness could be a sign she was feeling better. Nurses know shit, that’s for sure.

I came home and had lunch. I was working up the ambition to go and exercise since I was feeling exhausted anyway and have had to skip exercising for a while due to a full schedule of stuff, when the hospital called and said that Mom was being released and when would I like to pick her up.

Actually the release person was very weird on the phone. First she talked like they would take Mom home if I wasn’t going to. Then when I said I was going to get clothes for mom, the person on the phone said she could wear her nightgown and they could put a nurse scrub bottom on her to get her home. I told her it was a bit cold for that. We set a 4:30 PM release time. That would give me time to go exercise, go get Mom’s clothes and arrive at the hospital with the car.

This is what I did. The ride from the hospital to the nursing home reminded me of another ride I took with Mom. The one where she was delirious about Dad and kept telling me to stop the  car so she could get out and I could go on with Dad.

She didn’t want the car stopped yesterday, but she did say that she should just  come home with me. After all, she continued, she no longer had a room at the nursing home. I tried to reason with her, but all she did was get quiet.

I got her to her room. But the attendant said that there was no nurse on the premises at the moment. She also said that it would be best if I went to Meijer and filled the prescriptions the hospital sent home with Mom. This is not the way her meds are handled. But the delay of getting them through the usual channels would be a couple of days.

So I took my little body over to Meijer. They still had Mom in the system at the pharmacy there. I’m not sure that mattered, but by 6:30 I had the meds and what I could remember from the list of stuff on the fridge at home that I needed from Meijer.

I’m hoping today will be a bit more like a day off.

NYTimes: The Poet of Light

This review inspired me to re-visit the poetry of Richard Wilbur.

I am hoping to take some time off today and tomorrow. This seems to be difficult for me lately. I do have a lot on my plate. My Mom’s in the hospital and I need to be attentive to that as well. But I am exhausted from the last several days.

I finished The Stillness of the World Before Bach by Swedish poet, Lars Gustafsson recently. I was so impressed with his work that I ordered a used copy of his Elegies and Other Poems.

I read the first poem in this collection on Amazon this morning.

A couple days ago I read a poem by James Weldon Johnson called “Listen, Lord: A prayer.” I remember listening to a recording of his poem, “God’s Trombones,” (from which this poem is taken) as a kid and being very impressed with It.

I think I still am. This may be one of my first experiences of hymnody and religion as art. I just checked and I not only have the vinyl record from my childhood (originally owned by my parents), I seem to have purchased a second copy probably because the older record is in bad shape.

This is definitely a hokey rendition of the poetry. But reading the poem helped me realize how sincerely I am attracted to the poetry of the Negro Spiritual. I ordered a beautiful copy of James Weldon Johnson: Writings

During the last paragraph, I took a break and Skyped with Sarah and Lucy in England. This morning is getting away from me. I need to get over and check on Mom at the hospital.

I’m finishing listening to the recording of “God’s Trombones.” I don’t find the music that attractive, but the poetry manages to come through to me even in this version. I see on my record that the flip side is recordings of five spirituals, none of them in versions that would be my choice to use these days.

I’ve had a busy couple of days. Yesterday morning I heard from  my Mom’s nursing home that they had sent her to ER. She has been feeling poorly lately. On Wednesday when I visited her she told me she thought she was coming down with the flu. Her temp was up a bit on Thursday and the nurses at the home were concerned.

By the time I got to the ER, they were testing her for flu and pneumonia and doing the usual stuff to determine what was wrong with her. I went from the hospital to my trio rehearsal.

This went very well. It is such a pleasure to play with these musicians. They agreed to be my plan B for an upcoming Grace Notes 2018 recital that might fall through. After we had rehearsed Mozart, Ravel, Piazolla and Clara Schuman, I remarked that we should do a spring recital at any rate because the music was beautiful and I wanted us to perform.

After the trio left I practiced. Then back to the hospital. I spoke to the ER doctor who said that Mom’s tests for flu and pneumonia had come back negative but that he thought she had bronchitis (her eventual diagnosis) and combined with some lowered kidney function he wanted to admit her. I came back in the late afternoon and she was indeed admitted.

Today I got away from the house by 8:30 to go practice organ. Sunday’s recitalist needed afternoon time to rehearse so I wanted to be out of the way. Local temperatures had suddenly fallen and the rain from the day before was now sheets of ice everywhere. After practicing I drove down to my shrink’s office for my free visit. He told me last time not to bring a check since he had canceled two of our previous appointments, one of which I had driven all the way down to his Glen office to find that he had double booked me with someone else.

I had a lot to talk about today.

Eileen’s in China. Mom in the hospital and lots of other stuff. It’s helpful to have a good intelligent listener that’s for sure. Back to Holland for a rehearsal with a parishioner who plays trumpet. He is a young father and has returned to trumpet after having played in high school. He is quite smart and had listened to several of my recommendations (like practicing slow and use of a metronome). His playing has improved so much that it looks like I will be using him in service soon. This was very gratifying and encouraging.

Back to the hospital. Mom is feeling better today.

They may release her tomorrow. She was awake and told me she was having difficulty sleeping. This is out of character for her these days as she sleeps a lot. She seemed glad to hear that the fam is thinking of her and sending good vibes her way.

Then back to church to prepare the recital program for Sunday’s recital and print up the poster for the next month.

It’s been a busy couple of days, busier than usual for Thursday and Friday.

NYTimes: That’s What Ze Said

I have wrestled with pronouns all my life. I can remember when Ms. magazine first began publishing. There don’t seem to be easy solutions, but I do find the questions very interesting. This is an insightful article balanced by some skepticism in the comments.

NYTimes: Debunking Myths About Estrangement

I mentioned this article to Dr. Birky (my shrink) today. We were talking about staying in touch with people. I am someone who tries to stay connected especially with family. I try to do this in an appropriate way that is comfortable for all involved. The idea that cutting oneself off from one’s family is the best idea is a new one for me. Interesting read.

NYTimes: ‘The Lowest White Man’

I feel that as long as America allows the country to be debased by our current president we might consider calling ourselves “Country of Trump” or maybe “United White States of America.”

Eileen made it safely to Elizabeth’s house in China. I miss her, but she looks like she’s having fun.  I am easing into solitude.  I think I might a poetry addict. When I consider that I usually read a couple of poems lying in bed in the dark most mornings, I am reminded of alcoholics (an Anthony Burgess character in particular) who set their alarm in the early hours so that they can down a beer before they have to get up.

I have been trying a couple of web sites that post a daily poem:  Poem A Day -Academy of American Poets and Poetry Daily: today’s poem. But the poems they put up haven’t really grabbed me. Not that the defunct Garrison Keillor’s Writer’s Almanac always had great poems. But there was always a chance it would be good one. I do have many anthologies on my tablet which have some very fine poems.

Kevin Young, the new poetry editor of The New Yorker, has done some pretty cool collections. At least I am enjoying (in my perverse way) The Art of Losing: Poems of Grief and Healing.

Lots of good poems in this book. Few duds. Young included Dylan Thomas’s “Do not go gentle into that good night”early in this collection. I’m about half way through the book. I was gratified that he also included Thomas’s “A Refusal to Mourn the Death, by Fire, of a Child in London.” I’ve always liked that poem a lot.

The cool things is that the poem after it, “Luke and the Duct Tape” by Coleman Barks, after getting started with some stuff about the dead dude (all of the poems are about death) positions itself in dialogue with the Dylan Thomas poem.

Here it is, if you’re curious. I guess it’s kind of long.

LUKE AND THE DUCT TAPE

by Coleman Barks

Nothing can save us. This sweetness dies and rots.
Luke was a thirty-year old pharmacy graduate
student who worked at Horton-Add Drugs,
at the post office in the back
that stays open until seven p.m., my p.o.

It was also a lunch counter.
He sometimes did things behind there,
like make me a tuna fish sandwich
and fill a glass with ice and diet coke.

He mopped the place and swept up,
as quick and accurate with the broom-jabs
as he was at calculating my strange Tasmanian mail.
Hey, Finland! Once I sent out seventy-four books
priority mail. He said, It looked like Christmas
back there. In the storeroom where
the mailman picks up.

He laughed so easily with his quiet industry,
something out of Norman Rockwell.
He’s maybe the most promising thing we are,
Luke, young American man just before
he meets a woman and raises a family
and does church group and little league,
and every good thing stored in his strong hands
comes building out into the air.
Luke, master of small fixing.

Now on the glass double door, this handwritten
posterboard for his memorial service.
11 a.m. today. I missed it.
Would I have gone? Luke Poucher.
I never knew a last name.

One day we had some talk about how he knew
my name from all the mail, but I didn’t know
his. Luke. That’s a great name.

He was killed instantly last Thursday
in an automobile accident down the street
on Lumpkin at Old Princeton Road,
where he lived, not a half mile from me,
not a week ago. I had not heard
and don’t now ask the Horton family for details.

Car wreck. Luke’s dead. Luke 17:12.
The kingdom of God is within you.
He was so lightheartedly that,
it took your breath.

Is it with his death I fear my own
before the loving here gets as open
as it might could get in such as me?

I feel myself becoming arrogant sometimes
and a little numb, insensitive, with this
famousness I’ve been absorbing
the last few years.

I do not understand Dylan Thomas’ “Refusal
to Mourn the Death of a Child
by Fire in London.”

After the first death, there is no other,
he concludes, but on what authority?
He pictures his own death as entering
again the round Zion of the water bead…
the synagogue of the ear of corn,
and I have loved those words
since I first heard them in 1957.

I see the holy, tiny, elemental
corridors of corn grains and the fragile
tearshape inside the word Zion.
He says the nameless girl who burned
to death is now with the robed dead
by the unmourning Thames.

It may be that Luke is off somewhere profound
and myriad, though I feel him close
and still-mortal as I write this, waiting
for the foolish satisfaction
of my own phrasing.

What is the sudden subtraction of a young man,
who might just as well be my son,
a filament of ocean beauty
I do and don’t see today, do.

I grieve the death of Luke Poucher
for the place he swept and tended so well,
this fivepointed threshing floor
of stores and walkers and apartments,
mailmen, depositors, lunching retiree,
chemo-waver, body-worker, skateboarder,
UPS, any bunch that knows each other’s
half-grin in hurried irritation
out doing errands.

Let this be Luke, this end of the parking lot
around the mailboxes, Luke Poucher Place.
The air, the few flowers,
and the people as they meet going in
to buy lunch or stamps or shampoo,
their small nods of helplessness.

I asked for duct tape once.
You know, we ought to carry that,
but we don’t. It’s about all I know
how to do to fix anything.

I’ve got some broken ducks.
I need to get them in a row.

Let this low talking, the love and joking
we do fumbling for courtesy
here at this door be Luke, Luke
looking up from the stroke
of his all-hallowing broom, Beautiful
out there, isn’t it?

————————————–

I found a video of Barks reading it, but for some reason he left out the Dylan Thomas part.  Also, it looks like Barks released some sort of recording of himself reading it with sort of new agey music in the background. I opted to just put the poem here so you could read it.

We’re still working the bugs out of the new organ at church. The lowest pipe keeps sticking. It’s not as bad as it was last week. Ron Brown knows how to adjust it. He and I are meeting this morning after the 9:30 Eucharist so that I can hold notes for him while he adjusts it.

Originally, he had texted me to meet at 9:30.  This morning he suggested 10:30 instead. This extra hour gives me some time I can use. I’m blogging now because I was expecting to have to leave the house pretty soon and walk to church (car still in the shop).

I hope I’m settling into a bit of a life of the hermit. I am behind in composing a piece for my friend Rhonda. I have worked on it, but it’s still in early stages. This morning my head cleared a bit and I did some more on it. That poetry in the morning helps me get me going.

I hesitate to talk too much about the composing. It seems to often short circuit the work if I don’t keep it inside me for a while.

I was hoping to get working on it yesterday or even Monday. But it just wasn’t happening. I have the discipline to sit down and work no matter what. But. I also have the self understanding that I might as well wait for the real thing if indeed it comes.

Solitude helps this process. Or at least it has helped me before.

Eileen is on her way to China. She texted me and the fam that she had  boarded her flight so that’s good. Her flight arrives in Beijing tomorrow at 4:20 PM Beijing time. I am still car-less. Today I walked to church, then to OK Tire to grab some stuff out of the car for my Mom, then to her nursing home and then to my house. I’m a bit pooped from all that walking. I don’t know why since if I treadmill I usually walk about two miles on the treadmill in 45 minutes. I figure I walked about 2.5 miles today. Maybe it makes a difference if it’s real walking.

Fortunately, my sore leg hasn’t been bugging me much. I am feeling unmotivated this afternoon. I have been listening to music and playing some Beethoven on the piano. I had a good session at the organ today. My copy of The Classical French Organ: A Musical Tradition before 1825 by Fenner Douglas arrived in the mail yesterday. I’m ashamed to say I haven’t read this classic work. But now I will.

My current Shakespeare play is Measure for Measure. I didn’t know much about it when I decided to read it. I just  plunged in because I had a beautiful used copy of The Oxford Shakespeare Edition. I love this edition. Lots of references in the footnotes to my beloved Oxford English Dictionary.

A few days ago I realized that one of the struggles in the play is between a helpless woman and a powerful man who tries to force her to sleep with him. Sound familiar? Right out of today’s headlines.

The characters are Isabella and Angelo. Angelo has been left in charge of Vienna while the Duke is away. He has condemned Isabella’s brother to death for getting Madame Jullieta pregnant out of wedlock. Isabella comes to Angelo to plead for her brother’s life. Angelo falls for her and offers her a bargain. She desists and threatens to tell everyone about his offer.

He replies:

“Who will believe thee, Isabella?

Isabella realizes the position she is in and asks herself the same question.

We’ve been told we’re living in a post-truth age. Don’t believe it.

Looks at studies and ends up wondering if there might be a myth about how myths spread. “The end of facts is not a fact.”

Billie Holiday | by Elizabeth Hardwick | The New York Review of Books

There is a new book of collected essays by this writer. She was said to write clear prose. I skipped the review and found this essay online. I think it’s interesting. And well written.

Recollections of my Lessons with Gustav Leonhardt by C. Moersch

This is an article on a new web site by the AGO, Vox Humana. I will this one had been longer.

Eileen’s train left an hour late this morning. She was on her way to O’Hare in Chicago. But the delay was long enough that she had to rebook a flight to China for tomorrow. She is staying in a motel near the airport. I was sorry to see her go. She is such a good companion for me. I don’t dread being alone, but I do know that I am already missing her.

I had an appointment to see Dr. Howell, my hand guy, today. This morning the driving was very messy. Heavy wet snow. I went directly from seeing Eileen off to find the hand doctor’s office. I got there with thirty minutes to spare so I went to Panera to grab some breakfast. This is the second time I have gone to this Panera where a person behind the counter seemed unfriendly to me. Weird. Nevertheless she sold me some food and charged me to fill my thermos with coffee.

The appointment today was initiated by Doctor Howell’s office. He said my hands looked like they had changed little. One degree he said. I said out of how many degrees. He said that he had determined my dupuytren’s contracture was from 10 to 15 degrees.

It’s been nine months since he first saw me. I made an appointment to go back in nine months. This time, he told me, if I didn’t think it had changed much I could call and cancel that appointment

I came home and waited until about 10 AM. Then I went and said hi to my Mom. I dropped off the car at OK Tires to be serviced. It needs a tune up, oil change, and the windshield wiper liquid reservoir leaks so fast as to render that whole system unusable. Plus there are a bunch of idiot lights that are on. Since the onset of car computers, I don’t think these lights aren’t the dire thing they used to be. Maybe there’s a better name than “idiot lights” in that case.

Anyway, my right leg muscle started hurting last night. I did some stretches today. I will be car-less for a couple of days and walking everywhere. I limped from Ok Tires to the church to do some work. I wanted to choose some organ music for upcoming Sundays. I landed on “Wondrous Love: Five Variations for Organ” by Pinkham for the prelude. And a fun arrangement of “I’ve just come from the fountain” by Richard Billingham.

I decided we should sing this song as our second communion hymn Sunday. I plan to do a little research about the words before then. “Class leader, do you love Jesus?” “Zidh’ elder, do you love Jesus?” Not sure what these mean exactly. The first is probably Sunday School class leader. Hopefully a little poking around and I’ll figure it out.

Then I pushed ahead and decided the next week, I would play a piece by Lynn Trapp, a guy I went to school with based on the song, Pescador, “You who came down to the seashore.” I think the Episcopalian version of this song is weaker  than the Oregon Catholic Press one. Even the Spanish is different and not in a good way. But it is a strong little song about the gospel and Lynn did a good job of making an organ piece out of it. I decided to do a postlude by Buxtehude. His Ciacone in E minor sparked my imagination and I spent some time on it today. It will make a cool postlude that day.

I like the way this guy plays it.

Plus he looks like a young version of me a little bit (who plays a lot better). What’s not to like? He even has a crumpled look I can relate to. Maybe there’s hope for the young generation, after all.

I then limped home for lunch. I have to go back this evening for a Worship Commission meeting. I’m planning to walk. The sun is out now and the temps are rising this week.

I wasn’t going to blog again today, but a poem by Derek Walcott I ran across this morning neatly summed up where I find myself these days, or at leasts rhymed nicely with where I am.

I recommend listening to Walcott read it.

I lost my smart phone this week. I believe it was Tuesday evening I came home from an exhausting day and discovered I did not have it with me. I was too tired to trace my steps to find it. The next day I did so. I began gently kicking through the considerable amount snow around my car in the driveway. Nothing there. Then to church and searched the snow where I had parked previously and then all the rooms I had been in on Tuesday. Nothing. I was starting to get worried. But at my Mom’s nursing home I uncovered it buried in snow next to where I had parked the day before. Needless to say it was not in great shape. It’s working but the right hand button which shuts it off and also shuts off the sound of incoming calls without answering them no longer works. I am so grateful that it did not get away from me. I even dreamed Tuesday night about it. Sheesh.

Today, Eileen and I drive up to her Mom’s house. I think Eileen may be going to fix her hair for her. But at least we will give her her Christmas presents and have a visit. Eileen leaves Monday morning to fly away to China. I am going to miss having her around despite the fact that I treasure my solitude. During Christmas and New Years I repeatedly found myself playing through piano variations by Beethoven. I have an odd relationship to him. I am largely self taught on piano, having only a couple of years of excellent instruction from the prof at Ohio Wesleyan, Richard Strasburg.

I struggle with my own peculiar aesthetic which is dissimilar from most musicians I have met in my life. I want it all. But this puts me in a critical (literally in the sense of skeptical but interested) relationship to most music, especially music I have not learned yet. I have admired Beethoven’s compositional technique since learning one of his piano sonatas under Strassburg. The way a composer weaves a piece continues to fascinate me when it is done both skillfully and beautifully.

Flipping through volume 2 of the collected piano variations of Beethoven, I came across a little note from Jupe in the past: “played through entire book, 6/2016.” How ’bout that?

Michael Wolff’s ‘Fire and Fury’: Inside Trump’s White House

This excerpt from the new controversial book was linked on Facebook by a friend. I read it. I think  it’s gossipy and is actually what Nate Silvers has resolved to pay less attention to this year: “a shiny object.” i.e. a distraction. Eileen and I agree that it feels like the whole controversy has been cooked up by Bannon and Trump>