We had a full church for last night’s service of remembrance for the victims of Orlando. Participation was good. As usual, I didn’t hang around afterwards, but we did receive many comments on the music even from profs who are usually pretty reticent.

I spent an hour or so transcribing the opening and closing hymn so that the string players played on the prelude; the opening hymn; the taize chant, Ubi Caritas, interspersed in the reading of the names of the dead; the closing hymn; and the postlude. There was only one hymn that they didn’t play on which I accompanied on piano.

I’m still feeling the sense of accomplishment and exhilaration I mentioned yesterday about beginning work on a chapter in my Greek text that quotes from Aristophanes’s The Clouds. I found myself picking up my Greek in the afternoon yesterday out of sheer enjoyment.

I’ve also been playing a lot of Beethoven, revisiting his Bagatelles and Piano Sonatas. His clarity seems to be just the ticket for me right now.

Eileen has decided to get rid of her big loom. It is beautiful but it’s too big for her weave comfortably on it. She put it up on Facebooger yesterday.  She’s a a member of active Weaving groups there so it’s not impossible that someone will be interested in it.

In prepping for last night’s service, I had a nice chat with my boss. There was a funny moment when as we were working on this emotionally charged service which we both have ambivalence about, she told me that she was planning to pay me for doing the service. I teared up and so did she. Then while weeping, I asked her if she felt as stupid as I did. I pointed out that I was moved to tears by being told I was going to be paid. How dumb is that. I think we both found that funny.

A Brief History of Attacks at Gay and Lesbian Bars – The New York Times

Raillan Brooks, associated editor of the Village Voice, mentioned this article in this week’s On The Media broadcast in which he appears. He is a gay Muslim. Brooks Gladstone got my attention with this quote from a recent article he wrote:

“What results from this noxious brew of misread history and flawed assumptions — liberal self-congratulation, LGBTQ political complacency, past and present colonial statecraft — is Orlando: People like me were massacred for who they were, and people like me get blamed for it because of who they are. Neither side realizes it’s being played against the other.”

Raillan Brooks

That is a fine bit of prose and made me want to read the whole article. here’s the link:

Double Jeopardy: Queer and Muslim in America | Village Voice

On The Media also interviewed Dahlia Lithwick about the following article on the Second Amendment. More good stuff.

How the NRA perverted the meaning of the 2nd Amendment.

I haven’t read this yet, but Lithwick gives a clear and nuanced understanding of the history of this stuff on the podcast.

Although I am still working on the final grammar exercises from the fifth chapter of my Greek text, this morning I crossed into chapter six. There is a lot of background reading suggested and I began doing some of that. But I could not resist afterwards turning to the first line of the new study text excerpt.

I managed to translate on sight the first line. As i did so I was under the impression that it was from the original play, The Clouds, by Aristophanes. I was exultant. However despite the text informing the student that from now on “for the most part, you will be reading continuous extracts from single works, rather than collations of sources,” it turns out not to be part of the original play.

I looked through my books and discovered that I have a critical edition of the entire play in Greek with critical notes for the English reader by K. J. Dover.

That’s how I discovered that the first line of the text fell under the rubric, “for the most part,” instead of part of the continuous extract of the original text.

I am still a bit exultant. My study of Greek is moving about three times slower than it suggests to move. Of course the suggestion is not for someone like myself working alone with texts but for classroom use. Presumably that would be much quicker and more intense.

Despite my reservations about church these days, I invited my piano trio members to come and play at this evening’s service of remembrance for the victims of the Orlando shooting. They quickly said they were interested. I phoned my boss to ask her if it was a good idea and she was enthusiastic. So we will play some CPE Bach and my own arrangement of “There’s a Sweet, Sweet Spirit” tonight or at least that’s the plan as of now. I believe Jen (my boss) cut short her vacation to come back last night. I spoke to her on the phone while she was driving home. She will finalize the program sometime this morning.  I have already submitted these two pieces for it and am planning on adding cello and violin to at least the Taize “Ubi Caritas” which Jen and her cleric cohorts have decided should be sung between the reading of the names of the deceased.

My mixed feelings about this have not evaporated but they will not be an impediment to doing the service as well as can.

Lord knows, I have mixed feelings about any Christian ritual or prayer these days.

I linked in yesterday’s blog to Facebooger and quoted the main part of my sermon of the day. I was surprised that so far the reaction there has been all positive and larger than I expected. There didn’t seem to be an uptick to visits here according to Google Analytics.

I have interrupted my morning reading at the point of finishing up my Greek so that’s all for today.

China Imposes Blackout on Hong Kong Bookseller’s Revelations | TIME

I have been following this disturbing story both because it involves booksellers and a country possibly sending agents into another country to kidnap people and bring them to China.

It seems to be sinking in that Donald Trump is the presumptive nominee of the Republican Party for the 2016 Presidential election in the USA. There are signs that the media is changing its approach. A Trump  rally interrupted by cutting to a Clinton speech. Not only referring to Trump as a demagogue but explaining what he is doing that shows that. Unfortunately many people who are frightened by and detest him are blind to what he represents.

And what he represents is something that has irrevocably changed in the United States. Trump, to my way of thinking, is only possible because he is reflecting what many people understand about our way of life. Granted it seems that these understandings are not accurate and even cross the border to immoral, but unfortunately they have been stoked by the perfect storm I mentioned Signer describing in a previous blog post.

You can only ride the tide of stoked false hatred of the Clintons and Obama for so long. Eventually it turns on the entire system and destroys it. You can only reduce journalism to entertainment for so long. Eventually journalism itself is effectively removed from the situation and there is no reliable information with which to understand ourselves and our country. You can only suck our education system dry of funding and content for so long. Eventually, a populace of confused and mistaken people will surface a leader to destroy our country and turn it into something else.

We are perilously close to this situation right now in the United States. One can only hope we can pull back from the precipice not only by not electing a demagogue, but by addressing the evil in our society which has called him forth.

End of sermon.

I am still in the throes of burnout. It seems that my work has been draining and stressing me when I need to recover my balance. Tomorrow night there will be an ecumenical service to honor those killed in Orlando recently. I have consented to help with the music but only barely. My boss asked me. I told her in an email that all things religious have left me feeling very disconnected lately but that I would do this service.

I should add a caveat here that I continue to read Howard Thurman and find him refreshing and religious at the same time. He does this by talking about the radical genius of Christianity embodied in the person of the “poor Jew,” Jesus. But despite this, how Christianity has not only failed the disinherited but has exploited and repressed them.

It was in the pages of Thurman I learned that one of the most popular English slave ships was named, “Jesus.” Wow.

I continue to marvel that Thurman’s book, Jesus and the Disinherited, was published a few years before I was born. Its pages burn with relevance to the now of our moment in this country. At least they do for me.

Study Calls Snub of Obama’s Supreme Court Pick Unprecedented – The New York Times

It’s a new time in the USA.

Janet Waldo, Voice of Judy Jetson, Dies at 96 – The New York Times

I didn’t know the Jetsons only had one initial season which was simply repeated until 1986 when a new one was done.

It’s another pleasant morning on my porch. It has been trying to rain and is overcast. However, I can hear birds bravely singing in the morning.

I have been reading Bernstein’s Infinite Variety of Music. When he was alive, I tended to see him as a bit of talented con artist for some reason (but for all that a fine composer). My opinion was probably colored by conservative American music academics who would write him off as far too flamboyant. His European colleagues seem to get along with him better.

But now, reading his introduction called “An Open Letter” (link to pdf), I find his perceptions amazing.  Basically he predicts a return to tonality in music. He describes chance music and twelve tone music as musical attempts to emulate what was happening in the other arts, namely a poetical rebellion which he calls non-arts. He says that Waiting for Godot succeeds well as a non-play. Pale Fire by Nabakov is a clever book which purports to be an edition of a poem by a fictional author with all the invented academic footnotes and essays. Bernstein says it works as a non-novel, a “thrilling masterpiece.”

But music is too abstract to become non-music and remain poetically interesting and relevant.

Bernstein confesses  in his 1966 essay he looked more forward to the new Simon and Garfunkel song and would rather listen to the Association sing “Along comes Mary,” than “most of what is being written now by the whole community of avant-garde composers.”

I remember reading this with satisfaction when I first ran across it. At that time, I was happy to find that there were classical musicians like me who enjoyed musics in addition to traditional and contemporary classic music.

This time my attention was more caught by how he introduced this thought: “I am a fanatic music lover. I can’t live one day without hearing music, playing it, studying it, or thinking about it. And all this quite apart from my professional role as a musician. I am a fan, a committed member of the musical public. And in this role (which I presume is not too different from yours, gentle Reader), in this role of simple music lover, I confess, freely though unhappily, that at this moment as of this writing, God forgive me, I have more pleasure in following the music adventures of Simon and Garfunkel….” and so on.

I am also a fanatic music lover. However the moment has changed. It is no longer true in my opinion what Bernstein writes just a few sentences later. “Pop music seems to be the only area where there is to be found unabashed vitality, the fun of invention, the feeling of fresh air.” Popular music has mostly left all this good stuff behind as it commodifies itself and seeks popularity for its own sake.

But vitality, fun, and fresh air still exists. It’s hard to find in the waterfall of music available these days. But it’s there.

And speak of Paul Simon, I am enjoying his new album. I found myself humming words from the title track, “Stranger to Stranger.”

“I’m just jittery. I’m just jittery. It’s a way of dealing with my joy.” As someone seeking to find out if I can benefit from therapy, these lines hit me. Maybe my craziness is being jittery and dealing with my joy of being alive and married to Eileen. That would be cool.

Herman Melville by W. H. Auden

Robert Fagles quotes this poem in his introduction to The Oriestia by Aeschylus (he’s the translator). I liked the line so much I looked up the entire poem. Excellent poem.

here’s the line

Evil  is unspectacular and always human,

Auden, Herman Melville

‘Smoke,’ by Dan Vyleta – The New York Times

Despite panning this book, the reviewer told me enough about it that it looks interesting to me.

Facing the music: conductor Alpesh Chauhan | Music | The Guardian

Interviews like this always interest me.

Is It a Crime to Be Poor? – The New York Times

People are being put in jail for owing money. Welcome to Amerika.

Laid-Off Americans, Required to Zip Lips on Way Out, Grow Bolder – The New York Times

Another self serving rule brought to you by business and government.

Doctor’s Plan for Full-Body Transplants Raises Doubts Even in Daring China – The New York Times

This is a crazy story. It makes me smile.

I’m sitting on my porch listening to the rain this morning. It was raining harder when I came out here to do my Greek. Now the rain has slowed down, but it still makes a nice sound and a cool damp breeze is moving past my chair.

So my first therapist attempt was a bust. I guess that’s not surprising. What did surprise me is how deflated and depressed it left me. After our session I walked home passing again through the park. It didn’t occur to me until I reached the park how useless my session had been and that I would have to call the therapist and take her up on my offer to keep looking if she and I were not a good fit.

Why weren’t we a good fit? I think the easiest way to think about this is that we lacked very many things in common. Part of this might have been age, but not all. She didn’t recognize very many of my references. John Hartford, Neil Postman and others might well have been before her time. She had the typical mental health care giver’s quiet and reluctance to commit herself to much. Annoying, but understandable. She did recognize Murray Bowen, but not Ed Friedman. Even then, I outlined my understanding of Bowen theory and its origin because she described church as my family “business.” I told her it was more my family system and that led to a bit of discussion (mostly me talking) about that branch of psychology.

I’m not sure about other references I made. Being noncommittal is a basic shrink technique, I would guess. But the main reasons I know she’s not the shrink for me are her own questions and description of our work together. She asked me what the outcome of meeting together would look like to me (honest answer which I gave her: “I don’t know.”). When I said I was rambling on (which I was), she said I wasn’t rambling I was telling her things that I thought were important. She also said that I would find myself looking at myself differently because of what I had talked to her about (wrong).

Finally during the session she asked me if I knew what enneagrams were. Sigh. I told her they reminded me of the Meyers-Briggs evaluation which is sometimes called “Episcopalian Horoscopes.” She laughed.

I told her that for most of these tools one would not have to scrape very deeply to see they are based on broader wisdom and concepts already present in the culture. I see them as useful, but I myself am a suspicious dude when it comes to embracing them.

She quieted down about enneagrams. Then she asked me if I had ever read any Richard Rohr (no). She was surprised. She recommended Falling Upward.

Sigh. Another self help book. And it looks directed at aging people. I guess she saw me as an eccentric older brainy type. I will look at this book. But I’m also planning to call her today and tell her I’m going to keep looking for a shrink.

Sad! — On The Media’s current show

My brother Mark mentioned how much he got out of this episode so I’ve been relistening to it. Micheal Signer has some interesting things to say. I have read his book on Madison and think he has a great mind (and it’s a great book and very pertinent to what is happening in the us right now).

His ideas were so good I synopsize them here for your dining and dancing pleasure:

In a previous show, Signer said

Demagogues thrive when we are cynical about truth.

They start to deflate when we put faith back again in public reason.

This time Signer describes the current “perfect storm” in American politics which is providing an opportunity for a demagogue such as Trump to get elected

1, cultural cynicism about leadership
2. corrosion of civic knowledge among the rank and file
3. media has shirked responsibility as conservator and influence on values of freedom of speech and separation of powers
4. widespread economic anxiety
5. national security fears that Trump seeks to amplify not calm

How Donald Trump Used the Orlando Shooting to Sow Division | TIME

I have a lot of links I haven’t been putting up. This is getting to be a long post so I’m only putting up a few links. This one falls in line with Signer’s ideas.

Why The AR-15 Assault Rifle Used In Orlando Is So Common In Mass Shootings

From International Business Times. Some stats and information.

The Scope of the Orlando Carnage – The New York Times

Frank Bruni has some solid observations.

I had a nice long phone chat with my brother,, Mark, yesterday. He pointed out to me that Google stats don’t count him because he has my new blogs emailed to him without coming on the site. I doubt that many others are doing this but he has a point. Also, as I mentioned to him I don’t trust Google stats to be an accurate count of visits only vague trends.

I asked Mark about Howard Thurman yesterday. His book, Jesus and the Disinherited is one of the books that my church community is reading this summer. It has been stacked in the coffee area for a while. My student, Rudy, noticed it and recognized the author who died in 1981. The book itself began life as an article, “Good News for the Underprivileged” published in 1935 (which doesn’t seem to be online).

I had been ignoring the book. I have an aversion to religiosity which intensifies when I’m burned out.

But after Rudy expressed interest I thought it might be worth a look despite being a religious book.

I’m about half way through the book. It was published in 1949 and the gender language is from that time. But Thurman seems to me to be a brilliant thinker and critic of the church especially in terms of its failure to live up to its radical genius where the dispossessed are concern.

I have often thought that much of my understanding of life was shaped by early direct exposure and a simple literal response to the Jesus of the gospels through bible stories and more importantly bible verses.

So when Thurman starts drumming home the three hounds of hell (as he calls them) “that track the trail of the disinherited” :  fear, hypocrisy, and hatred, using words of Jesus it makes sense to me.

I especially like his stories. He tells one about his grandmother who was born a slave. She could not read or write so the young Howard had the task of reading to her daily from the Bible. As he says, she was very particular about which passages she wanted to hear: certain Psalms, passages from the four gospels. He noticed that she didn’t ask for much from the letters of Paul.

Later when he was “older and half way through college,” “with a feeling of great temerity,” he asked her about it.

“During the days of slavery,” his grandmother told him, “the master’s minister would occasionally hold services for the slaves. Old man McGhee was so mean that he would not let a Negro minister preach to his slaves. Always the white minister used as his text something from Paul.

At least three or four times a year he used as a text: ‘Slaves, be obedient to them that are you masters … as unto Christ.’ Then he would go on to show how it was God’s will  that we were slaves and how, if we were good and happy slaves God would bless us. I promised my Maker that if I ever learned to read and if freedom ever came, I would not read that part of the Bible.”

This story hit me particular personally since I can remember as a young man finding some of Paul’s stuff highly unacceptable.

Thurman develops the idea that Jesus was a “poor Jew” all his life. In contrast to this Paul was Roman citizen.

If a guard kicked Paul into a ditch, he had legal recourse and was protected by his position in society. If someone kicked Jesus into a ditch, he was a disinherited person and had no recourse.

Thurman thinks this contributed to Paul’s point of view and I find it convincing.

Also, Jesus was in the position that people in our current society (and Thurman’s society when he was writing) are in, especially people of color and poor people.

In many ways he reminds me of my old hero, Thomas Merton, by speaking in a clear reasonable voice to the entire human not just a captive Christian audience or arena.

Eileen and I cooked out yesterday afternoon. Or at least we attempted to do so. I was grilling asparagus and other veggies when Eileen came out to grill her steak. She noticed there wasn’t any flame. Bah. We ran out of propane. So we finished up in the kitchen. Afterwards we did our daily Mary visit. Then I came home and read in the back yard resting up for my late afternoon wedding.

Fun fact I learned from Alex Ross. Colonel Kink, actually the actor who played him, Werner Klemperer, was the son of the famous conduct, Otto Klemperer.

Besides being an actor, Werner was also an accomplished violinist and pianist. Fun stuff.

It’s not my intention to primarily chronicle the life and times of a working church musician here. But here’s an update. Suffice it to say that last night’s wedding, although successful as a secular celebration of the love of two people, had some bumpy parts from my point of view. The office administrator, the curate and I all had the wrong time for the wedding. At 5 PM, the curate and I were staring at each other and alone in the building. We were expecting the wedding to start then. But the participants had asked to begin at 6 PM. It actually said this in the description in the church calendar entry. I pointed it out to the bride and she was relieved that THEY hadn’t messed up. Sheesh.

This is emblematic of the disconnect of the situation. The wedding went off fine. It was a small but enthusiastic group. They managed to pay attention to the bulletin and follow most participative moments leading me to think that they might possibly have even sung an easy hymn together. But the groom forgot my check so I didn’t get paid. And the curate quickly left afterwards. I turned out the lights and blew out the candles. Another day in the life of a church musician.

My blue mood seems to be lifting a bit. While waiting for people to show up to the wedding I read through more of the Orgelbuchlein. I realize these pieces don’t make much sense to modern listeners. But I find them attractive and interesting if only as historical records of the thought of Bach around chorale tunes of his time. An organist on Facebooger mentioned that he has been doing the same thing: playing his way through the book. That’s encouraging to me: that there are other crazy church musicians out there.

Italian paper criticised for Mein Kampf giveaway – BBC News

Germany’s banning of Mein Kampf (only recently rescinded) has always seemed puzzling to me. I do wish the United States was as remorseful about its sins of slavery and repressing of people as Germany is about its terrible past.

I mentioned here recently that playing Bach at the organ had helped my mood. Yesterday my mood plunged into melancholy. If this is depression, maybe it’s lack of apparent cause in my daily life is an indicator. At any rate, I see my shrink for the first time on Monday. Maybe she will have some ideas.

I once again turned to my beloved music for solace. However, this time it didn’t work. Instead I was reminded of my inadequacies as a  musician. Nice. I am, of course, my own worst critic. But even in my organ practice yesterday, each stumble seemed to mock my life long pursuit of skill.

Sometimes you ear the bar, sometimes the bar eats you.

It was hard for me not to see my evening martini and wine as self medication. My mood was so morose.

I could point to stuff at church as at the very least not helping. Today I have another wedding with the curate. Not only is there no congregational singing planned, one of the curates assured me in an email that she and her husband support the bride and groom in their decision to have no hymns. Discouraging to this old church musician.

Frustratingly it may be the right decision. Maybe this will be a small wedding. Small groups of non church people are difficult to inspire to sing together in worship, that’s for sure.

Again, this blue feeling may be related to simple burnout.

This morning I am less blue. I finished a chapter in Alex Ross’s Listen to This that I purchased on Thursday.

He seems to be addressing some of the same ideas that Ben Lerner was dancing around in his recent short story in The New Yorker, “The Polish Rider.” Ross begins his book thinking about what it means to write about music.

Also, there is an epigraph from Beckett’s novel,  Molloy, which I continue to read. Nice serendipity.

I follow with my eyes the proud and futile wake. Which, as it bears me from no fatherland away, bears me onward to no shipwreck.

Samuel Beckett, Molloy (epigraph to Ross’s book)

In the first chapter which is also entitled, “Listen to This,” Ross outlines his own connection to music. Until the age of twenty he had listened to only classical music. He was passionate about it and even entertained being a composer. But then he began to discover other musics. It’s an interesting story.

He mentions being influenced by Bernstein and sent me back to The Infinite Variety of Music.

Which brings me back to my feelings of inadequacy. I have never fit in to many musical crowds. In my rock and roll youth, I was the weird keyboard player who might have understood music a bit better than the rest of the band but was definitely a bit of a reclusive nerd who not only liked the Doors but also liked Bach and read poetry.

By the time I got to college I was older than most of the other music students and much less skilled. I tried to catch up in skill as quick as possible. Many times it feels to me like I never managed to do this but I keep practicing and improving even at the age of 64.  Also, in the academic setting I was the weird one who was not only interested in Bach but the Doors.

So you can see why I like Alex Ross because he has no problem moving from Bach to the Doors and knows a ton of stuff about all kinds of music.

United Nations Chief Exposes Limits to His Authority by Citing Saudi Threat – The New York Times

The Olive Brings Solidarity and Peace Once Again

Oh year, right! The OLIVE branch.

Commemorating the Reformation for the 500th Time | Reformed Worship

My friend, Peter Kurdziel, thought I might like this article. I haven’t been able to bring myself to read what a Reformed dude thinks about his Lutheran heritage yet but I may.

I like putting ideas here, but today I’ll basically review the day Eileen and I had yesterday. We managed to get the Mini to the shop on time. The worker that Eileen spoke to thought he could probably have it fixed in time for me to be back in Holland at 1. Not sure why Eileen told him I needed to be back by 1 since my rehearsal was actually at 12:45 PM, but no matter.

We then went to check out the new Trader Joe’s.

It’s on the same street as the Mini shop (28th) 2 miles further east. I have been in a couple Trader Joe’s, one in California and the other in Ann Arbor. Our Grand Rapids store seems to still be feeling it’s way towards the quality of the other two shops I have seen. Eileen and I took our time and examined most of the shelves since we had a lot of time to kill.

We ended up buying some stuff. I think the most important thing was that Eileen found some frozen Kung Pao Chicken which is one of her favorite dishes,. She tried it last night after she got home and it turned out to be pretty good.

From there we went to the Schuler Books and Music Shop which is between Trader Joe’s and the Mini shop. When I go into a bookstore these days, I have a much better feeling about it than I have for years. Bookshops seem to be making a bit of comeback if I read the news correctly. Schuler definitely seems to be thriving. They have added used books which might have been about a sixth or a fifth of their offerings.

They continue to have little concerts and readings plus a nice cafe. In fact, the last time I was there was to meet a friend at the cafe, but that was some years ago.

Eileen found a weaving book. I purchased Alex Ross’s collected music essays, Listen to This ($6.50),

and a nice copy of Ulysses Annotated: Notes for James Joyce’s Ulysses by Don Gifford ($7).

By noon, the shop had still not phoned us that the Mini was ready. We went over to the shop and Eileen settled down to wait for her car. I drove back to Holland.

I had a good rehearsal with my cellist and violinists. Eileen finally got home after 4 PM exhausted. Another day in the Jenkins household.

Period. Full Stop. Point. Whatever It’s Called, It’s Going Out of Style – The New York Times

Very cute. This article is made up of paragraphs which are sentences at the end of which they have omitted periods.

Today Eileen and I are going to Grand Rapids to bring in her Mini for a recall. The dealer has been vague about how long they will need the vehicle. We are due there at 9:30 AM. Our plan is to ask how quickly they can figure out how long they will need the car. Then leave them our phone number and go to see the new Trader Joe’s in Grand Rapids which is not too far from them. Then presumably we will head home and pick the car up later if it’s not ready by then.

So I’m blogging a bit earlier than usual.

I mentioned at the end of the blog post yesterday that I might write about the paradoxical fragility of papyrus verses the durability of marble. Worrying about historical legacy and canonical preservation has always seemed uninteresting to me, both personally and in the case of larger issues like great music and art. But I find the idea that ideas can be less ephemeral than objects interesting.

I recall an old science fiction story that put forth the proposition that the only way to convey information over time and ensure it’s transmission was to create a religion and ritual around it.

This sounds like it might have been a Heinlein novel, but it might have been Asimov. All else crumbles away and is forgotten.

When the people in H G Wells future (in the movie) discover the little talking rings that have somehow preserved knowledge from the dead civilizations of the past (the character’s past but our far future), I remember thinking about the idea of how one might preserve ideas.

This relates to a story in the current New Yorker which is thankfully online.

The Polish Rider – The New Yorker

First let me say that I recommend this story. I confess that I have only listened to the author read it (the audio is available at the link). Also, if I might add an aside to two important members of my sometimes readers (ATTENTION Sarah and Elizabeth), I would love to know if you two notice this post and take a look or  listen to this story.

The reason is that it deals at one level with the inter-relation of the arts. You two are artists of words and images. The unnamed narrator of this story examines in asides the relationship of words to images.

The narrator wonders whether when a writer uses words to describe visual art (as the writer does throughout this story), isn’t she/he actually co-opting the visual art (concrete… the durable piece of marble mentioned above) and asserting the superiority of literature (fragile papyrus).

these stories are really opportunities for the authors to assert the superiority of their own art, of literature, over painting. James’s or Balzac’s words can describe paintings the crazy artists can’t actually paint, or intuit canvases that were as of yet unpainted, unpaintable. And isn’t it really true of all ekphrastic literature, fiction and poetry, that even when it claims to be describing or praising a work of visual art it is in fact asserting its own superiority?

Ben Lerner, “The Polish Rider”

I think it’s a bit of a false dilemma, pitting one art against another, but it interests me because of the speeding up of vehicles of transmission of words and sounds via constantly renewing technologies.

Earlier in the story, Lerner writes:

” maybe the comparative unreality of writing is precisely its advantage, how it can be abstracted from any particular material locus. Isn’t that what Shakespeare says in Sonnet 55? Not marble nor the gilded monuments are going to endure, but these rhymes—powerful in part because they are so easy to reproduce, transmit—are indestructible. No pigeons are going to shit on them, or, rather, when the pigeons do shit on a particular copy it doesn’t matter; nobody is going to leave the only Sonnet 55 in a car.”

“These rhymes … are indestructible.” Wow. I immediately read over Sonnet 55 (Lerner appropriates this number for an address his story, one of many funny little cross references mixed in with current references adding to the self-conscious ephemerality of his ideas and his story).

Shakespeare Sonnet 55 – Not marble, nor the gilded monuments

“The Polish Rider” ends with a description of music. It’s obvious that musical descriptions fall under the rubric of being inferior to literature, but music is also present in the moment an experience not really quite able to be preserved in recordings. In the penultimate sentence of the piece, Lerner jogs the reader into musing after finishing the story, at least this reader. “The living record of memory….”

I have to quickly add that Proust uses music as a motif in his complex and beautiful work, “Remembrance of Things Past.” And yes it does evoke associations that echo his famous tea and madeleines.

Fraud Charges Against Jail Officers’ Union Chief With a Taste for Luxury – The New York Times

What a story! Good reporting about corruption.

Depoliticizing Anti-Trump Protests Plays Into Right-Wing Narrative | FAIR

Some clear comments about the obfuscation surrounding the violence of Anti-Trump demonstrators. I abhor violence, but it is intellectually dishonest not to see these actions as an extreme comment on Trumpism and instead (as noted in the article) as an attack on American free speech or something.

The Verve vs. The Rolling Stones (1997) – Songs on Trial: 10 Landmark Music Copyright Cases | Rolling Stone

Handy little list of cases that have all kinds of implications for artistic freedom and copyright. I recognized some but not all of them.

Google developing kill switch for AI – BBC News

PEOPLE GET READY

New elements on the periodic table are named – CNN.com

Even though it’s a trial period for these names and none of the new elements are found in nature, I still think this is very very cool.

Viewpoint: Don’t let misinformation, rants against socialism undermine your decency | MLive.com

I admit that instead of flaming people I disagree with on Facebooger, i sometimes simply shop around and find a clearer exposition of ideas. That’s how I came on this link. This one was in response to a rabid meme against socialists.

Yesterday was kind of a downer for me. This Saturday’s wedding has no music planned but “Married Life” from the movie, “Up.” When I asked about hymnody the curate shot me down. Fuck it. Jen’s out of town. I haven’t discussed last Saturday’s wedding with anyone but Eileen. To watch two young priests turn away from my own understanding of sung prayer in the Episcopal church is dispiriting but not surprising, i guess.

Then my Mom wimped out on her neurologist appointment. I say she wimped out, but she did actually have diarrhea. The problem I have with this is back during her mental troubles, I had to force her to go to the doctor, yelling at her and trying to get her to shower and dress in time to make an appointment. She was a bit cantankerous yesterday in addition to not feeling well. She told me she didn’t want to go to the doctor again. I sat on her bed and rescheduled her appointment for next Tuesday.

By this time I was feeling sorry for myself I guess. Eileen was off taking her friend Barb to the Physical Therapist. I stopped off at church and practiced for the fuck of it. It was a good idea. After playing a couple of large Bach pieces I kind of know I felt a bit better.

This morning I got the idea to check and see how Greek tragedy relates to Homer and discovered the Orestes trilogy by Aeschylus sitting next to my chair. In his introductory essay, “The Serpent and the Eagle,” Robert Fagles, the translator,  grabbed my imagination on several fronts.

He talks about Aeschylus consciously building on the great Homer stories. “Slices of the banquet of Homer,” is the phrase he attributes to Aeschylus. And the three extant plays in the tetralogy are about the family of Agamemnon who is an important character in the Iliad and Odyssey. The famous “wrath of Achilles” which begins the Iliad is directed at Agamemnon.

In the tetralogy, Agamemnon’s son, Orestes, and his wife, Clytaemnestra, kill Agamemnon.

But even more interesting to me, is how Fagles points out Aeschylus was consciously moving his story from “primitive ritual to civilized institution[s].”

Aeschylus manages to unravel the rituals of the dying god (Dionysus), the hero cult, and the legal trial. He links these to the plot of his story in ways that surprise me. The audience would have understood the plays as rooted in their rituals. In fact, the distinction in Greek tragedy between ritual and drama is not clear. Fagles compares it to the performance of the Passion Plays in Christian history.

This fascinates me.  When Fagles writes that Aeschylus turns ritual into art,  I resonate with the idea, being a church musician. The line between prayer/ritual and art is an unclear one for me. And I value the ambiguity. I am planning to read further in the Orestes trilogy. The fourth play, a comic one, is lost. There is an interesting movement in the three extant plays. The death of Agamemnon at the hands of his family members in the first play…  Orestes goes mad in the second one…

and the final play is about the transformation of the Furies who seek to avenge the violation of the filial code of Agamemnon’s death at the hands of son into a redemptive institution, from “curses to righteous causes,” the Eumenides.)

Tomorrow I think I might write about how ideas can outlast many a concrete human endeavor, or as Fagles puts it, the paradox of the “durability of marble and the fragility of papyrus.” This seems to me to be connected to the ephemeral nature of digital information. But I need to think on it a bit.

For some odd reason my blog had a slew of spam between now and yesterday. The WordPress sorts it out and allows me to mark it as spam. Not sure why I had so many. Usually I think it has something to do with the links, the pics, or search terms.

I’m back to treadmilling it seems. My new treadmill is pretty funky. I have to coax it into starting up. The distance function doesn’t seem to work properly. But what the heck, at least I can start back up with more exercising.

I don’t have too much to write today. I have noticed something, though. In my reading, the concept of a son murdering a father goes beyond the Oedipus story. I have noticed in my random reading at least two more references in Greek stories. In Antigone, Creon’s son Haemon (betrothed to Antigone) becomes so incensed with his father after finding Antigone dead by her own hand, that when his father calls him, “The boy answered no word, but glared at him with fierce eyes, spat in his face, and drew his cross-hilted sword. His father turned and fled, and the blow missed its mark.”

In the Iliad, Phoenix, the lifelong companion of Achilles, was urged by his mother to bed his father’s mistress and thereby cause her to lose her taste for older men (Homer says “kill the young girl’s taste for an old man”). The father then curses Phoenix when he suspects that he did so. Then

I took it in my head to lay him low
with sharp bronze! But a god checked my anger,
he warned me of what the whole realm would say,
the loose talk of the people, rough slurs of men—
they must not call me a father-killer…

Iliad, Book IX

Wow. Kind of a weird thing if you ask me.

After church yesterday, an elderly couple accosted me and complimented me on my playing, They are snow birds back from their winter abode. They told me they were glad I was there as the musician. I mention it to off set my whining here. I sometimes feel like I am performing to a void, that what I am doing is not being noticed.

Yesterday the pre-service crowd noise persisted into the first two stanzas of the opening hymn. I could hear the buzz as I lifted my hands to phrase between stanzas. Sigh. However, the participation quickly rose and remained strong for most parts of the rest of the service. I wish I could have been a bit more seductive in my accompaniment of the first hymn. Realizing that many of the people in the room were not with me, I plowed ahead.

Ah well. It’s hard not to be discouraged after a wedding like we had Saturday.

Onward. Upward.

New words notes March 2016 | Oxford English Dictionary

Quarterly update. Apparently this and the embedded links are available online to everyone. Excellent. I put this link up on Facebooger.

Unless You’re Oprah, ‘Be Yourself’ Is Terrible Advice. – The New York Times

I’m not sure exactly what I think about this. I know I’m guilty off crossing boundaries that seem to be what this writer means by being yourself. At least I used to do this more. Now I’m a bit better at keeping the old trap shut. Hey. I just said A BIT better.

No-Knead Bread Recipe – NYT Cooking

This is self described as one of the NYT’s most popular recipes. I like kneading.

In Turkey, a Syrian Child ‘Has to Work to Survive’ – The New York Times

Child labor instead of education. Nice.

The Ultimate Veggie Burger Recipe – NYT Cooking

This keeps popping up on my Facebooger feed. I finally bookmarked it. Looks complicated.

Hits to this blog are falling. Yesterday I had 23 visitors according to Google Analytics (which I’m not sure I trust to count actual visits anyway). So maybe besides a few faithful family members and friends, my audience/listeners is/are diminishing to the point that I’m basically sending words and thoughts into the void. This is not much different from any writing, then. Writing alone one throws words out as though to a reader or listener, but who knows who will ever read or hear them? No matter. I put these words here for whoever is interested, usually motivated by the idea that loved ones, friends, and acquaintances might be comforted to know that I am still alive and kicking.

When Eileen arrived home from her workshop last night, she asked me how my day went. Pretty good, I answered, up until the wedding.

Doing weddings in a contemporary context can be difficult and complex. I may be called on to give some feedback on yesterday’s wedding as it was the curate’s first wedding. He even asked me afterwards how I thought it went. I said okay and cited Marian Hatchett’s idea that it would be good to wait a couple days before evaluating it. (The story I have heard about Hatchett was more emphatic. Although Hatchett was an important liturgist and theologian in the Episcopal church, he also would serve as a supply priest in small parishes around Sewanee where he taught. Apparently he would often be infuriated by what he experienced in these parishes. He had a rule that he wouldn’t discuss Sunday’s celebrations until one or two days had passed for him to cool down.)

It’s hard for me to pinpoint just what bothered me about yesterday’s wedding. “Canon in D” was spelled “Cannon in D” in the program even after I pointed it out to my boss before it went to press. But that’s not it. The singer was problematic. She was nervous and amateurish and her protective lover/husband hovered nearby. She asked for a mike to sing and despite my warnings ended up using it. This is the first time at Grace I have worked with a singer who sang through a microphone.

I did try to work with her. Telling her projection was not volume. But this is futile with someone who is probably more comfortable with karaoke than sung congregational prayer.

This definitely was discouraging. The curate was nervous I think. He did some odd things which I can attribute to his novicehood. But one thing that sticks in my mind is the father of the bride wandering around at the offertory looking for the “wafers” (this was the way the curate described the bread). The father of the bride told me he and another man were to bring them up but he couldn’t find them. I told him the curate probably already had them (as indeed he did).

There was no congregational singing whatsoever. Only piano and violin were used as instruments (I think this was the request of the bride and groom but am not entirely sure). The energy of the group however, as is often the case, was upbeat.

People don’t go to weddings thinking they are going to pray. And prayer itself means so many different things to people. My understanding of liturgical prayer is that is above all an action of the group. Something done with the body and the voice.

The phrase “Good celebrations nourish and foster faith, poor celebrations weaken and destroy faith” kept going through my head while sipping my martini after the wedding. I was thinking that bad church is one of the reasons I’m so close to being an atheist. I also wondered where this little phrase had entered my lexicon.

Lo and behold, it’s from the Roman Catholic Bishops Committee on the Liturgy document, “The Place of Music in Eucharistic Celebration.” My liturgical understandings such as they are have evolved from the reforms in the Catholic church. Fortunately most of them obtain in the Episcopal church, at least in theory.

Evaluating prayer has always seemed a bit odd to me. How can one judge another’s heart?But coherence of prayer is another thing as is consistency with the stated theology of the denomination. But enough. Time to get ready to go do church.

And if Elected: What President Trump Could or Couldn’t Do – The New York Times

Some interesting possibilities. Frightening to say the least.

Palestinians Elect a New President (on a Reality TV Show) – The New York Times

And I thought it couldn’t get more surreal.

Another quiet morning. Yesterday Eileen spent the day at her workshop at Hope College. I had a quiet day at home. I did go to church and practice a bit. In the afternoon I roasted vegetables on the grill. I met Eileen at the Sushi restaurant for a nice meal together. A good day.

Today, I will go to the Farmers Market this morning.

Roasting vegetables yesterday was an attempt to continue to use what we end up purchasing at the market.

Today I am planning to purchase some trout and spinach, maybe some other stuff.

In the afternoon I have the wedding. This is one planned by a curate. There will be no congregational singing. The music is largely goofy. The bride will walk in to Leonard Cohen’s Hallelujah instrumentally performed. And Aunt Suzy (literally, this is how she has been referred to) will be singing “Can’t Help Falling in Love with You” while the “unity candle” is being lit. In other words, it’s basically a soap opera wedding.

I didn’t coin that phrase. It was used by a person doing a wedding (a Minister of some sort?) that I played for once. He assured me it would be just like a soap opera and I would recognize everything. Nice.

I did manage to flip my treadmill and do fifteen minutes on it yesterday. I put it in the corner of the porch so it doesn’t jiggle the entire porch as much.

It feels like summer is here.

NYT Calls for Stronger Copyright Protection Without Calculating the Costs | FAIR

I’m finding the FAIR reports a good balance to a lot of other reporting. Recommended.

Media Trumpwash Clinton’s Reckless Foreign Record | FAIR

What are little things like facts when discussing Clinton’s Foreign policy record?

As Kingfishers Catch Fire – Poetry Foundation

This is today’s Writer’s Almanac poem. I like it. It’s a good balance to the idea that today is also Dr. Ruth’s birthday and the anniversary of Tienanmen Square.

King Tut’s Dagger Made of ‘Iron From the Sky,’ Researchers Say – The New York Times

The Egyptians or somebody seem to know the material was from a meteorite: “iron from the sky.” Cool beans.

Julia Child’s Berry Flan Recipe – NYT Cooking

Eileen and I love Flan. This looks excellent.

I did manage to get my treadmill delivered and into the front porch yesterday. Eileen spent the evening registering for her weaving workshop and then having supper with other registrants. I exercised on my new treadmill. It’s kind of funky but I managed to get it to work.  It causes the porch to shake quite a bit. I’m going to experiment with moving it around on the porch. There’s just not room for it in the house on the first floor otherwise.

I only managed 35 minutes instead of my usual 45. I guess I’ll have to work up to my old time. After exercising, I showered and had my first martini for a few days. Eileen has already gotten up and left for her workshop this morning.

I messaged Ana Hernandez on Facebooger this morning.

Jodi the curate emailed me that she wanted a recording of “Be Still and Know” to use with the “Growing into worship” kids group at church. Apparently she or someone else has taught them a different setting and she wanted to use the one we use in church by Hernandez. It didn’t take Hernandez long to get back to me and tell me that there isn’t a recording of the piece available yet. I reminded Jodi that all of the music in the hymnals has a “listen” button on Rite Stuff (the church software for our hymnal and prayerbook). I went over to my copy of Rite Stuff and found out (again) that I haven’t been successful in registering on this computer. Otherwise I might try to make Jodi an mp3 of this song. I have no idea how the play button manages to render it but that would be a way to do that.

I really don’t have much to blog about this morning. I managed to overcome some recent difficulties I have been having with my Greek studies this morning. I realized that it has gotten more difficult since I am almost up to where I have previously studied. At least now I am more satisfied that I have a better technique to study than I did (like being more thorough on the Grammar of each lesson).

Eileen and I meeting for supper tonight at a restaurant downtown after her workshop. She suggested this and I am glad.

Eileen said to me recently that I never take a day off.

Do practicing musicians do this? Is that what she is referring to? Probably not. However, I think I am making some small progress at winding down my yearly seasonal schedule. I have resolved to pick easier organ music for a while to learn and perform. That should help.

I decided to schedule an improv for the prelude for a week from Sunday and a little David Harris Trio on Olivet for the postlude. That should be an easy morning.

For her part, Eileen is gearing up for a weaving workshop being held at Hope College for the next few days.

She is planning on using our small computer those days, so I’m practicing using the big one this morning for this blog.

I installed our new printer yesterday and it seems to be working fine. We finally went to Best Buy and bought one. We bought an HP Envy 4520.

It has been sitting in the box waiting for me to hook it up.

We also went to a local Estate Sales shop and purchased a treadmill.

Unfortunately it wouldn’t fit into the Subaru. Also, I promised Eileen (and myself) that I wouldn’t try to lug the thing into the house by myself. The shop will deliver for a $35 fee but only to curbside. I left a message on my boss’s cell phone asking her if the church has transportation for something like this. I offered to donate to one of the ministries or pay someone to do this for me. She has not returned my call.

I also messaged an acquaintance locally I saw moving his household stuff using a Community Action House (a local charity) truck. I asked him if this was something they did. So far no response from him, either.

Today I’ll probably contact the church custodian and ask him if he has any ideas. I know he has a truck he sometimes uses but he’s no spring chicken himself. Maybe he and I could lug it on to my porch (where I plan to keep it year round).

NO LINKS TODAY, BUT A COUPLE OF QUOTES

“We care not ourselves
when nature being oppressed, commands the mind
to suffer with the body.”

Shakespeare, King Lear, II, iv

I have been reading Lear. Next Timon of Athens.

“With acquaintances, you are forever aware of their slightly unreal image of you, and to keep them content, you edit yourself to fit. ”

John MacDonald, Bright Orange for the Shroud, p. 19

I know. I know. I gave up on this writer. But not before making a note of this quote.

I stopped by the library yesterday and checked out two mysteries by John MacDonald. I had made up my mind I needed to do some lighter reading than Antigone. I made it through the first 24 pages before I realized it wasn’t for me. I was disappointed but there  you are.

Light reading is a bit harder for me  than I remember it being in the past. Were the novels of Anthony Burgess light reading for me? I remember the delight of each one not to be entirely recaptured on rereading. I have read science fiction all my life, enough to know that as a genre it’s somewhat elusive. I’m up to date with Margaret Atwood’s latest. I landed on an ebook copy of The Girl in the Spider’s Web by David Lagercrantz.

I have read all of the original books in the series by Larsson. I read five chapters of it last night (15.9%).

This morning I got up feeling a bit fuzzy. Still skipping my evening drinks so that’s probably not what was going on. Who knows? My Greek Grammar has bogged down a bit. Does it really matter if I understand “middle verb participles”? Probably. I’ll work more on it tomorrow.

I finished reading a translation of Antigone I have been reading. I poked around in the church music books Rhonda gave me. Then a poem by Auden and one by Kenyon. I’m still feeling a bit fuzzy.

Last night, weirdly, after supper, just before Eileen began her nightly viewing of The PBS New Hour, I had a strong urge to play piano. For the last few years, I have found the PBS News Hour more and more insipid. The odd exception to this seems to be the weekend version of it which is shorter and pithier. Eileen enjoys it. I decided to drive over to the church and play piano for a while since I had the urge. This didn’t seem to bother Eileen so off I went.

Usually at that time I am attempting to stay up to 7 PM before going to bed. Thankfully the church was completely empty so I played Beethoven variations, Glass etudes and ended with some Bach. I came home relaxed and then read.

Summer is shaping up nicely.

I found myself feeling a little sad and a lot unmotivated yesterday. I think some of it might have been connected to thinking about my old acquaintance, Robert Hobby, whom I mentioned yesterday. Bob is one of several oddball friends I have had over the years that have subsequently wandered out of my life. I miss them and ponder on how much responsibility I have for losing touch with them. Usually I decide that “life” has happened to us and our orbits have changed. This is when I’m feeling grown up. But sometimes I think about my attempts to keep connected to them and how they have been unsuccessful.

Besides Bob, there’s a flute player who stomped out of my kitchen angrily and never looked back, someone whose second marriage I failed to attend and never responded to attempts to contact him, another person who wandered back in my life after a solid friendship in the past but was too wounded to reconnect, a young guitar player/recordist who got married and started having a lot of babies, a man who was unhappy and brilliant with whom I shared a basement when we were both high school students who growled at me the last time I saw him at a book sale, and some others. Eileen tells me that they are all odd balls and she is right. I am definitely part of the oddball crowd myself.

I had a dream last night that seems related. I was working as a waiter at a convention. Most of the people I was waiting on were Hispanic. I remember making fancy coffees for people as I waited on them even though I wasn’t supposed to. The other waitstaff seemed surprised and impressed. Finally for some reason I removed a toilet from a bathroom and installed a shower. A Hispanic woman wanted to use the toilet to wash some clothes (!). I had to tell her that it was gone. Maybe she could use the shower stall instead. She was not happy. I apologized to her and to an elderly Hispanic dude. He accepted my apology.

Along about this time in the dream I noticed Bob Hobby was giving a speech at the convention. He was finishing up and it was time for him to leave. I tried to talk to him (get it?) but he had to catch his bus. I called after him that I had been talking to some of the Hispanics and things were going better than he might have expected. He didn’t answer but he seem to understand. His bus left. I walked back to catch my bus which I was concerned had already left.

Of course all of this sad mood might have more to do with the fact that I have been skipping my martini and wine the last few nights. My goal is to snack less. So far it’s working. However I do know my drinking is a weird mixture of habit, self medication, mistaking hunger for wanting a drink and the simple pleasure of having an evening cocktail. And that’s probably not all.  I can’t wait to hear what a therapist says about it (sarcasm).

Okay, this is a bit random, but here are a few things I have ran across this morning and last night that are sticking in my brain this morning.

First, after Greek, I picked up my Collected Poems of Auden and read “In Praise of Limestone”

My first response was “Jesus! What a poem!” My second response was to realize how this poem ties together many things I think about: Ancient culture, the ephemeral nature of being alive, and other stuff. I love the way Auden partitions humanity into the “best and worst of us” and the lukewarm ‘band of rivals” in the middle. Auden is, as usual, bitingly ironic and bitter and at the same time weirdly redemptive. What a poem!

I then turned from erudite Auden to eloquent Kenyon and found a poem that shatteringly relates to today’s holiday.

I always think that war is truly an unspeakable horror for those who go through it. Of course, I am guessing,  but so was Mark Twain when he wrote his “War Prayer.”  And so was, I suspect, Jane Kenyon when she penned “Gettysburg: July 1 1863.”

If you don’t want to read it, I’ll save you the trouble. It’s about getting killed in battle. I don’t know if I will be able to resist posting it on social media this Memorial Day.

Author Nathanial Philbrick was the NYT’s “By the Book” reader in yesterday paper. He mentioned John D. MacDonald. It made me wonder about doing some lighter reading this summer. MacDonald is a decent writer. So on my way to bed last night I perused my shelves and found I only had one little pamphlet by him in my alphabetized books, Reading for Survival. I plucked it from the shelf and lay down to read.

This was an essay published in 1987 by the Library of Congress. MacDonald died the year before. This was one of his last works. He had been asked by Jean Trebbi, then the executive editor of Florida Center for the Book to write an essay on reading. This Center still exists (link to their website).

‘

MacDonald struggled with writing an abstract essay until Trebbi suggested using his infamous characters to expound his ideas. This worked and the result is fun quick read.

Here’s a link to a .doc download of it

And here are the passages that have struck me through two readings, one last night and one years ago.

“The man who doesn’t read books has no advantage over the man who can’t read them.”

“the climate of an educated mind … [is] characterized by skepticism, irony, doubt, hope, and a passion to learn more and remember more.”

“The life unexamined is the life unlived.”

“the nonreader in our culture, Travis, wants to believe. He is the one born every minute. The world is so vastly confusing and baffling to him that he feels there has to be come simple answer to everything that troubles him. And so, out of pure emptiness, he will eagerly embrace spiritualism, yoga, a bana diet, or some callous frippery like Dianetics, L. Ron Hubbard’s personal path to infinite riches, a strange amalgam of sociological truisms and psychological truths masquerading under invented semiscientific terms, and sold to the beginner at a nice profit.”

referring to Eric Hoffer’s The True Believer, “the best fanatics are people who have nothing i their heads but wind, smoke, and emptiness. Then if any idea manages to slip in there, it does not matter how insipid or grotesque that idea might be, it will expand to fill all the available emptiness and it takes over the individual and all his actions. He cannot har any voice but his own. He is beyond reason, beyond argumentation. He is right and everyone who does not believe exactly the same as he is wrong.”

This last is an apt description of how some people behave online and in social media.

I recommend reading the entire MacDonald book. Read it to survive.