Thomas Dolby-She Blinded Me With Science by adiis

I think I outfoxed my unruly choir yesterday, blinding them with the science of  my own playfulness and energy and rehearsal technique. A miracle for old man Jupe. By the time the pregame was over, morale was high in the group and people seemed to be looking forward to nailing the service musically.

So the service went well. During the pregame I noticed the A Capella sections of our anthem were sounding pretty good without accompaniment. I told the choir that’s how we continue to rehearse and perform it. This was a bit of musical risk since the sections were not brain dead easy, especially harmonically. Taking a risk within the abilities of a performer is always the best choice. In the performance these sections went pretty well with just a touch of sagging in pitch, but not terribly discernible. I noticed the composer of this anthem, Stephan Casurella, is on Facebooger. I messaged him today that we sang his anthem yesterday and requested to be his Facebooger “friend.” It’s goofy I know, but I think it’s kind of fun to do this kind of connecting. I believe that the weird mixture of cyber communications provides an appropriate way to reach out to people like this. They can easily ignore it. Or respond if they want.

I went a little nuts on an improvisation at communion. Our second communion hymn was “Let All Mortal Flesh.” I have always admired this melody and text since first encountering it. After we sang it I continued with an increasing loud and dissonant improvisation. Eileen said later she didn’t notice it, but one choir member seemed distressed as I improvised. Ah! A Twofer. Good improv and shaking up a choir member.

The rest of the day was a bit of a blur for me. Eileen gathered flowers from the yard and made bouquets for Mary (my Mom) and Dorothy (her Mom). We set out for the annual Whitehall Mother’s Day celebration, first stopping to connect with Mary a bit.

Eileen drove home from Chelsea while I wrote my blog (see yesterday’s post). Sarah wanted to take a look at Holland’s annual Art in the Park Festival after we got home. We arrived to find tons of people and cars all over the city. I think maybe Hope had graduation as well. So there was a large arts and craft fair in the park, graduation, and people walking everywhere.

We split up. Eileen and Sarah went to the park. I went to church to practice and prep for this morning. Then I went grocery shopping. By the time I got home I was exhausted.

Sarah asked me on the way home what my plans for retirement were. She is a worrier (Hi Sarah!) and sees me dealing with my shrinking energy pie. I don’t really have plans for retirement. I sort of feel like I retired years ago when I quit the local Catholic job that brought me to this area. Ever since then I have factored in my own interests into every decision about how to fill my time.

I do find myself melancholic this morning. I wonder how much of it was the play we saw. I saw the play as a bit of a poem.

The story was built on the idea of the common ancestry many living beings have via the construction of their extremities.

The protagonist recognized people by their hands not their faces. These represented one of the aspects of commonality he talks about in his opening monologue. Finally, the poem of the play that I have been pondering is dealing with “why we left the water” and also should we simply give up and return to the darks of the water.

The “why we left the water” refers to the origins of walking creatures in the first fish to prop itself up its fins and look around. The return is the dark ending of the play in a not too distant future dystopia. Meredith finds Richard in a facility. She herself has been living on the streets in New York. She’s pregnant and wants to have the child despite the dire situation the world is in at the time. It’s an act of hope in the face of despair.

It, of course, echoes many things happening right now in the world not the least of which is the despair of the triumph of the racist, hate rhetoric of Donald Trump. Christ, no wonder I’m melancholic.

But it is an act of hope. That’s something, right? It’s this futile hope that I have connected with all my life via music, poetry and the people in my life.

I’m sitting in the car blogging offline. Eileen is driving. Sarah is sitting in the back seat. We just had lunch with Mark and Leigh at the Plaid Melon Restaurant. We had a good visit with them. They are excellent hosts. Sarah got to see some fam while she’s visiting. Eileen got to go to Forma the weaving shop. I had time off to veg and practice piano and read. Leigh’s piano is a family heirloom and is a nice Steinway baby grand. I found that practicing the Philip Glass etude I am working on was especially rewarding, nice deep tones in the bass.

While Eileen, Sarah and Mark went to Forma yesterday, I asked Leigh if she would mind if I worked on piano technique exercises (which can be quite dealy to listen to, especially for a musician and piano teacher like Leigh). She said she would go outside and work in her garden (which is a pleasure for her). So that’s what we did: I practiced scales, Hanon, Pishna and she went out and worked. I like to think my piano technique is improving. God knows I’m working on it.

If you read my comments you will see that Rhonda left some encouraging words about choir rehearsals on a recent blog post. Thank you, Rhonda! She also remembered that I’m interested in playing duets and made sure I knew she was still interested in doing this after her parents visit.

Next Sunday, my friend, Peter is playing a 4 PM recital at St. John’s, Grand Haven. It’s an anniversary recital of some sort. He told me he plans to play my setting of NETTLETON (“Come Thou Font”). I’m thinking I might possibly go hear him. It was such a gas to chat with him recently. He is a good player and a great guy!

However, this is the day that Sarah gets on a plane to go back to the U.K. so I’ll have to see how the schedule works out.

Although there is no choir rehearsal this week, the piano trio and I are planning to get together. We have scheduled around the Tulip Time madness and changed our meeting time to Tuesday at 4 PM. I want to do some hymn arrangements for the following Sunday when the trio will be playing. I think it would very classy to have the intro to “Come Down, O Love Divine,” our opening Pentecost hymn played with violin, organ and cello. Also, I want to write some accompaniment parts for “There’s a Sweet, Sweet Spirit.” I’m thinking long notes on violin and cello might dress it up a bit if I did it right.

My plan is to tether this laptop to my phone and access the internet that way to upload this post. So I don’t want to use the laptop too long that way. We have so many minutes a month of this kind of service and there’s no reason to use it up this way.

After we get back in town I will go to church to post hymns for tomorrow and practice. The anthem is not a particularly hard one but I have a rather elaborate set of registrations for it worked and that’s what I need to practice. That and the psalm. I practiced the psalm on the piano yesterday at Mark and Leigh’s house. Leading psalm tones is a tricky business and I like to be as prepared as possible. Occasionally I do mess up in service. It’s better not to, of course. But if I mess up, I don’t want it to be because of poor prep.

I did my Greek from my Kindle at Mark and Leigh’s house. I wasn’t absolutely sure I would work on it this visit. I wanted to spend quality fam time with everyone and not use up my alone time with Greek. Better to blog.
I think I’ll skip links today as well to cut down on online time via tethering.
Well, that’s report. Thanks for reading.

I did go and practice yesterday morning before anyone got up. When I returned Sarah and Eileen were still in their bedrooms, hopefully sleeping.

I was looking forward to a chat with my friend, Peter Kurdziel. He was dropping by sometime in the mid morning since he was accompanying a choir in Holland that day and we had arranged that he would.

He texted me that he would be a bit later than he anticipated. Despite having many things to do before leaving for our visit with the Ann Arbor Jenkins clan, I sat down and practiced piano a bit after Eileen, Sarah, and I had breakfast.

Peter sneaked in and startled  me while I was working on Beethoven’s cello sonata. We had a long involved talk. It was great. I miss this sort of deep talk with colleagues.

After he left I was in a bit of daze being exhausted and innervated by our little chat. During this time Eileen had gone back and forth to exercise class. I had numerous errands to run before we could get out of town: library trip for Mom books, bank trip to deposit Mom’s tax check, stuff like that.

Finally we got out of town and arrived in Chelsea around 4:30 PM. Mark had made reservations at their favorite BBQ restaurant near the theater where we planned to view a new play.

We had lovely family meal with Mark, Leigh, his son Ben, and Ben’s partner Toni. Then we walked to the small charming theater, “The Purple Rose.”

The play we saw only recently opened. It’s a new work called “Gaps in the Fossil Record” by Matt Letscher. None of us really knew anything about it, but I was interested in going to a local production at this place.

The theater was started by the local below the radar celebrity, Jeff Daniels. He’s an actor in case you don’t recognize his name and comes originally from Chelsea. He has tried to maintain a normal life here while having a national acting career. The townspeople seem to be in on giving him space and letting him be real locally.

Twenty five years ago he started a little theater in his home town. Now they regularly run all sorts of stuff.

“Gaps in the Fossil Record” is a story about a paleontologist who falls in love with a student. It begins with him lecturing and the playwright uses this device to outline some serious ideas in the play about the interconnectedness of life. Many animals share very similar aspects in the constructions of their arms/limbs. Richard traces this back to the fish that first crawled out of the water on its fins. We can see the end of the story in the fossil record but we don’t know why we crawled out in the first place.

At the end of his lecture he puts a final slide up of two skeletons embracing and asks his “students” (he addresses the audience as though lecturing) to speculate on who they were.

This is the underlying philosophical idea behind the love story of the play which spans from the present until about the year 2034 or so. Various characters in the play give their ideas about what’s happening in this slide. These comments are interspersed throughout the telling of a love story that spans a generation with one actress playing her own daughter after her death (in the future). Three actors assumed five roles. Richard was the aging paleontologist who experiences a bit of epiphany when he falls in love with his student, Jane.

Meredith is Jane’s highly eccentric mother who at first is appalled at their age difference and the fact that she learns of  their relationship after they are married and Jane is pregnant. We later learn she was pregnant with twins and that she and one of the twins dies presumably in child birth. The actress who plays Jane convincing returns as her own surviving daughter, 17 year old Meredith, to visit Richard in a automated healthcare ward where he awakes from a coma in the near future.

In a moving scene which pulls together much of the plot and the philosophical point posed by Richard in his opening monologue (“why” did we walk out of the water?), Richard gradually regains parts of his memory and he and his daughter end up in a embrace which mimics the slide.

There was a monologue from the Richard character after this that we agreed could have been more effectively omitted. Mark and his son Ben were cognizant that the canned music came up during this. I think Mark found this annoying and emotionally manipulative. For my part, I was emotionally manipulated and wept and didn’t even notice the music only the ideas that the character underlined at this point. Unusual for me.

Even though it moved me, I agree that I would have been more satisfied with a clearer ending that was right there in the resolving of the many manifestations of who the people were in the photograph of the skeletons into a final statement of father/daughter love.

But it was a surprisingly good play. How nice, eh?

We came home and Mark and I drank and chatted until 1:00 AM or so. Long fucking day. But good.

This morning I am blogging earlier. I have a busy morning despite my exhaustion and low  morale. I struggled with choir rehearsal last night. The energy was overwhelmingly negative. People seemed anxious and serious. They also studiously ignored many of my instructions causing me to repeat them with as much good humor as I could muster.

It was our last rehearsal of the season. We have two more Sundays but no rehearsal next Wednesday. I spent the day preparing a choral version of our closing hymn for Pentecost: “There’s a sweet, sweet spirit.” I had intended it as a final, mildly fun way, to end the last rehearsal of the year.

But I had choir members who didn’t even recognize the hymn we have been using as a closing hymn our Pentecost celebrations for years. So I tried to teach it as best I could. I offered to stay after Sunday’s Eucharist and go over it again with anyone interested.

We spent a lot of time on Sunday’s anthem which due to sporadic rehearsal attendance was not as familiar as I like more mildly difficult anthems to be. Choir members kept vocally objecting to my rehearsal techniques, jumping in and suggesting we rehearse certain ways in the middle of my instructions.

It was hard to tell if I was invisible to them or just monumentally inconsequential.

Due to the intense preparation of “There’s a sweet, sweet spirit,” I was unable to practice piano yesterday. I did spend time intricately registering the anthem for this Sunday. Despite the recalcitrance of the participants last night I think the registrations worked.

After I finish blogging, I’m going to sneak over to church and practice this anthem and Sunday’s postlude.

We are leaving for Chelsea later for two nights and three days at my brother’s house. This is in order for Sarah who is visiting to see some of her Jenkins fam over there. Usually I call a local church and arrange to practice organ while I am there. This time, I’m going to practice this morning, skip Thursday’s practice, and hit it again Saturday when we return. This should be sufficient.

I also have a buddy coming for coffee this morning, my friend, Peter Kurdziel. He is in town for a choral festival and messaged me we should get together. I invited him to the house. This is another reason to sneak in some early morning practice.

I hope I can get some down time while I’m away.

Why Republican Voters Decided On Trump | FiveThirtyEight

Analysis from Nate Silver.

Eileen surprised me last night when at the end of my piano practice she told me that whatever I was working on was growing on her.

It was Etude 11 from Philip Glass’s “20 Etudes.” My original goal with these etudes was to read through them so that I would know which ones might interest me musically enough to learn and use at church.

Then I hit #11. These etudes are divided into two volumes of 10. The second volume seems to be much harder than the first. The technical problems intrigued me enough to want to work them out in some detail. That’s where it stands. There are some cross rhythms I am attempting to learn “by feel” instead of painstaking slow work. I think it will work. My piano teacher of years ago, Dr. Strasburg (Mr?), told me that ultimately one plays difficult cross rhythms by feel.

But after that, I learned to carefully outline cross rhythms in little diagrams, explicitly showing how they work. These diagrams can be rather involved. One can practice slowly with them. Very slowly. But eventually one has to speed them up and feel does in come in to play.

Earlier in the day, Dawn the cellist and I rehearsed the Brahms cello sonata movement I performed Saturday. It sounded so good that I said we should schedule it sometime in June as a prelude. I was surprised how much my intense prep for Saturday improved my ability to play challenging sections.

Then we rehearsed the first movement of Beethoven’s Cello Sonata, opus 5, #1. It inspired me to put this movement on my practice list as well.

Beethoven has some one hand accompaniment patterns on the piano that I find challenging.

Since I am working on my technique maybe now is the time to improve my ability to play these tricky little things.

I am relearning how piano prep differs from organ prep. I found myself practicing slowly but with a little muscular bump on each note on the piano. This seems to help my piano playing and is the opposite of my organ technique which is based on still hand and releasing notes (tracker technique).

Jes sayin’

MAX Transit tax renewal passes with wide approval – News – Holland Sentinel – Holland, MI

Eileen, Sarah, and I all voted yesterday. Sarah had her absentee ballot with her and dropped it off at city hall. Eileen and I were number 45 and 46 at our usual precinct.

A Nickname for Daw Aung San Suu Kyi? There’s No Short Answer – The New York Times

I love names.

I continue reading Steiner’s Antigone in the mornings. The section I started this morning is about the chorus in it.

As I have read Greek drama over the years I have always found the chorus a bit of an anomaly. I know that it is important to the drama. That it precedes historically the solitary speaking part of Thespis who I was taught was the first person to step away from the chorus and speak an individual part.

Steiner talks about musical settings of Antigone by Mendelssohn, Honneger, Saint-Säens, and Carl Orff.

He talks about how when Monteverdi and others “invented” opera they did so with an eye on classicism. They were conscious of restoring the chorus.

All this talk of musical settings got me to thinking. I had never connected my long years of loving and performing choral music with the idea of the Greek chorus. Pretty obtuse, eh?

So that’s my insight for this morning. When a modern choir sings it is often connected to the way the Greek chorus functioned in Greek drama: commenting, elucidating, mocking, whatever. Suddenly I see the whole thing differently.

Wow.

Dilma Rousseff, Facing Impeachment in Brazil, Has Alienated Many Allies – The New York Times

Having first learned of some of the details of the current Brazilian crisis from CounterSpin, I read the NYT skeptically about this story.

Stricter Rules for Voter IDs Reshape Races – The New York Times

I continue to be surprised by commenters that say that “everyone” knows that “everyone” needs an ID to do practically anything these days. Failure of imagination, I guess. At least of sympathy for people who don’t have it as good as you do.

Sarah is visiting and I almost missed a day of blogging. It’s great to have her around. We went grocery shopping. However, I am very tired from yesterday plus the grocery shopping, so this is it for today.

There’s No Such Thing as a Free Rolex – The New York Times

A constitutional right to buy and sell access! Oy!

The Stranger, Seattle’s Only Newspaper

This is access to Dan Savage’s sex column. He is great!

The Many Faces of Dennis Hastert – The New York Times

Frank Bruni talks intelligently about this stuff.

Nicholas Guyatt’s ‘Bind Us Apart’ – The New York Times

Interesting new book.

American Airlines apologises to musician for barring violin | Stuff.co.nz

I could never get a straight answer from airlines about guitars, either. Musicians I knew told me to just take my instrument and they would accommodate. Apparently that doesn’t always work.

Voter identification laws by state – Ballotpedia

Limiting access to voting makes me crazy.

Jefferson changed ‘subjects’ to ‘citizens’ in Declaration of Independence

Pretty cool.

I have been thinking about yesterday’s performance with the cellist. One thing that interests me about it is the way in which he and I communicated primarily through the music itself. I see music as a conversation but I also see it as an extension of actual conversations, communications, and relationships with people. For it to be strictly limited to the musical act itself focuses exactly what is happening with the sounds. I noticed that at first I did not look at the cellist very much as we rehearsed. I was concentrating on my own notes and playing while listening to him carefully.

As the morning went on and we practiced and then performed, I found myself looking at him more often and more carefully. We began to form more of a connection than just what we were doing with the sounds. But the sounds themselves were in definite conversation. It’s a bit hard to describe. But the back and forth adjustments that are possibly even in strictly notated classical music can be a sort of evolving clarity about what the cello and the piano are saying through Brahms notes and our hands.

The words that Brandon (that’s his name) and I spoke to each other in the course of the morning would not fill two sheets of paper. But the musical connection quickly matured so that by the end I could say to him that over the course of our brief work together I began to relax and take more musical risks.

The last notes of the Tchaikovsky “Andante Cantabile” waft musically over an an empty church. I looked at Brandon and said, just like Sunday morning. But I could sense that he was as happy as I was to just have played the music.

I listen to stuff at night to help me drift in and out of sleep. Lately I have been listening to the follow up podcast to Serial’s story of Adnan Syad, Undisclosed:  the State v. Adnan Syad.

Syad was the young man convicted of the murder of Hae Min Lee in 1999. Last night’s episode kept me awake and thinking.

In this episode, the listener learns about the Marion Correction Institution, a prison that is exceptional in its emphasis on rehabilitation and humane treatment of its population.

Eileen and I had just been discussing theories of incarceration for some reason. Revenge or rehabilitation? Eileen said that most of society sees prison as revenge. I agreed but said that it makes more sense to rehabilitate, especially regarding voting and employment.

Then I listened to Episode 12 of Undisclosed. At the Marion Correction Institution there is an organization called “Healing Broken Circles” functioning that seeks to create groups where people in prison learn to treat each other and themselves with respect. They are succeed in counterintuitive and breath taking ways.

I’m disappointed that Undisclosed doesn’t have a transcript that I can find of this episode. In the episode itself one of the people talking mentions reading a transcript of one of their episodes. I was hopeful I could find such a thing. I’m interested in learning more about the situation in the Marion prison and the woman who is talking in the podcast.  It seems to speak directly to mass incarceration in the USA with the unusual note of hope.

Normally I would play a bit in the quiet morning and get a few more details to research, but daughter Sarah is sleeping close by. I want to keep it as quiet as possible as she rests up from her trip yesterday.

But I will check this out further later.

 Daniel J. Berrigan, Defiant Priest Who Preached Pacifism, Dies at 94 – The New York Times

In 2008 Berrigan said it was the worst time of his life. I concur. It is a time of terrible injustice.

Photo of Paris Massacre Victim Sets Off Press Freedom Case – The New York Times

Tricky stuff. The unfolding impact of that old technology: photography.

I’m blogging in the afternoon instead of morning. This morning I made coffee, studied Greek, then practiced piano in preparation for my funeral this morning. I did some scales and stuff like that but mostly concentrated on the Brahms I was scheduled to play with a cellist I had never met.

I found this accompaniment right at the edge of my abilities with the little prep I was able to do. Plus it was nerve wracking to meet a musician and then perform a piece that is challenging for me in public immediately thereafter. Of course, the cellist has the same situation. We were both a bit nervous I think about the other’s abilities.

We finished our run through and he was very complimentary of my playing. That was nice.  He was a good player as well and I told him so. Preparing this accompaniment in this amount of time I did learn some stuff about what’s effective and what’s not. I pretty much nailed the sections I was concerned about. He played some other stuff I had to accompany as well.

After the service (I DID get paid), I felt like I had gone up against the wall (motherfucker) and through the wringer.

Thankfully tomorrow’s music is no where near as challenging as the accompaniments I played today. Whew.

Sarah is on her way here from England. We pick her up in GR around 5 PM. I am looking forward to having her around.

Ray Kurzweil uses the story of the person who invented chess to illustrate the onrush of the future into our lives. McChesney/Nichols quote him and the story in People Get Ready.

In the sixth century in India, an inventor presented the game of chess to the local emperor. The emperor was so impressed that he promised the inventor any reward he wanted.

The inventor asked for grains of rice to be granted in the following way: one grain on the the first of the 64 squares of the chessboard on the first day, 2 grains on the 2nd day and square, 4 grains on the 3rd, and so on, doubling the amount each day and succeeding square.

“By the time one got to the sixty-fourth square, the number of grains would be eighteen quintillion, vastly more rice than has ever been produced in history.” (Nichols/McChesney, p.89)

Moore’s Law proposed in 1965 is that computer power doubles every eighteen months. In this story, McChesney and Nichols propose that we are now entering the second half of the chessboard. In the story when the emperor theoretically got that far, the total was “four billion grains, about one large field’s quantity.”

The automation of jobs feared in the sixties is happening now.

We tend to overestimate the effect of a technology in the short run and underestimate the effect in the long run.

systems engineer Roy Amara (quoted in People Get Ready)

At the end of 2014, “former Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers stated that he no longer believed that the automation process would create new jobs to replace the ones it was eliminating. ‘This isn’t some hypothetical future possibility,’ he said.’This is something that’s emerging before us right now.'”

You get the picture. It’s something to think about.

What if the cost of machines that think is  people who don’t?

historian George Dyson, quoted in People Get Ready

Weighing Obama’s Economic Legacy–With a Thumb on the Scale — FAIR

I love these articles that analyze new coverage. This one is once again about something in the  NYT. Bookmarked to read.

‘It’s Remarkable How Little Real News Comes From Saudi Arabia’ — FAIR

and

‘Brazil Is One of the Most Unequal Countries in the World’ — FAIR

These are transcripts of this weeks CounterSpin podcast. Excellent and informative stuff.

Vox’s Puff Piece on Goldman Sachs Doesn’t Reveal Goldman Sponsors Vox — FAIR

This is the second weird thing I have seen recently in connection with Vox. I am growing skeptical about this source.

Woolly Wolf Spotted in Nepal Is Likely a New Species

This is not breaking news according to the article, but I think this sort of thing is fascinating.

Only one more Wednesday choir rehearsal this season. People are dropping off like flies. Some of this is the early Easter season this year. But it’s hard not to speculate on changing patterns of people’s behavior. I notice that my small group of singers are very active in the local community as musical resources. My soprano who also plays viola has been hired away from us for Pentecost by the local mega church for an orchestra production that day. She feels torn between remaining loyal and singing at her church which she dearly loves and making $150 for a gig. I am very sympathetic because my choir members do not tend to be rich people at Grace. They are highly self actualized and tend to get involved in stuff from a personal motivation. I like and encourage that. And when one of my sopranos can earn badly needed funds I try to downplay her guilt and encourage to do what she has to do.

In the meantime I strategize to come up with stuff to keep the people who show up and myself motivated. This has worked pretty well this past spring choral season. We are down to preparing three anthems for our last three Sundays. This Sunday’s anthem is a rousing setting of the African American Spiritual, “I know the Lord’s laid his hands on me.”

Next week at our last rehearsal we will have our hands full continuing to learn a slightly challenging recently composed anthem in the Anglican style (“O Love! O Life!” by Stephan Casurella). After last night’s rehearsal several singers were surprised that this little baby was falling together, surprised and experiencing a sense of personal satisfaction. Desired effect achieved.

As we come down to the last rehearsals, I shorten them at will. The goal is to make it as high a quality experience of singing as possible. This seems to be working well this year.

For myself, I have written a little postlude for our last Sunday using violin, cello, and piano. In addition, I have gotten inspired to transcribe’s Doris Akers own vocal licks that she improvises over her song being sung by a male quartet. I think it would be cool to have my sopranos (Probably doubled on the violin) sing these licks on Pentecost on our annual rendition of “It’s a Sweet Sweet Spirit.”

I’m about half way through transcribing them. Eileen wondered last night if they would work at the tempo we sing the song. We sing it a bit faster than the Akers rendition above, but I also add a much more intense driving Gospel feeling with gospel piano licks. I told Eileen I think the Akers vocal parts will work with this style and at the tempo we do the song.

All this keeps me connected at at time when the situation is fraught with discouraging aspects of absences and inattention.

Yesterday, Rhonda was wondering out loud  if it made sense to perform Arvo Pärt’s  Mein Weg hat Gipfel und Wellentäler for American audiences.

I pointed out that I have done this piece at church and since not many people seem to pay attention to my playing, I chose to do so in this kind of environment.

This “kind of environment” compels people like me to do stuff they love because they love it, not for recognition or even tons of money. I’m good with that.

When I arrived at my Mom’s room in her nursing home yesterday to escort her to an appointment with her hearing aid people, Miracle Ear, she told me that my son, David, had called her from the Dominican Republic.

My son lives in California with his wife and three children. It struck me as unlikely that he would be calling Mom from the DR. Then Mom went on. David had been taking a taxi. They were stopped by the police. The taxi driver had marijuana in the trunk and claimed it was David. David needed bail money.

Mom told me that she told him that I handle all her money transactions and that she was sorry but she couldn’t help him.  She was, indeed, distraught.

My response was to tell her that it probably wasn’t David and that she had done well to refer them to me. I then texted David in California to confirm that he had not called Mom. Shockerini. He immediately texted back that he had not.

Mom was relieved. She had felt bad that she couldn’t help David.

As I manage my Mom’s affairs I am continually struck by how vulnerable the elderly are. I know. I know. I’M elderly. But still. Mom basically follows my advice. She and Eileen’s Mom offer us money all the time. It would be easy to drain their resources in a way that would hurt them.

I mentioned to Mom yesterday that not only were the elderly vulnerable, but that they were often taken advantage of by their own family.

I continue reading People Get Ready. As the jobless economy of large scale, global automation is upon us, it becomes apparent that the present economic situation is madness. A guaranteed income, shelter, health care and education makes sense when robots do all the work. But if the people draining off the profits continue to control decisions about how we live, we will become slaves not liberated human beings.

The liberation easily fits the way I see life. My Mom, anybody’s Mom, deserves to be taken care of in her old age despite her own private economic resources.

And as I always say, I have difficulty believing in money and property ownership. See this tree? It’s mine. What does that mean?

So a jobless economy to me evokes an crazy idealistic notion that there’s more to life than making enough money to live or even making lots of money. Stuff like making art, music and literature. Learning about stuff. Hell, learning about everything. Cooking!

I’m afraid that this direction is not exactly where we are heading or where we will end up. But Nichols and McChesney (and many other scholars) say we are on the precipice of a new and different time.

I believe that’s correct.

My need and experience for solitude is becoming more clear to me daily. Eileen is a great help as we examine our changed life style. While Eileen was working, I had copious time alone in the building. I think this is a key insight. Being alone in the building is apparently how I see solitude. Since she retired, Eileen and I give each other plenty of space. But this is not quite the same as having time completely alone.

Yesterday, when Eileen took her usual trips to Evergreen to exercise I stayed home alone. I can feel the effects of these conscious alone times. Yesterday I spent the first hour alone composing. In the afternoon I did a bit more of this, practiced piano, and then sat in the backyard and read (It was a beautiful day). Eileen pointed out to me that when she was working, she would often arrive home and hear me describe my time alone in which I had spent hours reading and practicing piano. Yesterday, I experienced a bit of jolt of memory as Eileen arrived home and I was sitting in the backyard reading. I don’t think I did much of that last summer.

It’s counter-intuitive to me to seek time away from Eileen. I enjoy being with her and think of having her around more in retirement as one of the good parts of life. However, I am beginning to see my own needs more clearly. It’s healthy to think that my relationship to Eileen need not bear all the pressure of my personality. Emotional and physical space can have a renewing effect especially on (dare I say it?) my artistic temperament.  Then, maybe our times together will be more pleasant for both of us.

I finally heard back from Satursday’s cellist. Sooprise, sooprise. He’s having life stuff. His partner’s mother is dying in another state. He is having challenges balancing supporting his partner, doing his work (whatever that is), and participating in planning for Saturday. I just emailed him back and then sent an email to the office manager copied to him and Rev Jodi about what I think would be good for the program Saturday. Jodi and I meet tomorrow and Mary (the office manager) has promised us drafts of the program for Saturday and the bulletin for Sunday (at which Jodi presumably will preside and preach). That shit’s looking up.

Clintonism the Future? NYT’s Political Science Fiction — FAIR

I have now put a link on the front page of my tablet to FAIR’s web site. I think they are living out Nichols and McChesney’s ideas of a viable fourth estate journalism. I know they are bit on the left, but they still seem empirical in their criticisms of media like the NYT.

Virginia Governor Restores Voting Rights to Felons – The New York Times

Good news in a time that voting is threatened in the USA by weird prohibitions.

The Cost of a Decline in Unions – The New York Times

I sent this 2015 link to Eileen yesterday. She was wondering about the relationship of CEO wages to works in the 60s and now. This reports some of it. Reading People Get Ready provides some insights into the demise of unions. There is a long discussion of the impact of technology/automation on the last half of the 20th century. Unions face a diminished need for workers. Like the shifting voting base in the USA (non white majority is upon us), the entire terrain of the discussion of unions has changed.

In Spain, Catching Up With Cervantes – The New York Times

Cervantes has a 400 year anniversary as well as Shakespeare, eh?

I dreamed last night that I was having a first lesson with a new piano teacher. I showed her the exercises Strasburg taught me that I have been practicing lately. I had trouble remembering them without the little cheat sheet he made for me. I was anxious to get to my four octave scales so my new teacher could evaluate  me better and begin to help me.

Before attending Ohio Wesleyan, I was a voracious reader in preparation for my musical college education. I showed Lhevinne’s book, Basic Principles in Pianoforte Playing, to Dr. Strasburg my piano teacher. I told him that this little book was very like his pedagogy. He pointed to Rosina on the cover and said, she was my teacher.

Craig Cramer, my grad organ teacher, used to insist that musical technique could only be transmitted from one living being to another, that it could not be written down.

Maybe at his level that is true, but for me I have always loved to read what people have written about piano and organ technique.

I didn’t practice piano yesterday. Instead I put a little composition I wrote on Saturday into Finale. I do enjoy working with Finale and this was the first time I used my new version of it.

I probably dignify this little piece by referring to it as a composition. I basically wrote out a little obbligato line that I want the violin and cello to play in octaves while I bang away at the piece in a gospel piano style. I think this will be fun and easy for my players.

I was thinking about spending more time alone at church.

It would be nice to find a little midi musical keyboard so that I could working on compositions there.

I priced them on Amazon and found a cheap one. However I couldn’t be sure that it had the kind of midi chord outlet I need. I’ll have to look at one in person before I will feel confident enough to purchase it.

My intermittent reluctance to spend more time at church might be something I could overcome. I find the whole Christianity thing suffocating sometimes.

It’s my problem, no doubt. But if I’m alone in the building and am thinking about my own need for solitude, maybe I can overcome this.

I’d like to keep this short this morning. I have some work I would like to do before church. Yesterday I began composing a little piece based on “There’s a sweet, sweet spirit” by Doris Akers for my piano trio for Pentecost. I would like to get my notes (written on pieces of paper) into a Finale doc this morning.

I found this recording yesterday on YouTube of Doris Akers herself singing it.

I’m planning on stealing some licks from it. Either for my trio version or maybe even better as a descant for my sopranos.

Well that’s all for today. I want to get to work.

The smug style in American liberalism – Vox

I’m working my way through this troubling article posted by one of my right wingers on facebooger. As far as I can see, it’s barely coherent. Written by a supposed educated young writer, it seems to start off ranting and descend into cherry picked examples. I plan to finish reading it when I am feeling up to it later.

What? Seems like a parable of our times.

Even though Eileen has been retired for a while we continue to evaluate how we do our lives together in her retirement. She’s gone again today for a lot of the day.

Yesterday was a road trip for wool. Today she is driving up to her Mom’s house to do her Mom’s hair and help out a bit since her sister, Nancy, is out of town. Nancy usually does the lions share of making sure Mother Dorothy has what she needs.

Eileen and I talked about how we are continuing to adjust to her retirement over breakfast this morning. My insight from yesterday was how helpful it was to have some extended time alone.

To some extent I have this kind of time each early morning I spend by myself, cleaning the kitchen, making myself coffee, studying Greek and reading.

But considering how helpful it was to have time alone yesterday and how much I was looking forward to a bit more of it today, Eileen and I need to think about creative ways to factor in Steve solitude in routine better.

The first step, obviously, is noticing that I need this time. I have noticed that when I am alone at church sometimes I can literally feel myself relaxing. I have spent a lot of time alone in churches in my life going all the way back to when my family of origin lived in Flint (1963).

I still haven’t heard from the cellist I am supposedly accompanying a week from today. I promised Mary Miller, the church’s office administrator, that I would have something nailed down by Monday morning regarding the music in this upcoming memorial service. After I blog, I will email this dude. At first gently, and then if I still receive no response, I plan to email him what I will put in the bulletin. I will probably not put any titles of cello pieces in the program, but simply leave spots for him to play like “Offertory” and “Postlude.” It would be nicer to have the titles in there. And we may well get them later in the week as people begin to arrive for this service. In the meantime, I think it’s only fair to Mary Miller to have a clear working solution so that she can print up a program when she has time.

It’s been about a week since I have returned to daily piano technique practice. A day or so ago, Eileen asked me if it was helping. I told her it was very hard to tell in the short run, that this sort of practice for me is a more gradual kind of improvement. But I have noticed that the scales are getting back to where I like them.

I am reading People Get Ready: The Fight Against a Jobless Economy and a Citizenless Democracy by McChesney and Nichols. It is excellent. It was a good introduction to their ideas to hear them talk about it in a YouTube video.  Unlike Tragedy and Farce: How the American Media Sell Wars, Spin Elections, and Destroy Democracy, People Get Ready is heavily footnoted. I find that helpful. The prose is not terribly offputting, but the ideas are scholarly and backed up by references.

In their YouTube talk McChesney talks about proposing People Get Ready to the publisher as a book about the reemergence of Facism in the 21st century. The publisher was adamantly opposed to it at first. A few months ago she contacted them and said she owed them an apology about the relevance and acceptance of this part of their topic (see the Trump campaign for the Republican nomination for presidency).

For the record, here is what they write in a footnote on p. 35.

“For our purposes, we prefer Robert O. Paxton’s approach [to defining Facism].  Calling fascism ‘the major political innovation of the twentieth century,’ he regards it as ‘dictatorship against the left amidst popular enthusiasm.’ Mass support is a defining feature, which is why the run-of-the-mill police state does not qualify. ‘Fascism,’ he writes, ‘was a new invention created by the use of ritual, carefully stage-managed ceremonies, and intensely charged rhetoric.’ See Robert O. Paxton, The Anatomy of Fascism (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2004), pp. 3, 16.

When ‘Both Sides’ Are Covered in Verizon Strike, Bosses’ Side Is Heard More — FAIR

Listening to the CounterSpin podcast from FAIR (Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting) has become part of my routine. Listening to the podcast mentioning the above article, I thought about how Russians approached Pravda and other Russian state media in the 20th century. It’s not quite that way in the USA unless you are uncritical, then it is.

9 Things Singers Need to Know About Their Bodies – Total Vocal Freedom –

This is pretty good article about its subject. I “shared” it on facebooger and tagged choir members and choral conductors I know.

Speaking of choral conductors, Shaw is a hero of mine. I probably won’t get access to this documentary but I admire the fact that it was made.

A Shakespeare Anniversary Brings Pomp and Plays to Stratford-upon-Avon – The New York Times

In one of our England trips we made it to Stratford-upon-Avon. I am a Shakespeare fan but the city was disappointing in its Disneyland approach. I liked looking at his house in the woods (way outside of town) and his house in the city, however.

Eileen is off to spend the day on a road trip to Forma where she buys her weaving stuff. She is going with a friend. I have the day pretty much off and need it. I still haven’t heard back from the cellist for the upcoming memorial service scheduled for a week from tomorrow. I think I will email him tomorrow if I haven’t heard from him by then. Mary Miller, the office manager, wants to finalize the bulletin for the memorial service by Monday. This means I need to know exactly what this dude wants to play and plug in to the service. Doable but a bit unnerving that he has let it go this late.  Not sure what to make of this.

I finished typing in my reading notes to Tragedy and Farce by Nichols and McChesney this morning. I also started Chapter 4 of my Greek text. I have worked through the readings of this long chapter already, but now I plan to be more thorough about studying the grammar. The texts say it should take about 7 weeks to do this chapter. I’m thinking it will be longer for this old solitary dude. Maybe I should consider taking a classical Greek course somewhere.

I took Mom to the doctor’s office yesterday (she’s fine). I was surprised how quickly my energy dissipated after that.  I did get a call from my doctor’s office that my lab results of my blood tests came back and were all normal. I guess this means I don’t have lead poisoning. They still haven’t posted the results to my online account yet.

I managed a bit of organ practice before my violinist showed up to practice. She consented to play on Pentecost at Grace so that will be fun. My cellist has already said she could do it. We’re singing this fun little Irish piece  which has a nice obbligato instrumental part which sounds cool on the violin. I’m seriously thinking of arranging the closing hymn, “There’s a Sweet Sweet Spirit” by Doris Akers, for piano, violin and cello. I could do one that could accompanying congregational singing and then one that could be the postlude. We’ll see.

I have been wondering if my fatigue is connected to my lack of exercise. I haven’t done any walking for the last four days. Maybe I’ll do some today. Maybe I’ll look around for a treadmill machine as well.

Law and Order Is at the Heart of the China-Taiwan Deportation Dispute | TIME

I learned more from this article than initial reporting on this story in the NYT and other news sites.

Rare medieval plainsong is discovered in Norfolk – News – Eastern Daily Press

Cool

Get to Know the Historical Figures on the $5, $10 and $20 Bills – The New York Times

Helpful collection of info on people going on the currency.

I recommend clicking on this and listening as you read today’s blog.

Choir rehearsal last night was challenging in a way I expected. People are not showing up. It’s typical for this time of year. It’s frustrating that many of the absent people are doing music related things in the community: playing in a local orchestra, attending lectures regarding an upcoming performance of Brahms’s Requiem.

These sort of absences have more impact in a small group. But I try to make it a good experience for the people who show up. I have two new anthems scheduled for the last few weeks of the season. One is Moses Hogan’s arrangement of “I Know the Lord’s Laid His Hands on Me.” The other is a modern Anglican sounding piece, “O Love! O Life,” by Stephen Casurella, words by John Greenleaf Whittier. I spent most of last night’s rehearsal on the latter.

Chatted with my boss, Jen Adams, on the phone yesterday. Last week she suggested that we schedule a phone call this week to touch base. She sounds chipper and healing. That’s nice.

I continue to emphasize piano technique in my daily practice. I think I was surprised that my scales were not as fresh as they used to be. I also discovered that for the first time I can easily do Hanon the way it’s designed, that is: moving directly from one exercise to another without stopping by using my tablet and having it scroll. This is satisfying.

I still haven’t heard back from the April 30th Memorial service cellist, but it hasn’t been too long. In the meantime, I have added some of the pieces he mentioned to my practice sessions. It’s just lucky that he asked for the Brahms that my cellist and I have been practicing.

Well that’s enough for an exhausted Thursday morning. See you on the funway!

Unfortunately, my two days off this week, Monday and Tuesday, were disrupted by meltdowns. Monday, I got enmeshed in thinking about bills and quickly got off balance. Tuesday, I got drawn in to a discussion of an upcoming memorial service with my curate and the family’s ideas about the service.

I am finding more and more people who are educated are also limited in their abilities to think and communicate.

I have been communicating with my curate about an upcoming memorial service via email for a while. I am beginning to suspect that she is hearing emotion in  my emails, but missing actual content.

I have offered to meet with her, but she hasn’t responded about this.

Yesterday in desperation, I sent her an email outlining the memorial service, plugging in realistic ideas from the family. She seemed grateful for this. Meanwhile I received an email from the family member who is a cellist and who is planning to play.

This is where I seriously got off balance. He suggested all kinds of classical literature for this service which is only ten days away: Beethoven piano sonata, Faure Sicilienn for cello and piano, Brahms cello sonata movement. After making sure it was okay with the curate (via email) I sent the cellist an email outlining how we might possibly include some of the music he had mentioned in an initial email. My anxiety was high about performing some of this music, but at the same time I quite approve of the choices. I hope I can help shape this service into one that works well. I am feeling the absence of my boss keenly in this exchange.

My frustration was exacerbated by the church’s wifi which kept kicking me off while I was trying to work. By late afternoon I was a mess.

On the other hand, I spent some good hours working on my piano technique and choosing some fun upcoming organ music. The music always calms me down and centers me.

People do not.

Jupe’s notes on Tragedy and Farce by Nichols and McChesney

So I finished this book yesterday. Very impressive. I began making a doc of my notes about the book. This is a link to the ongoing doc.

When a Senator Passes Judgment on a Chief Justice – The New York Times

Interesting article by Adam Liptak. Nice quote: “Mr. Grassley’s logic, if that is the right word, was that conservative decisions are apolitical but that liberal ones are partisan.”

46 Killer Android Tips for Google Fans | PCMag.com

Haven’t worked my way through these yet. One of them already didn’t work as described. Sheesh.