My church owns a full set of Hymns for Choirs arranged for mixed voices and organ by David Willcocks. This past Sunday we used two of them for choral elaborations with the congregation: “Blest are the pure in heart” and “Ye watchers and ye holy ones.”

We didn’t sing them from the books however. In the books they are laid out like this:

I guess great minds work alike, because after a discussion about how choir members found it difficult to follow the parts on the page, both I and a choir member made copies which separated out the voices.

I felt these two elaborations were very successful Sunday. Part of the trick is playing the organ soft enough for the cong to really hear them as they sing but strong enough to support choir and congregational singing. My experience of many organists who do this kind of this is that they play slightly too loud to help the situation.

So I’ve been looking through the Willocks book. There are several more of these that fit tunes that we regularly sing. I have made a list and this morning I began working on putting them into choral score.

It doesn’t take long to do one. So I’m thinking of gradually preparing them for future use this way. I did one this morning.

On another note (heh), Shirley Turkle has me thinking about the concept of privacy which she talks about in a chapter of her Conversation book called “The Public Square: what do we forget when we talk through machines?.”

First she explains how little privacy we have online. The she points out despite being “onstage,” it feels private. This leads not to a society where people are afraid that they are being constantly monitored (Orwellian), but one in which our preferences expressed online are fed back to us in algorhythmic suggestions for what brands and information to consume. This “bubble” then leaves us no room to ponder in solitude, instead we live with a distorted online mirror image of ourselves.

Turkle tells a story about how her Grandmother took her to the main public library in Brooklyn. They made a day of it and brought along sandwiches to picnic and talk. Her Grandmother explained to her that her choice of books to check out was her very private business. No one was able to check to see what she was reading. Likewise, her Grandmother had explained to her since she was small that her mail was also private.

In the Europe of her Grandmother’s parents, the government “used the mail to spy on people.”

I have long thought that online information is accessible to governments and businesses.

I recall the Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick obviously acting like he had privacy and texting his lover. His texts were used as  evidence of corruption and he was convicted of fraud, extortion, bribery and other stuff. I remember at the time thinking he was pretty naive about phone messages.

But now when I pair up the idea of privacy with solitude or room for thought, it gives me pause.

What kind of a bubble are we building unbeknownst to ourselves and how is it limiting our understanding of our life and society?

I was able to talk to the Jenkins/Daum Beijing crew this morning via Skype. I was foolishly surprised how much this raised my spirits. I do like my kids and their spice very  much. Fun to chat. Fun to see Alex. The above pic is one they sent via text. After our conversation I figured out to do a screenshot with my tablet. Next time I’ll take some of the conversation.

I have a new writer to read: George Saunders.

Nathan Lane: By the Book – The New York Times

Nathan Lane mentions him in the above article. I have begun to see these “by the book” interviews as a bit bogus. They seem pretty canned. Sometimes I suspect they have been written via email. But I am a fan of Nathan Lane.

I just belatedly read “Tenth of December,” by George Saunders, and was totally blown away. If Raymond Carver, Rod Serling and O. Henry raised a child and damaged him slightly but somehow touched him with a little of their genius, you might get George Saunders. Of course, you could also wind up with Donald Trump. You never know what will happen with those three-way author child-rearing experiences.

I was picking up a book for my Mom yesterday. I inter-library loan books for her now routinely since she has read most of the books that interest her at the local library. I remembered that I had bookmarked several authors that I want to read. Saunders was the one whose books I found on the shelf.

I began with this short story from In Persuasion Nation.

I Can Speak ™ by George Saunders — HCC Learning Web PDF link

This is a hilarious story to read with Shirley Turkle’s research into robots in mind. In the story a salesman is writing a letter to a dissatisfied customer of the I Can Speak ™. At first we aren’t sure what the product is. But we quickly learn that it’s a sort of robotic mask that covers the face of babies and simulates them making conversation way before they can do anything but make inarticulate noises.

So glad to have found this writer.

I continue to play through and rehearse Robert Schumann’s piano music. I find him very satisfying artistically. This is a bit of a change fore me. I have scheduled one of his pedal piano pieces to play on the organ this Sunday as the postlude. I can remember making fun of these pieces or strictly listening to a student of mine make fun of these pieces years ago.

Now I’m learning one.

I was playing some lovely pieces of his yesterday: “In der Nacht” and “Warum?” from his Phantasiestück, opus 12, when I began to wonder what he thought of Mendelssohn’s “Songs without words.” These pieces resemble Schumann’s own lovely lieder (which I have been listening to a lot lately).

I googled their dates this morning and I did not realize how contemporaneous these two composers were, having been born within a year of each other.

I pulled down my collection of Schumann’s essays and lo and behold Schumann reviewed Mendelssohn’s many collections of this genre.

I have listened to colleagues disparage Mendelssohn in general and the “Song without words” in specific.

I quietly enjoy playing Mendelssohn as well as listening to his symphonic work.

Schumann seems to have loved his work. But of course Schumann goes raving made before he dies.

I still feel like I’m in pretty good company.

I finished another chapter in Finnegans Wake this morning. This feels like an accomplishment. I now have recently read 9 out of the 17 chapters. Using resource material helps immensely. This morning I glossed over a section that Campbell presented an astonishing and beautiful explanation for.

I’m still stressed. The stress is deepening into interior thought and I’m being a bit more quiet (believe or don’t).

The last two Sundays I have felt that I and my volunteers have sort of “hit it out the park.” The quality has been high in execution. This past Sunday, I came up with a strategy in interpretation that helped singers sing like they understood the Latin text of “Tu Pauperum Refugium” by Josquin.

I just checked on YouTube and noticed that it indicates that I listened to six videos of this piece. They are marked “Already Watched” since I’m logged in on YouTube. I quickly listened to bits of them and realized that none of them are something I want to post here.

They seem to miss the meaning of the text and substitute ethereal sort of visceral interpretations that are beautiful but too objective for me after yesterday.

In order to help the choir sing with understanding (or at least appearing to understand what they are singing), I marked sections dynamically (loudness or softness) and with articulation (connected or less connected and even accented).

If we hit it out of the park yesterday and on the previous Sunday, I feel like I was the baseball. By that I mean both Sundays left me more depressed and deflated than usual.

The week has been stressful as well. Struggling to come up with new anthems at the last minute on the day of the rehearsal contributed to this. The difficulty of leading a rehearsal of head strong people who often miss my instruction.

There was an added difficulty this week. One of my tenors is a retired English Prof. Rev Jen has allowed him to proof the weekly bulletin on Thursdays. But he’s not supposed to make theological comments, only corrections.

This week he became very entranced with the concept that the anthem, “Tu Pauperum Refugium,” almost quotes Jesus’s comment that he was the Way, the Truth, and the Life.

I submitted an English translation for the bulletin which he then proceed to reedit. I received an email from my office manager about it on Thursday. She said that she would hold off publishing until I had to chance to look at it.

This meant Friday morning found me not relaxing and recuperating but standing in the church office and trying to sort through this dude’s corrections.

I have a difficulty because people come at me like this, often in person, in ways I find very unhelpful. I stave them off (like that soprano in the Wednesday rehearsal this week).

But I also need to evaluate the content of their criticisms as well as the unhelpful emotional package of disapproval.

I am well aware that this is as much about my stuff as theirs. However, my feelings are genuine. The trick is to listen past the annoyance and take good suggestions.

This takes enormous energy, often laying in bed in the dark thinking and reevaluating.

Friday of this past week, I had to look carefully at the corrections the English prof made. In the end I decided he wasn’t seeing the same piece of music I was.

I mentioned to Eileen that my struggle with this man (whom I have known for a while) is that for him, his academic understanding trumps artistic aims. And for me it is the complete opposite even though I try to integrate scholarship into my understandings and performances.

And it takes emotional and intellectual energy and stamina.

Once again I find myself adjusting my morning routine. I have skipped Finnegans Wake and Greek to blog. But before this, I listened to the “On the Media” Podcast.

I have been using an Android interface that I find very confusing. It’s called Podcast Addict. The problem may be that I began with too many subscriptions and then had trouble weeding through to the ones I wanted to listen to at any given time.

So this morning after doing the dishes and making coffee, I sat and listened to “On the Media” on Podcast addict and downloaded a different podcast app to try called Podcast Republic.

So far it seems a bit cleaner and easier to use but as I say that might be because I now know which podcasts I will be more likely to use (Reading Finnegans Wake and On the Media are the main ones).

After this I played through today’s anthem many times, thinking about interp and trying to make sure I can accurately double voices on the piano.

I had a bit of an insurrection at the end of Wednesday rehearsal. One soprano pointed out that standing in the aisle in front of the choir area is not working. We are blocking the aisle and parishioners insist on wading through the choir disrupting them while singing.

I find group problem solving in a choir rehearsal disrupts the rehearsal procedure and as usual did not respond to her other than to acknowledge that she had a point and that I wasn’t necessarily going to change.

The next day I thought about it and decided she’s probably right.

So this morning I am going to have the sopranos and tenors stand behind the piano on the stage and the basses and altos on the floor on either side of the piano. We’ll see how that works.

Yesterday Eileen went with me to church and stuffed the anthems for Christmas. Choosing these anthems took a weight off my shoulders. I have been pretty stressed lately and seem to react predictably by over functioning (up early on Sunday morning going through the anthem for a half hour on the piano).

Review: Orquesta Buena Vista Social Club Bids Adiós, With Notes of Loss – The NYT

This is a sad review of a performance of a dwindling group of musicians. It did, however, point me to a 2015 release. Here’s the YouTube playlist, however I listened to it on Spotify.

I’m knocking off now to give myself some more time to study and read before church.

Blogging a bit late this morning since I was reading and studying right up until Eileen got up. Then we had breakfast and boggled.

I have been thinking about the ideas of attention and intention. In her book, Reclaiming Conversation, Turkle talks a lot about attention and its ebbing. If I’m lost in my phone, obviously my attention is usually not who I am with or where I am.

But more than this, we are losing our ability to attend. 

Turkle tells a great story about Maryanne Wolf, a professor and cognitive neuroscientist who studies brain function and reading. Wolf wanted one evening to relax with a book she read when she was young, The Glass Bead Game.

This story got my attention because the book in the story is a very important to my own development. I have read it at least twice.

But Wolf found that she was unable to focus on the book and follow it the way she had previously been able to. She ascribed this to her use of the Internet and set about to systematically get her ability to concentrate (attend) back. It took her four weeks of work but she did it.

More about her later. I was thinking about the implications of this loss of attention around the idea of listening to music. If people are not using deep attending/listening/thought in their lives, it is no wonder they don’t seem to appreciate or notice live music.

I hadn’t thought of this before.

I’ve also been thinking about the benefit of an actual printed page in a book versus on one of my devices. I am considering purchasing a copy of the second edition of my Greek Textbook which contains the Greek for reading. Right now I own the Kindle of this book and purchased it because the printed books are so expensive.

I own the first edition in book form. l have found myself returning to the first edition for my daily study. I’m not sure why, but I find that I read the Greek differently on a page than on a screen even though in both cases I tend to read it out loud.

In her 2010 article, “Our Deep Reading Brain: Its Digital Evolution Poses Questions,” it is the same Marryanne Wolf who was reading Hesse that makes some observations (which Turkle puts in a footnote in her book).

I think they are worth sharing.

My major worry is that, confronted with a digital glut of immediate information that requires and receives less and less intellectual effort, many new (and many older) readers will have neither the time nor the motivation to think through the possible layers of meaning in what they read. The omnipresence of multiple distractions for attention—and the brain’s own natural attraction to novelty—contribute to a mindset toward reading that seeks to reduce information to its lowest conceptual denominator. Sound bites, text bites, and mind bites are a reflection of a culture that has forgotten or become too distracted by and too drawn to the next piece of new information to allow itself time to think.

Maryanne Wolfe

“The act of going beyond the text to analyze, infer and think new thoughts is the product of years of formation. It takes time, both in milliseconds and years, and effort to learn to read with deep, expanding comprehension and to execute all these processes as an adult expert reader. When it comes to building this reading circuit in a brain that has no preprogrammed setup for it, there is no genetic guarantee that any individual novice reader will ever form the expert reading brain circuitry that most of us form. The reading circuit’s very plasticity is also its Achilles’ heel. It can be fully fashioned over time and fully implemented when we read, or it can be short-circuited—either early on in its formation period or later, after its formation, in the execution of only part of its potentially available cognitive resources. 

Because we literally and physiologically can read in multiple ways, how we read—and what we absorb from our reading—will be influenced by both the content of our reading and the medium we use.” Maryanne Wolf

I recommend the whole article. I love it that she quotes Proust (another favorite of mine whom I have read over and over). 

Daughter Sarah put a link to a YouTube video in the comments yesterday. She said we should Skype about it and that would be fun. But in the meantime,  I want to do a little thinking out loud here about it.

First, here’s the video.

So the message seems to me to be that empathy is desirable and that sympathy is unfeeling. As I said yesterday, I am entertaining rethinking my idea that empathy is problematic.

Before check the OED for some sentences and history on these words, I want to point out some problems with empathy. A quick google of  René Brown reveals that she is a social worker with three degrees in the subject. Family system theory is small discipline in psychology. When I heard Friedman talk, it was obvious to me that is also not a widely accepted way of thinking.

Beyond Friedman, I have used ideas I gleaned from him to help me with my own behavior. Specifically in terms of my individuation, or understanding of where my personality ends and others begin. It is easy to miss this boundary. When other people do this to me, I identify this kind of behavior as globbing. People who seem not to be telling the difference between themselves and me attribute motivations and understandings to me that are more theirs than mine.

It is in this kind of context, that I think empathy can be dangerous. Brown’s ideas work with people who are clear to themselves and others about who they are. But often when dealing with troubled people, the trouble is chronic and it is easy to slip into behavior like advising, helping or in the case of the video reacting with unhelpful responses that begin with “at least” or reacting by trying “to make things better”

The video says that the way to make things better is “connection.” I think what makes things better is “presence.” What’s the difference and is there one?

Sometimes it’s tricky to try to connect without helping. I have found that knowing what to say to someone is less important than simply being present with them, sometimes not saying anything.

Also, in my mind is the idea of Rogerian listening skills. Carl Rogers entered my life via the “I hear you saying” movement that my parents bought into. It was annoying, but I think they had good intentions and were acting of love and trying to be good parents.

Later I was taught the technique by a psychologist in a weekend retreat arranged by the priest I was working for himself and his staff.

I learned that when someone is speaking to me and trying to sort through feelings and ideas and maybe even problem solve out loud, it can be helpful to them to feed their ideas back to them as unfettered by my own stuff as is possible and with honesty.

This seems like a kind of “presence” to me.

Finally for what it’s worth, the word “empathy” is a much younger word than the word “sympathy” in the English language.

I seem to recall that Friedman made this point. The OED shows the first recorded use of “empathy” this way:

1895   E. L. Hinman tr. K. Lasswitz in Philos. Rev. 4 673   For the capacity factor of psychophysical energy the name ‘empathy’ is proposed. Empathy is then a physical quantity, a physiological brain-function, and is defined as the relation of the whole energy at any change of the central organ to the intensity.

“Sympathy” this way:

1578   J. Lyly Euphues f. 9,   Doth not the sympathy of manners, make the coniunction of mindes?

We probably need both words and concepts to be complete humans.

Just my opinion. Comments/corrections welcome here (or later on Skype, Sarah J.)

I scheduled too much yesterday.

Not all of it was in my control but some of it was. At 5:20 or so, Eileen called me at church. I was at the organ working on my postlude for this Sunday. I was exhausted but thriving on adrenaline and sheer willful discipline. She wondered what was taking me so long since I had been there since after my 2 PM Ballet class. She was showered and ready to go out to eat. I told her I would quit and come home and we could go out before choir rehearsal.

At this point in the day, I realized that I was beaten. One of the things I scheduled badly was working on choosing and reproducing anthems on the same day as a rehearsal, classes and meetings at church. And of course I tangled with the copy machine, fucking up one of the two sided large ledger pages of one of the anthems.

Rehearsal went alright despite my fatigue and the choir’s usual behavior. It is often like herding cats. I tried to end rehearsal with a lighter moment, inviting singers to grab a percussion instrument and experiment with singing and playing my Jazz Mass. Several people left, one of whom also arrived late. But those that stayed to the bitter end seemed to be having fun.

I was thinking about George Eliot this morning and the fact that she published 12 books of poetry. I don’t know her poetry. She was the author of the text of the anthem last Sunday. Here’s a link to the poem from which the composer took the words of the anthem. I think it’s a good poem, but more on that later.

I pulled out my beloved Oxford Book of English verse. No poems by her there. “Didn’t make the cut” I said to myself. Then I looked in another anthology. Nope. Finally I turned to my Father’s multi-volume Anthology of the World’s Best Poems.

This is a treasured item in my poetry library. My Dad’s Dad and Mom gave it to him on his 24th birthday in 1953.

George Eliot was on page 2058. 2058! I hadn’t thought of it before but this multi-volume collection is over 3,000 pages long.

Markham, the edito,r was surprisingly dismissive of Eliot as a poet: “…. though possessed of great intellect and sensibility, [Eliot] is not, in respect to metrical expression, a poet.”

Harsh words, dude. Then I looked and discovered that the only poem in  the anthology was “O May I Join the Choir Invisible!” linked above. Markham does say that this poem is good enough to be worth all the rest of her poetry and quotes another dude named Stedman: “it is the outburst of an exalted soul foregoing personal immortality and compensated by a vision of the growth and happiness of the human race.”

I then reread the poem. Hmm. I don’t think I understood this poem until this morning. It seems to be about one of my favorite topics and that is the communion one can have with fine minds of the past in books and music. Cool. And an excellent topic for an anthem at Eucharist in my opinion. I wonder if anyone else at church noticed this meaning. I know one of the tenors told me he clicked on the link I sent the choir and read the poem. He did look at me kind of funny, but he does that.

Faux Friendship – The Chronicle of Higher Education

So today’s links come from footnotes to Shirley Turkle’s Reclaiming Conversation. This 2009 article is already talking about how friendship is affected by social media.

At Harvard, Rowan Williams lectures on the paradoxes of empathy | Harvard Mag

I looked for some lectures Rowan Williams did on empathy that Turkle quotes from. I am ready to reconsidering the concept, empathy. I began to value sympathy more than empathy after listening to Friedman talk about both concepts. Empathy in his view (from last century) is “with, at, in another’s passion, feelings (pathy)”

Whereas sympathy, is “together, alongside, another’s feelings, passion”

The distinction is critical to his concept of non anxious presence. But Turkle has me reconsidering. I’m probably going to check out Rowan Williams lectures:

The Paradoxes of Empathy | Mahindra Humanities Center

Shirley Turkle is helping me understand some behavior that troubles me both online and in real life.

Generally I often find that people I talk to are not familiar with many things that are at the center of my life: certain writers and composers, concepts, and the like.

I remember as a much younger man realizing that not everyone was interested in the fact that Chopin was so fastidious he rarely removed his kid gloves.

Now I have a better idea how many people are interested in stuff I am: my few remaining companions and probably some of you who take the time read my daily ramblings occasionally.

But since I have become active on Facebooger I see more online bad behavior like name calling, ridiculing others, using words inaccurately, and what we used to call “flaming.”

I have thought about the fact that online communication cuts off the most of inter human communication which I understand to be non verbal. This means the emotions in what we say are sheered off. What remains is often a sort of Rorschach test of the person reading the online communication (I include phone texting here).

I just checked and I have 417 “friends” on Facebooger. I use this social interface in very many ways. One important way for me is to connect to my family both close family members and extended ones.

I count 27 Jenkins family members and 26 Hatch family members (Eileen’s side of the fam).

This means I have about 350 other connections on Facebooger. There are 78 people that I have invited to be members of the Grace Music Ministry page.

Several of these are Jenkins people as well. I try to add any member of Grace Church on Facebooger to this group if they accept both my “friend” request and the invitation to be part of this group.

But I use “Facebooger” as a way to connect to other kinds of stuff as well. Like order valium online thailand everybody else I connect to several layers of friends I have had over the years at college and in other contexts. This is nice.

I also am in many groups that relate to my church work: AGO Facebook pages, Church musician pages, Episcopal Church musician pages. This offers me a chance to track conversations around topics I am thinking about. Sometimes I wade in.

These conversation feeds often remind me of “comments” on news sites. Here again I read more than I contribute.

Turkle describes for me a social world of young people where social media connections, especially via their smart phones are replacing face-to-face encounters and damaging their socialization as people.

Here’s a passage that struck me:
“We have learned that people who would never allow themselves to be bullies in person feel free to be aggressive and vulgar online. The presence of a face and a voice reminds us that we are talking to a person. Rules of civility usually apply. But when we communicate on screens , we experience a kind of disinhibition. Research tells us that social media decrease self-control just as they cause a momentary spike in self-confidence. This means that online we are tempted to behave in ways that part of us knows will hurt others, but we seem to stop caring.” p. 166 of Turkle’s Reclaiming Conversation, emphasis added

This explains some of the online behavior that I have found perplexing in my extended family, friends and strangers. People are just people, of course. And in my experience, bad behavior doesn’t happen too often in my groups. But Turkle is asking how the new tech is changing (has changed?) us. And I wonder if people’s insensitivity and recalcitrance online is partly caused by this.

I like the fact that she is coming from the point of view of a sociologist and licensed clinical psychologist. The way she observes and analyzes behavior helps me.

It’s election day. I shamefacedly admit that I put off researching today’s election until today. I was pleasantly surprised that it was easy to find my ballot online. I researched the candidates. One guy just started his Facebooger page in Sept, has made only vague statements with little content and one actual misspelling on Facebooger. His opponent (a much older dude) has been on Facebooger for a while. While it’s a weak way to figure this sort of thing out, his activity convinced me to vote for him. Neither dude seems to have a website.

One of the mayoral candidate’s husband is a local music teacher. I was already friends with him on Facebooger. I think I might vote for him, but not his wife. Her opponent is stronger in my opinion.

Of course as I looked over the music guy’s feed I once again wondered why the local musicians practically shun me (not you, Rhonda). The face that I am eccentric cannot account for all of it. I think some of it is not being part of the local in crowds (Reformed Church, Calvin grads — most of the people running for local office today are Calvin grads… the music guy met his wife the candidate when they were both undergrads at Calvin, thank you Facebooger).

But I also think that I obstinately lead with content not necessarily seeking the perception of competence by others, just the competence itself.

Or who knows?

I made another meme for Facebooger.

These things are easy to do. First I read or run across a quote or a concept I would like to present on Facebooger. Then I search images copyrighted for reuse, download them and add my words.

I am enjoying the Turkle book on conversation and hope to finish it before its due date at the local library. It’s a new book and I’m sure I won’t be able to renew it. Rhonda implied that she herself put a hold on it after reading about here.

As I knew I would, I enjoyed the class discussion around historical Modern Dance choreographers. It is interesting to me to listen to young people. I like throwing in my two cents.

Yesterday I was talking about the American genius of eclecticism and realized that a significant portion of people in the room weren’t American. How cool is that? I grabbed the young and very bright person from Germany after class and assured her that I thought that there was such a thing as the German genius and also Japanese (we have two people from Japan in class, one is a visiting prof and one is very young and just arrived from Japan this semester).

In fact, I think all human cultures have their unique genius. The gratifying thing is the young woman from Germany completely understood my enthusiasms, both for the geniuses of culture and the heightened sense of interdisciplinary relationships existing now with fewer sectarian dogmas (Artists and educators often do not seem as narrow to me now as they did in my youth. I don’t think this is all me.)

Well that’s enough for today.

‘John le Carré: The Biography,’ and Frederick Forsyth’s ‘The Outsider’ – The New York Times

This review inspired me to return to le Carré. I looked on Netflix for some movies with Alec Guinness as Smiley. No dice. But I did find one on YouTube and watched the first part last night.

Smiley’s People (1982) Part One – YouTube

Once again I have changed my morning routine. This morning I wanted to submit the material for Sunday’s bulletin (which I am trying but failing to do earlier than this, say more like almost two weeks before it is published). In addition I got up mulling over the fact that I needed to spend an hour or two researching dance people for my 11 AM class. The idea that I was going to spend a good part of my morning doing this had me thinking about whether I have allowed myself to be exploited by the Hope Dance department.

I have of course been complicit in any exploitation. It reminds me in part of how church musicians were being paid when I arrived here in Holland Michigan in the late eighties. I don’t know if I have the energy to address this particularly little injustice. The dance department itself is already sort of the bad boy of Hope College. They have wormed their way into the institution and seem to remain on the outside of good administration.

This morning I realized that one of the reasons I am not too upset about leaving this work is that it pays so shitty. I hadn’t thought much about that since I told myself that for me a large part of the remuneration was the “perks” of having access to excellent online resources.

But free and/or reasonably priced resources on the internet seem to be improving. There are people in academia who understand the problems with firewalls around knowledge and even champion free access.

So now it’s after 7 AM and I have my little tasks pretty much done. I did most of my research about the dancers on Wikipedia. How about that? I don’t know the good online academic scholarly dance tools. The music tools mentioned some of the people I want to be able to talk about semi-intelligently (or as I started thinking about it this morning. like a guy getting paid $25 an hour to teach college and improvising music).

I think I’m ready. The task was to provide some comments on the relationship to music of the dance philosophy of these people: Isadora Duncan, Ted Shawn, Ruth St. Denis, Martha Graham, José Limon, Paul Taylor and Merce Cunningham. All of these people are dead (some long dead) except Paul Taylor. Each dancer in class was given one of these people to look up. Today we all talk about it.

Yesterday I spent the entire All Saints service light headed and running on Adrenalin expecting at any moment to have to run to the bathroom. The service went very well despite these conditions. I came home more tired than usual.

Sunday afternoons find me deflated usually. Yesterday was worse than usual. My head was spinning.  By evening I felt well enough to end the day with a martini and some wine. This morning I feel fine.

Daughter Sarah called from England and we chatted with her online for a while. That helped a bit. Then we walked to say hello to my Mom. I’m going to quit blogging now and do some of my regular morning reading and studying. See you on the funway.

Gloria Steinem: By the Book – The New York Times

Steinem mentions a bunch of books that sound interesting.

How 4 Federal Lawyers Paved the Way to Kill Osama bin Laden – The New York Times

Man o man, it disturbs me greatly that we as a country continue to rationalize our evil.

Handel Museum Opens a Hendrix Half – The New York Times

On a lighter note, Handel and Hendrix share a museum and a tiny bit of history. How cool is that?

Academia’s Rejection of Diversity – The New York Times

Rejection of conservatives leads to less quality. Shockerini.

I just reset my clocks on the wall. You probably can’t see it, but they are marked (in order from left to right) Beijing, Calif, Holland MI USA, and Engl. I have kids in all these place (except here of course).

I am feeling a bit better than yesterday. Before I turned in I had body aches like a body cold. I slept pretty well and woke up without a tummy ache. Aren’t you dying for the jupe body report?

I did some serious reading last night. Eileen and I made jack o lanterns but she took charge of the trick or treaters (something I usually have done in the past). I bought too much candy (something I have also done in the past).

Quote for the day: “Relationships deepen not because we necessarily say anything in particular but because we are invested enough to show up for another conversation.”

I like that. Shirley Turkle said it in her book on conversation. So you can pretty much depend on the fact that she means showing up in presence and not online, text or phone call.

Relationships between parents and children are different I think. They need nurturing but we all carry our parents with us to the grave whether we outlive them or not.

I’m still a bit shaky this morning. I’m wondering how church will go. I usually do a bit of improv to make the opening hymn work (For all the Saints – choir on a couple verse, women and children on one verse, low voices on another). Instead of improvising sections between stanzas I experimented last night with playing sections from an anthem from which I am drawing the choral verses and the descants. I can do that if I don’t feel well.

Harvard Law Library Readies Trove of Decisions for Digital Age – 

I always think this kind of thing is neat.

Eileen had several days this week where she didn’t feel well. She thought she was having a bit of food poisoning, but we couldn’t quite figure it out. Last night my tummy wasn’t right for much of the night. I don’t feel too bad but it’s just enough to feel like I need to stay near a toilet. Great.

I hope this goes away today. I’m taking Meijer Metamucil

So I slept in a bit this morning. Got up and did laundry, cleaned the kitchen and made coffee despite feeling a bit off.

I’m blogging late again. Eileen and I played boggle after our late breakfast. Life is rough.

Rhonda and I had our first meeting about improvisation yesterday. I proposed that instead of paying me (as she originally offered) that she could help me with some questions I have about my organ playing. Yesterday I asked her to listen to the balance of a trio section of piece I am playing tomorrow. Very helpful.

After talking to her about what she has in mind, I think I can probably help her a bit. This is surprising to me. But what she’s looking to do at this time is to demystifying improvising a bit I think. With her skills and talent that shouldn’t be too hard.

Another benefit of meeting with Rhonda is that it will give us a structure to stay in touch a bit more since both of us seem so busy.

Rhonda told me about several musicians she is listening to these days.

I asked her what she listens to for fun, like for cooking. She mentioned the Punch Brothers.

I’m pretty sure I’ve mentioned them here before. Anyway, I recognize them.

But I didn’t recognize Sylvan Esso.

Rhonda said that she and her husband Mark saw them live. I’m always looking for new music. This is cool.

Later she texted me that she is learning this piece.

I Spotified this, but like this YouTube version by Bastian Fuchs better than what came up on Spotify.

I’ve never heard of this composer but I like this piece.

And while I’m embedding videos here’s a new Snarky Puppy one.

I haven’t made it all the way through but I do like the music of this group.

 Matt Haimovitz and Bach, Colonizing Columbia’s Campus – The New York Times

I have been way behind on my New York Times so these links aren’t too fresh. I bookmarked this one because it addresses an experience that I have had, namely making splendid music in a hostile environment.

The Telephone’s Muted Emergence – The New York Times

A little history about the word.

How Texas Teaches History – The New York Times

Initially I skipped this article when it first came out. I could see that it was about misinformation in history textbooks in Texas. This is not a new concept for me. However when I read a letter to the editor in Wednesday’s NYT (that’s as far as I am in trying to catch up), I was intrigued about the use of the passive and active voice and its relationship to obfuscating stuff.

On page 246 of my copy of Finnegans Wake, Joyce makes a reference to the collection of essays Our ExcFactification For Incamination of Work in Progress. I was surprised by this and began rooting around for my copy. It took me a couple of days to find it. I had it filed under Beckett.

Shirley Turkle footnotes this appearance of Louie C. K. in her book on conversation. It’s quite good.

I am blogging late in the day once again so I’m ending here.

I made a meme from a Turkle quote. I’m putting it and the video here and on Facebooger.

Stress is creeping back in my life (although my blood pressure remains good). Yesterday was an example. I was late for two things (I hate being late), a meeting with my boss and my second ballet class.

I am finding ballet class more stressful. Julie is weirdly being very nice to me. I’m sure we see this situation differently—-the fact that she is choosing to lay me off for a semester. She did email me the names of the dance people so that I can research them a bit and sound half way intelligent in a class discussion on Monday.

I enjoy being included in this way. But I find it incongruous that Julie seems to value my work so much, but at the same time does not see a need to include me in a semester.

I am wondering about it. It seems to me that by the time next fall rolls around I am likely to be doing something else that will be more interesting to me than resuming the ballet accompaniment work. Or else I will value my down time and feel that I can afford not to work at Hope College (something I’m not wild about anyway since it is a bigoted institution). 

Anyway, by the time choir rehearsal arrived yesterday I was exhausted and on edge. I gave a good rehearsal however. It was a difficult one since the soprano section was effectively absent. It was literally absent as we began rehearsal: not one soprano. One soprano had texted me she was ill and wasn’t coming. Another announced Sunday she was skipping rehearsal to attend an important soccer game in which her son was playing.

That leaves two. One arrived late and was also ill. Too ill to sing. She came to listen and I supported her and pointed it out to the other choristers. Finally the fourth arrived. She was exhausted and literally fell asleep during the rehearsal (at least that’s what she said, I didn’t notice it).

The difficulty is that the omission of the soprano part makes the remain sections have to weirdly adjust. It’s just not the same without one fourth of the music no matter how I try to play the part on the piano.

After rehearsal I was satisfied I had managed my basic trick which is to be the person in the room who is in the best mood and enjoying himself and keeping people alert and connected after a long day.

Today I have two meetings and three rehearsals. It shouldn’t be too bad a day despite that. I am meeting with a woman who has offered to be a sort of “den mother” to a short term children’s choir. She has said she will talk to parents and feel them out about how realistic it would be to do something like this. Unfortunately she is moving slowly and time is passing.

I am also meeting with one of the curates (Jodi). She asked me for some help looking at music resources for her to use with her programs. This is also easy.

I have been prepping for the Jodi meeting this morning and will do a little prep for the den mother meeting.

Another stress point is helping our office administrator keep the high quality of the bulletin. Yesterday she handed a proof copy (admittedly not finished) of Sunday’s bulletin. She had cut the psalm tone in two and stretched it from margin to margin distorting the music so badly that it was unreadable.

I tried to help her (in between all the other things I had to do). But finally ended up making the choir’s Wednesday rehearsal copy myself. This morning I plan to ask her to start over and not split the tone in two. We’ll see how that works out.

Last Sunday’s bulletin was riddled with mistakes. They were not the kind I expect my office administrator to catch (like inaccurate solo music titles and references to hymns we weren’t going to sing in the Music Notes that I had prepared). But Rev Jen and I have promised each other to keep working on this.

You can see I’m tired. I always find myself talking too much when I’m exhausted. Thanks for reading.

Ironic that I spent a large part of this morning beginning to prepare for an upcoming discussion in my Modern Dance class about the relationship between schools of Modern Dance and the music they choose to use. (Ironic because they are sort of laying me off)

I was surprised to learn that Diaghilev ballets (e.g. Rite of Spring) are not exactly what is meant by Modern Dance. Or at least this is a line that the Online Groves dictionary draws and it probably reflects a general understanding.

I finally got so overwhelmed that I emailed Julie and asked for a list of which dance people the kids will be reporting on.

My inter library loaned copy of Shirley Turkle’s new book, Reclaiming Conversation: The Power of Talk in a Digital Age. I spent a good amount of my morning time reading in it today because it’s a bit expensive for me to purchase right now.

It’s an interesting read so far. Turkle is looking at how people don’t talk to each other face to face and the resulting damage to our psychology.

She points out that the “crawl” (the banner running below many news shows)began during the Iran hostage crisis of 1981. People were trying to stay abreast of this story. The crisis ended but the banner remains. She holds it up as an example the kind of divided attention we exercise in our digital age.

She doesn’t document this but it seems reasonable to me.

Early on, she talks about the Goldilocks effect: “We can’t get enough of each other [only] if we can have each other at a digital distance—not too close, not too far, just right.”

“Technology enchants. It makes us forget what we know about life.” Shirley Turkle, Reclaiming Conversation

“Face-to-face conversation unfolds slowly,” Turkle observes, “It teaches patience. We attend to tone and nuance.”

“When we communicate on our digital devices, we learn different habits. As we ramp up the volume and velocity of our online connections, we want immediate answers. In order to get them, we ask simpler questions; we dumb down our communications, even on the most important matters. And we become accustomed to a life of constant interruptions.”

Turkle seems very interested in people who have lived with this phenomenon throughout their lives. She provides many anecdotal illustrations of her probing and attempts to understand.

“When things complicated, it’s easier to send a picture than to struggle with a hard idea.” Shirley Turkle, Reclaiming Conversation

Her basic point is that online life is “associated with a loss of empathy and a diminished capacity for self-reflection.”

She does footnote this idea to a study by a Stanford U Prof, Clifford Nass. (Media use, face-to-face communication, media multitasking, and social well-being among 8- to 12-year-old girls. Pea, Roy; Nass, Clifford; Meheula, Lyn; Rance, Marcus; Kumar, Aman; Bamford, Holden; Nass, Matthew; Simha, Aneesh; Stillerman, Benjamin; Yang, Steven; Zhou, Michael, Developmental Psychology, Vol 48(2), Mar 2012, 327-336)

DNA of Ancient Children Offers Clues on How People Settled the Americas – The New York Times

I love this shit.

How Hospitals Coddle the Rich – The New York Times

I cross posted this to my Facebooger feed. I did not know about this but it’s unsurprising and discouraging.

Jimmy Carter: A Five-Nation Plan to End the Syrian Crisis – The New York Times

Carter makes sense to me on this subject.

Yesterday, Julie Powell asked me if I minded laying out a semester as a ballet accompanist. Her reason is a bit convoluted, but of course I said I didn’t. Maybe I should have insisted on playing Tuesdays and Thursdays. She told me I was her first choice if I wanted to play. But her reasoning was that she was attempting to increase the pool of pianists by offering two classes on Monday and Wednesday to a pianist driving from Muskegon to “make it worth her while.”

This pianist is someone from Julie’s past who presumably needs the money. I mentioned to Julie that this was the way GVSU permanently sidelined me as an adjunct, by offering me work that I didn’t want to accept (morning and evening classes).

Walking home from this conversation I realized that I felt a certain sense of relief. My energy pie seems to be shrinking a bit.

The ballet accompaniment is not a lot of work, however I often pour my heart and intellect into my improvising. That does take energy.

It finally happened that Songza introduced to me to music I hadn’t heard before but like. “Pavane” (original by Fauré) covered by Hubert Laws began playing yesterday from a songza playlist. Eileen asked me what it was. She and I both liked it.

It turns out Laws did an album in 1971 of just “covers” of classical music.

I’m listening to the entire thing right now on Spotify. I like it.

Besides the Fauré  which begins the album the rest of the tracks are (in case you can’t read the pic above):

Rite of Spring (Stravinsky)
Syrinx (Debussy)
1st and 2nd movement of Bach’s Brandenburg #3.

This music totally fits my mood this morning.

I was thinking about Francis Jackson’s setting of Vaughan Williams tune for the text, “For All the Saints” (Sine nomine) this morning and realized that he refers throughout to other hymn tunes by Vaughan Williams including the melody for “Hail Thee Festival Day” (Salve Feste Dies) and “At the name of Jesus” (King’s Weston).

I think he does this with adroitness and beauty. I have been slaving over this particular little piece (12 pages). It was only this morning that I realized that many of the motives I like and recognize are not from the All Saints tune but the other tunes.

How ’bout that?

Frankly Speaking

I googled Jackson’s work to see if I could find an analysis that takes note of the use of other tunes and ran across this interview with him. Wikipedia says he was born in 1917. In two years he will be a hundred, eh? His music is youthful and engaging.

Everything Doesn’t Happen For A Reason — Tim Lawrence

Another article bookmarked to read. One of the people I “follow” on Facebooger put this link up. I read in it enough to bookmark it.

I used my morning blogging time reading this disturbing article:

A couple passages from my reading rattling around in my head this morning.

From a few days ago:

Luxury, then, is a way of
being ignorant, comfortably
An approach to the open market
of least information. Where theories
can thrive, under heavy tarpaulins
without being cracked by ideas.

This is the beginning of Amiri Baraka’s poem, “Political Poem.”

I keep thinking of it because i see myself as living in luxury. When I forget that I do it is indeed “a way of being ignorant.” My theories do sometimes feel like “tarpaulins” not “cracked by ideas.”

Then I read this passage this morning from Marcus Aurelius’s Meditations.

Betimes in the morning say to thyself, This day I shalt have to do with an idle curious man, with an unthankful man, a railer, a crafty, false, or an envious man; an unsociable uncharitable man. All these ill qualities have happened unto them, through ignorance of that which is truly good and truly bad. But I that understand the nature of that which is good, that it only is to be desired, and of that which is bad, that it only is truly odious and shameful: who know moreover, that this transgressor, whosoever he be, is my kinsman, not by the same blood and seed, but by participation of the same reason, and of the same divine particle; How can I either be hurt by any of those, since it is not in their power to make me incur anything that is truly reproachful? or angry, and ill affected towards him, who by nature is so near unto me? for we are all born to be fellow-workers, as the feet, the hands, and the eyelids; as the rows of the upper and under teeth: for such therefore to be in opposition, is against nature; and what is it to chafe at, and to be averse from, but to be in opposition?

I read that as sort of a guide to how to relate to people on Facebooger. Heh.

Somehow I managed to exhaust myself yesterday.

Not sure how this happened. The day started slowly as we waited for our friend, Barb Phillips, to arrive. After she showed up, we went to the Farmers Market, stopped and got some milk, went to my Mom’s apartment and picked up a stack of books to be returned the library, had lunch. Then I went to church a bit early for my rehearsal with Dawn for today and practiced organ. Dawn arrived and we rehearsed. Back home and entered my Mom’s books into the doc I keep to keep track of what she has seen. Interlibrary loaned three new books for her. Off to the library to turn books in and find new books. Back home and Eileen and Barb joined me for the walk to Mom’s nursing home. On the way back we parted ways and I walked to church to finish prepping for today.

By then I was pretty tired. But I walked home and made the dish I have been meaning to make. Eileen took a picture of it and put it on Facebooger.

Neither she nor Barb tasted it. I had two servings. Here once again is a link to the recipe.  I pretty much followed it, but couldn’t find shallots. Used sliced white onions instead. I purchased the mild Kimchi which was plenty spicy for me.

After putting this dish in the oven, I madly took a shower and then made myself a martini. It was along tiring but satisfying day.

It’s looking distinctly like my church is going to help me get my computers in better working condition.

A while back I quit using one of my laptops because it was running hot.

We had already put one new fan in it and due to our new financial situation I didn’t want to put more money into it.

At staff meeting this week I asked Rev Jen if I could submit a ticket to BandA the service that the church subscribes to that helps with all our computer issues. She said yes. Then I asked about upgrading my other laptop. She also said yes to that.

So I did that. I actually submitted what the service calls a Query about my other laptop. BandA responded quickly to that and suggest that instead of installing a solid state hard drive, I could improve speed by adding memory. I want to confirm that the church will do this before moving ahead. Also I think it might be good to get the older laptop functioning first.

But anyway, that’s cool.

My security software is expiring. We can’t really afford to put our money into computer security software at this point.

I asked my brother about free ones and he was very helpful. He told me what he uses and pointed out that PC mag reviews them.

The Best Free Antivirus for 2015 | PCMag.com

The info is sort of overwhelming but I looked at their page on Panda (which is one of the ones Mark uses).

Panda Free Antivirus (2016) Review & Rating | PCMag.com

I went with that. Downloaded and installed it today and uninstalled my present one.

Our friend, Barb Phillips, is coming to visit today. Yesterday Eileen’s Mom and sister Nancy came to Holland to Christmas shop. I joined them for lunch. I spent most of the day working on church stuff, picking anthems and practicing.

Managed the two mile walk back and forth to see my Mom with Eileen yesterday.

This is a good way to get some exercise in. My blood pressure has been low for a while now. Not sure exactly why (not losing the weight I want to), but it might be related to the fact that I finally got a little vacation.

Two days ago I decided to attempt to learn Francis Jackson’s “Fantasy on ‘Sine Nomine'” for next All Saints Sunday.

As you can see it is reproduced in hand written fashion. It is a twelve page romp and I have been practicing and poring over this piece in every spare moment.

I have a plan B if I don’t feel like it is ready by next Friday or so. I’m also learning a Scherzo by Alan Ridout which is much easier and could easily substitute for it.

I will eventually use the Ridout even if I do not resort to plan B on the Jackson piece.

I finished Silence: A Christian History by MacCulloch this morning. Despite my momentary distaste with his distaste in church music that lacks decorum (see yesterday’s blog), I still have great admiration for this book and its author.

I especially appreciate the way he manages an intelligent criticism of some of the stuff that I think is wrong with Christianity (its historical approach to slavery, homosexuality and antisemitism).

He is careful to show that in order to get to ethical places with these issues one cannot take the Bible as the “inerrant Word of God.” MacCulloch is above all a historian and constantly shows the benefit of approaching his subject through that lens.

There can be no Christianity without the canon of Scripture, and the Christian life has characteristically demanded a searching and researching of it. The great gift of the Enlightenment to Christianity, contextual criticism of the text, has not sought to deny that demand, only to enrich it.

Diarmaid MacCulloch

In distinguishing himself from those who misuse the Bible he quotes this lovely little sentence of Thomas Fudge, “A text without a context is a pretext for a proof text.”

If that needs unpacking for my less religious readers, some Christians go looking in the Bible for quotes to back up their preconceived ideas on, for example, the three issues mentioned above or other things. Quotes used in this fashion are “proof texts.”

I am still slowly working my way through MacCulloch’s wonderful bibliographic essays at the end of the book. He points the reader toward many fine books some of which I am tempted to purchase and read and study.

A Plan to Honor Martin Luther King at a Southern Civil War Symbol – The New York Times

Wow. Check out the origin of these outdoor sculptures.

ChurchPublishing.org: Food Fight : Struggling for Justice in a Hungry World by Chris Herlinger and Paul Jeffrey

I follow Jeffrey on Facebooger. He posts pics as he takes them. Excellent stuff.