Eileen and I finished sorting and filing music in the choir room yesterday. It was quite a relief. I went to the organ area and checked for stuff I might be leaving behind. I believe my replacement begins this weekend, so it’s nice to gather up everything I’m planning to take with me and get out of the way as much as possible. I found some Bach that I definitely wanted. I also brought home my harpsichord toolkit and a gong.

Now all that’s left to bring home is my harpsichord and my marimba.

I celebrated with a real gin martini (and several more drinks) and put a few more items on my Friday night pizza.

Earlier I had a good meeting with my therapist. I found myself struggling to come up with a clear short description of the book Gods before Men. This is ironic because I have read it twice and Kunzru’s ideas are having an impact on me.

I’m referring to more than just that book. I plan to read all his novels but I’m also working my way through his 2020 podcast season of Into the Zone and following him on Twitter. It’s hard to define my attraction but I am enjoying learning about his take on many subjects.

I chatted with Dr. Birky (my therapist) about being an outsider. This is not the first time I have talked to him about this idea.

It occurred to me this morning that so far in his book, The Outsider, Colin Wilson has not used a musician as an example of an outsider. The section I read this morning was about Van Gogh. Previously he has used characters in fiction by Hemingway, Sartre, H. G. Wells, Camus and other real life people like T. E. Lawrence. Wilson was writing in the 50s and his thinking about this stuff would probably be different if he was writing in this century.

Either way, what’s important to me is not his ideas about being an outsider but my own evolving notion. Maybe “outsider” is the wrong word. But there is a pattern in my life and the life of my Father and his Father of not quite fitting in or meeting expectations of our chosen fields.

In my own case I feel like this stance has a strong redemptive side. I am a sort of outsider because the better colleagues and friends perceive me the less likely they are to invite me into their lives and circles. This feels redemptive because I’m pretty certain they (and I ) would benefit. But I need the invitation before this would be appropriate.

Plus I definitely do not see myself as an outsider in the arts.

I am drawn to beauty especially in music, poetry, and ideas. But, my experience has been that people in these areas usually have a prior criterion before granting credibility. This criterion boils down to fitting in and often, in my case, appearance.

I find this hilarious. In the age of the internet, I still have tons of access not only to works of art but information and discussion about them. This is despite not approaching my life work in a way that is obvious and acceptable to many if not most others who share my interests.

My eclecticism probably works against me. But of course it’s as aspect of myself that I value and enjoy. When I was young someone cautioned me about being a “jack of all trades and master of none.” Thankfully I didn’t take this little bit of advice. I think a good solid intellectual curiosity combined with an interest in craft and analysis has served me pretty well up this point. I’m certainly not a “jack of all trades,” but I do have a wide range of tastes and interests, often wider than other people I have met who also like music, poetry, and ideas.

If this isn’t correct, it is at least the way it seems to me. In addition I find that when humans are excluded from inner circles of art something in me questions it. I think this is because when I find art (music, poetry, and the like) successful and most beautiful there is a basic connection to what it means for anyone to be a human.

This is what I like Christopher Small’s concept of musicking: music as a verb which incudes many human activities that contribute to it.

So it doesn’t exactly feel like being an outsider when I find the things that give my life meaning are basically inclusive instead of exclusive. In fact it feels redemptive and rewarding.

I finished Kunzru’s Red Pill night before last.

It’s a not a long novel but I found myself sucked into reading it nonstop. Yesterday I put a synopsis in the blog and then decided to wait until today to write about it.

It was published in 2020 and was Kunzru’s sixth novel. It takes place a few years ago. The first person unnamed narrator resembles Kunzru. He’s a writer. He’s interested in philosophy and poetry. He’s married with a kid. I don’t know if this is the case with Kunzru but it probably is judging from his other novel I recently read, Gods Without Men.

I like learning about real historical people that authors find so important as to include in their novel. In this case, Heinrich Von Kleist (1777-1881) and Comte de Maistre (1753-1821).

While it’s clear that Kunzru doesn’t condone these two guys, especially in the case of the latter man, he knows enough about them to make them important to his plot.

Heinrich Von Kleist is a romantic German poet. It turns out that his grave is near the writer’s colony where much of the novel takes place. Von Kleist suicide figures into the overall plot of the book.

Comte de Maistre is a weird historical figure who was a “philosopher, writer, lawyer and diplomat who advocated social hierarchy and monarchy in the period immediately following the French Revolution” (Wikipedia).

So Red Pill is a blend of a very up-to-date understanding of life with some historical sophistication. I think it is ultimately a bit of a pessimistic book. I would hesitate to recommend it to people struggling with the madness in the world right now. I was drawn to it because of its title which is just what you think it is, a reference to the Matrix and the mad world of the Alt-Right at this point in time.

The settings interest me as well. New York City, a suburb of Berlin, East Germany during the fall of the Berlin Wall, Paris, and Scotland.

I continue to work my way through Kunzru’s old podcast, Into the Zone. Eileen gave me Red Pill and White Tears for my birthday I look forward to reading more by this guy. I think Kunzru might be my new flavor of the month if not year.

I continue plugging through Colin Wilson’s The Outsider. The more I read it the more I think that my ideas and his are very different about the idea of being an outsider. I approach the concept trying to understand myself. However, Wilson’s Outsiders are miserable and critical of what they are on the outside of.

I’m not miserable. I could come up with criticisms of people I see on the “inside,” but I’m more interested in understanding those I don’t agree with or even just don’t make sense to me.

I’ll probably finish the book. I’ve always wondered about it especially in relationship to my understanding of myself. it looks like it’s not going to be that helpful but I feel like I want to follow through to the end.

I’m also struggling with The Vorrh. Yesterday I went back and outlined what I have read in it. The story jumps around. There are a lot of characters and Brian Catling, the author, is fond of writing about them without clearly identifying them. This can be a strength, but in this case, it’s beginning to wear on me.

Also, the entire metaphor of the fantasy is that Essenwald is an English type city transferred whole cloth outside the mysterious, forbidding forest area in Africa, Vorrh. It looks like a perfect opportunity to write a story critical of colonialism. At least this could be a background notion. however, Catling doesn’t seem to be doing that. There is a flavor that if there are good guys in the book, they are colonizers. Yech. Maybe if I read all three volumes he will pull it together in a satisfyingly scathing way. But I’m losing motivation. I’ll finish this one but I’m not sure I want to read more of the trilogy.

My daughter Sarah in England seems to think I need more birthday gifts. Yesterday evening i received a book and a CD from her in the mail.

These are definitely to my taste and I thanked her online. I listened to some of Bjork this morning while exercising. I love finding new music.

I don’t know if anyone who reads this blog clicks on my links to poems, but I persist in linking poems I like and have read recently. Here are a few.

Luanne by Ashley August

A couple of these links are to Google Books rendering right from the source, Latinext. This poem is where I got the title for today’s blogpost.

Luanne is special
Tantrum on a pretty day
Wreck, quiet, scream a room still
Cackle when something funny
Run when it scare her
Stay when it feel good
Say nothing when she ain’t got nothing to say
Don’t fake the funk
She don’t be polite for nobody’s feelings
Tell you she want it, tell you to take it back
Tell you you stupid when you is stupid

Isa Guzman, Night, for Samuel Cruz

And here’s the poem Guzman had in mind

Night, for Henry Dumas | Fishouse

I finished Red Pill by Hari Kunzru last night. I started a blog post about it earlier but decided it was too convoluted and the whole thing would benefit from a bit more pondering. I enjoyed this book and will probably write about here soon.

Scheherazade by Rimsky-Korsakov was the music I played for this morning’s routine. In its entirety. I have known this piece so long that I wonder if we had a recording of it when we lived in Greeneville Tennessee prior to 1963.

My BP is still low and I may have actually dropped another pound in weight. But my body rash is rampant. I didn’t mention it yesterday in the preparatory meeting at my eye doctor for my upcoming cataract surgery. That went fine. They didn’t even give me eye drops to dilate my eyes for which I was grateful.

Eileen did the grocery shopping after dropping me off at the eye guy. I am doing very little driving unless it’s necessary. The plan is to put new lenses in my eyes that will help me see better up close and see better far away with glasses. This is the opposite of what most people go for according to the eye guy. But I think it’s the best choice for me.

I have to put eye drops in my eyes during this process. We’ll probably stop off at the drugstore and buy them today. The two eyes are done in two settings. The timing for the extensive use of eye drops morning and evening will vary for each eye. The eye guy has a handy dandy chart he gave me to help me negotiate this. First surgery scheduled for Wednesday, Oct. 13, the second the following Wednesday, the 20th.

There are a series of follow up appointments thereafter to monitor recovery.

I helped Eileen do some final mounting of doors on our new wardrobe yesterday. She got on the phone and contacted the manufacturers about the missing board. There was one board missing from the construction of one of the two drawers. Apparently they will be sending us one free of charge.

I also have a new book shelf for my study thanks to the efforts of my lovely wife. She bid on several of these and won one. It’s sitting in the study right now waiting for me to decide where it goes.

I restored a small bit of confidence in my hands yesterday going slowly and accurately through some Mendelssohn and Beethoven. My friend Rhonda has invited me to play some piano duets with her Friday. This time since she has two pianos in her choir room at her church we will probably sit at a distance and play two pianos instead of one piano, four hands.

I mentioned to her my diminishing physical abilities. She texted me “use it or lose it.” A fine attitude. However I have been “using” my hands assiduously all my adult life. I don’t think this is going to get better through exercise and surgery seems to be an extreme solution. This is according to a physician I consulted early after I was finally diagnosed with dupuytren’s contracture not so long ago. He only recommended surgery when the “risk was worth it.” He definitely did not recommend it to preserve my ability to play music about which I asked him in detail. The “risk” in his recommendation is worth it to restore a much more severely affected hand in order to get some minimal use restored. I can use my hands. They just don’t stretch like they used to.

I still enjoy playing and will probably do so as long as I can. .

The Lie About the Supreme Court Everyone Pretends to Believe – The Atlantic

This article by Adam Server is probably part of my echo chamber, but I’m glad to read this in print.

“What I take exception to is the demand from judges and justices that the public acquiesce to their self-delusion that they are wise sages who hold themselves above the vulgarities of partisan politics, even as they deliver sweeping victories to a conservative movement and Republican Party that have worked for half a century to achieve those victories.”

China celebrates Meng Wanzhou’s return as a victory — even at th –

My son-in-law, Jeremy, is quoted in this. Cool.

It’s still dark outside. I usually wait until sunrise to put out my US flag. It’s the latent boy/cub scout in me. Flag etiquette, emphasis on etiquette.

I have an eye appointment this morning so they can do preliminary measurements for my upcoming cataract surgery next month. We need to leave at 8:15 to get there 15 minutes early. Eileen has asked me to call her at 7:30 which is in a few minutes.

I thought I would try to get some blogging in before that.

There are two silly things on my mind this morning.

The first is the dream I had last night. In it, I was bumming a ride from a family. For some reason, it meant that they would have to have me at their evening meal. My house wasn’t too far away but they didn’t seem to mind so I thought it would be nice to stay for supper.

At first they didn’t mind. But soon I understood that it was okay maybe this once that I bummed a ride and would stay for supper but it wasn’t to become a habit.

Then the Dad came home. In my dream he looked like an actual person I know but wasn’t exactly that guy. He was also a bit dismayed that I had taken advantage of their good will and not only bummed a ride but also was going to stay for dinner.

The dismay of the whole group was only gradually becoming apparent to me. I decided that it would be better if I simply walked home from their house and skipped the meal. I wasn’t upset. I could see that they didn’t really want me to stay so I thought it would be more appropriate if I just walked away.

I woke up thinking about being welcome. In my dream I certainly didn’t feel welcome. But this was only distressing because of the situation I was in not as a sense of rejection. In fact, I felt very independent in the dream and not reliant at all on being accepted.

I don’t know if I’m quite conveying the whole emotional envelope of the dream but it is quite clear to me. My presence which I thought might be not only acceptable but a good thing was complicating things in a way I hadn’t anticipated. Time to get dressed and walk away.

Many of you armchair shrinks out there have already probably come to the obvious conclusion that this is related to me being in my fourth week of retirement. But funnily enough I didn’t leave my job feeling unwelcome. In fact I felt the opposite feeling of letting people down in order to take care of myself.

So I’m not sure what the dream has to teach me.

The other thing I wanted to blog about was discovering the quirks and mistakes in podcast advertising. I listen regularly to the podcast Into the Zone. Hari Kunzru is a classic outsider with a lovely little hint of his English Indian background in his speaking voice. I noticed that the State Farm spokesman in the accompanying ad had a similar accent. Later I noticed the insistent ads for African American podcasts. It feels quite intentional.

Then this morning I was laying in bed trying to get a valuable extra hour of sleep and I noticed that the ads on the old podcast I was listening to started getting garbled. One ad would begin and then before it was done another new ad started, one I hadn’t heard before and obviously came way after the podcast I was listening to. It had been inserted and began before the first ad finished. Then abruptly the old ad returned for a second and then a word from the new ad blurped. The rest of ad section of this podcast was equally convoluted. Damn. It was so funny that there was no getting back to sleep for Jupe.

One lesson I never quite learned was the importance of surfaces. Appearing to be something can carry so much more weight actually being it in life. Some how I got cued in early to this. But found that “being” and “content” ended up being what interested me.

This probably began as childish naiveté but turned into my approach to life. Appearing a certain way always seemed the easier way out. It helped to be a white, male who wasn’t poor.

But I developed a taste for hidden content, looking beyond the surface of people to search for what and who they were. It didn’t occur to me that others were often more interested in the appearance not content.

For example, Henry Cowell started his academic life as a janitor in a music department of a college. Or at least that’s the story I remember. Someone figured out that on the inside he was a composer.

I always liked that story. It’s most probably apocryphal but I still like it.

I never quite learned the lesson that to go along was to get along. I had too many questions at least inside my head even if I didn’t say them to people.

Last night I dreamed I was teaching a music theory class. It was dream like of course. Sometimes the room was dark, the chalk was fuzzy as I tried to explain things to the class. The content was clear to me in the dream as it is on waking. I understand music theory.

At one point I went around and put up little signs at Hope College about tutoring music theory. My motivation wasn’t so much the remuneration but talking to somebody about something I like. It seems like I had at least one person respond interested in getting some help. All I can remember is that after I taught them the differences between the types of augmented sixths (German, French, Italian), they lost interest.

I can still remember how to teach that. My point here is that I didn’t really learn the lesson about appearances. I figured since I had the knowledge and skill that was enough. Silly me.

For me an academic degree now has aspects of appearances divorced from content. Not all degrees are like that, but I continue to be amazed as I ponder my life how often my content was missed by others because the package (my appearance or lack of degree/certification) was wrong.

This may be one of the biggest lessons Holland had to teach me. There were a few people who seem to get tha I had something to offer. But in retrospect it seems so very naive of me to miss that fitting in is so important.

But no matter. Toujours gai, archy!

This relates in my head to the determinative nature of appearances in current popular culture. I only notice because I am often bored by it. But style, presentation, and manufactured personality ARE content when considering popular music and the arts.

I cling to my antiquated notion that the way music sounds is the most important thing about it, whether it be popular or academic. This preoccupation with sound keeps me interested in music, both new and old.

It feels lucky especially since appearances are sometimes so important.

I finished a second read of Kunzru’s Gods Before Men. As I got further into the book a second read didn’t seem so important once I had drawn some connections that I missed the first time in the first half of the book. But I finished it anyway. I started Red Pill which is Kunzru’s latest. Weirdly it reminds a little bit of Thomas Mann. What’s up with that? I am enjoying it.

Today is only the 21st day of my so-called retirement. I miscounted a couple of days ago. It’s the third Sunday I don’t have to go play a church service. I just gained nine days of life from miscounting.

It’s getting cooler here in Western Michigan. Eileen turned the heat on because she was cold. Last night she shut it down again and opened the windows and doors because she was warm from moving parts of the new wardrobe from the back of the car to the house. I helped.

We are missing one board of the wardrobe. Eileen said she would check to see if she could order a replacement. It’s the back of one the drawers so she continued assembling it. This is something she enjoys. it’s a bit like a puzzle for her. She does love puzzles.

She stayed up late last night finished assembling a lot of the new wardrobe. It’s laying down in the study where I am typing. It looks much too heavy for one of us to bring upright. I’m sure she has a plan. Together we can probably set it upright for further assembly.

I planed through a Bach prelude and fugue last night, the fugue first. It was the one in Bb major from the first book of the Well Tempered Clavier. I am finding it more difficult to pull these piano pieces off with my bad hand. Even my right hand has new troubles.

I mentioned to Eileen it’s a good thing I’m not performing in public with such diminishing abilities.

But my love of music is not diminishing. This morning I pulled out a recording Beethoven’s first symphony conducted by Simon Rattle in 2003 and did my stretches to the first movement while watching the Liszt piano transcription. I exercised to Hari Kunzru’s podcast about punk rock in East Germany. I was surprised when Kunzru quoted a lengthy passage of Thomas Merton on solitude. I didn’t see that one coming. It made me want to dig up some not religious Merton, maybe the book on solitude. I have read a ton of Merton. In the past he hasn’t alienated me very much. I’m not sure how I will read it now being free of thinking much about church and religion.

Jen, my former boss, was in my dreams night before last. She was talking about the benefits of having a condo. I think she may have been trying to talk me into getting one for me and Eileen. Then i noticed she was very exhausted and stressed. I wondered aloud if some physical exercise might help her. The people in my dream were confused. I explained to them that I had found ways to help Jen in the past.

I know it doesn’t make sense. It’s a dream.

When I sat down at my desk this morning, I felt a strong urge to read a bunch of poetry. Which I did. I will probably read some more after I finish this. Emily Dickinson was on my mind so I read some of her. Then some living poets. I subscribe to Poetry magazine. I like to dip into the latest issue but it means if I like a poem I can’t share the link here because the latest issue is often not online yet.

Ashley M. Jones was a guest editor of Poetry for three issues this year. I found more poems than usual that I liked in those issues which I am still working my way through. Here are a few I like.

How to decide which human gets your last ventilator… | Poetry Maga

by Emily Gallacher Viall. the bio in the back of the issue says that she is a nurse and poet. It goes on “On the second day of the second month of 2021, she gave birth to twin boys, which she thinks is pretty cool.

Everglades 2020 by Annik Adey-Babinski | Poetry Magazine

Swimming Pool 2020 by Annik Adey-Babinski

These two poems were subtitled “After Eclipse by Rose Marie Cromwell

I’m trying to go over to the church and spend an hour here and hour there doing final filing and sorting. Yesterday, Eileen went with me. She is sorting choral music as I work on instrumental. I have the trio and other instruments file finished and am working my way through the organ music. I’m getting closer to the end of this task. The condition of the collection of music I am leaving behind varies from pristine to very used. Since I can’t imagine needing much organ music for the rest of my life I am only taking important stuff like Bach or good editions that I can continue to learn from or would enjoy having in my collection. If my successors find what I am leaving useful at all, that’s to the good. If not, they can easily discard stuff.

I wrote an entry here recently about how poetry keeps me alive. Music does this as well. There is much of Beethoven’s excellent piano music that I can still manage to get through with my old, misshapen hands. I continue to be drawn to Mendelsohn. I have been working over one of his Song without Words that I think is lovely. Here is a recording of it.

I’ll probably never be able to play it that quickly. This doesn’t bother me. I like it slower anyway but couldn’t find a recording on YouTube in which the player doesn’t play it quickly. I do like the melody very much both the main minor melody and the E major section in the middle.

Eileen has been participating in online auctions. Elizabeth and Jeremy have had success with them and I think this may have inspired Eileen. She bids and then keeps an eye on progress. Sometimes she is outbid and sometimes she wins. It’s a bit like Ebay but what she is bidding on can be picked up at a local warehouse if you win the bid. Yesterday she went to pick up three successful bids. A book case, a wardrobe, and a book.

The book was for me. She didn’t tell me the title only that she was pretty sure I would be happy that she purchased it. I couldn’t think of what in the world she had bought me. She didn’t tell me until later that she had only paid two dollars for the book.

She was correct. I was happy to get the book. It is a volume of the Loeb Library. I love these little books. The Greek books are green and the Latin, red. More and more as I try to access writing that is translated I enjoy having the original next to it. If the original language is a romance or a classical language I can often see some of the meaning in it when I compare it to a translation.

The book is Elegies by Propertius.

I hadn’t heard of this guy but it looks like fun. Propertius knew Virgil, Horace, and Ovid. The poems are in Latin. They were originally translated into English for the first of the Loeb editions by a man named Harold Edgeworth Butler. The translation I have is by George Patrick Goold who was a professor at Yale and also General Editor of the Loeb Classical Library (1974-1999). According to Amazon, this book retails at $28. Cool.

Eileen spent the afternoon yesterday at her doctor’s appointment. I stayed home. For the first time it bothered me that the parallel octaves in Beethoven in the left hand are very difficult for me.

I can barely stretch the octave due to my dupuytren’s contracture.

Before this I have managed to fake it enough to play through music satisfactorily for myself.

Eileen also stopped at the butcher before she came home. She got a bit of a run around waiting for a blood draw that had not been ordered. She had fasted and came home ravenous and made herself a steak and fresh green beans.

I think today is day 30 of retirement. Last night in my dream I played and sang Bob Dylan’s Just like a Woman all the way through on my old Martin guitar. I haven’t played the Martin for a long time. I even entertained selling it but Eileen discouraged me from doing so. In the middle of the night on waking I thought maybe playing guitar might be more satisfying physically than trying to do octaves with my left hand. I did remember that playing it requires building up callouses. This was the main detriment to playing it more. I could pick up my nylon string guitar and not need the callouses to play. But even that eventually became a bit of a rarity.

In the light of day, I’m not as resolved to start playing my Martin again. It is true that I don’t know how hard it will be with my shortened left hand span. Conceivably it may be better than piano.

But I can still listen to and think about music. I could compose but I am not to the point of considering doing much more than what I have been doing: reading, thinking, writing prose, and studying. The mild frustration of diminishing physical abilities is not limited to my left hand. My main physical problem is not related to age. At least I suspect it’s not.

I developed a reaction to a Blood Pressure drug several years ago. This rash has never really entirely abated and has recently begun to spread and get worse again. It was never diagnosed. My Internist, Dermatologist, and Allergist couldn’t nail down the cause of the rash beyond the original reaction to new drug. They prescribed topical steroid which I still apply as well as a skin moisturizer.

This is probably more than most readers want to hear about an old man with a rash, but besides some fatigue and aches, I am physically doing well except for this itching.

I have an appointment with my dermatologist next year. It was the earliest I could get in.

Despite not being able to play the left hand on the piano as facilely as I used to, I continue to find satisfaction in reading and studying. Yesterday I started reading an excellent anthology I checked out from the library.

It’s called Latinext and is edited by Felicia Rose Chavez, José Olivarez, and Willie Perdomo. My recently acquired habit of reading the Table of Contents caused me to realize that I probably need to own this 300 page anthology. I will never be able to read all the poems that I want to only having checked it out of the library.

Published in 2020, Latinext is volume 4 of The Breakbeat Poets. The book is divided into five sections: La Muerte, El Bandolon, El Mundo, La Bendera, and La Sirena. Piecing together Spanglish is integral to understanding these poems. As best as I can figure out the sections mean Death, Mandolin, World, Flag, and Siren. Here’s a link to a poem I liked in La Muerte: INSTRUCTIONS FOR MY FUNERAL by Javier Zmora.

Opinion | What Sandra Day O’Connor Stood For on the Supreme Court by Linda Greenhouse

I haven’t read it yet, but I read every article Greenhouse writes that I can find.

I listened to the embedded podcast below this morning. I find it fascinating and informing to listen to Judges talk. I especially like the ending remarks of District Court Judge Cheryl Ann Krause. She says that good judges demonstrate how to disagree without being disagreeable. One of the other judges insists that in disagreement they learn from each other. Krause goes on to say that judges are united in upholding the Constitution and the rule of law. They are a model for all citizens at a time of madenss.

Oops. I seem to have embedded the entire playlist from the Constitutional Center. I’m only recommending the first podcast in the list.

I don’t know why poetry is so important to me. Sometimes I think about it and sometimes I simply sit and read it. When a new New Yorker magazine comes in the mail, I read the letters, look at the cartoons, and note the few articles I want to read. But even if there are no articles I that catch my eye, since Kevin Young has become the poetry editor, I usually set aside the magazine to read the two poems later.

This morning read the two poems in the September 13th issue.

I remember once someone on TV, I think it was Eric Hoffer, saying that he read and read and when he found a good sentence in a book he celebrated for a month. I feel that way about poems. When I find a line or two that I connect with I feel celebratory.

“Poetry Reading,” by Adam Zagajewski | The New Yorker

“Just then a speaker started playing
the songs of Billie Holiday—she sang
from immortality, without fear
But no, not quite, her fear was now
perfectly formed, refined”

“Tin,” by Jane Hirshfield | The New Yorker

“I studied much and remembered little.
But the world is generous, it kept offering figs and cheeses.
Never mind that soon I’ll have to give it all back,
the world, the figs.”

Of course there are many ways I read poetry. I love trying new poets. There are other poets that I continually refer to and reread. T. S. Eliot. Dylan Thomas. Anne Sexton. William Blake. Shakespeare. Charles Bukowski. Others. And of course, Homer who is never far away these days.

One of the reasons I don’t turn my back entirely on the religion of my youth is the poetry of the Bible and hymns. Like those phrases in poems I fall in love with, some phrases from the Bible and hymns are embedded inside me.

I continue to read Colin Wilson’s The Outsider. Although I have rejected what I hoped would be gaining insights to thinking about outsiders now, I want to follow his thinking throughout to the end. He describes a character in Herman Hesse’s Demian.

Almost like poetry, Bible passages, and hymns, Hermann Hesse is lurking inside my head. I read many of his novels and culminated in adapting The Glass Bead Game as almost a credo at one time in my life. It was this book that lead me to sit in the waiting room of my piano teacher in Ohio and do my own version of Yoga exercises and even meditation in preparation for a lesson. To this day my ability to relax as I do music has something to do with that and the fact that Richard Strasburg, my teacher, showed me some very good relaxation exercises at the keyboard. Exercises that I used as both as a student and as a rock and roller to relax as I practice or perform or even at the occasional bar gig. I still use these to get in touch with my musical self.

I’ve read Demian but I don’t remember much about it, like the speaker in Jane Hirschfield’s poem above, Wilson describes Emil Sinclair struggling with two worlds. The comfortable world of his family home and “paths that led into the future.” What interests me is Wilson’s description of Sinclair’s family home: “… his middle-class, well-ordered home…” with “straight lines and paths that led into the future. Here were duty and guilt, evil conscious and confession, pardon and good resolutions, love and adoration, Bible texts and wisdom. To this world our future had to belong; it had to be crystal clear, beautiful and well-ordered.” Wilson lapses into quotes from Hesse.

Later he describes Sinclair’s relief at returning from an troubling but typical adolescent disturbance in his life. Then Sinclair “sings the dear old hymns with the blissful feeling of one converted.”

The language alerts me to my own little journey. I don’t remember falling in love with any hymns or even Bible scripture as a young person. I remember watching.

I watched my Father preach three times a week: Sunday morning, Sunday evening, and Wednesday evening. I watched my Father sing solos and my Mother sing duets with my him. I remember watching the hymns in the hymnbook, looking at the music as well as the notes as most everyone sang in the little Tennessee church were my Dad was pastor. But I never personally had a “dear old hymn” I could sing with “blissful feeling” of any kind.

Sinclair’s lapse is temporary. He will return to the friendship and struggle with Demian.

For myself, I am content and even feel invigorated to find poetry where ever I can, from the wonderful singing of Billie Holiday to the odd warped little memories in my head of Bible and hymns.

I have had a copy of Colin Wilson’s book, The Outsider, in my library for a long time. I find I mean something different than he does by the word, “outsider.” I read the first chapter yesterday sitting in my car with Eileen by the lake. The waves were quite spectacular for Lake Michigan. So instead of sitting on the channel as we sometimes do, Eileen parked in front of the beach.

When I think of outsiders, especially those I admire and identify with, I think of people who have not chosen their lot. This means Blacks in the U.S., Indigenous peoples of the Americas, people born in another country but brought here as children to be reviled by government and society alike, and so on. I read a theologian once who said that societal ideas often come from the margins of society. This also appeals to me.

Wilson’s outsiders disapprove of what they are outside of. In fact, their disapproval seems to be intrinsic. He redraws the meanings of H. G. Wells, Sartre, Camus, Kafka, T. S. Eliot and others. He frames their ideas as critiques.

This may be. But for my own part, I identify with outsiders because from a young age I found life confusing. I was born into the Christian tradition and community. But as I grew up I found myself more comfortable with distance between me and it. This didn’t feel like critique only confusion and questioning.

I can remember being in my early teens and sitting in West Court Street Church of God in Flint, Michigan, during a service, thinking the thought, What are we doing here? Where did all of this come from? Certainly fundamental Christianity did not hold meaning for me. My parents were unsurprised. I find that interesting. They continually said they were glad that I and my brother found ways to connect to church in our lives. It was almost like they didn’t expect us to do so.

I think Colin Wilson misreads the thinkers he cites. He hasn’t really brought up any clarity around ideas of meaning in life other to cite Sartre’s main character in Nausea whose existential crisis is temporarily alleviated listening to Sophie Tucker sing “Some of These Days.” This of course struck home with me. Because besides my own connections in life to people I love and who love me, the meaning I have found in life is definitely in beauty like that.

Significantly, Tucker represents to me the outsider. Jazz is (was) an outsider music.

Wilson decides in the second chapter of his book that such reaction is illogical and won’t work in the longer run and is only a “glimmer of salvation.” Maybe that’s the problem with his approach way back in 1956. He was looking for salvation.

For me these problems are interesting to think about but pale in the light of the more extreme debasement of beauty into the handmaiden of profits and glibness. Hari Kunzru quotes Theodore Adorno in his Into the Zone Podcast “It’s Always Sunny in the Dialectic.” Entertainment music is a tool of power, Adorno said, that lulled listeners urging them to consume instead of provoking genuine and emotional intellectual response.

For me the key is the word “genuine.” I trust my own responses to art (music, poetry, novels, essays). I seem to have a bullshit detector combined with a love of beauty, at least for myself.

On another note I have begun reading Brian Catling’s The Vorrh.

I follow Terry Gilliam’s Facebook feed and he mentioned this book as a great read. Good enough for me since I admire his work immensely. I interlibrary loaned it and am over a hundred pages into it.

Gilliam has a blurb on the copy I am reading as does Alan Moore. Catling himself seems to be a rather well known artist in England. This book is the first of a trilogy. It was published in 2012. The subsequent volumes are The Erstwhile (2017) and The Cloven (2018).

The prose style is fascinating. It took me a while to get in sync with it as a reader. It reminded me of adjusting to the prose of Mervyn Peake’s Gormenghast. In fact in it’s fantastic (literally) nature it reminds me of Gormenghast.

I am aware that many of my interests are in humans whose existence is peripheral to society. I could speculate why this is. My lifelong self image has been one of someone who is confused by the norms. Eventually I learned to dislike many of them.

While some of this can be attributed to the usual teenage adolescent and subsequent adult angst, at this age it feels more like a theme.

As a child, I know I was made to feel special. I was the preacher’s kid. There was one woman named Elizabeth who they tell me took me for nature walks and pointed out the beauty around us. I don’t remember this, but I think it might have something to do with my basic love of beauty.

But I can see how I was a spoiled kid. At Crescent Elementary in Greeneville, Tennessee, I remember being one of the smart boys. Boys, as I remember, were never as smart as the smart girls, but most of my teachers treated me as though I was smart. This definitely put me on the outside along with a definite lack of sports interest.

By the time the fam moved from a cozy segregated southern town to Flint, Michigan, a not so cozy segregated city, I was definitely someone who enjoyed being alone and not part of the group. I spent many hours alone in my Dad’s new church playing at the piano.

Somehow, I developed an interest in poetry. I can remember loving music from the get go. Popular music contained some poetry, at least for me. But somewhere in there I decided that poetry was interesting. By the time I got to high school I believed it when a teacher told me that reading poetry was more valuable and useful than reading the news.

I was on my way to being a full fledged outsider. My interest was also drawn to the arts and music of people on the outside. My only black friend in high school, George Inge, was an artist. He and I hung around with a very smart young Jewish woman, Cheryl Cohen. We were a trio of outsiders. I have lost touch with George but Cheryl is living in Southern California and we have reconnected via the Facebooger.

But what I mean to say is that I can see that the music, novels, and poetry of African Americans, the poetry and novels of Native Americans, and actually any art that is coming from someplace other than what feels like mainstream attracts me.

This mornings exercise music was the Bulgarian choirs of Le Mystere des Voix Bulgares.“

I can remember being in a CD section of a bookstore and realizing that by quitting my job at the local Catholic church my income was going to plummet. Time to buy some CDs. The 2 CD set of the Bulgarian Choirs was one. I have never regretted that. Again this morning I found their music incredibly beautiful and moving.

I come from a family of outsiders. My mother’s father was an illegitimate child who was rejected by his step father for that reason. My mother was a bit of an outsider if one looks at the vastly different way she lived her life from the way her sister and brother lived theirs. They lived on the same block along with my grandparents for most of their lives. Mom moved away and traveled all over the world and lived the life of an itinerate pastor’s wife’s. My father’s father was an irascible troublemaker in the Church of God. Both he and my father experienced being thrust on the outside of the church throughout their lives.

Although I know I have made my own way by insisting on not conforming all my life, I feel now that I have been and am still incredibly lucky to have a life that is rewarding.

Who Lost the Sex Wars? | The New Yorker

I started reading this article hoping it was going to cover how transexuals were being treated by the feminist movement. That wasn’t covered but the article held my attention by talking about the struggles of seeing people as they actually are sexually and otherwise.

I finished Hurston’s Jonah’s Gourd Vine yesterday. Maybe the point of the book or at least its title is that we lead charmed lives under the shadow of the gourd vine until we don’t.

The glossary did not reveal much to me. I had already figured out most of the phrases and words from context. I do this with Shakespeare. I try not to look at footnotes unless I have a question. Often the question I might have isn’t there in the footnotes.

I also found that Hurston’s novel had notes in the back as well as the glossary. From the notes I learned that the wonderful sermon that Rev Pearson preaches is a transcription of one Hurston heard. Specifically it was preached by the Reverend C. C. Lovelace in Eau Gallie, Florida on May 1, 1929.

In fact, the same year Johah’s Gourd Vine was published, Hurston published the sermon in Negro edited by Nancy Cunard.

In my American Library edition, there is a chronology of Hurston’s life. The chronology was more revealing than the Wikipedia article or other references I have read about her life. She struggled financially throughout her life not just at the end of it. But she seems to have maintained her art of writing right up until the end of her life, working on projects like a life of Herod and submitting articles for the Black newspaper The Fort Pierce Chronicle.

Before she and Langston Hughes had their parting of ways, they were traveling together in 1937. The chronology says that Hurston accidentally ran into Hughes in Mobile, Alabama then drives him in her car to New York. On the way, they stopped at the Tuskegee Institute and visited the grave of Booker t. Washington. In Macon, Georgia they saw Bessie Smith perform and visit her in her hotel room.

This trip seems to be an eye opening one for the city slicker Hughes. Hurston not only had a background from the south, she had pursued her career of anthropology there. In 1935 she joined Alan Lomax and Mary Elizabeth Barnicle for a trip throughout the south. They made recordings for the Library of Congress. Afterward, the chronology adds, Lomax credits Hurston with being “almost entirely responsible for the success” of the first part of the expedition.

I was tickled to see that in 1937 Hurston suggests to the Guggenheim Foundation that it “fund a college of African-American music, with lectures by Duke Ellington, Fats Waller, Louis Armstrong, singer Ethel Waters, and the tap dancer, Bill Robinson.”

What a school and series of lectures by living treasures that would have been! Apparently nothing came of it.

I also finished the Miles Davis biography, So What: The Life of Miles Davis by John Szwed. This is a fantastic look into the life of an important composer and performer. Szwed gave me more insight into Davis than I had before. He scrupulously documents comments and stories about Davis that demonstrate that he was very different from the many ways he is often portrayed or talked about. Szwed shows him in three dimensions but respectfully acknowledges the parts of any person that are impossible to know.

I’ll end with a quote from Wayne Shorter that comes from an article by Krystian Brodacki, (Jazz Forum 1/1992 (vol. 132), pp24-29)

To sum up Miles, I like to call him an original Batman. He was a crusader for justice and for value. He’d be Miles Dewey Davis III by day, the son of Dr. Davis, and at night he’s in his hard-skin suits with the dark shades and he’s doing his Batman-fighting for truth and justice. But Batman had to be a dual personality, too, like he knew the criminal mind. So Miles, whatever he did that was not criminal but like short-tempered or he cursed everybody out, and when he was younger he’d hit somebody, or like they say Miles treated some woman really bad or something like that … I would say that Bruce Wayne, the guy that played Batman, he was capable of doing that, too, that’s why he was such a good Batman… A pure person does not know what defenses to use against the Vampire!

Counting the glossary I discovered this morning, I only have a few pages left in Zora Neale Hurston’s novel, Jonah’s Gourd Vine. I have refrained from looking up reviews and analysis until after I finish the book and give it some thought. The book makes sense to me so far. It is the story of the life of John Pearson. He was in the first generation of African Americans born free after enslavement. It begins with him as a strapping seventeen year old and before he is done he has married many women and become a successful preacher.

The title of the book comes from the story of Jonah in the Bible. When the gourd appears in the story Jonah is unhappy. He was unhappy that he had spent time in the great fish’s belly. He was unhappy that when he finally did preach to Nineveh they basically ignored him. He was especially unhappy that the gourd or vine in more modern translations had died and no longer provided shade for him as he sat and brooded on a hillside.

So Jonah’s gourd is both a pleasant shade for a troubled person and subsequently a symbol of fate that both comforts and then leaves us to our unhappiness.

Jonah’s gourd has been mentioned twice so far in the novel. I’m still pondering how it all comes together.

Thurston writes dialog that reflects how she hears people actually talk. At first it feels a bit like derisive minstrel show exaggeration. But the more I read her dialog the more it seems that she is rendering an honest transcription of how real people talk. There is also an excellent transcription of an important sermon in the life of John Pearson. It made me think of James Joyce’s inclusion of sermons in his work.

Hurston’s way of telling her story was contrary to many of her contemporaries. Her shrewdness and excellent story lines went unnoticed. This lack of recognition eventually became so pronounced that after producing many books and plays she famous died in obscurity earning money as a substitute teacher and a maid..

In 1934, Langston Hughes published his collection of short stories, The Ways of White Folks. He had collaborated a few years early with Hurston on a play, Mule Bone. According to Wikipedia, this is when their friendship fell apart.

The same year, George Orwell published Burmese Days; Ezra Pound, An ABC of Reading; Dorothy L. Sayers, The Nine Tailors; Evelyn Waugh, A Handful of Dust; Henry Miller, Tropic of Cancer; P. L. Travers, her first Mary Poppins novel; F. Scott Fitzgerald, Tender is the Night; and Agatha Christie several mysteries including Murder on the Orient Express.

Good year for books. It’s hard to imagine what it would have been like to be a reader at that time. I have read several of the books mentioned above but I’m not sure I would have been aware of them in the thirties if I had been alive.

When I read a good book, it takes me some time to process it. With pages to go in Hurston, I am chomping at the bit to quit writing here and go finish it and think about it.

More tomorrow.

It’s probably silly for me to count days of retirement. The job I just left was a part time one. It didn’t require near the effort that many people put into their livelihood. Being a church musician has always left me lots of time for other stuff I like to do. When I was a child, I watched my Father leave the home and go to the office at the church. It always seemed like he had a cushy job. When I was an adult, I watched an ex-policeman go about his daily duties as an Episcopalian priest with a minimum of effort and a maximum of leisure in the northern Michigan resort town I lived. We called him “Smokey.”

Granted Smokey eventually left his strong willed wife for the wife of a parishioner. But that was not unusual. In the little resort town I lived, there wasn’t that much for people to do. Fish. Hunt. Drink. Go to bars. Dance. Fuck. Take care of the kids. Whatever.

My family and I ran a local bookshop. I played in bars and the local Episcopal church for meager remuneration. Eventually we all had to leave for more prosperous jobs. Prosperous as in “make enough money to live.” This was always the goal And with children there is an added sense of responsibility.

I set my sights on a better church job. At first it was a little church in Westland Michigan. Before I left the resort town in northern Michigan, a friend pointed out tactfully that I needed my musical training was unfinished. This was a bit of an understatement at the time. There was even an outspoken Welch lady at the church who nagged me pointing out that I needed to improve my organ playing skills. I had a few years of studying piano in Delaware, Ohio. One year of college working on my musical skills in general with an eye toward composition. But I was sorely lacking in the skills I would eventually acquire.

So churches paid me to play the organ and conduct choirs. This went on for years. Usually I had a church job as I pursued my college education. I was an old student even then. But so were many at Wayne State. Not so much at Notre Dame. But church has been the way for me to make a bit of money to help support the family. But it’s never felt like a job you retire from.

Eileen and I are doing alright with both of us living on retirement and social security. If it wasn’t for the Covid plague I like to think we would be doing more during this period. We have curtailed airplane flights out of a concern for their safety. This means we have curtailed annual visits to California to see our beloved family out there or to England to be with that beloved branch of the family. The China branch came closer and relocated here in Michigan. So they are easier to see.

I’m pretty sure Eileen and I would be more adventuresome at this time of life if it were safer. We like to travel together. We enjoy each other’s company. And travel has been a part of lives together, one that has been exhilarating and educational.

Eileen noticed that we could get round trip tickets to Dublin for #300 recently. Damn! I would love to return to Dublin and spend more time pursuing literary Dublin sites. But I don’t think that’s in the cards right now.

Hell, I’d like to go to Grand Rapids and go to some of my favorite restaurants and bookstores. This would be easy. But Eileen and I are restricting ourselves to restaurants that provide outdoor seating at this point. I have no idea what we will do when the snow falls. But I suspect we will continue to restrain until it’s safe.

Mt therapist continues to ask me if I want to discontinue therapy now. It’s probably his way of giving me permission to do so. I was telling Eileen that I don’t feel anymore drawn to therapy than I did when I began. But I have found it helpful, occasionally, very helpful. At my zoom session yesterday with Dr. Birky I didn’t have much on my mind but usually I do. So I’m not quitting now.

I have scheduled eye surgery in October to replace my cataracts with artificial lenses. This should improve my life considerably. If we remember, Eileen does all the driving. I can see to drive and still do short trips like to the library or Farmers Market. But if she’s in the car, it’s probably safer since I see distant objects double and blurry.

The physical stuff made my church gig a bit more stressful than it had been. I had trouble seeing the music clearly and my hands are gradually shrinking so that I can’t reach as far as used to on the keyboard. These disadvantages are not too troubling in my living room, but in public they can add a little pressure.

Also, I’m hoping the eye surgery will make reading books and music easier.

I have altered my morning routine to end with writing in this blog. [Sarah, if you’re reading this, you are probably the only one to persist through my bluster. Hi!] However, I have toyed with doing some more directed writing of prose at this time in my life, so I’m sort of using this daily discipline to test the waters a bit.

I remain motivated to keep my daily routine of reading, studying, and playing. It’s what I want to do. Maybe I’ll want to do something else like composer or write. Maybe not. What I am doing now is pretty damn fulfilling.

Opinion | God Has No Place in Supreme Court Opinions – The New York Times

Linda Greenhouse, the writer of this article, is also featured in an interview in this week’s On The Media. I admire her greatly and try not to miss any of her articles.

On the radio program she makes clear she sees us moving towards theocracy in the US. Both in the radio interview and in the article she mentions that people who support making abortion illegal have dropped the pretense that it is anything other than their religious beliefs. She keeps suing the word, “dogma,” in the interview. I like the sound of that.

Religiosity goes a long way to explain why so many people in the US talk and act as though they have no brains.

The Untold Stories of Wes Studi, an Overlooked Native American Icon 

This is an article by a writer I admire, Tommy Orange. It’s a good read since he is a skillful writer writing about something he knows. It’s in the Gentlemen’s Quarterly. The pictures of Wes Studi are hilarious. He is a prolific actor, but in the pictures he models fashion clothes. The captions enumerate what he is wearing and the cost, which is eyebrow raising. As below, most of the captions I read said “hat, his own.”

Eileen was surprised that I made time to go over to Grace Church yesterday. She thought that with the influx of so many new books I would want to stay home and read. I am definitely in the mood to read. But I have been planning on going over and doing some filing. I motivated myself with the idea of checking out my old CD player sitting in a closet there.

Janice Ian writes about the need to own the music you love. The main way to do this effectively, she says, is to own CDs. Since I have had experience with Catholic missalettes and copyrights, I know that physical property doesn’t translate into legal ownership. Those little pamphlet things that Catholics sometimes use have some very interesting small print. You don’t actually own the little booklets. You are licensing them from the publisher.

Likewise digital recordings are often accessed via a sort of licensing. Ian noticed this when she found one of her favorite recordings remixed and remastered in a way she found annoying. When she attempted to find the old recording online, she failed.

Record ownership falls under this rubric for me, but I don’t remember Ian mentioning that.

Like an idiot I parted with most of my favorite records a long time ago. But I had so many that the remnant is still a significant part of my life now that I realize how valuable and important certain recordings are to me.

When it came to replacing CDs I had at least learned that technological lesson: don’t jump on a Technological bandwagon with both feet, you probably will regret it. Thus, my CD collection is on my porch gathering dust. I only have broken out CDs to listen to in my cars which I always make sure have a function player.

When Eileen and I arrived at Grace yesterday, I grabbed one of those CDs in the car. It happened to be Rattle and Hum by U2. But inside was The Joshua Tree which is also a recording I love.

I dragged out the moldering CD player and put on U2. It crackled a bit as I adjusted the volume but it did play the CD. Eileen and I listened to it as we both sorted and filed music.

My church gave me a $200 gift certificate to Readers World, the local bookstore. I now have about $40 left after ordering a bunch of books. I like shiny new books. But I also am developing a consciousness of liking old musty books.

My recent foray into Charles Ives led me logically to thinking about and reading Emerson. I have the portable Emerson.

These thick paperbacks from the past are wonderful. They are usually well edited and have thoughtful selections from the featured writer. I am still in the midst of the introduction by Carl Bode.

But when I fetched the Portable Emerson, I pulled out an interesting thin blue box sitting next to it on my shelf sporting the hand lettered title, Ralph Waldo Emerson’s Reading.

The box neatly unfolded.

Inside was a worn paperback copy of Ralph Waldo Emerson’s Reading: A Guide for Source-Hunters and Scholars To the One Thousand Volumes Which He Withdrew from Libraries.

The copyright is 1941. The publisher is Thistle Press, Raleigh, North Carolina.

Eileen being a retired library thought this was a violation of privacy. Me, being who I am, I thought it was very, very cool to see what books Emerson read.

Another book came in the mail yesterday. It qualifies for a bit of mustiness itself. I haven’t been able to find my copy of The Peloponnesian Wars by Thucydides. I decided to replace it but didn’t want a new glossy edition.

Mustiness was preferred. I manage to get a line on a Great Histories edition from 1963. This fits in nicely with my other books.

I started reading Jonah’s Gourd Vine by Zora Neal Hurston yesterday.

One of my Readers World purchases was two volumes of Hurston published by the Library of America. I like these editions even though they are new.

Jonah’s Gourd Vine is the first novel in one of them. I think Hurston is an amazing writer. Time to go read.

I went to the Farmers Market yesterday while Eileen made homemade mint ice cream. I bought some flowers as well as stuff to eat.

The person at the flower stand cautioned me that even though I was buying some flowering tobacco it could not be used for smoking or consuming. Later I thought that despite my mask she probably thought I looked like a goddam hippie who might consume anything to get high.

I told her that I was nostalgic about tobacco having been raised in East Tennessee around tobacco farms. You can see the flowering tobacco plant better in this picture. It’s pink and the two highest flowers in the arrangement.

In both of this photographs you can see the bread rack waiting to cool fresh bread. It has about five more minutes in the oven then out it comes.

My daughter Elizabeth emailed me and mentioned that she knows I like low key birthdays. She is right. But yesterday was lots of fun. I opened the gifts my brother and his wife mailed me. Books! Excellent! Thank you Mark and Leigh for the lovely two volume Library of America set of Tennessee Williams plays and Rita Dove’s new book of poetry.

Earlier in the week my daughter Sarah and partner Matthew sent me a Mr. Natural collection by R. Crumb.

Eileen and I went out to eat at Mizu Sushi. She was hoping the flowers that she had secretly ordered for me would come before lunch. They did.

Then just as we were pulling out of the drive, the Hari Kunzru novels that she had ordered came in the mail.

With our meals I had warm saki and she had green tea. I had raw fish bibimbap and Eileen had Chicken Teriyaki Bento box. It was all delicious. I paid for the meal with a gift certificate from my former boss.

Then we crossed the street and bought season tickets for the Hope College Great Performance Series. After that we walked down to Readers World to pick up books I had ordered.

We came home and I read books and had a real martini and some wine. I can’t imagine a better 70th.

Today is my 70th birthday and I’m very happy to be here. One of the things about living this long is that you know you didn’t die young. Except for a diligent dermatologist I might not have made it. He found a funny looking spot on my head, tested it, and then passed me on to people who could remove my melanoma.

Our daily lives are shaped by many turns of fate. Probably most of them we slide past unknowingly.

Anyway, I’m glad to be alive. My blood pressure was low this morning and despite some cheating my weight continues to fall slowly. I have been exercising daily for a few years with an eye on raising the odds on being able not only to live but do some thinking.

Yesterday morning I got hung up in Charles Ives. I listened to his Concord Sonata as I exercised. I pulled out my piano score and despite the difficulty of reaching even an octave with my left hand played slowly and pretty accurately through several pages.

I also read a bit of Liszt’s piano transcription of the first movement of Beethoven’s 5th symphony. In his Essays before a Sonata as quoted in the piano score, Ives writes the third movement, “The Alcotts.” He seems to be thinking a lot about the “Orchard House” where the Alcotts lived.

Within the house, on every side, lie remembrances of what imagination can do for the better amusement of fortunate children who have to do for themselves—much-needed lessons in these days of automatic, ready-made, easy entertainment which deaden rather than stimulate the creative faculty. And there sits the little old spinet-piano Sophia Thoreau gave to the Alcott children, on which Beth played the old Scotch airs, and played at the Fifth Symphony.

That’s exactly what I do: “play at the Fifth Symphony.” The Symphony permeates Ives’ music. It is prominent in the first movement of the Concord Sonata. It helps to go back to Beethoven and sip from the well of Ives’ inspiration.

Once again our visit to the beach was made on a very windy September day. It is exhilarating to sit by the channel and read when it is so windy. We stopped at the library and I picked up some books including An Indigenous Peoples’ History of the United States by Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz.

Sandra Cisneros mentioned this book in her By the Book interview in the September 2, 2021 New York Times Book Review. I thought it sounded interesting and ordered a copy through the library.

I read the Introduction and the First Chapter sitting on the windy beach. Dunbar-Ortiz is helping me understand the history of how white people replaced all the brown people who lived in the Americas before them.

The short answer is settler colonialism.

The Wikipedia article linked above has a concise definition: “Settler colonialism is a form of colonialism that seeks to replace the original population of the colonized territory with a new society of settlers. As with all forms of colonialism, it is based on exogenous domination, typically organized or supported by an imperial authority.”

Dunbar-Ortiz outlines a brief survey of the dizzying variety of civilizations that precede European colonization. She says it was not the “new world.” It has a history of technology and ideas and peoples. There were roads everywhere. The forests were cultivated. Corn was raised to feed large populations. It boggles my mind which has been shaped by a misunderstanding of the history of the land where I live.

Here’s a pertinent quote from Dunbar-Ortiz:

“The total population of the hemisphere was about one hundred million at the end of the fifteenth century, with about two-fifths in North America, including Mexico. Central Mexico alone supported some thirty million people. At the same tie, the population of Europe as far east as the Ural mountains was around fifty million. Experts hae observed that such population densities in precolonial America were supportable because the people had created a relatively disease-free paradise. There certainly were diseases and health problems, but the practice of herbal medicine and even surgery and dentistry, and most importantly both hygienic and ritual bathing, kept diseases at bay.”

Eileen just got up and is taking a shower. I’m hoping to get to the Farmers Market this morning. Time to quit. More tomorrow on Ives and other stuff.

As I put out my American flag, I notice that my neighbor two doors down is still flying his. I try to follow American flag etiquette and bring in my flag each evening.

Sometimes I forget. The etiquette I know says that you can keep your flag up at night if it’s lit. This morning my neighbor’s porch light was on despite the gentle dawn light. I guess it’s conceivable that it was his intention to follow flag etiquette.

I walk over to pick up my daily paper. My shoulders relax as I feel the morning breeze move over the neighborhood. As I once overheard a trucker say in the dead of an Ohio night at a truck stop: Another day in paradise.

I’m not that bitter but it’s good to remember that I benefit from my country’s paradise, largely built on the backs of other peoples not enjoying the fall of the planet not to mention my fellow countrymen and women who are not as fortunate as me.

A weird time to be alive. The planet is in full fledged shut down. My country is losing the shreds of democracy it has grasped at in its short little history. At the same time, I have a place to sleep, food to eat, and good health. Also I have a universe of information, beauty, poetry, and music at my fingertips via the internet.

Today is my last day to be in my sixties. Tomorrow I turn the big seven oh. My friend, Dave Barber, who is just a little older than me once told me that when he thinks about his own aging, he thinks to himself, huh, so this is what it’s like to be 69 or 70 or whatever. it’s a good attitude.

Today is also day nine of being retired from church work. I have a another friend who occasionally posts what day she is on in her retirement on Facebroke. I don’t remember the number. it’s in the two hundreds.

I feel fortunate and lucky in my life so far. If one lives and benefits from being fortunate in the lottery of life the least one can do is feel grateful.

I do.

Into The Zone Bingo!

I’m listening my way through Hari Kunzru’s podcast, Into the Zone. The September 4 2020edition is called “That Ain’t Country.” I’m about half way through. I felt like I had it the lottery when Kunzru began to interview Kevin Young, a poet I like and admire about Cowboys. Life is good.

Murders of environment and land defenders hit record high | Climate crisis | The Guardian

Killing people defending the planet. Who benefits?

“Colonialism is still running strong, even if it’s dressed up with corporate logos or hidden with offshore bank accounts.”

Behind The Scenes – Herman Miller houses visitors at historic lodge

A 2008 article. The Herman Miller private complex sits right on a site with all kinds of local history.

Point Superior was the original site of the winter camp of Chief Ogamah Winine’s Ottawa band. George Smith eventually convinced them to move to the Old Wing Mission site I mentioned yesterday. But before that white investors attempted to make a settlement there themselves. It’s not clear how this affected the Ottawa band but it can’t have been good. They bought the land from the state, platted nearly six hundred lots, built a sawmill, a blacksmith shop, and seven houses. But sandbanks blocked the easy access to Lake Michigan this outpost counted on and it quickly went bust.

I can hear thunder quietly rumbling this morning. Often in the morning I can hear trains passing far away. it’s dark usually. I find all this relaxing as I go about my mundane morning routine.

When I first came to Holland to live, I was startled by the homogeneous nature of the population. Of course, I wasn’t seeing it clearly. It seemed as though it was largely a white group of people. After a bit of observing all these white people also seemed to be religious conservatives. Yikes!

I didn’t see the brown people who were either picking blueberries or descendants of brown people who had come to the area to do so. Many but not all of these descendants were busily distancing them from their heritages and quickly falling into step with the local white conservatives.

I have wondered, where are the brown people? Where are the black people? I have been learning some interesting answers reading Old Wing Mission: Cultural Interchange as Chronicled by George and Arvilla Smith in their Work with Chief Wakazoo’s Ottawa Band on the West Michigan Frontier edited by Robert P. Swierenga and William Van Appledorn.

I did try to learn about the local history when we first arrived in 1987. I learned about the Dutch Reformed Churches and that they had split right here in Holland forming the two American branches: Reformed Church of America and the Christian Reformed Church. If I had tried to learn more about who preceded them here, there was not much information easily available at that time. If I had my wits about me I might have checked with the Holland Museum. But I didn’t.

Now that I am looking into this more carefully, I note that much of the research has been published after we arrived here including the book above (2008).

Old Wing Mission consists of an edited version of diaries by both George and Arvilla Smith. The first chapter which I read yesterday is a history by Swierenga that begins in the early 19th century.

As best as I can make Roman Catholic missions weren’t going well locally for whatever reason. Swierenga tells a story of George N. Smith arriving from the East, becoming ordained in the Presbyterian Church. After a specific plea from the shrewd Chief of the local Ottawa band, Ogamah Winine, Smith became convinced of his missionary calling to the Ottawa. Ogamah Winine is referred to in the book as Chief Joseph Wakazoo. Only once, so far, has Swierenga used his original name. He indicates that the correct spelling of Ogamah Winine is unknown.

The Chief needed Smith in several ways. It would help to have a white man negotiate the quickly changing policies of the U.S. government. There were monies and land available for native people from the goverment. But getting it was hard if you weren’t white. Ogameh Winine and his mother quickly converted from Catholicism to Protestantism. Before too long Smith was the proxy buyer of land on the southwest corner of Holland where the Old Wing Mission Building still stands.

After a very nice lunch yesterday, Eileen and I drove out to take a look. The building is currently privately owned. My reading tells me the interior has been remodeled and some of the original buildings are long gone.

I snapped a picture of the historical marker in front of the building.

The “Old Wing Mission” is named after Chief “Wing,” Ogameh Winine ‘s recently deceased brother. The book does not tell what “Wing” ‘s real name was. It’s the “old” Wing Mission because Smith and Ogameh Winine eventually decide to leave the area and move to the leelanau Pennisula north of Traverse City where the Ottawa band migrated each year for the summer. There they presumably established a New Wing Mission.

Before too long, the Catholics come back with a vengeance. Smith took decades to learn the Algonquin language spoken by all three indigenous peoples of the Michigan area: Ottawa, Potawatami, and Ojibway. The ‘black robes” as the indigenous referred to Catholic priests were more fluent. Father Andreas Viszosky established a Catholic mission about where the current Heinz Factory now sits.

A struggle begins between the two missionaries. The Catholics have many attractive attributes. Cool ceremonies, more tolerant than the Presbyterians especially about drinking. Smith made his converts sign pledges of abstinence. Viszosky presumably would discourage drinking but forgive the sin and did not require signed pledges most of which were not necessarily kept faithfully.

I don’t mean to be glib about this. Drinking is still a problem among surviving native peoples. But the whole missionary story is distasteful. The reader knows the ending. The indigenous people were subject to genocidal treatment in our country.

So, I appreciated the book starting with these sentences: “The history of the American Indians has been told largely by white Americans. This book is no exception.”

Like good scholars Swierenga and Van Appledorn are looking to understand and describe history.

Before too long the Dutch arrive and that is ultimately the final blow to the situation. The Ottawa Band could stand it no longer. The whites were taking over. Time to leave.

I do wonder about the history preceding this time.. I know the “black robes” had missions on Lake Michigan up and down the shore much earlier. That history also interests me.

I am planning to join the local historical society soon. I am reading a library copy of Wing Mission and figure they probably sell it at the museum. I would rather buy it there.

I’m having trouble embedding or linking just one episode of a podcast I listened to this morning.

The Podcast is Into the Zone. It is hosted by Hari Kunzru, the author of Gods Without Men.

The first episode is called Druid Like Me and is quite good. Kunzru has some very fine insights about England, his home country. I recommend listening especially to my British readers (Hi Sarah and Matthew!) Here’s a link to the web page. You will have to scroll down for this episode which is also available in the ways you usually listen to podcasts.

Speaking of Brits, Eileen and I watched a few episodes of Bill Bryson’s TV series based on his book, Notes from A Small Island. Made in the nineties when we were all younger (Bryson is about the same age as Eileen and me), it’s fun to get a Bryson look at the country he has adopted. Stephen Fry is a cab driver in the first episode. Recommended as a fun, slightly blurry distraction.

This morning is my first Sunday in retirement. I am reminded of a teacher I knew at Ohio Weslyan, Tilden Wells. Eileen and I visited him after he had retired. When asked how he felt about it, he said that when the class bell first rang after he retired (Class bells? Ohio Weslyan must have had them. I don’t remember them), after that bell rang, Tilden claimed to feel a slight pain in his left testicle.

I don’t even have that. My release from this work has been mostly painless. I have quickly subsided into what feels more like normal living.

I think I need to pull back from starting any projects for a while. I toyed this week with doing some writing already, but I want to give myself a pause. Some time to think before starting any new routines besides reading, practicing, and studying would be well spent.

I chatted with both my daughters yesterday. Elizabeth drove over for a quick overnight visit and brought Alex. Jeremy is on a business/family trip. He should be back by tomorrow. Eileen and I have a weekly video chat with Sarah. What a luxury for me to see both of my daughters on the same day!

As you can see, I figured out how to embed videos with the new WordPress software. It’s ridiculously easy. When I copy an embed url into block text, the software automatically converts it into an embedded video.

I discovered that the score I purchased to the second string quartet of Charles Ives is woefully out of date.

I compared a library copy of Malcolm Goldstein 2011 critical edition to the used 1954 edition I purchased.

There were significant differences. More measures restored in the Goldstein edition.

Ives published few works during his lifetime.

Those few published works were rarely performed. He left tons of manuscripts of his works. But his hand was not that clear and he used pencil. So Goldstein’s edition is better and takes into account all the Ives research that has been done.

I wasn’t exactly doing a comparative study. I’m interested in Ives use of hymn tunes and other melodies in his work and especially in the string quartets. I have been listening to them and can hear many musical quotes. Goldstein points out musical quotations and sources. Also, like Satie, Ives was known to write comments in the scores for performers. Unlike Satie’s sardonic and charmingly intentionally misleading comments, Ives reflected his hard scrabble new England personality. Comments like “pretty tone, ladies” and “This is music for men to play…”

Ives envisioned writing a string quartet specifically for four men to play and left comments about the “weak, trite, and effeminate” string quartet music, even referring to it as “emasculated.”

As I began marking the tunes and comments into my used score, I discovered measures missing in the old edition. Dang.

In my listening, I have found the first string quartet more interesting and relevant to my own learning. David Porter has updated that piece in a new edition.

Both the Porter edition of the first string quartet and the Goldstein edition of the second are $49.95 new. Although this includes parts for the strings (which I do not need), this is more than I want to pay for a study score.

I was able to get the Porter edition used for $15 plus S & H. I haven’t started studying it yet, but am looking forward to it.

Along the same lines, I am reading Vaughan William’s collection of essays, National Music and other essays. I admire the way these composers integrate melodies into their work. Plus, listening to Brahms this morning, I was inspired by his melodies as well.

That’s about all for today. If Eileen and I stay true to form, we will eat out today. First real day of retirement and life is good.