My tablet arrived in the mail yesterday afternoon. Eileen left for Muskegon to visit her sister Nancy and her Mom. She was too ill to attend the annual Hatch Mother’s day meal so she wanted to make up for this absence and also wanted to help Nancy mess with the loom she loaned her.

I marked time anticipating the Fed Ex guy delivering my tablet. I threw open the sheer curtains on the porch and in the living room so I wouldn’t miss him while I treadmilled. He arrived after lunch.

I immediately opened it up and obediently plugged it in to finish charging it as per the enclosed instructions (Do not use until fully charged).

In the meantime, I got online and purchased another silly book for my Mom using her credit card. Then I went to the library and turned in her old books and found a few new ones. I supplemented these with a couple of books I ordered for her online and dropped them all off.

I also picked up a hard copy of Our Kind of Traitor by John Le Carré. I ripped the audio book from the library copy and have been listening to it at night. Unfortunately since I fall asleep I have been getting the plot a bit confused.

It’s pretty interesting so I began outlining the hard copy of the book this morning to help me keep things straight. I think the audio book might be edited down a bit since I have run across passages I don’t remember. Or maybe I just slept through them.

Some weird serendipity this morning between my Greek and Thomas Merton.

I managed to use my tablet to work on my Greek this morning. My Kindle versions of the second edition look quite good on the tablet App.

This morning I was quite excited because I managed to push my translation for the day up to a quote from Homer: “All strangers are under the protection of Zeus.”

 

Then this morning, in Merton’s essay “The Early Legend: notes for a cosmic meditation,” I came across this: “the stranger is holy.”

This essay reminded me of Herman Hesse, especially The Glass Bead Game.

It’s kind of a poem narrative about a ritual. The voice of the essay begins with the voice of a holy man.

 

You get the idea. At the back of Hesse’s The Glass Bead Game, he includes what he calls “lives.” These are supposedly the creation of the main character, Joseph Knecht. They are exercises in meditation and may describe previous lives of Knecht.

Parts of this Merton essay are like this.

Then I ran across this.

 

“Take time to compose yourself.” On Tuesdays on my Google Calendar I have kept the reminder: “Steve composes himself.” This is to help me to remember to thing about composing each week. Today this probably won’t work since I have a 10 AM meeting at church. But still it’s kind of cool to run across this in Merton.

I am enjoying this collection of essays immensely. They surprise me with the way I can relate to them so intimately. It has to be a combination of being influenced by Merton (and frankly the radical Christ of the New Testament) and coincidence.

My last example of this in this essay is two mantras Merton develops. First:

“I made myself a black man so as not to be one of them.” Merton, The Early Legend

I was shocked when I read this line. I think of myself as an “outsider” who identifies strongly with the weak. Merton repeats this notion several times in the essay.

The second mantra-like notion is found on this page.

 

“Neither sacred nor secular.” “The Lord of Songs,” “The live maize,” and on the previous page, “the live quail.”

Another little intimate resonance for me since I have difficulty with the distinction of sacred and secular.

 

 

It’s a beautiful day in Holland Michigan. As I took the garbage to the curb this morning a gentle breeze was blowing. Birds singing. Life is good.

I played my first Gwyneth Walker organ piece at church yesterday. I have mixed feelings about this composer. I find myself only attracted to her instrumental music not her choral work. Also many of her instrumental pieces seem a bit glib in their use of sentimentality. It feels like she is working on being accessible.

I couldn’t find my score to the piano trio I purchased by her. But yesterday after church rummaging around for the umpteenth time I FOUND it in a folder I had marked “PIano trio.”

I came home and started practicing it. On the inside cover was a pretty unfriendly notice.

Something like “Purchasing this music does not give you permission to perform it in public. To do so one must contact ASCAP.”

I went on ASCAP’s web site but there was nothing obvious about getting permission to perform music only solicitations to join the dang thing (ASCAP = American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers).

So I went on Gwyneth Walker’s web site and found an email from the subsidiary publisher who publishes this piece and emailed them.

I just checked my email and there was no reply yet. This makes sense since I emailed them on Sunday and it’s early Monday morning.

If there is a charge to perform this fucking piece of music, I am seriously considering NOT doing so and emailing the publisher’s rep and Gwyneth Walker herself complaining.

On the other hand, I might just give up and pay the stupid fee.

I received one comment yesterday about her organ piece. Mostly I noticed while I was playing my heart out on it (I quite like it) that people were in conversation both to  my left in the choir and to my right on the floor in front of the organ. Sigh.

Only one more Sunday of choir. Thank God. I am two clicks past burn out. Poor me.

And it’s a beautiful day.

Episcopal Church Fonts – Progressive Solemnity

Geeky article on fonts.

Migrants in Rome Try to Recover After Ponte Mammolo Camp Is Destroyed – NY

I’m probably just naive but this sort of thing always depresses me.

A Conversation with Victoria Polevá — Music & Literature

Ran across this composer yesterday. Found a pretty cool piece by her on YouTube.

Sent her a “friend” request on Facebooger. She had responded by this morning. I love the interwebs.

With This Many Buskers in Asheville, a Discordant Note Was Inevitable – NYT

I found some of the attitudes in this article off putting. The bit about “less talented buskers” being “little more than panhandlers with musical props” and the one shop owner commenting on whether the smell of performers shouldn’t go further than the sound of the music. She hastily added  she wasn’t speaking of the more professional performers.

that bugs me