I spent all my energy yesterday morning going to the Farmers Market with Eileen, then searching for a book case for my Mom’s room at the nursing home.

Mom has been devouring Christian Amish novels from the library. I keep a list and deliver books to her. Not just the Amish books but also other books that I think she might enjoy reading. Usually they are CHRISTIAN fiction. Which is ironic since I find the entire concept pretty distasteful. But my Mom likes them at this time of life.

Anyway, she’s pretty much read all the ones at the library at least twice. So I have been looking for other books. I have searched the interlibrary loan system and found a few. But Amazon has been the best resource for this small niche genre of Christian Amish novels that my Mom hasn’t read yet.

I have been using her credit card to buy her used copies of these novels. Recently I noticed that they were piling up around in her room. She and I discussed getting her a book case and replacing her TV table with it, which was the goal yesterday.

By the time we had scoured three or four stores and found one, I was exhausted. I had dressed too warmly for the day and Mom’s room was stuffy and warm. Eileen and I went through bags and stacks of stuff to clear away and organize Mom’s room a bit. Only a bit, you understand, since it would be another major project for Jupe to do more.

By the time I arrived at the organ bench in the afternoon for my daily practice I was stiff and exhausted. Later Eileen asked me how my practicing went. Not good, I responded. I discovered that I was taking today’s prelude by Gwyneth Walker a few clicks too slow on the metronome. This was the result of confusion not adaptation (as I sometimes do with music for accuracy’s sake). So that was good. But mostly it was one of those times when I had trouble concentrating and doing well.

I read this article later in the day:

The insults of age: A one-woman assault on condscension by Helen Garner

I am feeling my age. I noticed in pictures of the AGO potluck how older and different I look from the rest of the group. See for yourself.

Then while attending an opening of an presentation of a project called The Human Canvas yesterday, I noticed how invisible I was suddenly when I was unable to get the eye of the presenter. She simply didn’t see me.

Anyway, the article by Helen Garner is probably a guilty pleasure read for an old fart like me. I read parts to Eileen last night.

Toward the end of the article Garner quotes from Marilyn Robinson’s novel Gilead.

I have thought about reading this book. It was recommended by my friend Rhonda. I had unfortunately temporarily filed it under the “too-fucking-Christian-religious” part of my brain.

“On the tram home I thought of the young waiter with a chastened respect. It came to me that to turn the other cheek, as he had done, was not simply to apply an ancient Christian precept but also to engage in a highly sophisticated psychological manoeuvre. When I got home, I picked up Marilynne Robinson’s novel Gilead where I’d left off and came upon a remark made by Reverend Ames, the stoical Midwestern Calvinist preacher whose character sweetens and strengthens as he approaches death: “It is worth living long enough,” he writes, in a letter to the son born to him in his old age, “to outlast whatever sense of grievance you may acquire.” from Helen Garner’s article linked above

I found the novel in my Calibre library in the section of  books my brother has shared with me. Started it. Reading it reminds me very much of my father, brother and grand father all of whom are ministers I love.

The fact that Rev Ames is writing the book as a letter to the his adult son for him to read long after he is dead has some resonance for me since I don’t think I every really knew my own father the minister.

It’s probably a good read for now.

Last night was the AGO potluck which the chapter has every year at the end of the season. I had just about talked myself out of going, when I had a change of heart. I feared that the attendance would be low and my absence would be rude. This turned out to be completely wrong. A good number of members and significant others showed.

I took the opportunity to make a pan of marinara sauce and some fresh hummus to go along with some locally made fresh bread. I do enjoying cooking.

I chatted with some of the younger people (a college junior and recent grad). I was surprised when one of them told me he gets his news primarily from the New York Times online via a discounted student subscription.

I hope I wasn’t too much of an old ghoul but I asked these young people several questions about tech that I wonder about. No, they had never heard of the news source, Vice News. No, they didn’t know much about using Ipads or other tablets to read  music on and facilitate page turns.

They seem impressed with my new Android phone and the fact that I could add a tablet to my subscription for only 10 bucks a month.

Pretty soon I wandered off worrying slightly that I had made them a bit crazy with my intensity. But that’s my life.

I continue to cross compare the two versions of Freidman’s last book, A Failure of Nerve: Leadership in the Age of the Quick Fix.

It’s interesting to note when the editorial changes in the later edition changes meaning and when it clarifies convoluted syntax.

This morning I was mulling over Friedman’s notion that differentiation is a life long process. In order to make it work, one has to be dedicated to “continually transforming” one’s self.

It’s a “life long commitment,” Friedman writes.

I especially liked this section (which the ruthless editor of the later edition seems to have cut).

“The effort to ‘differentiate oneself in one’s family of origin’ should not be confused with therapy. This is not about pat concepts such as whether someone had an authoritarian father and therefore has problems with authority figures nor whether unresolved issues with one’s mother have resulted in problems relating to women. The problem with parents is that they had parents. 

Differentiation has more to do with the self-regulation that emerges when individuals can gain more autonomy over their reactive mechanisms as a result of moving toward their families in new (often playful) ways rather than distancing from them.”

Ed Friedman (emphasis added  in the first instance)

It’s helpful to me to have heard Friedman’s voice and seen him speak in person. I hear the book (especially the first version which retains more of his phrases) in his twangy ironic Mr. Natural voice. It helps.

New laws to target radicalisation – BBC News

David Cameron to unveil new limits on extremists’ activities in Queen’s speech | U

It looks like Great Britain may be moving toward some more weird repression. I couldn’t find this story in the US press online yesterday. In fact, I had difficulty running it down after I read it on my phone via the UK paper, The Guardian’s app.

When I went on to the Guardian’s web site I couldn’t access anything but a US version of it. It was only by searching this morning that I found the original article I had read in it.

In the Guardian report, Cameron’s government and the new Conservative manifesto uses language about closing Mosques and “cracking down” on people. Hmmm. I would love to hear Alan Moore’s take on this.