I did manage to goof off yesterday afternoon. I even skipped reading the NYT so I’m a day or two behind in that. Instead I did other reading. I’m feeling a pleasant sense that nothing is so important that I can’t stay relaxed throughout my work. Probably delusional, but I’ll take it.
I think that I am mostly a lover, a good audience of poetry, music, stories, and ideas, emphasis on love. I am a bit of a maker, but mostly a lover. I have been returning to the first volume of Bach’s Well Tempered Clavichord. There is a difference between the two volumes. I have read where people think that the second volume is more profound and there might be something to that. However, returning to the first volume I find it immensely satisfying as well.
I’m hoping to coast through today.
I’m thinking I need to add a couple of anthems to the choir schedule list. After all, Lent starts next Wednesday. I have most of the Easter season to plan and a couple holes in Lent and Holy Week. I like my idea of scattering interesting high art kind of anthems between easier more accessible but still rewarding ones. I’m planning to do my setting of Psalm 121 when it comes up in Lent. I wrote this setting and dedicated it to my maternal grandparents, since I seem to recall this psalm was used at both of their funerals. At any rate, I can still hear in my inner ear my grandmother Midkiff (Grandmommy she insisted on being called) recite this psalm in the King James and nice W. Virginia accent.
A Back-Channel Plan for Ukraine and Russia, Courtesy of Trump Associates – The New York Times
Russia Will Accept Passports Issued by East Ukraine Separatists – The New York Times
I’m grouping links today. I have been trying to understand what’s happening in these countries near Russia. Richard Haas’s book, World in Disarray is helping. I looked at a map as well. it’s good to remember that six or more of these countries depending upon how you count were Yugoslavia until Tito’s death in the 90s.
The world is so much more complicated than what is presented in our media both journalistic and social.
Dysfunction and Deadlock at the Federal Election Commission – The New York Times
In these two articles, the second is written by the subject of the first. I love that kind of reporting then commenting from the principles.
Why the World Needs a Trump Doctrine – The New York Times
This is written by ” Zbigniew Brzezinski, who was President Carter’s national security adviser from 1977 to 1981,” and is currently “a trustee at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, where Paul Wasserman” the other author “is a research associate.”
I think the article is a bit pathetic in ascribing possibly competence to President Trump. But I do agree that President Trump is president and find the “Not My President” protests irrelevant expressions of what feels like denial. You have to admit he’s president to effectively monitor and resist bad stuff he does, right?