Spent the morning working on the harpsichord yesterday, prepping the keyboard for the new jacks. This involved removing one lead weight from the white keys (the old white keys had two) and putting an extra bushing under each key to decrease how far the key depresses.  I believe that now Eileen and I ready to start putting the new strings on today. She has the day off so we should find some time for that.

In the afternoon, I went over to the church for my weekly trio rehearsal.

We ran the violin and cello part to “Dead Man’s Pants.” When we got to Tiny Lies I switched from piano to banjo and sang the vocal line. The string parts are “sweetners” for this section. It was such a rush to hear actual instruments play the parts I have been working on for a while.

I need to turn my attention to the rest of the play list and start getting people together to rehearse.

I meant to contact the drummer this week. I have his cell so I can do that soon.  I wrote a riff for an arrangement of Bob Dylan’s “Tombstone Blues” yesterday. This song keeps on haunting me. This is the second arrangement I have done of it.  Kind of a blues piano funk thing.

I have been adding people to my Facebook “friends” list.

This has necessitated substituting the word “screw” for “fuck.” Several of the people are young people from my church and that seems appropriate. More troubling is the fact that some of the people on the list really rag on political figures in a negative way.  I don’t mind them expressing their opinions. In fact, I’m for that. But it does look they have bit hook line and sinker the partisan line that people who disagree with you are immoral and stupid.

Interestingly,  in his book, “Making Patriots,” Walter Bern points out that the founders of the USA realized this kind of acrimony can be destructive to the life of the republic.

“The Constitution, they said, was intended to provide a “remedy for the diseases most incident to republican government,” and Federalist 10 leaves no doubt as to what they understood to be a disease: “tyrannical majorities,” “angry and malignant passions,” a “factious spirit,” and, of most relevance here, zealous opinions “concerning religion.” With these diseases in mind, they wrote a constitution that withholds, checks, and separates powers, and (see Federalist 63) excludes the people “in the collective capacity” from any share in the exercise of these powers, and consigns religion to the private sphere by separating church and state and prohibiting religious tests for officeholders. Their purpose was to exclude, or at least inhibit, the zealous, the angry, and the morally indignant, and this, in turn, depended on confining the business of government to issues less likely to give rise to zeal, anger, or moral indignation.”

from Making Patriots by Walter Bern

Bern is writing about the separation of religion and state which is quite apropos.

So I try not to knee jerk react on Facebook about highly charged issues and discussion.

It’s not religion so much as the recent federal suit to challenge the immigration law in Arizona and of course there is always a stream of hatred directed at the president no matter what party she/he hails from.