I played two pieces by Ernst Bloch for the prelude and postlude yesterday.  After church, a Lutheran minister who sometimes attends our church and may even be a member for all I know, shouted at me his name (Ernst Bloch). With my rock and roll diminished hearing I thought he said something in German, like “erste block.”

What could he be yelling at me? First block? Then I figured out he was commenting on the composer I had performed.

Not sure why I know about Bloch. I was eight years old when he died in 1959. I probably have come across his choral and piano compositions while studying and reviewing music.

Anyway, his musical language is pretty accessible. I chose the pieces yesterday because they weren’t too difficult to learn quickly and I thought they were attractive. This is more and more important for me. I only really want to perform music I think is attractive, well written, interesting and edifying.

I don’t mind doing music that doesn’t fit this category, but given the choice I would rather play music I like.

The postlude was “Wedding March III.”

Ray Ferguson taught me that I could alter titles to fit the church situation. Normally in the past I have chosen not to put an idiomatic title like  “Wedding March” in a church bulletin unless it had some reference to the service. Instead I would put the tempo marking which is always an acceptable practice in my mind.

I talked with Eileen and Jen (my boss) about retaining the title this time. They both thought it was a bit weird but not that weird so I went ahead and put the correct title in the bulletin.

During the dismissal, just before I began the postlude, our PA went berserk and starting making a very loud noise. Sort of ruined the moment anyway, i guess.

We sang “We are climbing Jacob’s Ladder” yesterday.

The story in the song was the story in the first reading.

The arrangement in the Episcopal resource, Lift Every Voice and Sing II, is by Horace Clarence Boyer.

It’s unusual in that Boyer has chosen a 12/8 time signature for it.

I came home and looked through my collections of Spirituals and could not find another one remotely related to it.

In addition he throws in some lovely elaborate chords that to my ears give the hymn more of a gospel flavor and less of a African American/Negro Spiritual feel.

I was realizing this as I prepared Saturday to accompany Sunday’s singing of his hymn. At the last minute I decided to use the piano instead of the organ and give it a slightly gospel feel.

I prefer doing spirituals without very much accompaniment elaboration. In fact, I think they are most served when sung just by voices since that’s how I hear them.

But since Boyer’s rhythms and harmonization was what people were looking at and if someone tried to sing the harmonies they would find them more jazzy than spiritual I thought I would put an accompaniment under it that would serve the music.

On the walk home, Eileen commented that she didn’t know this hymn. I remember (I think) singing it  as a boy. It doesn’t occur in the official Church of God hymnal of my youth, nor the later 1989 Worship the Lord. But there were many songs I remember singing at church camp and in less formal gatherings and it surely is one of them.

1. Scientists Name a Newly Discovered Water Mite After Jennifer Lopez – NYTimes.com

2. Elaine M. Brody, Expert on Elderly Who Grew Into the Role, Dies at 91 – NYTimes.co

I started reading to see if this person was related to Jane Brody. She’s not, but she’s still pretty interesting.

3.In Remote Corners of India, Immunity for Soldiers Who Kill and Rape Civilians – NYT

Madness.

4. Influx of South Americans Drives Miami’s Reinvention – NYTimes.com

This story is about an influx of middle to upper class people mostly. Still interesting to me.

5. The Weird, Scary and Ingenious Brain of Maria Bamford – NYTimes.com

My extended fam finds this woman funny. I watched part of her “The Special Special Special” last night. Though I like the name, the comedy didn’t hit me. I’m afraid I still hear the pale ghost of Lenny Bruce in such talent as this.

Yesterday I did a lot. I went to the Farmers Market. Dropped by Mom’s and picked up her books (found her missing remote control for her hearing aid). I prepared a nice outdoor lunch spot for Eileen and me, rinsed lettuce and chopped veggies and sliced cooked chicken (for Eileen) and laid it all out for us to build ourselves a salad. We sat outside and enjoyed a meal with each other.

After lunch I went to the library and turned in Mom’s old books, picked out some new ones and dropped them off for her. Went to church and practiced organ. Came home and decided to lay out the fixings for supper before I treadmilled. This meant rinsing rice and putting it in a pot with the requisite water and sitting it on a burner to await turning on. I also chopped up a bunch of veggies including a copious amount of onion greens. Exercised, showered, then began making an excellent veggie/black bean curry fry. Yum. Turned on the rice while doing this. After it was all ready, Eileen was still upstairs weaving so I made myself a martini and sat in the back yard and read David Byrne’s How Music Works.

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What Happened to Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 – NYTimes.com

This is the clearest outline of what is being reported about this incident I have seen.

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At Long Last, Justice for Ronnie White – NYTimes.com

The subject of a smear campaign finally gets a judgeship.

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Rebooting ISEE-3: Space for All – NYTimes.com

Civilians go around NASA and do some fascinating stuff.

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Needing Skilled Workers, a Booming Germany Woos Immigrants – NYTimes.com

This article got me thinking about the percentage of people who have college degrees.

Educational attainment in the United States – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This Wikipedia article seems to indicate about 30 % of US citizens have college degrees. I wonder what this means to the devolving public rhetoric in our country. I have always noticed that people who have degrees are no more likely to be informed and educated than those without them. For me, degrees have value only when earning them involved actual learning. My degrees mean something because I worked hard and learned a ton when I went to college. Not always the case.

I had a phone message recently inviting Eileen and me to consider become host parents for foreign exchange students. The reason the caller gave for contact us was that we were “empty nesters.”

I don’t think that hosting students is something that Eileen and I want to do. I, for one, value my privacy and my  time spent at home reading, studying, practicing and being with Eileen.

I began to think a little bit more about the term, “empty nesters.”

Eileen and I love being parents. And I especially love having adult children which adds significantly to the number of people I can actually converse with at this time in my life.

And then it hit me.

Hey. Our nest is not empty.  We’re in it. 

And it’s a good time of life for me. Probably  as good as any time I’ve had so far.

Number one. I’m still alive and have more time of life left. And I get to live with Eileen. And do music.

Maybe this is narcissistic.

But I guess I have many flaws and that could be one of them.

Narcissus gets a bad rap anyway. In the original legend, he doesn’t know he’s falling in love with himself, just a beautiful youth that is actually his reflection. Heh. Jes sayin.

I finished reading War in Heaven by Charles Williams. Williams wrote in the 30s. This was his first novel. I ran across his name when I was on vacation and downloaded several ebooks. I was hoping for charm, but think the writing and plot were pretty lame.

Although it starts out like a murder mystery, it descends into a goofy story of the Holy Grail. The hero is a bumbling Archdeacon whose bland holiness is reminiscent of Father Brown.

In the hands of the bad (evil) guys the Grail somehow is a locus of power. At least that’s how they see it. Some of them want to destroy it. The plot is a struggle for possession of it and ends in a blaze of goofy religious shit.

And there[s a dose of anti-antisemitism.   One of the evil dudes is, of course, a Jew who is in cahoots with the anti-Christians.

This sort of inverted understanding of evil bores the shit out of me.

Williams definitely goes to the bottom of the heap of writers I’m interested in reading.

It is the banality of evil of that convinces me. See Hannah Arendt (one of my favorite philosophers).

1. Johnny Winter, Virtuosic Blues Guitarist, Dies at 70 – NYTimes.com

I do admire the Winter brothers. Never met Johnny, but I was a roadie once for Edgar’s band and did meet Rick Derringer.

2. The F.E.C. Lags on Campaign Finance Disclosures – NYTimes.com

Written by a former staffer who should know.

3. James MacGregor Burns, Scholar of Presidents and Leadership, Dies at 95 – NYTim

Bookmarked this guy to think about reading some of his work.

4. On Kawara, Artist Who Found Elegance in Every Day, Dies at 81 – NYTimes.com

This guy sounds amazing. He did conceptual art before it was a concept.

5. The Benefits of Failing at French – NYTimes.com

Many insights in this article and its comment section. Hope for old people like me for learning a language and having other mental benefits from it.

6. The Legacy of the 1964 Harlem Riot – NYTimes.com

How history set the stage for current racism in the USA.

7. Nadine Gordimer, Novelist Who Took On Apartheid, Is Dead at 90 – NYTimes.com

Another good writer gone.

Recently, I have noticed that I am feeling very appreciated. Intellectually I can usually come up with this notion. But emotionally, not so much. My own criticisms and assessments of myself and my work tend to drown out compliments, though I try to receive them graciously.

But I have noticed that at church the arrival of two new staff people has affected me to some extent. We have hired two new curates. Curates are sometimes called “baby priests.” They have just graduated from seminary. They will soon be full fledged priests (ordained). A curacy is a first gig, almost an internship but a bit more official in the eyes of the community.

So our staff at work has shifted significantly. These two curates have replaced two other staff positions. Previously we had a director of religious ed and a part time assistant priest.  Now the curates will  be helping out in these areas. Jodi, the wife, will be primarily responsible for family ministry and Hispanic outreach. Christian, the hubby, will emphasize campus ministry. Both will preach as deacons and then officiate at Eucharist once ordained. This is a tremendous relief to my boss. She mentioned to me that despite having assistants she has been “on call” for eight years. She said she wouldn’t recommend it.

I take delight in my boss’s relief, that’s for sure. Christian questioned me closely about my musical experience. He seemed to value my eclecticism and openness to non-classical Anglican church music. In fact, when we talked around the table, my boss emphasized the breadth of my abilities and leadership. It was a flattering moment.

I was flattered again when in the course of each of us on staff sort-of telling our story about how we came to be in our jobs, my boss included me in the first breath of telling how she decided to continue as rector: “Then Steve came on board and I decided to stay” or something like that.

I was also very satisfied to hear that when my substitute organist accidentally stopped accompanying the closing hymn one verse too soon, the congregation simply went on without her. Yes! Rev Jen also passed on that people missed singing the psalm in my absence, since we decided it would be simpler to say them when there is a substitute organist. Accompanying Anglican chant is a bit a specialized skill. Congregation members expressed concern that we continue singing the Psalm. Again, Yes!

My dentist pointed out to me that at this point in my life it must be satisfying to be part of an organ project. I readily agreed and added that the fact of just serving in an Episcopalian congregation is a treat at the end of my career (such as it is, I really don’t think of myself has having a “career” just a great life).

Then yesterday I stopped at the Holland Area Arts council to pick up charts for an upcoming Holland Symphony gig I have been asked to play. This in and of itself is a big deal for me (being asked, thanks again, Rhonda!). Also the Holland Area Arts council has always been sort of hostile territory. The people who organized the dang thing in the first place were my neighbors for a while but have never seen fit to include me in any of the music stuff there. They tend to use only Hope connections. Makes sense.

Anyway, I realized how weird it was for me to be going into this building. Then next to the Holland Symphony office a voice from another office rang out. The Holland Chorale manager is a former choir member of mine. We chatted each other up for a while.

I left thinking my life is changing a bit. I think I’m a bit  more visible than I used to be.

Finished Bach: Music in the Castle of Heaven by John Eliot Gardiner yesterday morning. I can’t say enough good about this book. Gardiner combines the usual academic erudition and up to date scholarship with evident hands-on experience with most of the music he discusses. This is mostly cantatas and the larger choral works including the Passions and the B Minor Mass. He emphasizes understanding the music and speculates on the interior world of Bach. He is uncovers much about Bach the man this way and makes a case that is often convincing. At any rate his observations about the music itself are clear and empirical. I learned a lot from him and am continuing to use his insights and approach in understanding Bach.

In addition to these attributes, Gardiner goes a step further and makes his own wide ranging reading and thinking part of the text. He draws heavily on surprising sources to make his point.

For example, he quotes Philip Pullman the author of His Dark Materials (Pullman also has a blurb on the book) several times. This is ironic because superficially one might think that Pullman’s work points away from Bach’s Christian beliefs which play heavily in Gardiner’s argument. But Gardiner is speaking so clearly in a contemporary context and understands what it is to try to make meaning of living now. This inevitably reflects a jaundiced take on much of Christianity. But I like how Gardiner uses Pullman’s ideas to point to the depth of the humanity of Bach. And this is just one instance of Gardiner’s very wide range.

I made a list of words I looked up in the back of the book. I made a list of books and articles I want to look at further if not read. Gardiner draws on David Yearsly’s work. I have read some in Yearsly’s Bach’s Feet and now I plan to read more of his work having benefited from Gardiner’s use of his insights.

I spent a good hour yesterday working on Komm, Heiliger Geist, Herre Gott BWV 651 yesterday.

This work has always intrigued me. I heard it performed by a fellow grad student and never quite understood it. I am spending a good amount of time with the chorale it is based on. I wrote the German words as I sometimes do in the music under the melody. I am convinced in order to perform chorale preludes well the performer must be very familiar with the melodies they are based on. This is a long one and I think that’s one of the reasons this piece is so long.

Using Gardiner’s detective tactics and consulting Peter Williams book, The Organ Music of Bach: Second Edition I think am beginning to understand this piece better. When one hears the piece, the manuals furiously whir with quick notes that can put the listener in mind of the Holy Spirit. This is the kind of thing Gardiner constantly points out.

I have noticed this in the past. But yesterday I registered it on my silly crappy organ so that the melody in the pedal stood out more than I remember in the grad student’s performance. I think she was also struggling with a bad instrument as well.

Knowing the melody better and being able to hear it clearly makes playing this piece much more satisfying.

Yesterday someone from the dance camp stopped by. They have been supposedly trying to get hold of me. They were actually worried about me.  The woman who has been my contact over the years is rather elderly. I admit I thought maybe she was either very ill or had even passed away severing my contact with the organization which is not very organized when it comes to booking me.

I speculate that some of the instructors have pianists they prefer to work with and specify that they should be hired. The parade of instructors varies. It makes sense to me if one is comfortable with a pianist and has worked them one would prefer to have them.

I mentioned to the cecchetti woman that I could have easily been contacted through Hope’s dance department. She replied that the director of the camp had “got on her computer” and couldn’t find me. This is just weird.

At any rate, she assured me they just didn’t drop pianists and she had been trying to contact me since March and had stopped at my house several times in the last two weeks. I gave her my cell phone number for next time.

I have been learning a lot about Bach chorales. I have often wondered what exactly they are. I probably first encountered them in the old 1940 Episcopal Hymnal.

To make them, Bach took a familiar hymn melody and then wrote three more parts that fit with it. So that the soprano part is always the melody, and the alto, tenor and bass make up elaborate melodies that fit with the tune and harmonize it.

I have liked them from the first time I encountered them.

But I have wondered what Bach used them for. Gardiner casually mentions that we now know that they were not intended for congregational use in the Passion settings of Bach. This surprised me when I read it. I guess I had always thought that Bach included them so that the congregation could sing along at that point in the long Passion settings.

Also he often concludes his cantatas with one of these four part chorales. Again I had assumed that this was when the congregation took part.

Now I’m not so sure. I need to find out more about Gardiner’s passing comment (which he did not footnote).

But it makes sense to me that these elaborate and lovely settings were not intended for the entire congregation to sing. I guess I always thought that they may have joined in on the melody with the choir adding Bach’s parts. But often the keys are pretty high for a congregation.

I also find myself drawn deeper into these settings. I have been playing through them as part of my organ practice since before the vacations. I find that playing the soprano and bass alone helps me see Bach’s thinking more clearly. Transposing these two part versions is also helpful.

Mendelssohn loved these chorales and often included them in his works.

I am looking to them to understand more clearly how Bach thought about harmony and maybe steal some ideas from him for ballet classes in the fall.

1. THINX Underwear: New Period Panties Changing Taboos Around Menstruation – AIF

This is a great idea. Young women face a daunting part of life when they begin their periods. Anything that help them is an excellent idea. I am usually for open discussion anyway.

2. How to Teach Reading and Writing – NYTimes.com

Again I’m linking a letters section. Jeremy Glazer from Stanford California leads off his thoughtful letter with this wonderful observation.

“Too often, educational debates become simple reductive arguments against the imagined orthodoxy of the other side.”

More and more I see people alienated not by others but by what they presume others are.

3. Obamacare Fails to Fail – NYTimes.com

I insist that people are not using their brains enough when it comes to processing facts. Perception is often that our government and country is failing when it’s not actually doing so. The Affordable Care Act is doing so much good, but you wouldn’t know it from the public discussion unless you are listening with your brain.

4. Spies Like Us – NYTimes.com

America has lost its moral compass around security. It is a difficult concept to have an intelligence branch of government which is subject to oversight and legal/ethical guidance. But America deserves better than its getting.

5. Boehner’s Empty Charge Against Obama – NYTimes.com

Boehner is not my idea of an extremist although I don’t agree with his policy ideas. In this discussion he is clearly proved to be falsely claiming Obama will not responsibility for something. Good job, Charles Blow!

6. BBC News – Church of England General Synod backs women bishops

The Church of England gradually catches up to the Episcopal church in America. Excellent!

7. Bach Collegium Japan, and John Eliot Gardiner : The New Yorker

This is an old article I have bookmarked to read about Gardiner by the illustrious Alex Ross.

8. The End of the ‘Mormon Moment’ – NYTimes.com

A frustated ex-Mormon explains some stuff.

9. The Quiet Movement to Make Government Fail Less Often – NYTimes.com

Some good perspective on what really has gone on and is going on with the US government. The Upshot column is the NYT’s replacement for Nate Silver: trying to keep the Moneyball perspective on how things actually working going.

10. Roberts’s Incremental Approach Frustrates Supreme Court Allies – NYTimes.com

This article helped me see Chief Justice Robert more clearly.

I am still finding it a nuisance to get used to our new laptop. Windows seems to be moving its PC experience toward the smart phone interface. The screen on our new computer is a touch screen. However the keyboard is so big that it’s kind of a pain to skip it and reach for the screen. Also, Windows has changed its nomenclature from software to the phone appellation, “apps.”

So one can choose between accessing everything on the old desktop interface or one can opt for the new Windows screen which has little squares for each app. I of course lazily prefer the old system. I guess I wouldn’t mind a new system if it was such a nuisance. But of course the new one seems to be designed by people who are not taking into account how it might hit users.

Or maybe I’m just getting old and out of touch.

Speaking of this, I was talking to a young college graduate yesterday who has recently moved to our area with his college educated wife and their kids. I was suggesting that the Hope Performance series is quite worthwhile. (In retrospect I don’t know if he could afford tickets for his entire family).

In order to illustrate the breadth of what’s available, I mentioned how wonderful the Emerson String Quartet concert was. As I saw the inevitable darkening in his visage at the mention of the dread classical music, I hastened to add that I had also attended a stage play presented in the same series.

But when I said the title, “Farenheit 452,” there was no glint of recognition in his eyes. I then asked him if he recognized the writer, Ray Bradbury. He didn’t seem to. He said the writer sounded vaguely familiar. I could see he was distressed at not knowing these authors and quickly made light of it.

But first I explained the meaning of the title of the book and play, “Farenheit 461.” (The temperature at which books supposedly burn) Couldn’t resist that because I think that’s kind of cool.

I told him that the actor troupe had offered a science fiction play and a watered down Shakespeare play.

Later when talking to Eileen about this, she said that it was a definite gap in the guy’s education.

I didn’t entirely agree with her. I think it represents the poor education many Americans have been receiving for the last few decades.

Of course there are exceptions and I guess I’m thinking largely anecdoctally. But meeting people with broad educated interests has been a rare thing for me. Young adults I meet who are educated often seem to know a lot about their area of study.

But attempting to factor in broader understandings and interdisciplinary observations is often futile. This old guy has learned to try to keep his trap shut so he doesn’t intimidate or confuse people. That way they keep talking to him.

But nevertheless on the INSIDE I am often processing the fact that the person I am talking to has no idea of many things that are important to me.

Take poetry.

Eileen has said to me many times, she doesn’t like poetry. She blames her education. But living with her, I have to come realize that she values the poetry of life: the beauty of words, music, ideas and stories.

Yesterday despite other pressing things I should have been attending to, I reorganized my poetry and comics (graphic novels and such) sections. I carefully went through every shelf, wiping the shelf and books and making sure books were in order by the poet. When I posted a pic on Facebooger about it, my son, David, made a humorous comment about “poetry in motion.”

Later musing on my conversation with the young man, I had the insight that while these many books represent for me a way of seeing life in terms of beauty and reason they are a closed area for many if not most people I run into.

For me, the poetry and the poets who made them are like old imaginary friends who have not forsaken me but are still around to comfort me and continue to expand my understanding.

I remember  a teacher who told me it was more important to read poetry than stay informed on current events. I still think he was probably right even though I try to do both.

It looks like Cecchetti ballet camp held annually here at Hope College is not going to contact me this year to serve as ballet accompanist. It’s hard to know exactly why. I remember last year there were some new accompanists that they imported. One in particular was an amazing pianist. So maybe they didn’t need me.

Or it could be that since I have dropped my land line they couldn’t contact me. This seems weird, since all they would have had to do was ask someone in the Ballet department for my contact info, but I guess it’s possible.

There is a slim possibility that I somehow have alienated myself from them, either with my personality or my playing.

But that seems a bit paranoid and thin skinned of me to think.

So there you are.

In watching and reading other people comment online, I have sometimes suspected that when people are going back and forth they have a preconceived idea they would like to prove.

This is pretty easy in the day of the interwebs. I do read comments quite a bit on a variety of web sites and topics.

Of course they quickly descend into name calling and arguing.

But sometimes someone will cite a statistic or a fact and put a link up.

When I was young and involved in the fundamentalist Christian church I learned of  “proof-texting.” This was when someone would be discussing (often arguing) about some doctrine or moral point  and then they would set off to find a bible verse (usually out of context) to back them up.

It reminds me of people linking in web pages to validate a cited statistic or concept or piece of information. I sometimes click on these links. Some don’t say what the comment thinks they are saying. Some are web sites dedicated to convincing readers and are not exactly information sites.  But sometimes I do learn a bit more about what is being discussed.

I should point out that I have to wade through a lot of anger and crazy talk to find the little nuggets of information. I do find it instructive to read a ton of comments whether this is from other church musicians, people whose ideology I disagree with, or people commenting on a news story. It does take patience and time, however.

1. Letters: Whose Argument? – NYTimes.com

This is a link to the letters column in the New York Times Sunday Book Review. I have a tendency to read letters to  newspapers like I read online comments. I find them interesting and sometimes instructive. One letter from Sam Friedlander from Tennessee had a sentence I admired in it:

When you’re 12, you should read to understand plot; when you’re 18, you should read to understand character development; when you’re 30, you should read to understand deeper implications.

2. Gin, London Style – NYTimes.com

On one of my visits to England I had difficulty communicating with my quasi-son-in-law about martinis. We were in a store and looking at booze. I told him I was interested in getting fixings for a martini. He didn’t seem to recognize what I was talking about. He showed me the vermouth section (Martini and Rossi, get it?).

I have read about an English gin which has a lower proof than the gin we buy in the USA. But I haven’t actually seen it. Anyway, this article is pretty interesting even though the drinks are very expensive.

3. Amazon, a Friendly Giant as Long as It’s Fed – NYTimes.com

Amazon and Hachette (the publisher) gave interviews to this reporter. According to the report this is the first time they have gone on record. Also, I didn’t know France had passed an “Anti-Amazon” law. Or at least their Senate has. It was unclear to me if the bill then was French law or not.

4. The Emerson Plays Shostakovich at Tanglewood – NYTimes.com

I do passionately love string quartets. I have listened to this quartet for most of my life in recordings. They played at Hope April of 2013 and were fabulous.

5. Charlie Haden, Influential Jazz Bassist, Is Dead at 76 – NYTimes.com

I love a good obit. This guy seems fascinating. I will definitely spotify him to hear his stuff.

6. Sheldon Adelson, Warren Buffett and Bill Gates on Immigration Reform – NYTimes.co

So speaking of online comments, the ones on this article caused me to be a bit more skeptical of what Adelson, Buffett and Gates have to say in it. However I did like this:

Speaking of the members of Congress: “It’s time for 535 of America’s citizens to remember what they owe to the 318 million who employ them.”

Eileen and I ran into a young woman we know in the grocery store. She sang in one of my children’s choirs years ago. Now she is a dolphin expert and lives in the Florida Keys. She also sings in a band there. She was with her Mom and mentioned that she had been visiting Holland since January. It was pleasant to see her.

I was musing later on how her work in a bar band was so foreign to so many classical/academic musicians who are in my orbit these days.  Whereas I feel comfortable talking bar music with a bar musician and classical/academic music with a classical/academic musician.

This is helpful to remember as I am snubbed by locals (not you, Rhonda! if you’re reading this… you are a big exception to this).

One of my insights from having been on vacation for a bit is to regain some perspective about this stuff.

It bugs me that I have sometimes have to struggle with feeling sorry for myself about being snubbed and ignored.  I certainly do not want to feel sorry for myself. And by the time it gets to that stage I have lost perspective.

Mainly I have forgotten that my musical world is different from those who look askance at me (if they see me at all).  In actuality my entire point of view about life is far removed from most people I encounter. This has actually always been so. And I treasure my own little take on life. That’s the vacation insight.

Although I enjoy my work at church and at the dance department, my true calling is to be inside music and ideas and beauty. Insofar as that overlaps with my livelihood I know that I am lucky. But when circumstances are uncomfortable I need to remember why I am doing what I do. Whether things are going well in my church work or in the dance studio is only important to me in terms of doing a good job. My passion is music and learning. That can exist as long as I can think and move.

I know how lucky this is.

I do find myself pondering whether there are other locals who are at all interested in the same things I am. But I think of this mostly when I consider the important mental hygiene of not being entirely isolated. So I continue to want to stay open when someone like Rhonda or another musician/thinker crosses my path.

In my life I have had many good friends. But most of them have fallen out of my orbit or changed.  Since usually they don’t make a declaration of why things are changing, I have to consider how much of my isolation from them is my own doing or is the result of having upset or failed them somehow. Since I don’t have the information it’s tempting to blame myself entirely, but intellectually I know that’s quite true.

And in the final analysis, I am very very very lucky. First of all to have someone who loves me like Eileen. Secondly to spend so much of my time connecting to great music and great ideas and great beauty.

The last few mornings when I have opened my front door I have not only seen and heard the beautiful sights of a summer morning still dim before the sun entirely rises. I have also smelled the strong lovely scent of the plants/flowers Eileen has planted in our front lawn. I am lucky in many ways.

I suppose I should elaborate a bit about brain being washed and ill-informed which I mentioned here all too briefly yesterday.

It is very easy to be brainwashed in the age of the online echo chamber and insane TV news coverage. Probably almost impossible not to have portions of our brain washed free of facts and replaced with “framing” of an issue. Again and again I watch intelligent people online seeming to back unsubstantiated sets of facts that interpret their way into falsehood.

The echo chamber effect causes the things that you disagree with to stand out and the things that you agree with to seem like part of the environment.

In order to counter act this one must develop a set of literacy skills.

An important one is sourcing of information. I know that my conservative sisters and brothers think ill of the New York Times.

But I still think that it is an important source of information in the USA.

But besides that when i see a link on Facebooger or Tweeeter, I immediately look at the URL (the web address) to see where the link originated. It makes a huge difference to me what site is being cited (so to speak).

I have been doing this sort of back story sourcing for years for news organizations and news stories.

Now on Facebooger since I have such a wide array of political points of view and education and sophistication among the people and organizations I “follow,” I can see that many people (if not most) are consulting with sources that are dedicated not to accuracy or informing but instead to shaping (“framing”) if not down right deception.

Speaking of being ill informed, I find that news stories flicker quickly and superficially through popular media. Many if not most people are just not paying attention anyway. And popular US media leaves out a lot (if not most) of the information. Attempting, one supposes, to make the information more accessible and compact.

I find myself asking softly to myself what I learned in my high school journalism class.

WHO?

WHAT?

WHERE?

WHEN?

WHY?

Besides the last one (WHY?), the first four are usually facts and not interpretations. And unfortunately one or more of them can be omitted when the reporting is trying to be accessible and compact.

So basically, I wonder how many people are being critical of their own approach to getting and processing information whether that be news or just continuing learning about life.

Finally the only person i can really work on in this area is myself.

The dilemma is to decide when to enter the mad conversation that is based not on clarity and learning but on something else. Reading dimly online it is impossible to see each other clearly especially in a time when people are using language in such varied ways.

Decades ago when I got the idea of having my own online web site (preblog) I envisioned a conversation online much like the idealistic Great Books conversation idea of Mortimer Adler Jr. Alder envisioned. As one absorbs the great ideas and books of Western Civilization one enters into their conversation.

Like my old idea of connecting with minds online, Adler’s Great Books conversation may be unrealistically idealistic.

But there you are.

Last night after driving home from Grayling, I was sitting in my chair and moved a magazine and found my checkbook. I hadn’t taken it with me. It is comical that I spent a good amount of time combing through huckleberry bushes looking for it. I told Eileen if she spotted it not to move it because I wanted a picture of it (for Facebooger and possibly blog use).

It may be that I am destined to live off balance and keep myself there. Ay yi  yi.

I was very surprised at how exhausted I was from the drive home.

Admittedly I was stressed about the checkbook. I also have vacation stress believe it or not. I can only really be myself with Eileen. So living with others even ones I care deeply about takes energy.

Also Eileen and I spent a good deal of time driving around Grayling purchasing material to reglue my Mom’s rear view mirror. The guy at the auto parts store was clueless. When I asked for alcohol to clean the window, he tried  to sell me dry gas. After purchasing a kit and a tool to detach the mirror from the little metal piece that holds it on the windshield drove down to the grocery store (checked in to see if they had found a check book, ahem) and bought alcohol and paper towels.

Then when Eileen read the directions we figured out that the little kit to reglue the rear view mirror actually had a little alcohol pad in it to clean the window first.

So we prepped the window which meant carefully taping the spot where the mirror goes from the outside, removing the old glue, cleaning the area, putting one (1) drop of glue on the small part the mirror is attached to and then pressing it on the glass for a minute. Next we were to wait thirty minutes so we jumped in our cars and started driving home.

By the time we got to Lake City we pulled off and mounted the mirror.

Come to think of it, it’s not too weird that I was exhausted and depleted by the time we got home.

My emotional terrain was one of fail. My romance with failure is complicated. I know that I can be difficult and that I am perceived as maybe incompetent or eccentric to a fault, and I don’t really like being perceived that way. But at the same time, I am very satisfied with my eccentricities and am not particularly interested in adapting to be more easily classified by others.

It’s a weird space to live in. Maybe that’s what it means to be old now. Resisting having my brains washed out by stupidity and keeping the blinders on by not being informed might be just an old guy getting older and more out of touch with popular society.

I am totally at peace with that. All I can say is thank God for Eileen who can see past my weirdness and manage to love the real me.

Yesterday I plunged in and went huckleberrying with the crew here at the cabin. I am the only male and it did not occur to anyone to invite me on these excursions so I invited myself. They were of course surprised and did not mind if I came along.

Unfortunately, it now looks like I might have dropped my checkbook while moving around in the huckleberries. They are planning one last quick pick this morning. I will be going along again. If I find my checkbook I will probably pick berries a bit as well. it’s pretty likely I dropped it there.

Huckleberrying was not quite as strenuous as I thought it would be. Of course this is apparently a good year for huckleberries. This means that one spends all of the time picking and less time trying to find the berries.

I finished reading Titus Alone last night. This means I have read the entire Gormenghast trilogy. I don’t think the last volume is as tightly written or plotted as the first two volumes. I was curious about how Peake would move his hero from an enclosed world of Gormenghast to a different setting that would be more urban.

Unsurprisingly his description of the city Titus wanders to is much more sketchy than the vivid background of Gormenghast. Frankly the plot sort of wanders. Peake struggles to create vivid city people the way he created vivid isolated fairy tale castle people and doesn’t quite pull it off.

Published in the late fifties, Peake hints of sexual revolution, the impact of technology (especially war technology) and does come up with some startling predictions. There are flying ships, mass death rays, and drone like devices. The personalities he introduces are caricatures as were the ones in the first two books. But they don’t hold up as well with a more urban setting.

And the plot is pretty silly. It  seems to have been developed to allow Titus to finish his adolescence and at the end be a man.

I recommend the first two books of this trilogy. But Titus Alone should probably be read as a curiosity and not the piece of art that I thought the first two were.

Eileen is thinking of stopping in Whitehall to pick blackberries. She knows where some grow wild and is disturbed that they are not being harvested. She has lost her mind. I have too because I will probably go with her and help her.

I have to deal with the fact that the rear view mirror on my Mom’s car has fallen off the windshield. Eileen and I drove separately so we have Mom’s car and the Mini here. I am planning to see if I can find an auto parts store and buy a little windshield glue kit and fix it in Grayling.

Thus the vacation draws to a close. It’s been a good one and i do feel rejuvenated.

I managed to draw three family members into an emotional exchange on Facebooger yesterday. Damn! I found it very upsetting to read their exchange and didn’t sleep very well last night. This morning I got up and carefully composed an answer that I hope may sufficiently apologize for getting them going. Whether it does that or not, I do feel a bit better.

In fact this morning is the first day of vacation that I actually feel a sense of well being. This has been missing since I have been so stressed by whatever is stressing me (work, age, fatigue?). I do find that not only am I slowing down physically but also emotionally (hopefully not too much mentally but that’s probably denial, heh).

I’m wondering how I’ll make it through another year of working doing all the stuff I have been doing. I do need to make adjustments to make it a workable year. But Eileen and I are counting on me bringing in my part of the money we need to live. So there’s that.

I can try to improve my physical well being through exercise and diet and get enough rest.

I will probably have to drink less in order to be better rested. Dang.

Today is the last full day of vacation here in Grayling so I’m glad that I am beginning this day with some sense of being rested. I’m not quite ready to plunge into my next phase of activity which will be planning the next year at church and pulling together the final steps of an organ purchase recommendation with that committee. But it’s beginning to look like this next phase will be possible.

I’m working on evolving an effective approach to learning classical Greek. This time I haven’t used flash cards much. Also I’m behind on the exercises and grammar sections that accompany the texts I am reading daily. But I read somewhere recently where the way to learn is largely in the doing not drilling.

I do find that in my daily reading I am asking deeper questions about the words and the grammar of myself than I did when I studied Greek before. I try to read over the new section four times. Since I’m at the cabin I do this pretty inaudibly but still try to quietly vocalize the reading since this seems to help understanding and retention.

Planning to read another fifty pages in Gardiner today (the Bach book). If I do that I will only have about a hundred pages left to read in it.

I have been wondering about where profundity of musical ideas fits in to people’s lives these days if they aren’t predisposed to listening to and thinking about music that isn’t popular music. I think that mostly it doesn’t. People need profundity but I think in popular music they are getting it more from the words than the sound of the music.

This comes home very clearly as I listen and think about Bach’s cantatas and the St. John Passion. I don’t see very much music being written these days which can achieve the depth and coherence of Bach’s music, but that is probably largely because of our fragmented context. There’s no larger common language to draw on but popular music which tends to be pretty simple. Don’t get me wrong I like the simple. But Bach is not simple and it boggles my mind what he can say and with what beauty he says it.

I have a couple days left before we return to Holland. It’s a good thing I purchased my updated Greek texts before vacation because I have literally used them every morning. My procedure is to read a section through four times as well as doing some written exercises each morning. I do the latter only if I have enough energy. This usually takes about 45 minutes or so. It seems to be a good way to start the day.

Yesterday I noticed that I have played half way through Bach’s Well Tempered Clavier completing the entire first volume while we  have been at the cabin.  I have played my way through it several times in the past, but as I age I find that I am much more thorough in my playing through of music for fun often repeating it four times.

Playing Bach’s wonderful keyboard music is a good complement to reading Gardiner’s book, Bach: Music in the Castle of Heaven. I have been reading fifty pages a day in it the last three days. This is a good goal. I left off at page 350 yesterday. There are  558 pages in the book so I am making a solid dent in it.

Gardiner has done an amazing job of bringing together scholarship, musicianship, erudition and gossipy contemporary (even popular culture!) references.

For example, when he talks about the rapport he feels between his performances of the cantatas and his audiences churches, he quotes Yo Yo Ma and mentions Sting.

I have learned that when an audience and a performer know the hymn tune that is being  used in a Bach piece it creates a different sort of performance. Speaking of the familiarity of “How Brightly Shines the Morning Star” (Wie schön leuchtet der Morgenstern) Gardiner observes that

“enough audience familiarity with the tune” elicits “that ‘invisible circle of human effort’, as Yo Yo Ma describes it, when performers and listeners alike are engaged in a collective or communal act. It was a feeling that returned twenty-four hours later during a rock concert in the Royal Alpert Hall in which Sting exchanged snatches of familiar songs with his adoring audience in a kind of spontaneous litany.”

I find it encouraging that such a fine classical musician does not bury his head in the sand of the classical world and ignore music that is popular with the rest of us.

This is just one example of the many little cool facts and allusions that stud Gardiner’s wonderful book.

His description of Bach’s St. John Passion included an admiring quote from Robert Schuman after he had conducted it in 1851:

Bach’s St. John Passion is ‘in many ways more daring, forceful, and poetic’ than [the more popular and more often performed St. Matthew Passion] How compact and genial throughout, especially in the choruses.”

Gardiner and Schuman enticed me into listening to about half of the St. John Passion yesterday with the score and translation before me.

This kind of immediate access sitting out here in the woods or anywhere else for that matter never fails to delight and amaze me.

God bless the interwebs.

Listening to On The Media’s first show about Hispanic/Latino news coverage made me realize how challenging but possible it is to keep up with world affairs.

On The Media is the best source for accessible critique of journalism these days. You have to admire that at the end of this show they asked Julio Ricardo Varela from Latino Rebels to rate it. They got a “C.”

Varela’s criticisms included finding the entire “Breaking Bad” segment irrelevant to larger Latino concerns and interests as well as OTM’s concentration on Spanish language aspects of this story.

This was helpful to me, because I enjoyed the “Breaking Bad” segment but with a spoonful of perspective can see that it was more about popular culture than understanding Latino journalism needs and topics.

Of course it is obvious that a first venture into a huge subject will of necessity fall short of high expectations.  It will be interesting to see if there are future attempts to correct this omission in their coverage.

In the meantime, we are all just clicks away from better perspective than the best US journalism outlets can give us.

I found it enlightening that Jorge Ramos observed that US journalism is in effect very provincial.

He said that UNIVISION’s audience sees coverage of the many Latino countries as “local” coverage.

This made me realize how little I actually know about current South American and Caribbean events not to mention Africa and the Middle East.

Since I’m on vacation I have the time and inclination to seek out some current stories.

Here is some of what I found and recommend.

Latino Rebels | The Lull Before the Storm

Might as well start with a decent story from Varela’s web site. This has some great info on current USA immigration reform and it aint good news.

Contradictions Emerge in Relative Quiet of ISIS Ruled Iraqi City – SPIEGEL 

One of the best analyses of what’s happening in Iraq I have read.

what scientific concept would improve everybody’s cognitive toolkit

The book version of the above link was an Amazon Daily Deal for $1.99.

One of the commenters on Amazon pointed out that its entire contents was available online at Edge.org. Thank you dude.

At Zingerman’s, Pastrami and Partnership to Go – NYTimes.com

Okay this isn’t international or even all that pertinent. I just love Zingerman’s and love that it made the New York Times.

http://www.spiegel.de/international/

So, Spiegel’s English site is pretty good, but it doesn’t update as often as it’s real site:

http://www.spiegel.de/

http://www.theguardian.com/us

The Guardian is also pretty good but you might want to check their UK page.

http://www.theguardian.com/uk

EastSouthWestNorth

I have found that this site has interesting International deep links as well as English coverage of Chinese current topics (It is labeled as 1 of 3 at the top… you have to scroll down for comments and blog links). Pretty sure Elizabeth or Jeremy turned me on to this.

http://www.aljazeera.com/news/middleeast/

Al Jazeera used to be one of the best sources for international news coverage. But they started up Al Jazeera US TV and since then I have go a bit deeper into links to avoid stupid stupid TV news.

By Talking, Inmates and Victims Make Things ‘More Right’ – NYTimes.com

It never fails to amaze that the simple act of honest talking is not factored into dealing with injustices.  Even though I see that people in my life often are made uncomfortable by forthrightness, in some situations it can make an important difference.

North Carolina voter law challenged: ‘the worst suppression since Jim Crow’ 

This is a Guardian article. I guess they are the dam liberals of the UK. They have this one nailed.

Corporations, ‘artificial people’ and the unintended risks of Hobby Lobby 

And this one.

Fearing Lawsuits, Sheriffs Balk at U.S. Request to Hold Noncitizens for Extra Time 

Obama administration on the wrong side of this issue.

A Post-Colonial Africa, Drawn by Nature and Culture – NYTimes.com

 Nine Nations of North America, 30 Years Later – NYTimes.com

These two links redraw borders in new and helpful ways.

I was reading Gardiner’s Bach this morning and ran across a title of Bach’s I didn’t recognize: Generalbasslehre of 1738.  This appears to be a teaching manual in the handwriting of one of Bach’s students. The title is translated as “Notes on the Thorough Bass Lessons” by Thomas Bratz in his article, “The Problematic Origins of Generalbaßlehre of 1738″ conveniently available online here.

According to Bratz, the history of the authentication of this little book goes all the way back to Spitta’s bio of Bach (which I own but have not read). Spitta gives it a false attribution as being in the handwriting of Kellner, one of Bach’s copyists. I’m glad to read that the entire text is in Spitta so that’s one way I can take a look at it.

In 1984, the manual was re-attributed to someone near Bach and resumed it’s place in the important documents we have from Bach’s time. I missed it in school since I left ND in 1987 and no one mentioned it to me.

On the way to look this up, I found a nice list of Primary Sources many of which are linked in to online versions (the Bach thing is not).

I love the way online resources continue to flourish, especially ones that are not behind firewalls of some sort. This kind of scholarly stuff wants to be free!

I only had 10 hits on the blog yesterday.

Mark said that was because he couldn’t get on (we had internet problems possibly due to increased Saturday after fourth of July traffic).

Nice quotes from Titus Alone:

describing an air born device that resembles a drone:

“What did it do but act like any other petty snooper, prying upon man and child, sucking information as a bat sucks blood; amoral; mindless; sent out on empty missions, acting as its maker would act, its narrow-headed maker — so that its beauty was a thing on its own, beautiful only because its function shapes it so; and having no heart it becomes fatuous — a fatuous reflection of a fatuous concept — so that it is incongruous, or gobbles incongruity to such an outlandish degree that laughter is the only way out.”

This volume was published in 1959.  Peake (the author) died in 1968 and was already suffering ill effects of declining health as he completed it.

Finally I love these two quotes spoken by a new character in this volume, Muzzlehatch.

“My voice, strident to others, is music to me.”

and

“There must be something wrong with my brain.”

I relate.

The ancient Greeks seem to have referred to themselves as “Hellenes.” It has long puzzled me where the term “Greek” came from. This morning I decided it would be pretty easy to run it down. And so it was.

The short answer to this question is that “Greek” comes from one name for many of the tribes in the area and predates the adoption of the term, “Hellenes.”

So when the Romans ran into the Greeks who were colonizing southern Italy, they, the Romans, used their word, “Graeci,” to name them. This term was pretty much the root term for subsequent European words to name them.

In the meantime, there was a famous and important leader named Hellen (a guy and NOT Helen of Troy) whose name became the one that the Greeks used for themselves.

There you are.

I was reading an article this morning online and was puzzled by the verb subject agreement in it:

Some of his finest fiction—including the stories “The South,” “The Dead Man,” and “The Intruder,” to name just a few—was kindled by the dagger.

With a little poking around, I found a reasonable explanation.

Some indefinite pronouns — such as all, some — are singular or plural depending on what they’re referring to. (Is the thing referred to countable or not?) Be careful choosing a verb to accompany such pronouns from Subject-Verb Agreement

Kellers’ cancer writing shows how broken journalism has become – Salon.com

Broken because facts are not checked.

American Independence Myths: Lies May Comfort, But Facts Matter | New Republic

Speaking of facts.

The Daggers of Jorge Luis Borges by Michael Greenberg | The New York Review of

This is a fascinating article about Borges.

Retracing Mao Zedong’s Long March—by Motorcycle – Adam Century – The Atlantic

Reaction of Chinese people that that this author runs into are one of the best parts of this interesting story.

SPIEGEL Interview with Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari – SPIEGEL ONLINE

Wow. Some observations from a player in Iraq. Not necessarily reliable, but still interesting.

Mark’s adult kids and their significant others and animals arrived yesterday. It was Leigh’s birthday.  She takes great delight in her kids, so I think she had a good birthday having them here in Grayling.

I have been spending a good amount of time with Bach’s Well Tempered Clavier volume I.

Leigh made a huge casserole for the group last night. She made a corner of it for me without meat. That was nice.

Finished reading The Stone Gods by Jeanette Winterson yesterday. Good read.

It’s basically a sci fi story. I liked this quote.

“What it means to be human… is to bring up your children in safety, educate them, keep them healthy, teach them how to care for themselves and others, allow them to develop in their own way among adults who are sane and responsible, who now the value of the world and not its economic potential. It means art, it means time, it means all the invisibles never counted by the GDP and the census figures. It means knowing that life has an inside as well as an outside.”

Well, I’m on vacation and not having enough thoughts for a blog post. That’s good.

After three entire days of relaxing I am beginning to feel more calm. I admit to spending a lot of time thinking about the same things that fill my brain at other times. Things like wondering about how music fits into people’s lives.

But in this calm, my usual answers of how important music is to me seem stronger. My need for others to understand this about me diminishes as I spend time reading about, thinking about, listening to and playing music.

God bless the interwebs.

I have been reading in Gardiner’s Bach: Music in the Castle of Heaven. He often sends me scurrying to find books, music scores and recordings. Yesterday I read the passage where he points out that Handel and Bach both created interesting compositions at the age of twenty-two. I had listened to the Bach composition, Christ lag in todesbanden, the day before yesterday. Then I was able to listen to Handel’s Dixit Dominus. With both pieces I kept the score in front of me as I listened.

Gardiner can hear the future of both composer’s style in these two pieces.

“… even at this stage there are pointers to the divergent future preoccupations of these two giants: love, fury, loyalty and power (Handel); life, death, God and eternity (Bach).”

While Bach was in Germany (where he spent his entire life), Handel was in Rome.

Calling Handel a dramatist in the making, Gardiner says:

“Where Bach is yoked to Luther, Handel, decidedly more of a man of the world even at this stage, shows us why he was so drawn to Italy, responding, like Dürer and Schütz before him, and Goethe later on, to her landscape, her art in all its vitality and vivid colors, and of course, her music.”

I was amused to see Handel at a young age already using the same climbing long soprano lines that one associates with the Hallelujah chorus.

Gardiner thinks that both Bach and Luther looked death in the eye. 

“Precociously, he [Bach] seems to have learnt how the colossal force of faith embodied and enacted in music could deprive death of its powers to terrify, as though concurring with Montaigne (whom he certainly never read), ‘Let us banish the strangeness of death: let us practice it, accustom ourselves to it, never having anything so often present in our minds than death: let us always keep the image of death in our imagination—and even in full view.”

Gardiner is writing about the great Actus Tragidus (BWV 106 – Gottes Zeit ist der allerbeste Zeite – God’s time is the best time). I got up this morning and listened to this masterwork. I had never done so before. I recommend it as a work of genius but won’t belabor you with a discussion of Gardiner’s thoughts or my reactions to its structure and compositional accomplishments.

Gardiner speculates that Bach may have been thinking of the people in his life who were dead at this point. That would include his parents (buried in the cemetery next to the church where Bach was baptized – Georgenkirche in Eisenstadt), and also the sister of a friend of his (Susanne Tilesius, sister of Pastor Eilmar).

I can’t resist pointing out the clever construction of this piece with movements that correspond to each other in clever and symmetrical ways. And in the center of this comes a rest with a fermata over it.

Gardiner says “… it is up to us how we interpret …. [this] silence…. ” One interpretation would see it as an indication that death is a full stop. Another is that death is a midpoint and “the beginning of what comes after.”

Very cool.

Yesterday was one of those rare days when I didn’t put my hands on a musical instrument all day. I guess I needed a vacation even from that.

I did do a lot of reading. I finished the second volume of Gormenghast.

In the afternoon, Eileen, Mark and I made a trip to Grayling and bought groceries.

We are expecting more family members to arrive tomorrow.  Adult kids of Mark and Leigh and their significant others.

1. PDF Do Musical Works Contain an Implied Listener” by John Butt

I read this yesterday. It’s kind of dry but is a topic I’m interested in. I did listen to the opening of the Bruckner symphony Butt mentions.

2. Before Shooting in Iraq, a Warning on Blackwater – NYTimes.com

Cowboys.

3. A Disregarded Request From a Beloved Senator Shakes Up Hawaii’s Primary – NYT

Who has more influence, a dead senator or a sitting president?

4. The lost promise of the Internet: Meet the man who almost invented cyberspace – Salon

Thank you to Brother Mark for pointing me to this one.