I battled computers and internet providers yesterday as I attempted to write my daily blog and do some church work. There are so many layers to consider when a computer balks:  the particular computer being slow, your wifi modem going on the blink, the internet service provider slowing down, the internet itself being slow. And those are just the basics.

At any rate I did manage my tasks. Sheesh. I also found myself at crazy Meijer the Saturday before New Years Eve as I did on the Saturday before Christmas. I must be losing my mind.

Perusing an old copy of American Organist (the American Guild of Organist mag) this morning, I was amused to find evidence that there are people in the world more anachronistic than me. I think of myself as anachronistic because I am word based (love to read and write), love the arts of the past, and am curious enough to use reference tools to find an answer to a question.

There were letters in this issue about the tired old topic of the dire state of church music. People whose skills are less and less called for (Hey, I’m one) are forced to examine carefully why they do what they do. Or they would be if they didn’t deny that the world is wrong in its eclecticism and they are right to hold up a shining light of truth and beauty in the music they deem canonic.

Pathetic.

Yesterday I was listening to Quadrophenia by Pete Townsend.

I was marveling at the skill with which he writes and records music. I noticed there were long passages of pure instrumental music not based on the tune of a song or improvised. It struck me that it was  goood music. I did wonder if it was simply the familiarity I have for the music. Then I realized that knowing music is part of how it works. Also there are many ways to spin a song, a melody, or a symphony.

I think Quadrophenia holds together musically (and dramatically) better than Tommy and that’s saying something since Tommy is pretty good.

There’s so much music available to us these days that it seems particularly narrow to read the rather snobby comments in the AGO mag. Life and our relationship with music and the arts are constantly always changing. One can stick one’s head in the sand and bemoan it or one can seek ways to deal with it.

1. Don’t Trash Colombia’s Democracy – NYTimes.com

The president of Bogata gives a fascinating look at a current crisis in Columbia. This is one of the reasons I admire and read the New York Times.

2. If You’re ’Appy and You Know It – NYTimes.com

This is a kind of goofy article about an American visiting a school class in Paris. But I like this Rumi quote that was in it.

“As we work, live and love in today’s interconnected and interdependent world, we need to remember that developing the ability to shift perspectives is essential. With this in mind, I’ll share this quotation:“Out beyond ideas of wrong-doing and right-doing, there is a field, I’ll meet you there.” 12th century Persian poet Rumi”

3. ‘See It Loud,’ at the National Academy Museum – NYTimes.com

This article makes me want to see some of the pictures denigrated and make up my own mind.

4. “Degenerate Art” Opens at Neue Galerie in the Spring – NYTimes.com

Art that hung on Hitler’s mantel versus truly great stuff. Interesting contrast.

5.Infection Resulting in Amputation Raises Questions About Asian Immigrants’ IV Use – 

This story blew me away. Koreans use IVs like over the counter remedies. Some pay an extreme price. Gruesome.

Being attracted to people different from yourself is not a terribly prevalent approach in American, especially in little old Western Michigan where I live. Ethan Zuckerman uses this word to describe Paul Simon’s attraction to South African music. He gives a critical description of how Simon was at the low ebb of his career (remember “One Trick Pony”?) and revitalized it by essentially writing bits to fit with extant recordings from South Africa. He then connected with the musicians and contracted them to record with him on Graceland launching many international careers.

I know that I am attracted to people and things I don’t understand or recognize. Often I then try to find out more. This even extends to the rabid extremists who fill much of the public air space with their fear and anger. I like the weirdos. I am fascinated by  what looks like incoherence and would like to make more sense of it.

Of course this is not the only kind of foreign style or people I am attracted to. But I admit to finding this extremism almost comical in its weird juxtaposition of misunderstandings and certainty.

Xenophobia is not much concerned with George Brock’s idea that we need  “the systemic, independent attempt to establish the truth of events and issues that matter to society in a timely way” via the “four sub-categories – verification, sense-making, witness and investigation.” I mentioned this in yesterday’s post and it is sticking in my brain.

I have watched some people I know for long enough to have witnessed their extreme points of view unjustified by events.

I have listened to intelligent people predict over and over dire stuff that just doesn’t happen. Sometimes it seems like they are arguing with themselves almost.

Extremism combined with ignorance is practically a way of life in America these days.  I often scan the comments sections to articles I read online. The venting and obvious misunderstandings are always present as well as the occasional insight.

I watch confusion prevail on many Facebooger posts I see. A small example yesterday when I was reading some comments back and forth about Bach’s Art of Fugue. One person pipes up with the idea that Bach coined the word “Contrapunctus.” I had to at least suggest that this Latin term was used long before Bach was born.

And there are other examples I routinely see on Facebooger. Points of view espoused that brook no disagreement. I often do some checking to see how the information cited stands up to “verification and sense making.” It doesn’t take too much cleverness to look closely at the linked web site and see its extreme bias. Often this bias is present in the name of the Facebook page linked: “Americans against the Republican Party” or “I hate it when I get up in the morning and Barack Obama is president.”

I understand many extreme points of view as more about a person’s private history and mental make up than any coherent understanding of a subject. This helps me.

I tried to add an extension to my Chrome browser which would allow instant translations of Tweets. I read about Danny O’Brien’s Greasemonkey extension in Rewire by Ethan Zuckerman. Even though I followed the Chrome instructions for adding a non-Google extension (drag and drop), I  couldn’t get it to work. It’s probably just broken. I see that it was made in 2011 and has only been installed 6500 times (a suspiciously round number don’t you think?).

It would have been nice since I follow quite a few tweeters who tweet in other languages. I did find a Chrome social translator extension (Social Translator). I installed it, but it only works on Facebooger.

There’s probably an extension out there for Twitter but a quick google doesn’t bring one up.

I am trying to catch up on some of my reading. In my Kindle folder called “Currently reading,” I have 16 books. Yikes. Some of them I will not worry about, but I’m trying to read in Christianity: the first three thousand years by by Diarmaid MacCulloch (36 % read), Rewire: Digital Cosmopolitans in the Age of Connectivity by Ethan Zuckerman (47% read), and  The New American Jim Crow by Michelle Alexander (40 % read).

The MacCulloch percentage is deceiving because the Kindle is very dumb about what it is measuring with its percentage.  A good third of the book is footnotes and index. But it is a huge tome.

Speaking of Michelle Alexander’s book, here’s an interesting little piece from it:

“at least 10 percent of Americans violate drug laws every year. and people of all races engage in illegal drug activity at similar rates. With such an extraordinarily large population of offenders to choose from, decisions must be made regarding who should be targeted and where the drug war should be waged.

From the outset, the drug war could have been waged primarily in overwhelmingly white suburbs or on college campuses. SWAT teams could have rappelled from helicopters in gated suburban communities and raided the homes of high school lacrosse players known for hosting coke and ecstasy parties after their games.  The police could have seized televisions, furniture, and cash from fraternity houses based on an anonymous tip that a few joints or a stash of cocaine could be found hidden in someone’s dresser drawer. Suburban homemakers could have been placed under surveillance and subjected to undercover operations designed to catch them violating the laws regulating the use and sale of prescription ‘uppers.’ All of this could have happened as a matter of routine in white communities, but it did not.

Instead when police go looking for drugs the look in the ‘hood. Tactics that would be political suicide in an upscale white suburb are not even newsworthy in poor black and brown communities…

As one former prosecutor put it, ‘It’s a lot easier to go out to the ‘hood, so to speak, and pick somebody than to put your resources in an undercover [operation in a a] community where there are potentially politically powerful people.”

Michelle Alexander, The New Jim Crow loc 2550-2560

1. Literary Review – Christopher Hart on the daily rituals of great mind

Fun little book review with facts about famous artists and thinkers.

“In his introduction to this wonderfully entertaining little book, Mason Currey quotes V S Pritchett: ‘Sooner or later, the great men turn out to be all alike. They never stop working. They never lose a minute. It is very depressing.’

2. Does journalism have a future? | TLS

I found it enlightening to read that “there has never been a mass audience for serious news.” This makes sense. So many people I read commenting on the “news” are angry and extreme (all sides).  It was refreshing to be reminded that journalism is “the systemic, independent attempt to establish the truth of events and issues that matter to society in a timely way”, and the author of the book being reviewed, George Brock, “offers a menu of four sub-categories – verification, sense-making, witness and investigation.”

3. Somebody Has to Be Wrong About Obamacare – Bloomberg

Contradictory claims cannot both be accurate. Right?

4. Dangerous Minds | The new Doctor Who’s Oscar-winning short film: ‘Franz K

Planning to watch this in an idle moment soon.

So today is St. Stephen’s day. I guess it’s my name day since I don’t know a St. Bruce (Bruce is my middle name and yes I was named for both St. Stephen and Bruce Wayne.)

A google reveals that there is a St. Bruce, patron saint of martial arts. But I’m skeptical about this. The link says he was born in Tibet before Christ. Hmmm.

Anyway, it’s also Boxing Day in some places.

Yesterday, Eileen and I had breakfast with my Mom.

All three of us had a chance to chat with Elizabeth, Sarah and Matthew via the interwebs.

This is what we looked like to them in the U.K. (Elizabeth is visiting Sarah and Matthew there). I made the mistake of logging into Skype via Windows 8.1 while we were trying to connect. Did you know that once you log in this way, it’s impossible to shut Skype down or log out of it? Or if its possible it’s complicated. I hate Windows. I also hate the alternative stuff.

We then drove to Whitehall for a Hatch Christmas.

This guy is on the wall every Christmas there. It sings.

So today I’m hoping to get a little rest in. The last few days have left me exhausted. Eileen has to work today then she has some time off.

1. Christmas ghost stories: Ofodile by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie | Books | The Guardian

 Thank you to Elizabeth for putting this up on Facebooger. I now have it marked to read. I admire Adichie.

2. Winning Veterans’ Trust, and Profiting From It – NYTimes.com

This is abominable.

3.Yusef Lateef, Innovative Jazz Saxophonist and Flutist, Dies at 93 – NYTimes.com

I didn’t know this fine musician was also an author of fiction.

4. Amnesty by Russians Includes Greenpeace Case – NYTimes.com

And a member of Pussy Riot.

5. Iceland’s hidden elves delay road projects – Yahoo News

Thank you to the Davepaul for recommending this via email.

6. How Your Church Family Works: Understanding Congregations as Emotional Systems by Peter L. Steinke

I’ve often wondered how Ed Friedman who view the post 9/11 America. Steinke doesn’t seem to be covering much new ground but it looks like he might have some observations how family systems is playing out contemporarily especially in churches. It’s on my Good Reads “want to read” list.

Every Christmas I think of Robert Southwell’s poem, The Burning Babe.

It’s kind of an antidote to what we have done to Christmas.

I survived my Christmas eve. Feeling very exhausted this morning. Eileen and I came home and opened presents last night. That way she could sleep in a bit this morning. We are going to have breakfast with my Mom then drive up to Whitehall for the Hatch Xmas. Eileen and I made quiche yesterday afternoon (she made the crust, I the filling). We had some last night between services. I think it was excellent, but the onions were a bit much for Eileen. I had sauteed sliced onions so that they came out in delicate rings. But next time I will dice them finely.

I tried the technique of shaking a crunched up head of garlic in two metal bowls. Hey. That works. Very cool.

I’m hoping to get some resting time in the next few days now that Xmas is over at church.

In the meantime, if you are reading this, Chrerry Mistmas from Jupe.

I had planned to make blueberry pies for the neighbors. But I think I better delay that effort to a day when I have less on my plate. Often on Christmas eve, I’m not too pressed. I feel confident that the evening will easily go well. Unfortunately, I have been challenging myself more in my church music and this now is holding true for this evening’s upcoming music at the later service. Part of this also has been the spotty attendance in my tiny choir. So that yesterday I began putting an anthem into Finale to enable me to better play and conduct it tonight.

Sometimes playing and conducting involves doubling weak voice parts in the accompaniment. One of our anthems this evening, “Masters of this hall,” is really a pretty easy anthem. But the choir seems to have had weird trouble learning it. So I have been doubling their parts until recently. When I added the “tarantella” piano part, the men pretty much fell apart. In order to feel at ease, playing both the piano “tarantella” figure and the men’s parts, it will help me to have the piano part above the men’s part in the score. This is not the way it’s laid out, but is how I am doing it in my nearly finished redone score.

And this isn’t even the hardest anthem for the evening. In addition to “For Unto Us” by Handel, the choir seemed shaky on what I thought were more easy anthems. Doing Handel well is always a challenge.  Playing and conducting this movement is something I have been practicing daily for weeks. This evening I am facing the fact that choristers will likely arrive late to rehearsal and be under-prepared to sing the scheduled anthems. This will require some cleverness on my part to enable their best performance. Cleverness and energy.

And then there’s the postlude which ends the evening. I have scheduled a new movement from a Handel organ concerto to sort of match our big anthem. Again I have been working on this for weeks, but it’s not quite together. I will rehearse it today and it will be fine this evening. But I can’t count on being able to take it up to a quick tempo and hit every note. Sigh.

So no blueberry pies today. I will just make sure I’m rested and prepared for this evening plus drop in to check on Mom and visit some friends to drop off gifts.

I may make a quiche, however. That way Eileen and I will have some food for today. I can also heat it up for Mom to join us in a Christmas breakfast if I can convince to do that tomorrow.

1. Leave These Southwest Ruins Alone – NYTimes.com

GPS and web sites are enabling people to reach and destroy Pueblo ruins. Ay yi yi.

2. Bits and Barbarism – NYTimes.com

Krugman makes some points about currencies including pointing out the waste involved in the bit-coin. It’s counterintuitive to think of how much energy the cyber world requires to run.

3. Hugh Nissenson, Who Pushed the Novel’s Boundaries, Dies at 80 – NYTimes.com

Never heard of this author until reading the obit. I will have to check out some of his work.

4. Horologicon: A Day’s Jaunt Through the Lost Words of the English Language: Mark Forsyth

This book looks very interesting to me.

5. Jezebel – Celebrity, Sex, Fashion for Women. Without Airbrushing.

Interesting website I stumbled across. Not sure what to make of it yet.

6. Michelle Alexander: Locked Out of America | Moyers & Company | BillMoyers.com

Still reading this woman’s The New Jim Crow. Looks like a good interview.

So Eileen and I walked to church yesterday despite my lingering cold. It was beautiful, especially on the way back. Eileen kept remarking on the way the snow outlined the branches of trees and grass. I suggested she take a picture but her phone had been dead that morning and she had left it home to charge.

It was dangerously icy here in Holland Michigan yesterday morning. So choristers were slow to gather. But the conditions of the morning seemed eventually to charge up those who chose to brave the weather and come together. They remained in the common area, talking enthusiastically to each other until the last moment before church.

I began the prelude on the hour. The Heiller got off to a shaky start for some reason even though I have been working hard on it. It is often difficult for me to transition from strategizing on how to help a choir sound good on an anthem to a calm and clear performance of a piece  on the organ. I think that came in to play. At any rate by the time I got to the good part (the last two pages of my four page excerpt of Heiller’s lengthy piece on the chant Salve Regina), it had settled down and I nailed the rest.

This year in our annual Advent IV Lessons and Carols, I only scheduled one anthem and that was at the offertory. This meant that the Lessons and Carols was only readings and hymns sung by the congregation. I will be interested to hear my boss’s feedback on she thought that went. The congregation seemed very engaged with the singing of the hymns. I dropped the organ out of “The Angel Gabriel” and it sounded nice.

I managed to pull together the choral anthem pretty well. “There is a star” by Mendelssohn is often a “screamer.” I think we kept that at a minimum yesterday. There were people videotaping the choir throughout the rehearsal and service. I just checked and no one has emailed me a link or put anything up on Facebooger or I would share here.

At the end of the anthem where the chorale comes in, the congregation joined in on the singing. That seemed to work.

I forget sometimes to comment about how much improvising I do in a service. I tried to keep the accompaniments at the organ interesting yesterday despite the paucity of resources of my little instrument. I related the accompaniment of the two Gregorian chants in the service, “Creator of the stars of night” and David Hurd’s new plainsong fraction anthem we are singing at communion. All I did was hold a fifth down for the entire duration of both pieces. We sing only the first three stanzas of “Creator of the stars of night.” I added volume to the accompaniment as the hymn proceeded but did not change the notes. This seemed to work.

Our sequence hymn was a new text paired with the tune for “Good King Wenceslas. I often improvise as the gospel procession returns to the altar area. Yesterday I used snippets of this melody and scattered them over the range of my little reed alternating with flourishes on a flute stop. I thought it worked.

At the end of the service I played a rather lengthy postlude, the first movement from Mendelssohn’s Sonata for organ in Bb. I nailed it. By the time I had finished most of the congregation was gone. But a few hardy listeners seemed to appreciate it and hung around to listen. I don’t mind. I had fun.

So the guitar gig was bizarre. The host kept us cooling our heals for two hours, while his wife belatedly finished cooking the meal and guests arrived. Eventually I ceased making small talk and sat and read my Kindle. The musicians were invited to sit down at the meal with the group. I demurred. I usually don’t eat before I play. The performances went pretty well. If I hadn’t had to wait two hours I probably would have played the Kottke a tad better. As it was, I pretty much nailed everything. This is much easier for in pop music than the other music I play (classical?).  Laurie did eat with the group. She also sang well and drove me back and forth to the gig.  It was satisfying that the host gave us a check at the end of the evening, something I can’t seem to convince my church is musician etiquette with visiting musicians.

The bizarreness of this gig is difficult to nail down. The conversations tended toward the pompous and banal. They talked about AIDS at one point. No one mentioned gay men. I did.  I suspected there were closeted gay people in the room which is odd since it was a vaguely artistic theater type crowd and I would expect gays who are out. But I got the feeling that the smart people in the room were mostly the women and the token young person who had learned to let the older men blather on. There was some talk about solstice but I don’t think anyone who was talking understood much of the idea.

I think this gig made me grateful for my work in the church despite my own weak faith. At least I see church work as growing out of some historical understanding and context. And there is community. Also eclectic music making beyond a narrow understanding of style. Last night I mentioned  my cellist to the person I was talking with who knew her. I said that she and I were working on Beethoven cello sonatas. But I had no idea if they knew what the fuck I was talking about other than probably recognizing the composer.

But the music chosen by the host seemed well received. As I say, it was a bizarre gig.  On the drive home, Laurie mentioned that there were at least a few people in the room who probably did not recognize “Who Knows Where the Time Goes” made popular by Judy Collins in the late sixties. I said to her that the rest of the crowd could probably have sung along.

Judy Collins

It was that kind of gig.

This morning I’m still suffering from my cold. It’s not as bad as it has been. I’m wondering how smart it was to schedule an excerpt from Anton Heiller’s “Fantasia on Salve Regina.” It’s tricky but I think it’s beautiful. I have had at least one person complain to me when I have played “dissonant” music in the past. And I know my cellist doesn’t really like music that uses dissonance.

But this music is beautiful so I guess I’m glad I scheduled it.

The choir is singing “There shall a star” by Mendelssohn this morning. It wasn’t going too well Wednesday until I convinced them that the half note was the beat. Then it fell together. The trick on this one is to get people to make a lovely forte sound, something one doesn’t hear that much in church choirs. We’ll see. I have put the concluding harmonized chorale in this anthem in the bulletin. That way the congregation can join us in “How brightly shines the morning star.” That will probably be cool.

The rest of the service is Lessons and Carols (with Eucharist). People usually sing this pretty lustily. The Carols are mostly Advent but with a strong dash of Annunciation. Hence the prelude.

The postlude is the first movement of Mendelssohn’s Sonata for organ in Bb. It will require some stamina to play musically today, but judging by yesterday’s rehearsal it should be fun.

Windows 8/1 does seem a bit more user friendly than the original 8.0. I could never figure out how to restart the old version except by physically holding down the button on the laptop. Now there is a start button. Which also means there’s a way to restart when you right click on it.  But 8.1 requires you to create a log on account because it’s designed to work primarily in the cloud. It’s kind of a pain to make it so you don’t have to log on. I found numerous online instructions on how to remove the log on. I stopped reading when one said that one could really screw up your computer if you didn’t do it correctly. Yikes. I guess I’ll just give in and log on to my own laptop when asked. Thanks again, Microsoft!

Eileen and I spent most of the day yesterday getting packages in the mail to California.

She did most of the work. This is nice because often she is unable to help because of work.

President Obama pardoned 8 felons in jail yesterday and another 13 who had already served their time.

While this is a drop in the bucket it is a sweet drop considering that our prison system is totally racist and our laws are designed to put black people in jail (see the excellently researched and written The New Jim Crow by Michelle Alexander).

I read Al Goldstein’s obituary. Though I have to agree with some of the commenters who take the author to task for not really understanding this complex man. What jumped out at me was that in his last years he was homeless and held odd jobs. He was a greeter at a New York deli as well as other odd jobs. He was busted for stealing books from Barnes and Noble. What a sad story.

I have always had a soft spot for pornography. I don’t approve of exploiting people in order to make it. But I believe fiercely in freedom of expression and speech. And I think people look good naked. As a young person my parents worried that my fantasy life would lead to dire actions. I don’t think it works that way. Didn’t for me.

I have to pace myself today because I have that guitar gig this evening. Having chosen some formidable organ music to play for the next week or so I have to spend time on the bench. But besides some grocery shopping and balancing checkbooks, I need to take it easy.

Just about done with The Gentrification of  the Mind by Sarah Schulman.

It is truly an amazing book. It’s really a book about the loss of authenticity, about replacing (gentrifying) the real with the bogus and rootless. The history of the suppression of the memory of AIDS is truly the history of the United States. I close with some excellent quotes from this morning’s reading.

“Gentrified happiness is often available to us in return for collusion with injustice. We go along with it, usually, because of the privilege of dominance, which is the privilege not to notice how our way of living affects less powerful people. Sometimes we do know that certain happiness exists at the expense of other human beings, but because we’re not as smart as we think we are, we decide that this is the only way we can survive. Stupidity or cruelty becomes the choice, but it doesn’t always have to be that way.”

“Depending on our caste and context, opportunities are regularly presented that enable us to achieve more safety by exploiting unjust systems. Whether we are benefiting from globalization, U.S. markets, or being able to get a job/apartment, a play production, or a relationship because of  prejudicial structures that give us unfair advantages as Americans or whites or educated people, or people with homes or people with running water or people with health insurance, or people who can afford to shop at Whole Foods, or whatever. We get to feel better precisely because someone doesn’t have what they need.”

“So, pressure to marry and have children, institutionalized monogamy, social recognition through marriage and motherhood, financially strapped female parents, relationships by habit, sexual repression, the propensity of single parent lesbian households due to a lack of accountability, identity by consumerism, privatized living, lack of community, over-burdened projecting broke parents, obstacles to being productive … sound familiar?”

“I had no one to help me, but the T. S. Eliot helped me. So when people say that poetry is a luxury, or an option, or for the educated middle classes, or that it shouldn’t be read at school because it is irrelevant, or any of the strange stupid things that are said about poetry and its place in our lives, I suspect that the people doing the saying have had things pretty easy. A tough life needs a tough language – and that is what poetry is. That is what literature offers – a language powerful enough to say how it is. It isn’t a hiding place. It is a finding place.”
― Jeanette Winterson, Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal?

I  wasn’t sure where to store this lovely Winterson quote. I ran across it as the epigram to Amber Dawn’s interesting looking book, How Poetry Saved My Life: a Hustler’s Memoir.  So I put it here. I guess I could put it in my notes for Sarah Schulman’s The Gentrification of the Mind since that’s where I found Amber Dawn mentioned.

After looking at Amber Dawn’s book on Amazon and reading a bit of it, I now am interested in the Winterson book quoted above as well Dawn’s novel Sub Rosa.

Winterson is an author I read. Schulman mentions her as an example of an out lesbian writing well and receiving recognition for the quality of her work. Unfortunately Schulman was drawing a telling parallel to the dearth of out lesbian writers of quality in the USA right now. Winterson is British. It’s the British that publisher her and give her accolades.

I for my part am always looking for writers that I might like to read. Amber Dawn is now on that list.

I have been using the website Goodreads to keep track of my reading. It’s a kind of social network for readers. The social thing doesn’t interest me that much. But I do like the interface and keeping track of my reading. I seem to be connected to it through Facebooger. It shows me Facebooger “friends” who are using Goodreads and asks if I want to recommend a book I am reading or have read to them. So far, I haven’t done so simply because the recommendations didn’t seem apt.

I am simply adding Goodreads to the other methods I use to keep track of  my reading.

Since I had a rehearsal scheduled last night around the time Eileen and I usually have pizza, I invited my soloist, Laurie Van Ark, to join us for pizza after rehearsal. I declined to pull off the song suggested last minute by the person organizing the party. ( “Seasons” —see yesterday’s post for the fascinating background to this). I found out last night that this is a Solstice party which would have been good information when I got the email yesterday that Max (that’s the person whose organizing this party) said we could just add a song of our own choosing.

I was unable to come up with a song not knowing this and not knowing what songs Laurie would recognize. We talked for a while last night but couldn’t come up with a song that fit the solstice theme and that she knew well enough to perform in public tomorrow evening. I did give her an idea that I could probably pull off a popular song if she could think of one. Otherwise, I guess we’ll skip it.

Max is also putting together the order we will perform. Thankfully we won’t have to stay for the whole evening and can leave after we are done. Probably silly of me to take this gig. But I could use the bucks and it gave me an excuse to flex my guitar chops.

1. Windows 8.1 Review How to Disable Logon Screen – Disable Windows 8 Login 

I followed the instructions in this link, but this morning when I pulled out my laptop I still had to login. Hmmm.

2. The President of the Cool – NYTimes.com

I love it when Ishmael Reed gets published in the NYT. He’s not that great a writer, but I enjoy his rough edges.

3. Hypertension Guidelines Can Be Eased, Panel Says – NYTimes.com

I take Diovan and a water pill to help me keep my blood pressure under 140/90. It feels more like superstition than actually affecting my longevity. This article doesn’t help.

4.Uninsured Skeptical of Health Care Law in Poll – NYTimes.com

I would love it if journalists or poll takers would ask people if they are registered to vote.

I believe that much of the anecdotal weird shit one sees from the person on the street in the media is driven by people who watch too much TV and listen to too much of their own ill informed echo chamber and do not vote. Hence many hold opinions against their own self interest.

5. Smart Tip: Peel an Entire Head of Garlic in 10 Seconds Saveur | The Kitchn

I can’t wait to try this. Son-in-law Jeremy Daum says it works.

6. Cantor Fitzgerald Settles 9/11 Suit Against American Airlines for $135 Million – NYT

I do not get suits like this.

My cold seemed to worsen a bit yesterday. So I had one of those days where I go to print the psalm to proof it and the printer runs out of ink. Practicing was made more difficult because I had concentration problems as well as sheer fatigue. I persisted, but then when I wanted to leave could not find my phone. I looked for about twenty minutes before finding it. I came home and tried to research the final song the person giving the party Saturday requested. As usual all they gave us was a YouTube video of Heart singing a song called “Seasons.” This is problematic because when I started googling I had difficulty with the search terms being so common. Do you know how many songs there are that have “heart” and “seasons” in their title?

Finally I ran down the album by the group Heart (singing on the YouTube) and discovered the song was written by Elton John. Unfortunately, it’s not one that I could find in a downloadable piano/vocal version which would have saved me some time and effort.

The background for this afternoon computer use was twofold in frustration. I had (stupidly) downloaded and upgraded to Windows 8.1. This took forever to install of course. And then although there are some improvements (like a fucking “start” button), it now asks me to log on with the password it insisted I develop every time I boot up the computer. Helpful. Nice.

In addition to this, my internet server, Comcast, was hiccuping and going in and out of service at the very moment I had set aside to do this work.

Hah, hah, hah, he feebly laughed.

Then there was choir rehearsal. I felt the worst I had felt all day but gave a brilliant rehearsal despite the usual holiday craziness, glumness and numbness.  It saddens me every year to see people so stressed by fucking Xmas. Unrealistic expectation, unfortunate associations (deaths of important people around this time), and general overall consumer madness all add up to stressed people.

Fuck the duck.

I try not to add to it, but when I went a half hour later than usual, some choristers were pretty unhappy. But we will sound better because of it.

1. Secret Bids Guide Hopi Indians’ Spirits Home – NYTimes.com

Hurray for the Annenberg Foundation for purchasing Hopi artifacts to return to them. Fucking French ruled that the Hopi had no rights to them.

2. F.D.A. Questions Safety of Antibacterial Soaps – NYTimes.com

I’ve wondered about the idea of antibacterial stuff. I like hand soap anyway which is less likely to have the stuff in it.

3. A Transgender Volunteer for the Salvation Army – NYTimes.com

A great story. You know. The Salvation Army whose spokesperson famously said something about gays deserving death.

4. A Hobbyist Challenges Papers on Growth of Dinosaurs – NYTimes.com

I find this sort of exchange interesting to read about.

I’m still coughing and sneezing, feeling a little better each day. I tried to pace myself yesterday. Prepared information for the Advent IV bulletin and the Christmas Eve bulletin. Met with my boss and we reviewed stuff. I think we’re set for these services. I plan to submit Christmas I Sunday today.

After meeting with Jen I spent time on the organ bench with upcoming music. By scheduling interesting and challenging music, I am keeping my interest high in my work. The challenge in the choral music has been the spotty attendance. When people are there, they do pay attention and respond. And so far we have not given any embarrassing performances, far from it. We are a good little church choir. But the work is making sure people are feeling prepared more than concentrating on the musical aspects of performance which is more rewarding to me.

I picked up some stuff for my Mom at the grocery store and delivered it to her. I took care to stay back from her due to my illness, so no kisses and only a brief final hug. She seems to be doing pretty well.

Later I met with the soprano who booked me my upcoming guitar gig. She seemed to think that my Leo Kottke (the most challenging thing for me we will perform) was good enough. It is getting better. I’m planning on restringing both guitars I will use Saturday at the gig. I hope that will both make the slide guitar easier to play and the classical guitar sound a bit better.

My soprano (Laurie Van Ark) had no idea how to convert YouTube videos into mp3s to listen to on her phone, so I did that for her. She brought my attention to a song we are supposed to do that I had missed in a recent email: “Seasons” by Heart. At least that’s what I think the title is.  If I can find a tablature version online, I will probably write out the melody for Laurie as well. If not, maybe we’ll can this one.

I am continuing my morning read of The Gentrification of the Mind by Schulman (pictured above). Here are some interesting passages.

Speaking of the devolving theater scene in New York, she an quotes unnamed friend:

“Everything is [now] based on where you sit on the totem pole. It has nothing to do with how interesting your vision is, how good an artist you are, or even if they like you or not. People are brutally cruel to you if  you have less currency, and repulsively solicitous if you have more that’s the operating principle.”

She goes on: “He was describing the heart of supremacy ideology, in which people get ignored and disrespected, or attended to and praised based entirely on their social positioning

“Looking really closely, the most significant factor differentiating the disappeared avant-garde, destroyed by AIDS and gentrification, and the replacement artists, more closely aligned with the social structures necessary to be able to pay contemporary real estate prices, is professionalism… I came of age in the East Village in the 1980s [surrounded by]… the freaky, faggy, outrageous, community-based, dangerous, ‘criminal class’…. many artists I knew had an outlaw quality. They had illegal sex, took illegal drugs, hustled literally and figuratively for money, lived in poverty, and said fuck you to dominant cultural values, all of which made it possible for them to discover new art ideas later enjoyed by the world.

1. How Truro created Christmas musical history | Music | theguardian.com

First Lessons and Carols in 1880 in Cornwall. They sang an anthem we will sing at our Christmas Eve service, “For unto us” by Handel.

2 YouTube to mp3 Converter

This is the web site I used to make mp3s yesterday.

3. America’s Best Unknown Writer by Jonathan Raban | The New York Review of Books

Article on William Gaddis’s letters to his mom. I have read most of his books. He is difficult but excellent.

4. Why You Can’t Say ‘I Voted!’ in Chinese—at Least in China – James Fallows – The Atlantic

This is an old article. I was cleaning out my browser bookmark folder called “When diggolet doesn’t work” and ran across it. Sadly reminds me of the optimism America briefly felt when Obama was elected.

5. Spotify Music-Streaming Service Comes to U.S. – NYTimes.com

Speaking of old articles, it’s only been two years since Spotify hit the states. My, my.

6. 10 Chrome tricks to improve your browsing experience – TechRepublic and Windows keyboard shortcuts – Chrome Help

I was thinking it would be so much more helpful if bookmarks went to the top of a list instead of at the bottom. Don’t really see a way to do that with Chrome.

Yesterday my cold intensified. I guess I’ve had it since Friday or even before. It wasn’t debilitating on Sunday. But yesterday it pretty much was. I did get out and help Eileen do some Christmas and Aldi shopping. But the rest of the day I was in bed. I backed out of events for the evening (a rehearsal and an American Guild of Organists dinner). I hope today I will feel better. I need to do work stuff and practice organ and guitar. All I managed yesterday was some guitar practice. The guitar gig is Saturday.

Reading Sarah Schulman is definitely a breath of fresh air in my thinking.

One problem with living in a small town for me is that I’m the most radical person I know. Holland is perfect example of what Schulman calls “gentrification of the mind” which I take to mean substituting homogeneity and denial for diversity and awareness. Schulman recalls to me the times in my life when I knew curious, passionate, committed, honest and reckless people. Inspiring people, really.

Now I feel that I’m a spy in the midst of decontextualized sameness. An invisible man who is not seen by the people around him. I know this is by choice since I chose to live in this small Michigan town. I was remarking to Eileen that we moved here in the late eighties and found what felt like a throw back to the fifties. Then the entire United States went mad and became like Holland.

Just my impression. I think having a bad cold might make me grumpy.

1. H5N1 – Sam Altman

My nephew’s boyfriend, Tony Wesley, put this link up on Facebooger. He was talking about micro biological robotics when he was visiting at Thanksgiving. I don’t think he reads this blog but thanks, Tony! Interesting little read about “tail risk” which a google reveals means (in this context) the probability of a rare event.

2. History and Explanation of Gentrification – Gentrification

A little background I bookmarked for myself.

3. The 10 Best Books of 2013 – NYTimes.com

I love these lists. Again I haven’t read any of these books. But I do see two authors that enjoy: Adichie and Atkinson.

4. Japan’s  Top Voice – High, Polite and on the Phone – NYTimes.com

Phone answering competition.

5. The Catholics Still in Exile – NYTimes.com

Frank Bruni puts a little balance into the gushing response to the new pope, including an example of an organist who was fired for being gay.  My teacher in undergrad school advised me to get a Master’s from Notre Dame. That way I “could always work for the Catholics.” I watched the Catholics get more and more reactive.  It showed itself to me personally first with the push to only hire Catholic musicians. I can remember being at a Diocesan workshop where the theme was pretty much only “Catholics” can lead Catholics. I took the presenter aside and asked him if I should leave the workshop (not being Catholic). He told me that I wasn’t the problem.

I wonder if eventually I would have been fired for not being Catholic. I remember one job I had where I informed the priest in charge if he fired a staff person for being gay, I would quit. I guess that’s more likely.

6. Bigger Than Bambi – NYTimes.com

Maureen Dowd nicely sums up the recent weird only-positive-book-review-allowed nonsense.

This web site is suffering from some sort of server problem. Or something. I have had difficulty getting it to come up at all a couple times this week. If you’ve had problems and have checked again, thank you! It’s not clear what’s causing this. My daughter, Sarah, said she would check to see if the host has had some problems.

I have been thinking about the concept of gentrification. Sarah Schulman develops this idea thoroughly in The Gentrification of the Mind. First, she provides an earlier reference of the use of this word than the Oxford English Dictionary.  She mentions in passing that Ruth Glass coined the word. I googled it and did find some confirmation. The book is probably Aspects of Change by the aforementioned Glass and was published in 1964. The earliest use of this word to talk about the process of a changing neighborhood that the OED gives is 1972 in a novel by Michael Innes. It took me a while to figure that Michael Innes is a pseudonym… the OED credits the book with the real name of the author: J. I. M. Stewart. I got so distracted by this search that I ended up ordering a novel by Innes/Stewart since my reading told me he was strongly influenced by C. P. Snow. I have read all of C. P. Snow and enjoyed it. 

Anyway, Schulman makes a good case that the concept of a gentrified neighborhood, i.e. one in which the original diversity was replaced by a  homogenous richer population, is a clear symptom and metaphor for much of what’s fucked up in our society and the world. I do not mean to diminish Schulman’s basic thrust which is to restore the history of AIDS and to raise awareness of what is going on now that is so destructive to people in the world by systematic repression and the use of banality, consumerism, and lies to further the economic interests of the people who control the strings of the world.

As far as I am concerned she is electric in the way she lays this all out.

But she also points to the larger idea that it’s a sort of gentrification when we dilute the real life we are given by capitulating to a life of consuming and blind self-centered ignorance.

Jes sayin’

1. Repressive Tolerance, by Herbert Marcuse (1965)

I’ve heard of Marcuse, but Schulman quoted him about the way a certain kind of tolerance perpetuates rather than challenges a bad situation. This emphatically makes me think of living in bland old Holland Michigan where the good people are tolerant to a fault and the only ones who seem at all angry are standing in line to get free food and stay at the mission.

Anyway, I copied the above to my Kindle and am reading it.

Here’s Schulman’s telling mention of Marcuse:

Schulman cites “Marcuse’s insight into what he called ‘repressive tolerance,’ in which communities become distorted and neutered by the dominant culture’s containment of their realities through the noose of ‘tolerance.’ The dominant culture doesn’t change how it views itself or how it operates, and power imbalances are not transformed. What happens instead is that the oppressed person’s expression is over-whelmed by the dominant person’s inflationary self-congratulation about how generous they are. The subordinate person learns quickly that they must curb their most expressive instincts in order to be worthy of the benevolence of this containment.” p. 50

2. Prosecution Deferred, Justice Denied – NYTimes.com

Criminal prosecution of corporations, that is.

3. A Poor Apology for a Word – NYTimes.com

 The word is “sorry” and this is especially about Brits’ use of it.

4. A Disappearing Spy, and a Scandal at the C.I.A. – NYTimes.com

What a story! Reminds me of Le Carré.

5. With Affordable Care Act, Canceled Policies for New York Professionals – NYT

Republicans bluster on and do not convince me there are significant problems with ACA. This article, however, does. People who were on group insurance now forced to get individual. Bad idea even though I understand the thought process that designed it into the law.

6. Rights Advocate Is Indicted in China Over Role in Campaign Against Corruption – NYT

China is such a weird blend of governmental procedure. This looks totalitarian.

7. Teenager’s Sentence in Fatal Drunken-Driving Case Stirs ‘Affluenza’ Debate – NYTimes.com

See my discussion above of gentrification.

8. How To Make Friends When You’re ‘Old’

Fun little article linked by daughter Elizabeth on Facebooger. Thanks!

9.Colin Wilson, Author Acclaimed at 24 for ‘The Outsider,’ Dies at 82 – NYTimes.com

Have read some Wilson. He sounds as crazy as I thought he was. Also a bit delusional about his own importance and ability.

10. Belgian Senate Votes to Allow Euthanasia for Terminally Ill Children – NYTimes.com

Only in cases of extreme physical pain. Probably a good idea.

On the back cover of Sarah Schulman’s Gentrification of the Mind: Witness to a Lost Imagination, Samuel Delany blurbs that her “mind is clear as a bell.” I’ll buy that. Ironic to me, because I’ve never been able to read Delany’s thick prose. I read the introduction to Gentrification of the Mind this morning and kept finding myself reaching for my little stickies to mark off beautiful clear phrases like, “a ragged edge to us” (speaking of older queer theorists in the room with young suburban gay artists) the latter group’s world being described as one of “pacifying assimilation.”

Being sucked into Schulman’s excellent observations on the memory of AIDS, ACT-UP, and countless stories of struggles and deaths of so many was very different from the other introduction I read today and yesterday by Lydia Goehr in The Imaginary Museum of Musical Works. I am attracted to the ideas behind Goehr’s title and book, but this morning I decided I probably will only put it in my ongoing annotated bibliography and leave it at that.

Goehr and Schulman are both anchored in the academic world (Schulman teaches at CUNY, Goehr at Columbia), but they couldn’t be more different.

Schulman writes in simple clear prose and her passion comes through clearly to me. She says as a reader herself she has “always most enjoyed books I can be interactive with. I like to fiercely agree with one idea—and fiercely disagree with the next.”

Goehr devolves into academic prose quickly: E.T.A “Hoffmann gave currency to the notion of being true or faithful to a work (what later came to be called Werktreue). He gave to this notion a prominence within the language of musical thought it had never before had.” (and this is a passage I marked as salient!).

I lost patience with Goehr this morning when she used Plato and then Aristotle to help come with the first two of four “Nominalist” Theories of Musical Works. Ay yi  yi.

I am interested in Goehr’s ideas about the reification of music (see, I use big words), but not enough to wade through her prose.  There are other musicians on my list who can write in ways that are more accessible to me.

For some reason this reminds me a bit of my experience yesterday communicating with Gwyneth Walker’s website asking if a quarter rest had been omitted in a measure in her composition, “Sanctuary.”

She has a pretty extensive web site. She (or someone) has put her manuscripts online for study. But if you try to access them they ask for a password which she (or someone) makes available to researchers.

I couldn’t get an answer to my question by looking at her stuff online so I emailed the website.

Imagine my surprise when I not only received a reply with 30 minutes, but the person signing the email was the composer, Carson Cooman.

We emailed back and forth and the upshot of it was that Cooman insisted that the notation was correct but that it should be interpreted with a quarter rest. This seemed lame to me, since the pattern occurred three times and the first two times there is a quarter rest in this position but I didn’t protest, simply thanked him for his time.

I had asked for access to the online manuscript, but he ignored that request. No biggie. If I have further questions, I will just email the website. I purchased Walker’s piano trio Craftsbury yesterday online. I mentioned this in my emails with Cooman. Usually it’s instructive to see a composer’s original manuscript when thinking about a piece. But this doesn’t seem to be where the Walker web site is headed. At least for me anyway.

I see Cooman’s attitude as a vestigial remnant of the worst of academic stuff.

Cooman’s a decent composer. We have performed several of his choral pieces at church. Both he and Walker are breaths of fresh air to me. I have to admit to being more impressed with the few Walker compositions I have been exposed to than Cooman’s but that doesn’t mean that much. He probably has some great stuff.

I do like what I’ve played and heard by Walker. I have been listening to a CD on Spotify of her piano trio compositions. Both she and Cooman do not write in the stilted conservative style of what was being published in church music in the late 20th century. There is an attractive freedom to their work.

Gwyneth Walker’s “A Vision of Hills” (2002) for piano trio from Gwyneth Walker’s Website on Vimeo.

In “A Vision of Hills,” Walker takes the hymn tune for “Be Thou my Vision” (Slane) and weaves a wonderful ten minute piece. I’ve only listened to it but I think the way she uses the material puts most church composers to shame. Lovely stuff.

But it may be that I’m a bit simplistic in my approach to the prose of Schulman and Goehr and the music of Walker. I have lived from a “marginalized point of view” (Schulman’s phrase) artistically and intellectually. I am content that my cups of tea are not everyone’s.

Despite being on break from my college work, I am still feeling underwater a bit. I partially attribute this to taking on a couple of commitments which required (and in the case of the looming gig, still requiring) quite a bit of effort. The first of these was learning the duet part for Rhonda’s Advent recital. The second was accepting a guitar gig for next Saturday evening.

The duet was pretty straightforward in what it required from me. Learn the part. I feel pretty good about it, but Rhonda and I have not really done a post mortem on my participation. I will corner her at some time (Hi Rhonda!) and ask for some constructive criticism. It can be very instructive to get a colleagues’s feedback.

In the second case, I accepted the guitar gig because I was feeling a little guilty about not picking up my guitars and banjo. I have neglected them. Instead I have increased my practicing on organ and piano. So I thought a specific gig would give me an excuse to revive my guitar chops.

The real challenge in this gig is the Leo Kottke tune requested: “Hear the wind howl.” It’s not quite as hard as it sounds. It’s in a C tuning. If you watch the video, notice that sometimes Kottke is doing nothing with his left hand and only picking open strings. Part of the challenge for me is learning to use the slide (which is a little glass tube that makes the sliding sound).

I found a transcription of what Kottke is essentially doing in this video.  I have been chipping away at learning it. Only after transcribing the sung melody (and shooting it off to the singer who got me this gig)  yesterday, did I begin to think I am making some headway on learning this piece on the guitar.

The other pieces in this gig are much easier. “Who knows where the time goes” by Sandy Denny as sung by Judy Collins, “Diamonds and Rust” by Joan Baez, “Medicine Bow” an instrumental by Peter Ostroushko, an original song by the man who has hired for his party and a couple others.

I took the gig with the idea that what I would mostly do is try to get my guitar fingers back. But it has turned into a major project a week before Christmas.

Also I have scheduled what I call “big kid” pieces on the organ for the next several services. These require daily careful rehearsal which so far I have easily found time and energy to do.

Although Eileen is beginning to be reconciled to choosing to retire early, this has been a very stressful time for her and hence for me also.

But there’s more. I seem to be drawn into some intellectual muscle flexing as well. I have been daily practicing my Greek.

My daily reading has been rather consuming.

Besides reading several articles on origins of the concept of Mode in the Western tradition, I also have been examining sources that talk about the philosophy of music now.

I began another one this morning.

in The Imaginary Museum of Musical Works, Lydia Goehr seems to be speaking a bit more conservatively than some of the scholars I have read on the subject of what music is and how it works. She definitely is coming at it from an academic philosophical orientation. Her prose is just readable so far. But her ideas interest me a great deal.

I continue to plow through Auden, Shakespeare and Charles Taylor. Not to mention that I have been successful in sending articles to my Kindle to read as well. This morning I was experimenting with sending scholarly articles accessed through my college employment perks to my Kindle. I managed to send “How to Do More with Words. Two Views of (Musical) Ekphrasis” by Lydia Goehr (British Journal of Aesthetics 2010 Volume 50, Issue 4 > Pp. 389-410).

(“Ekphrasis has been considered generally to be a rhetorical device in which one medium of art tries to relate to another medium by defining and describing its essence and form, and in doing so, relate more directly to the audience, through its illuminative liveliness.” copied from the Wikipedia entry on this word.)

I basically chose this article randomly to see if I could send it to my Kindle.

Enough. I have stuff to do.

Charles Rosen, 1927 – 2012

Finished reading The Frontiers of Meaning by the late pianist/musicologist, Charles Rosen. It’s a slim volume which contains three talks he gave in 1993. I do like the way his mind works. His writings have taught me many things. In this book he successfully illustrates how music is often a hairbreadth away from being nonsense.  He points out some wonderful errors made by great musicians and musicologists and how in the final analysis it wasn’t that big a deal.

This reminds me so much of my late teacher, Ray Ferguson, who once commented to me after we had both listened to a lengthy musicological lecture regarding some obscure music controversy that in the final analysis it didn’t matter how the controversy resolved because the controversy was irrelevant to life.

I miss that guy.

I am planning to type up some reading notes today so I can return books to the library.

I have landed on this idea as a way to retain some sort of record of my reading and thinking in books I do not own. Even with some of the books I own I find myself making notes in a doc online.

I have been experience some convergence between ideas in the books I have been reading.

This happens often to me and it is a source of delight and wonder. For example, I am reading (re-reading?) “The Tempest” by Shakespeare. I am doing so because I am also reading Auden’s “The Sea and The Mirror” in which Auden uses characters from “The Tempest’ to make points about life, art, and religion. Impossible to understand Auden without knowing the players.

Anyway, yesterday I was reading in A Secular Age by Charles Taylor. In it, he refers to a quote from Buffon in French: “we come to see ourselves as issuing from what Buffon called ‘le sombre abîme du temps.'” I take the French phrase to mean “the dark abyss of time” which is the title of the chapter. Taylor speculates in a footnote that Buffon (whom after a google I take to mean George-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon, an influential thinker in the 18th century), that Buffon might have been thinking of Shakespeare. “Consider this speech from The Tempest, where Prospero questions Miranda about what she remembers: “What sees thou else / In the dark backward and abyss of time?” Act I, Scene II, ll. 49-50.”

I had just read this scene when I stumbled across the reference in Taylor’s footnote.

Convergence.

Then this morning, I was again reading Taylor, when he used a word I didn’t recognize: “nevralgic.” I thought I got the sense of the word but it seemed so odd to me I wanted to find out more about it. Checked the Oxford English Dictionary and it wasn’t there. Proceeded to google it and came up with a discussion about it in which two commenters had mentioned they had run across the word in Charles Taylor’s The Secular Age.

I don’t know if that qualifies as “convergence” but I think it’s cool.

By the way, it seems that Taylor is using the word deliberately (some of the commenters take it to be a typo). But that its meaning is not far from neuralgic which means “particularly sensitive” like a nerve and which is also only one letter away from nevralgic, “v” often being used in Latin as “u.”

1. 8 Photos You Didn’t See From Obama’s Trip to South Africa – PolicyMic

I “shared” this on Facebooger. I think the pics are interesting and they relate to a couple of other articles I have read recently about photographing the president.

2. Obama’s Orwellian Image Control – NYTimes.com and Limit on Access Stirs Tensions Between White House Photographer and Press Corp

These are the two articles I read recently about the controversy of the White House limiting photo ops.

3. How to Truly Honor Mandela – NYTimes.com

Kristoff’s tribute has a litany of problems and brave people who could use help right now.

4. Prison Memoir of a Black Man in the 1850s – NYTimes.com

This makes me suspicious that it’s a hoax. At any rate, it will be an interesting read once it’s published.

Could not get my web site to come up this morning until just a few minutes ago. Instead I did other stuff.

I finished Breach of Trust by Bacevich. It is a damning and lucid examination of where we are as a country. Although he makes recommendations that he thinks would change things, he is not hopeful anything will change.

He quotes General George C. Marshall’s final report as chief of staff at the end of the book.

There must not be a large standing army subject to the behest of a group of schemers. The citizen-soldier is the guarantee against such a misuse of power.

link to lengthy pdf of the report, this quote is from p. 117, but I couldn’t find it

Even though I was a conscientious objector during the Vietnam war and was even spared service due to a relatively high lottery number, I do not object to serving my country. Never did. Just killing for it.

Bacevich’s vision of a citizen-soldier army (which he shares with many great Americans including General Marshall) includes a wide swathe of ways that citizens could serve. I think he is on to something.

I share his disdain for citizens (especially our leaders) who cling to consumer ways and want to send out young and not so young Americans to die on their behalf for money and oil.

The warriors may be brave, but the people are timid. So where courage is most needed [for change] passivity prevails exquisitely expressed (and sanctimoniously justified) in the omnipresent call to ‘support the troops.’ Bacvich p. 193

I recommend this book to any one who is seeking to understand the madness of life in the USA.

____________________________________________________________

Choir rehearsal kicked my butt last night (as I put in an email to a colleague this morning when I couldn’t blog). I had multiple absences which totally changed the experience. I scrambled to help those who bothered to attend, but ended up having to scrap at least one Christmas anthem (we have one more rehearsal before Christmas!).

I am feeling the exhaustion this morning. I will try to do some resting today. This being old sucks.

1. Dangerous Minds | Ingmar Bergman’s soap commercials

Ingmar Bergman made commercials. Worth checking out.

2. 10 Lifehacks For Your Car and Driving Habits – Tested

I’m not sure I buy all of these, but I like the one about using Pam to keep your car door from freezing. Planning to implement that idea.

3. Caution – Reading Can Be Hazardous – NYTimes.com

Confessions of a book award judge.

4. Disney trashes ‘Poppins’ author in ‘Saving Mr. Banks’ | New York Post

This totally figures.  The Disney company has made a movie covering up the tracks of the exploitation of P. L. Travers. The movie apparently is riddled with lies. Sooprise.

I loved reading Travers. It is encouraging to know she hated the movie made from them. My estimation of her goes up.

Just about finished with Andrew J. Bacevich’s Breach of Trust: How Americans Failed Their Soldiers and Their Country. It is a frightening book. The clarity of Bacevich’s understanding and the historicity with which he approaches his subjects is amazing. Consider his list of use of the military since the draft ended:

Iraq (twice)

Afghanistan

Lebanon

Grenada

Panama

Somalia

Haiti

Bosnia

Kosovo

smaller “interventions” include

Special mission to secretly enter Iraq in 1980 (which failed)
Special mission to secretly enter Pakistan in 2011 (which succeeded)

Other long-duration, quasi-cover operations

El Salvador
Honduras
Columbia

In 2012, President Obama sent U.S. Marines to patrol the
western coast of Guatemala.

This doesn’t include places we have sent our bombs in our stead.

And then there are incidences that quickly fall out of memory.

“Who today remembers the 1975 Mayaguez incident, in which eighteen Americans were killed while attempting to regain control of a container ship shanghaied by the Khmer Rouge? Or how about the “Tanker War” of 1984-1988? Highlights included a crippling Iraqi attack on the USS  Stark—-with Washington readily accepting Saddam Hussein’s apology for killing thirty-seven American sailors—and the USS Vincennes shooting down an Iranian commercial airliner—with Washington refusing to apologize for killing 290 passengers and crew.”

The fact that this was all carried out by a military that was no longer citizen based but all volunteer is critical to his alarm.

I remember slowing become aware that the United States was wreaking war over the entire world. This was in the 80s.  Before the internet I clipped newspaper articles talking about many of the conflicts above. I was astonished at the growing number of wars in the world. Bacevich traces much of this increase to Washington’s newly acquired elite fighting force combined with the increasing independence with which the US Government involved its military world wide. Independence of any oversight or even awareness by the American civilian population.

Bacevich says that this will continue unless the highly unlikely event occurs that the American public gets more involved in its government.

Speaking of getting involved, the radio program, “On the Media,” has created an easy to use website for asking the government about its secret policies on who can come into or leave our country freely.

I think it’s a model for citizen involvement in the future. After obtaining your phone number, the web site calls your representative’s office for you and connects you via that number. It gives you questions to ask and a form to record information obtained. I haven’t done yet, but plan to when I have time to fool with it.

Incidentally, Bacevich himself served as an Army office for 23 years and lost a son in the second Iraq war.

Yikes. I can’t seem to lay my hands on my cell phone this morning. I’m hoping I left it at church.

Yesterday was a good day for me. Even starting with a dentist appointment. I opted for a crown instead of a filling so I have to return in a couple of weeks for the rest of the work.

I finally read the article about Aldi grocery stores I linked a few days ago and decided to grocery shop there yesterday.

I was surprised at what they stocked. I remember going there several years and having the impression it was sort of a thrift store for food. The stock then was meager and I remember thinking not very good in quality.

Yesterday however I was able to find things to purchase that fit my list and also bought some things to see if they were usable (such as fake Campbells and Progresso soups and low cal foods).

I spent about a third of what I have been spending at the grocery store. It’s not a totally fair comparison since I usually purchase pretty expensive things (like organic milk) at Meijers and opted for whatever Aldi stocks to see if we could stand it. In other words, I could have easily spent less money at Meijers as well.

I assured Eileen that I enjoy grocery shopping.

 She doesn’t. So that works  out well.

In my dream last night, I was telling my Dad that doing the dishes was sexy. He said it was gay. I laughed at him.

I spent some time on the bench yesterday. This is important because I have scheduled preludes and postludes for the next two weeks that need rehearsing. Sunday I am doing a prelude and a postlude that Guilmant specifically composed for the third Sunday of Advent. I like doing stuff like this. I also have a deep respect for Guilmant. I like the fact that he composed his organ music based on Gregorian chants for the church year with the idea of imitating Bach’s Orgelbüchlein and make sort of a late 19th century adaptation for Roman Catholics.

Guilmant is firmly in the French Romantic organ tradition, not my usual cup of tea. But still I am enjoying learning his pieces which are based on the Advent/Christmas chant “Creator alme siderum.” At least that’s the name of the melody in the Hymnal 1982. Guilmant refers to it by what appears to be its earlier title, “Conditor alme siderum.”

I also had some time to read through some of the organ music I recently purchased on sale. I have been reading through bits of this stack. Yesterday I played through Sanctuary (3 movements) by Gwyneth Walker. I don’t know her work. I was surprised by her writing. It is simple, clear and quite beautiful. It somehow appeals to the whole musician in me, the musician that loves Billy Holiday and Bach in equal measures. She obviously has combined astute compositional technique with an ear that has absorbed the popular music world as well as the erudite. At least that’s how it hits this old rock and roller organist. Cool beans.