I read this sentence in a poem this morning:

I’d wear those jaws like a toothy cilice…

Hmmm. Didn’t recognize the word. Neither did spell check. But it was in the OED.

Hairshirt, eh?

Here’s more from the poem:

… I’d wear those  jaws like a toothy cilice,

slip into the glitzy red gown of penance, and it would be no different
from what I do each day—voyaging the salt sharp sea of your body,
sometime mooring the ports or sighting the sextant, …

from “When the Beloved Asks, ‘What Would You Do if You Woke Up and I Was a Shark?'” by the illustrious Natalie Diaz.

Then there was another word in Louise Glück this morning.

*****

Scilla

Not I, you idiot, not self, but we, we-waves
of sky blue like
a critique of heaven: why
do you treasure your voice
when to be one thing
is to be the next to nothing?
Why do you look up? To hear
an echo like the voice
of god? You are all the same to us,
solitary, standing above us, planning
your silly lives: you go
where you are sent, like all things,
where the wind plants you,
one or another of you forever
looking down and seeing some image
of water, and hearing what? Waves,
and over waves, birds singing.

Oh yeah. That’s what it is. A flower.

Glück mentions these flowers in another poem I read this morning.

*******

April

No one’s despair is like my despair–

You have no place in this garden
thinking such things, producing
the tiresome outward signs; the man
pointedly weeding an entire forest,
the woman limping, refusing to change clothes
or wash her hair.

Do you suppose I care
if you speak to one another?
But I mean you to know
I expected better of two creatures
who were given minds: if not
that you would actually care for each other
at least that you would understand
grief is distributed
between you, among all your kind, for me
to know you, as deep blue
marks the wild scilla, white
the wood violet.

******

not Scylla

Lastly, I ran across a word that the OED didn’t know.

And where once the crowdws were mere pent peacocks,
Twiddling half chatoyances, shimmers in the dark,

from “Aubade, Vol. 2: The Underground Sessions” by Rowan Ricardo Phillips in The Ground

Chatoyances? What the heck?

Wikipedia to the rescue.

Here’s what Wikipeda says: “In gemology, chatoyancy (pron.: /ʃəˈtɔɪ.ənsi/ shə-toy-ən-see), or chatoyance or cat’s eye effect,[1] is an optical reflectance effect seen in certain gemstones. Coined from the French “œil de chat,” meaning “cat’s eye,””

It’s worth quoting Phillip’s entire poem:

*****

Aubade, Vol. 2:

The Underground Sessions

The sun is a sequence of flash and din
In the sunken club’s slack black ceilings.
And where once the crowds were mere pent peacocks,
Twiddling half chatoyances, shimmers in the dark,
Now only dancers remain.
The DJ rubs the mood of the room as though it
Were his womb. We dance: we ripple in place.
The twin black lakes of vinyl blend
Stirred to life by the dipped needle.

No one I know knows the real ends of when. (What?)
No one I know knows the real end of when. (What?)
No one I know knows for real when to end. Again.

No one I know knows for real when to end. (What?)
No one I know knows the real end of when. (What?)
No one I know knows the real ends of when.

And when we thought we’d reached the end
It was remixed again.
No one I know knows for real when to end.

As when a drinking collared deer
Hears a noise and
Although safe by being Caesar’s
Feels a strange freedom there in that second,
Some sense in the gut, a thunder of ribs,
A surge in the blood, some cinched memory
Of not being Caesar’s,

I change in the sameness of change.
I embrace the night and get gone.

*******

The Way They Live Now by Michael Lewis | The New York Review of Books

Interlibrary loaned the book in this review.

Memorable quote from the article:

Monty Python was able to survive many things, but Goldman Sachs wasn’t one of them.

It snowed all day yesterday. Each time I got in the car I had to clear the snow off it. I notice this morning it is -4 degrees outside. Yikes.

I read Michael Robbins’ review of Louis Glück’s new collected poems.

Los Angeles Review of Books – The Constant Gardener: On Louise Glück

I had seen a copy of it on the new shelf at the library, but hadn’t bothered to check it out since I have recently read several volumes of her work. After reading Robbins I was inspired to stop by and see if it was still sitting on the new shelf. It was. I checked it out so that I could find some of the poems Robbins mentions in his entertaining review.

I think I like Robbins. I am re-reading his little book of poems Alien Vs. Predator. I like the way he studs his poems with images and references I recognize. It reminds me of my first contact with Bob Dylan’s work. Plus his meter and rhymes are sometimes as vicious and clear as his images. I now check his blog for new essays and ideas.

I read the New York Times online in a different manner yesterday as I exercised. Instead of reading headlines and deciding whether to click on the article, I decided to open the first twenty or so articles (this would be the front page and the international section) and read the first paragraph or so. It was a different way to proceed for me. I had a friend long ago who insisted he read the Sunday New York Times from beginning to end each week. This always perplexed me as an odd task.

Reading the paper this way does I think bring me in contact with news stories I would skim or miss. Online journalism hasn’t quite figured out how to write headlines that both interest and inform a reader enough to click into the story. Plus godforbid there should be many pictures.

Afghan Insurgent Is Killed on an American-Led Base – NYTimes.com

Last night, Eileen and I watched the Daily Show from Feb 13 (Hey, we’re behind!). Stewart had on Fawzia Koofi an Afghan politician who has her eye on Karzai’s job.

I thought of the article linked above. It is a crazy quilt world where American soldiers shoot prisoners in the back and feminist politicians from Afghanistan teach us bravery.

Mary Beard, Classics Professor, Battles Internet Attacks – NYTimes.com

This is an article I might have missed since the original headline didn’t mention Mary Beard (The Saturday Profile: In Britain, an Authority on the Past Stares Down a Nasty Modern Storm).

She is another whose blog A Don’s Life I check regularly. I wasn’t aware she had made such stupid enemies.

Shadow Morton, Songwriter and Producer, Dies at 71 – NYTimes.com

Okay okay I admit it. I follow Janice Ian on Facebookistan. She announced Morton’s death and I do recognize him as a producer of her work.

This is the sort of obit I read even if I don’t recognize the deceased.

I was going to write that I didn’t do music at all yesterday. I was too tired/lazy/ill to go practice organ at church. The music I am playing tomorrow is not all that hard (despite the exposed measured pedal trills in the postlude, but what the heck!). But then there was that hour and a half at ballet class. This week my improvs seemed very strongly melody based. I usually make my improvs very coherent harmonically. That way I figure it should be pretty easy for dancers to tell where I am in the phrase. But melodies are probably even easier to follow.

But even when I emphasize an improvised melody, I usually do variations as I repeat it.

Today is a bona fide day off. I have nothing scheduled. I need to do little tasks like groceries and practice organ. But I can schedule these at leisure.

As I was sitting and reading this morning, the desktop computer bonged loudly. It bongs usually when someone is trying to contact me on Facebookistan or Electronicmail. I had two messages flashing on Facebook. One from my brother that my web site was working better for him today. Another from a young woman at church wondering why I shared a picture of her. This second one also had a link for me to click on. It didn’t pass the smell test. I didn’t respond and just closed the window. Looks like somebody got hacked to me.

Well as you can tell I actually have nothing to say today. This must come from extended periods of illness/fatigue/laziness. No links even though I persist in my daily internet news reading as I treadmill (which is where I get a lot of my links).

After playing my ballet classes yesterday, I came home and try to piece together a Valentine’s Day program from my Mom’s nursing home. I had one hour to do so. I had in mind a couple of piano pieces: The first Arabesque of Debussy and the Raindrop Prelude of Chopin. This seemed sufficiently sentimental for a Valentine’s day party.

I added to them tunes like “As Time Goes By,” “What the World needs now,” and “My Funny Valentine.”

When I arrived, there was a gentlemen who repeatedly confided in me putting up his hand to his mouth to shield his secret, “One man and ninety nine women.” Each time he said this to me, I pointed out that this was good odds.

The room slowly filled with people. There were tables set up with Valentine treats on them. Afterward one woman said to me that she had enjoyed my program so much she had not eaten her treats. High praise. She also told me a story about her sister who played the piano and had died at the age of twelve before she herself was born. Her mom had wanted her to learn piano but she had wanted to learn dance instead. Now, she said, I’m too old to dance.

But actually I had looked up and had seen her dancing while I played.

I had tunes like “Chattanooga Choo Choo” and “In the Mood”also on my playlist. Two women told me that the music I had played was the music played at their high school dances.

I find it interesting that just sitting at the piano and playing out tunes is something that has meaning and appeal for these people. I suppose they are bored out of their minds and any distraction is welcome. Although they don’t really act like this. Instead they seem extremely polite and also very tired as they move their walkers slowly through the halls.

When I left the old guy bragging about the odds was wandering the room and still making the comment to no one in particular as they took down the tables.

**********************************************************

Wes Anderson’s Worlds by Michael Chabon | NYRblog | The New York Review of Books

Chabon’s essay made me rethink if I wanted to see some of Anderson’s movies.

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How the G.O.P Can Win Black Voters – NYTimes.com

It always pleasantly surprises me to read Ishmeal Reed on the pages of the New York Times.

It’s getting boring that I talk about being ill every day so let’s just let it stand as read that I am still fighting this cold.

I noticed that the studio I usually play my Wednesday class in was dark yesterday when I arrived. This is not unusual. I am often the person who checks to see if the door is unlocked and if it is amble in and turn on lights. I usually proceed to play piano. This is the nice thing about my job. I play piano. There is a piano waiting for me to play if I want. Then after the class begins, I get to play piano. I like that.

Anyway, the students were going into a classroom, just not the one I was scheduled to play in. I followed.

In dance etiquette a student does not enter a class that is ongoing with out permission from the instructor. Similarly, this piano player (old and fat as he is) paused in the doorway sort of looking at the instructor (and seeing no other pianist) waited expectantly for her to indicate whether I should enter or not. Already lecturing, she waved me in.

My instructor had apparently asked her to combine classes. First day back from break. She was doing a pilates class. Which means I played piano to pilates exercises. Great fun.

The rest of yesterday sped by in a haze. I did what I was supposed to: meet with my boss, prep for upcoming services, get library books for my Mom, treadmilled and in the evening played (and conducted) the Ash Wednesday Service.

The little Bach organ pieces (as well as the scheduled anthem) went very well. This was despite the fact that my  head was stuffed up so I couldn’t hear and simultaneously my  head felt like a balloon dangling somewhere above my body.

Today I have two ballet classes followed by a Valentine’s Day party at my Mom’s nursing home. I was a bit concerned because I hadn’t prepared much. But looking over my usual nursing home type piano material I note that most of the pop music I usually play (from the forties, fifties and sixties) is made up of love songs. Add a dash of romantic classical music by Chopin and Debussy. Piece of cake.

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Drones, Kill Lists and Machiavelli – NYTimes.com

Letters to the editor on the current topic including one from Desmond Tutu.

****************************************************

Paul Tanner, Musician With ‘Good Vibrations,’ Dies at 95 – NYTimes.com

This guy invented a sort of cheater theramin.

****************************************************

Zhuang Zedong, Winner In China Foreign Relations And Ping-Pong, Dies at 72 – NYTimes.com

I’m just beginning to get a feel for the weird lives of the Chinese. People fall in and out of favor with the current government. Then huge chunks of their lives are spent in rehabilitation and hard labor. This guy was no exception. When Mao banned Ping-Pong as bourgeois  there were players who killed themselves.

****************************************************

Donald Byrd, Jazz Trumpeter, Dies at 80 – NYTimes.com

Gleaned some great music to Spotify from this obit.

*****************************************************

Hong Kong TV Drama Plays Out Uneasy Ties With China – NYTimes.com

TV marches on. Unreality continues to kick reality in the butt.

*****************************************************

$95 and several weeks later I have my laptop back. It’s unrepaired but seems to be working as well as it was other than now it has now way to connect to audio.

Today is Ash Wednesday and I’m starting the day fatigued.

Having been ill, I guess it’s too much to think I would wake refreshed today ready for the tasks ahead. I don’t think I pushed myself too hard yesterday. Before lunch, I retrieved the laptop. The geek squad dude was amused when I exclaimed, “Praise Jesus!” when he told me there was no further charge. Then I drove to the church to do my prep for upcoming services. Came home for some lunch. Decided to put off getting my Mom more reading material. Eileen visited her on Monday and she said she still has books to read. My friend Rhonda dropped by kids and visiting friend Katerina from Germany in tow. She was picking up music I had set aside for her and dropping off some other music I had loaned her. I think her kids might have been curious to see Miss Eileen’s digs and were a bit disappointed Eileen wasn’t here.

After they left I treadmilled and made supper for Eileen and me.

I don’t feel like I pushed it yesterday but I’m still a bit tired and shaky today. I have the usual 8:30 AM ballet class, meet with the boss around 11:30 and have the usual service this evening. I remarked to Eileen that doing a service is much less work than doing the weekly rehearsals.

On Facebookistan I notice that my young and strong niece Emily takes afternoon naps. This is something I should cultivate. I have noticed that if I’m sitting in my chair in the afternoon I do manage to doze off for a moment, but only a moment.

I read about a third of Obama’s State of the Union this morning. Politics depresses me when I’m this under the weather I think.

This evening the prelude and postlude are standard Bach pieces I can pretty  much play at the drop of the hat for funerals: “Ich ruf zu dir, Herr Jesu Christ (I Call On Thee, Lord Jesus Christ) BWV 639″ for the prelude and O Mensch, bewein’ dein’ Sünde gross (O mankind, mourn your great sins) BWV 622” for the postlude.

I’m pretty sure I can make it through today. Maybe I’ll work in that nap this afternoon.

*********************************************************************

I am feeling better this morning. Maybe this dread illness is finally going away.  Last night I was not as exhausted as I have been when it came time to go to bed.  All signs to the good.

Yesterday I spent the entire day resting. For me this meant alternating between reading and playing piano. I guess that’s what I usually do with time off anyway. At least if I’m not working on composing some music or something.

I dipped into my Dostoevsky (Brothers Karamazov), Reinventing Bach, Musicking (by Christopher Small), Christianity: The First Three Thousand Years (Diarmaid MacCuloch), and “Six Months, Three days” a short story from Some of the Best from Tor.com 2011.

The short story was pretty weak but I don’t mind a sci-fi short story once in a while. I spent most of the time however doing escape reading in A Feast for Crows (Book 4 of Games of Thrones).

In between I snuck bits of Bach English Suites and Mendelssohn piano pieces in on the piano.

Today I have no scheduled tasks, other than prepping for upcoming stuff. I usually turn in music on Tuesdays for the bulletin a week from Sunday. In this case that would be Lent II. I am thinking of scheduling simpler organ music for this Sunday (Eileen’s suggestion as she watches me sweat bullets over preludes and postludes). I also am playing at my Mom’s nursing home on Thursday for Valentines day.

**********************************************************

‘The Endgame’ and ‘My Share of the Task’ – NYTimes.com

In this book review Bacevich takes propaganda volumes by players in the Iraq war to brilliantly shreds.

***********************************************************

The Ignorance Caucus – NYTimes.com

One side believes, at least in principle, in letting its policy views be shaped by facts; the other believes in suppressing the facts if they contradict its fixed beliefs.

***********************************************************

Amazon.com: Morimur: Hilliard Ensemble, Christoph Poppen, Johann Sebastian Bach: Music

This interesting recording is mentioned by Paul Elie in Reinventing Bach. It illustrates a theory that Bach was quoting certain chorales in the unaccompanied violin sonatas. The Hilliard Ensemble sings snippets of them (including a cappella bits from the cantatas) and they are interleaved with the violin piece. I do love the Hilliard Ensemble. I bought the MP3 album since it’s not on Spotify.

***********************************************************

One of the tenors remarked yesterday that I still looked like I was ill. I told him that it was kicking my butt. Indeed it is.

I sailed through the service yesterday basically hitting all the right notes and leading the congregation and the choir as well as I usually do.

But on the inside I was sort of floating. It’s too early to tell today whether this silly thing is abating or not.

I finally found a poem on page 19 in Michael Robbins’ Alient Vs. Predator that helped me understand him more as a poet.

*********

My New Asshole

By Michael Robbins

My new asshole’s official candy
is cola-flavored, fish-shaped.
I sexually harass it.
It puckers with distaste.

My new asshole could be your friend,
if you had any friends. My new asshole
is making a name for itself.
It is a way of looking at the world.

It tilts at megabucks.
It tithes its chocolate tenth.
It moons over my hammy.
It sings a song of sapience.

Now it wants a puppy.
It wants to open a Red Lobster.
Where did it get that strawberry?
My new asshole has discovered boys.

My new asshole says so much.
My new asshole is being bullied.
It occurs to me I am my new asshole.
I am talking about myself again.

********

I liked this so much it made me want to hurry up and finish reading the volume and then re-read it.

The wind is blowing in western Michigan. The snow and ice has not quite melted and they are predicting more snow and lower temps for today.

I have two days to get well.

************************************************************************************

Eileen and I listen to online audio books at night to lull us to sleep. Last night I put on Orwell’s Keep The Aspidista Flying. It begins with this lovely inscription:

Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, and have not
money, I am become as a sounding brass, or a tinkling cymbal. And
though I have the gift of prophecy, and understand all mysteries,
and all knowledge; and though I have all faith, so that I could
remove mountains, and have not money, I am nothing. And though I
bestow all my goods to feed the poor, and though I give my body to
be burned, and have not money, it profiteth me nothing. Money
suffereth long, and is kind; money envieth not; money vaunteth not
itself, is not puffed up, doth not behave unseemly, seeketh not her
own, is not easily provoked, thinketh no evil; rejoiceth not in
iniquity, but rejoiceth in the truth; beareth all things, believeth
all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things. . . . And now
abideth faith, hope, money, these three; but the greatest of these
is money.

I Corinthians xiii (adapted)

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Why Would You Ever Give Money Through Kickstarter? – NYTimes.com

I gave money for my niece’s husband’s worthy project. But then he and I seemed to disagree about Amanda Palmer’s use of Kickstarter. I understand that she used it to finance an extravagant and fancy venture that I quite liked. But to my way of thinking someone as connected and personality driven as she is doesn’t really need a kickstart.

I still feel that way. But what the heck.

**********************************************************************************

Rick Perry Visits California, and Incurs Jerry Brown’s Wrath – NYTimes.com

Perry seems to have out danced Brown by utilizing the news amplification of his original small investment in an ad.

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German Education Chief Quits in Scandal Reflecting Fascination With Titles – NYTimes.com

This hilarious little story has the lovely phrase, “title arousal,” in it.

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Dutch Put Electric Cars to the Test – NYTimes.com

I bookmarked this one for my wife who is very interested in this kind of thing. We would probably own a Prius if she thought she could afford it. I still think the Mini is nice for her.

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Original Sin by Sam Tanenhaus| New Republic

How the Republicans went from the party of abolition to racism.

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Bella Bathurst – Sound advice

Insightful essay on listening in general and hearing loss in particular.

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A giant radio telescope, a small school and a Wi-Fi problem – Network World

Unlike airplanes, radio telescopes are actually befuddled by wifi.

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Farmer’s use of genetically modified soybeans grows into Supreme Court case – The Washington Post

So this farmer used feed as seed. Put the fucker in jail.

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Thang Dinh Tran loves maps and Vietnam. That may put him in the eye of a storm. – CSMonitor.com

I love stories of obsessions that turn into sources of information and activism. Very cool.

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U.S. Use of Mexican Battery Recyclers Is Faulted – NYTimes.com

I was hoping for a couple days of rest since my Friday ballet class was canceled and I had nothing else scheduled for Saturday. Unfortunately I have been ill. Yesterday I did manage to do my tasks like practice and bills but I basically was dragging myself through the day again. Today all I have to is survive church. I’m still ill.

In the meantime, I have been doing escape reading and have finished a couple more books.

Super Sad True Love Story  is a novel that my son-in-law Jeremy put on my laptop for me to read.  Its charm is the way it satirizes a bunch of stuff about being alive right now. The internet has gone bonkers in this book and people can monitor themselves and others constantly. They monitor their fuckability, their perceived age, their credit ratings from minute to minute. In some cases these ratings seem to be flashing above them in the rooms they are pursuing their social lives.

The main character is a misfit of course. He works for a company that will give one eternal life via technology (something I’ve actually read about recently in the news). He doesn’t make enough to subscribe to this service himself. It’s incredibly expensive. But he is high up in the hierarchy of the company.

The story revolves around his weird and hopeless relationship with a beautiful young Korean woman and the breakdown of a society that is already haywire.

Happy stuff. I enjoyed the shit out of it. Very good escape reading.

Speaking of escape reading I just finished volume 3 of A Game of Thrones, A Storm of Swords.  I don’t think it’s all that good. But the author can write and plot okay. The point of the book seems to be to tell a long fantasy story in which the reader cannot anticipate plot twists. It’s sort of a soap opera in that it has kept me interested because I wonder what’s going to happen to the characters.

I read volume 3 on my Kindle. I have volume 4 in a paperback I bought a while ago and started it yesterday.

My head is fuzzy. I keep thinking uncharitable thoughts about stuff and am hoping it’s just the illness.

I did read through the first few English suites of Bach at the piano yesterday. It seems to calm my fevered soul (I don’t really have a fever, just a cold).

Before going to practice I stopped by the library to pick up a couple more books of poetry I had inter-library loaned.

I started them this morning. Neither poet seems quite as good as Natalie Diaz but what the heck.

According to Paul Elie the same day that Pablo Casals recorded his first complete Bach cellos suite (the one in C major), Robert Johnson was also recording his blues.

 It was indeed a “good day for recorded music” when both Johnson and Casals were making historic recordings, recordings I adore.

Elie’s book is a bit of a guilty pleasure. He gets a lot of musical facts wrong, historical and otherwise, but his basic insight that the advent of recording was more good for music than bad is one I’m interested in. In the first part of the highlighting above he makes the point that that recorded music is intrinsically not like live music. This seems obvious, but the intimacy of listening to a recording is so different from being in the room with a live musician. As we listen we “with” the music, we are “holding on” to it and the recorded artists, the music and the player are “carrying us.”

There is some truth to this and it has been true in my life. Recordings have allowed me so much more access to music even though I am musician capable (since I play keyboards) of recreating a lot of music at the keyboard. For this I am delighted and grateful.

Another juxtaposition Elie points out is the recording that Casals made of the Dvorak cello concerto in E minor right after the terrible slaughter of Guernica.

Casals was devastated by the carnage his countrymen wreaked on helpless civilians as was Picasso.

Guernica can be seen as a harbinger of the many terrible ways governments kill civilians in the course of war in the 20th and 21st century.

In the wake of the tragedy Casals was scheduled to perform with the Czech Symphony Orchestra with Georg Szell and then record.

We have the evidence of this incredible moment in music and history in those recordings.

I think this is pretty amazing.

A final comment. I am pretty sick these days. Yesterday I dragged myself around to do stuff like practicing organ and do some grocery shopping even though I don’t feel that well. This cold/flu thing is hanging on with a vengeance. Even now I’m weak. But I was thinking of what good health is. I have heard it said that good health is the absence of illness. That it’s a sort of negative presence. One does not feel bad. As I get older I find it more of a positive than a negative. I guess feeling ill as I write exacerbates and reinforces that.

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The Questions Brennan Can’t Dodge – NYTimes.com

“Secret law” is an oxymoron.

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Reg Presley, Lead Singer of Troggs, Dies at 71 – NYTimes.com

Great pics in this video. “Little nostalgia for the old folks.”

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Finished An Equal Music by Vikram Seth yesterday.  The musical descriptions in the book are quite good. But it occurred to me that the book participates in the snobbery of the music world, denigrating all but the “greatest” music.

This might have worked out better except that the main character, Michael Holmes, is by turns vapid and/or unbelievable. He seems to have no thought of the people that his lover has gathered into her life in the interval in their relationship (which he initiated).

Their relationship seems to be mostly about his own infatuation and needs.

This is not very attractive.

At the same time, Holmes turns his back on what Seth apparently holds out as his eventual salvation, not relationships but the music itself.

This is tricky.

If the music in the novel is great (and I believe that it is — “Art of Fugue” by Bach, Trout Quintet of Schubert), how does a musician turn his back on it as Holmes does quitting the quartet because he cannot play “The Art of Fugue” now that he knows his estranged deaf lover will be performing it.

I think this is weak. It discounts (at least temporarily in the plot) what the author purports to be espousing —- that great art is as good as living.

Holmes has also spent his career playing a very fine violin on loan to him. This seems like a precarious way to proceed, very “student”-like to me. Surprise, surprise, there is a plot crisis where it seems he will lose his violin (he doesn’t).

Reading reviews of the book I found that Seth’s partner at one time was a violinist. I couldn’t help but wonder if the main character in this book was a way for Seth to parade both his love and detestation for his previous partner.

Certainly, musicians can be detestable (being humans). But there are some interesting people in the book — the violist in the string quartet who is a sister to the first violinist.

Her intriguing three-dimensional personality is begging for more details for the reader as is the cellist. Billy (the cellist) is both more conventional than his cohorts and more adventuresome. They reluctantly agree to play his compositions knowing in advance it will fall short of their snobbish small definition of music.

I find this unattractive. I believe that music grows easily out of maturity and relationships. I know that it’s not the only way that it works. But I have known enough very excellent musicians who were both exemplary human beings I strive to emulate and very very fine musicians.  I agree with Chet Atkins who said that he could tell a lot about a person by the way they play their instrument. I have found that to be so and usually use it as  an important way to understand another musician both as a person and a musician.

Although the music is great in the book and Seth makes it clear that the deaf pianist lover makes wonderful music when she plays, the whole thing rings a bit false for me. I wonder what sounds Seth imagines for her, the quartet and Holmes himself playing the second part alone to one of the fugues from the “Art of Fugue” at the grave of his benefactor who wills him his instrument at the last minute.

I suspect that Seth’s imagination would not be quite matched by any real realization of such narrow musicians playing music even though they are obviously excellent players.

I found myself wondering what kind of music the cellist wrote.

But there you are. This from the dude interested in composition (me).

I did like the writing and might read another by this author.

My church has finally got a working web site up and running. It has taken literally years for this to get going. They still are very conservative about what can happen online. At first they didn’t want any staff to do any editing. But I convinced the boss that I and the religious educator should have easy access to the pages related to our areas so that we could make updates. Yesterday I updated the music page which had information that was years old.

I had a very busy day yesterday. Didn’t even have time to treadmill.

The good news is I’m looking at some time off coming up. I have tomorrow off (ballet class was canceled for me). Monday and Tuesday Hope college is not in session so I have those days off. I need some down time. Hopefully I will get it.

I have been thinking about old friends and acquaintances.  My brother recently linked me in to some videos one of the first Episcopal priests I worked with in Oscoda Michigan. This is decades ago. I didn’t recognize him until he started moving his a face bit then I could see the young man I knew (“There you are, Peter!”)

I have had many good friends over the years. It’s kind of weird that so many of them are no longer in my orbit. Some of them withdrew intentionally. Others I’m sure just faded out of my sphere of living.

I muse about Oscoda days because I have come so far since then. I was thinking yesterday that the musician I was in Oscoda would think I am a pretty good organist. The musician I am now often needs convincing.

Poor me.

Last night after supper, I realized that my body was very achy  Not in the usual old guy way, but in a body-cold way. I had a bad night. This morning I’m not too achy but wonder how this long day will go.

The internet failed me yesterday. I was trying to prepare my recommendations for Ash Wednesday and Lent for my boss. For Ash Wednesday this involved pointing two psalms (pointing is deciding how to line up each line of text with a repeated series of notes that are the psalm “tone”). I finished the first psalm, began the second. Then the internet went away.

Curses.

I waited a bit then went over to church to practice. There was no one in the office any way. This means that no one would need my recommendations until today.

I figured out what I wanted to play as a postlude for Ash Wednesday (O Mensch, bewein’ dein’ Suende gross BWV622 by Bach). That was as far as I got on working on Ash Wednesday.

I have added playing a harmonized scale in all keys (major and minor) to my daily organ rehearsal. I do this in the way that Dupre recommends doing it.

Also working on hard on a little postlude by Alec Wyton. Postludes are sort of a throw away moment at my church, but I still practice them and play them as well as possible.

This day seems a bit daunting this morning. I’m a bit light headed from tossing and turning (and aching) most of the night. I have an 8:30 Ballet Class, a 10:30 Staff meeting (not sure if my boss will want to meet at our usual 11:30 time or after staff meeting or at all),  3 PM shrink appoint for Mom, pick up a student who sings in the choir around 5:30 PM, 5:45 meal with church members, 6:45 Kids choir, 7:45 chamber choir.

After I got back from church yesterday there was a phone message from my Mom’s nursing home. Mom had gotten confused and apparently thought her Wednesday appointment was on Tuesday even though there is a sticky on her mirror with the date and time. She had been waiting for me to pick her up for over an hour. I called and explained to the woman had left the message.

Here’s another amazing poem by Natalie Diaz

If Eve Side-Stealer & Mary Busted-Chest Ruled the World

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Suffolk County Still Struggling to House Sex Offenders – NYTimes.com

Reminds me of a novel I read in the last year.

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I continue to stay about one step behind in my little tasks I give myself to do. I need to print up a corrected descant to the Gloria we have been singing at church (by Proulx). It’s an evolving descant I wrote. Proulx’s composition is more interesting than many musical settings of service music. There are lines in the accompaniment that I thought would make a nice little descant. I haven’t looked at his choral arrangement. I’m sure he has (had?) one published by G.I.A.

Proulx is dead. I remember when he was ailing, fellow AGO members taking up a collection for him since he had no insurance (church musician) and had collapsed on a commercial air flight. A former student of mine had little good to say about him. But that was because Proulx would not allow my student’s paramour to sing in one of his fancy little Chicago church ensembles.

Gossip.

I seem to remember taking a master class with him or something. He seemed very creative. He started out Anglican but converted to Roman Catholicism.

Like many of us, the RCs buttered his bread. He’s not the only musician I know that converted.

It’s hard not to be cynical about this sort of thing but who knows what happens in the cold hearts of us church musicians.

I also need to email a flute player I know who has asked me to specify which Taize volumes she used when she worked with me so she (or someone she is working with) can purchase them. I grabbed copies of these volumes while I was at church Sunday in order to verify what to recommend. The ones the church owns are out of print (and published by G.I.A – Proulx’s publisher). I noticed that there are current versions available that replace them. I needed the old ones in hand to refer my friend.

I am planning to write SATB or SAB choral parts for the Kids’ Choir’s upcoming anthem. This is so the choir will have something to sing and back up my two or three children singers. Another task.

Eileen stayed home from work ill yesterday. She also missed church on Sunday. Nothing serious. A cold that keeps her tired and groggy.  My own cold seems to have spread from my ear infection to include lung congestion. Nice.

I have been entranced by Schubert lately. In An Equal Music by Vkram Seth (one of the novels I am currently reading, thank you, Rhonda), the plot continues to involve music. At the point I am in the book, the Schubert Trout Quintet plays a role. I have been listening to it. I think I like Schubert quite a bit.

Then when I get a chance I sit down and read through portions of his piano sonatas. Very satisfying.

The last two ballet classes the chair of the department has asked me to play for other teachers. Not sure what this means exactly. I think I do my job well but it’s hard to tell how the teachers feel because of the highly evolved etiquette in dance class work.

This etiquette can and often does include a concluding combination called the reverence (reh vair RANCE).

This is a stylized warm down of slow elegant bows.

Yesterday the teacher I was working with asked a student to lead it. The leader moves slowly enough that the entire class can follow and mimic a ballet curtsy to an imagined audience. If they remember they turn and bow to the pianist as well. It’s a quaint charming etiquette procedure.

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Reformers Aim to Get China to Live Up to Own Constitution – NYTimes.com

I once had a rabid conservative ask me if China had a constitution. I can’t remember what we were talking about, but the implication was that China was basically a completely repressed godless COMMUNIST country. I confessed to the dude I didn’t know. Looked it up. Glad to see this article as well.

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Saving Timbuktu’s Priceless Artifacts From Militants’ Clutches – NYTimes.com

People saving stuff for humanity.  Thank you!

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Chris Kyle, Author of ‘American Sniper’ Reported Killed in Texas – NYTimes.com

Tragic story of two vets doing good shot by a crazed third they were trying to help.

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BBC News – Richard III dig: DNA confirms bones are king’s

I love this stuff.

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Exquisite Corpse – Interview with Jack Micheline

Bookmarked to read. I really like this guy.

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This morning’s office Gospel reading has Jesus saying to the disciples, “Whoever is not against us, is for us.” This got me to thinking about the popular American notion of the early 21st century as voiced by our then president that whoever is not for us is against us.

These are not necessarily the same idea. In fact, it strikes me that there’s a radical difference between these two statements. In the first, one assumes the best about others. This for me is a rule of collegiality. Once I have identified someone as a colleague, I attempt to assume they are competent and coherent.

The second statement confines the other to either following the dictates of the speaker or is assumed to be a mortal enemy.

I never thought of that before.

I was reading in Paula Bohince’s book of poetry this morning, The Children. I was thinking how her poetry seemed to be based largely in almost artificial takes on nature. I like nature poetry generally. I find that a poet can illuminate her/his surroundings in ways that I perceive as the poetic pop of meaning. I wasn’t getting that from Bohince but persisted in reading.

Then I came across her poem, “Gethsemane.” It’s about Jesus in the garden before his crucifixion. I read it and put the book down. I have read so many poems and heard many sermons about Jesus in the garden. I was repelled by Bohince’s poem.

It’s not religion that repels me so much as mundanity. Or at least what I perceive as mundanity.

I have been reading in the book of Samuel in the Old Testament.

It tells the story of David which is one I love.  David the shepherd, David the King, David the naked dancer, David the evil next door neighbor who sends the hot neighbor’s husband off to war to die so they can fuck.

I love his holiness and his screw ups. Whatever his story is, it’s not mundane in my thinking.

I went from Bohince to another poet I am experimenting with reading, Natalie Diaz. To me,  her poetry jumps off the page (instead of floating ethereally and falsely into the air as Bohince’s words seem to do).

I like this and it seemed to be an antidote to the bad religion that sometimes rattles around in my head.

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Truth is, there may be angels, but if there are angels
up there, living on clouds or sitting on thrones across the sea wearing
velvet robes and golden rings, drinking whiskey from silvery cups,
we’re better off if they stay rich and fat and ugly and
‘xactly where they are—in their own distant heavens.
You better hope you never see angels on the rez. If you do, they’ll be
marching you off to
Zion or Oklahoma, or some other hell they’ve mapped out for us.

from “Abecedearian Requiring Further Examination of Anglikan order valium from india Seraphymn Subjugation of a Wild Indian Rezervation” by Natalie Diaz in When My Brother Was An Aztec.

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Yesterday I decided that Jack Micheline was such a profound poet I had to order a collection of his work I am reading. I did so.

Then I read another of his poems this morning that hit me.

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Poem

There is no separation
between my life and my work. Thank God
let it be one thrust
let it be the light against the dark night
I go again and again to the punishment block
among the deathly crowns of sewer rats
among the sickly intellectuals of words
among the hardened faces of a lost youth
who seek more causes to swallow their pain
who seek in a relentless pace which swallows the sunsets
enmeshed, surrounded by the enemies of art
the artists themselves are but a handful
the falsifiers
the lovers of money
the rich who give nothing to the world
but a child’s unloved face attacking all
defending the virtues of their state
cowards proclaiming the latest fashion
what is a poet’s life but pure rebellion
saintly virtues
poverty
and relentless wars of the heart
The rock and roll singers who mimic just words
the modern age crushing all who oppose it
the deadly eyes
everywhere a flower must grow
everywhere there is work to be done
everywhere a flower rises it must be loved and watered
There is a war in the arts
a war for the roses
a war against the dark night
and the triumph is but a single thrust into the sparrows

1962

from North of Manhattan: Collected Poems, Ballads and Songs by Jack Micheline

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Spotify isn’t music to their ears in the House of Representatives | PCWorld

Did you know peer-to-peer networks were forbidden in the halls and offices of Congress? I didn’t/

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BOOKMARKED TO READ:

Bill Gates on the Importance of Measurement – WSJ.com

For 40 Years, This Russian Family Was Cut Off From All Human Contact, Unaware of World War II | History & Archaeology | Smithsonian Magazine

Druckversion – Crime Story: The Dark World of Moscow’s Bolshoi Theater – SPIEGEL ONLINE – News – International

This last article is about the guy who recently had acid thrown in his face.

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What Happens When Drones Return to America — Printout — TIME

Excellent article about the tech of drones, not just in war but behind the lines in the hands of regular people here in Amerika and other places.

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Robert Johnson: rare new photograph of delta blues king authenticated after eight years | Music | The Observer

My daughter Elizabeth put the pic up on Facebookistan. Boing Boing linked in to the Observer article about it.

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Prince George’s considers copyright policy that takes ownership of students’ work – The Washington Post

This article is little hysterical, but still….

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Gay issue leads Scouts to find new Keene home | New Hampshire NEWS

Article in my brother’s hometown quoting him. Makes me proud.

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Your Paintings – Paintings

Over 200 K paintings online. Thanks to the Davepaul for this link.

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Eileen has been telling me that I don’t seem all that happy lately. It’s tricky to consider one’s own happiness. Happiness doesn’t seem to be an end in and of itself. To seek it is to miss it entirely. But one can certainly think about one’s situation and whether it’s aligned with one’s perceived intentions.

I think I miss large amounts of unstructured time. I have the happy self image of being a bum. My first wife’s grandmother was polish. She was a large woman who I remember as always sitting in a chair. I can hear her saying, “He’s just a bum.” She wasn’t necessarily talking about me but this memory makes me smile. I liked being a bum.

Now it’s hard for me to honestly (or even dishonestly) think of myself in this way. I am working more hours than ever at the ballet department at the local college. I am also doing more at church. Plus I do some stuff to keep my Mom afloat in the nursing home (weekly tasks like bills and take her books and chocolates).

Yesterday I had an honest-to-god unstructured Saturday morning. I organized the kitchen.

It felt good. We are planning to revamp our house so that we can live here for the rest of our lives (before we get carted off to a nursing home).

This involves converting the main floor into a living space: renovating the bathroom, installing a washer/dryer on this floor, and making what is not the chaotic library our main bedroom.

The kitchen will lose a significant storage area, a little closet we call the pantry. I have been in the process of emptying it out so that the contractor can tear up the ceiling and see what the heck is up there.

This has meant reorganizing the kitchen significantly, reducing and cleverly storing stuff. That’s what I did yesterday. I listened to Benjamin Britten on Spotify and goofed around in the kitchen. Eileen likes to call this “putzing” around. It amuses me that she says this. And it seems to fit.

Anyway,  by the time I got around to my tasks for the day (grocery shopping, picking up Mom’s books to take back to the library and getting her new ones, practicing organ, treadmilling) I realized that the morning spent in the kitchen doing what I wanted to do had left me feeling relaxed and satisfied.

It was the first day off in two weeks since last Saturday Eileen and I drove to Muskegon in the morning.

So there you have it. The whole morning put me in a good mood. Not exactly the same as being a bum, but close.

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Illumination by Natasha Trethewey

This is the last poem in Trethewey’s Thrall. I like it. It’s about reading someone else’s annotations in a second hand book. I relate.

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The Library and the Architect Respond to a Critic – NYTimes.com

I find it interesting when people reported on respond with letters. In this case, both of these letters are subjective and not terribly convincing, but fun to read in especially in light of the initial reporting.

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In Senate, Traditional Decorum Gives Way to New Discord – NYTimes.com

I suppose it’s inevitable that old fashion etiquette is abandoned in every nook and cranny of life.

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Ethnic Tensions Arise in Timbuktu After Islamists Leave – NYTimes.com

Complicated relationships between Islamists and historical secularists.

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German Legislators Vote to Outlaw Bestiality – NYTimes.com

Learned a new word in this article: Zoophile.

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Italian Court Convicts 3 Americans in Kidnapping Case – NYTimes.com

C.I.A people breaking other countries’ laws.

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Zoom views of Hagia Sophia and other Byzantine Monuments

All you can do is zoom in on this pics, but what the heck, it’s still cool.

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T. S. Eliot was so angry at the audience at for laughing at Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring that he “poked his neighbors with the point of his umbrella.”

About the music, Eliot said that it “seemed to ‘transform the rhythm of the steppes into the scream of the motor-horn, the rattle of machinery, the grind of wheels, the beating of iron and steel, the roar of the underground railway, and the other barbaric noises of modern life.”

These quotes are from Lyndall Gordon’s bio of Eliot, T. S. Eliot: An Imperfect Life. She goes on to say that Stravinsky’s ballet music  was an example of “a revelation of a vanished mind of which the modern mind was a continuation.” I love the way she writes and thinks. Though her thought is probably not as true today because the mind of the many is not often a continuation of anything. History is an unfelt breeze in many lives. Still it’s a nice way to think of Eliot and Stravinsky both of whom are clearly speaking in a context of transforming the old into the new.

Speaking of transforming the old into the new, Natasha Trethewey casts her eye over history and gleans some pretty marvelous references to Casta paintings from the 17th and 18th century.

Casta is a Spanish and Portuguese term that refers to “mixed-race people.”   Trethewey bases much of her poetry on descriptions of paintings from this time and place.

Referring to the painting above, she writes: “Still, the centuries have not dulled/ the sullenness of the child’s expression./If there is light inside him, it does not shine/through the pain that holds his face.” Of the mother Trethewey writes “the boy’s mother contorts, watchful/her neck twisting on its spine, red beads/yoked at her throat like a necklace of blood,/her face so black she nearly disappears/into the canvas…”

And for this one, Trethewey writes “How not to see/ in this gesture/ the mind/ of the colony?/In the mother’s arms,/ the child, hinged/ at her womb—.”

I couldn’t find the painting online for the following poem. I think the poem itself stands alone magnificently anyway.

********

Torna atrás

After De Albina y Español, Nace Torna Atrás (From Albino and Spaniard, a Return-Backwards is Born) anonymous c. 1785-1790

The unknown artist has rendered the father a painter and so

we see him at this work: painting a portrait of his wife –

their dark child watching nearby, a servant grinding colors

in the corner. The woman poses just beyond his canvas

and cannot see her likeness, her less than mirror image

coming to life beneath his hand. He has rendered her

homely, so unlike the woman we see in this scene, dressed

in late-century fashion, a chicqueador – mark of beauty

in the shape of a crescent moon – affixed to her temple.

If I say his painting is unfinished, that he has yet to make her beautiful,

to match the elegant sweep of her hair,

the graceful tilt of her head, has yet to adorn her dress

with lace and trim, it is only one way to see it. You might see,

instead, that the artist – perhaps to show his own skill –

has made the father a dilettante, incapable of capturing

his wife’s beauty. Or, that he cannot see it: his mind’s eye

reducing her to what he’s made as if to reveal the illusion

immanent in her flesh. If you consider the century’s mythology

of the body – that a dark spot marked the genitals of anyone

with African blood – you might see how the black moon

on her white face recalls it: the roseta she passes to her child
marking him torna atrás. If I tell you such terms were born

in the Enlightenment’s hallowed rooms, that the wages of empire

is myopia, you might see the father’s vision as desire embodied

in paint, this rendering of his wife born of need to see himself

as architect of Truth, benevolent patriarch, father of uplift

ordering his domain. And you might see why, to understand

my father, I look again and again at this painting: how it is

that a man could love – and so diminish what he loves.

from Thrall by Natasha Trethewey

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Prosecutor Shot to Death in a Town Near Dallas – NYTimes.com

This looks like an execution. Chilling.

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Sept. 11 Hearing Censorship Ordered Stopped – NYTimes.com

Unseen offsite censors stop video if they determine it’s a security breach. Judge takes umbrage since the judge should be ruling on such stuff. Very orwellian, in my opinon.

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In Iceland, Court Says a Girl Can Finally Use Her Name – NYTimes.com

Some pretty heavy government intervention thwarted.

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So I’m reading An Equal Music by Vikram Seth. It’s a novel recommended by my friend Rhonda. Michael, the main character, plays second violin in a string quartet. He is obsessed by an old lover with whom he used to play. One piece comes to his mind that reminds him of her: Beethoven’s early piano trio in C minor (Opus 1 no. 3).

His current lover (who is not a musician) reveals to him that Beethoven made a different version of this same music and changed from a piano trio (piano, violin, cello) to a string quintet (2 violins, viola, cello).  

This latter piece (Opus 104) is pretty obscure I guess. Michael searches high and low for recordings and the sheet music of the quintet. At this point, the story becomes pretty dated. I became curious about the music and stepped to my computer and was looking at scores almost instantly online.

Also it turns out that the local college owns performing copies of the piano trio. I checked them out and my violinist and cellist graciously agreed to play through it. Which we did yesterday.  The violinist fell in love with the music. We played the first and last movement of the trio that Seth uses in his novel. The last movement, a finale, was more immediately understandable to me. As I confessed to my musician friends, Beethoven has never been a composer that I was simpatico with. For me, he has definitely been an acquired taste in my life. But I have acquired it. Like so much good romantic music, it doesn’t make that much sense to me initially. I have to let it sort of sit in my brain for a while. We played the first movement twice. It made more sense the second time, as Beethoven often does for me.

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When Jim Crow Drank Coke – NYTimes.com

Duke Ellington worked for Pepsi. Who knew?

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Keeping Blood Pressure in Check – NYTimes.com

Different drugs for different cases of high blood pressure. Bookmarked to talk to my doctor about next time I see her.

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Shadowy Squads Enforce Modesty in Hasidic Brooklyn – NYTimes.com

Ay yi yi.

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Norman Foster’s Public Library Will Need Structural Magic – NYTimes.com

Hope College is planning some new buildings. This article sheds light on how difficult it is to that sort of thing well.

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84 pictures of dead malls | Death and Taxes

Speaking of large public buildings, these are great pics.

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Beijing Takes Emergency Steps to Fight Smog – NYTimes.com

China’s idea of emergency measures is to call a news conference and lie apparently.

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Drone Strike Lawsuit Raises Concerns on Intelligence Sharing – NYTimes.com

What confuses me is why the USA is not being the subject of a lawsuit since we’re the ones actually killing people.

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After the Brazil Nightclub Fire – NYTimes.com

I seemed to have missed the reporting on this recent tragedy. This article brings it life in a tragic way, plus comments nicely on what’s appropriate when reporting something like this.

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Getting started late on the blog this morning.

I ran across an interesting passage or two in Reinventing Bach yesterday.

In the first passage the author Paul Elie compared the Bach cello suites as revived in the 20th century to two pieces of visual art.

The first was Gaudi’s Sagrada Familia which Eileen and I saw in person in 2004.

I have been a life long fan of the Casals recordings and Gaudi.

Elie used the phrase “distressed stone cathedral” in referring to Sagrada Familia.

I had not connected the beauty of Gaudi’ vision with Bach’s cello suites. But I like the connection.

All of these Barcelona pics are from a trip Eileen and I took with Sarah and Matthew. It was an amazing experience.

This was the view from our hotel window. The “hotel” was several floors in very large building. It was also the hotel where George Orwell recuperated from being shot in the Spanish Civil War. Curiously, Elie also mentions Orwell a few paragraphs earlier in reference to this same war which was an important event in Casals life as well. Casals was living in Barcelona and actually rehearsing with an orchestra as the war began to unfold.

Elie also compares the Bach suites as played by Casals to Giacometti’s Palace at 4 AM. This one I didn’t know.

I think it looks pretty cool in black and white as well as color.

In addition to these visual comparisons, Elie notes the relationship of Albert Schweitzer recordings to Casals. I end with this (I quite like it).

“It is revealing to compare Casals’s cello suites to the organ recordings Albert Schweitzer made at All Hallows. Schweitzer’s Bach is a sound at the far end of a long dark tunnel; Casals’s cello is heard up close. Schweitzer takes us back to the remote place that is the past; Casals sets out from the past to come and find us where we are.”

Elie is making the point that recording changed and actually helped the dissemination of great music like Bach through wonderful recordings like Casals.

I figured out why my Dupre exercises defeated me so easily Monday. I had remembered them much easier and was frustrated when my usual Monday fatigue seemed to be seeping in as I attempted them. Yesterday I realized that instead of beginning with his first exercise which consists of harmonizing a scale in all keys with root chords, I had plunged into the second exercise where he suggests inversions of chords to allow the bass note to move in contrary motion to the scale.

If this sounds like gobbledygook to you, just think of trying to run before walking or skipping into the middle of a language textbook of a language you don’t know very well.

Anyway, yesterday rather than begin with the easier exercises (which I fingered silently in ballet class while I was not needed), when I got to the organ bench I carefully worked through the more difficult exercise in all Major keys making sure my voice leading was text book.

Drupes began his “preliminary” exercises with a thorough grounding in textbook harmony which is an exacting process that strictly controls how each note of one chord moves the note of another chord (voice leading). Frankly, I’m not sure how important this is to interesting improvising, but am willing to put my self through these paces from time to time to help my own self image as a musician.

I began my second book of Trethewey poems yesterday. It seems to be her latest. I am enjoying it a bit more. In her first book, it took me a while to realize that her use of historical slave and racial bigotry imagery grew out of her own experience as a child of what we used to quaintly call a “mixed marriage” (You know. Like the president. Heh.)

I thought it was interesting that her words at first had made me uncomfortable enough to find learning more of  her own situation made a difference to my understanding. In my silly ideal thinking, this should not necessarily have been so. I believe that being a member of some designated group does not automatically qualify one as an expert about it. But at the same time my brain is mundane enough that I cast around for an author’s orientation and background to help me understand their work.

Sigh.

Anyway one of her multi section poems in Thrall is called “Miracle of the Black Leg.” It uses the legend of the saints Cosmas and Damian surrounding the amputation of the leg of one person that is used to replace the sick leg of another. The person losing the leg is a moor (as Tretheway has it in her poem).

Wow. I had never  heard of this story. Besides the prominent racial overtones, I wonder about the idea of transplanting limbs. It seems so medically involved to me. Very weird that it is a legendary miracle dating to possibly the fourth century.

Trethewey footnotes two books to this poem.

The Phantom Limb Phenomenon: A Medical, Folkloric, and Historical Study, Texts and Translations of tenth- to Twentieth-Century Accounts of Miraculous Restoration of Lost Body Parts by Douglas B. Price and Neil J. Twombly. I don’t know about you, but I take solace in the fact that this stuffy looking little tome even exits. Very cool.

Also, One Leg in the Grace: The Miracle of the Transplantation of the Black Leg by the Saints Cosmas and Damian by Kees W. Zimmerman.

St. Damian. Ah yes, I spent some time working as a musician in church dedicated to this saint in Detroit. My first Catholic job. I read the Vatican II documents there and wondered if anybody else I was working with had actually read them.

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Tiny Kentucky Town Passes Ban on Gay Bias – NYTimes.com

A very engagingly written description of life in a small town in Kentucky.

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Streaming Shakes Up Music Industry’s Model for Royalties – NYTimes.com

The music industry lumbers on in its ignorance and stubborn approach to customers. At least it seems to have stopped bring them up on legal charges.

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Boy Scouts Consider Lifting Ban on Gays – NYTimes.com

Probably too little too late, in my opinion.

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U.S. Plans Base for Surveillance Drones in Africa – NYTimes.com

We are marching into the future.

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Losing my religion for equality

Jimmy Carter quits being a Southern Baptist for reasons of principle. Makes sense to me. Also it’s admirable and looks difficult to leave something so ingrained in oneself.

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