I admit it. I skipped my morning reading and tried to find out results from yesterday’s election. I made a cheat sheet to take with me so I remember my choices. I used it to record who won and who lost. I have changed my voting patterns. In 2000 I voted for Nader. I felt that the GW Bush presidency was a disaster for the country.  I don’t really blame him particularly because I don’t think that one person has all that much control. But our country’s actions during his administration were very different (I like to think) than they would have been under a Gore administration. I just couldn’t bring myself to vote for the highly reactionary Joe Liebermann who was second on that ticket.

I learned my lesson. I held my nose and voted for Obama. I guess I’m glad he won but I still believe that Tom Wolfe has it partly right when he describes the government as being like a train on tracks with the parties on either side screaming at it to change its direction, but it just keeps on pretty much in the same way.

He says presidents are pretty inconsequential except for their war powers.

Not sure if I totally agree with that. It is complex, that is for for sure.

I’m relieved that the “take no prisoners” approach the Republicans seem to have been pursuing at least failed at the Presidential level.

I think intransigence leads to worse government. Not that I think people should surrender their values.  I just think that governing is important and to declare that the most important thing about government is to immediately began working against a second term for the elected president seems to me to be wrong-headed if not cynical. Glad it didn’t work.

Also glad to see Pete Hoekstra not get elected. I believe that he did damage in the house. I think he is an old style Republican unlike Huizenga (who also got relected as our local Congressional Rep) and Dykstra (the current mayor of Holland). Old style Republicans seem very reductive. They play on the Tea Party. I have tweeted back and forth with Huizenga. He seems very convinced about his ideas. But I don’t get the “take no prisoners” thing from him or Dykstra.

Anyway, glad this is all over.

FWIW here are two bulletin articles I submitted yesterday. They relate to some of my musings on my blog. Haven’t heard from the boss whether she will publish them as is or wants changes. One is for this week and one for next.

Possible Music note for Sunday:

Why sing psalms? A psalm is a song. The Oxford English Dictionary defines “psalm” this way: “ Any of the sacred songs contained in the Book of Psalms in the Old Testament and Hebrew Scriptures.”

The Performance Notes section in the Hymnal 1982: Service Music volume says

“Biblical song has been part of the Christian liturgy from very early times. Continuing a tradition familiar from Jewish worship, the sing of psalms and biblical canticles became a regular feature both of the Eucharist and of the daily office.”

Today we begin singing psalms in our worship using one of nine Simplified Anglican Chants found in the Hymnal 1982 at S 408- S 416.  Concerning how to sing chant setting the Performance Notes mentioned above says:

“When singing Anglican chant settings of canticles and psalms, particular care should be taken to make sure that the rhythm, sense, and mood of the words govern the tempo dynamics, and style of the singing.”

“Good chanting is good singing. Chant is a musical medium for the clear and expressive singing of liturgical texts. Word accents create the rhythm in chant … if singers read the text in an expressive but not exaggerated manner, and then sing the words to the chant with the same rhythmic flow, they will discover how chant can unify the Christian community’s singing of liturgical texts.”

This means we sing the psalms very much the way we have been reading them together, unhurried and carefully, realizing the meaning of what we are saying together.  Chanting has been described has heightened prayer. By singing, we take our words one step further away from their ordinary use and deepen their meaning  as we pray them.

Steve Jenkins, Music Director

I have been yelling at my answering machine a bit more lately.

Last night I yelled at the Mayor of Holland. Twice.

I was yelling that despite his support for the local airport millage, I planned to vote for it. Tomorrow I guess I will return to yelling at banks and credit cards who call to tell me of my last chance to change my account to a better interest rate.

I do like being able to order used books through the Internet.

I recently ordered T. S. Eliot’s play, The Elder Statesman. It was mentioned in an essay on his Four Quartets and I didn’t recognize it.

It arrived in the mail yesterday. I sat down and read it straight through. I have read many plays in my life. When I was a young man in Flint Michigan I would visit the new book sections of poetry, music and theater areas when I first entered the library.

My browsing habits have changed somewhat. For the most part this is for the better because I can zero in on what I am looking to learn much easier with the new search engines. But I still check out new book shelves at the library.

I found the play by Eliot to have some fun stuff in it. It’s basically about an elderly (60ish!) British politician who is retiring. His daughter has talked him in to moving in to a nursing home. This nursing home is vaguely reminiscent of Thomas Mann’s TB clinic in The Magic Mountain. Obviously ill people are not accepted here. Even people who look ill.

Just before leaving Lord Claverton (that’s the statesman’s name) is confronted by someone he knew as a young man. This person is now going by the name of Federico Gomez. He and Claverton (who is also using a different can you buy diazepam online in the uk name — his wife’s, since she is the source of his title) attended Oxford together. Gomez remembers an indiscretion of Claverton’s during this period of their friendship. He also sort of blames Claverton for his own fall from grace due to Claverton giving him a taste of the good life. Gomez goes to jail for forgery and then flees to South America where he changes his name and becomes successful.

He has returned with enough information to blackmail Claverton, but is only interesting in reestablishing their friendship.

At the Magic Mountain like nursing home, Claverton runs across another “ghost’ (Eliot’s word) from his past. A woman whom he jilted and then who threatened to take him to court for breach of promise. They settled but she still has his indiscreet letters.

Claverton faces himself in the mirror of these past ghosts and reveals his true nature to his beloved daughter, Monica.

For me it is an unsatisfactory denouement, but one that movie producers everywhere would probably approve.

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I Didn’t Write That – NYTimes.com

Case of purloined expert identity.

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Outside the Amtrak Window, a Picture of the U.S. Economy – NYTimes.com

Check out the photos. The Eloi peer at the Morlocks through the train window.

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Chicago Project Follows What Happens to Juveniles – NYTimes.com

Chicago research they said couldn’t be done. Now that it’s done no one is paying attention.

“It’s a segment of the population that many Americans don’t think about, don’t care about,” Dr. Teplin said. “What rivets Americans is the unexpected — the Colorado massacre, mass school shootings. The everyday violence is something that doesn’t concern most people.”

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Outrage in Texas After Airborne Police Sharpshooter Kills 2 Immigrants – NYTimes.com

Texas is a state where government agents can fire on moving vehicles….. from a plane…

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Desperate for Civility on Capitol Hill – NYTimes.com

Interesting editorial the day before elections.

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All Saints Sunday is kind of a high holiday in the Episcopal Church. The noise level was higher than usual as people were buzzing about and preparing for church. I have discussed this with my boss and neither of us quite knows what to do about this part of the service (the prelude). My liturgical training tells me that the beginning of worship is a time of gathering. This entails greetings. On the other hand as the musician I am often performing some fine music that frames the prayer that will ensue.

I ascribe some of the loud chatter and obliviousness to the moment to the way our entire society treats the arts and music in particular. Music has largely become a commodity.

It’s also the soundtrack of living.

Rarely is it the prism into meaning that much of it attempts to be.

Anyway, I kicked up the registration slightly to the prelude. Still some parishioners complained to me that they couldn’t hear it.

Of course they sit at the other side of the room.

Whippy skippy.

My failing strategy is to do excellent music well. I find that my fallback reaction to leading with content and not perception pretty much fails in all situations these days.

When we have visiting musicians, people are a bit more aware that music is happening before and after the service. I feel that this is partly politeness but also I feel like perception that something is happening has risen with the present of visual instruments. The organ pipes are presently not visible. I am guessing that if there is ever a more obvious organ installation at my church where you can see the pipes perception will rise that someone is actually doing something with it before and after the service.

Part of my whining about the educated and trained musicians is that I have a strong conviction that what I and my music ministers offer musically is a cut above the average church music that can be experienced in most churches. But still most of the educated musicians seem to act as oblivious as any of the other people in the room.

Fuck the duck.

The best I can do these days is to turn away from this obtuseness and center myself as much as I can on what I am doing.

My boss (who was a semi pro athlete) understands how distracting this can be. An athlete or a musician must be prepared for distraction. I use sports analogies with her quite a bit. When I brought this up recently,  the distraction part of the analogy made sense, but I pointed out that what I am trying to do with music is communication. I guess this inevitably fails more than it succeeds in the kind of environment I am working.

Nonetheless I persist. The music went well yesterday.  We make a big deal out of the Episcopalian hymn, “For All the Saints.” The choir sings two of the 8 verses in a choral arrangement. Yesterday I had high voices (women and children) on verse 6 and low voices (men) on verse 7. I change the accompaniment to fit these variations. And we had descants on a couple of other verses. All in all, it’s a pretty cool way to start All Saints Sunday.

The kids choir sang a few measures by themselves in the anthem I had tried to teach them. Then I had the chamber choir gently join in. This worked okay. As usual all three kids in the choir were also altar servers. I’m not sure if this is a drawback or not. It might help assure their attendance since all three are enthusiastic new altar servers.

The choir ably sang C. V. Stanford’s “Justorum Animae” at the beginning of communion. It’s hard for me not to think that music at my church is pretty good.

I should add that I know that many people at my church do appreciate the music and perceive much of what is happening (if they can hear it, heh).

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The Dead Weight of Past Dictatorships – NYTimes.com

Historically informed view of contemporary struggling societies.

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Making Babies, Just to Make Ends Meet – NYTimes.com

The new normal: making money how you can including making babies for other people.

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The Far Side of Acrimony – NYTimes.com

An eloquent essay by Frank Bruni pleading for a lull in the madness with the new president whoever he is.

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Chess – Falko Bindrich Accused of Cheating – NYTimes.com

Chessmaster goes to the john during the tournament, has cell phone,  did he cheat?

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Remembering the Berlin Wall | The Nation

I had no idea that bits (huge bits in cases) of the Berlin wall were housed all over.

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The photographer let the mask drop

when he realized Eileen and I were not going to buy pictures.

He went quickly from hearty

to sullen,

from quipping

to soft grunts of assent.

I suppose it’s natural for sales people to want to charm, to engender a light almost trusting moment.

I am chagrined how I fall for people’s masks over and over.

But I think it’s better (for me at least) to try not to let my own ever present cynicism take over and keep trying to trust people.

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How Do You Raise a Prodigy? – NYTimes.com

Have bookmarked this to read. Thanks to Peter Kurdziel for pointing this article out on Facebook.

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Russian Band in Trademark Dispute – NYTimes.com

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Iran Sanctions Take Toll on Medical Imports – NYTimes.com

The law of unintended consequences.

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Cloisters (Dennis Aubrey) « Via Lucis Photography

This web site is amazing. The people behind it travel, take pictures and tell history. Very cool.

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I sometimes remember how a friend of mine for whom I had the greatest respect and admiration inadvertently remarked about my poetry that my persistence would inevitably lead to good poetry. I of course I heard that my poetry wasn’t good.

At this point I am pretty much at peace with my own abilities as a poet and musician and see myself as someone who seeks to improve what meager skills he has.

I only bring it up because I think my reactions to and readings of poetry and music reflect my own bias however misguided.

This morning I found myself dissatisfied with the poetry of Oni Buchanan in her volume The Dry Animal which I am finishing reading. This is the second volume of her poetry I have read. A few of her poems jumped out at me as full of insights and meaning as poems and music sometimes do. But this morning I found myself wondering if her approach to poetry in some of  the poems in The Dry Animal had a sort of thesaurus feel. By that I meant that her choice of words seem to almost feel like pastiches of soft meaning where the words were largely emptied of resonances and chosen almost naively.

This probably says more about the way I think and read than Buchanan’s abilities or way of writing.

Hence my memory of my friends assessment of me as a young bad poet.

Later I finished reading the essay I have been reading, “T. S. Eliot’s ‘Quartets’ : a new reading (1967).” I found Denis Donoghue’s analysis very unsatisfactory. I suppose the year it was written is pretty significant. Donoghue was writing only twenty or so years since the publication of the “Four Quartets” by Eliot as a whole. Donoghue (who when googled seems to be still teaching, writing and hopefully thinking) would probably complete rework his analysis now. Critics at the time and even now read “Four Quartets” with a Christian background in mind. This is discomforting to me. Also initially critics felt that the third section or quartet, “The Dry Salvages,” had failed as a work of poetry.

As I read this section now it seems to me to be as attractive and intriguing to me as the other sections.

Reading in critiques from the sixties, there seem to be almost a consensus that Eliot had over reached poetically in “Four Quartets” in “The Dry Salvages.”

I cast about for another point of view and found an excellent article by Tahita Fulkerson, “Eliot’s Sestina in ‘The Dry Salvages'” (College Literature, Vol. 12, No. 3 (Fall 1985) pp. 277-281).

Fulkerson is writing after another twenty years has passed. A google of her name reveals she is now president of a college in Texas. I love google.

I found her analysis enlightening. Unfortunately, it’s one of those privileged access only articles which can only had by normal people for 16 buckeroos. Right!

I won’t recount the insights Fulkerson afforded me as I see your eyes are beginning to lid over. The reason I mention it is that I found a startling misprint in it that got passed proofreading.

What is actually quoted above are lines 25-30 twice.

In order to make sense of Fulkerson’s comment, one has to read the actual lines 19-24.

Just another instance where the world of print is as unreliable as the cyber world of information. It was just this sort of error that I constantly run across that caused me to begin to use WikiPedia. One must be critical no matter what source one consults, eh?

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World War II Pigeon’s Message a Mystery – NYTimes.com

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China – Cafe Owner Sentenced Over Online Messages – NYTimes.com

Kunming in the news! This is where my daughter and her partner lived for a few years and Eileen and I visited them there.

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Greek Editor Not Guilty in Publishing Names With Swiss Accounts – NYTimes.com

How about that?

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The Blackmail Caucus – NYTimes.com

Vote for Mitt because the Republicans refuse to cooperate with Obama?

“.. arguing for Mr. Romney on the grounds that he could get things done veers dangerously close to accepting protection-racket politics, which have no place in American life.”

Please note that crazy liberal Krugman does say “By all means, vote for Mr. Romney if you think he offers the better policies.”

We keep getting calls from the oddest people.

Bill Clinton called.

Sarah Palin called.

Some guy called claiming to be the son of Ronald Reagan.

Good grief. I really don’t know what each call was about because I didn’t listen to them. And there have been many other calls.

I heard someone on the radio advising people not to pay attention to political ads.

The sad thing was that the speaker (some expert) maintained that political ads despite their outrageous nature now work so it behooves anonymous donors to purchase them for causes.

Good grief. Who is getting their information from this stuff? No wonder the democracy is beyond broken.

On a happier note, my trio yesterday rehearsed Frescobaldi with the new tempos I had found.

We also rehearsed some parts to a piece by William Byrd I have scheduled for November 18th.

I think this music is pretty charming.

I dumped the parts into Finale a while back. I was waiting for people to let me know if they wanted to play an instrumental part. I invited 5 people. 3 immediately said yes, 1 eventually said no, and finally the last person said no yesterday.

After that I knew which parts to assign to whom. In between class (which of course ran late) and my rehearsal I quickly extracted parts for my players.

It’s dangerous to work quickly on this kind of thing. Easy to make mistakes. But we did manage to read through it yesterday.

In the remain time at rehearsal, we turned to Mozart. The string players said it was a bit of a culture shock to move from the Renaissance pieces we had been rehearsing (which are rather solemn) to the joy and dancing music of a Mozart piano trio.

I confess that I love moving from music style to music style.  I remember being so impressed with a CBC radio show years ago called “Eclectic Circus.” It was the first time I had heard the phrase, “The divine Miss Billie Holiday.”

When I was very young, someone in my father’s church in Flint cautioned me about becoming a “Jack of all trades and master of none.”

On the one hand this has haunted me because I have never felt as competent at the things I choose to do as I would like to be. Even now I can see improvement in my keyboard skills because I continue to hone them and aspire to play well.

But on the other hand, it helps me understand myself as someone who likes a wide range of things, whether it’s music, literature, poetry or food.

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In China, Silencing a Voice for Justice – NYTimes.com

Another disturbing story about the lack of justice in China.

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Vietnam – Musicians Singled Out by Officials – NYTimes.com

Iran – Money Woes Halt Orchestra – NYTimes.com

Music in the news and it’s not good news.

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Bahrain Bans All Protests in New Crackdown – NYTimes.com

Great. Out stupid election politics has got to be contributing to this terrible move.

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This is a scan of the cover of my copy of T. S. Eliot’s Four Quartets. I finished re-reading them this morning. I had added this book to my morning poetry read after finishing up poetry books by Jon Woodward and Oni Buchanan. I’m actually not quite done with Buchanan’s volume, What Animal,but am nearing the end of it.

I find it helpful to consult books about books. In Eliot’s case this is especially helpful since his work sits contextually in a larger poetical and historical context.

Sitting next to my books by T. S. Eliot was this very old paperback collection of essays.

As you can see it’s brittle pages are yellowed with age. After I read the introduction last week, I discovered that the editor, Barnard Bergonzi, had made them chronological so that the essays with the most insights occur later in the book. I began reading Donogue’s essay above and am just about finished with it.

The result is that I’m thinking I might make Eliot my next poet to basically completely read. He has been an important poet in my life. I was surprised at how many cross-references to his other works I recognized and intrigued by those I didn’t.

His play Murder in the Cathedral is one I have read and re-read. His poems rattle around in my brain. I even wrote a cantata based on his longer work, Ash Wednesday, when I was a student. It was scored for SATB, oboe, flute, guitar, cello and harpsichord.

I thought I had done a little choral version for my present choir of one of the movements, but I can’t find it in Finale right now.

Donogue quoted a play by Eliot I hadn’t heard of: The Elder Statesman. I just ordered a used copy of it.

Since it was Halloween, I didn’t have rehearsals last night. This turned out to be quite a relief since I do pretty thorough prep for rehearsals these days. I used the time to look over anthems for Advent and Xmas. I was pretty much dreading this, but was pleasantly surprised by the work I did earlier in the fall. It took me about twenty minutes to come with up a working list of anthems through Epiphany.

I was so happy about this I went back to church and rehearsed Bach some more (having already rehearsed Stanford for this Sunday and the new settings I have scheduled for the following Sunday by Walther and Bach of the hymn tune Werde Munter).

Came home and did the pumpkin thing.

I had to make my jack-o-lantern. Eileen had already made hers. I had purchased a third pumpkin to cook. I peeled it and chopped it up. This made about 8 cups. I used half for this recipe:

Afghan-Style Pumpkin (With Yogurt Sauce) – Recipes – The New York Times

I omitted the ginger (didn’t have any), and skipped the yogurt since I didn’t make it very spicy. Eileen wouldn’t try it, but I LOVED it.

We had the usual trick or treaters last night. A bit lighter than usual probably due to the weather (rainy).

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Eileen Southern’s Readings in Black American Music arrived in the mail yesterday.

The author, Eileen Southern (1920-2002),  also wrote another book that I own.

The Music of Black Americans.

I was reading in my Hymnal 1982 Companion when the former was cited. I recognized the editor from my history. I was excited that there was a companion of source readings for the book.

I have had admiration for this part of the American tradition for a long time. I love the music and I love the stories.

It fascinates me how so much beauty and art came as a result of the inhumane story of African slaves imported into the New World.

This incongruity is part of the US psyche.

We see it playing out even now in the current election.

I find reading American history fascinating and informative.

This book mysteriously arrived in the mail this week. I don’t remember ordering it. My daughter, Elizabeth, was active in the NY Occupy Wall Street movement. Either I ordered it and forgot or she ordered and dropped shipped to me because she is currently living in China.

I am now over 200 pages into this, the second volume of Game of Thrones. I have been hooked into the story now. I wonder if I will stay hooked for three more volumes after this one.

Yesterday I spent some time deciding how to recommend my parish begin singing the psalm at Eucharist for the first time. I think the “simplified Anglican chant” would be a good place to start. I also thought that since in the Hymnal 1982 when more than one tune is in the hymnal for the same set of words, the editorial policy was to put the recommended one first, we would start with the first one in the hymnal, S 408.

These tunes are designed to be sung in unison by the congregation. However the only version available for putting in the bulletin is a four part one. Weird. I did my own unison version to make it clear.

Then I proceed to “point” it. This means to make clear when change from the reciting note to the final note.

Again I disagree a bit with the editors. They indicated that the principle of changing on the last accented syllable should just be explained to the group. I have found that people interpret this differently. It’s so easy to just point the damn thing.

This also prepares for more complicated tones to come.

Finally yesterday afternoon after doing all this work, choosing more organ music to learn and rehearsing upcoming organ music, I settled down and read slowly through two Bach organ works: the A minor BWV 543 Prelude and Fugue

and the fugue from G minor Fantasia and fugue BWV 542.

I read through them slowly for accuracy but not so slowly that I couldn’t hear the music itself. I have been working on the G minor on and off for a week or so.

A sense of well being settled over me as I did this. It was an extraordinary experience. It left me grateful and humbled to be able to be in the presence of such beauty and genius. Bach rocks!

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Greece Moves Quickly to Put Editor on Trial – NYTimes.com

I continue to follow this story. As my friend from Romania once put it, “Don’t you know? All governments are jerks.”

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http://publius.org/

Every election I use this web site. It’s Michigan specific. It gives a complete ballot for upcoming elections. I have been checking it periodically. It has only come up to a working site in the last few days.

If you are in doubt about how to vote, my nephew Ben has helped put together a guide for crazy liberals:

http://mivoterguide.com/

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My copy of Jon Gillock’s book Performing Messiaen’s Organ Music: 66 Masterclasses, arrived in the mail yesterday. I think that was partly what inspired me to practice two new movements by Messaien of his Nativity suite. The other inspiration was a passing comment from Rhonda Edgington.

Gillock’s writing is a bit breathless about Messiaen. I had a prof who use to call this kind of writing “purple prose.” Gillock is immersed in the Christian meaning of the work which I guess is helpful. More important for me are Messiaen’s own comments (which are actually in the scores anyway) and other factual information in the book.

I do like books like this in which I can find information (and opinions) to think about concerning pieces I am learning or interested in learning.

Messiaen’s “Nativity” suite has 9 movements as you can see above. This was a relatively early work of this composer and many trained organists learn this music in school. I’m not sure how many of them play them. I would say that many parish organists do not schedule them in their preludes and postludes.

I learned 1 and 2 in undergraduate school Recently I resurrected them and performed them at church. In 2009 I scheduled “La Vierge et l’Enfant” for a little recital I gave at church. I did “Les Bergers” on Christmas Day last year. Then I learned 4 and performed it this year on New Year’s day.

Yesterday I began work on three new ones:

Desseins Eternels is beautiful to my ears. I almost scheduled it for a week from Sunday but want to get it a bit more in my fingers.

Les Enfant de Diue is one I have wanted to learn for a while.  Messiaen used identical harmonic language in both of these pieces. He called it Mode 2. There is a copy of this scale in the scores.

Les Anges, the third piece of his I began seriously attacking yesterday, seems to be more about rhythm buy 50 mg valium than scale. Messiaen was big into the Hindu “added-note” rhythms. I haven’t checked but I seem to recall from previous reading that he got all his information about this sort of thing from books.

However he did so, I think the music is very cool. Messiaen seems so tame now.  People with defined classical tastes sometimes object to his music. The apocryphal story I know is that he was unable to use his own music at his church. This is sad because he was obviously a devout dude.

I’m not as devout, but I think his music has something important to say to humans. One organist who attends my church confessed that (supposedly despite her own misgivings about his music) his music worked better for her in church than in recitals.

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Come Ye Back – NYTimes.com

A letter about the tune, “Danny Boy.” I bookmarked it because the Kids’ choir is singing an anthem next Sunday using this tune.

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Greek Editor Arrested After Publishing List of Swiss Bank Accounts – NYTimes.com

Same as it ever was. Arrest the person who exposes the corruption.

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Here are some articles I have bookmarked to go back to and look at, possibly read.

Benoit Mandelbrot, the Father of Fractal Geometry, Pens a Disturbing New Memoir – Tablet Magazine

Los Angeles Review of Books – Literature Is Not Data: Against Digital Humanities

Joyce: Heroic, Comic by Fintan O’Toole | The New York Review of Books

William Styron to Norman Mailer: Two Letters by William Styron | The New York Review of Books

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Dead or Alive by Steve Coll | The New York Review of Books

Book review.

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Beyond the Circle of Hell by Francine Prose | The New York Review of Books

Review of Diaz’s latest collection. Will definitely read his new book.

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The Light Brothers » Counterpunch: Tells the Facts, Names the Names

I love it that the organ dude, David Yearsly, writes a column for the radical left website, Counterpunch.  You have to annoyingly scroll down past a silly letter to get to his column.

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After church yesterday as I was turning off the organ and taking off my organ shoes, a young man complimented me on the music of the service. I can’t remember exactly what he said but I was left with the impression that he thought the whole thing hung together well and was well executed.

I think about the idea that music is a dance between many people: listener, composer, performer, and many others we sometimes forget including the person who cleaned the room and the makers and maintainers of the instruments themselves and so on in an unending web.

When I am performing as I was yesterday a piece which I think of as a solid example of beauty and art and not twenty feet away a person is seated and talking loudly (and probably embarrassing) the people just behind him I try not to be distracted and stay in the moment of doing. But of course part of me noticed. I also noticed people noticing the situation. Through my own concentration (and the beauty Mendelssohn left us) I try to lead both myself and interested listeners deeper into the entire moment which will include not only the distraction of the oblivious loud talker but the dance of the music.

Before leaving for church I looked up the churches of some of the musicians who led Saturday night’s concert. Johannes Müller-Stosch, the conductor, mentioned his own church when discussing orchestration and the necessity of sometimes using and sometimes omitting instruments . At least that’s what I think he discussing in the mid-concert conversation with the audience in which he answering questions texted in.

I mostly remember him describing talking to the violist between the halves of the concert.  He didn’t mention it, but she had just executed a breathtakingly beautiful solo in the Poulenc in the first half. He said that they had been discussing the repertoire possibilities for viola and he recalled that when at his own church he had scheduled the Mozart Requiem he had to tell the interested violists there was no viola part.

His own church? I thought it would have to be Grand Rapids because I couldn’t conceive of it being in Holland where he conducts the orchestra.

A little googling revealed that he somehow is the music director of St. Luke’s Episcopal Church, Long Beach California.

I asked a friend, another violist in the orchestra who sings in my choir, about this. She said that he had not returned Saturday night to California but instead had taken that Sunday off but did regular commute.

I looked for music composed by Johannes Müller-Stosch since in the materials for the concert it mentioned he was an organist and had composed music for organ.

On Spotify all I could find was “Serenity” a recording he had made with a violinist.

The music I clicked on was identifiable not his compositions. In fact one of the pieces was the Mendelssohn movement I performed at church yesterday. Coincidence!

Glancing at the web site of the church, it’s not obvious what kind of theology they espouse. They do seem within the larger conversation of the American Episcopal church.

Not so with the organist, Huw Lewis,  from Saturday night. He also commutes from Holland to his church which is St. John’s Episcopal Detroit.

This church is known as a reactionary island that clings to the old ways of the American Episcopal church.

In fact, on the front page of their web site (above), they make it clear that by continuing to use the Episcopalian prayer book of 1828, they are upholding a “450+ year tradition of Anglican Prayer Book theology, language, and form, we know that our worship is formed by ‘right doctrine’ that has been inspired by Scripture, and has been sanctified over the centuries by the prayerful use of the faithful.”

Different strokes for different folks I guess.

I wonder if they still sing the Gloria after communion (as I remember doing in the 1928 service),use some of the nonsensical prayers that were corrected in the 1979 and have the priest keep his back to the congregation as he does Eucharist? It would be easy to correct these things and continue using the old book.

Easier still to use the current book.

Anyway, the young man who complimented me and the prayer at the church where I serve reminded me of the wide variety of how people pray and do music in one denomination. I’m glad I get to work where I do.

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The Mainstream Media’s Trivial Pursuit of Campaign 2012 | The Nation

Eric Alterman takes the Media to task for doing such a poor job. I admire this man quite a bit and think he is a clear thinker. Be warned, he’s a liberal.

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An Opinion to Consider Before You Vote – NYTimes.com

Citizens have three duties, he said: to pay their taxes, serve on juries and vote.

Margaret Sullivan and others continue to maintain the concept of the separation between editorial policies and reporting.

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Outrageous Policies Toward Rape Victims – NYTimes.com

Kristoff enumerates current terrible policies.

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When Mass Hysteria Convicted 5 Teenagers – NYTimes.com

The Central Park five.

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The Dead Have Something to Tell You – NYTimes.com

Carpe the diem before it carpes you.

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The Price of a Black President – NYTimes.com

“…[H]aving any politician as a role model is incompatible with accountability, the central tenet of representative democracy. By definition, role models are placed on pedestals and emulated, not criticized or held accountable.”

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So Eileen and I met after her work yesterday, grabbed some food and went to the pre-concert talk in Dimnent.

This local college chapel is a typical mid-western abomination of acoustics. It looks like it should be reverberant but it’s not. The orchestra and the organ sounded pretty good last night. My left ear has been stuffed up for a while which made the listening not quite as much fun.

The program was kind of weird, but I don’t want complain too much because I was delighted that the orchestra itself sounded pretty good. A small city orchestra like this one is often not that good.

The program Ekkehard Overture by Franz Schrecker,

Poulenc organ concerto

and Saint-Saens symphony 3 (with organ).

I guess it’s clever that all three pieces use organ. But I felt that the Poulenc was the excellent piece of the three. The Schrecker struck me as so much movie music and was sort of framed that way by the programmatic nature of the piece (Monk falls in love with queen, rejected, finds solace in God).

The Saint-Saens was an instance of thematic transformation which used a similar kernel of melody in four loooong movements.

Poulence was packed with ideas and contrasts.

There were many wonderful moments in it. Professor Lewis the organist played the solo part very well and I was grateful to my friend Rhonda Edginton for urging Eileen and me to attend and then meeting us later for drinks.

I finished the first volume of George R.R. Martin’s five volume fantasy series, A Song of Ice and Fire.

I haven’t seen the HBO series based on this volume. The book is just over 800 pages of story. Each chapter has the name of a character. There are several plots weaving throughout the book. The tie-in is the struggle for power, the “game of thrones.”

The ending is pretty spectacular. Without giving away too much of the plot, I can say that the book spills clearly over into the fantastic. Martin tells a story that for the most part is totally within the realm of this world. But there are hints and flashes of a more fantastic world. With this ending he promises the reader more of this kind of thing.

I find the book is written generally in clear strong prose. I asked the woman who sold me the second volume at the book store if she had read it. She said she had the rest the first two but was giving it a rest. This doesn’t bode well. I now have copies of the first three volumes of this series. If I can stay interested it’s good light reading in my diet which I keep pretty varied: poetry, non-fiction heavy and light, fiction heavy and light.

I also finished reading my second book of poetry by Jon Woodward, Rain. It’s difficult for me to sort out my response to the poetry of Woodward and his wife, Oni Buchanan. I heard them perform their commissioned piece, Uncanny Valley, words by Woodward music by John Gibson. Afterward Oni Buchanan read selections from her latest book of poetry.

I find that I think of them together. Woodward seems to me to be the more lyrical of the two, Buchanan the more narrative. I’m not sure if I hadn’t arrived at their poetry the way I did if I would be attracted that much to their work. I am finishing my second volume of Buchanan’s work and right now am planning to leave it at that.

Instead I have been sucked back into re-reading T. S. Eliot’s Four Quartets.

Paul Elie’s book Reinventing Bach is the reason I’m back reading T. S. Eliot.

Yesterday I bought an ebook copy of Elie so that I could read it while treadmilling (after finishing the NYT of the day…. something that takes less and less time in this appalling period of presidential election madness).

Elie’s book is sort of a guilty pleasure for me. It combines my love of Bach with my intrigue about the changing relationship people have to music in general in my lifetime. When he began quoting T. S. Eliot I was hooked.

He describes Eliot as having a “sharp nose, knotted tie, emphatic Adam’s apple” and as “bent over a typewriter, pondering the afterlife of the past.” He invents a bit and pairs up Eliot composing Four Quartets (or at least Burnt Norton the first section published independently of the other three) with a famous recording session in which Schweitzer records Bach both things happening at roughly the same time (1935) and place (London).

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Jacques Barzun, Historian and Educator, Is Dead at 104 – NYTimes.com

I have long admired this thinker. I checked and I found three of his books sitting on my shelves: The House of Intellect, The Use and Abuse of Art and Classic, Romantic and Modern. Now as a 61 year old, I find his intellectual vigor as an old man inspiriting.

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I have my usual 8:30 AM ballet class in less than an hour. I used up some of my time I budgeted for blogging goofing around with the videos I took yesterday of my practicing.

The one above is the least bad of the three.

I find that watching myself play is very helpful. It is like looking at your own pimples in a mirror, however.

It makes me more conscious of playing accurately something I think have improved on in this century. But as you can tell from this video I still have a long way to go.

This piece is a canon which means that one hand plays exactly what the other has just played only a few beats later. This is kind of an exacting piece which brooks few mistakes.

I have been playing it with a metronome. On Wednesday I got it up the marked tempo (which is quarter note equals 88 beats per minute). I think I could perform it that fast. Unfortunately, I don’t hear it that fast. I will perform it at the tempo that seems most convincing to me.

The prelude on the other hand (Andante and Andante con moto from Sonata V Op. 65 by Felix Mendelssohn) is one where I have troubling get the “con moto” out of the “Andante con moto.” I find it difficult to hear it as slow as the tempo which is marked (which is eighth note equals 126 beats per minute). Even though the number is higher, in this case the eighth notes are triplets and it feels pretty slow.

Anyway I have to stop and have some breakfast before walking to the class.

Recently I mentioned my website to someone and she asked me if that was like a blog. I replied that it was and that I had been doing since before the word “blog” was coined.

Also, my bookmark service got hacked. It seems that I can bookmark but I can’t necessarily access the bookmarks so no links today.

Sometimes I just pick up a book in the library at random.

That’s how I ran across Reinventing Bach by Paul Elie.

Paul Elie’s book is a brave fresh look at the current state of music. He is writing from the perspective of primarily experiencing music via recordings.

It is actually true that much of primary experience of music has been through recordings. Although I heard and made live music weekly growing up in my dad’s church.

But my most vivid memories of music as a child are recordings some of which I still own.

Elie is insisting that technology has revived interest in music and in Bach specifically. He says that “Bach was technologically the most advanced musician of his era—a technician of the sacred.”

And that Bach himself constantly invented and adapted musical ideas. He borrowed from himself quite a bit turning one piece for choir and orchestra to an organ piece or adapting a secular cantata into a sacred one.

Elie is chiming in with other writers I have read who point out how recording has made so much more music available to many listeners than live performances ever did.

What I admire about the book so far is his enthusiasm for music I like. Yesterday chatting with my boss, I was surprised when she told me that the vestry had said that an organ project would be one easily supported by the congregation. She routinely expresses support and admiration of my work. And I get the usual compliments at church. But many people never speak to me about what they find meaningful. So it’s nice to hear that maybe my congregation’s leadership doesn’t think authentic quality is that outlandish an idea.

As I watch how people fail to notice that music is going on during the prelude and postlude, it sometimes causes me to feel like an anachronism because I love and treasure music the way I do. This relates to feeling like an endangered species who still loves reading interesting difficult books and poetry.

Reading Elie makes me remember I’m way off base. If I think about it for a minute, I realize there are lots of people in this world who love the things I do.

“The drumbeat of revival in classical music—often set up in opposition to the shriekback of a popular culture enchanted with technology—obscures the fact that, for most of a century now, technology has been the means of classical music’s survival.” (Elie p. 9)

And then he started quoting T. S. Eliot about time.

“Time present and time past
Are both perhaps present in time future,”

He sets Eliot’s words in a lovely description of a recording made by Albert Schweitzer of Bach organ works.

“…[S]o it is in Schweitzer’s Toccata and Fugue in D minor. The recording evokes the night a long time ago when the music of Bach (“in appentency, on its metalled ways”) coursed through the pipes of a big organ at a church in London…”

The parenthetical quote is also Eliot. Elie sent me back to Burnt Norton the first of the Four Quartets.

Life is good.

I’ve run into a bit of trouble with the Children’s anthem I have scheduled for All Saints. I realized while rehearsing it last week that many of the words in the anthem are entirely unfamiliar to the kids.

I decided to make a crossword puzzle using them. I thought I would give the kids the words to the anthem with the hard words underlined. I would tell them the words they needed to solve the puzzle were the words in the anthem and give them a copy with the hard words underlined.

We are the Lord’s; His all sufficient merit,
Sealed on the cross, to us this grace accords.
We are the Lord’s and all things shall inherit;
Whether we live or die, we are the Lord’s.

We are the Lord’s; then let us gladly tender
Our souls to Him in deeds, not empty words.
Let heart and tongue and life combine to render
No doubtful witness that we are the Lord’s.

We are the Lord’s; no darkness brooding o’er us
Can make us tremble while this star affords
A steady light along the path before us—
Faith’s full assurance that we are the Lord’s.

We are the Lord’s; no evil can befall us
In the dread hour of life’s fast loosening cords;
No pangs of death shall even then appall us.
Death we shall vanquish, for we are the Lord’s.

The clue for 4. is too obscure (the solution is “sealed). But much worse than that, Eileen said the whole thing would be hard for a 5th grader much less the mostly 3rd graders I have.

So back to the drawing board.

When I asked her how to teach vocab she said this was a good way, but there are too many words and the words themselves are hard for the kids.

I taught them to sing German so I’m sure I can teach them these words by rote. In fact I only have one more rehearsal before All Saints Sunday because Halloween falls on next Wednesday.

But then I had an idea: fit different words to this arrangement.

Here’s what I came up with:

This should work. These words are the Magnificat and aren’t strictly All Saints, but I think they fit well enough and hopefully it will make a bit more sense to the kids.

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In Jerusalem, Carter Says 2-State Solution Is in ‘Death Throes’ – NYTimes.com

Interesting perspective from an actor in history.

Carter is a member of this organization:

The Elders | Independent global leaders working together for peace and human rights.

The Elders
Martti Ahtisaari
Kofi Annan
Ela Bhatt
Lakhdar Brahimi
Gro Brundtland
Fernando H Cardoso
Jimmy Carter
Graça Machel
Mary Robinson
Desmond Tutu

Honorary Elder
Nelson Mandela

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Gay Marriage Ruling Fuels Judicial Vote in Iowa Vote on a Justice – NYTimes.com

I think people misunderstand the nature of justice and the courts. I am sorry to see people voting on judges like this.

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I finished reading this book of poetry this morning. It was written by a pianist I heard perform recently.

Oni Buchanan is also a founder of Ariel Artists.

They represent my new bud Rhonda Edgington.

Oni’s poetry is worth reading.

This is an excerpt of a poem that caught my attention. When I read it, I didn’t realize “Palais de Mari” was a composition by Morton Feldman.

It follows that I didn’t know he himself was inspired by a photograph he saw at the Louvre by the same name. (Found this all out this morning by googling. Couldn’t find the photo online.)

But still I was drawn into Buchanan’s imagery. An earlier book of her work I ordered happened to arrive in the mail yesterday.

I also finished J. G. Ballard bizzare little novel, Kingdom Come, yesterday.

Still processing it, but have to say it has more to recommend it than not. Ballard is dealing with the consumerism that has engulfed the US and UK society. The plot climaxes when a thousand plus hostages are trapped in the mall by the mall staff and a bunch of insane people.

Before it is over the survivors are kneeling at make shift altars of video players and big screen tvs and wearing bar codes on themselves.

Pretty bizzare show.

Finally a little interesting etymology thing.

I ran across two words I didn’t know in Peter Burt’s The Music of Takemitsu.

“Emic” and “Etic” are anthropological terms. Burt was talking about an observation Toynbee had made about Japan as it responded and adapted to the incursion of Western countries into its isolation.

This latter diagram shows the meaning pretty clearly. “Etic” is supposedly a neutral perspective and “emic” either consciously or unconsciously reflects the perspective of the context.

If you can read it, the above entry from wikipedia says that the two terms are derived from the linguistic terms phonemic and phonetic which are “in turn derived from Greek roots.”

I find this kind of thing informative and fascinating and immediately looked up the etymologies of the two linguistic terms.

I found that there is no real Greek meaning to “etic” and “emic” in “phonetic” and “phonemic.” In both cases “ic” is a pretty broad Greek suffix.

The “e’ is derived from the roots, “phone” and “phoneme.” So the anthropological terms split one letter from the linguistic root term and add it to the suffix to come up with “etic” and “emic.” (citations from the OED)

I can’t help it. I think that’s interesting.

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Why Partisans Can’t Explain Their Views – NYTimes.com

So if we try to “justify” our views, we tend not to actually think about them. But if we are asked to explain the basic policy ideas we are talking about, simply describing them, we tend to be more likely to modify our views and our behavior.

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The Foreign Policy Debate – NYTimes.com

Written before the presidential debate last night about its topic. If on the off chance you are interested in this substance, it provides a bit of insight.

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Connecting the Dots in Libya – NYTimes.com

Margaret Sullivan, public editor at the New York Times, writes about this controversy, its coverage, and reader response.

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Last night I had a nightmare.

Church anxiety nightmares are something I have experienced over the years. Usually they involve not knowing what hymn or service music I was supposed to be playing. The rest of the community is poised and waiting but I don’t know which hymn to play. I haven’t been told. That was the theme last night.

I was playing a large fancy cathedral type event with multiple music groups (choirs and groups of instruments). The bulletin was an elaborate affair of many pages. I did not have one. I kept looking for my bulletin. At one point I borrowed one from someone in the pew. Then I couldn’t make any sense of it. I found one hymn number and jotted it down. But it was not the next hymn. Meanwhile the service was going on. I even remember saying in the dream, “This is a musician’s worst nightmare: not knowing what music to play.”

I found the celebrant who is the same guy who will really be doing the service at Grace this morning while the boss is away. I told him I didn’t have a bulletin. He said there was one waiting for me to pick it up in the other room at the “lectern.” I asked him why in the world I would check there.

In the late 90s and early 00s (aughts) I had a series of these dreams which I still remember. At one point a person in the dream asked me, “What’s at stake?” I awoke and thought, “What’s at stake?”

This ended up helping me not only handle simple anxiety but also probably was a factor in me quitting my full time church gig and doing some other things like practice more, compose more and play in local coffee houses on the streets of Holland Michigan.

The other recurrent nightmare theme I have is that I am back in school (usually college but sometimes high school) and am at a loss as to where I am supposed to be and what my schedule is.

Anxiety. Lovely.

Yesterday Eileen remained in bed ill all day.

I had a full day of tasks. Began with the Farmers Market. Then checked in with my Mom and picked up her library books she had finished reading. Off to the library where I followed my usual routing of making a note of which books she was returning and searching for new books for her to read. These days I wander around using my net book as a direct interface to the library catalog web site. This works pretty good until the web site automatically resets every few minutes.

Came home and had lunch (took up soup and tea to Eileen). Then dropped by and gave Mom her books (and Hershey bars). Then I was off to the grocery store. Came home put away groceries. Check on Eileen. Went to the church and practiced. Came home and treadmilled.

Kind of a full day off.

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Letter from Iceland: Surviving the Little Ice Age – Archaeology Magazine

Interesting article on archaeological site in Iceland.

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Berkeley, Targeting Homeless, Proposes Ban on Sidewalk Sitting – NYTimes.com

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My talented daughter Sarah is working on a design change for my web site.

This is what it looks like so far. It is cleaner. I haven’t upgraded my WordPress software for a very long time. This is due to the fact that the last time I did so, I got locked out the upgraded site and couldn’t create new posts.

One of the main things Sarah will probably help me with is using a more recent version of the software I use to edit this blog.

The band in this video is a local band. Yesterday I had the pleasure of chatting with the guitar player, Craig Avery.

A mutual acquaintance, Dennis Remenschneider, suggested that Craig should study with me. He is the music person at Immanuel Lutheran church in Ludington Michigan as well as one of the founding members of the band, Brena.

He has studied organ briefly before. I enjoyed listening to someone with his perspective. I found it slightly puzzling that he would seek me out, but this was largely at the behest of Remenschneider and the church he is working at, I guess. They offered to foot the bill for his lessons. Dennis idealizes my abilities. I’m afraid he wants me to mentor Craig. Craig seems to be doing church music just fine, but does not have pipe organ skills.

We agreed I would teach him. He is to purchase organ shoes and contact me for our first lesson. I gave him an old copy of Gleason I had laying around and asked him to read a few pages.

It would be fun to an organ student. We’ll see how this plays out.

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Government chief whip Andrew Mitchell resigns – Telegraph

This dude was rude to some workers. Lost his gig.

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Boy Scout Files for First Time Give Glimpse at Years of Abuse – NYTimes.com

No wonder the organization is homophobic. It makes me crazy when pedophilia is equated with homosexuality implicitly (as in the case of this article) or explicitly. Stupid stupid stupid.

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Larry Itliong, Forgotten Filipino Labor Leader – NYTimes.com

Did you know President Obama was recently in Keene, California at the United Farmworker headquarters? He designated the country’s first monument honoring a modern-day Latino. Some interesting little known history in this reporting.

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Suspect in Benghazi Attack Scoffs at U.S. – NYTimes.com

This story is an object lesson in how actors in a situation attempt to shape the reality of its reporting. Ahmed Abu Khattala throws untruths and innuendo into the mix. What a mess.

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Is It Time to Upgrade Your Gadgets? Do the Math – NYTimes.com

Some practical rules of thumb for when to upgrade phone/computer/whatever.

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Questions and Answers on the Benghazi Attack – NYTimes.com

This stuff continues to be distorted by weird reporting. Found this outline helpful.

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‘Ninety Years of Discrimination’ Is Enough, Court Declares – Garrett Epps – The Atlantic

Defense of Marriage Act goes down. Good.

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Recently I read through all of Frescobaldi’s Canzoni a due canti col basso continuo with my Amy Piersma, my piano trio violinist and Deb Coyle on oboe.

There are five of them in this collection which I purchased used from my old prof, Craig Cramer. The Canzoni change tempo and time signatures several times in each piece. You can see this in the first page of my score.

You will note the penciled in metronome markings. Yesterday Amy, Dawn Van Ark, my piano trio cellist, and I spent a good deal of time thinking about the tempos in this piece in our weekly rehearsal.

The previous week when I had ran through this with violin and oboe, I stopped us and set tempos for each section. This was to expedite reading.

I had thought this week to just let the trio (Deb couldn’t make it) move from section to section. The first rehearsal I had supplied the missing cello part. The second I supplied the missing oboe part.

But Amy had started thinking more specifically about tempos and their relationship in one canzona. After a great deal of discussion and experimentally playing, it became clearer to her and Dawn that these tempos are usually thought of in terms of proportions, i.e. 2:3.

Usually in tempo changes we think of what is common between the two tempos. Maybe the half note equals the half note of the next section. In proportional tempo changes this is a bit trickier, but can be done.

I came home and started poking around trying to find some resource material. My understanding of proportional rhythm in renaissance music dates back to my training in early music and work in early music ensembles. It has been years since I have had a discussion about it. I thought it would be good to research a bit.

Of course the salient article was outside my access.

There was an article in the 1995 edition of Early Music History. I do have access to this journal. But only volumes 29-31 as you can see here.

Access via Hope College is indicated by the little green dots.

The article in question was “Tempo relationships between uple and triple time in the sixteen century” by Ruth L. Deford. If you look closely you can see that I could buy this article for 30 to 40 pounds ($48.45 – $64.60) or rent it for anywhere from 4.49 – 5.99 pounds sterling ($7.25 – $9.67). Conversions are from today’s exchange rates.

So the heck with that. I did find an article in a book on Google books.

It’s not specific to the canzonas, but it might have some information in it. Inter-library-loaned the book which contains it.

In the meantime I found an online brass quartet edition with suggested metronome markings. I tried them out and found them pretty workable. I added one of my own and emailed it to the players as a working metronome solution until further examination.

I think this kind of thing is sort of fun.

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Teacher on Jury Duty Accused of Bringing Heroin to Court – NYTimes.com

Oops.

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In the Debates, Interruption or Interjection? – NYTimes.com

Deborah Tannen is someone whose books I have read. She has an informed and sensible way of looking at certain topics. She wrote this article.

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Scott’s Story and the Election – NYTimes.com

Little drama on the op-ed pages of the NYT. A friend of Kristoff confided in him about his own story about not having health insurance. He gets diagnosed very late with serious prostate cancer. He allows Kristoff to use his story as an example of someone needing health insurance. Kristoff received a lot of response (positive and negative). The man died this Monday.

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Eileen and I both are not feeling great. Eileen skipped choir rehearsal and announced at breakfast this morning that her goal today and tomorrow is to “survive.” We have head colds.

I’m using the Blackberry to video myself so that I can estimate the time it takes for the prelude. I think the mic is picking up room noise. I don’t think it’s a file conversion problem. I uploaded this directly from Eileen’s blackberry onto YouTube. These videos are just me practicing. I’m making no attempt at doing a finished product. (Can you tell?) I put them up thinking someone might be curious what I’m doing at the organ.

This is the postlude. I videoed it for the heck of it. I like the melody it’s based on and Farlee manages to come up with some pretty interesting stuff for an organ setting of it.

I just emailed the church secretary the following about the composer of the prelude:

Noel DaCosta (1929-2002) Although of Jamaican parentage, Noel DaCosta, was born in Lagos, Nigeria. He later moved to Jamaica where he lived until age 11, at which time he came to the US. He pursued his musical education at Queen College (City University of New York) and at Columbia University. While still in graduate school at Columbia, DaCosta was the recipient of the Seidl Fellowship in Music Composition. He later studied with Luigi Dallapiccola in Florence under a Fulbright Scholarship. In his latter years, Da Costa served as Professor of Music Emeritus at the Mason Gross School of the Arts at Rutgers University where he taught from 1970 until shortly before his death.

I lifted it whole cloth from a Pipe Dreams online article on African American Composers.

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Mexican Doctor’s Baths for Corpses Reinvigorate Cold Cases – NYTimes.com

NCIS technology in real life. Remember Juarez? Where people (mostly young women) are being slaughtered by criminals. Over 8,000 bodies await this dude. I like his careful avoidance of getting involved in the criminal proceedings. I think he likes being alive.

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The ‘Eyeball to Eyeball’ Myth and the Cuban Missile Crisis’s Legacy – NYTimes.com

This version of history more believable.

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Woman Must Relinquish Kafka Papers, Judge Says – NYTimes.com

More Kafka stuff to come. Excellent.

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