jupe loves his work

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With two classes left to do in the Ballet Camp, I have been pondering how differently I am perceiving some of the people this year.

First, the overall feel of the camp is much more relaxed and positive though there is no lowering of the standards of quality necessary to ballet.

A couple of the instructors seem very different to me this year. Where before in past years they were tense and driven, now they are relaxed and friendly. I see a couple instructors actually smiling with their eyes as well as their lips (all ballet people can smile, just not necessarily also with their eyes).  This is a pleasant change. It could be that I am simply seeing the same people differently. But I do suspect that it’s not all my subjectivity and usual over sensitive interpretation of events.

This ballet camp has not taken the toll on my energy and health that I feared it might. At the beginning of the summer I was feeling very drained from my schedule of combined church work and ballet accompaniment. The contractor for the ballet camp caught me in a weak moment just before my California vacation and I accepted the work despite misgivings.

I came home from California less stressed than last year.

I do enjoy coming up with improvisations that fit ballet exercises and also have some musical merit in my own eyes. So even though the camp gave me a lot of work, it didn’t turn out to be so much that I am back where I was at the beginning of the summer.

In addition to this, I am finding my church work more and more meaningful as I double down on improving and honing my organ skills. Each week I look forward to preparing and performing at least one piece for Sunday morning.

This week I have enjoyed learning and delving into a setting by Ennis Fruhauf called “Intermezzo on Sicilian Mariners.”

This piece strikes me as very well written.

WARNING! MUSIC ANALYSIS FOLLOWS! DANGER! DANGER! WILL ROBINSON!

When I think of “intermezzi” I think of Brahms. I’m not sure if that’s what Fruhauf had in mind, but I still see a ton of skill in this setting.

fruhauf01

Note the four measures marked Andantino above that follow a gentle introduction (not entirely shown). I think these measures are elegantly written. They are deceptively simple. But with repeated rehearsing I begin to hear some lovely subtlety, especially regarding the articulation, and melodic unity.

Then note how he proceeds with the melody in long note values developing the Andantino rhythm and tempo.

fruhauf02

This returns in the restatement of this section with a duple descant.

fruhauf03

fruhauf04

I remember the first time I played through the piece thinking that the materials at the beginning were good but didn’t warrant an entire repetition. Then when he added the little descant, I was charmed.

In between, in the middle section, he changes key and does some clever stuff with the meter.

fruhauf05

He sets up a very regular set of afterbeats in the lower voice with miniature lush chords floating over it on beats one and three. Then as a piece de resistance he delays the melody one beat.  This works very nicely.

Good writing.

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no time to blog, have to get to work

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Two more days of ballet camp and then my time becomes my own again. This morning I had to spend most of my blogging time preparing information for my meeting today with Pastor Jen this morning.

She has mentioned that this fall might be a good time to begin chanting psalms in the liturgy. I wanted to show her the psalter resource that we are already subscribing to (St James Press). I printed up the psalm for this weekend and next so she can get an idea how these settings would work.

Unfortunately I now have little time before I have to eat and zip off to my first ballet class.

Here are the links I have been skipping posting the last few days.  I’m limiting my comments on them  to save time.

Thousands Gather in Tokyo to Protest Nuclear Restart – NYTimes.com

Navy Ship Fires on Boat in the Persian Gulf – NYTimes.com

Active-duty suicide numbers decline in June – Army News | News from Afghanistan & Iraq – Army Times

Bob Babbitt, famed popular music bassist, dies at age 74 | Tune In Music City | The Tennessean

Five Obamacare Myths – NYTimes.com

Policy and the Personal – NYTimes.com

Distributing, Then Confiscating, Condoms – NYTimes.com

The Moral Case for Drones – NYTimes.com

I have to mention here that I am still skeptical about remote killing, but this article explains some best case scenario approach.

To kill, or not to kill? – FT.com

Shakespeare in South Africa and American prisons.

The End of Privacy? – NYTimes.com

Can Liberal Christianity Be Saved? – NYTimes.com

This stirred my brother and my boss to link the following eloquent rebuttal:

Diana Butler Bass: Can Christianity Be Saved? A Response to Ross Douthat

The Science of Compassion – NYTimes.com

F.D.A. Surveillance of Scientists Spread to Outside Critics – NYTimes.com

I love the inadvertent fuck-up.

hot musings from helland

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Even though one of my classes was canceled due to the rescheduling of classes in air conditioned studios, I found myself pretty exhausted at the end of the day, yesterday. It has been incredibly hot here and I did walk back and forth to Ballet from home in 110 degree heat.

Early in the day, I spent time at the organ choosing music for this Sunday. Our closing hymn is “Lord dismiss us with they blessing’ to the usual tune of SICILIAN MARINERS. I was surprised to find a pretty lovely Intermezzo based on this tune by Fruhauf in my library. I have looked at his work before and find it uneven in quality and sometimes lengthy. It will require a tad bit of rehearsal but I think it will be nice for Sunday.

For the postlude I landed on an obscure (at least to me) composer, John Garth. It’s in a copy of “The Organist’s Companion” edited by Wayne Leupold. I bought this copy of the mag (Vol 19, No 3, March 1997) used to see just what these were like. Not terribly good, but not too bad. I might purchase more if I find them cheap.

Anyway, according to the blurb in the mag, Garth was born in 1722 in Durham England and died in London in 1810.  He “was active in County Durham and is known to have been an organist in Sedgefield.” There are a few more details on Wikipedia including the fact that he edited Marcello’s huge work on the Psalms.

The voluntary starts out with a pretty blah adagio (as English voluntaries do). The Allegro that follows is a charming two part dance that redeems the piece. It will make a good postlude even though everyone leaves as quickly as possible and talks and ignores the music much like the end of a movie.

I also received a box of used music I bought from Craig Cramer yesterday. It didn’t have too much exciting in it. I was disappointed in the 5 anthologies I bought edited by the great English dude, C.H. Trevor. I was hoping they would have some English gems in them. Instead it’s pretty much stuff I already own in better editions (e.g. Walther, Krebs, Guilmant).

I did get a book Organ Voluntaries by Matthew Locke (1621-1627). I purchased this primarily because I have a quasi-son-in-law with the same name.

Matthew Locke
Matthew Locke

See a resemblance?

Also a very interesting book of piano pieces called “Piano Music of Africa and the African Diaspora.”

I do not recognize any of the composers even though they seem to be important mid 20th Century types. Florence B. Price was the first female African-American composer (according to the notes in the book).

There is a jazzy piece in this anthology by her called “Nimble Feet” from a larger work called Dances in the Canebrakes.

All of the music I have read through in this book so far has a popular jazz influence. Some of it looks dryer than that. I will use it to check out composers I haven’t heard of and see if I can find some interesting music that is new to me.

Have to quit. No links again today kids. I have more ballet classes filling up the day today.

jupe and his dang religious reading

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I’m grateful to have had a day off yesterday.

I spent it reading,

practicing

and chatting online with my grandson in California.

Today I have a full day planned. Pick up the car from the Muffler Man parking lot before Eileen goes to work. Choose prelude and postlude for this Sunday. Then I plunge into four and half hours of ballet classes interrupted only by a lunch hour.

I’m enjoying Diarmaid McCulloch’s Christianity: The First Three Thousand Years. He quickly gets through the first thousand in the first two chapters. He has some interesting insights into how Greek and Jewish history is necessary to the birth of Christianity.

Later in his chapter on Jesus, “A Crucified Messiah,” he explains the origin of the virgin birth of Christ:

“This tangle of preoccupations with Mary’s virginity centers on Matthew’s quotation from a Greek version of words of the prophet Isaiah in the Septuagint: ‘Behold, a virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and his name shall be called Emmanuel’. this alters or refines the meaning of isaiah’s orginal Hebrew: where the prophet  had talked only of ‘a young woman’ conceiving and bearing a son, the Septuagint projected ‘young woman’ into the Greek word for ‘virgin’ (parthenos).” Isaiah 7:14, Matthew 1:23

I looked in my standard Bible reference, The Complete Parallel Bible, which lines up four translations: New Revised Standard Version, Revised English Bible, New American Bible, and the New Jerusalem Bible. All of them translate Matthew’s use of the word, “virgin.” I assume that’s because it’s the word which was used in the original.

However in Isaiah, three of the four restore the phrase, “a young woman.” Two of these footnote that it was “virgin” in the Greek. One of them, the New American Bible, simple writes “virgin” with no footnote. The New American Bible was an authorized Roman Catholic translation last time I looked. Not sure what they are using now.

There is a lot of Catholic theology based on Mary’s virginity. I can see how an accurate translation might not help that.

I love McCulloch’s lens of language that he constantly uses. Here’s a lovey example of how the word Christianity blends a lot of history into one word.

“The name ‘Christian’ has a double remoteness from its Jewish roots. Surprisingly in view of its origins in the Greek eastern Mediterranean and amid the Semitic culture of Syria, the word has a distinctively Latin rather than Greek form, and yet it also points to the Jewish founder, not by his name, Joshua, but by that Greek translation of Messiah, Christos. With its Latin development of a Greek word summing up a Jewish life-story, this very name ‘Christian’ embodies a violent century which had set Rome against Jerusalem, and the world has resonated down nearly two thousand years, during which Christianity in turn has set itself against its surviving parent, Judaism. ‘Christian’ embodies the two languages which became the vehicle for talking about Christianity within the Roman Empire: Latin and Greek, the respective languages of Western Catholicism and Greek Orthodoxy.”

This is probably more than any clear thinking reader wants to know about this stuff, but it’s what’s on my mind this morning.

That and the stifling heat which is already throbbing outside. Thank goodness for air conditioning.

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relaxing with words

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Today I have the first day off I have had since coming back from California. Yesterday was particularly strenuous. After doing church, I came home and made lunch for my fam, then hugged my brother and his wife good-by and went played ballet classes for three hours. Whew.

Singing at church was a bit on the weak side. Many of the regular attendees that sing strongly were missing. Despite this, I was satisfied with the introduction of my new piece of service music, “Emmaus Fraction Anthem: The Disciples knew the lord Jesus.” I think it’s going to work fine but I want to hear how the boss thought it went from her perspective.

Still reading J.R. Watson’s The English Hymn: A Critical and Historical Study and by Diarmaid MacCulloch’s Christianity: The First Three Thousand Years.

Watson’s book is $99 new. The Kindle version is hilariously priced at $94. I’ll probably pick up a used copy if I  decide to keep reading it.  His take on Hymnody combines a conservative academic understanding with a current literary sensibility. His goal is to examine English Hymns technically and objectively in a poetic sense within the context of sung prayer. He is trying to avoid the approach that many church people use which is colored largely by their own devotion. I’m enjoying it.

McCulloch seems to approach history largely via language and words. I like that immensely. In my reading this morning I ran across these word facts.

from my notes:

Greek concepts imp to Christianity

polis – city state
ecclessia – the assembly of citizens of the polis who met to make decisions

He relates polis to the words politics, police and polity.

Metro - mother

use of the word, ecclessia, in Christianity is similar to its Greek origins but expanded

a local representative group of a larger identity but also can be used to refer to the larger church and “lurking in the word” is the idea that the faithful themselves have a collective responsibility for decisions about the future of the polis

the greek word, kuriake, means belonging to the Lord (Kyrie)
from which church and kirk are descended

tension between the two concepts is a strain that runs through the history of Christianity – ecclessia of the people, versus kuriake of the authorities

kuriake must relate to Kyrie, eh?

I particularly like his comment on the word, metaphysical.

Aristotle “discussed abstract matters such as logic, meaning and causation in a series of texts which, being placed in his collected works after his treatise on physics, were given the functional label meta ta physica, ‘After The Physics’. And so the name of metaphysics, the study of the nature of reality, was born in an accident.”

His interpretation might be a bit dubious. When I consulted the OED, it suggested that an early understanding of meta ta physica was not that it literally followed the treatise on physics but that the teaching of it should come in that order.

Either way it’s cool.

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dance music

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One interesting aspect of working in a national ballet camp is the parade of techniques and personalities of the teachers. The Cecchetti camp represents a certain system of pedagogy in the world of ballet so there is a lot of consistency of language and ideas in the teaching.  But some teachers disarm with humor (which can disguise some very sharp critical thought), some teach with silence, some with affection, all with their bodies.

I find it challenging and engaging to adapt to each teacher’s style as best I can.

Twice this past week different teachers questioned my improvised introduction (usually referred to by dancers as the “preparation”). One suggested that I play the last half of the phrase I intended to play (something that is complicated by the fact that I am improvising and often haven’t thought that far into the phrase).  When she said this, I was at loss and immediately repeated the exact preparation I had just played. She seemed satisfied that I had corrected the problem.

This occurred with another teacher. She stopped my introduction and described what she wanted. I repeated it exactly. She was happy.

Ironic, n’est pas?

I suppose it’s possible they simply overlooked my inability to do what they asked and went on.

More likely it’s a confusion of dance language and music language, something I run into constantly working with dancers. In some instances (like these I’ve been talking about), there is a subtlety the teachers are looking for, a nuance, that is not easily expressed in mundane musical language. So I must listen beyond the words to the meaning.

In other cases, words that I think of as specifically music terms (Adagio, Allegro, etc.) take on a specificity in the ballet context. They describe not only tempo but the character and dance technique of the combination.

Dance teachers are very interesting in that most times their bodies are past their prime (for dancing ballet anyway). So they have had to come to grips with being very good at something and then changing to being good at teaching it, but no longer doing it to their satisfaction.

All of this stuff is part of what engages me in this work.

I also love to improvise. My improvisations in this context tend toward the rhythmic. I also try very hard to make it pretty clear where the phrases are.

The word, “music,” takes on a larger meaning to dancers. It can refer to the poetry of movement when they are admonished to put the music in the movement.

I like to think that if I am improvising well there is some charm or beauty in the improv that helps dancers do this if they are listening and dancing in that way.

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Who’s Very Important? – NYTimes.com

Some great quotes in this editorial.

“… leading Republicans consider Mr. Romney’s apparent use of multimillion-dollar offshore accounts to dodge federal taxes not just acceptable but praiseworthy: “It’s really American to avoid paying taxes, legally,” declared Senator Lindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina.

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Norman Sas, 87, Inventor of Electric Football – NYTimes.com

Last night over drinks, my brother and I explained to our wives what the heck electric football was.

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Arnold Schwarzenegger Gears Up for Act 2 as an Action Hero – NYTimes.com

What can I say? I’ll probably see his new movie. Sheesh.

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Trial of Soccer Star Terry Revolves Around Foul Language – NYTimes.com

This is a fun read as the author and the court dance around the actual words involved.

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Maria Cole, Jazz Singer and Wife of Nat, Dies at 89 – NYTimes.com

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the art of church music

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gmailfail

Since I have to be at ballet class by 9 AM, I thought I would do my and my Mom’s bills. I have skipped doing them for a week.  Usually, I email Eileen with a synopsis and snapshot of our bills and finances each week and do likewise in an email to my Mom, my brother, his wife and Eileen with my Mom’s bills.

I finished my bills and then Gmail went down. Ah. A reprieve.

Thought I would do a quick blog while I wait.

I have almost read the entire introduction to J.R. Watson’s The English Hymn: A Critical and Historical Study. I waltzed over to the seminary library when I realized they had a copy of this and checked it out.

It amuses me. Watson seems to have written an odd little book that acknowledges the fading importance of its subject while it cordons off a conservative little take on the literary understanding of hymnody.

He bemoans the practice of changing hymn texts by hymnal committees although this is part of the hymn practice all the way back to John Wesley altering hymns of George Herbert and Isaac Watts.

He (and other professors I have listened to) are strongly under the influence of the academic insistence of fidelity to original texts. I think this is mistaken when applied to the art of hymnody.

Speaking of art, my brother the Episcopal priest is visiting. Last night in our conversations I found myself mentioning the art that I practice, that of Church Music.  Like hymnody itself, this art is changing and also like hymnody it is barely acknowledged as a field.

I was speaking to Mark about a church musician we both know and saying something like who can blame him for not thinking of church music as art, when in fact so few people do.

On the other hand, this art is a pleasure to me at this point in my life. I enjoy the wide range of congregational song we use at my church. I enjoy learning and performing organ and choral music. So what the hell.

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J. R. Watson cited a couple of cool poems with references to the erosion of hymnody and faith. They were both online. Recommended reading.

Aubade – Philip Larkin

Waking Early Sunday Morning by Robert Lowell

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Under Citizens United, Public Employees Are Compelled to Pay for Corporate Political Speech – NYTimes.com

Didn’t get a chance to treadmill yesterday so I didn’t get the paper read all the way through. This article however attracted my interest. The author does a nice little dance about the funding of public pensions as a compelled source for political money. Cute.

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book talk

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I think I may have found a further reason for purchasing ebook copies of books: simple size. Christianity: The First Three Thousand Years by Diarmaid MacCulloch is a very large book. While on vacation I read MacCulloch’s fascinating review of R. I. Moore’s The War on Heresy:  Faith and power in medieval Europe.

Burning the Cathars | TLS

The writing in the review interested me more than the book he was reviewing. I noted that MacCulloch had written a history of Christianity and that the book was sitting back in Holland on Herrick Library’s shelves.

Yesterday I was grabbing a slew of new Christian Romances for my Mom to read. I had a book on hold and grabbed that. It was Michel Houellebecq’s latest English translation The Map and The Territory.

Then I remembered the MacCulloch and grabbed it as well. At first I thought I would probably want to own such a large book with copious illustrations and maps. It clocks in at just over a thousand pages. That doesn’t include another 150 pages of critical apparatus (the plural of apparatus is “apparatus” or “apparatuses” sadly not “apparati” as I first typed). I tend to delve into footnotes and bibliographies. In fact I have already ran across another book footnoted by MacCulloch: The English Hymn: A Critical and Historical Study by J. R. Watson published in 1999.

englishymn

I have done some reading about hymnody. It used to be a major interest of mine. This book might suck me back into thinking about it. We’ll see.

In the meantime, a Kindle copy of the MacCulloch would make it easier to lug around and read.

I’m almost done with Scorpio Games by Maggie Stiefvater.

I’m reading the Kindle version legally loaned to me by Eileen. Just about done. It’s not as bad as I expected it to be. I plan to finish it before attacking Houellebecq.

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Why Is Apple Discriminating Against Iranian-Americans? – NYTimes.com

Another reason to avoid Apple if you can.

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still post vacation fatigue but toujours gai

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As usually happens one of the organizers of the Cecchetti ballet camp snuck into class as I was playing and handed me my schedule. They have me scheduled for classes almost every day (I have Monday off apparently) for the next week. Most of these days I am playing three classes as I did yesterday. This means I am at the bench for four and half hours.

This takes quite a bit of energy, but I think I’m up for it. I know I welcome the work and the money it brings in.

Today is Eileen’s birthday. She is sixty years old.  I have her first birthday present waiting for her on the table. This evening after we are both done with work we are planning to go out to eat. Like me, she is recuperating slowly from our trip to California. I am still sleeping in past my usual early rising time. Us sixty-year-olds take a bit longer than we used to to get our groove back.

threesandmen

My son gave me three comic books he had from the Sandman series. I was talking to my ex about how much I enjoyed Neil Gaiman for some reason. I think she may have mentioned it to David. This is cool.

I didn’t get a chance to go practice organ yesterday. After ballet classes, I did grocery shopping and then came home and treadmilled. I ordered pizza for Eileen and me. That was pretty much the entire day. Maybe I will find some time today to practice organ.

It looks like I’m not going to get to working on my harpsichord this month like I was hoping to. Besides ballet, I have some other important things to get done like preparing a manuscript to submit to the Greater Kansas City AGO composition test.  I hope I can find some more time to relax before the summer is over.

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Spike Lee Talks Obama, the End of Mookie’s Brooklyn, and the Hollywood Color Line — Vulture

I am a fan of Spike Lee’s work.  Good interview.

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Mali – Islamist Rebels Smash Historic Sufi Tombs – NYTimes.com

Makes me crazy when people destroy history.

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Robert de La Rochefoucauld, Noted for War Exploits, Dies at 88 – NYTimes.com

Fascinating life.

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A Confucian Constitution in China – NYTimes.com

I have often thought that the Confucian stuff is a great human heritage. Interesting recommendation of applying Confucian thought to governing in the 21st century.

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Obama the Socialist? Not Even Close – NYTimes.com

The corruption of words in our time. This person has experienced socialism and comes up with a different definition of it than many Americans.

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still whipped from the trip

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Whew. Still whipped (as  my father used to say) from my trip. Today I have two ballet classes that I know of. The contractor left a message on my phone last night as we agreed and told me where to be for the morning classes.

Skype asked me to update as I was trying to connect with Sarah in England yesterday. Of course it failed to work properly after that. She also updated and still nothing.

She called on the land line and while she and Eileen were chatting I installed the google plug-in and we ended up doing video/chat via that. The sound was garbled a bit on our side but at least the dang thing worked. I left feedback for Skype which is about as effective as my emails back and forth with my Republican representative Bill Huizenga about his opposition to Health Care. The House of Representatives is voting on this today, I think.

Like I said to Eileen I don’t think Huizenga is all that bright. He’s a politician, ferchrissake. But I do suspect him and our governor of being pretty sincere in their views however mistaken.

I asked him to at least urge his Republican colleagues to put forth an alternative to the Health Care program something they are reluctant to do.

I did manage to get some organ practice in yesterday. Ran in to the guy who subbed for me and had a nice chat with him. Treadmilled.

This is all I have time for this morning.

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Kim Jong-un Appears With Disney Characters on North Korean TV – NYTimes.com

Apparently, Kim John-un released cool propaganda video of him conducting music. Some things you can’t make up.

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Grandmothers of Buranovo Give Russian Village New Life – NYTimes.com

This is as inspiring as fakey American Idol can be, I guess. I watched their videos on YouTube. Charming people doing lousy music.

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Let’s Draft Our Kids – NYTimes.com

Interesting ideas. I like his three options for drafting young people. He is aware that something so sensible has no chance of being implemented any time soon. But still, it’s good stuff in my opinion.

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Emily Dickinson Search Results | The Online Books Page

Links to  lots of Emily Dickinson online.

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back in helland

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Eileen and I ended up waiting an extra couple of hours for our connection from Dallas/Fort Worth to Grand Rapids.

Since it was already a late flight, we got home in the middle of the night, around 3:30 AM.

Late hours for an old geezer like me.

Eileen and I figured out how she could loan me a Kindle book she bought. The rules are 1) the publisher must allow loans; 2) the loan is only for 14 days and 3) a book can be loaned only once.

Sheesh. It seems like a very old style approach to the free flow of information and ideas. Just a tiny leak in an area where so few people really participate (i.e. reading and thinking).  But a leak it is.

So I’m reading Eileen’s Kindle Book copy of Scorpio Races.

The book seems directed at a young reader audience. The main characters, Puck and Sean, are in their teens. I am reading it because Eileen read it. Even though a death begins the book it doesn’t pick up until about half way through when the plot starts to develop. The interesting thing to me is the idea of capaill uisce. This phrase roughly translates from the Irish as “water horse.” It seems there is a legend that this author has made real about fierce flesh eating horses.

There is an annual race where these killer horses are caught and raced. This is the background of this book. I cannot tell how much of the legend is connected to fact, but it makes for a mildly interesting read and helped me pass time with the many waits I had yesterday flying back from California.

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The Drone Zone – NYTimes.com

On the ride home last night, Eileen and I heard a BBC report about CCTV technology the British are looking at which would allow software to monitor the overwhelming number of cameras the government uses to watch the population. There are so many cameras trained on the citizens that there is a surfeit of trained observers.

I was particularly taken aback when one person who was selling the tech said that one has two options: either to be monitored by software or spottily monitored by other humans.

My gut reaction was “Wait a minute. Those aren’t the only options. What about whether a society wants to trade (as the British society seems to want to do) privacy and dignity for safety (false safety in my opinion).

I thought more than once about the true reason the USA has such weird security measures in its airports: to lull the traveling population into thinking the government is making it safe to fly when indeed it is not. Perception seems to trump reality over and over these days. Just my exhausted morning after opinion, I guess.

Pass the drone.

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‘How Should a Person Be?’ by Sheila Heti – NYTimes.com

Recognized this author but wasn’t sure why until I realized she co-wrote Chairs are the people go.

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self-forgetting love of knowing

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steveeileencalif2012

For some reason most of my reading yesterday was in Rousseau’s Confessions.

Patterned on St. Augustine’s Confessions, it is a very personal self-portrait written in Rousseau’s old age. I know I have read at least portions of Augustine’s work as well.

I also read this article I had bookmarked from yesterday:

Burning the Cathars | TLS

I didn’t realize that some of the Crusade waves of killing involved French from the north killing French in the South.

Interesting quotes:

the English word “bugger” is derived from “Bulgarian”, and reflects the common canard of mainstream Christians against dissidents that heresy by its unnatural character inevitably leads to deviant sexuality.

In the mid-twelfth century, a Patarene-style reformer in Liège called Lambert le Bègue (“the stammerer”) narrowly escaped a heretic’s death for revivalist activities that included composing a rhyming vernacular version of the Book of Acts for his followers…

The Kingdom of England proved itself precocious in intolerance, perhaps because it had the most sophisticated royal government in twelfth-century Europe. It was Henry II who in 1166 launched the European-wide persecution of heresy, in hounding some wandering Germans to death in Oxfordshire. The English, often so complacent of their record on tolerance, can let that stand beside their near-contemporary invention of the blood-libel against Jews and their later pioneering expulsion of their entire Jewish population.

What Is It to be Intellectually Humble? | Big Questions Online

From this article I previously bookmarked and read yesterday, this caught my attention:

Subramanyan Chandrasekhar was once asked why he could innovate in physics well beyond retirement age, while most physicists do innovative work only when young. He said, “there seems to be a certain arrogance toward nature that people develop. These people have had great insights and made profound discoveries. They imagine afterwards that the fact that they succeeded so triumphantly in one area means they have a special way of looking at science which must be right. But science doesn’t permit that. Nature has shown over and over again that the kinds of truth which underlie nature transcend the most powerful minds.” Chandrasekhar seems to be saying that early success in knowing “puffs up” the scientist, so that his enlarged ego makes it hard to see the way forward on new problems. The humble self-forgetting love of knowing can remove this impediment.

I like this quite a bit. “Science doesn’t permit” thinking your special way of looking at things is necessarily the right way. Once one is hardened into that, one misses things. Preserve me from as much of that as possible.

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Libya’s Unintended Consequences – NYTimes.com

Not sure if this columnist quite gets it right, but it’s interesting. See the online comments for some challenges to his notions.

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The Thrill of Bill & Hill – NYTimes.com

Our leaders are not only bad, they are also boring. At least Bill and Hill aren’t boring.

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The Coffin-Maker Benchmark – NYTimes.com

Kristoff uses a bit of irony to make a point. Unfortunately he also points out once again how public opinion is confused in its facts:

A World Public Opinion poll in 2010 found that Americans believed that foreign aid consumed one-quarter of federal spending. They said it should be slashed to only 10 percent.


In fact, all foreign aid accounts for about 1 percent of federal spending — and that includes military assistance and a huge, politically driven check made out to Israel, a wealthy country that is the largest recipient of American aid.

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Don’t Indulge. Be Happy. – NYTimes.com

Money buys a little happiness. But more money doesn’t buy more happiness.

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jupe's last day on vacation and a bunch of links

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Today is the last day of our annual California visit to see the Jenkins family out here.  There have been some very relaxing parts to this visit.

It has been fun to reconnect with my grandkids especially the two older ones, Nicholas and Savannah. Catherine is beginning to come out of the self centeredness of babyhood. She is fun to be around as well.

My daughter-in-law, Cynthia, is ever the gracious host. There have been some very relaxing moments with everyone. Yesterday we hit the backyard pool again.

I have been using their treadmill almost everyday (not the day we went to Sea World).

Despite the missing notes on their piano I have played some Bach on it pretty much every day we have been here. Last night before going to bed, Nicholas and I played duets on his synth in his room.

With parental permission, I helped Savannah install some National Geographic software so that she could use it to interact with the book she bought about Sea Creatures (“Monsters” in the title).

I started reading The Anti-death League by Kingsly Amis on my netbook. I had been saving it for vacation reading or fun reading sometime.

Tomorrow Eileen and I get on a plane and fly home. It will be good to get back.

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What would Rousseau make of our selfish age? | Terry Eagleton | Comment is free | The Guardian

I started reading this article yesterday and it made me wonder more about Rousseau. I am aware of him as an important influence but haven’t actually read much about him.

I looked him up in the Encyclopedia Brittanica Academic Edition online and read the entry. Then I downloaded a copy of his Confessions and a biography by John Morley.

I was surprised that he lived at the same time as Rameau.

Also they were on opposite sides of a controversy. Rameau (whom I have read, studied and whose compositions I have learned and performed) was on the side of Harmony and order. Rousseau endorsed melody over harmony and paved the way for the later Romantic thinkers. This controversy at this time in History was something I was unaware of.

As a younger man I was fascinated by Rameau’s theory of chords. As an older man I am more drawn to Rousseau’s romanticism.

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What Is It to be Intellectually Humble? | Big Questions Online

On James Agee | Open Letters Monthly – an Arts and Literature Review

Stephen Wolfram | Technology and Human Nature – I Like to Build Alien Artifacts | The European Magazine – The Opinion Magazine

Three articles I stumbled across and bookmarked to read.

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Let It Bleed: Libertarianism and the Workplace — Crooked Timber

I read much of this article. It seems to be part of an ongoing conversation that I’m not sure I entirely understand. I do get the writer’s ironic criticique of Libertarianism as not quite consistent in the modern context.

Outside a unionized workplace or the public sector, what most workers are agreeing to when they sign an employment contract is the alienation of many of their basic rights (speech, privacy, association, and so on) in exchange for pay and benefits. They may think they’re only agreeing to do a specific job, but what they are actually agreeing to do is to obey the commands and orders of their boss. It’s close to a version of Hobbesian contract theory—“The end of obedience is protection”—in which the worker gets money, benefits, and perhaps security in exchange for a radical alienation of her will.

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Getting Away with It by Paul Krugman and Robin Wells | The New York Review of Books

This sums it up nicely:

However awkward it may be for the traditional press and nonpartisan analysts to acknowledge, one of the two major parties, the Republican Party, has become an insurgent outlier—ideologically extreme; contemptuous of the inherited social and economic policy regime; scornful of compromise; unpersuaded by conventional understanding of facts, evidence, and science; and dismissive of the legitimacy of its political opposition. When one party moves this far from the center of American politics, it is extremely difficult to enact policies responsive to the country’s most pressing challenges.

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Burning the Cathars | TLS

Another article bookmarked to read. It seems to be a critical re-assessment of 13th Century Crusades.  Or a review of a book about that subject.

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In South Sudan, Illness Is Killing Child Refugees – NYTimes.com

This tragedy never ends.

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15 Killed in Pakistan by U.S. Drones Aimed at Taliban – NYTimes.com

I find the use of remote automated killing machines extremely evil. It is a parable of distancing and refusal to take responsibility for self.

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Rift Forms in Movement as Belief in Gay ‘Cure’ Is Renounced – NYTimes.com

I was embarrassingly amused to read about “Mr. Pickup” in this article.

Mr. Pickup, an officer of the National Association for Research and Therapy of Homosexuality, composed of like-minded therapists, said reparative therapy had achieved profound changes for thousands of people, including himself.

Mr. Pickup? Some shit you can’t make up.

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Time for Pregnancy-Support Alimony – NYTimes.com

Some interesting speculation about how DNA identification changes the equation around pregnancy.

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What Do the ’60s Tell Us About Today? – NYTimes.com

Some intelligent reaction in the letters column about lumping hippies in with the Gordon Geckos.

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Lifeguard Says He Chose Saving Man Over Saving Job – NYTimes.com

Private company fires a life guard over liability issues. Communal values continue to erode. We don’t have community and government anymore, instead private companies dictate their self servicing version of our common mores.

All governments may be “jerks” as my Romanian friend taught me, but all companies seem to struggle with outright dehumanizing evil. What a choice.

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Olympics Terrorism Fears on Display in Britain – NYTimes.com

Fear in the most closely watched population in the world.

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Japan Fukushima Nuclear Crisis Called ‘Man-Made’ – NYTimes.com

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No Letup in the Health-Law Debate – NYTimes.com

This letter to the editor points out that much uninformed and wrong headed opposition to the Health Law is wide spread.

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fun seaworld pics from jupe

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As we were leaving for Seaworld yesterday, I looked down and saw this picture my grandchildren had made on the driveway.

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I didn’t take my camera out very much. But when I did, I alternated between fam pics and fun pics. I put some fam pics up on Facebook this morning. I thought I would put up the fun pics here.

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I had to take pictures of the flamingos.

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They always make me think of Alice in Wonderland.

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And then there were these weird structures I couldn’t resist photographing.

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This is actually a huge ride of some sort. It wasn’t working when we arrived. But as we left we heard screams from people on it as we passed on our way to our parking spot.

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One of my favorite people pics I took. These are my grandchildren: Nicholas, Savannah and Catherine.

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At the end of each exhibit the exit cleverly channeled us through gift shops. In one these bears caught my eye.

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This morning I am remember the flamingos the most of fondly of all the animals we saw yesterday.

Now to spend the day recuperating.

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organs and books with the grandkids

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Managed to get permission to practice at the local First Baptist church in Corona. Nicholas my grandson was still asleep so I treadmilled. He was up after I finished. I invited him to accompany him and he accepted.

The organ was an electric, a Rodgers. I still used it to demonstrate for Nicholas who had apparently never seen even an electric organ up close. He seemed pretty interested. He is a polite quiet little boy.

Later in the day, Eileen and I took all three grandkids to the annual bookstore visit. We give them a price limit. Then they pick out books for themselves. I usually choose an additional book or two for Nicholas. Yesterday I also chose a couple for Savannah as she is getting to the stage that she reads for fun.

It was a graphic novel adaptation of Macbeth for Nicholas and Mrs. Pigglewiggle and a cool monster book for Savannah yesterday. When I asked Savannah if she had read Mrs. Pigglewiggle she replied it was her favorite book. So we found a different volume of Mrs. Piggleworth’s many collections for her that she hadn’t read.

Later she confessed that her copy of Mrs. Pigglewiggle was very worn and falling apart. I almost wished I had bought her a new copy of that volume.

I can’t remember the title of the monster book I bought for Savannah, only that it was about famous historical monsters like Grendal and the Loch Ness Monster. [Update: Monsterologist above] It turns out that Nicholas had a copy. It seemed to please Savannah to get her own copy. It had fold outs and lost of interesting pictures and information.

I bought myself the latest Granta magazine. Wow. 17 bucks for a magazine.

Eileen spent all her time helping the kids and didn’t buy anything for herself. I forgot to call the piano technician yesterday. Hopefully I’ll remember and call him on my cell sometime today. We are planning to spend the day at Seaworld.

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Physicists Find Elusive Higgs Boson Seen as Key to Universe – NYTimes.com

Pretty good synopsis of the recent discovery.

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Remember Yucca Mountain? – NYTimes.com

One drawback to nuclear energy: what to do with the waste?

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Doughnuts Defeating Poverty – NYTimes.com

I have been reading articles about how Africa is stereotyped by the west as a country (it’s a continent) of poverty (It has some nations that are industrializing and growing like crazy). Here’s another with a broad perspective from a writer who spends time there.

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No Medal for the International Olympic Committee – NYTimes.com

Insights into the bad stuff of the Olympics: elite guidance and rampant commercialism.

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A Carbon Tax, Sensible for All – NYTimes.com

Sensible? Yes. Probable? Not so much.

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spiderman and coraline

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We all went and saw the new Spiderman movie yesterday.  I was reminded of hearing John Irving say in an interview lately that he is someone who “doesn’t like movies.” I probably fall in that category as well. My grandkids, daughter-in-law, son and wife all seemed to like it. And, of course, I love doing things with my family.

This movie’s Spider-Man reminded me much more of the character in the comic book I remember.

The actor who plays Spider Man in the new movie, Andrew Garfield

reminded me of a combination of Tony Perkins

and Sarah Bernhard.

Jes sayin’.

Came home and pulled up an ebook copy of Neil Gaiman’s Coraline. Read it. I liked it. My grandchildren and daughter-in-law don’t seem to have liked the movie based on it. Too creepy. The creepiness is what I liked. Apparently after finishing it Gaiman read it to his six year old and she liked it.

My wife pointed out that our local library (in Holland Michigan) has subscribed to Audiobookcloud.

So by logging on to the Herrick website, one can stream numerous audio books.

Last night we fell asleep to a favorite: Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy O’Toole.

Trying to get up the gumption to go hunting for an organ to practice on today. Also planning to hire a piano technician to come in and make my grand son’s  creaky old upright piano playable.

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10 Unjustly Neglected Novels | Hardware | Sabotage Times

Cool. Have only read one of these.

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How Alice Got to Wonderland by Ted Gioia

Stuck this up on Facebook yesterday. Apparently next week is an anniversary of the first time Dodgson (Carroll) told the story to his nieces.

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China Says No More Shark Fin Soup at State Banquets – NYTimes.com

Ah yes. Those politically correct Chinese.

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Al Jazeera Says Arafat Might Have Been Poisoned – NYTimes.com

No surprise if this is true.

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Voter ID Bills Rejected by Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder – NYTimes.com

I remember when I watched the Twin Towers fall on TV. I said to the people in the room, we might as well go down and register for our national I.D. card. I guess I was wrong. But not about the fear.

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Gaelic Guerrilla – NYTimes.com

Che Guevara and Ireland. Who knew?

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The Downside of Liberty – NYTimes.com

Another article analyzing (and castigating) both right and left. Makes sense to me.

Thanks to the ’60s, we are all shamelessly selfish.

Do your own thing” is not so different than “every man for himself.” If it feels good, do it, whether that means smoking weed and watching porn and never wearing a necktie, retiring at 50 with a six-figure public pension and refusing modest gun regulation, or moving your factories overseas and letting commercial banks become financial speculators. The self-absorbed “Me” Decade, having expanded during the ’80s and ’90s from personal life to encompass the political economy, will soon be the “Me” Half-Century.

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Leah Price on the History of Reading | FiveBooks | The Browser

Counter intuitive notion that more women began reading romances turned out to be a feminist notion.

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casals and 3 unknown masters

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It’s getting on to 7:30 local time so I thought I should get blogging. I read in Conversation with Casals yesterday poolside while my grandson and one of my granddaughters participating in their swimming lessons.

Since it’s a transcribed interview the voice of the elderly Casals comes through pretty clearly.

It’s a lively discussion with many stories and enlightening comments from the Maestro.

I knew the story of Toscanini’s famous ability to record orchestra pieces without varying from recording to recording in the amount of time the movement took.

I admired Casals comment on it:

“I don’t understand what conclusion should be drawn from this [fact]… Toscanini, like all great artists, does not lack in creative fantasy. And since a musical work does not always appear to the artist in exactly the same way, without the slightest differences, it follows that a great interpreter can be carried away by some inspiration of the moment, where the idea of the stop-watch has no place at all.”

Throughout the text Casals mentions composers he has known and whose work he admired. Several of them were unknown to me. In fact one chapter of the interviews is entitled “Three Unknown Masters.”

The three are

Julius Engelbert Röntgen (9 May 1855 – 13 September 1932)
Sir Donald Francis Tovey (17 July 1875 – 10 July 1940
Emanuel Moór - 1863 - 1931

This morning I poked around on imslp.org and Naxos and found scores and recordings by all three. Röntgen seems to me at first hearing to be in the Romantic tradition. Wikipedia says he was influenced by Schumann, Liszt and Brahms. Certainly in the piano trio movement (from No. 10 in A Major)  I listened to today one could hear wifts of Schumann and Brahms.

Unfortunately the piano trio (no. 1 in B minor, Opus 1) by Tovey  I listened to did not keep my attention very long and I moved on to Moor. I now feel that I should give Tovey more tries since I didn’t realizing I was listening to his first opus. A first opus often shows glimmers of where the composer ends up,but usually also has some apprentice aspects that the composer will abandon in his or her mature voice.

Moor seemed to have more immediately attractive musical ideas than Röntgen. Although I did get sucked in to Röntgen’s beautiful slow second movement of his piano trio. I listened to a cello sonata movement by Moor (Sonata 2, Op. 55) and it was quite nice. It was a theme and variations. Unmarked as so. I thought it curious that the cellist took several passages down out of the very high range Moor had written them or at least as was notated in the score available online. Maybe that’s a usual cello thing. Or the performer had a reason to do so.

I believe all three composers wrote pieces for Casals.

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Lonnie Thompson, Climate Scientist, Battles Time and Mortality – NYTimes.com

Dramatic important story of a scientist who was important to the scientific awareness of global warming. This is a very readable and well written historical essay.

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Probation Fees Multiply as Companies Profit – NYTimes.com

For profit companies putting people in jail. One step closer to corrupt Dickens England of the 19th century.

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Dozens of Syrian Soldiers Defect En Masse to Turkey – NYTimes.com

Complex stuff.

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After Ruling, Roberts Makes Getaway From the Scorn – NYTimes.com

Outlining much of the anger generated on right and left by Roberts recent ruling.

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Mexico Elects a New President – NYTimes.com

Enrique Peña Nieto has been elected. He penned an article in yesterday’s NYT:

Mexico’s Next Chapter – NYTimes.com

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BACK IN THE DAY: Communists in the river bottom | Breaking News | PE.com – Press-Enterprise

This is a link to a local Corona/Riverside newspaper. I’m staying in Coruna. I thought this article was interesting and amusing.

REGION: First black Marines had it rough | Breaking News | PE.com – Press-Enterprise

Also from the local paper.

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vacation day 2

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I rose very early yesterday to clean the kitchen enough so that dishes were at least rinsed if not actually washed. Eileen and I pulled away from the house around 5 AM and easily made our flight in Grand Rapids.

The first leg of the journey took us to the Fort Worth Texas Airport. We grabbed some breakfast and I bought a hat. So now I have a Texan hat. I have recently lost my favorite hat so being on vacation is a good time to keep an eye out for new hats. I’m not too happy with the Texas hat, but it is a genuine Texan cowboy straw hat so what the heck.

Between Texas and California, I ran a race between my netbook battery running out and finishing John Irving’s new novel, In One Person. Made it with a few minutes to spare. I keep changing the settings and turning off programs to prolong the life of the battery.

Interestingly the plane from Texas to California was the first plane I have ever been on with onboard wifi. It wasn’t free of course. I think the cheapest you could go was purchase a $9.95 one time permission. But the connecting page did have some free stuff including a nifty real time map of where the plane currently was. I love those. I would have continue to use it but alas the battery was gone after Irving.

I liked the Irving quite a bit. His skill as a plot maker and story teller has improved since the last book of his I read. That may have been Hotel New Hampshire. I recommended the book to Eileen. It’s a good solid story and captures an awful lot about what is happening in gender politics in the USA right now.

This morning as I lay in bed suffering with the three hour time change I listened to a book talk with Irving recording in February on the Scottish BBC. Kind of cool.

We had a good portion of the day to spend with my daughter-in-law and grand kids. As I have mentioned in this space I have been chatting on line with my 12 year old grandson. It was fun to talk to him in person. I showed him the OED online. He is a reader and seemed quite interested in anything I wanted to talk him about including the OED. My grand daughters seemed pleased to see me. Even the dog seemed more relaxed.

After treadmilling, I joined them in the back yard pool. The weather is pretty much perfect right now. We spent a good deal of time squirting each other with the handy dandy “aqua zookas” they had laying around.

My son had a long day of work and came by for a hug, some food and a chat.

I skipped reading first thing this morning. I thought I would blog first since I’m residing in a bit later time zone. My son told me last night he checks my blog daily. I didn’t have a chance to blog yesterday, so I thought I would try to get one up here before morning is entirely gone in Michigan.

Vacation off to a good start. Today I plan to check in to finding an organ to practice on. On the AGO LinkedIN group which I recently joined someone suggested I  use the Organ Historical Society’s index of pipe organs to do this. As far as I can tell they list one organ in Corona at the Lutheran church.

I am designated driver to my grand kids’ piano lessons today. I’m going to ask their teacher if she has any ideas.

My grand son seemed interested in learning a bit more about what the heck a pipe organ is. Yesterday I pulled up some pictures to explain to him how one uses one’s feet to make music on it.

Well it’s about 6:30 local time and no one is stirring here yet but me. I’m going to sign off and put this up on the web.

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How Liberals Win – NYTimes.com

Thoughtful analysis of how political change happens.

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NYTimes eXaminer | An antidote to the “paper of record”

A web site dedicated to criticizing the NYT.

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Hacks/Hackers » Journalism x Technology

Crowd sourcing and changing journalism as we know it.

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Article Changes Are Shown in a Tool Created by Outsiders – NYTimes.com

I’ve taken several of the links today from this article by the NYT public editor. He describes how online articles change over a period of time. He mentions that he publicly called the NYT to track this and create a better understanding and transparency of this process. They said it was too expensive. Now someone else has done it for them and some other news sources. It looks a bit klunky but very interesting and good to know about if you are tracking down a specific emerging story or its history.

NewsDiffs | Tracking Online News Articles Over Time

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I have been reading in James Joyce again. He makes me double check my understanding of concepts and words as well as learn new ones.

Pyrrhic victory – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Stephen Daedalus is teaching his students in the first part of Ulysses. He expects them to know quite a bit. I checked out his reference to Pyrrhic wars.

I also ran down the origin of “The Ballad of the Joking Jesus” which Joyce uses in this novel. Apparently it was written by a friend of his.

The Song of the Cheerful (but slightly Sarcastic) Jesus – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

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Sri Lanka Arrests 9 Web Site Journalists – NYTimes.com

It’s dangerous to be a journalist in many places in the world.

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In Health Ruling, Vindication for Donald Verrilli – NYTimes.com

Some behind the scenes about the lawyer who argued for the government in front of the Supremes on what it’s like to get lambasted and then slightly vindicated.

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Count Robert de La Rochefoucauld – Telegraph

Thank you to Jeremy Bastian my quasi son in law for linking to this obit on Facebook.

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death and james joyce

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I messed up the time for the funeral yesterday. I arrived at about 9:25 AM thinking it was to begin at 10 AM. No one about. I checked the bulletin, but no time was given on the program. I had looked earlier at my google calendar and noticed that while I had it on my calendar at 10 AM, the church did not have it on it’s calendar.

I phoned Eileen and left a message that I would be later than I thought and settled down and practiced until my boss arrived. She confirmed that the funeral began at 11. She said the family had been funny about publicizing the service and that’s why it wasn’t on the church’s calendar. I told her I didn’t think that “private” worship services were allowed in the Episcopal church. She confirmed this pointing out that she had announced it Sunday. But also said there were the usual extenuating circumstances of a family in grief acting a bit off balance.

That made sense to me.

It was an odd funeral. The family had requested there be no homily or Eucharist. There was some serious grief in the air. I was surprised at how strongly they sang “Amazing Grace.” Made me think more of a communal celebration might have been healing for them. But what do I know?

I was glad I had laid out several organ pieces in advance. I used pieces based on hymns like “What a friend we have in Jesus” and the hymn tune Beech Spring which has a strong comforting feeling (I think).

The rest of the day I was exhausted much like a Sunday. I think it’s draining for me to be in a room with so many grieving praying people. Not surprising.

I seem to be renewing my interest in James Joyce. This morning I spent some time with Finnegan’s Wake online. Very helpful to have the footnotes at this web site. I also read the first few pages of Ulysses on a free ebook.

Joyce’s words are very familiar to me. I have read these portions of his work many times.  It is comforting to reread them.

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Health Care Act Questions and Answers – NYTimes.com

I continue to learn about this.

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How the Army Won Egypt’s Election – NYTimes.com

“Meet the new boss, same as the old boss.”

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Murdoch Praises News Corporation’s Newspapers – NYTimes.com

Interesting move. Murdoch is definitely moving toward digital news.

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Tangled Passages – NYTimes.com

Online confessions of NYT editor Patrick LaForge:

No one sets out to write an opening sentence so long that it frustrates and irritates readers. But that’s what we sometimes do.

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the organist muses on his work as he sits in the backyard

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I’m sitting in my backyard. The weather is beautiful this morning. There’s a nice breeze and it’s in the seventies.

Busy day yesterday, at least before noon. I set myself tasks to do before we leave. Some were weekly tasks anyway like balance Eileen’s and my checkbook and my Mom’s checkbook, pay bills for both households, grocery shop, bank, stuff like that. I also had to prepare bulletin-ready versions of my Emmaus Fraction Anthem and Holy, Holy. I didn’t revise the Holy, Holy. I just changed the font to match.

I turned in the music for the Sunday after I get back from California. I realized this morning that I had needlessly chosen a prelude. My original plan was to do an instrumental version of my Fraction Anthem so that people in the congregation could hear it a few times before the service. So I won’t need the prelude I chose. Hmmm. It was also a composition of mine based on the tune, Sharpethorne by Erik Routley (link to pdf of this piece). I hope I’m not falling into the trap of doing too much of my own work at my church.

Anyway,  I will change this when I get back.

Since the closing hymn on July 15th will be the hoary old Anglican hymn, “O day of peace, sung to Parry’s popular tune, Jerusalem, I thought I would schedule a postlude in that English style.

Not in the mood to learn one of Parry’s pieces I own, I went over to the IMSLP Stanford page and found some fine organ pieces. Two opuses of short organ preludes and postludes (Op. 101 & 102) are collections I will return to. I know I’m a broken record but I am constantly amazed by what is available online.

I also put in for the check for my sub.

Today I have a double funeral for a husband and wife who died within days of each other. There were distressingly young by today’s standards. The husband was 61 I believe and the wife in her late 50s.

I spent some time choosing some soothing and appropriate organ music for the prelude and postlude. This is unusual. Usually I just grab something at the last minute, play what I have ready for the upcoming Sunday or improvise something. Typically  I rely on a little classical piano music for the prelude. Today I’m planning to do organ music exclusively. I chose chorale preludes on tunes and other stuff that will hopefully comfort or not distract people in what I’m expecting to be an unusually grief filled ceremony.

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The Nation Summer Reading List | The Nation

Book suggestions from crazy liberals. I bought one as a Kindle book, The Water-man’s Daughter by Emma Ruby-Sachs. Another I put in my cart on Amazon to download on vacation if I think I need another book: So Much Pretty: A Novel by Cara Hoffman.

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Terje Rypdal at Le Poisson Rouge – NYTimes.com

This musician sounded interesting to me. I bookmarked the article to remind myself to Spotify him.

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San Antonio’s Mayor Asks for 1/8¢ Tax to Finance Prekindergartens – NYTimes.com

Radical notion. Taxing to raise  money for education.

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Phoenix Area Rattled by Booby-Trapped Flashlights – NYTimes.com

Great. IEDs in the USA.

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Flavor Is the Price of Tomatoes’ Scarlet Hue, Geneticists Say – NYTimes.com

This whole news story is somehow not surprising.

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States Face a Challenge to Meet Health Law’s Deadline – NYTimes.com

It is interesting to watch this battle unfold. Governors who are deliberately not preparing for implementation of the Health Care Bill are taking a huge risk.

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CNN and Fox’s Supreme Court Mistake – NYTimes.com

Fox did not issue an apology. Sooprise sooprise. Fair and Balanced.

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Don Grady, Who Played Robbie on ‘My Three Sons,’ Dies at 68 – NYTimes.com

Robbie died. He played the oldest son in this pic.

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