I’m hoping I’m not being foolish in accepting more work from the Hope College Dance department. The chair called me this week and offered me another class to accompany, “Modern Dance.”  It will be my first non-classical ballet class. The teacher is a woman I have worked with before and actually have seen her perform Modern Dance with her husband in a duet piece.

I’m scheduled to accompany an 11:00 AM class today, as well as an evening warm-up for this evening’s dance concert. The reason I’m hoping it’s not foolish is that I seem to be on a pretty hectic schedule and am pretty fatigued. Now I have accepted more work.

I told my wife last night that it would not be my first choice to “stretch” myself at all when I am this stressed and tired.  Although it will probably be a bit of new task to accompany Modern Dance, I’m pretty sure I have the chops. I just would like some time off from stuff and I don’t really see it in the cards.

The Modern Dance class will meet three times a week which brings my load up to four classes that meet over all five weekdays.

Yesterday was another pretty strenuous day. Ballet class, meeting with rector and children’s choir director, meeting with rector, exercise, piano trio rehearsal then a bout of cooking (made yolk-less quiche again), then another ballet class.

My piano trio decided it would perform the first movement from Haydn’s lovely E minor piano trio H. XV no. 12. a week from Sunday as the prelude. Without repeats it clocks in at about six minutes. I had prepared a baroque violin sonata by Loeillet for us to perform that day. But after we read through the Haydn movement we all agreed it would be a fun prelude to perform in the near future. We will be doing the Gigue from the Loeillet as the postlude that day.

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I found it interesting to compare two obits of the recently deceased journalist, David S. Broder.

David Broder, Political Journalist and Pundit, Dies at 81 by Bruce Weber of the New York Times

David Broder, 81, dies; set ‘gold standard’ for political journalism by Adam Bernstein of the Washington Post.

I read the NYT obit first and was struck by the negative jabs it took at this man while acknowledging his prominence and abilities.  Weber writes that Broder’s writing style could be “pedestrian.” He mentions a recent profile in Time magazine which he describes as “flattering.” He quotes Paul Begalia’s assessment that Broder was a “gasbag” and “the Hindenberg of pundits.” Only later does Weber reveal that Begalia was the subject of Broder’s implicit disapproval in his book, ““Behind the Front Page” (1987).”

None of this was in the Washington Post obit where Broder worked. Broder did work for the New York Times briefly but left quickly and apparently very dissatisfied. Interesting to compare the obits of the two rival papers.

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Peter King tempers rhetoric on Muslims as congressional hearing gets under way

I haven’t read this article about the King hearings, but I did read one which suggested that if King was truly interested in home-grown terrorists in the US he should check with the Southern Poverty Law Center for one of their hundreds of violent groups they track. I’m a fan of this organization.

I deplore the direction King is taking our public discussion. What I have heard from the hearings from yesterday hold out the hope that this angry politician is inadvertently allowing some reasoned and emotional assessments of the travesty of hate against Muslims in America.

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Give Peaceful Resistance a Chance – NYTimes.com

“Research shows that nonviolent resistance is much more likely to produce results, while violent resistance runs a greater risk of backfiring.” Cool.

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What the West Can Do to Help the Libyan Rebels – NYTimes.com

The Case for a No-Fly Zone Over Libya – NYTimes.com

A couple of articles about possible US intervention in Libya. I have no idea how I feel about this, but it is fascinating to track and watch. Glad I don’t have to make this decision.

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The New American Pessimism by Charles Simic | NYRBlog | The New York Review of Books

This is a short little article I bookmarked to read by Simic the poet.

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It’s hard to know exactly what it means when someone says, as a woman did last night after service, “Nice music!”

After an hour of readings, preaching, praying, singing, choral music and even a dab of organ music, it’s not clear what struck a person as effective unless they specify (which they sometimes do).

A musician I respect once told me that I play “ornamented chorales” well. Ornamented organ chorales are settings which take a hymn melody and sort of riff on it like a baroque jazz musician. Usually the melody is featured using its unique solo sound like a reed stop or beautiful flute stop. The movement of the  melody and harmony is slowed down considerably.

Last night I came into the church area from the choir rehearsal room and noticed a relaxed meditative quiet among people waiting for the service. I was thankful that the boss and I had decided not to have me do a congregational rehearsal of the new Sanctus and Agnus Dei they would be asked to sing in this service.  We had agonized about how to move from a little teaching session into the prayer itself. Options included rehearsal – organ prelude – silent procession…. or organ prelude – rehearsal – silent procession.

One problem was the organ prelude was Bach’s “O Mensch, bewein dein Sunde gross” (O Man, bewail your great sins), one of those slow beautiful ornamented chorale preludes.  Indeed, in my mind, it is the prototype of the form.

This is the second Ash Wednesday in a row I have scheduled it for the prelude.

So we opted to see if the congregation would get the hang of the two simple melodies without the rehearsal and with the assistance of the choir.

I did play the prelude well last night.  The choir was experiencing anxiety over the under-rehearsed William Byrd motet.  I did my best to cheer lead them through the last minute preparation and tried to use my best non-anxious technique.

The piece is notated in such a way that it presents challenges for even a fluent musician. The time signature is 4/2. The beat is the half note (actually last night I beat the whole note). This means that half notes work like quarter notes usually do, whole notes like half notes and so on even using the ever popular breve (double whole note).

So “seat-of’the-pants” good musicians sometimes stumble over the music. And of course notes and rhythms are just a small part of what makes music music. Difficult to do expression and other fine tuning without the correct notes and rhythms.

So my first task was to rehearse notes and rhythms as much as possible. I chose a quicker tempo than in previous rehearsals. I thought maybe this would help the music make more sense both interpretively and to the singers themselves. This worked until singers began to make rhythmic mistakes.  Hence the anxiety in the rehearsal.

I managed to move them into thinking a bit about the tone quality and cool pure vowels needed for Byrd. Worked on the beginning of the piece. Suggested we sing a couple of especially lovely sections softly and also fixed the ending by slowing up the final measures and then ending with a lovely soft chord on the word, “clear,” as in “none shall be justified and stand before thee clear.” I love the Byrd texts.

This had the double effect of creating a possible musical performance of an under-rehearsed piece and also suggesting to the more alert members of the group that there was a way to save the performance and, hopefully,  giving them the possibility of relaxing and doing well.

In the service, itself, I asked the singers to take a deep breath and remember the sound of the beginning few measures. Then I told them the tempo would be slightly slower to allow us the space to perform well.

The performance was much more musical than it had a right to be, and still wasn’t near realizing the potential of this group of singers. It was lovely however.

Speaking of “nice music” I spent time at the piano yesterday with Brahms, Ives and Beethoven. Ives often leads me to Beethoven. Beethoven permeates the Concord sonata of Ives as does its quintessential “American” nature. I was reading yesterday a commentator who said that Americans hear Ives with a “shock of recognition.” This is also the title of a novel I admire by William Gaddis. Great concept! That great art is appreciation with an emotion like recognition.

Anyway, I played through and rehearsed Brahms waltzes, Concord Sonata of Ives, and two early Beethoven piano sonatas yesterday. Nice music, indeed.

Finally, I ran across two new pieces that I couldn’t resist purchasing yesterday.

The first is a Concerto for Flute and Recorder in e minor (TW52) by Telemann. A writer in the New York Times reviewed a performance of this piece and called it lively and “Gypsy-inflected.” (link to the review). I was intrigued and listened to the snippets on Amazon and then bought MP3s of the whole concerto for four bucks.

The other piece was “Central Market” by Tyondai Braxton which was mentioned in another review which began with the sentence: “The Wordless Music Orchestra had a kazoo section for its concert on Monday at Alice Tully Hall, along with six electric guitars. There was whistling, too.”

I went on Warp.net’s Braxton page and listened to a bit of it. Liked it so much I also bought the MP3 album on Amazon. Braxton struck me at first as a bit of a 21st century Zappa type. This morning I re-listened carefully to the entire album and am not sure it will hold up to a lot of replaying. But it is delightful inspired music. Nice music, that is.

Harold Rheingold tweeted a link to two interviews he did recently preparing to write a new book. The first is “Pierre Lévy on Collective Intelligence”

They discuss some very interesting evolving definitions and ideas.

Collective intelligence exists in the animal world. In the human world the connectivity of the “internets” represents an important amplifier of this idea as it helps to advance our collective reasoning and knowledge.

An emerging skill is one of curation in which a synergy is created between personal knowledge management and collective knowledge management.

The example Lévy offers is when one tweets a link with a comment. The comment categorizes the link and represents a form of personal knowledge management. But it also is offered to others in the collective. Lévy calls this signaling and he also calls it the result of new kind of idea:

“We say that everybody [online] becomes an author, an editor, a publisher but also everybody is becoming a specialist in library science because when you categorize information, you organize it for youself but at the same time you organize it for others when you share it contributing to the common memory. This is a new thing when done in a conscious way…. (Emphasis added…. I have roughly transcribed Lévy’s comments on the video).”

Rheinhold and Lévy both call this knowledge citizenship.

Rheinhold points out that choosing what to share comes under the old adage of the categorical imperative.… that is “share with others the quality of ideas you would like them to share with you.”

The other interview Rheingold linked was one he did with Jimmy Wales the founder of Wikipedia. I haven’t listened to it yet.

I made mp3s of these interviews along with a recent talk by Cory Doctorow (link to page where you can get that).

Yesterday David Brooks had some interesting stuff in his column which seems to relate to this conversation.

The New Humanism by David Brooks – NYTimes.com

Brooks says we often limit our understanding of ourselves to reason and/or emotion.  He cites some new talents and strengths in humans that are the result of combined insights in the fields of “neuroscience, psychology, sociology, behavioral economics and so on.”

I am still pondering these:

Attunement: the ability to enter other minds and learn what they have to offer.

Equipoise: the ability to serenely monitor the movements of one’s own mind and correct for biases and shortcomings.

Metis: the ability to see patterns in the world and derive a gist from complex situations.

Sympathy: the ability to fall into a rhythm with those around you and thrive in groups.

Limerence: This isn’t a talent as much as a motivation. The conscious mind hungers for money and success, but the unconscious mind hungers for those moments of transcendence when the skull line falls away and we are lost in love for another, the challenge of a task or the love of God. Some people seem to experience this drive more powerfully than others.

(from the article linked above)

A couple of automatic features combined on my desktop computer so that I lost a bunch of edits I made in an exhausted fog last night to a cello part I am preparing.

Overnight, Windows did an update and automatically attempted to restart.  Whenever Finale asks me if it should autosave I always say yes. Apparently it hadn’t asked me about that and I neglected to manually save a bunch of work before giving up last night.

So this morning I got up to find my desktop stalled in an attempt to restart. It had, however, managed to shut-down Finale where my work had not been saved. So about an hour lost.

Lots of “user-friendly” features defeat me.

Finale itself had defeated me earlier. I was unable to create multiple measure number areas in a single doc. I know this probably sounds like gobbledy-gook, never the less the dang program purports to do something (and in all likelihood DOES do this).  But the way I was doing it didn’t work.

Of course, with Finale there’s always a “workaround” solution. And I figured out one. Just not as elegant as it could have been.

I had a nice chat with my bud, Jordan VanHemert. He is a musician friend of mine who continues to kindly reach out to me when he’s in town.  He is a senior at Central Mich University where he studies music. Yesterday when he said to me that he was finds it exhausting, I misunderstood him for a minute and thought he meant our conversations when he meant student teaching multiple grade levels.  Amusing.

Anyway, he saw my Ive’s Concord Sonata score sitting on my piano and started talking about Ives and his first exposure to Ives. He was visiting a university, I believe, and heard a wind instrument ensemble transcription of the third movement (III. “The Alcotts”) of this piece which he instantly liked.

Jordan also mentioned Mozart’s Bassoon concerto as one that a roommate had performed which he also liked.

After he left, I purchased mp3s online of the lovely Mozart concerto.

Also, throughout the rest of the day, I carried around the Ives score and when I got a minute (of which I had very few for myself yesterday), I played through it several times.

I have always seen the Ives Concord sonata as an impossible mountain to climb as player. Ives wrote music that was complex and idiosyncratic. I like his music very much, but haven’t learned much of it. Interestingly I found “The Alcotts” easier than the other movements. Not sure I have ever played through it all the way before. Probably have but just don’t remember.

I found the 2.5 hours of ballet class yesterday a bit exhausting. I fear part of it was the impending Worship Commission meeting I had to attend afterwards. By the time of the meeting I was pretty punchy. I try to sort of “co-teach” these meetings with my boss as she and I try to help this community take “next steps” in its evolving choices about how it prays.

I know the liturgical theology pretty thoroughly and have had years of experience of helping lay people think about what their ritual prayer actually is saying and how it compares to what they intend and the design of the prayer.

I think I was helpful last night. But as I say, I was punchy.

Played a piece by Daniel Pinkham called “Postlude” as the postlude yesterday.  Oddly enough there was scattered applause after I finished this sharply dissonant and pretty abstract short piece. I have been playing Pinkham’s organ music since the 70s when I first began playing organ.

IN the 70s, I worked in a little Episcopal church in Oscoda, Michigan which looked out on the beach. I would sometimes prop open the door near the organ and listen to the waves as I practiced. There are a set of voluntaries by Pinkham that I learned then that when I play I still hear the fog horn from the nearby Lake Huron.

I’m feeling fatigued and emotionally drained. Pretty typical for a Monday.  Yesterday at church, someone was very nice to me who usually doesn’t speak to me or notice I’m around. Very weird. Also after service a visitor introduced himself to me as a truck driver from North Dakota. He said that he has attended hundreds of Episcopal churches around the country as he travels. He was a slight almost elderly looking unshaven man in a rumpled light brown suitcoat. I thought at first his tie was an American flag design but when he came closer I could see that it was just a wild mixture of muted colors.

He told me he keeps a journal in which he records his church visits and saves the “pew handouts” (He waved his bulletin at me when he said this).  He said that each church has things that are “special” about it and that if he was a writer he had lots of material with which he could write stories.  Little did he suspect that he, himself, was becoming fodder for my daily blog post. I tried to make him feel welcome but couldn’t help but wonder why he came all the way over to the music area and introduced himself to me.  Just sharing his presence, I guess.

This week will be pretty strenuous for an old guy like me. I have ballet every day with some shifts to allow for the performances Thursday, Friday and Saturday. On these days I will be working a bit later (5:30-6:45) and playing for the warm-ups for the dancers who choose to warm-up in a classical ballet way for the evening’s performance. On Friday evening, Eileen and I have tickets to see the performance. We are planning to meet downtown and go for drinks and food. Then see “Dance 37″ as they call this dance extravaganza.

The”37” represents the number of years they have been presenting a dance performance from the Ballet department. My guess is that is probably about how old this young department is.

Wednesday of this week is Ash Wednesday so I have a service to play that evening. Am planning for the choir to sing a lovely three part setting by William Byrd, “Attend mine humble prayer” [link to pdf of the music]. The choir doesn’t know this as well as I would wish. This piece was a bit of turning point for me this year. I realized that I would be more prudent to pick music that could be done well with far less preparation than a piece like this.

I will double the vocal parts on the piano Wednesday and it will probably not be a train wreck. I will shoot for a musical performance (when musicians say “musical performance” they mean one that not only includes a rendering of the notes and rhythms accurately, but also draws the listener in and past the notes to the beauty and meaning of the music…. not always that easy but always the goal of a good musician or musical organization like a choir). But will actually be satisfied if the performance is not a poor one.

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‘What I Really Want Is Someone Rolling Around in the Text’ – NYTimes.com

The Millions : A Year in Marginalia: Sam Anderson

Two articles about writing in books. The first led me to the second.

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Language Log » True Grit isn’t true

I loved the Coen brothers version of True Grit.  Article on the lack of contractions in the movie (do not instead of don’t) and it’s authenticity.

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IMF, the Real Dictator in Tunisia | The Media Freedom Foundation

IMF = International Monetary Fund.

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The Big Payday at Your Expense – Libya and Gas Prices | Dailycensored.com

Gas prices spiking. This article asks “Can you find Libya among the top fifteen nations supplying the United States with crude oil?” I love this site.

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Talk Doesn’t Pay, So Psychiatry Turns Instead to Drug Therapy – NYTimes.com

I like the fact that my Mother’s mental health care workers are so conservative about her mood drugs. They prescribe them, but in low doses and monitor pretty closely. She sees her “talk shrink” this week.

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Thurgood Marshall – NYTimes.com

Little editorial on a hero of mine.

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I have been listening to the music of Robert Johnson and Blind Willie Johnson for the past few days. I discovered that I had not ripped all of their music to my hard drive, so I did so and then proceeded to play all the way through their music while I exercised. I do love this music.

For the the third Saturday in a row, Eileen and I worked at church photocopying (legally), collating, numbering and stuffing anthems for the choir. Earlier in the day I finished picking hymns and anthems through Easter Sunday. I just emailed the pastor, the secretary, the assistant pastor and the youth choir director a copy of this work.  It was a huge task to find anthems I could do with a shifting small group of choristers, but I believe I now have a plan for the hymns and anthems.

I also spent an hour or so cleaning the kitchen. It kind of felt like the same sort of task as picking hymns and anthems: something I have been wanting to get done.

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2012: Yes, maybe, and unelectable – The Boston Globe

A bitter little rundown of the GOP 2012 presidential candidates.

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College the Easy Way – NYTimes.com

Yet another article on diminishing value of schools in the U.S.

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Gates Attains New Level of Biting Candor – NYTimes.com

I loved this quote from Defense Secretary Gates:

“….Washington, a city, he has said, ‘where so many people are lost in thought because it’s such unfamiliar territory.’ ”

and of course his recent clarifying comment about US military commitment in Libya

Mr. Gates told Congress. “A no-fly zone begins with an attack on Libya to destroy the air defenses. That’s the way you do a no-fly zone. And then you can fly planes around the country and not worry about our guys being shot down. But that’s the way it starts.”

I ran across an interesting idea about connecting online:

Curating as in “A person who manages, administers or organizes a collection, either independently or employed by a museum, library, archive or zoo” en.wiktionary.org/wiki/curator

I heard Steve Rosenbaum talking about this on a podcast from last week’s On The Media Show (link to transcript and audio).

If I understand the idea, it is that when people link and recommend articles on line, they are “curating.” This is different from finding material via search engines like Google since Google uses ‘bots and super secret formulas to rank pages on their search results (algorithms).

This strikes at the heart of one of the uses I have admired and proposed over and over for the web: connecting and learning about stuff.  Rosenbaum seems to be in touch with the idea that “monetizing” everything online drains content at some level.

Howard Reingold has been teaching how to sift through the web to the gold of actual reliable content for years (see his Crap Detector 101 article here for a taste).  He applies critical thinking in a concrete way. Reingold is the reason I began using Twitter. He defined it as the “on-going present.” I continue to use it that way.

Which leads me to all sorts of random “curators” like myself who pass along ideas and links. It’s pretty easy to sift out the totally monetized tweeters not to mention the porn tweeters.  This morning I am currently following 1,098 people and organizations on Twitter.  I have made lists that allow me to further sift these people. The most important one for me is the “family” list in which I can see if people in my extended family are commenting via Twitter. But I also have lists of “good links” like Reingold, “news,” “conservatives,” “liberals,” and “church musicians.”

I “sift” the web using the techniques I have developed as a critical news reader and consumer over the years.  I see PR, propaganda, slanted reporting, partisan framing, and other methods of distortion as basically forms of dishonesty.

Faking honesty and authenticity is not that easy if one is looking for signs of commercial origins and propaganda in consumer information. It’s not that easy to “talk like a person” as the web designer advice goes when all you’re thinking of is the “golden goose” of making lots of money with the web.

I constantly detect fallacious argument technique in all areas of information dissemination including “curated” comments or even just comments from people I know and love. (once again here’s the link to a list of fallacious arguments… I continue to return to this list and it helps me think critically)

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http://www.npr.org/blogs/alltechconsidered/

Andy Carvin is senior strategist for NPR’s Social Media Desk. He blogs from the link above. Here’s a link to an interview with him about using Twitter to report from Libya (where no reporters are currently allowed):

http://www.onthemedia.org/transcripts/2011/02/25/02

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Neil Postman – Bullshit and the Art of Crap-Detection « Critical Thinking Snippets

Postman died in 2003. He was an early critic of the impact of the media explosion on public rhetoric and someone I followed and read.  Ran across this article writing this post and had to bookmark it to read later

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WikiLeaks Soldier Left Naked in Cell, Lawyer Says – NYTimes.com

I think the Assange case is shaping up to be a paranoid’s dream of governments shutting down transparency.  Somebody is very pissed about WikiLeaks and is moving quickly to punish the perps. Or maybe it’s just me. heh.

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My trio was kind enough to indulge me and sight read through the first two movements of Mendelssohn’s C minor piano trio yesterday. Later I read through several of his organ works on the organ. I seem to have this composer on my mind a lot lately.

I continue to be a bit stressed. I had a conversation with my boss yesterday about how I am strategizing to deal with an ever dwindling number of people showing up to be in the choir. My strategy is to simplify. I have been working on changing an old arrangement of “Jesus Met the Woman at the Well.” Years ago, I took Chanticleer’s arrangement and simplified it from four parts to two part men and women choir for a church choir I was working with. I thought that in my present gig it would be more satisfying to the singers if I went back and filled in the alto and tenor parts in the arrangement. After watching an increasing number of singers skip rehearsals and miss services this season, I had the idea that the original simpler version would be probably be a better choice (and far less work for me).

The problem this choir is having is that it is dwindling in numbers. So when a few people are absent it represents a larger and larger percentage of the group that is not present. For instance this weekend I have two singers who have told me that they will not be present, a third who said he probably won’t be.  Of the regulars, this leaves about 6 singers. There are a few singers who are irregular in their attendance and they might or might not be there.  Also one or more of the 6 could not show due to one reason or another.  This is not just a performance problem. I like to choose music that takes some preparation. When people miss Sunday they also miss the post service rehearsal. Our numbers are almost too small to really think of as a choir. Oh well. It’s what I have had to deal with a lot in my “career” as a church musician.

I have failed in my attempt to draw these singers into deeper commitment by scheduling interesting music for them to learn and sing ( William Byrd, good gospel tunes, my own compositions). The only remaining strategy is to choose material that I can do with little preparation and shifting small numbers of singers.  I need to choose some of them today because I remain behind in planning.

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Supreme Court Rules on AT&T Case – NYTimes.com

More on recent Supreme Court rulings. I like the fact that Chief Justice Roberts talks about word meaning in his ruling and comments on the bench.

“Responding to a request for information, an individual might say, ‘that’s personal’,” Chief Justice Roberts wrote. “A company spokeswoman, when asked for information about the company, would not.

“In fact, we often use the word ‘personal’ to mean precisely the opposite of business-related: We speak of personal expenses and business expenses, personal life and work life, personal opinion and a company’s view.”

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Huckabee Questions Obama Birth Certificate – NYTimes.com

PolitiFact | Mike Huckabee said Barack Obama grew up in Kenya

Both of these reports scrupulously say that Huckabee was NOT questioning the place of Obama’s birth and that he retracted his incorrect comments about Obama’s Kenya childhood (Obama was raised in Hawaii, not Kenya).

A classic example of the technique described in Don’t Think of an Elephant: Know Your Values and Frame the Debate by Lakoff.

As a potential 2012 presidential candidate, Huckabee can thus have it both ways. He can remind the public of these bogus charges and disavow them at the same time.

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Then there’s the recent international scandals on cheating and plagarism.

Internet Cheating Scandal Shakes Japan Universities – NYTimes.com

German Defense Minister Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg Resigns – NYTimes.com

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Finally, it looks like some of the questions raised a few years ago about instituting common sense procedures are having some effect.

Fewer Bloodstream Infections in Intensive Care, C.D.C. Says – NYTimes.com

“Bacteria like staphylococcus can be warded off with simple measures like washing hands, wearing sterile gowns and drapes, and following the proper techniques for inserting and maintaining the lines.”

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I found the word, “houseman,” in Peter Gomes’ obituary. The sentence was “He worked as a houseman to help pay for his education.”

When I use the “define-colon” google search command these two definitions pop up:

Definitions of houseman on the Web:

• intern: an advanced student or graduate in medicine gaining supervised practical experience (`houseman’ is a British term)
  wordnetweb.princeton.edu/perl/webwn
• Houseman was a term previously used for a junior British hospital doctor now known as a house officer.
  en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Houseman

But when I click on the little question mark that pops up when I highlight the word on the New York Times article, the apparently correct definition came up:

house·man (hous‘m?n‘, -m?n) 

n.
A man employed for cleaning, maintenance, and other general work in a house or hotel.

Weird.

I had a very busy day yesterday.  I made quiche and salad to take to share with my staff, exercised, accompanied two ballet classes and then met Eileen for drinks and supper at the pub.

Recently I purchased new shoes that have special supports in them. When the sales-person examined my feet he said that usually people with my kind of feet have a lot of back pain and other kinds of pain as a result.  I don’t have any of this, but since walking and exercising in my new shoes I am experience a lot of soreness. Hopefully this is temporary.

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Supreme Court: AT&T can’t keep bad behavior a secret

This article by Nate Anderson on the Ars Technia website begins with this hilarious paragraph:

The Supreme Court decided (PDF) today that AT&T can’t keep embarrassing corporate information that it submits to the government out of public view; “personal privacy” rights do not apply to corporations. “We trust that AT&T will not take it personally” concluded the ruling.

Who knew the Supreme Court could be so witty?

Supreme Court and personal privacy: Corporations don’t have ‘personal privacy’ rights, Supreme Court rules – latimes.com

Hopefully these rulings represent a trend.

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Proposed Texas immigration law contains convenient loophole for ‘the help’ – Yahoo! News

Thanks to the Davepaul for this link.  A bill proposed by the same person (State Representative Debbie Riddle) who “made headlines last year when she claimed unnamed FBI officials had told her that pregnant women from the Middle East were traveling to America as tourists to give birth, and then raising their children to be terrorists who could later enter the U.S. freely as citizens — so-called “terror babies,” a devious offshoot of “anchor babies.” She became somewhat infamous on the web when she stumbled repeatedly in a CNN interview about the claims, complaining later that host Anderson Cooper’s line of questioning was more intense than she had prepared for.”

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Slashing Community Service – NYTimes.com

Specifically “AmeriCorps, Habitat for Humanity, Teach for America, City Year, Foster Grandparents and others.” I can’t understand the blind anger that is driving our Congress to cut programs for the weakest in our society. It seems to me misinformed, at best and bigoted at worst.

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Why Your Boss Is Wrong About You – NYTimes.com

I love it that this article appeared the day I had a staff meeting.

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Got up this morning and made Banana Muffins from my new used copy of Moosewood Restaurant Low-Fat Favorites.  They are in the oven as I write this. I over bought bananas last week. Eileen is needing soft food ever since her orthodontist installed some new braces hardware. Bananas are a good solution, but one can have too much of a good thing.

I listened to WBUR’s Monday podcast of “Here and Now” and here Charles Ferguson’s interview from last year about his movie, “Inside Job.”

From the website:

“Taking the stage to accept an Oscar for best feature length documentary last night, “Inside Job” director Charles Ferguson stuck to his film’s topic.

“Forgive me,” he said. “I must start by pointing out that three years after our horrific financial crisis caused by massive fraud, not a single financial executive has gone to jail, and that’s wrong.” The crowd erupted in cheers.

In his documentary, Ferguson blames the crisis on out-of-control Wall Street financiers, lax regulators and business school and economics professors who lauded questionable financial industry practices while taking home millions from Wall Street firms.”

Ferguson’s first career was as a Poly-Sci PHD holder, second as an IT guy, finally he started making films.

His words in the WBUR interview describe a devastating picture of corruption and arrogance in the government, the business community and the academic world. Sooprise,sooprise.

Installed a couple of plug-ins to my Chrome browser yesterday.

The first is called “Read Later Fast.”  As far as I can tell, it saves the page you are looking at for later viewing offline or online. Either way you have to access the article using the interface in the program which allows you to either see it in a frame as it was online or just view the text version (with photos). It is not saved in the cloud but rather the computer you are using which makes it less functional for me.

The other plug-in, “Quick Note,” holds more promise for a useful tool for me since it stores the notes on Diigo which can be accessed from any computer.  You add photos to your note as well as text. Cool.

Both plug-ins were developed by “Diigo,” the online bookmarking site I use.

I use the “Diigolet” version because Diigo was only Chrome compatible originally with this plug-in. I found this web site/program by getting bumped from service to service after the New York Times idiotically discontinued it’s original online article-archive function.

So when I list off links at the end of posts, I am often referring the ones I have bookmarked within the last 24 hours, either because I find them significant or plan to read them.

Here are today’s links.

U.S. Prepares Military Options on Libya – NYTimes.com

That’s right kiddies, our warships are heading to Libya. Yikes!

A Right Without a Remedy – NYTimes.com

Editorial about the rights of Guantanamo prisoners and the US judicial system.

Curbing That Pesky Rude Tone – NYTimes.com

Civility is always on my mind, as well as fallacies in logic and propaganda.

Go Easy on Yourself, a New Wave of Research Urges – NYTimes.com

This is a NTY blog. It linked me to my next link.

Self-Compassion

The idea in the first article is that research is supporting the concept of “Self-compassion” as a factor in healthy approaches to living. The second link is more information about the idea itself which apparently originates in Easter philosophies.

RELEVANT Magazine – Shane Claiborne on a New Way to Pray

I sheepishly include this. It’s about people who can more easily live their faith than pray it. Aptly describes my present community.

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Couple of final notes.

First, the muffins were pretty bad. Since beginning this post I have had breakfast with my lovely wife who good-naturedly ate one of them. I had two. Moosewood doesn’t seem to be able to adapt their wonderful recipes very successfully to be low-fat. Darn.

Secondly, I am still plugging away at Little, Big by John Crowley.

Good stuff from last night’s reading:

“Trooty is booth, booth trooty,” He said “that is all ye know on earth, and all …”

“I need to go,” she said. “To the john.”

And I often feel like this:

“It was probably he who had it wrong, who saw it from some peculiar useless personal point of view no one else shared, no one.”

Of course, my wife is extremely supportive and excluded from this sentiment.

Learned two new words as well:

cerement – a pall

epopts – initiates

I spent quite a bit of time playing Mendelssohn on the piano yesterday. As the day proceeded I seemed to be slipping into mild melancholy.

Later in the day, the local shoe shop called to say a pair of my shoes were ready to be picked up along with the modified insert they had prepared at my request.  Oddly, this seemed to be the turning point of my mood and I began to feel better (shopping is genetically a mood restorer for me I guess). I went downtown and bought the shoes, put them on and walked around. I walked to the shop where I buy my coffee beans and bought a pound. Then I went to the music store where a friend of mine works that I haven’t seen in a while. I walked around the store but he was nowhere to be seen.

I played my two afternoon ballet classes in a much better mood.

Last night I had three dreams about my Dad. Between each dream I woke and then fell back asleep.

In the first dream, he had returned from wherever he had been to get Mom. He felt that she would be better off living in Kentucky closer to where he was living in Tennessee. He was flipping through phone books for some reason.

The second dream was Mom’s funeral (she is the living one in reality). I was standing with my Dad, his brother Johnnie and my brother Mark. My Dad said that Johnnie really should do the funeral since he had the best singing voice. I said that Mark actually had the best voice in the family. Mark said his son Ben did and I agreed with that.

In the last dream, my Mom was alive again. Dad was once again returned from wherever he had been. He had decided to use the proceeds from their house sale to buy another house. He wanted to go look at a house that he and Mom had looked at before. Surprisingly the house was only about 29K. Dad thought they should buy something more expensive since they had the money from the house sale plus were pulling in 200K a year.

I tried to dissuade him from taking on Mom’s care pointing out that was the mistake that she had made with him. As I was leaving my brother Mark invited me to sit in a lawn chair for a chat.

My sister-in-law Leigh was dancing around with the ballet star Nureyev.  Mark felt that I was making a bad decision to give Dad the power to make his own financial decisions. I countered in the dream that I would lay it all out for Dad and agreed that he was likely to make a bad decision but it was his right to determine his own direction and fate. Meanwhile Leigh danced with Nureyev.

I can’t imagine this stuff that I’m writing interests anyone but it’s all that’s in my head this morning. Rilly rilly interesting, eh?

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Al Qaeda Finds Itself at a Crossroads – News Analysis – NYTimes.com

“Democracy is bad news for terrorists. The more peaceful channels people have to express grievances and pursue their goals, the less likely they are to turn to violence.”

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Propaganda Critic: Introduction > The Institute for Propaganda Analysis

This seems to be an online essay about propaganda. I read a bit of it yesterday while treadmilling.

“…[T]he seven basic propaganda devices: Name-Calling, Glittering Generality, Transfer, Testimonial, Plain Folks, Card Stacking, and Band Wagon.”

I’m trying to differentiate between logic fallacies and propaganda.

“It is essential in a democratic society that young people and adults learn how to think, learn how to make up their minds. They must learn how to think independently, and they must learn how to think together. They must come to conclusions, but at the same time they must recognize the right of other men to come to opposite conclusions. So far as individuals are concerned, the art of democracy is the art of thinking and discussing independently together.”

I like this stuff.

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Fox Shamelessly Promotes Huckabee For President | Media Matters for America

Roger Ailes, Fox News, And The Rule Of Law | Media Matters for America

A couple of articles I bookmarked to read.

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According to the Writer’s Almanac, today is Robert Lowell’s birthday.  I used to read his poetry when I was much younger. Here’s one I liked:

The Literary Life, a Scrapbook

My photo: I before I was I, or a book;
inch-worm! A cheekbone gumballs out my cheek;
too much live hair. My wife caught in that eye blazes,
an egg would boil in the tension of that hand,
my untied shoestrings write my name in the dust…
I rest on a tree, and try to sharpen bromides
to serve the great, the great God, the New Critic,
who loves the writing better than we ourselves….
in those days, if I pressed an ear to the earth,
I heard the bass growl of Hiroshima. No!
In the Scrapbook, it’s the old who die classics:
one foot in the grave, two in books—one of the living!
Who wouldn’t rather be his indexed correspondents
than the boy Keats spitting out blood for time to breath?

It would be tempting to be discouraged about some people’s behavior I experienced at church yesterday. Believe it or not I try not to be too negative in my posts here.  I think I was a little discouraged when half of the choir decided to leave the post-service rehearsal.

Three of the people who left were apparently heading to a party, the fourth just left with them.  I and four singers remained.

When this sort of thing happens, I try not to let it affect how I treat the people who have chosen to remain.

I told them I wanted to rehearse one more anthem with them. I did so and I think they didn’t leave too discouraged by their fellow singers abandoning the rehearsal so dramatically.

I suspect I only managed to retain the three headed for the party as long as I did in rehearsal because I worked very hard on a motet by Byrd I would like to use at Ash Wed. Before the rehearsal was over I learned that one of the eight singers present couldn’t come on Ash Wed. Two other singers will not be present this weekend which means they would miss a critical rehearsal of this piece.

I would cancel the piece, except I think that doing some of this kind of music is what keeps most of my dwindling number of singers motivated.

I would hate to act in a reactive manner to their behavior and withdraw or postpone the piece, substituting something much easier but less interesting.

At this point I don’t plan to do this. It is a gamble to keep it scheduled.

This is more the way I suspect this choir has operated in the past with some of these singers who do have some adeptness in what they do.  For example last week, we “pulled off” a little adaptation of one of Handel’s Chandos anthems.

The performance was the best of our renditions note wise. But since I had to spend all of my time teaching the notes in the pre-service rehearsal I was unable to address the musical subtlety that makes a performance better.

Yesterday we sang a setting of Christina Rossetti’s poetic rendition of the gospel reading called “Consider.” Since we knew this one a bit better, I was able to draw attention to the pure vowels that enable blending. The performance was more in line with what I attempt to do with church choirs.

There were other dismaying moments yesterday.

My family systems mentor the late Ed Friedman would be proud that I continue to try see these incidents as positive indicators of my leadership.

During my post-service rehearsal, several people including my beloved pastor talked so loudly and so long that I was forced to ask them to be quiet so we could hear ourselves sing. I mentioned this before to my boss, but she and the others didn’t quieten down until I told that that we were unable to hear our selves.

That was a moment when I allowed a bit my dismay to show to the choir because it was so obvious and also indicated a level of concentration I try to inculcate in choirs I rehearse.

Earlier during the prelude, I buried my dismay so that I could perform despite the fact that someone was wandering near the organ console and happily whistling away while I performed.

I do know that I had at least one listener to the prelude and the postlude. My wife mentioned that she thought I had played the prelude well. And a parishioner asked if the postlude was Bach and said that he liked it.

In addition the congregation seemed to sing very heartily yesterday and that is always satisfying. I dropped the organ accompaniment to the last stanza to “Jesus, All my gladness” and lightly played the bass line up until the last two measures. Bach chorale settings (of which this hymn is one) always sound to my ears when sung unaccompanied in harmony.

So another day in Jesus’s salt mine I guess. I complained a bit to Eileen after work but then tried to put all this aside for the afternoon. But I was very tired even before I exercised.  It takes stamina and energy to keep one’s balance in the face of this sort of thing when you are as thin skinned as I apparently am.

But toujours gai, Archie, tourjours gai!

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ThinkProgress » REPORT: You Have More Money In Your Wallet Than Bank Of America Pays In Federal Taxes

Thanks to Cory Doctorow for pointing this out on Boing Boing. Not very surprising to me that the corporations who are actually the special interests that  control our government (not the unions as I heard recently on the radi0) don’t pay a dime in taxes.

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Absorbing the Pain – NYTimes.com

Bob Herbert talks to people who are struggling in Philadelphia.

Quote:

“The big shots are in charge, and they just don’t give a darn about the little person.”

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Ezra Klein – Where the teachers unions go, the union movement will follow

I found a link in Ezra Klein’s short Washington Post article to a pdf of what looks like a thoughtful level-headed proposal (pdf) outlining a specific process for evaluating and, if necessary, firing underperforming teachers from Randi Weingarten, head of the American Federation of Teachers. I’ve only just skimmed it so far, but I like what I read in it.

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The G.O.P.’s Abandoned Babies – NYTimes.com

Charles Blow sounds understandably upset about recent Republican recommendations to withdraw funding for natal and pre-natal government research and assistance programs.

Quote:

“It is savagely immoral and profoundly inconsistent to insist that women endure unwanted — and in some cases dangerous — pregnancies for the sake of “unborn children,” then eliminate financing designed to prevent those children from being delivered prematurely, rendering them the most fragile and vulnerable of newborns. How is this humane?”

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Fact-Free Science – NYTimes.com

“[M]ore than half of the Republicans in the House and three-quarters of Republican senators … say that the threat of global warming, as a man-made and highly threatening phenomenon, is at best an exaggeration and at worst an utter “hoax”…”

“Fred Upton, the head of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, has said outright that he does not believe that global warming is man-made.”

“John Shimkus of Illinois, who also sits on the committee — as well as on the Subcommittee on Energy and Environment — has said that the government doesn’t need to make a priority of regulating greenhouse-gas emissions, because as he put it late last year, “God said the earth would not be destroyed by a flood.”

“It is very difficult to get a man to understand something when his tribal identity depends on his not understanding it” Michael Bérubé, a literature professor at Penn State aptly quoted in the linked article….

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Unfit for Democracy? – NYTimes.com

Another excellent article by Nicholas Kristoff pointing out the inherent contradiction in the patronizing stereotype idea that the Arabic world is not ready for democracy.

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I found a poem by Johann Walther, the composer of the partita  I am performing this morning at church.

O day, come yet more often, O! Joyful day!
That day which God gave us thee, o beloved Bach!
We thank him for thee and beseech him for thy life,
so seldom is the world given such a gift!

Bach and Walther were about the same age and apparently were good friends. Bach was godfather to one of Walther’s children (Johann Gottfried).  I have to agree with the sentiment of Walther’s poem about Bach.

Perusing through my collection of Walther’s 85 settings of Chorales for the organ, I see that I have performed many of them over the years.  They are solidly written and persistently creative.

Lent V falls on April 10 this year. The psalm for the day is Psalm 130 which begins “Out of the depths have I called to you, O Lord.” I looked at many settings of this psalm for my choir to possibly sing that day. I finally chose Bach’s simple four part chorale version. I find these settings enormously satisfying as do most choirs I have ever worked with.

The translation we are using begins “From Depths of Woe I Cry to Thee.”

I also finished a working version of my setting of Psalm 121, “I lift up my eyes to the hills.” This psalm is part of the readings assigned to Lent II (March 20 this year).

I feel a bit uneasy that I didn’t get  more time to refine this version. But I felt it was best to put it in the hands of the singers today as one of the upcoming anthems we need to rehearse. Here’s a link to a pdf of the entire piece (also on my “Free Mostly Original Sheet Music” page)

My friend, Peter Kurdziel, expressed interest in seeing this piece. I want to clean it up a bit more before handing it off to a colleague. My working version reflects my concern that the choral parts be finished enough to perform, but  the keyboard part still needs some polishing which I will probably change on the spot as we rehearse it. Not very helpful to others looking at the piece to perform.

Once again Eileen helped me get multiple anthems photocopied, folded, numbered and stuffed in the choir slots. Afterwards we went out for drinks and “starters” at the pub. Life is good.

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Military to Investigate Whether General Ordered Improper Effort to Sway U.S. Lawmakers – NYTimes.com

Psy-ops for Americans by Americans. Yikes!

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Libya: What happens after we stop watching these revolutions against Col Gaddafi? – Telegraph

Interesting analysis by U.K. journalist, Charles Moore.

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Fox News Chief, Roger Ailes, Urged Employee to Lie, Records Show – NYTimes.com

Fox continues to hilariously deny its partisanship. Ailes has public ties to many Republican presidential campaigns and subsequent governments beginning with being media advisor for Nixon in ’68 all the way up to and including both Presidents Bush.

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Scientists Are Cleared of Misuse of Data – NYTimes.com

This is about charges that scientists fabricated data to support Global warming.

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Today is really my first day off in two weeks. Unfortunately, I feel like I’m a bit behind in my planning for church so I will definitely have to do some of that today.

Yesterday I agonized over a few measures in the piece I am rewriting. This took quite a bit of time in my already busy schedule. My daily regimen of improvising for ballet class has, I think, increased my melodic skills if only in the realm of the simple (which is where I usually like to work).

So given enough time to ponder I am reasonable confident I can write something that is pretty decent by my standards and represents what I mean to compose.

Re-writing is always harder. And I have given myself the added pressure of composing something in time to rehearse it with my choir and perform it well by March 20th (Lent III).  I would dearly like to have it done and duplicated for tomorrow’s rehearsal, but we’ll have to see if the muse is friendly today or not.

The following week (March 27th, Lent IV) I want to perform my transcription of Chanticleer’s “Woman at the Well.” This transcription is basically finished, I just have to add the rest of the alto and tenor parts. This is also on my mind today.

In addition I have to submit hymn recommendations for Ash Wed and Lent. Sheesh.

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*****All my links for today are from the New York Times.******

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New Anti-Immigration Bills in Arizona – NYTimes.com

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Zimbabwe – TV Viewers Charged With Treason – NYTimes.com

Short story of people jailed for watching the wrong televisions shows.  This kind of futuristic expression of tyranny boggles my mind.

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Shock Doctrine, U.S.A. – NYTimes.com

Krugman says Wisconsin is not Cairo, it’s Baghdad.

From Chile in the 1970s onward, [Naomi Klein]… suggested, right-wing ideologues have exploited crises to push through an agenda that has nothing to do with resolving those crises, and everything to do with imposing their vision of a harsher, more unequal, less democratic society.

Which brings us to Wisconsin 2011…

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Run Mitch, Run – NYTimes.com

Years ago, Ed Friedmann described the effect the hostile environment has on potential leaders, discouraging them before they accept leadership. This story is about a politician I disagree with, but what discourages me is that he sounds like a leader backing away from leadership.

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As Mental Health Cuts Mount, Psychiatric Cases Fill Jails – NYTimes.com

This is in Texas, but we can look forward to more of this nationwide as our increasingly reactionary leadership attempts to dismantle the government and social services.

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Discovery Shuttle Heads for Space One Last Time – NYTimes.com

I always feel like I’m in an old science fiction novel when I read stories like this

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I didn’t have to “beg” for the check after my gig last night. The man who booked me handed me an envelope half-way through the evening. He is also a musician. Go figure. It’s been a while since someone actually paid me right at a gig without asking.  Nice change of pace.

My violinist and I began at 6 PM last night and played on and off for two hours.  I managed to adjust the amplifier for the violinist’s mike  so that she could be heard over the loud crowd noise without the  feedback scream. I played a little baby grand but kept the lid down to balance.

Besides dinner music, we were supposed to have a special number during the awards part of this appreciation dinner for volunteers for the local Community Action House. It wasn’t clear what would be appropriate.

I recommended that we have “Red Sails in the Sunset” ready.

I also thought it might be wise to have a nice classical piece ready as well. I recommended a movement from a solo sonata by Loiellet.

I thought of the first one because local elderly people I have performed for have requested it more than once. The second because Loeillet seems not to have written anything that wasn’t beautiful.

The PR guy there had never head of “Red Sails in the Sunset.” I thought the crowd was a mixture of ages but with many people well-dressed. I recommended the Loeillet and that’s what we did. Amy is a fine violinist and I thought we pretty much “cooked” all night.

I woke up pretty exhausted this morning.

I need to do some composing today as well as my mom’s and my bills. Have been exercising regularly this week.

Treadmilling and Wii Fitting. Changed my silly Wii Fit Plus ™ routine to include more aerobic type exercises. I feel goofy about this but it’s probably good for me.

Tried to have supper ready for Eileen before I left for the gig. The Baked Apples seems to have been the only recipe in the meal I didn’t totally screw up.

Tried to riff on a low fat rendition of Mexican Macaroni and Cheese. Should have followed the recipe.

But the most spectacular failure was the Blueberry Cobbler.

I tried to substitute 4 cups of frozen blueberries for 2 cups of fresh in a recipe and the dang thing never did cook all the way through. Sigh.

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Recipes: Buttermilk blueberry pie – Dessert Recipes – Helium

I ran across this recipe when I was trying to reassure myself I could substitute buttermilk for milk in the blueberry cobbler recipe. It looks good to me.

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The Root seems to be a very slick African-American take on current events. http://www.theroot.com

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Revenge of the Pomeranians – NYTimes.com

Gail Collins says that ” The House is the deranged Pomeranian that yelps and throws itself against the window and tears up the upholstery 24/7. The Senate, meanwhile, is like a narcoleptic Great Dane you can hardly rouse for dinner.”

But my favorite quote from this article was “There is very little in Washington that can’t be explained by an episode of the original “Star Trek,” and Boehner is playing out the one where the Romulan captain prefers the ways of peace but is saddled with a crew that will mutiny if he fails to follow through on the plan to blow up the galaxy.”

Decided to perform a partita by Johann Walther this Sunday. It’s based on “Jesu Meine Freude.” The version I am working from has 8 variations. Planning to do the last one as the postlude and the chorale and the other seven as the prelude.

I am hearing this piece in more chamber organ way, but this video gives you an idea of the piece. He only plays the theme and six of the variations. I don’t really like the sound this player is choosing on his organ and his interp leaves me wondering why he does certain things. But anyway, there it is.

(I just googled notes inegale and walther and it looks like google has once again changed its search algorithm and not for the better. My top results included pages with the phrase  “in eagle” instead of the requested “inegale” and “walter” for “walther.” “Notes inegale” is the term for how the performer on the Youtube video chose to interpret the piece. I wondered if I could find some research on connecting the German composer Walther with the French practice of inegale. Sheesh.)

The melody these variations is based on is one of my favorite hymns. Bach wrote an unbelievable beautiful choral motet on it.

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The secretary at church has put her draft of the upcoming bulletin in my slot at work on Tuesday evening the last two weeks. This is a good sign. I have continually suggested that it would be easier to work further ahead. I used to do this for the Catholics when I worked for them. I worked two weeks ahead and it saved me much trouble and worry.

Usually I submit most of the information she needs for the bulletin on Tuesday. This Tuesday I chose to do some other things like be with Eileen and do some cooking (see yesterday’s post), so I didn’t get it done in time for the Tuesday edition.

So yesterday when I looked at the draft of the bulletin, the secretary had thoughtfully left some space for the Music Note. I am trying not to overfunction at work and am not planning to do a Music Note for the bulletin every week.  But I do see it as one of my most effective education tools. So I sighed and began working on one.

Here’s what I submitted for this Sunday:

Bulletin article for this upcoming Sunday:

Music Note William Cowper, the author of today’s sequence hymn, “Sometimes a light surprises” (Hymnal 1982 #667) was a “shy and sensitive man, given to periods of depression and despair…Through the help of and counsel of friends, however…. the blackness of doubt was replaced by the light of faith, a theme… explored in this hymn.” (Hymnal 1982 Companion) The third stanza refers directly to the gospel for today: “… who gives the lilies clothing will clothe his people, too.” Christina’s poem, “Consider,” is also based on this gospel and serves as the text for the Chamber Choir Anthem at the Offertory. Our first communion hymn, “Peace before us,” was adapted from a Navajo prayer by David Haas. It is taken from Wonder, Love and Praise. Our second communion hymn is “Jesus, all my gladness” Hymnal 1982 #701. This hymn is a classic expression of yearning to abandon “earthly treasure” and make Jesus our master instead of wealth (as mentioned in the first lines of today’s gospel). The organ prelude and postlude today are based on this hymn.  “Nada te turbe,” a prayer penned by the 16th century Carmelite nun Teresa of Avila provides the inspiration for today’s closing hymn, “Nothing distress you”  taken from Voices Found. It’s reassuring message also echoes today’s “Consider the lilies” idea. Interestingly, the Leader’s Guide to this hymn points out that “perhaps it is no accident that the opening phrase quotes the opening melody from the American hymn, “Blessed Assurance.” Submitted by Steve Jenkins, Music Director.

I can see that I need to edit that last sentence. Probably should read: “Interestingly, the Leaders Guide to Voices Found points out…..”

I will get a chance to do so before it goes to press.

Here’s the words to the anthem Sunday:

Offertory:   Consider by Roland Martin

Consider
The lilies of the field whose bloom is brief:—
We are as they;
Like them we fade away,
As doth a leaf.

Consider
The sparrows of the air of small account:
Our God doth view
Whether they fall or mount,—
He guards us too.

Consider
The lilies that do neither spin nor toil,
Yet are most fair:—
What profits all this care
And all this coil?*

Consider
The birds that have no barn nor harvest-weeks;
God gives them food:—
Much more our Father seeks
To do us good.

*In 16th Century English usage, “coil” refers to tumults or troubles. Used idiomatically, the phrase means “the bustle and turmoil of this mortal life.”

Text by Christina Rosetti

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TODAY’S LINKS

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Feb 13 show with FCC Commissioner Michael Copps

I was surprised to hear someone on the FCC exhibit such an excellent understanding of what is happening in media right now.

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Early the show, Project Censored is mentioned.

Click on the pic above to read the top 25 news stories that were “censored” in the sense that they were drowned out by the usual propaganda, distortion and spin.

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A Third Judge Validates Health Care Overhaul Law – NYTimes.com

The health care law works its way through the courts. I know there are problems with this law but I am so mortified that America has fallen so far behind other developed countries in providing basic health care for its citizens, that I support this flawed law. I do half expect the right wing conservative Supreme Justice and his colleagues to strike it down.

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Kenneth Cuccinelli of Virginia Wages War on Climate Science – NYTimes.com

I think this is an example of politicians trying to alter how science is perceived. Yikes!

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Free Online Library of articles on spirituality at worldwisdom.com

Thanks to my brother Mark for putting this link on Facebook. This is an interesting collection of articles.

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Brian Coyle, chair of the music department at Hope, was kind enough to loan me his copy of The New Real Book, yesterday. This means that both Amy my violinist and I will have a copy to work from in our Thursday evening gig.

“Real books” began their lives as illegal collections of tunes working musicians needed to have access to.  Also called “Fake Books,” they made the transition from expensive illegal contraband to legal college text books in jazz music departments.

While they have plenty of jazz tunes they also have lead sheets for the standards that a lot of jazz is based on. These are the kinds of tunes I am hoping to zero in on for my violinist whose experience of popular music seems to be playing in a wedding string quartet.

Brian also loaned me his CDrom of all six extant Real Books. I went through Vol 4 & 5 last night (The New Real Book II & III) and printed out 2 copies of a bunch of tunes like “Blue Moon” and “Mood Indigo” that I thought might sound nice on violin.

Amy and I are meeting today and will nail down a play list. I also linked her to a couple more classical violin pieces by Telemann and Haydn.

This took quite a bit of time yesterday. I did do some relaxing. I managed to spend a little quality time with Eileen yesterday and then do some cooking while I was exercising.

I used a new quiche recipe I found online:

Ww 3 Pt. Weight Watchers) Broccoli Quiche Recipe – Food.com

I adapted this recipe to include meat and veggies I had on hand. Eileen’s meat side of the quiche had bacon and chicken in it. My side was heavy on the sweet red peppers and green onions. It was quite good. By the time I delivered to Eileen for our weekly supper at her work site, I was pretty pooped.

I spent the rest of the evening reading.

I’m about half way through William Cobb’s Substance of Hope and am finding it a brilliant and insightful analysis of Obama’s presidential campaign. I am learning things that I missed (Did you know that Jesse Jackson had an oops moment with the pressing saying he wanted to “cut off Obama’s nuts”? (link to news story from the time) I didn’t.

I have spent my life strongly identifying with Black Americans (as they were known through much of my youth).

In 1972, I cast my first presidential ballot for Shirley Chisholm. I found out in Cobb that the Congressional Black Caucus refused to support her run for president.

Just 12 years earlier my dad was frightened of the liberal ROMAN CATHOLIC Kennedy and cast his vote for Nixon.

Dad’s life journey was one of moving toward the issues of his day.  Before he died, Eileen helped him cast his last presidential vote in 2008. We all wondered if his recent infatuation with the TV hate-monger, Lew Dobbs, would influence to vote for McCain.

But he voted for the campaign in which his granddaughter, Elizabeth, was working: Obama.

Cobb devotes a chapter to the Jeremiah Wright period of 2008 campaign (“Of Jeremiah Wright: The Meanign of Change on the South Side of America“) and one to Jesse Jackson’s relationship to it (“The Jesse Problem: The Black President and the President of Black America“). I finished both of them last night.

In the chapter four (“The Black Machine: The Old Guard and the Age of Obama“), he outlines Obama’s relationship to the Civil Rights leaders. Cobb is  a brilliant and insightful commentator on contemporary America.

Examples:

Cobb traces Obama’s increasingly obvious strategies of his campaign speeches:

“By turns and degrees his (Obama’s) professorial cadences acquired more gravy, his rhythms came to echo those of the black pulpit, he ditched the occasional auxiliary verb…

“During that spring I saw Obama speak to majority black crowds and majority white ones. He used two vastly differing styles. One was serious and professorial, with an unflappable undercurrent of cool; the other was loose-limbed and colloquial yet with that same air of coolness. The question was note whether Obama was pandering—he absolutely was. The question was which audience he was pandering to.”

Cobb quotes a speech Obama gave in Selma at celebration of the 1965 voting rights march there. He gives it as an example of how the young Obama recast the civil rights movement into his own story and the global story.

Cobbs quote (which precedes the above quote) begins with a dropped auxiliary verb:

Obama speaking to the crowd:

“People been asking, ‘Well, you know, your father was from Africa, your mother, she’s a white woman from Kansas. I’m not sure you have the same experience.’ And I tried to explain, ‘You don’t understand. You see, my grandfather was a cook to the British in Kenya. Grew up in a small village, and all his life, that’s all he was—a cook and a house boy.’ And that’s what they called him, even when he was sixty years old. They called him a house boy. They wouldn’t call him by his last name. Sound familiar?”

Having read The Audacity of Hope, I recognize the Obama in Cobb’s book.

I also can see how the man who wrote the above book transformed into the leader he is now. People on the right often paint him as basically un-American and people on the left as a traitor to the cause. I think a consistency can be traced in his life as a leader even when he takes turns I don’t agree with.

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LINKS

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Borromeo String Quartet and the Digital Tide – NYTimes.com

This group uses laptops instead of sheet music. Cool.

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University of Arizona to Open Civility Institute – NYTimes.com

Civility in Arizona. It could happen.

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The Ethicist – Hollywood Property Values – NYTimes.com

Sunday, Randy Cohen in an answer in his column gave an excellent synopsis of how I see copyright.

“The founders did not design copyright to enrich some colonial Warner Brothers but to make ours a land of innovation. Hence Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution seeks “to promote the progress of the science and useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries.” Randy Cohen

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Dream Act Advocate Turns Failure Into Hope – NYTimes.com

This news story describes the courage of a young American as she puts herself on the line for her struggle. Very inspiring to me.

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Book Lovers Fear Dim Future for Notes in the Margins – NYTimes.com

Article about notes people have written in books they own.

My favorite was Mark Twain’s comment in The Pen and the Book by Walter Besant: “nothing could be stupider” than using advertising to sell books as if they were “essential goods” like “salt” or “tobacco.”

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For Wisconsin Governor, Battle Was Long Coming – NYTimes.com

Interesting history and analysis of Right Wing ideologue Gov Scott Walker.

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Pictures from an Institution by Randall Jarrell, an excerpt

I recently discovered that a poet I like has written a novel I didn’t know about. It’s a satire on college life in the 50s.

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The King of Limbs : Where are you? Radiohead CD

Broke down yesterday and bought MP3 version of Radiohead’s new CD. Played it in the background while I was reading.  Sounds like Radiohead. I like it.

When I work on Saturday like I did this past weekend, it means that in effect I don’t get a day off for around thirteen days. I’m beginning to feel it this morning. Thank god for coffee.

Hope college remained open for the snowy President’s day yesterday.  I played for three dance classes which ended up being four hours on the bench. At the early class, the teacher was one of the advanced students whom I recognized from class. It was fun to see her handle a room full of her peers so well.  I learned from her that dancers take a class called “Accompanist,” in which presumably they are taught how to talk to musicians. She agreed that it was much different to actually deal with a live musician. She looked to me for approval which was odd because I just follow the teacher. I told her afterwards she did an excellent job, but what do I know? I’m just a piano player.

One of the students in this class quizzed me about the meter I had used for the last waltz across the floor. This was pretty unusual. Often dancers, students and teachers alike, are a bit nervous talking to musicians. I understand this because musicians can be such dinks. I had used some jazz waltz rhythms and the questioning dancer thought they might be 6/8. Since I am improvising, the time signature is a bit ambiguous (even though as a student I was instructed to always envision a key and time signature when I improvise). I explained to her how I thought of the meter. Later I realized the astuteness of her observation because a jazz waltz often has a six beat rhythmic pattern making it work like 6/8.

Speaking of musicians not being dinks, the chair of the music department who attends my church chatted me up quite affably after church this past Sunday. I don’t want to give the impression that this man and other teachers from the local Christian college are not friendly. Most of them are totally polite.

They just don’t usually talk music with me. This man often smiles and gives me a thumbs up when he sees me. He mentioned to me Sunday that there was a visiting jazz musician who was giving a free concert I might want to attend. Unfortunately the weather prohibited this man arriving yesterday so it wasn’t an option.

Since the chair of the music department is a bit of a jazzer, they have been bringing in major talent to work with the students and give performances. Quite a luxury really in such a small town. The idea that a college in a small town would be a source of intellectual and artistic resources is one of the ostensible reasons Eileen and I chose to live here.

I have an early class today and quite a bit on my plate for the rest of the day, but I’m hoping I will have some time to do a bit of relaxing. I managed to get in my daily regimen of exercise yesterday. This now consists of 30 minutes with Wii Fit Plus program and 40 minutes on the treadmill. I am finding that I feel more relaxed and rested each day I take the time to exercise.

I’ve been thinking about this online storage website. I think it would be foolish to depend on it, but it might make a good second back-up in addition to a hard drive of some sort. Right now I have a lot of stuff I would hate to lose on an exterior hard drive and I keep thinking I should pick-up something to back it up. Carbonite charges $55 dollars a year I think. Hmmmm.

Today is the day I’m supposed to play examples of meters for a quiz for beginning ballet students. I’m thinking of using dances from this book.

Rebranding Mount Vernon – NYTimes.com

I haven’t had much time to explore on the internets, but I did read this article and the next one. The Mount Vernon article is interesting because it talks about the slaves of Washington’s descendants being the ones who ran the museum. The black descendants kept Washington’s ideas about slavery quiet even though some of them were pretty progressive (like he released all his slaves in his will).

They didn’t want to stir things up, I guess. Anyway it’s an interesting article.

Wesley Stace’s ‘Charles Jessold,’ Musical Murder Mystery – NYTimes.com

I found this music/book review very interesting. Will probably try to get a copy of the novel sometime and read it. Wesley Stace has a career as a indie folk guy (stage name: John Wesley Harding from the album by Dylan). But he also has written three novels, one of them a historical mystery novel of early 20th century English music.  The murder victim is an invented interesting composer.  Stace utilized Alex Ross (a hero of mine) as a reader on it. Then he had someone write the music of his fictional composer. What’s not to like?

Here’s another picture I found online. Any classical musician will recognize the familiar design stolen from the prestigious Schirmer music publisher.

This is just a step the book cover designer used in creating the final process (link to his site)

The final paperback apparently looks like this:

Very cool.

Another crazy morning at my church yesterday. People continue to float in and out in odd ways. Two of my musicians skipped the pregame because they were leading other things in the church. I find that sort of defeating. I have complained to the boss but she doesn’t seem to see it quite the way I do (as staff competing with each other for resources rather than god forbid working together), so fuck it.

Bill Bier the sax player did show up and he did wail on the postlude as expected. The little Handel choral rendition of Chandos 4 squeaked by with a respectable performance. It was under rehearsed and I spent all the prep time working on rhythms and notes and didn’t really have time to calibrate the choral sound the way I like to.

“Digo Si Senor” seem to raise the spirits of the congregation but they didn’t really sing it as well as I think they could have. I ran out into the center of the church and tried to cue them. In retrospect I think participation would have gone a bit better if I had done a complete play through of the tune. Live and learn.

Got a phone call from the chair of the ballet department last night asking me to sub on piano for an 8:30 this morning which I immediately agreed to.  Combined with my afternoon class it looks about three hours of ballet today.  I need to get working on a playlist for a gig for violin and piano on Thursday evening. Also want to finish up those two choral pieces (Psalm 121 and Chanticleer’s rendition of “Woman at the Well”) this week for rehearsal on Sunday.  Busy busy.

In the meantime, here’s some book notes:

I listened McChesney interview Jennifer Pozner on her book on the damage Reality TV is doing. (link to page with audio)

Reality Bites Back: The Troubling Truth About Guilty Pleasure TV outlines the history of “Reality TV” and its insidious retrogression of sexism (misogyny, unrealistic idealizing of women’s bodies and men as jackasses), racism (a return to the minstrel show mentality of people of color as stupid and uncouth), and self-serving sick seduction of viewers by shows designed around products.

A couple of things stood out to me in this program. First that McChesney was well aware that many listeners like myself don’t watch much of this kind of TV. It was almost amusing. Secondly, I learned a new word: Frankenbytes.

Did you know that Reality show voice overs of participants are often just words and phrases they have used in front of the camera cobbled together to say something they never said? I didn’t.

Also Pozner and McChesney have a brief devastating conversation regarding Trump’s show, “The Apprentice.” They point out how he himself is not exactly a successful business man having filed for bankruptcy more than once. And that the practices on the show are not only not how business works but would result in firings and legal action if people acted that way in businesses.

I’m more familiar with the Brit version which I found pretty repelling.

(Link to Pozner’s web site for her book)

Another interesting book and website:

Literature from the Axis of Evil: Writing from Iran, Iraq, North Korea, and Other Enemy Nations is a title on the New Press’s catalog that caught my eye. My interlibrary-loaned copy came this weekend.  In the introduction it points out that “since the 1970s American access to world literature in translation has been steadily decreasing.” Refuting the concept that this is simply a response to market the editors write this lovely sentence:

“The [New York Times 2003 article, “America Yawns at Foreign Fiction] seemed to accept at face value publishers’ contention that only ‘the  market’ is to blame, without acknowledging that successful ‘markets’ are cultivated gardens not wild states of nature.”

This reminds me of a paragraph that caught my attention in Schriffin’s book, The Business of Books.

“The recent changes in publishing discussed in these pages demonstrate the application of market theory to the dissemination of culture. After the pattern of Ronald Reagan’s and Margaret Thacher’s probusiness policies, the owners of publishing house have increasingly ‘rationalized their activities.’ The market, it is argued is a sort of ideal democracy. It is not up to the elite to impose their values on readers, publishers claim, it is up to the public to choose what it wants—and if what it wants is increasingly downmarket and limited in scope, so be it….

Traditionally, ideas were exempted from the usual expectations of profit. It was often assumed that books propounding new approaches and different theories would lose money, certainly at the outset. The phrase, ‘the free market of ideas’ does not refer to the market value of each idea. On the contrary, what it means is that ideas of all sorts should have a chance to be put in public, to be expressed and argued fully and not in soundbites.” [emphasis added]

If this makes any sense to you, you might want to check the online magazine, “Words without borders,” [link] co-publisher of The Literature of the Axis of Evil.

The moon was low in the early predawn sky for the drive to Muskegon yesterday. It loomed a bit larger (refraction from the atmosphere, I suspect) and felt like a friendly companion.

Though I got a way a bit late, I was on time for my first student’s scheduled performance time of 8:15 or so.  This was my first vocal Solo and Ensemble and they are quite different from the many instrumental ones I have attended.

The most startling thing to me is that each singer gets a warm-up period alone in a room with a piano and his teacher.  At instrumental solo and ensembles, warm-up rooms are crowded and noisy as several people warm-up at once.

There was only one of the seven students I played for yesterday that didn’t go all the way through their two numbers in the warm-up room as preparation for the judging session.  Many of these benefited from this last minute run through.

One of my scheduled singers had an appendectomy the night before and of course could not attend. No one mentioned this to me until I began to ask after him when he was my next scheduled soloist.  Most of the students were prepared to pay me their half of my fee. The vocal teacher, Joel, forgot my check for the Booster’s half. He assured me he would mail it immediately.

Once again I am begging people to pay me for my work. I guess that’s just the lot of the older weird looking outsider type music guy.

To be fair most of these people treat me with much more respect and appreciation than the local yokels both in the little town of Holland Michigan.  And since money has been a concern for me all my life, I think I am a bit over sensitive around these issues and try not to act weirder than is necessary.

The treat of the day for me was that my old friend, Peter Kurdziel, was also accompanying and we managed to have several nice chats together.

At the last event of the day, the choir director gave me a bunch of roses. It’s hard to feel unappreciated holding roses. Heh.

I drove home  and grabbed something to eat then Eileen accompanied me over to the church to prep for today. I had to make some (legal) photocopies for today’s post service rehearsal and stuff them and other pieces in choir slots for my choristers for today.

I also needed to rehearse playing the anthem since the choir seemed pretty sketchy on it last week. It’s a 2-part (men against women as I like to say) rendition Handel’s Fourth Chandos Anthem, “O Worship the Lord.”  I practiced soloing out both the men’s and women’s part with my left and right hand. It’ll probably go fine today.

I didn’t need to rehearse the prelude and postlude because GELO (Grace Episcopal Liturgical Orchestra formerly the Grace Electric Light Orchestra) is making its 2011 debut and is playing those parts of the service.

I was happy to hear that the excellent sax player, Bill Bier, will be joining us for the postlude rendition of Donna Pena’s “Digo, si, Senor.” He will most likely do some wailing on that.