I had a bit of an anxiety nightmare last night. I was teaching a choir class (the only person I recognized in the class was a guy who has his doctorate from U of M that I follow on Facebook). Anyway, we were working from a little magazine of music. I had in mind a clever vocalise to take the class through. But I couldn’t find the page number. The class waited and waited for me and then finally tried unsuccessfully to sing it without my help. I asked if someone could loan me their music. I had a strategy in mind to teach the vocalise which was based on a complicated Estonian type melody. I looked up and it was time for the class to end. I dismissed them with an apology.

Then I woke up.

What was that about, I wondered. I was still annoyed. Then it occurred to me. That I was leading people and I wasn’t on the same page they were. This is a common occurrence in my life, not being on the same page as other people. After I figured that out I wasn’t so annoyed. After all it’s how I live.

I think I need some time off.

I have been experience fatigue ever since this past Sunday even though I’m getting plenty of rest and relaxation. I have a stack of books I want to read this summer including Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Heale Hurston.

I had a six month appointment with my cancer surgeon’s office Monday and i took Hurston along. I was excited to discover that Henry Louis Gates, Jr. wrote the introduction to it. I have been reading his Stony The Road: Reconstruction, White Supremacy, and The Rise of Jim Crow. 

You probably recognize his name. He’s the Harvard Prof who got arrested for being black while trying to break into his own house.

I only realized recently that he teaches and writes books about the history of African Americans.

I’m also finishing up the English translation of Erpenbeck’s Go, Went, Gone. Julia Alvarez mentioned this book back in her April By The Book NYT interview.

Alvarez cites it as the last great book she has read and says this:

‘My reading friends are worn out with hearing me extol Jenny Erpenbeck’s “Go, Went, Gone,” a stunning novel about a retired classics professor who slowly becomes conscientizado — I love the word in Spanish — aware and involved in the plight of refugees from Africa camping out in a square in Berlin. The novel is lyrical, absorbing, so accurate as to the ways we resist engagement and then are pulled in.’

I am finding it an absorbing read. I have about 70 pages out of 286 left to go. It’s a library book that I need to return before my California flight next Tuesday.

I’ve got a ton of tasks before this evening’s rehearsal. I am definitely going out with a bang this year. Yesterday I chose hymns through August and emailed them to my subs and the office. My biggest task left before Sunday is writing witty, intelligent, and informative program notes for the recital Sunday.

I’m not feeling particularly witty, intelligent, or informative right now.

I’m lazing around this morning trying to conserve my waning energy. This afternoon I need to move my piano and harpsichord around at church and then tune the dang harpsichord. The piano tuner is coming tomorrow to tune our lousy piano.

I am meeting one of my two soprano soloists at 6 PM before choir tonight. She is singing a Handel aria with strings and harpsichord. After choir I am meeting with the other soprano who is singing a lovely little lied by Fanny Mendelssohn Sunday.

We are bringing my grand daughter Savannah back with us from California for a visit. That should be fun.

I actually can’t conceive of having time off right now much less having fun but I’m sure it’s in the works.

What page are we on?

The choir was excellent yesterday. One soprano told me that our rendition of Vaughan Williams’ O How Amiable gave her chills. It was good. It’s satisfying to be a part of something like this. We even did the little Dowland piece mostly unaccompanied (no mean trick). Dawn pulled stops for me on the prelude. I played Vaughan Williams’ Hyfrydol. It’s challenging to lift my hands and change stops to reflect the composer’s intentions. An extra pair of hands makes a lot of difference.

I came home exhausted. I didn’t really get a second wind. I think that the organ music, the two anthems and beginning a half hour earlier, all of this, took a toll on the old guy. I wonder how I’ll do next week with the addition of our afternoon recital.

I’m even tired this morning. Eileen on her second day of her weaving conference at Hope. She seems to be very happy with it and enjoying it as she goes. I  reported in to my surgeon today for a six month look at my incision. This meant a drive to Grand Rapids. My surgeon’s office is right by a restaurant that Eileen and I discovered in the midst of our trips to his office. Eileen insisted that I pick up some food to go for us since she couldn’t make the trip today. Heh. This is what I did.

I also took back roads back and forth to GR since there is a lot of construction between here and Byron Center road.

Since Eileen’s busy with her conference this afternoon, I’m scheduled to meet the plumber. He is coming to begin work on repairing the leak under the shower.

More notes from LikeWar

The United States remains “supremely ill-equipped” to confront the dangers the authors outline in this book. In fact “other nations now look to the United States as a showcase for all the developments they wish to avoid. [emphasis in the original]”

The good news is that some countries are doing better. They “have moved beyond … military reorganization to the creation of ‘whole-of-nation’ efforts intended to inoculate their societies against information threats. It is not coincidental that among the first states to do so were Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, and Sweden, all of which face a steady barrage of Russian information attacks, backed by the close proximity of Russian soldiers and tanks. Their inoculation efforts include education programs, public tracking and notices of foreign disinformation campaigns, election protections and forced transparency of political campaign activities, and legal action to limit the effect of poisonous super-spreaders. [emphasis added]”

Super-spreaders are key  nodes in networks. The term is borrowed from biological contagion studies. When these key few influential social media accounts click ‘share,’ they can redirect huge swathes of the internet.

There is a historical precedent in the United States for responding to misinformation. “D]uring [the] Cold War …. the U.S. government [initiated]… the Active Measures Working Group. It brought together people working in various government agencies—from spies to diplomats to broadcasters to educators—to collaborate on identifying and pushing back against KGB-planted false stories designed to fracture societies and undermine support for democracy. There is no such agency today.”

But it’s worse than that.

“Today, a significant part of the American political culture is willfully denying the new threats to its cohesion. In some cases, it’s colluding with them. [emphasis in original}”

Next time “Dangerous Speech” as defined by these guys.

I finished Likewar last night. I learned a ton of stuff from this book. Singer and Brooking are experts on their subject. According to the dust jacket bio, Singer is a consultant for the U. S. Military and the intelligence community. Brooking is a research fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations.

Together, this two heavy weights, outline some recent history and have some clear ideas about what needs to be done in response to their topic.

All the folderol surrounding the Mueller investigation and the public handwringing about Russian interference in our elections pales next to their incisive history and analysis of how  countries and factions have been using social media in their wars and terrorist activity.

I am ambivalent about how to share the information I have gleaned from this book. I did put up a Facebook post in which I recommended it.

I’m thinking that instead of writing up my reading notes  privately, I might put some info here beginning today. There is a ton of information in this book, both historic and current affairs.

I think I will begin at the end of the book.

Three rules of LikeWar.

1.For all the sense of flux, the modern information environment is becoming stable.

“With all this talk of taking responsibility, it’s important to recognize that this is the appropriate moment in both the internet’s and these [social media] companies own maturation to do so. As internet sociologist Zeynep Tufekci has reminded us, ‘Facebook is only 13 years old, Twitter 11, and even Google is but 19. At this moment in the evolution of the auto industry, there were still not seat belts, airbags, emission controls or mandatory crumple zones.'” link to footnoted source of this 1918  quote

2. The internet is a battlefield.

“Like every other technology before it, the internet is not a harbinger of peace and understanding. Instead it’s a platform for achieving the goals of whichever actor manipulates it most effectively.”

3. This battlefield changes how we think about information itself.

“If something happens we must assume that there’s a likely digital record of it… however, an event only carries power if people also believe that it happened… a manufactured event can have real power, while a demonstrably true event can be rendered irrelevant.”

4. War and politics have never been so intertwined.

And both borrow techniques from each other. “… politics has has taken on elements of information warfare, while violent conflict is increasingly influenced by the tug-of-war for online opinion.”

5. We’re all part of the battle.

“In this new war of wars, taking place on the network of networks, there is no neutral ground.”

There’s much more. I will probably put some of it up here in future posts. But for now I would like to echo their conclusion that “if we want to stop being manipulated, we must change how we navigate the new media environment.”

To illustrate this, they cite a Stanford U study which gauged three groups’ ability to evaluate the accuracy of online information. The three groups were divided into college undergraduates, history PHDs, and professional fact checkers.

The first two fared badly despite their education. The fact checkers used the internet itself to verify stuff. They “understood the Web as a maze filled with trap doors and blind alleys, where things are not always what they seem. So they constantly linked to other locales and sources, seeking context and perspective. In short they networked to find out the truth.”

In the next paragraph the authors use my favorite story, the one about the blind men and the elephant. Then they put this advise:

When in doubt, seek a second opinion—then a third, then a fourth. If you’re not in doubt, then you’re likely part of the problem!

Here’s a quick little post before I head off to see my therapist. The people came yesterday to examine one of our basement walls to see if it was leaking. It wasn’t. But they discovered that our shower on the main floor was leaking like a sieve. So no more showers on the main floor for a while. Eileen has a plumber coming Monday afternoon to take a look.

This is discouraging since we love our bathroom on the main floor. But shit happens.

Eileen is heavily involved with the weaving conference at Hope. She has already gone over for the morning seminar. She seems to be enjoying it although she is spending long hours at it and comes home tired.

I finished two books recently. The Alto Wore Tweed by Mark Schweitzer and The Mouse and his Child by Russell Hoban. Both were disappointing. Schweitzer was weaker than Hoban. It’s a light hearted romp but after I finished it I thought I don’t need to read any more of these right now.

I wanted to like Hoban, but I found the story uneven. I’m interested to see what Eileen thinks if she reads it.

My trio rehearsed yesterday. Then I rehearsed the organ pieces I have picked out for this weekend’s prelude and postlude: Vaughan Williams’s setting of Hyfrydol  (our opening hymn tune) and a lute Galliard by Dowland. We are doing anthems by both composers so that should fit nicely.

I am ready for some time off.

I invited them but my therapist and his wife didn’t come to my last recital. I was not surprised, but I thought it was a cool recital and told him all about it during my last session. I’m curious to see if he brings it up today. He most likely will but probably not mention his decision to skip it.

I understand that there is a big difference between a therapeutic relationship and connecting outside of the same. But I think that people who skipped my last recital missed me and my cohorts giving an unusual and  excellent performance.

But toujours gai, Archy, toujours gai.

NYTimes: Full Transcript of Mueller’s Statement on Russia

I read this and started the full report. It’s surprising how clear and informative Mueller can be.  I read the above because a commentator on the PBS suggested that it would be good to read the entire statement. I started the full report after hearing that only 3% of Americans have actually read it. I’m not sure I’ll make it through (probably not) but the NYT has a nice online searchable version.

NYTimes: Read the Mueller Report: Searchable Document

I’m writing during my resting period before this evening’s choir rehearsal. Eileen has been on call all day. She is driving Jennifer Moore, the weaving workshop presenter, from the airport to her lodgings. She was supposed to pick her up around noon. They were planning lunch together. But Moore’s planes have been canceling. Now Eileen is going to be picking her up closer to 10:00 PM this evening IF she is able to get a plane into GR.

That’s the bad news. The good news is that Eileen will be able to come to choir rehearsal this evening. Her workshop starts in earnest on Sunday and she has signed up to help register people. She is excited about this and I’m very happy to see her so involved in something she likes.

I managed to time all the  music on the June 9th recital today. This resulted in me lopping off several anthems I had wanted to include, but I am determined not to have too long a recital. At this writing I think I have about 45 minutes of music. That is plenty. When I factor in logistics and other stuff I am hoping to come in under an hour. I made a copy of my working order to give to the choir this evening. Next Wednesday we will probably run through most of the program in order.

I am looking forward to getting some time off soon. I enjoy my work, but it’s time for a break.

Lies about treason and coups – GreenwichTime

Opinion | My Rapist Apologized – The New York Times

This is by Michelle Alexander, the author of The New Jim Crow.  I admire the way her mind works. This article is a startling story of how she as a Mom had to tell her daughter she had been raped and also how her mother had had the same experience (telling Alexander that she —- her Mom — had also been raped. Good read.

What to Do When You’re a Country in Crisis – The New York

This is an interesting review of Jared Diamond’s latest book Upheaval. The author of the review convinced me with the way he pointed out the errors in the book and some weaknesses….. I still may read Diamond’s book, but I will keep this review handy for perspective.

In ‘The Octopus Museum,’ Brenda Shaughnessy Sees a Cephalopod Future

I rarely read reviews of poetry books in the NTY book review, but this one made me want to read the book. Cool.

I checked back earlier than usual today. I was wondering if I pissed off any reader with my thoughts on Memorial Day. yesterday

I have been skipping putting up links, so today the rest of the post is made up of links.

Keetje Kuipers, Arrival | Fogged Clarity

Still Life with Small Objects of Perfect Choking Size | TriQu

Another Kuipers poem I like.

NYTimes: A Lesson for (and From) a Dystopian World

At Golden Gate Park with You | Alaska Quarterly Review

Collaborators by Keetje Kuipers – Poems | Academy of Am

“Getting the Baby to Sleep” by Keetje Kuipers | Blackbird 

More poetry by Kuipers.

How to Criticize with Kindness: Philosopher Daniel Dennett

I like this guy. Here’s the gist:

How to compose a successful critical commentary:

1. You should attempt to re-express your target’s position so clearly, vividly, and fairly that your target says, “Thanks, I wish I’d thought of putting it that way.
2. You should list any points of agreement (especially if they are not matters of general or widespread agreement).
3. You should mention anything you have learned from your target.
4. Only then are you permitted to say so much as a word of rebuttal or criticism.

Introduction to Greek Meter pdf

NYTimes: A Coast-to-Coast Marriage of American Railroads

Today is Memorial Day in the USA. Recently I was reading somewhere (or it could have been a podcast I listened to)  that the USA in its current mad state has made a cult of the military. Thanking service people for their service and so on. On Memorial Day I have very mixed feelings. I have tons of sympathy for people who are serving in the military, especially those who turned to it for an education and/or a livelihood. However, I understand that the first task of the military is to kill humans in service of the country it hails from. It’s like business. The bottom line is to make money. The bottom line of the military is dead bodies (see General Patton’s Christmas cards with stacks of dead Vietnamese on them). The logic of the military is iron clad as far as I can see. Strip away the romanticism and what you have left is pretty horrible to me. And to top it off, the people who run our society, usually old and rich, don’t seem to blink twice about sending tons of young people to their death to subsidize their wars which often look to be based on either accumulation of the fast diminishing resources of our planet or profiteering.

I’m in a happy mood, eh? Well today driving over to pick up a mangle that my wife had decided to buy used, I killed a momma duck who was crossing the highway with a trail of ducklings.

Bah. Nothing to be done. I didn’t get any warning and suddenly I was plowing through them and hit the mom. Fuck. Fuck a duck. Literally.

By the way, this is a mangle:

Yesterday one of my sopranos (Hi Barb!) was buttering me up with all kinds of compliments on how I lead the choir, but her punch line was “you need a vacation.”

She is, of course, correct. I only have two Sundays left before a lengthy time off. Yesterday, the former Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church, The Right Reverend Katharine Jefferts Schori, was the celebrant for Eucharist at my church. The day before she did a little two hour thing where she talked and did Q and A. Eileen went to that. I am distinctly not in the mood for religious stuff and took the opportunity to skip it. I didn’t get a chance to meet Schori, but she gave an intelligent homily (no surprise there, she’s obviously pretty brilliant).

SCHORI ON THE RIGHT LEFT , WILLIAMS ON THE LEFT RIGHT

But when I noticed Rowan Williams article in my New York Times app early this morning, I sighed and clicked on it to read it despite the fact that he is a former archbishop of Canterbury. Actually I know Williams to also be pretty brilliant, but as I just mentioned I’m not exactly in the mood for religious stuff.

I was in for a delightful surprise. His article was all about the book, Riddley Walker by Russell Hoban. Williams’ description inspired me to get hold of an ebook copy of this book. In it, Hoban does the Anthony Burgess Clockwork Orange trick of inventing a pidgin version of English which seems in both cases to be one of the main characters. In Hoban’s case, his story is set after some sort of terrible cataclysm in which the survivors are illiterate and have evolved an illiterate hodge podge language of English. Unsurprisingly I found a Burgess blurb which reads “this is what literature is meant to be.” I was sold.

Both Burgess and Hoban have a debt to my hero, James Joyce.

Later I was perusing my own books. I was sure I didn’t have Riddley Walker laying around somewhere. But Hoban is an unusual writer. He has written all kinds of stuff including children’s books. The Mouse and His Child was sitting on my shelf under H. It is a beautifully made book. I’m on chapter 3.

Then I was doing my daily read in Clarence Lusane’s fascinating and informative Black History of the White House and ran across another interesting title: The Echo from Dealey Plaza: The True Story of the First African American on the White House Secret Service Detail and His Quest for Justice After the Assassination of JFK by Abraham Bolden. Bolden had been specifically invited by JFK. He has a story to tell and it’s not a happy one.  A used copy of his book is now wending its way into my greedy reader’s paws.

So I’m trying to take a day off today. I put off church planning until tomorrow. I need to not only outline the next two Sundays and the recital on the final Sunday, I want to start working on preparing Hymn choices for my subs.

But not today. Today I relax and read. Life is good.

this next one is technically not new having been recorded in 1972, however, it’s new to me.

from 2004

Another version from 2012

from 2014

From 2016

from 2019

I am going to have to buy their new album even though it’s on Spotify.

My reading interests are very wide ranging these days.

I have been reading Dante’s Inferno and the Aeneid by Virgil.

Portrait of Dante by Luca Signorel

These and some of the rest of my reading are interrelated with each other.

I became interested in Dante after checking out Patricia Sloane’s excellent T.S. Eliot’s Bleistein Poems: Uses of Literary Allusion in ‘Burbank with a Baedeker: Bleisten with a Cigar” and “Dirge.”  Even though this title sounds like it might be a dreary doctoral thesis dressed up for publication, it’s a breezy and fascinating analysis of T. S. Eliot’s use of allusion including many references to Dante’s Inferno.  I am reading it as well. Dante and Burgess led me to consider reading Dante’s trilogy. I picked up my very worn used copy and discovered that it is quite good with extensive footnotes. I love good footnotes.

Virgil leads Dante around Hell and Limbo. Also, Burgess uses Virgil’s Aeneid as a slight pattern for one of his books. So why not add Virgil’s Aeneid to the mix?

And of course Shakespeare joins these as books I like to read in the morning.

But by evening I am ready for lighter fare or at least fiction. Yesterday I was on the phone with Thom Gouwens, a recitalist we are hiring to play the November Julia Huttar Memorial Recital.

I have known him and his wife, Judy, ever since she was my daughter Sarah’s first grade teacher. Thom asked me if I had ever read any of Mark Schweizer’s liturgical murder mysteries. I hadn’t. He recommended them as something an Episcopal organist like me might enjoy.

Later I realized that I had been avoiding these silly books because Chuck Huttar (Joy’s widower) has said they weren’t very good.

Charles and I don’t see eye to eye on much. Maybe I should give them a shot. So I bought the first one last night as an ebook ($2.99). It’s called The Alto Wore Tweed.

It seemed to be some good light reading for me in the evening or afternoon. it doesn’t take itself seriously and I get many of the church jokes.

So from the serious to the silly….

I may have made a mistake in canceling my piano trio rehearsal today. Probably not. My violinist seem to have a good time Sunday, but when I  mentioned getting together this week she looked like I had shot her. So when I hadn’t heard from her last night,  Dawn (the cellist who also sings in my choir) and I decided to skip today. Dawn also consented to repeat the piece she played at the recital for the prelude for this Sunday. That should be splendiferous.

We are sitting around waiting for the building contractors to show up and work on the basement windows. I believe Eileen is having them all replaced with thick glass insulated type windows to keep the heat/cold in.

All of this work on the house is beginning to tell even on Eileen. It’s quite a bit of disruption. But I think after we get it all done she will be a happy camper.

Ever since Sunday I have been on a sort of Duke Ellington kick. I started listening to Teachout’s bio of him and also digging up recordings of his on Spotify.

I also ordered a copy of Brothers’ book Help! The Beatles, Duke Ellington, and the Magic of Collaboration. It came in the mail yesterday.

I examined a copy of Brothers’ book from the library and decided I needed to read it (eventually). Collaboration is very interesting to me and I love to do it when I can. I think Sunday’s recital had a bit of that in it. At least I hope so.

Yesterday I finished reading Ken Krimstein’s graphic biography (it’s not a novel dammit) The Three Escapes of Hannah Arendt: A tyranny of Truth. I am a fan of Arendt’s work.

This excellent little book made me want to read all of the books that I own by her.

I never realized how many of the people in history I admire were Jewish. Proust, Kafka, Arendt… just to mention a few. Krimstein does a good job of packing his little book with tons of information.

This morning when I was working on my Greek, I became very curious about the meter Homer uses. I dimly recall that this factored into my interest years ago. Although I am working line by line, the website I am using for the original is not always clear which line is which. If I could scan it, I would be sure that I was looking at a complete line (there seem to be tons of information and resources online for Homer that I am still exploring).

At any rate, I plan to find out more about this subject.

Now’s as good a time as any to post here. Our house has been very disrupted the last two days as the people Eileen hired to insulate our house have been going about their business. I think they are close to done as I write this. It’s quite an extensive process. They put new insulation everywhere: the attic, under all of the siding, and the basement. They poked holes in some of the walls to get to little pockets of space. Eileen is very happy to have this done. I’m happy that she’s happy.

Unfortunately, yesterday while they were using heavy machinery upstairs, they poked a hole in our living room ceiling. According to one worker, it happens but he doesn’t like it when it does. Before they leave today they are planning to repair this.

The Writer’s Almanac for May 16, 2019 | Garrison Keillor

So the recital yesterday was a blast. It was such a pleasure to work with this group of people. Everyone did a splendid job.

I warned everyone I was that casual attire was encouraged and that I was planning to wear excellent socks.

I wore my outfit to church but that worked fine since I wear a robe.

The listeners seemed to appreciate my extensive program notes. (link) I know I had fun writing them.

I was happy with my performance of the Toccata and Fugue in D minor by Bach. It wasn’t perfect but I mostly did it the way I intended to. I thanked Rhonda afterwards for her help with it. She had some good ideas and after experimenting around a bit, I incorporated many of them into my final performance.

I also enjoyed improvising with Jordan. We did this as background music to two of the readings. On the reading from Olio by Jess, we used soprano sax and piano. This was lots of fun as it was very free form. I asked Eileen to read the poem a line at a time and then Jordan and I responded together.  In the reading, “I’m like a bird” by Nick Hornby, we used flute and marimba and did some playing underneath Jen’s reading. At one point, she stopped and we played a short excerpt of the song from the title. On the Duke Ellington reading, Jordan improvised magnificently between little bits of the Ellington excerpt. Some very cool stuff.

The trio nailed my “Stirred Hearts and Souls.” And it was fun to do my Drek 2019.

I finally did a Grace Notes recital that resembled my approach to my coffee house gigs. It was extremely satisfying.

I have been neglecting posting here due to increased preparation for today’s recital. Yesterday I spent time on composing the final program for today. I  interleaved paragraphs of explanations and stories into the list of pieces to be performed. I deliberately made the whole thing personal keeping in mind the internet maxim: “talk like a person.” I was pleasantly surprised that all the musicians seemed very supportive of my unusual approach. I haven’t heard from Jen yet. She said she would be unavailable Friday and Saturday and did not answer emails. I put a copy of the program in her box yesterday after I finished printing up 50 copies. I’m hoping she thinks it’s okay. I am planning not to talk today which is a change from my usual modus operandi in this situation. But the notes are extensive and entertaining.

I am guardedly optimistic about the number of people who will attend today’s recital. In addition to hoping for a little support from the Grace community, it’s always helpful to have several people involved the program. They bring family and friends.

I decided at the last minute to include a harpsichord solo, Gavotte by William Byrd. I have thought from the beginning it would be a good idea to have a short little harpsichord solo, but realized that this meant not only keeping the harpsichord in good tune but making sure all the jacks returned quickly enough for me to play the dang piece. This is mostly true. I am planning to play the Gavotte for the prelude for this morning’s service.

Eileen is still resting at this point (8 AM). It’s relatively warm out and there is a drizzle of rain. This is actually my favorite kind of weather.

It will be interesting to see how everything turns out today. I will probably post the program here later since I am so proud of it.

It’s Tuesday afternoon. Our house is crawling with electricians. Actually only a couple guys named Ian and Allen. They are young and polite. They seem to quickly understand when I told them Eileen was project manager. They have left me alone.

I have chosen readings for Sunday. This looks like it’s going to be fun. I sent them out to the readers (Eileen and Jen) and Jordan.

The first is a section of Duke Ellington’s autobiography, Music is My Mistress.

I sent the readings marked up (as you can see)… M means music here.

I’ve asked Rev Jen to read this reading and for Jordan to play some sax licks during it.  I often say that Ellington said if it sounds good, it is good. This is the source of that quote.

I asked Eileen to read this section from Olio by Tyehimba Jess. I have read this work and thing it’s something of a masterpiece. Jess used real life figures and made poetry about them. You can see that this poem has lots of music works. Jordan and I will work together on this one.

Just before my little ensemble performs Drek 2019, I’ve asked Jen to read this piece by Nick Hornby.

I admit I went looking for this. I wanted something interesting and well written. Jen actually recognized Hornby.

She emailed me that she has the song “I’m like a bird” stuck in her head (witty, eh?). I didn’t know the song, I just liked the sentiment of the piece. Now I think we better use some of its melody in the background music which Jordan and I will do. I’m thinking of something a bit softer for this one… I would like to use marimba and let Jordan choose his own instrument (he plays several).

Well, my practice on the Bach went badly this morning. Part of it may be the interruption in my routine. Eileen got up early because of the electricians coming. I hadn’t even showered after exercising when she got up. I didn’t get to my Greek until about an hour ago. Also, I’ve asked Rhonda Edgington to listen to my piece and I think that made me a bit off balance in my practice (Hi Rhonda!).

Even more than these two things is the fact that I need to strategize carefully about this piece at this point. When I start thinking about the tempo (like I did this morning) I seem to get flustered and distracted because I’m worrying about whether it’s fast enough or steady enough. When i simply try to play the right notes, it goes pretty well.

I’m about to hop in the car and do my afternoon practice on it. I will go slow and carefully. I remember Ray Ferguson answering a question about what tempo I should do a certain piece. He said that by the time you learn it, you will know. I think this is happening to me and that I can short circuit it if I over think it. Slow practice is always good.

Plus I made bread after lunch. That’s always a calming experience for me.

I am enjoying working directly on Homer’s Odyssey. I like the web site I have mentioned, but oddly enough one of the most helpful resources is a The Odyssey of Homer construed literally and word for word by The Rev de Giles. I think it was published in the 1850s. I would love an old musty copy of it, but the online version is very usable.

I checked and it only seems to be available in reprints.

Harvard’s Bad Call on Ronald Sullivan – The Atlantic

Today and yesterday I made two trips to the church to practice the Toccata and Fugue in D minor by Bach, one before lunch and one after. This piece is slowly coming together. I have done lots of slow practice and am continuing to do so.

Today begins my second week of daily 20 minute jogging in place. BP is still high but weight is at least stable.

It is crazy here in Holland due to the ending days of Tulip Time. I like the tulips but the tourists proliferate in an amazing fashion so that even down here on 18th street there is very little parking left on the street. And the drivers make me shudder. it’s a miracle none of the many, many pedestrians do not get hurt.

I finished Leonard Cohen’s Flame. There is a lot of crap in this collection. Not exactly his best work. I like his final album, You Want it Darker.

The lyrics for this album make up a section in this book, but I think that publishing so much of the material from his notebooks is goofy unless done in a scholarly way (which this is not).

I like this stuff but it feels more liberal than bipartisan to me.

The most disturbing thing I learned was this.

The flat line of 30% chance that a law is past remains the same for 0% public support for it and when 100 % of the public support it.

How fucked up is that?

I love these Oxford Union things. We are about forty minutes into this one.

I am also a fan of the Constitutional Center and Jeffrey Rosen. I knew some of this stuff since I have been reading American history. We’re about 40 minutes into this one as well.

I skipped Greek and my  usual morning reading this morning and prepped for my 10:30 rehearsal. I prepared scores for Drek 2019 and other things coming up. The rehearsal lasted almost two hours but it was rewarding. We went over Drek first. I was curious what my crew would think of this primitive, gentle piece. My string players seemed to like it which surprised me a bit. But they are very supportive of me generally anyway.

We went over a Corelli trio sonata we will do with violin, soprano sax, harpsichord, and cello. I didn’t have the harpsichord ready to roll so I did it on the organ (which would work quite as well). Jordan sounded splendid on the soprano sax and I thought it really worked. I think the harpsichord will be the finishing touch to this.

I brought scores to the Handel soprano piece my strings are going to play for the June 9th recital. We went over that. Also, the strings are playing this Sunday and we went over the prelude and postlude. The prelude is “Air for a G string” by Bach. My violinist loves to milk it and plays very romantically. People will love that. The postlude is a little Bourée by Handel. Amy and Dawn (the string players) will play on that as well. It’s easy and that’s the point: to do something easy and that will still be classy.

We went over my Piano Trio I wrote in January of 2017. Jordan hung around and turned pages for me which helped immensely. I went over this earlier in the morning before Eileen got up. I will need to practice it but I think it will come off okay.

Rhonda couldn’t make this rehearsal so I didn’t bother to edit her final piano scores for Drek 2019 and the little arrangement I have done of Rhosymedre for Sax and Piano.

She will be able to come to our rehearsal next Thursday which is turning into basically our Dress Rehearsal for the following Sunday recital.

I am planning for Eileen and Rev Jen to do two readings each. I haven’t picked these out yet, but Jordan and I independently came up with the idea of improvising back music to the readings. I think that will be cool. I’m hoping to nail down some if not all of them tomorrow.

I came home, had lunch and rested a couple of hours but then returned for the mandatory daily practice of the Bach Toccata and Fugue in D minor.  I’m home now, too tired to concentrate on Greek, but grateful that today went so well.

Daily exercise and Homer… I don’t know if I can keep this up, but I am spending 20 minutes running in place each morning, plus some light exercises like sit-ups (6 this morning!). My plan is to continue this. Also, I have been translating a line or two of Homer’s Odyssey daily for the last three days in addition to my usual study.

I finished reading In Other Rooms, Other Wonders by Daniyal Mueenuddin. I savored it. Mueenuddin tells troubling stories that are simple on the surface but have complexities inside them. I liked all the stories. The one called, “Lily,” hit home with me. The story is of two people who meet and fall in love. Lily is a jet setter type American who parties hard. but has an interesting interior life.  Murad her eventual Pakistani husband is rich, elegant, and sensitive. The story is divided into two parts. The first is their romance and marriage (which shocked me a bit… I didn’t think they were heading towards that). The second is the story of the inevitable break down of their relationship. Both characters can be attractive to the reader. But in the second part we see their weaknesses. Lily is unable to keep up a respectable life with her husband. For his part, Murad is no where near as flexible and exciting as he appeared. Lily wants to make their sex life varied and interesting. He is much less experienced and very conventional in his love making.

What troubled me was as Lily grows away from Murad, she violates a promise and reads his private diary This actually happened to me in my first marriage. This story helped me understand that a bit better. But like all of Meenduddin’s stories, it troubled me. Drawing this reaction is one of the things I think is admirable about his writing.

I listen to podcasts. Now I guess I will listen even more since I’m doing a daily twenty minute jog in place. I may eventually use audible.com since I recently discovered that having a Prime Amazon account includes this.  Audible.com always put me off because I was under the impression that you had to subscribe to their service and sort of rent a book or two a month. So instead I have purchased synced readings to some of the Kindle books I own. These turn out to be available on the Amazon Audible app. Who knew?

Anyway, I have a lot to listen to on podcasts so I’m not needing to mess with Audible.com but I probably will eventually.

In the meantime, here are two podcasts that I have listened to and am quite struck by.

Kickass News: Jared Diamond on Nations in Crisis

I have read and enjoyed Jared Diamond’s book, On Guns and Steel. He talks about his new book, Upheaval: Turning Points for Nations in Crisis, on this podcast.

One of the things he says is that he sees the world as being in a neck and neck horse race between the Horse of Destruction and the Horse of Hope. He gives hope a slight edge but points out that both “horses” are speeding up exponentially.

I have been thinking about the proliferation of negativity via social media and other internet exchanges. I suspect that the terrible things happening in the world are continuing to happen at the rate they have in the past. It’s just that negative info is so much more interesting than mundane hopeful info.

But I’m convinced that there are many, many good things that happen quietly all around the world. I have no idea of the proportion between the two extremes, but I know that  many quiet good things happen because of people as well as awful and atrocious things.

It sounds a bit Pollyanna which is annoying but leads me to my next link.

Emma Cline Reads Miranda July | The New Yorker

Some of you may recall David Sedaris  hilarious rendition of “Roy Spivey” by Miranda July. It was voted listeners’ favorite podcast in the first ten years of the New Yorker’s Fiction Podcast.  The link above is to another story by July and I think it’s spiffy. I have been interested in veiled complexity lately (as Daniyal Mueenuddin’s marvelous stuff). July is not exactly veiling her complexity as clothing it with an eccentric surface. I’m not going to go further in hopes that a few of you will listen and/or read this excellent story called “The Metal Bowl.”

Ray Buursma: Street performing and flawed laws

Finally, I have to share this. Even as I write this, this conference is streaming live on YouTube. This is from yesterday. Jeremy Daum, my son-in-law, is looking good. Eileen and I have it boomarked to check out together sometime. I have to say I am proud of Jeremy!

I have been going through the readings for Chapter 7 in the JACT Greek text I use for a year or so.  I put the Greek on the left side of the page with lots of space, then translate the word and often identify it’s grammatical function. The right hand side is reserved for study notes (which I use often). This morning it occurred to me that would be a good way to study Homer (the original inspiration for this insane task in my 60s). Surely there were online resources for this.

It turns out there are amazing online resources for studying Homer. Tuft University has extensive texts online. In the Odyssey resource, each Greek word is a link to the very things I am interested in knowing about it.

I have looked at this website before, but this morning I had an “aha” moment. I now have enough grammatical understanding and vocab that it is time for me to tackle the Odyssey.

It helps that Emily Wilson’s wonderful recent translation has exactly the same number of lines as Homer. Each of her lines are not a direct translation of the Homeric line, however, I am putting her line by line translation into my new Odyssey notebook on the right page.

This is exciting for me. Today I began working on this in earnest after several years preparation. I am planning to continue working in the JACT text simultaneously.

I decided to exercise before work today. I was judging from yesterday, that this should not be a problem for me as far depleting energy needed for church and it wasn’t.

I was inspired by pictures of Bill Clinton “jogging.” I didn’t know you could run like that. I pictured running as something that was so strenuous it would kill me.  I don’t exactly run vigorously. It’s much more like a trot, but it does seem to be more active than walking on the treadmill for 45 minutes, so the desired effect is possibly achieved.

I’ve mentioned these 15 plays that were in a New York Times Style magazine a while ago. Last night Eileen and I watched a couple. They are fun. The characters in “Presidential” are Jared and Ivanka. They are discussing which of them should run for President in 2024. Here’s a link to both the video and the script.

The other video we watched was of Terrence McNally’s “Muses of Fire.”

Terrence McNally, the author, wrote himself into the play.

McNally wrote his dead lover, Edward Albee, in as well.

Here’s a link to an NYT interview by McNally. that accompanied the play. I like these actors in the McNally piece as well as the writers they portray.

I started writing this  blog post before church. It’s now about 2:30 on Sunday afternoon and I’m building up energy to go back and practice.

The choir did a bang up job today. They sang Ellington’s “Come Sunday” beautifully and the soloist, Elizabeth Brubraker, did a wonderful job. I used the tune in the improvised piano prelude and that came off well.

My May recital is two weeks from today. My Bach is in pretty good shape but it needs daily maintenance. This week I plan to pull this recital together. All the players have consented to their part. Now I have to get some stuff in their hands. It’s all pretty easy music for the most part.

Speaking of the Bach, I love the fact that the manuscript which is our source for this piece is sitting online where anyone can view it (link to the pdf).  The handwriting is of Johannes Ringk who owned the manuscript. It is possible that he copied it from a manuscript in the possession of Kellner who was a pupil of Bach.

I dug it up to answer some questions I had about it.

Now before I go, a few fun video embeds (since I couldn’t figure out to embed the NYT’s videos mentioned above).

Ever since hearing the Russian Rennaissance perform, I have been thinking about the way they did Prokofiev’s Piano Toccata, Opus. 11.

I like visual illustrations of music like this one.

But these guys are closer to the way the Russian Renaissance did it.

.”

And just for fun, I have embedded this to begin at their interpretation of Ellington’s “Caravan