Thursdays seem to be turning into another work day for Jupe. It’s a rewarding day. Yesterday I spent about two and a half hours in actual rehearsal with Amy and Dawn on violin and cello. In addition, I had to prepare scores for the rehearsal and managed forty minutes or so of organ practice. All of this on a day I was extremely worn out from Wednesday’s work. Good grief. I always seem to make full time jobs out of part time ones. This dates back to my work at St. John’s Episcopal Church in Oscoda.

At least I make more money now than then.

Despite the fatigue, rehearsing with Amy and Dawn is very rewarding to me. The Haydn piano trio we have been working on sprang to life yesterday. Amy and I read a Mozart sonata that we had not played before. After we finished reading through it, I was looking at the notes in the edition we have. I had remarked to Amy that it reminded me of Haydn in places. The notes revealed that Mozart had not completed this piano trio. Instead Maximillian Stadler had written almost half of the work. According to Groves, Stadler was a prominent musician contemporary with Mozart and moved to Vienna after Mozart’s death to supervise his estate for Mozart’s widow.

This explained the unusual remote keys in the latter part of the work. It was not this, however, that reminded me of Haydn. Instead it was the second section of the opening movement which is attributed to Mozart.

The piano trio spent a good deal of time working on music for upcoming Sundays at Grace. This meant going over “Air for a G string” for this Sunday as well as a charming little sinfonia by Scheidt for the postlude. After having made sure we have our signals straight for Sunday, we proceeded to rehearse the Haydn. Then the little piece by Thomas Tompkins we have been working on, finishing up with the trio I wrote for us. Satisfying, but I did walk home very tired.

coping with trump

Dawn and Amy both remain very upset about President Trump. Amy is still trying to deal with forgiving friends and family for voting for him. We did chat a bit about this. I pointed out that I hadn’t had the heart to mention to Eileen that Trump was having a press conference yesterday. She was contentedly working on her most recent weaving project of blankets for some soldiers in Afghanistan. I didn’t have the heart to tell it was going on. I heard some of it on the car radio driving back and forth to see my Mom at the nursing home.

I didn’t have the stamina to listen to this press conference or even to read it in its entirety. i found an annotated version of it by Financial Times, but for some reason when i tried to link it in just now it is behind a firewall. Fuck that.

Collection | The Metropolitan Museum of Art

This is cool. Thousands of online records of their collection.

This morning feels like a typical Thursday in that I am exhausted. Yesterday was a typical Wednesday except that my boss is still out of town so we didn’t meet. I practiced organ, walked to church and prepared for the evening rehearsal. I also began  filing a ton of organ music laying around the choir room. I don’t know why I’m so tired.

I had an odd dream last night. I seemed to be visiting a state legislature convention. Somehow i ended up with a box of promo material for Rep. Huizenga. It was about 20 matchbooks and many promo photos of him. I’m bring it up here because when I woke I up I realized that the promos were oddly of the back of his head and that pose seemed to be his photograph wherever I saw it in the dream, on posters or whatever.

In the dream I was trying to find him to give him his silly promo stuff. I never did.

Today I have my trio rehearsal. Eileen pointed out to me the other day that I seem to her to be working harder to prepare our Sunday morning services in the basement. This may be true. I don’t find the work onerous. But I do seem to have lots to do. For example this morning I have to put a couple voices of a Scheidt sinfonia we will play Sunday into Finale so that I can easily read them at the synth. Also, since we are singing a Bach chorale I thought it would be a good idea to do a version of the “Air on a G string.” I know. I know. I’m a whore. But anyway, I have to make sure everyone in my trio, myself included, have a score to this that matches. Sine my trio string players are long time local wedding string quartet members, this should be another easy piece. We just have to make sure we all have the same number of measures and that the music matches up.

book report

I have been thinking about Nabokov’s Pale Fire since I bought a small paperback of it when I was in high school. In it, Nabokov constructs a book that purports to be an edition of the long poem, “Pale Fire.” In the book he also invents a commentator who is really the subject of the book. His story is told mostly in the introduction and the footnotes which make up most of the book.

I have an ebook version of this. But like so many ebooks the footnotes do not work well. I was reading it in my old tablet (before I shattered it).  I downloaded it to my new tablet. Yesterday when I was resting up for the evening rehearsal I reread the introduction more carefully and discovered that Nabokov has his commentator advise readers to skip to the footnotes first and read them straight through. Previously I had been laboriously moving back and forth between the poem and footnotes via my own little system of bookmarks.

Reading them straight through yesterday I could tell that they are designed to be read that way. The commentator says that you should then read the poem and it will make more sense after reading the notes first. We’ll see what I do, but for now I’m planning to read the footnote section of the book.

Dubai Plans a Taxi That Skips the Driver, and the Roads – The New York Times

The browser version of this article has an annoying gif. Sorry about that. But I think this idea is wild.

 Human Gene Editing Receives Science Panel’s Support – The New York Times

I heard this on the radio as well. I have never understood how they can change all of the DNA at once. Cool stuff, though.

On the Road to Another Watergate? – The New York Times

We can only hope. May it come faster.

After doing dishes and Greek this morning, I did something I haven’t done in ages. I sat and held a newspaper and read it while sipping coffee. It’s funny how something so simple changes.

My Mom subscribes to the local paper, the Holland  Sentinel.  We have subscribed on and off. I dropped my subscription primarily because I basically access news and information online. I tried a digital subscription for a while. The Holland Sentinel’s website, like so many, struck me as clunky and slow. They even simulated online those stupid stupid little stickers they stick on their paper with ads on them.

Now they are pop-ups online (which my Adblocker thankfully blocks). At least they were the last time I looked at the Holland Sentinel online.

When Mom doesn’t give the paper to the workers at her nursing home, she gives it to us, mostly because Eileen likes to sit and do the puzzles. We both glance over it. I noticed the headline, “Dutch, but not so much,” in this past Sunday’s paper, but didn’t think it looked interesting.

But a day or so later, a link popped up on my google news with a sentence or two describing what the article was about. It was comparing conservative Holland Michigan to the more liberal Netherlands. This is something that I have thought about living in Holland.  Many of the local stereotypical brain dead conservative attitudes are in such stark contrast to what I see as the more humane and intelligent approach of the Netherlands. Or at least that’s how it seems to me having never visited the Netherlands, but only read about it.

So here’s a link to the article if you’re curious.

Dutch, but not so Dutch: Holland abortion views differ from those in the Netherlands

The Holland Sentinel’s website seems to be improved. Sarah Heth, the reporter, did a good job of interviewing local people and integrating AP reports. I will look for her work in the future.

How the New York Times Is Using Strategies Inspired by Netflix, Spotify, and HBO to Make Itself Indispensible | WIRED

Speaking of journalism, I have read some of this article this morning. I have it bookmarked to finish reading. It’s a bit longer than many news articles.

Journalism is definitely one of my ongoing interests. I have been thinking about reporting and page design since I was co-editor of my high school newspaper.

Weird. Moy Sand and Gravel the other book of Paul Muldoon’s poetry came in the mail yesterday. I also paid a penny plus shipping and handling for it. It was in pristine condition. And I see by the invoice that the people selling the book (Goodwill Industries) had specified its condition. Cool.

In first under Trump, Russian jets buzzed a U.S. destroyer at close range – The Washington Post

 Russia Deploys Missile, Violating Treaty and Challenging Trump – The New York Times

Jackson: Civil rights will suffer under Sessions | Chicago Sun-Times

That would Jesse Jackson. Senior.

Trump adviser Stephen Miller lied — and it matters – Chicago Tribune

It matters because the lie about non-citizen’s voting will drive further terrible voter restrictions.

Bobby Freeman, ‘Do You Want to Dance’ Singer, Dies at 76 – The New York Times

And now for a song. It starts around 1:46

edison report

So Edison and I went to the vet yesterday.  Despite the fact that the vet suspects Edison of having some sort of chronic illness possibly cancer, Edison is flourishing. Our strategy is to monitor him closely and when he begins to slow down on the amount of food he is eating to take him in to the vet so the vet can look him over and give him a cortisone shot.

Edison climbed into the vet’s arms yesterday. She told me that they didn’t see that kind of behavior much in her office. Presumably because she tends to animals that are not very happy when they see her. She also said that sick cats can often have a “look” in their face showing their unhappiness. Edison didn’t have that yesterday.

I was able to report to her that although Edison was beginning to slow down on the amount of food he is eating, he has also been much more frisky since she last saw him. Edison continues to slowly gain his weight back. Weight loss was what alarmed one of the vets before and led to the working diagnosis that Edison is ill.

We have chosen to pursue a “quality of life” strategy for him. Our present vets have gone as far as they can in determining what’s wrong with him. To find out more, we would have to go to a cat oncologist in Grand Rapids. It would be expensive, but even more importantly it would mean a lot of misery for Edison.

The vet thinks we are approaching it the right way. And you can see from the photo I took this morning,  that Edison is very much himself.

organ practice

I was inspired by the excellent playing of my colleague, Rhonda, the other day to work on my own technique. I took a couple of technique books home from church:

Nilson’s pedal exercises and

Gleason’s textbook for organ. The first I used in undergraduate school and revisit periodically. The second I only used with my first teacher, Kent McDonald, in my early organ study. I used both in my practice yesterday. I do this with piano technique as well from time to time.

marking in books

I love to mark up my books. However, I don’t like purchasing books with highlighting and marks in them. My first book of Paul Muldoon’s poetry came in the mail yesterday marked up by the previous owner. I purchased it for a penny plus shipping and handling. Usually I try not to order used books that indicate they might have marks in them. I think since I didn’t know Muldoon’s work that well that I just wanted to read him at leisure. Now I am doing some erasing so that I can see the text of poems. Unfortunately some it is in ink. Yikes.

new book

I am very interested in Viet Than Nguyen’s new book of short stories. Yesterday he put up a link on Facelessbooks to one of the stories in the book. I read it and I think this dude can write. Here’s the link.

“Black-Eyed Women” by Viet Thanh Nguyen

There’s some very clever stuff in this story, but I refrain from discussing it too much in case, God forbid, you should happen to click on the link and read it.

Will We Lose the Doctor Who Would Stop the Next Flint? – The New York Times

Monna Hannah-Atisha’s name might just ring a bell. She’s the doctor who led the discovery of the problems in Flint. She is also a first generation Iraqi immigrant. She wrote this article which asks if we are stopping human resources with our fearful ban.

I had fun at church yesterday. The associate pastor has been subbing for my boss the last two Sundays. Both Sundays she has seemed very impressed with the music. I think she had low expectations for praying in the basement. The strings really add a lot as does the choir. Both Sundays at the announcements (just before the Offertory where we sing our anthem), she has complimented me and the music. Yesterday just before the anthem, when I said to the choir that she keeps setting us up with high expectations, one of my sopranos (a former director of the group) remarked that it was a good thing we keep meeting them. I thought that was kind of cool.

The choir itself was missing several singers.

I had one bass, two sopranos, three tenors and three altos. the anthem was SAB . My one bass was fighting a cold or something. But the anthem came off well.

Today I have told Eileen that I will take the cat to vet appointment since it is the same time she usually goes to the Evergreen Commons and exercises. I had to wake her yesterday so that she would have time to get ready for church. She isn’t up yet and I have to get the cat to the vet in 45 minutes. I don’t usually bother her in the morning unless she asks me to.

Unpublished Black History – NYTimes.com

This is actually an article from a year ago. The NYT linked in to this article:

A Star at the Apollo, Out of Its Spotlight – The New York Times

I think both articles are kind of cool.

talking with dr. birky

I saw my shrink on Friday. I try to bring him any stuff I am working on about myself. This time I could only point to my feeling energized about my work and my piano trio. He seems genuinely interested in the life of a musician and asks many questions often content based about my field. We discussed working with professors in my choir. He helped  me understand some concrete reasons a professor would not do well with being out of their own comfort zone. They have a sense of order and expectation of situations in their work.

Interestingly enough my perception is that my professors in the choir for the most part are pretty self aware. I have three profs, but all choir members are professional types, even if retired.

Talking with Dr. Birky helped me understand that in the last week or so I have “kicked it up a level” both with the choir and the trio.

listening to the radio

I was listening to the radio this morning while doing the dishes. The National Constitution Center has a podcast. The current one is a discussion between two partisan legal scholars about Neil Gorsuch’s nomination to the Supreme Court.  It’s worth listening to. I admire how Jeffrey Rosen moderates a civil discussion between two rival points of view.

He, himself, clerked for Gorsuch and recommended to listeners to read Gorsuch’s book on assisted suicide and to read his own recent article in the Atlantic, “Not even Andrew Jackson Went as Far as Trump in Attacking the Courts.”

I read this article this morning. I like it when writers delve into history with an eye on the present. I also looked at Gorsuch’s book.

Rosen made it sound like it’s a short read and available on Kindle format. His tone of voice led me to falsely assume it would sell for under $10. But, no! It’s $26.95! For a Kindle book! Fortunately, I was able to interlibrary loan a copy. I plan to check it out and possibly read it. Rosen made it sound like one could gain insight into Gorsuch’s mind from reading it.

After the podcast I tuned into the BBC world service radio station.  I was caught up in a description of Hans Rosling, a doctor and statistician who died recently. What interested me was his ignorance quiz. I took the online Guardian version and got 6/9, but only because I had listened to Rosling talk. On the radio, in a interview recorded before his death, he pointed out when people answer questions about what is happening in our world in the areas of population, life expectancy, and other questions, if they answer in ways incorrectly that are significantly different from random sample responses, they reveal misconceptions on the part of the answerer. Fascinating.

And I learned from the broadcast that the world population of children is actually remaining stable and maybe even slightly falling. As the late, Hans Rosling pointed out, this is a startling idea that doesn’t make it to the news very often.

Rosling is an antidote to the current climate of public discussion in the USA. He said we need to base our understanding on facts not myths. Excellent!

I’m running out time so I have to quit here.

men are scum

Well, Eileen is off to her breakfast with three other women from church. She has told me that sometimes the talk is negative about men. One member of the group especially is a bit of a downer. She claimed today that they might be able to talk about something else besides “men are scum.” Anyway, I think it’s good that Eileen has a social life although i told her that I wouldn’t have breakfast with this group since I don’t need more negativity in my life, being a church worker.

an intimate letter to a stranger

Today is the birthday of a writer named Pico Iyer. I learned about it on today’s Writer’s Almanac. I’ve never heard of this dude but I like the quote they used today:

“The less conscious one is of being ‘a writer,’ the better the writing. And though reading is the best school of writing, school is the worst place for reading. Writing should … be as spontaneous and urgent as a letter to a lover, or a message to a friend who has just lost a parent … and writing is, in the end, that oddest of anomalies: an intimate letter to a stranger.”

Sheesh, another writer to put on my list.

I sometimes feel like blogging is like that: intimate letters to strangers, even though most of my readers are family and friends.

art and propaganda

I finished reading Albert Murray’s interview in the new Paris Review. I was intrigued by the title the editors chose to put on it: “Art and Propaganda.”  I have interlibrary-loaned his memoir, but I’m more interested in his The Omni-Americans: New Perspectives on Black Experience and American Culture (1970). I was just poking around on Amazon and discovered a different subtitle: “Some Alternatives to the Folklore of White Supremacy.” Cool. I think I’ll go ahead and buy a used copy inexpensively online today.

In the meantime here are some passages from the interview I highlighted.

“I’m constantly amazed at people—writers, spokesmen—who profess to love something but don’t love it enough to find about it.”

This reminds me of many academics I have rubbed shoulders with.

“I think it is the processing of the idiomatic—that is, the extension and elaboration and refinement of the idiomatic—that adds up to fine art.”

“I think that’s the nature of fine art—when it goes beyond the provincial, it becomes universal, and the elements are accessible to mankind at large.”

“I believe, after my good friend Kenneth Burke, that literature is equipment for living.”

I interlibrary loaned Burke’s Attitudes Towards History this morning.

“When the basic purpose of the literary statement is to promote some immediate value, some virtue, to counterstate some vice, to sell some program, then I think of it as propaganda. There’s no pure definition of propaganda because every statement has to do with values, but when the complexities of human motive, of human behavior, of human aspiration are oversimplified in the interest of a specific social or political remedy, then we’d call it propaganda. ”

“I was raised in the context of epic heroism, and all the expectations of my childhood that were put on me by my elders were  those of the epic hero. Fortunately, since I was reading about epic heroes, fairy tales,and things like that, it all made sense to me. And no goddamned sociologist has ever been able to talk me out of it. I would have my sword and have it sharpened and have my resilience and have my courage. Anyone who tries to talk me out of courage and out of strength and out of skill is not my friend. ”

I love this shit!

An Anti-Consumer Agenda at the F.C.C. – The New York Times

Regulations to protect users on the internet are going away.

Paris to Increase Security Around Eiffel Tower – The New York Times

Yikes.

AN OPEN LETTER TO REPRESENTATIVE BILL HUIZENGA – Holland Sentinel

I didn’t know this was happening. I would gladly have signed. Glad to see so many names I recognize on this including my boss, Jen Adams, and friend, Rhonda Edgington.

Tishaura Jones slams Post editorial board while declining interview | Local News | stlamerican.com

My daughter put this link up on Feesburger. She and her husband lived in St. Louis while he attended Washing U there. Jones is running for mayor. This is an impressive article showing what public minded leadership looks like at a time this kind of courage is rare.

Trump, Socrates and the Laughter Effect – The New York Times

Letter to the editor alludes to the Aristophanes play I am reading in Greek.

Eileen reminded me that I am not retired and am old and that is why I have a shrinking energy pie. She is right. However, yesterday I was pretty active all day despite it being the day after my weekly choir rehearsal. I lazed around all morning, straightening the house and preparing scores for my afternoon trio rehearsal.

Thursday afternoon trio rehearsals are getting longer and more intense as we prepare to play weekly in public. This Sunday we are performing two movements by Corelli. I found this score on IMSLP under violin sonatas. It is entitled “Sonata a Flauto solo e basso” and is  in a different key than marked in IMSLP. I’m not sure about the circumstances and history of the piece, but it is nice and we like it.

Amy and I read another amazing Mozart violin sonata yesterday. The Mozart violin sonatas are really outstanding works. Mozart seems to have used them to explore some unusual and attractive (to me, at least) compositional avenues. After reading through most of it yesterday,  I thought that Mozart would have given Beethoven a run for his money if he (Mozart) had lived longer. I said as much to Amy, adding that if Beethoven heard this piece he would have sat up and taken notices. Also, he might have chosen Mozart as a teacher instead of Haydn, if Mozart had lived longer.

Here’s a lovely rendition.

This recording is using a replica Fortepiano, so called because it is precursor of the instrument used today.

After prepping for this Sunday, I presented some possible music for future Sundays for the trio to consider. Dawn, who works at the Hope College Library, had previously brought us an ancient set of Haydn piano trios. I chose one yesterday for us to look at and the trio approved. It won’t be ready for a week from Sunday but we might do it the following Sunday.

The one I chose is different from many of Haydn’s piano trios, in that he gives the cello its own part instead of doubling the left hand of the pianist. The one we are learning is in A Major, Hob XV/9. Here’s a nice recording of it.

We also decided to play 2 “Symphonies” by Samuel Scheidt a week from Sunday. They are short little movements, symphonias really, for three parts and continuo. I will play the second part and bass, violin will take part I and cello part III. I will probably make scores for myself with the voices I need clearly written out together. Yesterday I read from the score.

I also have two sets of pieces by Henry Purcell which we could use.

Again there are three parts, the middle of which I would play with my right hand and a bass part for my left, the other two parts to be played by the violin and cello.

Then we rehearsed the Thomas Thomkins piece and my own trio, “Stirred Hearst and Souls.”

After than Dawn the cellist and I rehearsed some Frescobaldi together. By that time it was almost time for supper.

Eileen was surprised when I suggested going out to eat before going to a concert last night. We tried the local Laotian place and it was great!

Then we went to a battle of the organs at Jack Miller auditorium at Hope College. My friend Rhonda played pipe organ and the visiting prof Tony Monaco played Hammond. The program said B-3 but it looked more like an adapted C-3 to me.

Rhonda played well. I liked her selections. She played several pieces by living composers and more than nailed them. She is an extraordinary player and seems to me to be getting even better and better.  It was ironic that the “popular music” contingent was so much more stuck in the past than the “classical music” player. Monaco plays in a specific jazz organ style that not only uses what I think of as the Hammond Sound (hollow funky sound that I like) but lots of loud heavy vibrato chords and lines that reminds me more of Lawrence Welk. Monaco has good jazz chops but I still have to wonder what it is that musicians like him are doing when they play “April in Paris” in 2017 in a style that came to its present state pretty much in the 60s.

The program leaflet was bogus. It just consisted of bios of the players. I think the concert would have been better served with the pieces listed. If Monaco wanted to be spontaneous they could have easily made provisions for that in a program which listed Rhonda’s interesting pieces.

I mentioned to Eileen that while Monaco was a good player and played clear good jazz voicings and standard improvs, Rhonda’s selections were better music. When she demurred, I pointed out that there’s lots of great, excellent jazz music which I like and think is good, citing Miles Davis.

I did quite a bit of prep for last night’s choir rehearsal. I contacted the piano tuner and had him tune our piano for the rehearsal. I thought carefully about how to build on Sunday’s good performance. Our anthem for this Sunday is pretty easy so instead I concentrated on extending the skillful way we sang Sunday’s sixteenth century anthem a cappella. I had the choir sit in a circle and mixed up the parts so that no one was sitting next to someone in their section. Then we sang several things that I expected them to know a cappella working up to repeating Sunday’s anthem. Then we worked on some of our more difficult upcoming things constantly trying to work a cappella when possible.

I’m being influence in a small way by reading what Paul Hilliers has to say about choirs and singing Renaissance music.

I was intrigued to read the other day that singers in Renaissance choirs had no conductor. Of course they didn’t, conducting as is thought of today originated in the 19th century.  Having thought that, I wondered if I was right and ended up reading the Groves Dictionary of Music’s entry on conducting. Sure enough I was right.

Anyway, I felt pretty good about last nigh’s rehearsal despite some negative energy from one less experienced singer.

Today I have to madly clear away my mess in the living room because I have invited my trio to rehearse here today. I do this when the church is hosting Feeding America. The parking lot starts to get crazy hours before the doors open for this food give away.

I checked out and started reading two books yesterday. The first is A World in Disarray: American Foreign Policy and the Crisis of the Old Order by Richard Haas. This book was quoted by David Sanger in an article last month in the NYT.  Haas is described by the book bio as president of nonpartisan Council on Foreign Relations. He also worked as senior Middle East Adviser to G. W. Bush and director of Planning Policy Staff under Colin Powell.

Published this year, the Foreword mentions the Trump Presidency, the Introduction mentions Brexit.  The book grew out of lectures he gave as Humanitas Visiting Professor of Statecraft and Diplomacy at the University of Cambridge. Basically he discusses how we have abandoned “the rules, policies, and institutions that have guided the world since WWII.” The first third of the book is about history to the end of the Cold War, the second about the last twenty five years or so, the third suggests four critical elements needed  for the US in what he calls World Order 2.0: 1. a new approach to sovereignty; 2. a new approach to multilateralism; 3. a less fixed approach to relationships with other countries; and 4. a change in our approach to terrorism address root causes especially within our own borders. It will be interesting to see how he ends up filling in the details on all of this.

Sam Shephard has a new novel out. Who knew? I admire this man’s plays and spotted this book on the new shelf at the library. Started it last night when resting for rehearsal. I skipped the foreword by Patti Smith. Maybe I’ll read it after I read the novel.

This morning I was laying in bed listening to public radio. I finally decided I couldn’t do the news and turned to the current Paris Review.

I remembered reading a poem I liked by Stephen Dunn in it, recently, called “Historically Speaking.”

This poem came to mind when I began reading an old interview of Albert Murray this morning and Murray was quoted as saying: “I believe after my good friend Kenneth Burke, that literature is equipment for living. How do you look at the world? Who helps you most to see the world as it is?”

It’s a great interview of Murray. It makes me want to read more of him. He died in 2013 and was a jazz critic, novelist, and all round clear thinker (from the looks of this interview). I started the interview (which doesn’t seem to be online) after I had read seven poems by Frederick Seidel in the same issue. They aren’t online either. I found them to be engaging. I have never heard of him.

I think I have mentioned here before the high school English teacher who said to me that poetry is more important than the news. In retrospect I think he might have had Ezra Pound’s line in mind:

This morning, poetry and music helped me start the day. I’ll read the news later.

Paris Review did put an interview of Paul Muldoon online which i stumbled across and bookmarked to read further.

I was sitting with my Mom at her doctor’s appointment yesterday while she had her ears flushed. She had recently been told she needed her ears cleaned by the Miracle Ear Hearing Aid people. She complained to them that the person who used to be in the office cleaned them for her. The Miracle Ear Hearing Aid people (who were new) said that whoever had done that was not supposed to have done it and they could not do it. So we ended up at the doctor’s office last week. But the wax was so impacted, Mom had to go home and put oil in her ears for a few days. Now we were back.

I was reading David Lehman’s Foreword to The Best American Poetry 2005.  In it, he describes two reviews of Garrison Keillor’s Good Poems.

I have read this anthology I am sure, but I can’t find my copy of it. The two reviews were in the same April 2004 issue of Poetry. NEA chairman Dana Gioia found something of worth in the anthology, August Kleinzhaler, not so much. Lehman spent time responding to the negative review in a way that I found pleasing.

Lehman also described Paul Muldoon, the Irish poet who had edited the 2004 volume, in such a way as to make me curious about him. This morning I read a couple of poems by him online (linked below) and decided I quite liked him. I like how he uses words and ideas even though I don’t always understand the references. He was born in June of 1951 making him just a few months older than me, so many of the references I do get.

As by Paul Muldoon | Poetry Foundation

The choir sang very well yesterday. The sixteenth century anthem we performed was very well executed. The whole morning went very smoothly. But on the inside I was a bit of a mess. I’m not sure why but all morning I was not feeling very confident or sure of my self. Eileen said it didn’t show. And in fact, I had several surprising compliments. One of these was about my conducting and the energy and expression I put in to it (and hopefully consequently into the music itself).

It may be that since we did the anthem unaccompanied and I was able to concentrate solely on conducting that the complimenting chorister simply was able to notice my interpretation and conducting more. It is difficult for singers to follow a conductor who is also playing an instrument. They have to get their cues from more subtle gestures and nods. This compliment came from the retired English prof in my choir.

The mother of the three sisters in my choir was there yesterday. She is quite elderly and is brought to church by one of them. Yesterday she waved me down  and told me she was glad that her daughters sang in my choir because I was a good conductor. She sits and listens to our pregame rehearsal. I understand that she herself was a very active musician when she was younger. I thanked her and told that was very flattering coming from someone like her.

I was so happy with the choir’ performance that I told them to keep the anthem in their folders.  This anthem is a typical sixteenth century motet, counterpuntal and challenging. I want to keep returning to it in rehearsal and possibly build up a set of these more difficult pieces for use in a recital this spring after the organ arrives.

By the time I got home my interior emotional landscape was a mess. I was feeling incompetent despite the successful performance and compliments. There was nothing to do, but walk to one of the churches which allows me to practice and spend a few hours at the organ. This did end up helping a bit.

Harry Belafonte Knows a Thing or Two About New York – The New York Times

Several articles online caught my eye yesterday and earlier this morning, so there are quite few links today. I found this profile of Belafonte very interesting. He turns 90 on March 1 (he is about the same age as my Mom). There are many things I liked about this article.

The following comment seems to echo a bit of my own observations here yesterday.

The election of “Mr. Trump… was not a break from America’s traditions but a resurfacing of energies that have been there all along.

“I look at him as a continuation, … with all of the images that we throw up about our generosity as a nation and so forth, America tends to ignore the fact that there is a parallel history from which we come that’s not quite so pleasant. And I think Donald Trump reminds us that that value, that negative component, is still strongly in our midst.””

Harry Belafonte

Presidents since George Washington have been signing executive orders. How do Trump’s stack up? – LA Times

Helpful article. I especially liked this graph:

Will the Supreme Court Stand Up to Trump? – The New York Times

I’m glad Linda Greenhouse keeps writing even though I thought she was retired.

Why Nobody Cares the President Is Lying – The New York Times

This author, Charles Sykes, self-identifies as a former conservative radio talk show host.

My Resistance Movement – The New York Times

Inspiring words from an adult child of Muslim immigrants.

Can the Democrats Be as Stubborn as Mitch McConnell? – The New York Times

Yes, but with a difference, since President Trump is a completely different kind of president than we have ever had and needs to be resisted.

The History the Slaveholders Wanted Us to Forget – The New York Times

History! A good article by Henry Louis Gates, Jr.

A Hard Look at Times Editing in the Digital Era – The New York Times

Interesting to hear how copy editing works or has worked up until now. Some of the commenters are merciless.

Steve Bannon’s Book Club – The New York Times

Reporter bumps into Bannon at an airport carrying Halberstam’s The Best and The Brightest!

 Pipedreams 1705: PIpedreams Live! in Holland (MI)

A choir member pointed this program out to me.

I’m must be feeling a bit tired and cynical this morning because it occurs to me that one can see much of the history of the United States as a continuous stream of perfidy. Since we do not trace ourselves to the people who lived here when Europeans arrived (the Native Americans), we are a complete nation of immigrants. Plus we coerced people from Africa to come and be less than human among us, to serve us and to do our work for us in the fields and our houses.

Succumbing temporarily to Lincoln’s “better angels,” we “freed” them to be third class citizens. You can probably fill in the history from here. It has been lately rehearsed in the public discussion.

So, the recent actions of this country to keep out people who seek entry can seem like a continuation of the terrible things we have done to ourselves throughout our history.

I am aware that this is a cynical stance and it does not completely describe the situation by any means. But I have had an aversion all my life of identifying with a “country.” I love many things about the United States. But I’m not sure I love it. I’m not sure it is actually something that can be loved. It reminds me of the corporation syndrome in our elections. Corporations are now people. I guess in the view of many, the United States is reified into a person. Is this person an angry uneducated white man? It kind of seems like it right now if you buy that approach.

I guess I’m sorting it out from ideas like “society” and “community,” both of which make sense to me. But I keep thinking about the image of selfish immigrants who repress, exploit, and keep at the border people like themselves.

I’m also wondering this morning if this temporary stay of the executive order about immigration will allow the Sudanesen family we were expecting here in Holland to now come. To quote from my boss’s sermon last week:

“The Garang family is a family of five.  Grandmother, Tabitha, Mother, Awak. They are an 18-year old boy, Deng, 16-year old girl, Abuk and 7-year old boy Ajang.  They also have numbers on the printouts we’ve received.  In the system they are known as “Aliens Numbers 212-895-605 through 609”. They have numbers.  They are people. They are Sudanese refugees. They have lived in a camp in Kenya for years and years and years and they have been participating in a very thorough and unsettling resettlement process for a very long time. And they have names.”

I was listening to the latest New Yorker Fiction Podcast in which Junot Diaz, a writer I admire, read Edwidge Danticat’s short story, “Seven,” last night.

I love these podcasts where one writer chooses the work of another to read and discuss with the current fiction editor of the New Yorker, Deborah Treisman. There is a certain amount of writer-shop-talk that I am interested to listen to.

In their discussion around the story, “Seven,” I was reminded of something I have been pondering. I thought of it listening or reading about the Supreme Court. Justices who are moderate when appointed can become liberal as the court moves further to the right. it is the court that has moved not the justice him or herself.

In the same way, I am feeling more radical even revolutionary than ever as I read and learn about the brutal and savage shredding of decency occurring under the leadership of the Trump administration. I don’t feel that I am changing so much as watching the discussion move away from me and others I agree with.

The story, “Seven,” was scheduled to be published in the September issue of 2001. It was delayed after the 9/11 catastrophe and published in the ensuing October issue. Diaz and Reisman seem to be making the podcast on the day of Trump’s inauguration. They talk like the times are dark and it is obvious to me that Diaz has purposely chosen this story which is about the reunion of a Haitian immigrant with a green card and his wife who has flown to be with him in New York City after a seven year hiatus.

In his comments after reading it he says something like this:  “Given … how much energy we spend maligning immigrants, demonizing them, just the very fact that you have a writer who is writing about folks as human beings ..[is making] a tremendous social political correction….. Characters like these living lives like these set against the hysterical anti-immigrant, xenophobic  time we are in feels like the writer is being intentionally revolutionary…” In other words, Danticat’s story is literature performing one of its functions of using the particular to talk about the general. And it seems intentionally revolutionary because many people in the United States have moved away from their moral center.

30 Washington Post Articles on Gorsuch’s Nomination–Not a Single One Opposed

Normalizing the Trump fiasco

Mic. Latest News. Opinion. Reviews. Analysis. Rethink The World.

Someone from this news organization was interviewed in this week’s On The Media. I thought the organization sounded interesting and checked it out. They are on Facelessbooger and YouTube as well.

There are some days I get up and feel a lack of confidence in my abilities. I suspect my friends and colleagues of seeing me as inept as I sometimes see myself. I know this is a condition of over sensitivity, but I still get to live through these feelings and must ignore them. No matter. I have already spent time this morning with the Fitzwilliam Virginal Book and my $50 synth harpsichord.

I put volume 2 of the Virginal book on my tablet. It will automatically scroll through a piece of music as I play. The trick is finding the correct setting for a piece. With pieces in the Fitzwilliam Virginal book, this is tricky. Essentially almost all of the pieces in this work are theme and variations. The themes take up far less page space than the intricate variations. So you can see that if one has to set a scroll speed this can be somewhat problematic.

Despite my fatigue, the piano trio rehearsal went well yesterday. These two players are extremely kind to me and are currently indulging the way I would like to use them at Sunday Eucharists in the basement on a regular basis.

It turns out that the Tomkins “Sad paven” will take more prep than one rehearsal. So I asked the trio to play some pretty easy music this weekend instead. We will do a little arrangement of one of the slow movements of “Winter” by Vivaldi from his “Seasons.”

Then we landed on two movements of a Corelli sonata for the following Sunday.

They sound pretty cool and I pulled them off the internet so no need to put them into Finale docs.

The violinist had some ideas about how I could make a better score for her for my piece, “Stirred Hearts and Souls.” She played from a full score Sunday which meant that she had to spread music over two music stands. I enjoy editing and making music notation so that will be fun.

I have been too busy this week to practice organ although i now have keys to Hope Reformed Church and St. Francis and permission to duck in and practice 24 hours a day as long as the room is empty. I must get to one today. I think I will try St. Francis first because I keep fantasizing about playing some of the Fitzwilliam Virginal book pieces on the little tracker that sitting there.

I’m back to reading Nabokov’s novel, Pale Fire. I read in this book as a kid but never finished it. Now I have an ebook copy.

I hope today will be a day of recuperation for me. I’m already feeling a bit tired this morning, but not like yesterday.

5 Best Books of 2017 So Far – Best Books of February 2017

This page has an annoying pop up. All you have to do to get rid of it is click on “I don’t read.”

Neil Gorsuch and the Search for the Supreme Court Mainstream – The New York Times

Linda Greenhouse writes about the moving Supreme Court mainstream. Probably we are watching the entire mainstream situation plunge into the abyss. I watched PBS Newshour last night and it was hard not to think that instead of “committing journalism,” they are enabling and normalizing the Dark Time of Trump. Fuckers.

Executive Orders | whitehouse.gov

I’ve got to start reading these things.

Genius Web Annotator | Genius

Looks interesting but I haven’t signed up yet.

I had a full day yesterday. I think I used up more energy pie than I had judging from how exhausted I am today.

However last night’s choir rehearsal went very well. I chose a few more difficult (or at least not easy) anthems and we read through them last night. The Hassler piece (Quia vidisti me) went very well. I think we were all surprised by how good we sounded on it. The person who suggested we sing it wasn’t too pleased that we were doing it in Latin, but I told her that’s how we were going to do it and she accepted it, I think.

Today I continue to overuse my energy pie. I have spent a good deal of energy looking for music for my piano trio to consider using as preludes and postludes. I also spent an hour or so on Finale. My violinist dropped of a piano accompaniment to a violin collection. It has “Jesu, joy of man’s desiring in it” and Vivaldi’s Adagio from Winter (just to mention a couple). I made cello parts to fit with it. Then I redid the cello part for my trio, “Stirred Hearts and Souls.”

Then I went to visit my Mom and take my synth to church. Right now I’m resting up for this afternoon’s rehearsal.

Raid in Yemen: Risky From the Start and Costly in the End – The New York Times

I bookmarked this one so that I could look back on which people are making decisions in the Trump Presidency.

Trump Pushes Dark View of Islam to Center of U.S. Policy-Making – The New York Times

Dark and inaccurate.

Yesterday I purchased an ebook copy of Jonathon Smucker’s Hegemony How-To: A Roadmap for Radical. I think it might be my next read after Strangers in Their Own Land. 

It’s Wednesday morning and I feel like I needed Monday and Tuesday of this week to get a little space between me and my work. I’m not entirely sure it was effective but I did notice myself making the attempt.

Yesterday, I made an appointment for today to take my Mom to the doctor to have her ears cleaned. I would have preferred not to do this on a Wednesday but thought it was important enough to put on the schedule.

This morning I want to do some more planning for church. I am thinking of having the piano trio play something by a 16th century composer to match the lovely choral anthem I have scheduled for this weekend: “O Sing Joyfully” by Adrian Batten (1591-1637)

I’m thinking I can find a piece for four viols online and give the high part to the violin and the low part to the cello and play the middle two voices on the piano. That should be pretty easy and classy as well. For the postlude, I think I’m going to ask the trio to play a version of “Jesu, joy of man’s desiring.” That would require little prep on all our parts. We are sing the hymn,  Come with us, O Blessed Jesus Hymn 336 in the Hymnal 1982, as a second communion hymn Sunday.

Once again i sheepishly admit to choosing the hymn to fit the postlude I have in mind.

One of my sopranos (who was the choir director at Grace at one point) asked if we could sing Hassler’s “Quia vidisti me, Thomas” on Easter II. The following video starts with a short organ voluntary before the player stands up and conducts this piece.

I’m not certain she wanted to sing in Latin which is how I would like to do it. I think it would be cool to learn and sing on my remaining Second Sundays of Easter. So I want to put it in the choir’s folders today so we can begin rehearsal on it tonight.

I would also like to move a bit further ahead in the season with specific choral music choices since I’m only planned through Ash Wednesday which is March 1.

Roxane Gay: By the Book – The New York Times

This woman mentions a lot of books/authors I have read and admire. It would be worth checking out the ones she mentions I don’t recognize.

President Bannon? – The New York Times

With this article I have starting tracking the Trump presidency by creating a label in my bookmarking system, something I have done with other presidents.

Strangers in Their Own Land

I finished Strangers in Their Own Land: Anger and Mourning on the American Right A journey to the Heart of Our Political Divide. I put the whole title there because I think it helps define the book a bit. I have as yet to read the last hundred pages which are made up of acknowledgments, appendices, and end notes. I plan to give them a careful look.

Hochschild, the author, is definitely on to something. While I think she only has a piece of the truth, it is still an important piece. To reduce her eloquent book: if we are to understand the people who voted for Trump we must look closer at their emotional self-interest and value it even higher than their economic and other self interests. Trump doesn’t enter the book until toward the end, when Hochschild observes his candidacy in action, then returns to her Tea Party acquaintances to find out what they think of him. Spoiler: They all vote for Trump, some enthusiastically, some reluctantly.

She also does a fine job of sympathetically painting people with whom she (and presumably most of her readers) disagree.

I decided to read this book because I wanted to understand better the people who voted for Trump. Now I feel like the country is in a much wider and more dire crisis. I will be reading another non-fiction book, but probably not one about the voters but about the process or the history or something.

Closing thoughts

It’s now in the afternoon. I have had a day. Eileen and I got my Mom back and forth to Miracle Ear.  The Miracle Ear people said that Mom needed her ears cleaned. They were new people. The old people cleaned her ears, but they weren’t supposed to. When i asked about this at Mom’s nursing home they said that a nurse couldn’t clean ears, only a doctor could. It was about this time I realized I had lost Mom’s remote for her hearing aids. I madly retraced my steps. I called the Miracle Ear place but they didn’t see them. Finally we drove back to the shop and I found them in the snow, near where we had parked. Sheesh.

Things have changed

The presidential order to deny access to refugees crosses a line for me.  Now President Trump has actively harmed people. In the name of our country. I don’t see myself as someone who orients their ethics around religion, but today I’m linking in my boss’s sermon and another minister’s newspaper column.

Surrendering Distance – a homily by Jen Adams

It’s not Trump, it’s us by Kevin Aldrich

And this  man’s analysis is frighteningly convincing:

Trial Balloon for a Coup? – by Yonatan Zunger

I took a screen shot of numbers to call. Not sure how much difference this will make in a coup, but one must do something.

Some new old music

Being a musician feels a bit esoteric right now as things are going to hell in America, but it’s really who I am. Yesterday I decided that Benjamin D. Sherman’s book of interviews and commentary, Inside Early Music, is worth a read straight through. Previously I had been picking out interviews to read, but they are so good and so interconnected with the other interviews in the book (intelligently cross-referred), that I thought I would just start at the beginning with Sherman’s interview of Marcel Pérès on Plainchant.

Wow. I was pleasantly surprised to read in print something I have thought about for years, that is that the way Plainchant is often sung most probably has nothing to do with the way it might have been sung when it was created. Also, the acknowledgement that there are two main reasons people sing and/or listen to Plainchant: religious and ambient sound. I think it’s cool that this is part of the conversation now.

Moreover after reading a bit, i sought out some of the recordings Marcel Pérès has made. And I love them. He uses a drone that comes from Byzantine practice (I think, still learning about all this). According to some YouTube comments it’s called an “ison.” I think it makes these recordings lovely. I like the free sounds of the ornaments. Wow. This makes this music come to life for me in a new way.

I rarely embed playlists but the embedded playlist above is one I am listening to right now. I think it sounds wonderful.

Then this morning I got up and continued playing my electric harpsichord. Yesterday i read through several pieces in the Fitzwilliam Virginal Book. This morning I continued with a Pavana by Thomas Tomkins.

Another Wow! I played it through a couple of times, admittedly pretty slowly so I could keep the tempo as consistent as possible. Then I realized that I recognized his name as a choral composer. Hmmm. I definitely will be looking at his compositions to see if I can schedule one this season. Lovely lovely stuff.

This is the Pavana, but it seems to be a different version for viols. Around 3:00 into this video, comes music that doesn’t seem to be in the harpsichord version. As with most of the pieces in the Fitzwilliam Virginal Book, each section of theme is followed by an ornate variation. The viol version seems to be just the themes of the Pavana. At 5:24 the Galliard begins. I hope this is somewhere in the Virginal book as well.

Church report

A quick report on church yesterday since I’m a bit over my usual 500 or so words. The prelude version of my piece didn’t go so well. I think the violinist got lost. We discussed it and couldn’t figure out what had happened. It took us a while to find each other. I was with the cellist, but the violinist thought the cellist had been mistaken and tried to adjust to her. As Dawn the cellist pointed out later, though we didn’t play it the way it was written in the prelude, it didn’t sound wrong. Heh.

The postlude came together accurately. It was fun doing this. The congregation seemed to chat both in the prelude and postlude but the choir and few others seemed to be listening to what we were doing.

John Hurt, British Actor Hailed for His Shape-Shifting Roles, Dies at 77 – The New York Times

Daughter Sarah and i saw this actor in Krapp’s Last Tape on our first visit to the UK.

Donald Trump, the Religious Right’s Trojan Horse – The New York Times

I thought this was an eloquent article (some of the commenters disagree). I liked several sentences (in a horrifying way) including this one:

“President Trump may lack a coherent ideology, but he shares with the religious right a kind of Christian identity politics, a sense that the symbols of Christianity, if not its virtues, deserve cultural precedence.”

2017 isn’t ‘1984’ – it’s stranger than Orwell imagined

bookmarked to read

Place to practice organ

Well, the dude from St. Francis has been very forthcoming with help. He told me that my friend, Rhonda, had a key card to the church and there was no reason I couldn’t get one.  I was welcome to come and practice any time the church wasn’t being used. He emailed the office manager to prepare a card for me and let me know when it was ready. He also asked the administrative assistant to copy me in to weekly schedule emails. Wow! In addition he wrote me that he had not forgotten “the amazing kindness” I showed to him as a “stranger’ when he needed a last minute sub 12 years ago when his beloved grandmother died.

Between St. Francis, Hope Church and possibly the Methodist church, it looks like I should be able to keep my chops up when I am without an organ.

Walking in circles

Eileen told me yesterday that she planned to participate in the local march against the nomination of Betsy Devos as Secretary of Education. I told her I would also go. The march was planned from 11 Am to 1:30. We bundled up, stopped by the library which is near by, then joined people walking around Centennial Park. The crowd seem to be growing as time went on. At one point it seemed that the sidewalk around the park was full of people.

I pooped out after about an hour and half. By that time, it was thinning out. Eileen hung on a bit longer but reported that the crowd continue to dwindle. There’s some interesting information about the legality of public demonstrations in the most recent  Counterspin podcast from  Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (fair.org).  Here’s a link to it:

Mara Verheyden-Hilliard on Inaugural Protest Arrests, David Turnbull on Pipeline Resistance

Here’s a few more links about other stuff.