I ran out of blood pressure meds during Holy Week. The prescription had expired of course. I called my doctor but the phone robot said the whole process is now automatic between pharmacy and doctor.

The pharmacy contacts the doctor and the doctor okays the refill. I called for a refill last Friday but hadn’t heard anything by this morning.

I registered for the NYGoodHealth online pharmacy info and discovered I was using an old prescription number. Apparently, my prescription has been sitting waiting for me since last Thursday but I wasn’t inquiring about the correct prescription number. It looks like they automatically refilled it and did not contact me.

I only missed two days of meds. My blood pressure has been low until this morning when it was only mildly high (138/96). So I guess I’ll pick up meds today. Sheesh.

I was truly exhausted yesterday but managed to get through my ballet accompaniment okay. I even managed to treadmill for the first time in three days.

My head is still spinning from the last six days.

Hopefully I will begin to recover from this nonsense soon.

I have seen some interesting child behavior the last week or so.

Children out of control. Parents oblivious. For what it’s worth it reminded me of this section of Friedman.

Children who work through the natural problems of maturing with the least amount of emotional or physical residue are those whose parents have made them LEAST important to their own salvation. (Throughout this work MATURITY will be defined as THE WILLINGNESS TO TAKE RESPONSIBILITY FOR ONE’S OWN EMOTIONAL BEING AND DESTINY)

Children rarely succeed in rising above the maturity level of their parents, and this principle applies to all mentoring, healing, or administrative relationships.

Parents cannot produce change in a troubling child, no matter how caring, savvy, or intelligent they may be, until they become completely and totally fed up with their child’s behavior.

Friedman came to these conclusions after thirty years of observation as a working shrink and rabbi. In these two roles, Friedman observed his Washington D.C. community over several generations made up of “thousands of lawyers, administrators, physicians, and other scientists… [there was] a good chance that many of them were in therapy.” He was a wise man and I think he was on to something.

When Eileen read these, she had an “aha” moment about stuff she has seen in her jobs. So these insights are not just about parenting, hence the reference to mentoring, healing, and administrative relationships.

Finally, in an effort to cleanse my weary brain I found myself listening to YouTube music. I ran across a group I quite like.

I listened to their entire live performance on KCRW while I treadmilled. It helped me tremendously.

I have been listening quite a bit to Takemitsu’s “From me flows what you call time.” I got in the mood for it a while ago and pulled up my playlist on Spotify. The playlist was still there, but the title of the piece was dimmed and would not play.

I have found this over and over on Spotify. Music that they used to licence suddenly is no longer available. Mildly annoying I guess. I own a recording of this that I love (by the BBC orchestra). When I tried to import it to a Spotify playlist it informed me that feature was only available on the premium version. I pay for Spotify but apparently don’t have the “premium” version.

My itch to hear it increased until I copied it to both of my computers from my exterior hard drive where I keep a copy  and was able to listen to it that way.

Last night after an exhausting day, Eileen and I sat down to relax. I thought I would go through Netflix and see if I could come up with something to “rot our minds’ (as we say to each other).

I kept throwing movies that might fit the ticket on our queue. I was moving by genre. When I pulled up the “comedy” section the first one was “Big Lebowski.” I was shocked. This movie is one of my all time favorites. I had just that day on the drive home fantasized about buying a used DVD of it so that i could watch it once in a while. It was definitely not previously on Netflix.

So we watched it.

It looks like part of the strategy of these subscription services is to licence stuff for a limited time. I remember last December. Toward the end of the month, all of Woody Allen’s movies began to have a little description added on Netflix: soon to be unavailable. Sure enough after January 1 there were no Woody Allen movies on Netflix. But strangely they are gradually returning.

Odd.

I have been slowly and meticulously rehearsing the Widor toccata for about four weeks. The meticulous part comes in trying to play every note either staccato as marked or for the exact length and precisely releasing the note.

This seems to have paid off. At the vigil, I was dead tired by the time the postlude arrived. I had not played Widor all the way through at tempo at any time during the previous four weeks. This did not seem foolish to me as I know the notes pretty well and have performed it many times.

I did start it a couple of times at a performance tempo (under the marking on my score but still fast enough). When I did this, it went so well that I stopped and saved it for the performance.

Sure enough. When I performed it Saturday night, despite exhaustion there was a precision and clarity I was proud of. I stumbled a little on Saturday night at one point introducing an accidental I had never played before. This was surely my lack of concentration not poor prep.

Yesterday however I played it very well. Wow. That works.

Poking around on Facebooger I was surprised how many of my colleagues had performed Widor for Easter. I had always thought that it was the rock and roller in me that succumbed to playing this popular piece at a high feast. But it looks like it was played in several local churches in West Michigan and other places.

So all I have to do is get through today’s ballet classes and I will have survived the Holy Week marathon at the age of 63. Whew.

Andrew Porter, New Yorker Classical Music Critic, Dies at 86 – NYTimes.com

This famous critic was an organist. I did not know that.His collection of articles from the New Yorker (Music of Three Seasons: 1974-1977)) is neatly tucked between Persichetti’s Mass for Mixed Chorus (A Cappela) and Poulenc’s Gloria on my bookshelf.

Yesterday I took advantage of having little to do during the day and planned the rest of the choral season at church. I’ve never done that before during Holy Week, but it seemed like the thing to do. I also chose music for next Sunday and emailed it off to the office. Next week I am planning to play an Offertory by Dandrieu on “O Sons and Daughters.”

It never fails to amaze me that stuff like this is sitting online for free use. I could only find 5 of the 9 pages in my library at first, so I printed up new copies of this piece.

I also rewrote a descant for last night. My printer is low on ink at home, so I wrote it out by hand at church. My sopranos didn’t quite pull it off, even though i spent quite a bit of time teaching it to them. As we worked on it before the vigil I found several errors in it. Damn.  We corrected them but ran out of rehearsal time.

I found myself with a bit more energy at the end of the evening for the postlude. It mostly went very well, much clearer and cleaner than I usually play the famous Widor Toccata. Of course it sounds like shit on my little instrument, but what the heck.

One more service today, then off to the Hatch Easter Egg hunt. I made excellent marinara sauce yesterday, bought some good bread and am planning to use it as a dipping sauce with the bread. That should be good.

Almost done with the marathon. Tomorrow I have classes as usual, then I will rest.

Review: ‘Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo in Detroit’ – NYTimes.com

Eileen has been talking about going and seeing this exhibition in Detroit. i think that would be an excellent idea.

Retired Japanese Fighter Pilot Sees an Old Danger on the Horizon – NYTimes.com

So many soldiers talk about the horror of war. This man is doing what he can for peace.

The Last Man to Beat Floyd Mayweather Jr. Still Regrets It – NYTimes.com

One man’s on top of the world right now, the other scraping together money to live.

Transgender Inmate’s Hormone Treatment Lawsuit Gets Justice Dept. Backing – 

I guess that’s why they call it the JUSTICE department.

China Law Translate | 立法法 (2015年修改版）

This website is the work of one man, my son-in-law, Jeremy Daum. This is a link to a translation of important legislation that passed recently.

Today I need to rest up a bit and do some tasks. Eileen is gone for the day. She went to Whitehall to do her Mom’s hair and help prep for the annual Hatch Easter Egg Hunt tomorrow.

I was very tired for last night’s service. I am thinking of skipping the treadmill today in order to have energy for this evening. The service begins at 9 PM since that’s around the time of sunset. It will make a long night for Jupe. At the end of both of the remaining services (tonight and tomorrow)  I am performing the Widor Toccata as the postlude. This is a piece I know well and have been meticulously preparing. But I can’t anticipate how much energy I will have when it comes time to do it. Usually it’s fine even if I’m tired.

Attendance was very low at the Good Friday service. Ten people in the choir, about twenty in the congregation. Despite this, everything went well. I didn’t drop the organ accompaniment out as I like to because of the sparse numbers.

I managed to sleep in this morning until 8 AM. That is much later than I can usually get myself to lay in bed. I should be able to ease myself through this day without too much stress.

Rev. Robert Schuller, 88, Dies; Built an Empire Preaching Self-Belief – NYT

I knew Schuller attended Hope College, but learned that he also matriculated from the adjoining Western Theological Seminary. His obit makes him sound so much saner than he seemed on TV.

A Transgender Bangladeshi Changes Perceptions After Catching Murder Suspects

I wasn’t aware of the “third sex” in this culture. Interesting story.

Photos: Jumping Japanese businessmen show their daughters how to defy stereotypes

“The neologism “solarymen” combines Japanese word sora (sky) with “salarymen.”

Self-Portrait Of The Artist As Ungrateful Black Writer

Saeed Jones knocks it out of the park with  this excellently written essay.

I remain interested in Les Back and his sociologically related ideas. Reading his The Art of Listening, I realized that I have had a life long lay interest in many of the social sciences including psychology, sociology, anthropology and others, the more holistic the better.

This morning I was reading Back’s introduction (written along with Michael Bull) to  The Auditory Culture Reader. This book is a collection of articles and is edited by Back and Bull. (click on the title and you can scroll down to read the table of contents to get an idea of the wide range of articles in this collection if you’re interested).

Bull and Back quote Geertz

It is always very difficult to determine just when it was that “now” began. Virginia Woolf thought it was “on or about December 1, 1910,” for W.H. Auden it was “September 1, 1939,” for many of us who worried our way through the balance of terror, it was 1989 and the Fall of the Wall. And now, having survived all that, there is September 11, 2001.

I recognize Geertz as one of those behavioral science type writers I have read (and thought had died long before Sept 11). I ran down a copy of the quoted article via Jstor which I have from being employed at Hope College.

I was delighted to find that this article is also online for anyone to read.

HyperGeertz-Text:AN INCONSTANT PROFESSION:
The Anthropological Life in Interesting Times by Clifford Geertz (2002)

One thing I like about many fields of study in the 21st century is that they are interconnecting like crazy. There seems to be an emphasis on losing the gobbledygook-jargon-Ivory-Tower approach.

Many thinkers are trying to write with wide ranging clarity and insight.

I find the Geertz article to be like that. As he outlines his experience of his field he cites  I  recognize many thinkers I have read and who have influence my thinking: Ruth Benedict, Margaret Mead, Erik Erikson and of course many I do not.

I’m hoping that the articles in the Bull/Back reader will also be clear and informative.

I have been slowly playing through piano works by John Adams. When I approach his music more as a percussionist than a pianist, it makes more sense to me. I have been playing his stuff, because I was basically in the mood to work on Ligeti’s piano etudes and couldn’t find my copy of them.

Yesterday I went through organ music at church and then came home and went through all of my piano music file. No dice. I kept searching and finally found Ligeti tucked in a cranny.

So now I have both Adams and Ligetti to study. I even treadmilled to recordings of the works I have been slowly playing through.

They have a cleansing effect on me. Something that is helpful this time of year in church work.

I ran across this cool image of Jupiter yesterday and put it up on Facebooger.

The Scrambled States of Immigration – NYTimes.com

Overview of the confusion created by not having a coherent national policy about immigration.

Thursdays for me are the day of the week I find myself the most exhausted. Yesterday was long but pretty productive. I eased myself through the day and even had time and energy to exercise on the treadmill something I rarely can pull off on Wednesdays with so much else on my plate.

I am finding a sense of calm and perspective coming over me a bit. I’m not sure where it’s coming from but I am grateful for it. Church doesn’t seem near as important to me as it has in my more burnt out moments this year. I have scheduled sensible music for me to play and conduct for the next four days. No big projects. Some small ones like continuing to rehearse the Erik Thiman anthem I am playing and conducting from the organ which has a pretty involved accompaniment.

I skipped practicing organ on Monday and Tuesday and that seems to have been a good thing. I didn’t have to go to church.

My practice yesterday and the rehearsal last night left me confident that I will acquit myself just fine in the upcoming services.

I have been working on the infamous Widor Toccata for postludes for the Vigil and Easter Sunday. I have been working at a fairly slow pace paying attention to playing all the staccato markings. Yesterday after doing this, I played the first few pages up to performance tempo. It sounded clean. I stopped. I have been thinking seriously about the research that shows that the important part of rehearsing is not making mistakes or if one makes them to immediately work on correcting them.

This leads me to think that it’s better not to fling myself at rehearsing for it’s own sake. Better to rehearse smarter and emphasize accuracy. I know this probably sounds simplistic. But to me, it feels like a new insight.

I think my rehearsing techniques have been improving over the last fifteen years and that they weren’t bad before.

Maybe some of my calm is coming from understanding myself better. I am realizing that my relationship to music makes sense. It’s hard to convey this exactly, but some of it is letting go of some stereotypical educated musical prejudices that I don’t share. At the same time embracing my own understandings and love of music.

My improvisations have been showing this to me. I routinely think about genre and style as I improvise. And I have been including even more popular music style in my improvs. But at the same time I will switch to clear motivic and almost classical sounds (at least to my ears).

This ranging over styles combined with coming up with melodies on the spot that I think are interesting in the moment may be part of my recent perspective.

It doesn’t hurt that I have reading and thinking about writers like Les Beck, Ed Friedman, and bell hook.

I have begun outlines of the two versions of Friedman’s  A Failure of Nerve. It has occurred to me to offer to the priests at work to read through this book with them this summer sometime. I’m not entirely sure I’m up to this. But I know it would help us, especially the curates. We’ll see. Right now I’m on survival until next Monday afternoon.

This is a little project I have been helping a student with. I think she is going to use this video for an audition with a ballet company. At any rate, I put it up on Facebooger and am posting it here as well.

The Supreme Court’s Death Trap – NYTimes.com

I’m so glad that Linda Greenhouse continues to write an article one in a while in retirement. I think she is excellent.

Campaign Finance Complaints Filed Against 4 Presidential Hopefuls – NYTimes.co

Probably moot, but still sort of interesting.

Arizona Orders Doctors to Say Abortions With Drugs May Be Reversible – NYTime

If we all vote on it we can change science.

I tried to take it easy yesterday since today begins the marathon. For the next six days this old guy has stuff to do each day: rehearsals, services, ballet classes. This kind of schedule is bit more daunting than it used to be for me. I feel old particularly when I see myself in pics like this:

Hell I am old, 63. This morning I tried to laying in bed past 6 AM. On Wednesdays I drive to the ballet classes because I meet with Jen and company right after my last class at the church. Driving is the only way to make it on time.  This means I can leave the house a bit later.

I took advantage of this as well and made tabbouleh this morning. I bought and prepared the bulgur yesterday. The instructions said to add boiling water and dry bulgur and wait an hour. After an hour, I was dissatisfied withe bulgur, too tough. So I covered it with water and let it sit overnight. This morning it was just right so I drained it and added the rest of the ingredients. It helps me to eat on the run on Wednesday as well so I will be having tabbouleh between ballet class and church meeting.

I’m wondering if the cat is contributing to my weird blood pressure lately. What has been happening is that I get up and take my blood pressure and it’s a bit high (over 140/90). Then I make coffee. Take it again and it invariably falls down into a  more acceptable range.

Yesterday I took it at Meijer. The stupid stupid blood pressure machine had new annoying talking software. It wanted to know if I was a boy or a girl, my birthdate, my height before it would take my blood pressure. I seem to amuse a person standing nearby as I yelled at the robot. Since the human was amused I pointed out that this was probably going to make my blood pressure higher.

But it didn’t. I had the lowest Meijer blood pressure in ages. Weird.

Back to this morning. The cat invariably accompanies me in the bathroom as I sit and take my blood pressure the first time. He likes to give me uncomfortable love nips on the most vulnerable part of my calf. So I usually sit and try to relax while the cat rubs me and sometimes nips me.

This morning I decided to take my blood pressure again right away with the cat out of the room. Sure enough, it fell enough points to come down to normal or normal high for me (under 140/90). Hmmm. That seems way too simple for me. But maybe there’s something to it. Tomorrow morning I will try to remember to kick the cat out before taking my blood pressure the first time and see how it is.

Meanwhile: Once more into the fray!

Freidman’s wisdom continues to haunt me. I reread more in his last unfinished but published work [Leadership in an the Age of the Quick Fix] this morning. I am going back and forth between the privately published unedited version and the more polished published version. I consult with the old version primarily to look at my notes and see if they left anything significant out of the second.

I hesitate to share too much here because I think I might not express my ongoing insights clearly. But as I read Friedman I wonder how his understanding (his “way of thinking”) as I understand it is showing itself in my daily life.

For example, last Sunday afternoon I found myself in the parking lot of my Mom’s nursing home feeling that I had not handled her recalcitrance well.

When she said that she did not want to go to her doctor’s appointment the next day, I berated her with questions like “What if I and Eileen refused to go to our doctor’s appointments?” and reminded her that I wanted to keep her around and that my concern was out of love for her.

Of course I did all this in my angry voice. I didn’t mention this yesterday but this bullying of mine was a technique I used more than once when Mom was having her worst times with Dad’s death and refusing to go to appointments. It is a weird reversal of parental role from child to parent. I hope that I don’t do this to my care givers, but probably will.

Anyway, when Eileen and I showed up to take Mom to her appointment yesterday, she was in her bright red suit, all smiles and had even asked the nursing home for the usual medication list we need to take with us to appointments.

When she got in the car her first words were an apology about how “ugly” she had been the day before.

Was my behavior with her a Friedman “taking of a stand in the face of recalcitrance”? Or was it simple exhausted acting out of frustration on a loved one? Maybe some of both?

At any rate, I was surprised by her apology. Her cognitive function has been constantly improving. This was one reason I was so blind sided on Sunday. Now here she was actually apologizing for her behavior. I greeted it with relief and acceptance. Since she said that the reason for her behavior was that she just didn’t want to go to the doctor appointment, I told her that if there was any way to avoid such appointments I would be the first one to arrange for it, but that they were probably necessary.

This is tricky stuff.

The whole Friedman way of thinking is extremely tricky. It challenges me to constantly try to find clarity in my thinking and honesty with myself.

At the same time, I sometimes notice people’s behavior that seems to fall under the Friedman ideas of immaturity, indecisiveness, and what I think of as “globbing” (other people’s lack of self regulation and ability to discern where their personality ends and other people’s begin). Friedman suggests self definition is the answer to this kind of behavior. This is a difficult order but can be effective if done with clarity and honesty.

At any rate, I restrain from listing off the clear insights of Friedman, If anyone is interested, I say get the book Leadership in the Age of the Quick Fix and see what you think.

It’s not just a book about the conventional notions of leadership.

Church went well yesterday despite the slightly elevated anxiety levels in leaders and people. Anxiety always seems to go up in churches I work at during the high holy days. This presents a challenge for leaders to stay as non-anxious as they can. I felt like I did a pretty good job at this, but of course I’m not a primary leader just one who is working with music people… which can be a lot like herding cats.

Anyway, I felt pretty good about how I handled myself. In system thinking one can sort of see one’s life as intersecting circles: work, church, nuclear family, family of origin just to name a few. I was differentiated pretty well in my church/work circle yesterday. Eileen and I seemed to be doing pretty well as a couple. I shouldn’t have been surprised then when my Mom suddenly refused to go to her doctor’s appointment today.

But I was. I’m not proud to say that I reacted to her in an angry way. She seemed  to silently acquiesce in the face of my asking her what in the world she meant by this. I’m expecting her to be ready to go this afternoon when Eileen and I stop by to pick her up.

Nevertheless this felt like a “fail” for me.

It reminded me that of Friedman’s maxim about systems: “When things are going well, watch out.” I wish that I had been able to maintain the calm I managed all morning during the Palm Sunday service.

The morning at church went so well that I mentioned to Eileen that I had recently read the quote from the movie, “Little Big Man,” “Sometimes the magic works, sometimes it doesn’t” or something like that. I said that the “magic” had worked that morning. Despite some interesting difficulties I managed to help the choir sound good on the anthem.

However, in the afternoon in my Mom’s apartment at the nursing home, the “magic” didn’t work. Dang.

I reread this in Friedman this morning and take it to heart.

The way out [of emotional and conceptual ruts] requires shifting our orientation to the way we think about relationships from one that focuses on techniques that motivate others to one that focuses on [our own] presence and being.

Why Reconstruction Matters – NYTimes.com

Interesting use of history to understand the present. I always like that stuff!

John Renbourn, 70, Eclectic Guitarist Who Founded the Pentangle, Dies – NYTime

“Another man done gone.”

I have been thinking a lot about the ideas of Ed Friedman lately.

I purchased his last incomplete book in its 1999 “edited manuscript” version  published a few years after his death. Then, a later version came out in 2007. Here is a pic of my two copies of this book, both of which I have read and studied.

Yesterday I was wondering what he would make of the hyper anxiety and stuckness of our society almost twenty years after his death. Also I think I am watching the emotional system at my job unravel a bit.

In his theory, Friedman defines emotions not as feelings but as the basic instinctual responses built into the lizard part of our brains. He loves to pull his metaphors or wisdom from natural science. He compares the persistence of multi-generational emotional patterns to the way trees regenerate year after year.

“Persistence of form” or “power of the past” are two names Friedman uses for this phenomenon. “Trees teach us … the the connection between generations of living things is more like an infinitely-long collapsing telescope in which each generation to some extent overlaps the next, thereby contributing in a significant way to its form and shape. This understanding of the connection between generations in this way can be very useful for leaders.”

It’s important to understand that unlike most self-help books, Friedman is defining leadership much broader than business or politics to include parents, teachers, spouses, and almost any human as they live their lives seeking integrity.

When we try to fix problems in our situation, we often resort to changes that can be described as technical, administrative, or managerial, Friedman says. He points out that these activities are most of what “advice” consists of…. Rogerian listening says that when we advise others we are often blocking them from their own insights.

“Unless structural changes are accompanied by changes in an institution’s multigenerational emotional processes, they will almost always regress.”

This quote from Friedman seems to me to apply to my church’s situation as well as the society at large. We are in full scale regression and we constantly “adapt to our most immature members” in Friedman’s language.

This adaptation looks like this: “the widespread triumph of data over maturity, technique over stamina, and empathy over personal responsibility.” 

Instead family system thinking emphasizes strength, not pathology, challenge not comfort, self-differentiation not herding for togetherness.

[All the ideas and quotes come from Friedman, I have added the emphasis]

China’s Fear of Women With Pamphlets – NYT

Speaking of stuckness.

Tomas Transtromer, Nobel-Winning Poet, Dies at 83 – NYTimes.com

Transtromer seems to have been an important Swedish poet and leader. I’ve never heard of him, but will definitely look up some of his work.

Which Companies Are Buying the Election? – NYTimes.com

Our government continues to keep secret its funding from the public. Sick stuff.

AMBER ALERT CANCELLED: 6-Year-Old Child Found

It was with relief that I found this online yesterday. I still maintain that this kind of focus is not healthy for our society. Not sure exactly how it should be done but judging from the hysterical comments I read on Facebooger, we are a mess.

Mother-Daughter Duo’s Photo Project Features 5-Year-Old as Iconic Black Women

Speaking of child focus, I’m ambivalent about this project. I love the idea that the child is dressing up as historical figures. But I wonder about the stage parent disease aspect of the deal.

At precisely 5:25 AM this morning, Eileen’s phone began beeping. At the time I thought it was an alarm since she was planning to leave around 8 AM to spend the day at Little Pine Island Camp north of Grand Rapids at a Weaver’s Worskshop. I was unhappy to be woken up since I needed the sleep, but she managed to silence the noise.

A bit latter after Eileen got up she told me it wasn’t an alarm, it was an AMBER ALERT.

I looked at my phone and sure enough, there was an AMBER ALERT. The alert read: 5:25a Bancroft, MI Alert: LIC/KJC97 (MI) 2000 Teal Ford F-250 Pickup.

I didn’t understand what this was until I googled it.

That’s right. AMBER is both a backronym for America’s Missing: Broadcast Emergency Response and the name of a murdered young woman. Nice.

In case you’re wondering (as I was) what a backronym is:

That helped figure out that the message on my phone was about a vehicle. LIC= licence plate and so on. Good grief.

It turns out that late last night in Shiawassi country a six-year-old child was last seen with her father in Bancroft Michigan last night around 10 PM.

The Michigan State Police web site for Amber Alerts classified the action under the phrase “intent to harm.”

When Eileen told me it was an AMBER ALERT instead of an wake up alarm sound, I glanced outside involuntarily. I think I was looking for evidence of an atomic attack or impending hurricane or something.

It took me some time to figure this all out.

While I certainly would want an abducted child to be released unharmed as soon as humanly possible and her abductor caught and tried, I can’t help but wonder if being woken up miles and miles away from the site of a crime with a phone message that seemed a bit cryptic to me even fully awake…. I can’t help wonder if this is connected more to the destructive fearfulness and ignorance present in our society than a constructive man hunt.

We seem to be living in a climate of ignorance and fear. These twin attributes can do much harm. I would call the “fear” “anxiety” but it does seem that many people are afraid.

“According to E. O. Wilson, author of SOCIOBIOLOGY, the three essential characteristics for an enduring society, whether it consists of ants or humans are cooperation, cohesiveness, and altruism. In civilized human societies these characteristics have been made possible by the development of our ability to regulate our instincts rather than let them drive us automatically. Under conditions of chronic anxiety, however, that capacity is eroded, and with it goes cooperation, cohesiveness, and altruism.

Ed Friedman, A FAILURE OF NERVE: LEADERSHIP IN THE AGE OF THE QUICK FIX p.82 in the self published version, emphasis added

Ed Friedman used to distinguish between anxiety and fear. If one is a bit worried about flying in a plane, that’s anxiety. If one is watching the ground come closer as the plane crashes, that’s fear.

Friedman also pointed out one of the amplifiers of anxiety in society these days is what he called “child focus” (In chronically anxious families, the quickest trigger for anxiety is any issue that involves a child.)

Friedman died in 1996. I often wonder what he would make of the current state of affair in the world and in the USA.  My impression we have lost sight of many attributes that help us function as self-differentiated adults.

I’ll close with Friedman’s list of qualities of people who are differentiated (He always used to say, remember, no one does better than 50% at this stuff)

6 interlocking characteristics of self-differentiation

1. clarity about one’s beliefs
2. self-definition in relationships
3. toleration of solitariness
4.preservation of connectedness
5. stamina and persistence
6. self-regulation in the face of sabotage

Incidentally I keep refreshing news sites and they haven’t turned up the missing kid and her father as I publish at 10 AM local time.

Comcast seems to have healed itself.  I phone them again yesterday and the robot told me that my service outage was part of a large problem scheduled to be fixed by 1:30 PM or so. Sure enough, the speed came back. How bout that?

I continue to be inspired by the interwebs even as a part of me wonders at the fragility of it. It seems so ephemeral and dependent on connections that can be broken or lost. I hope that it continues and plan to avail myself of it as long it does and I can access it.

At the same time I marvel at how complicated simple things have become. I muse that in order to listen to music or watch a video, it used to be so simple: turn a switch.

Now more often than not it involves problem solving. I find this a weakness in the tech itself. But maybe it’s a character flaw in the user (me): impatient when I realize that the reasons the music is not playing or the video has paused are mutli-layered and interconnected. One must consider is it the hardware? is it the software? is it the Internet service provider? Is it some new weird lack of compatibility between one or more of these to work well with the others?

By this time I have often decided to deal with it some other time.

Recently, I received an email from someone searching for information about old Deagan marimbas. My website had come up in a search. Their father was a marimba player on the radio and had left his instrument as part of his estate. They were looking for information on refurbishing and value of the instrument. I pointed them to some of the resources David Hall used when answering some of the same questions about my marimba.

I think this is kind of cool.

And yesterday as Eileen and I were sitting in an insurance office (still trying to clear up confusion around our health insurance) I texted back and forth with Sarah the daughter in England about new music we are listening to.

Also kind of cool.

There are more museums in the U.S. than there are Starbucks and McDonalds 

Fun fact from Reddit link.

China cracks down on dancing grannies and Guangchangwu

This is a story I’m sort of following. This report from the Australian Sydney Morning Herald says that the Chinese government has now developed a list of 12 dances and some music that are sanctioned by the government for use. What a weird way to do that!

Here’s a video of one of the tunes that is okay with the China government.

Looking at the comments I was able to figure out some of what happens in this video.

Wednesday is very long day for this old guy. It begins with an 8:30 AM class and last night ended around 9 PM with going over the Easter Exultet with three cantors post choir rehearsal. Whew.

I missed exercising and thus reading my daily New York Times. This morning I got up, made coffee and read yesterday’s paper online.

I had to access the internet via my phone since our Comcast connection is now so slow I can’t even get the speed test web site to load much less tell me how slow my connection is. I spoke with someone from Comcast briefly yesterday before choir rehearsal. I found it very annoying that the operator began our conversation by trying to sell me a different cable package. I pointed out to him that what I had was not working and I was not interested in purchasing something but fixing what I had.

I know the poor dude was probably working from a script. I wonder if they really do monitor customer calls and if they have some sort of evaluation form they tally stuff in as they do. Surely I’m not the only customer to complain about sales approaches when I am reporting a problem with service. But I like everyone else am at the mercy of one or two Internet Service Providers who along with all the corporations control our lives and limit our choices.

Oops. I guess I got up a bit grumpy this morning.

Here are a few links from my morning reading of yesterday’s paper.

China Executes 3 Over Deadly Knife Attack at Train Station in 2014 – NYT

I didn’t realize this knife attack took place in Kunming. Kunming is where my daughter Elizabeth and her then-partner-now-husband Jeremy lived for a while. Eileen and I had a very pleasant visit there.

Behind a Veil of Anonymity, Online Vigilantes Battle the Islamic State – NYTimes.com

This story and the next are examples of the weird way tech has changed the world. This story is about people on Twitter attempting to harass, block and remove radical extremists from social media.

Indian Court Voids Law That Curbed Offensive Online Posts – NYTimes.com

This is about a law that has been used to convict and jail people for stuff they put on Facebook and other social media in India. I think that’s very odd.

China Puts a Hitch in the Step of ‘Dancing Grannies’ – NYTimes.com

Finally a story about dancing grannies. What’s not to like about that?

It’s a rainy dark morning in Holland Michigan. My phone tells me it’s 37 degrees out. On Monday when I left the house for work I noticed the clouds looked like rain clouds but the temp was much lower and there was no precipitation that day.

I had one dream on and off all night waking in between episodes. I was visiting what seemed to be a migrant camp. The people were friendly. My father and my Uncle Ivan (my Mom’s brother-in-law) both deceased were alive and well in the dream as well as my two daughters as children. At one point, possibly the point of arrival at the camp, I realized it was Saturday night and I had to play a service far away the next morning. I talked with my Dad about how long it would take to arrive at the church in order to time my departure. Later my Uncle Ivan transported Eileen and me to our rooms in an elaborate mobile home (what they call a recreation vehicle?). Most of the dream was populated by Hispanic migrants. Can’t tell you where all this came from but there you are.

I had a nice chat with Sarah (the daughter living in the UK) yesterday. She called on her lunch break. She and her partner Matthew are planning a getaway to Edinburgh. Sarah said it was a seven hour drive. She also pointed out that a seven hour drive in the U.K. is much different from one in the USA, presumably more difficult and stressful. I hope they have some good time off together. I know they could use it.

Comcast has been giving me problems. I tried to use Spotify last night and this morning with little success. Yesterday I used my phone to access the internet. This morning I tried to listen to Debussy while cleaning up the kitchen. No luck. But it seems to be working now.

First Amendment, ‘Patron Saint’ of Protesters, Is Embraced by Corporations – NYT

The oligarchy of the world continues to manipulate things for its own profit. “Corporations are people, my friend” to quote Mitt Romney.

Russell Brand is my new hero. I asked Sarah how he was viewed in the UK where he is from. She said he was a TV personality and felt that he had gotten more political since attaining notoriety in the USA (“Big in Japan”). At any rate, I find his YouTube podcast fun. Here’s yesterday’s.

And speaking of YouTube videos, I found this synopsis of some of Friedman’s basic ideas yesterday.

Spending a weekend listening to Friedman talk in person at a workshop about family systems was a formative event in my life. It’s a way of thinking that has helped me tremendously.

Speaking of formative stuff, bell hook quotes M. Scott Peck’s definition of love in her book All About Love: New Visions. Peck “defines love as ‘the will to extend one’s self for the purpose of nurturing one’s own or another’s spiritual health… Love is as love does. Love is an act of will—namely both an intention and an action. Will also implies choice. We do not have to love. We choose to love.” She goes on to say that “love” is a verb and is incompatible with mistreating or abusing others.

I realize that I have been working on this concept of love for years, reminding myself to treat the people I love with respect and tenderness. Admittedly I don’t always succeed but it is the goal and I continue to see love as an act of will, not primarily a feeling.

I talked to my Mom yesterday about striking people you love. Specifically we talked about her “spanking” me. She said that she chosen to use “switches” (stripped flexible branches) instead of her own hand. In Tennessee when we passed  a certain bush on the way to church (the site where I received several switchings) I would point to the bush where she got her switches and say, “There’s the switch tree.”

The reason, she said, that she used the switches was that she didn’t want to strike me with her hand. I asked her if her parents struck her. She replied her mother did. With her hand? I asked. Yes, Mom said, with her hand.

What this all to do with love is bell hooks’ adamant insistence that while children need boundaries and discipline they do not need abuse or striking. Hopefully people in power choose not to harm others, but choose to love them.

I inter-library loaned bell hooks’s book, all about love: new visions. Les Back mentions it more than once in his The Art of Listening (which I have finished but am still pondering).

all about love arrived yesterday. This morning I read the introduction. It looks like I’m going to make it my next book to read.

Although I recognized hooks name, I’m not sure from where. From poking around on the web it looks like she is primarily a feminist culture type critic.

I am attracted to her brand of feminism and her lucid prose.

We seem to wonder about some of the same things.

From the introduction

Our nation … is a culture driven by the quest to love (it’s the theme of our music, movies, literature) even as it offers so little opportunity for us to understand love’s meaning or to know how to realize love in word or deed…

[S[chools for love do not exist. Everyone assumes we will know how to love instinctively. Despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary, we still accept that the family is the primary school for love. However, this love often eludes us. And we spend a lifetime undoing the damage caused by cruelty, neglect and all manners of lovelessness experienced in our families of origin and in relationships where we simply did not know what to do.

hooks was born the year after I was (1952). bell hooks is a pen name derived from the name of her grandmother, Bell Blair Hooks. (link to wiki article where I learned this stuff).

I began this morning listening to a Beethoven string quartet  and doing the dishes (The one in Eb major, opus 127). Later I pulled out my score and listened to the first movement again, studying the score. Beethoven has been on my mind recently for some reason. My trio has been playing some of his work and I continually turned to his piano sonatas during my spring break. His piano trios make his up his Opus 1.

I find this benchmark interesting: the first Opus. The romantics naturally enough kick off this nomenclature (part of this kind of Romanticism being an idealizing of the past). What will be my first work for the ages ask the Romantic composers who helped invent the concept (music for the ages…. the whole idea of posterity being an aesthetic resource comes into being in Western culture in the 19th century… not an innate concept in the other cultures or even the past about the arts).

Chopin’s first Opus is a piano rondo which I have played for years. Or maybe I should say have attempted to play since it’s not all that easy for me.

After making coffee, I turned to my daily Greek study. I am finding it no easier but am enjoying this study. It fits nicely with my interest in classical studies and even Beethoven now that I think of it.

I am still processing the experience of being involved with the performance of my piece for Marimba and Organ that Rhonda and Dave played Sunday.  I have lost the habit of thinking that there are many listeners that are interested in what interests me as a composer and musician. So it was an odd feeling to be in a room with performers and audience connecting with one of my pieces.

Although this piece is eleven years old, it came back at me in a pretty fresh way through this experience reminding me of the times I have composed music I am proud of.

I have not chosen any conventional path of being alive. I was once told that the reason people find me confusing is that I am more a “one of a kind” person. I have found this insight (from a person who described himself as one of the “liturgical jet set”) helpful and bewildering.

Helpful when I’m staring at my navel (so to speak). Bewildering when I realize that I think everyone is “once of a kind.”

Conventional or not… my life is good.

Before I close I want to share one of Les Back’s ten aphorisms for grad students pursuing their doctorate: READ PROMISCUOUSLY!

When I lived in a basement as a teenager (my parents moved away when I was in High School but allowed me to stay in Flint with friends), I was close to a young man with a brilliant mind, Les Oliver. I would marvel how Les would pore over stacks of moldy books at a used book sale and then pick out one that he had never of and whose author was unknown to him. Many times these books turned out to be fascinating and I added them to my list of books to read.

Les read promiscuously. I aspire to it.

I have been thinking this morning of certainty. In the last chapter of The Art of Listening Les Back addresses the process of doing a PHD in sociology. After being involved with many grad students doing a doctorate, he comes up with ten aphorisms that reflect bits of wisdom that have. occurred to him about research.

One of them contained a comment that struck me: “Don’t be thrown by the obscure or diffuse nature of what keeps you passionate about what you are doing… the feeling that ‘something isn’t quite right’ in the world [is valuable], or as Rachel Dunkley Jones put it recently, ‘a sense of uncertainty about the things everyone is so certain about’….”

I have this feeling quite often whether at church or in conversations or just listening to people and reading their comments online. I am often repelled by the certainties of  people, thinking quietly to myself that I see it differently. Attempting to not share my own uncertainty unless asked.

Back has obviously dealt with a lot of the same stuff in his life. His descriptions of which academic advisers to avoid rings true to me: avoid ‘the self-absorbed egoist,’ he advises. Avoid ‘mercurial personalities and “academic psychopaths” when looking for someone to read your thesis.

When I think about the reactions I have had to academics over the past few decades, I realize that I have run into these personality types and also people who are very certain in their faith in their own abilities and observations. Sometimes I have learned from these people. Sometimes not. It’s helpful to ponder some of their behavior in light of Back’s wisdom.

Living in a small town in Western Michigan it has recently occurred to me that many but not all of the people I run across here are unusually serious and uptight in their preoccupation with this small world.

I began my time here in Holland in 1987 thinking the place was provincial. Now that the window of the Internet is at our fingertips, I feel like all of us, myself included, have to guard against this tendency since we are connected the way we are.

So of course I didn’t get up at my usual 5 or 6 AM this morning since I’ve laying in bed longer this past week. That means I don’t have as much time to do stuff like read and blog. I did, however, do Greek.

Concert features local organist Rhonda Sider Edgington, and unusual cominations

Rhonda managed to get an article in the local paper about the concert today. In it, she is quite complimentary of me. I thanked her yesterday.

I listened to Rhonda and Dave the marimba player rehearse my piece yesterday. That was lots of fun. They are both fine musicians and were a delight to work with.

Dave was interested in the fact that I own an old marimba. We went over to the church after rehearsal so he could see it. He figured it dates from 1916 making it almost a hundred years old. Also it’s in pretty good shape and could be refurbished into a decent instrument.

I finally learned the definitive difference between a marimba and a xylophone. It’s the sounds. Different partials are present in the tone of each key. A marimba has a prominent octave partial. This makes the sound a bit more mellow. Dave demonstrated this for me with my instrument by striking a key and damping it and listening for the sympathetic vibration of a higher key. This is something one can also do on the piano: exciting a higher string in sympathy with a quiet but certain harmonic or partial.

The xylophone has a prominent fifth partial thus sounding brighter. So even though xylophones tend to have shorter resonators and the keys are sometimes a bit thicker it’s  the sounds of the two that makes the actual difference. Dave also figured out that my instrument was called a marimba/xylophone when it was made. He suspected that xylophones were developed a bit later.

My pregame rehearsal before church is in an hour and I have to have breakfast and get dressed. So that’s all I have time for today.

By the way, my hits yesterday dropped to a record low of about 20 hits. Not sure what that means but thanks for reading!

As I was chatting to Dave the marimba player I told him that I purchased my marimba to play the music of the Baja Marimba Band and Herb Alpert’s group. You’ve probably never head of them, right?

“I keep their records in my studio,” he replied.

My time off is drawing to a close. I am more rested than I was at the beginning of this time. I hope it will make a difference in how I weather the upcoming spring schedule of church and college. It probably will.

Oddly enough, I had a peak number of hits yesterday (81). Hard to say what that’s about.

This morning I finished another chapter in The Art of Listening. It was called “London Calling” and was a complex look at the challenges of multiculturalism in London and New York. One quote sticks in my head this morning:

The opposite of to love is not to hate but to separate – John Berger quoted in The Art of Listening by Les Back

Eileen is at her Mom’s, doing her hair and generally helping out this morning. I have been relaxing and reading.

This afternoon I am going to listen to Rhonda and Dave play through my Pentecost Suite for Marimba and Organ.

Yesterday I  stumbled onto an interesting new hip hop album.

Kendrick Lamar, Emboldened, but Burdened, by Success – NYTimes.com

In this article, the writer reviews Lamar’s album, “To Pimp a Butterfly.”

I listened to part of it while treadmilling yesterday.

I like the diversity of the music in it. I have often wondered why hip hop doesn’t use more music. I find it more interesting when the sounds are interesting.

This album is on Spotify (where I listened to it). It’s also on YouTube.

I haven’t parsed the lyrics yet, but I do like the diversity of sounds in it.

And I like the lyrics I can understand.

Daevid Allen, Guitarist, Singer and Founder of Gong and Soft Machine, Dies 

This guy was an early member of The Soft Machine, a group I admire. I’ve marked his obit as containing music I want to Spotify and check out.

Samuel Charters, Foundational Scholar of the Blues, Dies at 85 – NYTimes.com

Another interesting music obit.

Scientists Seek Ban on Method of Editing the Human Genome – NYTimes.com

Sometimes I feel like I’m living in a sci fi novel. Very cool and interesting article

French Parliament Debates Weight Standards for Fashion Models – NYTimes.com

In order to prevent anorexia as a industry standard.

Remains in Madrid Are Believed to Be Those of Cervantes – NYTimes.com

Another hero of mine: Miguel de Cervantes.

Still sort of semi vacationing in my hometown. I slept in this morning. Then got up and started working on Greek. I discovered that I am only three sections away from where the text will change it’s orientation. The sections I have been translating and studying are drawn from multiple sources. According to the text this will change to using only one source for the passages to be studied. It’s easy to see how this will eventually transition into only studying ancient passages. At this point, the sources are supplemented with text. So far they are sort of historical fiction with characters speaking and acting. It’s just enough to keep the student interested and he/she learns the language.

I am excited to be closer to the earlier sources in my study.

After giving an organ lesson, i came home and returned to reading The Art of Listening by the sociologist, Les Back. The chapter I read today is called “Listening with the Eye.” In it he describes a collaboration with Paul Halliday (a photographer) and several of his students.

The students used a Victorian box camera to photograph people on the street.

Les Back talked to them about Walter Benjamin’s ideas in his essay, “Theses on the Philosophy of History.” I haven’t read the essay yet, but plan to. Here’s a link to it.

Then the students spent two years taking pictures of people on the street in Brick Lane, East London. Each person was first asked if their picture could be taken (given is another verb Back discusses). The Victorian camera is very large so the process was far from covert.

Back cleverly points out that they took 200 pictures in this time. The exposure time of a Victorian camera is long but less than a minute. So what they end up with each photograph is “a fraction of life, a deep partiality that is nonetheless vital,and to my mind, precious.”

The striking image on the cover of the book is one of these photographs. Donna, the person in the picture, has had Stevie Wonder’s song, “Isn’t she lovely?” tattooed on the inside of her arms. It was a song she sang to her god daughter as she was dying.

I was so impressed with the quote that is the title of this blog that I interlibrary loaned its source: Worstward Ho by Samuel Beckett.

I ran across an oblique reference to the quote in The Art of Listening by Les Back this morning. I have always admired Beckett’s work and didn’t recognize this book. It might be fun to look at.

I managed to stay in bed past 8 AM this morning, a small personal victory for myself. I’m trying to continue to have a Spring Break despite the fact that we are back in Holland and I spent a good deal of yesterday immersed in church stuff. This immersion should allow me to not think very much about church for the next three days.

Not an easy task. But studying Greek, reading Les Back, playing piano and spending time with my wife and my Mom should help. I am planning to go over to church today for my piano trio rehearsal and tomorrow morning to give an organ lesson but that’s it.

This morning I finished a very moving and fascinating chapter in Back’s book.

Ostensibly about tattoos and their implications for clear listening beyond verbal communications, Back turns to his own family to explore how our bodies are our loudest and clearest communication. Specifically his brother and her daughter.

This is especially effective as he began the book talking about having a small epiphany sitting at the death bed of his father. Back has taught me a great deal about middle class UK stuff. He connects the reticence of his father (and other males) to the possibility that there is strong meaning in their refusal to glibly express their emotions. This is a new take on this for me though the distance my own father maintained with me rarely struck me as rejection personally.

Instead I tended to see my Dad as someone who struggled to express his deeper feelings. I would sometimes feel that he had a deep shame of himself. It never made too much sense to me.

Back points to the tattoos and jewelry of his niece as emblems of meaning. One of her tattoos reads “Mum and Dad.” Back calls this “illocutionary love.” Wow. Had to look that up.

His niece wears many rings, most of which relate to her grandparents, either owned by them, given to her by one of them, or purchased for her by one of them. Of course, Back’s father is represented here.

I can’t say enough good about Back. He is amazing.

I’ll end with a quote from him. He says in an interview with a young sociologist:

I’ve started to be more strident about an argument for a critical sensibility. A critical sensibility which is kind of furnished by the books that we love, by the theorists we find captivating and help us think our relation to the world differently, but also a sensibility that is training attentiveness to the world.

Link to pdf of entire interview.