In the years before my Father’s mind became completely confused by the disease that killed him (Lewey Body Dementia), he wrote memoirs. One for himself which he called Through Many Dangers, Toils and Snares …. Chronology and Memoirs.

One for this older brother Dave called Family Pacesetter: Stories of David Benjamin Jenkins

 and one for his brother Jonny called The Middler and I: Stories of Jonathon Robert Jenkins.

I obviously have copies of all of these. Dad’s is organized into sections by year. It’s easy to find stuff that way. I have come to realize that Dad is not always a reliable reporter. So it’s like listening to someone reminisce and occasionally getting dates and details confused.

The recent tragedies of killings of black men by police has brought to mind a time in my life when Dad was very concerned with this kind of behavior. At that time it was called “Police Brutality.”

He writes:

“This year (1968) I became very active in a  much needed POLICE OBSERVERS CORP, a group of Pastors keeping watch on the behavior of local police.”

He doesn’t write this, but I remember him telling me that there was a certain elevator that went from a basement police parking lot up several floors to the police offices. It was in this elevator where pastors and reporters  had determined that the most brutal beating went on. The Police Observers Corp stationed pastors in this elevator to help lower this kind of activity. It’s my understanding that Dad was one of these men (not sure if there any women).

It was around this time that Dad  became one of the first white ministers in the Church of God denomination to wear a clerical collar. He said that if he was going to be public in his protesting he wanted people (Police) to realize he was there as a minister.

So now 46 years later, the USA still systematically represses people of color. The reasons are complex but still discouraging. The mistake I keep watching white people and angry conservatives make is to think that racism is evidence of malice. While this is the case is a relatively few instances, I tend to assume that most people are not working that way in their head.

Instead, I have come to see racism and other ills in our sick society (like rampant consumerism and preoccupation with money as the source of happiness) as more subtle than individual malice. Instead, it can been seen in trends of  institutional and societal failure.

So, these trends can be seen in routine massive incarceration of people (especially men) of color for nonviolent crimes, routine stereotyping of victims of poverty and unemployment as choosing their lives, and many other subtle barriers that we as a society throw in the path of the downtrodden and less privileged people among us.

While this is discouraging, I also see and hear voices of sanity speaking truth to the nebulous power of the mob. Mob is a good simile. People get dragged in via echo chambers and their own resistance to using their brains to reason.

I believe we get the country we deserve in a democratic society. Even with gerrymandering and voter suppression, somebody has to be voting in these clowns and supporting their institutionalized madness.

Thank goodness for the voices that remain to challenge us. Here are pictures of just a few.

Eileen and I attempted to watch the DVD of “The Piano in a Factory” last night. Our big laptop didn’t seem set up to play a DVD. I could get it to play but it was clunky. I had to go into the files and then it started but when it got to the movie it didn’t have a way to turn on the subtitles.

The movie itself had such beautiful photography that I was motivated to figure out a solution. This ended up being switching to my old laptop which is on the same operating system but was an early release of it and has no touch screen. It worked much better until just about the end when the DVD started freezing and jumping around. Eileen said this was probably scratches on the library’s DVD.

Despite these difficulties the movie was mildly enjoyable. This is high praise from me since I rarely seem to enjoy a new movie these days. The composition and beauty of what was on the screen persisted throughout the rather goofy story.

I especially liked the music in this movie.

The main character is a musician. After a scene with him and his wife discussing divorce the story begins.

The musicians are  playing for a funeral. One does not know this. Instead they are pictured playing before a stone wall.

Then the camera ascends and you see two large threatening steaming nuclear plant stacks.

Very cleverly these stacks come to the viewer’s mind when we learn that the community is weirdly trying to preserve some local smoke stacks. It turns out they are not these threatening stacks.

Then the main character stops the music in response to off camera complaints that it is too sad. It is only then we learn they are playing for a funeral.

The plot is about the struggle the main character and his friends have trying to procure a piano for his daughter so she will stay with him and not his ex.

I have to say the actress who plays the young daughter has excellent hand position on the piano.

I discovered that there is an online access to movies like this from which this movie originates:

Film Movement.com

It looks like you can stream movies from it. I haven’t quite figured it out. My library owns several of these movies so I thought I would work my way through them before purchasing something online.

While I was fussing about with getting my computer to play a DVD last night, Eileen mentioned that Krista Tippett had said something appropriate about this sort of problem. This morning I listened to her most recent show.

Seth Godin on the art of noticing and then creating

Maybe you recognize his name but I didn’t. It’s a mildly interesting show that does factor in some basic insights into the internet and how we connect these days. I’ll have to ask Eileen what hit her about this show after she gets up.

Godin has his own web site and blog which i have bookmarked. Many of his insights seem self-evident to me, but still worthwhile I guess. I do abhor seeing life as marketing but he puts a pretty healthy sheen on that idea by broadening it to how you connect with your “tribe.”

Again goofy but kind of interesting.

Dear Diary,

I got up early this morning to clean the kitchen. I left a mess from cooking up veggies that I bought at the Farmers Market a week ago: Brussels sprouts, celery root, rutabaga, parnips,  and turnips. I froze most of the Brussels sprouts and roasted what was left. I chopped up and roasted the rest of the root veggies. I found a bag of Poblano peppers on the mark down shelf at Meijer yesterday, so I roasted them as well.

While I cleaned this morning I perversely listened to the Advent I evensong from Westminster Abbey. Here’s a link but it’s not a permanent one since BBC slyly pulls it shows after a few weeks from the available archive.

Eileen and I did go and purchase a Christmas tree after I finished my blog yesterday.  Then I went grocery shopping. After that we went to the hospital to take Mom her glasses and hearing aid. I also bought some roses to take to her. She seemed in pretty good spirits. They came to take her away to test her kidneys so we left.

I took Eileen home and she proceeded to bring the tree in and set it up. I went to church and practiced. I have been reading Bach’s Clavierübung III. I have learned a lot of it, but it’s interesting to play through it and think about the various beautiful settings. I was particularly caught up in his setting of “Dies sind die heil’gen zehn Gebote” (These are the Ten Commandments). I also have been reading my way through all my many volumes of Buxtehude. I brought home a copy of the Clavierübung III and the Buxtehude to read through the manual only settings at home. I spent some time with both this morning.

I am finding myself very discouraged and bitter about the United States lately. It’s a combination of the Ferguson and Staten Island grand juries and the way our public institutions and “servants” (Congress and the Supreme Court especially) are functioning and don’t seem to be much interested in the common good. I feel very distant from all this madness. Thank goodness for Bach and Buxtehude and James Joyce and so on.

Once again I have to quit.

sincerely,

Jupe

I seem to be in a sort of mental tail spin. Classes at Hope are over for this year. Yesterday morning I had a 6 month check up. I worry unnecessarily about these. I mostly am ashamed that I haven’t lost weight since the last appointment. This anxiety drives up my blood pressure at the office. Dr. Fuentes told me that we were just going to accept that I have “white coat” syndrome which drives it up. Usually they take it twice and the second one is considerably lower.

After this appointment (which other than my usual “white coat” dealy went well) I came home and crashed. I had skipped morning coffee in case they wanted to draw blood (they didn’t), so I was looking forward to having some and relaxing a bit.

Somehow I managed to forget that I had a lesson scheduled at 10:30 with an organ student. I remembered it around 11:15. Eileen and I drove over to church and I apologized profusely to my student.

Last night after my first martini (I only  had one then red wine with my pizza), I had a call from Mom’s nursing home. They wanted to send her to ER because her urinary tract infection was causing her pain and she was having difficulties. By the time I got a hold of anyone Mom was already at the ER.

This morning Eileen and I drove over to check on her. She is suffering from some confusion which apparently comes along with the infection. At least we hope that it’s connected. I think she is more comfortable at the  hospital and they are aggressively treating her infection. She’ll probably go home in a few days.

Last night I dreamed about my dead cousin, Alan. Both he and my Dad were in the dream. My Dad appears pretty often in my dreams, but I haven’t dreamed of Alan for years. Later in the dream I was talking to my sister-in-law, Nancy. I was going to talk to her about my Dad, but then I remembered that she didn’t have a Dad (this was in the dream… her and Eileen’s father passed away a few years ago) and decided not to bring up my Dad.

This last little bit is amusing to me, because it reflects some behavior I have developed at this stage of my life, namely keeping my fucking mouth shut once in a while especially when I deem my insights unhelpful.

Eileen and stopped over at Mom’s nursing home and grabbed her hearing aids and glasses. We will deliver them this afternoon. The nurse thought that Mom’s lack of hearing and seeing might have caused her to underestimate Mom’s cognition. I’m not hopeful about that, but will drop off the stuff along with a couple of books Mom might want to read. She doesn’t usually read in the hospital. It is a traumatic event in her life and leaves her pretty exhausted.  But I will take her some books just in case.

After getting Mom’s stuff, we came home and had breakfast and I emailed the fam about Mom. Jupe continues to tailspin.

Eileen wants to go buy a Christmas tree, so I’m off. No pics today.

I can remember years ago before many of you were born or at least before you had become young adults, I was exposed to a piece of software that demonstrated the possibilities of hyperlinking a text.  It took the poem, Ulysses, by Wordsworth and interwove it with many kinds of hyperlinks from definitions, discussions of meaning to a video of Ted Kennedy movingly reading (reciting from memory?) the poem.

The experience blew me away.  I immediately saw how hyperlinking helped expand the nonlinear way of approaching thinking. It seems to me now many years later ironic that this technology suits the works of James Joyces, especially Finnegans Wake. The ability to access layers of meaning in this text is greatly enhanced by links and windows.

I have two sites bookmarked for this: FWEET (above) and FINWAKE.COM (below)

And these are just two old bookmarks. I  didn’t bother to search this morning for new ones. I’m pretty sure there are more out there. The irony comes from the fact that hypertexting (enabling nonlinear approaches to ideas) and these Finnegans Wake sites are all available at a time when accessing ideas and reading texts thoughtfully is out of fashion.

So I begin my days reading poetry by Dylan Thomas and then reading helpful and informative essays by his buddy William Tindall. Then turning from them to Finnegans Wake by James Joyce since Tindall constantly refers to Joyce’s work and piques my curiosity once again about it.

In doing so I feel like a hermit in a cave who trembling turns over pages by candlelight and is truly caught in the small light of the solitude of ideas and thinking.

It helps that all of these books are in tatters.

I have found myself lately having a visceral attraction to old books I own. I enjoy picking them up even though they are falling apart and their pages are sometimes yellow with age.

Readers of this blog know that I am enamored with ebooks, so this is not a luddite moment. Rather I just notice the pleasure and quietly enjoy it.

Tuesdays the New York Times publishes a Science section. Here are some links from this Tuesday I thought were interesting.

Avi Loeb Ponders the Early Universe, Nature and Life – NYTimes.co

Interview with a fascinating scientist including his ideas on how to spot extraterrestrial life (look for smog).

A Robot Exhibit at MoMath Aims to Bring Math to Life – NYTimes.com

Crazy robots under your feet.

Snowflake Symmetry – NYTimes.com

Answers the question how one arm of a snowflake buy valium 5 mg online knows how to grow like the others (answer: they are all responding to similar environmental changes).

A Vulture’s Gut Is Simple but Seems Effective – NYTimes.com

And also mysterious.

The Ants of Manhattan – NYTimes.com

When Everyday Noise Is Unbearable – NYTimes.com

Hoping for a Good Death – NYTimes.com

It turns out that even people who specialize in helping with death can easily screw up.

I had a restful day yesterday. Today is my last day of classes so it will be the last long Wednesday for a while. I decided yesterday to perform Bach’s great chorale prelude on “Nun Komm der Heiden Heiland” for a prelude a week from this Sunday.

There is something about chorale preludes like this that attracts me deeply. I enjoy playing them. I’m going to pair it up with a flashy little piece by Pachelbel on the same tune for the postlude.

My present community doesn’t sing this hymn as much as some of my past ones, but no matter. It’s great music.

I need to get going and prep the psalm so I can work on it between classes this morning.

An Art Form Rises: Audio Without the Book – NYTimes.com

Not sure what I think about this. I sometimes find the dramatizations a bit annoying. But I’m probably spoiled by the quality of books I tend to read.

A Missouri Thanksgiving | The Academic Angle

I was very surprised when the provost of Hope college wrote this blog post about Ferguson. I experience Hope as fixed in the arrogant theology of Calvinism, that is the idea that God has preordained sinners and elect (look it up if you don’t believe me). This colors their approach to contemporary American living and seeps into the way they group people into us and them.

This blog draws on Bejanmin Watson’s Facebook post about Ferguson which apparently has gone viral. The moderate conservative, David Brooks, also quoted this blog in his NYT column yesterday.

Though I do approve of this stuff, I cynically remarked to Eileen yesterday, “What could be better? A white guy talks about Thanskgivings from years past complete with B & W pics, then quotes a black sports start who is a Christian. it’s all very palatable for white people.”

What America’s police departments don’t want you to know – The Washington Post

Once again suppression of data helps  pull the wool over our eyes.

Chief Justice Samples Eminem in Online Threats Case – NYTimes.com

So the Chief Justice listens to Eminem. That makes sense.

Lessons From an Ancient Time When Recyclers Walked the Earth – NYTimes.com

Ancient antecedents of common sense.

Finished reading For the Time Being by Ruth Ozeki last night. I am still pondering and digesting it. I found it clever and skillful in a way few contemporary works of art manage to pull off. On the face of it, it is the alternating narrative of the dairy of Nao (pronounced “now”) and the day to day life of a character named Ruth. They both live on islands. Nao lives in Japan and Ruth in Vancouver Island. Ruth has found Nao’s diary washed up on the beach with a bunch of other stuff in plastic bags. She is a writer who is experiencing writer’s block living on this island with her husband, Oliver. She decides to read the diary slowly, letting it unfold over the course of the entire novel.

Nao’s story is the story of a young girl who is out of place in Japan since she was raised in California before her father lost his job in a silicon valley gig and comes home broke and broken to Japan. On the ensuing connection between these two lives hangs a magical tale of brutality and beauty.

Ozeki has placed several appendices in the novel which are footnoted in the text. My one recommendation is that you read these appendices as they are footnoted since they (like everything) are part of the evolving narrative.

Ultimately I think Ozeki is a bit hard on her character Ruth. Ruth gets annoyed quickly by her charmingly methodical autodidact of a husband, Oliver. She is unreasonable and impatient sometimes exploding into weird rage at herself which she directs at others. Sometimes the reader might surmise the brutality around this character is a bitter mirror for the author.

There is more even brutality around the characters Nao, her father (Haruki #2) and her long dead great-uncle (Haruki #1). Nao and Haruki #1 are the victims of ijime which apparently is Japanese for very skillful and prolonged “bullying.” But the cultural expression of this is much more deeply rooted and defined as described here. Nao is systematically tortured by her her fellow Japanese students. Haruki #1’s letters and “Secret French Diary” reveal his own experience of this torture as he is selected to be a kamikazi pilot at the very end of WWII.

The plot hangs on the story of Nao and her grandmother Jiko, the Zen Buddhist nun. Jiko is a fictional character that will stay in my brain for a long time. She is a hundred and four years old and living in a Buddhist temple. Nao ends up there in the course of the story. Jiko insight into Nao and the way she envelopes and heals her through her also helps Ruth to heal herself is at the heart of the novel.

Before she is done, Ozeki blends Zen Buddhism, Japanese manga culture, Proust, origami, botany, Schrodinger’s cat,  quantum physics, multiple wolds of possibilities and old fashioned magic into this fine-tuned fuck of a novel. Recommended.

Bernhard Misof – NYTimes.coms

A profile of a scientist in the Sunday paper. I was impressed with his comment about listening to great music (the Bach Cello suites for example) brings back his faith in the genius of mankind. Me, too.

Just Plane Ugly – NYTimes.com

Air travel as a metaphor for what’s wrong with America.

African Books for Western Eyes – NYTimes.com

A Nigerian writer explains how getting published equates largely with writing what Westerners expect to read.

How ‘Star Wars’ Saved Marvel From Financial Ruin – NYTimes.com

There are a couple of details in the Marvel-“Star Wars” deal that seem quaint, if not downright insane, in 2014. First, Marvel paid zero in licensing fees. Second, the Lucas camp wanted the comic book out before the movie’s release.

Dead Composers Stage a Comeback – NYTimes.com

I admire both Jeremy Denk and the late Charles Rosen. This looks like fun.

Inspired by Charles Rosen’s “Classical Style,” a textbook from the 1970s, Mr. Denk has created characters that include not only Mozart, Beethoven and Haydn (who have read a newspaper article declaring the death of classical music), but the Tonic and Dominant Chords.

Is Our Art Equal to the Challenges of Our Times? – NYTimes.com

we are in the midst of hard times now, and it feels as if art is failing us.

The Discussion on this topic

I skipped blogging yesterday, something I have rarely done since I began writing daily online, an activity which predates the term, “blogging.”

Eileen and I had company. My nephew, Benjamin Jenkins, gets up almost as early as I do. He, his partner, Anthony Wesley (Tony) and his sister, Emily were visiting for Thanksgiving. I had not anticipated how pleasant it would be to have these people around. I forget what it’s like to be in a room with people with whom I can easily talk and are interested in my ideas or at least listen patiently to them.

I don’t really have a lot to say today either. I was disappointed that after three days off in a row I once again found myself exhausted at the end of the day yesterday. Maybe this had something to do with the stress of doing family things with Eileen’s fam and the physical exertion of trying to keep up with Emily, Ben, Tony and Eileen as we did our running around yesterday. After breakfast, we went to see my Mom. Then to the Farmer’s Market. Then to downtown Holland which seems to hold some nostalgic interest for this group.

I had neglected to take my Kindle with me. But I was tickled that I was able to download a book I have been reading, Ulysses by James Joyce and tag along with the group and sit and read while they shopped.

After people left, I met with my violinist, Amy Hertel, and we rehearsed for this morning’s service. She is playing a Mozart violin sonata movement. I think think it is a particularly excellent one. But after learning about the musical tastes of Ben’s significant other, Tony, (Black Metal) and being reminded of the tastes of my friend Jonathan Fegel after running into him on the streets of Holland yesterday, I have to wonder how many people appreciate this music at all.

This morning is the first Sunday of Advent, the beginning of the church year. But at my church there is an overshadowing “tradition” of celebrating St. Andrew on this day since his feast is Nov 30. Amy, a long time previous member of this community, was reminiscing about this yesterday. It’s her “favorite Sunday” at Grace even though she has joined a different Christian community (Lutheran Missouri Synod). I didn’t have the heart to talk to her about Advent starting on the same weekend.

The previous rector is celebrating his 50th anniversary to the ordination of the priesthood today in Allegan. Both Jen (my boss and priest) and I thought it was weird to overshadow the first Sunday of Advent with this kind of a celebration. But this dude also presided over some pretty dubious practices at Grace so it stands to reason I guess.

Well as you can see, my brain is pretty empty this morning.

In Northern Ireland, a Wave of Immigrants Is Met With Fists – NYTimes.com

There are people who hate in every country.

Hong Kong Clashes Flare as Protesters Return to Camp – NYTimes.com

This struggle continues even though it is slipping from the forefront of discussion like most other complicated protracted issues.

In a Twitter Post, Malaysia Airlines Sends the Wrong Message – NYTimes.com

Tragi-comic tweets from a desperate corportation.

U.N. Panel Cites Concerns With U.S. Security Practices – NYTimes.com

Our shameful practices held up for deserved if ignored scrutiny.

A Jordanian Spins Comic Book Tales to Counter Terrorist Ideologies – NYTimes.co

One of the things I like about this story is that the dude received an epiphany while talking to a child.

Japanese Newspaper Prints Apology for Using the Term ‘Sex Slaves’ – NYTimes.c

The world continues to plunge into the madness of obfuscation and willful wrongheadedness.

Doing Some Heavy Lifting – NYTimes.com

And if you thought that the battle for women’s rights was won, read this.

The Pain of the Watermelon Joke – NYTimes.com

President Obama and his kids just bought Brown Girl Dreaming, a book this woman wrote. Daniel Handler (the author of Limony Snickett) comes off like a stupid white person in this story.

I’m listening to Mozart’s G minor string quintet (K. 516).  Reading Dylan Thomas’s poem, “Ceremony After a Fire Raid,” and  in William Tindall’s commentary on it sent my mind into many various nooks and crannies including a reference to this string quintet.

Listening to this piece of music makes me wonder what people get out this stuff these days. I’m planning to accompany a Mozart violin sonata movement on Sunday for the prelude for Eucharist. Learning it and performing it with my friend Amy Hertel has been an amazing experience for me. I do wonder how much meaning it might have for the average listener (whatever that is).

Reading Tindall’s commentary is an odd experience. The commentary itself sometimes seems as profound and thought provoking as the poems he is writing about. The Mozart reference presumably illustrates the way this particular poem moves from darkness to light. The last section of the music moves into major from minor.

For me I like the way Mozart sometimes pits two sets of two instruments against each other occasionally in this piece (2 violins against 2 violas).

“Ceremony After a Fire Raid” hit me pretty hard this morning. First of all I have been thinking about the death of Michael Brown because of the all the hoopla about the recent grand jury finding of insufficient evidence to try his killer.

I don’t mean to infantilize Brown. The poem is about the death of a baby. But it does get at the grief of the death of an offspring which can be applied to Brown’s death.

But beyond the headlines, I was also struck by the ritualistic nature of the poem. It outlines a church service in its movement.

“The first part …. is a requiem chant of despair…. The second part combines collect and sermon. The third part combines gloria, communion and organ voluntary.” William Tindall on Dylan Thomas’s poem, Ceremony after a Fire Raid

Ritual is finally for me the only way I can pray at all.

“… we who believe without belief…” William Tindall on Dylan Thomas’s poem, Ceremony after a Fire Raid

Each year around Christmas I pick up Robert Southwell’s poem, “The Burning Babe” and read it.

Tindall mentions both this poem and another favorite of mine by T. S. Eliot, Ash Wednesday.

 “Only a ritualist would burn a baby or, fascinated by such sacrifice, continue to celebrate it” William Tindall on Dylan Thomas’s poem, Ceremony after a Fire Raid

It was also startling to me to pick up my daily Dylan Thomas poem and find references to church and organ music.

I was struck at the end of the poem where Thomas writes “The masses of the infant-bearing sea Erupt, fountain, and enter to utter for ever Glory glory glory.”

Tindall writes of the recapturing of the lost sense of “glory” sitting next to Thomas reading this poem in a studio broad cast. Wow.

I also heard the echo of the three fold Sanctus of Isaiah and the Holy, Holy in the Mass in these lines.

Finally, Tindall once again mentions James Joyce and relationships between Dylan Thomas and Joyce. In this case, apparently Leopold or Molly Bloom also admired a work by Mozart that reflects the same movement from darkness to light, the violin sonata K. 11.

Eat Turkey, Become American – NYTimes.com

In the 50s a Minnesota town rallies around a Korean immigrant to get him a renewed visa. Told from the point of view of his kid.

Shakespeare Folio Discovered in France – NYTimes.com

I didn’t realize these folios often have information that tells us how the plays were done. Some handwritten notes such as changing gender of characters and other alterations by the prints in between printings. Very cool.

A Call to Save a 12th-Century Minaret, Heard Far and Wide – NYTimes.com

Interesting story. Good headline writing.

I’ve been thinking about the poem, “In my craft or sullen art” by Dylan Thomas. (3:45 on the video above). I have been reading this poem since my teens. I think it has helped shaped my outlook on aesthetics and my own relationship to art and composition.

When the speaker in this poem says that he labors “Not for ambition or bread Or the strut and trade of charms On the ivory stages,” it helps me understand my inexplicable lack of ambition coupled with a passion for my art.

And when Thomas concludes the poem this way: that he writes “for the lovers, their arms Round the griefs of the ages, Who pay no praise or wages Nor heed my craft or art,” I am reminded of my weird ability to make beautiful music in the presence of people who don’t seem to be paying attention and manage not only not to despise them, but to enjoy their presence while I do what I do.

Yesterday was another full day. In addition to my usual schedule, I took Eileen out to purchase some drinking glasses for today’s meal and pick up her Mini. After choir rehearsal, I weakened and went and purchased gin. There has been no gin in the house for several days. I’m hoping I can continue to cut back on my drinking and snacking as I have been, but last night seemed to be a good night for a martini.

While I was at the liquor store, one of the clerks asked me what I was thankful for since tomorrow was Thanksgiving. I smiled and said, “I’m thankful to be alive.” It’s true.

Ruth Ozeki writes in her novel, For the Time Being, that the “Zen nun Jiko Yasutani told me in a dream that you can’t understand what it means to be alive on this earth until you understand … what a moment is.”

The nun in the dream explains, “A moment is a very small particle of time. It is so small that one day is made of 6,400,099,980 moments… a snap [of  your fingers] equals sixty-five moments.. if you start snapping your fingers now and continue snapping 98,463,077 times without stopping, the sun will rise and the sun will set, and the sky will grow dark and the night will deepen, and everyone will sleep while you are still snapping, until finally, sometime after daybreak, when you finish up you  98,463,077th snap, you will experience the truly intimate awareness of knowing exactly how you spent every single moment of a single day of your life.”

I am up early this morning doing dishes and laundry. I need to prep the Psalm for Advent II to take along to ballet so I can work on it in between classes. I would like to have both it and “Vito’s Ordination” ready to use this evening. In the case of the latter tune, my goal is to introduce the choir to the basic tune this evening. I am beginning to wonder if the notated pop rhythms might be hard for my literate crew. I guess we’ll see.

All this means I have less time than usual this morning before work for blogging. I read a chapter of Greek out loud and listened to Dylan Thomas while I washed dishes. I quickly read a bit in the bio of Mao I am reading. I think of these as morning ablutions. Literally washing my brains out a bit before facing other humans.

Eileen and I went over and looked at Mom yesterday. She had another fall. No physical harm done but of course we are concerned. I made an appointment with her psychologist since we seem to have fallen off their radar due to cancellations. He mainly monitors her mood meds. I don’t think they are what’s going on with her but it doesn’t hurt to have him look her over since her condition seems to be deteriorating slightly. Her doctor has ordered in home physical therapy which has begun. They are evaluating her probably to see if her care is sufficient. One of the nurses yesterday told me that workers are helping her get to the bathroom at night if she rings.

We are hosting some of Eileen’s fam for Thanksgiving tomorrow. We have an interesting history with this extended group. Eileen’s parents rejected our marriage and did not attend our wedding. Since her dad died, her mom has done a bit more reaching out to her. But inevitably connecting with them is a bit stressful complicated by the fact that despite efforts to accept me most of Eileen’s fam finds me an anomaly (sound familiar?… Mister Outsider…. Jenkins stuff).

So Eileen and I have been  madly preparing for this. We initially said we would stay in Holland so my Mom could come over for Thanksgiving. That doesn’t look like it’s going to happen. Eileen called her friend Barb yesterday to find out if we could do Thanksgiving in Whitehall (where her Mom is). Barb said she could. So Eileen called her sister and discussed what would be best for Dorothy her mom. Apparently it will be better to go with plan A, so that’s the plan Back to cleaning.

I’m about half way through For the Time Being by Ruth Ozeki. It is an amazing work. Ruth Ozeki is a Zen Buddhist priest according to the blurb on the back. The book is a maze of references to time and Buddhism replete with a large dose of pop Japanese Manga culture. I love reading books that seem to be happening in the same world I am living. By that I mean the interwebs and other modern stuff as well as the foreboding of the coming of the end of humans on the planet due to our own stupid preoccupation with carbon based fuels.

Turkish President Says Women Shouldn’t Be Considered Equals – NYTimes.com

This would be funny if it wasn’t so evil. Last sentence of the article is illuminating: “The president’s remarks on Monday came a week after he claimed that the Americas were discovered by Muslims at least 300 years before Columbus.”

In Same-Sex Marriage Calculation, Justices May See Golden Ratio – NYTimes.co

Comparing the number of states where same-sex marriage is legal to the ones where interracial marriage was legal and other issues before the Supremes ruled. A tipping point?

Last night I had one of my anxiety dreams. I was playing for a large apparently Roman Catholic service. I had my harpsichord and had played a piece on it for the prelude. Unfortunately, this had ended way too early and there was time for more music. I thought maybe I could improvise on the first hymn if I could just find it in the hymnal. I began leafing through the hymnal.

The room was for some reason darkened. The congregation was very faceless and became more and more restless.

My anxiety was beginning to rise when I thought something like, “You know? Fuck it. I’m not going to play this anxiety game. I’m outta here. Goodby all.” Then I left the church.

Satisfying to think of on awakening.

Yesterday I had a funny thing happen to me in ballet class. I have been working on writing down an improvisation from last Friday. It seemed to have made an impression on the teacher and the class. Yesterday I repeated this improvisation during an Adage for the pointe class. I thought maybe the teacher at least would recognize it after her strong approbation last week. Nope.

Nobody said anything to me about it. Just shows to go you, I guess.

The  music probably is not as important or as significant as I thought it was. No biggie. I still like playing. And I still will probably finish writing out the improvisation. It’s quite easy. I am thinking it might be something that would amuse my grandson, Nicholas, as he could play it probably on sight.

Will Texas Kill an Insane Man? – NYTimes.com

I like the statement in this editorial: “A civilized society should not be in the business of executing anybody.” Civilized or not, I believe that it is immoral for a state to kill. I know this is an opinion not many in our country share, but it has been mine for all my adult life.

Bigger Than Immigration – NYTimes.com

My boss preached on “us and them” Sunday. I would link in her sermon but it’s not online yet. Charles Blow has some clear insight into the people who hate Obama and immigrants. They are losing power and they know it and are resisting.

In her novel, A Tale for the Time Being, Ruth Ozeki has her main character Nao (pronounced “now”!) mention that she quit blogging: “… I stopped doing that a while ago. It made me sad when I caught myself pretending that everybody out there in cyberspace cared about what I thought, when really nobody gives a shit.”

I on the other hand who am older than the fictional age of this character and have followed the Interwebs since its youth, think of blogging not as talking to everybody in cyberspace, but sort of the equivalent of busking, playing music on a street corner.

Just like real life for an old guy in the USA where most people don’t see me or what I’m doing. My fam and friends might drop by. That’s good enough for me. And of course it’s all public and not sad at all.

In the book, Nao is writing in a diary that Ruth, another character, has found on a beach in a Hello Kitty lunch box and sometimes reads to her husband. She footnotes his reaction to this passage: “I never think anyone gives a shit,” Oliver said, “Is that sad? I don’t think it’s sad.”

Anyway I’m seriously in to this book now and enjoying the hell out of it. I first ran across it on our local library’s streaming audio book page. Eileen and I sometimes listen to books at night on this site. The recording is actually read by the author, Ruth Ozeki, which was very formative in my impressions since I think it’s important to pronounce the Japanese name of the main character, Nao, in order to further understand the whole “time being” thing.

But I’m reading a hard cover and discovering that Ozeki put much more into her book than can be easily understood in an audio book. This is illustrated by the fact that she footnotes the diary of Nao sections with reactions from the character Ruth who also happens to be a writer like her namesake Ruth Ozeki.

She uses much more Japanese in the written text with explanatory footnotes on the language which I’m pretty sure she doesn’t do so much in the audio book, I think she sometimes just substitutes English to help a listener better understand the story.

My choir sang well yesterday. Unfortunately I made a couple of glaring mistakes while playing the organ both in the prelude and the anthem. Not that big a deal, except I suspect I was affected by the presence of some music profs from Hope College. I hate that it affected me, but have to face it and work on it.

My guess is that the people that I worry about probably didn’t even notice my mistakes. In the prelude i screwed up the melody in the pedal once. They most likely weren’t listening (like most everyone else). In the anthem I made a glaring mistake in a pedal line that was probably only perceptible to the choir or someone who knew the anthem.

Fuck a duck.

We did the Carson Cooman piece which has some faux minimalism in the organ accompaniment. I did have a parishioner tell me he was surprised at how good the organ sounded on it. Everything’s relative, I guess.

I came home and spent a couple hours working on transcribing a lead sheet of “Vito’s Ordination Song” by Sufjan Stevens.

I

I was laying in bed early this morning thinking about Dylan Thomas’s recording, “An Evening with Dylan Thomas.” This record probably strongly influenced my love of Dylan Thomas especially as a young man. I still have the vinyl somewhere but couldn’t lay my hands on it after I got up. I do however have the complete Caedmon recordings of Dylan Thomas on CD which includes this record on CD.

Before coffee this morning, I transferred that recording to my laptop and began listening to it. I have read most of the poetry of Thomas Hardy. This is probably because Dylan Thomas reads a poem by Hardy on this record.

Yesterday was my Mom’s 88th birthday. Eileen joined me for an early trip to the grocery store. We picked up some stuff to help Mom with her birthday celebration including a ridiculous Turkey cupcake cake.

Then we joined her for lunch at her nursing home.

I ended up making a little album of pics from all this and putting it on Facebooger. I know that some of my readers (assuming anyone at all is reading, ahem), don’t do Facebooger so I put a couple up here for them.

I took the silly cake around to all the people in Mom’s small cafeteria (about 20 people). After our lunch, I offered each person a cup cake. In order to make the silly thing, the cooks at Meijer dumped so much frosting on it that it leaked down in huge amounts  in between some of the cupcakes. One person pointed to a huge lump of chocolate frosting and asked to have that. She was very tickled when I put it on her plate.

Mom is doing better but she is still not fully herself. At this stage of the game I always wonder how much she will come back from confusion. I always think “quality of life.” Yesterday, she insisted that she only wanted Amish novels to read. This is slightly problematic since she has read most of the large prints one at the library. I went and picked out four that she at least only read once.

The fact that she has started reading again is a good sign.

I ran into Jodi and Christian our curates at church yesterday as I was doing my weekly Saturday prep for Sunday.  They took me up on my recent offer to transcribe and arrange Sufjan Steven’s song, “Vito’s Ordination,” for their ordination. It will be pretty easy, but it will take a bit of work. My goal is to have a working score for the choir to get started on by this Wednesday.

V.F.W. Goes Gender-Neutral, Recognizing Female Veterans – NYTimes.com

About time this happened.

Four Decades of Solitary in Louisiana – NYTimes.com

Outrageous.

The Impeachment of Obama on Immigration May Be Legal — But It’s Wrong – NYT

Interesting discussion. I don’t entirely buy either stance.

Sculptor Offers Another Clue in 24-Year-Old Mystery at C.I.A. – NYTimes.com

Had to pass this link on to my puzzle loving wife.

Most Heavy Drinkers Are Not Alcoholics – NYTimes.com

I’ve been a heavy drinker most of my life (again probably thanks to romanticizing about Dylan Thomas). But I’ve been confused about addiction and alcoholism. This article helped clarify it for me. I think it influenced me to not buy gin or wine yesterday and try and lose some weight. The relationship between these two for me is that when i have a martini or glasses of wine in the evening, I inevitably always snack….. ahem.

Thai Protesters Are Detained After Using ‘Hunger Games’ Salute – NYTimes.com

Also reading George Orwell’s 1984 in public is frowned on.

Suffer Little Children – NYTimes.co

I love it that while Krugman thinks Obama’s recent immigrant stuff doesn’t go far enough, his reason includes the fact that it’s the “right thing to do.” I miss that reason a lot because most of the discussion centers on economy and laws.

The Racist Origins of Felon Disenfranchisement – NYTimes.com

This stuff basically makes me crazy.

How Medical Care Is Being Corrupted – NYTimes.com

Wow. I didn’t know a lot of the stuff in this report. Like incentives to prescribe certain meds.

The Case for Black With a Capital B – NYTimes.com

I love it when people think about language like this.

While reading in William York Tindall’s A Reader’s Guide to Dylan Thomas this morning I realized how I turn to books for conversation. Tindall seems to have a section for each of Thomas’s poems. So after reading a poem aloud and thinking on it a bit, it’s interesting to see what Tindall has to say about it. I find it particularly gratifying that Tindall seems to see Thomas in intellectual relationship to one of my other favorites: James Joyce.

Speaking of the clever shape of “Do not go gentle into that good night,” Tindall says “This tricky shape … pleased young Stephen Dedalus.”

Dedalus is of course one of Joyce’s memorable characters. I am tickled that he, a FICTIONAL character, is cited. Tindall is writing in 1961 before the complete saturation of public culture by the false celebrity and expertise of actors and the characters they play. It’s hard to hear a news report these days that doesn’t reference a movie scene or star.

Stephen Dedalus while obscure is definitely one of the stars of my little galaxy. Cool.

In another commentary, Tindall compares Thomas’s female subject in “Into her lying down head” to Molly Bloom, another Joyce creation.

Speaking of Molly Bloom I am inevitably reminded of her when my ballet instructor asks her dancers to shout “yes.” I keep meaning to mention to her Molly Bloom’s famous monologue that ends Joyce’s Ulysses.  This burst of erotic life force is a poem in itself and has had an enormous influence on my own embrace of the joy of life.

Speaking of the dance stuff, I had an interesting embarrassing experience yesterday. We came to the slow combination that dancers call the “Adage.” The teacher was repeating one they had done in the previous class. Before dancing it, she turned to me and said,  “You weren’t our pianist last class, were you?” “No mam,” I replied.

This can be slightly awkward for a teacher who wants to repeat something. The department for some reason has decided to alternate pianists for the morning classes. The reasoning has never been explicit, but I assume it’s to broaden both the teacher’s and the students’ experience of music.

So going into the Adage I was determined to make a good clear improvisation that fit the combination the teacher had designed. I made it simple and beautiful as I could to help them dance the slow dance. In between repetitions of it, Julie asked me in front of the class if I had made it up or played something from memory. I assured her it was (like most of my playing) made up. She said something complimentary and the class burst into applause.

I was moved. My music is my most vulnerable moment. Playing for ballet most of the time I am in a weird position that I like quite a bit. I am not the center of the moment, but my improvisations can be helpful and even important. In a way, I am illustrating the dancing and the human bodies of the people in the room. It’s an odd objective kind of intimacy. It is a lot like being alone and composing. So I was caught off guard when the class resorted to typical ballet etiquette of applause. This is something they will do when one of them does something particularly well or elegant.

Julie told the class that she wants to make a CD of my improvisations and sell them. I told the class they would all have to buy one. Julie looked at me and said something like you won’t remember that piece, will you? No, I said.

But I came home and wrote down what I could remember. This is the first time I have  wanted to capture an improv on paper for its own sake.

I feel much better this morning despite struggling through a day off yesterday. By that I mean that anything I did yesterday took more energy and concentration than usual. Eileen and dropped Mom’s car off to the dealer. Her car is one of those cars recalled due to a dangerous ignition switch.

I just found myself moving slower than usual yesterday, taking longer to do tasks. My piano trio people both canceled. I waited at home alone while Eileen went to have her hair done (something which she enjoys immensely). To distract myself while she was gone, I went through my resources gathering some info on ordination music. I felt like I was vaguely overfunctioning, working on my day off, but fuck it.  I shared a planning goggle doc with my clerics with some ideas. I was impressed that Jodi responded that she was interested in see a checklist and some suggested hymnody for ordinations I unearthed from Marion Hatchett’s A Guide to the Practice of Church Music.

I guess it’s not too surprising she would be interested in something by Hatchett. He was an enormous influence on the 1979 Prayer Book. I remember meeting him in Detroit years ago and have since read much of his work. My brother studied with him in seminary and I picked up some fun stories, but mostly I learned from Hatchett the scholar in his writing. Most Episcopal priests would probably recognize his name.

I was looking at choosing a postlude for a week from Sunday yesterday. My fatigue caused me to dither. I found a rather lengthy setting of the tune of our closing hymn. I liked the idea that it would call on some actual organ technique to perform and I was sorely tempted to put it on my plate and learn it. It would take some intense daily rehearsal between now and then. But after some lengthy dithering my better sense told me I should choose something a bit easier so I did and found a nice little setting by Walther of one of the melodies of the communion hymns for the day.

After organ, I dragged myself home to exercise. But as I say, I’m feeling much more relaxed today.

I overdid it yesterday. By the end of the day I was pretty exhausted and am still tired this morning. I took my laptop to college and In between my morning classes worked on the psalm for Advent I. This involved loading my laptop with the necessary information before heading out into the snow. It can take me a full hour to do the psalm.

Here’s what it looks like when I email it to church.

I make it with my music notation software, Finale, which the church helped me purchase. We split the cost 50/50 and the church paid for one update.

I am amused that while I am pretty sure I am an outsider in the world of Anglican musicians that I go to such lengths and can produce this insert that enables my congregation to sing in this very Anglican manner.

I am well aware that when the psalms are sung this way they are more often sung by choirs. But it is the intent of the American Episcopal church to encourage their singing by congregations as well.

In fact the Anglican  Chant Psalter issued by the American Episcopal church has two chants suggested for every psalm, one is congregation, one choral.

This is a blurred pic of the tones. Apologies but I’m too lazy to redo it. I just want to illustrate that there are two tones suggested for each psalm. If you look closely you might be able to tell that I used neither of these tones. I used one we  have done before. Repeating tones helps the congregation. Using new tones provides variety.

A blurred picture probably isn’t as offensive a copyright violation, eh?

This makes me think of my conversation yesterday with our curates. Christian kept asking me if something was legal. When I mentioned I could arrange the Sufjan Stevens tune for choir for use for his and Jodi’s ordination, he asked if it was legal. I told him not really. Later I figured out when he asked if something else was legal, he meant was it permitted by the Episcopal Church, when in fact I was talking about breaking the law of the land which is something I do pretty routinely in copyrights since the law is rigorous and almost impossible to follow in many instances.

On Tuesday I composed a descant for King’s Weston (At the name of Jesus) which we are singing this Sunday.

Yesterday, I was actually working on this descant when I looked up at the time and realized I was late for my meeting Jodi, Christian and Jen. Oops.

I find this sort of ironic and a bit humorous, since I often wonder if chronic tardiness represents avoidance behavior. Was I trying at some level to avoid this meeting? Probably. No reflection on my curates. I just anticipated that planning an ordination would be a lot like planning a wedding trying to factor in the curate’s wishes and balance them with the community I work for.

I wrote the descant for this hymn, because every time we sing it I think to myself that it really deserves a descant. I got a little out of control (hence the exhaustion) and wrote two descants for two different stanzas.

It interests me to be so outside the radar of the Anglican musicians and still perpetuating all this Anglican music. Evidence that I am outside of the radar can be seen in a recent conversation on the Anglican Musician Facebook page about hymn tempos and keys. In this conversation one stuffy dude pointed out that Bach had written his chorale version in the key of Eb and that it suffered from being in done in C. Further that Bach never intended it to be repeated three times with different words. His weird idea was to use a setting from the 17th century that represented actual Lutheran practice of the time.

What a ding dong!

I spent most of yesterday with Eileen. Her colonoscopy came out normal. She seemed relieved. I was reminded how deeply I love her as I watched her go through with this test. I do wonder about the invasivness of this procedure. So much of medical evaluations are based on actuarial-like  statistics and it’s weird and oddly disconnected from living. It often feels to me like 21st century superstition to try to take care of your body.

I am of course very glad that Eileen’s colonscopy came out normal and that she was not harmed by the procedure itself (small chance of a puncture can occur they informed us).  And of course I jump on the treadmill whenever I can and try to eat right and watch my weight (not always successfully). But my skepticism is still present even as I too go through the motions of “taking care” of myself. There is the idea that one gets a body and a life and that life is to be lived and the body to be used. There doesn’t seem to be anything wrong with using life up. As Modest Mouse puts it in their song “Ocean Breathes Salty” on their CD “Good news for people who love bad news,” “you wasted life, why wouldn’t you waste death?”

I take this to mean that people don’t embrace living  fully and do not understand death as a logical and beautiful part of life. (Sarah, I’m not thinking of you. Heh.) One way I see this happening around me is the blindness of people to contexts that could inform them. Maybe this is what it is to be older. You know shit. You watch other people who don’t seem to know the same shit and consequently sometimes waste and screw up life.

This doesn’t mean that I haven’t done my share of this kind of wasting and screwing up. It means I feel lucky to know some shit and to be alive and living with a woman I love.

I guess it’s a kind of bittersweet joy of living.

I’m thinking of the joy of touching someone you love, the joy of walking on a snow covered street and looking at the snow and the trees. I’m thinking of seeing past the lies of organized religion and bureaucracies to the living breathing people involved. And of course for me there are the joys of making music and reading.

I have been finding the poetry of Dylan Thomas a great consolation for the stupidity of life in America right now. I follow the news. I voted. But I remember what a high school English teacher taught me: that there is more important stuff in a poem, more life, more reality, than any “news story.”

Partisanship Breaks the Government – NYTimes.com

When I say stupidity of America, this is what I am thinking of. I have to sadly agree with the expert Linda Greenhouse: the Supreme Court of our country “is beginning to look evermore like just a collection of politicians in robes.”

When Government Succeeds – NYTimes

Likewise, Paul Krugman writes in this article: “The real lesson of the Ebola story is that sometimes public policy is succeeding even while partisans are screaming about failure…. American political discourse is dominated by cheap cynicism about public policy, a free-floating contempt for any and all efforts to improve our lives.”

Inequality, Unbelievably, Gets Worse – NYTimes.com

A clear statistical look.