Exhausted as usual on Thursday, I rose yesterday and immediately did corrected copies of the upcoming psalms for the next two Sundays. In each case, we had noticed trivial mistakes in them in choir rehearsal.

It looks like the Republicans are heading for many victories next Tuesday. I find this confusing.  I cannot bring myself to vote for a Republican these days. Though almost all politicians seem to have lost a sense of public service and instead are operating in interests that do not serve the country as a whole, the Republican rhetoric is the most extreme and intransigent.

I have to hand it to them that they have reframed the reality so that many young voters (according to polls) are holding the President and the Democrats responsible for a general lack of governing even though they themselves are at least complicit in this, and in my opinion, have deliberately set out to divide and conquer those with whom they disagree.

Gunnar Myrdal talks about the idea that a democracy is a discussion between those who have opposing opinions with values in common. This is no longer true in the political arena of United States. But I believe it’s not exactly what is happening in the minds of the citizens since I tend to think that at heart we still do have values in common.

Well, I will vote as usual. I always do.

I wonder how many people making noise now actually vote. I think the more people to vote the better. Right there, I am in disagreement with the Republicans who seem to think that money is speech and are discouraging voting (especially of course among those who would not vote for them).

I am not as tired today as I was yesterday. The piano trio read through Tchaikovsky. Thank goodness, my colleagues went slowly enough for me to play some of the notes in his piano trio (which is dedicated to Nicholas Rubinstein! Yikes!).

I have been reading through Fanny Mendelssohn piano pieces.

 

 

This one I have found very haunting and keep playing through it.

(Side note: my bookmark service [Diigo] allows me to add a footnote to a saved pdf file. I did this in the online version of this piece. It shows corrections which my edition does not have. This feature will come in very handy for me, since I am always looking at pdfs online.).

I also have been reading Dylan Thomas in the morning.

This shit keeps me sane.

Galway Kinnell, Plain-Spoken Poet, Is Dead at 87 – NYTimes.com

A poet I read.

Pressure in Japan to Forget Sins of War – NYTimes.com

The right ward noise of politics is not limited to American Republicans. I read constantly that this kind of intolerance and bigotry is on the rise in Europe and other places.