I did hear from Metro Health yesterday. After calling and leaving messages at various numbers I had basically given up hope. However, someone called to tell me that I was on their list to call and that I would get a call today with prep info and the time for my procedure.

Now I’m waiting around for this call. I was going to blog after it came in but it’s already 3:30 PM and I’m beginning to wonder when they will get around to it. Might as well blog a bit.

Church went well today. I felt a little silly because  Johannes Müller-Stosch, the conductor of the Holland Symphony Orchestra was visiting.

He is a gracious informed presence and also an organist church musician type guy in Long Beach. The reason I felt silly was this was an improvisation week end. I would have liked for him to hear repertoire on our lovely Pasi, but that’s the way it goes.

The choir nailed “Every Valley” by John Ness Beck. This is a piece that is popular with many choirs. it’s kind of poppy. My relationship to it has changed (as has my understanding of much music). I used to think it was too hokey. Now I just think of it is in the style of popular music. No biggie. I played piano. Playing piano and conducting is not something that I find easy to do. Better to play and conduct from the organ (something I have been trained to do). On the other hand I have been trying to get the choir to listen and sing with its own autonomy. I like ensembles that can do that. So I try to do the body language part of conducting but not too many cues. There’s no way that you can keep up a conducting pattern when you need both hands so much of the time to play the accompaniment adequately.

We almost had a train wreck this morning. I was glancing at the psalm in the bulletin during the first reading and noticed that the Gloria Patri had been included. This made sense because the psalm slot was filled by Canticle 16. But I hadn’t put the Gloria Patri in the choir’s version. So I hurriedly whispered to the choir to sing the canticle from the bulletin. They went with it and all was well. If I hadn’t noticed we would have led strongly until the Gloria Patri in which case the congregation most likely wouldn’t carry it without us. That would have been interesting.

I had many supportive comments this morning about my impending surgery. It is helpful to have so much support. It reminds me of a radio show I heard this morning which I will link here tomorrow since it won’t be available online until then.

The program is The People’s Pharmacy and the guest for this weekend’s show was Robert Lustig. I’ve never heard of him but I liked what he had to say.

Lustig is a professor of Pediatric Endocrinology at the University of California. Basically he is a brain science guy who offers practical application of living in our crazy time. I will probably talk more about his work as I learn about it. But for now here’s the 4 Cs he presented on the radio show. As best as i can remember they are ways to resist the strong manipulations of our brains be consumers and addicts.

Here they are:

Connect (empathy)

Contribute (to something bigger than yourself and other people)

Cope (Sufficient sleep, mindfulness, and exercise)

Cook (the less processed foods in your diet the better)

I have put three books by him on hold at the local library.

I’m especially interested in that last book, the cookbook.

He’s also all over YouTube and I’m planning to watch a few of his presentations. What I like about this guy is that he presents simple concepts clearly.

I thought of him just now because he is clear that “Connecting” is something you do in person to other people looking them in the eye and listening and responding. Weirdly it’s sort of the opposite of the “Connectivity” of social media.

He also said that his four Cs are things you Mom told you. I liked that.

Today is John Milton’s birthday. I learned that (like I do many things) by listening to Garrison Keillor’s Writes Almanac for the day. I was very surprised to learn that Milton coined a lot of words.

“According to Gavin Alexander, lecturer in English at Cambridge university and fellow of Milton’s alma mater, Christ’s College, who has trawled the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) for evidence, Milton is responsible for introducing some 630 words to the English language, making him the country’s greatest neologist, ahead of Ben Jonson with 558, John Donne with 342 and Shakespeare with 229. Without the great poet there would be no liturgical, debauchery, besottedly, unhealthily, padlock, dismissive, terrific, embellishing, fragrance, didactic or love-lorn. And certainly no complacency.” link to source