Today’s date is one of those little fun ones: 11,12,13…. Heh.

For some reason, I had a spike in visits a week ago Monday. I happen to glance at Google Analytics and was surprised to see 45 visits for Monday, November 4. I admit I was checking because I suspected my readership might be dwindling to zero. Always good to know when I’m posting here every day. If no one read this for a while, I would certainly feel a bit less compelled to write daily even though I do so primarily out of a discipline and a need to write something every day.

For the record, Google Analytics shows the following unique visitors for the last week:

Monday, Nov 4: 45

Tuesday, Nov 5: 23

Wednesday, Nov 6: 26

Thursday, Nov 7: 25

Friday, Nov 8: 30

Saturday, Nov 9: 16

Sunday, Nov 10: 25

Monday, Nov 11: 25

So you can see that 40 is a bit of spike. I cannot think of a reason for this spike. Sometimes I cross post to Facebooger and that can cause a bit of a spike. Or I link in to something which brings visitors.  Last Monday’s blog contained no links. It was just a typical Jupe rant about his hate/love relationship with religion.

I became interested in this after I posted a video of my composition, “Julie’s Waltz.” YouTube also keeps track of hits.  I wondered if anyone had clicked through to the video I posted of my playing it. YouTube reports seven hits on the video as of four days ago. I know that a couple family members subscribe to my YouTube videos. I began to wonder if people were looking at the blog much. Hence  checking Google Analytics.

I made an interesting discovery this morning reading in Christianity: The First Three Thousand Years by Diarmaid MacCulloch. He cited Peter Jeffery and said that the origin of the church modes arrived in the West via the  Byzantine empire who got them from the Palestinians.

This organization of modes is basic to all of Western Civ music. I used to get amused at rock and rollers who were so sincere and hard core about their ability to play chords on the guitar.

My reading had taught me that they couldn’t never have played “Louie, Louie” without the literal invention of tonality and harmony which grew out of experimenting with the church modes. From such esoteric endeavors comes “96 Tears” and “Stairway to Heaven” and “Kick out the Jams, Motherfucker.” This makes me smile.

And now it looks like we all got it from the dang Palestinian Christians who sought refuge in the Byzantine Empire after the Muslims had a stronghold in the Middle East (c. the beginning of the 8th century).

Cool. I interlibrary-loaned the festschrift containing Jeffery’s article.

I recently ran across some pretty cool blogs on the Smithsonian website. I’m not sure how often they are updated. But here are the ones I bookmarked and intend to check occasionally.

Food and Think – Smithsonian.com

 

Past Imperfect – History – Smithsonian.com

 Paleo Future (sort of a steam punk blog gone wild)

 

Design Decoded Smithsonian.com

 

 

 

Collage of Arts and Sciences Smithsonian.com

 

 

Innovations Smithsonian.com

 

Surprising Science – Smithsonian.com