I’ve gotten my groove back a bit today despite not having a diagnosis for my hives. I am alive. My life is mostly good except for this silly itching  which if I distract myself I don’t notice too much. Eileen left for Whitehall this morning. She is up there helping out.

I promised her I would straighten up the house a bit and vacuum. This I have done. I also spent a few hours transcribing a silly song for our Stewardship musical. Rev Jen promises me this is the last year I will have to do it. I am skeptical.

Here’s the song I have been spending so much time with.

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Nice, eh?

When I complained about having to do this, Rev Jen said the church would pay me extra for it. I told her that was not the point. It’s just a pain in the ass. But now it’s done.

I mailed some packages to England today. I’m relaying stuff to my daughter her significant other. Sometimes they need someone state side to receive and pass on cargo from dealers who won’t maill overseas.

I stopped by the library. I am enjoying the library immensely these days.

When I got up this morning I found the above book in a package on my front steps. Not a bad way to start the day. Plus Eileen and I are eating very well due to all the fresh fruit and cheese and veggies we have been getting at the Farmers Market.

I walked buy diazepam 2mg online over to pick up our car which was at O.K. Tires getting its air conditioning fixed. On the way, I managed to trip and fall. Sheesh. Nothing damaged except my pride.

I’ve been plugging away, reading Alan Jacob’s The Year of Our Lord 1943. I was tickled to read that Arthur C. Clarke as a young man reached out to C. S. Lewis. He was critical of some stuff in Lewis’s novel, Perelandra.

Clarke wrote to Lewis objecting to a specific passage in which Lewis evidences some cynicism about humankind’s ability to resist doing terrible things especially with technology.

Clarke wrote: “The whole passage [concerned] seems to be an outburst of unreason and  emotional panic rather surprising after the acute penetration of The Screwtape Letters.”  I liked that Alan Jacobs spent a few pages describing Clarke’s novel that he published ten years after his exchange with Lewis, Childhood’s End. Apparently, Lewis was quite taken with it. It makes sense that Lewis would be a reader of science fiction, I just hadn’t thought of it before.

Lewis wrote to the woman who later become his wife and exclaimed regarding this book: “IT’S A REAL CORKER.” I like that story and Clarke’s book sounds like one I would like to read.

I just checked and I don’t have a copy on the shelves (I love having my books in order). I have quite a few titles by Clarke, but not that one.

Well, it’s been kind of long day today. Time to relax.

Eileen had a doctor’s appointment today. She and the doctor (who is also my doctor) discussed my hives.  Dr. Fuentes told Eileen that my hives couldn’t be from a drug reaction if they were persisting the way they are. She also said she couldn’t prescribe more prednisone. Dam. She gave Eileen the name of a Grand Rapids dermatologist she recommends. She thought I could get in sooner to see this doctor instead of waiting until my October appointment with a Holland dermatologist.

Googling reveals that hives lasting longer than six weeks are usually impossible to diagnose. Nice.

I am discouraged. My itching continues. I have already had one shower today. I have a bottle of aloe gel sitting next to my chair. I use it liberally. I have talked to Fuentes office as she instructed Eileen I should do.  They are contacting the GR dermatologist who will call me. Bah.

This is getting old.

I met with my violinist today for some playing. That was fun. I’m still working on organizing my books and I enjoy doing that.

Eileen is off meeting with a contractor she is thinking seriously of hiring to do our doors. Tomorrow she goes to Whitehall to help care for her Mom.

I can’t find the sheet music the author of the Stewardship musical wants for this year. The tune is “This Moment in Time” as recorded by Englebert Humperdinck in 1979. This is a pain. But I have began transcribing the stupid thing.

Eileen and i are going out to eat in a few minutes. Yesterday we watched “Get out” and “Loving Vincent.” I was disappointed in the latter. The moving picture approach to Van Gogh’s style was very cool, but the plot was lame. I kept hoping that since the plot occurs after Van Gogh’s death, they were  going to make a point about  how he saw stuff and that his vision actually lingered on after his death and that’s why they did all that cool animation of his paintings and style. Nope. Too bad. “Get out” was a gas.

Eileen helped me today and we now have all of the choir folders stuffed with music for Sundays all the way to Advent. She is such a help with this stuff.

I had a good meeting with Jen.

My stupid hives are still itchy. I just took a shower to help with it. I guess I will report to my doctor on Friday that we haven’t licked this entirely yet.

So this is tricky, trying to keep a healthy distance between me and my gig. Tuesdays are shaping up as a good day and time to do stuff for the fun of it. However, in the back of my mind are some nagging things weighing on me about work.  For the third or fourth year, I am getting roped into doing the musical that the church puts on for its stewardship campaign. I don’t mind doing it so much. What bothers me is the indirect way I have been involved in it. No one ever asked me to do it. It was just expected that I would put in extra time for it.

Last year, I got roped into singing a solo in it. Once again I was involved before I knew what was happening and there was no graceful way to back out.  Monday I received an email from one of the organizers telling me and others to respond and say which evenings this week we could rehearse. It was overwhelming and not clear if the organizer was looking for multiple rehearsals. I emailed the boss but she hasn’t replied. In the meantime one of the “stars” has responded to all that he is busy this week (of course…. why wouldn’t he be? since there was no warning that there were to be rehearsals this week). I’m not sure if that puts the kabosh on it or not.

(Update: I received an email from the boss. She said I could limit myself to participating a couple of times closer to the actual performance. She also promised this was the last year for this kind thing. Hah.)

Tomorrow I will finally turn my attention toward getting some music for the author of this thing. He has been emailing me for months that I needed to transcribe the melody he wants from YouTube. What a pain. Anyway, I’ll look at it tomorrow. Fuck the duck.

Eileen is off getting her hair done. It has been warm and rainy in Holland this morning. Thank goodness for air conditioning. We couldn’t find a movie to go see today. So we’re going to go out to lunch then come home and watch “Get Out” online.

This movie is directed by Jordan Peele. Eileen and I have been enjoying Key and Peele shows. They are silly but we like them.

I think the two men are quite talented. Jordan Peele was the impetus behind BlacKkKlansman. The movie was originally his baby, but he decided apparently he was too busy and got Spike Lee to do it.

It sure is good to have Eileen back in the house. I like my solitude but I love my wife and want her around.

Clarkesworld Magazine – Science Fiction & Fantasy : Issue 143

I recently started listening to old podcasts from this mag.

I got a little carried away this morning and wrote a bulletin article for next Sunday.  I think Mondays are going to be a sort of work day, at least a half day of work.

I checked the background on Sunday’s hymns and discovered that J. R. Watson spends a couple pages of his book, The English Hymn, on our Sequence hymn for Sunday: “Blest are the pure in heart.” After doing some reading, I ended up reducing what I found out to a reasonable Music note.

I’m writing in the afternoon and Eileen is still not home yet. She texted me that she was in a clinic with her Mom and her sister, Nancy. They were hoping to get her Mom’s foot xrayed.

I spent the morning at church working. I am now planned through until Advent of this year. This not only means hymns and anthems but organ music as well.

I found my Scheidt volume 1 I was looking for.  These editions are amazing and have lots of information as well as all that music.

I watched the CBC special: Leonard Cohen: Tower of Song, a tribute concert. It was pretty amazing. So many of the songs they sang are songs I have loved and performed over the years. I felt pretty stupid sitting in my living room alone, weeping, watching the stupid thing, but that’s what I did.

I miss my wife.

Whew! My tasks are done for today. I walked over to church a bit early. Sarah pulled together a poster for our September recital. I went directly to our offices and printed up 20 copies. Then before church, I put them up.

I had taken some Scheidt over with me. I purchased a three volume very cool edition of Scheidt organ music recently. Before vacation I was working my way through the first volume. Now I can’t find the fucking thing. It’s probably at church but I didn’t see it this morning.

I’m interested in finding charming little pieces that fit nicely on my instrument. I played through some variations by Scheidt on Christ lag in Todesbanden in the second volume  earlier this morning. It is nice stuff. It helps to know the melody well.

Church went fine. There were two visitors who used to attend Our Lady of the Lake. They are thinking of joining Grace. One guy said that he and his wife (who wasn’t present) are definitely planning to come to the first choir rehearsal. They are both music teachers. The other woman is stilling thinking about it.

After church, I straightened up for the afternoon recital and walked home. It was hot and humid, so I turned on the air conditioning, ate a salad, took a shower, and put on a fresh shirt and returned.

My recitalist, Dana Anderson, only programmed Bach and Mozart. He obviously is highly skilled and by his own admonition to the audience is an “organ snob.” He said that’s why he was there instead of some other place today. I would have appreciated a wider choice of music, but he did play very accessible pieces by Bach and Mozart and also played the hell out of them. I wish I could have sat down with him afterward and asked why he did some of the things he did with agogic accents. They kind of worked. But for sure they were interesting.

We had about twenty or so people.

I’m now sitting in my air conditioning and feeling thankful.

Eileen called yesterday to say that she was planning to stay three nights at Barb’s (in Montague?). So I’m on my own for a few days.

This morning I got up and after the usual morning stuff (dishes, coffee, Greek, Poetry, reading), set out for the Farmers Market. Dana Robinson, tomorrow’s recitalist, indicated that he would probably want to begin using the instrument around 10 AM. I grabbed some stuff at the market, came home put it away, and set off for church.

I managed to practice as  much as needed before Dana arrived. I went over to the church offices to work on the program for his recital and a poster for September recital.  I finished the program but didn’t hear back from daughter Sarah who usually designs the posters. No worries. I will post it once we get it done. I’m also planning to send out some press releases when the poster’s ready as well.

My doctor messaged me back. She keeps giving me the same instructions as though they are new. She has upped the one BP med I have left to a dose and half. She told me my BP was too high (this I knew) and to report back in three weeks so she can see how my BP is doing.

In the meantime, I am trying to lose weight. My weight is down a little. If I can lose some pounds I am hopeful that the BP will drop more. But who knows?

Rhonda mentioned this book to me, so I checked out the library’s copy. As I have mentioned here recently, my views on Jazz are evolving.  I think that Chinen is examining the very questions that I have about Jazz and coming up with some interesting observations. He also lists off the “129 essential albums of the Twenty First Century (so far).” I love stuff like that. This morning I listened to the first album.

Chinen says that if you work your way through the list (presumably in order of release which is the ways he list the albums), you’ll have a good impression of the contemporary state of the art.

Here’s a taste.

Also this morning, I discovered that the collection of Papers on Georgian Psalmody, the Gallery Tradition I have been reading refers to a bunch of recordings. I found some on YouTube.

My hives seems to be subsiding a bit. At least I hope they are. We turned off our air conditioning yesterday and opened the windows. I think I miss fresh air. I practiced guitar a bit in the afternoon. I do find it satisfying to rehearse Bach and Gervaise. The latter composer is once again an example of how I have been influenced by The Pentangle. It is in their recording (John Renbourn actually) of Bransle Gay that I first heard of Gervaise. Since then I have not run across this composer very much, but I do like the dances he seems to have written/arranged.

Here is the recording of it that I have known since I was younger.

I still love to play and listening to the music on this recording. I have a collection of guitar pieces edited by Renbourn. Yesterday I began working my way through another piece by Gervaise in it. Lovely stuff.

I have been reading in Alan Jacobs’ The Year of Our Lord 1943: Christian Humanism in an Age of Crisis. It’s basically about the response of five people to WWII, especially regarding the morally dubious notion that the Western Allies won not because their cause was right but because their forces were superior.

The five thinkers are W. H. Auden, T. S. Eliot., C. S. Lewis, Jacques Maritain, and Simon Weil. All of these people are thinkers I have read and am still interested in. Jacobs doesn’t have the clarity of mind of any of them, but so far it’s kind of an interesting read.

And he quoted a beautiful Cranmer collect.

Most merciful God, the Granter of all peace and quietness, the Giver of all good gifts, the Defender of all nations, who hast willed all men to be accounted as our neighbours, and commanded us to love them as ourself, and not to hate our enemies, but rather to wish them, yea and also to do them good if we can …. Give to all us desire of peace, unity, and quietness, and a speedy wearisomeness of all war, hostility, and enmity to all them that be our enemies; that we and they may, in one heart and charitable agreement, praise thy most holy name, and reform our lives to thy godly commandments.

Opinion | The Question We Must Keep Asking – The New York Times

Ai Weiwei asks, “What is it to be human?”

A litmus test for inclusivity at the Washington Post – Columbia Journalism Review

Bias exposed.

Hold your breath: a song of climate change – The New York Times

A poem by Bob Hicok

I spent the morning at church working on planning. This is going pretty well. I am doing it a bit differently this year. I am doing a detailed plan for every Sunday instead of just sketching in hymns and/or anthems. I’m going so far as to pick organ music as well. Today I made good progress and am planned through the middle of October. My idea is to continue this planning into the season, maybe working on it more intensely for the next couple of weeks before our first choir rehearsal.  But after that making chipping away at it part of how I spend my weekly time.

I received a big box of used organ music in the mail today that I purchased from my former teacher, Craig Cramer. I notice a lot of it (especially the French Classical and Spanish Baroque) is pretty easy and would fit easily into my new rubric of playing more easy (but not less interesting or rewarding) music.

Boy we are eating good these days. I have been purchasing local camembert and chevre. It is excellent spread on bread. For lunch I melted some local smoked gouda on roasted pablano peppers. Oy! Peaches are in and are excellent eating. Eileen stayed up after I went to bed and made more jam. This time she used huckleberries out of the freezer.

Tomorrow she is going up to Montague to spend time with our friend, Barb Philips at a cabin on the water. I opted not to go with her, since I have stuff I need to do here in Holland. Rhonda is coming over in the afternoon for tea and duet playing.

Life is good.

I can see that adjusting my schedule and my attitude toward work is going to take some fine tuning. I have tasks at this point that I need to keep remembering. Yesterday I did some emailing about Sunday’s Grace Notes Recital. Emailed my student, Rudy, and offered him a lesson this week. I am planning to go over today and put in for the check for the recitalist Sunday. I’m hoping they can cut it rather quickly so that I can have it hand, the way I prefer.

Eileen and I do a thing we call “Check In.” We make a schedule for upcoming days and review everything in the “In Basket.” We did that yesterday. We have scheduled a Grand Rapids day today. This means a meal and movie. That should be nice.

The guy who was reupholstering a chair for Eileen called yesterday and wanted to come by and drop it off (and get paid). We scheduled that for 10:30.

On Sunday afternoon, I continue to play with my books, putting them in a usable order. I worked on that some more yesterday.

Eileen ambushed me a bit by insisting on running down the $6.02 that Xfinity owes my dead Mom and keeps snailmailing us about. She thought she could handle it without me, but that turned out not to be the case. I am abashed that jumping in and working on this threw me off emotionally and mentally so easily. The rest of the day was rubbish and I decided to end it with a martini and wine.

I have decided I want to more clearly put together the cast of characters in Alan Moore’s Jerusalem. Weirdly, I couldn’t find one online. So I started working on one this morning. I think it would be fun to more clearly see how the story hangs together. I think I can go a long way with this by making a google doc about it. I have it in a searchable Kindle book. Even though I am reading a hard copy, it is handy to be able to search the Kindle version.

I decided yesterday I wanted to study both Anglican church music and American Black Music. The former is under control. For the latter I pulled out my copy of Readings in Black American Music by the scholar, Eileen Southern. I discovered that it is a companion book of resources for her larger history, The Music of Black Americans: A History (Third Edition). I ordered a copy of that yesterday.

The flavor of Anglican Church Music when combined with African American influence on American worship sounds like a good combo for study for Jupe.

I see my therapist, Dr. Birky, this Friday and am hoping to continue to work on integrating my life better.

Islamophobia and structuring the post-Cold War new world order – Hatem Bazian – Daily Sabah

I continue to try to expand the way I find stuff online. Lately, I have been doing more Twitter. I also have increased my Google Alerts. This article came up under Salman Rushdie.

You might think from today’s title I was going to complain about my hives. But instead I’m thinking of the fact that this morning finds me immersing myself in church music reading. I have beeni enjoying reading about hymnody and the history English parish congregational singing, not to mention iJerusalem, n Alan Moore’s does a lot of referring to hymn writers and hymns (who knew?). This morning after Greek I pulled out my 82 Hymnal Companion and read up on the hymns I will play next week. In doing so, I ran across a reference to Temperley’s article in the Hymnal Companion, “The tunes of congregational song in Britain from the Reformation to 1760.”

This is a useful short summary of his work on this subject and ties in nicely with my reading. I enjoyed checking out next week’s hymns. If I found something fascinating I would write a bulletin note. The reading was interesting but not fascinating. I am beginning to see the  history of hymnody especially Anglican and related hymnody in a clearer way.

Last night I was unable to concentrate and do too much reading. Instead I fired up my Roku and re-watched the first show of Diarmaid MacCulloch’s History of Christianity.

I am not that good at watching images these days. I started out interested. The scenery of places in the world related to the Christian Church is one of the strong points of this series. MacCulloch bravely looking at stuff, with his hair ruffling in the wind and sincere passion in his eyes, is not. I admire his writing, but as I say I am not that patient with moving images at this stage of life.

After watching the silly weekend PBS newshour, I queued up some videos from my YouTube subscription.

What Misko does in his guitar arrangements is amazing. This was released this month.

I then randomly listened to another new video.

I quite like it.

Church went fine yesterday. Many people greeted me and welcomed me back. They sang up a storm which is always fun. The idea of using improvs for preludes and postludes seems like a good one. People aren’t looking for repertoire and frankly most of them aren’t listening that closely which is fine. A little improv works well and is super easy for me to prepare and execute.

I still have my hives. They vary in intensity of itchiness. They weren’t a problem at work even with the choir robe that I routinely wear. However, I am a bit skeptical that this second round of prednisone will do the trick. I had a friend at church say that she took this drug for something similar but longer and presumably in larger doses.

The good news is that despite still having high BP my weight is going down. I expect this to help with the BP. But it’s good news because we are eating so good due to fresh fruit, cheese, and newly made jams (Blackberry AND Pepper Jelly). I told Eileen yesterday that if I can lose weight eating like this then there truly is a god.

David Quammen Turns Tough Science Into Page-Turning Pleasure – The New York Times

This book describes a mind boggling discovery in the late 20th century that I had never heard of:

“Genes, as it happens, do not merely flow vertically from parent to child. They can move horizontally (known as horizontal gene transfer). They can move between species. “Roughly 8 percent of the human genome consists of the remnants of retroviruses that have invaded our lineage — invaded the DNA, not just the bodies, of our ancestors — and stayed,” Quammen writes. The gene that gives us the human placenta came to us from a retroviral infection. ”

Get that? This explodes many notions of how evolutionary changes happen. Way cool.

I slept well last night. I do wake up intermittently but this allows me to remember dreams. I see the dreams as confirmation that I feel back asleep. My last dream this morning was funny. The night before I return to my weekend duties at church, I had a church dream. I remember waking at home (in the dream) and realizing that I had performed a concert which had been taped. I didn’t remember the concert. I was watching the tape of it with some interest. The piece seemed to be a transcription of a Bach cantata movement. There were people in the choir and orchestra from both of my last churches.

The upshot about the performance was that I didn’t bring the choir in on its entrance and subsequently they did not sing. I was buried in the score (judging from the tape) and conducting the instrumental ensemble. One of my sopranos from my present church was oddly playing oboe. On the tape, she was playing her part loudly and adding rhythmical stuff to try to get my attention about my failure to bring in the choir.

I remember the tape had a narration and a sort of story line that began with choir members square dancing. I also realized that a husband and wife team were called from the concert due to the death of their son.

Happy back to work day!

As a result of Eileen’s hard work, the rack is back over our stove with our new pots hanging on it.

We haven’t decided if this is where we want to hang pots permanently. Eileen had an idea that a wall rack to the right of the stove might be more practical and certainly easier to clean.

But I do like the new pots!

I am being drawn toward historical poetry and music lately. I spent a lot of time with John Clare this morning. He was brought to my attention by his appearance in Alan Moore’s weird and beautiful book, Jerusalem. In it, Moore puts the ghost of Clare at the St. Andrews (Mental) Hospital in Northhampton. This is historical. Clare seems to be the subject of some rehabilitation due to the beauty of his poetry and his subjects of the poor and ecological awareness.

I looked him up in the my beloved Oxford Book of English Verse and he has one poem there, “Written in Northhampton County Asylum.” This poem later is found with a different title on the Poetry Foundation website (and other places). I Am! by John Clare | Poetry Foundation

I spent the morning poking around learning about Clare:

The doctor did phone in a prescription for me yesterday afternoon. By 4:00 PM I was carting home a new bottle of prednisone. Dr. Fuentes doubled the dose she had me take previously. I went ahead and had a martini last night. I was itching still of course. But this morning I woke up around 2 AM.  I wasn’t able to get back to sleep, but I got up at 4 AM and took another dose of the steroid. As I write this, I am feeling much, much better. I hope this stuff works. BP up this morning. No drinky poo tonight.

Eileen brought pots and pans home from her Mom. Dorothy, her Mom, is now living with Eileen’s sister, Nancy and her husband, Walt. This means that they have to empty the old trailer where Dorothy and Clyde lived in retirement. There’s lots of stuff to get rid of or pass on. Eileen and I have been talking about getting new pots and pans for the kitchen to replace the terrible teflon ones we have had for years, so Eileen asked for some from her Mom’s kitchen if no one else wanted them.

Eileen remembers all of the pots from her childhood. This is a great old pot. Eileen’s Mom called it a dutch oven, but Eileen thinks it’s probably too small to be considered one.

Eileen’s Mom received this beautiful copper bottom pot as a wedding gift.

Dorothy at some point added these two pots to make a set. Very cool.

Eileen’s Mom swears by this one. I am so happy to get these guys. I can’t wait to use them.

I pulled down the rack where I had the old pots and soaked the metal hooks over night (they were very very icky).

Eileen is cleaning parts of the rack right now.

It will very cool to have this rack cleaned and put up my new pots on it.

We also hit the Farmers Market this morning.

I am planning on a cheese sandwich for lunch.

No word from the doctor as of this morning. I did phone her office yesterday. My discomfort increased as the day wore on yesterday and after consulting Eileen, I self medicated with 2 martinis (she didn’t say I could have 2, only that I was justified in attempting some relief in that manner). Weirdly my BP this morning was the lowest it has been since I quit using the drug we suspected was causing my rash. Also my weight was down which may be why the BP was low. Who knows?

I feel pretty good this morning. The alcohol did help ease the itching. Mornings don’t seem to be as bad as evenings in general with this rash.

I spent some time with both versions of The New Oxford Book of Carols yesterday. Multiple copies of the short version arrived after I went to bed. The check I made out for them is gone from the fridge so I assume Eileen gave it to the Music Director from Our Lady of the Lake.

My summer reading in English Parish Church music has led naturally to reviving an equal one in the relatively new collection of carols. At this point I am planning to devour all the essays in the large version and use as many anthems from the small version as seems appropriate in the next choir season.  I have already earmarked a few including this lovely one:

Eileen did make jam and we had peanut butter and jam sandwiches for lunch. I worked on my books which distracted me from an increasing discomfort. They are now roughly all in order from A to Z by author upstairs. One box I discovered recently of unshelved books turned out to be all Classical Latin texts. Apparently sometime in the past I spent quite a bit of effort attempting to learn Classical Latin. This has seeped from my senile memory. But I have noticed that I seem to understand more Latin than I used to. I just thought I was mostly recognizing cognates (not only from English but from other languages I have some experience with like French and German).

Part of my culling has been to discard books in languages I can’t read, keeping only inter-linear or paginated versions.

Eileen is off to Whitehall today to spell her sister and tend to Dorothy. I have an organ lesson scheduled today, but that’s all. Hopefully I will hear from my doctor today one way or another. I would love it if she phoned in something to relieve this dang itching.

But life is still good. The explanation for today’s blog title, “old people in love,” is that this is something I mumble to myself as I spend my life with beautiful Eileen!

Opinion | John Brennan: President Trump’s Claims of No Collusion Are Hogwash

My take is that this is largely symbolic, nevertheless our leader is out of control. Regarding the “collusion” with Russia, Brennan telling writes: “The only questions that remain are whether the collusion that took place constituted criminally liable conspiracy, whether obstruction of justice occurred to cover up any collusion or conspiracy, and how many members of “Trump Incorporated” attempted to defraud the government by laundering and concealing the movement of money into their pockets.”

NYTimes: New York Today: A Playlist for Commutes

This is fun. I listened to it as I worked on my books yesterday.

W.E.B. DuBois on Robert E. Lee

I do like DuBois!

Opinion | The Church of Aretha Franklin – The New York Times

Article by Michael Eric Dyson, I do like this writer and of course Aretha was a national treasure!

Health Report

My hives and itching persist despite having finished a regimen of prescribed steroids. I messaged my doctor through the online access to Spectrum Health. I will phone after 8 AM when the office is open.

My weight has been falling. I have abstained from alcohol the last three nights and plan to continue doing so. My BP is still elevated but not climbing.

I am using lotions and showering often for some relief. Sheesh.

More about Gallery Music

It turns out that the New Oxford Book of Carols published in 1992 represented a bit of a change in how church  music scholars, especially English ones, approached music like the Gallery Music mentioned in yesterday’s post. Like so much good scholarship I am reading in many fields, this represented a much more inclusive and broader look at music from many more traditions and practices. This predated and seems to have influence the first conference on the renewed interest in Gallery Music convened in 1997. 

While beginning to learn more about this music and the subsequent flowering of Victorian hymnody,  I kept returning to my hymnal collection. I haven’t really looked at the Anglican hymnals, so much as Hymnal 1982. I wasn’t finding any of the tunes from this period. Then I discovered through my reading that not only were there representatives of this practice in the New Oxford Book of Carols, but there is actually an essay about them in the appendix, “The English ‘Gallery’ and American ‘Primitive’ Traditions.”

This inspires me to add a more thorough reading of all the extra stuff in this wonderful collection as well as persisting through the papers of the 1997 conference.

New Music for the Choir at Grace

When I was music director at Our Lady of Lake, Holland, I purchased multiple copies of the Shorter New Oxford Book of Carols. As I revamp my approach to my job, I have been thinking about Christmas as a bit more of a peak of the season than I have in this gig. I am planning on considering learning some larger organ works to use. That reflects my down playing the week to week organ pieces mentioned before. In addition, I find myself thinking about the wonderful choral music in the Shorter New Oxford Book of Carols.

Yesterday I emailed a bunch of staff members at Our Lady of the Lake offering to buy their set of Shorter New Oxford Book of Carols. It looks like I could get copies of this $27 book for $20 bucks new from Barnes & Noble, so I offered to pay $5 a piece for whatever they were willing to part with.

Before too long I heard back from their current music director telling me she would box their 21 copies of it up and drop them off at my house.

Wow! I hope this happens. This would be quick access to some wonderful music and a good addition to the choral library where I work.

The rest of my Wednesday

Eileen and I had a lovely breakfast at the Biscuit yesterday. They had an item on the menu that consisted of french bread smeared with cheese with large chunks of heirloom tomatoes on top, sprinkled with fresh basil and delicious balsamic vinegar. Two eggs came on the side, but as Eileen said, it didn’t really need the eggs.

This inspired us to pick up some heirloom tomatoes and chevre on our Farmers Market trip yesterday (we had already had basil and balsamic vinegar).

In addition, we purchased lots of good, fresh stuff from the market. Eileen bought a bunch of blackberries to make jam. Blackberry jam is her favorite jam.

We decided to have chevre and heirloom tomatoes for lunch at home as well. Amazing stuff.

In the afternoon, Eileen helped me shift a bunch of books in my ongoing attempt to get stuff in order. This set me up so that while she makes jam today, I can attack authors A through B which are a mess. I can’t believe we have managed to get my books so much closer to being in order.

I stepped into the church yesterday for the first time in about six weeks. I went over with the notion that I would pick out organ music for a week from this Sunday. At this point, I’m thinking of alternating improvised preludes and postludes on one weekend and relatively easy literature on the next, thus giving myself two weeks to prepare easier music. This should cut down on the hours I have to spend at the instrument, pleasurable though they be.

For prelude on August 26 (a week from Sunday) I chose “Liebster Jesu” BWV 731 by J. S. Bach.

This is a beautiful piece that I have played many times and is the tune to the opening hymn that day. The closing, “Stand Up, Stand Up, for Jesus,” is in A major so I paired it with the A minor prelude and fugue (BWV 559) from the little Bach/Krebs set.  I thought that Krebs was credited with all of these, but a glance online shows that the A minor one is probably by Bach himself.

Rev Jen dropped in to say hi and welcome back. She probably spotted my car in the parking lot. I’m feeling good about getting back to work, especially after gaining a bit of perspective due to time off. It was great to see her!

Earlier I had stopped by the library to drop off some books and pick up my interlibrary loaned copy of The Traditional Tunes of the Child Ballads by Bronson, vol. 1. I haven’t had a chance to check this book out yet. I ran into Rhonda. We haven’t seen much of each other this summer. We said we would get together after the dust settles. I would like that.

My copy of Bradley’s Abide with Me: The World of Victorian Hymns arrived in the mail yesterday. Temperley’s ideas about English Parish singing pointed me toward this charming little book. I have already read a bit in the library copy.  English Victorian hymns emerge after the Calvinist metrical psalm singing in England is firmly entrenched. Hymn singing and texts were ubiquitous at this time in Great Britain.  They were everywhere: beginning to join metrical psalmody in most non-Roman Catholic churches as well as pervading homes, bars and public places.

Bradley cites poems and prose by Thomas Hardy about the little instrumental bands that accompanied hymns in the non-cathedral churches of England. Apparently Hardy’s parents met when his future mother spied his future father playing viol in one of these. Hardy made a poem about it, “A Church Romance.”

I have a soft spot for Hardy, especially but not limited to his poetry. His was the first complete collection of poems by a poet that I decided to read straight through. That was years ago. I began to enjoy them so much that I slowed way down and savored them, sometimes neglecting to pick up the book for a year or two. I didn’t finish it yet. This morning, I find my bookmark on p. 836 of 954. My edition of  The Complete Poems of Thomas Hardy happens to be the one that Bradley cites in his notes. Cool.

The idea of a group of an 18th century instrumental band leading singing in English parish church is sometimes referred to as “west gallery music” since the bands were in the west gallery when they were playing in Anglican churches.  The wikipedia article linked in the last sentence gives “Georgian psalmody” as another name for this music.

Nicholas Temperley

In his keynote speech for the first meeting of the First International Conference organized by the Colchester Institute, Nicholas Temperley says that he prefers the term, “Gallery music”(Georgian psalmody 1 : the gallery tradition : papers from the First International Conference organised by the Colchester Institute, 1998).

The singing of this music was a bit rustic by all reports. In fact, after this style of hymnic treatment had long fallen off the radar in England, it was re-discovered when English scholars such as Temperley listened to the American shape note tradition and fuguing tunes and once again found English roots in American soil.

Bradley quotes Hardy who “describes the choir of Longpuddle Church, consisting of a leader on fiddle, bass-viol, tenor fiddle, serpent, clarinet and oboe, who were much in demand for reels and dancing parties ‘for they could turn out a jig or a hornpipe out of hand as well as ever they could turn out a psalm, and perhaps better.'” (from the Hardy short story: “Absent mindedness in the Parish choir.” These sound like my kind of church musicians.

This is a serpent.

I recently stumbled across the revival group, West Gallery Music Association, on YouTube and didn’t realize it was related to my current reading on English parish music until recently. Here’s the video.

This increasing interest in West Gallery music is apt for Jupe’s reentry into his little church music world. Tomorrow, what the New Oxford Book of Carols has to do with all this.

Tippet’s Desert Island Disc choices (mentioned in yesterday’s blog) have been providing me with some beautiful music to run down. When I listen to these programs I am scrutinizing the over all aesthetic of the sum of the choices. How broad is the celebrity listener’s experience and love of music? The broader the better in my opinion.

Tippet passes this scrutiny.  Born in 1905, Tippett is 80 years old in this 1985 broadcast. He exhibits what I expect in a composer: a curiosity in all music unrestricted by stupidity. So his selections range from Ravel to The Police, from Monteverdi and Berlioz to Harry Partch. This very breadth gives him more credibility in my eyes.

There is no online list of music for this broadcast (that I have found) but I am working my way through some of the choices beginning with the Minuet from Ravel’s Sonatine.

My copy of this piece gives 1905 (Tippett’s birth year) as the date of publication. Tippett remarks that the first movement is much harder than the Minuet. I have attacked this piece before and found that to be true and had not made it to the beautiful second movement. Tippett heard this as a young person so it must have been very fresh. He says he still loves it at the age of 80. It IS beautiful and I am planning to learn it and use it as a prelude at church sometime.

The Monteverdi Vespers is another of Tippet’s choices. I have been listening to it since. Wonderful stuff. It inspires me to do some Monteverdi in the next choral season.

I settled down last night in bed to finish this short little book which I have been enjoying so much. I was down to the last two chapters: 7. What History Books are Good for and 8. Living and Dying with History,

Chapter 7 was pretty good. After concluding that “Historians and their books … constitute a kind of factual bulwark against historical bullshit,” Elizabeth (the fictional history book writer that Poe uses throughout) dithers through a seminar conversation in which she keeps questioning what “History Books are Good for” without (predictably) coming to any firm conclusions.

It’s here where I think Poe went wrong. The next chapter descends into an attempt to write about Elizabeth’s death and her attitude towards her work at that point in her life. The breezy prose style breaks down with Poe’s squishy conclusion that “… if Elizabeth has learned anything from writing, reading, and thinking about history books it is that those who have not acted out of universal love simply do not know that love is humankind’s only hope for serenity.”

WHAT!

I think I get what he was trying to do, end with a philosophical flourish with some basic truths. But using his one dimensional creation, Elizabeth, which served to hold together a very interesting explication of the inner workings of scholarship, using her instead as if he had developed a more three dimensional fictional character through which he can sort have a cosmic, metaphysical, ending failed to work for me.

Darn. I did like a lot of the book and learned from it.

From my notes:

Bad history writing doesn’t produce bad history. Bad thinking does.

Here, he saying that it’s not about the quality of how you put words together, your ability to write, but your ability to think. My take is that clear (good) thinking is what produces clear (good) writing.

Thinking about the idea that history is a true story about what actually happened in the past (which is not able to change), Poe concludes that the reasons there are so  many different understandings of history is that thought the subjects (the facts) are the same, the stories can be very different. This is a helpful notion to me.

Another way he talks about this is that the “content” of a history floats on the surface of the story being told. The container of the content is the story and it is the old into which the facts are poured. I’m rewording it here to reflect my understanding.

The Dictionary Is Telling People How to Speak Again – The Atlantic

Prescriptive thinking is back according to this headline. Bookmarked to read.

Paris Review – V. S. Naipaul, The Art of Fiction No. 154

Still processing Naipaul’s death. I love these Paris Review interviews.

I hope I’m gradually getting over a bad reaction to a new BP drug. I skipped the alcohol last night and plan to continue doing so. This is mostly to lose weight, but Eileen and Dr. Fuentes have expressed concern on the amount I drink and they probably have a point. We’ll see how it goes.

My BP did not jump higher than yesterday this morning and that is a bit of relief since I was watching for a terrible trend of escalating readings due mostly to dropping the use of one of my BP drugs.

This morning I stubbornly adhered to my routine: morning ablutions (BP, weight, clean teeth), do dishes, make coffee, take out garbage (usually Eileen does this, but when she thought of it yesterday, she was obviously too tired and I told her that “tomorrow was another day” my own code for I will do it when I get up if I feel like it), then Greek both J.A.C.T and Xenophon (see yesterday’s post if this confuses you), poetry reading, and finally reading another chapter in How to Read a History Book (two chapters left after this… I’m enjoying this one immensely,  learning a lot and putting some aspects of my college experience into clearer perspective).

Then I read three reviews of Chuck Palahniuck’s Adjustment Day which I finished reading last night. I will link them below. I enjoyed this book but it’s probably not particularly flawless.

Then I made a little list of resolutions about how to do my job after vacation. It’s an evolving thing, but here is what I have so far this morning.

Post vacation thoughts (credo?)
need to concentrate on the part time nature of work without lowering quality

play less hard organ music. alternate improv weekends with literature. Choose a couple big pieces for the holidays.

Think about bulletin notes as more worthy work time.

Tuesdays with Eileen. Add beach when nice or movie?

use more guitar, banjo, marimba, drums, and piano at church.

schedule the Bach bouree (a guitar piece I have been working on) when mastered as a prelude after having changed strings

Play more easy music in general. with trio?

think about some compositional projects. maybe something in reaction to current madness in the country

Like I say it’s a work in progress but this looks pretty good to me the day after my last vacation Sunday off.

Zer0books (mentioned yesterday) does videos. This is one. I watched it and then re-watched it with Eileen. I have thought that silencing Jones probably wasn’t the best solution. I like the visuals in this quite a bit, except like several of the YouTube commentor, I agree it needed better on screen i.d.s of who we were looking at.

I’m not sure I believe in progress in quite the way this video outlines, but think this is worth the 13 or so minutes to watch.

On Being a Writer | by V.S. Naipaul | The New York Review of Books

So Naipaul died. I had several of his books in my hands the day it was reported since I’m putting my collection in a better order. The New York Review of Books reposted this article he wrote. I’ll probably read it after I finish the obit. I have read and enjoyed several of this man’s books.

Your guide to 2018 apple harvest dates in Michigan | MLive.com

Silly I know, but I bookmarked it because I will be buying apples as usual this fall at the Farmers Market.

Classic Desert Island Discs: Sir Michael Tippett

Desert Island Disc show on BBC qualifies as one of my guilty pleasures. They are often dumb and silly. This one is not. It’s a replay as Tippett has been dead for a while. I find him and his selections charming. I plan to check out many of them further. This is a great episode.

Words That Burn

This is a podcast of a “dramatization of the World War II experiences of William Stafford, Lawson Inada, and Guy Gabaldón. Especially relevant in today’s political climate…” I haven’t listened to it yet, but probably will.

Karen Russell Reads Mavis Gallant | The New Yorker

Last night’s listening. I’ve got to get some books by Mavis Gallant.

NYTimes: The Rise and Fall of Paul Manafort: Greed, Deception and Ego

From today’s NYT. This article (along with believe it or not Marshall T. Poe’s book on History books) helps me understand the Manafort scandal better. Greed is good.

Adjustment Day by Chuck Palahniuk review – blood and guts, but no heart | Books

As promised above, here are links to the reviews I read this morning. This is probably the best one. In it, I learned that Palahniuk was a very early user (1996) of the pejorative “snowflake.” He is the second earliest quote in the OED entry.

On ‘Adjustment Day,’ A Quick, Horrifying Descent Into Madness : NPR

I guess I’m proceeding from the best review to the worst review. This one’s not too bad.

Adjustment Day: A Novel: Chuck Palahniuk: Amazon

I read through most of the comments on the Amazon page. As good as anything else linked here although of course all over the place.

Since this is a long post, I’m putting a link here to “A Reality Experienced: A Review of In the Middle of Things: Essays Meghan Florian.” It’s my brother’s first published piece since he retired and began honing his writing skills. I’m proud of him!

I think it would have been better if I could have been out of town for this my last Sunday off in my vacation. I am still itchy and covered with splotches but it might be easing a bit. Today is the last day I take two doses of prednisone. I think I have about three pills left. After this point I’m supposed to lower the dose to one a day. Unfortunately my blood pressure is climbing. 157/106 this morning. My plan is to begin skipping alcohol altogether and subsequently lower my daily calorie intake especially in the evening. It’s probably too little, too late, but what the heck.

It makes sense that my BP would be climbing since I have been off the bad BP medicine for a few days. Fuentes was hoping to offset that a bit by upping my other BP medicine but so far that’s not working or it’s not helping enough. If I have seven days of higher BP or if it shoots up to dangerous levels (approaching 180/120 according to my googling) I will contact Fuentes. Otherwise I will report to her when two weeks have elapsed.

Yesterday at the library I did it again. I ran across a fascinating book by browsing the new books. How To Read a History Book: The Hidden History of History by Marshal T. Poe may sound dry but it’s not. The prose style is breezy and with a clear leftist slant as well as a critical analysis of higher education as applies to historians. I’m eating it up.

Here’s a sample which also shows a couple of his definitions about  history:

“By and large, the people I’ve encountered have a pretty good grasp of what history is and what a history book is. The former is the past and the latter is a true story about the past. These two plainspoken, intuitive, commonsensical definitions of ‘history’ drive over-thinkers absolutely nuts.”

A few sentences later he confesses that dense scholarly history books (my term) ” though hard to read, are interesting if you are excited by parsing, arranging, and rearranging words. I confess that I am enthused by these things, but that’s because most of my friends are over-thinkers and that’s the way over thinkers roll.”

This reminds me of a conversation I had at Wayne State with Dr. Parks, the theory prof. He confessed that what he knew most about was producing prose about music theory. He felt that working on his writing style was how he spent more time than on music itself.

We were studying from his draft version of his book, 18th Century Counterpoint and Tonal Structure.

Poe’s analysis of how history books are made is helping me understand a lot of the reading I have done in my life of history books and other non-fiction, either scholarly or popular. It’s a short read, only 134 pages. I’m on page 42 right now and am having trouble putting it down.

Poe’s book is published by Zero Books. They seem very interesting to me. But here let me allow them to explain themselves in their “about page.”

There is a paragraph in the back of the Poe book which was published this year. It was what drew me in:

Zero Books

Culture, Society & Books

Contemporary culture has eliminated the concept and public figure of the intellectual. A cretinous anti-intellectualism presides, cheer-led by hacks in the pay of multinational corporations who reassure their bored readers that there is no need to rouse themselves from their stupor. Zer0Books knows that another kind of discourse–intellectual without being academic, popular without being populist—is not only possible: it is already flourishing. Zer0 is convinced that in the unthinking, blandly consensual culture in which we live, critical and engaged theoretical reflection is more important than ever before.

A list of interesting titles they publish followed.

Sign me up.

Also, this morning I made some interesting headway on my Greek. The texts that I have been using for several years are slow going, at least for me as I teach myself without the benefit of teacher or other people. I have often wanted some supplementary easy material to read along side the carefully constructed J.A.C.T texts. Recently, while re-organizing my books, I came across an interesting little book, Easy Selections Adapted from Xenophon. “Easy” is a relative term, especially in a book originally published in 1877. My copy is a charming older small book and looks like this:

So this morning I tackled the first sentence in the readings. After working on it for a while I decided to learn more about Xenophon. I’ll tell you about him another time. The cool thing is, I ran across another fascinating website,The Perseus Digital Library.

Lo and behold, here was the very text I was working on with a link for every word that would define it and its function.

A little poking around on the site reveals a project of staggering dimension and beauty.

Under the research page, they make it clear.

“Our larger mission is to help make the full record for humanity as intellectually accessible as possible to every human being, providing information adapted to as many linguistic and cultural backgrounds as possible.”

I know this is a longer blog post, but I am glad to find myself doing this on the my last Sunday off from work. I am not dreading going back to work.But I remain hopeful  I can realign my approach to reflect this time off by coasting a bit more in my church work. I do miss my boss. I even dreamed about her last night.  Even though my body is a mess and I’m looking at reentry, I’m glad to find stuff like Zerr0books and Perseus and have enough brains left to absorb a bit of it. I will submit the music for next Sunday, probably tomorrow. I’m going to suggest that I lay low this week and essentially keep vacationing until next Saturday when I will post hymns for next Sunday. If Jen wants to meet this week, I will do so, but I will let it be her idea. Often when she takes time off, she gets back on Saturday night.

Life is still good.

Eileen spoke to Cynthia last night after I went to bed. The fire is very near their home at this point. Cynthia is thinking about how to save three vehicles. As far as I know they are safe but being cautious.

The fire near them is nicknamed The Holy Fire.

I don’t like the looks of “5 % contained.”

I slept badly again last night. This might be partially due to the steroids. I think the itching is easing just a bit, but my skin is very sensitive. Dr. Fuentes said I might feel “edgy” from the steroids as well. But I am feeling a bit better.

Eileen drove up to Grand Haven for an alto breakfast. We have a choir member who lives up in Grand Haven and commutes to our choir and church. I am feeling a bit more like myself today. I have taken several showers in the last few days. But today was the first shower when I put on music to listen to. My Donovan play list. This is a good sign.

Then after running errands, I played Aretha Franklin while I prepared green beans to boil. They are from Leigh’s garden and have been sitting in my fridge. There’s quite a bit but I think they cooked up deliciously.

One of my errands was to the Farmers Market. I took five of my knives to be sharpened. They reasonably charge by length. My cost was $22. I also purchased cherries, blueberries, watermelon, peaches, lettuce, cukes, and heirloom tomatoes. Eileen is thinking of making pickles this afternoon. She has a bag of small cukes in the fridge for this purpose. The cukes she bought for eating last Wednesday turned out to be bad.

I also cut up one fourth of the watermelon for Eileen and me to eat.

My BP was high this morning (146/101). This could be from the meds or the reaction. My weight was up too. Besides the discomfort of having a body rash EVERYWHERE ON ME, I feel pretty good.

Margaret Atwood reads Mavis Gallant. | The New Yorker

This is an amazing story. Mavis Gallant is now on my radar. I plan to read more of her. I listened to this story several times last  night since I couldn’t sleep. It is a tight structure of beauty. Atwood (another hero of mine) reads it beautifully. I love the layers of meaning in this piece. Recommended.