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I didn’t blog yesterday because daughter Elizabeth is visiting and got up early enough for me to chat with her instead of blogging. I love having adult kids. We went to the farmers market together. Then she helped me pick out a camera to make videos of myself playing.

After talking to a salesperson, I decided his advice to use a good web cam was worth trying. I bought a pretty fancy (for a web cam) one.

and a cool tripod.

All for about a hundred dollars. Now I have to build up the energy to actually video myself playing.

After that, Elizabeth and I dropped by my Mom’s, chatted her up, and invited her to go out to eat with us. She was glad to see us, but didn’t want go out with us. We went home and were in the process of making lunch when Mom phoned and said she had changed her mind, she did want to go out for lunch.

So we went over and picked her up. I asked her why she had changed her mind, she said they were having fish and she doesn’t like the way they do fish. Heh.

So the three of us had lunch together at Crane’s

and then Mom wanted some fudge so we walked to Kilwin’s.

Mary Jenkins, my Mom, at Kilwin's picking out fudge.... thanks to Elizabeth for taking this picture

Mom was pretty tired after that so we took her back to her room. I went off to prepare for my evening rehearsals and practice organ. Elizabeth drove Eileen’s mini around and ran some errands.

When I went to work around 5:45 PM, Elizabeth picked up Eileen they went to one of Eileen’s and my favorite restaurants, Citu-Vu.

I had fun with my Kids’ Choir last night. We worked on Bach and a little Brahms melody. We rehearsed in the church and I worked on teaching them to project their voice. I try to show them some music each week. Last night I played my Bach trio movement for them and had them stand close enough to watch me play it. That trio is one I’ve thought might make a nice little video. I will have to become resolved to the poor stops on my organ I guess.

Clever Elizabeth picture of me preparing worksheets for my Kids' Choir yesterday.

So that’s why I didn’t blog yesterday. Too busy.

Can you fill in yesterday's Kids' Choir spelling game?

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Politics, Principle and an Attack on the Courts – NYTimes.com

Bitter partisan battles continue to change the shape of our democracy.

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BBC iPlayer – The Essay: The Piano in Five Pieces: Alastair Sooke

This link won’t last long. BBC is running five shows on the piano. This one has a very weird perspective and uses art to illustrate the writer (speaker?) take that piano and classical music is no longer relevant. It’s like rebelling against a dead parent.

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Skeleton Found in England May Be of Richard III – NYTimes.com

So Richard the III might get his reputation back via an archaeological find.

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Melting Greenland Weighs Perils Against Potential – NYTimes.com

Greenland loses tradition, possibly gains independence and mining industry.

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Mitt’s Mortification – NYTimes.com

“…[W]e need to ask whether we now have an electoral process so vacuous, vicious and just plain silly that most people in their right minds wouldn’t go anywhere near it.

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The Conservative Mind – NYTimes.com

“It’s not so much that today’s Republican politicians reject traditional, one-nation conservatism. They don’t even know it exists.”

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Hunger on the Rise in Spain – NYTimes.com

Amazing response of Girona official: people scavenging? padlock the garbage bins.

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I seem to be suffering from mild melancholia lately. I ascribe it to my schedule. Yesterday I began (for the first time) to entertain ideas of retiring from church work someday.

I guess I feel like I’m getting old to keep banging my head against this particular wall. I enjoy the work, but I tend to turn it into an obsession and make full time gigs out of part time ones.

This notion ebbed a bit when one of the musicians I asked to join me in performing the Bach Cantata movement the choirs are learning quickly said yes. So now I have a violin and myself on organ for it. I sat down and transcribed her part.

The oboist is giving it some thought. The cellist did not respond. One violinist turned me down. Time for the “whatever shrug” that I have been using to keep stuff in as much perspective as I can.

I will wait a bit before emailing the violinist her part. If the oboist says yes, I will give the violin some oboe II parts when it rests. If the oboist says no, I will give her oboe I parts. And in case I will give instrumentalists parts with the cuts that I made in it.

As I was rehearsing at the organ yesterday I realized that the page turn scores I made are so high that no singer or instrumentalist could see me conducting.

Oops. Made shorter scores.

Daughter Elizabeth

and Edison the cat arrive tonight.

That will be nice, especially the daughter part. Eileen and I will be cat sitting indefinitely while Elizabeth joins her partner Jeremy to live in Beijing.

My Mom actually came over to my house yesterday and ate her Wendy’s cheeseburger with me. It’s been some time since she’s had the strength and inclination to do something like that.

The dance department chair has requested some Prokofiev

and Rachmaninoff

for some dance combinations. Unless an instructor is specific about the piece, I find this pretty tricky. I can play pieces by these composers, but do they fit in character with what the instructor expects. Yesterday she asked for a mazurka. My brain went blank. What she needed was so far distant from my experience of Chopin mazurkas that I didn’t even associate them. I did manage to improvise something that fit the dance. It barely related to what I think of as mazurkas but it worked.

I had some Prokofiev and Rachmaninoff with me in case she asked for it. She didn’t. Interestingly while looking through my Prokofiev scores I found some music that intrigued me. I slowly played through a couple pages of his etude in D minor Op. 1#2 yesterday and before that several pieces from his Music for Young People Op. 65. The latter represents him as a composer at his height of his abilities. The music is not too hard but not really for beginning students.

I do like Prokofiev and am glad to get sucked back into his work. I have rehearsed several movements from his piano sonatas and find them pretty profound. I think he has something to say to me.