Mother’s day seems so manufactured to me these days. Call it my own jaded take on things. Of course I like to see people express direct affection and appreciation for each other. So screw it. 

My burn out continues. Eileen and I watched “Charlie Wilsons War” last night and it felt like a rewrite of history to me. Maybe this movie is based on true events, but the underlying arrogance that the Afghans were waiting for the Americans to come and rescue them around denies the basic fact we are still dealing with in Afghanistan. That is that the basis of this kind of conflict seems rooted in people who are defending their right to live. It was my impression prior to the movie that the USSR stepped in and was routed by unusually tough fighters, many of whom now are loyally Talibans pointing American weapons at American soldiers. But what do I know? Probably Tom Hands, Julia Roberts and Philip Seymour Hoffman have it right and I’m just a bitter burned out old guy in Michigan.

I had a good visit with my friend, Jordan V. yesterday.  We ate, chatted and played music together. 

I can feel the Sunday silliness looming on my immediate horizon.

I have to resist the temptation to give in to the obvious fact that most people who hear my music do not respect or even hear or notice it. The cavalier fashion in which my work is treated by the people I serve can sometimes make it hard not to be discouraged when you are as burned out as I am. I keep clinging to the notion that I do music to do it and that it is a gift to those who choose to listen. 

This morning I am going to perform three pieces by Vaughan Williams. His two organ chorale preludes on Bryn Califaria and Rhosymedre as well as a lovely apparently out of print anthem called “The Tree of LIfe.”  I have never performed the organ piece on Bryn Califaria or the choral piece before. I wish I could feel more relaxed and less anxious about church this morning. I guess it’s just the burn out. 

Eileen and I met the piano guy at the Boersma cottage yesterday. I and several family members and friends have purchased a piano to donate to the cottage. We also had wheels put on that make the piano more serviceable to the situation.

Jason is a man in a wheelchair who has been there since the cottage opened in 2007 seemed very moved by the donation. The shabaz was concerned about how loud the piano seemed. The piano guy pointed out that even though it might annoy the workers, the brightness of the piano probably serves the resident elders who are often a bit hard of hearing.

One new elder whose name I don’t remember was hovering about in a walker. When I asked her if she was a pianist she gave the standard disclaimer of people who have studied the piano but don’t feel competent. But she did say she would have to give the new/used piano a try before too long.

The installation of the piano took longer than I anticipated (after we got the wheels on, the piano guy went to his truck to look for some material to protect the walls from the iron on the wheels). I did manage to play several little Bach pieces. This is when the shabaz lady went a bit anxious. I pointed out to Eileen that this anxiety is typical in a situation where the food chain is full of people who generate impossible expectations on their employees. Freidman used to call these people peacemongers. Heh.

After this we had a full day of putzing around in Mom’s apartment at Appledorn, lunch with Mom at Wendy’s (her treat), a meeting with the hospice bereavement counselor, carting Mom around and Eileen working in the yard. I did manage to get over and practice organ a bit. 

I still have not heard back from the organist in Greater Missenden where I will be headquartered for my two weeks in England. I managed to convince myself yesterday that given some rehearsal time on vacation, I could learn the last movement (the Sortie) from Messiaen’s Pentecost Mass for Organ. I re-read Dame Gillian Wier’s comments on this piece. It finally sunk in that the difficult middle section emulates the call of the lark. Cool. Cool. 

This section of the piece is fun. There is the mad lark melody that floats over two other parts. These parts are in a sort of rhythmic palindrome. The first chord in the left hand begin 23 sixteenth notes long. The next chord is 22 sixteenth notes in duration. Each chord thereafter diminishes its value by one sixteenth note.

In the mean time the pedal notes are doing the reverse beginning with 5 sixteenth notes durative value then increasing in value by sixteenth note increments. The pedal is not the lowest voice in this ensemble since it registered two octaves higher than it is written. The low sounds come from the chords. 

Anyway, it’s fun to play and I think it would be cool to listen to. Especially if I can play it mostly correctly. 

Eileen received a bouquet of roses from Elizabeth the daughter. Very nice. She and I both are still very stressed out from the activities of the past few weeks (Dad died 3 weeks ago today). The visit to the bereavement counselor was very helpful. Eileen’s family is as usual not helping her at all, to say the least. A big piece of her grief for Dad is the fact unlike her own parents he accepted her. Ay yi yi. 

Mother’s day makes me a bit crazy the way it looms in the minds of so many people as a Hallmark moment. In the past I have made sure that my own Mother knows I love her on this day and pretty much left it at that. But since Dad’s death is so fresh I feel like it would be a good day to have Mom over for a cookout. Unfortunately this clashes with the Hatch expectations that all of the adult kids (and spouses) show up for the last hurrah with the Mom and Dad before they hop in a car and drive to their Grayling house for the summer. 

Eileen feels torn, needless to say. So she has come up with the compromise that she will drive up this afternoon (after work and during the tulip time madness) and spend some time with her Mom then. 

Families. You gotta love em.

I have had a tough week. And Fridays (and Mondays) are usually hard days for me because they follow times when I am repressing my introvert tendencies and working with people (a recent quote from a book my boss had our church read: “The public is a motherfucker.” Take this bread by Sara Miles)

I sat in my boss’s office yesterday and talked with her about my obsessing as evidence of my burn out and lack of balance.

Believe it or not, this helped a bit and I was less weird after that talk. Then later I was waiting for my Mom who was in Walgreens. The car windows were down. I was listening to the CD my daughter Sarah made for my Dad’s funeral buffet. I could feel the tension easing as the breeze blew through the car. 

A lot of this went away during choir rehearsal and the subsequent drinks afterwards last night.  My boss and I were in accord that now was not a time to work on the problems presented by my church’s music program (poor attendance at rehearsals, lack of new blood, ect.) I encouraged my wife to take a “mental health” absence from rehearsal.

My choir like so many choirs seems to be sort of “Dream Team” Exercise in dysfunction and it can be telling on people trying to act like grown-ups (that would be my lovely wife). 

I won’t go into details because it’s probably not appropriate in this venue, but suffice it to say that what is most depressing is how people treat each other. 

Anyway, I came home and did not obsess to lovely wife. I have found that sometimes venting is rehearsing frustration and doesn’t really help anything. I know it doesn’t help my wife the good listener. 

This morning the weight of my own mental shit is still there but is abating somewhat.

I am meeting the piano guy at Boersma in less than an hour to deliver the piano I and other fam and friends are donating. This will be fun.

Later Eileen and I meet with the Hospice Bereavement counselor. I am extremly curious to see how adept she will be with  us. My Mom hasn’t heard from these people yet so I will avail myself of this meeting to ask whether they are attempting to contact her or not…. see if I can move that along.

Mom is dealing pretty well with Dad’s death. “Surreal” was the word she used yesterday. But she does a lot of reminiscing out loud which is good I think. She also is getting her religion back which is good for her. I stay silent as she preaches to me about God’s providence (I have difficulty with God and providence but am glad that it is helping her a bit). 

My own stuff with Dad is pretty complex. I have more anger at him for how he didn’t really manage the last phase of his life than how he was a Dad to me. I find myself thinking of his personality over the years. This contains fond reminiscences as well as many times when it seems like he was misbehaving. Probably about usual for most people. I loved my Dad. I watched his personality ebb and tried to give aid and comfort to his physical presence as his mental stuff drained away. But I am aware of the distance he kept between himself and his life. In many ways, as his mental attributes went away what was left moved me much more to compassin. He became more vulnerable, of course, but also more comfortable with the physical. As his son I mourned his death and wept easily at the funeral. But I see myself as an adult child of my parents acting on my principles (duty to family, doing the right thing if I can figure out what it is) in how I relate to them more than simple love and emotion. I feel like I own my life and try not to play the blame game with anyone, especially the people who made me.  Anyway. Like I said complex.

Okay I know you’re dieing for today’s quote, so here it is: 

“The gift is property that perishes.”

This is from Lewis Hyde’s “The Gift: Creativity and the Artist in the Modern World.” Hyde says this after he retells the Scottish folk tale, “The Girl and the Dead Man.” In this tale, three sisters separately set out to seek their fortune after their mother says they can have a large loaf of bread and her curse or a small one and her blessing. The first two sisters take the large loaf and end up being killed by the sister of a bewitched dead man. The last sister takes the small loaf, shares it and escapes their fate. 

Hyde is thinking about how gifts work (giving freely, passing gifts along) and then how that relates to the consumer society we live in . Very cool. Oh by the way, Bill Viola wrote one of the blurbs in the front section of the book:

He blurbs: This book “…. has shown me why we still use the word  gift to describe artistic talent, and that selflessness, not self-expression lies at the root of all creative acts.”

I guess I better blog since I skipped it yesterday and I’m late today. I usually do it in the early morning. But this morning I slept in. 

My sister-in-law Nancy contacted us Tuesday evening and asked Eileen to come up to Hackley Hospital in Muskegon on Wednesday morning for a family pow-wow about “Do Not Resuscitate” papers for their father. It wasn’t clear what kind of condition he was in (conscious?) but we dutifully climbed in the car early yesterday and drove up.

Eileen’s father’s health is declining. But he was conscious and the DNR papers were routine Hospital instructions. He was recently diagnosed with COPD (chronic obstructive pulmanary disease). He also has some evidence of asbestos fibrosis from his time in the US navy. His lung problems are stressing out his heart. So he isn’t doing great but he is not dieing.

Eileen found the whole thing physically and emotionally exhausting. She came home and crashed. I finished reading “The Broom of the System” by David Foster Wallace. Very funny. Recommended. Then walked over to church and practiced.

This morning I emailed a church in the village in England where my daughter Sarah lives. I have been debating about learning a pretty tough organ piece to play immediately after I get back from England. If I schedule it, I will need to do some serious practicing on vacation. I am thinking of scheduling it but having a back up piece that will require less prep.

I am finding life a bit stressful these days. Church is weighing me down as well as famiy stuff. Time for a vacation I guess. 

In the meantime I really like these excerpts from Milton Glasser’s talk I mentioned in the last post (

more from Ten Things I Learned I Have Learned by Milton Glasser 

HOW YOU LIVE CHANGES YOUR BRAIN.

The brain is the most responsive organ of the body. Actually it is the organ that is most susceptible to change and regeneration of all the organs in the body. I have a friend named Gerald Edelman who was a great scholar of brain studies and he says that the analogy of the brain to a computer is pathetic. The brain is actually more like an overgrown garden that is constantly growing and throwing off seeds, regenerating and so on. And he believes that the brain is susceptible, in a way that we are not fully conscious of, to almost every experience of our life and every encounter we have. ..

DOUBT IS BETTER THAN CERTAINTY.

 

… Deeply held beliefs of any kind prevent you from being open to experience, which is why I find all firmly held ideological positions questionable.

ON AGING.

Rule number one is that ‘it doesn’t matter.’ ‘It doesn’t matter that what you think. Follow this rule and it will add decades to your life. It does not matter if you are late or early, if you are here or there, if you said it or didn’t say it, if you are clever or if you were stupid. If you were having a bad hair day or a no hair day or if your boss looks at you cockeyed or your boyfriend or girlfriend looks at you cockeyed, if you are cockeyed. If you don’t get that promotion or prize or house or if you do – it doesn’t matter.’ Wisdom at last. Then I heard a marvellous joke that seemed related to rule number 10. A butcher was opening his market one morning and as he did a rabbit popped his head through the door. The butcher was surprised when the rabbit inquired ‘Got any cabbage?’ The butcher said ‘This is a meat market – we sell meat, not vegetables.’ The rabbit hopped off. The next day the butcher is opening the shop and sure enough the rabbit pops his head round and says ‘You got any cabbage?’ The butcher now irritated says ‘Listen you little rodent I told you yesterday we sell meat, we do not sell vegetables and the next time you come here I am going to grab you by the throat and nail those floppy ears to the floor.’ The rabbit disappeared hastily and nothing happened for a week. Then one morning the rabbit popped his head around the corner and said ‘Got any nails?’ The butcher said ‘No.’ The rabbit said ‘Ok. Got any cabbage?’

TELL THE TRUTH.

The rabbit joke is relevant because it occurred to me that looking for a cabbage in a butcher’s shop might be like looking for ethics in the design field. .. I remember reading that during the Stalin years in Russia that everything labelled veal was actually chicken. I can’t imagine what everything labelled chicken was. We can accept certain kinds of misrepresentation, such as fudging about the amount of fat in his hamburger but once a butcher knowingly sells us spoiled meat we go elsewhere. As a designer, do we have less responsibility to our public than a butcher? Everyone interested in licensing our field might note that the reason licensing has been invented is to protect the public not designers or clients. ‘Do no harm’ is an admonition to doctors concerning their relationship to their patients, not to their fellow practitioners or the drug companies. If we were licensed, telling the truth might become more central to what we do.

 

So once again I wrote a post that I am not using.

This time it’s because I realize it’s probably not all that appropriate. It was about how yesterday went at church and some of my ideas about how to deal with the situation next year… people absent, late and the overlapping of educational programs with pregame rehearsal forcing people to choose between them. Whippy skippy. 

Brain Rule #7 is “Sleep Well, Think Well.” (from John Medina’s book, “Brain Rules,” that I keep mentioning in this blog.) Interestingly Medina quotes researchers who determine that 1 per cent of the population is comfortable rising around 5 AM and doing its best thinking before noon. They are referred to as “larks.”

(Musical side note: I also read yesterday that Messiaen uses the call of the lark in one of the movements of his Pentecost Mass for Organ. Fascinating. Fascinating. Right?)

About 2 per cent of the population are the late sleepers who think better in the evening or late afternoon. They are referred to as “owls.”

Most of the population are “hummingbirds” and are somewhere between these. 

Medina says owls have the worst of it because our society is not generally set up for them to sleep in and stay up. Also that these patterns change with age and other conditions. 

He envisions a time when we can determine which category we are most likely to be in by a blood test. Then educators and employers could group people by sleep type for more effective brain work. Cool idea.

He says that universally, people’s brains wind down around siesta time in the afternoon.

Naps are normal. He mentions that LBJ used to stop everything in the afternoon and don pjs and take a nap much to the annoyance of his staff.

But he points out that he was normal to do so. It was the staffers who were out of step with their bodies and their brains.

Yesterday I got up and went grocery shopping before Eileen woke up. I was able to do this because my Mom is no longer making a weekly trip to the grocery store for groceries. I do like getting this done early on Saturdays which tend to be a bit more crowded.

Mom called later and said she was quarantined to her room due to the fact that she was ill. I received this call on the way to take a look at a piano I am thinking of donating to Boersma Cottage, the place where my Dad spent his last few months and died. 

I have been negotiating with them and they seem interested. On Friday I spoke with them and Cindy (the head shabaz) said it was okay with “MIke” (presumably someone a bit higher in the food chain) as long as it was a new piano and looked okay. Uh ho. I told it was a used piano. She said it would probably be okay. I said I would take photos of it and they could decide if it looked nice enough. 

I am buying it from the guy who sold me my piano and also has tuned pianos in all the churches I have worked in here in Holland.  He told me it was in pristine shape and wanted 750 dollars for it. He is donating the cost of transporting it. My daughter Elizabeth and quasi-son-in-law Jeremy are donating a bunch of money toward it. I have also heard from a couple of friends of Dad and Mom who said they were interested in helping. Mom said she would put 25 dollars toward the cost of it. Heh. 

Here are a couple of shots of it.

It looks pretty good to me. But we’ll see what the shabaz and company say at Boersma. It would make stopping buy and playing so much easier. Also then others could use it there… elders or visitors or whoever.

So anyway, Mom was confined to quarters so I dropped off thank you notes and magazines for her as she requested. Her forehead was dry and cool. I don’t think she has the flu (ahem). I think she is exhausted from the last week. I kept taking her places partly because she was previously stuck in her room due to a flu quarantine (of other people in the assisted living place). Also because she has lots to do as we get ready to empty her apartment at Appledorn.

Somewhere in there, Eileen and I scrutinzed and then bought a treadmill for a hundred dollars.

I got up this morning and used it while reading the NYT online. 

Wow. Life is good.

Oh well, WordPress has defeated me once again. I was writing a long boring post on music and music editions and suddenly it asked me to relog in and of course I lost the entire post replete with linked images. 

I don’t have the heart to rewrite it now. Plus as I wrote it I knew that most of my readers might not be all that interested in an arcane discussion of my recent purchase of scores like Czerny’s edition of The Art of Fugue by Bach. 

I was interested to note that the philosopher Hegel recently popped up in two incongruous books I happen to be reading yesterday: “The Broom of the System” by Wallace and “Friday, Saturday, Sunday: Literary Meditations on Suffering, Death, and New Life” by Cunningham. Wallace uses a character’s voice to comment and ridicule Hegel. Cunningham, not surprisingly, cites Hegel’s ideas that drama is the highest form of art. 

I mentioned Medina’s Brain Rule #5 recently (“Repeat to Remember”) in which says that spaced reviews of material are more effective for retention than massed ones.

David Brooks (usually a bit conservative for me, but I have read books by him, read his columns and usually pay attention when he’s on the News Hour with Jim Lehrer) had an piece in the NYT on Genuis versus practice which seems to be along the same lines.

Anyway, in the same chapter Medina observes that 

“The more a learner focuses on the meaning of the presented information, the more elaborately the encoding is processed.”

Which is to say that focusing on meaning helps the retention process in the brain.

Reminds me of learning music. I strive for a level of understanding of any piece I perform. The more I attain this understanding the better I perform the music and the easier it is to do so. 

Anyway, for some reason I have been musing on the fact that my approach of choice to music is pretty primitive.

Despite my training, I so often find myself approaching music more like the pop musician I was at the age of 20 replete with better technique to be sure, but with a related aesthetic that would probably horrify many “musicians.”  

Thinking of learning two movements from Messiaen’s Messe de Pentecost for organ. Probably never have them ready for this Pentecost but whotthehell, archie, toujours gai!

I met with my boss yesterday and talked with her about possibly doing two bach cantata movements on two specific Sundays this summer. I presented her a list of 12 possibilities and then proceeded to recommend two.  All 12 were culled from previous careful study of indices and the music itself and have some connection to the gospel of the day.

I think the words of this movement possibly relate to the way Jesus goes away from the crowds at the beginning of the gospel to a deserted place but returns to teach and heal them at the time he chooses

2	Aria (Duetto) [Alto, tenor]
	Fagotto, Continuo
	Du musst glauben, du musst hoffen, You must believe, you must hope Du musst gottgelassen sein! You must be calm before God! Jesus weiß die rechten Stunden, Jesus knows the right time Dich mit Hilfe zu erfreun. to make you rejoice with his help, Wenn die trübe Zeit verschwunden, when the troubled times have vanished Steht sein ganzes Herz dir offen. His whole heart will be open to you.

Aug 9, 2009 Proper 14 year B 

Cantata 84 mov 3 Sop, Oboe, Violin, continuo

 This Sunday is one of the five 6th chapter of John gospel readings about Jesus as the bread of life…. you can see the connection.

3	Aria [Soprano]
	Oboe, Violino, Continuo
	Ich esse mit Freuden mein weniges Brot I eat with joy my little piece of bread Und gönne dem Nächsten von Herzen das Seine. And from my heart do not begrudge my neighbour what is his. Ein ruhig Gewissen, ein fröhlicher Geist, A quiet conscience, a cheerful spirit, Ein dankbares Herze, das lobet und preist, a thankful heart,that praises and extols, vermehret den Segen, verzuckert die Not. Make blessings greater, make troubles sweet.

We will do them in German with translations in the bulletin. Now I have to invite talented parishioners to learn and perform them. Ay, there’s the rub.

I am feeling cynical about that this morning.

Last night’s choir rehearsal was typically discouraging in attendence for May. 4 missing sopranos (that’s all of them) and 2 missing altos (leaving 2). One of the 2 tenors remarked later that we are not the choir we used to be. That’s right. Ah for the good old days when people actually showed up. Fuck it. 

Of course I try not to allow my discouragement to color the way I rehearse and we had a good rehearsal despite the fact that half the choir didn’t show. The usual stuff I guess.

I did find time to read another chapter in John Medina’s book, “Brain Rules: 12 principles for surviving and thriving at work, home and school.”

It was about principle or rule #5: “Short-term memory: Repeat to Remember.”

I was struck by this notion:

referring to the work of Hermann Ebbinghaus who scientifically tested and monitored his own ability to remember, Medina writes: He “…showed that one could increase the life span of a memory simply by repeating the informationin timed intervals. The more repetition cycles a given memory experienced, the more likely it was to persist in his mind. We now know that the space between repetitions is the critical component for transforming temporary memories into more persistent forms. Spaced learning is greatly superior to massed learning.“  [emphasis added]

This concurs with my own observations as a learner and a teacher. My current choir has a history of pulling stuff together at the last minute and doing an adequate job. This reinforces the fact that some of them feel that rehearsals are not all that critical since they have so much faith in their own ability to pull it together at the last minute. Also I continue to hear musicians in my church say they are not willing to come to weekly rehearsals. But one of the reasons I persist in attempting to get people to rehearse is my own experience of Medinas rule five, especially the “spaced learning” idea. 

I sometimes tell people what I think McCoy Tyner (top rate jazz pianist) might have said to his students: that it is better to practice 15 minutes every day than 45 minutes every other day. It is the spacing that allows the brain to learn better or at least that’s my own experience and the one I encourage other learners to consider.

I wanted to put a few pics up on Facebook, but couldn’t figure out how to link in Piccasa Pics so screw it. These are pictures from my Dad’s funeral gathering.

I recently ripped a Messiaen CD I found at the library. Two nights ago, I decided to listen to a bit of it, specifically his “Préludes pour Piano.” Apparently this is one of his first compositions. I was intrigued by it and am planning to order a copy.

Yesteday, I was reading about this piece in Peter Hill’s “The Messiaen Companion.” I have the Hope library copy checked out and decided it would be a good thing to own so I went on Amazon and ordered a used copy for $20. Noticing that the rest of the prices for this book are incredibly expensive, this morning I recalled that I had previously priced copies of this book and decided it wasn’t really worth $550 new or even 89.95 used “collectible”. Good grief. I guess I just lucked in to a cheap copy yesterday. Or it’s not the right book. Anyway I ordered it and will know soon.

What I especially like about this book is so far the articles I have read are by performing musicians.

This sort of take on music is a bit different from the musicological one. Much more helpful to me.

I especially like Dame Gillian Wier’s article on Organ music (That’s her in the pic above). I am reading it and contemplating learning a movement of Messiaen’s Pentecost Suite…. probably the last movement. I am examining an interlibrary loaned copy of it at the moment.

Anyway

This caught my attention yesterday:

 

“So what’s going on here? Why are paychecks heading for the stratosphere again? Claims that firms have to pay these salaries to retain their best people aren’t plausible: with employment in the financial sector plunging, where are those people going to go?

No, the real reason financial firms are paying big again is simply because they can.”

from “Money for Nothing” by Paul Krugman, NYT

 

This is my suspicion.

That the real reason behind business is selfish greed and not some sort of “contribution to society” or other idealistic folderol. For what it’s worth, I think most of us (or most of me) struggles with disguising our own selfish motives with rationals and denials like “contribution to society” or “just trying to help” or whatever. Anyway, good article from one of my favorite NYT columnists.

Also was reading the monthly letter from Eileen Guenther (current prez of the American Guild of Organists)

She mentioned the book, “The Wisdom of Crowds” by James Surowiecki. Guenther writes that Surowiecki “aruges that ‘A large group of diverse individuals will come up with … more intelligent decisions than even the most skilled “decision maker.”‘” Surowiecki writes for the New Yorker and his book intrigues me as an balance to expertitus and elitism. So I ordered a cheapo (3.99) copy.

The online excerpt is the beginning of the book, where he uses “Who Wants to be a Millionaire” to illustrate his basic idea. While admitting it’s not a scientific sample, Surowiecki points out that group intelligence (audience) beats out individual intelligence (contestants and experts on the phone) by many percentage points on average. The TV studio audience comes up with correct answer 91% of the time. Whereas, “Experts” are right 65% of the time. Heh. 

I am interested in this idea not because I think groups are smarter than individuals, but because I think factoring in group wisdom is important.

Plato’s notion that the majority of the people are apt to be wrong has always bothered me a bit with its underlying snide implication. Of course many things bother me about Plato’s notions anyway. In this case I like Lincoln’s “You can fool some of the people all of the time, and all of the people some of the time, but you can not fool all of the people all of the time.”

But whatever.

Two days after my Dad’s memorial service I am thinking about the experiential aspect of communal grieving. Whenever I have pictured myself in possible future grieving at the death of a loved one, I usually think of my private feelings and wonder how I will deal with them. Having lived through the past few days I realize the strong waves of feelings and sadness are couched in an experience of others as much as self.  

One moment of strong emotion was listening to my Dad’s college roommate give an appreciation of Dad’s life. Other moments were watching my adult children and wife weep which always has a strong impact on me. So I have experienced the wisdom of having an extended family and support system during this significant milestone of change in my life. 

And as I was predicting, the reception afterwards was a good group moment.

The food was elegant by my provincial standards. I noticed that the sound in the room of people talking was at a good volume even before people began sipping wine. When I commented to a Lutheran pastor friend that the gathering fit my definition of sacramental he enthusiastically agreed and said it was an agape meal. A bit more religious than my take on it, but still understandable and satisfying to contemplate.

I was perusing Emerson’s essays yesterday.

I was thinking of him as a essential American writer. My daughter and her partner are visiting for the funeral. He is UK bred and born and she is becoming more and more a UK person. Seeing our society through their eyes is fascinating. I once again become aware of the subtle little differences between people and peoples. Also of course this illuminatesw that which we all have in common. Emerson not only shaped many concepts that permeate the intellectual environment and history of the US but he also wrote about traveling abroad and specifically to England. 

Like reading Mark Twain’s take on Europe, it’s engaging to overhear his experiences. “First Visit to England” is by Emerson’s own admission more about the people he meets and has conversations with than places he visits. When he meets and talks to Wordsworth (whom he describes as “a plain, elderly, white-haired man, not prepossessing, and disfigured by green goggles.”), they talk about America. Wordsworth apparently had many comments on the country (“his favorite topic”) including the interesting prediction that what America needed was a civil war to “teach the necessity of knitting the social ties stronger.” Unfortunately the war that came a few decades later was much different this and further divided us from each other.

Emerson qutoes him at length:

“I fear they [Americans] are too much given to the making of money; and secondly, to politics; that they make political distinction the end and not the means.”

These words ring particularly salient this very day as America leads the global economy into turmoil and I heard talk on the radio this morning utilizing the current evolving flu pandemic to further an essentially political struggle for the confirmation of secretary of health and human services, Kathleen Sebelius,Swine Flu Outbreak Highlights HHS Vacancies  and pass what looks like a hysterical extra-budget appropriation of funds instead of allowing the process to work. Although when I googled this last idea I found there was much more political discussion going on around Susan Collins who (oops) seems to have excised funding for this very situation from the stimulus bill package last February (Swine Flu Outbreak Revives Controversy Over Stimulus Funds).

And of the notion of what we all have in common, I sat in my kitchen yesterday and had a nice chat with my cousin who is a physicist who actively supports the Creation museum. It was interesting to hear his description of moving from a passionate evoluntionist to a creationist. I found his shifting of ideas to be something I could relate to but definitely not the content of his shift.

Yesterday my Mom and I went to the funeral home to take them some pictures and tell them some info about Dad. The funeral home subcontracts with a web service that provides a brochure with pictures and Dad’s life story. They also made up this picture:

which is compiled of the pictures we gave them of Dad at different ages. It’s a goofy concept but when you know the person I think it’s kind of interesting. 

After the interview, the funeral home director submits all the information we gave him to a “lifestory” writer and then they post the proposed online bio for family editing.

This is apparently a bit of a pastiche of the contracted writers abilities to make sentences and our information. Most of it was okay but the opening paragraph they wrote made me crazy. This is it:

Paul A. Jenkins was a vigorous man in heart and mind, who cherished his wife, cared for his family and worked diligently inservice to others. Always in pursuit of the true meaning of life, Paul found purpose in loving mercy, acting justly and walking humbly with his God.

 

In case you missed it, the last sentence is a paraphrase of a bible verse locally very popular: “what does the LORD require of you But to do justice, to love kindness, And to walk humbly with your God?” Micah 6:8

The sentiment in this verse is admirable but has no special connection to my Dad. The writer of the paragraph obviously had it in mind with his topic sentence which in its mutiple clauses draws on the verbs and gives a nod to the structure of the bible verse. Clever enough but it grated on me.

After some soul wrenching work and assistance from my wife, daughter and quasi-son-in-law, I came up with an alternative:

Paul A. Jenkins believed that his story would remain unfinished even after his death. He spent his entire life thinking, wondering, and talking about God. As a seeker of meaning and a preacher, he loved sharing his insights and questions with his congregations, his colleagues and his family. A man who expressed himself easily, he often told his wife he loved her and was lucky to spend his life with her. He deeply loved his family and gladly embraced a life of service to others. 

Still not wonderful particularly, but better, I think. I cribbed from a different source: My Dad’s autobiography he wrote some years ago in which he wrote: 

“Living this life-story has taken 75 years. As told here it is obviously incomplete. Whether you read this before or after I die, my story is still in the making. I have tried to record significant moments in my life’s journey. I know that what I share here is partial at best but it has been an enlightening exercise.”  taken from “Thru Many Dangers Toils and Snares: Chronology and Memoirs” by Paul A.Jenkins (unpublished)

I didn’t have the heart to re-write the entire thing. But Eileen and I scrutinized it the entire piece for errors (there were some) and resubmitted it to the funeral home/web site people. You can see the whole dealy here. 

IIt’s been almost a week since my Dad’s death and I think it’s probably okay to write about it here now.  This has been a complicated time. I was in California determinedly taking some badly needed time off. I arrived there last Thursday night to see my son and family. Dad died early Saturday morning. I received a cell phone call from the place he was living. They had been instructed to call my brother who was there in Holland but did not have his phone number, only mine. So I called him and he began to deal with it. Dad had requested cremation and Mark and I wanted to make sure Mom had a chance to see the body beforehand. She did and opted not to see it.  The cremation aspect helped me decide not to shorten my vacation. 

I fielded numerous phone calls in attempts to help and support people in Michigan. Eileen and I arrived back in town on schedule Wednesday evening. My daughter Sarah and her partner Matthew arrived within an hour. My son is planning to arrive on Saturday by himself. My daughter Elizabeth and her partner Jeremy will also arrive Saturday evening. Jeremy pointed out that this is one of the postive aspects of funerals…. that we get to see each other. This is a first time gathering of these very important loved ones. My adult children have not been in the same room since Sarah was in the third grade (according to our reckoning). 

The funeral will be at the Presbyterian church since that is the tradition Mom is most comfortable with.  I find this time confirming my own take on church and funeral homes which is pretty cynical. I find that planning the prayer service has little meaning for me other than making sure Mom and Mark are okay with it. Mark hates funeral homes and has discovered all over again why. I have fumbled around since getting back and made a couple of bad calls in efforts to pull this stuff together. Sigh.

I am more interested in the reception following the praying. I have hired a kick ass caterer and we are holding it at the apartment building where Mom and Dad spent their last two years together here in Holland.This enables many of their new acquaintances to easily take part.  I am looking forward to people standing around eating, drinking, talking and being with each other. My priest and I agree that this will be the “sacramental” moment. That is, a moment when the gathered mourners will be a visible sign of connectedness and emotion. 

One person sobbing and attempting to console said that now my “Dad knows.” Presumably she meant that he knew whether was an afterlife and the secrets of the universe would be revealed to him or something. I stupidly and honestly said maybe there’s nothing to know. Dealing with others reaction to my Dad’s death has helped me see that I experienced it as relief and have been doing some grief work over the period of time I have been present to his mental and physical decline.

Last night over drinks after choir rehearsal choir members and i discussed atheism. I had mentioned in the course of rehearsing Vaughan Williams beautiful “Tree of Life” anthem that Vaughan Williams was a professed atheist and at the same time a most spiritual composer whose works were a privilege to perform. Through the last few years I have found tremendous personal inspiration and consolation in the music, poetry and prose that I love.  I suspect this emotion is similar to what some people find in their philosophy or religion or belief in God or whatever. 

At the same time I realize that I have no working concept of God. I have found that living in the moment is not as easy as it sounds but is something for me to shoot for. The idea that we live our lives with our thoughts centered on what happens after we die is a silly one for me personally. On the other hand I see what strength it can give others especially those mourning a loved one and do not begrudge this one bit. 

Last night I conversationally observed that composers like Vaughan Williams and Verdi (also under discussion due to a recent local performance of his “Requiem”) probably were disassociating themselves from organized religion by proclaiming public atheism. 

This was me being tactful since there were people in the room struggling with the idea of atheism. 

I was raised with a very simple concept of God and steeped in the Christian Bible. As an adult I have found most concepts of God in religion confusing and not very believable much less helpful. But I do believe in the need to see and live beyond myself loving and respecting others and also to the observe and connect to the beautiful world around me. And the Bible and specifically the teachings of Christ turns out to color my entire understanding of my own life and the history of humans. 

When I first interviewed with my present boss I told her I was an atheist. She said this probably made me Episcopalian. What I think this might mean is that my personal belief is irrelevant to participation in my present community.  At least this is what it ends up meaning to me. My lack of coherent belief has troubled some readers of my blog. They see me as hypocritical because I am church leader who toys with atheism. 

This may be but at least I don’t hide it and of course I don’t believe this actually so. I am a good church leader and a good church musician. This might even be because of my own lack of fixed ideas about something that not one of us truly knows. Anyway, this is getting a bit cosmic and I have to go clean house and then screw up some more stuff on my Dad’s funeral. Heh.

[sbj note: These are some lines of Eliot that struck me this afternoon as I read through the first two sections of “Four Quartets.”]

Time and the bell have buried the day,
The black cloud carries the sun away.
Will the sunflower turn to us, will the clematis
Stray down, bend to us; tendril and spray
Clutch and cling?

    Chill
Fingers of yew be curled
Down on us? After the kingfisher’s wing
Has answered light to light, and is silent, the light is still
At the still point of the turning world.

from Burnt Norton from “Four Quartets” by T. S. Eliot

The poetry does not matter.
It was not (to start again) what one had expected.
What was to be the value of the long looked forward to,
Long hoped for calm, the autumnal serenity
And the wisdom of age? Had they deceived us
Or deceived themselves, the quiet-voiced elders,
Bequeathing us merely a receipt for deceit?
The serenity only a deliberate hebetude,
The wisdom only the knowledge of dead secrets
Useless in the darkness into which they peered
Or from which they turned their eyes. There is, it seems to us,
At best, only a limited value
In the knowledge derived from experience.
The knowledge imposes a pattern, and falsifies,
For the pattern is new in every moment
And every moment is a new and shocking
Valuation of all we have been. We are only undeceived
Of that which, deceiving, could no longer harm.

from East Coker from Four Quartets by T.S. Eliot

O dark dark dark. They all go into the dark,
The vacant interstellar spaces, the vacant into the vacant,
The captains, merchant bankers, eminent men of letters,
The generous patrons of art, the statesmen and the rulers,
Distinguished civil servants, chairmen of many committees,
Industrial lords and petty contractors, all go into the dark,
And dark the Sun and Moon, and the Almanach de Gotha
And the Stock Exchange Gazette, the Directory of Directors,
And cold the sense and lost the motive of action.
And we all go with them, into the silent funeral,
Nobody’s funeral, for there is no one to bury.

from East Coker from Four Quartets by T.S. Eliot

    Home is where one starts from. As we grow older
The world becomes stranger, the pattern more complicated
Of dead and living. Not the intense moment
Isolated, with no before and after,
But a lifetime burning in every moment
And not the lifetime of one man only
But of old stones that cannot be deciphered.
There is a time for the evening under starlight,
A time for the evening under lamplight
(The evening with the photograph album).
Love is most nearly itself
When here and now cease to matter.
Old men ought to be explorers
Here or there does not matter
We must be still and still moving
Into another intensity
For a further union, a deeper communion
Through the dark cold and the empty desolation,
The wave cry, the wind cry, the vast waters
Of the petrel and the porpoise. In my end is my beginning.

Laying in the dark this morning I was thinking about skepticism, namely my own. I was listening to NPR as usual and noticing how surprised I was to hear someone who sounded honest and principled describing his role as a investigator into criminal exploitations of the recent TARP money. This would be Neil M. Berofsky, inspector general in this department. Read or listen to it for yourself  here. Integrity seems to be a rare commodity in public life (and private life for that matter). 

One recent recipient of the Pulitzer was quoted on this morning news as “not really thinking about the Pulitzer.”  I found this a bit hard to swallow. Maybe it’s true, but earlier I heard how certain online news organizations were not applying to the Pulitzer this year because of the vagueness of the eligibilty requirements (i.e. one of the requirements is that the reporting be local and original…. is it local on the web? if you link into tons of other pertinent material have you violated this requirement).

Then I thought, Hey. Wait a minute. You have to apply to receive these prizes. Wild-eyed idealist that I am I always envisioned nominations from peers and the reading public. Silly me. 

This led me to think about my own deeply rooted skepticism of all things public. I often recall how people in the USSR would read Pravda newspaper.

They knew much of what was in the paper was untrue but they learned how to read between the lines. 

This can be helpful when reading U.S. newspapers and is essential to listening to broadcast news (NPR or TV or others). 

I fear this habitual resistance to suspending my disbelief might contribute to my own inability to be entertained by many fine movies and tv shows. I often but not always have trouble suspending my skepticism long enough to enter into a contemporary piece of broadcasting or story-telling. It’s easier with the written word but still I am infected with a bit of downhome “show me” attitude. It’s probably a good thing.

I’ve also been musing on our need for each other as humans. I’m sure this is related to recent events in my life where I have learned to appreciate it when family members (my daughters in particular) take the initiative and reach out to connect to myself and the extended family. I also have survived the recent stress in my life not only by reaching out to loved ones but also taking solace in great music, poetry and prose. 

I feel connected when I play or listen to Mozart….

or read Emily Dickinson…. or Dostoevsky or Tolstoy.

One thing that slightly bothers me about vacations is that I end up on sort of a music fast. I know it’s good for me to get away from my usual routine, but I do miss the practice and listening to the music I love. 

I wish I had put some Mozart on my MP3 player before I left. I have been relying heavily on playing and listening to him recently. My stupid stupid MP3 player probably won’t talk to my little netbook I have with me. It makes me crazy how inflexible technology seems to be. But maybe I’m wrong and I will be able to transfer some Mozart (pretty easy to find on the web) to the player. Otherwise I can of course just use my netbook to listen. I think Eileen has been using her netbook to listen to audio books at night. 

All these little electronic devices (MP3 players, netbooks, even cell phones) make handy flashlights when you’re in an unfamiliar dark room. Cool.

Right now (5:45 local time…. 8:45 Mich time) I am the only one awake and have managed to conquer the coffee machine and am waiting for coffee. The coffee machine adds another gentle noise to the rumble of trains in the distance. I don’t hear birds yet but of course it is still dark and I am half deaf.

Yesterday our hosts took us all to the beach for the afternoon. We watched the kids get their feet wet in the cold ocean. My grandchildren flew their first kites which came in their Easter baskets. My granddaughter’s kite went up easily in a gust of wind. But the wind died and the rest of the time she and my grandson spent the time madly running around trying to get kites up in the air like you do when there’s no wind. 

The adults seemed tired and tense on the drive. My youngest grandchild was car sick on the way back. All in all a typical family afternoon at the beach much enjoyed by this granddad.

Another cool thing about reading books on a netbook is that no light is needed in a darkened bedroom.

I felt in need of a light mystery short story before falling asleep last night and sure enough there was one on my Mobipocket reader called “The thing on the hearth” from The Sleuth of St. James Square by Melville Davison Post. Mr. Post (1869-1930) hails from West Virginia and his largely forgotten writings are available on line. This short story was vaguely reminiscent of a cross between Conan Doyle and Poet. Just what the doctor ordered for last night’s reading. I was in the mood to read more but too sleepy to continue.

Okay so I’m visiting in California, reading, relaxing and spending time with loved ones. I am writing long passages in my journal so there will be a bit less blogging I think.

I continue to enjoy the web site: http://manybooks.net/   Their collection is big and interesting and free.

I did buy a hard copy of Orwell’s “Down and Out in Paris and London.” I have been listening to it on audio books and keep wanting to underline stuff and think about it. It doesn’t happen to be available on manybooks. 

I read a bit last night in “The Broom of the System.” The title to today’s blog comes from my reading last night. 

Here’s my morning links which I have been annoyingly posting on Facebook.

Google as Jaba

2 years later it turns out the kids were telling the truth, the police were lieing…. but now nobody is paying much attention of course

Abe Lincoln the vampire slayer coming soon

Day 2 in California and a lot is going through my head this morning including Emily Dickinson’s poetry:

MAY-FLOWER.

Pink, small, and punctual,
Aromatic, low,
Covert in April,
Candid in May,
Dear to the moss,
Known by the knoll,
Next to the robin
In every human soul.
Bold little beauty,
Bedecked with thee,
Nature forswears
Antiquity.

I have been utilizing Manybooks.net. What a blessing this web site is.  I was able to put three volumes of Dickinson on my Acer yesterday. Coolness.

I am listening to the audiobook of Orwell’s “Down and Out in Paris and London.”

I believe it was in the introduction I read that Orwell was inspired by Jack London’s “People of the Abyss”

So I bit and downloaded it from Manybooks. Very cool. Not so cool was the book itself which reads like “poor like me” and also shows the London had trouble seeing Londoners very clearly. 

But I do see why it influenced Orwell. London basically camaflaged himself as a poor person much like John Howard “Black Like Me” Griffin.

Unfortunately Jack London couldn’t avoid the appearance of patronizing the poor people as he “joined” them temporarily.

Orwell on the other hand actually works 17 hours a day for weeks at a time in a Paris restaurant.

The insight that Orwell borrows from Jack London is I suspect that there is no basic difference between people in different economic classes. Some of his analogies put me in mind of Mark Twain’s the Prince and the Pauper. Exchange clothes and situation and there is no difference between the indentured slave of a restaurant worker in Paris (whom Orwell points out literally work those long hours every day of every week for years and years) and the people who have the extreme privileged lives in our world.

London sees this. Orwell sees it. Twain sees it. 

Another interesting idea mucking around in my brain cells regards gender roles in the U.S. Judith Warner has written an article and started an online blog discussion on NYT.com  (“Dude you’ve got problems“). She is writing about the root cause of some of the ridicule and anti-homophobia preteen boys express and experience. 

She quotes Barbara J. Reismann 

about pretten boys: “[T]hey have the sense that to be a man means something and is incredibly important. These boys don’t know how to be that something. Their pathway to masculinity is unclear. To not be a man is to not be fully human and that’s terrifying.”

Warner’s basic point is that what is stigmatized about gay men is not just the gayness but the “feminine.” This utterly ignores that there is a difference between sexual orientation and the basic masculine/feminine natures that we all contain to some degree. This has been part of my thinking about so many of the sexualized sterotypes of the popular if not ground level U.S. culture: sexuality is complex and never singular. But of course those are my ideas not Warners…

She also points out how this affects preteen girls:

“There’s a degree to which girls, despite all their advances, appear to be stuck – voluntarily – in a time warp, too, or at least to be walking a very fine line between progress and utter regression. Spending unprecedented amounts of time and money on their hair, their skin and their bodies, at earlier and earlier ages. Essentially accepting the highly sexualized identity imposed on them, long before middle school, by advertisers and pop culture.”

Warner quotes several recent books and studies. This article was helpful and interesting to me. I recognize the boy pattern from my own Tennessee preteens. The peer pressure is immense on all people of this age. I remember it vividly in my late fifties. 

On the blog one commenter put it well:

I went to a conference on bisexuality about 15 years ago. A woman there said to me, “I wish you gay men would stop putting your energy into fighting homophobia and instead put your energy into eradicating misogyny. Because the problem society has with gay men isn’t that they’re with other men – it’s that they’re men who are “acting like women.” If it were ok to be a woman in this culture, homophobia would just disappear.”

I can’t go that far. Nothing in culture disappears like that. But still hate is hate and misogyny is a particularly potent evil expression of hate and does affect all genders.

Last but not least as I listen to the hope of birds singing in the California spring, I delighted to read this article: “Hope for a Harvest of Tolerance from Anne Frank’s tree” by David W. Dunlap. NYT.com. The horse chestnut tree that Frank writes about in her diary is ailing but still alive. Ten saplings taken from cuttings from this tree are being distributed in an effort to promote tolerance. I like this. I used the picture above as my desktop.

So. Stuff is happening. The Hospice people were concerned that Dad is “actively dieing” and wanted to know how aware Mom was of this situation. I was in a movie and had my phone turned off. They spoke to Mark and he helped them decide to go over and talk to her about it and offer to take her to see Dad in case he dies tonight or tomorrow (which they thing is very likely). Mark also helped them decide to follow Mom’s psychiatric nurse’s recommendation that someone be with her on 24 hour watch at this time. This will be private pay and Mark unhesitatingly recommended it.

I have to examine myself and make sure I’m not running away from my father’s death. I don’t think this is exactly what is happening. I do need some space from the whole deal, that’s for sure. It’s time for others to take up some of my slack and Mark is doing exactly that. He is planning to drive over and be with Mom this evening. I don’t feel that I need to see Dad one more time before he dies. I hugged him and told him I loved him on Wednesday. He has asked to be cremated which will actually give us a bit of flexibility on scheduling the funeral. My son the clinical psychologist professionally asked me what it would look like if I felt I was needed in Holland. I told him if Mom was asking for me I would probably go. Otherwise I’m seriously planning on waiting for our scheduled return flight on Wednesday.

I continue to learn that emotional space is different from physical space. 

Eileen’s doctor’s office has been trying to contact her since Thursday morning, despite the fact that she told them she would be out of own. Of course by the time she got the messages off her cell phone it was already to late to talk to them before next Monday. She’s concerned but not too worried about the results of a recent blood test. Oy.