I was yelling that despite his support for the local airport millage, I planned to vote for it. Tomorrow I guess I will return to yelling at banks and credit cards who call to tell me of my last chance to change my account to a better interest rate.

I do like being able to order used books through the Internet.

I recently ordered T. S. Eliot’s play, The Elder Statesman. It was mentioned in an essay on his Four Quartets and I didn’t recognize it.

It arrived in the mail yesterday. I sat down and read it straight through. I have read many plays in my life. When I was a young man in Flint Michigan I would visit the new book sections of poetry, music and theater areas when I first entered the library.

My browsing habits have changed somewhat. For the most part this is for the better because I can zero in on what I am looking to learn much easier with the new search engines. But I still check out new book shelves at the library.

I found the play by Eliot to have some fun stuff in it. It’s basically about an elderly (60ish!) British politician who is retiring. His daughter has talked him in to moving in to a nursing home. This nursing home is vaguely reminiscent of Thomas Mann’s TB clinic in The Magic Mountain. Obviously ill people are not accepted here. Even people who look ill.

Just before leaving Lord Claverton (that’s the statesman’s name) is confronted by someone he knew as a young man. This person is now going by the name of Federico Gomez. He and Claverton (who is also using a different can you buy diazepam online in the uk name — his wife’s, since she is the source of his title) attended Oxford together. Gomez remembers an indiscretion of Claverton’s during this period of their friendship. He also sort of blames Claverton for his own fall from grace due to Claverton giving him a taste of the good life. Gomez goes to jail for forgery and then flees to South America where he changes his name and becomes successful.

He has returned with enough information to blackmail Claverton, but is only interesting in reestablishing their friendship.

At the Magic Mountain like nursing home, Claverton runs across another “ghost’ (Eliot’s word) from his past. A woman whom he jilted and then who threatened to take him to court for breach of promise. They settled but she still has his indiscreet letters.

Claverton faces himself in the mirror of these past ghosts and reveals his true nature to his beloved daughter, Monica.

For me it is an unsatisfactory denouement, but one that movie producers everywhere would probably approve.

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I Didn’t Write That – NYTimes.com

Case of purloined expert identity.

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Outside the Amtrak Window, a Picture of the U.S. Economy – NYTimes.com

Check out the photos. The Eloi peer at the Morlocks through the train window.

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Chicago Project Follows What Happens to Juveniles – NYTimes.com

Chicago research they said couldn’t be done. Now that it’s done no one is paying attention.

“It’s a segment of the population that many Americans don’t think about, don’t care about,” Dr. Teplin said. “What rivets Americans is the unexpected — the Colorado massacre, mass school shootings. The everyday violence is something that doesn’t concern most people.”

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Outrage in Texas After Airborne Police Sharpshooter Kills 2 Immigrants – NYTimes.com

Texas is a state where government agents can fire on moving vehicles….. from a plane…

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Desperate for Civility on Capitol Hill – NYTimes.com

Interesting editorial the day before elections.

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It’s also the soundtrack of living.

Rarely is it the prism into meaning that much of it attempts to be.

Anyway, I kicked up the registration slightly to the prelude. Still some parishioners complained to me that they couldn’t hear it.

Of course they sit at the other side of the room.

Whippy skippy.

My failing strategy is to do excellent music well. I find that my fallback reaction to leading with content and not perception pretty much fails in all situations these days.

When we have visiting musicians, people are a bit more aware that music is happening before and after the service. I feel that this is partly politeness but also I feel like perception that something is happening has risen with the present of visual instruments. The organ pipes are presently not visible. I am guessing that if there is ever a more obvious organ installation at my church where you can see the pipes perception will rise that someone is actually doing something with it before and after the service.

Part of my whining about the educated and trained musicians is that I have a strong conviction that what I and my music ministers offer musically is a cut above the average church music that can be experienced in most churches. But still most of the educated musicians seem to act as oblivious as any of the other people in the room.

Fuck the duck.

The best I can do these days is to turn away from this obtuseness and center myself as much as I can on what I am doing.

My boss (who was a semi pro athlete) understands how distracting this can be. An athlete or a musician must be prepared for distraction. I use sports analogies with her quite a bit. When I brought this up recently,  the distraction part of the analogy made sense, but I pointed out that what I am trying to do with music is communication. I guess this inevitably fails more than it succeeds in the kind of environment I am working.

Nonetheless I persist. The music went well yesterday.  We make a big deal out of the Episcopalian hymn, “For All the Saints.” The choir sings two of the 8 verses in a choral arrangement. Yesterday I had high voices (women and children) on verse 6 and low voices (men) on verse 7. I change the accompaniment to fit these variations. And we had descants on a couple of other verses. All in all, it’s a pretty cool way to start All Saints Sunday.

The kids choir sang a few measures by themselves in the anthem I had tried to teach them. Then I had the chamber choir gently join in. This worked okay. As usual all three kids in the choir were also altar servers. I’m not sure if this is a drawback or not. It might help assure their attendance since all three are enthusiastic new altar servers.

The choir ably sang C. V. Stanford’s “Justorum Animae” at the beginning of communion. It’s hard for me not to think that music at my church is pretty good.

I should add that I know that many people at my church do appreciate the music and perceive much of what is happening (if they can hear it, heh).

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The Dead Weight of Past Dictatorships – NYTimes.com

Historically informed view of contemporary struggling societies.

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Making Babies, Just to Make Ends Meet – NYTimes.com

The new normal: making money how you can including making babies for other people.

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The Far Side of Acrimony – NYTimes.com

An eloquent essay by Frank Bruni pleading for a lull in the madness with the new president whoever he is.

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Chess – Falko Bindrich Accused of Cheating – NYTimes.com

Chessmaster goes to the john during the tournament, has cell phone,  did he cheat?

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Remembering the Berlin Wall | The Nation

I had no idea that bits (huge bits in cases) of the Berlin wall were housed all over.

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