I am planning on blogging more as I get closer to retirement. But this week we are visiting my brother Mark and sister-in-law Leigh in Unadilla. Unadilla is not that far from Ann Arbor. Chelsea is closer. That’s where we are off to this evening. A quick trip to the local independent bookstore. Then out to eat.

Mark cooked last night. I find it very satisfying to watch him cook. He been taking classes in cooking for a while and is, of course, quite adept.

My energy level is not high. I think I’m sort of winding down a bit even in the throes of looking forward to retirement. I have had a couple of nice emails from church music colleagues. All very laudatory and supportive.

I am feeling more and more disconnected from church stuff. But my other  of interest are as strong as ever. I have been reading in my Child Ballads (which are actually the collection of tunes for the Child Ballads compiled by Betrand Harris Bronson). I have been listening to the playlist  of Child Ballads that I posted here.

I am trying to read Leigh’s copy of The Glass Castle by Jeanette Walls while we are here. My grand daughter Catherine is reading it and that’s why I am doing so. So far, it hasn’t really grabbed all that much. It reads like someone review their history with their weird family of origin. But I don’t detect a very clear narrative development as of yet. But I’m only a hundred pages into it or so.

I am planning on picking up a couple of new books when i see them. Perhaps they will be at the book store this evening.

Nice Racism by Robin Diangelo.

And The Cruelty is the Point by Adam Serwer.

Well that’s all for today. I just have enough time to do a bit more piano playing on Leigh’s lovely Steinway before we leave for the book store and restaurant.

Increasingly I am spending my morning routine listening to music. I liked to listen to podcasts while I exercise and do the dishes in the morning but have been finding most of them bogged down in stuff that doesn’t interest me.

Eliza Stein put together a playlist based on contemporary renditions of Child Ballads.

I am loving this.

This morning for some reason I was drawn to Mozart’s Prussian String Quartets.

This group has just released a recording which is what I was listening to on Primephonic this morning.

I pulled out my scores and discovered the first movement all marked up with my markings (way past schooling).

Rhonda dropped by last night around martini time. She brought me a few copies of the CD she and  Brian Reichenbach made of new trumpet music. My BLM is on it.

This promo video begins and ends with excerpts of my piece. CD can be purchased on Rhonda’s  or Brian’s web site.

I am flattered these two did this. I still like the piece and I like the way they play it.

Finally, here’s an excerpt from Natalie Diaz’s American Arithmetic in her Postcolonial love Poem.

Police kill Native Americans more
than any other race. Race is a funny word.
Race implies someone will win,
implies I have as good a chance of winning as—

We all know who wins a race that isn’t a race.

Native Americans make up 1.9 percent of all
police killings, higher than any race,
and we exist as .8 percent of all Americans.

Sometimes race means run.

I’m not good at math—can you blame me?
I’ve had an American education.

We are Americans, and we are less than 1 percent
of Americans. We do a better job of dying
by police than we do existing.

from American Arithmetic by Natalie Diaz in Postcolonial Love Poem

She rocks!