I spent time today with Eileen watching my daughter, Sarah, be worried on Skype. It is difficult for my loved ones, I know. There’s nothing more to report at this point. Eileen and I will meet with the oncologist for a consultation on Wednesday. We should know more after that. I also spent a good deal of time writing a Music Note for next Sunday’s bulletin. I especially like to talk about the sorrow songs like Steal Away that have a double meaning for the enslaved. I was able to mention that this song was used by Nat Turner to alert his co-conspirators.

Fun fact from Jill Lepore’s These Truths: In 1492 seventy-five  million people lived in America, north and south. At the same time sixty million people lived in Europe, fifteen million less.

As I mentioned to Sarah, I find it frightening to look death in the face. However, so far I haven’t exactly panicked. I hope I don’t. A little denial can be a good thing when faced with daunting circumstances. In the meantime, each moment of life left seems to be something to savor. For that I am thankful.

I don’t have anything to report about my health. The funeral yesterday knocked me on my butt. But until I know for sure cancer is spread throughout my body I am hesitant to ascribe my fatigue to it.

The funeral went well. But there was added pressure of working with an unknown deacon (who was leading a lot and preached), dealing with the grief of parishioners especially those in the choir, and the extra pains I took on preparing some organ music. The latter worked exceedingly well, I thought. It is fun to have a good instrument whose sounds are so beautiful in and of themselves so that when one adds a decently composed piece on top of that the overall effect can be stunning.

I’m starting to read Jill Lepore’s These Truths: a History of the United States. So far, it’s meeting my expectations. I like that Lepore supplants the usual understandings of history as story or memorial. She says that history is “inquiry—not something easy and comforting but demanding and exhausting” (p. xvi) She goes on: “To study the past is to unlock the prison of the present.”

Good stuff. In the first chapter, she does a good job of balancing description of Columbus’s first visit (where she purports to begin her history) and documentation of the peoples he met. She does this through some very careful citations which lead the reader through the labyrinth of sources. Very cool. She even cites my beloved Samuel Morrison. Morrison was a historian of America and even wrote a bio of Columbus (which I have read).

I don’t often see him cited these days because the history is being reexamined to include a different view of Columbus.

Friedman used Columbus as an example of someone who was courageous and adventuresome. “I’ll figure out how to get back after I get where I’m going.” Teaching about Freidman’s understanding of family systems requires a light touch when using Columbus as a metaphor in this manner.

This reminds me of talking to my brother about “White Jesus” over the Thanksgiving holiday.

I told him he could look up Kendri’s citation in the index of his book under White Jesus.

Well, this is not the case. But here is the relevant passage.

“The American  Bible Society, the American Sunday School Union, and the American Tract Society were all established in this period [1820s], and they each used the printing press to besiege the nation with Bibles, tracts, pictures, and picture cards that would help create a strong, unified, Jesus-centered national identity. A good tract ‘should be entertaining,’ announced the American Tract Society in 1824. ‘There must be something to allure the listless to read.’ Allurement—those pictures of holy figures—had long been considered a sinful trick of Satan and ‘devilish’ Catholics. No more. Protestant organizations started mass producing, mass-marketing, and mass-distributing images of Jesus, who was always depicted as White. Protestants saw all the aspirations of the new American identity in the White Jesus—a racist idea that proved to be in their cultural self-interest. As pictures of this White Jesus started to appear, Blacks and Whites started to make connections, consciously and unconsciously between the White God the Father, his White son Jesus, and the power and perfection of White people. ‘I really believed my old master was almighty God,’ a runaway henry Brown admitted, ‘and that his son, my young master, was Jesus Christ.” [p.153]

Opinion | Of Monuments, Arguments, Vampires and Thanksgiving

Marueen Dowd writes an interesting article about her conservative family.  I recommend checking out the comments as well. I don’t often read Dowd. She seems to be too inside the beltway to help me understand what’s happening. However, the subtitle of this article, “John Wayne, Brett Kavanaugh, my brothers Michael and Kevin, and me” piqued my interest.

Thanksgiving vacation was sadly brief. Eileen was exhausted on Thanksgiving morning and slept late. I was planning to check on her around 10 AM, but I heard her stirring. We didn’t get away until later in the day (11 AM?).

Visits to my brother’s home in Unadilla can be a respite so the fact that we had to jump in the car yesterday and drive home was disappointing. Thanksgiving went well. Leigh knocked herself out preparing to host everyone. Ben, Tony, Emily, and Jeremy came for the meal and some visiting and then left. I only had one martini that evening. This may have helped offset the extra calories from all the good food.

After returning to Holland, I went over to church to prepare for this morning’s funeral. The funeral was the reason we had to come home a day early. The deceased is brother to three of my choir members. Their family, the Van Ark family, is very musical and admirably tends to celebrate the holidays together musically. They are planning to sing two choral numbers for the funeral today: Eagles Wings and The Lord Bless You and Keep You. Laurie Van Ark (who sings in my choir) gave me a copy of the former which I carefully prepared. This is a bit odd since I don’t remember when I have ever performed this piece of music as written. This is a point of contention between me and Bob Batastini. He heard me accompanying a congregation years ago and told me I was doing it wrong. I, of course, didn’t see it that way and he joined the numbers of musicians who seem to think I’m way off base about a lot of musical things. No biggie. I’m hoping that if I am supposed to accompany the second anthem they have music for me.

I took some pains over the organ music for this service. Helping a musical family mourn its dead can be tricky. I opted for some classy arrangements of the hymns they are singing today: “Come my way, my truth, my life” and “What wondrous love is this.” I am using these arrangements to show off the beauty of the organ and hope that this sort of thing is the ticket for this group. I think it will be. I am playing arrangements by Lindt who has done a book of organ pieces based on tunes by Ralph Vaughan Williams. He wrote the tun for “Come my way.” I added a nice little arrangement of the Vaughan Williams tune for “I heard the voice of Jesus say.” It’s a bit elegiac but it might also work.

I have to sort of take the temperature of the people who are present in order to make final decisions. If these organ pieces don’t seem to quite fit the mood and occasion I can easily improvise what strikes me as would fit it.

I continue to ponder my own demise. My extended family at Thanksgiving was very supportive and restrained about my cancer but didn’t seem too horrified when I joked about it. Mark, of course, is quite experienced with death and understands most clearly (like Rev Jen). Still it’s hard for anyone to watch people they love go through stuff. (I’m referring to people watching me go through stuff).

On the way over, Eileen told me she was trying not to submit me to her own anxiety. I pointed out that there is a difference between anxiety and fear. When someone you love is mortally ill, the logical response includes being scared. Or as Taj  Mahal puts it: “If you ain’t scared, you ain’t right!”

Jes sayin’

My violinist was too ill to play the nursing home gig yesterday.  She texted me but I didn’t notice. The cellist called me about two hours before the gig since she noticed I hadn’t responded. She was reluctant to pull together some last minute cello/piano stuff so I ended up doing it alone.

This actually made it easier if a bit less rewarding. I started out with “It Don’t Mean a Thing If it Aint Got that Swing” by Ellington. That went well. Then I played a movement from a Mozart piano sonata. I should have looked more closely at it beforehand. Although I have performed it as a church prelude before, it has some treacherous hand crossing in the second section. So the first half went well but those hand crossings  in the second half… not so much.

I interspersed some more Ellington with Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata  and a couple of Autumn tunes (Autumn in New York and The Autumn Leaves). By then I thought it was time for some hymns. Then they served ice cream to the residents while I played “background music.” They listened more closely to background music and I received quite a bit of applause on several tunes.

I was very happy with my pop tunes and the improvs. I did have fun doing it but I was pretty wiped out after that.

I met with Rev Jen yesterday instead of our usual Wednesday time since she took off to be with fam in Kazoo today. I told her that I knew it was primarily a “counseling session” for me and thanked her.

Tonight I have another two hour choir rehearsal planned. Several members have signed out. It’s quite likely that one or two others will discover last minute reasons not to come. This is not all that unusual especially the rehearsal before Thanksgiving.

Eileen and I decided it would be a good idea to purchase some frozen pies from Cranes and take them to the Jenkins Thanksgiving in Chelsea tomorrow. Eileen has them already baked and is now baking the tofurkey for me to take tomorrow.

Opinion | The Psychology of Political Polarization – The New York Times

I took the Hidden Tribes quiz linked in this article. Predictably I came out as a Progressive Activist (the furthest left one can be in this tribal classification).

We had workers at the house all day yesterday. Unfortunately, Eileen is unhappy with their work. Instead of using the old trim around the upstairs door, they cut and stained their own trim which doesn’t look very good. They didn’t finish the basement door trim and left huge holes in the plaster. Eileen texted the company last night but we haven’t heard from them. We haven’t paid for the entire work yet so that gives us some negotiating power. It kept Eileen awake last night.

Rhonda dropped by for tea and piano duets yesterday. That’s always nice.

This morning we dropped the Subaru off at OK tire for some tweaking before our drive to Chelsea on Thursday morning. There was a slow leak in the front right tire which they fixed. Also they checked the oil, the coolant, and the power steering. All of these were low so it’s a good thing they did. Eileen and I went to the Good Earth and had breakfast together. These days are difficult for her. She finds herself a bit on the fuzzy side as she works at dealing with my cancer.

I’ve over booked myself today. But it’s for the good. I am meeting with Rev Jen today instead of tomorrow because she is going out of town for Thanksgiving. Then my piano trio is performing at the nursing home. I stopped by this morning and discovered the piano is 10 cents sharp. This is a lot. I texted the string players and they seem to think we can do it anyway. That’s a relief. Because the alternative would be for me to cart one of my electric keyboards over there for the gig.

I’m pages away from finishing Kendri’s Stamped From the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America. It’s a great read. I told Eileen that it might be a bit of a echo chamber type read for me, in other words, reinforcing  my own understandings and speaking from a point of view I’m sympathetic to. But on the other hand I do think Kendri is a brilliant scholar of his subject. I want to finish it so I can read Jill Lepore’s new book, These Truths: A History of the United States.

I also picked up another book on Shakespeare by Greenblatt.

Will in the World: How Shakespeare Became Shakespeare. I do like this writer and think he does a good job of explaining stuff about Shakespeare.

I picked up another book of poetry to read. To the Left of the Sun is a collection by Linda Flaherty Halmaier. I’m enjoying it, but the poems I like are not online to share.

A choir member loaned me a small book of poetry by G. A. Stoddard Kennedy. At least I think that was the author. I gave it back to her recently. She asked me what I thought and I told her it wasn’t my cup of tea… too religious. After looking at some of his poems online, I could be wrong about him. Some of them were more bitter than the ones she had marked as her favorites.

On Saturday I felt a certain “blahness” all day. Eileen got up and immediately proposed shopping for an overcoat for me in downtown Holland. I  need a new overcoat since my old one from the thrift store defies attempts to keep the lining in it and is wearing out at the sleeves. So after breakfast we went to the library and then downtown. We also stopped by Evergreen Commons to check in.  In order to cover our trips Medicare insists that we check in twice  month. That’s all we’ve been doing lately, but both of us would like to get back to exercising regularly.

We wandered around in downtown Holland looking for a full length coat for me. No luck. It appears they are a bit out of fashion now. We came home and I ordered another one online. Eileen had ordered one for me about a week or so ago but it was too small.  I noticed that several of the online purchasers said that they were satisfied with their coats but that ordering online took several tries to get one that fit. Since we can drop them off at Kohl’s (the store we are ordering from online) we decided that was the way to go.

By the time I got to the organ I was exhausted. Unfortunately this was one of those rare times when music did not revive my soul. I played some Bach, Scheidt and some French classical composers. Finally I gave up and went home.

Sunday was a little better. Eileen had a hard time sitting in church. She was in tears at the peace and left for a bit and then came back. I suspect Rev Jen’s sermon affected her since Jen alluded to the fact that we never know what’s going on in other people’s lives. I liked the image she used: “In some families there is an earthquake going through the living room.” Nice. But possibly disturbing to my lovely wife.

Many people at church  told me they were rooting for me. One woman called out “I love you” as I passed her. There is only one response. I told her I loved her too and stopped and chatted a bit with her. People’s anxiety is a bit on the high side (understandably). I try to joke a bit to ease the tension. When I told the “I love you” woman that I would post updates on Facebook she said that meant that she and others wouldn’t have to bother me by asking. I told her I liked the asking, I liked the attention. She laughed.

There are others who are going through stuff in their private lives at church. During the homily I found a place to sit next to someone. As I sat, she thanked me for sitting with her. She wept through Jen’s sermon as well. She asked if she could drop by the house later and I said, “Of course.” This morning I found a gift bag from her and her husband on my door knob with a note about my illness.

One man at the coffee hour after church grabbed my arm and told me he hoped I was “taking care of this.” I assured him i was. Often at church I will find that people need to say a word or two to me after the service. I try to be visible for this but not hang around too long for the usual suspects. A couple of choir members were unhappy that there was so much noise during the prelude and postlude played by the violin, cello, and organ. I said that if they don’t quiet for Bach they’re not going to get quiet.

When people complain about this I try to point out several mitigating factors. The first is usually the changing theology around the gathering moment of the Eucharist. My two choir members said that it was a moment for spiritual reflection and preparation for prayer. They both know that I have said that it is a moment for connecting with others and that when the noise is loud, it’s sometimes a good thing.

Secondly I try to mention that there is very little live music in people’s lives these days. Most people listen to a lot of recorded music and tend to treat it as a commodity not something another person is doing in their presence.

These comments rarely help but I make them anyway.

Eileen was still pretty upset on our walk home. I managed to distract her a bit with sitting and watching “Won’t You Be My Neighbor?”

I’m disappointed that this movie about the admirable Fred Rogers doesn’t mention John Costa, his pianist who died in 1996. I remember watching this show with my son when he was a child. I always looked forward to the piano improv especially over the closing credits.

This is a bit of a long post today but I had to catch up since I haven’t been writing the last couple of days. Tomorrow maybe I’ll talk about some of the new books I have been reading.

I am feeling fine. No symptoms other than the lingering rash which doesn’t itch so much as make me worry that it’s part of the cancer. Today my spirits are edging back into unreasonable optimism. This is a benefit of being a person of wide mood swings.

Oh, I forgot to mention that my visit with Dr. Birky my therapist went well on Friday. Also the young trumpet player I work with has actually been practicing and made it through much of the first movement of Hadyn’s trumpet concerto with me. Good stuff.

It’s a little after 8 AM on Friday morning. I didn’t post here yesterday. I was very exhausted from Wednesday and spent most of the day just getting the stuff done that needed to be done like rehearsals.

Eileen’s still in bed. The workers are pounding away (and singing) replacing doors in the back of our house. It looks like the interior trim is not part of the work they do so when they are finished we will still have to have this done. Eileen is still thinking of having the kitchen remodeled so the trim could easily be part of that.

I have the cat sequestered in the master bedroom downstairs complete with litter and food. He is unable to resist supervising the workers.

Today I see my shrink and probably rehearse with the young trumpet player from church.

Yesterday I spent time with Brahms on the piano.

He wasn’t my first choice but I seem to have left favorite Debussy collection at work.

My piano trio prepared a playlist for our appearance at the nursing home next Tuesday. I broke my cellist’s A string helping her tune it up. She has wrist issues and is unable to firmly place the peg deeply in the slot to keep it from slipping. This is the third A string she has broken in a week.  I hadn’t tuned it up very high. It looks like a defective string. At any rate, she had an extra and we put that one on successfully.

I decided to play two of the movements from the Handel organ concerto we have been performing down an octave on the piano. This was surprisingly effective. Dawn the cellist remarked that it sounded like it had been written for the piano.

A couple Christmases ago I gave Dawn and Amy copies of The Real Book. We broke them out in preparation for our nursing home gig and worked out arrangements of about five tunes to go with our Bach and Handel.

I finished Greenblatt’s Tyrant: Shakespeare on Politics this morning. He knows a ton about Shakespeare (He edited the Norton Shakespeare). Excellent read. He obviously has an eye on Trump but doesn’t mention him by name once. Very clever.

I’m on hold with Metro Health where the Laurence McCahill, the oncologist I am expecting to do surgery on my head works.

In the meantime I woke up this morning thinking about doing some composing. The mood I’m in this morning is one of weird optimism. Last night, before I fell asleep, I wondered if I’m in some kind of denial since although frightened of dying soon I remain weirdly calm most of the time. Fodder for discussion with Dr. Birky, my therapist, on Friday, I guess.

Composing is something I do enjoy doing. I haven’t been doing so much of it. “Mental Floss” was my last piece. Instead I have immersed myself in the music of Phillip Glass, Scarlatti, Scheidt. and others including a charming little piece called Triptych by Ad Wammes.

The nurse just picked up. She recognized my name which is a good sign. She told me that they were waiting for a pathology report from U of M. This is a second review of my initial biopsy. She said she will call Friday no matter what to update me on what’s happening. This seems reasonable to me.

I have asked the choir to stay an extra half hour this evening so we can have more time for Christmas music. I might repeat this next Wednesday even though it’s Thanksgiving eve.

NYTimes: Should the Press Boycott Trump? Political Strategists Weigh In

The Library Book | Book by Susan Orlean | Official Publish

Orlean has popped up in podcasts and on PBS. I think she’s kind of pompous but the idea behind this book is interesting. It’s about a fire in a major L.A. library in 1986. Not sure how I missed it. I was in grad school that year. That’s probably it. I do love libraries.

It’s almost 3 PM and I haven’t heard from the oncologist’s office. It’s starting to look like they aren’t going to call today. If I don’t hear from them today, tomorrow I will start calling them until I get results.

I don’t have too much to blog about today. The key stuck in our new back door yesterday. The workers came by today and looked at. They decided they will have to replace the entire lock.

My daughter-in-law, Cynthia, called from California to check in with me.

I have spent the day goofing off, reading and doing some playing.

The second chapter of LikeWar by Singer and Brooking is the best history of the Internet I have ever read.  It’s very helpful to review this history since I lived through it. I’m not sure when I began making my own daily website but I’m pretty sure it was very early in the history. The WaybackMachine Internet Archives shows activity in 2002. But I’m pretty sure I was doing my website before then.

I probably have this info on old hard drives, but I’m too lazy to go looking for it today.

When I moved here in 1987 there was no World Wide Web only the internet. I remember accessing it with a phone modem via a local General Electric hub that had been left over from their company here. Very soon after arriving I remember accessing the university library catalog of Notre Dame using this connection.

Anyway, the history in this book lays it all out in readable prose. I recommend it if you want some easy clear background on the rise of the Internet.

I keep slogging away at Stamped from the Beginning as well. It’s a history of racism and I’m now up to the 60s.

Some interesting ideas from it:

The attempt at integration following the Civil Rights act was itself an act of racism. Instead of working to even out the education for all kids, it acted on the implicit racist premise that if only black students were purchase of diazepam online exposed to white students they would end up the better for it. This is the aspect of racisim that Kendi defines as “assimilation” which simply means the more black people can be like white people the better off they are.

An anti-racist approach would have been to bus kids both ways (something that was rarely done) and sharing of resources and tax revenues. The premise of anti-racism is that black people and white people are not different in any way.

Also IQ tests and SAT type tests originated in racist ideas that one could measure intelligence. If one could do this, reasoned the creator of these tests (Stanford eugenicist Lewis Terman) they would become the “newest ‘ojective’ method of proving Black intellectual inferiority and justifying discrimination.”

Another fun fact is how racist Tarzan movies and the King Kong movie were. If you think about it, both of these movies were codes about African American inferiority. The white guy civilizes Africa. King Kong is forcibly brought to America (like the enslaved) and falls in love with a white woman.

Kendri puts it this way: “Actually, King Kong was nothing but a remake of The Birth of a Nation, set in the island scenery of Tarzan, and then New York. But King Kong did not invite the controversy of The Birth of  a Nation. The filmmakers had veiled the physically powerful Black man by casting him as the physically powerful ape. In both films, the Negro-Ape terrorizes White people, tries to destroy White civilization, and pursues a White woman before a dramatic climax—the lynching of the Negro-Ape. King Kong was stunningly original for showing images of racist ideas—without ever saying a word about Black people.”

Finally my last share from Kendri: “Malcolm [X] condemned the half truth of racial progress bellowing that you don’t stick a knife in a person’s back nine inches, pull it out six inches, and say you’re making progress. ‘The black man’s supposed to be grateful? Why, if the white man jerked the knife out, it’s still going to live a scar!”

I waited until after church yesterday to email the choir about my cancer. I didn’t want my diagnosis to become the theme of the morning at church.

One of life’s little problems is that when you love someone as deeply as I love Eileen, you know that the chances are slim you will both die at the same time.

Someone has to hang on.  Married couples have this information available to them as do friends and lovers. We all die. We all don’t know when unless we choose to kill ourselves or something.

I will keep pointing out that, although my life is not over, it has been a very rewarding one. Eileen says that I love life and that is true. Mark says I am a voracious reader and this is also a joy of my life. One slight disappointment is that I haven’t developed many friendships. But I can be a challenging person to have for a friend and I prefer myself the way I am (always thinking that I can improve on most fronts).

So the trick for me now is not to fall into a false sense of security, a false sense of denial of what is happening, or a morbid understanding of my life as almost ended. The outcome (as usual) is unknown. It’s a bit like performance anxiety. You affect the quality of a performance by concentrating on its assessment as you do it. Better to let yourself experience the moment and beauty without second guessing yourself into some sort of immobile state of anxiety.

Book Note

I am finding LikeWar: The Weaponization of Social Media is teaching me tons of stuff.

I have thought a lot about the Internet as I watched it grow almost from its beginning.

“The internet, once a light and airy place of personal connection, has since morphed into the nervous system of modern commerce. It has also become a battlefield where information itself is weaponized.” from LikeWar

Neil Postman taught me how entertainment had reshaped politics, journalism, and church. These men are teaching me how the internet has also reshaped those three but on a global scale. Not just those three areas but the addition of others including war and terrorism.

“These new wars are not won by missiles and bombs, but by those able to shape the story lines that frame our understanding, to provoke the response that impels us to action, to connect with us at the most personal level, to build a sense of fellowship, and to organize to do it all on a global scale, again and again.” from LikeWar

We inherited some cool copper bottom pots and pans form Eileen’s Mom. I have been wanting to clean them up. This morning Eileen looked up how to do so. It turns out to be very easy. Put half inch of water and tons of salt in a frying pan. Bring to almost a boil. Put enough water in the pot to be cleaned so that it doesn’t float and sit it in the frying pan. Turn off heat and soak for ten minutes.

I have found that rinsing and drying the pot is imperative otherwise some stains return or occur.

I like the looks of these pots when they are cleaned.

While I definitely find thinking about my death frightening, thinking about my own mortality is something I have done regularly  all my life. In the song above (which I have been listening to on and off since my teens), the narrator of the song keeps running across his own tombstone. It has always struck me as a poem about how none of us escape mortality.

I’m not considering changing how I’m living my life just because I may possibly have cancer throughout my body. I’m living my life now the way I want to. Not much to change other than accommodating the way my body doesn’t work the way it used to.

I tell the story about how John Hartford found out he didn’t have long to live. His response was to practice harder. Mine may be to try to read faster or at least more, learn more Greek, and keep playing music.

Guide to Staging — Melanoma – SkinCancer.org

Sorry to be so morbid about this stuff, but this is a page I found helpful.

China’s Xinhua agency unveils AI news presenter

NYTimes: Who Owns the Supreme Court?

I appreciate Greenspan.

Reigns of Terror in America | The New Yorker

“the bloody-mindedness of deranged and broken men can be countered only by principle and fortitude…}

I don’t remember if I shared this link or not. I think I put it up on Facebook. It’s written by Jill Lepore author of These Truths.

It’s been a busy day today. We now are the proud owners of a new used Subaru Forrester. It looks a lot like our old one.

Eileen ran a few vehicles down online. We ended up purchasing this one from a local shop called Prestige Auto which had several used Subarus for sale. The people were very helpful. We paid about 6 K for it cash. The shop we bought it from redid the head gasket and timing belt on it for us as part of the purchase price. These need to be done after 100 k miles. The vehicle has about 120 K on it. We should get another 80 k miles on it.

Eileen and I are coping with the new landscape of my skin cancer. I will be keep people up to speed about this. It’s definitely not a secret. No news on this front.

I stumbled across another amazing book, LikeWar The Weaponsization of Social Media. The point of this book is the impact social media has had on war and crime. I was not aware of how much armies and street gangs are using social media in their skirmishes and street fights. It is a weird story. For example according to this book, “80 per cent of street gang fights that break out in Chicago schools are now instigated online.”

The authors do a good job of describing a new kind of cyber warfare, one of information and propaganda.

I got the call last night from my dermatologist telling me the discolored area on my forehead is indeed a serious melanoma. It’s the kind that if caught early has a good survival rate. Unfortunately we have caught this one late. My dermatologist recommended a surgeon to remove the cancer and check my lymph nodes for possibly spreading. I called the surgeon’s office this morning. They did receive the referral but the surgeon is surgery all day today. They are promising to get back to me on Monday or Tuesday of next week.

In the meantime, though shaken, I am planning on continuing to live my life the way i have been living it. This means Eileen and I will be going out to eat this evening and going to hear the Turtle Island String Quartet at Hope.

Eileen and I have always known that she has an actuarial advantage over me, women living longer than men. In addition her genes probably have longevity in them (judging from the length of the life of her Mom and her Grandmother). Me, not so much. My uncle Richard died of a heart attack when he was 57.

Having said that, I have seen that these sort of things don’t always quite work out like you might expect. I knew a woman at Our Lady of the Lake. Marvelous person. She was a microbiologist as well as a decent oboe and flute player. She saw microbes everywhere and was quite paranoid about it. She was killed in a plane crash with her adult daughter. Well, fuck.

I rehearsed with Mike the parishioner this morning (as planned). He is a very interesting young man. His wife is expecting their third child and she is in the beginning stages of labor. He showed up for a rehearsal with me a few weeks ago telling me he had found out that they were closing his company. He was quite shaken.

But today he had good news. The company had transfered everyone to a different building locally. In the mean time he had put out his resume and had a line on a gig in Novi. I didn’t have the heart to mention my melanoma to him.

I have been coaching him on trumpet (and flugelhorn) for a while. Unlike my piano student, who never practices, Mike takes my advise to heart. This means that he takes his mouthpiece with him on business trips to keep his chops up. He works over trumpet technique books. He has taken my advice to count rhythms more carefully and even found an app to help him do so. Today he rocked. It’s satisfying to see someone do what it takes to improve. He is smart as a whip and I enjoy our time together.

I have had supportive phone calls, emails, and texts from family and friends. I will update this blog when I know more as well.

I purchased a bunch of support hose on the advice of my dermatologist. I have some silly ones.

I wash the red ones by hand, the others I did in the washer. Hung them all to dry.

It snowed last night. Eileen took a picture of it this morning.

Eileen and I looked at cars to purchase yesterday. My Mom’s old car has a thrown rod in it and is not long for this world. Eileen does not like to drive her Mini in the snow and has been scoping out another second car for us. We test drove three Subarus. Though none of them was quite the ticket, I’m encouraged that we might get another Subaru since I liked the old one.

In the meantime, I’m coaxing my Mom’s old car around town. We will definitely use it tonight since there is snow on the ground.

Yesterday the workmen Eileen has contracted showed up and installed a door upstairs.

and the kitchen door.

They’ll come back and finish the job. We’re not sure when. We do know we will have to move the pie safe pictured above to give them complete access to the door frame.

I remembered that the wife of a nephew on Eileen’s side of the family put up this picture recently on Facebook.

Although it smacks of the rapture, the comments she and her friends put on it were about the fact that we all end up in line to die.

My nephew-in-law, Tony, (he’s married to Ben, my brother’s son) called me to offer support and love. He asked if I was going to do anything in response to learning about my diagnosis like travel or something. I told him my life was good. I’ve had a good one so far. I would like more if I can get it.

Although today is a day off, I have a busy day planned doing non work type things. Eileen and I are planning to go out for breakfast, then buy me a new winter coat. In the afternoon we have an appointment with the bank (Eileen is running our money but I need to come along to sign things). After that, Eileen has a mammogram scheduled.

Yesterday also was a busy day off. I learned that there is a way to do last minute practice that pays off. The Handel Concerto we played last night was under-rehearsed. Despite some glitches I was happy with the way I played. I spent some time on scales and Hanon during the day as well as specific rehearsal of the piece. I think this made a difference. I didn’t exactly “nail” it, but I enjoyed doing it and thought it was passable.

I connected with an old high school friend yesterday. When I cook up mushrooms I remember being introduced to mushrooms cooked in butter by Greg Angus. We were both in high school. As I remember it, Greg’s grandmother had a little cottage on the premises of some sort of church campground. Greg’s family was from Owosso but he went to high school at Carman in Flint where I attended. Both of us were without family in Flint and we hung out at his Grandma’s empty cottage together. We were about the same age. Greg studied classical guitar and was a huge influence on me. His mom was a piano teacher and I can remember being at Greg’s house in Owosso and his mom pointing to Bach’s Well Tempered Clavier sitting on her piano and telling me I was going to have lots of fun with it. She was right! But at the time I wasn’t much of a musician.

Greg’s Dad taught in the Flint schools as I recall. He did open classroom teaching which I remember as being unstructured and interesting. I believe my brother was scheduled to take his classes, but they moved away. I think this is an unhappy memory for Mark but I could be mistaken.

Anyway, I looked over the Greg Anguses on Facebook and picked one based on his hair and mouth. It turned out to be the guy. And he still plays guitar. Cool.

Despite all this activity on days off I hope I am gaining a small bit of perspective on my work. I do enjoy the piano trio immensely. We are rehearsing this Thursday and have three more gigs in the upcoming weeks. We will repeat the Handel concerto at church a week from Sunday. Amy, my violinist, asked if we could schedule the trio for church early in December when she has family visiting. She requested that we do one of my compositions. I told her we could play but I wasn’t sure that one of my compositions would fit. The anthem for the Sunday she wants us to play would easily accommodate some string parts. And I have been wanting to perform the last movement of Bach’s violin sonata in B minor. So we will do some Bach on that day.

Later in November we will be playing the November birthday party at the nursing home where my Mom used to live. That should be fun.

This weekend is “improvisation” weekend at church for me. This means no prep and that I make up the prelude and postlude on the spot.

I have done my morning classical Greek this morning but skipped the poetry and non-fiction reading to do this post.

Eileen and I don’t have to vote today because we voted absentee.

An Underground Sensation Arrives – The Chronicle of Higher Education

Weirdly the subtitle of the book in this review seems to be different in the article than in the picture of the book below. I like the one in the article better: Afro-American Currents in the Age of the Haitian Revolution. The slave uprising in Haiti was one of the few successful ones and scared the shit out of white southern American slave holders.

Frederick Douglass’s 19th Century | The Nation

A review of a new book by Eric Foner in which we also learn that Afro American history is a family affair for him, having an uncle who edited Douglas four volumes of speeches. Frederick Douglas is an American genius and one of our “better angels.”

Jane Coaston and Alexander Chee on Politics, Storytelling, and the midterms

This is a link to a podcast. I listened to half of it this morning and learned a bunch of stuff. I’m planning on subscribing to The Weeds podcast after listening to this one.

I nailed my prelude and postlude yesterday. The prelude was a lovely modest trio based on the opening hymn, “For All the Saints,” written by Hugo Gehrke. It’s an obscure little piece but I love it. The postlude was also based on the opening hymn and was a bombastic short treatment by Charles Ore in his inimitable style.

I wasn’t sure if we would have enough robes to go around.  It was late in the rehearsal before I understood who exactly was going to be present. I was preparing the rather elaborate treatment of the opening hymn with the choir, but time was running out if I was going to give them time to put on their robes. Rattled, I ran through the two choral verses and the descant and dismissed them. As it turned out we had lots of time. My boss wasn’t ready to start until well after the hour.

Al Fedak’s recital went well. I found it a bit retro. He played the organ version of Louie Couperin’s Chaconne. This is actually a harpsichord piece and I love it very  much. However, the previous century found brass groups and organists appropriating it. Fedak played well and connect with the audience. I felt like I was in a time machine, but I often do. Living in western Michigan can be a lot like living in the past or at least in the sticks.

Two memories from the recital are stuck in my head this morning. The first one is watching the widower of our previous organist weep at this recital which was a memorial for his dead wife. This was moving. Moving in another way was watching a local millionaire being escorted into the recital late, barely pushing a walker and wearing sweat pants. I wish he had been in better shape. I would love to have teased him about the organ he insisted be installed at the local college since he was paying for it. He was escorted by a retired Hope professor who is a Grace parishioner and had initially resisted installing a tracker at Grace.

Talking with Birky last week about how colleagues and others sometimes have difficult pigeon holing me professionally, he asked if I thought power games had anything to do with it. I think where two or three humans gather, there are power things happening. But it was a new thought or at least an unfamiliar one to interpret my life as a professional outsider from that point of view.

I’m more likely to understand myself as someone who has refused to conform to the necessary norms which confronted me in music. By doing so, I have made my situation the way it is and even  though I bitch about not being recognized, in fact, I am very happy, even passionate about how I see music and my life.

This evening my trio is playing for the local AGO meeting. We are going to do all four movements of a Handel Organ Concerto. I decided that this was best for us for two reasons. First, the parts were available online at IMSLP. Secondly, because unlike some of the Stanley organ concertos whose parts were also available, the violin and the cello have much more important parts (solos, actually) and it gives me a chance to show them off better.

The trio has three more scheduled appearances in the next couple of months, twice at my church and once at my Mom’s old nursing home. At church we will repeat some, if not all, of the Handel for one Sunday and do a couple of very cool movements of a Bach violin sonata at the other. I gave my violinist and cellist copies of the Real Book volume I a couple of Christmas ago. We will add stuff from that for the nursing home gig.

I’m meeting this afternoon for a last minute rehearsal with the trio before this evening. The piece is a bit under rehearsed on my part, but it should be fun to do. I will work on it today. I don’t usually find myself practicing intensely the day of a performance, but that’s the deal today.

I have been neglecting my blog. I haven’t had the urge. My strength and energy is returning after a long bout with a reaction to a new drug. I continue to get up, take my blood pressure (still high), weigh (still too much), floss, brush my teeth, put on my new compression socks, do the dishes, make coffee, and settle down to studying Greek.

I had a good discussion with Curtis Birky, my shrink, on Friday.

I told him the story of how I had cross swords with the executive editor of GIA, Bob Bastini. Bastini thinks that I play the RC folk music with too much elaboration. This is moot because I don’t play much of this repertoire anymore. Also, he rejected all of my compositions I submitted to him. Originally operating from Chicago, Batastini retired to his cottage in Fennville. Now he assists with the local RC church, improving the music quite a bit. Recently he seemed a bit defensive to me when I was talking excitedly about the acoustics of Grace Church. This is odd since he’s the “big kid.”

When I was in Detroit, I discovered I was the same age as a young virtuoso organist named Huw Lewis. I quickly figured out that he and I had completely different philosophies of music. I was jealous of his skill but not his approach.

In the nineties, Lewis accepted the organ professor position at Hope College here in Holland.

I moved here in ’87. It’s like these people are following me.

I’m just kidding about that. I was only trying to make my therapist smile, something which is not hard to do since he has a good sense of humor. He needs it in his line of work.

Talking with Al Fedak the dude who is playing today’s Joy Huttar Memorial Concert, I discovered that he feels that the Hymn Society of America is moving in the wrong direction by including praise bands in their definition of hymnody. Al is two years younger than me and served for a time as choir director for Grace church while he was studying at Hope. I mentioned to him that I admired the Hymn Society’s broad variety of members. I think I did this in a gentle non-reactive way.

Al is trying to figure out what to do with himself at this stage of his life. His gig at a big Presby church in New York is changing. The minister is leaving. The new minister will be a male, Al mentioned. Money is drying up a bit and Al expects to have his salary lowered.

I asked if he has anything else in mind to do. I mentioned that I followed the pattern of H. L. Mencken and am studying classical Greek in my old age. His eyes seem to glaze over when I mentioned that.

He’s a friendly dude, but like Batistini and Lewis (and practically everyone else) sees the musical life a bit differently than I do.  No biggie.

I finished reading Donald Halls book of poems, The Painted Bed, this morning. I may be in a rut since the last three books I have finished reading were by him. I want him to be good, but continue to find his poetry not that attractive.

This might be the best poem in the book. I put here instead of linking it to the New Republic where it was published because like so many web sites and apps these days the page was full of adverts.

Deathwork

Wake when dog whimpers. Prick
Finger. Shoot up insulin.
Glue teeth in.
Smoke a cigarette.
Shudder and fret.
Feed dog and cat. Write syllabic

On self-pity. Get Boston Globe.
Drink coffee. Eat bagel. Read
At nervous speed.
Smoke a cigarette.
Never forget
To measure oneself against Job.

Drag out afternoon.
Walk dog. Don’t write.
Turn off light.
Smoke a cigarette
Watching sun set.
Wait for the fucking moon.

Nuke lasagna. Pace and curse.
For solitude’s support
Drink Taylor’s port.
Smoke a cigarette.
Sleep. Sweat.
Nightmare until dog whimpers.

I remember Burgess’s Enderby critiquing an angry young black man’s poetry, ignoring the anger and looking to the heart of the poems driving the young man crazy. I have that feeling about Hall. His concerns (which I do have some sympathy for… losing his wife) pall a bit and don’t necessary make good poetry. Here’s a few lines from this book I like:

from “Kill the Day”

“He slept on the fornicating bed of the last breath.”

“Her absence could no longer be written to.”

“Without birthdays, she remained the age at her death.”

“Love is the exchange of a double narcissism,
agreement of twin surrender, the weapons laid by,
the treaty enforced by by habitual daily negotiation.”

After The Painted Bed, Hall brought out White Apples and the Taste of Stone.

I wonder whose idea it was to splash his name across the top with the second line reading “Poet Laureate of the United States.” These sorts of things mean less and less to me. Anyway, I have the library’s copy of this book and plan to look through it.

I read a poem by Earl Braggs this morning that I can’t find online to share. It’s called “Science is not Fiction, Wrong is Not a Direction.”

lines I like from it

“…Two boys in love in a small town.
One had to leave so you left, trading everything for nothing
and nowhere stamped PORTLAND on a bus ticket.
This is a good place to disappear. Here the coastline

is rocky like your feelings. You are the King of Deception
and the Queen of Deceit. There is no place where
these two meet. Sure he said he loved you, but he had no one else
to love. Sure

they clapped for you when you read your science fiction,
but that’s what audiences do…”

“… tapes and players don’t care

about the state of this Portland weather forecast. Light rain.

No need for an umbrella. You don’t have one anyway,
so you walk around always in the wrong direciton until
you are soaked

into realizing there is no need to disappear,  in a city
this size, no one sees you anyway.”

the drone by Clint Smith | Poetry Magazine

I was looking for some music today at church and ran across several pieces I had purchased but not looked at since they arrived. One of them was Triptych by Ad Wammes.

When I came home I read through them and liked them then I found the following videos of them to share here. Eileen also said she likes this music.

First an explanatory video from the composer.

Now all the pieces in order.

I didn’t share these on Facebooger. I think they are more to the taste of organists and church musicians than the average facebooker on my feed.

As I mentioned in the previous post, I subscribe to different feeds on YouTube. Here’s some new music.

I love this song. I like this version as well.

I like Pomplamoose. This is a cover, but I didn’t know the original. Looked it up. I like Pomplamoose’s version.

I have been following Denk’s career. He is a heckuva pianist and a very literate dude. I’ve also been thinking about using piano for music like this.

Getting into Bach in a weird way.

Kind of hokey, but I love Keb’ Mo’, the pictures in the video, and above all, the sentiment. I’m putting this one on my Facebooger feed.

I am feeling much much better today and yesterday. The whole energy thing is coming back around. This is a relief since I wasn’t sure that my fatigue was all from the drug reaction. Now I’m hopeful that it was.

I think I’m going to keep this short since I’m tired.

The man in the background is William Lee.  He was the slave of George Washington.  Washington like this guy especially because he was so loyal, unlike Ona Judge and Henry “Harry” Washington. These two managed to escape from Washington much to his consternation.

Below is pictured Washington’s slave chef, Hercules.

He also escaped. It’s sordid stuff. I am reading Clarence Lusane’s Black History of the White House. It’s quite good, if disturbing.

I have been watching a bit more TV since getting a new Roku.  Below is a WindSync rehearsal of an amazing piece of music. I subscribe to their YouTube channel and this popped up in my feed yesterday.

I went to the dermatologist today. He told me I would need to wear compression socks for the rest of my life. As I understand it once the collagen in the skin is stretched, it weakens it so that it cannot return to its original strength and elasticity. I am happy that the socks are working at keeping the swelling in ankles at bay. What the heck. He decided to biopsy the little place on my forehead, so I should know in a couple of weeks if it’s benign or not. He thought it was, but wanted to make sure.

Eileen and I voted by absentee ballot this election. I checked online and found that it was received by the local election.

Social Media—What a Bummer

On Reading ‘On Reading Well’

The author of this review seems conservative, but the book looks interesting to me.

I am feeling out of balance today.

Yesterday I saw my internist. My weight and BP were up in the office. Dr. Fuentes felt it was too soon to prescribe a new BP med since I am in the last throes of my reaction to the old BP med.

My rash continues to abate. I see the dermatologist on Thursday for a follow up visit. I’m hoping that as I feel better I will regain my functioning possibly even muster the discipline to lose some weight.

In the afternoon my two colleagues, Jordan and Rhonda, dropped by for a chat. I’m afraid I was not all that accommodating resorting to grumpy Jupe talk instead of intelligent listening to these two fine musicians (Hi Rhonda and Jordan!).

I’m wondering if I’m moving too close to my work again.

I struggled with choosing music on Saturday to play for the prelude and postlude this upcoming Sunday. It is possible (likely?) that the recitalist will attend this service. I never like to choose my repertoire with an eye to how it would be perceived by another musician. Plus I continue to notice how out of step I am with other musicians.

I endeavored to choose music that would fit my own criteria and ignore how that might be received by someone like the recitalist. I reasoned that I would not want to only improvise the prelude and postlude for the feast of All Saints celebrated (we move the feast to the weekend after Nov 1). Another criterion is not to give myself music that I will have to spend hours preparing. So I managed to land on a couple of chorale preludes based on “For All the Saints,” one by Hugo Gehrke and one by Charles Ore.

I think they are well written modest pieces that fit the service.

This morning I am feeling unreasonably discouraged.

I have been reading Shakespeare and also Stephen Greenblatt’s book, Tyrant: Shakespeare on Politics.

 Greenblatt is not all that subtle about using Shakespeare to comment on the current Trump nightmare.

In King Henry VI part two  Shakespeare creates a character, John Cade, who demagoguery is Trump-like. He promises the mob that he will do impossible things like abolish money and provide for them himself. “[T]here shall be no money; all shall eat and drink on my score.”  He also falsely claims to be a Plantagenet with a legitimate claim to the throne of England.

Greenblatt writes: “Cade himself for all we know, may think that what he is so obviously making up as he goes along with actually come to pass. Drawing on an indifference to the truth, shamelessness, and hyperinflated self-confidence, the loudmouthed demagogue is entering a fantasyland — ‘When I am king as king I will be’— and he invites his listeners to enter the same magical space with him. In that space, two and two do not have to equal four, and the most recent assertion need not remember the contradictory assertion that was made a few seconds earlier.”

“In ordinary times, when a public figure is caught in a lie or simply reveals blatant ignorance of the truth, his standing is diminished. But these are not ordinary times. If a dispassionate bystander were to point out all of Cade’s grotesque distortions, mistakes, and downright lies, the crowds anger would light on the skeptic and not on Cade.”

Hmmm. Remind you of anything?

This takes place in the second part of King Henry VI. I only own the Yale version of the first. I just ordered all three volumes in the Yale version for about six bucks. It seems like important reading for me to do.

Now off to play music from the Fitzwilliam Virginal Book much of which is contemporary to Shakespeare’s time.