from her poem in 2008:

to a song in 2017

Good to find out that Buffy Saint-Marie is still making music.

words:

[Verse 1]
Ooh, you’re slick, you investors in hate
You Saddams and you Bushes, you Bin Ladens and snakes
You billionaire bullies, you’re a globalized curse
You put war on the masses while you clean out the purse

And that’s how it’s done, war after war
You old feudal parasites, ya just sacrifice the poor
You’ve got the cutting edge weapons, but your scam’s still the same
As it’s been since the Romans, it’s the patriot game

[Refrain]
That’s the war racket
It’s the war racket
It’s the war racket
It’s the war racket

[Verse 2]
You twisters of language, you creeps of disguise
Your disinformation’s like worms in your eyes
You privileged bankers, you gambler thieves
You profit on war, you think there’s just less money in peace

So that’s how it’s done, time after time
Country after country, crime after crime
You pretend it’s religion like there’s no one to blame
For the dead and impoverished in your little patriot game

My Scarlatti arrived in the mail yesterday. At the same time, I continue to try to catch up to the scholarship around his work. Imagine my dismay when today playing at random out of Volume VI, the very first piece in my new music had a typo. I couldn’t find something to compare it to online. The Gilbert edition I purchased is the only one for this particular Sonata (K. 256). So I was reduced to looking through my old Longo edition. That’s how I figured out that in the next to the last measure in the piece the soprano line is written a third too low for six notes. Sheesh. At least the Gilbert edition is clean and uncluttered especially compared to the 19th century over editing of the Longo edition.

I found a couple of interesting books related to Shakespeare at the library today.

Tyrant: Shakespeare on Politics by Stephen Greenblatt seems to be pointed directly at this moment in the United States. I haven’t read that much in it yet, but what I have read has been wittily written. By carefully designing his descriptions, Greenblatt makes it obvious that the concerns of today echo concerns of the past.

Writing of the Roman Catholics under Elizabeth, Greenblatt says “The terrorists were not easy to identify since most of them were home grown. Having been radicalized, lured abroad to training camps, and then smuggled back into England, they blended easily into the mass of ordinary, loyal subjects…. The extremists formed cells, praying in secret together, exchanging coded messages, and trolling for other likely recruits, drawn largely from the population of the disaffected, unstable youths prone to dreams of violence and martyrdom.” Remind you of anything?

Sitting not far from this book on the new shelf was William Shakespeare’s Jedi the Last: Star Wars’ Part the Eighth by Ian Doescher.

I’m not necessarily planning to read this one, but I thought it would be fun to look through.

NYTimes: Playing the Long Game for the Supreme Court

Sheet music sharing | MuseScore.com

A free sheet music source I wasn’t that aware of.

Interview: Hew Locke questions America’s ‘Patriots’ : Artimage

So the allergist appointment did not last three hours, thank goodness. Now I have had two specialists tell me they think my rash was a reaction to Losartan, the blood pressure medicine my GP substituted for Valsartan. The allergist said it was unlikely that the asbestos removal and new heating/central air had anything to do with  my reaction. She did test me for general food allergies and came up with nothing. She recommended that I go as hypo allergenic as possible and reviewed all of the health products I use such as hand soap, shampoo, and that sort of thing. She also did not like Dawn dish liquid. Basically we are changing all our products to ones that the allergist recommends. She also represcribed the topical steroid I have been using in an ointment instead of a cream. I will see her again in six weeks.

I managed to give an organ lesson, but by the time I was done I was too pooped to practice and came home. Before the lesson Eileen and I managed to get our new Roku installed. This turned out to be a bit harder than we anticipated due to a faulty extension cord. We have moved the furniture around so that I am closer to the TV screen. I need to make an appointment to see the eye doctor since my vision is getting worse.

Getting old is no fun, but considering the alternative I am a happy camper.

Usually on Wednesday afternoons I try to lay down for an hour or so gathering energy for the evening rehearsal. I thought I would do a post during this time today. I don’t have much to report. I met with Rev Jen. That’s always a morale booster. My morale seems to need boosting. I think it’s a culmination of months of hives, ebbing energy, and the news.

I purchased a new Rokku from Amazon. It came in the  mail late last night. I don’t have the wherewithal to install it today though I am expecting it to be straightforward.

The topical steroid is definitely having an effect. Plus the compression socks are helping keep the swelling down. I have a three hour allergist appointment tomorrow. That sounds exhausting. My organ student wants a lesson after that. I told her we could pencil it in and I would see how much energy I have left after the allergist. I should be fine.

I played through the Fantasia by Byrd that I am going to use Sunday on the Pasi. it sounds fantastic to my ears! I have a jones for Byrd and his ilk lately. I have been listening to The Queen’s Six and playing in my Fitzwilliam Virginal Book.

NYTimes: ‘Use That Word!’: Trump Embraces the ‘Nationalist’ Label

Do you think Trump has any idea of what the word means? I don’t.

I have been reading Sutcliff’s book on Scarlatti. It has inspired me to play a bunch of Scarlatti which has in turn inspired me to purchase better editions of these works.

I own the complete Longo edition, but they are extremely dated and are actually difficult to play from since you have to ignore so much of what’s on the page (dynamics, slurs, articulations, sometimes wrong notes or wrong rhythms).

I ordered four volumes of Kenneth Gilbert’s edition of the Scarlatti sonatas.

I met Gilbert years ago when I was attending Wayne State U. My teacher, Ray Ferguson, took a bunch of us up to hear a master class Gilbert gave at U of M. Ray was a student of Gilbert’s and often quoted him. I have come to think of him as one of those good scholar/player types.

Sutcliff and some of the articles he footnotes (which I am also reading) debunk a lot of my preconceptions of Scarlatti. Actually they debunk some of the speculative aspect of Ralph Kirkpatrick’s book on Scarlatti.

I am not quite the downer debbie I was yesterday.

Eileen and I walked to Evergreen Commons just to check in. We have to check in twice a month or we lose our insurance covered membership. Walking over was just enough exercise for me at this point. My hives are still abating but I’m running low on the topical steroid. I will have to call the dermatologist’s office and request a refill. Originally he prescribed a large container of this stuff for me, but Meijer told me it would take a few days to get it. I then asked the dermatologist to prescribe a smaller amount which he did. But now I see why he prescribed a large amount. I apply it twice a day, but it’s going fast.

I’m trying to get some rest in today. I’m feeling overwhelmed and physically am still not okay. Sunday kicked my butt. Today I have spent most of the day reading, playing piano, and goofing off. I hope this will help my energy reserves build up for the rest of the week.

The ancient metaphor that created modern sexism – The Washington Post

The metaphor is plowing.

Tribalism Isn’t Our Democracy’s Problem. The GOP Is.

I know. I know. The partisans always blame the other side. But there is difference between the parties these days that is startling. For one thing, the leaders of the Democrats are not typifying Republicans as “evil.”

I didn’t read this article all the way through yet.

Startling fact

“Michigan is in the bottom third of states in college degree attainment, with 28.3 percent of all residents aged 25 or older holding at least a bachelor’s degree, compared with a national average of 31.3 percent.” link

This explains a lot to me. Not that having a degree is that much of an indicator of anything.  But most people are not formally educated.

Although, my hives continue to improve, this morning I have a strong case of the blahs and some fatigue from yesterday. My annual appearance in Stewardship the musical at my church usually leaves me feeling a bit deflated. I think this is mostly because each year I’m not clearly informed about how I will be involved and assume I will be able to just pay piano for it. Then I discover that I’m one of the people doing solos. Yesterday I had to dress up like a child version of myself and sing a parody on Piano Man by Billy Joel entitled Piano Boy complete with a beanie provided by the people who organized the thing.

The conceit was that the musical was a prequel to the other two we have done. All the characters were played by children. Except the piano man. Jen promises me that I will not have to do this again next year but I am a bit skeptical.

Fuck it.

On the other hand I have decided to perform a wonderful Fantasia by William Byrd next week and that raised my morale a notch. I like the way this man plays it.

I’m going to split it up into two parts since it is so long. The prelude will be the first five minutes or so of the above recording. The postlude will begin at the second around 4:49 when it breaks into the usual triple meter closing section. This guy plays the hell out of it on the piano. I will have to see if it sounds okay on the organ. If not, I will schedule improv I guess since this is supposed to be improv week. We are singing an anthem by Byrd. I was inspired by that and the wonderful music of The Queen’s Six to play some Byrd. I have long admired the keyboard piece I have scheduled.

NYTimes: My Year as a Trump Ambassador

This confirms what I have been reading about in Lewis’s book, The Fifth Risk. We are fucked.

Bob Woodward’s ‘Fear’ Missed What Matters About Trump – The Atlantic

I’ve read Fear. This is a convincing critique of it.

Elijah Parish Lovejoy – Wikipedia

This guy was actually a white dude who got lynched. John Szwed mentioned him in his bio of Miles Davis.

Thursday evening Eileen and I went to a concert. The performers were The Queen’s Six pictured above. They were amazing. Eileen was gung-ho to go out, but wasn’t expecting to enjoy the concert as much as she did. I found this group fresh, authentic, and eclectic. I especially liked the sound of the two counter tenors.

The group is part of a larger choir that sings regularly at Windsor Castle, their “day job” as they put it. I liked that they do all kinds of music and do it all well.

This was their opening number.

This was their encore.

The bass (third from the left) arranged this. They had a nice mix of musical styles, from William Byrd to Michael Jackson to breathing composers, Nico Muhly and Philip Moore. Here’s the Moore piece:

Although these videos aren’t that old, these men look much younger to me in them.

They did this arrangement as well.

I like how they change their voice production effectively from style to style. I’m also quite enamored of their sound and musicianship. And of course Nico Muhly is a composer I like and follow. He had an article in today’s New York Times about his new opera which opens this evening in New York City.

The topical steroids seem to be helping. My dermatologist might be on to something when he surmises that I’m in the ebbing throes of a drug reaction.

Eileen and I went to the dermatologist this morning. His name is Ronald W.
Reusch and I see by googling him (for an image for this post) that he’s not a dermatologist, but rather a physician’s assistant with some further training in dermatology. He seemed very competent to me. After questioning and examining me he told me he thought my hives were from an internal cause, probably that I am still reacting to the drug that my GP suspected of causing it in the first place. He said it wasn’t unusual for this kind of reaction to last as long as this. Also, each time I did a regimen of prednisone the hives returned in a slightly milder form. He prescribed topical steroid. He also ordered a blood test and asked to see me again in two weeks. My ankles are quite swollen by the end of the day. He recommended wearing compression hose during the day and prescribed those as well.

Meijer pharmacy was out of the the topical steroid. I phoned the the dermatologist office to ask them to prescribe a smaller amount since the pharmacy did have smaller tubes but wouldn’t give me any since the prescription was for a larger amount and doling it out in smaller amounts without a specific prescription would screw up the dose.   I received a text telling me it will be ready tomorrow. That will probably work fine.

We stopped off at a hospital supply type store to pick up the some compression hose. They couldn’t fit me when my ankles are swollen and asked me to come by in the morning before they start to swell so they could measure my feet and lower leg.

I was surprised by the doctor’s diagnosis and hope that he’s right about it being a drug reaction. Hives can sometimes be symptoms of more serious stuff like cancer. I’m hoping that the blood tests will be more conclusive.

Yesterday I managed to plan all the choral anthems through Christmas eve. I’m not sure how well I did rehearsing last night since I was exhausted and feeling pretty bad from the hives. The fatigue and chills can be quite the nuisance. I think I have a pretty good plan for the rest of the year. I hope people can make most of the rehearsals. That’s really what I need. However, I am prepared to adjust the plan (as I have been doing) to reflect who comes.

Well enough. I’m resting up to go out with Eileen this evening. We have tickets to the Hope College Great Performance series concert scheduled for this evening. We may even go out to eat if I have the energy. More later.

Sarah and Lucy landed in England this morning around 8 AM Holland Michigan time. Matthew texted that they home safe and sound by 9 AM. This means both of my daughters and granddaughters Alex and Lucy are now safely back home.

Eileen and I have had a very lazy day. We got up late (me around 8, Eileen more like 10). This is a very good thing since we are both a bit tired from the last couple of weeks.

I finished reading Donald Hall’s first book of poems after his wife died, Without. I’m not sure what I think about it. The grief in it is palpable and arouses my sympathy. I can’t tell if the poems are any good. In fact, they don’t feel like poetry to me since he rehearses many of the facts around the life and death of Jane Kenyon that I already know. No one poem jumped out at me. I continue my examination of his work after Kenyon’s death and have started reading The Painted Bed.

This book holds out more promise for better poems. I also have been dipping into Kenyon’s posthumous collection, Otherwise. The book has been sitting on my shelves. I have read in it but not finished it. It’s interesting to read her poems and think about them after Donald Hall has also died.

Speaking of dead poets, I am reading Leonard Cohen’s The Flame. As I read it I wonder if he is my guilty pleasure. He has written some excellent songs and poems. But many of them are not good. I find that usually I still like them. I’m enjoying this book especially because everything in it is new to me.

Jelly Roll Morton in Washington Webcast | Library of Congress

I stumbled across this last night and watched some it on YouTube. I was very surprised to learn about Szewd’s scholarly work on Jazz. I am eager to see how his bios of Miles Davis and Billy Holiday hold up.

I have read bios of both of Davis and Holiday and have found them unsatisfactory. Szewd’s work looks promising. The local library owns four of his books and I have put the bio of Miles Davis and Jazz 101 on hold.

Davis and Holiday are huge presences in my musical world. Both have a bit of larger than life persona that doesn’t always add up. But I do love their music.

Republicans are terrified of the “left-wing mob”: What really scares them is losing | Salon.com

I think of Salon as a bit of an echo chamber source for me. But I am reading more of those these days. I have this bookmarked to read.

Alternative Nobel literature prize goes to Maryse Condé | Books | The Guardian

I follow Tyhimba Jess on Facebook. He put this link up. I don’t know  Maryse Condé , but I think Jess’s work is amazing and if he speaks highly of a writer I’m interested.

Michigan Voter Information Center

When we dropped off Sarah’s absentee ballot, Eileen and I applied for and received our own absentee ballots. If you’re over sixty you don’t need a reason to request one. I thought I would do so to make sure I haven’t been purged from the rolls by the local Republicans. At the above link, I can follow the progress of my vote after I drop it off.

Juan Williams: Trump, the Great Destroyer | TheHill

I have read Juan Williams’ bio of Thurgood Marshall and like it. However, as a public commentator sometimes he seems too conservative for me.  But his new book looks good. The comments section on the above article flame the hell out of him from the brain dead right. That alone might be enough to make me take another look at what he’s doing.

I’m feeling a little better today. My feet aren’t as swollen. My daughter Sarah did the dishes for me this morning so I didn’t have to stand like I usually do. It’s hard to say why I feel better, but my feet definitely benefited from not having to get up and stand a long time. Yesterday morning I did the dishes for over an hour. Maybe that contributed to not having a great day.

Right now Eileen, Sarah, and Lucy are in downtown Holland shopping. I managed to get over to church before lunch and get stuff ready for tomorrow.

I also dropped by the library and picked up some poetry books by Donald Hall and re-checked out the library copy of Negro Side of the Moon by Early S. Braggs.

I was reading in my copy of Negro Side of the Moon when I noticed that he didn’t keep the long line format throughout. This aroused my curiosity. Comparing the two versions, I find that Braggs rewrote the first 43 couplets extensively making the lines longer by a few syllables. In these first 43 couplets he tidies up the poetry mostly by omitting words here and there. Then in the 44th couplet the new version is the same as the old one and reverts to the shorter line. So far I have compared couplets 44 through 164 and they are the same. I’m planning to continue reading both books to note what changes he made in the old version. I do think that the rewrite improves the poem some, but not that drastically.

In his A Carnival of Losses: Notes Nearing Ninety  Donald Hall writes about how his poetry improved at one point late in his life after Jane Kenyon his wife died. He does this in the essay entitled, “Necropoetics.” It occurred to me that at one point I quit reading his poetry. Or at least I quit following his new books of poetry as they came out. I was interested to see if I agree with him, so I rustled up some books by him at the library today.

I have been reading in Without by him which seems to be poems about his wife’s long illness and death. I’m about half way through. The poems are moving, but I’m not sure how good they are. In his essay, “Necropoetics,” Hall writes “After her death, I was able to assume a diction as potent as Jane’s… In the months and years after her death Jane’s voice and mine rose as one, spiraling together images and dipthongs of the dead who were once the living, our necropoetics of grief and love in the unforgivable absence of flesh.” (p. 146)

What that last sentence is undeniably beautiful, I’m not sure that Hall’s work rose to the level of his wife’s. I had previously concluded that she was a better poet, but that’s just my opinion. I have read more of Hall’s prose than his poems, I guess. I think his prose is pretty good. But I want to investigate to see if his poems really became as good as Jane’s.  The first half of his book, Without, has not convinced me, but I’m still trying to keep an open mind about it. After all, looking for poems I like is something I enjoy doing especially when I find one.

NYTimes: Did Hell Freeze Over? My Republican Dad Is Voting for a Democrat

By Sarah Vowell. I’m a fan of her work.

Elizabeth and Alex are safely back in Beijing. It was great fun having them around.

I’m hoping the trip back wasn’t too stressful. When we last saw her at the airport yesterday, Elizabeth seemed braced for the trip and generally relaxed.

My hives seem to be worsening.

At least I’m assuming that the symptoms I am experiencing are related to the hives. My feet swell quickly as the days wears on.

I am having fatigue and chills. Sarah thinks I should lay off work, but I point out to her that so far I can function at work. It also helps distract me.

On Wednesday I spent some time picking out organ music for October 21. I decided to play one of my favorite voluntaries by John Stanley. While finding this music I noticed a neat little facsimile edition I have of his Opus X, Six Concertos for Organ, Harpsichord or Fortepiano.

Gerald Gifford is the editor of the Stanley concertos and provides a top notch introduction and notes. I took it home and have been playing in it wondering why I hadn’t done so before. The music is wonderful (in my opinion).  I am actually enjoying the fact that Stanley uses several clefs in this facsimile of a contemporary published edition.

Unfortunately I couldn’t find string parts for this opus online. They do exist according to the editor of this edition.

I tend to associate John Stanley with my very first organ teacher, Kent MacDonald,  who told me Stanley was one of his favorites.

My copy of Negro Side of the Moon by Earl Braggs recently came in the mail.

When I read a library book I often use stickies to mark passages that interest me. Then when I purchase the book (IF I purchase it) I go back with the library copy and mark these in my own copy. I had done a few of these in Mr. Braggs book.

I was startled to find that the two books (the library copy and my own) did not have identical pagination.

Upon closer examination I could see that in the new copy the couplets which make up this entire book length poem were lined out differently.

For example the opening in the library copy goes this way:

Point blank is not blank. Right in my face,
there, dangling from the daily newspaper-thin

In the copy that I purchased the open goes like this:

Point blank is not blank. Right in my face, there, dangling
from the thin white arms of a pyschological lynching tree

A close examination of the two books revealed identical ISBN numbers.

I could find no mention of the changes between them. They seemed the same in almost every way. There were a few more pages in the library copy than in the new book.

I began poking around online to see if I could find out something about this discrepancy.

Nope. The publisher had a way to contact them on their pages, but it was only for contacting their sales department. There was a disclaimer that any message they received that wasn’t about sales would not be addressed or answered.

Sheesh.

So I set out to find the author. He’s not on Twitter or Facebook. I did figure out that he was born in 1952 making him exactly Eileen’s age. This explained a bit of why I like his poetry so much, I understood most of his references, especially to pop culture. He’s an old guy like me.

Professor and Poet Earl S. Braggs

Finally on his professor page for the University of Tennessee, he had contact information. His email was a .edu email. Oddly enough there was also a phone number. I felt that it wouldn’t be too weird to email him through his faculty email address so that’s what I did.

Here’s what I wrote:

Subject: A Common Reader has a Question about versions of Negro Side of the Moon

Thanks for reading my book. I was thinking the other day, I write, write, write and no one reads my words. So thank you for proving me wrong. The situation is that the publisher published one version, I complained and they published the second version. I prefer the longer line version.

Peace

Earl

Wow! How cool is that? I love the interwebs.

NYTimes: Divide and Rule

Gail Collins and Bret Stephens, op-ed columnists for the NYT, go back and forth in an unusual civil conversation of people who do not agree. Worth reading. Also, the comment section is enlightening as well.

Opinion | A Really Good Thing Happening in America – The New York Times

Although it’s laudable that David Brooks, a Republican who is appalled by Trump,  is attempting to write a “good news” op-ed, I’m not sure he is convincing about his topic. I’m waiting to hear from Eileen what she thinks of this since she knows about shit like this.

What Clausewitz Can Teach Us About the Weaponization of Social Media

A recent Foreign Affairs article I have bookmarked to read.

NYTimes: The Paranoid Style in G.O.P. Politics

Krugman is commenting from the left, but another good read.

Schneier on Security: Click Here to Kill Everybody

Krugman quotes from this book. Great title.

NYTimes: A Future Where Everything Becomes a Computer Is as Creepy as You Feared

Where I found a reference to the Schneier book.

NYTimes: At Immigration Argument, Justice Kavanaugh Takes Hard Line

But weirdly Gorsuch doesn’t. Supreme Court oral argument that happened yesterday.

NYTimes: In London, a Temple Where You Can Worship at the Altar of Oscar Wilde

Very cool.

NYTimes: Michael Lewis Wonders Who’s Really Running the Government

I liked this quote a commenter put up:

“We are not a country ‘deeply divided.’ We are a country where an extremist minority has seized power through anti-democratic means and is imposing their will on the majority. Our media’s unwillingness to tell that truth is a massive, unending failure.”

Opinion | A Lesson for Kavanaugh From Another Tarnished Supreme Court Justice – The New York Times

 

Linda Greenhouse columns on the Supreme Court are mandatory reading for me. I thought one of the commenters (An obvious Trump supporter) was obviously someone who has drank the koolaid when he says that Kavanaugh will be one of the greatest Supreme Justices of all time. Very odd. Also I found the historical precedent of Hugo Black’s public admission of being a KKK member very fascinating.

I am reading the following 1973 article which Greenhouse quotes and links in her article.

A Klansman Joins the Court PDF

 

I’m trying to rest up for this evening. I had a good meeting with my boss. She asked me if I could take off Thursday, Friday, and Saturday. This is exactly what I’m trying to do, but it’s encouraging to have your boss be so sensitive to you. I feel like I’m off balance and not functioning very well. I am, however, functioning enough to do my job. The hives persist. My feet tend to swell as the day goes on. I also seem to be having more fatigue. Plus in the last week I have had a lot of activities (Funeral, Sunday Eucharist, After service rehearsal of Stewardship the Musical, hosting the recital, then back in the afternoon for Blessing of the Animals, Tuesday morning attending the interring of the ashes.

So here are some pics

Eileen and Sarah put flowers on the grave.

Kokx is Eileen’s Mom’s maiden name.  There are many members of the Kokx family buried in the graveyard by the church.

The nearby church was locked

but the gravedigger kindly let us in.

Eileen’s great-great-grandfather, Evo Kokx, helped build this church. He is  memorialized in a stain glass window.

The saint in his window is Saint Agnes.

I have to stop now and rest up for this evening’s rehearsal.

I had intended to fill up today’s blog with pics from the interment of the ashes of Eileen’s parents. However, my daughter Sarah has borrowed my phone and my keys to go gallivanting . So maybe tomorrow or the next day.

Eileen, Sarah, Lucy, and I drove up to Weare to the cemetery where many relatives on her Mom’s side are buried.

We met Dave and Jill, Nancy and Walt, and Mary there. The ashes were already in the little hole before the huge gravestone. I took pictures and will put them up here soon.

The guy from the funeral home was ill at ease and had nothing prepared. Dave told Eileen that he was disappointed in this. The funeral home guy kept asking us if anyone wanted to say something (no one did). Finally he suggested we all say the Lord’s prayer together (which we did).  Then the grave digger filled in the little hole and Sarah and Eileen put flowers on the grave.

Sarah, Eileen, Lucy, and I walked to the nearby church to see the commemorative stained glass windows in honor of two ancestors.

One of them  (the grandfather of Dorothy?) had helped build the church and that’s what he rated a memorial window (I’m sure the family paid for it). Oddly his window was a picture of Saint Agnus. The other Kokx ancestor’s stained glass window was a picture of of St. Francis of Assisi   (Kokx was Dorothy’s maiden name).

Again this is a pic from Sarah from Facebook. I took a ton of pics some of which I will probably put up here next time I blog.

One cool thing about all of the stained glass windows is that about half of them were of women saints. There was little explanatory sheet we found that had a section called “Equality of the Sexes.” This explanation pointed out that “not many Catholic Churches give equal weight to both male and female saints.” The author of the sheet speculated that since all of the women saints were on the wall to the left of the altar and all the male saints were on the wall to the right of the altar that this might reflect women and men sitting apart during worship.

Right now I’m home and for the moment alone since Elizabeth, Eileen, and Alex went off to Best Buy to return an Ipad keyboard that Elizabeth bought but doesn’t work on her Ipad.

My hives are still with me but seem to be not too intense. My feet are doing some weird swelling however. I’m sitting with them elevated as I type.

I have been found another set of books about Ancient Greek. I have purchased Greek: A New Grammar: Book of Exercises by Juan Coderch. Dr. Coderch teaches at St. Andrews, Scotland, and did a stretch of teaching at Oxford. It appears that he self publishes these texts. I was inspired to figure that out since all of his texts (as far as I can tell) are available in free PDFs on his web site. I love that. It inspired me to buy a few more.

He seems to be sort of a language dude. I find his prose clear and his explanations lucid. He also has translated The Little Prince, 

a Don Camillo short story, and a Sherlock Holmes short story into Ancient Greek. How cool is that? I ordered The Little Prince but am waiting on the second one.

Everyone in the house has gone to the Aquatic Center, the daughters and grand daughters to swim, Eileen to watch. It has been a while since I posted here.

Picking up from last Wednesday (my last post), the evening choir rehearsal went well. I finally have a handle on how to choose anthems for my current crew. We spent some serious time on two anthems I substituted for harder ones.

Thursday I tried to bounce back a bit, but I was exhausted. Friday was the funeral for Eileen’s Mom. As you might expect it was a wrenching experience. There was Mass at her tiny little home parish. Experiencing church as a worshiper seems to drive me away from all churchy kind of stuff. But this wasn’t about me. Eileen was comforted by having our daughters and granddaughers with her. Plus my brother and his wife drove all the way over to be there and that helped her as well (Hi Mark and Leigh!).

Saturday I made the programs for Sunday’s recital. Sarah pulled together another poster for Grace Notes, this time the one for November. She had difficulty accessing her computer remotely and had to have the assistance of her lovely partner, Matthew.

Sunday was a marathon for me. Eucharist followed by a rehearsal of Stewardship: the Prequel, recital at 2 PM, and a blessing of the animals at 5 PM. Nothing was very stressful or difficult in and of itself. The choir knocked it out of the park. I had a visiting musician give me many compliments including nice words about how well the choir sounded. He asked about the service music I wrote that we used and I directed him here. By the end of the day I was exhausted. I’m tired now but don’t have to do anything today. Tomorrow we drive to Hart, Michigan to put the ashes of Eileen’s Mom and Dad in a grave.

NYTimes: Susan Collins Is the Worst Kind of Maverick

I’m finding the comment section at the New York Times fascinating. The  NYT selects certain comments and puts them in a subdirectory called New York Times Picks. This saves some time. Lately they seem to be choosing comments from the right wing perspective. In this article, these were almost half of the “picks.” But a quick perusal of the “Readers Picks” (i.e. those most recommended by readers) restored the liberal bias of the readership.

I wasn’t impressed with Collins behavior around the Cavanaugh confirmation. Neither was I surprised.

NYTimes: The Coming Storm Over the Supreme Court

Some history and background on how the Court has been challenged and changed.

Spend It All [by Robert P. Baird] – The Best American Poetry

This essay was  mentioned in the latest Best American Poetry collection. Bookmarked to read.

NYTimes: Hoaxers Slip Breastaurants and Dog-Park Sex Into Journals

The fact that these writers managed to fool professional journals seems to have pissed off many people. I think it’s funny and evidence of how bogus scholarship can be at its worst.

I spent the morning using the church copy machine to make legal copies of anthems and other things to stuff into the choir slots. I started stuffing them but then it was time to come home. Nobody here. Eileen, Sarah, and Lucy were off doing errands. I texted them, then waited a bit, then made my lunch. They came while I was preparing my lunch.

After lunch, I went back to work, met with Rev Jen, gave a piano lesson, then finished stuffing new stuff in the slots and filing the old stuff.

Now I’m home resting up for this evening’s rehearsal. I decided I could do a little blog during this period.

Sarah missed her connection yesterday so her flight was about an hour or so late. We were already on our way to the airport when we received a text from Sarah telling us she was going to be late. We decided since we were half way to the airport to go to Schulers.

Eileen bought a couple kid books for the grand daughters.

I purchased Jill Lepore’s These Truths.

This is on my list of books to read. Also I purchased what looks to be Donald Hall’s last book, at least until posthumous ones come out. He died this year.

I finished reading Bob Woodward’s Fear.

I didn’t find this book as disturbing as I expected. Mostly it was descriptions of behind the scenes give and take around governmental issues. It’s not surprising to me that Trump is unsophisticated. His unchanging views expressed in this book help me understand many of his moves as president. They are disturbing, but I was already disturbed by them.

After Woodward, I started reading Jamieson’s book above. This seems to be a clearly researched and documented book that is helping me think about social media and the damage done. Somewhere I read or heard on the radio about the fact that most extreme memes originate not with Americans but with anonymous people like the Russians. This can be an encouraging thought since I keep trying to believe in the redeeming nature of humans, even Americans.

Anthony Burgess is being republished in fancy, edited new editions. While looking at them I discovered a title by him that I had not read. I interlibrary loaned it thinking it would be one of the new editions. I seem to remember the library citation as saying it was. However, I either am misremembering so someone miscatalogued the book, because it wasn’t a new edition.

But I enjoyed reading a Burgess novel that I haven’t read before. I finished it yesterday.

The Donald Hall book is sheer guilty pleasure reading and I am planning to read it after doing this post as I rest for this evening.

The Jill Lepore will wait until I finish Ibram X. Kendri’s Stamped From the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America. 

Brett Kavanaugh: why Republicans don’t care that he’s a liar – Vox

I keep finding helpful articles on Vox despite it’s obvious bias (which is my own, namely liberal). This article cites a study that found that there is weird authenticity in the  “… the idea that lying is not only acceptable but seen as a sign of a certain kind of honesty, if done in service of a traditional group under threat from an upstart social movement.”

Further the author of the article extends the findings of the study and says that “..conservatives are lining up to defend their nominee to be the fifth vote on the Supreme Court against allegations of sexual assault. It’s a defense of social group and status hierarchy against an upstart challenger, just like in the study. This is what made his fiery opening testimony so effective, at least for conservatives: It appealed to their sense of in-group threat and partisan identity.”

Sarah and Lucy are on a plane and on their way to Michigan.

This morning I played through this Pavan and its Galliard.  I do love Byrd’s music. It is such a wonderful thing to be able to play coherently through this stuff. I am playing out of copies of the Fitwilliam Virginal Book I purchased on the advise of the instructions for assembling my Zuckerman harpsichord kit. Now at this age, I can sit and play successfully through most of the pieces in it. Cool stuff.

Yesterday I was thinking as I played through Back preludes and fugues from the second volume of Well Tempered Clavichord, that when I was about 20 or so and attending Ohio Weslyan U, studying composition, I told my fellow students that all the keyboard technique I really wanted at the time was to be able to successfully negotiate the Well Tempered Clavichord. It’s no exaggeration that I have that skill now. I am very grateful to be able to sit down and render these wonderful pieces. I also love thinking about what Bach does in them which is pretty amazing.

I was chatting with Brian Colye this weekend at church. He’s not that much younger than me. We were talking about Nate Chinen’s Playing Changes. Brian immediately understood what fun I am having pulling up the many albums mentioned and/or recommended in this work. It is an amazing time. We talked about discarding our CDs in favor of digital recordings. The conveniences of these things is amazing. Brian said he still has a few old vinyl records. I confessed to having more than a few and that I do return to them this morning from time to time.

This morning while cleaning the kitchen and making coffee I listened to my beloved Robert Johnson.

Post script: This blog has been sitting here all day waiting for me to post it. Consequently Sarah and Lucy have now safely arrived.

Life is good.

I haven’t blogged for a couple days so here goes. Eileen continues to need TLC. I signed her out of all choir activities for a while (at her request). I came home from church yesterday and offered to take her out to eat and then shop for shoes. But she demurred. She knew that I was pushing myself on a Sunday afternoon to do that and she decided not to ask me to do so. She would go alone to buy shoes.But after lunch she changed her mind. Daughter Sarah would be glad to go shopping with her after she arrives from England.

I need to do some work today on rearranging the anthem schedule for the choir. I made an overly ambitious initial list of anthems for the fall. I have had to readjust several of them to make them more doable. In addition, though we have some new people, overall attendance has been erratic. Nothing to do but adjust the anthems. I’m hoping to do some of that today from home. I’m thinking of more part singing, probably SAB would be best since I have had only bass singer (bless him) for the last few meetings.

I was thankful for my new approach to my work yesterday (improvised preludes/postludes biweekly). The morning Eucharist was a breeze. The last minute anthem introduced Wednesday went well. I tempered my improvised prelude and postlude with silences after the gospel and a small silence after communion. These are times I sometimes insert a clever improv.

The silence was timely as Rev Jen used the old Testament story of Esther to talk about the divisions in our country at this time, directly referring to the Kavanaugh hearings last week. Though she did this, it was admirable the way she was constructive and helpful. Good sermon. I approached a Republican in our midst after church to chat him up. These are bad times in America. We need each other more than ever.

I’m only five chapters away from finishing Woodward’s Fear:Trump in the White House. What is emerging for me is a portrait of a president who views everything in the world from the point of view of cutthroat business practices. It helps explain his continuing preoccupation with tariffs and taxes. What a country.

Daughter Sarah and granddaughter Lucy get in a taxi in the wee hours of tomorrow morning, local England time. I know these trips can be arduous, but I think having her and Elizabeth and the grandkids around for this time of mourning is exactly what Eileen needs.

NYTimes: Yo-Yo Ma Wants Bach to Save the World

Bach and Yo-Yo Ma. What’s not to like?

Lindsey Graham’s Brett Kavanaugh rant, and history with Trump, explained – Vox

Vox is a left leaning web site. Despite that, it is plausible that Graham’s recent mysterious partisan rant was a job interview with the sitting president. What a country.

NYTimes: James Comey: The F.B.I. Can Do This

Comey is problematic, but he seems sane compared to current leadership.

NYTimes: Trump Can’t Win the War on Demography

It continues to occur to me that it is the simple changing face of America which challenges the unabated sick racism of our heritage.

I put this book on hold at the library this morning. Ibram X. Kendri footnotes it when he suggests that Teddy Roosevelt gave the “White House” its name after inadvertently offending racists by inviting Booker T. Washington to a sit down dinner at the site.

I want to find more corroboration of that notion but flipping through this book.

Eileen came home yesterday, exhausted, drained, and fragile. It is good to have her back. This has a been an extremely difficult time for her. I’m glad that she finds being with me comforting. It’s a difficult thing to watch your Mom die. I am pretty sure that Dorothy did not suffer, but it was hard on her kids to watch her ebb away.

Daughters Elizabeth and Sarah and granddaughters Alex and Lucy, are planning to come for this funeral. This will help Eileen immeasurably . And it will be fun for me to see everyone as well.

I’m about half way through Earl Braggs’ book length poem, Negro Side of the Moon. Braggs couplets avail themselves of our history in America and are clear eyed and angry.

It begins:

Point blank is not blank. Right in my face,
there , dangling from the daily newspaper-thin

white arms of a psychological lynching tree
hands me, disguised as a sign, a poster-child

piece of paper. Point blank, an all-every night
billboard without a hint of apology. Dangling

dead-stiff as if an opening night Tivoli Theatre
marquee all too eager to sell the price of a ticket,

admission fee, me: “Just another city nigger-
night boy shot dead in the head,” red blood red

Bragg quickly hits his stride, wielding literacy, accurate understanding of the history of slavery and the present moment of racial hate, and a satisfying post modern sensibility.

It’s not too long before he bitterly begins a theme of “If only we had arrived without the difficult history of …”

… If only we had only arrived
without the difficult history of difficult

music. Jazz. If only slave trading tall

(tale) ship songs had not re-translated

so easily into …. Black on Black crime
a white-collar corporate American

financial “re-invested” investments
good BUSINESS opportunity, wide

open for, as per usual, not a crime
at press time…..

Now for a couple little sections I marked that I liked:

June 17th 2015 at approximately
9:05 Easter Carolina standard

Time. Motive: ugly love, heritage
and hate. It’s beyond way too late

to take a Confederate flag down.
Put it up, let it fly, let it unfurl

to reveal the truth of these (we
see and do not see) trying, crying

times. it’s 1963 all over again
and the 16th Street Church of

Birmingham, Alabama burns….

And this:

What does an American Express

credit card “really express? Flat-out
broke and not broke simultaneously.

Mark is also reading Stamped From the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America by Ibram X. Kendi.

This week I learned from this excellent history that from the period of 1889 to 1929 (40 years) there was an average of one lynching every four days.

Back to Braggs’ poem:

… Let us now
take a look at what is really buried 

in the carefully kept, meticulously
manicured graveyard science of

Beautiful Whitesboro, New Jersey.
Beautiful Lynchburg, Virginia.

Beautiful Lynchburg, Tennessee.
Beautiful Whiteville, North Carolina.

Ida B. Wells, a slave ship daughter,
born in Holly Sprints, Mississippi

in the year of “Our Negro Lord”
1862, months before emancipation

documented lynching in America
the Beautiful…

The racism is in the bloody names of American cities, eh?

The first of the supplementary Greek studies arrived in the mail today. Peter Jones’ Learn Ancient Greek reflects the sense of humor this Joint Association of Classical Teachers writer and editor. It’s a romp of book and I have already read a few chapters.

This pocket dictionary was also recommended. It came today as well.

I stumbled across Seamus Heaney’s book of essays, The Government of the Tongue: Selected Prose 1978-1987 at the library the other day. I’m on the fifth essay and enjoying it.

Eileen’s Mom passed away last night. As I write this she is still in Whitehall with the family planning the funeral. As it stands, It will be a week from tomorrow. I think this has a been a difficult but healthy time for the family as they said good bye to their beloved Mother. Dorothy was 94 years old and was pretty lucid. I hope and pray that she was comfortable. I think she was.

Eileen came home briefly Monday evening and spent the evening here in Holland. She returned on Tuesday after a call from her sister Mary telling her that Dorothy was failing. So I have been doing quite a bit of batching it.

My day yesterday was pretty crazy. Eileen had scheduled Baumann and De Groot to come and finish the job of furnace/air conditioning installation. During their installation they inadvertently shut off all outside faucets. Eileen didn’t figure this out right away. But when she did she contacted them and they made plans to fix it on Wednesday arriving around 10 AM.

Unfortunately this was also one of two possible scheduled electricity outages from our local Board of Public works. And of course at 10 AM yesterday morning all electricity ceased  in my house. I called Baumann and De Groot who decided they could go ahead with their work without electricity.

The workman arrived and in the course of trying to keep the cat the house I managed to lock myself out of the house right as the workman left to get more materials for the repair. The front door was locked and so was the back. The workman had wanted to come into the basement through the door on the basement landing. After he had assessed the situation, he stepped out through that door and I pulled it shut immediately realizing that I was locked out.

The work man asked me if he could help me get back in. Next time, I will definitely say yes, but this time I thought I could probably open the front door by reaching through the open windows. This was not the case. I managed to get one window too far from the door to reach it and began to crawl in.

In doing this, I inadvertently swung my foot up and completely shattered the glass in the window which at that point was above my head and torso. I am happy to report that I was very lucky and suffered only a couple minor cuts from the glass. I moved carefully and crawled into the porch feeling pretty stupid but lucky not to be bleeding profusely.

All of this was occurring on the my busiest day of the week. This week was especially busy because we had our first staff meeting of the Fall complete with a luncheon together. I also had a meeting with Jen scheduled and a piano lesson to give not to mention numerous tasksI to prepare for the evening choir rehearsal.

I have been cutting back on alcohol. But last night at the end of the day I had a martini. What a day!

Black Female Lawmaker in Vermont Resigns After Racial Harassment – The New York Times

The racial madness in our country is unabated.  It makes me crazy.

How Russia Helped Swing the Election for Trump | The New Yorker

This article inspired me to purchase a Kindle copy of the book reviewed.

NYTimes: Trump’s America: Reckless, Alone and Ridiculed

Trump’s performance at the UN is a new low in American statesmanship. I can’t imagine how the history of this period will be written. I am certain it will not be described as one of the times we found our better angels.