Eileen and I have busy little bees today. Before Eileen got up I moved the lighter electric keyboard to my study.

Then after breakfast, we decided to go get my marimba from the church.

While we were there I met Stephen Rumler the new music guy for Grace. I also chatted briefly with the rest of the staff. Jen and Jim are planning to move the harpsichord home early next week. Woo hoo!

Then we came home and put stuff in the upstairs music room.

We rested for a little bit then decided to unpack the new book shelf and bring in the parts.

Eileen seems to be beginning to assemble this thing. I’m a bit pooped myself but we’ll see how far she gets.

The guy from the glass place came and took out my window to take to the shop and fix. I’m expecting him back today sometime. This afternoon I’m expecting a man from the Sharp Construction company to come and give us an estimate on replacing the storm door and some siding off our upstairs. I called and started a claim with my insurance company about this.

I also called Grace church and talked to Mary about getting some help moving the harpsichord. Rhonda was willing to help but it didn’t work out for her due in some part to my not wanting to do it after her husband gets off work. I’m hopeful that Mary who really runs thing over there will rattle some cages for me and find someone for me to hire to move it. If not, I will find someone to hire to move it for me. I’m getting too old to move it by myself.

I finished reading three translations of Dante’s Divine Comedy. I found it very helpful to read three at at time since they were so very different. Sandow Birk and Marcus Sanders are surfers who know each and other and collaborated on a contemporary language version. Very helpful but no notes. John D. Sinclair’s version is one that has the Italian on one page and his prose translation on the facing page plus a little essay for each canto. Finally the Dorothy L. Sayers is a rhyming translation. She also did the notes for the Inferno and the Purgatorio but died before she was able to do notes for Paradiso. Her colleague, Barbara Reynolds, ably completed the notes for the last volume.

By reading these three at the same time I think I got more out of it than doing them individually. I definitely got a lot more out of it than I did when I read classic J. M. Dent version. It is good and I relished following in the footsteps of Juan Louis Borges and T. S. Eliot who both used it. But I got so much more out of doing it consulting three different versions.

It has taken me quite a while to finish this little project.

Before driving down to the beach yesterday, we stopped and picked up the library’s copy of The Hidden Musicians: Music Making in an English Town by Ruth Finnegan which I had interlibrary requested. This is a fascinating little book whose title I picked up from the bibliography in Keith Negus’s Popular Music in Theory: An Introduction. Finnegan is intent on examining all music making in Milton Keynes, Buckinghamshire, U.K. This little city is not far from where Sarah lives so that’s part of the attraction, but also I like Finnegan’s approach to taking each musical activity on its own terms and keeping her range so wide. She researched it in the 80s. I read the first chapter yesterday and am enjoying it immensely.

Finally, Eileen and I have been enjoying this beautifully performed YouTube video. Recommended.