I can hear thunder quietly rumbling this morning. Often in the morning I can hear trains passing far away. it’s dark usually. I find all this relaxing as I go about my mundane morning routine.

When I first came to Holland to live, I was startled by the homogeneous nature of the population. Of course, I wasn’t seeing it clearly. It seemed as though it was largely a white group of people. After a bit of observing all these white people also seemed to be religious conservatives. Yikes!

I didn’t see the brown people who were either picking blueberries or descendants of brown people who had come to the area to do so. Many but not all of these descendants were busily distancing them from their heritages and quickly falling into step with the local white conservatives.

I have wondered, where are the brown people? Where are the black people? I have been learning some interesting answers reading Old Wing Mission: Cultural Interchange as Chronicled by George and Arvilla Smith in their Work with Chief Wakazoo’s Ottawa Band on the West Michigan Frontier edited by Robert P. Swierenga and William Van Appledorn.

I did try to learn about the local history when we first arrived in 1987. I learned about the Dutch Reformed Churches and that they had split right here in Holland forming the two American branches: Reformed Church of America and the Christian Reformed Church. If I had tried to learn more about who preceded them here, there was not much information easily available at that time. If I had my wits about me I might have checked with the Holland Museum. But I didn’t.

Now that I am looking into this more carefully, I note that much of the research has been published after we arrived here including the book above (2008).

Old Wing Mission consists of an edited version of diaries by both George and Arvilla Smith. The first chapter which I read yesterday is a history by Swierenga that begins in the early 19th century.

As best as I can make Roman Catholic missions weren’t going well locally for whatever reason. Swierenga tells a story of George N. Smith arriving from the East, becoming ordained in the Presbyterian Church. After a specific plea from the shrewd Chief of the local Ottawa band, Ogamah Winine, Smith became convinced of his missionary calling to the Ottawa. Ogamah Winine is referred to in the book as Chief Joseph Wakazoo. Only once, so far, has Swierenga used his original name. He indicates that the correct spelling of Ogamah Winine is unknown.

The Chief needed Smith in several ways. It would help to have a white man negotiate the quickly changing policies of the U.S. government. There were monies and land available for native people from the goverment. But getting it was hard if you weren’t white. Ogameh Winine and his mother quickly converted from Catholicism to Protestantism. Before too long Smith was the proxy buyer of land on the southwest corner of Holland where the Old Wing Mission Building still stands.

After a very nice lunch yesterday, Eileen and I drove out to take a look. The building is currently privately owned. My reading tells me the interior has been remodeled and some of the original buildings are long gone.

I snapped a picture of the historical marker in front of the building.

The “Old Wing Mission” is named after Chief “Wing,” Ogameh Winine ‘s recently deceased brother. The book does not tell what “Wing” ‘s real name was. It’s the “old” Wing Mission because Smith and Ogameh Winine eventually decide to leave the area and move to the leelanau Pennisula north of Traverse City where the Ottawa band migrated each year for the summer. There they presumably established a New Wing Mission.

Before too long, the Catholics come back with a vengeance. Smith took decades to learn the Algonquin language spoken by all three indigenous peoples of the Michigan area: Ottawa, Potawatami, and Ojibway. The ‘black robes” as the indigenous referred to Catholic priests were more fluent. Father Andreas Viszosky established a Catholic mission about where the current Heinz Factory now sits.

A struggle begins between the two missionaries. The Catholics have many attractive attributes. Cool ceremonies, more tolerant than the Presbyterians especially about drinking. Smith made his converts sign pledges of abstinence. Viszosky presumably would discourage drinking but forgive the sin and did not require signed pledges most of which were not necessarily kept faithfully.

I don’t mean to be glib about this. Drinking is still a problem among surviving native peoples. But the whole missionary story is distasteful. The reader knows the ending. The indigenous people were subject to genocidal treatment in our country.

So, I appreciated the book starting with these sentences: “The history of the American Indians has been told largely by white Americans. This book is no exception.”

Like good scholars Swierenga and Van Appledorn are looking to understand and describe history.

Before too long the Dutch arrive and that is ultimately the final blow to the situation. The Ottawa Band could stand it no longer. The whites were taking over. Time to leave.

I do wonder about the history preceding this time.. I know the “black robes” had missions on Lake Michigan up and down the shore much earlier. That history also interests me.

I am planning to join the local historical society soon. I am reading a library copy of Wing Mission and figure they probably sell it at the museum. I would rather buy it there.

I’m having trouble embedding or linking just one episode of a podcast I listened to this morning.

The Podcast is Into the Zone. It is hosted by Hari Kunzru, the author of Gods Without Men.

The first episode is called Druid Like Me and is quite good. Kunzru has some very fine insights about England, his home country. I recommend listening especially to my British readers (Hi Sarah and Matthew!) Here’s a link to the web page. You will have to scroll down for this episode which is also available in the ways you usually listen to podcasts.

Speaking of Brits, Eileen and I watched a few episodes of Bill Bryson’s TV series based on his book, Notes from A Small Island. Made in the nineties when we were all younger (Bryson is about the same age as Eileen and me), it’s fun to get a Bryson look at the country he has adopted. Stephen Fry is a cab driver in the first episode. Recommended as a fun, slightly blurry distraction.

This morning is my first Sunday in retirement. I am reminded of a teacher I knew at Ohio Weslyan, Tilden Wells. Eileen and I visited him after he had retired. When asked how he felt about it, he said that when the class bell first rang after he retired (Class bells? Ohio Weslyan must have had them. I don’t remember them), after that bell rang, Tilden claimed to feel a slight pain in his left testicle.

I don’t even have that. My release from this work has been mostly painless. I have quickly subsided into what feels more like normal living.

I think I need to pull back from starting any projects for a while. I toyed this week with doing some writing already, but I want to give myself a pause. Some time to think before starting any new routines besides reading, practicing, and studying would be well spent.

I chatted with both my daughters yesterday. Elizabeth drove over for a quick overnight visit and brought Alex. Jeremy is on a business/family trip. He should be back by tomorrow. Eileen and I have a weekly video chat with Sarah. What a luxury for me to see both of my daughters on the same day!

As you can see, I figured out how to embed videos with the new WordPress software. It’s ridiculously easy. When I copy an embed url into block text, the software automatically converts it into an embedded video.

I discovered that the score I purchased to the second string quartet of Charles Ives is woefully out of date.

I compared a library copy of Malcolm Goldstein 2011 critical edition to the used 1954 edition I purchased.

There were significant differences. More measures restored in the Goldstein edition.

Ives published few works during his lifetime.

Those few published works were rarely performed. He left tons of manuscripts of his works. But his hand was not that clear and he used pencil. So Goldstein’s edition is better and takes into account all the Ives research that has been done.

I wasn’t exactly doing a comparative study. I’m interested in Ives use of hymn tunes and other melodies in his work and especially in the string quartets. I have been listening to them and can hear many musical quotes. Goldstein points out musical quotations and sources. Also, like Satie, Ives was known to write comments in the scores for performers. Unlike Satie’s sardonic and charmingly intentionally misleading comments, Ives reflected his hard scrabble new England personality. Comments like “pretty tone, ladies” and “This is music for men to play…”

Ives envisioned writing a string quartet specifically for four men to play and left comments about the “weak, trite, and effeminate” string quartet music, even referring to it as “emasculated.”

As I began marking the tunes and comments into my used score, I discovered measures missing in the old edition. Dang.

In my listening, I have found the first string quartet more interesting and relevant to my own learning. David Porter has updated that piece in a new edition.

Both the Porter edition of the first string quartet and the Goldstein edition of the second are $49.95 new. Although this includes parts for the strings (which I do not need), this is more than I want to pay for a study score.

I was able to get the Porter edition used for $15 plus S & H. I haven’t started studying it yet, but am looking forward to it.

Along the same lines, I am reading Vaughan William’s collection of essays, National Music and other essays. I admire the way these composers integrate melodies into their work. Plus, listening to Brahms this morning, I was inspired by his melodies as well.

That’s about all for today. If Eileen and I stay true to form, we will eat out today. First real day of retirement and life is good.

Finished Hari Kunzru’s God Before Men last night. About 4/5ths of the way in, this reader lost heart. Iuspected that Kunzru wasn’t going to tie all his loose ends together. After I finished the novel, I could see that I had not read carefully enough and the loose ends did make sense but I needed another chance. So I started on a second read.

Before doing that I figured out why I was reading this book in the first place. To the best of my knowledge I ran across Kunzru when he was featured in a NYT “By the Book” interview in March 2017. Although this novel is not mentioned, I must have done some checking around and found a used copy online and purchased it.

It sat on my to-read stack until recently.

The first time I read the book, I carefully noted the shifting times of chapters in the back fly leaf. I did so because there was no table of contents. One would have been helpful. Glancing over the shifts you can easily see that most of the story takes place in 2008-2009, since he alternates sections in the past with those.

This time I am catching much more since I recognize characters that he slyly puts in the beginning hundred pages of the book. I should have paid more attention.

After a puzzling quasi Native Indian parable about Coyote learning to cook meth in the desert, the first chapter ends with a character being actually welcomed into a flying saucer by aliens in 1947. It was quite some time before I understood that the character was hallucinating this. On a second read I can see why. It’s presented in way that made me think that maybe this incident actually, somehow, happened and the book was going to explain it.

My concentration wandered during the second chapter of the book which takes place in 2008. . It’s a lengthy description of an English Rock and Roll Band working or failing to work in a studio in L.A. Maybe Kunzru thought readers would be interested in this band, but I found the descriptions of the band struggling and falling apart accurate and therefore discouraging and a bit boring. I didn’t realize until the second read that Nicky, one of the band members, is important to the plot. He ends up driving by himself to the desert and holing up in a little motel near the same spot that the beginning section takes place in.

Place is practically a character in the book.

I just did some poking around to see where this story takes place. There is a rock formation called Trona Pinnacles. “Trona” does not mean three. It is the name of a mineral which results from the evaporation of salt deposits. “Pinnacles” is the word Kunzru uses to describes three mysterious columns of rock that figure into every story in the book that takes place in the desert. Trona Pinnacles is in the Death Valley National Park.

I don’t think Kunzru is being literal in the setting of his story.

In her essay, “That Craft Feeling,” which I mentioned in previous post, Zadie Smith talks about writers who are “macro planners” and ones who are “micro planners.” As you might suspect the latter map out their novels with great planning and detail, the former basically start with the first sentence and write towards the last. Smith is a “micro” planner. Kunzru is probably more of a “macro planner” since this book is very planned and crafted.

I was hoping that was the case. The book wanders around quite a bit depends on an alert reader. I’m not sure I fall into that category.. After I finished the book, I thought about the title which is only referred to in the French epigram at the beginning of the book. “Dans le désert, voyez-vous, il y a tout, et il n’y a rien . . . c’est Dieu sans les hommes.’” which I translate loosely to mean “In the desert, you see, there is everything and there is nothing, it is God without men.” Or something like that. This is a quote from a story by Balzc.

So not only does Kunzru tie it all together there are some interesting points he is making. Time for a second read.

‘Race is a lie’ Hope panel explores race, racism

This is about a local panel at Hope College. I can’t tell if Kevin Kambo’s ideas are silly as they seem (Race is an idol) or if the reporting is at fault, but this discussion seems woefully misguided and ill-informed.

I made the mistake of taking the WordPress software update on its own terms and not at least trying ways that I used the old version. Most of them work. That’s good. I can even see improvement. The help videos were useless to me. My orientation toward what I am doing is so different from techies. I spend most of the time watching help videos waiting for them to get to something that interests or helps me. This is another reason I prefer written help sections.

Thank you, Sarah Jenkins, for pointing out the easy way to do word count on this update!

Elizabeth and Alex arrive this morning. My morning often begins around 6 AM and Eileen’s after 9 and sometimes later than 10, so “morning” is a bit of a nebulous concept in this context. I moved most of my stuff from the study/guest bedroom. I’m still sitting at the desk right now. But it’s around 7:30 AM and Elizabeth and Alex probably wont arrive soon.

I gave my brother Languages of Truth: Essays 2003-2020, by Salman Rushdie and keep forgetting that I did so, to his amusement. I have read the first chapter of it three times now.

First, as an adapted essay in the New York Times Book Review I first read back in May. The online version is fun because of the illustrations that are not in the book. Secondly, I read it as the first chapter of the book. Yesterday I read it for a third time.

As usual I marked some sections.

We are born wanting food, shelter, love, song, and story. Our need for the last two is not less than our need for the first three.

Regarding Randall Jarrell’s notion that “A novel is a prose narration of some length that has something wrong with it” Rushdie writes this beautiful paragraph:

So: If a novel or indeed a play is bound to have ‘something wrong with it,’ then let it be at least a wonderful wrongness, speaking of the strangeness of the world’s beauty, a wrongness that seeks to wipe from our eyes and cleanse from our ears the dull patina and muffling wax of everyday which makes us see reality as monochromatic and hear it as monotonous, and to reveal the rainbow music of how things really are. Let it be a play or indeed a novel containing bright moments, dark changes, living characters, sudden transformations, images of fire and ice, horrifying metamorphoses, luminous insights, comic alterations, and stories that have nothing wrong with them at all.

Incidentally this paragraph seems to be omitted in the NYT version.

A high bar put in wonderfully composed sentences.

Also in this chapter, Rushdie comes up with a concept I find useful, “a personal tradition.”

Edward Bond and his Shakespeare are writers who, like Kafka, long ago entered my personal tradition, the only tradition that’s worth a damn to a practicing writer being the one he forges for himself, that is not laid down by high priests of literature, not a stone-carved commandment brought down from Sinai or the Cambridge University English faculty by a Leavisite Moses but a pagan thing, a melting down of treasures, a golden calf. Or, let’s say, a thing born of thee happy and —even better—the useful contaminations by others of the writer’s reading mind.

The same can be said about one’s personal tradition of music when one is a musician. Musicians are notoriously narrow or seem so because the ones usually interviewed or written about have zeroed in on one aspect of their art in order to excel in it. But I have found that more and more musicians I meet, usually younger ones, don’t have the calcified attitude or so many teachers, professors, and other students I have known in my life.

Salman Rushdie to return to India for his next novel – EasternEye

Something interesting coming from Rushdie.

Thelonious Monk’s 25 handwritten tips for musicians

These are great. I especially like “you got to dig it to dig it, you dig?”

What I learned from an unlikely friendship with an anti-masker | Lif

Getting to know someone you disagree with, always helpful!

Work begins on public observatory at Hemlock Crossing Park

Cool

Revealed: LAPD officers told to collect social media data on every civilian they stop | Los Angeles | The Guardian

Thanks to Jeremy Daum for tweeting this link.

VanRaalte Farm Civil War Muster

Apparently this happens every year. This year it’s Bull Run. Cool.

Serialised novel: A first for Rushdie, staple format for Bengal classics – Telegraph India

Other Bengal authors use this method.

The Telegraph uses “spread of classical music in Kolkata” to glorify conversion and evangelical work that marred Bengal

I love it when one media outlet criticizes another and does it pretty well.

NYTimes: How Sept. 11 Gave Us Jan. 6

Spencer Akermann was recently interviewed on Democracy Now about this.

“Eight months later, there is no political response to the insurrection at all, only a security response aimed at its foot soldiers.”

It occurred to me yesterday that my life in retirement is actually returning to a sort of “normal.” I’m not sure what I mean by that except as I continue to relax and ponder I seem to be returning to a mindset that I haven’t had for many years. This way of thinking feels right and very different from having to do church music.

I still have lots of respect for the arts and history of Christianity. But I feel like I have returned to a previous orientation towards them that is more informed (since I have learned a lot since I last felt this regular.

It was a beautiful day yesterday. A cool fall day. I sat outside and read for awhile. But it was a little too cool so I finally came in. Eileen made blueberry jam so we had it on fresh bread. It was worth every calorie.

I am continuing to slowly lose weight. This encourages me that it’s real weight loss. I am back to abstaining from real gin and not snacking after a light supper. I’m hoping that will continue to let my body shed unneeded pounds.

I have fixed up the guest bedroom as a sort of study. I set it up this way when Mark and Leigh visited so they could stay in this room. I am finding it very helpful to have a desk and a place to sit and work on my computer. I also want to clear out an upstairs room and make it into a music room. I want to move my harpsichord and marimba there. Right now all my guitars and my banjo are there.

I think the mornings are a very productive time for me. I have spent them in recent years stretching my brain a little bit, learning a smidgeon of Ancient Greek and reading poetry both contemporary and more classical. This is when I read my Shakespeare. But this week, after exercising and making coffee, I have sat in my computer room and thought about stuff. I also have been doing some prose sketches. This morning instead of sketching I made a list of ideas that have been rattling around in my head as possible pieces of prose, fiction or nonfiction.

Being systematic is important to me. I have found that when I do something systematically (like read a portion of book on a daily basis or even practice) the eventual accrual is pretty astonishing to me.

I am slowly figuring out to work my new WordPress software I use to create and edit these blogs. I don’t know, dear reader(s), if you have noticed, but there is a tad less clutter on my initial web page. The excessive amount of links have been making me crazy so one of the first things I changed was limiting the links there.

Speaking of links. I have learned how to insert them. So here’s some for today.

Americans Still Oppose Overturning Roe v. Wade

Most Americans favor legal abortion. The reason we are in the current situation is that the right has chosen to seize power in undemocratic ways like voter suppression and more importantly stacking the Supreme Court with right wing judges.

What a revoltin’ development.

Fragments of medieval Merlin manuscript found in Bristol library

New info on Merlin and King Arthur.

The Wonders That Live at the Very Bottom of the Sea – NYT

I link this article for the first paragraph. I didn’t receive my Sunday NYT for a couple of Sundays. This didn’t bother me too much. I basically subscribe to it for the apps and the “replica edition,” the second of which is not available without subscribing to at least the Sunday paper. Consequently, I missed reading the NYTBR (New York Times Book Review) which comes as a section in the Sunday paper.

In this past Sunday’s NYTBR, Lowell Edmunds wrote in the letters column that the first paragraph of the above linked article it was the “best first paragraph in memory.”

Here it is.

“In the deep sea, it is always night and it is always snowing. A shower of so-called marine snow — made up of pale flecks of dead flesh, plants, sand, soot, dust and excreta — sifts down from the world above. When it strikes the seafloor, or when it is disturbed, it will sometimes light up, a phenomenon known, wonderfully, as “snow shine.” Vampire squids, umbrella-shaped beings with skin the color of persimmons, float around collecting this luminous substance into tiny snowballs, which they calmly eat. They are not alone in this habit. Most deep-sea creatures eat snow, or they eat the snow eaters.”

Not bad.

“The Monkey Who Speaks,” by Han Ong | The New Yorker

Speaking of good writing, this short story in the September in the September 13 issue is exceptional. I listened to the podcast. But instead of falling asleep, as sometimes happen my mind started buzzing as the story unfolds. I recommend it!

I interlibrary loaned Ong’s novel The Disinherited.

Ong was born in 1968 in the Philippines of “ethnic Chinese parents.”

He and his family came to the US in the 80s. He is another recipient of the MacArthur Genius grant. I look forward to reading his works.

Bread is in the oven. I have exercised, fed the cat twice, put out the flag, brought in the paper for Eileen (I use the app but don’t usually look at the hard copy), and written about 400 words, experimenting with doing some non-blog prose writing in the morning.

I didn’t figure out how to do a word count in my updated WordPress but I did find it in my Google docs.

WordPress provides videos to help users learn. They are a bit tedious. I started one yesterday after blogging and will probably continue to try to learn more about this new update.

I just took the bread out of the oven. It smells great of course. It’s a nice, cool fall day today. So a good day to heat up the oven without making the kitchen miserable. The bread making is a small task for me. I have learned not to belabor the whole thing. I mix up what is called a sponge which is simply warm water, flour, yeast, and salt. Set the time for 30 minutes. Then, after the sponge has done some rising, I add the salt and the rest of the flour. I mix it in with a kneading motion and by the time it is mixed in, I stop kneading and shape it into loaves. Then a 30 minute rise and pop it into the oven. Easy peasy.

The wind was crazy at the beach yesterday. There was a red flag warning which means no swimming. However, we did see the huge kites in the sky that people use to kitesurf with. We also saw someone walking toward the beach in a wet suit carrying a surf board so maybe that activity is not prohibited.

Eileen and sat out in the wind for a while. We both enjoyed that. It’s pretty exhilarating to sit and let the wind blow over you. It usually reminds me of getting stranded on Cape Hatteras with my family when I was a child. Childhood memories are so tricky. Especially growing up with photos being taken. My Dad was a big photo slide nut. So we ahve hundreds of old slides of family and my parents trips to Europe.

Hatteras was actually an island at the time. Now you can drive along the coast of North Carolina and there is a bridge that lets you get on and off the Cape.

We were traveling with my Grandfather, Pop Ben. Pop Ben is what we called him. He and Grandmother were with myself, Mom and Dad. This was pre-Mark, my brother. I don’t remember too much even with the help of color slides. I know we must have gotten on to the island with a ferry. We were traveling in cars and had camping equipment with us. We may have even planned to stay the night on the island but the family story I remember is that we missed the ferry and got stranded.

We slept in tents and wind howled. I have a memory of fishing right off the Atlantic shore on a cold windy beach. I associate it with this time on Hatteras. I was sitting in a folding lawn chair, holding my rod, when suddenly I was being pulled into the water. I had a bite! Someone rescued me. I don’t remember if the fish was reeled in or not.

Anyway, the memories are all mixed up but that’s sort of how I remember it.

Yesterday the strong winds and sand in my hair and eyes reminded me of this. Eileen and I decided to move to the car to have our picnic lunch because of the wind and sand. We stayed in the car for our daily boggle game but went back outside to continue reading.

Today is the local Farmers Market and I need to stop blogging and go buy some tomatoes.

Although I realize that all my life my appearance has offended people beginning with my parents, I think I have underestimated how it has determined so much in my life. If I consider only my sojourn in Holland Michigan I realize that not “looking the part” has distanced me from some possible colleagues.

I guess this goes back to when I left Detroit in 85 or so. In Detroit I didn’t stand out. Even some of my profs had leftover hair styles from the 60s and 70s. And there were many older students like myself. One prof might have considered teaching me composition if I had not offended him in another way from the moment we laid eyes on each other.

He was giving his first lecture to a theory zip type class where holes in understanding and terminology were to be rectified. He must have disliked me on sight. I sat in the back agreeing with his comments and smiling at his sarcasm when he said to the group something about thinking they didn’t this information. He probably thought I was smugly smiling because he directed his comments directly to me and said snidely that I didn’t think I needed to study the content of the course.

I was furious but remained silent. Unfortunately, instead of reaching out to him in a way that would flatter him and bring us closer as colleagues in the next class I didn’t bother to raise my hand but instantly answered every question he put to the group. He finally had to ask me to be quiet.

Later he hired me to help copy music for a composition he was having performed by the Detroit Symphony. I was very uneasy about this. As I recall I needed the money but didn’t feel qualified to make scores for symphonic players. I had just begun learning how to copy music with a pen. The teacher was clear. He needed me no matter how bad I did the job. I think it was at this point but it may have been in another context when this same teacher told me he would not accept me as a student of composition.

I hadn’t asked him to, but it’s probably another case of my lack of social skills winding me up where I have spent most of life happily: on the outside.

I now believe that if I had cut my hair and paid more attention to my appearance and clothes my connection with Holland and Western Michigan would have been drastically different. I don’t regret this because I am very happy with how things have turned out here.

I have long felt that my hair style and sloppiness are similar to how men sometimes clung to styles long after they were in fashion and look silly.

In addition, I have consciously chosen paths of behavior inconsistent with fitting in and self promotion.

No matter.

Yesterday I updated my WordPress version of software that I use to edit my web site. It looks like a bit of steep learning curve since I can’t get the dam software to do quite what I usually do this morning. Oh well. I’ll have to delve in the help menus which I usually generally ignore until I have a problem.

I’m having difficulty importing graphics. The way one does this is all different in the new version. Also, it doesn’t give a running tally of words written which I find useful. I’m sure all of this is doable. I will just have to learn how to do it.

Today is “date day” and it is a beautiful day. Right now it’s in the 60s and it should be lovely down at the beach by the time we get there.

I managed to get the pic above in this post, but all my other interests like word count seem to require installing plug ins and extra little programs. What a pain!

Also the help menus so far are just public forums. I will look for some tutorials.

Over and out for today.

It’s very odd to no longer have to worry about church work. Being an introvert of sorts, I needed to brace myself for my weekly commitments. This is no longer needed and has been lessening for a while probably going back to the beginning of the Covid Crisis.

On the one hand, the Covid Crisis demanded much less work from me. On the other, it may have delayed my retirement. I did not want  desert my boss during a crisis.

I have just finished exercising and am sitting at my computer working on this post. This is a bit new for me. Usually I sit and read at this point in my day. But if I do begin to pursue writing more seriously, I will probably work in the morning. So this is a nice little trial run to see what this feels like.

I succumbed and let myself have some scotch and wine last night. This led to my usual snacking as I thought it would. It seemed appropriate on my last day of work. So, what the heck!

I learned a couple things. First, I missed being lucid enough to read in bed. Secondly, I can feel it physically this morning. I’ve never had hangovers. But having abstained recently, I have gotten used to having more energy and generally feeling better.

Good health is the absence of something, I have heard said. The same could be said for my own well being. I have been feeling better lately. But this morning I can feel a slight niggling physical fatigue.

This is complemented by feeling some mild shell shock like symptoms of not having to do anything for work.

Ever.

Again.

Morning Podcast Report

This is cool. The banjo playing, MacArthur genius grant recipient I mentioned here recently also hosts the Opera Pod Cast Aria Code. I remember when this podcast came out. I subscribed but when I dipped into it wasn’t that interested. But this morning I listened to the first one from back in 2018. Pretty cool.

I like that in the promo Giddens promises that at the end of each episode they will play the entire aria.  The panel I heard this morning included the singer who sang aria with the Metropolitan Opera, Diana Damrau. Since the role she sang was Violetta, the high class call girl in Verdi’s La La Traviata, one of the other panelists was Brooke Magnanti , a former call girl herself. Cool.

For you opera buffs here’s a video of Damrau singing the aria.

Wow. What a voice! Although this is the same singer and orchestra, this is not the recording on the podcast since she goes up for the ultra high note (not written according to her in the podcast) on the podcast recording but not on the video.

Opera is a good thing for me to study at this point. I enjoy the music and haven’t listened to a ton of opera. I like finding new music that I like. I do like Verdi already but I don’t even know this opera very well.

I sometimes listen to the headlines from Democracy Now. I have followed their reporting for years. This morning I listened to their podcast. Or at least some of it. I’ll save the rest for later. It’s a report on Afghanistan featuring Bilal Sarwary, an Afghan reporter who recently fled the country with his wife and daughter, and Spencer Ackerman, an American journalist and writer.

This wraps it up for my first day of retirement.

It’s my last day of being a church musician. I’m thinking about writing this morning. I wonder if my next thing will be writing. I have always loved words. I don’t really tell stories very well. But like everyone I have a lot of material in my life that lends itself to being put into prose.

So there’s memory.

If I start writing about a memory should I change the names in it right away? My inclination is that I should because I think the rhythm of the sentences is important to me.

For some reason i have faith in myself that if i turn myself to writing fiction that will go well. Or at least i will be likely to be almost satisfied with what I can come up with. The reason for this is I believe in my ability to listen to characters and let them unfold on their own. I’m not sure why I have this confidence but I do.

I think I have had an interesting life. Born into the heartland in Anderson, Indiana, the birthplace also of a weird Christian church that calls itself The Church Of God. Or as I grew up saying it “churchagod.” My young parents were attending the church’s small college that still sits in this midwestern town. Before long, my Mom quit school pregnant with me and Dad finished and became a minister in the church. They moved to the South.

It was years later before I understood about the color lines in our country. Sure I have a vague memory of being appropriately indignant for a little boy about the colored only drinking fountain.

I seem to recall horror in my Dad’s face as he pulled away me from it.

I’m pretty sure if I just rambled to myself on the page eventually after some ruthless editing and cutting down I might come up with some good stuff.

But for now the next thing in my life is to rest up a bit and consider what I want to spend my time doing besides practicing, reading, and studying.

In the meantime I have listening to Zadie Smith’s collection of essays, Changing My Mind: Occasional Essays. They impress me so much that I bought a hard copy of the book to read carefully.

In one of the essay, “That Crafty Feeling,” Smith points out that a writer only really knows what craft works for her. Or that’s what I get out of her comments like “what I have to say about craft extends no further than my own experience.”

She also parses one of my other favorites, David Foster Wallace, in the essay, “Brief Interviews with hideous Men: the Difficult Gifts of David Foster Wallace.”

I listen to stuff like this at night. The point is to drift off to sleep. So I don’t hear everything. That’s why I bought the book. I find Smith saying things that interest me and I want the whole concept to ponder and learn from.

I finished reading Zora Neale Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God last night. This book is the subject of the first essay in Smith’s collection, “Their Eyes Were Watching God: What does Soulful mean?”

As a fourteen year old, Smith rejected books like this. She says she flattered herself that “ranged widely” in her fourteen year old reading and never chose books for “genetic or sociocultural reasons.” Her idea of good writing at that age did “did not include aphoristic or overtly ‘lyrical’ language, mythic imagery, accurately rendered ‘folk speech’ or the love tribulations of women.”

This last list describes Hurston well. Finally giving in to her mother’s recommendation to read it, Smith goes on to be totally converted to Hurston by reading the novel.

At seventy, I had less misgivings than she. But I admit I had to look past Hurston’s rendering of dialog. Reading it aloud helped. Also the fact that when she introduces white people into the story, they speak in “folk speech” so it’s not just some sort of dialect that she is rendering.

But all this stuff falls away when I read Hurston. She is in control. But she also is going somewhere that no one else was going at all in 1937 when the book was published.

Zora Neale Hurston 1861-1960

I get a bit of magic realism vibe when she flips her prose from mind boggling beauty to the mundane and interesting life of Janie Crawford, the main character.

I plan to read more of Thurston’s work. In the meantime, I highly recommend this book. Here are few phrases that struck me as one’s I wanted to remember.’

All quotes below are from Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora neale Hurston.

Janie Crawford’s Grandma is talking:

“So de white man is de ruler of everything as far as Ah been able tuh find out. Maybe it’s some place way off in de ocean where de black man is in power, but we don’t know nothin’ but what we see. So de white man throw down de load and tell de nigger man tuh pick it up. He pick it up because he have to, but he don’t tote it. Hand it to his womenfolks. De nigger woman is de mule uh de world so fur as Ah can see.”

While reading and listening to Hurston’s prose in my head (or even out loud) I was reminded of a multi-lingual prof at Notre Dame named Niels Rassmussen. His first language was not English. Once he was listening closely to me as we were chatting. Mimicking my own pronunciation of “to,” he echoed, “tuh” which was actually how I was saying it. He was trying speak the language like a native.

In the audio book of Smith’s essays, the reader affects an exaggerated movie accent (think of the black actors in Gone With the Wind) when reading the dialect in the excerpts from Hurston. It annoys me so much I often skip past it.

“there’s a basin in the  mind where words float around on thought and thought on sound and sight. Then there is a depth of thought untouched by words, and deeper still a gulf of formless feelings untouched by thought.”

“She knew that God tore down the old world every evening and built a new one by sun-up.”

“So Janie began to think of Death. Death, that strange being with the huge square toes who lived way in the West. The great one who lived in the straight house like a platform without sides to it, and without a roof. What need has Death for a cover, and what winds can blow against him? He stands in his high house that overlooks the world. Stands watchful and motionless all day with his sword drawn back, waiting for the messenger to bid him come. Been standing there before there was  a where or a when or a then.”

“All night now the jooks clanged and clamored. Pianos living their lifetimes in one. Blues made and used right on the spot. Dancing, fighting, singing, crying, laughing, winning and losing love every hour. Work all day for money, fight all night for love. The rick black earth clinging to bodies and biting skin like ants.”

Well, if you read all that, it gives you a taste. Best to read the whole dam book.

My church gave me a gift certificate for Readers World last week. I’m working on an email to ask Readers World to sell me the David Foster Wallace, the 2 Modern Library volumes by Hurston, plus her posthumous publication that came out last year, Barracoon: The Story of the Last “Black Cargo”.

I started this post early this morning. I quit in the middle and did my last church service. Then Eileen and I went out to eat. I came home and finished it.

The service went fine. There were a few less people than last week. I don’t really feel the relief right now. It will take me sometime to get used to not having to work up the psychic energy to do the church thing. In the meantime, I am pondering the next thing.

Readership of this blog continues to dwindle, so thank you for reading!

I am approaching my last Sunday as a church musician with some fatigue. It has seemed a bit of a gauntlet to get this far.

But with any luck tomorrow will be an end of it.

I still have to do a lot of sorting and move instruments from the church to my home. I don’t think there’s any rush about that.

Americans Still Oppose Overturning Roe v. Wade

I have searched Spotify for some albums I ran across on my soon-to-be defunct app, Primephonic. Lo and behold I have been able to find everything there.

This morning I turned on the Primophonic app and it welcomed me and asked me to log in. I moved on to something that works.

I have not had good luck with many things like Primephonic. Innovations often look like a good idea and I want to support them and share with my friends. Then the people who are developing them realize they can sell out to someone like Apple who then invariably fucks up the aspects of the interface that I admire and use the most. Maybe someday I’ll learn not to do this.

I’m killing a little time, waiting to meet with my therapist, Dr. Curtis Birky, in about twenty minutes.

I’m in a much better space today. I had a good day seeing my grand daughter and taking part in the first of day of her birth week. Birth week seems to be how my daughters celebrate the birthdays of their children. Lucy’s birthday is coming up as well and they are already in full celebration mode over in England as well.

The last two days I have played piano before Eileen gets up. This is an excellent way for me to start my day. I asked Eileen if she minded yesterday. She said that not only did she not mind it, but she enjoyed it. Wow. I’ll take that!

Alex painted this painting yesterday with new paints she got for her birthday.

Jeremy is growing a Venus flytrap. He said it ate a wasp. Yikes. It’s much smaller than it looks in this picture. A wasp would be bigger than any of the traps pictured.

Here’s where I broke off writing and did therapy. I had an excellent session with Dr. Birky today. I find this very helpful. He gives me insights and ideas that help keep me as sane as possible and understand myself better. I can’t recommend therapy too much. Of course, it’s important to find the right dude so another thank you to my brother for teaching me to find someone that fits me!

On Sunday my boss, Rev Jen, announced that she was going to post one “Thank you Steve” message everyday this week. I have been keeping an eye on it so far she has done so.

Today seems to be a video I made for her for some sort of meeting she wanted music for. Here’s a link.

On Monday they put up this.

It’s one of the posters that was sitting in the back of church last Sunday.

On Tuesday they posted the clever, sped up video of the installation of the Martin Pasi organ.

I’ve put it up here before, but here it is again.

On Wednesday, another of those back of the church posters.

I’m not sure what they posted yesterday but I think they did one.

Sheesh. All this attention is kind of embarrassing. But flattering indeed.

Sorry I missed you yesterday. I see my hits went down as well. How did the few mysterious ghosts that haunt this blog know that I didn’t write a new post? Beats me.

My head is spinning with thinking about the next phase of my life. My grand daughter Alex is seven years old today. i can’t believe it has been seven years since Elizabeth gave birth to her. Eileen and I are driving over for a birthday party. It’s actually birth week as they will celebrate for a while. We are coming back tonight before dark. Even so, Eileen will probably drive. She has a new awareness of my bad vision garnered from realizing I couldn’t read signs in the grocery store.

I am very glad to still be alive at almost seventy years old. At the same time my mood is glum this morning. I didn’t sleep that great last night. Thanks goodness for a good cup of coffee.

I’m trying to keep my psychic radar clear as I consider what to do with retirement. I know I am capable of making some interesting and well crafted art whether it be music, prose, or poetry.

At this stage of my life, I don’t find  people to collaborate with over the yeas. I find consolation in connecting with strong minds in wonderful prose, poetry, and music. What will this mean in retirement? Probably more of the same with some specific projects here and there.

On Facebook, Janice Ian pointed out that if you use digital music, you don’t really own it. She was speaking about discovering a recording that she listens to digitally had been changed. She was unable to get back to the original. She advises using CDs to preserve the music you want to here.

Recently my app Primephonic was subsumed into Apple. I have a week before it goes away. Apple wants listeners to migrate to Apple music. They will provide a free subscription for some limited time. I don’t think I’m interested in that. It does look like Primephonic will refund the balance of any paid subscription. This is frustrating. But I am most bothered because I gave this app away to several musician friends. Now it will just stop. But now that I think about it, maybe one or two of them uses Apple music anyway. This morning I am seriously considering purchasing some CDs for the first time in years in order to keep touch with music I am listening to and thinking about.

I’ll spare you links, quotes, and poetry this morning. I just wanted, dear diary, to keep this silly blog going.

I had alcohol last night for the first time in quite a while. I had a martini and half a Guinness at the restaurant. I came home and drank two drinks of Mark’s predictably very fine scotch. I got up early enough this morning to exercise before driving off to the eye doctor.

The eye guy said I could have my cataracts removed if I so chose and I do. So that’s coming up. They will call within two weeks to set up another appointment before the surgery. They will do my right eye first and then the left a week later.

They replace the hazy cataract lens with an artificial one which can be altered to fit your vision needs. I’m going to opt for reading without glasses and driving with. This is the opposite of most people’s choice but it’s mine.

I finished reading Postcolonial love Poem by Natalie Diaz and Bonesetter by Chris Haven and returned them to the library.

I think we are going out to eat again tonight. No drinkie poo for Steve tonight.

“American Arithmetic” ‹ Literary Hub

(This was the logo on yesterday’s church bulletin. Ahem.)

Although, Jen’s sermon (“Music helps”) was embarrassing for me, in retrospect, it was gratifying that she outlined my work for Grace so eloquently.  gratifying that Jen could articulate so well my time with Grace beginning with being hired to bring different music style factions together to running a poorly publicized music series. She even called it “Grace Notes.”

I don’t think I mentioned yesterday how kind and complimentary everyone was to me personally yesterday after church at the  outdoor reception. There were also many envelopes and gift cards dropped off at the piano during the prelude. It’s obvious that the group really appreciated me.

Today we begin hosting my brother and his wife for a quick visit. This should be fun. I always enjoying being around them.

They’ll never know how my study/guest bedroom transformed from typical Steve chaos to usability for guests. Eileen did a ton of work as well. One way for us to get a cleaner house is to host someone so we clean everything up.

Although I only have one more Sunday to go, we have a full and satisfying week coming up. After a couple of days with Mark and Leigh, we will drive over to Hastings to help celebrate the seventh birthday of my grand daughter Alex. She started first grade today and judging from the pictures, she was eating it up. Not surprising. All my grandkids are exceptional (no bias here).

I just emailed my piano trio members to make sure they understand that I have not completely quit piano trio yet, just taking a sabbatical before I decide anything about what to do with my retirement. I told them that I definitely will want to have them over to do some playing but I’m not sure how long it will be before this happens.

I finished another book of poetry this morning. One more to go before several of them become due to return to the library tomorrow.

Today was “thank you Steve” Sunday at my church. Jen started the service with a little welcome (a Covid innovation) and thanked me right away (applause). Her sermon started with “Music helps.” Oh fuck, I thought. Yep, the sermon was about me (applause). Then at the announcements, she came back with a little bag of stuff and a speech (applause). We closed with “Sweet sweet spirit.” It was my idea since the only person who could come up with something they wanted to sing was a choir member who suggested, “This little light of mine.”

Unfortunately the choral arrangement we do does not include congregational participation. So “Sweet sweet spirit” it is. My sopranos met beforehand in the choir room to practice the descant I cribbed from the singing of the composer, Doris Akers. It’s not easy. As I passed though the choir room getting my robe, I told the singers I would go a bit slower today to make it easier to sing the Akers’ licks.

Which I did. There was applause after the hymn and after my bluesy improvised postlude.

Then there was a reception outside.

I kept telling people it felt a bit like a funeral.

There were three easels with nice montages of me and Eileen in the back next to the organ (very funeral like). Plus the homily was about me like a deceased person. Several people said that it couldn’t be funeral since it was a celebration! I said that’s how we try to do funerals.

I have already submitted the hymns for next week my last Sunday. They will be announcing my successor this week.

I left rather abruptly yesterday and neglected the following links at the bottom of the post:Jordan VanHemert | Saxophone
Home — Populace
Afghan music school falls silent under Taliban rule By Tiffany Wertheimer

Jordan VanHemert | Saxophone

Jordan is someone who was in my life for a bit. He is a great musician. He moved away. This is website.

Home — Populace

This is an interesting report on a study on aspirations in the population of the USA. I still haven’t read it yet but Eileen has.

Afghan music school falls silent under Taliban rule By Tiffany Wertheimer

I have read this one. This morning I ran across two Shakespeare quotes on music:

Julius Caesar describes Cassius to Marc Anthony.

“He has a lean and hungry look…” I, ii, l 194

“…. He reads much,
He is a great observer, and he looks
Quite through the deeds of men. He loves no plays,
As thou dost Anthony, Anthony, he hears no music;
He seldom smiles, and smiles in such a sort
As if he mocked himself, and scorned his spirit
That could be moved to smile at anything.” I, ii, l 204-207

from Julius Caesar

In the footnote to these lines:

“The man that hath  no music in himself,
Nor is not moved with concord of sweet sounds,
Is fit for treasons….. Let no such man be trusted.”

Merchant of Venice, V, i, 84f

On my way to the Farmers Market this morning, I thought of these lines as I listened to a Vivaldi Oboe concerto that I played with my friend Ellen years ago.

I have several poetry books  that will be overdue this week. I have already renewed them twice. So I’m trying to finish them before Aug 31 when they are due.

The first one is Field Music by Alexandria Hall. This poetry is especially fine in my opinion. Here’s a rendition from her website of the last poem in the book.

Here are a few more poems also from her website:

“Proximity,” Tinderbox Poetry Journal, Summer 2020

“On Music,” Tinderbox Poetry Journal, Summer 2019

“Dredge,” Meridian, Summer 2019

“Slumber Party,” BOAAT, Nov/Dec 2016

I like all of her poetry so far. There are more links to other poems I haven’t read yet here.

Chris Haven is apparently a local poet. I’m not sure how I ran across him or Alexandria Hall. Neither title was in my list of books I keep so I can remember where I heard about them.

I’m not finished with Haven’s book yet, but I have found a couple poems I like.

Oops.  Time to go again..

Eileen won her bid and purchased a new bookshelf for 33 dollars plus 15 per cent auction fee. She’s putting it together as I write.

I will have to lend a hand when she gets ready to put it in the guest bedroom/study. In the meantime I am resting.

Before lunch a took a ton of books upstairs and filed them. They have been sitting around waiting to be filed.

This morning I read in Vaughan Williams charming book, National Music and Other Essays.

It’s like listening to someone ramble. It holds my attention entirely.

As you might expect he can turn a phrase.

The Venusberg music from Tannhäuser is good music when it comes to the right dramatic moment in the opera, but it is bad music when it is played on an organ in church. I’m sorry to have to tell you that this is not an imaginary experience.

 

I would define genius as the right man in the right place at the right time.

 

There are very few great composers but there can be many sincere composers.  There is nothing in the world worse than sham good music.

 

Speaking of Wagner I picked up Alex Ross’s Wagnerism again and read in it a bit this morning.

Mark Twain is on record:

“The opera of “Tristan and Isolde” last night broke the hearts of all witness who are of the faith, and I know of some and have heard  of many who could not sleep after it, but cried the night away. I feel strongly out of place here. Sometimes I feel like the one sane person in a community of the mad’ sometimes I feel like the one blind man where all others see; the one groping savage in the college of the learned, and always,  during service, I feel like a heretic in heaven.

I especially identify with the “groping savage” remark.

After a short break, here’s where we are in the guest bedroom/study.

Eileen is putting the finishing touches on the bookcase. These are the books we took from off the flimsy shelf.

This is the messy desk.

Bookshelf with books in it.

I have to go fold clothes.

Jordan VanHemert | Saxophone

O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay! The new New Yorker came today.

The short story is a new one by George Saunders. I’ve already read it. I do like this guy and a new short story by him is something to celebrate.

Here’s the link “The Mom of Bold Action,” by George Saunders

It is hot in Holland. Eileen hasn’t been taking her daily walk because it’s too hot. We were planning to go out to eat today. We are not eating at inside restaurants these days because of the heightened Covid transmission. We were planning to sit outside at the Ottawa Beach Inn. Nope. Too dam hot. I pity poor street musicians this evening.

I made bread this morning. Eileen did some more canning. Thank goodness for AC.

I also went grocery shopping after Eileen and I moved furniture around in the house. We moved a chair out to the porch and moved two chairs from the porch into the living room. We moved the head board of the old bed frame from the study/guest bedroom to the basement.

Eileen is bidding on a book shelf that we will put in the study/guest bedroom. I filled a flimsy metal set of shelves with books but it’s too precarious. We’re trying to have this done in time for Mark and Leigh to visit next week and not have to sleep in a room with a dangerous book shelf. We will have to do something else if Eileen doesn’t win her bid.

I am exhausted.

I think the silly retirement thing has turned into a low hum in my life since having to fend off crazy shit for this upcoming weekend. I am hopeful that I won’t have to do much extra stuff for this Sunday where they are planning to honor me. This is not to say that I have fended all silliness off because church family systems like this have a way of catching you off guard. I think my awareness of this is part of the low hum. I can’t wait to be completely done with this gig.

I ordered study scores of Charles Ives’s string quartets. They run 50 bucks new but I was able to get used copies. We’ll see how they turn out. I had bad luck with inter library loaning these. They came as sets of string parts but no score. Fuck.

I’m hoping that what I ordered today will allow me to study them.

I did discover that the second string quartet is online in Ives manuscript: Charles Ives String Quartet 2 manuscript online

The title of this post is the last line of Chris Haven’s lovely poem, The Songbird’s Song . In the poem, the poet worries that the songbird’s song is disappearing one note at a time.

Eileen is canning tomatoes in the kitchen. I have already been to the Farmers Market. My piano has been fixed and tuned. Kelly Bakker, the piano guy, reacted to the news that I am retiring by trying to sell me a piano.

If he could come up with a Steinway upright I would consider it.

My brother and his wife are coming for a visit next week. I am reorganizing my study to accommodate hosting them.  I moved a metal set of shelves in and put books on it. This would have been a good solution to all the books laying around but the shelf itself is too flimsy. Eileen has bid on a shelf that will replace it. We need to change it so it will be safe for visitors.

I have been reading in David Foster Wallace’s biography.

I’m not sure it’s a great one but learning about his life is interesting and illuminates some of the books he has written that I have read.

I want to finish this bio and the biography of Miles Davis by Szwed.

Szwed has a better handle on Davis than Max does of Wallace.

Since I have finished a couple of novels, I started Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neal thurston.

In her essay, “Their Eyes Were Watching God: What does soulful mean?”, Zadie Smith talks about resisting reading this book for several reasons. Her mom convinces her to read it and she is sucked in, despite her objections.

I also am uncomfortable with the dialect in this book. But when she wants to Thurston can write incredibly beautiful prose. Plus she tells a story. I’m hooked.

There There by Tommy Orange is an amazing book. It started slow for me as you can tell if you look at a previous post. But soon I began to see how the entire novel was pointing to a climactic scene that ties everything in the novel cleverly together.

I admit that I am a bit skeptical of writers emerging these days from workshops. But this guy proved to me that not only can he write but he has something to say. I see why it was a Pulitzer Prize finalist.

Each chapter title is a character’s name (with the exception of one called Interlude) One chapter introduces Thomas Frank, “Cheyenne Drummer who formerly worked as a custodian at the Indian Center.” This entire chapter is a tour de force of beauty and pain. It begins with Frank as a sperm and an egg in his parents before they met:

Before you were born, you were a head and a tail in a milky pool.—a swimmer. You were a race, a dying off, a breaking through, an arrival. Before you were born, you were an egg in your mom who was an egg in her mom. Before you were born, you were the nested Russian grandmother doll of possibilities in your mom’s ovaries. You were two halves of a thousand different kinds of possibilities, a million heads or tails, flip-shine on a spun coin.”

And so on. By the end of the book I was flipping back and forth and understanding how Organ had carefully prepared the entire story. Wow. What a read!