Eileen and I have spent most of the day messing with her computer. She was struggling with it last night when I went to bed. It’s moving very sloooooow. I got up this morning and worked on it a bit. Last night it took Eileen 45 minutes to get it to boot up. I had the same thing this morning. It kept doing updates. But slowly. Very slowly.

I finally got AVG antivirus installed on it. I discovered that my paid subscription extends to 9 more devises besides my computer. I quickly added Eileen. Or I should say I slowly added Eileen. Then I ran it. This took several tries but finally did get it to run but was surprised when it didn’t find any malware. When I went to bed last night Eileen was convinced she had malware. But no.

Then we proceeded to take off applications and programs. I think that’s what Eileen is still working on right now. It’s an old computer but it has been so slow for several days so that it’s basically unusable. I of course keep urging Eileen to replace it. But now it’s a bit of a challenge.

Despite the computer snafu I did get some reading in this morning. I wisely did some reading before tackling the computer. Eileen didn’t get to bed until late. So she slept in a bit. We skipped the lovely daughter in England Saturday connection. We are dragging today but I think we are determined to beat Eileen’s little laptop (and/or replace the dang thing).

I noticed the headlines describing the fact that the filibuster rule of the Senate will probably not be changed and thus that voting reform is less likely to take place at the federal level. I find this very discouraging. It feels like I am witnessing the erosion of democracy in the U.S.

I also noticed this: Florida Democrats ask Merrick Garland to intervene on state election proposals. But I am so discouraged to watch the Republican party sew up a one party system along the lines of southern Democrats after Reconstruction. I ascribe it to the Republican lock step that began with Newt Gingrich. The Republicans are better at staying on message and following party dictates. Obviously the Democrats don’t do this and while I admire the fact that Democrats are more tolerant, I am unhappy with Senators Sinema and Manchin blocking the change of filibuster rules to allow for federal protection of voting rights.

This all bums out despite the fact that I am enjoying my reading a great deal right now. I watched another Susan Howe presentation this morning on YouTube. She sent me back to a book I stopped reading: Lives Like Loaded Guns: Emily Dickinson and Her Family’s Feuds by Lyndall Gordon. I stopped reading this book after Emily Dickinson dies in it. Now I realize the remaining story of the fights between the Dickinson family and the Todd family are still reverberating in an environment of restoring access to Emily Dickinson’s many letters and manuscripts. So I read another chapter in it this morning. I remember picking it up because I have found Gordon’s work quite good in the past. Now I am motivated to learn more about Dickinson especially on the various versions of her poems and writings.

This is all a bit glum so I want to embed this wonderful video of some amazing musicians.

Inawe Mazina’igan Map Project – Ojibwe.net

Thanks to Elizabeth for sending me this link. I continue to read about Michigan Native people and also to request more of the books now available.

I’m convinced that if I had a hundred years left to live, I wouldn’t be able to read all the books I wanted, play and study all the music I want to, and I wouldn’t run out of things that make me curious and want to learn more about.

This is an amazingly good thing for me and I am grateful.

Today is another of one of those serendipity type days. I listened to a wonderful lecture/poetry reading by Susan Howe this morning. It was given in April of 2019. Howe is 81 at the time. Now 84, I would still love to hear her lecture and/or read her poetry. This presentation at the Harvard Divinity School is entitled “Concordance: An Evening with Susan Howe.” Concordance is the title of a recent book of poetry she has written. She reads from some of it on the lecture but doesn’t make clear when she is doing so. This is very typical of her. She mixes poetry, scholarship, and insights in everything I’ve seen her do, including her books.

I’ve checked out her Concordance from the library.

Before this morning I had only glanced through it and noted that it’s mostly tiny pieces cut out of pre-existing published material presumably concordances.

After listening to her bring up Charles Ives and thinking more about Emerson and other people and ideas she brings up, I decided this morning to read from the beginning of Concordance.

My head is whirring from all the associations she alludes to and evokes in my own head. In the lecture she reads The Snowstorm by Ralph Waldo Emerson. This would be worth the price of admission for me, but she points out that Emily Dickinson copied four words from the ninth line because she admired them so much.

Howe says she also loves the ending line: “The frolic architecture of the snow.”

She also says how working with a composer recently led her to Charles Ives. She describes Ives as a “romantic modern” and then claims to be one herself. She relates to Ives propensity for quotation and again confesses that most of her work is quotation.

She also quotes some beautiful lines from Emerson’s Divinity School Address. Before doing so, she quotes Daniel Webster’s definition of “meteor.” (about 8:27 into her lecture…)

Susan Howe:”I’m just taking that word meteor and I’m going to read it aloud from Noah Webster so you can see what I mean. 

Meteor (noun)– sublime, lofty– in a general sense, a body that flies or floats in the air. And in this sense, it includes clouds, rain, hail, snow, et cetera. But in a restricted sense in which it is commonly understood. Two– a fiery or luminous body or appearance flying or floating in the atmosphere, or in a more elevated region. We give this name to the brilliant globes or masses of matter which are occasionally seen moving rapidly through our atmosphere, and which throw off with loud explosions fragments that reach the earth, and are called falling stones.  We call that by the same name, those fireballs which are usually denominated falling stars or shooting stars– also the lights which appear over moist grounds and graveyards called ignis fatui, and meteor-like flame lawless through the sky (Pope), figuratively, anything that transiently dazzles or strikes with wonder.

I mean, It’s like a poem in itself.” (transcript of her lecture can be found here)

 Then she points out how Emerson uses the word meteor: ” a snowstorm was falling around us. The snowstorm was real– the preacher merely spectral, and the eye felt the sad contrast in looking at him out of the window behind him into the beautiful meteor of the snow.” This is from the Divinity School Lecture.

So Howe, Webster, Ives, Dickinson, and on and on. Cool beans for old Jupe.

I am all excited about two new books. I picked them up from the library today on my way to my dentist appointment. My old dentist has totally retired and my new dentist, Dr. Morin, has completely refurbished the office. They were very careful about Covid precautions so that’s encouraging. The bad news is that I have an ongoing infection which requires the removal of one of the few remaining teeth I use to chew.

Bah. But they scheduled me another appointment to work on my missing filling and another cavity they found. I’m also booked in the local oral surgeon for an extraction in March. Oh boy.

I am very excited about The Art of Tradition: Sacred Music, Dance & Myth of Michigan’s Anishinaabe, 1946-1955. This is exactly the sort of information I have been looking for. The Anishinaabe is the umbrella name for the three indigenous tribes from the Great Lakes Area: Ojibwe (alternatively Ojibwa, Chippewa), Odawa (alternatively Ottawa), and Potawatomi. This book is a publication of the 1959 research of three people including the mother and father of the man who wrote the introduction. It seems to have a good balance of scholarship and good humor. Example: when talking about what sounds like an awful practice of a sort of hodge podge celebration/pageant of Longfellow’s Hiawatha with actual Native Americans, the editor observes: “[W]hile well-heeled tourists admire the romantic wedding of Hiawatha with the chaste maiden Minnehaha, the performers (Native people from Michigan at the time) were smuggling in under the cover of their language the following song:

I wouldn’t sleep if there was something I could drink
I wouldn’t sleep if there was something I could drink
I wouldn’t sleep if there was something I could drink
I wouldn’t sleep if I had someone to sleep with“

I think that’s cool. The book includes music and songs. I am very glad to find this resource published in 2009 and look forward to it leading me to other sources of information about people who lived here before the white people came, both French and Dutch.

The other book is The Antinomian Controversy, 1636-1638: A Documentary History edited by David D. Hall. My interest in this book grows out of reading Susan Howe’s The Birth-Mark. Much of Howe’s stuff is about this very controversy. Glancing over the table of contents I see names and ideas I recognize from reading Howe. Cool.

Wikipedia says this about Antinomianism: “Antinomianism (Ancient Greek: ἀντί, “against” and νόμος, “law”) is any view which rejects laws or legalism and argues against moral, religious or social norms (Latin: mores), or is at least considered to do so. The term has both religious and secular meanings.” It goes on to say that Martin Luther coined the word but that its meaning includes many other ideas such as Gnosticism and Manichaeism. The book is specific to a story about Mrs. Anne Hutchinson being tried for Antinomianism and kicked out of a Massachusetts colony. I don’t think I will necessarily read the whole thing but it should help me understand Howe’s ideas better.

Musically I have been doing a lot of Bach preludes and fugues from the Well Tempered Clavier and a ton of Couperin.

I would like to share this wonderful performance I listened to on YouTube last night. Perfect martini music.

The sax player, Scott Hamilton, is amazing. Listen to how the superb Èlia Bastida on violin picks up on the musical ideas in his improv. Cool, cool, cool.

Eileen and I decided not to go out in the cold today and sit by the beach. I wasn’t looking forward to getting the car going again today. It feels like a good day to sit inside and look out on the freezing cold. This is probably not going to last too long, but it is reminiscent of how winters used to be in Michigan. I am very content to sit inside and read which is not all that different at what I do when we go sit by the lake.

One big difference for me today is that I won’t make the usual picnic lunch. I enjoy doing this, but if we’re home we will just do what we usually do and fix our own meal. Since I am a vegetarian and Eileen a carnivore we usually end up making different food for ourselves otherwise we might share more often. We do usually sit together at the kitchen table for breakfast and lunch and then play Boggle afterwards.

Ah retirement!

beloved, I was driving down by Eleanor Stanford | Poetry Magazine

“Bach makes us
hold one note in mind so
we can hear several as though
at once”

British composer dies at 104 – Slipped Disc

Francis Jackson. I quite like many of his compositions. This short notification came across my Facebook feed.
Here’s another link.

Organist and composer Francis Jackson dies at 104 BBC

Following up on petty complaints from yesterday, I had more success with completing the information for the screen protector warranty today. But not after exhausting myself first. Some of this is probably just being old. I called the phone store early this morning and left a message. I asked them to call me back especially if they knew they couldn’t come up with the receipt number I needed

I know you will be shocked but they didn’t return my call. After breakfast with Eileen, I gathered what little wits are left me and prepared to get in the car and drive to the place we bought my phone. Eileen quietly offered to accompany me but I let her off the hook.

There was not much snow on the car but it was very, very cold when I went out to get it going. We have this piece of plastic that was designed to cover the windshield so that if it snows it’s easy to get your windshield clear of snow. I peeled this off. It was stuck to the windshield and there was all kinds of ice on the windshield as well. The car started up quickly (thank god).

I had cleared off much of the ice and snow at the base of the windshield wipers, but apparently that was not enough because they did not move when I turned them on. Oh no. I hope I haven’t broken the windshield wiper motor, I thought to myself.

I came back in the house and left the heat going full blast in the car. I called the phone place again. I was flabbergasted when someone answered. The first thing I said to them was THANK YOU FOR ANSWERING THE PHONE. After I described my problem, the person on the phone told me they would email me the number I needed.

What?

Can it be that easy?

I returned to working with the silly app the company had made me install in order to qualify for their warranty. This was hilariously cumbersome. The app asked for all kind of information including two obscure numbers from my phone. Also it wanted me to take a picture in the mirror with my phone of the screen using their silly app. These things are never as easy as they sound, eh? (Move the phone closer. Move the phone further away. Tilt your phone.) But I managed to get that done and find the silly numbers and put hem in the phone.

The app also asked me to photograph my receipt as well as enter the number on it. I didn’t have that receipt. That was the whole dang problem. But I took a picture of the email the phone store guy sent me. He only sent me the number that I wanted not a picture of the receipt. That probably won’t work if I have a claim but it satisfied the robot in the app.

I finished the process of registering my phone for a warranty on the screen protector. It told me near the end that the warranty would only cover up $300 damage so I guess I need to break my screen when my phone is almost paid for.

Meanwhile the car was still warming up. I went out and tried the windshield wipers. The one on my right budged a slight bit. This encouraged me that I hadn’t broken my windshield wiper motor. But I decided to wait a half hour of blasting the heat in the car to try again.

This ended up working. So my car isn’t broken and my phone screen protector warranty is registered.

The upshot is that this wore me out. Apparently 70 year old Jupe only has enough energy and emotional stamina to do that much in a day. Good grief.

Oh. I forgot that yesterday I was flossing and managed to dislodge a filling. I have an appointment on Wednesday for a cleaning and an assessment of the damage. This is my first dentist appointment since Covid hit the fan.

In other news, I am continuing to read Groves about Fanny Mendelssohn (more properly Fanny Hensel her married name). It turns out she wrote quite a bit of music and there is a lot of it that can be purchased. I looked on IMSLP of course but there wasn’t too much more there than I already have. But I checked online for purchase of new scores and discovered there is a ton of music that I could purchase. Now I have to wait until Eileen gives me the go ahead to spend some money. Then I will probably buy some more Fanny Hensel.

I have been playing what I have. She has a lovely Lieder for piano in B minor that I have been playing way under tempo. Today Eileen mentioned that she thought that even though it was under tempo it was nice. It reminded her of gently bubbling water.

My public!

I do like the piece a great deal. Even (especially?) under tempo.

Opinion | No Republican should be able to evade these simple questions – The Washington Post

I constantly complain that Republicans are not quizzed about their ideas about the election and Jan 6 to my TV. Nice to see my bitching (some of it) in print.

I had a very busy day yesterday. It didn’t help that I got up a bit later than usual. Eileen had made an appointment for some friends to stop buy and pick up all the leftover stuff from Edison: baby food, cat litter, and sundry items. They came by about 10:30. We did the usual zoom meeting with Sarah. After lunch I set out to register my stupid phone with the makers of the screen protector. Apparently they guarantee its efficacy and will refund the cost of the entire phone if the phone shatters.

I’m not sure if I have that guarantee correct but what I do know is that I promised Eileen I would take care of this. First, of course, you have download their damn little app (grrrr!). Then after I entered the 16 digit thingamabob on the little card that came with the phone they wanted the receipt number of the purchase. Of bloody course they do!

This is how I spent my afternoon yesterday: looking and looking for a receipt. I promised Eileen I would contact the place where we purchased both the phone and the screen protector tomorrow in hopes they can tell me the receipt number of our purchase. Hah! At least I put that off for a day so I could have a bit more normal day today.

Fanny Mendelssohn has been on my mind. I requested several books regarding her from the library today. I am planning on eventually purchase one or more of these books but would like to see them in person. Plus I promised Eileen that I would slow down on non-essential purchase until she determines they are okay with her budget. She did allow me to donate money to National Constitution Center. Here’s a link if you’re interested.

I loved this quote about Fanny Mendelssohn in the Groves online dictionary: “Upon seeing her first-born daughter, Lea Mendelssohn remarked that Fanny was born with ‘Bach fugal fingers’ as reported by the new father in a letter to his mother-in-law Bella Salomon, … thus immediately placing the infant in a rich context of music, erudition, and strong female leaders in the Itzig-Salomon family.”

I have to admit that Covid news, Supreme Court news, and Democracy news are all getting me down. Sheesh. Thank goodness for music, poetry, and beauty. I’m reminded of a cartoon by the late, great Vaughan Bode.

The lizard and one of Bode’s nubile females are falling to what looks like certain death. The lizard proposes that they should make love before they hit the ground. The female points out that he doesn’t have any genitals (although he seems to in the pic above). He replies that maybe they could squeeze this or that while they fall.

Beauty in the face of madness and end times is like squeezing this or that before we crash.

NYTimes: Supreme Court’s Conservative Majority Appears Skeptical of Biden’s Virus Plan

I like what this commenter had to say:

Mark Keller from Portland, Oregon writes on Jan. 8

Sadly, this Supreme Court wants to legislate, rather than apply the law.

The dumbfounding anti-vax comments from Alito and vax-hesitant interjections from others show that the Court’s conservative core eagerly bring personal, anti-science, pro-conservative Christian biases and agendas to their deliberations.

And what of the laws, the constitution and precedent? This not-so-Supreme Court chooses to hunt and peck for a word here and a phrase there to bolster their narrow viewpoints, rather than treat them has coherent, guiding documents and traditions

I told my therapist, Dr. Birky, today that I resisted making a list for stuff to talk to him about since we have not met for four weeks. I resisted because talking to him is not so much a report of what has passed in my life as talking about my own self in the moment. a holiday four weeks hiatus is a long time for staying connected with a mental health care provider.

I did notice that when I talked to him about something that wasn’t all that happy his next question was about playing music with my extended family. When I talked to him about that I told him it was probably one of the high points of the holidays for me. He must have made a mental note to use that to stop me from focusing on the negative too much. Clever man.

Yesterday I played through three of Fanny Mendelssohn’s Vier Lieder für das Pianoforte, Op. 2. I was surprised at how lovely I found them. I have played through them before but my attraction for them was different this time and more profound.

I chose to embed the recording above after listening to a live recording on YouTube. The live recording, although recorded and performed well, didn’t attract me. In fact, I wondered why I thought the piece was so beautiful. Then I found the recording above of Irene Barbuceanu. I think it was partly the tempo but all the simpatico of Irene Barbuceanu’s beautiful interpretation that helped me remember how much I like this piece

.

We had a heavy snowfall yesterday. Eileen and I got into it so that I could take her for her MRI at Holland Hospital. The hospital is not very far from here but we drove. Eileen broke out her snow blower today and did part of the drive. I dragged the Christmas tree to the block through the snow. Today was snow day for all local schools, plus the library didn’t open until noon due to weather.

I continue to read poetry every day. These two poems from the current Poetry magazines grabbed me.

Sparks in the Sun by Kelan Nee | Poetry Magazine

Elegy for the Four Chambers of My Brother’s Heart… | Poetry Magazine

Sounds Like Hate: Red Flags Everywhere

I have been listening to this podcast from Southern Poverty Law Center. It’s a good exposition of the Jan 6 insurrection. I love the SPLC.

Welsh Cakes Recipe | Allrecipes

A recipe for Welsh Cakes came across my Facebook Feed today. This looks like fun.

After chatting with Dawn on the phone yesterday I had several dreams last night which included a marimba. In one of them I was preparing to play a Bach two part invention with another instrument. This is funny because one of the first pieces I played on my marimba was the Two Part Invention by Bach. I played one of the lines on my marimba and I think that my friend Dave Barber played the other on flute. I also recall that we performed this at my Dad’s church in Flint. But who knows?

In one of the other dreams I was playing marimba with other musicians. But it seems that we were all standing on a flimsy balcony like situation which was threatening to collapse and was moving in a dangerous way.

I realized today that my dupuytren’s contracture would not affect my marimba playing since one holds mallets when playing. I am planning on practicing marimba as well as think more seriously about composing music using it and other instruments. This composing was also part of my dreams and thoughts last night. Sheesh!

I forgot to mention that Dr. Doug Strong reached out to me on Facebook recently. His brother, Dave, died last year. The three of us lived on the same street in Flint Michigan. They were both a bit older than me. Dave played trumpet and Doug played reeds. Dave went on to be a shop steward in Flint like his Dad I believe. Doug went to U of M and studied premed. He also played in U of M orchestras or bands or something.

I had surmised that David had died. Like so many things on Facebook it wasn’t quite clear and I only figured it out well after his death so I didn’t sent flowers, otherwise I probably would have. Doug informed me that Dave indeed died of Covid. I thought maybe he had since he and his wife attended a fundamentalist church. Dave continued to do music all his life. After I figured out he died I did a playlist of tunes that made me think of them. They were mostly Tijuana Brass but I remember Dave doing an arrangement of the Rolling Stones song, Paint It Black, while it was still being played on the radio.

My current Shakespeare play I am reading is Timon of Athens. This morning I did a search of podcasts and found one about this play. The person narrating it played a section of rehearsal from a current Royal Shakespeare production of it. Then he played some recording of rehearsal. As I listened I realized that the role of Timon was being played by a woman.

Cool beans.

I noticed I had a significantly higher number of hits on my blog yesterday. It went from 12 hits on Tuesday to 39 yesterday. I didn’t check further about where the hits were coming from. When I have an unusual number of hits I figure that something triggered search engines to send more people than usual to my blog.

I am blogging earlier in the day today. It’s about noon. Eileen has an MRI this evening. They are checking her right inner ear for a benign tumor that might just possibly explain the differential between hearing loss in her left and right ear. This is a long chance but Eileen and her doctor decided together that it was worth finding out.

Yesterday, while Eileen and I were sitting at the beach in the midst of all the snow, my daughter-in-law, Cynthia, called me from California. I was very surprised since she hasn’t called me since she called to tell me that she found one of the books I had sent to my granddaughter Catherine to be inappropriate. She was vague in that call, but I had the impression that it may have been the main character’s picture on the cover. The main character is a black woman. But who knows? There is no reason to think this book was inappropriate for my granddaughter, but of course I told her that I had no intention of getting between her and her kids and to just go ahead and get rid of it.

Watching her from afar on Facebook I had the impression that she and I were moving in different directions politically as well. So I was very relieved to get a call from her. and want desperately to stay connected to her and her kids. We had a nice chat. She put me on speaker phone. Not my fondest experience usually, but this time I was glad to connect with anyone who was around. I got to speak with grand daughters, Catherine and Savannah. We said we should do a video call through Facebook Messenger sometime through Facebook. I hope we do that. This is the way we usually talk to Sarah in England.

Today is a snowy day in Holland. The wind is blowing as well. I dressed up warmly, scraped the snow off the car and the front steps, then went and got gas. I also stopped at the library to drop off a couple of books that were due and pick up another one.

The book I had waiting for me was Old Wing Mission: Cultural Interchange as Chronicled by George and Willa Smith in their work with Chief Wakazoo’s Ottawa Band on the West Michigan Frontier edited by Swierenga and Van Appledorn. I have checked this book out before and plan to eventually probably own it. I’m trying to slow down on book purchases for myself for a while, but I was interested to look at Arvilla Powers Smith’s diary which is in this book.

Susan Howe in her book The Birth-Mark has alerted me to look more closely at what women have to say about history since their points of view and understandings were often ignored and/or simply erased. Howe gathers information about Emily Dickinson and Ann Hutchinson as well as others. You recognize Dickinson but maybe not Hutchinson. She is an interesting case of being run out of a New England community because of her radial religious beliefs which are referred to as Antinomian. Antinomian is a specific Christian understanding which is often thought of in that context as being heretical. However its use in this context is different. I’m taking it to mean that Hutchinson thought that one did earn one’s salvation but through what Christians sometimes call “grace.” Since American Puritans linked up behavior to spirituality this was a serious breach of their understandings leading them to banish Hutchinson.

My friend Dawn called me on the phone today. It was so pleasant to hear from her. She was checking to see if I had done any composing lately and if I had the piano part to Clara Schumann’s piano trio. I assured her that I was still brewing up something for us musically and I did, indeed, have that piano part and she was welcome to drop by and retrieve it. I think she and my replacement, Stephen Rumler are thinking of doing some playing together. I certainly hope so.

I have been vaguely thinking of writing something that she, Amy, Rhonda, and I could do together. I’m not sure what this would be exactly but I would choose to play another instrument besides keyboard so that Rhonda could cover keyboards. I could play marimba, banjo, congas, or guitar. Or maybe I would switch off during the piece from one instrument to another.

In the past I have preferred not to blab about my projects until they are a little more developed. Sometimes discussing them can sort of short circuit them somehow. But I hope that won’t be true of this project. The whole idea is to do something that I could do with the three people locally I would want to work with. But we’ll see.

Fighting For A More Open, Balanced Patent System: 2021 in Review | Electronic Frontier Foundation

Bookmarked to read.

The Obsessively Detailed Map of American Literature’s Most Epic Road Trips – Atlas Obscura

This is cool.

The Tender Trap | by Lorrie Moore | The New York Review of Books

Moore is a writer I admire. She reviews Couples Therapy: a documentary series directed by Josh Kriegman, Kim Roberts, Eli B. Despres, and Elyse Steinberg and Scenes from a Marriage: a miniseries written and directed by Hagai Levi and cowritten by Amy Herzog

I forgot to mention yesterday that during my visit to my brother and his wife how grateful I was to be included in some Jenkins family music. Emily on mandolin, Leigh on Violin, Mark on piano and me on guitar. I enjoyed playing with this crew very much.

I am also grateful for the three musical friends I have here in Holland. I mention this because I complain so much in this place about being under estimated or just plain ignored by musicians in Western Michigan. Since I have retired this is not that big a deal for me. But as I think about moving forward with music I remember that Rhonda Edgington, Dawn Van Ark and Amy Hertel have all been very good about making music with me. Instead of bemoaning my lack of colleagues I want to reach out to those who have chosen to connect with me. I’m not sure how this is going to happen or when but it is a logical step.

Also during my time away, Holly Anderson, a member of Grace Episcopal Church, emailed me and let me know about some kittens who were available. She did this because she was aware of my loss of Edison (which I am still grieving about and whom I still miss daily). I let her know that Eileen and I had decided to not to get another pet.

Holly had also previously sent me a very gracious thank you for my music at Grace after I retired. She had told me this many times in person as well. When my retirement was announced she was not happy. She said she would still see me at church, right? I had to gently disabuse of this notion. She is one of my favorite listeners there and is an amazing person. Ever since getting the thank you from her in the mail I have been pondering how to communicate to her how essential listeners are to the whole process of music.

So I emailed her back a lengthy response to her email about the kittens. I told her about Christopher Small’s idea that music is a verb and includes all working parts from listeners to people who set up chairs to performers and on and on. I also mentioned that music is one of the essential parts of being a human. She responded in a few days how she thought this idea was cool and that she remembered a dream she was the one making the music. I like this a lot.

I continue to admire Julie Fowlis’ recent Inside Music program on the BBC. I can’t believe she produces a two hour program of this quality weekly. I listened to the whole thing this morning while making coffee and bread and cleaning the kitchen and exercising. It has inspired me to follow up on most of the music she has on her play list.

I also find her description of her education and relationship to other musicians in Scotland inspiring. It has helped me understand how my education has not always been as helpful as it could have been. This has probably assisted me as an autodidact as it has continually thrown me on my own resources. And of course this is largely the place I am now as well. A good place, actually.

This is one of the pieces on Fowlis play list that I liked. She said that she uses this music for a gentle morning wake up and that she loves the music by Horner but has never seen the movie. Cool.

Massacres in U.S. History – Zinn Education Project

I recently listened to a repeat a podcast of Al Franken interviewing Michael Harriot.

Harriot mentioned massacres in our U.S. history some of which I was not aware. This link is to a partial list by the Zinn Education Project.

I have been neglecting my blog. I have been too busy with holiday fun. Eileen and I spent a few days with Mark and Leigh at their home. We were joined by Ben, Emily, and Jeremy. This visit helped me remember how much I enjoy conversation with people I love. Hell, probably with any people. We drove home yesterday and arrived just before a snow storm.

While it was good to visit with people, returning to my house now provides a new, unique pleasure of returning to the comfort of the books surrounding me especially those in my study.

Eileen and I are understandably weary today. I stayed up very late every one of the three nights we were visiting. We did get a chance to chat with Sarah today. We usually do so on Saturdays but we were busy traveling home. The English branch of the Jenkins fam have been partying like mad over there. Celebrating and re-celebrating Alice’s second birthday. Here’s what we looked like (Alice put the star on me on their screen).

I have plenty of new books to read. I love visiting Mark and his library. I left my copy Bloom’s Shakespeare: The Invention of the Human and Don Quixote at home and read in Mark’s copies. I also read in his Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson.

Mark gave a very cool book on Dante written by one of his favorite teachers.

Right up my alley.

I cooked in Mark’s kitchen which is amazing. It’s fun to work in it. I was able to get a little playing on Leigh’s fabulous piano.

I enjoyed chatting with my niece, Emily, and her husband, Jeremy, and my nephew, Ben. Tony, Ben’s husband, was under the weather, so we missed seeing him.

Eileen and I are laying around today. Life is good.

“They said they said.
They said they said when they said men.
Men many men many how many many many many men men men said many here.”
Gertrude Stein, Patriarchal Poetry, quoted by Susan Howe in The Birth-Mark

Inside Music – Singer and musician, Julie Fowlis finds a place to breath for January 1, 2022

cool This episode is only available for 28 more days or so. I stumbled across this one morning and loved it. Recommended.

The Selk’nam’s quest for recognition

“In the 19th century, other Europeans and their descendants would arrive, this time to stay. Men who had already domesticated plants and animals and who upon arriving in what is now called Tierra del Fuego found hunter-gatherers who had lived there for more than 10,000 years. That indigenous group would become to known as Selk’nam.  The encounter between hunter-gatherers and the colonizer farmers led to a defacto death penalty for the Selk’nam. A tragedy that is still the order of the day. Considered extinct in the history books and laws written by the victors, yet the survivors claim to be alive. And now they fight for recognition.”

‘Pooh,’ ‘Sun Also Rises’ among works going public in 2022 | AP News

cool beans

Building Trust Across the Political Divide – Comment Magazine

bookmarked to read

I had to send two C. P. E. Bach books back to the libraries that sent them to me via interlibrary loan. Before leaving to do so I did another request for each one and will soon have them again in my greedy little hands. I finished reading Anthony and Cleopatra by Shakespeare this morning. Great stuff! I also started reading Stand On Zanzibar by John Brunner. I was chatting with Jeremy about this author the other day. I was surprised that I didn’t have any books by him in my library. But now I do. I had to go look up the year in which Burgess published Clockwork Orange. The syntax in the books are related. Burgess mixes up Russian and English to come up with pidgin language Alex and his cronies use. Brunner coins words that mix up English and Corporate language. Burgess (1962) turns out to predate Brunner (1968). Both men are writing under the spell of Joyce.

We had a good Christmas. Jeremy, Elizabeth, and Alex came for Christmas eve and left the next day. I enjoy having them around. I even did a bit of cooking even though Eileen and I swore we were going to make easy eating with salads and cheeses from Meijer.

The above picture is of the New York Times recipe for Creamed Greens Potpie. It uses store bought puff pastry. I modified it and used a Spanakopita filling of Spinach and Feta cheese. I thought it was great but Eileen said it was too garlicky and tasted too much of spinach.

We are descending (with permission) on my poor brother and his wife in a few days. Now that Edison has gone to his reward (died), we are freer to leave the house. We are all severely vaccinated so it should be relatively safe.

I’m planning to use the remaining puff pastry in some kind of Cheese Pinwheel thingo. Something along these lines bur probably not quite as fancy.

I also promised Mark I would bring fresh baked bread. We will take whatever is left from Christmas meals as well.

I have been enjoying the hell out of Susan Howe’s The Birth-Mark.

It’s a unique blend of scholarship and poetry and what not. The title comes from a short story by Nathaniel Hawthorne of the same name. My edition does not have a hyphen in it. But thinking about the different versions of published works is very much what Howe is about.

She is also into marginalia. As she writes her prose she will point out what Melville wrote in the margins of his copy of a Hawthorne work. Since she is into marginalia she is attuned to the silencing of great women writers like Emily Dickinson. I am digging all the American crap. The whole discussion is something I resonate with.

Here are some cool quotes from Howe’s book.

“The enthusiast … is a solitary who lives in a world of his own peopling.” Coleridge quoted in Howe

In describing archived presentation of original documents, Howe quotes Richard Sieburth’s introduction to his translation of Hymns and Fragments by Friedrich Hölderlin: “[P]resenting Hölderlin’s texts as events rather than objects, as processes rather than products, [converts] the reader from passive consumer into active participant in the genesis of the poem, while at the same time calling attention to the fundamentally historical character of both the reader’s and the writer’s activity.”

I dig that sort of stuff. This relates a bit to the way I see music as a verb about group process.

I learned a new word today: “cormorant.”

Eileen recognized it as the name of a bird but in her book The Birth-mark, that I started today, Susan Howe uses the word in reference to John Cotton, the historian Cotton Mather’s maternal grandfather calling him a “library cormorant.” The OED gives a second figurative meaning of cormorant as “An insatiably greedy or rapacious person. Also with qualification, as money-cormorant.” Howe says that John Cotton was one of the “vivid” lives in the “Lives of Sixty Famous Divines,” in Cotton Mather’s Magnalia Christi Americana.

Not only was John Cotton a “library cormorant” but “Mr. Cotton was indeed a most universal scholar, and a living system of the liberal arts, and a walking library…. Twelve hours in a day he commonly studied, and would call that a scholar’s day; resolving to wear out with using than with rusting.” (from the Magnalia as quoted by Howe)

I like the idea of wearing out from use rather than rust. I think this is something I aspire to as well and reminds me of Eileen and her Mom.

Later Howe refers to Nathaniel Hawthorne as a “library cormorant.” I think this is a useful word for me since I and so m any others I know are library cormorants.

I picked up on Howe because she gave a joint reading with Ben Lerner which is on YouTube. I was just curious about her work. She’s a bit older than Lerner (b. 1937). I’m not sure what the book is about yet but decided I was interested because it deals with Emily Dickinson, Emerson, and others.

I’m on the road to recovery from being phished thanks especially the expertise of my daughter, Sarah, and brother, Mark. I upgraded my Internet Security software and ran some diagnostics. I changed a few passwords and will be working on that more. Eileen and I both have some work to do on securing our devices. Now we have motivation!

Eileen is working on her Mom’s famous cinnamon rolls today. They look great so far. I have volunteered to eat any failures if she is not satisfied and starts over.

Rhonda just stopped by with a Christmas gift. I was not only able to give her her Christmas gift but these days I can give a whirlwind tour of my study, my music room, and Eileen’s loom room. As Eileen just remarked, we are getting somewhere!

I made one last trip to Readers World before Christmas Day today. I did some research on some books for Eileen and me and then went and picked out some stuff. Eileen always finds it difficult to choose something to give me. Usually if we’re alone for Christmas we don’t really do much, but since we will be celebrating here on Christmas day and have lots of presents for Elizabeth, Jeremy and Alex it seems that Santa should bring both Eileen and me stuff. So I did the Santa thing for both of us today. I think I was pretty successful.

Eileen also is making chili today, one pot vegetarian and one pot carnivore. The house is smelling excellent!

Before I say anything about what happened to me I want to reassure you that everything’s okay now.

Eileen and I were sitting in the parking lot at the library waiting for our books on hold to be brought to us when I noticed an odd text message. Ten minutes earlier it had said that someone had just charged an AQUAGLIDE Recoil Trampoline on my “card.” If not me I should click on this phone number.

I did so. The person answering told me that someone had hacked my Amazon account and applied for an Amazon credit card and charged stuff on it. I’m sitting in the car. I told him I needed to drive home and see what was going on. He said okay but not to hang up.

When I got home I could see I had received an email with the sub, “amazon.com, action needed: Password change attempt.” Note the little “a.” I didn’t notice this until later when Eileen did. I clicked on a link to change my password all the while talking to the con man on the phone. He gave me a new temp password which weirdly worked. I told him I couldn’t see any recent activity on my account. But he told me that the hackers are so clever that they would hide the notifications.

He asked if there was an Amazon store nearby probably knowing full well that there wasn’t one. I probably got it wrong but I thought he wanted me to go to an Amazon store inside a nearby Wal-Mart and talk to Amazon security people. I was supposed to stay on the phone and let him know when I was in the parking lot. He was adamant that I should not get out of the car.

When we were in the parking lot, I began to tell him the whole thing felt like a scam. After he told me that they had deposited $2,000 to my credit card and I was use that to buy four Amazon cards at Wal-Mart, I told him there was no way I was going to that.

He blustered (“Amazon is a reputable company worth millions!). He threatened (“You can hang up, sir, and take the next step into court”). He suggested I didn’t trust him because of his Indian accent. Finally I told him I was going to hang up.

I was worried about the Amazon account. But we went to our bank to make sure our account had not been hacked.

The banker was very, very helpful. After ascertaining that we hadn’t actually purchased gift cards, he checked out account and there was no evidence of it being hacked at the bank. He told us we were probably okay. In fact, he was relieved at how we had stopped following the man on the phone’s advice and came to the bank. He taught me that if fraud was actually being investigated there would be no sense of urgency. He said this kind of phishing is a big business in countries like India where there are office building full of people running these scams.

Oh, I thought. That makes sense.

I came home and successfully accessed my Amazon account (I hadn’t closed the window after logging in the the password from the bogus Amazon people. I instantly was able to change the password. So probably no harm done

Eileen’s credit card was in reality hacked recently. Our banker told us that once we had been hacked we would probably be targeted again since hackers to sell any information they get.

So it was a learning experience. I have been phished once before. I received an email from Rev Jen. Just like today’s hackers, the hacker had replicated Jen’s real email but put in an extra period. I didn’t notice the difference of the lower case A. But Eileen did.

Sheesh. I am feeling like a little old man who is a bit of an easy target. But I am incredibly relieved. On the drive to the bank I was fantasizing about getting a job so we would have money to live if we had been cleaned out.

So Eileen and I decided not to do date-day today. Instead we’re hanging around the house and tending to things that are on our minds for Christmas. At least Eileen is.

She decorated the tree last night after I went to bed. Then after breakfast, she wrapped presents while I messed with my books. I have been organizing them in the study. Today, I also organized and cleaned up the books on the south wall which are mostly music books, African American related books, church books, and general folk music. I pulled a stack of churchy stuff I know I will not want again. I’m thinking of dropping it off at Grace Episcopal church sometime next year.

Eileen is thinking of making her Mom’s famous cinnamon rolls for Christmas. She found the recipe today, but back in 2012, we made videos of Dorothy showing her and Sarah how it’s done. I searched my exterior hard drive, Drop box, and YouTube but couldn’t find them. I put out a call on WhatsApp to Sarah and the rest of the fam. Sarah didn’t know exactly where she had them but thought she did. Elizabeth located a link in an old email. That was helpful.

YouTube is a bit cumbersome sometimes for me. Even though I had searched my videos these recording didn’t come up. It took some poking around until I located them on my YouTube channel. The difficulty was that they were private videos. Lord knows how to work with them, but somehow I managed to make a playlist and Eileen watched them on the Roku screen.

Eileen just finished and said that it was very helpful despite the fact that she was recalling how to do it correctly. Watching these videos helped her be sure she knew what she was doing. These are great Cinnamon Rolls and it will be a treat for Christmas.

I held my breath when I plugged in my ancient exterior hard drive. When we were moving the living room bookshelves to the study I managed to drop it on the floor. Ever since then I have worried that I lost information. It wouldn’t have been the end of the world but there are many Finale files which are my only access to some of my compositions.

I have never worried about saving my work for posterity. However, I was hoping those files were intact. I have thought of recomposing some of my stuff and giving some pieces some new piano accompaniment carefully written out. Having to reconstruct an old song from scratch is not as attractive as messing with one from old files. So I was relieved to see that I hadn’t destroyed this old exterior hard drive.

It looks like today was a good day to skip the drive to the beach.

I was pretty impressed with how adroitly my new phone had saved information from the old one. It even managed to restore my current milkweed wall paper. I love the way the milk weeds looked in our yard as they opened up and slowly distributed those feathery seeds.

There was fire in two of my dreams last night. In the first one, I was in a family’s basement. I discovered my little brother playing with matches. It was not Mark but some generic brother. I fussed at him, “Are you insane?” I told him he needed to go tell Mom while I proceeded to try to put out the flame.

The second fire dream took place in a church loosely based on First Presbyterian Detroit. I was at the organ. I don’t think the service had started yet. There was a soprano from Grace Episcopal preparing to sing a solo based on Ralph Vaughan Williams organ piece Rhosymedre. I was fumbling around looking for my music so I could accompany her. In my fumbling I moved a switch. This seemed to be a significant event because as I continued to look for the music and orient myself to the large organ, I noticed smoke coming from the pipes. Smoke was pouring into the room. There were shutters on either side of the huge pipe case. We shut them. Then we or somebody decided to evacuate everyone while we tried to put out the fire. I remember feeling relieved and thinking, “Now I don’t have to play the service.”

Back in real life, I broke my phone over the weekend. I left it sitting precariously on the kitchen table on some bunched up tablecloth. I had bunched it up because the coffee carafe turned out to be wet on the bottom and I was trying to dry the tablecloth out. I hadn’t noticed that the phone was perched in such a way as when I took a few steps to move out of the room the phone fell on the floor with a slam.

It was already cracked but when I picked it up it the screen had cracked further and formed a tree like pattern over the top of the screen.

The phone still worked but I decided it probably wasn’t a good idea to use since for some reason I didn’t have a screen protector on it and the glass seemed to be gradually shedding fine glass dust.

So today Eileen and I went and upgraded the silly thing.

I am starting to understand Ben Lerner’s poetry better. It helps me to listen to him read his poems. I did this this morning with this recording from 2019 while I exercised. Since I understand them better I find myself liking them more. I finished his essay, “The Hatred of Poetry,” this morning.

Eileen brought the Christmas tree in and I held it while she secured the stand. She is definitely in Energizer Bunny mode lately. I on the other hand continue to enjoy relaxing, reading, and practicing. I’m also messing with books constantly as I sort them into the new shelves. I find that a pretty pleasant task.

I am enjoying not having to do church so much especially at this time of year that I think I might be feeling slightly guilty about it.

Ben Lerner seems to be a project of mine. I don’t always understand his poetry and am working on doing so better. The above book is a beautiful book I have been reading despite not always understanding.

The book itself is a work of art and is a pleasure to hold in your hands.

Lerner and Kluge and their team have put a lot of thought into presentation in this book. So far the best approach has been to read straight through instead of trying to understand every little reference and allusion. Explanations are part of the text throughout.

Apparently when Lerner published The Lichtenberg Figures, he thought of sending a copy to Kluge since he admired his film work and felt that Kluge might connect with his poems. He decided it was a bit much to reach out to someone he didn’t know to share his work. But in the meantime, someone gave Kluge a copy of the book in a German translation. Kluge was so taken with it that he wrote 16 reactions (stories he calls them) and these apparently ended up being printed not only in The Snows of Venice but also in The Paris Review.

There is a video on YouTube of them presenting stuff to what seems to be a German audience. They both read from The Snows of Venice, but Lerner doesn’t speak German and Kluge keeps telling him he tell him (Lerner) what he (Kluge) said in the lengthy German comments.

I figured all this out but most of this information is in The Snows of Venice.

Angels play a big role in the prose of Kluge. Kluge brings two prints for Lerner to look at. Their conversation is one of several transcribed conversations in the book. Lerner recognizes them. The title of this one is translated in the book as “The Angel of History.” But I think is probably more accurate to say “New Angel.”

Kluge says this about it: “This angel is in despair. This is a gaze from the end of the 1930s, fixed upon the abyss of mass fascist movements and a history that has revealed its entrails.”

Lerner tells Kluge in the book the story of Rebecca Quaytman who was an artist doing some research. Quaytman travels from America where she lives to Tel Aviv to see the picture in person. Lerner: “As part of her research, Rebecca went and looked at the drawing in person and she noticed immediately that around the edge there was evidence of an intaglio print. It turns out that Klee’s ‘Angel of History’ is mounted on a print of none other than Martin Luther. Only Rebecca noted this secret hiding in plain sight. It’s a remarkable secret for a number of reasons. That the ‘Angel of History,’ so long a symbol of left Jewish messianism is mounted on top of Luther.” Lerner points out that “only a person who is physically present can see the traces of the engraving of Luther’s cape” in the margins.

At this point in the book, Quaytman takes over and there are four works reproduced in which she references Paul Klee’s painting.

Here are a couple.

I think the Hebrew means “The Cock.”

This second image is my favorite.

I have more rabbit holes to share but I think this is enough for today.

This morning I was playing softly on my electronic piano (with the harpsichord sound) in order not to disturb Eileen. I decided it would be fun to play from the Anna Magdalene Bach Notebook. I have a dog-eared copy I have had for many years. This collection is so-called because one copy exists in her handwriting.

It was not unusually for musicians to have hand written copies of music they wanted to have around. In fact, these kinds of copies were much more common than music that had been made on a printing press.

The music in the notebook is not only pieces by J. S. Bach but also other composers including Francois Couperin, C. P. E. Bach, and Georg Bohm. So I think of it as sort of the family record collection.

Everyone in the house was a musician. Anna was a professional singer in the court of Anhalt-Cöthen where Bach served as court musician. I speculate that he may have hired her. At any rate they became a couple after Bach’s first wife died.

Since I have been studying the life and work of Bach’s son, C.P.E. Bach, I imagine what it would have been like in this musical house.

This morning I played several pieces from the Notebook. Then it occurred to me to compare some of them to the J.S. Bach versions from which I usually play them. I discovered that in the E minor partita there were a differing number of measures in the same piece in the two sources.

When Eileen got up, I told her I had spent time down the rabbit hole this morning. This is sort of how I think about the luxury of being retired. Rabbit holes are now something I can get lost in. This was a perfect example.

When I analyze a piece of music, I usually add measure numbers if they are not printed already. This is how I discovered that these two version differed. Anna’s Notebook version has 105 measures in it. The printed version from the first volume of Bach’s published music (Clavierübung volume I) had 108 measures. As I examined the two side by side, I figured out that at one point Bach had added a two measure group and then just before the end he added another measure. All throughout the two there were many slight differences.

I’m assuming that the family record collection version came first and that Bach changed it slightly (improving it, no doubt in his mind) when he prepared for the printed version.

The next step down the rabbit hole is to speculate why he did so.

On a more mundane note, Eileen and I went out and got our Christmas tree. I used to try to delay the purchase of a tree until very close to Christmas. It seemed weird to encourage church people to wait and celebrate Christmas on the actual date and at the same time at home to join in the cultural consumer insanity of extending Christmas back into the season of Advent and even before to Thanksgiving and Halloween.

Even before retiring I was loosening up on this. After retiring I can understand more clearly what I expect from holidays. I like them and like celebrating them. But this year we didn’t get a tree as early as we have been doing. This is more from laziness I think than intention.

So, we had a bit of a difficulty finding a tree to buy today. But we did find one so we’re set with that. I’m expecting the Elizabeth branch of the Jenkins clan to celebrate with us on Christmas Day. So that will be nice.

I finished Ozeki’s The Book of Form and Emptiness last night waiting for Eileen to get back from Kalamazoo. It is an excellent book but I was slightly disappointed in the “happy ending.” It felt a little clunky and was in contrast to how the rest of the book drew me in.

My daughter Elizabeth and her family has given me these wonderful Trust Fall Quarterly Book Club memberships. I save them for when I’m looking for something to read. The books have so far invariably been good. I do like the fact that I am receiving a book in the mail that someone else has recommended.

In each box is a signed copy of a book they recommend and a clever related side line item. Usually there are some interesting information on an enclosed sheet. As a bonus in the last book I received (the one on the left pictured above) there was a galley proof of Wole Oyinka’s Chronicles from the Land of the Happiest People on Earth

This is a perfect choice for me. Apparently the extra book was a random choice from 2021 fiction titles. Galley proofs are not for resale. But they can be given away.

Last night after finishing The Book of Form and Emptiness, I decided to dip into Chronicles from the Land of the Happiest People on Earth.

I recognize Soyinka, but more as a playwright and poet. I noticed a volume of his poetry in my library but haven’t checked for a play yet. But I liked that his bio says that he was “twice jailed in Nigeria for his criticism of the Nigerian government, and he destroyed his U.S. Green Card in 2016 when Donald Trump was elected president of the United States.” Sounds like my kind of guy.

So far it is a romp and I am enjoying it immensely.

In addition I am reading Anthony and Cleopatra by Shakespeare for the first time. I read essays on this play by Harold Bloom and Emma Smith. I reached for Bloom and Smith about a third of the way through the play because I didn’t quite understand why some of the action was taking place. These authors helped me understand much that I was missing including the fact that Cleopatra (played by a man) bemoans the prospect of her story being told in a reenactment of humiliation: “I shall see/ Some squeaking Cleopatra boy my greatness/ I’the posture of a whore.” V.ii.219,220.

That’s cool. And probably a weird moment when acted in the Globe theatre.

Anyway, Cleopatra is better understood in terms of modern celebrity and posturing of same. Excellent stuff as usual from the hand of the master.

I got up this morning and made bread. Eileen and I had some for both breakfast and lunch. It makes the house smell great.

I broke down and put up on Facebooger an entry about Edison’s death. Eileen pointed out that many of the people who have had contact with him might need to be notified. It seemed the easiest way though I found the idea of parading my grief a bit distasteful. I had many, many supportive comments and over a hundred “likes.” Social media is such a weird environment.