So it turns out that quarantined Jupe is a busy guy. Weird. It’s just beginning to look like we have the Triduum under control for presenting online. Good thing since it begins today at dusk (technically).
Rev Jen added me for her Palm Sunday live stream. That went okay. Since then we have been working on what we will present online for the Triduum and Easter Sunday. For this evening, the Maundy Thursday presentation will just be her and me. I will improvise a prelude, sing “Will you let me be your servant,” and play “Stay with me” on the guitar at the end of the service. The rest Jen is handling.
For Good Friday we are adding a husband and wife team who are both regular readers (Jay and Karen Bylsma). They will be streaming together from their home.
It doesn’t look like you can multi track a stream. If more than one person tries to talk, it doesn’t work. This basically leaves out doing music from more than one place live. Also, if everyone in a stream tries to give responses it doesn’t work.
Jay and Karen will give the responses and since they are in the same stream, this should work.
Jen and I have worked out what she wants me to do musically for the Good Friday live session.
I met with Laurie Van Ark and Kris Pierce to go over a reader’s digest version of the Exultet. I say “met” with them but of course we met up online. I think this should work for the vigil.
I am planning to do the rest of the music for the Vigil and Easter Sunday on keyboard which is to say it should be easy with lots of improvising.
Like I say, this all takes surprising amounts of time.
I’m also chief bottle washer at our house and do most (but not all, Hi Elizabeth and Eileen!) of the dishes.
This morning I got up very early to exercise and make coffee. I managed to get two hours of reading in before the day began. I have decided to try to read some of the books I have inter-library loaned since no books are going back to the library right now and I will have them for an extended period.
This morning I put a good dent into Erich Auerbach’s Dante: Poet of the Secular World. I learned some fascinating stuff from reading in it and Plato this morning. In the 10th Chapter of the Republic there is a complete version of an afterlife experience that looks very much like the Christian one that came later. There is judging of the dead and sorting them into differing afterlives according to the way they conducted themselves when they were alive.
There are even permanent servants in the after life which are described as “fiery.”
Who knew?
Auerbach quotes a lot of Greek so I get to practice that as I read as well.
This afternoon I managed to finally finish Black Leopard Red Wolf by Marlon James.
This is a helluva read and I’m looking forward to the other volumes in this projected trilogy. I have to say it’s both dark and fantastic. Lots of violence and sex but in a very unusual way.
It’s a good thing I finished this one because yesterday I started Don Quixote in the Edith Grossman translation. It is a gas.
I also picked up Akiko Busch’s How to Disappear: Notes on Invisibility in a Time of Transparency.
This seems like a good quarantine read. I’m about 30 pages in and loving it.
Eileen is still fighting her sciatica. It is a trying time for her in many ways not the least of which is the debilitating nature of her suffering. At a time when she should have all the time in the world for her weaving and other projects she is unable to function very well. Not happy stuff.
The Chinese Branch of the fam seems to be making the best of being stuck in our house. Jeremy continues to work online. Elizabeth has been cleaning the yard, organizing activities for Alex, and cooking.
I still find it rewarding to have them around. I hope it doesn’t drive them (or Eileen) too crazy.
I’m already crazy so this is not a problem for me.
2020 Hugo and Astounding Awards Finalists – Locus Online
Arundhati Roy: ‘The pandemic is a portal’ | Free to read
Some brilliant writing from India.
The Amusement Dark by Mike Buckley : Clarkesworld Magazine – Science Fiction & Fantasy
Biologist Is Surprised To See Yeast Being Hoarded, Decides To Teach People How To Make It At Home | Bored Panda
The Killer Flu of 1918: A Philadelphia Story – The New York Times
Some excellent writing from last Sunday.
Andy Beshear and his Wholesome Meme Messengers – Melissa Ryan
Elizabeth J. pointed me to this article. She knows the author and Beshear is the governor of Kentucky who is one of those governors exhibiting actual leadership right now.