I dreamed about my harpsichord last night. For those of you not up to speed about this, when I was a young man of 17, I used  my college money ($600) and bought a harpsichord kit from Zuckermann around 1969. With the help of some friends and one friend’s carpenter Dad, we assembled the kit and I played the harpsichord for many years. I even studied harpsichord in school and performed harpsichord solos in several of my under graduate degree recitals.

A couple years ago, I decided I should upgrade my jacks (the thing that plucks the strings). I purchased an upgrade kit and began working. But for some reason or another I abandoned the project. Since then my harpsichord has been sitting uselessly in our dining room.

In my dream last night, one of the people who helped me assemble it originally was disparaging my attempts (in the dream) to work on it. I got the impression he thought it wasn’t worth messing with.

Admittedly it’s not a fancy harpsichord. But it fits me (outdated, old and kind of primitive). I would love to have it back in working condition.

I got the idea this morning laying in the dark that maybe I should consider completing each jack one at a time instead of doing each operation to all jacks then moving to the next operation. I pulled out all the material I bought to fix the thing

and also the instructions.

We’ll see if such a procedure is even possible with the materials and tools I have.

Yesterday I upgraded to Windows 10.

At first it seemed like a mistake. The computer crawled. I had many blank screens and suddenly the computer no longer talked to the big monitor (that we use for tv viewing).

Yikes. However with a couple of restarts everything started checking out okay. I believe the computer is even running a bit quicker. Wouldn’t that be nice?

I am working with students in the Modern Class on their final project. Julie has divided them into teams. Each team is to develop a short dance based on an idea that they get to come up with. There is an older visiting prof from Japan in this class. Julie allowed her to work by herself. She has worked with Syrian refugees and was very upset after the recent Paris incident. She has developed a dance about the journey of refugees from Syria.

I think it would be cool if I could find some traditional Syrian music to incorporate in her dance. I know I have a book somewhere of world music that might contain some Syrian or at least Arabic music. I spent a good of time this morning looking for it. No dice.

I’m hoping to find something on the interwebs after blogging.

Democrat Wins Mississippi House Race After Drawing Straw – The New York Time

They drew straws after a tie. Wow.

Greek New Testament Papyrus Is Discovered on eBay – The New York Times

This seems to be an important papyrus since it comes not from the usual codex (book like) source but from a scroll.

Winnie-the-Pooh’s Skull: Relic of Inspirational Bear Goes on Display – The New York Times

I didn’t know Winnie the Pooh was based on a real bear.