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.