Chris the worker is prepping this wall of our kitchen to paint it a light green. He also managed to  get the window on  the right open, so we now have two windows working, with a lovely view of our backyard.

This picture is one of the ones I was too discouraged to continue to try to put on the blog yesterday.

This is another picture I took yesterday. This is the backdoor of the kitchen.

So we’re almost done with this renovation. The electrician (Chris calls him Sparky) came yesterday and installed one more electrical outlet and changed the light switch in the dining room from a broken dimmer to a regular on and off switch.

Chris installed a grab bar in the shower. I ordered a nicer shower head with an extension which is supposed to arrive in the mail today. After Chris installs that and finishes painting the kitchen I think we are done.

Whew.

I did not anticipate that the loss of my privacy and solitude would have such an impact on me.

I guess I’m spoiled and need that time alone.

I have decided to learn some music by Donald Busarow for this Sunday’s prelude and some Handel for music a week from Sunday.

Busarow taught at Wittenberg. He was also the teacher of one of my buddies from grad school. Googling him reveals that he died a couple of years ago. I have lost touch with all my friends from grad school. A couple of them are on Facebookistan. But since my fall from grace (leaving the employee of the Holy Roman Catholic Church), I have less and less in common with people who are still working for them.

Busarow, however, is Lutheran through and through as was my buddy who was his student.

When we were deciding where to live after grad school, I interviewed at an Episcopal church in Springfield Ohio which is where Wittenberg is. I am very glad we did not move there. The church there is one of the few churches I have interviewed over the years that did not offer me the job. The gig was half music and half youth ministry director. Yikes!

I do wonder if I might have gotten to know Busarow a bit if we had moved there. He is a very competent composer. I’m pretty sure I would have gotten along a lot better with the Lutherans than I have with the Reformed tradition here in West Michigan.

But no matter. The music I am playing by Busarow is in one of those “Music for a Sunday Morning” series that Concordia published for a while. They all have three movements. Presumably one for the prelude, one for an instrumental offertory and one for the postlude. Busarow has written more than one in the series (I think I own two by him).

This is number 15. I will perform the Prelude and Litany as the prelude and the Finale as the postlude.

He wrote the piece for an AGO convention in Ohio. He developed a theme in the pieces of AGA which is musical notes for AGO.

I thought about putting that in a note in the bulletin Sunday but decided it was too silly.

1. Robert Bellah, Sociologist of Religion Who Mapped the American Soul, Dies at 86 – NYTimes.com

The book on which he worked, Habits of the Heart, is a popular one with liturgists. I have read in it.

2. Early Film by Orson Welles Is Rediscovered – NYTimes.com

Soon to be online.

3. The Tea Party’s Path to Irrelevance – NYTimes.com

Lots of history in this article. One of the comments corrects his notion that the Whig Party was a direct antecedent to the modern Republican party. But still there is some interesting stuff in the article.

4. 11 Trillion Reasons – NYTimes.com

USDA tries to get us to eat right but at the same time subsidizes farmers who produce the stuff of junk food

5.Jailed Pussy Riot Activist’s Defiant Speech at Parole Hearing – NYTimes.com

Remember these people?

6. Veterans Group, Flying a Flag With a Message, Ruffles a City – NYTimes.com

This bugs me. Why can’t they fly a historical flag? Weird.

7. Russia’s Anti-Gay Crackdown – NYTimes.com

Russia’s new law says they can arrest foreigners who are “suspected” of being gay.

8. Confessions of a ‘Composeress’ – NYTimes.com

I’ve been listening this composer’s music on Spotify. I think it’s kind of cool.

I’m getting to blogging a bit late this morning. I’m sitting at the church. There is an electrician at my house working. After Eileen left for work, I went to the Farmers Market. I picked up our CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) package for the week. You can see the contents above. Eileen and I subscribe to a small share and it is more than enough.

I chopped and cleaned some of lasts week’s stuff that we haven’t eaten yet.

In addition to the CSA stuff, I bought eggs, blueberries, melon (not pictured), lettuce and peaches. After separating out a few leaves of the lettuce for sandwiches, I chopped and rinsed the lettuce and put it in a plastic bag. If I do that, we are more likely to use it.

While I’m at it, I’ll try to put some pics of the kitchen up. After putting a couple of pics in an edited post, the whole thing balks and I’m not sure why. But I start getting error messages which take forever to come up. Anyway, here’s how the kitchen is looking.

This picture gives a bit better idea of the color.

Afternoon update: I stopped trying to get pics up because they were taking too long. Then I came home to discover I had lost the internet at home. Now it’s working and I’m going to just leave today’s blog at this.

More tomorrow.

I have now received all the books I recently ordered in a slight binge. I’m reading the library’s copy of Michelle Alexander’s excellent The New Jim Crow. This book is blowing me away. The copy I purchased is a “revised edition.” I’m hoping the main revision was the addition of a foreword by Cornel West. In it, he says The New Jim Crow is “the secular bible for a new social movement in early twenty-first-century America,” “a wake up call in the midst of a long slumber of indifference to the poor and vulnerable.”

I am finding that Alexander outlines the history of racism in the US drawing a disturbing line from slavery to our current system of repression by legal means. She uses copious footnotes citing recent studies, books and a long line of bad court cases.

I was encouraged when I found both Alexander and West making public statements regarding the recent Travon Martin debacle. There are some sane and prophetic voices out there in the midst of the insanity and evil.

The Siege of Krishnapur is the second installment in J.G. Farrell’s Empire Trilogy. I found the first volume Troubles to be both witty and tragic with an amazing use of a decaying Irish resort as a sort of parable of empire. I look forward to the second volume.

Every Love Story is a Ghost Story  is a quote from Wallace’s posthumous The Pale King which I have recently read and admired

The quote comes from Chapter 25 which is nothing more than a series of sentences describing the actions of a bunch of IRS workers sitting in a room. The first few sentences set the tone and rhythm for the chapter: “Irrelevant Chris Fogle turns a page. Howard Campbell turns a page. Ken Wax turns a page. Matt Redgate turns a page. “Groovy” Burce Channing attaches a form to a file.”

The prose is lined up in two columns per page (something lost in the ebook and audiobook version both of which I own). Towards the end of the chapter the title D. T. Max chose for his biography of Wallace simply occurs.

I look forward to reading the bio and hope that he explains his choice of this sentence (which I like).

1. FAMM Home Page

“FAMM (Families Against Mandatory Minimums) is a nonprofit, nonpartisan organization fighting for fair and proportionate sentencing laws that allow judicial discretion while maintaining public safety.”

Mentioned in a footnote in The New Jim Crow. I “liked” it on Facebook along with “Prison Reform Movement,” “All of Us or None,” and “Prison Policy Initiative.”

All of Us or None is”is a group of people with past convictions fighting against the discrimination that prisoners, former prisoners, people convicted of felonies, and our family members face inside and upon release.”

2.Life in a Toxic Country – NYTimes.com

The “toxic country” here is China and the toxicity is the air, baby food, and other stuff. (Elizabeth, scary stuff, but you might be interested that the author uses a British made face mask.)

3. In Missouri, Race Complicates a Transfer to Better Schools – NYTimes.com

The New Jim Crow not limited to mass incarceration.

4.2 Years After 116 Police Bullets Flew, Few Answers – NYTimes.com

It’s not until the end of this story that a picture seems to emerge of confusion on the ground when police responded to only the idea that “shots were fired” and did not know if the person they were apprehending had fired shots or not. Tragic stuff.

5. Of Courage and Cantaloupes – NYTimes.com

When will our elected officials begin to govern again?

6. Stephen King’s Family Business – NYTimes.com

I thought this was fun and plan to read some books by the other writers in the clan.

7. Marriage and Minorities – NYTimes.com

More effects of mass incarceration.

8. Court Rulings Blur the Line Between a Spy and a Leaker – NYTimes.com

We now have legal blurring between espionage and reporting. Great.

9. Organ gifted to Hope’s new Jack H. Miller Center for Musical Arts – Holland, MI – The Holland Sentinel

I have known this was coming for a while. It seems to me to be a poor choice of organ (Cassavant with pipes concealed!), but people with that opinion seem to have lost this one. Too bad.

Lots of thoughts flying around in my head this morning. I have been doing an online journal since the late nineties and I am still learning what’s appropriate to write about. I try to err on the side of omission but my nature is one of transparency especially in the kind of confessional writing I sometimes do here (sometimes I go offline and journal if I feel like my thoughts are too personal or might possibly offend or damage a reader).

So while there’s lots on  my mind, I’m not sure if much of it is appropriate to share here.

The underlying thing I have been thinking a lot about is how people seem drawn to and ask for mediocrity. This frustrates me to no end since I have spent my life trying not to be mediocre in my work and life.

Of course, it’s more likely that I’m just mentally fatigued on Monday morning.

In the course of writing this blog post, Eileen and I discovered that the cords that we have had hanging everywhere in the dining room have been dead for months. We (I) thought that the signal for the phone, TV, internet was coming through the phone line. Nope. Everything has been coming through the cable line. Ahem.

I nailed my postlude yesterday. After a long day on Saturday I dragged myself to church to practice for Sunday. I like to go over the entire service on Sunday, sometimes in order. I don’t practice every hymn particularly, but I do usually do one or two. I wait and go over the psalm on Sunday since the bulletin is already printed at that point.

I have been refining my own practice techniques lately to include systematic repetitions. Each time I sit down at the organ (and increasingly more and more at the piano) if I decide to rehearse a tricky section I repeat it a minimum of four times often more. I sometimes do the section slower and slower so that I allow myself more consistent accuracy and security. That way the last time I play the section will be the most correct and secure.

I have been doing this for a couple of years and it’s really paying off. Case in point, the Saint-Saëns prelude I performed yesterday as the postlude. I learned this piece in about six days. After settling in to learning it, it became apparent that there were three sections that demanded the most of my technique.

All three were a running pedal part with moving accompaniment in the manuals.

As I mentioned here before, the section is repeated in two other keys. Each section is slightly different in the manuals with elegant shifts of accompaniment emphasis.

On Saturday and again yesterday morning before church, I isolated these sections and practiced them slowly and carefully.

The result was I nailed the first two and had only a momentary insecurity in the third which was probably indiscernible to even a careful listener.

It’s telling that I mention the careful listener, because I don’t think I had any yesterday. That happens. But it is my own need to do quality work that drives me, not how people choose to listen to it.

It’s still very satisfying to do well. It’s kind of like busking. I put it out there and people can listen or just move on.

So when a colleague brags about not bothering to prepare preludes and postludes, I have to quietly remain steadfast in my own habits of preparation even though I don’t necessarily have the chops that many professional organists have. In fact this drives me to practice more often and carefully.

Just as the article I recently linked (The Consolations of a Schubert Sonata Surplus – NYTimes.com) influenced me to add Schubert’s lovely sonata to both my daily piano practice and listening choices, a reference in a novel I have recently started reading influenced me to purchase a couple of Kindle books.

In a recent chat with my friend Craig Cramer he mentioned a couple of authors he has enjoyed reading: David Lodge and Paul Auster.

While at the library recently, I pulled a book by each author and sat and read a bit, until I decided to check out The Brooklyn Follies by Auster.

I think I confused Auster with another author and have been passing him over thinking he was dead and that his writing was an example of late modernism. I don’t know how I got that impression since he is living and Cramer described his writing as hilarious.

Anyway, I came across a passage in which the narrator is talking to his brilliant nephew about an essay the nephew has written entitled, “Imaginary Edens: The Life of the Mind in Pre-Civil War America.”

The nephew has written about Edgar Allan Poe and Thoreau. The narrator asks the nephew to outline the argument in the paper.

“It’s about nonexistent worlds,” my nephew said. “A study of the inner refuge, a map of the place a man goes to when life in the real world is no longer possible.”

 

“The mind.”

 

“Exactly. First Poe, and an analysis of three of his most  neglected works. “The Philosophy of Furniture,’ ‘Landor’s Cottage,’ and ‘The Domain of Arnheim.’ Taken alone, each one is merely curious, eccentric. Put them together , and what you have is a fully elaborated system of human longing.”

 

….

 

“After that, I jump to Thoreau and examine the room, the house, and the landscape as presented in Walden.”

I was intrigued. I have read lots of Poe but hadn’t heard of the three stories.  I browsed some Kindle versions of complete works of Poe and landed on this one.

While I was at it, I perused the Thoreau works available and bought one.

Even though works by these authors are easily available for free online, I find purchasing one that has been formatted for Kindle to make the reading experience more enjoyable.

I stumbled into reading “Thou art the Man” by Edgar Allan Poe before getting to the three mentioned in the Auster novel. I did so because in Peter Berger’s The Far Glory he uses the Old Testament story where the prophet Nathan confronts Kind David with his murderous conduct as an example of the emerging self in Western civ.

So I had the story on my mind.

I’m glad there is so much Poe I  haven’t read. I look forward to reading more of  him including the three stories mentioned above.

The new bathroom is finished and functional. I took my first shower in it last night. Eileen assembled a neat little cabinet she bought online.

I couldn’t believe she had the energy to do that last night after working all day.

Above is the “before” picture taken yesterday morning.

This is what it looks like this morning (“after”).

The workmen also moved the refrigerator and stove across the kitchen to the new wall. I would put pics up of that, but it’s so chaotic as to be depressing, so maybe after I get it cleaned up and organized.

Cleaning and organizing is now the big job. We have been living and working around not having access to the areas that were being worked on. This meant lots and lots of temporary stashing of stuff. Now to figure out how to best organize everything. A big job.

I finished reading Elizabeth Strout’s Abide with Me yesterday.  It has one of those redemptive endings which unfortunately left me weeping sitting in the library’s silent reading room. Ah well. I also cry at stupid movie endings. At any rate, the book starts out telling the story of Tyler Caskey, a young minister living alone with a troubled young daughter. We overhear his interior monologue as he seeks to serve in his first church in a small New England town.  Eventually the reader learns his wife has died recently. The book essentially tells the story of  how he moves to grieving this loss.

I liked this quote enough to jot it in my reading notes on this book:

“Anyone who has ever grieved knows that grieving carries with it a tremendous wear and tear to the body itself, never mind the soul. Loss is an assault; a certain exhaustion, as strong as the pull of the moon on the tides, needs to be allowed for eventually.” p. 283

This book is a little religious for me. But as a guilty pleasure, I found it ultimately a rewarding read. Not as good as Olive Kitteridge by the same author.

I also finished McLuhan’s Understanding Media this morning. I am planning to review all my notes on this book and make an extensive list of quotes and my own observations. Ultimately I think this book is very dated meditations of a literate man who has some insights most of which fall short of any deep understanding but certainly were more clearheaded about his topic than anyone else I know of that was writing at that time.

I may put up more later as I continue to thinking about this book.

I received an email from the  Hope college library that they now have available a Hope version of the Summons search engine.

I instantly searched for Christopher Small and found some interesting articles written since his death.  I spent the morning yesterday hiding from the workmen at church again, this time reading articles online about Small.

I love the interwebs.

The plumber joined our other workman yesterday and spent the day installing plumbing.

Though we are getting close to being done with our bathroom renovation, I find that having people in my house working all day is getting on my nerves. Yesterday I spent most of the day at church, working and practicing.

I chatted on the phone, my old friend and former teacher, Craig Cramer.

He seems to be doing pretty well.

After a lot of organ practice and my piano trio rehearsal, I came home and sat in the backyard and read until the men left for the day.

Before date night, Eileen wanted to come home and see how much progress had been made during the day.

I’ll probably spend today a lot like yesterday (0ff-site), since the workmen have already begun to arrive.

I’m having trouble getting pictures to upload from my computer to the blog. Usually they fail several times before loading properly. This discourages me from putting them up. I have more pics than you probably want to see anyway. (“Here’s before and after pics of  my toilet installation.”)

1.New Habits Transform Software – NYTimes.com

This article reminded me of McLuhan’s notion that when a technology emerges, it is often inaccurately seen as (and even named for) the old technology (“horse-less carriage).

2. Women as a Force for Change – NYTimes.com

Global look at gender issues. Not just PC stuff but vital.

3.Republicans – Blinded by Self-Righteousness – NYTimes.com

I am thinking a lot about the hate that divides us and drives the sickness in our society. I keep thinking of what my friend from Romania told me years ago: “Don’t you know? All governments are jerks.”

4. Condemned to Die Because He’s Black – NYTimes.com

And this is part of the sickness, the evil, that has taken hold in our society. Michelle Alexander in her book The New Jim Crow, makes a convincing argument that one can draw a line from today’s mass incarceration (and subsequent loss of civil rights even after release) to the coded rhetoric of the 80s (“law and order” and “war on drugs” being essentially a politically acceptable way to keep stoking racial hatred and win elections) to Jim Crow to slavery. She does it well and with copious footnotes and scholarship.

5.Why young people still care about classical music – Telegraph

Bookmarked to read. I’m skeptical but would love encouragement.

6. The Consolations of a Schubert Sonata Surplus – NYTimes.com

After workmen left yesterday, I played through most of the Bb sonata this critic has heard multiple performers play. It is a good one.

7. NY Sex Criminals Lose Pataki Psych Transfer Case – NYTimes.com

Surprise, surprise. Criminals who have completed their sentence don’t get benefit of the constitution. More of the same.

8. Revealing a Health Care Secret: The Price – NYTimes.com

Time and time again I read where if the price for medical procedures was available, it would have the effect of lowering over all health care costs. Transparency!

9. Hillsdale president gets heat for calling minorities ‘dark ones’ | Detroit Free Press | freep.com

A little hate in Michigan. Coverage started with this article. Read it online, yesterday, on USA Today.

10. Chevre and Mushroom Stuffed Chicken | Taste for Adventure – Unusual, Unique & Downright Awesome Recipes

According to Eileen, this is a good recipe. I made it for her the other night.

I have been working on transcribing the first movement of Bach’s BWV 1079 for organ trio. First I took the piano score to the organ console and played through it. I found that it mostly worked as a trio. One section had to be transposed down an octave for the pedal. Otherwise it sits nicely on the instrument. I proofed it this morning. Now it’s here:  link to pdf if anyone would like to have a copy.  Warning, it’s kind of a long piece.

I decided I would just take a picture of the mess in basement at church instead of finding pics online to illustrate this process. Yesterday I filled ten more boxes with choral anthems. Originally all the stuff in this picture filled the entire room. My first task was to sort of organize it a bit so I could get around in the room. Note the billion coat hangers. Originally they were all sort of thrown into boxes. If you look carefully at the bookshelf on the left you can see where put some of them. On the right bookshelf I put the choir robes which were laying on chairs.

These are the old cabinets I am emptying. At this time I believe I only have two left to empty. Of course this is just the beginning of the huge job of sorting all the stuff in the other picture (including a year’s worth of anthems) and then carting it all upstairs to the renovated choir room.

This is the room where everything is going to go. I’m hoping I can get all my files in these nine drawers. I will have to put boxes in the drawers to make them work for me. I did mention this when it was discussed, but apparently I didn’t say it loud or persistently enough. No biggie.

This is what the rest of the choir room looks like now.

From chaos at work to chaos at home. Chris began staining the new doors yesterday.

This is the same door from the inside of the bathroom.

More later.

I am feeling a bit overwhelmed by the chaos both at home and at work.

Yesterday I spent several hours organizing the contents of the choir room which had been removed from the old room so that it could be renovated. This removal was done the week after Pentecost by enthusiasts from church (without me). I have to organize  the multiple contents of the room now in the basement as well as file all the choral music from last season. The contents from the choir room are not only music related but also the acolyte stuff, random educational materials and other things. I don’t really have to file that stuff, but I do have to work around it.

Before going on vacation, my boss and I agreed I would empty the six file cabinets of their contents of anthems and music so that they could be taken away. I have cleared out three of them. I did this after pushing stuff around in the room to sort of organize the basic chaos first. I carefully put the contents into cardboard boxes and marked them. I have run out of boxes but they are on order.

I also decided that I won’t be able to perform the piece by Parry I have been working on.

It’s 10 pages long. Several of the pages are full of lots of fast notes. I can play it, but not at any kind of a performance speed. This meant I needed  a postlude for this Sunday right away. I stumbled onto a piece I think I can learn in time by Saint-Saëns.

It’s from his Op. 109. It’s the prelude of a prelude and fugue. If I can master a couple of the sections, I will be able to perform it. I have to admire the skill of both Parry and  Saint-Saëns. Both compositions are well worked out. The difficult section in Saint-Saëns occurs three times in different keys and with slight variations.

I find the first instance of this passage to be the most difficult even though it’s in C major. I have marked the pedaling in my score and practiced this section one billion times yesterday.

When it occurs the second time in A major, I find it the easiest.

In its final Eb major incarnation, I find it somewhere between the previous two in difficulty. At any rate, I am planning to work on it today and decide if it will be ready by Sunday. If not, I’ll find an easy substitution for it.

Besides the chaos at home and work, I am also slightly depressed that I haven’t been paid for the wedding on Saturday. I could use the money but it doesn’t bode well that my boss is out of town. She told me Saturday that the groom said they forgot the checks. I don’t have the chutzpah to bug the bride and groom just yet. Maybe I will next week.

Chris got a lot done yesterday including hanging the two new doors.

Onward. Upward.

Eileen stayed home from work yesterday with a sore throat. She stayed in bed all day. Since the renovation continued with Chris the worker painting and laying tile, Eileen was locked upstairs with the cat. If she needed something, she texted me on my phone. In this way, she told me what she wanted for breakfast or that she needed tea.

Clever, eh?

When I left to practice organ in the afternoon and returned to treadmill I kept my phone handy and told Eileen to text me if she needed something.

I like this aspect of the smart phone.

Cell phones were in my dreams last night. I had a very interesting dream about being at a convention with Eileen. She was there but not with me, attending some function. I was taking care of  a baby (our baby?). Not identifiable as one of our three children, this baby was quite young, not ready to walk.

I carried the baby with me to pick up some used books I had picked out. I remember in the dream setting the baby down to look carefully at the books. Then I looked for a paper bag to put them in so that I could carry them and the baby.

All the while I realized that while Eileen had her cell phone with her, I had left mine in our room. My plan was to take the books, drop them off at our car, return to our room and call Eileen with my cell, all the while carrying this baby.

At some point I realized I no longer had the books with me. I wasn’t too concerned about that and kept wandering around from room to room (supposedly in a convention center of some sort), phoneless carrying a baby.

Chris finished painting the little wall that will divide the bathroom into laundry room and the rest of the room.

He propped one of the new doors up near the place he will hang it. He told me yesterday he will hang the doors and then stain them in place. It’s easier that way I guess.

The tile floor is almost finished as well. I like the looks of it.

1. Found in Translation – NYTimes.com

I found this a fascinating read. It’s a quick over view of so much philosophical writing that I don’t about.

2. Romney’s Reflections – NYTimes.com

I guess all politicians are to some degree in deep denial. Certainly true of this dude.

3. Status and Stress – NYTimes.com

“As income disparities have increased, class mobility has declined. By some measures, you now have a better chance of living the American dream in Canada or Western Europe than in the United State.

4. Voting Rights Of Black Americans Trampled By ‘New Jim Crow,’ Civil Rights Advocates Say

& 5. Cornel West: Obama’s Response to Trayvon Martin Case Belies Failure to Challenge “New Jim Crow” | Democracy Now!

& 6.Michelle Alexander: “Zimmerman Mindset” Endangers Young Black Lives with Poverty, Prison & Murder | Democracy Now!

I becoming increasingly aware of how our country systematically represses its citizens.

7. Garry Davis, Man of No Nation Who Saw One World of No War, Dies at 91 – NYTimes.com

The original One Worlder. Inspiring and goofy.

8.  I’m Still Waiting for My Phone to Become My Wallet – NYTimes.com

Me too.

9. The Brutality of ‘Corrective Rape’ – Photographs – NYTimes.com

Warning. This is a disturbing story with sad pictures. About South Africa.

10. What do conductors actually do? Review of ‘Inside Conducting’ by Christopher Seaman » The Spectator

Too new to interlibrary loan, but looks entertaining if not informative.

11. A Religious Legacy, With Its Leftward Tilt, Is Reconsidered – NYTimes.com

An interesting look at evolving understanding of recent history of  Christianity in America.

This morning I ordered four new (at least to me) books.

First I ordered my own copy of Michelle Alexander’s The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindess.

I’m on page 42 of the library copy. I spent some time this morning taking notes on this book. It is helping me understanding the political environment in the US we are living and the history of how we got here.

Here’s some of the quotes I put in my reading notes doc this morning. I find these ideas both enlightening and upsetting.

“What has changed since the collapse of Jim Crow has less to do with the basic structure of our society than with the language we use to justify it. In the era of colorblindness, it is no longer socially permissible to use race, explicitly, as a justification for discrimination, exclusion, and social contempt. So  we don’t. Rather than rely on race, we use our criminal justice system to label people of color ‘criminals’ and then engage in all the practices we supposedly left behind. Today it is perfectly legal to discriminate against criminals in nearly all the ways that it was once legal to discriminate against African Americans.” p. 2

“The United States imprisons a larger percentage of its black population than South Africa did at the height of apartheid.” p. 6

 

Even in the age of the development of Jim Crow, the roots for our modern situation were being placed. Consider this 1871 Virginia Supreme Court ruling Alexander quotes which uses shocking language, explicitly referring to convicts as “slaves of the state.”

“For a time, during his service in the penitentiary, he is in a state of penal servitude to the State. He has, as a consequence of his crime, not only forfeited his liberty, but all his personal rights except for those which the law in its humanity accords to him. He is for the time being a slave of the State. He is civiliter mortus; and his estage, if he has any, is administered like that of a dead man.”   Ruffin vs. Commonwealth, 62 VA . 790, 796 (1871)

I grew up listening to political discourse which I could see was hate rhetoric disguised, but I still find the clarity of Alexander’s observations sobering.

After the fall of Jim Crow: “[W]hatever the new order would be, it would have to be formally race-neutral—it could not involve explicit or clearly intentional race discrimination. A similar phenomenon had followed slavery and Reconstruction, as white elites struggled to define a  new racial order with the understanding that whatever the new order would be, it could not include slavery.” p. 40

“Proponents of racial hierarchy found they could install a new racial caste system without violating law or the new limits of acceptable political discourse, by demanding “law and order” rather than “segregation forever.” p. 40

We are, of course, living in this time when hatred hides its true intent. Reading this book is like living in pre-war Germany and understanding that one’s country is engaging in societal evil.

I have more reading notes, but you get the idea. I recommend reading this book. It’s helpful in understanding today’s headlines.

For example, Cornel West uses the term, “The New Jim Crow,” in responding to the Travon Martin tragedy.

Cornel West: Obama’s Response to Trayvon Martin Case Belies Failure to Challenge “New Jim Crow” | Democracy Now!

I have bookmarked this to at least read the transcript if not watch the video. Also Alexander herself is engaged in the discussion.

Michelle Alexander: “Zimmerman Mindset” Endangers Young Black Lives with Poverty, Prison & Murder | Democracy Now!

Haven’t read or listened all the way through to these two links, but plan to.

I also ordered a copy of Parallels and Paradoxes: Explorations in Music and Society by Barenboin and Said. I paid a penny for it used and $4 shipping. I may have a copy of this somewhere, but I couldn’t find it. This is a discussion between two fine minds I am interested in eavesdropping on.

I’m very interested in D. T. Max’s biography of David Foster Wallace. I think that Wallace is one of  the finest writers I have ever read. D. T. Max. His last unfinished work, The Pale King, helped me understanding how to live in the chaos of modern life better. Again I purchased this for around $3 + $4 shipping. A bargain.

The Siege of Krishnapur is the second volume in J. G. Farrell’s Empire Trilogy. The first volume, Troubles, was an excellent read. I am new to Farrell and look forward to more excellent writing. This cost me the same amount as the Wallace bio.

I basically cleared out my “shopping cart” on Amazon this morning, spending less than $35 on all these. I love the interwebs.

I played an interesting wedding yesterday. Actually a blessing since the couple married earlier this year due to immigration convenience.

I liked the fact that the husband of the couple, a prof at the local seminary, did an entire bilingual bulletin in German and English. The wife is German. There were many people from Germany there. A small portion of the service was said in German. This included alternate prayers in the prayers of the people. The Lord’s prayer was “lined” out for us by a native speaker of German. The husband had memorized his vows to deliver in German to his German wife. She in turned said her vows to him in English. Kind of cool.

I also liked the fact that this couple chose to use the new same-sex blessings of a union that the Episcopal church has developed. My brother was involved with the development of this rite and I’m proud of him and it. Judging from yesterday’s ceremony which was entirely drawn from this work (as I understand it) the new blessings are pretty cool.

Finally I liked playing a wedding for people (especially the husband) appreciate organ music. I guess I usually assume that people don’t like organ music. It’s hard to be an evangelist for good music on a bad organ but I give it a weekly try. But yesterday I felt that my prelude music was appreciated in a way I don’t usually feel. I anticipated the situation and scheduled some real organ music: Prelude and Fugue in C major BWV 545 and In Dir ist Freude from the Orgelbüchlein, both by Bach.

I had prepared a Virgil Fox transcription of a movement of a Bach Cantata based on “Now Thank We All Our God,” but didn’t end up using it.

The wedding party was practicing in church up until about 15 minutes or so before the ceremony, so I didn’t have as much time for the prelude as I sometimes do.

I also prepared two movements (only one of which I ended up performing) from a delightful piano sonata by Haydn. The son of the husband played a Bach piece on the piano as part of the prelude. He was flustered but did a pretty good job after he got going. It’s tough to perform in those circumstances.

It was unusual to feel like the music I was playing was being closely listened to (it was quieter than usual during the prelude even though the energy was high and positive as it can be at a wedding).

The postlude (after the walking out music) was a request from the husband, Widor’s toccata.

They held up the group picture scheduled for afterwards while the husband and a few others stood and listened to this entire piece. It’s a popular one and is sometimes asked for. I find that it’s an exercise in concentration for this old guy. I only lost my concentration once yesterday, but got it back pretty quickly.

A little footnote: I noticed yesterday that two (relatively) young musicians that I have previously asked to perform with me had shows in Holland Michigan at the same time last night: Johnathon Fegel was giving one at Park Theater

and John Adams one at LemonJellos.

It’s kind of odd to be out of the loop with these kinds of musicians as well as most local academic musicians. With these two guys I just kind drifted out of their general radar, although I felt like if I wanted to I could probably play with John Adams since he is living in Washington State now and put out a call on Facebook for any Holland musicians who might be interested in playing on his concert last night.

I hope their shows went as well as my wedding.

It’s interesting to me how collegiality sneaks up on me. I admit to being discouraged about the AGO board meeting on Monday evening. My discouragement is complex but suffice it to say that my concerns do not seem to be related to those dominating the conversation around organ locally.

But the next day, I put up a Facebook comment about which pieces I am planning to play Sunday based on the Lutheran Chorale, Vater unser. The reason I am doing so (I think I have mentioned before in this space) is that the gospel contains the story of Jesus teaching the disciples the “Our Father.”

I put the comment up on the Facebook Organists Group. I was delighted to get some response. There were other people planning to play the same piece I was from Bach’s Orgelbüchlein. At least one person was planning to do a setting by Bohm, a charming composer who was a bit older than J.S.

Very cool.

Previously on the Facebook Organist page there was a long discussion about hymn playing. I read most of it and found it interesting making at least one comment myself.

Hey, that’s collegiality. Right?

Then I experienced collegiality around the composition mentioned yesterday. I am more and more convinced that group creativity can be a very rewarding experience both in the process and in the final product.

In the meantime, we are making definite progress on the home front.  The new kitchen wall has been painted. Not sure if you can actually tell the exact color on this pic (taken with my phone), but you can get an idea.

We had to replace the light fixture in what will be the main floor master bedroom. Eileen was at work when this decision needed to be made, so I picked out the one above. Everyone seemed happy with it. I know I liked it just fine.

Speaking of light fixtures in the master bedroom, the two old wall sconces had to be rewired.

They are both now on a wall switch. Cool.

The new doors we ordered have arrived and are sitting and waiting for hanging.

The shower tiles are placed and waiting for grout. Notice the tile will extend on the floor.

The bathroom walls are painted. The holes are for a medicine cabinet and a vent.

This is where the washer and dryer will go (the shower and toilet are to the left of this picture).

There was a bit of a mix up about this wall which will neatly divide the room into bathroom and laundry room. Eileen had noted it down in her drawings as a half wall. Chris the builder took this literally and built a wall that went some ways up but not to the ceiling. When the contractor saw this, he said that his intention was for a wall that reached the ceiling. You can see the first wall’s approximate height in the painted portion of this wall. Chris patiently redid this yesterday.

I’m glad it’s going to be a high wall. That seems to be a good idea.

On Wednesday I showed my Jazz Gloria to my boss, Jen Adams. She was very supportive and could envision the final version working with our congregation.

Wednesday afternoon I spent at least an hour working on it, composing more sections. Unfortunately, the electrician inadvertently shut down the power and I lost all the work.

Thursday I got up very early (before the electrician was to arrive) and tried to recompose some sections. When I hit the ending, I realized that the phrases suddenly shifted to three measure phrases. In my Wed morning version, I had not written out the repetition with which this setting ends. In the lost version I had. Recreating it, I was unsure if I had made the last phrases four or three measures.

I decided to go with the three measure phrases. This gives it a limping feeling of incompletion as the chords repeat and the melody layers itself.

In the afternoon I met with my piano trio. I impulsively decided to show it to them. They were also supportive and even enthusiastic. I asked them about the three measures phrases at the end and they seem to think it worked. Dawn Van Ark my cello player pointed out that it gave a feeling of transcendence and an unendingness. (!)

Amy Piersma, my violinists, asked me if I shared my work. I said that I wanted to but I didn’t have any of the Jazz Mass up online.

So this morning I got up and used Google Docs (now Drive) to make permanent urls available and added them to my Free Mostly Original Sheet Music Page.

For what it’s worth, here there are as well:

Grace Jazz Mass

Gloria (work in progress) (pdf)

Holy Holy (pdf)
bulletin version (pdf)

Emmaus Fraction Anthem (pdf)
bulletin version (pdf)

I welcome comments especially critical evaluations from other musicians.

I often complain in this blog about my lack of collegiate input. It struck me this morning that I have three very fine colleagues in Jen Adams, Amy Piersma and Dawn Van Ark.

I keep on being lucky!

1. Standing Our Ground – NYTimes.com

Wise words from the editorial board at NYT about the problem of gun madness in the USA.

“Something is wrong here. We are not being made more secure, we are being made more barbaric…”

2. A Policy of Rape Continues – NYTimes.com

Sudan has a policy of the military use of rape. Evil.

3. Justices on the Job – NYTimes.com

Insights from Greenhouse on the history of the Supreme Court.

4. Holder Wants Texas to Clear Voting Changes With the U.S. – NYTimes.com

It is clear to me that hate and racism and bigotry are an entrenched part of the life of the United States. It will be a long struggle for my country.

5. Nothing to See Here: Demoting the Uncertainty Principle – NYTimes.com

I learned from this article that I misunderstood the whole deal. Helpful.

6. Nate Silver Didn’t Fit In at the New York Times Because He Believed in the Real World

An interesting take on the Nate Silver phenomenon. I admire his clear headed approach to statistics. NYT screwed up.

7. No Keyboard, and Now No Touch Screen Either – NYTimes.com

Kind of goofy but interesting.

8. Losing Our Way in the World – NYTimes.com

Learning to see and navigate the real world without a compass.

9.

So even though I have been so busy I haven’t had time to do my daily fiction reading, I had an interesting insight yesterday morning concerning a passage in Abide with Me by Elizabeth Strout, an idea in Charles Taylor’s A Secular Age and playing through music for my own amusement.

One of the pieces I have been charmed with this summer is the first Ricecare of Bach’s Musical Offering. I have been playing it over and over (even practicing the little tricky parts) out of a sheer love of the music. Judging by some of his comments, Bach had this kind of playing in mind for some of his music, especially the keyboard music.

The Musical Offering BWV 1079 is known to be one of Bach’s more theoretical works at least in terms of being written for a specific instrument(s).  But the first movement sits nicely on a keyboard.

I find the music both beautiful and profound.

Yesterday I realized that it was an example of Charles Taylor’s notion of “fullness.”

He came up with this idea grappling with his topic of why our age is more secular than previous ages.

He sees belief and unbelief as different ways to account for existence.

“We all see our lives, and/or the space where in we live our lives, as having a certain moral/spiritual shape. Somewhere, in some activity, or condition, lies a fullness, a richness; that is, in that place (activity or condition), life is fuller, richer, deeper, more worth while, more admirable,more what it should be.  Perhaps this sense of fullness is something we just catch glimpses of from afar off; we have the powerful intuition of what fullness would be, were we to be in that condition, e.g., of peace or wholeness; or able to act on that level, of integrity or generosity or abandonment or self-forgetfulness.” (emphasis added) A Secular Age by Charles Taylor p. 5

I think the coinage is clunky and typical of narrow academics, but I like the concept behind “fullness.”

I also recently ran across a passage in the novel, Abide with Me by Elizabeth Strout that seemed to be related to Taylor’s “fullness.” Strout calls it “The Feeling.” The main character, Tyler Gaskell, a young idealistic Congregationalist minister, is musing as he drives along.

“Keep moving, he thought.

“And keep an eye out for God. Who was, if you cared for the Psalms, as Tyler did, looking right now from heaven, beholding all the sons of men, considering all their works. But what Tyler longed for was to have The Feeling arrive; when every flicker of light that touched the dipping branches of a weeping willow, every breath of breeze that bent the grass toward the row of apple trees, every shower of yellow ginkgo leaves dropping to the ground with such direct and tender sweetness, would fill the minister with profound and irreducible knowledge that God was right there.

“But Tyler was wary of shortcuts, and he was really afraid of cheap grace. He often thought of Pasteur’s remarks that chance only helped those minds well prepared, and he hoped these days to have a moment of exalted understanding come to him as the ‘chance’ result of his disciplined prayer. There was a fear the man lived with, a dark cave inside him: that he might not feel the Feeling again.”

Strout nicely captures the blend of innocence and education as a young person tries to avoid “cheap grace” a concept from Dietrich Bonhoeffer one of Tyler’s favorite writers.

But more important to me is the juxtaposition of Strout’s “Feeling” and Taylor’s “fullness” with my own satisfaction and enjoyment of playing music all by myself. They are all a sort of quiet ecstasy.

Yesterday was a bit of a crazy one.   Spent the day wondering if I was going to have to take my Mom to ER. She wasn’t feeling up to her hearing aid appointment, so I had to cancel that. Thankfully by the end of the day her symptoms were abating and she didn’t need to go to the ER.

Called the roofing guy. He reluctantly came over and checked out the roof his company had installed. Predictably he said it wasn’t the roof but the “flashing” that was leaking. What I should do, he said, is do some calking. Right. Thanks a lot, dude.

The Subaru ended up having all kinds of things wrong with it. Not the battery, but the engine needed tuning up, the head gasket was busted, water was leaking into the electrical system causing the locks to constantly go on and off (THAT’s  what that was!), the ignition was bad and the brakes are shot. We had about $500 of all of that done. Needless to say that didn’t include repairing the brakes or replacing the head gasket, both big ticket items.

I’m out of nose drops (that are actually for my ears but I put them in my nose). I went in the morning in person to Meijers to request the renewal of my subscription. The woman said that would be available after 4.  When I asked why it took so long she said the computers were down.

After planning hymns for the next two weeks I decided it would be much better to switch the Episcopal software RiteSong (which has all of the music to all  of the current hymnals and supplements on it) from my  desktop to my laptop.

I installed it on the laptop and got as far as attempting to enter the correct unique serial number. It balked as I expected it to. I called support and they said they would email me a key but it would take a while because their computers were down.

I went to church a couple of times yesterday to practice and choose organ music to learn for upcoming Sundays. Since the gospel this Sunday has the “Our Father” in it, I thought it would be clever to play a couple pieces based on the Lutheran Chorale tune: “Unser vater.” This was Luther’s metrical version of the “Our Father.”

I chose to learn Bach’s setting in the Orgelbüchlein. I do love the  Orgelbüchlein. I also found a very lovely simple setting by Gerald Near and decided to schedule that.

For the next Sunday I landed on a setting of the opening hymn, “All my hope on God is founded” (tune: Michael), by Andrew Clarke. I like the way he writes.

For the postlude I was thinking of possibly scheduling Parry’s setting of Hanover (O Worship the King) even though we are not singing the hymn that day.

I stopped over at my friend Rhonda’s house to chat a bit about Monday’s meeting and showed her Parry’s setting. It’s long and kind of goofy and I wondered what she would think of it. She assented that it was “legit.”

Good enough.

I slept badly last night. This morning my blood pressure was up. I think part of this is my introverted nature asserting itself and reacting to being with people. I also found a leak on the front porch this morning which could only be coming from the upstairs bedroom air conditioner. Sheesh.

 Our bathroom renovation continues to progress. Yesterday Chris the worker finished priming most of the walls he will paint today. The above pic is the view from standing in the shower area. And here’s a view of the shower area on the other side of the new bathroom.

Here’s the primed kitchen wall:

Fans were left blowing on the drying walls all night.

On Sunday afternoon, Eileen and I went to a local laundromat and washed clothes. Our old washing machine is no longer serviceable. Frustrating when a new washer/dryer is sitting in the house waiting to be installed.

I have to get my Mom to a Miracle Ear appointment today. Hoping she will consent to have lunch with me. We’ll see. I also need to work on compositions, get Subaru to the shop, plan a couple weeks of music for church and treadmill.

I guess I’m back at it.

1. Nate Silver and a general theory of media exodus | Jack Shafer

Nate Silver had astute math based observations on the last election and shared them on a NYT blog. He has now moved from NYT to ESPN. Shafer has ironic comments.

2. Royalty disputes strike sour note in streaming music

Millionaires bickering.

3. The humble SIM card has finally been hacked: Billions of phones at risk of data theft, premium rate scams | ExtremeTech

I posted this on Facebookistan and one of my “facebookfriends” pointed out that if there are seven billion cell phones out there people have to have more than one, but a quick google shows that the number of cell phones is approaching the number of people in the world. Wild.

4. The ‘Ender’s Game’ Boycott – NYTimes.com

I like the editorial position of not boycotting while still disdaining.

I’m hoping in the remaining weeks of summer to get my groove back. Vacation followed by an intense two weeks of ballet camp has left me a bit off balance. This is not helped by the ongoing renovation of our first floor bathroom.

Ballet camp had the unfortunate effect of reducing my practice time. After hours on the bench improvising it’s inevitable I would have less discipline and time for my usual organ and piano rehearsal. This is a significant piece I am hoping to return to.

Yesterday I treadmilled for the first time in three weeks or so. Another piece I want to come back.

I am feeling fatigued and disoriented this morning.

Time for some goofing off I guess.

Not much on the schedule today. I need to balance my Mom’s checkbook. I want to get some of that practicing in. My Subaru’s battery went dead. I have had it hooked up to a battery charger. I need to get it in to the shop today or some day this week.

So the usual stuff.

I do have a meeting this evening of the local American Guild of Organists board at 7:30 PM. We will be talking about the purpose of our chapter, its unique mission and upcoming program ideas.

I managed to check with the choir director at Hope College at church yesterday and he is open to doing a choral techniques workshop. I have some other ideas as well.

My brain seems a bit fried this morning, so that’s all I have.

1. Tower of Basel: The Shadowy History of the Secret Bank that Runs the World: Adam LeBor: 9781610392549: Amazon.com: Books

I head LeBor on CSpan last night. Fascinating piece of obscure but radically important history: Bank of International Settlements.

2. A far glory: the quest for faith in an age of credulity – Peter L. Berger – Google Books

I interlibrary loaned this book. I checked online this morning and this is the same Peter Berger who wrote The Social Construction of Reality and The Sacred Canopy. I read in it this morning. Pretty interestsing.

3.Death of Watermelon Vendor Sets Off Outcry in China – NYTimes.com

China continues to struggle to evolving a working civic structure.

4. 50 Years of Tough Questions and ‘Thank You, Mr. President’ – NYTimes.com

Helen Thomas went to Wayne State. How ’bout that?

5. Dealing With Anxiety – NYTimes.com

Cool quote from this article:

We would be far less anxious if we adopted the attitude of Rabbi Rami Shapiro: “Don’t take life so seriously. It’s only temporary!”

6. We Have to Step In and Save Detroit – NYTimes.com

Eloquent plea for federal assistance.

7. Detroit’s bankruptcy and what people are getting wrong about it | New Republic

Some fascinating insights.

Every morning for the past couple of weeks I have begun my day reading some McLuhan and Joyce. I am drawing near the end of McLuhan’s Understanding Media. Ultimately this book is too tightly situated in the necessarily limited point of view of the author. McLuhan has surprising insights into his time. These insights can be sometimes extended into the present. However he just as often wrong as he is insightful.

I think McLuhan’s strength is his ability to write metaphorical sentences that can sometimes now ring like aphorisms.

“Tradition, in a word, is a sense of the total past as now.” Marshall McLuhan

I especially liked this synoptic section at the end of the chapter on The Phonograph.

“The telegraph translated writing into sound, a fact directly related to the origin of both the telephone and phonograph. With the telegraph, the only walls left are the vernacular walls that the photograph and movie and wirephoto overleap so easily. The electrifications of writing are almost as big a step into the nonvisual and auditory space as the later steps soon taken by telephone, radio, and TV.

The telegraph: speech without walls.

The phonograph: music hall without walls

The photograph: museum without walls.

The electric light: space without walls.

The movie, radio, and TV: classroom without walls.

Man the food-gatherer reappears incongruously as information-gatherer.”

This section gives a good example of both McLuhan’s insights and his dated clunkiness.

There are no footnotes in this book. So unsuspecting readers may not realize that McLuhan is quoting (and building on) André Malraux idea of “The  Museum without Walls.”

Glenn Gould also liked Malraux quite a bit. Both Gould’s writings and Malraux’s book are sitting in my to-be-read-soon stack.

McLuhan often quotes Joyce. So it’s kind of fun to read a few pages of him in the morning and then flip to the Joyce’s masterwork of comedy and puns: Finnegans Wake.

There is story in Finnegans Wake. But what I enjoy most is reading aloud and listening (and often laughing) at Joyce’s wonderful Lewis-Carroll-gone-mad language.

As I have said here before, I’m pretty sure I haven’t read all of Finnegans Wake. But I find that most of the pages I am reading have my own little notes scrawled on them. I think these notes drop off about 2/3rds of the way into the book. This indicates to me that I haven’t read the entire thing completely yet. This makes me happy as I enjoy reading it.

Finally, I finished Amy and Isabella, Elizabeth’s Strout’s first novel published in 1998 (and sadly apparently made into a movie… yikes). For me this novel climaxed in the middle when the reader finds out why Amy and Isabella act the way they do at the beginning of the book.

At the beginning the mother and adult daughter are living in the same house but are barely civil to each other. Amy’s hair is mysteriously badly shorn. Something bad has happened. Then the book begins again in the past and moves up to the point we have met the characters at the beginning.

This is about half way through.

I think I understand what Strout was trying to do in this book. But by the end of the book most everything that was happening was not too surprising or even interesting to me.

Ultimately the book felt a bit contrived. This might not have been the case if I hadn’t already read and greatly admired Strout’s Olive Kiteridge.

I think I now understand why Strout constructed Kitteridge as a series of inter-related short stories in which we catch glimpses of characters and she successfully develops them like excellent little photographic portraits.

Amy and Isabelle suffers from a bit of fragmentation that this second technique remedies. In it Strout will sometimes tell the reader that not only Amy and Isabelle are feeling elated/desolate but becoming a bit unconvincingly omniscient, the narrator flits quickly from situation to situation of secondary characters seeking a sort of “Our Town” transparency of stories of people in physical proximity.

For me the best part of this book was when I was thinking about it one day and realized that the man who seduces Amy in the book is named Mr. Robertson.

Coo coo cachoo!

Ballet camp is over for another year. At least for me. There are the usual final cumulative performances this morning. I have never attended these. Right now I’m ready for a little ballet-free time. As usual.

Pondering my two weeks of collaborating with an array of ballet teachers I find that the teacher makes all the difference to me the improviser. Most of the teachers I worked with brought out certain parts of my music. This seems to corroborate Christopher Small’s contention that music is a verb and is about relationships (not just between humans, but between notes and between humans and sounds).

Small’s insight struck me more than once as I realized that the hours I have spent on the piano bench in a dance studio were hours of silent conversations between me and the teacher and the students. Several of the teachers seemed to appreciate the way I came up with improvs for their exercises.

I wonder about this. This year I eavesdropped on other pianists at camp a bit more than I usually do and found that most of them were some pretty fine pianists. I think of myself as a competent musician but not really a virtuoso by any means.

But I am proud of the way I can make up music and enjoying doing this.

To hearken back to Christopher Small, in my life I have found the conversation of music to be larger than what I perceived I was taught by teachers. First of all, I find that stylistic lines I was taught have historically been blurred by the composers I admire the most (Bach being a supreme example of curiosity about other music and blending of styles). Secondly, I have always been under the influence of a large array of musics and continue to seek out new musics that attract and interest me.

This has included the Doors, Bach, recordings I heard and loved in my youth (Charlie Parker, RCA historic anthology which still strikes me as a wonderful eclectic group of musics) and on and on.

I tell myself I’m interested in how music sounds but I know that it’s bigger than that. The subjective understandings are always in play: associations, visuals, people. Understanding music as a verb is something very basic to my own experience of music.

I have in the last few years failed to pick up several of the instruments I play (guitar, banjo). I find myself making music alone a lot. If I’m sitting in my living room and want to make music, I don’t pick up the guitar and play through my old songs. Instead I would rather be in conversation with Beethoven and Shostakovich and people like that.

I don’t really have people in my life right now with whom I could play guitar and banjo. I still like these instruments a lot. But I recognize that a huge part of my musical life is making music with other musicians. I get a lot of that at church (I think of the congregation as musicians) and from my piano trio and occasional piano duets with my friend Rhonda.

I find it telling that I am so attracted to the social/relational aspect of doing music.

1.Raising the Wrong Profile – NYTimes.com

I was reading Coates fine response to recent events when I found a book reference in one of the comments. I’m now in line to check this book out from the library when it’s returned. It’s called The New Jim Crow. I read through the table on contents on Amazon. Looks interesting.

2.Hitting China’s Wall – NYTimes.com

I don’t presume to understand economics, but Krugman’s observations make sense to me. They usually do.