We plunge back into a week of renovation today. This is where our new bathroom door will go.

Here is the pan for our new shower.

The workers arrive in about an hour. I got up early and cleaned up a bit from our cookout yesterday. Barb Phillips is visiting. Eileen, Barb and I jumped in the car after church and drove around looking for a beach on which to plop yesterday.

It was no surprise that the main beach was full. There was no parking. So like good locals we began driving up the coast looking for another place. Tunnel Park was full as well. We finally landed on Mount Olive County Park. It was quite nice and not crowded at all. Like many parks around here on the lake there was a little walk through the woods and up and down many many stairs over the dunes.

Speaking of the dunes, I learned yesterday that the dune ecology along the west coast of Michigan is a unique one. Created over 5k years ago, they are the result of glacier activity creating the sand needed, strong winds to drive the sand onto the shore in large quantities and vegetation that then takes hold and keeps the dunes in place.

I have often wondered why the little mountains covered with trees and Michigan plants are thought of as dunes. We have plenty of sand dunes around, but still most of the dunes I have encountered have been those I have been walking up and down a zillion steps to get over to get to the shore.

So that’s the reason.

Anyway, Eileen and Barb went down to the shore. It was so sunny I lingered on a platform where there was shade and read. After a bit, they came back and we played scrabble. Barb won.

Back home for a cookout. Hamburgers for the carnivores and many roasted veggies for myself.

By the end of the evening I had made quite a mess which is what I got up this morning and cleared away.

Church went well. Eileen skipped it. It was a small group but they sang their hearts out which is always gratifying to me. I nailed the organ music (hoary old English pieces from Oxford collections…. nicely written and not that hard). My friend Laurie brought her viola and there was an extremely nice moment when she played the melody for the sequence hymn unaccompanied as the gospel procession returned to the front of the church. I do like the sound of the viola.

Today I have to get my Mom to the shrink. Later I am scheduled to play for the June birthday party at her nursing home. I will be faking that since I haven’t really prepared much for it. Time for my top ten Bach and Mozart pieces along with a bunch of pop music from the thirties and forties.

On Saturday I went and purchased the stackable washer and dryer that Eileen picked out on ABC Warehouse’s website.

Our old washer is not working so well. It stops in mid  cycle and leaves clothes soaking in soapy water. It can be coaxed into finishing the cycle but this takes a bit of strategy and luck. It will be nice to have a washer one can count on.

The basement is a disaster right now. Yesterday while we were waiting for Barb to arrive I moved most of my clean clothes from the basement. Between the electrician running wires and the plumbers discovering how bad our plumbing is and making obscene messes I decided I would vacate as much as possible from the basement. This involved getting my clean clothes before they got messed up.

I had thought that I would use a neat little passage by McLuhan on “zero” for today’s blog. I read it yesterday and liked it. But this morning I got up and continued reading and found that he weirdly attributed the notion of infinity to Gutenberg. He also said that the Greeks and Romans had no idea of infinity. I thought to myself, hey what about Euclidean geometry?

Sure enough a little poking around online showed me that Euclid had ideas of infinity (even if they were a bit qualified).

Wrong, McLuhan. Makes one wonder what other things he was simply mistaken about.

Nevertheless, here is his passage on “zero.”

“Before the advent of ordinal, successive, or positional numbers, rulers had to count large bodies of soldiery by displacement methods. Sometimes they were herded by groups into spaces of approximately known area. The method of having them march in file and of dropping pebbles into containers was another method not unrelated to the abacus and the counting board. Eventually the method of the counting board gave rise to the great discovery of the principle of position in the early centuries of our era. By simply putting 3 and 4 and 2 in position on the board, one after another, it was possible to step  up the speed and potential of calculation fantastically. The discovery of calculation by positional numbers rather than by merely additive numbers led, also, to the discovery of zero. Mere positions for 3 and 2 on the board created ambiguities about whether the number was 32 or 302. The need was to have a sign for the gaps between the numbers. It was not till the thirteenth century that sifr, the Arab word for “gap” or “empty,” was Latinized and added to our culture as “cipher” (ziuphrium) and, finally, became the Italian zero. Zero really  meant a positional gap.”

Marshall McLuhan, Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man

McLuhan is essentially correct about this. He neglects mathematical history in the non-Western civilizations. This probably reflects the ethnocentricity of the time. But still it’s a lucid description of the need for zero in decimal positional numbers.

Beware dear reader,today I continue to talk about that odd little practice of mine: reading books.

This  morning I finished off two books of poetry I have been dipping into.

The first was Love: An Index by Rebecca Lindenberg.

I always find it weird to read attempts at reviewing books of poetry. Usually they are highly unsatisfactory to me even though I  like reading book reviews.

So attempting to write one, even a brief online blog of one, is daunting.

Lindenberg however can be pointed to as a poet. She likes indices that’s for sure. The title poem is 30 out of 88 pages of poetry in this book and is an alphabetical index of words. The list of words and their definitions manages to make a long poem that intrigues and hangs together cleverly.

Lindenberg has definite wit. I especially like two poems that draw on the silliness of Facebookistan. They are called Status Update and Status Update (2). I’m not sure how much sense they make to people unfamiliar with the little facebooklet dance that goes on, but here’s a little excerpt and a link to the full poems.

STATUS UPDATE

“Rebecca Lindenberg is drinking whiskey. Feels guilty. Is caught in one of those feedback loops. Is a blankity-blank. Is a trollop, a floozy, a brazen hussy. Would like to add you as a friend. Would like to add you as an informant. Would like to add you as her dark marauder, as her Lord and Savior. has trouble with boundaries. Rebecca Lindenberg is keeping lonesomeness at bay with frequent status updates designed to elicit a thumbs-up icon from you. Rebecca Lindenberg likes this, dismisses this with a backhanded wave. Rebecca Lindenberg wraps her legs around this. Has a ball of string you can follow out of her labyrinth. Has this labyrinth. Rebecca Lindenberg has high hopes. Has high blood sugars. Rebecca Lindenberg doesn’t want to upset you. Wants to say what you want to hear. Rebecca Lindenberg thinks of poetry as the practice of overhearing yourself…” (link to full texts of this and two other poems by Lindenberg – N.B. I recommend scrolling down past the reviewers over cute rendition of his own status update about Lindenberg and her poetry. )

This is about a third of the first one. You get the idea.

The other book I finished this morning was Useless Landscape: A guide for boys by D. A. Powell.

This is Powell’s fifth book of poetry and it makes me want to read some of his other books. His vocab keeps sending me to the OED. Often he finds beautiful words that name plants and manage to make them sing through his images.

I have read poems by gay people all my life. Powell’s take on his loves and sex life charms me and strikes me with its clarity and beauty. I have witnessed a seeping away of large anger in writers who speak from this point of view. This is not to say that they do not remain and express anger like all good writers. Rather that I remember more anger and less control and beauty in the gay art of the sixties and seventies.

Anyway Powell has some excellent things to say in his poems and makes the poems click and work for me.

This couplet grabbed me when I read it in the poem, “Missionary Man.”

            Had I ever thought about being saved?
No. I had only ever thought about being spent.

I had already marked it as something to remember before finishing the poem and realizing it was one of those crux images poet sometimes use. The ending three lines:

“There is no God but that which visits us
in skin and thew and pleasing face.
He offers up this body. By this body we are saved.”
Here’s a link to the whole poem but again a caveat: The delineation and punctuation of this version is all wrong. Better to just get a hold of the whole book and read it.

Another poem of Powell’s  that struck me with its beauty was “Mass for Pentecost: Canticle for Birds and Waters.” Link.

1. Surveillance, in a Search for Safety – NYTimes.com

Letters many critical and thoughtful in response to a preposterously supportive article by Bill Keller.

2. http://www.humanitiescommission.org/_pdf/hss_report.pdf

I recommend reading this report. It articulately and strenuously outlines real reasons for education and the arts beyond economic ones.

3. The Humanist Vocation – NYTimes.com

Got the report linked above in this article by David Brooks.

4. Online Classes Fuel a Campus Debate – NYTimes.com

Universities wade into this discussion displaying naivete and misconceptions (it’s not about so called “intellectual property” but about learning.)

5. Justices Back Use of Arbitration Over Class Actions – NYTimes.com

Our current three branches of government have little sense of public responsibility, only a responsibility to “them what brung em” i.e. the industrial/corporation complex.

6.Andy Warhol and the Persistence of Modernism – NYTimes.com

Modernism is the preferred mode of thought by people who run museums since post-modernism minimizes the notion of clear provenance and individual creators of a specific object.

7.New Pay Model for Times Apps – NYTimes.com

This makes me crazy. My online paid subscription will no doubt not be sufficient to allow me to read the NYT on my phone. The result will be that I will read other news sources on my phone even though I am a paying subscriber. Nice job, guys.

8. A Nation Divided Against Itself – NYTimes.com

Some poll results and inevitable conclusions.

9. -[ in·ter·lu·na·tion ]-

The photographer posting photographs on this tumblr site is someone I have known since she was a child. Nice pics from an interesting person.

10. ‘Mystifying’: Blind Chinese Activist Chen Guangcheng’s Former Adviser Speaks Out on Pressure Claims – China Real Time Report – WSJ

Best explanation I have read of this confusing scandal. Thank you to daughter Elizabeth for putting it up on Facebook.

Having finished Elizabeth Strout’s  novel, Olive Kitteridge, I am left with the impression that it is a book written for or at least clearly of old people. Strout presently in her late fifties creates a community, a personality gallery really,  in which older people are definitely the point of view of the story. Often the stories are about the deeply intimate details of long term relationships, their failures, their frailty, their dark beauty. I think Strout gets it right.

She creates a character in Olive Kitteridge whom we at first glimpse as an acid tongued partner to her husband Henry in the initial story, “Pharmacy.” Henry is a gentle complex soul and is a lovely foil to Olive’s more clearly focused personality. Her one interesting flaw in the first story is the way she speaks for her son defending him quickly to her gentle husband. The son never gets a word in. He doesn’t really try. He simply smiles in triumph at his defeated dad.  Henry, not Olive, is the subject of the story. But her role portends the direction of her portrait in the book as a strong willed person who is figuring herself out, understanding herself as maybe not the easiest wife and mother to live with. But still persisting in seeing life matter-of-factly from who she is.

As Strout moves from one self contained story to another we get further glimpses of Olive. In the second story, we see her from the point of view of former students. She is a retired math teacher. One of these students has driven back to the little village to kill himself. Suicide is a sub theme in the book anyway. Olive Kitteridge jumps in his car as he is sitting outside a local restaurant and engages him unwillingly in conversation. She doesn’t actually know he is in the throes of crisis. But her banter pulls him back toward living. She talks about suicide in their lives. His mother killed herself. Olive’s father did so as well. Both Olive and her former student have obviously contemplated doing so themselves. The conversation shows us a lot about Olive and is lodged in “Incoming Tide,” a little gem of a story which leaves the reader thinking and wondering.

Appended at the end of the book, Strout has added a fictional discussion with herself, her character Olive and a representative of a Book Club. Strout can’t seem to leave Olive in the novel. She asks her questions that the reader has including one about the story of the young man contemplating suicide. Olive’s answer are satisfyingly grumpy and unclear. You know. Like real life.

As the book goes on, we see into Olive more and more specifically, both in her own evolving story at the end of her life and in other people’s stories that she blithely passes through, remarking (usually but not always on the “inside”) their stupidities and inconsistencies as well as her own.

There are two passages that struck me as beautiful. Olive first plane ride. It’s good to remember that at this point she is a cantankerous if not brilliant self derisive old woman.

“[A]s the little plane climbed higher and Olive saw spread out below them fields of bright and tender green in this morning sun, farther out the coastline, the ocean shiny and almost flat, tiny white wakes behind a few lobster boats—then Olive felt something she had not expected to feel again: a sudden surging greediness for life. She leaned forward, peering out the window: sweet pale clouds, the sky as blue as your hat, the new green of the fields, the broad expanse of water—seen from up here it all appeared wondrous, amazing. She remembered what hope was, and this was it.”

For me finally Olive embodies a passion for living that I admire. Yes, children even old people have passion the books says. The book ends with a love story about Olive as a widow. She realizes she has been not easy to live with. She sees herself and the idea of living mercilessly in a way that attracts me. But she is not done living yet. She finds herself helplessly drawn towards a widower who is (horrors) a Republican (“You voted for that man (Bush)?”). Despite their differences she sees their relationship as a grabbing for life.

“What young people didn’t know, she thought, lying down beside this man, his hand on her shoulder, her arm; oh, what young people did not know. They did not know that lumpy, aged, and wrinkled bodies were as needy as their own young, firm ones, that love was not to be tossed away carelessly, as if it were a tart on a platter with others that got passed around again. No, if love was available, one chose it, or didn’t choose it. And if her platter had been full with the goodness of Henry and she had found it burdensome, had flicked it off crumbs at a time, it was because she had known what one should know: that day after day was unconsciously squandered.

So greediness for living surprisingly found inside a tart old woman’s thoughts and also a need for love that persists as we foolishly squander the gift of life we are all given.

Pretty cool.

Living with a renovation gets old quick. It’s surprising how disruptive it is. Yesterday morning, the kitchen doors started out looking they do above. By evening they were filled with drywall.

Another view of the right hand door:

I post pics because some of my most faithful readers over the years are my kids who might check here and be interested to see what we’re doing to this house.

The interior of the new room is entirely torn up getting ready for new walls and ceiling.

Only the toilet remains in place. Presumably it will be removed soon, probably today. Chris the worker informed me the electrician and plumber will come today.

I did go and pick up my first CSA box yesterday. I will be picking it up on Wednesdays. It had several kinds of lettuce, 2 cukes, 2 zucchini, 3 large radishes, 2 turnips and garlic scapes. It is a perfect amount for two people especially  when one of them (Eileen) doesn’t eat that much green stuff.

 1. How Cyberwarfare and Drones Have Revolutionized Warfare – NYTimes.com

A clear analysis that I find disturbing to read. No mention of humanitarian concerns, only Americans becoming aware of their own invasion of privacy. Drones are as disturbing as IEDs and other covert means of killing to me. It’s all madness as far I can see.

2. The F.B.I. Deemed Agents Faultless in 150 Shootings – NYTimes.com

Opaque secrecy and self-regulation behind security claims makes for a complete loss of confidence in the honesty and trustworthiness of our institutions.

We received a bit of bad news yesterday about our renovation. It turns out that a heating duct that runs through where the new bathroom is going is wrapped in asbestos. This means that a licensed sub-contractor who specializes in removing asbestos must be hired as well as a state permit must be obtained. This will probably cost us an extra two weeks.

But that’s what it’s like working on an old home such as ours.

The workers are doing a great job so far (one day) at keeping the dust and debris  out of our living area.

The new room is sealed off with plastic right now so pictures are useless. Maybe I’ll take a few today after some of the plastic is moved so you can see how it’s progressing.

I’m about two thirds into Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout. She is one of the American authors Adichie said she was reading. It’s a series of inter-related short stories. I usually don’t go for that kind of structure. I read short stories but often find them unsatisfying. It may be that the shorter form tempts writers to emphasize style and omit story. Hard to say.

Strout however seems to be constructing a very interesting story. The main character, Olive Kitteridge, is an aging flawed former math teacher who is outspoken and exhibits a lot of eccentric behavior. She is somewhere in each story and featured in several so far. Strout gets aging right. Kitteridge is not the only elderly person in the book. By elderly I mean sixties to seventies. One couple is in their seventies and they have a very interesting chapter about their relationship at this time of their life. The chapter is called “Winter Concert.” We listen in to their thoughts as well as hear their conversation as they attend a concert in a church. At first it seems they wife their life now  as idyllic but of course this is not the case. By the end of the story (Kitteridge also attends this concert with her husband, that’s one way it connects to the other stories), the reader has had a glimpse of the complexity of their unhappiness.

Another thing Strout is doing that I like is that instead of covering plots from different points of view in different stories, the stories themselves seem to be proceeding chronologically even though there is an inevitable disjunctness as the author skips around to tell stories about people who may be connected only by place and casual acquaintance.

At this point, it feels surprisingly coherent despite the lack of a centrally defined narrative one sometimes finds in novels.

1. Raw Scenes, Unspeakable Violations – NYTimes.com

Art performance and political protest combine in Beijing.

2. A More Secular Europe, Divided by the Cross – NYTimes.com

But not really. The defining anecdote of this article is deflated by the comment at the end that a local coin will retain religious symbols. But it is amusing to read that more Brits believe in ETs than God.

3. ‘Le Corbusier’ Exhibition Opens at Museum of Modern Art – NYTimes.com

I learned some stuff about Le Corbusier the architect from this report.

4. In Gospel Songs of Yore, Clues to the Speeches of Martin Luther King Jr. – NYTimes.com

This sounds like some interesting scholarship about MLK.

5. N.S.A. Chief Says Surveillance Has Stopped Dozens of Plots – NYTimes.com

Why should anyone believe this unsupported claim? I  know I don’t.

6, 7, 8. Give us back our public spaces so we can have access to all areas | Will Hutton | Comment is free | The Observer

Defenders of Public Spaces Take Inspiration From Turkish Protests – NYTimes.com

Transportation Chief Talks of Giving the Public More Public Spaces – NYTimes.com

Public space discussions. I am drawn to them. I remember being impressed with the public space of the trains and the Tube in Great Britain. There are some in the USA but definitely not as many as we need.

9, 10. China Dissident Says He’s Being Forced From N.Y.U. – NYTimes.com

Full Text of Chen Guangcheng’s Statement on Leaving NYU – China Real Time Report – WSJ

Hard to tell what’s going on here.

Change is usually not a cat’s strong suit and our resident cat, Edison, is no exception. Today is the first day of renovation. Edison’s food dishes and litter have been removed from the downstairs bathroom along with everything else.  I’m not going to post much about this on Facebook because we are not applying for a permit at this point. So here will be the source for pics if you want to see.

I spent the morning yesterday clearing the bathroom and pantry completely of all stuff in preparation.

In the afternoon, I cleared the dining buy valium india room wall where the new door will go.

This entailed moving a bookcase. Earlier, Eileen helped me move the harpsichord out of the way.

These bookshelves on the left are two bookshelves deep.

Then there’s the problem of keeping Edison out from underfoot of the workers (as well as keeping him IN the house). This morning I got up and did this. to the door to the upstairs where we plan to confine him.

Yesterday Eileen chose to sleep in and skip church. I ended up walking back and forth to church by myself. I encourage her to exercise this option, since when the choir is singing she feels obligated to attend regularly.  I feel like it’s my job and there’s no reason she has to attend.

The music went well.

I arranged my little organ piece that I had scheduled to include viola and cello on the cantus firmus (the melody).

I also wrote a little duet obbligato for viola and cello for use with the offertory hymn, “My faith looks up to thee.”

I include all parts in each score in the clef of the instrument to help expedite the lack of rehearsal and ease of performance.

The duet stands by itself as a nice little variation on the tune. So I used it as an intro and third verse accompaniment. In the intro I had the strings behgin alone and I gradually added organ so that the congregation would recognize it as an intro to the hymn and then join in the first stanza.

This worked pretty well. The organ was a bit out of tune when it entered. But what the heck.

I played my little Bach Praeludium et Fuga in C BWV 545 as a postlude.

On Saturday after a long day I dragged myself over to church to rehearse this piece. I rehearsed it daily for the two weeks prior to yesterday and didn’t want to mar my practice record and somehow affect my performance.

I’m not sure what exactly worked but I did manage to nail it pretty accurately and musically.

Three men stood around and listened to the entire seven minute performance. It’s funny how a few listeners helps validate the idea that one is actually doing something at that point in the service.

Yesterday was Father’s Day. At my church one of the lay leaders makes  a big deal out of this and provides beer and brats. I noticed that he had also laid out a ball and glove on the table with the brats. I have difficulty with this kind of gender stereotyping. Also bogus holidays like Father’s day. It seems to help people to reduce complexity though. It may give them something to hang on to in a time of heady increase in confusion and chaos in their daily lives.

Having said that, as a father I did appreciate that all my adult kids reached out a bit to me. Sarah even called me on the phone which was nice since we haven’t chatted recently and I happened to have had a disturbing nightmare in which she had a part the night before. Good to hear her voice.

1. Player in Leaks Case, Out From Behind Camera – NYTimes.com

Why is  it when I run across movie titles that look interesting they are not on netflix to stream?

2. John Horne Burns, the Great (Gay) Novelist You’ve Never Heard Of – NYTimes.com

Indeed I hadn’t heard of this writer. Not sure if I actually want to read him but he does have an interesting story as told in this review.

3.China Sets New Rules Aimed at Curbing Air Pollution – NYTimes.com

Pollution. Not sure how effective this will be but every little bit helps these days.

4.The Not-So-Good Old Days – NYTimes.com

I find myself learning from Stephanie Coontz, the author of this article.

“[Y]ou can’t just stroll through the past, picking the things you like and skipping the ones you don’t, as if historical eras were menus, and you could pick one from column A and one from column B.”

I stayed up reading last night, finishing Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s first novel,  Purple Hibiscus.

Adichie has just published her third novel, Americanah. I read an interview with her in a recent New York Times. Several of her comments intrigued me:

 I do think there is a tendency in American fiction to celebrate work that fundamentally keeps people comfortable. There is also an obsession with “original” for the mere sake of it, as though original is automatically good, and original often involves some level of irony and gimmick.

The U.S. has been at war for many years now, and there is also an ongoing intense ideological war in the U.S., but you would hardly know that from American literature. But of course this is also about my own biases. I love fiction that has something to say and doesn’t “hide behind art,” novels that feel true, that are not self-conscious experiments. I read a lot of contemporary American fiction and find the writing admirable, but often it is about individuals caged in their individuality, it says nothing about American life, is more about style than it is about substance (style matters but I struggle to finish a novel that is all style and has nothing to say).

In her novel, Purple Hibiscus, one is keenly aware of the background of a country at war with itself (Nigeria). One also is drawn into the convincing and disturbing drama of the life of one family. Papa, Mama, brother Jaja and the narrator, young Kambila are a microcosm of struggle. Papa is a new kind of African Big Man. He is rich and publishes a newspaper critical of the government. But in his own home he is a source of terror for those he loves as well as someone the other three venerate.

Papa’s religion is the white man’s religion (Catholicism). He practices in a narrow and fanatical way. His strict and puritanial household is balanced by his distinctly different Aunty Ifeoma’s life. She is also Catholic but is a professor at a local college. She is raising her children alone and seems to be a widow. When Kambila and Jaja visit Aunty Ifeoma, they experience a much different life. But they are (in different ways) torn between these two worlds.

Despite the influence of the vastly more humane Aunty Ifeoma, Kambila persists in loving and seeking the approval of her stern and conflicted father. This blend and the clearly drawn portrait of dreaded Papa makes this novel an engaging and disturbing tale.

A helluva first novel.

In the interview linked above, Adichie mentions several American writers she admires and presumably fall outside of her criticisms quoted above.

My next book is sitting on the floor by my chair and it is by one of these writers, Elizabeth Strout. I look forward to another interesting read.

(Regarding the story I wrote about the young  man in the elevator yesterday, I misremembered Eileen’s comments to him. She didn’t say we were lucky. She said we goofed off a lot. And she remembered the young man as responding that he knew how to goof off.)

1. The Other Side of the Story – NYTimes.com

What happens in an America with secret police and secret lists when someone is falsely accused? A nightmare.

2. Million-Anecdote Baby – NYTimes.com

Timothy Egan expects anecdotal experiences with Obamacare to change the game.

3. These Children Are Our Future – NYTimes.com

Another clear indictment of how we are failing our children.

4 & 5 Bad Idea, Mr. President – NYTimes.com

After Arming the Rebels, Then What? – NYTimes.com

Why Syria is not Kosovo in 1999.

6. Hong Kong Demonstrators Show Support for Snowden in N.S.A. Leak Case – NYTimes.com

Amazing local support.

7. China’s Great Uprooting – Moving 250 Million Into Cities – NYTimes.com

The Chinese attempt a massive social gambit.

8. Roasted Vegetable and Goat Cheese Pizza | One girl. One kitchen.

I consulted this recipe when I made food yesterday:

I didn’t follow the recipe quite. I did use Goat cheese on the one above, but  I baked the dough separately before adding roasted and fresh veggies. Eileen and I dropped by the Edgington’s yesterday with food. I made a more kid friendly version with cream cheese instead of goat cheese and the toppings I thought each kid would go for.

I thought I remembered that Esther liked black olives and Isaac raw  carrots. It seemed to work. I think it also helps when they recognize what they are being asked to eat.

My left ear suddenly was working better earlier this morning. I could hear. Then I put in the ear drops my doctor asked me to put in. Now I can no longer hear as well.

Eileen and I ran into a slightly morose young man in the elevator after our meal last night. He was dressed casually and was wearing tangerine shorts in the longer style that is prevalent now. He had come from a large birthday party which was dominating our corner of the restaurant. It was someone’s surprise 30th birthday.

We chatted with him as the elevator descended. He said that he had celebrated his own 30th birthday recently and his wife had sprang a similar surprise on him. I remarked that both he and the young woman who was the object of the party he was leaving looked much younger to me than 30.

I told him life just keeps on getting better. He asked us how we had managed to stay so happy. I told him I  didn’t know. Eileen told him it was luck.

1.Joyce’s ‘Finnegans Wake’ Takes Off in China – NYTimes.com

Bloomsday is coming up (June 16). I can’t imagine translating Finnegans Wake.

2.Birthday Song’s Copyright Leads to a Lawsuit for the Ages – NYTimes.com

I  hope this song is recognized as the public property it is.

3. Detroit’s Creditors Asked to Accept Pennies on the Dollar – NYTimes.com

Michigan’s infrastructure has been so decimated that there is no credible good consistent source of state news (besides Michigan Radio). So it’s good to read about it in the excellent NYT.

4. Sympathy for the Luddites – NYTimes.com

As usual the lowly worker pays the price for “progress.”

5 & 6 Remember All Those Passwords? No Need – NYTimes.com

Best Password Manager, Free Form Filler, Secure eWallet | Dashlane

I’m suspicious even though this password manager is recommended by NYT’s David Pogue and is free.

7 Netflix, Facebook — and the NSA: They’re all in it together – Salon.com

I got this link from a tweet where the tweeter commented that consumerism led directly to loss of privacy. The article is about Hadroop, a software used to compile data apparently.

Thirty-eight years ago today Eileen and I walked across the street from the little cabin where we were living to the park by Houghton Lake. There my Dad officiated over our wedding. It was my second marriage and Eileen’s first. It’s hard to fathom how much meeting Eileen has affected my life. I see my first marriage as the result of being young and foolish.

Or maybe I should just say foolish. But it’s hard to wholly regret such a youthful mistake when it resulted in the birth of my son, without whom I would never have met the woman he married or the children he fathered all of whom I adore. Also I wonder if without my first marriage would Eileen and I have met and formed our relationship.

In the Zoo Story by Edward Albee one of the characters makes the point that sometimes it is necessary to go a long way to cover a short distance.

 “Sometimes it’s necessary to go a long distance out of the way in order to come back a short distance …”

link to source

Maybe a foolish young marriage was necessary for me to understand and arrive at a lucky and lasting connection.

At any rate, I feel lucky today.

As is quite usual for me these days.

Yesterday I used my phone to tape Sunday’s prelude. It is my own composition and I alluded to it recently. Here’s the video.

1. In Battle Over Malibu Beaches, an App Unlocks Access – NYTimes.com

When we were in California, my daughter-in-law led us out to a wilderness trail that she first tried to access by parking on a suburb street. That’s when a resident came out and told us we would get a ticket if we parked there. Surely she was telling the truth.

2.Tim Kaine’s Immigration Speech in Spanish Is a First for the Senate – NYTimes.com

I think the more languages the better.

3. Out of India’s Trash Heaps, More Than a Shred of Dignity – NYTimes.com

This reminds of when a friend of mine pointed out that seagulls clean up human’s messes and we call them “scavengers.” Glad to see the people who help with the trash problem getting some remuneration and respect.

4. The Worst of Both Worlds – NYTimes.com

Hard to have a function democratic government when so many politicians are dedicated to stopping everything.

5. What’s Your Hurry? – NYTimes.com

Glad to see that Linda Greenhouse persists in posting  her brilliant essays in retirement. She is an astute Supreme Court observer and analyst.

So yesterday morning I hit the farmers market. My staff had a luncheon scheduled. Each staff person was to bring a dish to pass. I thought a nice roasted asparagus salad would be nice.

After roasting with lots of garlic I let it cool and spread shredded Zingerman’s Parmesan cheese on it to melt.

Mmm, mmm. It made an excellent salad. I also could not resist the strawberries. I chose the most beautiful ones and laid them on a couple pieces of lettuce.

This morning I got  up and played through the Ab prelude and fugue by Bach from WTC I. I thought it might be fun to see if I could tape it with my phone. Here’s the result.

It doesn’t sounds as bad here as it does on my phone. If the prelude is messed up, I tried to use YouTube’s suggested edit for it. Not sure what it did since it’s still processing it.

Anyway. I guess it might be fun to throw up videos like this once in a while. I am thinking I might record Sunday’s prelude and postlude today. We’ll see if I have time. I have some fun music stuff scheduled for today. My trio this afternoon and Rhonda the pianist/organist extraordinaire has consented to come to my abode and play piano duets with me.

1.Earlier Denials Put Intelligence Chief in Awkward Position – NYTimes.com

Lying on camera and before congress.

2. Chinese Journalist Said to Be Detained in Beijing – NYTimes.com

So much for democracy. I know it’s more complicated than that, but I still find actions like this outrageous.

3.Surveillance – A Threat to Democracy – NYTimes.com

Speaking of democracy.

4. New Rapid Malaria Test Uses Magnets and a Laser – NYTimes.com

Magnets seem low tech. Cool use of low and high tech.

5. East African Sweet Potato Curry Recipe | Healthy Recipe Ideas

This is a recipe I recently sort of  made. It is excellent.

6. Teenager’s Death Reveals Growing Anger in Syria – NYTimes.com

Dead because he offended some righteous religious types who proceeded to beat him and then execute him in public. Madness.

7. Weiner Story Appears Briefly, Then Disappears, From The Times’s Web Site – NYTimes.com

Now you see it, now you don’t . Welcome to the new “journalism.”

8. Sexism’s Puzzling Stamina – NYTimes.com

It just keeps rearing its ugly head.

9. The Solitary Leaker – NYTimes.com

If  you want to know how the powerful view the leaks this is a good example Brooks is totally wrong on this. Ad hominem attacks on Snowden. Nice.

10. Hong Kong, a Strange Place to Seek Freedom – NYTimes.com

Some of this ran through my head when I read Snowden’s assessment of Hong Kong as a bastion of free speech.

11. Manning Judge Rules Crowd-Funded Stenographers Should Be Given Permanent Court Access | Freedom of the Press Foundation

A blow for coherence and freedom.

12.

The opening hymn I have recommended for my boss to use this Sunday is “What does the Lord require” sung to Erik Routley’s tune, Sharpethorne. In the eighties I wrote a little string trio based on this tune. I later adapted it for organ so I could use it (link to pdf of entire piece). I’m playing it this Sunday for the prelude.

The postlude will be Praeludium et Fuga BWV 545 by J.S. Bach

With the fugue the entire piece takes a little under 7 minutes. I don’t think that’s too long.

Very few people seem to even notice I’m playing the prelude or postlude, so I just do music I think is cool and appropriate. That’s right. I think my piece is cool. Arrogant bastard that I am.

I went ahead and scheduled prelude and postlude for the following week as well. That way I can practice a bit. The prelude will be “Festival Voluntary” Op. 87 by Flor Peeters. The postlude will be “Epilogue” by Norman Gilbert. They are both our of hoary old Oxford collections I own. They will require a couple weeks to learn well.

I have to bring this to a close. I have  a staff meeting today at 11 AM. Everyone is supposed to bring a dish to pass. I plan to hit the farmers market and see if I can use ingredients from there to pull something together.

I finished reading Slow Lightning by Eduardo C. Corral. It is one of a quartet of books of poetry I began reading in each day back before vacation.

I enjoy getting up and reading poetry in the morning.

Yesterday I went to the doctor for my six month check up. Ironically, I was about ten pounds lighter than my last check up. Doctors seem to like it when you lose weight. The fact is I had gained weight before my last check up. So that even though she was happy about it, I still feel like I need to keep working at losing, if only basically watching my diet and moderating drinking and eating in the evening.

My blood work was good too. Cholesterol down. Blood pressure okay I guess. The things you worry about if you get to live this long.

Today I take  my Mom to her shrink. I will try to get her to go out to eat with me as well. I don’t think I am great company for my Mom. We don’t talk about much. I try to keep her up to speed with the fam. But she doesn’t really converse that much. On Sunday I took my laptop with me when I saw her and showed her vacation pics on it. The laptop is a bit easier for her than seeing pics on my phone. She seems interested but doesn’t say much.

I used to have conversations with my Mom and  Dad. We were a verbal family.

I seem to recall talking about ideas and things that interested me. But now Dad is dead and Mom is quiet. Things change.

The doctor gave me some ear drops for my impacted inner ear. My head has felt like a balloon for most of the last week or so. Not a comfortable feeling. I have to sort of exercise my imagination when I play music. This must be a little bit like what it is to play deaf. Or maybe not.

I checked out the novel Purple Hibiscus by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie yesterday and read the first fifty pages or so of it. (I’m not sure if it is the author pictured above with the book, but I really like the picture either way).

Purple Hibiscus is Adichie’s first novel. She was interviewed in the New York Times. I thought she sounded interesting and intelligent. She mentioned three American writers she is reading right now.

One of them had a book sitting on the shelves of my local library so I checked it out for possible summer reading.

Olive Kitteridge is Elizabeth Strout’s first novel as well. It won the Pulitzer in 2009 for what it’s worth. Actually it’s a collection of interrelated short stories.

Adichie seemed impressed with Strout’s work. We shall see.

The title to today’s blog comes from the title poem of Rebecca Lindenberg’s book of poetry I am reading, Love, An Index. She attributes it to Anne Carson who is another poet I quite like.

1. Meet “Mancow” Muller, The Conspiracy Theorist Star Of History Channel’s New Gun Show | Blog | Media Matters for America

Ay yi yi. I guess it helps to be outrageously stupid in order to get your own TV show.

2. Whitney Saves Douglas Davis’s ‘First Collaborative Sentence’ – NYTimes.com

Museums confront rapidly changing tech in presenting art from the nineties.

3. Robots Lead the Way to the Classroom – Slide Show – NYTimes.com

Pics about a recent story I linked and liked.

4. Cited by a Justice, but Feeling Less Than Honored – NYTimes.com

Hard evidence that Supreme Court justices are like the rest of us and make mistakes.

5.Affirmative Reaction – NYTimes.com

This made me think of the local little college here in Holland, especially this quote:

” … something fundamental is missing from a campus where everybody is pretty much alike. Diversity tends to make institutions more creative, more adaptable, more productive.”

6. Tom Sharpe, Darkly Satirical British Novelist, Dies at 85 – NYTimes.com

Hmmm. This guy’s books sound like something I would enjoy reading.

7. ‘Listen to the Birds’ and ‘Verdi for Kids’ – NYTimes.com

Book review of two books for kids about music. Plan to check out the “bird” one.

Did you know that the etymology of Narcissus is “narcosis” or numbing?

McCluhan points this out in Extensions of Man.

It reminds me of peering into the internet as Narcissus peered into the pool and saw his own reflection.

We forget that he didn’t recognize it, only fell in love with it.

Just as one is likely not to notice the echo chamber effect of seeking information online, we look into the pool of data and see something that attracts and distracts us.

We don’t realize that we are alone in a room looking at pixels and seeing nothing more than our own projected image, falling in love with it, I guess.

Happy stuff.

After reading this in McCluhan this morning, I then I ran across this passage in T. S. Eliot’s play, “The Family Reunion.”

“You have gone through life in sleep,

Never woken to the nightmare, I tell you, life would be unendurable

If you were wide awake.”

I’m afraid I’m still a bit exhausted from my vacation. I know Eileen was still very tired all day yesterday. I played well at church.

Came home and continued playing through Beethoven piano sonatas. I do find this satisfying. Later we visited Mom.

She seems to be doing okay.

I will be able to take most of today off. All I have scheduled is my six month check up with my doctor.

It looks like next week, we will possibly begin the renovation of our first floor in earnest. We meet with the contractor a week from today.

In the meantime I will need to continue clearing away stuff from the areas where they will work. This will entail much less work than moving the books to the second floor did. I will need to clear a wall of a bookshelf and the harpsichord and empty completely the pantry in the kitchen and the bathroom. Easy stuff.

1. Your Smartphone Is Watching You – NYTimes.com

“In the surveillance state, everyone knows you’re a dog.” I am bothered by the notion I keep seeing expressed that if you’re not doing anything wrong you have nothing to worry about. Yikes. Where are people’s brains? I understand we live in a fishbowl of surveillance, but the idea that there is no protected speech or privacy left and that the state can use all information to it’s benefit and the private citizen’s detriment erodes democracy. I don’t know what the answer is but it’s not to give the state free reign that’s for sure.

2. Progress At Work, But Mothers Still Pay a Price – NYTimes.com

“HERE’S an old riddle: a boy and his father are in a car crash and the father is killed instantly. The boy is airlifted to the best hospital in the region and prepped for emergency surgery by one of the top surgeons in the country. The surgeon rushes in, sees the boy, and says “I can’t operate on this patient. He’s my son.” Who is the surgeon”

More people respond that the surgeon is the dead man’s gay partner rather than his wife.

3. Peeping President Obama – NYTimes.com

The assault on privacy continues.

4. Edward Snowden: the whistleblower behind revelations of NSA surveillance | World news | guardian.co.uk

This is the article I ended up reading about this issue. It seems to be part of a series that broke the story.

I am fascinated that so many people try so hard to hide themselves from each other. At least it seems like they are trying to do this, but maybe it’s just all they can do to get up each morning and quietly try to survive another day not really aware of themselves that much.

I think of myself as someone who comes from the south. I make friends way too easy. I try not to hide myself and say what I am thinking and feeling as exactly as possible. Us lapsed southerners often seem to “wear our heart on our sleeve.”

I have been thinking of the many people I have known over the years with whom I no longer have contact. I think this might be a big part of life, simply moving on and ceasing to reach out to people. For those of us stuck with our heart on our sleeve, this can feel a bit like rejection or shunning. Of course when people die, the door slams shut a bit harder.

Yesterday Eileen and I both were pretty exhausted. I managed to do bills and then drag myself to the grocery store. I was glad I didn’t have to play the wedding at my church.

For some reason Beethoven was on the piano rack yesterday. I played through a couple of his piano sonatas and Liszt’s transcription of the first movement of the first symphony.

On the flight home, I began reading John Irving’s Prayer for Owen Meany. I continued reading in it yesterday. It’s easy reading for a tired brain.

This morning I got up and finished reading History of Knowledge by Charles Van Doren. I read my usual poetry plus a few pages of the beginning of Finnegans Wake.

I would have to say that life is good as usual.

1. Will D. Campbell, 88, Maverick Minister in Civil Rights Era – NYTimes.com

Funny how the outcasts and renegades of the past are sometimes seen as heroes and prophets after they die.

2.Harriet Tubman’s Great Raid – NYTimes.com

Excellent outline of the history of Tubman and a raid on the south to entice slaves to become soldiers. I especially like that she was singing as they went into the raid. Also that it bugged her when a white officer asked her to “sing to your people.”

3.New York Times Editorials on Obama Administration Secrecy – NYTimes.com

An article with links to news stories and editorials documenting this administrations sinking into secrecy.

4. Making a Mountain Out of a Digital Molehill – NYTimes.com

This academic is out to lunch as far as I’m concerned.

5. For Homebound Students, a Robot Proxy in the Classroom – NYTimes.com

I think this is a cool use of tech.

6.Civil Disobedience on a Turkish Game Show – NYTimes.com

Courage on TV in Turkey.

7. It’s extremist Muslims, not Islamic extremism – Opinion – Al Jazeera English

America keeps getting this wrong.

8. Of Slippery Slopes – NYTimes.com

I’m with this author. It’s no surprise that the government is totally spying on everyone. When the president says “nobody is listening to your phone calls,” it’s hard not think that somebody is listening to your phone calls.

I snapped a picture of this vaguely sinister poster at the airport last night. We were getting home from our annual California pilgrimage to see the Jenkins out there.

The trip home was a bit easier than the trip out there. The former had two stopovers and ended with a long drive through urban California rush hour.  Yesterday we only had one stop over and the whole trip was considerably shorter thereby.

Edison was glad to see us. And we were glad to see him and to be home.

I have farmed out the wedding scheduled at my church for today. Thank you to Rhonda for stepping in and taking care of it. I am relieved not to have to do that today.

Eileen and I will probably take it pretty easy today. She is still asleep. It’s around 9 AM local time. I would like to hit the farmers market today. And the grocery store. Check on Mom.  Exercise. But we won’t do much today, that is for sure.

1. BBC News – Tiny Chinese Archicebus fossil is oldest primate yet found

I love shit like this.

2. Why 1998 Was the Best Year in Music for Millennials: Jay-Z, Britney Spears, More – The Daily Beast

Since Neutral Milk Hotel made the list I thought I would check out the rest. But Britney Spears? Weird.

3. PBS Segment On Economic Impact Of Immigration Reform Fails Viewers | Blog | Media Matters for America

Public radio and TV seems to be trailing after the weird American take on life these days (far right of center? on the moon?)

4. A Trip Down Memory Lane: People Warned What Would Happen When Congress Passed Bills To Enable Vast Spying | Techdirt

Just like the Iraq war, people do perceive accurately what’s ahead. They’re just drowned out in the clamor of crazies.

5. Mary Meeker’s misinformation has influence – SFGate

Weird fact free observations about frequency of cell phone usage.

I read the 15th chapter of James Joyce’s Ulysses yesterday. Or at least I finished it yesterday having plunged into it sometime this week. This chapter is called the Circe chapter and draws a bit on Homer’s Circe chapter.

Circe turns Odysseus crew into pigs. He rescues them then stays a year with Circe.

Joyce’s story is about Bloom and Stephen Daedalus meeting up in a brothel.

I read a synopsis last night after finishing the chapter and an analysis this morning.

I think I’m going to have reread the Circe chapter of Homer to get more of the analogies between the two stories.

I read this chapter on my Kindle.

Yesterday we sort of laid around and didn’t do much in preparation for our flight back home this afternoon. I sat down with Nicholas and did some playing around the ideas of improvising. That was fun

My daughter-in-law Cynthia took this picture of us.

She also posed this one and had her Dad take the picture:

I put them up here for my non Facebookistan friends and readers.

1. Just in: Unknown J. S. Bach manuscript turns up

Wow. More possible Bach manuscripts surfacing. Makes sense since he was so prolific.

2. BBC News – Alice Kober: Unsung heroine who helped decode Linear B

Kober was a scholar who learned multiple ancient languages to decode the famous Linear B. She also tabulated occurrences of then unknown words in the language. She died just short of completing her work which was taken up by another scholar.

3. Filibuster Reform Has Right-Wing Media Frantically Condemning Judicial “Power Play” | Blog | Media Matters for America

I guess governing is just out of the picture these days.

4. Is Virginia for Haters? Cuccinelli vs. McAuliffe. – NYTimes.com

I often think of Rabbi Friedman’s ideas about how difficult it was to be a leader in the latter 20th century. I wonder if the good people duck the calling and then the crazies emerge. Just a thought.

5. The Future is Here | Ideas & Innovations | Smithsonian Magazine

Ongoing conference. This link features a cool video of Buzz Aldrin and Thomas Dolby singing “Science.” The lectures and information shared at the conference should be put up here before too long.

6. http://www.hope.edu/admin/hr/

employment/jobs/music_chaplain.htm

Hope college is looking for a chapel musician. I think the job description is interesting and telling.

It’s been a nice visit, but I’m starting to miss home. I miss time alone with my beautiful wife and I miss time alone.

On Tuesday, we took the kids to the books store which is part of our annual visit. We give them an amount limit and then pick out a few books for them that we want them to have. Eileen closely supervises Catherine the youngest in her choices. She consults with Savannah and Nicholas goes off and does his thing.

Last year I picked out a graphic novel version of Macbeth for Nicholas. At least that’s what I think I did. This year I picked out a nice graphic novel version of the Odyssey.

Believe it or not there were more than one version of this in graphic novels. This particular one retains some of the language of the original (“Sing O Muse…”). Nicholas has already finished reading it.

Then yesterday I purchased mp3 players for the oldest two. Catherine the youngest got a little fake laptop that seemed to satisfy her.  This all was as a result of me trying to figure out how to share music with Nicholas. I wanted to give him access to Glenn Gould’s recording of the Goldberg variations and Pablo Casals’ recording of the Bach cello suites. By the time I figured out he could access them via YouTube I had already created the expectation that I would buy him an MP3 player as well

I think a lot about how people listen to music these days. The sound of music is ubiquitous. The range of styles that one can hear is mind boggling. At the same time I get a sense that the music that interests me (whatever that happens to be) is not the music that interests many others in the vast scheme of music listeners.

This gap seems to have been true all my life but is intensifying.

In the introduction to Music of the Common Tongue: Survival and Celebration in African  American Music, Christopher Small writes of becoming aware that he was living in a soup of music that he hadn’t noticed (hadn’t thought of as valid or real?) until he had his music degrees and was teaching in college. I find this amazing. He calls the music in the culture he was missing: “light entertainment” or “rather intrusive noise from juke-boxes.

I on the other hand grew up as a hopeless child of my culture.

I remember hearing music in many ways including music on the radio and TV and music on records in my home.

I was fascinated when we visited a radio announcer we knew in Greeneville Tennessee. Her name was Maxine Humphries and she was a voice on the radio in the lives of the town. I have a memory of going to visit her studio early one morning. The other employees were just waking up from sleeping on the floor all night. I guess they slept there because they didn’t want to be late for the next day or were still there from the day before.

I recall listening to a trumpet player on TV as a child and asking my Dad why he was doing “that” to the sound. “That” was vibrato and Dad told me that the player was trying to make the sound more beautiful.

I remember thinking that it was more beautiful without “that.”

Then there were the records in  my life. My parents had a weird mixture of records. I remember hearing classical music on records as a kid. This is some of my first exposures to classical music and jazz I’m pretty sure. I specifically remember an anthology that had popular world classics of all genre. I have a copy of this set of records today and can clearly see how hearing pieces like Canadian Sunset and Ritual Fire Dance as a kid impressed me.

Both of my parents sang and played the piano.

Most of the music they performed was religious. But not all. My Dad would play snippets of Chopin and Rachmaninoff always tossing it off as something he sort of had in his memory from studying as a young person.

Three times a week I went to church where my Dad was the minister. Every service had music. Most of it sung by the congregation.

All of this musical soup was part of what I perceived as music. Still is.

Yesterday I loaded up Savannah’s MP3 player with tunes she likes. The Theme from Scooby Doo. Many Disney movie tunes. But I managed to find some classical music she okayed to add to the mix. Moonlight sonata by Beethoven and a Bach flute sonata movement.

I think of the vast array of musical styles as part of the fun part of life (like loving, having sex, good food, poetry, good books). Not sure just how it plays out in other peoples lives but it doesn’t hurt to throw some music I love into the mix.

I guess that sums up my approach in general.

After three hours at the first beach on Monday, we jumped into the van and drove down the coast. Eventually we stopped at Newport Beach with the idea we would walk out the pier.

Piers make good backdrops for portraits.

Portraits of one kind.

One kind or another, anyway.

I love taking pictures of people, especially ones I care about.

At the end of the pier, you can actually go down some stairs and walk around a bit underneath.

I enjoy finding patterns to take pictures of. Patterns like this.

I like taking artsy fartsy pictures that are almost abstract.

Underneath a pier there are patterns everywhere. In this picture, you can also see where one can walk right out to the edge. I guess this provides access for boats.

And then there are found obects (objet d’art).

But all good things come to an end.

Time to go shop.

1. TEDxMacatawa – Jennifer Adams – because you can

My boss made a TED video. How bout that?

2. Detroit’s treasure trove could be vulnerable to sale – USA TODAY

Best article I have read on this. Also linked it on Facebookistan.

3. Explain This: The Illusion Of Political Understanding : 13.7: Cosmos And Culture : NPR

How do we decide our positions on issues? Opinions not often formed from detailed understanding.

4. Swiffer Appropriates Feminist Icon To Promote Mopping The Kitchen | ThinkProgress

Another appropriation of reality to sell products.