I dreamed last night of my dead father-in-law. My dreams continue to be very important to me. In the dream he was disconsolate. He had behaved a bit badly (consistent with some of his behavior when he was alive). I embraced him with compassion and told him I loved him (something I never did).

I recently straightened my little area in the living room. I put away many books and kept only those books out that I plan to  read regularly. Eileen took a picture.

If it looks cluttered, it’s no where near as bad as it was when I began organizing. I guess I aspire to “cluttered.”

I am blogging on Friday morning because I have fallen in love with some new music. It’s an album released recently. I ran across it on my music app, Primophonic.

I am a fan of both the composer, Shaw, and the singer, Upshaw. Narrow Sea was commissioned by the performers in 2017. Shaw took texts from Sacred Harp pieces and reset them.

It seems to be on YouTube.

Here are the first few cuts.

I recommend all of the piece.

I just ordered a copy of The Sacred Harp. I have several shape note books but not the original. I am very intrigued to see the original pieces. I didn’t know “I am a poor wayfaring stranger” came from this tradition. I have known that song since I was young. I learned it from sheet music.

This is my new book I have purchased to give to people. I haven’t quite finished reading my copy yet, but I have found it amazing.

Amazing to learn that we have a significant number of people in our country to who have fallen in the cracks of moneyless poverty. In the video, Edin says that the $2.00 a day figure was used by the World Bank because using zero was statistically unhelpful.

That’s right, using World standards, in 2011, there were “1.5 million households with roughly 3 million children who were surviving on cash incomes of no more that $2 per person, per day for any given month. that’s about one out of every twenty-five families with children in America. ”

I found this book in Automating Equality by Eubanks.

If you’re not up for the book, the embedded video covers much of the same territory as the book.

In the video, Edin says that she met someone who was so used to be hungry that they described that it “feels like you want to be dead, because it’s peaceful being dead.” (This is around 1 hour and 28 minutes in the video).

Also, Edin mentions that one study she looked at said that getting hired at Walmart was harder than getting into Harvard.

And then there’s this happy video.

I learned about Belew from this episode of Deep Background Podcast.

Her historical background of the White Power movement intrigues me. I have interlibrary loaned her book,

She is thinking about now as well as history. You might know the insidious little book The Turner Diaries.

Timothy McVeigh read this. In the novel, there are details about idiots over throwing the United States. This includes a description (and instructions apparently) about blowing up a federal building and also congregating in the Nation’s Capital Building.

Here’s a recent article about this, although I learned what I’m mentioning from Belew’s video.

‘The Turner Diaries’ a blueprint for Capitol attack

I’ve got more links but I think it’s time for a martini.