I managed to get the program for tomorrow’s recital done today. It helped to have written it yesterday. I emailed Emily Ezust, Founder and Managing Director of LeiderNet Archive. Her organization manages the copyright of a translation at I wanted to use. She emailed me back today giving me free permission but pointing out that there is no funding for her research project in this area. I sent her 10 dollars CAD ($7.80 US dollars) via Paypal. I love it when people are so responsive.

Before lunch today I went over to church and dumped what I had into Publisher and proceeded to tweak it. In about an hour I had a draft to bring home to Eileen so that she could begin proofing.

I finished Go, Went, Gone by Jenny Erpenbeck yesterday. It is easily the best novel I have read in a while. I began typing up notes before going to church. She has a beautiful passage where she interleaves an all too familiar list of drug side effects of a drug that has debilitated one of the refugees in the story.

The man had no idea what the “yellow pill” was that someone official had given him. Richard, the retired professor and the character whose point of view dominates almost all of the book, discovers exactly what drug has been prescribed.

He begins to tick off the possible side effects. But at the same time he has been reminded of Bach’s Cantata BWV 82 by a phrase shouted by one of the exasperated refugees in the book: “Ich habe genug.” (I have had enough.) Erpenbeck begins interleaving the text from BWV 82 at that point. I think it’s cool that a shouted phrase in the street (in German) is exactly a phrase that Bach set in this Cantata.I have been listening and looking at it today. Very cool.

After lunch Eileen and I went back to church and I made changes in the Publisher doc as she and I proofed it. We printed up 50 copies. Then Eileen helped me prep for tomorrow’s service. By the time we had done all this it was around 3 PM and I was exhausted.

We came home and Eileen turned on the air conditioning and I am feeling decadently luckier than usual.  Especially as I process Erpenbeck’s book in which she has her main character gradually become more aware but not exonerated of his ignorance. Some fine writing.