Archive for the ‘Music’ Category
September 12, 2026
A while back I lamented to Sacred Harp singers Leigh Cooper and Mark Godfrey (wife and husband; some of us come in couples) over no longer being able to sing face to face, in one another’s company (instead, having to sing along alone at home via Zoom). Leigh took my lament to Paul Kostka, who acts as arranger for our twice-monthly singings in Palo Alto, and they picked a day (9/10) and time (11 am). That turned out to be the exact time I was scheduled to get flu and covid vaccinations, and Mark’s schedule that day precluded his taking part at all. (Juggling schedules is hellish).
But the plan eventually came together, with many singers invited to take part, but only four actually able to turn up on 9/10 : Leigh, Paul, Lorraine Sohlberg Kostka (yes, another couple), and me. Four is the magic number — SH is 4-part a cappella music — and together the four of us could cover the treble, alto, tenor, and bass lines. I’m a male treble; in the world of ordinary vocal music, I’m a natural baritone (roughly corresponding to SH tenor), but astonishingly I can do this other stuff too and love the lines I get. And when I have a voice (various degrees of laryngitis have dogged me in recent weeks), I am wildly, fiercely shake-the-windows loud.
But what is so touching is that the whole event was a gift to me. Causing me to spill over with joy at being back in the community — SH is communitarian, elaborately egalitarian, and comfortable with difference (I am often adorned in way-gay apparel) — with these wonderful people.
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Posted in Conversation, Homosexuality, Language and religion, Music, My life, Social interactions, Social life | Leave a Comment »
September 8, 2026
🎶 🎶 It’s 9/8, Anton Dvořák’s birthday (1841), which will serve as a lead-in to a fabulous performance of music (by Purcell, not Dvořák) that Ellen Kaisse e-mailed to me as a (9/6) birthday present, stroking one of the passions — for music — that animate my life (two others I have recently posted about: the multiplicity of languages, cultures, subcultures, and life histories; and moral purpose — yeah, that one sounds like swaggering, but I really mean it)
Before I leave AD, a note on him from my 1/27/24 posting “Spillville”:
let me recommend the Wikipedia article on Dvořák, for its detailed telling of a remarkable life, of great talent, a lot of pluck, a fair amount of luck, generous humanity, and the benefit of champions, advocates on your behalf (in this case, primarily Johannes Brahms)
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Posted in Dancers, Events and occasions, Language and the body, Music, Teaching, Writing | 1 Comment »
September 7, 2026
You say it’s your birthday / We’re gonna have a good time
— the Beatles, Birthday (1968, from The White Album)
[evoked for me in e-mail by Brian Joseph]
💪🏻💪🏻💪🏻 for (US) Labor Day, the flexed biceps of a manual worker (like my two grandfathers: Bethlehem Steel (maternal), Textile Machine Works (paternal); Melchior Zwicky doubled as a small-farmer as well). I’m two generations down and have ascended, as a professor and writer, to the status of scholar and artist rather than worker and peasant — socioculturally if not financially in the upper middle class. With a thick veneer of high culture, but also fiercely egalitarian. It’s a balancing act.
Birthday greetings. I now veer onto something completely different (but hang on; things will come together): amidst the great avalanche of well-wishing for my birthday, #86, yesterday, an especially charming pair that came as a package. (more…)
Posted in Academic life, Bilingualism, Events and occasions, Language and culture, Languages, Linguists, Music, My life, Names, Ohio State, Social class, Social life, Teaching and learning | Leave a Comment »
September 6, 2026
The big scheme is Pleasure as Therapy: something I do for pleasure (or play or engaged curiosity) turns out to be excellent therapy, alleviating some affliction of mine or extending my life. These are unintended, but gratifying, consequences. Gravy.
Previously on this blog, the story of my singing Sacred Harp hymns in communities of shapenote singers, a practice that moves me deeply, sometimes taking me into an ecstatic state. That’s the pleasure. Then my pulmonologist — who had me using breathing apparatus to strengthen my lungs — discovered this and said that my singing full-out was much better therapy than his, and I should do it as much as possible, ideally some every day. I see this as getting a prescription to eat cake. Or, to pick a different metaphor, go for the gravy.
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Posted in Age, Language and medicine, Lexical semantics, Linguists, Metaphor, Movies and tv, Music, My life, Play, Social interactions, Social life | 2 Comments »
September 3, 2026
(fecal matters in street talk; you might find it offensive)
Previously on this blog, in my 9/1 posting “Send in the rabbits”:
Made it back to my apartment, at which point the enema kicked in and I pretty much exploded with shit, everywhere, in piles. Vast amounts of cleaning up to do, and I still have to get someone in to scrub my workroom carpeting, which is beyond my (dis)abilities.
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Posted in Language and medicine, Language and religion, Language and the body, Music, My life | Leave a Comment »
September 1, 2026
🐇 🐇 🐇 rabbit rabbit rabbit for September, in the middle of another run of AZ-connected birthdays (not of famous people, however admirable; but of (still living) people who are important to me): 8/27 Ken Rudolph of soc.motss (85); 8/30 Ellen Sulkis James, a long-ago companion of mine on the staff of the Reading (PA) Eagle (86); 8/31 Benita Bendon Campbell, dear friend since Princeton in the 1960s and my connection to the late Ann Daingerfield (Zwicky) (90); 9/2 Mike Jankulak of soc.motss (57); and 9/6, yes, me (86)
9/1 came to me with a morning name: The Low Spark of High Heeled Boys — from what experiential or mental source I know not. But with a shiver of delight.
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Posted in Events and occasions, Friendship, Morning names, Music, My life | Leave a Comment »
August 30, 2026
(all the way at the end, we get to some sexual street talk, which I think has exactly the right shock value for its context; but if s*cking c*ck offends you, skip the next-to-last sentence)
It starts with Steven Levine — a sparkling vehicle of joy, enthusiasm, and congeniality — roused to anger and protest, as I reported in the 8/3 posting “Two notes on gay moral purpose”:
SL breaks out in a combination of, on the one hand, genuine pride in occasions of humane concern and (to put it grandly) moral purpose in the gay world and, on the other, righteous anger at a long-standing tradition in psychology, sociology, and medicine of blanketly treating homosexuality as dysfunction and disease. With, as sideshow, celebration of the raw sexuality in homosexuality — recognizing the physical and emotional pleasures of the associated sexual practices — in the wonderful BIG FAG t-shirts created by Steven (which he’d been distributing with abandon at Amsterdam Pride).
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Posted in Art, Clothing, Homosexuality, Language and the body, Language of sex, Moral worlds, Music, My life, Poetry, Social interactions, Social life | Leave a Comment »
August 27, 2026
Some weeks back, in midsummer, I sat at my worktable as night drew to an end, when sunrise broke out magnificently in my window wall (see photo #1 in my 8/25 posting “Where I live”) and filled me with joy at the gift of a new day. Also triggering an avalanche of musical associations — conveying fresh beginnings (as here), or rebirth (both of them in Schubert lieder, to come below), or (as in Mahler’s Symphony No. 2, also to come below), resurrection. (There’s more, lots more; I’ll list only a tiny sampling, from the odd trio of Haydn, Grieg, and Grofé — ok, Lambert, Hendricks, and Ross, they’re not))
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Posted in German, Language and religion, Music, My life, Poetry | 2 Comments »
August 26, 2026
About my daily life, because I’m so backed up in things to do that I’m just picking little stuff out of a hat. (The incidental good news is that my lab tests were very pleasingly improved, and I’m now starting, eek, a very slow withdrawal from prednisone; think good thoughts about woolly mammoths for me.)
Meanwhile, I took an early break in my sleep last night, to search, I don’t really know why, for material on the dog books of my childhood.
I did indeed speed-read (and barely comprehend, though I got Midsummer Night’s Dream and King Lear for life) all of Shakespeare at the age if 9, of my own volition, but I also adored imaginative fiction for kids. Dr. Doolittle, Freddy the Pig, every Oz book there was. And books about noble dogs. My West Lawn PA companion for several years was a sweet mutt dog (part terrier, the rest mystery). Spot / Spotty (not an imaginative name, but fitting).
Out of this I will produce soon a posting on what we all called at the time LadADog (three syllables rushed into a ball). And Albert Payson Terhune. But that’s not what this posting is about. This posting is about the music that Apple was playing for me when I went on my computer dog search around 9:15 pm last night.
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Posted in Books, Language and animals, Music, My life | 4 Comments »
