Category Archives: Music

Authors, Blogs, Socials, Music, Publishing

Multiple Abuses over Many Years, Reframing Classics, and Winter Jokes

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A line of severe storms with a chance of tornadoes is pressing in on my area of the world. It’s not raining here now, but it likely will by the time I publish this post. The storms have already prevented a roofing project I had planned to participate in this morning, which isn’t good (because that roof isn’t going to patch itself) but may be good for me, because I felt more worn out than usual after a church Christmas dinner last night. I mostly washed dishes, but lifting trays of 25 glasses into a dishwasher is moderate-level lifting and I’m just a puny office worker.

Anyway, nobody cares about that.

In this week’s World Opinion, Hunter Baker urges us to pray for the overturning of Roe and a better understanding of human life.

World Radio has released all four episodes in a long story on the abuse and recovery of the key witness against a wicked Mississippi church leader who abused many children over many years. It’s a story that reveals important truths many of us can use in our own communities. I’ll link to the first episode. You can find the rest by searching the website or your podcast app.

The estate of George Orwell has been looking for someone to write a sequel to 1984, telling the story from Julia’s point of view. Now author Sandra Newman will put it together. The Guardian states, “It is the latest in a series of feminist retellings of classic stories, from Natalie Haynes’s reimagining of the Trojan war A Thousand Ships, and Pat Barker’s The Silence of the Girls, a version of the Iliad from the perspective of Briseis, to Maggie O’Farrell’s Hamnet, which centres on the life of Shakespeare’s wife, and Jeet Thayil’s Names of the Women, which tells the stories of 15 women whose lives overlapped with Jesus.”

Arsenio Orteza writes, “Those seeking proof that everything old is new again need look no further” than a couple new releases from Warner Classics boasting a 3D orchestra and spatial audio. I’ve also heard this year’s shopping trends have Hot Wheels, Barbies, and board games at the top of the list.

Sarah Sanderson read Tolkien’s “Leaf by Niggle“ recently. “I too find myself living in an age of anxiety. Tolkien worried that the Nazis would drop a bomb on him before his work was done. I ‘doomscroll’ my national, state, and local COVID numbers daily.”

Mary Spencer attempts to find romance in romanticized Midwestern winters. “He looked at her and she blushed. At least, he thought she blushed. It could have been windburn.” [This post is on McSweeney’s, so let me add that I’ve come across hilarious posts on McSweeney’s before and have not linked to them here because at some point they got nasty. This post only veers toward that territory, so I’m sharing it, but you may see what I’m talking about in headlines to other posts.]

Photo: Fairyland Cottages, Detroit Lakes, Minnesota. 1980. John Margolies Roadside America photograph archive (1972-2008), Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division.

Music

Advent Singing: O Come, O Come, Emmanuel

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“O Come, O Come, Emmanuel” was a 12th century Latin hymn brought into English by John M. Neale of London. The Latin words come from an 8th century poem. This makes another commonly sung hymn with ancient roots.

Authors, Blogs, Socials, Music, Poetry

God Is Infinitely Wise and We Are Not Remotely

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Something triggered a memory today. I told my parents, over apple pie at Dollywood, that Jonathan Edwards had suggested the Lord had risen in the East and could possibly return in the West, even America. I don’t think he was suggesting it would happen, just that it could and would flow with the pattern of history. The main reason I remember that is the impression of impressing my parents with this detail from Edwards. A small thing. Both of them passed away in the last few years; now the holidays are different.

Pastor and author Tim Keller has been fighting pancreatic cancer for over a year. It’s now at stage IV. On Twitter Friday afternoon, he said, “It is endlessly comforting to have a God who is both infinitely more wise and more loving than I am. He has plenty of good reasons for everything he does and allows that I cannot know, and therein is my hope and strength.”

In The Atlantic this year, Keller wrote about his faith growing in the face of this struggle. Speaking of earlier in his life, he said, “Particularly for me as a Christian, Jesus’s costly love, death, and resurrection had become not just something I believed and filed away, but a hope that sustained me all day. I pray this prayer daily. Occasionally it electrifies, but ultimately it always calms:

“And as I lay down in sleep and rose this morning only by your grace, keep me in the joyful, lively remembrance that whatever happens, I will someday know my final rising, because Jesus Christ lay down in death for me, and rose for my justification.”

Writing at Age 91. We don’t know what time or days we have…. what was I saying just now? Oh, never mind.

Do you like reading poetry? Does it matter if you enjoy it or is it a professional exercise? “I can only think that a large-scale revulsion has got to set in against present notions, and that it will have to start with poetry readers asking themselves more frequently whether they do in fact enjoy what they read, and, if not, what the point is of carrying on.”

Writing is ridiculous, bound to fail; even success feels like failure. “Some people doubt themselves far too much, others not remotely enough.”

Researchers have concluded contemporary worship songs are going stale quicker than they used to, for reasons they can’t explain. “The average arc of a worship song’s popularity has dramatically shortened, from 10 to 12 years to a mere 3 or 4.” I don’t want to suggest these are only the most consumeristic churches, but in my church circles, we sing old songs–maybe a new melody or arrangement, but the lyric is still several years to centuries old. What I’m sharing in our new Sunday post is the kind of singing I hope you have in your churches.

Photo: Wellsboro Diner, Route 6, Wellsboro, Pennsylvania. 1977. John Margolies Roadside America photograph archive (1972-2008), Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division.

Music

‘Mary’s Boy Child’

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I think I’m actually in denial about Christmas this year. I need to get started with my cards and newsletters, and I need to get my tree up. I used to get right on those things the day after Thanksgiving, but this year it seems like a lot of work.

Still, it’s not too early to post a Sissel Christmas song. This is the young Sissel, way back in 1987, on Norwegian TV but singing in English for your convenience. I don’t think I’ve heard anyone do this song better.

My cold lingers, which it would be surprising if it didn’t, because it’s only been a few days. I have an idea this one will hang on, though. Had to do my annual eye appointment this morning. I arrived at the usual place, and behold, it was deserted. Lots of room in the inn.

I had a vague memory that they’d announced they’d moved. Again. This clinic changes venues more often than Nathan Detroit’s crap game in Guys ‘n Dolls. Thanks to the miracles of modern technology, though, I was able to find the right location on my cell phone, and I still had time to make the appointment.

The new place is a medical complex. With signs for various clinics and services. But none for my ophthalmologist.

The address was right. I double-checked. I got out of my car and went to investigate.

By the door, one of those three-foot stand-up yellow plastic signs, saying my eye clinic was inside.

This seems to me a rather cruel thing, to have a vision clinic with no visible sign. Like playing blind man’s bluff with an actual blind man.

But I did get in. Verdict: My eyesight has deteriorated slightly, but only slightly. My cataracts (every old person has them) have advanced marginally, but not enough to call for Steps to Be Taken yet.

Also finished my translation job and submitted it.

I am tired now. Wake me Monday morning.

Music, Uncategorized

‘Sir Patrick Spens’

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Busy. I am busy. Busy like the bees, and the beavers, and any number of industrious, alliterative animal life forms.

I posted the video above (recorded in Denmark) because I was on a long road trip over Thanksgiving, and I told the story thought to be behind this ballad. I’ve mentioned it here before. “Sir Patrick Spens” is thought to be (loosely) based (with a shipwreck thrown in) on historical events surrounding the death of Queen Margaret of Scotland. Known in Scotland as Margaret, Maid of Norway. And in Norway as Margaret, Maid of Scotland.

She was the last royal heir of the Scottish Canmore dynasty. Her mother, who had already died, was a Scottish princess married to King Erik II of Norway. When all the rest of the Canmores were gone, Margaret became presumptive heir. At 7 years old, she was betrothed to Prince Edward of England (later Edward II) and sent home to assume the throne. But she took sick on the voyage and died in the Orkneys.

The struggle for the throne that followed is the actual background for the “Braveheart” story, but it wasn’t cinematic enough for the screenwriters. So they invented that scene where Edward I hangs the Scottish chieftains, an event that never happened.

Poor Margaret lived on in song and story, the Maid of Norway (or Scotland). Elevated by that “Camelot” instinct we all bear within us, the sense that if some hero (or heroine) of the past had only lived, everything would have been all right. A shadow of Eden, perhaps.

Anyway, I took a long ride over Thanksgiving, and we had a very nice family celebration. Especially nice after last year’s isolation. I came home with leftovers, which is nothing to sneeze at, at today’s prices.

And I came back to work a-waiting. For the moment it seems to be pouring in, and I can translate as much as I can handle.

And that was a little frustrating too, because I had a pile of jobs to do that I’d put off over the holiday. Doing my laundry. Talking to Customer Service at the grocery store about why my gas rewards card isn’t working. Calling my health insurance company to find out why a medication they’d always paid for was suddenly refused (this got straightened out, and required a visit to the store for a refund). Something more that has to be done on my mortgage refinance, for some reason. And now I learn that my internet provider is withdrawing service, so I’ll have to find a new one of those.

Not to mention the Sverdrup Society work I haven’t had a chance to look at for weeks.

Thank you for your time. I must return to my workbench now.

Music

Advent Singing: Let All Mortal Flesh Keep Silence

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Let All Mortal Flesh Keep Silence · OCP Session Choir

Advent season begins today, so I’ll share my favorite advent hymn first. If you know this hymn, it may be the oldest song you know. The words come from the Liturgy of St. James, which is a Syrian rite linked to St. James the Less. Remember our brothers and sisters in the Syrian church, who have persevered in the faith for centuries, as you sing this hymn today.

The recording above has only three of these verses.

1 Let all mortal flesh keep silence,
and with fear and trembling stand;
ponder nothing earthly-minded,
for with blessing in his hand,
Christ our God to earth descendeth,
our full homage to demand.

2 King of kings, yet born of Mary,
as of old on earth he stood;
Lord of lords, in human vesture,
in the body and the blood,
he will give to all the faithful
his own self for heav’nly food.

Continue reading Advent Singing: Let All Mortal Flesh Keep Silence →
Music

Sunday Singing: We Gather Together

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“We Gather Together,” 1625, author unknown, translated from Dutch “Wilt heden nu treden” by Theodore Baker.

We gather together to ask the Lord’s blessing;
He chastens and hastens his will to make known;
The wicked oppressing now cease from distressing.
Sing praises to his name; he forgets not his own.

Beside us to guide us, our God with us joining,
Ordaining, maintaining his kingdom divine;
So from the beginning the fight we were winning;
Thou, Lord, wast at our side; all glory be thine!

We all do extol thee, thou leader triumphant,
And pray that thou still our defender wilt be.
Let thy congregation escape tribulation;
Thy name be ever praised! O Lord, make us free!

Music

Sunday Singing: Make Me a Captive, Lord

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“Make Me a Captive, Lord” is an 1890 hymn by Rev. George Matheson of Glasgow, Scotland. The tune was written in 1862 by George William Martin of London.

I’ve copied the words here. This performance skips the third verse.

Continue reading Sunday Singing: Make Me a Captive, Lord →
Music

‘When Johnny Comes Marching Home’

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For Veterans’ Day (as it closes; late to the party is how I roll), I looked for an arrangement of the American song, “When Johnny Comes Marching Home.” I wanted a live performance, but settled for the video above, a popular World War II version by the famous Andrews Sisters (Greek-Norwegian in ancestry, Lutheran in religion, all born in Minneapolis).

The song has an Irish tune, as so many great Civil War songs did. It was written by an Irish-American bandleader named Patrick Gilmore, who copyrighted it under the pseudonym “Louis Lambert” in 1863.

There’s a song called “Johnny We Hardly Knew Ye,” with the same tune, that’s far darker, about a soldier coming home from war maimed – “Ye haven’t an arm, and ye haven’t a leg. All ye can do is sit and beg….” I always assumed it was the original and that Americans altered it to make it suitable for recruiting rallies. However, according to Wikipedia, Gilmore’s song actually was published first, and “Johnny, We Hardly Knew Ye” had a different tune at first.

Most of the videos of this song I found on YouTube featured visuals that seemed to me somewhat ironic, as if to fulfill a moral obligation to remind everyone that war is terrible. Because, I suppose, we’re likely to forget about that.

I wanted to find an upbeat version. What this holiday is for, I think, is to affirm the soldier and the value of his sacrifices. We have another day for those who fell in war. Veteran’s Day is meant to be a day when the warriors in the hall can hear the skalds singing their courage and great deeds. That’s a necessary exercise, I think, and possibly more therapeutic than treating veterans like fragile, broken flowers.

Music

‘Threescore and Ten’

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Still working on translation. This job is a bigger one, in a single chunk, than I’m used to. I’m not complaining at all – that’s money in the poke. But I can’t dawdle with blogging (or reading books to review), so it’s music for you tonight. You’ll take it and you’ll like it.

The song, “Threescore and Ten,” continues the theme of nautical music I started last night. This one is closer to home (for me) though. It’s about fishermen, of whom I come from a long line. It’s a broadside ballad (words by fisherman William Delf, who wrote it for the benefit of the widows and orphans, music traditional) about a devastating storm that struck the northeast coast of England in February 1889. It’s still remembered as one of the greatest disasters to strike the coast around Grimsby and Kingston Upon Hull.

Performance by the Clancy Brothers and Tommy Makem (I actually have this album on vinyl).

Have a good weekend, and may the winds be favorable.