Mark's musings

We interrupt this blog for a special news announcement:

Mark and Sara have a brand-new baby nephew!!!

As-of-yet-unnamed Baby ("Leroy") Graves, born at 8:04 am on July 11, 2008
In Chapel Hill, NC
6 lbs. 12 oz.
proud parents: Beth and Brian!

Here is their own spot in the blogosphere.

Stay tuned for more news from Uncle Mark!!

Ugh.  Forget the little (throw-away!) communion-cups-with-a-shelf-for-the-bread, pre-packed and vacuum-sealed.

Forget the red-white-and-blue cross with stars and stripes on it.

Forget the Jesus-brand of bottled water.

There's a new brand of religiously atrocious kitsch in town, and it's going undercover as a BIBLE.


That's right, kids, now YOU can own your own TRULY PERSONAL "Personal Promise Bible."

Their website is here. 

                                                                                                      
When placing your order for one of these, you give them your name.  They then go through a few thousand places throughout the Bible and *insert your name* into the text -- so you can prove to all of your heathen buddies that it really IS all about you!


They're even nice enough to provide a section of "FREE Samples," culled from the NT.  But they are pretty thorough, and include Psalms, too. They'll even include your first AND last name in 50 places, and, if that's not enough, in 150 places they will insert your spouse's name (if applicaple):  "Pamela will be as a fruitful vine, in the innermost parts of Tommy Lee's house."(Psalms 128:3)

I had fun entering my name as "Satan" and reading the more-than-heretical results: "Even when Satan was dead in trespasses, God made Satan alive together with Christ (by grace Satan has been saved), and raised Satan up with Him and made Satan to sit with Him in heavenly places in Christ Jesus.  (Eph. 2:5-6)"


Of course, I think the whole enterprise is rather heretical to begin with, but perhaps I'm overreacting.




Thanks to Dave for finding this gem of American Christianity for us.

So I've been told that there's currently something of a bacon fad these days.  As one who largely avoids, ignores, or is oblivious to most fads, this particular one was brought home to me only when DukeDivGirl won some sort of blog contest, the prizes being an absinthe-flavored and bacon-flavored sucker (one of each).  The major awards were dutifully mailed, and sat on her desk for quite a few weeks.

At long last, the plastic wrappers were removed and the contents sampled. 

The cat, of course, was intrigued: Bacon?? You're offering me bacon???? Of course I'm interested!!


She soon lost interest.

It is worth noting, mind you, her relative ambivalence and lack of distinct emotion, when compared to my response:


Yes, it did make me lament my life as heretofore lived.


But being of the open-minded persuasion, however, I decided to give it one more chance:



Verdict: Stay away from bacon-flavored candy.  Very, very, very far away.

I (as are most folks, I reckon) am often asked, "what sort of music do you like/listen to?"  As a musician, particularly a classically-trained church organist and choir director with a penchant for stuffiness and arcana, I'm sure that lots of folks have a certain curiosity about what Perm has on his iPod or car stereo: does he listen to the verse anthems of Henry Purcell or the motets of Vaughan Williams or Bach organ preludes on his off time?  Or does he leave work at work and chill with Coldplay during his off-time?

Well, a cursory glance at my CD collection (or a short interview with my wife) will confirm that the arcana does, in fact, follow me through the week (those verse anthems of Henry Purcell DO get a lot of play). However, my personal musical tastes are nothing if not eclectic, ranging from Medieval sacred music through late-17th-century French bass viol literature and Mozart operas (I hate Puccini, though) to Glenn Gould to British Isles folk music to the Avett Brothers and, yes, the occasional Coldplay.  However, in an effort to give a short and simple answer to the musical-tastes question, I do enjoy disarming my opponents with the unexpected.

I will often say, perhaps subconsciously channeling Glenn Gould,* "I like lots of different music, but I especially love Old Time."

Old Time?  Just what is Old Time, anyway? From a standpoint of nomenclature, it ranks right up there with "Classical" as a near-useless and oft-misunderstood (if not downright misused) genre moniker.  After all, just as saying "Classical music" conjures up for some the sounds of sappy, cloying, Mantovani-manhandled arrangements of Puccini's greatest hits (barfo), so too can "Old Time" lead many to believe that I while away my musical evenings listening to Lawrence Welk playing "Nothing Like a Dame" on his accordion.

No, no, no.  Old Time refers to the oral-tradition folk music of the earliest European settlers in North America, particularly (for me) Appalachia. As such, it is a direct descendant of the traditional musics of England, Scotland, Ireland, Wales, and Germany, with a healthy admixture of African influence (i.e, the banjo).  It usually involves the fiddle, banjo, and string bass, and more recently (as in, since the 1910s-20s) the guitar; it also encompasses the a cappella ballads referred to by native practitioners as "love songs" (usually involving loss, death, and infidelity, of course).

"Oh," the questioner will then continue, "you mean Bluegrass."  No, not quite.  Few things are as insulting to Old Time musicians as calling their music Bluegrass.  Don't get me wrong, I have a healthy appreciation for Bluegrass, and even Newgrass, to be sure.  Few things are more enjoyable than to sit in a taproom or brewpub, pint in hand, listening to a live local bluegrass job.  It would be a betrayal of my love for Asheville for me to pretend otherwise.  But Bluegrass is not Old Time.  Bluegrass grew out of Old Time, fused with influences of jazz, blues, and even ragtime, and developed only in the 1940s, around the time of the end of WWII.  A major difference in performance style is that bluegrass musicians, much like jazz musicians, will each take turns with a solo, whereas Old Time is more straightforward, all of the melody instruments playing the tune simultaneously, or with a more cut-and-dry solo+accompaniment format.  Old Time is, on the whole, a bit more calm and (usually) rustic-sounding. 

Talking (or writing) about music, enjoyable though it may be, has strong limitations.  My adherence to this philosophy was one of the nails-in-the-coffin for my time as a Musicologist.  I'd much rather experience music than wax eloquent about it.  That being said, here's another tip-o'-the-hat to YouTube, with a dynamite example of just what I mean when I say Old Time. This is from the Mt. Airy (NC) Fiddler's Convention.

That's Riley Baugus on banjo, Rayna Gellert on fiddle, and Debra Clifford on guitar.  Riley Baugus, by the way, is THE MAN when it comes to Old-Time banjo picking.











*Gould insisted that his favorite composer, indeed, the greatest composer of all time, was Orlando Gibbons.

I'm so far behind on my posting that it's not even funny.  I'm anxious to write a book review of Michael Pollan's The Omnivore's Dilemma, which I finished a week and a half ago and LOVED.  It should be coming soon, although I'm on the brink of heading off to the beach for a week with the Holy Cross youth.

In the interest of posting something, though, here's a trio of YouTube delights featuring the late and oh-so-amazingly great Carlos Montoya (1903-1993).  

 I must confess that I love classic Flamenco, and it is rarely better than when in the hands of Sr. Montoya. I'm not one to dwell on regrets, but I suppose that if I had to name one major regret in my life, it would be that I did not pay better attention and practice more diligently as an 11 year-old, when my parents signed me up for classical guitar lessons with Gustavo in Costa Rica.  In retrospect, I would have loved to have gone on and studied flamenco playing.  Oh well. If I had done so, odds are I wouldn't be the fiddling, harpsichording, gamba-playing church organist that I am now.

But this guy is incredible.








It makes me want to go to Spain right this very minute.

SPOILER ALERT!!!!! 
I find there's really no way for me to do a just review of this film without giving the plot and ending away. So readers (all 4 of you...) beware!

So rumors of a fourth Indy film date back to at least 1998 or so. I can remember sitting at the circulation desk of the University of Richmond music library reading online postings about the "imminent, up-and-coming" Indy 4.  Well, 10 years later, it's here.  I can't help but wonder what it would have been like if the hiatus between film #3 and film #4 had been 9 years instead of 19, and so it's hard to avoid the question, "Why now?"  Don't get me wrong -- I'm as much a Jones fan as anyone, and was glad to have another jaunty fedora-capped adventure come down the cinematic pike.  It is, however, a bit like the Jones version of the Godfather Part III (although not quite that bad!!). Such a long lag in time between installations creates a certain unavoidable awkwardness, a certain surreality, in the film. It is, I think, a huge testament to Harrison Ford as an actor that within 10 minutes or so of appearing on screen, he was solidly not playing *at* being Dr. Jones, parodying a past role, but WAS, in fact, once again, Dr. Jones.

Good things about this film:
*The action-and-chase scenes were vintage Jones all the way. 
*John Williams' score. The faint reminisces of music from Raiders (when they opened the warehouse doors) were nothing sort of chilling, and the recollection of music from the Last Crusade (when he's looking at the photo of his dad on the desk) was quite nice.
*The dual-jeep-in-the-jungle fencing scene. Bravo for that one.
*The motorcycle-in-the-library bit. Classic Jones tongue-in-cheek humor.
*The references to Marcus Brody (painting on the wall outside the classroom, statue on the green).
*Nod-of-the-head allusions to Raiders and the Last Crusade. No reference whatsoever to the Temple of Doom.
*Good place-time reference to the 1950s (McCarthyism, Elvis, etc.) The scene in the nuclear-test-site town was quite effective!
*Henry Jones III. Say what you will, I like the character, and the actor. The comb was great...the comb at the hat, as my sister-in-law put it, really did become characters in their own right.
*Creatively grotesque ways to die. The ants were classic Indy stuff.
*The Paramount Mountain fade-in at the beginning. Odd Todd hated this. I thought it was great.
*Obscure reference to the Young Indiana Jones TV shows (the I-learned-Quechua-when-I-was-with-Pancho Villa bit). I wonder how many folks caught on to that one.
*The look-and-feel of the film. Cinematography, color, film speed and style are very classic-80s-Jones looking. I think I read an interview with Spielberg, saying this was a conscious move. It's not super-digitally-processed-and-crisp, and I like the result.

Bad things about this film:
*The Soviets are not Nazis. The villains just weren't as strong or hate-inducing. Cate Blanchett is a wonderful actor and I enjoyed her character, but you relied more on the fact that she was a wacko than on the fact that she represented an institution to be feared or loathed (a la creepy guy with the round glasses in Raiders, or Donovan-the-surprise-villain in Last Crusade). It's hard to top Donovan as a bad guy, I think. Blanchett's sidekick (stone-faced Russian dude) didn't even have a name.
*Old guy jokes. Sure, make ONE quip about Indy being past his prime, if you must. But let's face it: he wasn't exactly a spring chicken in any of the original 3 films, either.
*Much more could have been done with the character of Marian, and more especially, the dynamic and relationship between her and Jones.
*The last 10 minutes of the film, basically. Aliens, I can probably get behind (if I try really hard). The flying saucer, however, was UNNECESSARY. I mean, really. I know that (a) Lucas and Spielberg love spaceships and sci-fi (Close Encounters, ET, Star Wars), (b) they were trying to capture the element and feel of a 1950s B-movie (as opposed to a 1930s swashbuckle), and (c) were playing off of actual theories, hair-brained or otherwise, that some folks have about the existence of these crystal skulls and of Mayan and Incan civilizations in general.  But seriously. I don't watch Indiana Jones to get my sci-fi fix. I want human mystery.  Again, leave the aliens creepily shadowy and vague, and that would be ok.  The spaceship was WAY over the top and corny. Even for a movie that never tries to take itself too seriously.  And then, the wedding.  Give me a (slight) break. It wasn't nearly as corny as it could have been, but it did seem a bit forced.

Ambivalent things about this film:
*The Tarzan moment. Sheesh. Yeah, there are corny moments in all the Jones films. But this one takes the cake.
*The MacGuffin.  Seaching for the fabled city of El Dorado had a lot of potential; I think they could have made it much stronger and mysterious and desirable. But when you've got as many simultaneous plot elements as this film does, something is bound to get lost in the shuffle.  I really think Jones is at his strongest when he's dealing with the Judeo-Christian stuff (The Ark, the Grail). The Chankara stones were way too esoteric and obscure, and the skulls-and-El Dorado (which was more important? The lost city or the damn skull?) just didn't quite have the same heft.
*The character of Ox. Again, too many things going on in this movie to really create a clear picture of this guy.  If you're familiar with John Hurt as an actor, you'll immediately make the connection that that's him at the wedding. Otherwise, you might find yourself scratching your head and asking, "Who's the dude with the bowtie?"
*Henry, Sr.  Wasn't he supposed to end up extremely long-lived after drinking from the Holy Grail?

Final summation: This film is much more "Temple of Doom" and much less "Raiders" or "Last Crusade."  That being said, I think it narrowly beats out Temple of Doom when it's all said and done, but if Raiders and Crusade both earn a solid A, and Temple of Doom comes in with a C or C- (what can I say, I'm more generous with that film than most folks I know), I'd give Crystal Skull a B-/C+ (didn't you hate it when your professors played that game?), with a little note at the bottom saying, "See me in my office. With some rewrites I can bump your grade up to the B-."

I had a nice, long (really long) journal posting from Friday, but thanks to the wonderful technical savvy that often is Livejournal, my draft was not saved and I'm left with a torso.  At this point, I'm not really inspired to go back and re-write it all.  I should, and will, eventually, but not today.

Instead, here's something worth celebrating.

Has it really been a month since my last posting?  By way of apology, I can only offer words from the character of Rachel in B. Kingsolver's The Poisonwood Bible: "Jeez, Oh man."

Spring in the southern mountains has come, and (even if our calendars insist we have the better part of two months remaining), largely, gone.  The crisp, cool days, budding trees, pollen-laced sunsets, and sweet-smelling air is becoming fast overtaken by long, lazy evenings, ever-increasingly warm (even approaching hot) sunshine, the as-of-yet faint but unmistakable rise of humidity, and the first onslaught of a horde of buzzy things: gnats, mosquitoes, moths, biting flies. Summer is on the way.

For me, though, the arrival of summertime is heralded by one specific sound that I begin to long for right around this time of year. Even though I yearn for the strains, they still do manage to catch me by surprise when I do hear them.  This year was no exception -- summertime for me officially began yesterday at around 11:50am.

My own personal summer-signal is the song of the wood thrush. 


The wood thrush is a pretty plain-looking bird, and, all things considered, doesn't have a particularly melodious or complex song. But for me, it's one of the sweetest sounds of the year, and one of my favorite bird calls.

Here's a thrush (from Lang Elliot)

The thrush is much more easily heard than seen, as it enjoys high canopies and dense stands of woods. For me, that adds to the mystique -- the song seems to echo off the trees and eludes an easy pinpointing of its source. The tinny, woody, flute-like whistle simply seems to arise from the trees themselves.

Of course, seeing how we live in town, and not out in the woods (close though they may be), the wood thrush is far from the most common birdsong to be heard.  The past few mornings, I have awoken to a veritable symphony of chirps, warbles, whistles, and the like. I can't pretend to identify nearly all of them, but here are some of the more common and readily-recognizable ones that I've pinned down:

Tufted Titmouse


Red-eyed Vireo


Black-capped Chickadee


Song Sparrow


House Wren


Carolina Wren
 
There is a family of Carolina wrens nesting in the underbrush on the north side of our front yard. A little baby (adolescent, really -- not so little) was quite bold and stared me down the other day when I found them.

Northern Cardinal


American Robin


Pileated Woodpecker

This last one deserves a comment. The Pileated seem to love Tryon and can be found throughout the area. There is a nesting pair that live on Melrose Avenue, right near the church and our house, and are often seen flying about and hammering for grubs on some of our trees. However, a sort of game has ensued: our particular resident seems to HATE being photographed. He will sit for the longest time, showing off, perfectly still on the side of the tree. The minute I bring forth the camera, though, he's off like a dart. We've been doing this dance for a few months now, and now that the summer foliage is out in full-force, it will be even harder to win at this game.

There are also some as-of-yet unidentified warblers, some other varieties of sparrows, and the ever-present crows.

(thanks and credit due to both the Cornell Lab of Ornithology and the Patuxent Bird Identification InfoCenter for their excellent websites)

Another food entry.

First off, some commentary.

1) Empirically, I do not dislike Anthony Bourdain.  His shows are entertaining, and his previous stint on the Food Network was one of the better shows it has aired.  Since that time, his caustic commentary towards the Food-Related-Network has provided me with some gleeful entertainment and head-nodding.

2) I am not a Vegetarian.  I have been -- on more than one occasion -- in my short life, once for as long as about a year.  I now am a firm proponent of free-range and wild-caught (moderate) meat consumption.  I still appreciate Vegetarianism, and sympathize and can relate to many of the concerns of many vegetarians.  Above all, I love vegetables, and all the wondrous variety they can exhibit, and often choose a vegetarian meal over a meaty one.  I love meat substitutes and don't consider them bastardizations (at least the good ones).  I am not, however, and never have been, a vegan.  I applaud many of the creative culinary efforts of vegans, particularly Vegan Yum Yum. But, in the immortal words of my (vegetarian) friend Matt M., "I could never be a vegan, 'cause that's just wierd...bees being imprisoned and all that." 

That being said, I find this blog frigging hilarous....and the recipes look good, to boot.  Make sure you check out their inaugural posting, in order to get the full story.

I'll try my best to have a non-food-related Website next time. It will be hard, though.  I'll also try my best to have a non-web-link posting up soon, also.

I've been meaning to get this one on for a while:

A Year in Bread.

Pretty much what it sounds like.  Lots of recipes. Lots of lovely photos.  And, of course, good humor and the expected blog-banter.

So how tacky is it to tap YouTube as my Website this week?  It seems that you must have had your head in the sand for the past 2 years to not know about it (especially if you're reading blogs...).

Confession time: I was merely looking for an excuse to post a link to this music video from 1997.
Stumbling across White Town brought back all sorts of memories from '97...I remember watching this video in my dorm room Sophomore year in the basement of Wood Hall, with Eric's "Science experiment" sitting atop the TV set ("science experiment" = "How long can I let an apple sit out before it turns itself into compost?") and our next-door neighbor Jamal (aka Kramer) pulling pranks on us. Good times. 

I'm gearing up for a trip to Mexico.  We're getting up bright and early in the morning and Sara's driving me to the airport in Charlotte.
Before I head out, I thought I'd present my weekly offering...

A Year in Bread

It's exactly what it sounds like (although more than a year at this point!), and is truly wonderful.

Clearly, I'm not fasting from Internet Use this year (I have done that in the past).

Lent is upon us once again.  I started a journal post a few days ago to reflect upon Lent, but didn't feel inspired to finish it at the time. So, I thought I'd blend it together with my weekly entry on fun and interesting websites (strange combination, I reckon).

Website of the Week for February 9: http://www.shipoffools.com


For a few years I've been enjoying the existence of Ship of Fools, the "Magazine of Christian Unrest."  It's a cousin, I suppose of the longstanding Wittenberg Door (now simply, The Door), although not as blatantly satirical or strident.  It does, however, provide thought-provoking commentary and debate, peppered with timely humor and light-heartedness.  In short, it doesn't take itself too seriously -- which, in my book, is a Virtue.
Among my favorite features of Ship of Fools are the Caption Contest, the Mystery Worship Reports (look for Duke Chapel!), and the Signs & Blunders -- including the infamous Blake Bergstrom incident. 

I was very impressed, however, by their 40 Ideas for Lent: 40 separate suggestions for fasting and discipline, one for each day of the season. All sorts of things, from prayer suggestions, to various (creative) fast ideas, to social justice, to environmental concerns. Lots of integrity here, I think.  I actually included it in the "online resources" section of the "Lenten Resource Guide" sheet I drew up for Holy Cross (wearing my "Program Director" hat!).

Which leads me to the subject of Lenten discipline.  Over the past few years, I have discovered a certain personal enrichment in taking on disciplines, instead of (or in addition to) a more traditional fasting from certain things. The addition of certain disciplines is, I suppose, a form of fasting, since there are the same number of hours in each day, so by committing to certain additional acts, I'm cutting into time previously spent elsewhere.   I have attempted various fasts, including the traditional food fast, with varying degreesof "success" over the years -- I find that strict food fasts often lead to migraines, which can be tough. I think I have found ways of modify the food fast for myself that are spiritually enriching and meaningful, without causing the dreaded and disabling migraine. More on that in a bit.
For the past couple of years, I have taken on the commitment to read the Daily Office each day.  Following the Book of Common Prayer, this involves Morning Prayer, Noonday Prayer, Evening Prayer, and Compline.  I don't pretend to read all four every day (eventually I want to be at that point!) but I discovered that if I commit to doing *at least* two of the Offices each day, with more (3) on Fridays and during Holy Week, I have a discipline that is both attainable and meaningful.  This year, being at Holy Cross, I have the added structure of public Morning Prayer already in place.  If I make a commitment to attend a service at which other people are present, there is the added incentive of other peoples' presence.  Likewise, I have committed to reading Evening Prayer at the church 4 times a week -- the knowledge that someone else might show up goes a long way for encouraging me to keep my discipline. 
And I'm not set on strict Prayer Book Hours, either -- I have a booklet that I picked up in Alaska last summer, "A Disciple's Prayer Book," published by Native Ministries & Gospel Based Discipleship of the ECUSA, which has modified Daily Office services. I use that sometimes instead of Compline or Morning Prayer (on Saturdays).  And 3 days a week, I'm fasting from lunch, using that time instead to play meditative organ music (improvised or otherwise) in the Church, which becomes a form of noonday prayer for me.

However, praying with other people has its own sets of issues.  Do you have to like the people with whom you're praying?  What if they annoy you to pieces?  Such has been my experience of Morning Prayer at Holy Cross, and one of the reasons why I haven't participated more regularly before now. Morning Prayer at Holy Cross draws a small crowd, rarely more than 4 or 5, and often it will be just two of us -- me and Alphonse.  Alphonse is a rare bird.  He's the type of fellow who is always there whenever the church doors are open.    And Morning Prayer is his baby.  He also loves (arcane) church history, and has various off-beat theories and opinions about the finer points of the ancient history and theology of the British/Anglican church in particular.  And if you talk to him about it, prepare to be there all day.  He's stubborn in his public prayer habits: he doesn't bother with unison prayer/reading as being a unison endeavor -- he'll add his own little commentaries to the prayers, and come in and finish at his own pace. Whether we're reading Rite One or Rite Two, he'll stick to the 1662/1928 versions ("...and to the Holy Ghost....world without end..." etc.).   And after the service, there's a 50-50 chance I'll find myself in a forum about how the BV Mary travelled to Glastonbury in England, and how the early British church was the seedbed of "Bible-only fundamentalism" and modern-day Baptists and Pentecostals have more in common with early Anglicanism (that is, 6th-century, not 16th-century) than Catholicism does or did, and so on and so forth.  Some days, I find this amusing.  Other days, I find this annoying as shit.

Taking this discipline on has (even in the past 3 days!) challenged me to examine my own piety and prayer-spirituality.  It makes me think of the monastic life, and how monks repeatedly point to their fellow monastics as the single most challenging aspect of their vows -- other people can just be so irritating!  How dare they get in the way of my prayer life and my time with God!  Because, after all, I'm the only one who's interacting with God, and it's all about me and my own personal prayer life, and obviously I'm the one who knows the best way to pray, publicly or privately.  Ouch.  Even after 3 days, committing to public Prayer has been humbling, and has revealed itself as a fast in its own right.  Not only a fast from that extra half-hour of sleep in the morning, not only a fast from smug self-righteousness, but also a commitment to be -- to pray -- with those who are my brothers and sisters, members of my own congregation and community, regardless of whether or not I'd choose to spend time with them elsewhere.  This is the community of which I am a part.  This is (at least a tiny little corner of) the Church. 

One last Lenten thought. I've also stumbled across the idea of the Carbon fast,  advocated by some of the Bishops in the Church of England.  I took one of their ideas -- remove a light bulb from a prominent location in your house (I chose my bedside lamp), do without it for 40 days, and after Easter replace it with a high-efficiency bulb.  I like this because it's simple, and yet multi-faceted and profound:
1) It's a small but symbolic gesture (and the Church is a big proponent of small but symbolic gestures).
2) It's a gesture of using less electricity, and being reminded of that every evening when I lie down in bed.
3) It's a gesture of recognizing and remembering those around the world who do not have electric lights, who cannot afford the huge amounts of megawatts that we take for granted, and whose own resources, ecological health, and economic integrity is compromised by our participation in the current structures of both what Wendell Berry calls The Economy, and electric energy production.

So this whole weekly/daily posting theme is a good idea. I need to come up with more of these, and that way I'll guilt-trip myself into posting much more regularly.

Since it's Friday, it's time for my next entry in the Fun Weekly Website category.  Here you go, courtesy of my friends at www.1024greenstreet.com (you get that one for free!)

http://little-people.blogspot.com

It's quite clever and fun and intricate. My favorite is the art gallery village.

Perhaps this would be a fun weekly feature to start on here -- the Website of the Week!
It will give me an excuse to blog on here at least weekly, even when I otherwise don't feel like it, or my life seems so banal that I just can't bear to post my own postmodern version of Samuel Pepys' Diary.

Plus, there are so many zany, bizarre, funny, off-color, or otherwise noteworthy contribution to what Sen. Ted Stevens so endearingly calls, "The Internets."

So, without further ado, here's the Very First Entry for Mark's Website of the Week:

http://www.cakemusic.com

If you're not familiar with the band Cake (or, perhaps more correctly, CAKE), well, you should be.  Their website is a great introduction.

Definitely Mark Ardrey-Graves humor.


Happy 6th Day of Christmas!

Any questions? No?  Good.

Next Monday night is Christmas Eve.  At Holy Cross, this means that there will be two services: one, at 5:30, highlighting the children; and the other, at 10:30, the "Christ Mass" with full choir and (this year, at least) guest instrumentalists.  The late service is also preceded by a half-hour of music featuring organ, choir, and these same guest musicians: in this year's case, violins, viola, cello, and harpsichord. 
I'm playing the violin on one of these pieces (A. Corelli's Concerto Grosso No.8, the "Christmas Concerto").  I don't often play the violin anymore, especially in public ensemble situations such as this, more often these days playing Celtic fiddle at home for my own amusement.  This was not always the case, though. As Sara and I were hanging out with some friends in Asheville last night, it came around in the conversation that I had played in the University Orchestra when I was at Richmond.  In fact, for one semester I was the "first chair of the Second Violins." 
So what does that mean, exactly?   Well, (ahhh.....memory lane...) one can imagine the string section of the classical orchestra similarly to the voice parts of a choir: instead of soprano, alto, tenor, and bass, there is violin 1, violin 2, viola, and cello/bass (although often, especially after the mid-19th century, the cellos and basses have independent parts from each other). There are plenty of variations on this scheme, but that's a rough-and-ready analogy.  So, being on the front desk of the 2nd violins is independent from being "below" the first violins -- more often than not, we have different music from each other.   Yes, usually lower harmonically, or slightly more boring, than what the Firsts have, but who wants to play up in 3rd position all night?  Not me.  And I did enjoy the supporting harmonic role.  

In the modern orchestra, the strings sit in an arc radiating out from the conductor's podium, in columns (usually 2-seats wide, depending on the size of the orchestra) stretching back to where the brass sit.  The 1st Violins are on the conductor's far left, followed by the 2nds.  The woodwinds are generally right in front of the conductor, and then the violas on the middle-right, and the cellos on the far right.  The basses usually are behind the cellos.  Up until the late 1800s, though, the 1st and 2nd violins sat on opposite sides, providing something more like a surround-sound effect. 

And yes, for one semester (spring of my freshman year) I was the "first chair" of the 2nd Violins, which essentially meant I had the seat closest to the conductor (and sat next to the 2nd chair of the First Violins, who in turn sat next to the Concertmaster/mistress -- the principal 1st violin).  That semester we played Beethoven's 7th Symphony (LOVE that piece!) as our main work, along with some shorter pieces (trying to remember.......oh!  Bizet's "L'Arlesienne" suite and the "Low" Symphony by Philip Glass -- based on music of David Bowie and Brian Eno!  Our conductor could be a little weird sometimes).   In most orchestras, the principal chair of each section also leads sectional rehearsals, makes sure everyone's bowings line up, and takes any solos that might come along.  However, at the UR orchestra (in those days) the members of the Shanghai Quartet (artists-in-residence) took a lot of those responsibilities, as well as being the lesson-teachers for students.  They sat in the back of each section, though, wanting the students to have the limelight.

Oh, yes, the Shanghai Quartet:  Weiggang Li, Yi-Wen Jiang, Honggang Li, and Jim Wilson (wow, was that ingrained into my noggin or what?).  Our game used to be, while watching them play, "which one is Jim Wilson?"  I took lessons from both Honggang and Yi-Wen, and learned quite a bit, but also found them very frustrating and eventually did hang up the violin-lesson thing.  My last semester in orchestra was the fall of my junior year.  By that point I had begun harpsichord and organ lessons, gotten quite involved in the university choir and also collegiate a capella, and the orchestra -- and violin -- fell by the wayside.

After all, what college music nerd can't resist this type of performance?

So Sara and I both awoke at approximately 6am yesterday (Friday) morning to a loud BOOM-rattle! noise.  It only lasted (in our perception) about a second or two, so my thought was, one of these large trees surrounding our house has hit the building!  I jumped out of bed and ran to the window.  In my 6am brain-fog, looking out of the (dark) window into the (semi-dark) space below, and seeing the reflection of the window blinds in the window right in front of me, I thought, "Oh snap!  The porch has come unattached from the house and is flopping around in the wind!"  I ran downstairs and opened the front door, to find that (of course) the porch was just fine, but all the neighbors were out with flashlights, also looking for the hypothetical trees that had hit their houses.
Later in the day, courtesy of the Tryon Daily Bulletin*, we discovered that there had, in fact, been an earthquake, about 5 miles underground, centered in Mill Spring, about 8 miles north/northeast of Tryon, with a 3.1 magnitude on the Richter scale.

This leads me to a few reflections, in classic Mark stream-of-consciousness fashion:

1) This was quite different from the earthquake tremors we experienced in Costa Rica when I was a kid -- and probably why it didn't immediately occur to me that it was an earthquake.  Those lasted for much longer, and were also somewhat gentler.  (Mark: "Brian, stop shaking the bunk bed!"  Brian: "Mark, I wasn't shaking the bunk bed!  You stop shaking the bunk bed!")

2) You never know when odd things like earthquakes are going to hit.  You just don't.

3) I thought of a remarkable piece of sacred music, the Missa et ecce terrae motus (the "Earthquake Mass") for 12 voices by Franco-Flemish composer Antoine Brumel (1460-1513).  I suspect that it's the first (and one of the few) pieces of Western art music (sacred or otherwise) specifically named for an earthquake -- or any geophysical phenomenon (other than rain, I suppose...).  It is, of course, an Easter mass, based on the passage in the Gospels when the earth shook at Christ's resurrection (the musical material of the mass setting has as its kernel pre-existing music, the plainsong chant "Et ecce terrae motus"). But still. The Earthquake Mass for 12 voices. It's an amazing piece.  Check it out here.



* Yes, Tryon has a (daily!) newspaper, believe it or not -- with a daily-updated webpage, to boot.  It's great.  Here is the link, and here is the article in question.

For the (I think) fourth year in a row now, I'm hooked on one of the zanier distractions that the British Web has to offer...

The Haggis Hunt, courtesy of that wonderful news source, The Scotsman.