droney

Tom Tomorrow's comic This Modern World has been doing its snarky, hilarious takedowns of power for a generation now. He skewers the Obama administration as gleefully as he did the Bush administration — and, unfortunately, there's much to skewer.

A recent recurring character is Droney, the unmanned plane that explains our current outrageous approach both to warfare against our enemies and to the freedom of speech and thought and movement of our own citizens.

Click on the pictures to get full size.

puppy dog jig pre-release

This Saturday morning at 10am, in the beautiful Landa Gardens, is the pre-release concert and party for Owen Duggan's new album Puppy Dog Jig, which I co-produced and played on.

Owen's first CD, An Elephant Never Forgets, which I also co-produced, has won numerous awards including a Top Ten International Hit designation from IAIRA, a gold medal from NAPPA and a silver medal from the Parents' Choice Foundation.

You'll also hear my voice and piano work on it, as well as familiar bass and drum work by my fellow Jazz Protagonists, Greg and Darren, not to mention an enviable ensemble of San Antonio Symphony players, country fiddlers, penny-whistlers, and dobro-ists. Then there's the redoubtable Bill King tripping along on piccolo and flute, and playing the Branford Marsalis role on soprano sax for a reggae-inflected song about our fragile Earth. And, for dessert, one of the best trumpet players in the country, Ed Sherry, turns in an unforgettable performance for the bedtime jazz number "Pajama Time."

Puppy Dog Jig features original songs with lyrics and music by Owen, as well as collaborations between Owen and bestselling children's authors Lorijo Metz and Sandra Boynton, Texas music legend Lyle Lovett, and folk star Marty Cooper (who wrote "The Biplane Evermore" and the hit "Little Play Soldiers" for The Kingston Trio as well as "A Little Bit Country" for Donny and Marie), and a beautiful setting of a Rudyard Kipling song from The Jungle Book.

Whether or not you get to come to the release, Puppy Dog Jig is something to look for for any kid you know.

Here's all the info.

can't talk about this without that, part 3: gerrymandering

It's inevitable that when you discuss an issue you're probably leaving out some vastly important factor. Counting everything that really counts is so hard, you're bound to miss something. But sometimes it's glaring: no discussion of a piece of music can be complete without at least acknowledging the elements of rhythm, harmony, and melody. (I'm lookin' at you, Rolling Stone.) Sometimes you just have to say you can't talk about this without that.

Politics, for instance. The airwaves are crowded with complaints about our polarized political landscape, this increasingly crazy guy-in-the-middle-gets-shot-from-both-sides situation, in which each party seems to put forward the most caricatured version of itself for the voter to choose between. That is, when those airwaves aren't crowded out with political spokespeople speaking of their opponents as enemies of the state.

Certainly, the Southern Strategy is part of it; certainly, the 24-hour news cycle is part of it. But how is it that, in all of those complaints, all those analyses, all the handwringing about our toxically polarized culture, gerrymandering is hardly mentioned?

We think of ourselves as a nation of voters that, district by district, state by state, choose political candidates, all the while lamenting that there aren't better choices. But that's just not the case: because of gerrymandering, it is our politicians who choose their voters. No other way to put it. It's the truth.

All across the nation, district by district, state by state, voting areas are referred to as R or D, as if each election is a foregone conclusion. It pretty much is. Republicans blame Democrats when Democrats are in power, and Democrats blame Republicans when Republicans are in power, but as long as things keep going the way they are the finger-pointing doesn't matter, mainly because the Republicans are right and the Democrats are right: the party in power, whichever one is in power at the time, is to blame. They do it, again and again. It's like the Protestants and Catholics in Reformation Europe: everyone sees how horrible it is to be the group that gets beheaded, and then they get in power and behead.

Here's the result: In your district, it's likely that several candidates for several offices, often including Congressional seats, are running, for all practical purposes, unopposed. The real battle, then, is in the primary, where the true believers in a party insist that the candidate conform to an ever-increasing standard of purity. This is how a Democratic candidate who's a little to the left of John Kennedy can be called a spineless sellout and vilified by prominent Democrats; it's how a Republican candidate who's fairly far to the right of Ronald Reagan can be called a RINO — a Republican In Name Only. And, because this is the lay of the land, the people making those criticisms and calling those names own the conversation.

California has taken action by passing an anti-gerrymandering rule and appointing an independent panel to draw the district lines. Who knows whether that will work, or what unintended effects will come of it. But it's something. Meanwhile, there's the rest of the country, which, with increasingly powerful computerized tools of population analysis, is being creatively sliced into bluer and redder areas.

Wouldn't you love to be in a place where a candidate had to appeal to the largest possible votership? Where the margins of a party stayed on the margins? Where not only candidates but public officials once they've been elected felt that they had to answer to more than just their base? You can be in such a place, but not until we make gerrymandering a thing of the past. Other countries have people other than the party in power in the moment drawing the lines; we can too.

Meanwhile, every time you hear a political discussion in which the Red-Blue divide is mentioned, but gerrymandering is not, mention it.

a conversates

The family is driving to a party, when Greta says something cute.

Catherine: Greta, that was so cute! It was totes cute.
Barry: It was totes adorbs.
Catherine: It was crazy totes adorbs.
Barry: Do you think that when I talk like that it's money?
Catherine: Way money.
Barry: What! The Bitters Rd exit is closed off?
Catherine: That's totes irritates.
Barry: People who say "totes irritates" are crazy money.
Catherine: Cray-money.
Barry: It's totes cray-muns.

can't talk about this without that, part 2: food and smoking

It's inevitable that when you discuss an issue you're probably leaving out some vastly important factor. Counting everything that really counts is so hard, you're bound to miss something. But sometimes it's glaring: no discussion of a piece of music can be complete without at least acknowledging the elements of rhythm, harmony, and melody. (I'm lookin' at you, Rolling Stone.) Sometimes you just have to say you can't talk about this without that.

Food, for instance: specifically, the much-repeated opinion that food in mid-century America was at an unimaginative low. Frozen meals that resembled field rations more than real food, Spam, gelatin monstrosities, a drastic reduction in varieties of fruits and vegetables and coffee and beer, a thousand yellow-and-brown casseroles.

How is it that so few of these opinions make any mention of the fact that the air in mid-century America was uniquely smoky? Smoking, which famously blunts the taste buds, reached a peak just as stuff for the taste buds reached that low.

What was life like in the Fifties and Sixties? I'm amazed to think about it: every public place you went smelled like smoke. Offices, restaurants, hotel lobbies, even schools — everywhere you went, there was cigarette smoke. Time-travelers from 1860 and from 2060 alike would be struck by the smokiness of 1960. Whether you were a smoker or not, your closet was full of clothes that reeked of smoke. (Catherine and I got a taste of this in Beijing, where public places were often filled with cigarette smoke. After only a couple of weeks, Catherine gave up on the possibility of clothes that didn't reek, and from then on out ventured to many more places there than she would have here.)

Then, several factors began operating, and within a couple of generations smoking was not only illegal in most public places in most American cities, but, far more importantly, it was also looked-down-on when done in most public places. If you light up in a restaurant, you'll get a waiter or manager rushing up to you to politely explain that it's not allowed, but not before you've gotten several glares and pointed coughs and perhaps even sharp comments from surrounding people. It's truly been a change of minds and hearts and not just a change of law.

Right during that time, from the Nineties to the Aughts, there was a flowering of taste in food. Suddenly, the field rations and Spam and gelatin monstrosities seemed awful and out-of-date, and we had twenty different kinds of apples and twenty different kinds of coffee and an untold variety of beer.

Hm. Now that I'm writing it down, that thesis might be a bit strained. After all, other innovations and changes happened in our economy and culture. But, surely, the blunting and return of the average (even non-smoking) person's taste buds has been a factor in all of it. And I've been unable to find any mention of it anywhere!

can't talk about this without that, part 1: money and anti-semitism

It's inevitable that when you discuss an issue you're probably leaving out some vastly important factor. Counting everything that really counts is so hard, you're bound to miss something. But sometimes it's glaring: no discussion of a piece of music can be complete without at least acknowledging the elements of rhythm, harmony, and melody. (I'm lookin' at you, Rolling Stone.) Sometimes you just have to say you can't talk about this without that.

Anti-Semitism, for instance. We all know the sordid history of anti-Semitism, and especially of European anti-Semitism, especially since the Middle Ages. But I'm always amazed that so many can speak of the issue without ever mentioning Deuteronomy 23:19-20, and our differing interpretations of it.

Here it is:

Thou shalt not lend upon usury to thy brother; usury of money, usury of victuals, usury of any thing that is lent upon usury: Unto a stranger thou mayest lend upon usury; but unto thy brother thou shalt not lend upon usury: that the LORD thy God may bless thee in all that thou settest thine hand to in the land whither thou goest to possess it.

Back in the old days, you not only had to follow the rules of the state (England, Prussia, Italy), or be punished, but you also had to follow the laws of the church or face excommunication — and be barred from the sacraments, which included marriage and burial. So there was state law and also canon law. State law didn't forbid usury, but canon law did.

The Church interpreted the laws of Moses to mean that no Christian could charge anyone interest. Meanwhile, Jews had their own canon law, which stated that you could charge interest, just not to a fellow Jew.

You can see the giant gaping loophole here. Jews could charge Christians interest on capital, but not other Jews, and Christians couldn't charge it at all. Think about the financial and social implications of that set of circumstances, just as capitalism was emerging. (As an aside, think about the irony of many people today seemingly wishing to simply plug the laws of Moses into modern America, while simultaneously claiming to be great defenders of capitalism, an economic system that's explicitly curtailed by the laws of Moses.)

So, when you hear people saying Jews control the world economy, and caricaturing them as greedy, and at the same time stingy, and somehow profiting from the misery of others, and so on, this is where it all comes from — it's based in the actual situation of Jews becoming very powerful bankers in the period before and during the Reformation. Much modern anti-Semitism and distrust of Jews in Europe — into the 20th century and still today — is residue from that situation. Not something you hear talked about a lot. And yet no discussion of anti-Semitism is complete without it.

a photo treasure trove discovered

Ever hear of Vivian Maier? No one had heard of her until after she died. That's when they discovered 100,000 negatives of photos she'd taken since the late 40s.

The second half of the twentieth century, captured in New York and Chicago, mainly: fortunately for us, the capturing was done by an expert eye and hand.

Some smart guy bought most of it up at a garage sale for a few bucks, then took it home and discovered an amazing artistic oeuvre. That mild-mannered gal who lives next to you? She's Alfred Stieglitz.

The guy put up a website about Vivian Maier: read more about it and see more pictures.

the rules of the playground

Have a blast, everyone!

ten years up

I woke up today feeling groggy. Stuffyish nose, still tired out from a heavy Saturday of gigging, after a week of not feeling great or being able to get much nutrition.

At some point along the way today, though, I smiled, because today marks the tenth anniversary of coming out of chemotherapy. That is to say, on this day ten years ago, I was further from a chemo infusion than I'd been since I'd started that January.

My episode with cancer wasn't, I think, one of those things that changed my life or colored my perception of everything that came after. It was just a crappy situation that I had to get through. I knew going into it that the particular kind of cancer I had (testicular cancer, spread all up and down my aorta in late Stage II, and beginning to spread to the lungs) was very chemosensitive, and that, since I was young and otherwise healthy, they could practically kill me and therefore stand a very good chance of killing all that cancer.

I remember thinking on that April day that, for the previous four rounds, I would always reach the point of beginning to get better only to get knocked down again, but this time there would be no knocking down. I would just get better and better.

Here are my thoughts from that time:

I recently saw an old friend who mentioned that I didn't seem like the type to go through life wearing my cancer-survivor status as an identity. And I think that's probably right. It has forever changed my eyes: I can spot a cancer person a mile away now, and have some idea what they're going through. But I actually look forward to being just me again.

In the depths of the chemo, I occasionally would emerge to play a gig or half-gig, and I was really refreshed to think that people didn't see me as Cancer-Barry, but just as a particularly (or typically?) worn-looking jazz musician. They had no idea what was happening in my body at that moment, and I was sort of glad. It's nice to be anonymous that way.

But it's also nice to be the recipient of such care. People I didn't even know would pass me at church and say, "We're praying for you every day." I'd get random emails from not-very-close friends who were deeply touched and concerned, and expressed lavish support. I now see those people in a totally different light, having seen their previously unshared depth.

So. I'm writing some songs, doing some recording, playing gigs, teaching Sunday school, inventing meals to cook, building a new big-enough bookcase.

Onward.

Onward indeed, through a rich life. One day in April of 2003 I walked to the mailbox and back by myself — a major victory for me. (It still is, and for you too.) Since then, I've married Catherine, fathered two children, traveled the world, made music with great musicians, and more. More!

paying attention

The students are lined up to race. The coach says, "Ready ... set ... GO!" The students all begin the race.

The students are lined up to race. The coach says, "Ready ... set ... [beat] — Zach! Olivia! you're disqualified. You gotta pay attention!! ... OK. Ready ... set ... [beat] ... [another, longer beat] ... GO!"

The band director lifts the baton and counts off, "One, ... two, ... one, two, three, four" but then holds the baton up while the band lurches in and then falls apart, realizing bit by bit that the director isn't moving. Aha! "I never gave a downbeat, people. You gotta pay attention!"

The problem here isn't that the kids weren't paying attention. It's that the kids were paying attention, and the coach and director let them down. After all, the purpose of such countoffs is to get everyone to start at the same time, which is necessary for (in a race) fair competition and (in a performance) good music.

When the leader steps outside that cosmos and interrupts it, that's not teaching an important lesson about respecting the leader and following instructions; it's teaching an inadvertent lesson about the lack of respect the leader has for the situation at hand, and all its participants, and an important lesson about the abuse of power, however small.

The one-two-three rhythm that begins a race — the "Ready" establishing a mark, the "set" establishing a temporal distance by which we can predict the exact moment of "GO!" — is just as important a boundary as the dimensions of the track. The countoff that starts a piece — whether the two measure groove of a band director or the one-beat uptake of a classical conductor — is just as important to the piece as the tempo and dynamics.

For the leader to obey it, without power games, is a sign that that leader is all about the things that matter, and deserves your trust.

puppy dog jig

I'm glad to announce the pre-release concert event for Owen Duggan's new album Puppy Dog Jig, which I played on and co-produced.

Owen's first CD, An Elephant Never Forgets, which I also co-produced, has won numerous awards including a Top Ten International Hit designation from IAIRA, gold medal from NAPPA and a silver medal from the Parents' Choice Foundation.

Puppy Dog Jig features original songs with lyrics and music by Owen, as well as collaborations between Owen and bestselling children's authors Sandra Boynton and Lorijo Metz, Texas music legend Lyle Lovett, and folk star Marty Cooper (who wrote "The Biplane Evermore" and the hit "Little Play Soldiers" for The Kingston Trio as well as "A Little Bit Country" for Donny and Marie), and a beautiful setting of a Rudyard Kipling song from The Jungle Book. You'll also hear my fellow Jazz Protagonists Darren Kuper and Greg Norris on drums and bass, laying down jazz, rockabilly, reggae, and a dozen other delightful beats geared toward making kids move.

Whether or not you get to come to the release, Puppy Dog Jig is something to look for for any kid you know.

guardians of thebes

The other day in my inbox appeared a notice from my friend Alice Underwood, that her newest book, Guardians of Thebes, is out.

That's good news to all fans of the Tapestry of Bronze series.

I've written before about these books, and what an intellectual and visceral pleasure they are. I can't wait to get my hands on the new one and give it a spin. My guess is that it will again strike the perfect balance between juicy page-turner, scholarly tour-de-force, theological and social exploration, and historical/mythical joyride.

When's the next one coming out?

five little monkeys, bonhoeffer, committees

Do you know this rhyme? It begins delightfully enough.

Five little monkeys jumpin' on the bed
One fell down and bumped his head
Mama called the doctor and the doctor said,
"No more monkeys jumpin' on the bed."

Ah, but then it takes a trajectory we in the grown-up world know all too well.

Four little monkeys jumpin' on the bed
One fell down and bumped his head
Mama called the doctor and the doctor said,
"No more monkeys jumpin' on the bed."

That's human nature and society in a nutshell, isn't it? What the doctor actually said, as you may recall from the end of each stanza, is that NO more monkeys are to jump on the bed. As of the first stanza, there's a one-in-five chance of head-bumping. By the final stanza, of course, you will not be surprised to know that the head-bumping rate is one hundred percent.

And why? Because the committee here is acting just like a committee. They go on doing exactly what they'd been doing before, with the single exception of the one who got injured this last time. In some committees, it's because the one who fell down and bumped his head got blamed, and was disallowed to continue jumping on the bed; in other committees, it's because the one who fell learned his lesson and refused to continue.

But neither the sadder-and-wiser monkey nor the perfectly reasonable doctor can convince the rest of the committee that the actual problem stems from their continued activity. Nope, they just keep on jumping on the bed, and getting injured, and with each stanza the doctor enjoins the (fewer and fewer) remaining monkeys to stop — to make it so that no one is jumping on the bed. And with each stanza the (fewer and fewer) remaining monkeys do not stop. They keep on doing it, and keep on getting injured, because the ones who didn't get hurt simply cannot look around and see what's happening to their peers and what will soon happen to them.

Until, with the final stanza, the doctor's prescription has become a diagnosis: there are indeed no more monkeys left to jump on the bed.

thoughts on modern judaism

Several conversations recently have prompted me to conclude that quite a few Christians are undereducated in modern Jewish thought. It's as if Judaism ended when Christianity began, and didn't continue and develop.

men and machines

Workers fly back and forth like piston-rods
And clerks like clocks strike eight or nine or ten:
Say, you who know when men will be like gods,
In what wild future men will be like men.
    G.K. Chesterton

babies and beauty privilege

When Greta was just 7 or 8 months old, we took her to a gallery opening. Everybody fawned over her, of course; one woman, a complete stranger, asked if she could hold Greta for a while. She ended up carrying the baby all around the room, looking at one picture after another, bouncing and cuddling and smelling that addictive baby-head-smell.

Good for her! (The woman, that is.) She knew what she needed that moment, and wasn't afraid to ask for it. And how fortunate for her that she found parents who knew she wasn't going to kidnap the baby and sell her into the Mexican sex trade — something that's vanishingly uncommon, especially at gallery openings.

We have another baby now. People fawn over her too. Folks just love to hold and cuddle babies. But the interesting thing is the difference. The moment blonde-haired, blue-eyed Greta was born, people went mad. Nurses in the hospital found excuses to come back by the room and see her. People in the Taco Cabana laid hands on her. With dark-haired dark-eyed Clara, it's business as usual.

Whew! A preview of coming attractions, for a girl who's already going to go through life as a second child. No doubt people don't even realize they're treating the two girls differently. We'll have to work to avoid a Jacob-Have-I-Loved situation.

Of course, ceteris paribus, both our girls will grow up with beauty privilege. Neither of them will ever know what it's like to be un-beautiful. The most powerful agent of discrimination in our society is on their side and probably always will be. Within that context, there will always be comparison, won't there? The traditional pattern is that the older sister always feels that the younger one is more beautiful (oddly, this is often true [although, since I married a younger sister, I may be biased]). But the dark-haired one often feels less bestowed-with-magic than the fair-haired one.

My hope is that both girls will understand, to whatever extent it's possible, their beauty privilege, just as my hope is that they'll have some understanding of the privilege their wealth bestows. They'll often be encouraged to compare themselves to people far richer, and have little opportunity to compare themselves to the ninety-six percent of Earth's population that's far poorer than they. And, insidiously, they'll often be encouraged to compare themselves to those a tiny degree more beautiful — even, and especially, each other.

My greater hope is that they'll learn to be truly eccentric: literally, centered on something outside of the concentric circles of our warped society.

how to use "Dalí" in a sentence

Here's a sample sentence that puts the word Dalí to good use:

After drinking a whole demitasse, Greta had a Dalí of hot chocolate on her face.

while the band played on

To show how important a music soundtrack is, take a look at two identical dance montages, set to different music.

things i did in 12

Every year near Valentine's Day I send out a digest of the previous year. It's a good way to sift through all the stuff that life throws at you, and find what's worth commenting on.

Now comes the fun part, where friends old and new get back in touch and fill me in on all the stuff that somehow escapes the radar of Facebook.

Read it

five little words

Taking care of newborns is immensely easier for us these days because we now understand their language. From the very earliest days of life, there are five words that babies say, or, more accurately, five sounds that babies make. It transcends borders, ethnicities, and languages. Learn to recognize them, and you'll have a much better time figuring out what your baby needs and how to placate it.

I'm a little better at this than Catherine, but she's getting more and more discerning (and, two years ago, she got pretty good at it with Greta), and even 2-year-old Greta herself can hear a couple of those baby words clearly enough to proclaim that she knows what little Clara wants.

 Neh  - Hunger. Could it be that the instinctive motion of using the tongue for feeding it as the root of this sound?

 Heh  - Discomfort. Diaper full, or something itchy, or carseat maladjusted. This one often happens several times in a row and it often ends in a glottal stop, like "He*," where the * is a glottal stop. So it can sometimes sound like "ha, ah-ha, ah-ha..."

 Eh  - Gas. Burp me! Very distinctive glottal sound there.

In the above three sounds, the vowel isn't quite as important as that first consonant. In these next two, the vowel sound is more the key.

 Oh  - Sleepiness. Our kids haven't signalled this one that much because they just close their eyes and sleep. Whew! But even our blessedly easy kids sometimes get tired but can't find a way toward sleep without rocking or a pacifier.

 Errw  -  Poopiness. This one's a little hard to hear, but the facial expressions that often accompany it are a giveaway.

It's so nice to be able to hear what a kid is saying. Anyone who's ever frantically stuffed a pacifier in a baby's mouth when it's actually just uncomfortable, or tried to feed it when it needs burping, feels an overwhelming gratitude toward whoever figured this out and codified it. Many's the time Greta or Clara sounded like they were expressing some thing when I just knew it couldn't be right — " 'Eh?' Whadaya mean by saying 'eh?' I just burped you, you liar." — but when I obeyed what I heard them saying rather than what I thought I knew, the whole thing resolved instantly — "Awwwwwww, I love you, you double-burping trickster!"

Wonderful, isn't it? As far as I'm concerned, this is an incredible addition to the knowledge of humankind, a relief of the miseries of our race, and a lasting contribution from our civilization.

Just about every time I've shared it with someone, they've exclaimed that those sounds seem awfully alike. But our family has a Hannah, an Anna, and a Nana, and no one gets all that confused. Each baby will of course have its own accent for all these things, and it can be a bit tricky, but man oh man is it worth it.

fruit from scattered seeds

Catherine and I are fortunate to have traveled much. Often when we do we stay with friends or friends-of-friends. Of course we always try to be in good-houseguest mode, and we're both friendly folks, but sometimes a special connection gets made. In this case, it was made without our quite knowing how special.

Our friend M hung out with us, showed us around a bit, the usual. She and Catherine hit it off, with a couple of nice long boy talks. She and I hit it off, with a couple of nice long after-hours games and conversations when others had drifted off.

She knew we were religiously involved; she wasn't too religiously involved, although, like a lot of people, described herself as having spiritual interests. Certainly her lifestyle wasn't consistent with a traditional Christian faith — but, as ever, we had no desire to get into any debates or condemnations. Refreshingly, she didn't treat us like Goldilocks or Jerry Falwell, who seem to form the two usual choices for non-Christians when they meet people like Catherine and me. We didn't treat her like a heathen; ... actually, we did treat her just like a heathen or a Christian or any other human being should be treated: with friendliness and interest. Her sexual life was one that could be described as full buffet; she was fascinated that Catherine and I were each other's only one. We didn't really talk as much about sex or faith, though, as we did about beer and food and music and travel and books and movies. Just all the interesting stuff that people talk about when they hang out in the late-night-school-dorm atmosphere that you sometimes fall into when you travel.

After our trip we kept in touch a bit: a note here and there. We could tell she really liked us, and we really liked her. She disappeared from Facebook for a while. Then, just the other day, she reappeared, pictured next to a handsome guy, with a white veil on. Wow! Then we read the caption and realized she was wearing the veil as part of her baptism ceremony. Wow! I dropped a quick note asking how she was doing and expressing gladness to be back in touch. This is the response:

I think of you guys ALL the time! You two were a huge inspiration to me. When I moved I sought after God and wanted a Christian relationship like one you had. I saw how functional you two were and so badly wanted to turn my life around. I had never known a Christian couple before.

So... to make a long and exciting testimony short (for now) ... I met L at a restaurant and I loved him as soon as he smiled back at me. L's a God-fearing man, full of faith and gifted with evangelism, so it didn't take long before I found myself going to church every Sunday! It took some time and a miraculous healing over me at a Pentecostal church one evening to break me down and surrender myself to the Lord. The most incredible things started happening in my life... it'd take all day to tell you about them!

Then I was baptized and even more incredible things happened! I literally went into the water one person and came out another. I felt convictions I'd never felt before and true forgiveness for the first time.

I'm so thankful to have L understand the drastic changes that overcame me. Within a year of being baptized I started a new ministry at our church. We're in the process of starting it for the new school year in September. It's a community-based youth and creative arts program for 11-13 year olds that builds relationships through creative expression. Very exciting stuff! I could also go on about that for an entire day.

I can't even begin to explain how many different routes I've taken lately and all the things I've been doing through my faith!

Thanks so much for staying at our place when you were traveling. God works in the coolest ways, doesn't he!?

Short answer: Yes.

No doubt this whole situation owes much to Catherine. She has an effect on people. I've mentioned before that Catherine has always seemed to me one of the Pippas of the world: one of those living manifestations of the moral butterfly effect. I've often thought evangelism is the worst form of evangelism; but the corollary to that is even better: being yourself is the best sermon.

it's tons of fun to have a friend like this

My good friend Jason Young just whipped this up. He saw it on my blog and thought he'd give me a surprise by etching it in wood. So, thank you Jason, for a thoughtful gift!

mad men and abundance

The new season of Mad Men is only a couple of months away. Of course, back in the 1960s, a show whose next season was only a couple of months away would be still in its current season. But we're in a new era, and I don't complain at all, because Mad Men is way better than I Dream Of Jeannie.

As an artist, I have always told myself to use all the creative material I have, to spend it profligately, with no thought of saving it for some hypothetical better time down the road. That forces you to use your best ideas and therefore turn in your current best work right now. So what if you run out of ideas? Chances are, actually, that you won't, and that the juice will keep flowing for a nice long time. On the other hand, what if that's wrong, and this idea is the best you've ever had? Well then all the more reason to spend that idea right now. Is Paul McCartney really sad that all his best songs were already written 45 years ago? It couldn't have turned out better.

And yet artists still have a tendency to conserve great ideas for some reason, to let them wait. It's kind of a discipline to use those ideas now. I got to thinking about this in conjunction with Mad Men, when I read this interview with its creator.

I started this season, Season 6, with the idea, all that there is is Season 7 left. So there were certain things that I was talking about in terms of this season, and I was like I’m going to save that, I’m going to put that into Season 7, it’s not time for that yet. And at a certain point [the writers] said to me, "Why are you doing this differently than you did it before?" And they were right. I am incapable of really holding back on story. So despite my inclination and my terrors about it ending and having nothing left, I decided to use everything I have this season that I have right now. It’s worked for the show before. I never used to know if I had another season, so I would always put in everything that I had. There is an intricacy to the stories that we tell and they’re on a human scale, so the idea of having less is just … I think it would be boring.

I never used to know if I had another season, so I would always put in everything that I had. Is there a more concise way to state this powerful rule for artists?

And non-artists as well: you and I don't know if we'll have another season. Let's put in everything we have.

modern milk

How do you picture milk? That is, what is it? When you read of a milkmaid delivering milk through the streets in the 1750s, say, what exactly are you picturing? What about the milk delivered by a milkman in the 1950s?

It's likely that you picture a white substance like the milk in your refrigerator except in a pail or a jar or bottle. If that's what you picture, you have the wrong picture.

Our milk, a refrigerated solid-white substance of some slightly watery creaminess — available as whole milk, or 2% or 1% or skim — imbibed as a delicious drink or measured into coffee or tea or recipes, is a rather new development. By new, I mean something that happened in the lifetime of many living people. Just about anyone you know who's 65ish or older remembers a very different milk experience. For them, milk was a two-part substance, very watery with a thick head on the top. That's the way cows' milk actually happens. It wasn't something stirred and heated and filtered by machines to be homogenized — that is, given a single makeup, with standard levels of cream — before being sold. It was delivered in its two-part form, watery milk topped with thick cream, and then you decided what to do with the cream and how much of it to stir in at the moment of consumption.

So, we in the twenty-first century have no experience of family squabbles that start when the little kid gets into the milk jar and stirs in all the cream so the milk is deliciously thick and creamy, thus ruining it all for the rest of the family, who might have preferred if the mama had gotten hold of it first and scooped a good bit of cream off the top to spread on bread or to put into coffee or to use in that evening's dinner recipe. We wonder why there's such a huge gap between 1 and 2 percent and whole, without realizing till someone tells us that "whole" means 3.25 percent. We don't flinch at the idea of children drinking prodigious amounts of "whole" milk in the early 21st century, when their skinny counterparts a century before probably drank something much closer to skim (at least the common ones).

Interesting, isn't it, how major changes in society are so invisible.

single tracks or whole album? an iTunes rule of thumb

A friend asks about what he calls a tough economic decision: $1.29 for a song in iTunes, or the whole album for $9.99? I have yet to find my iTunes tipping point. If liking one song means I should buy the single, what about two songs? At almost $4, is three songs the tipping point for purchasing the whole album as opposed to singles? There must be an algorithm out there for this.

My answer is two-layered. The first is simple math: your tipping point is only reached if the price of the singles exceeds the album price. In the case of iTunes's $1.29 tracks, it's seven songs. Only if you buy the eighth is it worth buying the album. Simple market economics. Pay less for less.

The second layer adds one subjective variable. You might be buying from an artist who you think doesn't get enough attention for what they're offering, in which case you can consider the greater expenditure as not only purchasing more music (albeit which you may enjoy less) but also — crucially — giving business and support and, through your clicks, attention to a deserving artist.

So, that's one way of doing things. Glad to be of very little help.

the pratt. or, the shelby. or, the shell.

I consider myself a sartorially informed person. No doubt there are huge gaps, particularly when it comes to women's fashion, but, really, if you wonder which of your friends cares about gauntlet-button placement, or which will enthuse about the club collars in Downton Abbey, or which will get excited about a really good un-blingy cufflink, you won't be wondering too long, right? That's because you know that I'm a fan of all that stuff and truly enjoy dressing right.

That's why it's so odd that, at the age of 45, I'm just now finding out about the Pratt knot, also called the Shelby knot, also called the Shell knot. It's a way of tying your tie. Every man knows about the big studly Windsor knot, and its slighter but perfectly symmetrical half-Windsor, and the insouciant four-in-hand, which I've been using almost exclusively since college.

But now I find out about the Pratt knot! Crazy! It's like finding out there's a fourth primary color. How on earth can it be? As it turns out, the Pratt is fairly similar to the knot of my own invention that I used throughout high school, where I developed it as a way of conserving tie length when I wore loosened ties with untucked shirts — a casual, preppy-but-not-fussy look if you can pull it off — starting in about eleventh grade. (I wore a tie to school just about every day of my junior and senior years.) 

Anyway, you start off kind of backwards from how you'd start off doing a Windsor or four-in-hand, with the seam facing out and the skinny end on the other side of your neck. The result is a pleasantly puffy, very symmetrical knot that's good for tall guys and stylishly versatile.

I apologize in advance for the maddening format of the article I'm linking to: it's one of those where they make you click six times, reading a few paragraphs each, to get through the article. Phhhht. Stop doing that, folks. But it's a pleasure to see and try, and to scroll through and see who's been seen wearing it.

Behold the Pratt knot.

please don't help my kid

Just the other day, I was at the playground with Greta. There's a climbing wall that goes up to a platform where there are two slides. I helped her learn to place her feet on the footholds, then I went and sat down on the bench. Greta started and stopped, tried and failed and tried, and for the most part did an admirable job of getting up that wall.

A short while later, a very nice mom came up with her kid, and, while the kid played around, the mom helped Greta take each step and then boosted her to the very top, the whole while saying "Good job!" and "You're doing it!" and "Wow, you're really great!"

Phhhhht.

I was friendly to the mom, and she was friendly to me, but when she finally left Greta started at the bottom of that rock wall and grunted and pushed her way to the very top, at which point she raised her arms in triumph and said, "I did it myself!"

I said, "Yep, you did."

And now today I read this article. It's a complete statement of a parental philosophy. I feel some combination of thrill and relief that others feel the way I do.

mlk and jazz

Happy Martin Luther King day. Rather than rehearsing the same old sound byte, take a look at what the man said about Jazz.

God has wrought many things out of oppression. He has endowed his creatures with the capacity to create—and from this capacity has flowed the sweet songs of sorrow and joy that have allowed man to cope with his environment and many different situations.

Jazz speaks for life. The Blues tell the story of life's difficulties, and if you think for a moment, you will realize that they take the hardest realities of life and put them into music, only to come out with some new hope or sense of triumph.

This is triumphant music.

Modern jazz has continued in this tradition, singing the songs of a more complicated urban existence. When life itself offers no order and meaning, the musician creates an order and meaning from the sounds of the earth which flow through his instrument.

It is no wonder that so much of the search for identity among American Negroes was championed by Jazz musicians. Long before the modern essayists and scholars wrote of racial identity as a problem for a multiracial world, musicians were returning to their roots to affirm that which was stirring within their souls.

Much of the power of our Freedom Movement in the United States has come from this music. It has strengthened us with its sweet rhythms when courage began to fail. It has calmed us with its rich harmonies when spirits were down.

And now, Jazz is exported to the world. For in the particular struggle of the Negro in America there is something akin to the universal struggle of modern man. Everybody has the Blues. Everybody longs for meaning. Everybody needs to love and be loved. Everybody needs to clap hands and be happy. Everybody longs for faith.

In music, especially this broad category called Jazz, there is a stepping stone towards all of these.

a matter of diction

Several times now, Catherine or I will be talking with Greta, and one of us says or does something amusing, and Catherine or I will say, "That's silly!"

At this point, Greta will invariably say, "That's not silly; that's funny."

Is that Brake or Wiltse DNA? I'm delighted to say it's impossible to tell.

all happy novels resemble one another

rg3, brubeck, and sustainability

I'm thinking about the latest news of Baylor hero RG3. (That's Robert Griffin III, a terrific young football player.) He had a pretty bad injury, but played anyway, as footballers too often do; his coaches let him, as coaches too often do. The result is that he's now out, and his future in his chosen field of endeavor is in question. That future is certainly affected, no matter what.

I'm also thinking about Dave Brubeck, recently departed at the age of 91. He was gigging right up until the end. If you do it right, you can play piano forever. Musicians, whether classical or jazz or pop, often enter into a Master Wizard period, becoming better than ever, while everyone else they went to school with has hung up the towel.

This is why I'm so glad I didn't get into ballet, or boxing, or any other sport or career or activity or hobby that gradually destroys your ability to engage in it. Why on earth wouldn't you do something that rewards your dedication rather than punishing it?

downton and lydian

Catherine and I enjoyed a special holiday treat while waiting for our new little daughter to come: we watched season three of Downton Abbey. It's now airing in the US, but we watched it from a British website, and so we got to see the whole thing nice and early. Satisfyingly soapy, with beautiful men and women, superb period fashions, great interiors and exteriors, and lots of zingers from Maggie Smith.

One thing that gives the show its character is the music. It's instantly recognizable, and reminds us of the show itself, with its upscale sheen and urgent drama and slightly piquant taste and luxurious feel. The main theme is in A-minor, with a piano hammering out a high simple melody against a lush string texture. The sound, though, that I most associate with the series is when the music shifts down to an F-major chord, with a prominent G-major triad shimmering high in the strings. The conductor and performers always lean into this chord whenever it appears in the score, and the result is both sweet and bracing.

That's partially because it offers a glancing reference to the Lydian mode, a scale whose raised fourth degree always gives it a fresh kick, from the Norwegian Peasant Dances of Edvarg Grieg to the latest John Williams movie score. As I've noted before, the Lydian mode has, by now, a shorthand "movie-magic" sound. And, at least for now, it doesn't seem to get stale in people's ears.

Downton's composer, John Lunn, doesn't really use it in an extremely Lydianish way, though: we still hear the context of the A-minor that we've left, and to which we'll be returning shortly. It's a nice way of symbolizing the back-and-forth of joy and sorrow, contentment and drama, in the show itself; and that hovering bitonality, the G over F, seems to fit the overall theme in the series of modernity intruding on the traditional.

inducing lyrics

Of course, quite a few instrumentalists play melodies without any thought of the lyrics that go with them. They add notes, take notes away, and more. But, sometimes, you can hear the lyrics an instrumentalist is thinking just by listening to the way they play the notes.

For instance, this melody...

... is different from this one, ...

... which is different from this one.

Any guesses as to which set of lyrics the person in each case might be thinking of? Interesting, right? If you're an American, it's likely that you'll hear the third one as the one that feels right, because most Americans think of this as "Have you ever seen a lassie." But a German might gravitate to number two, "Oh, du lieber Augustin." And a Brit would hear the first one as the one that feels right, because Brits know it as "The more we get together."

So, now you have good reason to ask a jazzer the difference between "C Jam Blues" and "Duke's Place."

the actual path(s) of the magi?

Remember when you were a kid and asked each other questions like "Who would win in a fight, Batman or Superman?" or "How much Force Power could Yoda output?" or "How much energy would it take to lift everyone on earth?"

Well, there's at least one guy that'll take you seriously, and that's the guy who writes "What If?" on xkcd.com — week after week he answers with serious scientific calculations based on best-guess approximations of those comic-book-world conditions (here are the answers to the Yoda question and the lifting-everyone question). He often goes into advanced physics, using simple illustrations to help you believe you know what he's talking about.

For the Epiphany season (which starts, you recall, on the 12th day of Christmas, and celebrates the arrival of the magi), he considers the quite reasonable question of what would happen if you actually followed the path of a star on Earth. What if you were to walk towards a star at a fixed speed? Constantly following it even when it's "below" you during the daytime? What path would you trace on the Earth? Does it converge to a fixed cycle?

It's an Epiphany hoe-down. Check out his answer.

it's a girl

Say hello to Clara Eleanor Howard Brake, born New Year's Day 2013.

how to make an otherwise terrific movie less miserable

I just saw Les Miserables. I have several requests.

1. Do not blame Hugh Jackman. He's a fine actor, and an OK singer, and he's only to blame insofar as he accepted an extremely bad musical situation, namely the one created by the person you should blame. Blame Stephen Brooker. He's the musical director who made the bad decision to keep Jackman's vocal lines in their stage keys. It's a bad decision if you want Hugh Jackman, and it's a bad decision if you want to put a musical on the screen. (Listen to the Broadway and film soundtracks of The King And I back to back: the film version is at least a fourth or fifth lower in most songs.) Perfectly inexcusable. Most of the vocal ranges could and should have been lowered, and Jackman's could at times have been profitably lowered an entire octave. He sounded strained and wrong the whole time. It's not his fault. That one decision crapped on a perfectly great movie.

2. Praise Anne Hathaway. You'll hear from aficionados that she didn't do as well as a more trained singer. Pish. She's also a fine actor who's an OK singer, but in her case it all worked as it should. The entire time she's on screen she becomes more and more fearless as an actor. The result is simply thrilling. 

3. Thank the casting directors for filling the minor roles with people who could sing well. Yes, they all have that puny Broadway sound, but you were never going to hear Bryn Terfel. The minor characters balanced the film's weaknesses admirably.

4. If you ever write a musical, do not ever include the word "you." Especially at the climax of a line or anywhere where it'll last longer than a quarter of a second. The reason is that your singers will slaughter it every single time. No actor or actress who sings for the popular stage or screen is in any way capable of pronouncing this common, fine word. Again: no matter how difficult it is, avoid it entirely. We say it all the time, we speak it just perfectly, actors intone it well or poorly or with different accents, pop singers and opera singers and church choirs the world over have little problem with it, but in the entire history of Broadway musicals there has never been one single person who has ever managed to sing the word "you" without causing the gods of art, language, and common sense to cringe.

And some individual requests:

5. Russell Crowe, for heaven's sake get rid of that nasal affectation when you sing. You sound so studly when you speak. Keep that studly, non-nasal sound when you sing. It's actually easier.

6. Helena Bonham Carter, either stop acting entirely or stop bringing Tim Burton with you to every dang movie. Your choice.

7. Danny Cohen, have a good craftsman make an Oscar statue for you and put it on your shelf. You won't get one from the academy, but you absolutely deserve it. The cinematography was technically flawless and emotionally resonant. And while you're at it, have one made for Anne Dudley, the orchestrator. Gorgeous, tasteful orchestrations for the movies, that corrected the many sloppy orchestrations in the stage version, while providing depth and breadth and restraint and complexity that brought the whole thing to the level of good art.

8. Reader, go see this movie. It really is magnificent. At its best, it's overwhelming, and one must always thank Hollywood profusely whenever it gets religion right. They did, and then some. At the very least, they've provided a superb visual record of Les Miz, ripe for anyone to dub over. James Morris, Jessye Norman, Bryn Terfel, Anna Netrebko, I'll be getting in touch.

Sandy Hook and religion

As a very traditional Baptist, I'm dismayed that so many religious leaders keep touting this concept that if only we forced Jewish and Hindu students to pray Christian prayers that they don't believe in then mass murders wouldn't happen. Freedom doesn't work that way, the soul doesn't work that way, and — for heaven's sake — God doesn't work that way.

If we pray as Christ instructed us — alone, with the door shut — no law could be passed to stop us. It's only the public prayers over taxpayer-funded microphones, prayed into the ears of individuals of different consciences (even different Christians) that can, and must, be left to theocracies and states with state religions and other places where government and religion are in bed with each other, to the great damage of each.

In the past week, we've seen an insidious climax to the years-long suggestion from evangelicals (even, alas, Baptists who don't know their history) that the nature of God is to petulantly withdraw when He doesn't feel honored enough. What vision of God is this? Can religious figures such as Mike Huckabee really believe it's possible for God to be "marched out of the public square?" Are we now idolaters? Why do we then act as if removing a nativity statue removes the presence of God?

No. God was there, God is there, God is here, and He reigns, and — alas — He allows stuff like this to happen. All the pompous friends-of-Job we've been hearing the past few days are enlightening us about nothing but their own bilious, spiteful selves when they say that the reason innocent 7-year-old bystanders died in a storm of bullets was because they weren't forced to say the Lord's Prayer before geometry, or that Christians are somehow the only people who could ever teach "Thou shalt not kill."

The ironic thing (beyond the phenomenon of Baptists, who invented separation of church and state, now calling for their conflation) is that many of these outspoken people who say that God can be removed from schools by human will are the same people who hammer away at how much they hate government, and how government can do nothing right, and how they want government to stay out of our business and stop meddling — right up until they say that government-run schools should be teaching about God and morality.

I've seen what the school cafeteria does to spinach; I have no desire to see it serving up religion. We've had enough of public schools trying to teach morality and values and feelings — how about if they go back to teaching reading, writing, and arithmetic, and I'll teach my kids our family's religious values. And let's please find another way, a logical way, to discuss how America, the most religiously observant country in the world, can stop being so violent.

glad tidings

Holiday blues getting you down? Sad at the state of affairs in the world? Well, there's a lot to be sad about, but on the other hand we've never had it better. Take a moment to absorb the glad tidings in an eye-opening article called Why 2012 was the best year ever, in the Spectator this week. He overstates things here, and glosses there, but overall he's got it right.

tonality and ambiguity

Tonality is an interesting thing. How do you tell whether something is in a certain key? In most common pop and folk songs, and quite a few classical songs, it's easy. There's usually a giveaway. The melody hammers down on the tonic note ("She'll be COMIN' ROUND THE mountain when she COMES"), or the chords give you a clue.

Two big clues are the leading tone and the dominant seventh. The seventh of the dominant chord (the V chord) is on the fourth degree of the tonic scale (do the math) and it wants to go down to the third. In "Somewhere" from West Side Story, when we hear "theeeere's A PLACE for us," the word "A" strains down toward the word "PLACE," the fourth straining toward the third.

Take a look at this phrase. In the left hand, the E goes up to an F from the first to the second measure, and then down to an E from the third to the fourth. Meanwhile, the C goes to a leading-tone B and back in those same measures.

Really, a C-major chord and a G-major chord can easily fit into either of two keys: G-major and C-major. But that F and that B fix us unambiguously in the key of C-major. The F in the melody in measures 1 and 2 also help.

Take a look at this new phrase, just slightly tweaked. Now the Fs are F-sharps, and go up to Gs, and the Cs resolve to Bs. Now we're fixed unambiguously in G-major, with just a few notes changed. Those few clues change everything.

What if we erased those clues? Try taking away the fourth-resolving-to-third, and hold back on any leading-tone until the very very very end, and you have a fairly confusing phrase.

Just play the first measure. Or just the first and second: what on earth key are you in? Either the melody or the accompaniment should give you some clue.

The reason I got into this was that I heard a toy of Greta's playing the third phrase there. Even the rhythm was confusing: because of the way it was stressed, it sounded like the pickup note (that first G in the melody going into the first measure) was the downbeat, like "The Army Goes Rolling Along." The whole thing was and is disorienting. Come on, folks!

education in america, part 2