LUNCH TIME AT THE HOSPITAL

I was at MUSC Hospital today for a "tune-up" of my DBS units.  Since the appointment took less time than anticipated, I found myself with an hours' free time, which, coincidentally, was lunch time.  I decided to have lunch in the employee Cafe, which is open to the public.
 
I entered the cafeteria style line, and was was very quickly disappointed.  There was nothing there that I could eat!

For those of you who don't know me, I am a fairly strict Vegetarian - not a Vegan, mind you - because I will eat eggs and dairy.

Lets see, amongst the choices availableto me were  Beef Macaroni, Fried Chicken, a Hamburger or Cheeseburger, a hot dog, and a few other like things.  The thing which impressed me was that all of the entrees were high fat items.

Oh yes, there was a "Wilted Iceburg Lettuce and Cardboard Tomato(e) Salad"...

So, thought I, I can at least have a soft drink and a bag of chips.

No sirree.

I don't like to drink anything which is caffeinated; it keeps me awake at night.  About half of the drinks had caffeine.  The other half contained Splenda or Aspartame, to which I am violently allergic.  And even if that were not the case, I don't particularly enjoy the idea of imbibing rat poison.

So my choice was Mountain Dew, or Mountain Don't, as I call it, for it doesnt have the grace to be sugar-sweetened,  but uses the ubiquitous Corn Syrup.  Unless you have Diet Mountain Don't.

As a last resort, I looked at the chips.  There were no plain, old, ordinary Potato(e) Chips.

There was a dozen or more chips of various flavors, but no healthy, honest-to-god potato(e) chips...

Then I reached the checkout and, the person attending to it not being very appetizing, I took my leave empty-handed and with my tummy complaining vociferously.

My bus awaited, and I thoght about what I would eat all the way home.

Whereupon reaching same, I attacked and violently ate a helpless, unsuspecting Three Musketeers bar... It may not have been particularly healthy, but it sure was GOOD!

Jus' doin' the Charleston - -

Olivia

Going Home

Everyone has a place which is called home.

For some, it is a place where one rests his head at night not thinking where it might be on the morrow.

For others it is the place where one lives, knowing that, barring tradgedy, it will be there.

There is a third place called home; and not many people have it.  It is a place where one retreats from time to time.  It is a place which helps to recharge and energise the mind and the imagination.   It is a place which exists more in mind than in reality, but is really there.

I attended my 45th college reunion last week.  It is held in Princeton, NJ, leading some people to assume that I am a Princeton University grad.  But no, I am not.  It is held at a little college, which is now become the golden stepchild of a major university.  Many have heard of Rider University, but not many have heard of Westminster Choir College of Rider University.  They should.  You should.

It is located at the intersection of Hamilton and Walnut Streets in the town of Princeton.  It has a brick gateway leading up a shrot curving drive to the main building, Williamson Hall.  It is named after the founder of the college, a man known as a fine musician and choral conductor.

Why is this such a special place?  Because there is always music there.

If you stand in the middle of the Quadrangle in the wee hours of the morning, they say you will hear the distant echoes of all those singers, pianists and organists. and music educators who have passed along the Quad on their way to and from a class, or a lesson, or a choir rehearsal.  Much more than the sheer numbers of people, though, is the level of achievement  exemplified by those people.  There are few students to this day who are not better than average.  And a few of them show signs of genius.

What does this have to do with home?

The Choir College is one of those places which exists primarily in the mind.  It is a place of bright red robes.  It is a place of bright faces waiting for the downbeat.  It is a place far removed from the mundane.  It is a place back to which we all wish to go to recharge those worn batteries: to emerge full of life and hope.

Full once again of music.

Olivia

just doing the Charleston...

A Day in the Life of a Budding Composer

When I was in my senior year of High School, I was accepted by Westminster Choir College. I remember feeling awestruck, and decided to try my hand at composing. I took the "Veni Creator" as my text and launched in. I came up with what I thought was a great piece of music, but did not show it to anyone.   Time marches on...

I had completely forgot about that work until I was sorting through a box of music recently. There it was: the somewhat faded manuscript from 1965 - hand written, as we could only dream of computers in those days.

I sat at my keyboard and went through it. Oh my. The counterpoint is primitive, the modulations graceless, there is no theme to which the piece anchors itself, "wrong-note" chords everywhere... And then I started to giggle. My great work! Oh deary me...

Yet, in retrospect, there were glimmers of the future evident. A future to emerge after further study of theory, counterpoint, and the critical listening to hundreds, maybe thousands, of works by the great composers who have gone before.

Later, at Westminster, I asked my dear teacher, Dr. York, about this. And he reassured me that every composer, perhaps even Bach, did this. It is called Juvenilia, and often goes up the chimney on a cold winter day, at the hand of the composer.

Mine is still extant, and the later works show a remarkable resemblence to Herbert Howells' writing. My Artistic Executor has directions to burn before reading...

Then one day, something happens. You sit down and write a piece. Then you feel compelled to edit it, once, twice, thrice, or more. You know when it is ready.

And then you write at the top of the manuscript, underneath your name: "Op. 1"

I Tremble at the Thought . . .

We who have Parkinsons Disease refer to each day as a "Good day" or a "Bad day" depending on the whim of our bodies, the phase if the moon, and whether or not Golden Crackers won in the 4th at Hialeah...

We don't know whether the day will be a productive one or a bust.

I am now the possessor of a new machine to help those with Parkinsons and Familial Tremor and other motion disorders. It is called a "Deep Brain Stimulator" (DBS) and it bids fair to revolutionize the approach to the treatment of this incurable and progressive set of diseases we call Parkinsonism..

I have possessed this machine for less than 48 hours, and already it has changed my life.

The installation of the unit took 3 stages spaced over about 2 months..

STAGE ONE
Surgical implantation of the probe within the skull and within the brain but staying outside the membranes of the brain so as not to cause a stroke.

We had an interesting development occur during this stage.

I had been given an anesthetic which was reputed to allow the patient to be instantaneously awakened  if necessary.  Came the time the Doctor needed my input, I was given the "antidote" and lo and behold...I didn't awaken.  I was given another shot of the antidote and...I didn't awaken.  They were getting nervous, and people were starting to crowd into the OR to be of help.  They tried a third time, and I came awake.  Phew!  We did the usual PD repertoire of gestures and I went back to sleep.

But they didn't know the half of it...What actually happened was that I was in my other guise of secret agent, and I was battling my way through the bush in order to connect up with another agent to whom I would sign (in gestures) the intelligence I had collected.  Finally, after struggling through thick swampy ground I was able to see the other agent, approach her, and sign the data to her.  After she left, I was able to get some needed sleep...

Isn't it wonderful  what the brain can do to make the most of a potentially bad situation.  And the sets were really not bad...sorry Doctors, but you will have to wait for the rerun on Netflix.

STAGE TWO
The Docs must run a conduit of sorts from the side of the skull, down to the collarbone, and under the skin to the back of the breast. At this area, above the bra line, are the power pack and processor, called a "Generator". which are implanted just under the skin.

STAGE THREE
Testing installation and doing initial programming.

SO, HOW DOES IT WORK?
Inside the skull, thereis a probe having 4 transmitters and 4 times as many receivers.  Through these sensors the Doctor has control of the tansmitters on an individal basis.

There is a remote contol, similar to that found on any home theatre setup but far less daunting. The remote is pressed against the Generator (with or without clothing on) and the Send button pushed, and it turns on.

The Doctor supervising the installation has a remote of much greater capacity and capability.

The Patient (me!) does not take any of her Parkinsons medicines for 12 hours before the session. I was pretty miserable by the time I got to see the good Doctor Revuelta. I was shaking like a leaf.  My right foot lurch and shook so much that I could barely shuffle/walk down the corridor.

He turned on the units, arranged the external antennae, then, using his remote, he began to apply voltage in a simple manner. At about 1 volt the general shaking subsided, and at about 2 volts the leg suddenly stoped shaking! OMG. Just like that. I was nearly in tears.

We took about 1 1/2 hours to check through the 4 channels of the unit and see just how the basic settings affected the tremor, and what side effects there might be. Fortunately, I had only two settings which produced a physical reaction which I found unpleasant. Then he got to the creative part, where he combined the signals and changed their voltage, their signal strength, their band width, their frequency, and other arcane electronic things, all based on my reactions to what he did...  It was a musical performance with the Doctor conducting.

He explained that through the receptors on the probes, he could focus in on a given brain cell anda actually listen to it working. Can you imagine? Listening to brain cells individually.

He then was going to teach me to use my remote, but one thing got in the way. I said "Doc, I have to pee." He said "Wait", grabbed his remote, pressed it against my chest and clicked the button. He then said "Go..."

I took about two lurching, unsteady, agonizing steps and suddenly my legs were free, there was NO tremor, and I could walk  totally unaided and almost normally to the bathroom.  I broke down and cried.

That was my first setting.  I woud have two: one for stressful times, and another for the rest of the time.

When we finished doing everything he said that it was a thrill seeing each person react to the machine and what it does.

And to what it would do...  Believe me, it changes your life.

I have rediscovered my world in those 48+ hours.  It is once again bright, and focused, and my thoughts are clearer and more lucid.  And those strange little people whom I thought were there but really weren't have begun to take their leave.

This is a real blessing, and I am fortunate indeed to have got it through the work of the Medical University of SC Hospital, and their newly-formed Department of Motion Disorders. I received the ministrations of Dr. Gonzalo Javier Revuelta, DO, the attending physician and programming guru, Dr. Istven Takacs MD, the neurosurgeon, and Nurse Practitioner Amy DeLambbo who kept it all going. They, and the rest of their team all performed beautifully and with great professionalism.

This whole enterprise took close to three years.  A short time relatively, but a long time for a miracle to occur.

For about 18 years previous to that I was totally under the care of one Neurologist.  His conservative but wise decisions regarding my therapy, made it possible for me to continue my life's work throughout this stressful time.  I give you Dr. David Bachman, MD.

Thanks are due to my many friends whose constant emails and phone calls have given me support through their good thoughts and prayers.

I have been greatly blessed by Jehovah God, and give Him the credit for ultimately guiding me in the way I should go.

'Jus doin' the Charleston!

Olivia

WHEN DO WE DIE?

I was chatting online with Lowcountry author Richard Cote about what he terms "gentle death". This was in response to his Facebook posting about the assisted death of well-known right-to-die activist Nan Maitland.

Since then I have had a chance to think more about this subject, and have come to the conclusion that I am definitely ambivolent about it at this point in my life.

Why?

Because I like to watch.

I like to watch events unfold. I like to watch the seasons change. I like to watch politicians continually make fools of themselves. I like to watch the light change as I drive from Charleston to Florida. I like to watch the tides rise and fall. I like to watch my friends having a good time at a party. I like to watch the moon rise above the treeline. I like to watch the Milky Way slide smoothly across the clear Winter sky.

And I haven't even got started.

I said to Richard, "I believe that we all have the responsibility to live our lives to the absolute fullest. Anything less is perhaps one of the deadliest sins. I hear people saying how bored they are... how can anyone be bored with a whole universe just sitting there waiting to be explored?"
And what have I found in my explorations?

For one thing, I have found that one can avoid getting bored in a Doctor's waiting room, or in a gov'mint office, or in the auto salesmans' Closing Room (you know...the one with no inside handle on the door...). Simply put: watch people.

I like to watch people. They are inscrutable, unpredictable, generally entertaining entities, However, people are at their most uninteresting if there is a television in the room. Go into a restaurant with televisions sprouting from the crown moulding like an insidious vine. See the people stare blankly at the screen, not paying any attention to their friends, their servers, or their lives.

So what is the answer to the question I posed in the title?

The answer is that we die when we give up living. Some people do it by never looking around themselves. Others entertain themselves to death to the background of a bluish flickering screen. Some die in a cubicle in an office building, but they still manage to get up and go home at five o'clock.

And a few live their lives as though they will never die. They tend to smile a lot.

I smile a lot, even when the going gets tough. After all, when the going gets tough, the tough go shopping. But that is another blog in itself...

Here are a few pithy quotations I shall leave you to ponder.


"We spend too much time living in the ‘what if’ and need to learn to live in the ‘what is.’" - Rev. Leroy Allison


"A bird does not sing because it has an answer; it sings because it has a song." - Chinese proverb


"There is the risk you cannot afford to take and there is the risk you cannot afford not to take." - Peter Drucker


"Excessive self-esteem is the greatest rein on genius." - French organist Marcel Dupre


"They can't say 'Yes' unless you ask them..." - moi


Now go out and live...there will be time enough to die in a minute, or an hour, or a day, or a lifetime...


Olivia

Jus' doin' the Charleston...


PS - Look for Richard Cote's new book "In Search of Gentle Death", due to be published later this year.

Some personal thoughts after Valentine's Day

It was interesting watching my FBFriends yesterday...

There was not a great deal of heart-on-sleeve emotionalism.

- A few couples made understated comment about their relationship.

- A few sent the to-them obligatory blanket Happy Valentine's Day message: a Loretta Young style sweep-down-the-circular-staircase-and-MWAH sort of gesture. (Gawd, I WANTED that dress...)

- One or two were almost belligerent about their for-the-moment partner.

- Most went about their lives without comment.

Does that mean we didn't have love for our friends? Or they for us? Not at all. I count it to be a good Valentine's day if I dont get any special cards,letters, or FB messages. Yesterday was very good.

I went about my day's living uncomplicated by mass-media guilt or hysteria.

There are a few people out there who know that they are loved, not just on 14 February, but on 14 March and 14 April, too. Without cavil, without fail. And their love travels back to me every day, and I am replete.

Olivia

Jus' doin' the Charleston

What are those buildings?

A few people who don't live in Charleston (I won't embarrass them by naming them...) have asked what all the buildings are at the top of this page...

Charleston is known as "The Holy City" because of the large number of churches located in the city. It is also known for the number of world-class concert pipe organs housed in many of those churches.

So, I will identify them...from left to right and coincidentally downtown to uptown...

First Baptist Church...............................................[Wicks Organ]
First (Scots) Presbyterian Church.......................[Ontko Organ]
St. Michaels Church..................[Ontko/Kenneth Jones Organ]
Cathedral of St. John the Baptist (Catholic)...[Bedient Organ]
The French Huguenot Church.................[Henry Erben Organ]
The Unitarian Church ....................................[Johannus Organ]
St. Johns Lutheran Church................................[Schantz Organ]
St. Mary's Catholic Church.................................[Jardine Organ]
Kahal Kadosh Beth Elohim..................................[Ontko Organ]
Grace Episcopal Church.......................................[Reuter Organ]
St. Matthews Lutheran Church...........................[Austin Organ]
Cathedral of St.Luke & St. Paul (Episcopal).........[Kney Organ]

This list comprises about 20% of the churches on the lower peninsula. With all those pipe organs it can get a tad noisy downtown on Sunday mornings, but God does not appear to mind...

Olivia

'Jus doin' the Charleston

Overheard on Facebook...

Victor on Facebook remarked:

"...honestly, i don't think government is necessary.the rich should be the ones to dole out the cash to help the poor."

‎@Victor from me -

"Thats how it used to be. The rich had big homes, private railway cars, held big and lavish parties, etc. But it was understood that they also had obligations.

A good example is Andrew Carnegie. He was a tyrant when it came to business. He is reputed to have said "Power is my ability to say 'No' to you and make it stick."

He made lots of money.

He also donated entire libraries to communities which couldn't afford them, and pipe organs to churches and municipal auditoria.

Nobody made him do it - it came with the territory and was expected.

But anymore the rich are interested in doing one thing: getting richer. They have no sense of social obligation.

Is it so surprising that the government has taken over the charitable work once done by millionaires? But they do it to curry favor with the masses and get re-elected by virtue of how many promises they can make of a chicken in every pot (except mine and other vegetarians) and two cars in every garage (are we supposed to stack them?), only to break them after the election.

People have come to expect government charity as their due. (They dont call those programs 'entitlements' for nothing...)

There are going to be abuses in all levels of society; we the people are the ones who must ultimately decide which abuses we will tolerate. And which freedoms we may be forced to give up as a result.

I think we need a government which will deliver the mail on time and defend our interests and our borders, leaving the charitable work to the private sector. And if that counts for having a duplex in Fool's Paradise, well, call the moving company...

Olivia

Jus' doin' the Charleston

My Country...and yours

I had a rather nice exchange of emails with my friend Johanna the other day. I had just published the first episode of this blog, and received this email:

"Thank you for the invitation (I joined), funny that your blog was about the national anthem since today I am going to take the test to become an American citizen!"

I knew she of everyone I know would pass he test, so I jumped the gun a bit in saying:

"Welcome to citizenship in our strange but great country. I am sure you will pass the test with high marks, but more importantly than that, you will have done something that only a small percentage of our citizenry does in their lifetimes: learn about our history and our governmental forms.

"It took me until middle-age before I learned about my country and the strengths my grandparents brought to this country when they fled Hitler's takeover of Czechoslovakia. But I am glad I did, for despite its shortcomings, I am proud to be an American - and likewise will be proud to welcome you as a new citizen.

"God bless you and your family..."

She replied:

"Such sweet and heartfelt words of welcome. I thank you.

"Your story is yet another reminder of how the fate of one generation is forever altered due to historic events.

"I went in today expecting only to take the test but ended up being sworn in today as well so as of this afternoon I am an American citizen! I expected to walk out of there without my (Scandinavian) accent but I guess I'm stuck with that ☺

"It won't be long before I won't remember anymore how many representatives there are or how many amendments the constitution has, I will probably also soon forget the 5 US territories or who was the US president during world war one, but as of right now I actually know all the answers to all the 100 questions on the test that I was studying for to become a citizen. I enjoyed learning it all, and I will enjoy being an American from this day forward."

Do you enjoy being an American? Are you proud? I hope so...

Our country has many shortcomings, it is true, but yet it remains the "more perfect form of government" envisioned by the writers of our Constitution. They sought to give us a living document, and succeeded!

I have personally travelled the breadth of our continent, from sea to sea. I have seen the purple mountains and the amber waves. I have stood on Omaha Beach in France among the graves of our boys laid to rest in a piece of the USA facing the English Channel. I have entered a village in Normandy which commemorates D-Day with banners which say "We welcome our liberators" even more than 60 years later...

There must be something right with the USA to inspire people even at this time to seek their fortune, leaving home and kindred for the promises of the New World.

So again I say to Johanna, Welcome! Share with us your talents as we will share with you the greatness of our diversity.

Olivia
'Jus doin' the Charleston...

Where did you get that title?

A number of people have asked me that...

I stole it, of course! And from a first-class source. (of course)

It comes from the mind and pen of Frank Gilbreth, who for more than 40 years wrote a column of that name under the pseudonym of "Ashley Cooper". (Note that his pen-name is taken from the names of the two rivers which converge in Charleston Harbor to form the Atlantic Ocean...)

I quote a column written by one of his colleagues hours after his death.

I am humbled by his writing genius, and hope to live up to so worthy a mentor.

Olivia
Jus' doin' the Charleston

********

Why Charleston will remember Ashley Cooper
Tuesday, February 20, 2001
by Elsa McDowell

Years ago, Lord Ashley Cooper started preparing his own epitaph:
"Although he lived in the twentieth century, he didn't have anything to do with the invention of the atomic bomb, internal combustion engine, TV commercial, rock music or non-objective art."

We all smiled because, of course, Ashley Cooper will be remembered for what he did, not what he didn't do.

He made us smile. He made us think. He made us angry - but never for long. In his column here, beloved by readers, he would make fun of tourists one day and make fun of native Charlestonians the next.

He would recount colorful stories of old Charleston one day and of present-day Charleston the next.

He delighted us with comical slice-of-life vignettes, and he challenged us with prickly community issues.

Ashley Cooper earned the respect and affection of thousands of readers, and when he retired from column-writing in 1993, they grieved. Many are still grieving.

EXCEPTIONAL MAN

Ashley Cooper, of course, was the pen name of Frank Gilbreth Jr., who died Sunday.

This is the spot in the paper that Mr. Gilbreth filled for more than 40 years. It seems a fitting place to pay tribute to him. And it seems the best way to pay tribute to a masterful columnist is in his own words.

• "I don't know about other Charlestonians, but the way I tell summer from winter is that in winter we get lots of Lincolns, Cadillacs and stuffed shirts, and in summer get lots of Chevrolets, Fords and stuffed shorts."

• "What we really need in Charleston are tourists who will send their money here but stay home themselves."

ON CHARLESTON
• "In a hick town they take up the sidewalks at night. In Charleston, the sidewalks are in such bad shape that if you took them up you'd never get them back down again."

• "Who was it who said that Charleston - our Holy City - was like a lesson in verbs? Yes, you discover the present tense and the past perfect."

• "A correspondent advises Lord Ashley never to ask anyone where he is from. 'If he is from Charleston, he will soon announce that fact,' alleges my correspondent. 'If he is not from Charleston, there is no need to embarrass him.' "

• "They say we in Charleston spend more money on liquor than we do on education. But, my goodness, what you can learn at a Charleston cocktail party!"

• "What is full of slime and hooey,
Makes the stomach loop-the-loop?
What is slippery and gluey?
Greasy, gooey OKRA SOUP."

• He stirred up heated emotions over the Confederate flag (which he thought didn't belong over the Statehouse); over "y'all" and "youze guys;" and over historic preservation.

He wrote about cockroaches and Gullah, about George Gershwin and palmettos, about slumlords and bike paths.

His words remind us why we love Charleston and why we will long remember Frank Gilbreth, who loved it too.

Sing, America!

It's Stupor Bowl Time!

All my friends are talking about it...that time of year when we get to hear WHO is going to caterwaul, abuse, screech, mutilate, and desecrate our National Anthem. Oh, that's right - some people call it singing...

It's all right to stretch the meter a little bit. And no one can object to a hint of rubato now and again. And a few ornaments, tastefully inserted, help to spice up the vocal line. And a touch of pitch-bending makes it sound more contemporary.

THis is all fine and good. It is in the best traditions of both classical and pop music.

But instead of musical excellence we get something distantly related to music instead. We take a so-called "artist" whose main claim to fame is reading pointless and marginally obscene non-sequiturs as part of their role on a sitcom, and ask (pay,handsomely) them to get up in front of millions of people and croak through nodule-ridden vocal cords one of the more challenging vocal melody lines in existence. All the while, the audience sits in bewildered SILENCE trying to figure out what the holy heck is he/she actually singing.

I have an idea... (TM)

Lets get a good orchestra or an organist playing a BIG organ or even a rock band to play it with good rhythm, correct meter, and at a breathable tempo.

Then lets all stand up in the stadium or the tavern or in our media room at home (but not in our cars) and SING TOGETHER OUR NATIONAL ANTHEM! Just think of the grand roar it would create. It would drown out the sound of the Twin Towers collapsing, or the heated (but, mind you, not personally influencing) rhetoric of our politicians. And for a few moments we can all rejoice together in being AMERICANS (without the qualifier-dash prefixes). And then lets be sure to sing the rest of the verses, too...

Would that send a message or what?

For those of you who are not familiar with the full set of words of the Anthem, they appear below. Take a moment to read and reflect...

******

VERSE 1:
Oh say can you see by the dawn's early light,
What so proudly we hailed at the twilight's last gleaming,
Whose broad stripes and bright stars through the perilous fight,
O'er the ramparts we watched, were so gallantly streaming?
And the rockets' red glare, the bombs bursting in air,
Gave proof through the night that our flag was still there;
Oh say does that star-spangled banner yet wave,
O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave?

VERSE 2:
On the shore, dimly seen through the mists of the deep,
Where the foe's haughty host in dread silence reposes,
What is that which the breeze, o'er the towering steep,
As it fitfully blows, half conceals, half discloses?
Now it catches the gleam of the morning's first beam,
In full glory reflected now shines in the stream:
'Tis the star-spangled banner, O! long may it wave
O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave.

VERSE 3:
And where is that band who so vauntingly swore
That the havoc of war and the battle's confusion,
A home and a country should leave us no more!
Their blood has washed out their foul footsteps' pollution.
No refuge could save the hireling and slave
From the terror of flight, or the gloom of the grave:
And the star-spangled banner in triumph doth wave
O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave.

VERSE 4:
Oh thus be it ever, when free men shall stand
Between their loved home and the war's desolation!
Blest with vict'ry and peace, may the heav'n rescued land
Praise the Power that hath made and preserved us a nation.
Then conquer we must, when our cause it is just,
And this be our motto: "In God is our trust."
And the star-spangled banner in triumph shall wave
O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave!

******

The poem was set to the tune of a popular British drinking song, written by John Stafford Smith for the Anacreontic Society, a men's social club in London. "The Anacreontic Song" (or "To Anacreon in Heaven"), with various lyrics, was already popular in the United States. Accompanying Key's poem and renamed "The Star-Spangled Banner", it became a well-known American patriotic song. With a range of one and a half octaves, it is known for being difficult to sing.

That being said, after the pre-game tedium let's raise the rafters with a spirited rendition of our great National Anthem*, and then in accordance with age-old tradition sit back with a cold one and quaff the health of the good ol' US of A!

Olivia

Jus' doin' the Charleston...



*Westminster Choir College alums, Valkyries ad lib!


Copyright 2011 Olivia Margaret Ontko

MENTORS

If we are fortunate enough, we find or are found by special people who help us along on our journey. I wish to acknowledge my very special people...

* * *

When in prep school in Bronxville NY, I wanted desperately to study the organ, but the powers that be refused me. So, after doing my research, I rode the train into Manhattan, took the subway uptown, walked into the Church of the Heavenly Rest, and said to Charles Dodsley Walker "teach me".

And for almost four years, every other week, we had a lesson filled wih challenge, imagination, and lots of creative music making. None of this "do what I say because I said it" bumf. Listen, challenge, think, explore, listen.

Thank you, Charles. I'm still listening...

* * *

After I graduated from Westminster Choir Collge, and had worked for one or two organ builders, I found myself unemployed. A friend said I should call this fellow who went around voicing organs. And so I made contact with Allan Van Zoeren, which led to five years of going around and voicing organs and learning. Allan was a true master of the American/Dutch neo-classic style. His organs were clean and clear, precisely balanced, and never screamed.

I asked him early on how I could learn about tonal matters. He replied: "When you hear a stop that you like, go find out why you like it. Look at the pipes, measure them. Listen to them. They will tell you. And if you hear a stop that you truly dislike, go find out why..."

Thank you, Allan. I am still finding out why...

* * *

I had heard about him when I younger, and his name was Walter then. Switched On Bach was his entree to fame. Then I heard that he was really she: "Walter" had been a way to "make it" in what then was a man's world. The image stuck with me and I secretly admired her. I actually wrote to her once, and she actually responded.

When I decided to reveal my true self, I thought of her audacity and it helped to sustain me.

Thank you, Wendy Carlos, for your inspiration and courage. I still draw on your example every day...

* * *

Without these special people I would not be what I am today.

I hope I can do for someone what each of you have done for me.


Olivia

The Beaches are awry with no sound of music

It was recently published in Charleston's newpaper that the neighboring municipality of Sullivan's Island has enacted an ordinance to ban all sorts of noise . . . including singing? Yes, Virginia, no Singing in the Rain. Or in the Sun. Or in your home or office.


Knock Knock

"Yes, Officer?"

"I'm sorry to have to do this, Reverend, but I have to give you a ticket for all the noise you permitted to occur in your church last night. Let's see: loud singing, ringing of small bells, other loud and disturbing noises in the parking lot. And those loud bells in the tower at midnight. . . "

"But Officer. It was Christmas Eve Midnight Mass."

"Sorry, Reverend. See you in Court."

The report in the Post and Courier says:

"Sullivans Island Town Council approved an ordinance last week that added singing, whistling, hooting and hollering on public streets to a list of possible disturbing noises.

"Sullivans Island code already prohibits crying, calling, shouting, whistling, rattling, using a bell, gong, clapper, horn or hammer, drum or making about any other loud noise imaginable."

And the public comments have already started . . .

"I guess getting vocal during sex is outlawed also? "

"LOL!! Hey- when you jump into the ocean, you BETTER NOT MAKE A SPLASH! Don't allow the water to ripple and please don't ever talk out loud during the remaining open hours. We don't want to wake up the town council while they sleep in session."

And what will happen if the Spoleto Festival decides to have an event onthe Island? Will they take Westminster Choir away in handcuffs? And what about singing teachers? Will they be run out of town on a Grand Staff feathered with hemidemisemiquavers?

The mind boggles. What ever became of common courtesy, much less common sense? As usual, the irresponsible and unthinking few cause trouble for the rest of us.

". . . I'll know that I'm on the street where you live!"

"Hey, Bubba, you can't sing that there here . . . You have the right to remain silent . . . "

Just my thoughts...

Olivia

The Charleston Lawyer's Chorus, which usually contributes an excerpt from the rock opera "Runaround? Sue!" has decided to stand mute...

Transition - One Year down and a Lifetime to go . . .

My dear readers:

It has been a little more than a year since I stood up in front of my Westminster Choir College classmates at our 40th reunion, and stated: "Well, there have been a few changes..."

Little did I realise at that time that the changes were only beginning...

First of all, for those of you who are new to these ramblings, transition is not a matter of what clothing one wears, or how one walks and talks, or even of what's been added or subtracted...

It is more a change in one's thinking, for women and men are not just from different planets, they are from different universes. It is a change in how one best reflects one's soul.

One woman who went through mid-life transition and lived to tell her tale likened it to a tornado. One day, without warning (even if you have been thinking about it for years), you wake up with sirens screaming in your head. This is The Day. You are ready for it.

Or so you think...

And then your whole world collapses as the Transition Twister tears apart your life, everything you have held dear for 30, 40, 50 years, and deposits it in itsy-bitsy little pieces in your front yard. Your friends desert you. Your enemies spread evil stories about you. You may lose your job, and you certainly lose may of your civil Rights. If you are especially unfortunate, you lose your family.

But wait! While you are surveying the aftermath, you notice that something is changed. Something is different in a big way. The air is now still, but breathtakingly fresh. It is clean and crystalline, as God intended it to be. What has happened?

For once in your life, in a way not granted to many people, you are at a point where you can start over totally free of other people's notions. You can remake yourself as you would have yourself be, not as someone else demands. It is an awesome prospect, with even more awesome responsibilities; for as of this day, you are become the only one responsible. You can't blame your kid brother, or Aunt Sally, or mean old Cousin Saunders. You can't say anymore "But that's what my parents taught me."

That day is your re-birth day and the first day of your new life, and you have to make the best of it because once you take that fateful step out the front door, you cannot ever go back.

I have had many bad experiences within this year, but the good experiences outweigh them. Let me tell you about just a few of them. Naturally, no names are divulged, as that won't do anyone any good

-----------------------------------------

- There is the church I have served for more than 30 years. When I told the Music Director, he said "I don't know about this. How on earth am I going to explain to my 85 year old Life Deacon that our organbuilder is now she instead of he?" Whatever he told the man must have worked, as I am still on board there.

- There is the church I served for 20 years. When told of my transition by the Music Director, the Rector, I am told, said: "It's time we had a new organ technician. Do it immediately." End of story.

- There is the man with whom I had been personal friends for more than 10 years who, when I told him, said "Well, you can't come here any longer. What will the neighbors think if I start entertaining a woman in the afternoons while my wife is at work?"

- There is the church where the Senior Minister advised me that a woman on the office staff complained about my using the Ladies Room. She wanted me to use the Men's Room "where I belonged..." Sez me: "And what if her husband and I happen to exit the Men's Room at about the same time?" She hasn't complained again...

- Then there is the client who, after receiving my Transition Letter, invited me into his office and fired me on the spot. And then he laughed and said that by my announcement of transgender status I am no longer eligible for protection against discrimination under Federal Statutes and he is going to take the opportunity to get rid of me.

And yes, he can legally do that. Illegal aliens have more legal protections against discrimination than I do. {psssst...support an inclusive ENDA}

- And there is the minister who used to be my client who won't even reply to my request to become a friend on Facebook.

I have learned now that the key phrase coming from a man, especially over the phone, is "I'll have to think about this..." And you KNOW that the second after he puts the phone down all thought of the matter had passed into oblivion, never to be raised up again.

- There is the ladyfriend who, after being told over an afternoon glass of Chardonnay, gave me a big hug, and said "This calls for champagne..."

- And then there is the Organist with whom I had worked for more than 10 years who now looks straight through me when I explain a technical problem and each time says "I will have to get a second opinion." As if I had suddenly become less than competent... And I am not even a blond...

- And furthermore, there is the man I have known for a while whose eyes keep straying downward to my chest while we are talking, He never used to do that before... Oh, and, by the way, the answer is "Yes."

- And there was the female TSA agent at the airport who looked at my boarding pass, then at my driver's license (with its photo of me with my very long hair and its big, annoying "M"), then at the boarding pass and again at the license...handed them back to me, said thank you, MA'AM and gave me a big thumbs-up.

-----------------------------------------

Each day has been a challenge. Each day has been an opportunity to discover the great richness of diversity in and on God's Earth. Each day has offered unimaginable blessings along with seemingly insurmountable challenges.

They say that when you transition, you find out who your true friends really are. I have many fine friends, and thank God each day for them. I hope that when the time comes, I can support them as freely and as well as they have supported me.


Where do I go from here?


Well, writing more in my blog for one. Composing more music for two. And taking more time to be with my friends.

There is one special lady who always has a tag line at the bottom of her emails, my favorite of which is:

"If God brings you to it, He will bring you through it"

I look forward to whatever God brings me to in this next year, knowing that I will be cared for by God and my friends.


Blessings...


Olivia

AND THE BEAT GOES ON ...

I had an experience yesterday which brought me up face to face not only with my mortality, but with my immortality. And yours, too...

The days' work having been finished, I was lurking through the virtual halls of the Facebook site. The Omnipotent FB Server had recommended that I friend a person, so I clicked on his photo to browse his profile. The words "Ephesus SDA Church" jumped out at me. I had installed an organ in the very same church. And we are talking ancient history here, folks. This was wayback in about 1975. Why, that makes me almost as old as god. Not as wise, though...

So I quickly recounted this connexion and hit Send. Within minutes, comes a return email from one Lawrence S. granting me the beneficience of Friend status (Hail! Omnipotent Server), and telling me how he as a 12 year old boy stood on the curb watching a crew unload his church's new pipe organ console.

Then it hit me. Hey, wait a minute. I am sitting at my desk with an email originating in year 2010 from a man in California recounting his exprience of watching ME unload an organ console on the streets of Harlem in the 1970s...well, who would'a thought...

Aside from a few prescient authors, who of us could have foretold, of a hot summer's day in 1975, that something called a computer would have become such a pervasive force in our individual lives less than 50 years hence, thereby assuring each of us our ubiquitous 15 minutes of fame whilst simultaneously confirming the fragility of those moments....

Has the Internet affected your life today? More than you know. More than any of us knows or could have imagined just a short 40 or so years ago...and in another galaxy far, far away...

Olivia

LOST LOVES

Alec Wyton once described the two professional certificates awarded by the American Guild of Organists as being the AAGO (Also a good organist) and the FAGO (Formerly a good organist)...

I never got that far. I was just a BPO (Basic Parish Organist)....

Likewise with flying little airplanes. If you are instrument rated you get to fly IFR (Instrument Flight Rules), and if not, you fly VFR (Visual Flight Rules)...

Again, I went back to the basics and flew SOP (Seat of Pants)...

I loved doing both things. Thy each had their moments...

There is little else like leading a large congregation in a familliar hymn, frantically grabbing for any stop or coupler that ain't already on and wishing for the miraculous appearance of a Chamade Trompette while the people are singing for all they are worth and threatening to sonically obliterate you...

There is not quite anything like sitting at the end of the runway, running the throttle up to its limit while you are standing on the brakes and the airplane is quivering like a wet spaniel. Then you pop the brakes, pull back on the yoke, and suddenly you are on your back going almost straight up at only 4 or 5 knots above your rated stall speed...

What a rush! Both give one a great FOP (Feeling of Power)...

I haven't played for a congregation nor flown an aircraft (unless you count riding in the back on Delta) in close to ten years. Mercifully, I don't remember the last time I did either, which is perhaps just as well...

In both cases, I had no choice because of my physical condition, but perhaps God was telling me it was time to move on before I crashed a perfectly good airplane or got fired for playing the hymns too fast...

I did learn something from both experiences: The trick to aging gracefully is to move on to other pursuits while they will still remark "So soon?"

Easter Blessings to y'all...

Olivia

A PLACE OF MAGIC . . .

"I am a graduate of Westminster Choir College in Princeton NJ."

I say that to people who ask me where I went to college with fierce pride, the sense of which is founded in a special community of people who have gone before and come after. The long red line... each of whom has heard the sound.

The first time I trod upon the bricks of the Quad, I heard it. It is that sussurrus of music which pervades the campus. It comes from the practise rooms, the classrooms, and the Playhouse. It comes from the Chapel in the wee hours of the morning. Little did I know then, that it would color my life almost continuously for four very short years. Little did I know that the memory of it would always be in the corner of my mind, coloring my entire life even to this day.

Westminster is not just a place; it is a state of mind. It is song and more song. You cant sing in a choir with other people every day for four years withut a special bond forming. That bond is exemplified in the tradition of singing the Peter Lutkin "Benediction" at the conclusion of Choir College events and concerts.

It has been said that when Greek meets Greek, they open a restaurant. Well, whenever WCC alum meets WCC alum, they sing the Lutkin. Or as the late Lee Hastings Bristol remarked, "The Lutkin is the closest thing the Choir College will ever have to a 'fight song'..."

It is arguably not the greatest piece of music in the world, and to others it may even seem a bit mawkish; but to a Choir College person it is very special. You learn it as a Freshman at the first meeting of the Chapel Choir. You sing it at every possible occasion during your time at the College. You teach it to the choirs of your student church. And finally, in the great fane of the Princeton University Chapel, after your friends have asked "Whom shall we send?" and you have answered "Here am I, Lord, send me", it is sung lovingly to you - a final Benediction until you meet again.

From time to time over the forty-plus years since that day in the "U Chapel" when the Lutkin was sung to me and the members of my graduating class, I have myself felt drawn to that magical few acres of ground we call the Choir College. When I heed that call, without fail I come away refreshed and hopeful, renewed in spirit. Yet I know that the time is coming - not too soon, I hope - when I will not be able to make that pilgrimage except in my mind.

The late General Douglas McArthur spoke of such a time to the assembled students of West Point, his beloved Alma Mater, and with a few emendations I quote:

"The shadows are lengthening for me. The twilight is here. My days of old have vanished - tone and tints. They have gone glimmering through the dreams of things that were. Their memory is one of wondrous beauty, watered by tears and coaxed and caressed by the smiles of yesterday. I listen then, but with thirsty ear, for the witching melody of faint anthems, of far voices united in song.

"In my dreams I hear again the crash of the Missa Solemnis, the rattle of Carmina Burana, the strange, mournful mutter of the Brahms Requiem. But in the evening of my memory I come back to Princeton. Always there echoes and re-echoes: 'The Lord bless you and keep you...'

"Someday I will sing that final Benediction with you. But I want you to know that when I cross the bar, my last conscious thoughts will be of the Choir, and the Choir, and the Choir.

THE GLOBAL IMPORTANCE OF BACH TODAY

This address was brought to my attention today, and I believe it cannot be reprinted too many times...

So please welcome one of my favorite journalists, Uwe Siemon-Netto.

**********

The Global Importance of Bach Today

(Opening presentation by Uwe Siemon-Netto at the "Bach in Today's Parish" conference, Concordia Theological Seminary, Fort Wayne, IN, November 2, 2009)

A few caveats are in order before I speak to you about the global significance of the music of Johann Sebastian Bach. I am not a musicologist, nor a musician; you'll hear from these eminent scholars and artists later. I am just a journalist, and as a journalist, I'll start with hometown news first -- before going global.

I was born in Leipzig, virtually in the shadow of the Thomaskirche. When I was four, my parents began taking me to the motet or cantata services in the Thomaskirche every Friday or Saturday. This might sound alien to present-day parents, Lutherans included, who do not introduce their kids to music saying that they were "too busy" for that and preferred to spend some "quality time" with their children, like munching hamburgers together.

I spent most of World War II in Leipzig. This is why a blend of two kinds of acoustical impressions has been resonating in my head ever since my childhood - the sound of bombs and sound of Bach.

Often the two dovetailed. Often an air raid followed a cantata service or an organ recital. Or an air raid interrupted a house concert in our home. It was during one of these weekly concerts that I was first introduced to the Art of the Fugue, to which I shall return several times this morning.

The first time I heard the Art of the Fugue, it was played by a string quartet in the music room of our downtown apartment, which was destroyed on Dec. 4, 1943. Two of the musicians were members of the Gewandhaus orchestra, and two were amateurs. In the middle of the performance the sirens howled, and we all rushed to the basement.

There is something else I must tell you about these extraordinary events. They suspended on a very private level the artificial division between Jew and non-New imposed on us by the Nazis. Often Jewish relatives or friends came out of hiding a night to perform Bach or Beethoven, Pachelbel or Pastorius with us before joining us in the air raid shelters or disappearing into the night.

From that the very moment I heard the Art of the Fugue at home, the opening bars of its Contrapunctus One returned to my inner ear virtually every day - while being bombed, while fleeing from Soviet-occupied Leipzig after the War, while sitting exams at school, while feeling lovesick or covering the Vietnam War as a reporter, while suffering from a writer's blocks.

Oh, I sang Lutheran hymns in my head too, and I still do, none more often than "Abide with me." But most of all I am fixated by these fugues! They order my mind and my soul.

In my prayers fugues join the hymns my grandmother sang into my ears during the air raids. And this has been so for nearly seventy years now.

But that's enough about me for the moment. Let's stay in Leipzig for a while longer, though, in Leipzig, cradle of the peaceful revolution that brought down the Berlin Wall exactly 20 years ago. Did you know that this monumental event in history has a strong Bach connection?

The protest movement that ultimately snowballed into the bloodless revolution of 1989 started with young Christians, and even though it developed into a mass movement involving more non-Christians than Christians, it was the Church that provided the umbrella for its growth.

Here is a significant bit of information you will rarely find in your media:

This protest movement had its roots in the popular anger over a barbaric act committed by the regime of East Germany's Communist leader Walter Ulbricht. Ulbricht was a former bordello bouncer.

On his orders, the Communists blew up Leipzig's graceful late-Gothic university church. It stood on Karl-Marx-Platz, formerly - and now again -- called Augustusplatz. Ulbricht, also a native Leipziger, had big plans for transforming this largest square in Germany into the biggest proletarian parade ground in Europe. In Ulbricht, a church had no business standing at such secular venue.

The university church, symbol of Leipzig's academic life, as murdered on May 30, 1968. Three weeks later, the Third International Bach competition took place in Leipzig. During its opening session in the Congress Hall of the Zoo, Aall the Communist bigwigs sat in the front rows, next to prominent personalities of the international Bach community.

Suddenly, invisible hands unrolled a yellow poster from the ceiling of this concert hall causing a gasp. The poster showed the outline of the murdered church, the year of its death --1968 - and the words, "Wir fordern Wiederaufbau" ("We demand Reconstruction").

This spectacular incident drew the attention of the world's musical elite to a Communist outrage. The authors of this demonstration were four young physicists, all Christians. One was eventually betrayed by a West German leftist to East Germany's secret police and sent to prison.

It was this stunning episode that ultimately spawned the resistance movement whose success in November of 1989 Germans are commemorating in these weeks.

I must still beg you to remain with me in Leipzig for a little longer for it is, after all, the capital of the global Bach community, the number one pilgrimage site for Bach lovers from all continents. Of the 850 students at Leipzig's Hochschule f=FCr Musik und Theater Felix Mendelssohn-Bartholdy, Germany's oldest state conservatory, almost one quarter hails from Asia. Asians fill the pews of the Thomaskirche during its motet and cantata services.

Japanese in particular have been flocking to Leipzig even in Communist days. One of them was musicologist Keisuke Maruyama. He became a Christian by studying the impact of the weekday pericopes in the 18th-century Lutheran lectionary cycle on Bach's cantatas.

After he had finished his research he told my friend Rev. Johannes Richter, then the superintendent (regional bishop) of the half of Leipzig's Lutheran parishes: "It is not enough the read Christian texts. I want to be a Christian myself. Please baptize me."

When Richter told me this during one of my rare reporting stints to Leipzig, atheism was the state religion of East Germany. On the same occasion I interviewed the members of the Thomanerchor, whose director Bach had been from 1723 until his death in 1750.

Since the Reformation, the Thomanerchor has been a municipal institution, and so it was in Communist days. But under Communism, for the first time in the choir's history, no chaplain was allowed to provide pastoral care to these boys in their boarding school. For the previous 800 years, their predecessors received their instruction in the Christian faith in their dorms; now even table prayers were forbidden. To be catechized they had to go to a nearby church.

But when I asked several of these children whether they were believers they replied: "O yes, almost all of us are. You cannot really sing Bach without faith."

These two examples show that in an era of darkest atheism Bach worked as a missionary - to a scholar from far-away Asia, and to kids raised in a godless environment, and even a ranking Communist functionary.

I remember interviewing the director of the Leipzig Bach Institute of that period. He was a member of the Communist hierarchy. He told me that he could only be an atheist only as long as he did not have to listen to Bach. "It is strange, though, how quickly this changes when I hear Bach's music."

This now really does take me to the global significance of the music of Johann Sebastian Bach. I have made the fascinating discovery that whenever I write about Bach for the Atlantic Times, my regular client, these articles automatically appear in its sister paper, the Asia-Pacific Times.

Why should this be so? Because the editors of both publications know that Bach is one of the hottest topics in the Far East. You write about Bach in Germany or in France or in the United States, and Asians gobble it up - so much so that features like these sell advertising space more easily than many other topics.

My wife and I spend our summers in the Dordogne in southwestern France, where towns and villages are gradually restoring their Romanesque parish churches; there are about one thousand of them in the Dordogne alone. These sanctuaries are usually empty, largely for lack of priests. But this changes during the summer thanks to a concert series organized by Ton Koopman, the great Dutch organist and Bach performer, who owns a home there.

Then busloads of music lovers pour into the Dordogne from all over the world, Dutch, Belgians, Germans, Scandinavians, Japanese, Koreans, Chinese. A French count sleeps in a car parked immediately in front of ancient churches where the musicians store their ancient instruments. He protects those instruments literally with his own body against thieves and vandals.

French peasants devoid of musical education suddenly appear in their churches they and their ancestors had ignored for at least two centuries. Their children, until recently ignorant of any form of classical music now join choirs whipped into shape by Koopman, the star, and hitherto unknown instructors.

Wealthy Frenchmen like my friend Francis Vigne, a retired engineer, buy orphaned organs from the Netherlands and Germany and install them in these rural sanctuaries that had never held any instrument since they were built a millennium ago. Now slowly the locals, intrigued by their alien sounds, pop into these churches they had never seen from the inside. And more and more often do I hear them sigh: "All we need now is a pastor."

It is my impression, which I cannot substantiate with statistics, and for which I must beg you to trust my experienced journalist's nose, that all this is a manifestation of what many French call la grande soif pour Dieux or, more sophisticatedly, la soif pour la transcendence.

I claim that the music of Bach and his contemporaries lures the thirsty to a place where they will be refreshed -- to ancient edifices where they sit tightly packed on narrow benches, often without backrests, and listen to Koopman's Baroque ensemble, more and more and more every year - so much so that many copycats are now imitating Koopman's initiative.

When I see and hear all this I cannot help thinking with enormous sadness and anger of one big Lutheran church near St. Louis, which proudly proclaims: "Here you will never hear the music of Johann Sebastian Bach."

Well, let me tell you this: In southwestern France people might not fill the pews every Sunday but they have also not replaced the altars with sets of drums; they swing along not with praise bands but with Bach, Telemann and Pachelbel, Sch=FCtz, Schein and Scheidt. And I have noticed that when the concert season is well over, some of the churches, once so empty, remain packed.

Yes, I do believe that Bach is busily at work as an evangelist, to paraphrase Nathan Soderblom, the former archbishop of Uppsala in Sweden. I also share a similar view expressed by the late Arthur Peacocke, one of the most significant figures in the burgeoning dialogue between Faith and Science.

Peacocke, an Anglican canon and a noted biochemist, sounded much like Martin Luther who once described music as a tool of the Holy Spirit. He specifically made a point to which I am inclined to subscribe to heartily:

The Holy Spirit Himself dictated The Art of the Fugue into Bach's plume.

When I wrote this on my blog site I got into deep waters with Lutheran coreligionists who believe themselves to be more orthodox than I.

What infuriated them was not only my reference to the Holy Spirit's authorship of the Art of the Fugue, but even more so a story of mine describing how Glenn Gould's rendering of the Goldberg Variations, another very abstract work by Bach, had triggered the interest of Masashi Masuda from Hokkaido in northern Japan in Christianity.

Masuda told me on the telephone one day that he wanted to discover the source of this wonderful composition - and was guided to the Christian faith, thus supporting Arthur Peacocke's theory.

Masashi Masuda became a member of the Society of Jesus, and ultimately a professor of systematic theology at Sophia University, a Jesuit-owned school in Tokyo.

You cannot believe the furious electronic missives aimed at me across the internet in response to this report. "Sir, did you not know that the Holy Spirit only works through the Word?" one angry reader chided. I replied, "I thought we had learned in Systematics III that the Holy Spirit blew as he wished.

I apologized saying that I was unaware that the Third Person in the Trinity was under any obligation to study the Book of Concord before blowing? So now we know: The Holy Spirit has no right to use an abstract composition by Johann Sebastian Bach as a shoe ladle for the Word of God.

Another email correspondent seemed ready to burn me at the stake, if only this could be done in cyberspace, for implying in my Masashi Masuda story that the Holy Spirit might have guided this former non-believer to a denominationally incorrect target. "See? Now Siemon-Netto even asserts that Bach has driven this man to the Antichrist."

Rare in a journalist's life are such wonderful occasions when divine irony refutes absurdity with swift fury. On the very day I received this email a friend from Portland, Oregon, sent me this beautiful bit of news: She had a grandson, who used to be a godless lout. Then one day his father gave him a Glenn Could recording of Bach's Italian Concerto, another work without words.

A few months later, this young man surprised his father by playing the Italian Concerto on the father's piano, from memory. Until that point Dad had had no idea that this teenager even knew how to handle a piano.

Next, the boy informed his grandmother that he would now like to learn how to play the organ.

So from that day on he accompanied her every Sunday to her Lutheran church, and now he can play the organ and has become a Christian. I just copied this bit of her email to my angry interlocutor, self-righteously adding three of the first Latin words I had ever learned: "Quod erat demonstrandum."

As Prof. Robin Leaver told me this morning, Johann Olearius, the 17th-century German mathematician and librarian called the Holy Spirit "der grosse Kapellmeister" (literally, the great orchestra donductor). Again: Quod erat demonstrandum.

This leads me to a fascinating question others are probably more competent to answer than I:

How come that the most destructive and tasteless forms of music and the very best have an almost equal ability to transcend ethnic, cultural and geographic barriers while others don't.

How come you see people twitch to the same inane beat whether you are in Iceland or Okinawa, in Berlin or Bali? If Arthur Peacocke is right that the Holy Spirit disseminates Bach, what do you call the spirit that promulgates rap and Hip Hop but not, for example Schubert's lieder, on a global scale?

We might have to consult psychologists here, perhaps even physicians. After attending a genuine - not touristy - Voodoo seance in Haiti back in 1964 my wife told me that this experience had literally put a spell on her, mesmerized her, changed her physically at least as it was happening.

One physician said that this intense drumbeat actually changes your breathing or your heartbeat. I don't know about that. I was there too, and it did nothing for me. But like my wife, and evidently like huge audiences in Tokyo, I feel profoundly changed when listening to the Art of the Fugue or the final chorus of Bach's St. John's Passion.

There might well be some kind of spirit involved in Rap and Voodoo, in addition perhaps even to temporary biological and physiological transformations. Others might be more competent to opine on this.

But what about the Spirit who made sure that the Japanese with their entirely different musical background grasp the significance of the music of Johann Sebastian Bach, whereas most of us Westerners might find the traditional tunes of Japan charming, exotic, an alien delight, but not really overwhelming.

About ten years ago, I put this question in Tokyo to a couple of musicologists, whose names, I am ashamed to say, I have misplaced in my messy archives. They came up with the following theory that might in part explain the current Bach Boom in Japan and other parts of Asia for several decades now.

When Francis Xavier and other Jesuit and Franciscan missionaries landed in southern Japan in the mid-16th century, they brought with them Western-style church music, especially Gregorian chant, and the organ. In fact they built pipe organs from bamboo, and before the sixteenth century was out, some Japanese princes were so accomplished on the Queen of the Instruments that in the 1560s three of them toured European courts playing before kings and princes and before the Pope.

Christianity was eradicated in Japan in the early 17th century. Christians were crucified, burned at the stake, and scorched to death while hanging upside-down over cesspools.

But my Japanese interlocutors told me that while the Christian faith was wiped out, elements of Western music infiltrated Japanese folk song. This influence evidently remained strong enough to help Bach's music sweep Japan four centuries later.

I like this theory. I am sure Arthur Peacocke would have loved it. It comforted me in my perplexity throughout the last four years in St. Louis when I listened to Robert Bergt's spectacular Bach at the Sem performances, and found the huge Chapel of St. Timothy and St. Titus filled with white heads.

Most of these heads belonged to members of outside communities. I was grateful to see them there. But where were the seminarians in whose theological tradition the music of Johann Sebastian Bach played such a towering role? Where, for that matter, were most of the faculty members?

These concerts were recorded and then repeated over KFUO-FM, this marvelous gift by faithful German-American Lutherans to the larger St. Louis community, a jewel of the Lutheran Church Missouri Synod whose reputation is otherwise not really one of winsomeness.

Now this KFUO is being sold for an apple and an egg. The church body whose founder had linked music and the Holy Spirit so closely glibly jettisons one the Comforter's most splendid tools. Ladies and gentlemen, by all means grill me electronically for this outburst: This unfathomable act reminds me hauntingly of Walter Ulbricht's massacre of
our University Church in our mutual hometown of Leipzig in 1968.

I have been invited to talk to you about the Global Significance of the Music of Johann Sebastian Bach. You cannot do this without contemplating the Third Person of the Trinity, and I cannot help noticing that He is being mocked in our own family of faith.

Of course you can try to keep the Holy Spirit and his toys out of reality and replace them with kitsch. But be warned. The Holy Spirit will still blow as he wills, perhaps not on Founder's Way in St. Louis, but -- Japan and Korea, in once abandoned Romanesque churches in southwestern France, in the head of a formerly godless lout in Oregon -- and in my head, which keeps finding order and comfort thanks to Bach's incomplete masterpiece, the Art of the Fugue.


Uwe Siemon-Netto Ph.D., D.Litt.
Director
Center for Lutheran Theology & Public Life
Concordia University,
Old Administration Building, 312 A
1530 Concordia West
Irvine, CA 92612-3203

CONVERSATIONS WITH GOD 4

Hello all!

After a long absence...I'M BAAAAACK...

Well, the poop really hit the fan this week. I lost a big job, and my car died, and I overdrew my checking account...

So I did what every girl does: I spent a while during the wee hours running through the house screaming, lying in bed crying, and punching my pillow...which is far less painful than punching the walls...

And do you know what? It actually made me feel a lot better...

AS WELL IT SHOULD!

God almighty...

THE VERY ARTICLE...

I wish you wouldn't sneak up behind me...

I LOVE THE WAY YOU TWITCH WHEN I DO IT ...JUST LIKE MOSES...

Well, at least I didnt smash a bunch of stone tablets...

TRUE, YOU GET POINTS FOR THAT

BY THE BYE, HAVE YOU STOPPED TO NOTICE THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN WHAT GOES ON WHEN A GOOD THING HAPPENS TO YOU VERSUS A BAD THING?

Can't say that I have...so tell me...

YOU ARE SUPPOSED TO WORK THAT OUT FOR YOURSELF WITH FEAR AND TREMBLING - BUT OK...JUST THIS ONCE...

Ah, so you are a "just" God after all...

GROAN...THOSE POINTS? GONE!

IT'S SIMPLE, REALLY... A GOOD THING HAPPENS IN A FLASH, UNEXPECTEDLY...WITHOUT PRIOR WARNING...

Sort of like Ed McMahon knocking at your door to tell you that you have won the sweepstakes?

YES! AND I HAVE TO TELL YOU, OLD ST. PETER GOT SO EXCITED WHEN ED KNOCKED ON OUR DOOR...

I hope old Pete wasn't too let down...

A LITTLE, UNTIL ED STEPPED OVER THE THRESHOLD AND CALLED OUT "AND HEEEEEEEER'S ED!"... I DO A PRETTY GOOD IMITATION, DON'T YOU THINK?

Not bad...not bad at all...

ANYWAY, WHEN A BAD THING HAPPENS, IT STARTS OUT AS JUST A LITTLE TINY THING, JUST A SMIDGEN OF A THING REALLY, AND IT TAKES ITS SWEET OLD TIME AND HIDES IN THE SHADOWS AND YOU KNOW IT IS OUT THERE BUT CAN'T PUT YOUR FINGER ON IT, AND IT GETS BIGGER AND BIGGER AND AND BIGGER AND JUST AS YOU REALISE WHAT IS HAPPENING, ZOWEE!, IT EXPLODES ALL OVER YOU!

OMG! (oops, sorry...) You are right. Thats how it happens...

TELL YOU A SECRET...

Ok...tell all...

KEEP AN EYE OUT ALL THE TIME FOR LITTLE SMIDGENS LURKING IN THE SHADOWS AND DO SOMETHING ABOUT THEM BEFORE THEY HAVE A CHANCE TO GET ANY BIGGER...

Jesus H Christ! Too easy, can't do it... Is it really that simple?

YEP...THAT SIMPLE...

I'll have to work on that...

WITH FEAR AND TREMBLING?

Absolutely!

GOOD GIRL. YOU GOT YOUR POINTS BACK...

Thank you. By the way, what DOES the H in your Son's name stand for?

DARN IF I KNOW. HE WON'T TELL ME... AND I STILL CAN'T GET HARRY TRUMAN TO TELL ME WHAT THE S IN HIS NAME STANDS FOR...

Good night God...

GOOD NIGHT. I BLESS YOU...

*****

The god represented herein may or may not bear any resemblance to any other god, real or fictional, and the views presented here are those of the author alone, and should not be construed to represent those of any god living, dead, or immortal.

CONVERSATIONS WITH GOD PART 3

IN THE DOLDRUMS

*** *** *** *** ***

The Doldrums is the region of calm winds, centered slightly north of the equator and between the two belts of trade winds, which meet there and neutralize each other.

It is widely assumed that the phrase 'in the doldrums' is derived from the name of this region. Actually, it's the other way about. In the 19th century, 'doldrum' was a word meaning 'dullard; a dull or sluggish fellow' and this probably derived from 'dol', meaning 'dull' with its form taken from 'tantrum'. That is, as a tantrum was a fit of petulance and passion, a doldrum was a fit of sloth and dullness, or one who indulged in such.

The term was used to mean 'a general state of low spirits'

*** *** *** *** ***

I am definitely in the doldrums right now.

My College reunion is over...

The Spoleto Festuval has come and gone...

I feel as though I am about to expire of terminal ennui...which is itself a death worse than fate...

SO YOU THINK?

Jesus!

NO. HIS DAD.

Doesn't matter. I hate it when you sneak up on me...

(laughs) THAT'S A GOD'S PREROGATIVE...BUT YOU WERE SAYING...

I was just expressing my dismay at the way things seem to go in cycles...an up followed by a down...lots of excitement followed by horrible boredom...

SO LOOK AROUND YOU - I MADE A WORLD OF ALMOST LIMITLESS INTEREST AND YOU ARE BORED?

Hmmmm...

I CAN STIR UP A HURRICANE IF YOU WANT SOME EXCITEMENT...OR HOW ABOUT A NICE PLAGUE...

THat's quite all right. No need to put yourself to that much trouble...

THE WORLD IS THERE FOR YOU TO USE AND TO EXPLORE. I HAVE ALREADY DONE THAT...AND IT REALLY IS GOOD, IF I MAY SAY SO MYSELF.

But how do I get myself out of the doldrums?

YOU ROW FOR ALL YOU ARE WORTH...IT BEATS DEALING WITH THAT HURRICANE OVER THE HORIZON...SO WHAT ARE YOU WAITING FOR?

Now where did I put those oars...

*** *** *** *** ***

The God described herein may or may not bear any resemblance to any other God, real or fictional, and the views presented here are those of the author alone, and should not be construed to represent those of any God living, dead, or immortal.