VoxHumanae

My 17 month old daughter, Gabrielle, has taken to going to the potty!  She started showing interest a couple of days ago; pointing to her pants and saying “poot” and/or walking to the bathroom door.

She is “number 2″ for us to get this, apparently, difficult time of a child’s (and parent’s) life together so nicely.

Way to go, girl.

The past couple of days I have been spending some of my limited free time looking through a music sample pack of sacred choral music from Hope Publishing.
Their choral music is the pinnacle of schlack. Most of their choral music will never stand the test of time. After listening to the music and looking through the pack, I may use one or two pieces… out of a hundred. Who buys this stuff? When composters (i was trying to link garbage with composers… this is pretty close) craft together this junk it lessons the value of what serious music programs are trying to do.

How one inspires a congregation when practically every song sounds the same is uncomprehendable by me. The genre of music may change, pitches and text, but the essential quality is still there… in every choral piece… crap. It used to be difficult for me to distinguish between the crap and the not crap, but when one listens to the mess in their packets one can simply rule out 9 or 10 pieces per composter.  These “composers” are churning out more of this garbage than is musically appreciative.  It reminds me of the book 1984…  there is a kaleidoscope of sorts that people use to make poetry and songs.  It uses the same formula to create crafty pieces that people (proles) can appreciate, but essentially have to artistic worth.

This publisher’s only hope is that they have Dr. Payn sending them bell choir music.

In light of recent events I have found a shocking resemblance of the United States’ Vice President Dick Cheney and Cardinal Priest of Vienna (Wien) Cardinal Schönborn.  They seem to be impersonating each other lately.

You take a look…  impressive guys, keep up the good work.

Ok…

I understand that people have signs up for whatever candidate they wanted to “win” the election.
Ron Paul’s people dangled themselves from highway overpasses under cover of darkness because the government is watching them…for the prime spot that will catch that voter’s eye and lead them to the path of righteousness.
Hillary’s people put them in their finely groomed and chemical treated lawns.
Obama’s people proudly displayed their losing candidate.
There weren’t any McCain people proud enough to display the sign they own in their yard, apparently, or I just don’t live or drive through that neighborhood.
Local candidates cluttered the highway divider and surrounding grassy areas with giant signs that mullet wearing friends made out of ply board and took there in their Dodge trucks with the help of some buddies in exchange for a case of their choosing.

I give it to the local schmokels… their signs are the only ones that tend to stray from the white on blue with red… I have seen yellow, orange, and green.

Eye, here is the rub… the election is over and apparently no one is responsible for taking the signs down… especially the losers. As the losers drive for the next several months they will have a constant reminder of what could have been theirs if only they had chosen white on blue with red.

Several years ago I had an experience that folks in the psychological sciences would call a “flashbulb memory.”

I was living with my wife in our rural home set in the mountains of Clinton County, Pennsylvania…and got a phone call very early in the morning. For me, those phone calls usually mean that someone has passed away or that something bad has happened. In a shocking continuation of a theme…someone had passed away and something bad had happened.

I was informed that a long-time friend from high school who I had been in marching band, our indoor drumline and our high school musical had done a completely unbelievable act…
she bludgened someone 66 times with an axe.

Shonda Walter – age 23 (At the time)

Sentenced to death in Clinton County, Pennsylvania

By: A jury

Date of crime: 3/25/2003

Prosecution’s case/defense response: Walter killed her neighbor, James Sementelli, 83, as part of a gang initiation and robbery. Walter slashed Sementelli 66 times with a 10-inch hatchet as he begged for his life. Witnesses also said that during the killing, she stopped to say the Lord’s Prayer, carved a cross in the victim’s stomach as he was dying, watched television, and ate ice cream. She then took $510 in mostly change and Sementelli’s car. The defense argued (for a reason not specified in the news report) that Walter was not eligible for the death penalty under Pennsylvania law

Prosecutor(s): Ted McNight

Defense lawyer(s): Stephen Smith

Prison: SCI Muncy, PA

The other day, I bumped into a website that I actually thought was some kind of joke. I wasn’t sure how to take the content of the website and today it still perplexes me. As far as I know Shonda is in Muncy Pennsylvania and is on death row.

http://www.muncys3amigos.com/

This is her website?

The following poem was posted on the website as well… I am shocked and have a hard time not supressing the vivid imagery.

Red Fury by Shonda Walter

Red is my fury

Red is my love

Benevolent forces shine down from high above.

A course on the red sea, to hell I might send thee.

A glow from the traffic light could not stop me tonight

Blinded by the pain inside, locked it up, it will pass by.

Red I see, part of me,

My love, my fury, my jealousy.

This past week, my wife and I the opportunity to do the solo work for Carl Orff’s Carmina Burana.

There are several works of choral and vocal music that I will take any chance to perform.  So, after getting the call, I accepted the work almost immediately.  Let it be known that when one accepts work with most community choirs one must be ready for anything.  I had some idea of what to expect because I have done solo work with the conductor for the Mozart Requiem.

Music happens in spite of the conductor.  Truly…  The choir and accompanists are given the delight of a basic beat.  At one point when I actually thought the percussion section was going to get a cue for an entrance and he adjusted his glasses.

“Who is more incorruptible than the millionaire, right?”

Justice Scalia asked.

Well, obiously!  The POOR, right?!
The corruptible poor are constantly changing the face of the world.  I wish they would stop.

Truly, I question the validity of my government…
Amazing quote that must be shared regarding the “Millionaire’s Amendment.”

Everyday I get a barrage of phone calls from random people supporting random people.  I look in the papers and I feel like I am some surreal world.  All of a sudden in PA in March and mostly April the slime of the world come out of their holes.  They go, suit and tie, into schools and read to children, they promise “change”, they smile, they shake hands, they offer signs to the sheeple to put any place that might be seen by the most people possible.

Bumper stickers…door to door solicitors…recorded phone calls from Senators, Representatives, Hollywood persona, local leaders, etc…  Pamphlets from credit unions, teacher unions, parishoners…  emails…  it is exhausting and disgusting.

Candidates are ripped apart for saying the slightest thing that might be off the beaten path.

People vote for who their friends vote for, for who their papers unofficially and unofficialy endorse, who their neighbors vote for…

Noone seems to vote because of what they think for his or her self.

I will vote for someone who doesn’t bother me.

Natural selection is that ever popular theory that we now use synonymously with Adaptive Radiation.

Those individuals having a variation that gives them an advantage in staying alive long enough to successfully reproduce are the ones that pass on their traits more frequently to the next generation.  Their traits become more common and the population evolves.  Darwin called this “descent with modification.“

In a Choir, the conductor must quickly identify those slight differences holding specific advantages.  This must be observed at many different levels.  Singers must be observed and appropriate sound must be found and/or section leaders with charismatic leading skills must be used. Some conditioning would be appropriate.  Negative reinforcement must be given to those exhibiting traits deemed undesirable.  It is essential however, that several things remain in tact for advancement to happen.
1.  Choral personnel of the organization to remain steady.
2. Just rules.  (and for clarification, holding all people equally to those rules)
3. Obvious violations of skill cannot be overlooked because of intimate relations.
4. Board of Directors must represent the ensemble’s needs and tie those needs into what the community desires.
5. Not becoming too “elitist.”  This has been a hot word lately in the music business, but is completely appropriate.  The “elitist” crowd is aging…  you do the math.

Choral ensembles exist to fill a need.  That need has been dwindling.  Look at the singing groups that existed at the beginning of the 1900s!  Every town had many…  With inventions like the radio and television and computer, people become more self-reliant, and although there is an impersonal global community.  Human touch is the undesirable trait and will soon be extinct.

How many revelations can come up seemingly every week about some product or thing that we use/do that will ultimately kill us through whatever means that it does.

Lately, the big push has been on plastic.

Ahh… Plastic

That durable and stable material that holds our drinks, our food, our bottoms, our qwerty…etc
Plastic does not degrade by the means that something like paper or wood…would.  Plastic photodegrades.  Plastic is so durable and stable that it continues to be plastic for….  ever.  Basically, the sun’s light loosens bonds in the plastic’s structure and plastic kind of dissipates into… plastic.

“Plastic is bad for the environment“…
“It is bad to put in the microwave“…
“It is bad to carry more than one gallon of milk in a bag made of it”…
It is “bad“, “bad“, “bad“…

But, hey, look at the good side… it is so versatile!

Plastic has been called a “chemical sponge” that absorbs all that fun nasty stuff that we like to call persistent organic pollutants (POPs).

“Persistent organic pollutants (POPs) are toxic chemicals that adversely affect human health and the environment around the world.” The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency

The Algalita Marine Research Foundationlearned that “broken, degraded plastic pieces outweigh surface zooplankton in the central North Pacific by a factor of 6-1. That means six pounds of plastic for every single pound of zooplankton.” Which means, when birds and sea animals or looking for food — more often, they are finding and eating plastic.  OR that when they do eat the zooplankton, they are eating the plastic that the zooplankton live on, in and around.

I’m not sure if this would work or not…  but if it does, I should be given the rights to it…  We should photo-degrade much more plastic in the ocean so it absorbs all of the POPs and then scoop up the plastic and save the day!  humpf…

But, who cares…?

Certainly not me!  The average life expectancy of the regular person has increased dramatically since Roman antiquity.

Table from “The Biology of Aging”by Robert Arking