Virtual Farm Boy

A Mini Adventure - Wheels - Autos - New York Times Blog

The New York Times “Wheels” blog on July 3rd had a post about “Minis on Top”, a rally of 225 Mini Coopers in the White Mountains of New Hampshire.  My own Mini always makes me go “Isn’t it cute?”, but that many of them takes cuteness to its automative limit.

As it happens, when I left work at the library yesterday, under my windshield wiper was a flyer for the Burning River Minis, a local group of Mini owners who meet up every second Saturday of the month.  I didn’t get it together to go today, but it would be fun sometime.

I like receiving packages in the mail, especially of stuff I want, so today I hit a triple bonanza:

• I received (finally!) a big box that I had mailed to myself from Minneapolis at the end of the AGO convention on June 27th. (I’m going to overlook the fact that I sent it Priority Mail on the 27th, and it was apparently received on July 1st at the main post office in Cleveland, but I just got a notice in my mail box yesterday, despite the fact that I’ve checked my mail twice since July 1st. It was obviously just sitting around somewhere at the post office for a week. Nonetheless I’m glad it’s here—I was worried that it was permanently lost.) It was filled with dirty clothes (not important), a pair of Birkenstock sandals (important, but not something I was looking forward to), and a bunch of music that I bought at the convention, including some quite expensive European organ music that is hard to come by in the U.S. (Breitkopf & Härtel editions of Mendelssohn, and an edition of Scheidt keyboard music) plus some choral music.
• I received the DVD of Paul Festa’s film Apparition of the Eternal Church, with a lovely handwritten note from him. (See previous post about the film)
• Finally, I received two just-released DVDs of two operas by Benjamin Britten: Peter Grimes and Billy Budd. These are the first commercial releases of two films made in the 1960s with Britten’s partner Peter Pears in the starring roles. They both have other members of Britten’s “musical family” in the casts—Heather Harper, John Shirley Quirk, Bryan Drake. I remember that the Peter Grimes film was shone on PBS when I was in high school, but, being in the days before cable TV, the reception on the TV in Scranton, Iowa, was terrible, so I missed most of it. The film of Billy Budd is famous, but I’ve never seen it. I’m glad that Decca and BBC have finally released them. (There are some other titles in the Britten-Pears Collection.)

What a shame I have to go to work tomorrow.  It’s tempting to stay home and watch DVDs.  But I’ll be set for the next few evenings.

One of the most striking and haunting bits of the recent national AGO convention was a screening of the film Apparition of the Eternal Church by filmmaker Paul Festa.  A couple of months ago I had stumbled on the trailer for the film on youtube.  The description on his web site says it best:

In Apparition of the Eternal Church, 31 people listen to a ten-minute piece of music through headphones and describe what they hear. What all but a few don’t know is that the music is Olivier Messiaen’s monumental organ work Apparition of the Eternal Church, which the composer wrote in 1931 when he was 24 years old. A devout Catholic and the organist at the Church of the Trinity in Paris, Messiaen wrote a piece that sends some listeners to the heights of spiritual and erotic ecstasy.  For others, the encounter with Messiaen is like ten minutes in Dante’s inferno. The experiment, then, is to have 31 people put the violent contradictions of Messiaen’s music into words. The result is a collective interpretation improvising its way through an aesthetic landscape defined by paradox. Resolution confronts eternity, eroticism asceticism, spiritual ecstasy physical torture. Together, the music and its interpreters conjure something like what William Blake famously called the marriage of heaven and hell.

The cast of listeners contains people of all sorts: scholar and critic Harold Bloom, film maker John Cameron Mitchell, musician Albert Fuller, Justin Bond (better known as “Kiki” of Kiki and Herb), composer (and Messiaen student) Richard Felciano, and many others unknown to the general public.

I had despaired of ever seeing it here in Cleveland, so I was thrilled when I saw it on the program for the convention.  It came at the end of a very long day at the end of a very long evening of chamber music by Messiaen.  The concert ended with what seemed like an interminable work for six Ondes Martenot, the strange electronic keyboard instrument that fascinated Messiaen for most of his career.  I browbeat my traveling companion into staying for the film, and he was glad that he did.

Festa’s film is very funny in places, but by the end it is ultimately quite haunting. You can get an idea about it from the trailer.  I spoke with Paul Festa later in the week at the convention and gave him some contacts that he might pursue to get it shown in Cleveland.  (Cleveland Cinematheque and the Cleveland Museum of Art film series seem like naturals, especially in this 100th birthday anniversary year for Messiaen.)  If you get a chance, don’t miss the film, even if you don’t like Messiaen’s music.

Last week I was at the national convention of the American Guild of Organists in the Twin Cities, Minnesota.  Too much for one post, so I’ll be adding several posts about events of note over the next few days.  The of the most outrageous recitals (in a mostly good way) was Cameron Carpenter’s program. He shared the recital with his former Juilliard teacher John Weaver.  Mr. Weaver is a player of the older generation, very elegant and musical.  At the conclusion of his set (for which he received a well-deserved standing ovation), he introduced Cameron as a “talent of Mozartean proportion.”  Mr. Weaver went on to say that although Cameron was his student for a year, he didn’t teach Cameron anything, but rather the Juilliard School paid him to listen to Cameron every week for an hour.

Cameron Carptenter is trying to bring the organ to a new audience—he’s out to be the rock star of the organ world.  He has more pure technical ability that anyone I’ve ever heard (with the possible exception of the young Jean Guillou) and he feels free to make music his own.  Fifteen or twenty years ago AGO audiences would have been outraged (in a bad way) by his performance, because it in no way matches any kind of “historically informed” performance practice.  Now people look more for musicianship, musical communication skills, and even showmanship, all of which Cameron Carpenter has by the boatload.  On his program he played music as diverse as one of Jeanne Demessieux’s nearly impossible Etudes, a piece by Leo Sowerby, and Cameron’s own “synthesized” version of Bach’s Toccata and Fugue in D minor, which incorporates elements from just about every transcription that has ever been made of the piece.  He concluded with an encore, a transcription of John Philip Sousa’s march “Stars and Stripes Forever.”  It’s one of Cameron’s regular parlor trick/showpieces.  Here it is on youtube.  Note how he plays the piccolo obbligato the first time not with his fingers, but with his feet in the pedals: amazing.

Cameron wore a similar all-white outfit for his Minnesota recital as in the video. Organists (being by nature very catty) always have some sort of comment.  As the audience was filing out of the church sanctuary after the program, I heard a gentleman comment, “That nurse sure can play the organ.”   Later in the week I encountered Cameron on the street in a black tank top and chartreuse green skin-tight jeans. He only had moderate eye makeup on.  Needless to say you will not be seeing Virtual Farm Boy in a similar outfit.  Always stylish basic black for VFB.

Overnight on Sunday/Monday Paul Jerabek, my friend and 65-year member of the Euclid Avenue Congregational Church Choir, died after a few weeks of declining health.  What is remarkable is that Paul was 98 years old, almost 99, and until a few weeks ago he was very active, still doing many things around the church, living in his apartment at the Breckenridge Village retirement home in Willoughby, driving himself to events.

As I said, he was a member of the choir for 65 years before retiring a couple of years ago–in his 90s–because he felt that his singing was no longer up to his own standard.  (Truth be told, he was still doing just fine, especially for someone of his mature years.)  He and his late wife Alice had sung for many years in the Cleveland Orchestra Chorus under Robert Shaw, Robert Page, Margaret Hillis and others.

Paul was kind, unassuming and modest, but he had many talents.  After retiring from his main career he became a prize-winning rose breeder.  I will never forget visiting his home where he had what seemed to be an acre of beautiful rose bushes.  As a gift, he once gave George and me a cutting of his own breed “Our Pearl” which continues to flourish at our house in Cleveland, being the first rose to bloom in the spring, and it is always the last rose to die in the winter.  Paul was also an award-winning photographer of professional calibre.  His pictures—especially of his own roses—have been published in many magazines.

There are some of us who assumed that Paul would outlive us all, so it came as an immense shock on Monday evening when I heard of his death.  We will be discovering many things around the church that he just “took care of.”  I especially will miss him with the choir, because for the almost 25 years that I’ve been at the church, he has filed away the choral music that the choir performs.  It’s a big job that I never had to worry about.

On Monday evening I volunteered with the crew from my church that every 5th Monday prepares a meal for homeless people in the inner city of Cleveland.  When I arrived for duty at 3:00 (I don’t usually get to help because I’m usually at work when they prepare and serve.) Paul’s daughter Cyndy Henderson and grandson Peter Henderson were preparing a salad.  I asked what they needed done, and they said I could help with the salad.  (This was before I knew that Paul had died, and no one said a word about it.)  I found out later that I had stepped into Paul’s usual role for the preparation of the 5th Monday Meal—he had prepared the salad.  I was honored to take his place.

I—along with his many, many fans—will miss him.  Rest in peace, Paul.  I know that you’re still here with us in spirit.

This video is a  couple years old, but it’s a classic:  The famous “dancing waters” using Mentos and Diet Coke.

Yesterday was Parade the Circle in Cleveland, one of my favorite summer events.  The day started out cloudy and a bit drizzly, but by the time the parade began at noon, it was sunny and warm, with just a few clouds in the sky–perfect for a parade.  I always take lots of pictures. This year, however, I also took video, which I’ve posted on YouTube. (I’ll eventually get the still pictures posted to flickr.) The video is in three parts:

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

After years of struggling to keep up with maintaining the WordPress software that I use to manage my virtualfarmboy blog, I have moved it to the commercial WordPress.com site.  Now they can manage the spam comments (by the hundreds each week), keep the software up to date, and all those other nasty things that come with running an online system.  You can still reach the site with the address virtualfarmboy.com, but the address in the browser bar will show the WordPress.com URL.  If you keep an RSS feed for this site, you may want to check that feed URL so that you get all the important updates from VFB.

In my previous post, I admitted to leaving the Beacon Place Homeowners Association meeting early (truthfully, before it began). Yesterday I received in the mail a letter saying that there was not a quorum, so there has to be another meeting in late April. I had submitted my proxy AND signed in at the meeting, so my attendance was counted toward the quorum, and you can’t blame me.

I made a good faith effort to attend my Homeowners Association Annual Meeting this evening. I signed in so that I would count as part of the quorum. But after an hour, and before the actual meeting began, I couldn’t take it any longer, and I left. As a “prelude” to the meeting, a representative from the city traffic department was present to hear comments about the possible re-opening of E.84th street, which has been closed for severalyears. I really couldn’t care less if it is opened, and I wish it would, because it would mean there would be an opening onto Chester Avenue westbound, which there is not now.

But I am clearly in the minority, and the group was subjected to the rants of several of my neighbors who obviously are very passionate about the issue. It was also quite clear that if I had stated my opinion I would have been shouted down, and God only knows what other future reprisals would have occurred. So I kept my mouth shut. There was no one running the meeting (the person ostensibly running the meeting was also running his mouth to the extent that others in the audience were unable to make comments or ask questions). The current City Councilwoman was present as well, and she was subjected to the abuse from the group.

This “pre-meeting” was supposed to begin at 7:00 but didn’t start until almost 7:30 (when the city traffic commissioner finally showed up). The actual Association meeting was supposed to begin at 7:30. At 8:15, the session was winding down, and I decided than an hour and a quarter of my time was enough for this fiasco. There was no promise that the actual homeowners association meeting was going to be any more productive, so I retreated to Starbucks and the safety of my iPod and Moleskine journal. I guess I just have less tolerance than I once did for these sorts of shenanigans. Let them just stay as far out of my life as possible.