Good sectional

I am in the lobby of The Brattleboro Music Center waiting for Ellen while she is in her alto sectional  rehearsal.  The basses had a good rehearsal. We worked on the fourth movement of Howell’s Requiem  and The sixth movement of J. S. Bach’s Jesu Meine Freude. 

The BMC lobby

After existing for decades in a rather shabby building that the BMC rented from the local Catholic Church (shabby but sort of cozy and familiar), the BMC carried out a capital campaign and remodeled a retired school building, adding an auditorium, and creating a marvelous space for the School of Music and the various performing groups under the umbrella of the BMC, of which we are one. It is an amazing facility for a town of 15,000.

Back at the pool!

I let my pool membership expire last Christmas. For various reasons I did not renew it until today. It felt really good to get back on the exercise machines and into the hot tub especially. I got a three month membership which will bring us up to May 30 just before we go on our trip west. So that works out really well.

Tomorrow we have a Brattleboro concert choir sectional rehearsal with the basses at 2 PM and the altos at 3 PM. We are very much enjoying the repertoire we are singing this session.

New phone

I just installed a new iPhone -  an apple 6s. It will be our main phone; our old phone will be a backup.    The set-up process was stressful. I hope we’ll be happy!

I did the iPhone installation at the Dummerston church where there is a phone I could use to contact Consumer Cellular. They are getting ready for Deacon’s Dinner Saturday night. Sunday night we’ll have my birthday supper party in the same space!

Church diningroom

Aha! The old phone wouldn’t let me upload photos to Blogger but this one does!

Library time, etc.

We made two trips to Amherst this past weekend. Saturday, Ellen had a lunch date with Wallace at the Haymarket Restaurant in Northhampton and I tagged along and she dropped me  in Amherst near the Amherst College Library. I had about six hours altogether, and it went by very quickly. I had two "topics" I was exploring. One was commentary on Gospel of John, chapter 4 - the story of Jesus and the Samaritan woman at the well. This was because I am participating in  a pulpit exchange within the Windham - Union Association on March 15th, and I will be preaching in West Dover, VT, and I want to have the option of preaching on the Gospel lectionary reading for that Sunday, which is John 4. My library used to have several commentaries on John, but no more - downsizing has eliminated them. I have reduced my holdings to concentrate on Luke, which was the subject of my doctoral dissertation. So I needed to find commentaries on John at the Amherst College Library, which I did, and photograph the appropriate pages, which I also did (although the one commentary I wanted to see specifically - by Raymond Brown - was also (oddly) missing from the shelves at Amherst. But  I found three-four others. My second topic was "anti-semitism." I have been doing a lot of  thinking and reading on this topic lately. (also a spin-off from my dissertation), and I wanted to see what was there. There was more than I could begin to absorb.

Yesterday, we went to a performance of Mozart's The Magic Flute in Bowker auditorium  at U-Mass - put on by U-Mass Opera. Mostly student performers. We enjoyed it a lot - more on that later.

Frost Library at Amherst College

Just a small portion of the books on anti-semitism in the stacks

Snow

Our River Singers rehearsal has been canceled due to snow. So we have an expected evening at home. Earlier today I went to a meeting of retired clergy in exactly the same place that we would've had our rehearsal tonight - the Westminster-West Church. It was already snowing a little bit, but not enough to keep us from having the meeting. Five of us came. One of our topics of discussion was the phenomenon of anti-Semitism. I was the one who had suggested this topic, which grows out of the work that I've been doing on my doctoral dissertation. We shared our various relationships with the religion of Judaism. This group enjoys being together and we had a good discussion.

 

A visit with Mary in Manchester, VT

Friday, Valentine's Day, we drove to Manchester, VT, to have lunch with Mary Anderson, whom we had not visited with for several months. In the meantime she had visited her daughter, Erica, and her  family, in Capetown, S.A., where Erica manages a large lab devoted to biomedical research. So there was a lot to catch up on. We had lunch at Seasons Restaurant,  which proved to be quite nice, and they did not object when we sat and talked until after 3:30p.m.! We always have a rich conversation, over a wide range of topics and issues, because we share many interests as well as our mutual love for Mary's late husband, John Nissen, who was a large presence in my life, and whom Ellen got to know before he died about 6-7 years ago.

Seasons Restaurant in Manchester, VT

My friend, John Nissen

Metanoia of Vermont

Saturday, we went with John and Cynthia to visit Metanoia Farm, a spiritual retreat where Mark and Lisa Kutolowski are living a life that integrates contemplation with an intimate relationship with nature.  We wanted to see for ourselves what that kind of life looked like. Mark had visited the Guilford church a few months ago at the invitation of the Centering Prayer group, and we learned that Mark and John had met years ago at the Weston Priory. The life they are seeking to live is attractive in many ways. It is based on a Benedictine model of prayer and work, with the special dimension of a relationship with the natural world. Mark and Lisa are living in a yurt, and that is where we spent most of our time. However, when we arrived, we got a quick tour of what they are building. First, a barn which will house a large brick bread oven, and living quarters. Then an old farm house they are remodeling and where they have created an insulated room which functions as an office and guest room. ( I would post photos, but I was getting around with boots, ice grippers and ski poles, which made holding a camera and taking pictures virtually impossible. Sorry! I've included some from their website).

The yurt is on a knoll with a wonderful view,  and is kept cozy by a woodstove. There is no electricity or running water. They carry in water from a nearby spring. There is an outhouse a short distance from the yurt, and candles are used for light. They cook on the woodstove. We talked for a long time, then had a half-hour vesper service, mostly silence but including Taizè chants also. Then we had a lovely supper of soups and breads that we both contributed to. It was a lovely visit, and we learned a lot. Their vision is of creating a welcoming space where others can explore both the contemplative life and the intimacy with nature. Lisa is pregnant, due in May, so their life will change dramatically soon. They plan to continue to live in the yurt.  Their life is simple, but is supported by income from work they do for Kairos Earth which conducts nature pilgrimages. Mark still does some work as a wilderness guide. In the future, the bakery will be a source of some income. They have an open, exploratory, flexible attitude toward all they are doing. A lovely couple and an attractive life that incorporates many values we affirm and admire. It helps to be young, however!

Visit their website Metanoia of Vermont for more information.

Lisa Kutolowski

Mark Kutolowski

The original farm, now being transformed into a retreat center

Parasite

The Korean movie, Parasite,  that won four Oscars, was at the Latchis theater this past week and we saw it Thursday night. It is quite a movie. I have never seen anything quite like it.  It has some pretty bloody scenes in it, but overall, it is a multi-layered, funny, touching, intriguing, scathing movie!

A family in Parasite

Massachusetts family

Yesterday, after church, we came home, worked on the Spelling Bee puzzle (a hard one! E + xvpitl) and then went to Northampton to hear Max Feinland in an a cappella group, part of a big event involving maybe 50 young people ages 8-17, singers, musicians, composers,  dancers, many performing their own work. Not something that would have happened when I was that age. It was sort of talent show - that isn't new - but in my youth we were not encouraged to think of ourselves as amateur composers. We got there late and got seats where we could hear but not see. But when Max went up, I stood up. His group was good. It is sort of a wanna-bee Northamptones group - that being the elite high school a cappella group, very hard to get into. They could give them a run for their money!

We saw the Feinland family afterward, briefly (sans Ben).

Max's group (Max is third from right). It has a name but I forget what it is.

Max coming off the stage

After that we went to Katie and Savanna's to watch the Oscars. South Korea's Parasite won big - which I think surprised everyone. We'll see if it comes to Brattleboro.

Weather!

Weather has been the name of the game this week. We had been looking forward to a visit from Jim and Joy Harris this weekend. Jim is Shirley's nephew - her brother Ladd's son. Joy is his wife. They live in Cherry Hill, NJ, and Jim is a retired Assistant District Attorney for the State of New Jersey. However, he still goes out and makes educational presentations at meetings of aspiring state attorneys general. He was doing one of those in Concord, NH on Thursday and Friday, and they were going to swing by on Friday afternoon for supper and overnight. However, the forecast was for snow, sleet and freezing rain for Friday, and it was looking iffy. Then Jim called and said that Joy had gotten sick and was confined to the motel room, so that iced it. We'll hope to see them another time.

The weather kept us grounded Thursday and Friday We enjoyed a quiet time at home! I installed a lamp down by the chair next to the woodstove.

The storm had one causualty - our TV. We lost service during  the storm  and when I tried to rescan  the channels, I got nothing. No TV for the time being anyway.

We had a lovely evening with Kathy Leo and Tom Goldschmd on Monday. They came over for supper - a very nice time indeed. Such lovely people! And we had a good concert choir rehearsal Wednesday. That's been it! A chance to read and putter!

Good choir!

The choir sang Children of the Heavenly Father this morning in church, and they sounded good! It turned out to be a challenging piece of music. I had arranged it back in the late 1980's for the Guilford Church choir, and had not used it since, so it was a kind of resurrection. It involves close harmony in four parts for both women and men, and the choir was not accustomed to that. But they worked hard at it, and we had a great turnout  this morning - 15 in all, I think, counting Mary Westbrook-Geha and myself, which is really good. John recorded it from his pew and it sounds great.

Now we are at Katie & Savanna's to watch the SuperBowl. We've had great snacks! I have no oar in this game but I favor Kansas City because I consider them the underdog because they haven't been in the SuperBowl since 1970. And now they are winning, 31-20. I went to Kansas City back in 1974 and had contact with Jan Stenerud, who was an outstanding kicker for the KC Chiefs.  I was there for a a workshop with Richard Bolles, author of What Color Is Your Parachute. It was a workshop in Career/Life Planning. We were sent out to prove to ourselves we could make contacts in a strange place based on common interests. I shared an interest with Jan Stenerud in cross-country skiing. Back then I did a lot of cross-country skiing. Jan Stenerud had some connection with the only cross-country ski shop in Kansas City. I went there but Jan was out on the football field. The staff at the store gave me his number! I don't think I ever talked to him, but I could have. So I guess I proved the point. All of this was part of Bolles' philosophy of networking in search of a job. If I had actually met Jan Stenerud, my ace-in-the-hole would have been that I knew Bill Koch. Bill was already a well-known X-country skier in 1974 and went on to  win the silver medal in X-C at the 1976 Winter Olympics, the first American to medal in that sport. His mother, Nancy Ragle, was very active in the Guilford Church, which is why I knew him.

Jan Stenerud

Bill Koch

The SuperBowl game at K&S's