Another Saturday, another UTR tennis event. My son is really enjoying playing in these. And we are having fun with them. They are well run. The parents haven't been crazy...so far. It's been nice and relaxing and it hasn't taken all day...yet. Tennis has become one of my son's passions and I'm glad for it. He enjoyed playing soccer, baseball and basketball. He really liked basketball. But tennis, he's passionate about. And it's been fun playing against him and watching him play.
I work in a town that still has a confederate statue standing in front of its county courthouse. It's an embarrassment. The reality is there are a lot of ignorant rednecks and racists who live in this county who protest angrily any time someone even suggests the statue come down. They threaten violence. The politicians often are cowed by their vitroil.
Here is an excellent article from the Kaufman Herald about this racist history of the statue. Ironic because even the Kaufman Herald has this soldier in their masthead.
http://www.kaufmanherald.com/around_town/article_7fffb15c-fc2a-11ea-acc0-b7518ddd1102.html
This year, the weather in Texas has been appropriate to the beginning of the Fall Season. It's cool and rainy. I find it so refreshing after a long hot summer. August is almost unbearable in Texas.
Unfortunately, one of my favorite traditions that marked the changing of the season is no more. Live From Here with Chris Thile always began in the fall. The show was a harbinger of cooler temps, leaves changing color then falling and shorter days. Due to the pandemic, Minnesota Public Radio could no longer afford to produce the show. So, the show was canceled. Jackson and I greatly enjoyed LFH and we even went to see the show when they traveled to Austin a few years ago. They even played one of my song requests and mentioned my name on the show in a memorable episode.
I am glad for Autumn. But I am a bit nostalgic for Live From Here helping usher in the season.
I'm embarrassed to say, as someone who likes to think of themselves as a jazz aficionado, that I did not discover Erroll Garner's Concert by the Sea until 2004...when I was in my thirties. An older gentleman, who was subbing at the high school where I was teaching at the time suggested it. I had vaguely heard of Erroll Garner but was not familiar with this album. I was shocked to find that it was a huge seller. Released in 1955 it had sold over a million copies by 1958.
The story behind this "accidental" masterpiece is a story in of itself. The concert was scheduled at the last minute and held in a concert hall in Carmel-By-The-Sea, California. It was not meant to be recorded for an album. It was recorded almost by accident. Garner's manager took the tape to Columbia Records who released it despite the sub-par recording quality.
Errol Garner's playing was so spectacular it made up for any sound engineering deficiencies. Modern technology has done a decent job of improving the sound. The bassist and drums now are clearer than ever. Garner's mastery of the piano is so great it sounds like three pianists playing, not one. It is an amazing album.
That's one of the things I love about music, regardless of genre. There's always greatness to be discovered. There's always amazing albums hiding, some in plain sight. I find this particularly true with my experience in jazz. I've been listening to jazz for over thirty years but I still "discover" brilliant stuff all the time. This year I "discovered" jazz guitarist Grant Green. How did I miss this guy? His Blue Note recordings are fantastic.
The same is true for genres of all kinds. I love finding "new" stuff from years ago.
I took the day off today to see how my kid's At-Home Learning was going. Due to the amount of Covid cases in our county we elected to have our kids start the school year with the Remote Learning option offered by our school district. As a teacher I had a first hand view of how chaotic the beginning of the school year was going to be. I wanted my son and daughter to avoid that chaos and start at home until hopefully the chaos would settle down.
The year did indeed start out chaotically and I'm glad we made this choice. Our school district did make it tough for people to choose at-home learning. If a student chose at-home learning they are prohibited from participating in athletics the rest of the year.
Fortunately my Mom and Mother-in-Law, both retired teachers, were willing to facilitate the online learning for our kids. They alternate days coming to our house to supervise their progress.
The year has settled into a rhythm and now we will soon have to decide if the kids return to campus for the second quarter or continue with virtual learning. Despite numerous class re-locations, a few quarantines and a few positive cases, for the most part the year has hit a groove. Of course, that could change in a minute. That's the mantra for the year: expect the unexpected.
My routine, much like how I tackled the beast of Ulysses, is to read about 4 pages a day. So that means I have at least 82 days to go. So that would be around November 23rd...just in time for Thanksgiving Break. And that's if I don't get off pace.
The prose of GR is dense. There's over 400 characters that come in and out of the narrative. There's numerous digressions that go down bewildering rabbit holes. I don't understand much of what I read. But I understand more of it than I did of Ulysses. And I am enjoying it more. I do find it fascinating at time. At other times...frustrating.
I like this new model: reading a notoriously long and difficult classic a little at a time. This allows me to read other books for enjoyment at the same time. I'm also currently reading Utopia Avenue, David Mitchell's newest book. I also started re-reading Love Wins by Rob Bell.
Reading a tough work a little at time helps me not to become overwhelmed and overly frustrated. When I'm in the middle of a particularly dense section I know that I don't have much to get through if I'm only reading four pages. If a passage is particularly enjoyable I can wander past the four page mark at my leisure.
I think I already have my next tough work in line after Gravity's Rainbow. I think I'm going to give Swann's Way by Proust a shot. I've read portions of Remembrance of Things Past but never done the deep dive of going all the way in. I have a copy of Swann's Way that I bought at the same library book sale where I procured GR. So that will be next.
Onward to November 23rd!
I like old tech. This Royal Typewriter was my grandfather's. I've now inherited two of his former typewriters. I'm displaying them in my classroom as decorations. My students want to know where the screens are. Also, they don't seem to have wires with which to plug into the wall.
