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EDWARD JACOBS

Author: Ed Jacobs

  • Tuesday, October 20, 2020

    A.Word.A.Day
    with Anu Garg

    trumpery 

    PRONUNCIATION: (TRUHM-puh-ree) 

    MEANING:
    noun:
    1. Something showy but worthless.
    2. Nonsense or rubbish.
    3. Deceit; fraud; trickery. 

    ETYMOLOGY:
    From French tromper (to deceive). Earliest documented use: 1481. 

    USAGE:
    “The room was crowded with a chilly miscellany of knick-knacks and ornaments, gewgaws, and trumpery of every kind.”
    Leo Bruce; Case for Three Detectives; Academy Chicago; 1980.

    “History, made up as it is of so much trumpery, treachery, and tyranny, needs deeds of valor, of sacrifice, and of heroism if it is to be palatable.”
    The Medal of Honor: A History of Service Above and Beyond; Zenith Press; 2014. 

    See more usage examples of trumpery in Vocabulary.com’s dictionary. 

  • Sunday, October 18, 2020

    Yesterday was a pleasant day away from the news, a welcome break.

    Pattie and I wanted to retrieve our scuba gear from where we’d left it stowed in Surf City. We’re still hoping against hope that a trip to Bonaire in December will actually happen, and that’s really a trip that’s all about diving, so we’ll need the gear. I’m also hoping to take a dry-suit class (cold-water diving) in November, as well, so another reason to have the gear on hand in G’ville.

    The vet had given us some medicine to help Frankie with car sickness, and we think she’s at an appropriate weight finally, so we gave that a shot. So very happy to say that she didn’t get sick, and also wasn’t really lethargic from the med, either. So that’s a win.

    The drive to SC was pleasant, no traffic, no hassles. We took a quick break for Frankie to take care of business, visiting a little park in Kinston which we’ve meant to explore for a while now. The Kinston Music Park is a very nicely realized tribute & space (including a stage) dedicated to the very rich history of musicians in the area, and we thoroughly enjoyed walking, reading, viewing the images (some great work in glass!), and enjoying the space.

    When we arrived in Surf City, we were seen pulling in by the contractor who’s coordinating much of the work to be done on our place (floors and sliding door replacement post-Isaias water incursion) and the deck replacement. So he came over to give us an update, touch base, etc.

    Turns out he was down with Covid-19 for 3+ weeks…thankfully not hospitalized, and now fully recovered. But it sounds like late August-September was really a lost month for him, followed by a few weeks of trying to get his energy back.

    The insurance company is really very effective at fighting claims, stalling payment, etc., so after the hurricane of a early August, the contractor’s now at a point of seeing funds….in about a month. The deck is probably on a similar schedule, so the bottom line is that we’re looking forward to being back in there at some point in January.

    The beach-side exterior, decks completely gone…

    Past trips to SC have left us a bit down, to be honest. But Pattie enjoyed a nice walk with Frankie while I got the gear and talked with Steve, the contractor, and the day was just so beautiful.

    Once packed up, we stopped at a brewery that popped up about a year ago, but which we’d never tried. All were masked and distanced, and we enjoyed a nice break–as did Frankie.

    Frankie’s first visit to the Salty Turtle Beer Co.

    An easy trip home, a stop to VOTE (in and out in 10 minutes!), get flu shots, and a nice, productive day in the books.

  • Saturday, October 17, 2020

    Never said better than this.

    And this article by David Brooks so deeply disturbing, and so very important to read.

  • Friday, October 16, 2020

    What a turd.

    Something to offset the despicable superspreader

  • Thursday, October 15, 2020

    apoc·​a·​lypse | \ ə-ˈpä-kə-ˌlips  \plural apocalypses

    Apocalypse comes from Greek apokálypsis “uncovering,” a derivative of the verb apokalýptein “to take the cover off,” a compound whose first element is the preposition and prefix apó, apo- “off, away.”
    The second part of apokalýptein is the simple verb kalýptein “to cover, hide.” 
    The variant root kol- becomes hal- in Germanic, and the derivative noun haljō, literally “hidden place,” is the source of Old Norse Hel, goddess of the underworld, and English hell (the bad place).
    The earliest recorded meaning of apocalypse (in Old English) was in reference to the name of the last book in the New Testament, also called Revelation. It recounts several prophetic visions of upheaval and destruction culminating in the Second Coming of Christ. In Middle English, apocalypse was extended to mean “any revelation or disclosure.” However, the meaning “any disaster or cataclysm” was not recorded until the late 19th century.

    _________________________

    Early voting here in NC begins today; we decided a few weeks ago that we’d vote in person, rather than by mail.

    Then there’s this presence in our town in a few hours.

    So much has been uncovered; so much apocalyptic about the past four years. Just not sure what more of a revelation we can endure, what more can be disclosed. We will either rebuild, or not likely live through the coming of cataclysmic events which will turn our society into whatever survives civil unrest not seen here in 50 years.

  • Tuesday, October 13, 2020

    dinner time
    A nice evening to sit by the firepit
    Ready for halloween!

    This has been a wonderful visit, with lots of time spent with Jackson (and his parents), and some productive time helping out with some home repair matters. What a joy. The only thing missing was Pattie and Frankie, and hopefully we’ll all visit next month, as Joe, Cristin, and Jackson make their way south to visit Greg and Kathy in Florida.

    Today, driving back home, and looking forward to seeing my loves there before the night arrives.

  • Saturday, October 10, 2020

    Drove up to Scarsdale yesterday, a few days of watching Jackson while his folks attend to some social obligations. [We’re all disappointed that Frankie’s really not doing well in the car-ride department, with quite regular car-sickness. I think we’ll really have to start over from scratch on that; training her to just like getting into the car, etc., as now she runs away from the car. Perhaps when she gets a bit more weight on her, it’ll be ok to use some medication to ease the ride, but right now she’s still a little nothing (8 lbs). So, Pattie stayed in NC with Frankie, and it’s a solo weekend for each of us.]

    Can’t bear to sully the wonderful mood of spending the evening with Jackson by even bringing up the absurdity of political matters. Instead, just some video from a few moments of Jackson:

  • Thursday, October 8, 2020

    Yesterday’s main event was selling the Honda (to finance the Triumph). The Honda, which Pattie and Tim found/got me in Jan, 2019 as a starter bike, was an absolutely perfect starter bike. On that bike, I put on about 2000 miles, and gained a ton of confidence in riding, putting everything learned in the rider safety course I took Dec., 2018 into practice. The bike’s been up for sale for about a month, since i got the Triumph on Sept. 6. And I’m happy to have made $600 on the sale of the Honda.

    The woman who bought it came up from Wilmington, and I enjoyed getting to know her a bit over the few hours she was here–test-driving, getting $, notarizing title, loading bike onto a trailer, etc. She was a recent UNC-Wilmington grad (Master’s in Internat’l Studies) who’s heading into the military to pursue intelligence work. She is someone whom, it was very clear in just a few moments, is capable of anything. Pattie and I both found her remarkably impressive, in many ways. Sociable, affable, and capable of taking on any sort of challenge. I expected a few minutes worth of transaction but, in fact, spent about 3 hours on this. And we enjoyed the day, which became a very pleasant distraction from other things.

    _________________________

    The past days have been focused on two tracks: house-jobs, and constant reading and re-reading of the A.E. Housman poem.

    The house-work has gone well, with our deck now two-coat stained, a new sliding door installed to replace the rotting French doors, a doggy door ready to install one window darkening film is installed this evening.

    The Housman poem, from A Shropshire Lad, I’m readying to set–

    When I watch the living meet,
    And the moving pageant file
    Warm and breathing through the street
    Where I lodge a little while,

    If the heats of hate and lust
    In the house of flesh are strong,
    Let me mind the house of dust
    Where my sojourn shall be long.

    In the nation that is not
    Nothing stands that stood before;
    There revenges are forgot,
    And the hater hates no more;

    Lovers lying two and two
    Ask not whom they sleep beside,
    And the bridegroom all night through
    Never turns him to the bride.

    has led me to wonder about the perspective that comes from depression and/or feeling the threats of the heats of hate and lust. Even a quick reading of his biographical sketch reveals some of what’s behind Houseman’s expressions.

    At this point I have a fundamental harmony which I’ll tease apart for this brief song, and I think there may be ways to fragment/segment this harmony to find both melodic lines, accompanimental harmonies, and sounds to associate with now/life and forever/after-life. Although I’m writing for a faculty colleague with great range and virtuosity, his commission specifically asks for this to be suitable for student singers. So I suspect this will bring a contrast of pitch-complexity in the piano, and pitch-simplicity in the relatively easy lyricism of the vocal line.

    Off to stop speculating, and get to writing…

  • Tuesday, October 6, 2020

    The little anatomy student:

    And that little boy has far more going for him than the combined intelligence in the White House right now. This 4-year nightmare continues, worsening every day in ways far exceeding the worst we imagined a few years ago. Just astounding. As the conservative NYTimes columnist Bret Stephens wrote, “my prevailing feeling is that I’m so sick of it. Sick of living in Donald Trump’s Clownverse, or Dramaverse, or Bullyverse, or I-Can’t-Believe-This-Guy-Is-Actually-the-President-verse.”

    So I try to steep in the distraction of tending to a puppy. It often works.

    _________________________

    Welcomed a guest to our Composers Colloquium last Friday, as i’ve invited a series of guests to speak to our students over this semester. Perhaps one ‘benefit’ of this remoteness is taking advantage of the normalcy of accessing people via video, and bringing in voices from all over.

    I’ve prompted these guests to speak–in whatever ways seem appropriate to them–about what it means to be ‘relevant’ artistically in the current climate. Is what we do in pursuing artistic expression valuable, selfish, obliged to address certain ideas, obliged to entertain and distract, all of the above, something else, etc…?

    This particular voice was interesting in ways different than other guests. He took the tack that there’s nothing genuinely “new” (hard to argue with), as everything/everyone is a synthesis of experiences and exposures. So he went on to talk about the value of polystylism, i.e, taking advantage of the many influences and styles around us and incorporating those ideas into our work. The most entertaining part of his talk involved a nice playlist of contemporary examples of work from the ‘art-music’ work which draws on musics from other genres.

    Really, in so many ways, there was nothing new in this idea. Composers and other artists have borrowed, alluded to, quoted, reinterpreted, etc., ideas and influences from other composers for millennia. History books talk about this as a thread of development in every era of music’s history. This is, quite literally, a topic of study in every academic music class (history, theory, etc.).

    What made this so interesting to me was that our students were so drawn to this because it was the music of their own time being adapted. That is, simply because it was their popular music being “valued” through allusion, quotation, etc., it made sense to them. Is this just a case of each generation thinking their popular music is ‘the best’? Or are we seeing a generation of students who, like the broader world around us, just doesn’t recognize value in the study of ‘experts’; they only value what they experience themselves.

    Those who don’t learn from history, or from experts…

    The presentation itself was a good one; clear, interesting, and entertaining. But not tying its point to a long and well-worn practice was, well, disappointing. I’ve not spoken with my colleagues about this, though did send a thank-you note (cc’d to my colleagues) that noted the long tradition, and also the wonderful way in which this particular presentation connected with our students. Perhaps he just didn’t have enough time to make this point; perhaps the students’ reactions are just a snapshot of a moment in their development, not yet seeing the historical perspective; or perhaps it’s something else.

    When the presentation was over, i felt very unsettled, and also very old. I felt obsolete, actually, and was aware of a very strong urge to walk away from this work.

  • Monday, October 5, 2020

    As challenging as the week just past has been in our larger world, it’s been more positive and interesting in my local sphere.

    I received some incredible responses to “momentum,” and how that idea is manifest if different areas of peoples’ lives. There’s so much wonderful to digest and process, and I thank you for sharing your ideas. I’ve a file building now, with comments properly credited to you, and imagine this a longer-term project. That includes posting your ideas in the future, as that digestion takes place…

    Last week brought a wonderful meeting with John Dixon, a colleague in ECU’s School of Theatre and Dance. John has a project in mind.

    –John and Teal Darkenwald worked with The Machine Is Neither on a collaboration-commission I put together as part of NewMusic Initiative a few years ago. (Bandcamp release; Youtube of the 2nd performance [less impressive space that the main dance stage, fewer performers, but still interesting]). That was a great project, teaching all of us alot, stretching all of us alot, and very gratifying all along the way.–

    The project on John’s mind is motivated by much of our current world, including the many ways in we’ve all lost parts of our lives or, indeed, lives close to us, livelihoods, ways of life, modes of living; and also by the passing of his mother last spring. He has in mind something in the nature of a requiem. Not necessarily with that title, not necessarily with the traditional text (if any text at all), but of that spirit.

    We had an exciting and stimulating conversation on Thursday morning, and I think we both left with good energy to move forward. Lots to consider in this, something that would be released from an enclosed performance space, from an audience-performer separation, perhaps involving trained singers, certainly involving dancers’ voices; perhaps involving instrumentalists, but more likely small instruments like bells, shakers, etc., and perhaps pre-recorded sound using bluetooth speakers strapped on dancers, perhaps using phones to trigger sound…so much to consider both conceptually and, in time, logistically and technically.

    I’m thrilled about working with John and dancers again, and am deeply excited by this particular concept. I do need to get another project out of the way first, a relatively small one (a single song). Now that the biggest time-user of the fall (1st semester music theory) is over, I look forward to digging into that now (started this past weekend, actually).

    To end with more sugar:

    ready to roll!