Obituary

Here.

Mom

Her nurse called at 7 am and informed me that she had taken a turn for the worse. So Patty (a dear friend and caregiver) and I went down and spent the last couple hours with her.  She was semi conscious but knew we were there.  She  had terrible labored breathing, and all of a sudden she smiled and opened one eye  and then gradually and peacefully her breathing got shallower and shallower until finally she closed her eyes and opened her mouth as if to make good that no one would see her silent with closed lips, unable to spread cheer and good will to her fellow men.  As for her wishes I have made cremation arrangements, there will be no funeral or viewing.  Our immediate family will get together at the first opportunity to pray for he eternal rest and celebrate her life with a champagne toast
as she had asked.  Thank you all for your prayers but it was God’s will as he needs her more then we do and that need must be great indeed.  any memorials if desired should be given to your favorite  charity in her name. She won’t know and I don’t want to know.  Peace be with us all…….Jim

I was glad to make it up Weds-Thurs. to say goodbye. It looked like she was on the mend, and I needed to cover for Stephen (he would have covered if there’d been the need, but we didn’t see the need.) Otherwise, I’m not sure where I’m at. I’ve got 2 grandgirls sowing chaos (and requiring almost $200 in sporting goods for their new league softball adventure). Mom and I were never particularly close; she really tried to be a good mom, but she had family baggage of her own (“My dad took one look at me and ran away.”). So I’m not missing her yet. I’m more worried about my Dad. It seems to me that the best thing I could do is to go outside and make something live, it being the season for that.

Uncle Milty’s gone

Milton Babbitt, American composer, has died, aged 94. In spite of his rigorously intellectual approach to his compositional craft, I’ve never heard a piece by Babbitt that was not at core profoundly musical. Stylistically, it might not have been my cuppa, but his pieces always worked. And he was by all accounts a true gentleman, as witness this account by Jeff Harrington, a fine composer and gentleman himself:

He was genuinely the nicest person I met at Juilliard and both he and I being from Mississippi helped us bond. When I ran out of money and had to drop out, he was the only member of the composition department that seemed to give a shit. During a Master’s panel for the end of term, David Diamond attacked my conducting skills, in the most un-warranted fashion and would just not let up. Mr. Babbitt very calmly cleared his throat and then asked me in the most serious manner, “Jeff, having lived in Louisiana, what’s the secret to a good Jambalaya?” I almost cracked up from the relief of the situation and calmly replied, “It’s all about the Roux… it has to be burnt a bit.” David Diamond became red with rage and sat down furious.

RIP Jocelyn Chang

I just got a call from Dennis Lang (tenor at St. James, voice teacher at the Music Settlement) saying that Cleveland harpist Jocelyn Chang had died today, apparently of a stroke. She’d been having health issues (lung cancer, for the past 2 years). I’ve been out of the loop; the last time I saw Jocelyn was last April when I coached her student Kellen Lowrie in Angel weep me home, the piece I’d written for her as part of the Cleveland Composer Guild Junior Project. She looked fine then.

I met Jocelyn in grad school at Cleveland State. She was a member of the Cleveland Chamber Symphony (along with her bud, violist Patricia Noonan, another friend) and she was totally dedicated to new music. She was also a proponent of the Dilling Harp, which is a single-action harp in Eb with levers on the top functioning as the pedals would, invented by Mildred Dilling and made by Arsalaan Fay. It lacks an octave on either end, which makes it much more managable for a small person like Jocelyn. I wrote a short piece for this (two actually, though she never played the other, possibly because it wasn’t very good), and when she went to Europe to promote the instrument, she played it in Bucharest and Sofia… still, 15 years later, my only European performances. Jocelyn became “my voice of the harp”. Besides that, I wrote the accompaniment of my setting of Annabel Lee for her. The Great Hunger was written for the Coryton ensemble (harpist Xiao-Lei Salovara), but Jocelyn and her partner Michael Leese played it. I’d been considering a work for guitar and harp; if it gets written, I won’t be writing it for Dilling harp.

Jocelyn somehow managed to be perfectly down-to-earth and still somewhat reserved. She was an easy person to hang with. Chang was our entree into Chinese culture; her degree recital (done years after she’d done the rest of the work) was concluded with various Chinese pastries. She and Michael performed on one of Fred Lautzenheiser’s new liturgical music concerts, and afterwards we all went to Bo Loong, where she ordered various specialties for the table, including a whole fried chicken (and I ate the crispy head).

There are harpists who could outplay Jocelyn in terms of raw technique. But what made her special was that, as an interpreter, she had a composer’s mind, though as far as I know she had never composed herself. She was extremely conscientious, and knew instinctively what I was after, and what questions to ask when she wasn’t sure. Given that her playing was fit for Heaven, I hope she ends up there. Pray for her soul.

UPDATE: She’d had a series of strokes, and spent her last several days in a hospice. When she became too sick to teach, she started calling in to the Settlement saying she had the flu…which worked for 2 or 3 weeks. She lost her dad in April, she’s been taking care of her mom… and I worry about Michael, given that they probably weren’t gigging much recently, and that’s what kept a roof over their heads.

UPDATE 11/24: Obituary by Don Rosenberg.

UPDATE 11/30: ClevelandClassical.com obit here.
I saw Michael at a sort of memorial dinner a bunch of us had at Bo Loong Sunday night, and he seems to be holding up pretty well, considering.

Isaac Bonewits, 1949-2010

I knew Isaac somewhat in the 1980s, through attendance at Starwood and other pagan festivals, around the time he was starting ADF, before (and slightly after) the encounter with tainted tryptophan that demolished his health. Yes, in those days he had some of the arrogance of the intellectual, and a wicked sense of humor. A friend of mine and he once reportedly danced through a Seax Wicca encampment chanting “Saxons eat shit” in Gaelic, enticing many of the Seax (a Saxon magic revivalist group) to join in the chant.

As a holder of a degree in Magic and Thamaturgy (signed by Ronald Reagan no less), he drew a certain amount of flak. He was, per tract author Jack Chick, the personal “enforcer” of Gavin Frost, “the Pope of Wicca”.  I don’t know what is funnier: the notion that such an irredeemably culturally-Protestant religion could have a Pope (esp. Frost, who has always been controversial within the Craft), or that the dweeby-looking ectomorph Isaac could enforce anything, let alone do so for one as different in outlook as Frost. His Real Magic is still one of the better books on magical theory.

He died about 8 AM Thursday at age 61 of cancer. We cannot know the destination of his soul, but the prognosis is not good. Please pray for him.

They’re crying in the nursery…

Some poor soul offed himself (bloodying up a nice Mustang in the process), and the Record-Courier became such a battleground between people making sick jokes about it, and folks with namby-pamby moralizing, that they evidently closed comments before I encountered it.

Well, screw you, R-C; I have a blog!

It’s not “judging” to state that Christopher Poland committed a mortal sin. He stole a life that belonged to his family and to God. I would be judging and presuming to know the mind of God to speculate on where he is now. I don’t know why he did it, but I’ve had a spouse drive me to that direction, and “There but for the grace of God…”

Should they have printed the picture? I don’t know; it’s off now. It was in unnecessarily bad taste. But you know, when somebody offs themselves in public in a spectacular way, there’s no reasonable expectation of privacy.

Oh, and whiteninjatiger?

what is life a world of misfortunes of ignorance, hatred, unfair treatment to others of race or creed or perhaps impartial treatment to others. …Our world is in deep trouble let alone our country and OUR Government does absolutely nothing for US only for them. Think about that on this Memorial day and thank the Veterans for giving us the *right* to voice our thoughts.

With all due respect, veterans didn’t give me shit (well, one veteran gave me a birthday cake today, but she isn’t currently in the employ of the government). I had the right to voice my thoughts the minute I left the womb (if not before), along with the rest of my rights. Veterans have sometimes protected those rights (when not protecting the privileges of government and multinational corporations), for which I am duly thankful.

Susine-American dies of old age

Daryl Gates, the guy who invented the SWAT team and D.A.R.E., and was the head officer on duty (or not) during the Rodney King unpleasantness, has disincarnated. Present whereabouts are unknown, but if he wishes to continue his earthly career, he has to go where the bad guys are.

H/T: Claire

UPDATE: he was a bigger douche than I ever thought possible, with a penchant for spying:

He asked me, in the crude language of cops, if I liked women with red hair and large bosoms. Sure, I said, what guy doesn’t?

What in the world, I thought, prompted that question?

Immediately, Gates began recounting to me a blind date I had been on a few nights before, down to the details of what we ordered at LA Nicola on Sunset near East Hollywood. He even critiqued the champagne I shared with the woman who has been my wife now for almost 28 years.

Large swaths of Polish government die in plane crash

I’ll shut my anarchist face for a moment and say: this is tragic. As politicians go, Kaczinski seemed like a good guy, and it’s always sad when 97 people die early and violently. It would even be tragic if it were the same positions in the US. So pray for these guys, please.

Joseph Andrew Stack 1956-2010

Tactically, I think this was unwise. I don’t think I can call it immoral, though; he carefully targeted combatants. He gives his reasons here. He comes across as idealistic, a bit naive, the sort of model citizen who actually trusted his government, and got his heart broken by it. Somehow, all I can think of is Russell Casse, the crop duster dude in Independence Day. But alas, he didn’t blow up the ship, and the aliens will be pissed.

Of course,at Ace they’re doing the “tut tut, this will harm the Republican brand” lamentation, though Stack doesn’t come off as a Republican in his writing. Yes, I know, to the MSM any attacker who is not Moslem is a terrorist, and this can and will be used against the freedom movement. But maybe it’s time to separate sheep from goats, especially from the Judas goats. Say what you will about Joe Stack, he had more balls and more commitment than any of the pseudonyms posting at AoSHq.

UPDATE: NazionalVolksWelle says that the Fibbies closed down Stack’s website…which is remarkably stupid, given that it’s all over the freaking Net by now, and merely makes them look bad (and saves Stack’s ISP from being swamped). They managed to quote the emotive language and none of the argument, such as it was, all to preserve the narrative: “lone nut, not a terrorist”

I differ. This is not the writing of a wackjob. This is the writing of somebody who is incapable of integrating concepts as principles, which is not the same thing. If that’s wack, then so is the Chattering Class and the majority of the American people. He comes off, mostly for the worse, as an Average Joe who has been done wrong…why may be why the FBI wanted that post off, and why both political wings will try to make the mud stick.

Beck points to Shannon Love’s writings on this, in comments and on her blog. It’s given me much food for thought.  Certainly narcissism fits the bill better than heroism, especially considering the shameful way he treated his family. This was no Battle of Sipsey Street, for sure.

OK, he was a narcissist…so let’s make this All About Me. John Brown was an asshole, too, and I’m sure our forefathers in 1859 had the same prickle at the back of their hair, the same feeling of “shit’s gonna come down.” This is a warmup act for far worse to come, and I’ve been in a state of subclinical freakout all afternoon. The problem with taking everything is that those with nothing to lose are inherently dangerous, and that’s the case even when they lose all through their own self-absorbtion. It’s weird…wanting all hell to break loose just to end the uncertainty, and at the same time knowing that hell is, indeed, Hell. It was a great country and a good life, but it’s not for much longer. What good and what peace can we cling to, when evil is institutionalized by our fellow citizens?

UPDATE: Evidently this act resonated with quite a few citizens. Instead of the press wringing their hands about how many nutjobs there are out there, maybe they should ask why the IRS has made themselves so odious that an attack on their low-level paper-pushers is seen as heroic. “If you don’t want civil disturbances, quit disturbing us!” (Mama Liberty)

UPDATE 2/23: Evidently Joe had a point about the tax code.

John Murtha moves to underground bunker; women, poor hardest hit

Assuming (possibly erroneously) that the Murthafucka was a Christian man, he is better off. As are we.