Mr. T is dead

No, not that one. Or this one. This one.

Yes, it was way back in August, but I just found out the other day. Dying in your sleep at age 89 is about as good as it gets…not quite as glorious as being shot by a jealous husband, but less painful.

I studied with Abe Torchinsky at the University of Michigan. I’d basically never had a private brass lesson before, and was playing things out of the von Trapp recorder method (!), which he found odd (because, well, it was). He must have heard something, or figured that since I was a composition major and only a euphonium minor, it was OK, but he had mercy on me and my pathetic preparation.

I still remember my first lesson. T’s studio was like Grand Central Station, people coming in and out all the time for any and every reason. Two guys came in and started discussing something, I don’t remember what, and T. abruptly said, “Oh, go f**k yourselves!” I started turning colors, and he apologized. “No, I’ve used worse than that; I just didn’t expect it from a professor.” and he said, “Hey, these guys are tuba players; it’s the only language they understand.” He later developed a shtik about my scraggly beard being the result of oral sex with a sticky chin, which was annoying, but I took it in stride. I kinda got him back a couple of years later, when his Berlioz orchestral excerpt book came out. He was reading his notes to the Grande Messe des morts, describing the practice of boiling down the various tuba pats into two parts, which ended, “I find this practice reprehensible.” I said, “‘Reprehensible?’ Gee, T, you must have thought all day to find that word. If it were any of us, you’d just say “It sucks.”"

Please do not misunderstand: Torchinsky was not a buffoon, and resented that the tuba was regarded in those terms. He was, in every way that really counted, a perfect gentleman. He helped me get my horn, he gave his students “Happy whatever” gifts (he being Jewish), including a copy of the Philly recording of the Hindemith brass sonatas with Glenn Gould (quite slow, at Gould’s insistance), he was kind and sensitive, and gave his students what they needed. In may case, what I needed was raw technique, so I got spun off to his graduate student John Griffiths (now sadly gone too), freeing him up to teach the minutiae of orchestral technique (Warren Deck, the hot grad student in my day, went on to get the NY Phil job.)

I ran into him again online in the mid-90s’, on some tuba-playing forum. He’s got a Facebook page here. Here’s a story of Abe giving a contrabass trombone to William Bell, who then sold it for almost nothing to Roger Bobo.

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Elizabeth Clare Prophet’s final revelation

She knows the truth now.

As a Christian, I should take no pleasure in this. As cults go, it was a pretty penny-ante operation, and people wouldn’t much care had they not been stockpiling GUNZ! OH NOES!!! They ended up losing the guns in exchange for getting their tax-exempt status back, which should bother me, I suppose, except that an organization that becomes a State Church deserves what it gets. I certainly don’t think they were wrong about TEOTWAWKI, but their timing was off. Like Moses, she won’t set foot in the Threatened Land.

Elizabeth Prophet, who died on October 15, is survived by three daughters and two sons, one of whom is spiritual leader of the Church Universal and Triumphant. For some years she had been suffering from dementia.

As the left asked about Reagan, for how long?

Do they make them this way anymore?

WARSAW, Poland – Marek Edelman, the last surviving leader of the ill-fated 1943 Warsaw ghetto revolt against the Nazis, died Friday at the age of 90.

Read it. This guy was a genuine hero and mensch, apparently every day of his long life.

RIP Linda Rawles

John Wesley, Rawles’ wife Linda (aka “the Memsahib”), has died after a long illness. I never met either of them, but Rawles is responsible for a fine post-TEOTWAWKI novel and for SurvivalBlog.

Please do not send cards or e-mails of condolence. Linda told me that she would much prefer that that you spend that time and effort in sharing the Gospel of Christ with those that are unsaved.

Fair enough, but this is my blog, and I do wish him all the strength the Holy Spirit can send in this rough time. And as for that other request…if Christ can forgive me after 25 years of Wicca, when I knew better, He can forgive you.

YIPPEEEEE!!!!!

That was my response when my wife told me the news. No, I’m not either going to Hell. Why not celebrate the kindness of death to a suffering Christian?

I believe in a God who can forgive all sin…drunkenness, manslaughter, advocacy of covetousness and baby-killing, theft. And by all public appearances, Edward Kennedy believed in that same God, so we must assume he has his place in Heaven. As the prey of the “Lion of the Senate” (thanks, Rush!), I might have an unholy personal desire to see Teddy burn in Hell, but I can forgive.  I believe that, when the aeons roll on and Teddy finally leaves Purgatory, he’ll be greeted at the Pearly Gates by Mary Jo Kopechne. To watch that encounter would almost be worth the price of admission.

And for all those who might find this snark a little tepid, Beck delivers a proper eulogy.

UPDATE:  Memories of Teddy in his prime.

RIP Mike Seeger

I’ve been downloading New Lost City Ramblers tracks to my iPod (most recently, yesterday), and now I see that founding member Mike Seeger is dead at age 75. I always thought he was a better musician (and certainly less of a Marxist blowhard) than his half-brother Pete (maybe from having Ruth Crawford as his mom).

Shall we join in a chorus of Dock Boggs’ “O Death”?

RIP Tessa Bonner

…soprano with the Tallis Scholars (etc.), Dec. 31, of oral cancer.Words fail me.

Hat tip: Jeffrey Tucker at New Liturgical Movement.