Well, It Finally Happened.

Turn up your radio

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Turn up your radio
And let me hear the song

On Thursday, July 16, I went out for a 10a grocery pick up at Walmart. I also needed to pick up some meds waiting for me. I left Mom sitting at the kitchen table: fed, caffeinated, medicated and listening to the radio.

I was gone for maybe 30 minutes, tops. Honest.

When I came back, I found Mom on the floor, crying for help. I was calm because being anything other than calm wouldn’t be a helpful reaction to the experience. My first thought was that she had fallen and broken her hip, of course, because that’s what happens all the time to people my mother’s age. On closer inspection, I discovered she wasn’t hurt at all, thank G-d. Then I started looking around.

At least two new boxes of Kleenex had been scattered around the room from wall to wall and some of the chachkas from the shelves were arranged on the floor in what appeared to be a little shrine. Mom was in a state, more confused than usual. Since I decided she didn’t seem to be hurt, against her wishes I picked her up off the floor and put her in a chair while I cleaned up the mayhem in the room. She gradually collected herself but had no recollection whatsoever about what had happened, of course. I don’t think she fell. There wasn’t any bruising (she takes a blood thinner so the bruising would be dramatic) and she wasn’t complaining about anything other than her knees which always complains about anyway.

I put her to bed and she went to sleep. I put away the groceries and tried to collect myself. I pondered if this meant I couldn’t ever leave her alone or whether I could only leave her alone when she was sleeping or what.

Enter Tina.

Soon, though, Mom and I heralded in a new era in our lives together: A home health aide, Tina, came by on Monday, July 19. Tina arrived at 10a and stayed until 4p. The primary objectives of our time with Tina was to get Mom into the shower. Mission accomplished. Tina also helped by cleaning the kitchen and dining room areas, cleaned Mom’s room, gathered her laundry, taped down a rug that scooted around the kitchen floor, and, perhaps most importantly, stimulated Mom into conversation. After Tina left, Mom was much more “awake” than she usually is, so much so that she missed her afternoon nap and ended up staying until 8p.

I don’t know if Tina will be coming back (I’ve been warned that the odds are we won’t receive the same person twice), but I hope she does. Tina is a 47-year-old grandmother and attended Northside High School in Fort Smith, as did I (go Grizzlies!). She now lives up the hill a little bit in Mountainberg. I spent most of time at the house, helping Tina get oriented to the layout and organizing her chores. I did take two breaks: I went up to my rooms and paid some bills and I went out to Dollar General to buy some Diet Pepsi. (a 10m trip.) If Tina comes back, I’ll be more comfortable leaving for a longer period of time and that will be nice. I’m not sure what I’ll do with my time, but it will be nice to go out knowing that Mom is safe.

Mom has been sleeping pretty well. She only has nightmares once or twice a week that I need to help her through. (Basically holding her hand and waiting for her to calm down.) This has led to better sleep for me. Recently, I had a stretch of five consecutive nights where I slept straight through the night. That has been a tremendous blessing.

Mom and I watch a lot of CNN (when the Olympics aren’t on) and the controversy about vaccinations has been in the news. I remember taking the polio vaccine (a drop on a sugar cube) and I asked Mom about vaccinations in general and the vaccination for polio in particular. Mom was teaching when the polio vaccine came out and could remember how teachers participated in getting kids vaccinated and, interestingly, how to treat the kids who didn’t get vaccinated. I caught all this in a recording and am sharing it with you above.

I’ve reverted to one of the techy eras of my past and I’ve started using Feedly again, an RSS aggregator / reader. (If you don’t know what that means, that’s perfectly ok because it’s too geeky and intended for the news obsessed.) I use Feedly to keep up with news from the world’s of the arts, chess, Jewish life, clips about Tom Stoppard and some miscellaneous sources that usually amaze me and make me laugh. (It’s how I discovered Russian dashcam videos which if you haven’t seen, head on over to YouTube, search for them, and prepare yourself to be amazed, shocked, and rolling on the floor laughing.)

Thanks to Feedly, I came across a fascinating post this week about chess sets rescued from the Shoah and on display at Yad Vashem, the Shoah museum in Israel.

Speaking of chess, I’m still am working on puzzles, about eight a day. And, I had a breakthrough experience: I discovered that one of my best friends in college plays and I connected with him and we played a quick game on chess.com. I played like a fool and was being soundly spanked when the clock ran out for my friend. I’m looking for a rematch.

Turn It Up. Radio.

I've been a radio person for a long time. When I was a child, my parents left a radio on at night in my bedroom, tuned to a station that played the St. Louis Cardinals during the season and otherwise bingo games sponsored by Piggly Wiggly. (How one plays bingo over the radio is still a mystery to me.) In my adolescence, there was KISR, pronounced "kisser," that was the local rock 'n roll station that all the kids listened to. A dear friend of mine was a DJ there until robots took over the job.

In Missouri, I listened to KBIA (NPR) and KOPN (Pacifica). In Cambridge, I listened to WCRB (classical), Harvard's WHRB, and MIT’s WMBR.

In New York, I listened to WQXR (classical), WNYC (NPR), WBGO (jazz), WBAI (Pacifica), WFUV (Fordham U), and WKCR (Columbia U). In San Francisco, I listened to KDFC (classical), KQED (NPR), KALW (public), KPFA (Pacifica), and KCSM (jazz). It was radio utopia.

In Madison, I listened to WPR (NPR), it's digital signal (classical), and WORT (Pacifica). In Alma, I listen to KUAF (NPR) and it's two digital stations KUAF2 (classical) and KUAF3 (jazz). KUAF2 and WPR2 basically rebroadcast the classical feed from Minnesota Public Radio which means when I moved from Madison to Alma, I was welcomed home by my favorite classical radio personalities.

What I mean by digital signal isn’t internet-based. It’s HD radio which has been a blessing to me as it has freed me from sketchy internet connections (and aren’t they all). This is the radio I use and I highly recommend it.

Here in Alma, I leave KUAF2 on all night and I have a bad habit: I'll be awake in the middle of the night and hear something very good. I look up the track listing on my telephone and then go to my favorite music-buying website (Presto), and buy it. To mixed results. Sometimes it turns out the track doesn't represent the entire CD. There was a good reason that particular track was selected for broadcast. It was the best track by far on the CD and now I have an entire CD of music that’s mediocre and one track that's a stand out. (Welcome to Spotify’s business model.)

In Madison, I started hearing recordings from the Fort Smith Symphony and that made me smile because, during high school, I played violin in that group. The Fort Smith Symphony, under the direction of John Jeter, has recorded much of the music from Florence Price (1887-1953), a native Arkansan who has the distinction of being the first Black woman composer played by a major symphony. As the political consciousness of radio was raised, Price offered a double ticket to honoring under represented classes of composers.

The other composer who is getting a lot of air time is Samuel Coleridge-Taylor (1875-1912) and that is not a typo. It isn't Samuel Taylor Coleridge the Romantic poet. Taylor's mother was enamored by Coleridge the poet and saw the opportunity to honor the poet by naming her child Samuel Coleridge Taylor. Taylor is a Black English composer. Both Price and Taylor are very good and very different of course.

One of the best recent discoveries came from a podcast from WNYC created by Sara Fishko, one of my all time favorite radio hosts. The discovery was a violinist name Michael Rabin (1936-1972). He made a remarkable recording of Paganini's 24 Caprices and a great many concertos. Rabin isn't much remembered these days as his work and his particular style were eclipsed by Jascha Heifetz (1901-1987). Rabin had a extravagant rubato style as contrasted by Heifetz's technical perfection. Plus, of course, Rabin died when he was only 35-years-old.

Another performer I've discovered (and written about before) is Stewart Goodyear, a Canadian pianist. Goodyear helped make a name for himself by performing all of Beethoven’s 32 piano sonatas in one day, a marathon. I discovered him when I heard selections from his CD, For Glenn Gould. It was eerie for me to hear him play because he did an amazing job mimicking Gould’s style. (Gould is a particular favorite of mine.)

On Being a Jew.

Something I haven’t mentioned to you yet is that I’m taking a class offered by the Hadar Institute. Love, Sex, and Relationships in Jewish Tradition is a 14 week class led by Rabbi Avi Strausberg and I’m halfway through it. The way the course is run, materials are sent out each week and, after we’ve had a chance to review them, we meet with our havruta, study partner, that we’ve been matched with. In my case, I’m studying with someone who lives in Lafayette, California, not too far from where I used to live when I first moved to the West Coast. Not only that, but we also discovered my study partner and I used the same therapist. (Small world.) The content of the class is right up my alley as I’ve written on the topic a couple of years ago and led a program on the topic a couple of months ago for my synagogue’s Men’s Havurah.

Another other class I’m taking hasn’t started yet. Opening the Gates: Exploring the High Holiday Prayers taught by Rabbi Rena Blumenthal is a five week class that’s intended to make the makzor more user-friendly during the upcoming High Holidays. I’ve taken three previous classes with Rabbi Blumenthal and am looking forward to this one. If it’s anything like her previous classes, we’ll be looking at why the service is organized the way it is.

And I’ve signed up for another class with Hadar that’s focused on the month of Elul and preparing ourselves for the High Holy Days.

Speaking of the High Holy Days, my current plan is to attend services in person at United Hebrew in Fort Smith on the first day of Rosh Hashanah. For the second day, I’ll virtually attend services in Madison. I’m keeping my options open for what I’ll do for Yom Kippur. It would be nice to attend in person, but all that depends on the vibe I get in Fort Smith.

I’ve been virtually participating in the Torah Study group in Fayetteville at Temple Shalom. It’s held on Sunday afternoons. There are about three or four of us that sign in for the group and it’s given me the opportunity to make some new friends.

On Reading.

After finishing the Stoppard biography, I had an incredible yen for fiction, and, thank you serendipity, I found a novella by Stefan Zweig called Chess Story or, in some translations, The Royal Game. Zweig, an Austrian Jew (1881-1942) was smart enough / lucky enough to escape the Nazi maw and escape to Brazil. He wasn’t able to outrun his demons, though, and died by his own hand. Chess Story is all about what happens when two dysfunctional men meet on a ship bound from NYC to South America. One of the men is an idiot savant who can play chess but perform few other human duties. The other man served years in a Nazi prison and developed his chess abilities as a way to at least mentally escape the horrors of his confinement. It isn’t necessary to know anything about chess to appreciate the story and it might be an interesting way to learn about a writer who was a world-wide sensation during the 1920s and 30s. Highly recommended.

After finishing Chess Story, I decided to switch back to some non-fiction, at the recommendation of Tom Stoppard. In the biography, Stoppard recommends a book, Lev’s Violin, to all his friends and acquaintances. And, being a total Stoppard fan-boy, I couldn’t resist finding out more about the book. Lev's Violin: A Story of Music, Culture and Italian Adventure is by Helena Atlee who apparently made a splash with her book The Land Where Lemons Grow and I think I know why Stoppard appreciates Lev’s Violin. I’m about 20% of the way through the book and it is incredibly researched, much like a Stoppard play is usually incredibly researched. Lev’s Violin is, basically, the story about how the violin was invented, refined and then the provenance of a violin that Atlee happens across one night at a Klezmer concert. She makes the history come alive so that reader doesn’t just experiences the sights, sound and aroma of Cremona during the 1500s, the reader knows them. I’m up to the part where she makes an expedition to the forests where the best woods are grown for the best violins. She explains how the trees are farmed, how they’re harvested and what happens to them after that. As a former violinist, I’m enthralled by all this.

Well, I’ll leave that there and let you get back to real life. I’ll write again soon. Promise.