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Speaking of music most likely to get you killed while driving… Here’s what I must never listen to in the car. Not while driving because it could get me killed, and not as a passenger because it could get me committed. I air-conduct. I air-bass-drum. And I sing along. The dynamic marking is fff and the top note is G#5, and that is a powerful note for me, and I bring it.
Crank up your audio, hang onto your butts, and have a listen:
Singing in the Verdi Requiem has been one of the top musical highlights of my whole life so far. Being in the middle of the action in the Dies Irae is an amazing not only sonic, but physical, sensation. In the performance I did, the percussionist had two bass drums and hit one with each hand, and you could feel it through the floor. The conductor said to us choristers, “There’s no way I’m telling the orchestra to hold back dynamically at this part, you’ll just have to be louder.” So we were. Goddam folks. And holy fuck. We leaped to our feet at the first beat of the bass drum, and we breathed as one, and we were glorious.
Bottom line: if you ever get the chance to hear the Verdi Requiem live, do it. You don’t have to believe any of the text to have your socks knocked off.
The front flowerbed at Arb’s and my place is starting to take off – perennials that I’ve planted over the couple years we’ve owned the house, are established enough now, that they can dedicate some energy to blooming! Of course, weather that’s good for flowers is also good for weeds, and our weed crop is plentiful, so I was out pulling weeds yesterday evening.
Working in the front yard is not a peaceful and relaxing experience for me. I feel self-conscious about bending over with my back to the street and my butt in the air and often get into weird positions trying to avoid it. I’m on edge and there’s a constant stream of snarky comebacks and verbal self-defense going on in my head, along with self-pep-talks about how this is my yard and I have the right to be in it and what I look like while doing yardwork is nobody’s business.
Why?
In a word: men.
Like last night when a carload of young men appeared seemingly out of nowhere, yelled something about my fat ass, and peeled out with a screech of tires and raucous laughter.
This shit doesn’t happen super-often – not every time I’m out in the front yard, for example. But it’s often enough that anticipating it and steeling myself against it, takes a non-negligible portion of my mental CPU cycles. It doesn’t matter that not every man who passes by harasses me, and that in general not all men harass women. Enough men harass women often enough, that being on guard against it is an almost-constant thing you do, if you’re a woman.
I am going to start this post with a big fat trigger warning: incest, sexual abuse of children, adults in positions of power revictimizing survivors of sexual abuse, victim-blaming, gaslighting. This is a post about some seriously sick and fucked up shit.
The story about the oldest son in the Duggar family of (former) hit TV show 19 Kids and Counting, having molested several of his very young sisters, as well as at least one non-relative, is old news by now. (Story here if you aren’t familiar with it. Trigger warnings abound.)
There are any number of angles I could take on this story: how the adults who should have been protecting those little girls, instead circled the wagons to protect the family’s reputation; the social, religious, and political connections that may have been leveraged to keep this quiet as long as it was; the possibility that the TV station was aware (at least of rumours) of some of this and just kept the show going for years; Josh’s gross fauxpology; the rampant prevalence of sexual abuse of girls and women in Dominionist and Quiverfull sects; the way Christians are acting like the Duggars are being persecuted; the claim Christians make that an alleged human sacrifice 2000 years ago makes everything OK now; the Christian emphasis on forgiveness and turning the other cheek, that is so easily and often used to silence victims and empower abusers.
I want to talk about those little girls. Michelle Duggar (their mom) says they received counselling. She didn’t give specifics, but considering that actual licensed therapists are mandatory reporters, and mandatory reports were not made, we can assume the counselling was of a less-formal variety. It so happens that the organization that is the source of many of the Duggars’ beliefs, and produces much of their home-school curriculum, the Institute in Basic Life Principles (IBLP), has a lesson plan for counselling survivors of sexual abuse. It is horrifying. Nearly every point victim-blames and/or displays callous disregard for the survivor’s pain. Image of the document after the break.
Fiona’s superpower is that she can liquefy her bones to adapt to any human surface.
Somewhat ironic, considering Rachel Notley said “spring is here” last night.
On Sunday mornings, I get up shortly after Arb leaves for work, and move from the cozy, snuggly bed to the equally snuggly sofa. I make a cup of coffee and listen to Sunday Breakfast on CKUA, and half-doze under at least one cat (depending on Fiona and V’s current level of detente). This Sunday, as I faded in and out of consciousness, I heard something familiar and yet not. “This sounds like Piazzolla,” I thought, “but I don’t recognize it.” Turns out I was right, it was Piazzolla, and the reason I didn’t recognize it was that I’d never heard this composition arranged for violin and harp. Here, have a listen:
Astor Piazzolla is one of my favourite composers (though if I’m going to actually dance tango I prefer Gardel and Pugliese’s older styles). Piazzolla grew up playing and composing tango music, but was also deeply interested in jazz and classical music and studied classical composition with Alberto Ginastera and Nadia Boulanger. At first he tried to keep his classical and tango work separate, but his true genius lay in bringing his classical and jazz sensibilities to his tango compositions.
bleatmop
Mystro
Dead Wild Roses 
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