planetbendigo’s Neighborhood

I know, I know.  Poor little blog, I have neglected it so.  I will continue to neglect it for the next week, too.  A snippet from Black Friday and Black Saturday at The Bookstore to whet your appetite:

Me, turning away from the customer and sneezing into the crook of my elbow: "Sorry!  It's allergies; I promise I'm not contagious."  (Reaches for books to ring up.)

Customer: "Oh, don't worry about it.  I AM, but I just couldn't miss the sales."

Me: (saying nothing, completing transaction with a fixed smile, wiping down all surfaces with Lysol the moment the customer walks out the door...)

I'm going to blame on of the three customers (yes, three) with whom I had a similar exchange as that described above for the bug I've picked up over the weekend.  My allergies were giving me mild symptoms starting Wednesday of last week.  By Saturday evening, I suspected something more was coming on.  Sunday morning, my alarm went off so that I could shower and head off to sing at Mass.  As I woke up, I noticed several things. 

First, my eyes seemed glued shut. 

Second, when I managed to get them open, I tried to say "good morning" to my cat.  Nothing but a vague croak emerged.

Third, I was fairly certain that I had been gone over thoroughly by a couple of steamrollers.  Moving was painful.

I texted the choir director to say I'd not be singing that morning, and spent the rest of the day sleeping, drinking water and/or tea, sleeping, steaming my face/lungs/throat, and sleeping.  When I woke up this morning, I went to the doctor as I was, if anything, worse.

Did I mention that this week holds a plethora of Must Sing events for this diva?  Tomorrow night, I have a choir concert.  Thursday I have end-of-semester juries.  Friday I am, I kid you not, giving a 30-minute voice recital.  On Sunday, I have two Masses and another choir concert.  It would be nice to, I dunno, PRACTICE a bit for some of these, too; haven't sung all weekend.  While I do not like going to doctors (much less spending the money to see one), it seemed The Thing To Do this morning. 

"Ah," quoth she.  "Yes, you probably had some seasonal allergies last week; they would have set you up for something like this.  Yes, you quite possibly got this from one of the idiot customers you described.  You're a voice major and you have to sing how many times this week?  Don't talk any more than you absolutely must.  Go home and sleep.  Keep drinking as much water as you can hold.  Here's a script for antibiotics and prednisone.  Don't sing if you feel raspy. Warm up gently to see if you should sing."

Thank goodness for doctors who LISTEN.  I suspect I'll be adding "antibiotics and prednisone" to that "thank goodness" list by tomorrow afternoon; I'm told the prednisone should have taken considerable effect by then. 

Oh, and the post title?  Well, I won't be taking advantage of it this week or next week (to say the least), but thriftbooks is running a most excellent sale at the moment.  Free shipping on all books through the end of December, and fifty cents off each additional book from the same warehouse.  Mind you, they have upped their prices a little in accordance with this, but on a lot of books they seem to be charging exactly the amount they had been charging for shipping previously.  $4 for a book in new condition and no shipping just isn't a bad deal at all, though.  No, I don't work for them.  :D  I just appreciate cheap books and fantastic customer service.

And now, I am off to bed for a two-hour nap before heading to school to hear a senior voice recital and observe a choral rehearsal.    

I am grateful this evening.

I am grateful for the roof over my head, for my quarrelsome-but-sweet felines, for the chicken cooking in the oven.

I am either having a bit of an allergy attack or I'm starting a sinus infection. Oddly enough, I'm grateful, though I hope it's cleared up by tomorrow.  I'm grateful because this afternoon, post-grocery-shopping-madness, I could come home, curl up in bed, and sleep for several hours.  After I take the chicken from the oven, I'll pop in a movie and probably fall asleep in front of it.  To have this sort of downtime is rare.  I will revel in it.

I'm grateful for having so many dear people I can call "friend", whether new or old; for my best friends who listen to me when I'm going crazy, for their parents who always invite me over for laughter-filled holidays (ponder a situation in which potato peels suddenly spew into the clothes-washing machine, and you know that story'll be brought up for years to come).  I'm grateful for the three-month-old who belongs to one of these girls and who, I firmly believe, knows that Auntie UbiCaritas is always up for dancing him around a room until she's breathless.  Because, after all, what are aunties for?

I'm grateful for a particular old friend; we share the sort of bond that prompts either one of us to instinctively call the other whenever the other is feeling particularly blue. 

I'm grateful that I live in an area where I can attend the Tridentine Mass which means so much to me.

I'm grateful for friends who are like family.

I'm grateful for my divas, who make music and laughter with me.

I'm grateful for an assortment of new friends of whom I'm already quite fond and who have taught me so much.

I'm grateful for music, for singing, for teachers and professors and friends who are supportive and instructive in this crazy music world.

I'm grateful for my music-filled Sundays.

I'm grateful for the fellow bloggers who make me smile and who overlook month-long absences.

I'm deeply, happily, warmly grateful.

Thank you.

The lovely and talented Flamingo Dancer posted a book review of a used book for which I am positively green with envy.  The book was a biography of this diva (I wish I could have gotten film of her singing, but the recording will have to do...):

I have neglected you of late, blog, and I apologize.

But after today, I will not have another exam until final exams in December.  And yes, I do have a book review post to go up.  I just have to WRITE it.

Note: for those vegetarians or those Catholics who'd like to eat this on a Friday, I imagine that vegetable broth could easily be substituted for the chicken broth.

You'll need:

Olive oil

4 TB butter

Balsamic vinager

2 onions

4 stalks celery

1 bunch green onions

6 carrots

1 green bell pepper

2 small cans of tomatoes

4 cans of chicken broth (or the homemade equivalent, or vegetable broth, or...)

1/2 pound black beans

1/2 pound black-eyed peas

Two generous pinches of tarragon and sage

Three generous pinches of thyme

Dash of salt

Black pepper to taste

Dash of cayenne pepper

Slice the fresh vegetables.  Put them into a pan with a drizzle of olive oil and the butter. Simmer until the onions have been translucent for a few minutes.  Splash in a little balsamic vinegar, the half the juice from one of the cans of tomatoes, the herbs and the spices.  Simmer on medium-high heat until the vegetables are slightly past "browned" but not quite "scorched."  Dump in the remaining tomatoes and juice, the broth, the (rinsed) beans.  Simmer until the beans are tender.  Best served with fresh bread and perhaps a salad.

This is one of those soups that gets better with time.  It's quite good immediately, but the flavors meld together better after two days or so. 

This is both tasty and cheap; I got all the ingredients for less than $20.  Of course, I already had the stock items (vinegar, spices and herbs, onions), but even if you had to buy some of those this soup would still be quite reasonably priced.

 Enjoy!

I'm headed to work, where we're playing the Beatles, the Beatles, the Beatles, and very little else. 

I'm probably the only woman in the Western Hemisphere who can't stand the Beatles. 

Here's something to fill my brain with for the evening:

I spent last night dealing with an obscene phone caller (yes, another one) and several fairly annoying individuals while listening to everything that the Beatles ever recorded.  This should take the taste out of my mouth:

Good morning!  Enjoy a little music while you get ready! 

Too often, it seems as though I'm too busy being a music student to appreciate, well, music.  I'm going to be trying to post a video here every morning, just for kicks and to remind me to slow down and listen to the music.  Enjoy!

A few months ago, I posted about the closing of the church in which I grew up.  The Tridentine Mass is no longer said there; the group moved to another church last month.  Their new church is stunningly beautiful; the priest there wants to learn to say the Tridentine Mass (in the current situation, several priests from around the diocese take turns saying it), welcomed all the new parishioners warmly, and has generally been a boon to the community.  No one could ask for a better new home for the Mass than such a parish.

Those of the parish who attended the Ordinary Rite Masses (said in English and Spanish) have been told to attend a nearby parish.  The facts that both of these churches have strong (and different) ethnic backgrounds has been grossly ignored. 

I have done my best not to think about that poor church that has been left behind, so beautiful, so alone.  For nearly a century and a half, she stood in that poverty-stricken neighborhood, a comfort to all who walked through her doors.  Inside her doors were Truth, Love, Beauty, Compassion.  It's empty now, a shell. 

The diocese wouldn't invest money into the church to repair the structure, but it will be paying for its demolition. 

I heard polyphony and chant for the first time in that church.  Such music rang eternity through the Mass and through our souls.  I love opera, and much of it is great and beautiful, but there is a niche in my heart that only well-sung early sacred music can fill.

Last week, I gave a presentation in a music history class.  The presentation covered (necessarily briefly) chant and early litrugical polyphony.  Needing some music, I turned to a recording made fifteen years ago inside this church.  While deciding what to include in the presentation, I listened through the CD, which consists of the Solemn Mass of Corpus Christi (DesPrez' Missa Pange Lingua and assorted motets, the Lauda Sion Salvatorem sequence, etc).  The music permeated my day, and for a little while that moldy little office in the School of Education had a sense of peace and gentleness.

The church is closed, its pews bare, its tabernacle bereft, as is my heart.  Ordinarily, I do not mind being poor.  I have enough money to put food on my table, keep a roof over my head, keep kibbles in my cats' dishes, and keep me in books and music.  I have dear friends and good teachers, and who could ask for more?  Today, I can't help but wish I had millions of dollars I could donate to see that church back in that neighborhood, to see that Friend in that particular home once more.

For so many years, this church and the sacred music I associate with it was the only thing that kept me sane.

The music is still with me.  I carry it with me with my sheet music and my voice and in my heart.  This church's demolishment won't take away the music or, even more importantly, that for which it stands.  Today, as I sang, I let my soul lift on the chant's simplicity and soar through the words.  Hope lit once more.  The music and its Source are still here, and they always will be.