Here’s the YouTube.

La Kid shows up at 4:05. She’s got
long blond hair and glasses.

Here’s a photo, courtesy of UD‘s sister,

the Morrissey fanatic. Click on
the image for a bigger picture.

The Kennedy Center Springsteen tribute’s happening now. La Kid’s group will come out with Sting in a few minutes.

**************************

Much excitement here. Two fantastic views of La Kid smiling and singing behind Sting. Wow.

… on this sad story, the murder of an Indiana University English professor, when all the electricity in the house, and up and down Rokeby Avenue, and all over Garrett Park, went out.

It was a sunny, pleasantly windy winter morning, so I threw on my coat and gloves and took the dog for a walk around our acre, picking up twigs and branches tossed everywhere by last night’s more powerful wind.

Across the street, evergreen limbs had fallen into my neighbor’s azaleas. I tried to lift the limbs, but they were too heavy. The Garrett Park maintenance crew eventually came along and took care of it.

I walked down the street and along the tracks to the post office, where I picked up a book Richard Fallon, a constitutional law professor at Harvard, sent me. It’s an academic satire titled Stubborn as a Mule, and it’s Fallon’s first novel.

Back in my front yard, I broke icy snow off of my own azaleas so that they would stop drooping, and I chatted with Elena, who lives across the street and had just come back from a week in Hilton Head.

“Look at these pictures,” she said, holding her phone out so I could see the beach and the sun.

“Meanwhile,” UD responded, “I go north to Cambridge every winter. Why didn’t human tribes migrate from Boston millennia ago? Dark, cold, ridiculous.”

Suddenly a rush of fire engines and HAZMAT trucks and police cars appeared. Elena and I followed them to Els Benjamin’s house, where there’d been a gas leak.

I walked back into my house, made a fire with some of the twigs and branches I’d collected, and sat down to play the piano. Mozart’s Fugue in E-flat Major, K. 153/375f , has UD written all over it, because it’s short, and has a manageable speed and a strongly voiced theme. I love to follow just a few notes as they open out to variations.

Tonight at nine o’clock on CBS Les UDs will be watching the Kennedy Center Honors. La Kid‘s in the chorus that sings with Sting in honor of Bruce Springsteen, so her parents’ noses will be pressed to the screen during that number.

Actually, she claims we should be able to see her quite easily.

One more thing: Les UDs will spend the
end of the year and the beginning of the next at an
inn in the Virginia countryside. Blogging will continue
as always.

… where?

Hold on.

Newburgh, New York.

UD regulars know we drive – slowly – to Cambridge, Massachusetts, every Christmas. UD‘s sitting up in bed at the moment, looking at an out of commission swimming pool and Route … 81? 83? Lots of sun, lots of trucks.

She could swear she saw two big trucks last night loaded with hay. Is hay a commodity? Don’t you just have hay if you’re a farmer and then… I dunno… keep it at home?

She also saw an even bigger truck which was bilingual, French and English. It advertised the Canadian armed forces. Huge color photos of happy uniformed Canadian women and men. What was it doing here? Les UDs discussed this question at length. “How did it even get here?” one them asked.

UD urged that of all the off-road restaurants, they should choose Perkins. Mr. UD and La Kid were skeptical.

“It’s exactly like Denny’s,” said UD, knowing how much both of them love Denny’s.

“Okay!”

“But,” Mr. UD added, looking at La Kid, “if it’s not exactly like Denny’s, your mother is in trouble.”

When it came to it, they agreed that it was exactly like Denny’s, only cleaner, with better food.

… How her lit crowding fairylands sink through the space-silence
To build her palace, till it twinkles in starlight —
Too frail for a foot
Or a crumb of soot.

Then how his muffled armies move in all night
And we wake and every road is blockaded
Every hill taken and every farm occupied
And the white glare of his tents is on the ceiling.
And all that dull blue day and on into the gloaming
We have to watch more coming.

Then everything in the rubbish-heaped world
Is a bridesmaid at her miracle.
Dunghills and crumbly dark old barns are bowed in the chapel of her sparkle.
The gruesome boggy cellars of the wood
Are a wedding of lace
Now taking place.

************************************

This is the end of Snow and Snow by Ted Hughes.

It’s true that all this snow, falling and falling, makes the world a wedding.

The world I’m looking at from my front windows doesn’t have dunghills. Take away the lace and it’s evergreen, or azalea.

***************************************

Snowed in, we watch things.  Snow builds itself up
into slim hills along our split rail fence and inches up
into cone hats in our flower pots. Ania took this picture
as the dog walked in front of the camera.

This morning the street was absolutely silent.  White,
empty, silent.

*************************************

Gradually people on skis and sleds and people walking dogs who were dressed in winter jackets began to appear.  The town truck pressed its plow against Rokeby Avenue.

While Mr UD shoveled a path from the front door to the car,  I went to the stack of twigs and logs I keep on the deck, and brought bits of it in for a fire. I tossed a twig to the dog.

It’s five o’clock now, and the world’s become gray and blue as well as white. Up and down the street, holiday lights flash a little gold against the snow. People have gone back inside their houses.

UD‘s nervous and excited about singing in a Messiah chorus this year.

She’s done plenty of singalong Messiahs at the Kennedy Center (The night I brought my mother to this event has become one of my best memories.), and has sung bits of the thing in school and church choirs, but she’s never been in a big actual chorus that sings the thing through (not all of it, but a lot of it) with soloists and orchestra and all. She’s already described her first rehearsal.

*********************************

Last night at the Garrett Park Town Hall

UD didn’t sing anything from Messiah.
This was the annual Garrett Park holiday singalong
(here’s a post about the 2007 singalong),
and she sang a little solo from I Wonder as I Wander.

She wondered as she wandered whether she’d
actually hit the F sharp. And she did, she did hit
it, twice, thanks to the three sips of Nalewka
Kresowa Orzechowa she took before leaving her
house.

As always this event got UD going emotionally.
Even more this year than earlier years. Not sure why.
The very large audience sang its heart out, so that was
part of it. The accumulated years of the event, the deeply
known faces in the chorus around me, and in the audience
in front of me, all of us moving right along timewise, sharing
a long town past…

Pile on top of that the deep holiday memories everyone
sang from, the way you could stand there and look at
their faces and see exactly what this modest village event
meant to them, and you don’t have to read Thomas Hardy
to understand the dimensions of the thing.

Picture this

torn to bits,
its spine showing
shiny glue no
longer holding paper
to itself.

That’s UD‘s much-fussed-with
Schirmer’s edition of Handel’s Messiah.
It sits here on my desk
at the moment, next to
the equally shabby
Vintage Giant Ulysses
(I teach from the
controversial Gabler edition —

— not because I have a
position on the quality
of the edition, but because
it’s got larger, easier to read
pages than the Vintage.),
and next to the score
and the book is of course
a cup of tea.

**************************

Last night Gail, my cabbie friend,
drove me to the Landon School —
a private school for boys in ‘thesda.
(UD wrote about the
cheating scandal at Landon a few years back.)

***************************

A grad student of Mr UD‘s gave
him this thank you card a few weeks ago:

(She wrote that her dissertation
scared her every day, but Mr. UD
made it bearable… something like
that…)

UD found herself thinking about this
little saying as she took her
seat in the teeny soprano section (you
can’t run; you can’t hide) at the rear of
the General Music room.

To get there, you walk through the
cafeteria, its walls lined with vintage
photos of Landon sports teams.

You know how you can know something
and not know it? If you know what I mean?
UD‘s been singing and playing Messiah
since she was knee-high to grasshopper.
But does she really know it? Does she
know that all the Hallelujahs on page 203
are Ds? Hasn’t she thought for years that
some of them were DDGF?
Hasn’t she figured she can more or less do the runs
on His Yoke is Easy, and his Burthen is Light?
(The first piece on this YouTube is earlier music from which
Handel took the tune to His Yoke.)
Who knew that she absolutely totally cannot?

Still, she was game, and she sang out.
Do one thing every day that scares you.

Next rehearsal, next Wednesday.

This bit of footage — starting twenty seconds in — is the best I can do so far. La Kid’s in the chorus behind Sting, singing The Rising, at the homage to Bruce Springsteen at the Kennedy Center Honors last week. The show will be broadcast December 29 on CBS.

La Kid will also be part of the Christmas in Washington chorus. Barack Obama attends this event too. La Kid sees more of him than she sees of me. TNT broadcasts it on December 20.

Meanwhile, UD will be part of this chorus, performing Handel’s Messiah in ‘thesda on December 19. She plans to write about the experience on this her blog.

********************

From Sting to Death Where is Thy Sting. This is UD‘s current Messiah favorite.

I won’t ruin Bruce Springsteen’s surprise by disclosing that La Kid’s chorus is even as we speak singing The Rising for him at the Kennedy Center Honors.

Who are they singing with?

Sting.

A blast from the past. La Kid in the sea of red behind Springsteen at the inauguration.

************************

UPDATE:

John Mellencamp sang “Born in the U.S.A.,” Jennifer Nettles from Sugarland did “Glory Days” with a country twist, Melissa Ethridge rocked the house with “Born To Run” to a standing ovation and Sting ended the musical tribute with “The Rising” with help from a choir.

*************************

Another Update, from Rolling Stone:

Finally, Sting came out and was soon joined by a… gospel choir for “The Rising,” which got all of the tuxedo-and-gowned masses out of their seats and end[ed] the evening in an uplifting, change-the-world mode, as only Bruce’s music can.

But why not get it directly from a wee-small-hours-of-the-morning gchat with the Aretha Franklin of ‘thesda herself, Ania Soltan:

La Kid just called to tell me what a dress rehearsal for the Kennedy Center Honors is like.

I can’t tell you who her chorus sings with because the honorees are supposed to be surprised (the show’s tomorrow), but wow.

More later.

From the Washington Post:

… This fall, [George Washington University] became the first school in the country to offer scholarships to squash players, cementing its commitment to a sport that has been played at the collegiate level since 1931 but has just recently become more popular on college campuses.

… GW, one of four non-Ivy Division I squash programs, recognized the academic value of squash student-athletes to the school, too. In the seven years of existence, the men’s team has won the athletic department’s team GPA award twice.

… Two years ago, GW men’s coach Wendy Lawrence and women’s coach Maura Myers approached the athletic department about getting funding for scholarships and initially were rebuffed.

“I think the university assumed that squash players already had money,” Lawrence said, referring to the game’s reputation in the United States as an elitist sport played mostly at exclusive prep schools and Ivy League universities.

That was and continues to be somewhat true — recently, the family of one of Lawrence’s players donated $100,000 to the team — but the men’s and women’s squads at George Washington also have athletes on need-based financial aid. Tuition, room and board at GW is $51,775, one of the more expensive amounts in the country.

Six months after the rejection, however, the coaches received an e-mail. Both teams would be given partial scholarships to award new student-athletes starting this fall.

“We wanted to treat all of our programs the same,” GW associate athletic director Chandra Bierwirth said. “This seemed to be the natural piece of the puzzle.”

… In five seasons, the women’s team has gone from 29th to a ranking of 15th last year. They are currently the second-highest nationally ranked team at George Washington, behind men’s rowing…

Here

are

three

articles from three universities about the class on Wednesday before Thanksgiving controversy.

(Very pleasant, thank you, and I hope yours was too. Highlight: Playing Rock Band, UD‘s sister on drums, La Kid on guitar, and UD warbling into the mike. We did all these songs I sort of know… sort of know the chorus, maybe… Ramblin’ Man, Kids of America, American Woman… Started mentally ramblin’ during Ramblin’ Man… I was thinking Allman Brothers didn’t Cher marry one of them Sonny always seemed dumb named one of his kids Chesare because you couldn’t expect people to figure it out if they named him Cesare…)

So here’s my take on Should we cancel Wednesday classes before the holiday.

***************************

What’s happening, most broadly, at the American university right now is what UD calls Invisibility Drift. Classes used to meet three days a week; now most meet two. There used to be very few holidays and cancellations; now there are gobs. Official cancellations and particular professors cancelling for this and that reason. Some class sessions you just watch a film, which you can do anywhere, at any time, and there’s nothing class about it… I mean, no one’s up there teaching you something; there’s no discussion going on. The classroom, the professor, other students, the university — all incidental. I’ve read more than one Rate My Professor complaint about professors in courses like these turning out the lights, starting the film, and leaving. See you next Tuesday! Enjoy the show.

Add to this high levels of class skipping among students (I did plenty when I was an undergrad), high levels of watching tv shows on your laptop or texting while you’re in class, high levels of guest lecturers instead of the ostensible professor teaching the class, high levels of blowing the course off and looking at downloaded stuff in your dorm…

You get the idea. The university as a physical location where professors and students interact in real, flesh and blood time and place vanishes. Does your professor look at you and talk to you and think in front of you? Do you look at the professor and listen to her and take notes? Do students look at each other and talk to each other? Bring books and look at the places in the books where the professor directs their attention?

No. Ain’t much attention going on in the vanishing classroom. People are absent — physically or mentally.

So look at it this way. Administrators are aware that at $50,000 a year or so they need to, well, pay attention to the fact that their enterprise as more or less originally conceived and priced is vanishing. At least at British universities, where you seldom see a professor or take a class, they don’t charge much of anything. Here in a quintessentially postmodern transaction you pay immense sums of money for white noise. (Let’s not even talk about the Human Kinetics and Leisure Studies major you’ve chosen.)

Am I saying it’s all evaporated? No. I’m talking about a trend. I’m talking about administrators’ awareness of a trend.

******************************

So slot this into yet another canceled day — the Wednesday before Thanksgiving. And keep in mind that when you cancel the Wednesday you also basically cancel the Tuesday and eventually the Monday — There’s some psychological principle going on here, I guess… a kind of infinite regression principle in which once you cancel Day Z, Days X and Y are imperiled…

You can see, I hope, why universities are reluctant to do this particular deal. I mean, think about it from the perspective of the many schools like Auburn and Georgia where classes are further dumped left and right because of football games … It begins to look as though we might as well forget classes for the entire months of November and December.

Many universities are therefore doing nothing for the time being about the Wednesday. They leave it up to the professor, who tends to cancel classes. Over time, so many professors will cancel as to make it impossible for the few professors who hold Wednesday class to do so. Everyone will be gone. Professors will lecture to a whistling nothingness.

**********************************

Me? I hold class. Quite a few students showed up in both classes, and we had relaxed, excellent discussions (of Kafka’s A Hunger Artist and DeLillo’s Underworld).

(I mean, I thought they were great.)

There are passages – certain rousing conclusions, like this one from Concerto and Fugue in C Minor, BWV 909 (doubtful) – that amaze and exhilarate me as I play them. They heat the blood.

In the morning, before I leave for campus, I play these passages again and again. My heart, my mind, my hands — everything’s sort of feverish. The spotlight over the notes on page 95 of Johann Sebastian Bach Miscellaneous Keyboard Works Toccatas Fugues And Other Pieces illuminates the little world in which I sit as long as I can, picking out sounds and smoothing them.

While I teach, while I order coffee, while I sit on the metro, these final notes flow through my mind. Not just these notes; all the variations on them that whoever wrote it worked through the piece.

Whatever else my mind’s doing during these hours, it’s also spinning harmony after harmony.

At some point I drop this game and decide to sing all parts at once of the Domine Deus duet from Mozart’s Great Mass. High low up down alto soprano strings.

Later in the evening I return to the piano.

For years I made do with my father’s Waldorf spinet. Not much point tuning it, and I didn’t much care, being a good singer and a bad pianist.

As I got better on the instrument, I wanted more sound, and I had the spinet taken away. I bought in its place a pretty good baby grand.

It’s a beautiful thing to see, this piano, in a corner of the living room, its lid propped high, light from the deck windows on its dark wood.

I bought a red rectangular leather cushion for its black bench.

The high shelves behind the piano are all about my music books. Everything’s out of order. Suzanne’s between Handel and Haydn.

I like grazing the shelves, thinking I’ll sing this, getting distracted by that.

Anyway, this is what I’ve decided to thank this Thanksgiving. The piano that takes up a spotlit corner of the living room and heats my blood.

Something stubborn in me says no lessons.

So I’m sludgy, inept. I never practiced scales, never understood how to count beats, never took in the mysteries of dynamics and continuo.

When I catch myself running smoothly along two lines, moving a prelude’s harmonies as Bach intended, I’m astonished. A fluke, a folly. Give monkeys enough time and one’ll type Hamlet.

Yet it’s also true that a few years ago I began digesting fugues and sonatas (“Music is the best means we have of digesting time,” says Auden.), began starting a piece and finishing it, rather than reaching a moment of frustration (my hands too small to box with octaves) and fluttering the pages of the music book in search of fewer sharps and more adagios.

I still won’t get anywhere near Brahms — well, maybe a lullaby — but I can do some Schumann. I feel most certain of my footing with baroque and classical, and longtime readers know that a good deal of my playing accompanies my singing Henry Purcell compositions.

********************************

Have to prepare for class. More later.

… UD was writing a longish post about plagiarism, which should appear at Inside Higher Education any second now.

Ah. Here it is.

And an update on media stuff: Mr UD was indeed interviewed yesterday by the guy from ABC. He told the guy not to listen to Mr UD‘s wife on the subject of laptops in the classroom. Something like that. We’ll see if any of this makes it to the screen.