So following ladysisyphus's lead, I've annotated the list of the top 100 banned books, 1990-2000. The annotated list follows my own thoughts on banning and burning books.

I note for the record that I'm clearly out of touch with modern young adult literature, although I also note with some dismay that I seem to have missed some classics that were already classics "back in the day." I tend to consider myself widely read, but honestly...it's all one can do to keep up, some days.

I also note that there are things on this list that I do not get why they would be challenged, and a few that I do not get why they would be made available to anyone under the age of, say, 17. I tend to read the list as if these were all offerings made available to high school or junior high kids, forgetting that some of these would have been regular library challenges.

And while I agree that parents, teachers, and librarians should all be sensitive to the age and maturity of the reader when selecting or suggesting books, I absolutely do not agree that any book should ever be completely banned, or destroyed, or burned, or removed from the library or from sale in bookstores. Ever. Period. Because the minute it's okay to remove Sex by Madonna from the public library because it's about - well, sex, that is the minute it becomes okay to remove the Talmud, or the Koran, or Mein Kampf - that is the minute it becomes okay for somebody other than me to decide what I may and may not read.

Those (self-)righteous people who want to have book-burning parties to destroy copies of Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone or Heather Has Two Mommies should remember that the Nazis were big fans of book-burnings. So were the Leninists and Stalinists. So were the Chinese Communists of the Cultural Revolution. So those modern book-burners might want to ask themselves if that's really company they want to be keeping. It's no club I'd want to belong to, for sure. But you make your own choices, I suppose, and live with the consequences.

Those people might also want to remember that haunting and eloquent quote by Heinrich Heine, from his play Almansor (1821): "Where they have burned books, they will end in burning human beings." (German: "Dort, wo man Bücher verbrennt, verbrennt man am Ende auch Menschen.") It was only a bit more than 100 years later, in his own country, that they were doing precisely that.

Annotations:

• Underlined books are favorites


• bolded books are well-loved


• italicized books are ones I've read but have no deep attachment to


• crossed-out books (just one) I really disliked

Super-extra favorite and extra-favorite should be easy to deduce, based on that code.

1. Scary Stories (Series) by Alvin Schwartz
2. Daddy’s Roommate by Michael Willhoite
3. I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou
4. The Chocolate War by Robert Cormier
5. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
6. Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck
7. Harry Potter (Series) by J.K. Rowling
8. Forever by Judy Blume
9. Bridge to Terabithia by Katherine Paterson
10. Alice (Series) by Phyllis Reynolds Naylor
11. Heather Has Two Mommies by Leslea Newman
12. My Brother Sam is Dead by James Lincoln Collier and Christopher Collier
13. The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger
14. The Giver by Lois Lowry
15. It’s Perfectly Normal by Robie Harris
16. Goosebumps (Series) by R.L. Stine
17. A Day No Pigs Would Die by Robert Newton Peck
18. The Color Purple by Alice Walker
19. Sex by Madonna
20. Earth’s Children (Series) by Jean M. Auel
21. The Great Gilly Hopkins by Katherine Paterson
22. A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L’Engle
23. Go Ask Alice by Anonymous
24. Fallen Angels by Walter Dean Myers
25. In the Night Kitchen by Maurice Sendak
26. The Stupids (Series) by Harry Allard
27. The Witches by Roald Dahl
28. The New Joy of Gay Sex by Charles Silverstein
29. Anastasia Krupnik (Series) by Lois Lowry
30. The Goats by Brock Cole
31. Kaffir Boy by Mark Mathabane
32. Blubber by Judy Blume
33. Killing Mr. Griffin by Lois Duncan
34. Halloween ABC by Eve Merriam
35. We All Fall Down by Robert Cormier
36. Final Exit by Derek Humphry
37. The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood
38. Julie of the Wolves by Jean Craighead George
39. The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison
40. What’s Happening to my Body? Book for Girls: A Growing-Up Guide for Parents & Daughters by Lynda Madaras
41. To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
42. Beloved by Toni Morrison
43. The Outsiders by S.E. Hinton
44. The Pigman by Paul Zindel
45. Bumps in the Night by Harry Allard
46. Deenie by Judy Blume
47. Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes
48. Annie on my Mind by Nancy Garden
49. The Boy Who Lost His Face by Louis Sachar
50. Cross Your Fingers, Spit in Your Hat by Alvin Schwartz
51. A Light in the Attic by Shel Silverstein
52. Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
53. Sleeping Beauty Trilogy by A.N. Roquelaure (Anne Rice)
54. Asking About Sex and Growing Up by Joanna Cole
55. Cujo by Stephen King
56. James and the Giant Peach by Roald Dahl
57. The Anarchist Cookbook by William Powell
58. Boys and Sex by Wardell Pomeroy
59. Ordinary People by Judith Guest
60. American Psycho by Bret Easton Ellis
61. What’s Happening to my Body? Book for Boys: A Growing-Up Guide for Parents & Sons by Lynda Madaras
62. Are You There, God? It’s Me, Margaret by Judy Blume
63. Crazy Lady by Jane Conly
64. Athletic Shorts by Chris Crutcher
65. Fade by Robert Cormier
66. Guess What? by Mem Fox
67. The House of Spirits by Isabel Allende
68. The Face on the Milk Carton by Caroline Cooney
69. Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut
70. Lord of the Flies by William Golding
71. Native Son by Richard Wright
72. Women on Top: How Real Life Has Changed Women’s Fantasies by Nancy Friday
73. Curses, Hexes and Spells by Daniel Cohen
74. Jack by A.M. Homes
75. Bless Me, Ultima by Rudolfo A. Anaya
76. Where Did I Come From? by Peter Mayle
77. Carrie by Stephen King
78. Tiger Eyes by Judy Blume
79. On My Honor by Marion Dane Bauer
80. Arizona Kid by Ron Koertge
81. Family Secrets by Norma Klein
82. Mommy Laid An Egg by Babette Cole
83. The Dead Zone by Stephen King
84. The Adventures of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain
85. Song of Solomon by Toni Morrison
86. Always Running by Luis Rodriguez
87. Private Parts by Howard Stern
88. Where’s Waldo? by Martin Hanford
89. Summer of My German Soldier by Bette Greene
90. Little Black Sambo by Helen Bannerman
91. Pillars of the Earth by Ken Follett
92. Running Loose by Chris Crutcher
93. Sex Education by Jenny Davis
94. The Drowning of Stephen Jones by Bette Greene
95. Girls and Sex by Wardell Pomeroy
96. How to Eat Fried Worms by Thomas Rockwell
97. View from the Cherry Tree by Willo Davis Roberts
98. The Headless Cupid by Zilpha Keatley Snyder
99. The Terrorist by Caroline Cooney
100. Jump Ship to Freedom by James Lincoln Collier and Christopher Collier

So that was all when I was young and charming and in grade school in the 70's. I had not yet ventured very far out into the wide world, and most of what I could tell you about my taste in pens boiled down to a decided preference for Bics over Papermates.

And then I started exploring the dim corners of obscure book and stationery stores, and discovering ballpoints in all sorts of amazing colors! The best source, as I recall, was Lauriat's Books in the Salmon Run Mall, in Watertown, NY. Although it purports to be simply a bookstore, it was also a stationery shop, and they had a display of these pens - short, round caps; medium point ballpoints; and the colors!

This was when Bics came in a maximum of four standard colors, before they made the bright aqua and pink and purple and neon green that are now so popular. (Oh, and believe me, I pounced on those, when they started making them.)

I can't really say exactly when I started hoarding pens. It happened gradually, over time - I'd see something new or different, and pounce. I'd be a in a "writer" mood in Office Depot, and pounce. So I didn't have a few pens in a drawer, or even a few pens in a mug, or even a lot of pens in three mugs. I had a tin (you know, one of those old-style tins like Oreos come in at Christmas) full of pens...until they didn't all fit and I needed a second tin.

I've weeded them a few times. I go through a box, when I come across them in the closet, and anything that's long since dried up gets tossed. But I also still buy them in boxes, sometimes, when I'm feeling writer-ish.

Edit: And of course it occurred to me later that I completely forgot to mention my love affair with Gelly Roll pens. I have one entire (very large) mug full of these, in every color I could lay my hands on. Perhaps my favorite, in the gel pen family, is the Zebra multi-colors. The barrel shows three colors of ink mixed, and they write in a sort of iridescent, opalescent mix of the colors in the barrel. I especially like the "happier" colors for journal entries on feast days, like Easter or Christmas.

...have been greatly exaggerated. But seriously, folks...

Let's see...when last we left our heroine, it was just before Christmas, and I had some fond imagination that I was going to comment each day in the Octave before Christmas on the Great "O" Antiphons - while running into New York two nights in a row to rehearse and then perform at St. Patrick's with my chamber ensemble, finishing a vast array of last-minute year-end gotta-get-it-done stuff for the outgoing client, preparing to travel for two months to work for the incoming client, packing for Christmas week at my mother's, and doing the Christmas shopping. Right.

So the St. Patrick's gig was amazing. Lovely, lovely place to see - not as lovely to sing in as I might have expected. In spite of being enormous and very live, one feels very much as if one is singing entirely alone, even in the midst of a rather large group. Kinda scary. But a very good time was had, and we were well-received.

As is typical, there was a lot of last minute stuff to finish for the outgoing client - and a corresponding frustration in not being able to get attention from the people I needed in order to finish said last-minute stuff.

Christmas shopping! I did the Christmas shopping almost entirely in one six-hour marathon. Very tired at the end, but oddly very satisfied; it was fun, and I was particularly glad to find unique and unusual things for several hard-to-buy-for people on my list. Most fun had while shopping: Build-A-Bear!!! This is definitely a cool experience (even for an almost-40-year-old; I can only imagine how cool it is for kids).

Christmas! We had a grand time at my mother's house. For Christmas Eve dinner I made Minestrone di Castagne - a minestrone made with chestnuts, white beans, and ham. Very tasty stuff. Had a bit of a scare, at first: I had planned on buying my chestnuts in jar, at Williams-Sonoma, while I was out Christmas shopping. So I boldly walked into Wms.-Sonoma on the 23rd of December (all right, you know I can hear you laughing, right?) looking for chestnuts. And the first thing I spotted was actually Christmas ornaments - these glass snowmen-cooks. So I snagged a couple off the tree, and I asked the clerk if I could set them down until I was finished shopping - and she says, "Oh, those are only for decoration. They're not for sale." Oh.

And then I walk around the store, and I look and I look for the chestnuts - and there are no chestnuts. So I ask. And she says, "Oh, those are only a Thanksgiving item. We don't carry them for Christmas." Really. So "A Christmas Song" is mistaken, then? ("Chestnuts roasting on an open fire...")

And you know, you'd think that might have dampened my enthusiasm, but no. I forged ahead, and in a later store a lovely clerk asked if she could help me. I said, "What I need, you don't have," and she says, "Try me, you'd be surprised." So I say, "Canned cooked chestnuts," and she says, "Wegman's." I hugged her.

So that - eventually - was how I got my chestnuts for the soup. I have made this soup before entirely from scratch - starting with chestnuts in shells. And if you've got somebody whose fingers are insensitive to pain to peel them for you, you might start that way too. Or you might allow the possibility that sometimes a cop-out isn't a bad idea, and buy your chestnuts for soup in jars. Up to you.

Mom loved the soup - we ate it all week, and it only improves over time. We had a grand day at my cousin's house for Christmas Day; we went visiting various friends and other family all week; and then we arrived home just in time to freshen up and go out to a New Year's Eve gaming party - which was equally wonderful.

And then, of course, the downer: on the 3rd, I boarded a 7:10 a.m. flight to Nashville, TN to begin my current assignment. Not that having a job is a bad thing, really. But I'd been led to believe that this could be done remotely - and in point of fact, much of it could have been - and consenting to travel meant giving up participation in the chamber ensemble's March concert, which I'd been looking forward to.

And this is a nutsy-fagan project, for a nutsy-fagan client, if I may say so as shouldn't. There were some things that should have been done up front, and weren't, and the result is that I have to travel when I otherwise might not have had to. And, too, the days are very long - mine not as long as some; we typically arrive by 8 a.m., leave no earlier than 6 p.m. - and we don't go out at all during the day. Lunch is brought in. So I leave there usually around 6 in the evening (Central time), stop at the Kroger near the hotel for milk for the evening snack and morning coffee (ordinary hotel room, no fridge), pick up some fast food or other for dinner, and get back to the hotel between 7 and 7:30. I do my evening reading and the occasional fun stuff (like typing this journal entry), and tumble into bed to sleep before getting up to do it all over again.

It isn't without its rewards. The people - stressed as they are - are fun, and we had a very cool team outing to a local restaurant called The Aquarium (at Opry Mills Mall). I'm handling the flying much better than I used to, Volkswagen-sized planes and all, and I'm racking up frequent flier miles (though God only knows what I'll do with them). There are always compensations.

But in general, I'm looking at the stressed-out, burned-out people around me and realizing that they have lost their sense of what is truly valuable in life. They live from day to day and from crisis to crisis, ruthlessly suppressing all sense of regret at the things they're missing out on (like the day-to-day lives of small children at home), and criticize or mock anyone who displays "weakness" (like going to the doctor for an illness). I'm looking at that and saying to myself, "I will not become one of these - and that means that there is no career path for me among them." Which is a frightening thing to say, really, even out loud in print.

I don't know if it means that there is no continuing career for me in consulting; I doubt it means that there's no continuing career for me in technical writing. But I see no viable career path for myself at this company, because I insist on having a life in addition to a job, and eventually I think the powers that be at this company will count that against me.

More some other time on how truly warped and insane a world-view that is; it's getting late, and tomorrow is an early morning (Ash Wednesday and all).

O Wisdom, you came forth from the mouth of the Most High and reach from one end of the earth to the other, mightily and sweetly ordering all things. O come and teach us the way of prudence.

This is the first of the "Great O's," the antiphons on the Magnificat at Vespers in the octave leading up to Christmas. Depending on tradition they start today (Dec. 16) or tomorrow; if you use the last one, "O Virgin of virgins," then you start today. (If you want to see a bit more about them, visit a page I did as part of my web certification; it's ages old, but I'm still a kind of proud of it.)

I can't reproduce the music here...but I can comment a bit on the reading for the day, and the significance it has for me.

I am not, customarily, very wise. I push myself harder than I have strength for, drive myself farther than I can really afford to go...and pay for it later, sometimes physically, sometimes emotionally...sometimes both. I have permanent nerve damage to my right lower back and leg, as a result of stubbornly "soldiering on" and refusing to seek appropriate treatment until the damage had become essentially irreversible.

And I've just been called upon to go the extra mile again for my company. My company that kept me on the road and away from home and family and friends and singing for a year. My company that then turned around and told me "no raise" for the third year in a row. My company that just recently said "we're dropping the health insurance you've had, so you have to pick one of these two (crappy) plans which is all we'll offer."

And I've been feeling pretty spiteful and bitter about that. I don't really have a choice; if I want to keep my job, I go where they tell me and when, and right now, it's the only job I have. And to be honest, I don't want to lose credit with the person who suggested that they bring me into the project for which I must travel. The company's opinion doesn't matter a tinker's damn to me, but his opinion does.

Regardless, I've been feeling very spiteful about it, and sulky and stubborn, and sort of thinking, "Okay, I'll do this, but I won't enjoy it and I'll make you pay through the nose for every slight you've shown me and every fun thing you make me miss." And feeling bad about that, and un-Christmas-y and unChristian besides, but not really knowing what to do about it.

And then I read evening prayer from a lovely booklet I picked up a few years ago, Hasten the Kingdom: Praying the O Antiphons of Advent, by Mary Winifred, who was a sister of the Community of the Holy Spirit. It has the music that I can't reproduce here - being a singer, I've always wanted to learn to sing these antiphons - and a short, simple prayer service for each of the eight days of the antiphons.

And there in the readings is an answer to what I've been feeling and seeking...

From Wisdom 9:1, 9-11 (emphasis mine)

O God of my ancestors and Lord of my mercy,
who have made all things by your word...
With you is wisdom, she who knows your works
and was present when you made the world;
she understands what is pleasing in your sight
and what is right according to your commandments.
Send her forth from the holy heavens,
and from the throne of your glory send her,
that she may labor at my side,
and that I may learn what is pleasing to you.
For she knows and understands all things,
and she will guide me wisely in my actions
and guard me with her glory.

The meditation for the day spoke of how the first thing we need, to prepare for God's coming into our lives, is good sense. Not stubborn pride, not insistence on our own way or the highway. Not frantic cleaning or shopping or wrapping, when there isn't time. Not driving ourselves to exhaustion, both mental and physical, or giving more of ourselves than we really have to give - knowing our limits, and accepting rather than trying vainly to surpass them.

So out of this came two things, possibly related.

I'm prone to going Christmas-crazy, shopping and cooking and cleaning like mad, only to wake up the day after Christmas feeling like I missed it all, because I haven't had time to sit down with my favorite Christmas book (Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol), or watch Rudolph and Frosty and Charlie Brown, or just sit quietly by the tree...I often find I have not been prudent, in my preparations, not left my lamp filled with enough oil to burn brightly when it counts. So all the franticness I was starting to feel - I have to shop, I have to wrap, I have to write cards - sort of melted away into "I have to use common sense, do what I can, and not feel guilty for what I can't do."

And at the same time, I felt a dawning realization that my bitterness, my sulkiness, my spitefulness is simply not prudent, not wise. They are unhealthy for me, and can only endanger what is otherwise a good working relationship with a person who has done good things for me in the past, and intends only good for me in the present and future. What is asked is not unreasonable, not beyond my limits. It is true that I will miss singing one concert with my ensemble, but I won't lose the joy of having performed with them in the past, nor the promise of that joy again in the future.

Wisdom says, "be the best you can be, do the work you are given, go where you are sent without complaint. See the big picture, not the tiny detail. Two months out of a lifetime is as nothing, but the reward for doing well and being wise lasts a lifetime and beyond."

It isn't about whether the people I serve are deserving. It isn't even necessarily about the work itself; it has been known to happen that I've been sent on an out-of-town assignment for the company's purposes, only to discover that God had reason for me to be there that had nothing to do with the job I was doing, but was equally - perhaps even more - important. I'm sure the company wasn't aware of acting as God's agent, but there you are - they didn't need to know.

So I shall endeavor to be wise, to be prudent, and try to see whatever it is that God is bringing into my life with an open mind and heart. And suddenly I feel ever so much more ready for Christmas...

Yes, I know it's being joked about everywhere. There's a sort of gallows humor making the rounds, in various maps, both realistic and cartooned. And that gallows humor is based on the shocking vision of the map of the "United" States, with its blood-red center and its frozen blue fringes.

It's no joke, as the thousands of war dead, both blue and grey, could tell you. It's been tried before, and the half that stayed loyal was very determined not to allow it. And ultimately it collapsed.

Always before, in studying that long-ago secession, I've had the "appropriate" emotions and beliefs: the "good" North fought to prevent the "bad" Southerners from breaking up the Union, and won.

For the first time, I think I understand how the Southerners felt. A person who did not represent any of their interests - as they saw them, anyway - had been elected President over them. That person felt that a very strong federal government was necessary; they saw the states more as a loose confederation, with a nominal and weak central government. They felt disenfranchised. They felt unwanted. They felt they hadn't been heard. So they left.

And right now, I understand that. I hear the gloating triumphalism in the voice of the disgusting little turd that more than fifty percent of America wants as its President, and feel completely and totally disenfranchised. Yes, I voted - but not for that. I have some pretty strong beliefs - I am, after all, a Christian, although I'm sure Bush and his cronies would not acknowledge that since I'm not narrow-minded and bigoted, which appear to be pre-requisite Christian values for them.

Well, to be fair, I suppose I am narrow-minded and bigoted, but not towards the right people.

I think gay people are people, humans, and should have the right to do basically any damn-fool thing any other humans can do, including marry each other.

I think Christianity is the right spiritual path for me, and I think it's pretty good for a lot of other people, but I wouldn't presume to tell anyone else how to worship, nor issue pronouncements about my God is "better than" theirs.

I think abortion is not a good choice as primary birth control, but would not presume to make a moral judgment about its rightness for anyone except myself.

I think it matters at least as much what happens to people after they're born as before, and allowing them to buy guns and shoot each other is pretty stupid, as is killing them in order to teach them that killing people is wrong.

And my government...does not in any particular represent me, or my views, or my issues, at all. My government stands for bigotry and oppression and discrimination, and desires to enact those things not only into law but into the very Constitution that is the heart of the meaning of my country.

So I'm starting to think maybe Lincoln was wrong. Maybe we should have just said, "Sorry you feel that way, folks, but if you really do - then, good luck and God speed." And maybe the blue states really should say the same, and let the bigots go screw themselves without our help.

( Great and Holy Thursday )
( Good Friday )
( Holy Saturday )
edit
Sorry...tried to include an image but it didn't work. If anybody can tell me where I could store a regular image (as opposed to an icon-sized image) for linking to the LJ page, I'd appreciate it. It's a kind of prettified graphic version I made of the Easter acclamation, which was pretty much all it seems appropriate to say about Easter at the time...

So here I sit on Friday afternoon, with essentially nothing to do. There's some editing I expect to be doing sometime the afternoon, if the person I'm waiting on gets done reviewing and hands off his changes to add to mine. And I have been so tired and so bored for so long that I really no longer have much interest in doing even that miniscule bit of work.

Because it is miniscule, and it will not fill up the rest of the day until time to leave - and then there's this week's circus regarding "time to leave."

( this week's circus )
( spoiled brat )
( anything else, Mrs. Lincoln? )

So, when we last left our heroine, she was soldiering on in the face of overwhelming odds...well, which pretty much describes any day here in Wonderland.

It was very slow last week. Partly that has to do with being in the "refractory shadow" of a large deliverable; there's sort of a big expenditure of energy followed by a sense of mild to complete exhaustion, a need to regroup. It doesn't necessarily break one's heart that the following Monday is slow and quiet, and one can play Solitaire virtually undisturbed for a few hours.

But that regroup shouldn't take two weeks - which is the dictum from our foible-some leader (client-side). It shouldn't idle a large number of good people who are far from home, and who - given the choice - would much rather be twiddling our thumbs at home, thanks, than here where our access to the outside world is so limited. And that's what it's looking like doing. We're doing our level best to keep our heads in the game, to find useful and profitable things to do, to keep from going entirely insane. We are having mixed success, at best.

So Friday afternoon - after a solid work week of this all-too-quiet-ness - my current rideshare colleague and I took off for the airport. I dropped him off, ran an errand, and headed back to the apartment to vegetate for the weekend. Actually, I didn't entirely vegetate - there was a discussion group on Saturday morning as follow-up to the parish's screenings of The Passion, and I did an amazing amount of laundry, and I went to church and then out for another errand yesterday. All that, and I still found a fair amount of time to vegetate.

I decided to skip the get-together at the beach for those of us travelers who were in town this weekend; I was feeling really tired (which I now think may have been the beginnings of a cold, but I'm not just sure), and thought that one of the folk there was going to be a certain person new to the project, who is...a bit much, in large doses. And because I decided to skip the get-together at the beach, of course I didn't bother to open up the company mail to fetch the directions and address.

( And now for something really big... )
( aftermath )
And for now, that's about all - although God knows there's really nothing to do right now!

So here it is, Monday morning. Still quiet; half the team is still on the road and not yet arrived. I do have things I probably should do, but nothing that really sparks my interest, unfortunately. I seem to be running out of motivation.

That's partly tiredness. I tried last week to make a commitment to being asleep by 10, since I have to get up at 6 or so to meet the colleague with whom I'm currently carpooling. I didn't have remarkable success, although I think I did get a fraction more sleep than I might ordinarily have done. I might have gotten more yet, if I'd been smart and disabled the alarm Saturday morning...ah, well.
( Why I'm tired )

So what else is going on?

( car stuff )
( the prickly colleague )

I figure since the last entry in now about two or three weeks old, it was time to say something new. I wish there were more that's new to say, but really things are just grinding along as usual, for the most part.

Don came to visit over Super Bowl weekend; I wish I could say we went out and painted the town, but in truth, we spent a large portion of the weekend napping! We did have lunch with a friend of the family, and watched the game, of course. We are among the millions (I'm guessing) who must have been looking somewhere else during the three-second peepshow, so we really didn't know what all the fuss was about.

This past weekend was therefore another weekend here (Don's visit here was in lieu of a trip home). I intended to accomplish much more than I actually did, but had a good time anyway. Saturday I mostly read, caught up on correspondence, and ran errands. Sunday I went to church again at All Saints - wonderful welcoming place!

Sunday afternoon I went to a concert at the Times-Union Center: St Olaf's Choir. Now, I had never heard of St. Olaf's Choir, except that I must have, somewhere, because when I saw the poster last week in the convenience store over by the cafeteria, it stopped me in my tracks. I checked out when this was, called up ticketmaster, and poof! ticket.

They were absolutely astonishing. They sang the entire 2.5 hour concert from memory - no music in sight, except in front of the instrumentalists. They sang in five languages (English, Latin, German, Spanish, and an untranslated Brazilian Indian language that the composer had treated simply as "phonemes"). They sang a Jubilate Deo by Orlando Lassus; they sang the Bach motet Lobet den herrn; they sang Robert Ray's Gospel Mass. And about a dozen other things besides - fast, slow, complex, modern harmony, ancient harmony, complex rhythm - and did justice to all of it. Amazing!

So I couldn't - just couldn't - get away with fewer than three CDs: one because it was perhaps the largest collection of Dawson's spirituals together in one place; one because it was a collection of hymns; and one because it included a Cantate Domino by David Conte - whose work I already know I like from last June's encounter with Invocation and Dance.

And that's the news from here in Lake...oh, sorry...wrong tag line.