meanfreepath

Tonight was the Easter Vigil, and the now traditional Fellows dinner beforehand in the Buttrick Room. Anna, James and I prepared dinner -- an enormous pot of vegan chili, vegan cornbread, and fresh guacamole. The cornbread, from this recipe, was surprisingly good and had I not known I would not have guessed it was vegan. This may have been one of the first explicitly vegan meals I've prepared, at least for a crowd.

The service was unforgettable, but not in a good way. MemChurch's Easter Vigil starts with a fire lit in a barbecue grill; this year, winds blew smoke from the fire, reeking of lighter fluid fumes, right into the church. And then -- the fire alarm went off. The decision was made to proceed with the service nonetheless. The feeling of processing slowly down the center aisle of the church with Ed chanting the Exsultet, while the strobe lights of the alarm flashed and firefighters in full turnout gear trooped across the front of the sanctuary with their portable radios chattering, was indescribably bizarre.

It has been a pretty nutty week. I was pretty exhausted from March Meeting, and while it was great to see people in New York last weekend, that wasn't exactly restful either. Starting with APS, and continuing through this week, I've gotten onto a bad cycle where I have a hard time shutting my brain down when it comes time to sleep. I suspect excessive coffee consumption is at least partially to blame, especially when waking up tired makes one want coffee. Tomorrow morning we have the dress rehearsal for the St John Passion, so I get to sleep in a little bit, but not much. But hopefully that will help.

Last night I went to the final talk in MemChurch's Lenten speaker series, where Prof. Mark Jordan of the Divinity School spoke on Christian sexual ethics, particularly regarding same-sex marriage, and directly questioned whether and how churches should be blessing any type of union. The series was co-sponsored by MemChurch and the Harvard Episcopal Chaplaincy, and afterwards I took the opportunity to introduce myself to the Episcopal chaplain. I might try to go to Good Friday services at Christ Church Cambridge, at which that chaplaincy is based. The Choral Fellows are busy for Maundy Thursday, and the Easter Vigil, and are of course with the full choir on Easter Sunday, but don't have to sing (or sit through) three hours of Prof. Gomes's preaching on Christ's Seven Last Words on Friday afternoon.

Anybody planning on going to Pinewoods this summer? I'm not sure what I'd like to do. Scottish Pinewoods is always a blast, if intense -- I don't know how the people who do both the weekend and the week have anything left by the end of it, particularly those who tend to be up late for the post-dance jam sessions. I've heard the English-Scottish session is a bit more laid back, and what's more Liz Donaldson is music directing this year. So I'd think about either doing Scottish Week, Scottish Weekend, or if I were nuts English-Scottish Week plus the Scottish Weekend.

If I were to only go to Scottish Weekend, it might be feasible to do some kind of traveling this summer. I've never really traveled without my family, other than the UChoir tour to Mexico three years ago (which was wonderful, partly because I got to know pastwatcher a lot better). So perhaps that would be something worth thinking about.

One thing I need to get done this week is to write a talk for Morning Prayers on Thursday. Dr. Austin often turns to choristers to fill slots in the Morning Prayers speaker schedule, and in particular Choral Fellows since we're at Prayers anyway. This happens to be a particularly student-heavy week, with two other Fellows speaking.

Thursday happens to be the Feast of the Annunciation on both the Catholic and Episcopal liturgical calendars. Both the Lectionary and the Book of Common Prayer put down basically the same texts, including Luke's account of the Annunciation, and Psalm 40, "Expectans expectavi." Speakers are free to discourse on anything they feel like, but as an ex-Catholic/wannabe Episcopalian I don't think the liturgical calendar should be completely ignored. Somewhat unfortunately, the anthem that's been put down is some 20th century work (which is fine in and of itself -- I believe in supporting new music) taking its text from the Tao Te Ching. For the Annunciation, I do wish we were doing a Magnificat setting instead, although I can't think of any for TB or TTBB off the top of my head.

Several ideas had been rolling around in my head, but I hadn't checked the liturgical calendar before now. If people are interested I could post my talk when it's done.

Off to bed; this snowstorm hasn't really amounted to anything, and even if it did they would never cancel Morning Prayers.

This evening I completed the bicycle repair class I signed up for at the Broadway Bicycle School. The subject of tonight's class was rear derailleur adjustments. I'm slightly miffed that I ever found the derailleur intimidating -- it's really not a complicated mechanical device at all. Over the past few classes we've covered a bunch of stuff worth knowing, like chain replacement, brake adjustments, and bearing system adjustments. Before the bearing class I had never seen or used a cone wrench, and the brake class happened to come up in the nick of time as both sets of my brake pads were almost completely worn out. The first class was on tires and flat replacement, which I'd done on my own before; nonetheless, I picked up some useful tips. All in all, I think it's been a worthwhile investment and I can recommend the class with enthusiasm. Maybe down the line I'll sign up for the advanced class, covering wheel truing, cable replacement, front derailleurs, and hub and headset overhauls.

My lab's first big paper just came out in Science. If I may say so, it's a pretty neat bit of physics -- there's a nice "Perspectives" summary of the paper by John Crocker in the same issue.

The latest poll results in the MA Senate special election are truly frightening, showing Brown with a slight lead (within uncertainty) over Coakley:

http://www.boston.com/news/politics/2008/articles/2010/01/15/mass_senate_poll_shows_shift_toward_gop_candidate/

Time was when I considered myself a Republican, and while there are plenty of typical Democratic positions on economic issues with which I disagree, I do not want to send a supporter of the use of torture to the Senate. More importantly, in the current political climate, one fears for the ability of Congress to pass any legislation without a supermajority. And while there is much that is problematic in the current health care reform proposals, it would be a disaster to see that fail.

I was originally planning to spend part of the weekend at Arisia, and also need to spend a bunch of time practicing. I just made a donation to the Coakley campaign, and now I wonder if the weekend would not be better spent volunteering for her campaign.

In keeping with the decision I arrived at last night, I attended the 11:15 service at Trinity Episcopal in Copley Square this morning. I'd been in front of the church plenty of times, when gallian had talked me into going to outdoor international dancing a few summers back, but had never gone in. It was a mostly pleasant 5 mile bike ride downtown from my apartment, save for one maniac of a driver speeding and swerving on the Harvard Bridge. And I hadn't realized before how pretty the stretch of Comm Ave that runs through the Back Bay is with snow on the ground.

As for the service -- a lot of Episcopal churches do Communion every Sunday. Trinity has a weekly communion at 9:00, but their principal 11:15 service is Morning Prayer on all but the 1st Sunday of the month. One of the things I'd like to find out is the rationale for doing Morning Prayer vs. Holy Eucharist as a Sunday service.

The full Episcopalian Morning Prayer is considerably more involved, and richer, than the brief service customary at Harvard. (I would not be surprised if Harvard's Morning Prayers were much more extensive than the current 15 minutes in days of yore when attendance was compulsory.) Early in the service I was surprised that the entire congregation was asked to sing the plainchant canticle with the choir -- it's so easy to trip over the words or move incorrectly when not on the reciting tone. The canticle was followed by a spoken psalm and two Scripture lessons, with an anthem after each lesson. These were the Magnificat and Nunc Dimmitis in Bb of Stanford (pretty -- in UChoir we almost never get to sing Magnificats). During the Nunc I was surprised to see a woman in the front of the sanctuary waving a kite mounted to a pole; this was apparently the signal for the children in the congregation to assemble downstairs for the childrens' sermon.

The preacher's text this morning was the baptism of Christ, according to Luke. The preacher spoke about the imago Dei, our recognition of that through Baptism, and of the need to be listening to God's call in our lives -- a focused and relatively concise sermon. Following the sermon there was another anthem during the offertory, the "Three Kings" of Cornelius, the one with the bass solo over a serene "Wie schon leuchtet der Morgenstern." The service concluded with the usual blessing and hymn, and a choral benediction.

I stopped by the Welcome Table in the church foyer after the postlude (Buxtehude, Praludium in F). The lady there happened to be a convert from Catholicism, as well. She invited me downstairs for the coffee hour, where I chatted with a couple of people. It seemed relatively friendly for a large church, and certainly way more so than most Catholic churches. I could definitely see myself coming back.

So I decided to bite the bullet and register for the basic repair class at the Broadway Bicycle School. The cost seems pretty reasonable for a 10-hour course, and I look forward to being able to extend my bike repair abilities beyond replacing punctured inner tubes.

My brother and I were talking yesterday about various people we had known from high school, and somehow the subject of a local New Year's tradition that I participated in for a few years came up. This was a 5 mile road race known as the Hamilton Hangover. I'd generally go run it with some teammates from cross country/track; if nothing else we'd get some fast mileage for the day and a T-shirt out of it.

It then occurred to me that due to the race's late start, around noon, it would be possible if insane to have an unforgettable New Year's by dancing DelVal Hogmanay, stretching legs and icing feet, getting a few hours of sleep, and then running the Hamilton Hangover. One would probably even have time to make it to the DelVal recovery party after the race, assuming one had any energy left and one's legs were not turned into mush.

Frankly, two or three miles of very gentle running to warm up the legs, followed by extensive stretching, might actually be quite helpful in recovering from Hogmanay.

Peter Barnes's band "Bare Necessities" is probably the best known English country dance band in the area, and as far as I can tell they are very highly regarded in general. I sort of had a mental note in my head to try to listen to them live (maybe out in Arlington some Wednesday night) or to get some CD's -- I am the listed pianist (with a fiddler and a woodwind player) on May 26 for the Harvard Square English dance, and while I've played for ECD before there's a lot more I should learn before then.

Anyway -- if you Google "Bare Necessities", an underwear vendor and a naturist travel agency come up before the band.