1. When it comes to volunteering, it makes me very happy to find ways to help out when I can be pretty much unnoticed. The Elks food pantry makes this possible for me -- at least it did again today.
2. I decided to devote much of today to listening to the Great Course on learning how to listen to and understand great music. When I was going to college at Whitworth and the U of Oregon, I always enjoyed learning about the Protestant Reformation and what practices of the Roman Catholic Church that movement was protesting and what, over many years, the movement did to reform not only doctrine and church governance, but the experience of worship and the ways it urged individuals to search their conscience and not rely on the Church to do that for them.
That short paragraph I just wrote doesn't account for how messy the Reformation was nor does it account for Protestant abuses that I find historically repulsive and find disturbing as I see them continue into the present.
BUT, what I hadn't thought a lot about before today was the Roman Catholic influence on music, what its purpose is, what the Church regarded as appropriate and what wasn't, nor had I thought a lot about how Protestant reforms affected the composing and producing of music.
So many intellectual, spiritual, philosophical, and ecclesiastical developments that began to emerge in the 16th century matured in 17th century and beyond thanks to the Enlightenment or The Age of Reason. This blending of the spiritual, scientific, and rational, this trust in the authority of reason (almost always with God right in the middle of it all) helped a creative and precise and deeply pious mind and imagination of someone like J. S. Bach flourish and helped give us the exuberant creations of the Baroque Period, not only in music, but in other arts and sciences, too.
What I just wrote falls far short of elaborating upon all I learned and thought about today, but, hey!, this is a blog not a seminar paper!
3. I'm not quite sure how severe the winter weather was today along the route Debbie drives when she goes from the Diazes in Woodbridge, VA to Adrienne's house in Valley Cottage, NY.
What I do know is that a day or two ago Debbie saw the winter weather coming today and drove up to Adrienne's yesterday and so didn't have to make her way north in the winter weather today.
I am relieved she made things easier for herself by driving yesterday and that she has settled in at Adrienne's where she'll hold down Adrienne's fort and look after Jack while Adrienne travels to Virginia with Ellie next week on a business trip. Thankfully, Ellie will stay with the Diazes during the day while Adrienne is busy with work.
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