Sept 22, 2023 — Altitonant Jeremiad
I like this post naming scheme, and the phrase “altitonant jeremiad” is an apt description of the lives of a number of people I have known. You’ll have to look those words up if that makes no sense.
Also, happy equinox! Fall is officially here, and at least for us the weather is starting to turn cool. It’s not rainy enough yet, but we might see some real rain in the coming week.
Big news: the deck is done. I spent last Friday doing far too many things — none of them deck related — but Saturday and Sunday both featured extensive deck work.
It went from this:
To this:
It was finished just in time for the rain on Sunday evening, so the chairs were wet and I couldn’t even sit out there with a warm beverage on Monday morning.
In one of the photos above you can see the little cut out in the last deck board (top right). In an earlier post I’d mentioned that the deck has an in-cut that meant it wasn’t a simple rectangle. That’s it.
So the deck is off the infinite to-do list, which is good.
Saturday also featured attending a VSO (Vancouver Symphony Orchestra) concert. There were only two pieces on the program: Catamorphosis by Anna Thorvaldsdottir and Symphony № 6 by Mahler. I was not familiar with either work, but I suspected the first would be a tone poem that would leave me cold and the Mahler would be good.
Catamorphosis proved to be much more interesting than I expected. Composed in 2020 during the lockdown, it’s a twenty minute piece for a large orchestra, and yes it’s a tone poem of sorts. Anne and I both heard things that reminded us of the music from the movies Blade Runner, Arrival, and even the latest Dune. Not that we heard anything that was a direct copy. Instead, there were points where things somehow sounded familiar or similar.
I found some of the things going on with the percussion, piano, and harp fascinating. I’ll link to a performance of it for those who are interested.
Once Catamorphosis ended there was a long intermission to make major changes. Both pieces required a large orchestra, but those orchestras were very different. As performed by the VSO, Catamorphosis used four base drums, a piano, a single harp, and two tubas, while the Mahler needed only one base drum, two harps, one tuba, and a celesta. You get the idea.
Anyway, with intermission over and the stage once again full of performers, the baton came down and Symphony № 6 began. And I’m a bit surprised to say that unlike Catamorphosis, the Mahler was less interesting than I expected. I came out of it quoting Amadeus: “Too many notes.”
Not that it was bad. Quite the opposite, in fact. It’s a huge ensemble piece featuring a fascinating hammer in the percussion section towards the end, but in my opinion it needed some trimming. Perhaps a lot of trimming. It went on for well over an hour. But there’s more. In addition to the length, it felt too emotional and more than a bit overwrought.
That surprised me, as I am drawn to emotional music as a rule. I love The Wall even though it is about as literal as a low flying brick, and Roger Waters is tearing his own heart out on stage as he performs it. But this symphony is a bit too much.
Nothing sounded all that familiar, though there were short pieces of melody that I might have heard before. It’s called The Tragic, but I’m not sure why that is the case. And if you read a bit about the symphony it seems there is little to explain the name.
We had to flee the venue right after the performance ended — given aging dogs and weak dog-brain-to-bladder connections — but we enjoyed the evening. As we compared notes on our way home it seemed we had fairly similar reactions, though Anne enjoyed the Mahler more than I did.
The rest of the week passed in something of a haze. I think there was some letdown from the pressure of trying to get the stoop and deck finished (and the garage/shop reclaimed), plus I was tired for unknown reasons.
I spent some time working on the next issue of the Blueridge Bulletin (the monthly neighbourhood email I have mentioned in the past), and a bit of work on the community association website as well. These things ebb and flow.
Finally, I spent a small amount of time working on the family tree.
The story about my grandparents divorcing and remarrying has taken on a bit more definition, but not thanks to me. In consulting with my mom about it more details came out, and a friend found a confirming clue.
First, it seems my grandparents eloped. He was 20 and she was 19 when they married. I’m not sure what the marriage rules in Iowa — where they lived — were, but they got married in Illinois. There was no connection to the town they married in, so elopement is the apparent explanation.
Mom says my grandmother was always concerned about my grandfather’s ability to support them. This must have gradually worried her more over time, and eventually it boiled over. I can’t know the details — and my mom was something like four years old — but it seems a deal was struck. They divorced, but agreed to remarry once she had a degree. His parents paid for the degree and her parents took care of their three children, the youngest of which was only about one year old.
Mom remembers her father coming to visit during that time, but not her mother. That doesn’t mean her mother didn’t visit, of course, but if she did so it didn’t make an impression.
Anyway, my grandmother went to the University of Chicago and got her library science degree, and also a job at the university library. At that point, she remarried my grandfather, but not in Iowa. That last tidbit was a surprise, and I have to thank my friend Amy for discovering it.
It turns out they remarried in Cook county Illinois, possibly before even reuniting with the children. Amy found a tiny newspaper article announcing that, and with that in hand she also found the actual marriage license number.
The divorce is still an unknown at some level, but now we are sure it occurred. The best guess is still that it was in Iowa in 1947, and confirming that requires waiting until next year when the records open up. We don’t think it would have happened in 1945 because my grandmother would have been pregnant with my uncle at the time.
All of that leads me to some thoughts for those wanting to try genealogy. First, it might be good to work with someone who has done this before. There are tricks that are entirely obvious in hindsight, but which an inexperienced noob like me can easily miss. In my case, Amy’s help is proving invaluable.
For example, if you don’t know who a relative is, or perhaps you have a name but there is more than one person by that name in the geographical area (and time) you are concerned about, try looking at the marriage announcements and obituaries for relatives you do know about. They often list parents (and sometimes grandparents), as well as children and so on. Amy says the pros call this researching the FAN club — Family, Associates, Neighbours. Such digging can give you a handle on a name that you aren’t sure of, but it does involve spending time researching people who are not directly in your line.
The other thing I am learning is that newspaper archives are invaluable. Ancestry doesn’t provide access to newspapers by default, but you will almost certainly need them. Marriage announcements and obituaries are typically only available in newspapers — at least for the time frames I am digging into — so if you need those details you’ll want access to the papers from the time.
Amy suggests trying to confirm that the particular newspaper archive you choose has papers from the area you need. That makes sense, but if your family tree is a mystery that might be hard to do up front. In my case the service newspapers.com (which is owned by Ancestry) seems to be the one I need to subscribe to, but there are others including some that are free.
Anyway, the current research project is to figure out one set of my great (x3) grand parents. They are the most recent spots in the tree for which I lack sure data, and I have started the digging process. Of course, when the obvious stuff didn’t work out I sent my mom an email asking about them. She tells me she has more data and will dig it up. Clearly another important point about is to ask a lot of questions of the relatives you have available and write down what they tell you!
I’m not sure what next week will bring. Certainly there will be more work on the monthly email and the website, but in other ways I am between projects and will have to make something up. I guess we’ll all find out what is happening at that point.
Until then, take care!