"Freedom! Horrible, horrible freedom!"

(virtual sugar cubes to anyone who can identify that quote)

First day of freedom, and there's so much to do! And none of it involves reading about Milk Boards!!

On today's menu, so far I've got to return a library book, go grocery shopping, set up the slow cooker, then plunge into housework. Our entire house resembles medee6040's dearly departed roommate Dipshit's room. It's horrifying. I may take pictures and post them, to show just how horrifying it looks. Suffice it to say that leaving a resident to single-parent for about two solid weeks is not the way to maintain a home Martha Stewart would be caught dead in ;)

"But Father, I don't want it... I only want to siiing..."

Wowsa, our choir director just put up the rehearsal music. If anybody's looking for something to listen to, check this out: Rehearsal music.

Stars indicate what I think of each song
* = OK
** = very nice
*** = love it
**** = would marry it if I could

• Jesu Mkululi: *** we're going to sing this at the African Diaspora Community Forum on April 25. It's quite lovely, though it does start to get a little long at about the fourth verse. We're only doing two.
  
  
• Canadian Landscapes Trilogy
  
  
  • Scorned as Timber: ** it's grown on me
    
  • Bright Land: * meh
    
  • Snow: ** very... Canadian. It's grown on me too, although I think we do it better than this choir does
  
  
  
• Freedom Trilogy: **** only my very favourite song in years. It's so damn powerful as a blend of contradictory musical styles. Oh, and the voices in the stratosphere? That's my part. Not my choir in this recording, but when we sing it, there I'll be, sustaining high A's and trying not to die.
  
  
• Rise Up My Love or don't, I don't care. I hate this piece.
  
  
• I Beheld Her and then I wanted to run away, because I've sung this song to her just about every damn year I've ever been in a choir and I loathe it. It's like an STD, just keeps coming back over and over and over.
  
  
• Will Ye No Come Back Again *** beautiful piece. Always makes me think of Diana Gabaldon's Outlander series.
  
  
• Pie Jesu **** always makes me think of my mom. It was written for the victims of September 11, but meant to be used at memorials or funerals.
  
  
• Thou Shalt Know Him * meh
  
  
• Here's to Song ** OK

( Re. The Canadian Landscapes Trilogy )

white smoke

Habemus Papa

So, the new Pope

Why do I care? I'm not Catholic. I'm not Christian; I don't even believe in God. And yet I'm shaking my head as I wish the new Pope and the Church all the best and cling to quotes from people who know him who say he's intelligent, able to listen, compassionate, etc. And I'm trying to not think about the fact that John Paul II was all of that too, and look where he led the Church. And I'm also thinking another really good feature of Benedict XVI is that he's 78 years old.

For the record, in many ways I deeply admire John Paul II. I know he did what he felt was right, and I believe he acted only out of principle and compassion. But it's hard not to feel dismay that the cardinals appear to have elected more of the same, when 'the same' also means a death-grip on ideas about women and gays and contraception and female and married clergy that should have gone out around Vatican II.

::sigh::

I wish my mom was here. She's the one who taught me to respect and admire the Church for what it could be at its best, and understand it, at its worst. She's the one who pointed out that for all the evil it had done in the past and continued to do in the present, it was still the institution that had produced St. Francis of Assisi, Mother Teresa, and a Chilean Church that was the one and only public institution that stood up to Pinochet during all the years that he was in power.

I wonder what she'd think of Benedict XVI.