Or so the prediction is: at the moment rain clouds (but it won't rain) are obscuring the scorching Sun so there is a bit of relief. I was sweating on the return leg of the morning spatiamentum, but I imagine that had more to do with the 78% humidity than the 69 degrees of heat. It occurs to me that I have no real idea what that 75% figure means: another 25% and we would be swimming in water? this morning I don't doubt but that that might be the case. Relative humidity is the term used, isn't it.
Am listening to Hilary Hahn on an album called Silfra. She is apparently improvising her playing in response to the machinations of a German fellow named Volker Bertelmann ("who works under the name Hauschka"). While she is a splendid violinist of course, I am unimpressed with the "Ping-Pong balls, magnetic resonators, tiny motors and other implements" Herr Bertelmann has apparently stuck into the piano. 'Prepared piano' is the polite way of referring to this technique. Let us see what is at YouTube.
And there is this 11 minutes devoted to the machinations, photographed by Miss Hahn.
Lest I be misunderstood, I'm sure that Hauschka's work has its moments, and a concert performance would be at least interesting. It doesn't follow from this, however, that I am ever going to listen to any of it here on my own, in this, my glorious private auditorium.
The Blogger people continue to fuss about with the controls here, the 'dashboard' it is called, perhaps: it now took e.g. three clicks to center the video supra where before the tinkering began two sufficed. Someone imagines that he is being efficient, I suspect.
Before Vespers. It is 96 degrees, with a 10% chance of rain. I'm going to drink a refreshing bottle of beer... ginger beer, that is; Bundaberg's, from Australia.
Post Vesperas. Am drinking the ginger beer now, being refreshed and sweating all at once. The shortest Psalm in the Psalter is the 116th, the last of them at Vespers today:
116:1 Laudáte Dóminum, omnes gentes: * laudáte eum, omnes pópuli:
116:2 Quóniam confirmáta est super nos misericórdia ejus: * et véritas Dómini manet in ætérnum.
I remember, ages ago when I had first begun to say the Office, that the length of some of the Psalms proved onerous-- 20 and 30 verses, 40, 50 and even 60 and more, some of them (although those very long ones aren't typically said at Vespers)-- and so I would experience often enough a certain access of cheery relief when I realized that Psalm 116 was upcoming.
It hasn't gone beyond 96. Benedicite ignis et aestus Domino, benedicite frigus et aestus, Domino... but I devoutly wish there were any amount of frigus at all hereabouts.
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