Weird choir dreams continue

As you may recall, I’ve been dreaming about choir for a few months. Not a choir I was actually in, but one I kept chasing around a building trying to join for a service. Last night it took a new twist.

I was sitting in basement lounge space with a bunch of other people I didn’t know, all of us in street clothes and not robes, when we were called to come up to the church. When we got there, it was all wrong – and we were seated in the front pews instead of the choir loft. We started singing “Christ is Made the Sure Foundation” in four part harmony with descants and someone led us out the side door and down the street to the corner of some downtown city that I think was Philadelphia. We turned the corner and kept singing, and on the next corner found another stone church and entered through the side door.

This church was Trinity Church in Boston. I recognized it. We were still singing as we started processing into the choir loft except there was already a choir there and they were singing in German. A be-whiskered clergyman stopped the music and said in a very strongly accented voice, “There are 3,600 people outside and we must make room for them all. You can stay if you can sing what we’re singing.” And so somehow we all fit into the loft and the wonderful space behind the altar, all singing something in German that was probably Bach, and we had robes on.

I know this came from watching the live-stream of Brian Jones’ memorial service last weekend, when 85 choir members from Brian’s years at Trinity came together to sing and remember and honor him. The loft couldn’t hold that many so they ranged out around the space behind the altar. They sang that hymn, with descants, and I was home.

Maybe this will be the last of the choir dreams. It was a doozy.

Wheelchair repair takes forever

Ten days ago I heard the distinctive sound of metal hitting the floor, and discovered that something broke on my manual wheelchair while I was sitting in it. Believe you me, this is disconcerting at best. About 5 days later, I got a return call from the company and the tech walked me through a remote inspection using LogMeIn on my phone. The part that broke is one of four metal supports for the seat and the screw that held it in place broke in half. They suggested I use my power chair as much as possible because the other one wasn’t particularly safe, though they couldn’t actually tell me that for sure.

Yesterday I got a text from the company telling me that my primary care doctor would be getting a message from them regarding my diagnosis and use of the chair and that that process usually took about 14 days. Problem: my current PCP wasn’t the one who originally prescribed a chair in the first place, and I’m not sure how much is in the files because the stupid system switched to EPIC about the same time. Old records are Somewhere Else.

So I sent a long message to the doctor using MyChart explaining what was going on and offering to come in and talk to him, but a video visit would be better because the first time available through online appointment making was May 24th, which is weeks away. Apparently insurance requires that the doctor sign off on any chair repairs – and I would think that support for the SEAT would qualify as needed – but I guess I have to prove again why I need a chair in the first place.

I got this chair in May 2022 so it’s 2 years old now, and I understand that many people who get chairs need them for short periods of time and not forever. But I’m still using mine and I want them to fix it and not have it take 2-3 months to get permission, order parts, and get them installed.

On the other hand, I have a power chair and can use it for most things (getting in and out of the shower is problematic). The last time I had a problem I had to rent a chair for a month. This is better.

Cataloger at heart

I may be a choir person to my toes, but I’m also a cataloger at heart.

I worked as a technical services librarian in university and law school libraries for almost 40 years, starting as a cataloger and moving into management, acquisitions, serials, and electronic resources. And systems. Lots of systems work. It all suited me because I love order and structure and solving puzzles.

Catalogers solve the bibliographic puzzles of describing materials in all formats and making them findable in online systems. There are international standards and rules for doing this so that descriptions are consistent across libraries around the world. Some are pretty obvious but others are incredibly picky. When I started working in 1978, there were no online catalogs for library users; we still produced and filed cards. I even taught filing rules once a week in my first job. Be glad you weren’t there or had to do it.

Cataloging has two parts. First you describe what you have. What is the format? What’s the title? Who wrote it? Where, when, and by whom was it published? Is it in a series? That’s easy when you look at a novel but is much trickier when you get something complex or in a foreign language, or written by a committee, or published in 3 cities in different editions. After you describe the item, then you analyze what it’s about. Subjects are assigned headings that use standardized uniform terminology (Library of Congress Subject Headings, to be precise). Then it gets classified and given a call number to give the item a unique spot in your collection. That’s what people use to go to the shelf and find it.

You can see why all of that fits me to a tee. I’m mildly (okay, maybe not mildly) OCD and like structure, and I was a good cataloger since I could apply that to the work I did all day every day. But what happens when things changed?

Descriptions don’t change. The thing is what it is. But the subject headings changed a lot as the world changed. New headings are added all the time for new topics and old headings changed with the times. The biggest one I remember early on was NEGROES to BLACKS and then to AFRO-AMERICANS. We (or the staff who worked for us) used an electric eraser to remove the old heading and replacing it with the new one. Believe me, it was a lot of work and took a lot of time. Now that heading has changed again to AFRICAN AMERICANS but making the change in an online catalog is easy peasy without the eraser.

So what does this have to do with anything? Because last night I sat down with Quicken and reworked the taxonomy of my category list. What was there worked years ago when I started using Quicken, and I’d added new headings as new things came up (adding Cat when I got Tessie, for example). But now I wanted to track differently and needed to rearrange things, which meant thinking through what I wanted to report out to myself. No need for uniform headings, I could do whatever I wanted. I created a new structure and mentally applied an electric eraser to the old headings as I moved them to the new terms. It was very satisfying and my list is much tidier and easier to use.

I know, not super exciting – unless you’re a cataloger. Then it all makes sense.

A choir person to my toes

I joined my first choir when I was 6. My huge Presbyterian Church had a music program for all age groups, starting with first-third graders, then fourth-sixth graders, junior high girls (the boys’ voices were changing), and high school, plus of course the Senior Choir for the adults. Returning college students sang for Christmas Eve and sometimes in the summer. There was even a Choir Recognition Sunday every spring where choristers moved up to their new choir, getting an age-appropriate hymnal with their names in gold. Moving to the high school choir meant getting your own copy of Messiah. I still have mine.

We learned how to be good choristers. It was more than just learning the music and not poking your neighbor when you were singing. We learned to watch the director like a hawk. We learned how to count, how to breathe, how to mark our music, how to take care of our music and our robes. We learned that not coming to rehearsals had consequences: you couldn’t sing on Sunday if you missed the last rehearsal. We learned not to wear flashy things like red turtlenecks under our robes or dangling earrings because we were to look the same so we didn’t distract the congregation from the words and the music. We learned to worship through our music with every note and every breath.

For most of my life, joining the choir was how I made friends and found community every time I moved. I could sightread and had a decent voice – not a soloist, but an alto who blended smoothly with those around me. I’ve worn purple and white robes while singing in a cathedral choir, but usually black with white in my other Episcopal churches.

Not singing now is hard. While watching the memorial service today for the legendary Brian Jones, my director at Trinity Church, Boston, I found myself breaking into the alto parts I knew so well to the familiar music. I saw beloved faces of friends who were there to sing and knew of others around the country, watching as I was, adding our voices in our own ways. My neighbors may have been overwhelmed by my enthusiasm. I know the cats were confused.

But I also realized as I looked at Trinity that I couldn’t sing in a church choir now even if I had a way to get there — because they all have stairs. Every church throughout my life has needed the choir to navigate stairs to get up into the choir loft, as well as getting from the choir room to the sanctuary in the first place. They’re not accessible for someone like me. There are ways for people to take communion in those churches, but I don’t know how on earth I could ever manage singing from my wheelchair except as I did this morning, singing at home.

So I’m extra grateful now for the opportunities I had with the many choirs I’ve had the great good fortune to sing with. Singing Messiah and requiems and concerts. Singing for weddings and funerals. Going to England. For Candlelight Carols at Trinity and Easter Vigils in Portland and Charlottesville. For the Allegri Miserere and Ubi Caritas and the B-Minor Mass and Faire is the Heaven and Cornerstone. And most of all, singing for a normal Sunday morning liturgy and hearing the sopranos break into a soaring descant on a favorite hymn and knowing I was home.

Another milestone

Today I’m celebrating the loss of 90 pounds in 9 months. It’s astonishing. NINETY pounds. That’s the weight of a newborn baby calf or baby hippo. Or two SUV tires. Or six bowling balls. And my BMI is down 16 points. I’m still morbidly obese (oops, that’s now Class III so it sounds less terrible, but it’s still the same) but I’m closing in on “just” obese.

The last 10 pounds came off slowly but they still came off. To be honest, I’m actually glad the rate has slowed down. Oh, it’s wonderful to watch it just fall off almost by magic, but it takes the brain a long time to fully process that your body has changed so much. I’ve been so very fat for so long that it’s a big part of my identity. When it changes, do I know who I am? Do I recognize myself in the mirror? Am I still the same person inside or has that changed along with the physical changes?

I always thought that I was the same inside but now I’m not sure. I’ve been through a lot these past 3 years. I started losing 75 pounds during Covid to get myself down to a weight where spinal surgery was possible. When I got there, it was too late to prevent the nerve damage that now has me in a wheelchair. I gained all of that weight almost as fast as I lost it, plus more, as I lived a sedentary, more isolated life in a place with great food but with a wheelchair. Now I’m really seeing that the 90 pounds I’ve just lost got me back to the same weight as I was when I had surgery.

But I’ve lost that weight again in the same circumstances. Same home, same sedentary wheelchair life, same limited life – but I lost 90 pounds instead of gaining them. I’m stronger now, more at peace with the hand that I’ve been dealt. What I eat is up to me and no one else. And I’m very aware of how my body feels and understand the pressures and strains I’ve put on it with the extra weight I carried all my life. It’s different now. So am I.