The Blog About Nothing

You may recall that the Seinfeld show was described as the "show about nothing" and even spoofed itself with a series of episodes where the characters pitched and developed "Jerry", also a "show about nothing."   George Costanza describes the concept: "Nothing happens on the show. You see, it's just like life. You know, you eat, you go shopping, you read.. You eat, you read, You go shopping." (Seinfeld Blog).

This entry marks my 200th entry to the blog.  If I were a TV show I would be in syndication twice over. So to mark this momentous occasion, I will write a whole lot about nothing today.

Today, I did my ritual grocery shopping at Trader Joe's. As I was shopping,  I started to sing (to myself, mind you) a song by John Rutter called "Loving Shepherd of Thy Sheep", in which he took a  children's hymn from 1842 by  Jane E. Leeson for his own musical composition.  Apparently, Leeson was a member of a sect called the Holy Catholic Apostolic Church (CAC) in England.  Some argue that CAC was a precursor of the Rapture movement, which I find ironic given that yesterday an old friend wrote me jokingly about looking into pet care for the impending Rapture (witness the earthquakes, tsunamis, dead fish and, as of today, volcanos).

In any event,  as I was driving home from TJs, I turned on the Cambridge Singers' performance of the Rutter song I had been singing and for completely unexplained reasons started to cry. This was odd because I find that I do not cry much anymore, and certainly much less than I once did.  Of course, I cried when Ann died last month but even then did not cry as much as I felt sad and broken hearted.  But the tears were there this morning-- perhaps for Ann, perhaps for Japan, perhaps for nothing at all.

While I am talking about nothing, our cat continues to pick at her new "organic" food.  As I have written elsewhere, I have changed the cat food at least six times in the past year and the kitty ate whatever we put in front of her, until now.  I did not buy this latest brand but I have added a few other brands to the food to get her back to the bowl.  Still she snubs the new food after eating a few bites.

The other day I was eating breakfast when I heard some odd sounds outside, like kids were riding skateboards on our driveway.  I looked out and a bevy of large crows were chowing down on Kitty's food.  Kitty, of course, was nowhere to be found.  I opened the door and scared the crows away. Kitty came sauntering out of her hiding place.  What an embarrassment!  I have to protect her from birds!  I reminded Kitty that it was her job to bring me birds as tokens of affection and respect, like our other cats did.  She sneered at me in her cat voice and went back to lying in the sun, oblivious to her true role as a predator.  The crows have continued to come back every day and I dutifully scare them away each time. However, it has gotten so bad that they send out a call to all crows each morning after I put out the Kitty's food--a "dinner is served" crowing that can be quite loud.  I am thinking about creating a scarecrow for near her food bowl, but given what a wuss she is, it would probably keep her from eating too.

Here are a picture of our lazy, nonaggressive kitty and a video of Rutter's "Loving Shepherd of Thy Sheep" performed, fittingly, by children (with some augmentation for the men's parts).  The performance in the video is a bit different from what is scored in that all the youth sopranos sing what is written as a solo soprano part for the first and last verses.

Syd about to snooze

At the River

I attended my friend Paul's funeral three weeks ago and was reminded today of it while listening to an account of Justice Scalia crying openly and publicly at the funeral service of  Chief Justice Rehnquist.  I admire people who are secure enough in themselves to cry in public.  I am so uncomfortable crying in public that I was embarassed when I started to weep at the funeral during a performance of Aaron Copland's arrangement of "Shall We Gather At the River".  Part of the problem may be that I have always cried easily when emotionally hurt and that has happened too often in the work setting.  Like Tom Hanks said in  A League of Their Own, "There's no crying in baseball" --or in the workplace if you are a woman.  So I get upset when the tears start to flow as if it were such a bad thing to cry anywhere.  I hate to be viewed as an "emotional woman" or "hysterical". But sometimes it is ok to cry, such as at the funerals of friends.

"At the River" is a wonderful hymn which I had the pleasure of learning a few years ago when I sang with the LMU Community Chorus, although the version we did combined that hymn with another song, "Deep River."  At the funeral, the hymn was sung by a baritone with tenor overtones.  Here is a young baritone  I found on Youtube singing the Aaron Copland version.  It gives me the chills.