Wow!
Yesterday my sister's college friend, Randy Berry, was inaugurated by the State Department as the first-ever LGBT human rights envoy. This is a newly-created position for which he was chosen. Randy has served in the Foreign Service for most of his career, with postings around the world. His most recent position has been Consul General in Amsterdam.
About 100 people, including my sister, attended the inaugural event in one of the State Department's formal reception rooms, often used to host heads of state. Anne told me that several members of Congress were present, and the atmosphere included a string trio, hor d'ourves, and drinks. Secretary of State John Kerry spoke first, followed by Randy himself. (He told Anne privately that he had pulled a "college all-nighter" to get ready!) Both speeches are posted today on the home page of the State Department's website: www.state.gov
Two excerpts from John Kerry:
We know governments and civil societies in many regions are taking positive steps to advance LGBT rights. And we need to build on and learn from those successes. So this is an important post that Randy is signing up for. And it’s an important moment to represent our country. It demands courage and commitment, and it demands character. And I think everybody here who knows Randy knows those are three words that define him . . . So Randy, as you are surrounded today by family and by friends, I want you to know that you have President Obama’s full confidence, you have my full confidence, and you have the respect and the gratitude of the State Department family. And I look forward to working closely with you and with everybody here and the many people who are committed to this cause in the months and years to come. Let’s stay at it. God bless. And thank you, Randy, for taking on this task.
Some of Randy's response:
I am deeply, deeply honored and humbled by the confidence and trust that you’ve placed in me in appointing me to this special envoy role. I’d further like to thank you, Mr. Secretary, for your ongoing leadership and commitment in advancing the human and civil rights of members of the LGBT community both here and abroad . . . .
We’ve seen critical interventions in crisis situations, but also the use of such innovations as the Global Equality Fund to build local civil society networks and capabilities, ensure access to justice, and provide safe haven for those at risk. Many of you in this room are foundational partners in that effort and I thank you for that. Looking ahead, I pledge to put forth my strongest effort to honor and deepen those friendships with our friends and allies and to seek out new partners and grow that momentum.
We are not alone in our efforts. We must continue to learn from and exchange clear views with our closest governmental allies in this fight . . . . To our friends and partners working in the international civil society and global equality sphere and have provided a catalyst for change in many places around the globe, I look forward to encouraging – to engaging robustly, again, to continue to learn and to continue to refine our partnership. As leaders in social innovation and promotion of change, your role is invaluable.
I will seek to partner more with businesses not only to explore in greater detail how positive policies can encourage change, but also to see greater partnership through the Global Equality Fund, which carries great promise but needs additional support and participation. To our friends and partners, allies, and advocates doing the most challenging and difficult work in the most challenging and difficult of places, let me assure you that, as the Secretary just noted, the United States Government is fully committed to promoting and protecting your human rights. And to do that we must continue to engage with and listen intently to the views and needs of local rights organizations taking up the banner in hundreds of places around the world.
Date Weekend
Paul and Adam are no longer living at home, and the four younger kids left today on a church youth retreat. Jonathan and I have a full weekend alone for the first time since 2005.
My mother told me not to be surprised if our main topic of conversation is the kids!
My Mom's Birthday
I haven't posted for a week because I traveled to Virginia to celebrate my mother's 80th birthday. See below for a photo of her in the worship service at Luther Place Memorial, her home congregation.
Our family had ordered altar flowers in honor of my mother. The pastor took this information and decided to base the children's sermon on my mother's hands, which serve to care for my father and others. After the children's sermon, the pianist struck up "Happy Birthday," and my Mom got a standing ovation. At the conclusion of the worship service, the entire congregation (as requested by the pastor) shook those care-giving hands in congratulation.
The home health care aide could not work on Sunday morning, due to illness, so I stayed home with my father that morning to allow Mom to attend church. It's a joy to have this photo of the wonderful way my mother's church feted her on her big day. My sister Anne is seated with Mom, and my brother Mark is standing to Anne's left.
Mardi Gras
In our church, we celebrate Mardi Gras on the previous Sunday. Transfiguration is our last burst of joy before the solemnity of Lent. The kids in Sunday School made "Alleluia" banners from felt and glitter, and carried them out of the sanctuary. We won't see the banners or hear the word "Alleluia" again until Easter Sunday.
Today in the chapel service for the nursery school kids, we also carried out the banners and bid farewell to "Alleluia." The children placed their "Alleluias" in a basket, and as they returned to their classrooms, some of them shyly waved goodbye to the banners. Very endearing!
Jonathan: "Bach and I Are Like Twins"
Male
German
Lutheran
Professional Musician
Church Musician
Composer
Teacher at a Lutheran educational institution
Married
Lots of Kids
Etc.
Johann Gottfried Bernhard Bach, Part IV
For quite a while, Bernhard left
no trace; no one could find him—according to an inquiry by the town council,
“not even his father, the Capell Director
in Leipzig.” The distressed parents may
not even have become aware of their lost son’s matriculation in January 1739,
as a law student at Jena University—an attempt on the part of the gifted young
man struggling with obligation and inclination, intimidated son of a powerful
father and uncertain of his own place in life, to turn things around? But only four months later, on May 27,
shortly after his twenty-fourth birthday, Bernhard died “from a hot fever.” Nothing beyond this is known of his illness,
death, or burial.
source: Christoph Wolff, Johann Sebastian Bach: The Learned Musician (New York: Norton,
2000), p. 400.
More of Bach's Own Words
Despite working hard to gain Bernhard employment first in Muehlhausen and then in Sangerhausen, Bach now had to mop up (again) after his son when he unexpectedly left Sangerhausen. Bach wrote another letter (dated May 24, 1738) to Mr. Klemm:
With
what pain and sorrow . . . I frame this reply, Your Honor can judge for
yourself as the loving and well-meaning father of Your Honor’s most beloved
offspring. Upon my (alas! misguided) son
I have not laid eyes since last year, when I had the honor of enjoying many courtesies
at Your Honor’s hands. You Honor is also
not unaware that at that time I duly paid not only his board but also the Muehlhausen
draft (which presumably brought about his departure at that time), but also
left a few ducats behind to settle a few bills, in the hope that he would now
embark upon a new mode of life. But now
I must learn again, with greatest consternation, that he once more borrowed
here and there and did not change his way of living in the slightest, but on
the contrary has even absented himself and not given me to date any inkling as
to his whereabouts . . . .
Since, moreover, various creditores have presented their claims to me, and I can hardly agree to pay these claims without my son's oral or written confession of them (in which I am supported by all laws), therefore I most obediently request Your Honor to have the goodness to obtain precise information as to his whereabouts, and then you only need to be good enough to give me definite notification so that one last effort may be made to see whether with God's help his impenitent heart can be won over and brought to a realization of his mistakes.
source: The Bach Reader, edited by Hans T. David and Arthur Mendel, rev. ed. (New York: Norton, 1966), pp. 160-61
In Bach's Own Words
In a Nov. 18, 1736 letter to Mr. Klemm, a member of the city council of Sangerhausen, Bach describes his own rejection as organist several decades prior, and how this unfortunate event might now help his son Bernhard:
. . . Your Most Noble and Worshipful Council are now better in a position, by choosing one of my children, to keep the promise made to my humble self almost 30 years ago, in the conferring of the post of organist for the figured music then vacant, since at that time a candidate was sent to you by the highest authority of the land, as a result of which, although at that time, under the regime of the late [Mayor] Vollrath, all the votes were cast for my humble self, I was nevertheless, for the aforementioned raison, not able to have the good fortune of emerging with success. Your Honor will please not take it unkindly that I disclose my fate at that time on this occasion; only the fact that the first entree of my written correspondence found such gracious ingress brings the thought to me that perhaps Divine Providence is taking a hand here. May Your Honor futher remain a gracious patron of me and my family, and believe not only that the good Lord will reward you, but also that I and my family will be our life long . . . Your Honor's wholly obedient servant JOH. SEB. BACH
source: The Bach Reader, edited by Hans T. David and Arthur Mendel, rev. ed. (New York: Norton, 1966), pp. 150-51.
Johann Gottfried Bernhard Bach, Part III
No doubt an excellent organist who
easily passed an audition, Bernhard had a very fine instrument at his disposal
in Sangerhausen: the old organ his father had played in 1702 had by then been
replaced by a new instrument by Zacharias Hildebrandt of Leipzig, a frequent
collaborator with Bach, onetime apprentice of the renowned Gottfriend
Silbermann, and now ducal Saxe-Weissenfels court organ builder. But not even this attractive organ could bind
the unsteady and restless Bernhard to Sangerhausen. In the spring of 1738, he suddenly
disappeared from the scene without informing anyone of his whereabouts.
source: S: Christoph Wolff, Johann Sebastian Bach: The Learned Musician (New York: Norton, 2000), p. 399.
[note of explanation: As a teenager, Johann Sebastian Bach had applied to Sangerhausen as his first major position after finishing school. The town council unanimously granted him the job, but the local nobleman over-ruled them and insisted on a different applicant. So, the leaders in Sangerhausen knew J. S. Bach pretty well.)
Johann Gottfried Bernhard Bach, Part II
But Bernhard did not remain in the
Muehlhausen post for very long. Sixteen
months later, [Johann Sebastian] Bach contacted Johann Friedrich Klemm of
Sangerhausen, son of Johann Jacob Klemm, with whom he had dealt way back in
1702 as a candidate for the post of town organist in Sangerhausen. “I have dared,” he wrote,” to take the
liberty (since I have heard that the organist of the Lower Church has died and
the vacancy will probably soon be filled) of obediently asking you . . . not
only for your gracious patronage on behalf of a person who is very close to me,
but also to show me in this matter the special faveur of sending me mostly kindly a gracious note on the salary of
the vacant post.” Additional
correspondence with Sangerhausen followed, and again, thanks to his father’s
intervention, Bernhard was invited to audition on January 13, 1737, was elected
the following day, and quit his Muehlhausen post about a month later.
source: S: Christoph Wolff, Johann Sebastian Bach: The Learned Musician (New York: Norton, 2000), p. 399.
A Son of Johann Sebastian Bach
A . . . difficult and, in the end, tragic case was Johann Gottfried Bernhard, [Bach's first wife] Maria Barbara’s third son, doubtless an intelligent young man and a gifted
musician but also an apparent ne’er-do-well.
After graduating from [Leipzig's] St. Thomas School in 1735, he applied for the
organist post at St. Mary’s in Muehlhausen.
Johann Sebastian had learned that his former colleague Johann Gottfried
Hetzehenn had died that April, and using his long-established connections and
writing directly to the [mayor], Bach managed to get his son scheduled for an
audition. Early June saw both father and
son traveling to Muehlhausen, where Bernhard auditioned for the opening and was
elected for the job by the town council on June 16. Meanwhile, Bach had offered free [!] advice on
the rebuilding of the organ at St. Mary’s, under contract with Johann Friedrich
Wender and his son Christian Friedrich.
Then, on the evening of the organist election, Bach and his son were
wined and dined by the town council.
source: S: Christoph Wolff, Johann Sebastian Bach: The Learned Musician (New York: Norton,
2000), p. 399.
Pronunciation
As radio announcers keep discussing the military situation in eastern Ukraine, they are unwittingly taking sides. In Ukrainian, the word for the capitol city is Київ, while in Russian, it's Киев. The first is best transliterated Kyiv, while the second is Kiev.
Historically, the version that most English speakers use is the Russian pronunciation, but I feel the Ukrainian term would be more appropriate.
For an entire article on this topic, see:
http://www.businessinsider.com/kiev-or-kyiv-2014-1
Little Pleasures
After a significant winter storm, salty slush freezes in the wheel wells of everyone's cars. It is especially satisfying to kick this ice and have the entire chunk fall all at once. It's a small thing, but I really like it.
Roots
David and Adam have both expressed interest in their Ukrainian background. We've read that seeking self-identity is a normal part of adolescence, and this search is especially true for adoptees.
So David ordered his sports hoodie from high school with his Ukrainian name "Mihailo" stitched on the front. He also gives both his English and Ukrainian names as the title of his Facebook page:
David Mihailo Stahlke
(Mihailo Bogdanovich Vihrenko)
[By way of explanation, Mihailo is the Ukrainian version of Michael. Bogdanovich is the birth father's given name, inflected with a masculine ending. Vihrenko is the surname of the birth mother.]
Adam didn't just put his name on his clothing. His chest sports a tatoo "UKRAINE" that extends from arm to arm.
Our Big Winter Storm
Wow! We woke up this morning to clear blue skies, no wind, lots of sun, and over 19 inches of sparkling snow. Gorgeous!
All our schools canceled class, even Concordia, and besides the necessary snow shoveling we plan to take the kids sledding today. The snow is wet and sticky, making shoveling difficult because the snow won't easily slide off. One of the children complained that his shovel "wasn't working"!
That American "R"
Come, O Christ, and reign among us,
King of love and Prince of Peace;
Hush the storm of strife and passion,
Bid its cruel discords cease.
By Your patient years of toiling,
By Your silent hours of pain,
Quench our fevered thirst of pleasure,
Stem our selfish greed of gain.
After working with all these "R"s today in just one stanza for choir, I'm doubly glad that our choir's Easter anthem this spring is Randall's Thompson's "Alleluia." It contains only two words--Alleluia and Amen--and neither one has an R!
