A Note To The Granddaughters Pending A Bakken Story

Later on I will post something about the Bakken, but I'm so far behind at the moment, it will take me the rest of the week to catch up, and, of course, the stories will keep coming.

But I will get back to the Bakken in a few minutes. For now, something more important:

********************************

A Note for the Granddaughters

A couple of weeks ago my wife called attention to this WSJ article on Arvo Pärt. I read the article in the print copy and forgot to link it at the website. Tonight a reader alerted to another article on Arvo Pärt at NPR. This technology is so cool. At the NPR link, one can actually link to an audio broadcast. Highly recommend it.

I can't remember if I posted my story about how I discovered Arvo Pärt ... and now it's been so long, I can't remember the story. I have it in my journals, but I'm not in the mood to go back to the journals to see if I can find the story.

It was either this, or some close variation. Back in the 2002 - 2004 time-frame, the United States Air Force was sending me to a remote location in northern England on a regular basis. Every two or three months, I was sent to a remote site near Scotland for a few weeks. I was done with my work by 4:00 p.m. every day, and had weekends free. I would have gone nuts had it not been for a) reading; and, b) a Sony portable CD player. I would walk almost every evening and every Saturday and Sunday. On some Saturdays I would start walking at 7:00 a.m. and not get back home until 9:00 p.m., totally exhausted. Some nights, I did not think I would make it back to the dorm -- I was that exhausted. I generally listened to country western. I listened to one CD (actually a double CD) over and over: Hank Williams. Not junior. THE Hank Williams.

Somewhere along the line I first heard Arvo Pärt's music. From then on, I listened to his music almost exclusively some weeks. It was incredible when I was able to attend an Arvo Pärt concert in an English cathedral on one of those trips to Yorkshire -- but not with Arvo Pärt himself, just his music.

Near the end of my Air Force career, when I was making fewer and fewer trips to northern England, I would still walk, but I was walking later in the evening and late into the night. In rural England I found a small chapel whose doors were unlocked. I would go into the chapel about midnight, pitch black, no street lights outside, no lights inside, no flashlight. [I had walked the path so many times in daylight, I could walk it in the pitch black of night. I counted the steps it took from a landmark in the road to the chapel door.] I would sit in the dark chapel for about an hour listening to Pärt on the little Sony portable CD player and cheap headphones.

My favorite, De Teum. This is part 1. The entire Te Deum, it appears last over an hour. This is just nine minutes:

De Teum, Part I, Arvo Pärt

I don't listen to Arvo Pärt as much any more. I had to stop listening back in 2010 or thereabouts; the music just brought back too many bittersweet memories. Periodically I listen to him again, so I appreciate the reader for sending me the link.

As I said, I don't listen to Arvo Pärt as much any more. I also don't see as many meteor showers.

Part 2:

De Teum, Part 2, Arvo Pärt