Bald as a Negg

When I wrote that $3400 going down the drain is not a crisis to any First World person, I didn’t mean to suggest that no one in the First World is poverty-stricken. Plenty of people are, many going hungry every day. They’re just probably not stupid enough to spend so much on a mattress.

Friday afternoon I saw the charming Stefano at Vertical Clearance. I smoothed the hair back at my temple to show him where it’s falling out.

“Are you stressed?” he asked, meaning, “Geeze, I see what you mean.”

But, as he mentions often, I have (used to have) very thick hair to begin with, so he added, “You’re going down—wherever you’re going—with a full head of hair, believe me.”

“Are you saying that when I reach the gates of hell, I’ll have a full head of hair?”

“That’s what I’m saying.”

On Saturday morning, my cheerful checkout person at Rainbow mentioned that they offer a ten percent discount to Bike Coalition members. At first I thought they were trying to console us for the fallout from the recent Critical Mass incident, but it turns out it’s been in effect for a while, every day, on everything.

I rushed home and laminated my membership card, which is going to save me $442 a year. Maybe gold-plating it would even be in order.

I made Hernerakkan (yellow split pea soup) from Sundays at Moosewood Restaurant and Syrian Lentils in a Spicy Tomato Sauce from 366 Delicious Ways to Cook Rice, Beans, and Grains.

The former was OK. It has turnip and parsnip in it, which I am not fond of, though I was prepared to be surprised and delighted, which I was not, particularly.

The Syrian lentils are pretty good served over brown rice.

As mentioned, via Craigslist I had secured an opportunity to play at a church on Easter. The music director mentioned that the other trumpet player would play a descant part for one hymn—a melodic line that soars above the regular melody.

That was fine with me, as trying to hit them high notes in public is bad for my nerves.

The music director kindly sent us all copies of the music and explanatory notes which said that I would be playing all of the lead trumpet parts and the other trumpet player would be playing all of the second parts (with two trombones playing the tenor and bass parts), no doubt simply because he heard from me first.

I saw the note about the other trumpet player playing the descant, but then my eye fell on the news that I would be playing the descant on another hymn. My first impulse was to telephone the music director with an incoherent demurral, but I decided not to be a wimp.

On Sunday morning, the music director warned us that some of the congregants are very curious and said we shouldn’t be surprised if, while we were playing, one of them walked right up onstage and peered over the top of our music stands at our music.

Sure enough, as I was warming up in the room below the sanctuary, a fellow approached me and said, “How old are you? What’s your name? When are you going to be 45? How do you spell your first name? How do you spell your last name?” He wrote down the answers in a little notebook.

I finished warming up and said, “I guess I’m ready. Does it sound like I’m ready?”

“Yes you ready,” he said.

The next time I saw him, he announced, without looking at his notebook, “You were born on June 6, 1962.”

The musical selections went very well. I wasn’t nervous in the slightest, partly because, for most songs, we were all but drowned out by an organ, a piano, and the congregation singing. We did have a couple of brass-only features, which went fine. As for the descant, I did miss my high note, but out of lip exhaustion, as it was the fourth time through the hymn in a row, not nerves, and even Bruce, playing trombone immediately to my left, said later he hadn’t noticed.

The church’s program for the Easter service ends with “Our worship ends, our service begins.” The pastor’s name is listed; for ministers, it lists “All the people.”

The pastor concluded by saying, “People think this building is the church, but they are mistaken. The building is not the church. You are the church. You are the good news.”

When I got home, Tom and I took the train to Sacramento for an Easter dinner at Paul and Eva’s. Here’s who was there: Paul, Eva, Steve, Julie, Dan, Sarah, Sarah’s boyfriend Josh, Tom, me, Jim, Melinda, Abby, and next-door neighbor Ofer and his girlfriend, who is a well-known Pakistani singer, who contributed a yummy curried chicken dish.

Steve, riding his bike earlier in the day, had fractured his arm in an encounter with a dog. It hurt a lot, so he arrived a bit late and left a bit early.