Some Monday Musings — Janet Szabo

I don’t think I mentioned that I finished that Tracy Chevalier novel, A Single Thread. It was good. I appreciated her level of research and accuracy in writing about embroidery. I’m finding her books a bit formulaic, though, and slow to get going. I wish she’d get into the story a bit faster and spend more time fleshing it out instead of rushing to wrap it all up in a nice big bow at the end.

And I just finished Good Husbandry, the followup to Kristin Kimball’s The Dirty Life, which I read several years ago.

I’m still processing Good Husbandry. Kimball pulls no punches—she’s incredibly honest about her feelings about farming, family, and her place in life. She is so honest, in fact, that some of what she said rubbed right up against some of my own thoughts, and that was more uncomfortable than I would like to admit. That’s okay. I read to stretch my brain, not coddle it. Still, I need to chew on some of her observations a bit more.

[One comment she made in The Dirty Life has stuck with me all these years: She said that once she started farming, she never had a piece of clothing that wasn’t stained, ripped, or otherwise not suitable to wear out in public. I do have “good clothes”—for church, or when I am with my mother and sister and the girls and the standards are a bit higher—but for the most part, my daily wardrobe consists of items that I’m willing to sacrifice to the dirt and mess.]

Farming is hard. There is no way around that. And I can’t imagine doing it on the scale that she and her husband do it.

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

I know I declared an end to canning season a few weeks ago, but I haven’t put everything away just yet. Susan and her husband pressed cider from their apples and she gave me a couple of gallons. At the Farm Expo, the woman who did the organic pest management seminar had some of her farm’s apple cider syrup for sale. I thought I might make syrup out of the cider Susan gave me. The Ball Blue Book has a recipe, but it uses corn syrup as a thickener. No thank you. Other recipes call for cooking down the cider slowly for 6-8 hours to thicken it. I don’t want to do that, either. The syrup I bought at the Farm Expo is thickened with Clear-Jel. I’ve been able to find a few recipes for making something similar. I might have to do a bit of experimenting, but I’ve used Clear-Jel enough that I know how it behaves. Stay tuned.

I’m also going to can up more of those beans Cathy gave me. Canning beans is not hard and that way, they’ll be ready to use in meal prep.

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

Now that YouTube is back up and running on our TVs, I’ve been catching up on some of my favorite channels. One of them is Busy Hands, Quiet Hearts, which is hosted by a woman named Pia, from Denmark. Pia is part of a homesteading group I belong to on Facebook. She started out with a podcast but switched over to video, instead. I love listening to her. She has such a soothing voice. She’s also a knitter and knits in some of her videos.

Sewing Parts Online’s YT channel has some great serger technique videos. They also make general sewing videos, but I’ve found the serger ones to be really useful.

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

Mennonite Church USA has been working on a new hymnal, to be released a year from now. I have such mixed feelings about hymnals, much of which stems from the fact that until I was in high school, the Missouri Synod Lutheran Church we attended used the Lutheran Book of Worship, also known as “the old red hymnal.” I knew that hymnal backwards and forwards. The arrangements were all very Germanic and easy to sing in four parts. That hymnal was replaced by the “blue hymnal,” which, to this day, I think is one of the worst hymnals ever produced. Ever. The songs were pitched lower so that more people could sing the melody line, but that made them next to impossible to sing in four parts. And the arrangements were corrupted with goofy 1970s-era chord substitutions and chord progressions that now sound horribly dated.

The Mennonites also had a “red hymnal” that was used until the current Hymnal and Worship Book (which is blue) was released in 2000. I like our blue hymnal. The committee that put it together did a good job of keeping old favorites while incorporating newer worship songs and songs from other parts of the world. They also made it very singable, although our congregation will find a way to turn anything into a four-part song whether it has parts or not. MCUSA decided to release two hymnal supplements since the hymnal release. That wouldn’t be so bad, except that the hymnal and each supplement also has an accompaniment book, which means that on any given Sunday, depending on what songs the song leader picks, I may be playing out of six different books (it has happened). Being a church pianist is stressful enough without having to worry about grabbing the wrong book (that has also happened).

[The Lutheran church where I play for Advent and Lent is an Evangelical Lutheran Church of America (ELCA) church and uses a hymnal that is very similar to our Mennonite hymnal, with many of the same songs.]

The new Mennonite hymnal is supposed to include 800 songs. EIGHT HUNDRED SONGS. I suspect many of those may be short chorus-style songs, but that just seems a bit excessive to me. Right now, it appears that there will only be one accompaniment book (thank goodness). Music will also be available in an app version; theoretically, I could use my iPad instead of playing from a book.

I also understand that the hymnal committee has gone through and “updated” the language to better reflect current societal norms. I know that language is fluid and the language of hymns has changed much over the centuries. I hope, though, that they haven’t gone overboard in an attempt to make the songs more inclusive. I wouldn’t expect a song that originated in a Latin American country to have its words altered to make me feel more comfortable. That kind of sanitizing can get taken too far.

We’ll have to wait and see. It’s going to be a year, yet, before the new hymnal comes out.