THANKSGIVING

A holiday that celebrates cooking, family and the opening of a new Muppet movie is my idea of the perfect day. I found this Muppet clip (as a demonstration of my love for the holiday). It's also a great example of musique concrète, the idea that music can be made by any source.

ARRIVAL!

It's been an exciting day. A book that I have been trying to get my hands on for over a month has ARRIVED! The Obstacles have been Overcome!

 

Although my dining room table is covered in technology (computer, iPad and scanner), books, and cds- It would seem like I have it all. But I don't! I needed this book. It fits perfectly with my research. And I feel especially proud because I had to inter-library loan the book from Australia.

 

The book is entitled Divine songs from Four Major Religions: Hinduism, Christianity, Buddhism, Islam, giving the essence of the Bagavad Gita, Bible, Dammapada, Koran by K. Mallvaganam. For those who have been keeping up on my research, you can see why I am excited. The book encompasses the religion and music correlating with my Interfaith Rituals and Sound Amalgamations.

At first, I tried to view the book on google books, which I love. Usually it lets me view at least a partial portion of the book. Other times I can view the full book. But this resource had a cover page only. Tragic. I then looked into buying the book, but the only location the book existed was in the National Library of Australia.

 

After speaking with the JSU librarians, Carley and Debbie- (who have helped me more than words can say) I emailed the Australian Library and asked to see the first few pages. My concern was the book was not a typed written document but rather a musical score. Within a few days the Australians scanned and sent me via email the preface. One of the opening quotes by Swift, "we now have enough religions to hate but not enough religions to love." Quite poignant- I was hooked.

 

The book arrived today without a cover but as a series of haphazard copied papers rubber banded together. So simple and yet it was like opening a present. I lovingly took the book to the print shop, to have the papers put through a scanning feeder and saved as a PDF, allowing me to take the book with me on my iPad.

 

I've been working with the app called Good Reader. It lets me mark up documents and PDF's with underlines, circles and notes. Although I am still trying to get a little more familiar with it, I've enjoyed it so far. Now I just need to calm down enough to read at a thoughtful pace.