Snow; Reincken

Nothing is quite so good at reminding you that you're alive as something that can kill you. Today's example is the blizzard that has struck Northern Indiana, which made my hebdomadal walk to the sandwich(e) shop(pe) especially worthwhile. One cannot mope in such weather; one cannot loiter. Cold has a way of focusing one's thoughts; cold with 40-mile-per-hour wind gusts more so. As I strode confidently in my boots through today's weather, I felt a sense of purpose that is distinctly lacking in the languid life of the academic. In this weather, I am Shackleton; I am Peary; I am, especially, Amundsen, for I like to think Norwegianness has something to do with it.

Ah, but now I have retreated to the (relative) warmth of my (drafty) room, as I prepare to write several pages about the organ music of Johann Adam Reincken, one of Bach's influënces. (I recommend it, incidentally.) It's gotten so that I simply cannot hear Baroque music as the unitiated do, which may be a sort of disadvantage in planning liturgical music. My sister, for example, says all Bach's cello suites sound the same; this is patently untrue, but I suppose I should take it into account if congregants cannot distinguish between a passepied and a passacaglia.