Today’s Advent piece takes us back to early
17th Century Germany and one of my favorite composers of Christmas
music. Yes, I’m talking about the meister, Michael Praetorius. There’s
something about his works that evokes for me candlelit churches filled with the
vocal tapestries of Lutheran choirs, with a faint scent of pine and Glühwein
wafting through the space.
The words of “Nun Komm, der Heiden
Heiland” were written by Martin Luther as a chorale. It’s been translated
into English as “Savior of the Nations, Come” and is typically sung on the
first Sunday of Advent. You may know it from J.S. Bach. Praetorius made it part of his seasonal collection, Christmas
Vespers. Here’s Cleveland’s ensemble Apollo’s Fire, which specializes in
early music, giving us their take.
It may surprise you to learn that today’s
Advent carol originated in Ukraine. It was written in 1914, based on the
Ukrainian folk chant “Shedryk”, about a swallow that sings the first song of
Spring. (Way back when, the New Year began in Spring, and “Shedryk” is kinda
focused on the New Year.)
We know it as “The Carol of the Bells.”
Here is the Muppets’ version, featuring Beaker, the Swedish Chef and Oscar the
Grouch.
My friends—after nearly nine years living
in this house, I finally have a primary bathroom I can actually use. It took me
two
months of talking with multiple contractors to
understand the components and compare pricing, and 10 days of actual labor to
rip everything down to the studs, expand the shower footprint from 32”x32” to
32”x44”, move the shower fixtures to the opposite wall, build out, lay tile and
install new vanity (with top, sink and hardware), medicine cabinet, toilet and
lighting.
And I am verklempt.
We went from this:
And this floor:
Note, in particular, the embedded medicine
cabinet that indubitably dates from 1970:
I expect it’s been unusable since at least
the 90s.
To this:
Along the way, we had demo:
Note the cinderblock wall on the left.
That necessitated the crew building out the space with 2x4s to accommodate the
shower plumbing. (I moved the fixtures from the right to the left because—with the
expanded shower footprint blocked from the outside by the toilet, I did not
want to have to step into the shower to turn it on, and be hit with a blast of
cold water.) Also note the parquet flooring on the right at the back; that’s a closet
from my back bedroom, which gave me the space for the wider shower.
We had the shower walls (and dry floor,
but it’s covered up) tiled, waiting for the accent tiles:
It's a good thing I don't use the primary bedroom, because this is what it's looked like for three weeks:
After a week waiting for Home Depot to
pull its finger out, we had accent tiles, and boy, they were worth the wait:
See—here was my inspiration, from a DIY
subreddit:
The color scheme is astonishingly
butt-ugly, but I was struck by the idea of the accent tiles flowing down past
the shower hardware and filling the floor, like a waterfall. I was thinking of
something in blue, but it turns out that HGTV is not doing blues this season,
so they are not to be found.
What I did find were these beauties:
Once I had them, I wanted everything else
in the room to take a backseat. I have to say, it worked out exactly as I had
visualized it. The niche on the right echoes the flow, and it’s situated at
exactly the height I need to accommodate my Costco haircare products, pumps and
all.
Along the way, the crew discovered a crack
in the main drain pipe. That was on a Thursday and necessitated making gigantic
holes in my kitchen ceiling and down the column where the pipe flowed.
On the Saturday a master plumber showed up
and in half a day, he and his assistant replaced the “black pipe” material
(which probably also dated to 1970) with PVC.
Last week a guy drywalled, finished and
painted the kitchen with exquisite care, and you’d never know it had suffered
possibly mortal wounds.
(Oh—another long story, but there was a
thing with the main water shutoff valve early in the project. That resulted in
my kitchen faucet conking out. Eric—the mainstay of the project—tried fixing
it, but no good. As it happens, I’d intended to replace that tap—the arm was
stuck in one position and it had started not getting full flow. I showed Eric
the new one, and he spent a couple of hours on a Saturday installing it.)
I now have an all-singing-all-dancing 36”x24”
medicine cabinet, with about 32 light phases, including a night light; I’m
hoping it will do the heavy lifting for my bathroom storage needs.
I got plenty of mirrors and plenty of light.
New toilet, new vanity/hardware/sink.
Recessed light over the shower and another light over the medicine cabinet. You
could perform surgery in this theatre.
But most of all—I have a lovely shower
space, with both a rain shower head and a hand-held, which I can step into
without climbing over the edge of a bathtub. This is huge.
And it’s got me thinking about water and
things that sparkle in it. So, let’s head over to the old world for today’s
Advent music. (We're in Advent, remember?) Specifically, Spain, for “Los
peces en el río.”
There’s not a whole lot of substance in
this one—just the fairly banal activity of Mary washing and combing her hair, washing
her hands and laundering diapers. And the fish; the sparkly fish.
To tell you the truth, I’m a skosh vague about the connection between the
Nativity and Mary washing her hair by the river; rivers don't appear to figure
large in Nativity stories. But I’m willing to go with it. Woman's gotta do the
needful, after all. And why shouldn’t fishes be excited about the birth of the
Savior? The Good News isn't just for mammals, is it?
There’s no peg on when this was written or
by whom, but it became popular in the second half of the 20th
Century. Here we’ve got the Mexican trio Pandora singing it.
If you’ll excuse me, now, I’ll just pop
into my new bathroom to take another shower. My fifth of the day.
I am rounding the final corner on the remodel
of my primary bathroom. If all goes well, I
should be able to start using it tomorrow, or Wednesday. We’ve got vanity
light, shower doors, shower fixtures and toilet yet to install.
The project manager estimated they’d do it
in two weeks, which I took to mean 10 days of guys-on-site; today is Day 10.
(There was a week off while Home Depot faffed around with the accent tiles, so
technically it’s three weeks since they started.) What I’ve noticed in that
time is the expertise, attention to detail and amazing work ethic of everyone
who’s come in—demolition, plumbing, electrics, tiling, drywalling, installing.
They found a crack in the drain pipe on a
Thursday. By Saturday a master plumber was in the kitchen swapping out “black
pipe” with PVC. Last Wednesday a guy drywalled all the holes in the kitchen
(including ones that predated this project), and on Friday he finished off with
sanding and painting. I have a quasi-new kitchen.
Meanwhile, my primary bath is progressing
so beautifully—mostly the work of Eric, who has done everything since the demo.
He consulted me on the niche—height, width, etc. It’s tall enough to accommodate
the shampoo I buy from Costco and at a height that I can pump the bottles one
handed.
All this is by way of saying that I’ve
been doing a lot of thinking about laborers lately—in particular the people who
build and repair, who erect houses and expand roads. They are skilled and they
do hard work that I, frankly, would probably literally die before I could get
it right. I am in complete awe of their abilities and I am grateful for
everything they do. Especially knowing how vulnerable they are to exploitation, harassment and outright criminal attacks these days.
As it happens, the boy who was born in a
cow stall in Bethlehem two millennia ago was the child of a laborer—Joseph was
a carpenter, and Jesus went into the family business until it was time to take
up the other family business. The Messiah was not an accountant, a doctor or a
businessman; he was a carpenter. He was a Brown guy who built and repaired
things out of wood.
Pretty much like Eric, with the addition
of 21st Century plumbing and electrical.
So my Advent piece today honors Joseph,
who frankly doesn’t generally figure large in the Nativity narrative. (Just
like laborers today.) It’s by way of a lullaby, originating in 16th
Century mystery plays in Germany. I’m giving you Voces8 singing it.
Well, looky here—it’s Advent again, right
on schedule. That period before Christmas where Christians are meant to snuggle
into the season and prepare for the birth of Christ. It’s a long one this
year: four Sundays and four days to get our act together, to gather our
thoughts, count our blessings, assess how we’ve done during the previous months
and what we might do better in the coming year.
Oh, and maybe let in a little joy. And
hope.
You can do this whether you’re religious
or not, whether you’re Christian or not.
IMHO, it’s a good thing indeed to press
pause—especially at year’s end and when the nights are long and cold in the
Northern Hemisphere—and reflect. Reflect on whatever it is you’ve got that
needs reflecting.
And I believe that this year in
particular, it’s appropriate to consider people around the world who may find
it hard to see either joy or hope; I’m looking at Ukraine, at Israel and
Palestine, at Sudan, among others. In fact, I’m looking right here in the
United States, where Republicans are indulging in an exaltation of
authoritarianism as Democrats mostly flap their hands and send stern letters.
Where masked federal agents kitted out in the accoutrements of war are tear
gassing wine moms, pepperballing ministers in the act of prayer and ripping
anyone who looks non-white off the streets to meet Stephen Miller’s quota of detention-to-deportations.
Where the Kleptocrat layers gilded plastic gimcrackery over every vertical surface
of the White House—that portion that he hasn’t ripped down or paved over—and dreams
of a triumphal arch at the entrance to Arlington National Cemetery (it’ll be
much bigger, with much more gold, than l’Arc de Triomphe, because Macron just
really gets under that orange lizard skin).
Yeah, it's a struggle everywhere.
First Sunday in Advent is in fact about
hope. The prophesy of Isaiah looms large, and we open our hearts to the hope of
the redeemer’s birth—in whatever form that might take. So we’ll start out with
“O Come, O Come, Emmanuel”, which is as clear an invitation as you’re going to
get.
Floriani is a quartet of men whose common
ground seems to be having attended Thomas Aquinas College, a small liberal arts
school in Santa Paula, Calif., that teaches using the Great Books method. The
group is focused on sacred music.
May the light of the season warm and
strengthen all who struggle against darkness (literally) and those who suffer
in captivity.
