A student, Bach’s “Bourrée anglaise” for solo flute, and a coincidence

Today, I commented on a week's worth of texts by several students from my class "111 Words a Day: A Writring Project." In one text, Celine mentioned hearing Johann Sebastian Bach's flute composition "Bourrée anglaise", which reminded her of her sister. As I love Bach's works for flute, I checked and discovered that it is the third movement of the Partita in A Minor for Solo Flute. Although I mostly listen to Bach's Sonatas for Flute and Harpsichord, I noticed that I have that partita on an album by Peter-Lukas Graf. When I mentioned that in my comments on her text, Celine said that was the very version she had heard. (Andrew Shields, #111Words, 31 March 2025)

Snoopy and his plans to visit his mother in Plunderland

Snoopy left Plunderland many years ago, but sometimes he returns to the country to visit his mother at the Daisy Hill Puppy Farm. Having recently planned another trip to see her and his sister Belle, he's now beginning to worry about returning there: dogs who have barked out against Don Q, Vanza, and Lone Odor have been detained in pounds and even flown out of the country. And it doesn't help that Omen is one of those responsible for such actions. After all, she has confessed to being a puppy killer, and she has been staging photo opportunities outside of the pounds abroad where many of those dogs have been sent. (Andrew Shields, #111Words, 30 March 2025)

Don Q thinks about firing Wallace

Don Q asked Wiley about Wallace, "Should I fire him?" Gromit barked. Don Q asked Exit about Wallace, "Should I fire him?" Gromit barked. Don Q asked Vanza about Wallace, "Should I fire him?" Gromit barked. Don Q asked Lone Odor about Wallace, "Should I fire him?" Gromit barked. Wiley, Exit, and Vanza all hesitated. Lone Odor said, "You should fire him." He snickered to himself. He didn't want any competition in going to the moon to plunder its cheese resources. Don Q wondered out loud to the window on the wall, "But would it make me look bad?" Vanza said, "Nothing can make you look bad, Don Q." Gromit barked. (Andrew Shields, #111Words, 29 March 2025) 

Vanza, Exit, Wallace, Gromit, and Wiley in the group chat

Vanza said, "I'm doing an economic event in the Mitten, but I think this would be a big mistake for Plunderland. I am not sure Don Q is aware." Exit said, "We are prepared to execute. I welcome other thoughts." Vanza said, "If you think we should do it, let's go." Exit said, "I fully share your loathing of Europe." Exit said, "Godspeed to our Warriors." Vanza said, "I will say a prayer for victory." Wallace said, "Amazing job." Gromit barked. Wiley said, "Really great. God bless." When the Six Flacks raised the issue, Don Q looked at the window on the wall and said, "I don't know anything about it." (Andrew Shields, #111Words, 28 March 2025)

Exit receives a letter from Vanza

Exit opened the letter from Vanza, which he hoped contained news from Don Q at Hush Money House about what to praise and what to blame this week in Plunderland. The letter was blank, but he knew how to make the letters visible. But when he lit the special security candle and held the letter up to the flame, his hand was shaking, so he put the message down and took another swig of whisky from his Six Flacks mug. When he held the paper up again, it caught fire. Forgetting about the invisible ink, he watched the flame spread across the page and thought, "It is a pleasure to burn." (Andrew Shields, #111Words, 27 March 2025) 

The Aphorism Quartet at the Bird’s Eye in Basel, and the Kern-Hammerstein standard “Nobody Else But Me"

At the Bird's Eye in Basel this evening, the Aphorism Quartet (with Domenic Landolf on saxophones, Michael Beck on piano, Arne Huber on bass, and Jorge Rossy on drums and vibraphone) concluded their first set of originals with one standard: a brisk, tight, and wide-ranging version of "Nobody Else But Me", by Jerome Kern and Oscar Hammerstein II. Written for the 1946 revival of the composer and lyricist's 1926 musical "Showboat" (which also featured their "Ol' Man River"), it was, as I was moved to learn when I looked it up, Kern's very last composition: he died on 11 November 1945, and the song was first performed on 5 January 1946. (Andrew Shields, #111Words, 26 March 2025) 

Smoking and Sherlock Holmes in Kazuo Ishiguro’s “Never Let Me Go” (2005)

In Kazuo Ishiguro's "Never Let Me Go" (2005), Kathy H describes how she and her fellow Hailsham students were warned about smoking: "There was even a rumour that some classic books— like the Sherlock Holmes ones— weren’t in our library because the main characters smoked too much [...]." Arthur Conan Doyle's "A Study in Scarlet" (1887), the first Sherlock Holmes novel, may have been missing from Hailsham's library, but Kathy H and her friends Tommy and Ruth do act like the stereotype of Holmes as an "armchair detective": in order to understand the mysteries of their lives as clones, they mostly sit around and discuss all the clues they have noticed. (Andrew Shields, #111Words, 25 March 2025)

The founding of Basiliska by anti-Anselmite monks in the year 1111

The city of Basiliska was founded in the year 1111 by rogue Benedictine monks who had broken with Anselm of Canterbury over the ontological argument for the existence of God. When these monks-errant arrived at a bluff above the Rain River, they found an ancient basilisk there, which Bede had mentioned centuries earlier, and cast it down into the waters below. To honor the always shoeless monster, they built their city, Basiliska, around a fortress on the bluff. Inside, they built their cathedral and monastery, where they also went shoeless. Centuries later, the city of Basel on the Rhine River is still known for its Monster Cathedral and its Barefoot Square. (Andrew Shields, #111Words, 24 March 2025)

The loudest screamer, yeller, and complainer is a fraudster

In a recent television interview, United States Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick (who was CEO of the financial-services firm Cantor Fitzgerald from 1991 to 2025) downplayed the problem of the United States Social Security Administration's possible failure to send regular monthly checks expected by their recipients. After claiming that his mother would never complain if her check didn't show up, he added, "A fraudster always makes the loudest noise, screaming, yelling, and complaining." I'd like to thank Secretary Lutnick for confirming what I and many others have understood for a decade now: his boss is the country's loudest screamer, yeller, and complainer, so United States President Donald Trump is a fraudster. (Andrew Shields, #111Words, 23 March 2025)

The journeys of my quest for musical transformation: through a November snowstorm and a cool spring evening to hear Andreas Schärer at the Klavierwerkstatt in Liestal

Sometimes, my quest for musical transformation involves an actual journey. On 21 November 2024, I went through the dark and white night of a snowstorm to the Klavierwerkstatt in Liestal to hear the trio of vocalist Andreas Schärer, guitarist Kalle Kalima, and bassist Tim Lefebvre. Last night, exactly four months later, I went to the same venue on a cool, dry spring evening to hear Schärer and pianist Daniel García. Even without the storm, the trip there felt like a magical quest, with two buses, a train, a third bus, and a walk through the night alongside a stream to get to the venue, where Schärer and García cast their spells. (Andrew Shields, #111Words, 22 March 2025)

Working "against those determined to score political points at the expense of an incredibly vulnerable population” (John Oliver, “ICE Detention”, “Last Week Tonight”, 9 March 2025)

At the end of the story on ICE Detention on the 9 March 2025 episode of "Last Week Tonight", John Oliver calls for resistance at lower levels of goverment to the federal policies of President Donald Trump's administration: “We’re going to have to find ways to push back hard at the state and local level against those determined to score political points at the expense of an incredibly vulnerable population.” While Oliver is specifically discussing immigrants subject to detention by Immigration and Customs Enforcement, his point can also be applied to the scoring of political points with cruelty to all vulnerable populations—especially, with Trump, cruelty to transgender and non-binary people. (Andrew Shields, #111Words, 21 March 2025)

“This dress bugs me”: Eszter Balint in Jim Jarmusch’s “Stranger Than Paradise” (1984)

In Jim Jarmusch's "Stranger Than Paradise" (1984), Eva (Eszter Balint), a young Hungarian who is moving to Cleveland to live with her aunt, stops in Brooklyn to visit her cousin Willie (John Lurie) and his friend Eddie (Richard Edson). Although Willie first dislikes her and refuses to speak Hungarian with her, he eventually gives her a dress as a present. But later, in a scene that has stuck with my wife Andrea and me, Eva throws the dress away and mutters to herself, in her Hungarian accent, "This dress bugs me." That phrase, with Balint's pronunciation, has long since become part of our private language when we find small things annoying. (Andrew Shields, #111Words, 20 March 2025)

A day with Ishiguro, Morrison, Dickens, and Joyce

My day: first Kazuo Ishiguro's "Never Let Me Go" (2005), "My name is Kathy H"; then, Toni Morrison's "The Bluest Eye" (1970), "The pieces of Cholly’s life could become coherent only in the head of a musician"; then Charles Dickens's "Hard Times" (1854), "Mrs. Sparsit saw him detain her with his encircling arm, and heard him then and there, within her (Mrs. Sparsit’s) greedy hearing, tell her how he loved her, and how she was the stake for which he ardently desired to play away all that he had in life"; and then James Joyce's "Finnegans Wake" (1939): "What Barbaras Done to a Barrel Organ Before the Rank, Tank and Bonnbtail." (Andrew Shields, #111Words, 19 March 2025) 

From Adrienne Rich and Emily Dickinson to Johann Jakob Bachofen, “Mutterrecht”, and Basel

For this week's session in my course on Adrienne Rich's poetry, we discussed Rich's poems "I Am in Danger—Sir—" from her 1966 collection "Necessities of Life", along with a chapter on Rich and Emily Dickinson from Betsy Erkkila's 1992 book "The Wicked Sisters: Women Poets, Literary History, and Discord." While discussing Rich's changing understandings of Dickinson from the 1950s to the 1980s, Erkkila also touches on many other milestones in Rich's writing, including her 1976 study "Of Woman Born: Motherhood As Experience And Institution". Erkkila's list of influences on that book refers to Johann Jakob Bachofen's 1861 book "Mutterrecht"—which made me smile, as Bachofen (1815-1887) was from Basel. (Andrew Shields, #111Words, 18 March 2025)

Sixteen concerts so far this year

With the Skyjack concert on Saturday, I'm up to sixteen concerts this calendar year. But I count double bills as two concerts, so it's not sixteen nights out. Saturday was the nineteenth time I've seen trombonist Andreas Tschopp (who's in the band Hildegard Lernt Fliegen, which I've seen fourteen times). The two solo performances by pianist Brad Mehldau I saw in January were at least the tenth and eleventh time I've seen him. I know I saw two or three more Mehldau shows in about 2000-2005, but I don't have the exact dates. And since my first concert in 1978 (Linda Ronstadt), I'm up to 703 where I know the date. (Andrew Shields, #111Words, 17 March 2025)

The social and communal experience of musical transformation at the Bird’s Eye concert by Swiss-South African band Skyjack, 15 March 2025

As I wrote two years ago, inspired by Ted Gioia's "Music to Raise the Dead", I am on a quest for musical transformation. And as I wrote last May, following Vinnie Sperrazza's "Chronicles" on Substack, the interplay of musicians in jazz (the primary idiom of my quest) offers a model of community to the world. Last night's wonderful concert at the Bird's Eye in Basel by Skyjack (with Swiss musicians Marc Stucki, saxophones, and Andreas Tschopp, trombone, and South African musicians Kyle Shepherd, piano, Shane Cooper, bass, and Jonno Sweetman, drums) brought those points together: when the interplay expands to include band and audience, the musical transformation becomes social and communal. (Andrew Shields, #111Words, 16 March 2025)

Marc Stucki, Shane Cooper, Andreas Tschopp, and Jonno Sweetman of Skyjack

Don Q, Lone Odor, and the cars outside Hush Money House

Don Q and Lone Odor walked out the front door of Hush Money House and admired the line of cars that Lone had arranged to have brought there. While Lone jumped up and down and shouted, Don Q moved his hands back and forth and told the Six Flacks that he was going to buy one for his granddaughter: "After all, as long as I'm the King of Plunderland, they don't let me drive." As always when Don Q imagined that he was King, Lone smirked in the background. None of the Flacks ever found out whether Don Q actually did buy one of the cars to give to his granddaughter. (Andrew Shields, #111Words, 15 March 2025)

Don Q, the water flowing down, and the little fish

Unbelievably, Don Q broke into where the angels lived, and the water flowed down. "They sent it out to the ocean," he said, looking at the window painted on the wall where he saw whatever he was thinking about, so many things that nobody had ever seen before. "I can show you a picture." Nothing like this had ever happened before, he thought. "Nothing like this has ever happened before." He wondered what had been happening with all the water. It must have been that little fish that he had once heard people talk about. He looked at the window and saw it swimming there. "It was a certain little fish." (Andrew Shields, #111Words, 14 March 2025)

The extraordinary differences between two altarpieces from the mid-fifteenth century and Matthias Grünewald’s Isenheim Altarpiece from the 1510s

At the Unterlinden Museum in Colmar yesterday, I also saw two altarpieces that predate Matthias Grünewald's Isenheim Altar from 1512-1516 by around fifty years: Caspar Isenmann's altarpiece from Saint Martin's Church in Colmar, from 1465, and an unknown artist's altarpiece from Stauffenberg, from 1454-1460 (which was originally also in Isenheim). While both of these works were impressive, the shift in half a century is still extraordinary: in Grünewald's work, the bodies are less stylized, the colors are much more intense, and the paintings have more depth. Perhaps Grünewald was just the better artist, but the differences also mark the new developments in art that were spreading across Europe at the time. (Andrew Shields, #111Words, 13 March 2025) 

Matthias Grünewald and Otto Dix at the Musee Unterlinden in Colmar, France

Today, I went to the Musee Unterlinden in Colmar to revisit Matthias Grünewald's extraordinary Isenheim Altar from the 1510s. The museum now has a newer section that includes work from the 20th and 21st centuries. After I had spent an extra-long time contemplating Grünewald's "Annunciation", I was struck by a 20th-century painting that I immediately recognized as another "Annunciation". The style was familiar, and it turned out to be a 1950 painting by Otto Dix, whose work from the 1920s I have often seen before. And the museum also had Dix's 1946 "Crucifixion", another echo of Grünewald. As I learned, Dix was a POW in a camp near Colmar in 1945-1946. (Andrew Shields, #111Words, 12 March 2025)

Matthias Grünewald, “Annunciation”

Otto Dix, “Annunciation"

Matthias Grünewald, “Crucifixion"

Otto Dix, “Christ on the Cross"

Writing a poem about a taxi ride in Colmar, France

This morning, I decided to write a poem, with no idea what to write about. I'm in Colmar, France, for a few days, on a work retreat with my daughter Luisa, who is finishing her final big project for school. As I haven't revisited Matthias Grünewald's Isenheim Altar at the Musée Unterlinden yet, I wrote about our cab ride from the train station to our rented apartment. The taxi driver would have paid a high fee for us to pay by card, so we scraped together just neough Euro change to cover the cost of the ride. The poem is 106 words long, so it couldn't be my daily 111-word text. (Andrew Shields, #111Words, 11 March 2025) 

“Rich representation” in references to primary and secondary material in academic writing

I’ve been talking to students in academic-writing courses about what I call “rich representation”: don’t just refer to primary texts; quote them and analyze the details. And don’t just refer to secondary texts; quote them and frame the quotation with the author’s name to communicate your take on that work. This approach to materials with "rich representation" (which LLM-based text generators cannot do) enriches your texts, as well as your engagement with them. (Unfortunately, a lot of academic writing by humans does not engage much with quotations from primary materials. And many references to secondary literature are just page references or even just names of authors of works in the bibliography.) (Andrew Shields, #111Words, 10 March 2025) 

“A strong breeze at the top of the hill”: The limits of Kathy H’s world in Kazuo Ishiguro’s “Never Let Me Go” (2005)

In Kazuo Ishiguro's "Never Let Me Go" (2005), Kathy H goes to the edge of the grounds of Hailsham school: "There was a strong breeze at the top of the hill, and I remember being surprised by it because I hadn't noticed it down on the grass." I've read Ishiguro's novel many times, yet like Kathy H, I find myself surprised by the connections of such otherwise minor details to how Kathy's life is determined by others: the top of the hill is the limit of the world she is allowed to move in; the breeze she now notices is a figure for the demands the outside world makes on her. (Andrew Shields, #111Words, 9 March 2025) 

Tucumcari and Route 66 in a poem by Gregory Stapp

There are things I know only because of songs, poems, or other works that reference them. Reading Gregory Stapp's poem "There are no sidewalks in Tucumcari, New Mexico" in the "Eunoia Review", I thought of Lowell George's song "Willin'", from Little Feat's 1971 album "Little Feat": "And I've been from Tucson to Tucumcari / Tehachapi to Tonopah." I knew of Tucson, Arizona, before I ever heard the song, but I still know nothing about the other three cities. Stapp also mentions Route 66, which many of my friends in Basel only know about because of Bobby Troup's 1946 song "(Get Your Kicks on) Route 66" (originally recorded by Nat King Cole). (Andrew Shields, #111Words, 8 March 2025)

Route 66 in Tucumcari, New Mexico, photo by Lars Plougmann, Creative Commons License

Counting to high numbers and reciting poems to suppress evil thoughts in Charles Dickens’s “Hard Times” (1854)

In Charles Dickens's "Hard Times" (1854), when mill-worker Stephen Blackpool disappears, his friend and fellow mill-worker Rachael tells her confidante Sissy Jupe that she fears he might have been murdered, a thought she always tries to suppress: “I do all I can to keep it out, wi' counting on to high numbers as I work, and saying over and over again pieces that I knew when I were a child”. While her counting to control her thoughts may coincide with schoolmaster Thomas Gradgrind's utilitarian pedagogy of "Facts" and "statistics", her recitation of poems is something Gradgrind's pupils could never turn to in a moment of distress, because they never learn any. (Andrew Shields, #111Words, 7 March 2025)

Teaching four sections of a course in a week – and improvising a summary of the Bible

Whenever I teach three sections of a course per week, the third group generally gets the best class: my points are polished, and I can refer to the discussions with the first two groups. But in 2004-2005, when I taught four sections per week of an introductory course, I was just too worn out to teach well by the fourth time around. This week, I taught four sections of a course again, my two sections and two sections for my colleague on paternity leave. But now, the best was the fourth session, with my improvised two-minute summary of the entire Bible in a discussion of Charles Dickens's 1854 novel "Hard Times". (Andrew Shields, #111Words, 6 March 2025)

“Double consciousness” in Jordan Peele and Toni Morrison

In a class discussion this morning, we considered the concept of "the sunken place" in Jordan Peele's "Get Out" (2017), where, one student said, Chris Washington (Daniel Kaluuya) becomes "a spectator of his own life." After we had discussed that for a while, I mentioned a historical term for such self-spectatorship: the concept of "double consciousness" introduced by W. E. B. DuBois in his 1903 book "The Souls of Black Folk". This afternoon, in a discussion of Toni Morrison's "The Bluest Eye" (1970), we also turned to the concept of "double consciousness" in the description and story of Cholly Breedlove. Perhaps I will make the time soon to reread DuBois's book. (Andrew Shields, #111Words, 5 March 2025)

United States President Donald Trump and “raw earth”, his eggcorn for “rare earth"

United States President Donald Trump keeps talking about Ukraine's "raw earth", which he would like to control. Usually, I appreciate the linguistic creativity involved in such "eggcorns" (as in calling an "acorn" an "eggcorn"), and I won't criticize an eggcorn user for being unfamiliar with an expression. But Trump is the President of the United States, and here, when he wants to make policy decisions about the Russian war on Ukraine, the eggcorn reveals he has no clue what "rare-earth minerals" are. When the President keeps making such a mistake even as an issue keeps getting discussed, it's one more sign that he is unqualified for the challenges of the job. (Andrew Shields, #111Words, 4 March 2025)

On poet Adrienne Rich’s husband, father, sister, and brother-in-law

This evening, while preparing for a discussion tomorrow of the title poem of "Snapshots of a Daughter-in-Law", by Adrienne Rich (1929-2012), I learned some new things about her family. I already knew that her husband Alfred H. Conrad (1924-1970) was the author of a groundbreaking 1958 study on the economics of slavery in the antebellum South. But these connections are new to me: her father, pathologist Arnold Rice Rich (1893-1968), has several diseases or conditions named after him. Cynthia Rich (b. 1933), like her sister, first married a scholar, physicist Roy J. Glauber (1925-2018), and later came out as a lesbian. And Glauber himself won the 2005 Nobel Prize in Physics. (Andrew Shields, #111Words, 3 March 2025) 

The Colin Vallon Trio with Patrice Moret and Julian Sartorius at the Tinguely Museum and the Bird’s Eye in Basel on 28 February and 1 March 2025

Pianist Colin Vallon's trio with bassist Patrice Moret and drummer Julian Sartorius played at the Tinguely Museum in Basel on Friday afternoon, 28 February, and then again at the Bird's Eye in Basel that evening and last night (Saturday, 1 March). On Friday afternoon, I dreamed to their music like the soundtrack of a road movie. On Friday evening, I focused on Sartorius's drumming, especially on the snare. And yesterday, I got a sense of the trio as a whole. Besides some solo introductions by Vallon, they play no solos. But they aren't all soloing all the time; rather, they're accompanying each other as the compositions and improvisations build toward their climaxes. (Andrew Shields, #111Words, 2 March 2025)

Colin Vallon, Tinguely Museum, Basel, 28 February 2025

Patrice Moret, Tinguely Museum, Basel, 28 February 2025

Julian Sartorius, Tinguely Museum, Basel, 28 February 2025

Don Q shouts at clouds again, but it’s Sky Man

When Don Q looked at the window that Vanza kept having repainted on the wall, he shouted at the clouds, and they never shouted back. Often, tears would fill their eyes, and they would say, "Thank you, sir." But one day, when Don Q was shouting and putting his cards on the table, it wasn't the clouds; it was Sky Man. Tears did not fill his eyes, and he said, "I'm not playing cards." Vanza looked at the window and said, as he'd said before, "I really don't care." Later, Don Q laughed. "This is going to be great television." But Elephant, Macaroni, and Schmerz had already taken Sky Man's side. (Andrew Shields, #111Words, 1 March 2025)