What I am into this month (October)



The leaves are hinting at change.

October! Oh, October. Nominally my favorite month, you were long and grueling and terrible and good all at once this year. My very last full month ever without kids. Weird.

Oh, for those of you who are curious, I did mostly finish packing my bags for the hospital, complete with clothes for me to wear on the trip home. I discovered that I'm too clever by half and had already packed the bag with shampoo and things (I keep my usual overnight bag stocked with essentials to make packing for short trips easier), and so I decided I might as well finish the job. Plus, the DDH informed me that I'm simply not allowed to die, so I guess I won't.

Anyway, here's the monthly roundup:

On My Nightstand: My favorite this month was a long novel split into two long books, Blackout and All Clear by Connie Willis. Time-traveling World War II historical fiction. The awesomeness cannot be overstated.

Want to Read: Basically, you could wander over to Sheila's blog The Deliberate Reader, look at the list of books in her 31 Days of Nonfiction series, and count all of those on my want-to-read list. If you don't follow that blog, you should. Unless your to-read list is plenty long enough already, in which case, avoid it like the plague, because her reviews will make you want to read the books--more importantly, they'll tell you whether or not you actually would enjoy the book.

TV Show Worth Watching: Hi, fellow Once Upon a Time fans. Can we agree that this season is already levels better than the first? I think we can. Are you following along with Megan's weekly discussions over at SortaCrunchy? I tend to write novels about the episodes in the comments section, heh.

All the other usual favorites are back. Oh, a rec for fans of British comedy: Spy, starring Darren Boyd. The first episode of Season Two just came out and again, already loads better than the first. Another comedy the DDH and I are enjoying right now is Go On. If you watched any Olympic coverage at all, you remember the millions of annoying commercials for this show. Well, the commercials worked, we decided to check it out, and imagine our astonishment when it turns out to actually be pretty good!

Movies I've Seen (in or out of a theater): No movies this month. Someone told me we should take advantage of our last opportunity to go see a movie together for many months to come, but sitting in those seats is just so darn uncomfortable right now.

In My Ears: Mumford & Sons Babel. I really ought to branch out more, but let's face it, I'm pulling out the Christmas carols in 23 days and that will be that until January 6.

What I'm looking forward to next month: I think this is obvious. Before the month is out, we will have a T-Rex outside the womb. I'm looking forward to meeting the little guy. Also, frankly, to not having to go to this job anymore.

Goal Progress: I posted some goals for the new year, and I figured these monthly wrap-up posts would be a good chance to check my progress throughout 2012.

The Budget: The looking-forward-to-not-working-here anymore thing is great. The not-getting-paid-anymore thing is not so great. We had to re-enroll in the benefits stuff for the DDH's job, and now I'm depressed.

The Garden: While my college roommate was in town for the shower, we weeded half of it.

Food: I am on a fast food/junk food roll, unfortunately. The problem is, by the time I get home from work, I have energy for one task. That task can be whatever thing needs to be done to prepare for T-Rex or clean the house or take care of the critters, or it can be "make dinner." "Make dinner" loses over and over.

The Craft Room: I think every room downstairs except the craft room now looks amazing. The craft room and the master bedroom need help now. Clearly, I will never actually have all the rooms of my house clean and organized at once.

How was your October? What are you looking forward to in November?

Here come the colors!

 

I'll admit I'll miss my pretty office window view. It relly can't be beat.

What I am into this month (September).

This is the view from the other side of my building than I
usually post. The smoke comes not from that tall building
but from the other side, as the Tulsa School of
Arts & Sciences burned down.

September has been a rough month. It's been busy, and most of the busyness has been good. But it's been sort of an emotional roller coaster, and a very rough time at work.

Anyway, here's the monthly roundup:

On My Nightstand: I devoured a long chain of novels this month. The most notable is After the Golden Age, by Carrie Vaughn. It's about the daughter of superhero parents who has no powers herself, but really it's about family and self-acceptance and power and all of that. Highly recommend.

Want to Read: I am getting closer to the end of the Luther biography. The problem is that I take it with me places to read and then lose it. Still. Oops.

TV Show Worth Watching: They're slowly coming back! Castle and Bones and Grimm and all the rest--and Once Upon a Time premiered last night. Squee! (Except the DDH has a meeting and I don't know if we'll be able to watch it tonight on Hulu. *cries*)

Movies I've Seen (in or out of a theater): We rented a new Jason Statham movie, Safe, last week. Basically, this movie was designed to show off Jason Statham doing stuff. He gets to drive cars crazily, shoot people, have Epic Fight Scenes, all the fun stuff, and the movie people just didn't worry too much about if the plot tying it together made any sense.

In My Ears: I'm miffed at Amazon. I pre-ordered the new Mumford & Sons album, Babel, expecting to get it, you know, right away, and it didn't get here until Saturday. So all week I had to listen to people going on about how good it is. But. You know, they were right. The weird thing about Mumford & Sons is that I often don't even like their songs the first time I listen to them. But then I hear them again, and then listen again, and suddenly those songs have wormed their way into the very core of my heart. So good.

Links

Apparently I'm not the only one who has noticed that intArwebz are full of outgoing introverts chattering away at each other. Tanya Marlow shares her theory.

While I find myself grumbling at stuff on Patheos more frequently than not, this piece speaks to my irritation with doom-and-gloomers of all sides of the political aisle. Dear Christian, if the Thought of Either Romney or Obama Getting Elected Makes You Fearful, Angry, or Depressed, You Have What We Call a Theological Problem.



I seem to have lost my list of other interesting tidbits I collected around the internets this month. I'll be back to edit if I find it.

What I'm looking forward to next month: It was foolish to look forward to fall weather cool enough for sweaters in September, and I failed to drink even one pumpkin spice latte (or pumpkin anything, actually). Perhaps October shall do better. So many things to look forward to this month: two weddings, the baby shower, finishing things up. The last full month before T-Rex arrives (assuming he doesn't arrive pretty early). Halloween! I need to think of something clever for my costume this year. HALP.

Goal Progress: I posted some goals for the new year, and I figured these monthly wrap-up posts would be a good chance to check my progress throughout 2012.

The Budget: We have one, and it's doing okay, even with spending extra on baby things and renovation supplies. Yay.

The Garden: I may or may not contemplate planting more garlic this month or next.

Food: I failed to make dinner even once this week. We had fast food Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday, and a volunteer appreciation dinner to attend on Thursday, and honestly I don't even remember eating on Friday. I don't know. I'm having issues with hating food again.

The Craft Room: Is still not quite done and labeled, but it's being used for crafts, so what more can you ask for? And the office will need to be at least mostly done in the next couple weeks, since we have four or five people staying at our house for the baby shower, and the office is turning into our second guest room (with the bunk beds). And the nursery! The floors are done. It's looking so good.

The leaves are hinting at change.

How was your September? What are you looking forward to in October?

What I am into this month (August).

Hot and dry at the end of July.

So I maxed out my Picasa web albums and can't add any more pictures. And due to some strange photo-voodoo, spending all morning with their clunky interface deleting fifty pictures allows me to upload exactly three new ones.

Which means a number of posts that relied on images have been completely scrapped, and I have an irritating backlog of posts for the cooking blog to go up. If I can't sort this out, I'll have to go back to that irritating wired method of loading photos and, ugh, that's why I quit food blogging the first time. -_-

All that to say, I don't have an end-of-the-month view from my window picture for you. It's raining, which is good.

ANYWAY. After July completely disappeared with no warning, August sort of dragged on and on and on. Or at least this week has dragged on and on and on. I've been a day ahead of myself all week, but finally it is Friday and so if I can just get through today I get a three-day weekend. Huzzah!

Here's the monthly roundup:

On My Nightstand: I've been perusing cookbooks a lot lately. I only ever got a little less than halfway through Ratio because I kept stopping to experiment--which is a good sign for a cookbook! It's due back for realz now we mean it at the library today, but I think it's going on my Christmas list.

I've also begun scanning through On Food and Cooking, and it is proving to be enlightening, as well.

Want to Read: I am getting closer to the end of the Luther biography. The problem is that I take it with me places to read and then lose it. Oops.

Also a slew of young adult fantasy novels just came in for me at the library. Because I'm very highbrow like that.

TV Show Worth Watching: We're on the sixth and final season of Little Mosque, a strange and entertaining comedy about a group of Muslims in the Canadian equivalent of Podunk, Kansas. It's not exactly high art, but it's entertaining and endearing and Hulu has the whole thing up for free and that's pretty much the only kind of thing we watch.

Movies I've Seen (in or out of a theater): Hmm. I don't think I actually watched any movies at all all month. Interesting.

In My Ears: My Mumford & Sons Pandora station seems to have gotten some new life in it. I'm enjoying the selections from M&S's new album, and whatever else is on there. My ears are still oddly sensitive.

What I'm looking forward to next month: Progress on all things baby. Fall weather. Pumpkin spice lattes and sweaters (though will my overheated pregnant body need sweaters? Unlikely). Finishing the nursery (one can hope). Fall decorating!!! September should be a good month.

Goal Progress: I posted some goals for the new year, and I figured these monthly wrap-up posts would be a good chance to check my progress throughout 2012.

The Budget: I officially paid off my car this month, which means we now own both of them free and clear. Huzzah! And the DDH just paid off the last of the credit card debt from when he was unemployed last year. So. Things are actually on track and okay, even with T-Rex. Double huzzah!

The Garden: Our sunflowers are very nice. That is all. Oops.

Food: I've been baking far too many cookies lately. In general I'm having fun in the kitchen, though I noticed last night that some of my heat/standing intolerance that plagued me in the first trimester might be back. It doesn't help that the DDH absconded with the stool I keep in the kitchen and I don't know where it is. Turns out I really relied on that thing.

The Craft Room: Is still in the same almost-but-not-quite-complete state it was in at the beginning of the month. And the office is still in the complete-disaster-area state it was in. Perhaps that could be a project for this three-day weekend.

How was your August? What are you looking forward to in September?

 

Imagine a picture of the courtyard and fountain when it's raining here.

What I am Into This Month: July

I apparently never took a beginning of July/end of June
picture. This is from early June, when life was green and not
one million degrees and in an emergency drought state.

I'm having a hard time believing July is over. Where on earth did this month go? It's been ridiculous--running around frantically at work, at home, and everywhere in between.

Here's what I've been up to in July, other than working, renovating, registering for baby things, etc., etc., etc.:

On My Nightstand: I'm still working very slowly through the non-fiction books that I've been reading the past few months. Summer interferes; it's simply not non-fiction book weather.

I did read Mockingjay, concluding the Hunger Games trilogy. I'm toying with writing a full review of this, though it's probably redundant. Suffice it to say, I thought it ended exactly as it should.
I also read the first book of Jane Lindskold's Firekeeper series, Through Wolf's Eyes. It's been a long time since I've read such straight, traditional fantasy. I find that I'm a little tired of some of the tropes at this point, but Lindskold treats them well, with interesting variations. I'm working on the second one now and enjoying it.

And I don't know who recommended A Discovery of Witches; it was someone in the blogosphere. Let me just say that this book, the first in a trilogy, is what Twilight should have been. Do you know what I mean by that? The books are, in some ways, eerily similar (vampire becomes obsessed with girl, girl falls in love with vampire, vampire for some unarticulated reason refuses to have sex with girl, etc.), but this heroine--the last in a long line of witches with some pretty kick-ass powers of her own--is much more likeable, relateable, and role-modelly heroine than whiny old Bella. I have the second one on hold and think a more detailed review (and a post on urban fantasy and kick-ass heroines) might be in order.

I've also been reading books on cooking: Forgotten Skills, Ratio, and a few others (most of which I checked out of the library based on Anne's recommendations in this post, which I heartily recommend). Theoretically I'd like to do more with my little ol' food blog, but if nothing else I'm enjoying learning the science behind cooking. I also made fresh linguine the other night for the first time in a long time because Ratio wants me to make all of the doughs forever.

Want to Read: Finishing the Introverts and Luther books would be pretty good right now. I also have the sequel to A Discovery of Witches on hold.

I've been collecting other recommendations all summer, but need to organize and prioritize them. Anyone have any for me?

TV Show Worth Watching: I'm half-heartedly following Hell's Kitchen (we're many many episodes behind). Gordon Ramsey would hate my food, I think. I pop in and out for other things the DDH watches: Royal Pains, Eureka, White Collar.

Of course, for the next two weeks, I'm glued to the Olympics. Much to the DDH's chagrin.

Movies I've Seen (in or out of a theater): Yes, we saw The Dark Knight Rises. The Saturday it came out, so the day after the Aurora, Colorado shooting. The theater was only half-full, and I wonder if that can be attributed to fear, the fact that we picked the less popular, cheaper theater, or just that the movie's not as popular as it should be. Because. My word. Yes. There's a lot of there there, for an action movie, if you know what I mean.
In My Ears: Even my faithful "Like a G6" station irritates me now. Somebody toss me a musical lifeline. I can't listen to anything without getting a headache and wanting to scream.

What I'm looking forward to next month: Progress on all things baby. I don't actually have any plans for August at all. I have to hire someone at work to fill in for me. And I'm sure there's a lot of work to do, at home and at work, to prep for T-Rex's arrival. But I won't complain if the world would take it quietly for a bit. I need to soak in the last of my pre-baby days.

This is the second time ever the DDH and I have faced August without it meaning back to school for someone. I freely admit I miss my own elementary and high school days. And even college. But I'm glad he's done with law school.

Goal Progress: I posted some goals for the new year, and I figured these monthly wrap-up posts would be a good chance to check my progress throughout 2012.

The Budget: Our savings got a nice boost because we switched home insurance companies but apparently had already paid for this year's coverage or something, so the old insurance company mailed us a $3,000 rebate check. Which I guess means it's money we had already paid (and eep! that's a lot of money), but hey, bonus! So that's good. I'm still on track to pay off my car, and my boss even said that, though I shouldn't plan on or expect anything, the firm might actually pay me for part of my maternity leave. God does provide, one way or the other.

The Garden: I've even managed to kill off most of my herbs, though the sunflowers are still growing. Sigh. This year's weather required me to be way more on top of the poor garden than I was. I'm hoping to do a fall planting, though if it doesn't stop being one million degrees out every day, that's not going to happen.

Food: I'm finally back onto a routine and cooking regularly after all the vacationing and visitors. Check out Reality Chef for some of what I've been cooking. I'm experimenting with fresh pastas right now in the hopes of doing a nice comprehensive series over there. Delicious, but perhaps not as healthy it could be.

The Craft Room: I have little left to do in the craft room. Some labels, some shifting around of things. Clearing off my desk. It's beautiful. But I really do need to work in the office now. And of course I've been keeping you posted on the nursery!

How was your July? What are you looking forward to in August?

Oh! Also I got a new phone. See how much nicer the pictures
are? And also how the grounds crew can't keep the grass
green? Hot time, summer in the city....

Oh come, Desire of Nations.

An antiphon is a short sentence sung or chanted before the psalm or canticle in certain liturgical traditions. The seven "O Antiphons" date back to the ancient Church and are used to celebrate the final seven days of Advent, the last week before Christmas. Each O Antiphon is a name of Christ or one of his attributes described in Scripture. You probably recognize them as from the verses of the popular Christmas hymn "O Come, O Come, Emmanuel."

O Rex Gentium, et desideratus earum,

lapisque angularis, qui facis utraque unum:

veni, et salva hominem,

quem de limo formasti.

O King of the nations, and their desire,

the cornerstone making both one:

Come and save the human race,

which you fashioned from clay.

Isaiah had prophesied:

"He shall judge between the nations, and shall arbitrate for many peoples; they shall beat their swords into ploughshares, and their spears into pruning-hooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war anymore." Isaiah 2:4

So this is what the Sovereign LORD says: “'See, I lay a stone in Zion, a tested stone, a precious cornerstone for a sure foundation; the one who relies on it will never be stricken with panic.'" Isaiah 28:16

"For he himself is our peace, who has made the two groups one and has destroyed the barrier, the dividing wall of hostility." Ephesians 2:14

King of the Nations.

I think for today I'll simply share Longfellow's poem "Christmas Bells." He wrote it in 1864, after his son was gravely wounded in the Civil War and four years after the death of his wife in a house fire. You'll notice a couple of stanzas usually left out of the carol version.

I heard the bells on Christmas day
Their old familiar carols play,
And wild and sweet the words repeat
Of peace on earth, good will to men.

And thought how, as the day had come,
The belfries of all Christendom
Had rolled along the unbroken song
Of peace on earth, good will to men.

Till ringing, singing on its way
The world revolved from night to day,
A voice, a chime, a chant sublime
Of peace on earth, good will to men.

Then from each black, accursed mouth
The cannon thundered in the South,
And with the sound the carols drowned
Of peace on earth, good will to men.

It was as if an earthquake rent
The hearth-stones of a continent,
And made forlorn, the households born
Of peace on earth, good will to men.

And in despair I bowed my head
“There is no peace on earth,” I said,
“For hate is strong and mocks the song
Of peace on earth, good will to men.”

Then pealed the bells more loud and deep:
“God is not dead, nor doth He sleep;
The wrong shall fail, the right prevail
With peace on earth, good will to men.”

In some ways, not much has changed since the Civil War. Our country is still rent with division and strife, and, honestly, that's not ever going to change. Too often, I'm with Longfellow on that penultimate verse, despairing at the hatred and strife in my city, my state, my country, my world.

But the King of Peace came once and He will come again. Until then, we will do what we can to honor the bells' song of peace on earth, goodwill to men.

Oh, come, Desire of nations, bind

In one the hearts of all mankind;

Oh, bid our sad divisions cease,

And be yourself our King of Peace.

Rejoice! Rejoice! Emmanuel

Shall come to you, O Israel!

I am a Tiger daughter.

I just finished reading Battle Hymn of a Tiger Mother, by Amy Chua. I read with interest many of the articles that came out earlier this year when it was published, then forgot to ever get it from the library until I read a review recently on someone's blog.

It is a slim book, much smaller than I expected, with short chapters, and it reads like a novel. Zoom. I finished it in two lunch breaks plus about an hour Wednesday evening.

Wow. There is a lot there. I'm not (yet?) a parent, so all of the parenting style stuff is theoretical for me from that end still. My parents were, I suppose, somewhere in between Chua's "Chinese mother" and "Western parent," as are probably most parents. The sibs and I all turned out fine, anyway.

The thing that struck me the most, however, is how much of her story was rich people problems.

I mean, they traveled all over the world. Which is wonderful, don't get me wrong. But it seemed like every chapter was about how much money they spent on those two darn kids. Private piano and violin lessons. Group piano and violin lessons. Private lessons in other states. Private schools. Ball gowns. Travel. Fancy instruments. Catered parties in hotels that I know how expensive they are because they're the ones my boss stays at and dang, girl, I used to think a Sheridan was pretty fancy. I think every chapter includes some tossed-in little remark about the thousands of dollars the family is spending. Which is great; I hope to have lots of money someday. But.

My siblings are musicians. My sister's flute cost almost as much as my car. But she started out on a borrowed hand-me-down flute from a girl at church. My brother had a rent-to-own used plastic clarinet. My parents scrimped and saved to get them a half-hour lesson each week. They are both amazingly talented musicians--I am sure not as skilled as the Chua girls, both because they did not put in hours and hours every single day practicing since they were three (my siblings started playing in middle school) and because they were not studying with world-renowned musicians as private daily tutors--but they are both very good and are turning their passions into careers.

It's not Chua, who was reared as a poor-to-lower-middle-class daughter of poor immigrants, who played at Carnegie hall. It's her daughter, reared as an upper-middle-class-to-wealthy daughter of two well-known lawyers/Yale law professors/authors. How much of what they achieve is due to Chua's intensive Chinese parenting and how much to her intensive spending of American money?

Certainly one can achieve these great things even without a lot of money, and then only through the sort of hard work and dedication she describes. But the money sure opens a lot of doors and smooths a lot of roads.

Other than the money, I see a contradiction in the results Chua says she wants--successful daughters--with how much she does for them. Let's see. I'm not sure how to say this succinctly.

For example. Chua complains at one point about all of the projects her kids' tony private school come up with, and how she has to decide which architect to hire to build an authentic medieval building for one of her daughters.

Hold on a second. Wasn't the assignment for the daughter to build a building? Apparently all of the private-school-parents did these projects for the kids. But what the heck is the point of that education you're buying your kids, if you (or your hired labor) are the one doing all the work?

And I remember sitting at competitions with my painstakingly crafted project and looking at the projects of the private school kids, shiny and fancy and professionally done. Mine would be cobbled together from paper towel tubes and scrap fabric and cheap poster paint, and theirs would be solid wood and machine quilted and airbrushed. It's a generalization, for certainly lots of public school parents do their kids' projects for them, and lots of private school parents allow the kids to do their projects themselves.


This always bothered me, and I think it's perhaps the best part of my own parents' parenting: we did it all ourselves. All the schoolwork, all the dioramas and projects, all the crafts, all the 4-H projects, everything, we did. Did Mom truck us around to the store and pay for our supplies? Yes. Did both parents answer questions and give assistance when necessary (teaching us how to use power tools, lifting heavy objects, overseeing work with hot stoves)? Yes, though often the answer to a question was, "Look it up in the dictionary/encyclopedia/some book somewhere." (Remember life before Google?)

What was the point of anything we did, if we weren't the ones doing it? If we wanted to do something (sing in choir or play in band or 4-H or show dogs or all the different things we did as children), we stated that goal and, with help when we were little and less when we were older, we figured out the actions necessary to work toward it, and then we took those actions.

Chua, in a way, does everything for the girls. She chooses which instruments they will play, she chooses how much they will practice and with which teachers they will study. She finds them tutors and signs them up for auditions and enters them in contests.

To be fair, she does confront this dilemma of choice at the end of the book, and I don't want to give too much away. Mostly, I am thankful for the balance my parents found, and hope I can provide something of that to my own children.

But being myself a stubborn Tiger, I'll probably ruin their lives and make them miserable. At least they will inevitably think so when they're thirteen. ^_^

I am singing in the cold.

My voice miraculously healed after four months of weirdness just in time for the all-Lutheran Messiah performances this weekend. It performed excellently for three of the four concerts, and I feel human again.

Because, you know, my humanity is tied to being able to hit an F above high C and sustain a note for longer than one beat without croaking like a frog.

Actually, though, I have to give my voice a qualified opinion for a clean bill of health. It seems to be able to once again hit, more or less reliably, any note in my usual range except a D above high C. High D still is either croaky and awful or completely non-existent at the moment.

I hate that stupid note. It's always been the tricksiest one for me to hit, for some reason, yet it's probably the most common "soprano note" around. Yet for some reason, all the composers (mostly men, and so hitting any note in the treble clef was more of an academic exercise for them anyway) got together and decided that this would be THE note to make a song sound high.

"Yes yes," they said, rubbing their frozen fingers together (I always imagine composers as wearing fingerless gloves and shivering in unheated workshops). "We shall distinguish the soprano and alto parts by having sopranos sing a high D. Want to make your hymn sound high and impossible to sing by the average congregant? Toss in a high D or two!" Then they cackled wildly in rumbly bass voices.

(Don't believe me? What is that high note in "Happy Birthday" that nobody ever hits? A high D. The notes for the first "Rejoice!" in "O Come, O Come Emmanuel" that everyone strains to reach? High Ds. The reason most people don't sound good singing "It Came upon the Midnight Clear?" A plethora of high Ds. Seriously. Look up some song or hymn with a note or two that you never thinks sounds good, and I will bet you money (not really)  it's a high D.)

You rarely see notes higher than the D above high C in hymns or other songs, especially melodies intended to be sung by both sexes. It's the upper limit of most women's ranges and altos will whine incessantly if asked to hit one. Thus, a lot of melodies (aka soprano parts) feature this note when they want to sound high and pretty and feminine.

And I hate it. On a good day.

Handel, however, shares my disdain for the D above high C. Good ol' G.F. Handel, alone in his garret, not having been invited to the frozen composer party, said, "Fuck the high D. Are you men or are you sopranos? You will float along effortlessly on a sea of Es and Fs and Gs. You will hit that A up there on the line above the staff and by God you will like it or you will be cast into the depths with the altos, where there is wailing and gnashing of teeth and actual work involved in, like, reading music and stuff. You will sing real high notes and your voices shall reverberate from the rafters and the audience will weep with joy and envy and the alto-voiced among you who are pretending they are sopranos because they can't read music will hang their heads in shame and recognize you as the true masters of the singing art. This is my gift to you, sopranos, O my dearly beloved."*

It's not strictly true that there are no high Ds to hit in those choruses, but it's much easier to hit said note when you come at it from above than when it's the highest note in an otherwise lower-range song. And if you creak on the D, well, you will probably have a crystalline F or a piercing A-above-the-staff in the next phrase anyway and no one will even notice.

I love you, Handel. BFF 4EVR.

*All views expressed in this paragraph are exclusively those of Georg Friedrich Handel and not necessarily those of the author.