Give your kid an organ

Hold the jokes about Dutch boys with their fingers in the dikes, and don’t come at me with noise about how boys should be out playing with their balls and not inside playing on their organs. What’s not to love about Gerd “boy, you need a haircut” van Hoef?

Have a listen to how he plays Händel’s Arrival of the Queen of Sheba.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ey_8VSD7fgc

OK, so he can’t read notes, (well, he couldn't for a long time, but I guess now he can) and don’t ask me to explain why he’s playing Händel while he’s got a Bach score sitting there in front of him. He’s only 24. Cut the kid some slack.

And I'll wager you've never heard a better rendition of Bach’s Toccata and Fugue in D-Minor.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PEHGxpRoZQM

I translate for you from the Dutch:

Gert van Hoef groeide op in Barneveld.
Gert van Hoef growed up in Barneveld.

Pas op 13-jarige leeftijd kreeg hij belangstelling voor het orgel
At the tender age of 13 he began longing for the organ.

en door zijn grootvader werd hem de kennis over het orgel bijgebracht
and through his grandfather was him the knowledge over the organ brought by.

... hij dat in praktijk bracht op het van zijn ouders gekregen huisorgel.
... he practiced the house organ which he got from his elders (ouders = mom and dad).

Hij was autodidact en kon geen noot lezen, maar door zijn gebleken talent en oefening speelde hij al snel een aantal klassieke werken^[1] uit zijn hoofd.
He was an autodidact and couldn’t read no notes, but through his blinkin’ talent and practice played he fast a selection of classical works out of his hooves caput head.

I’ll stop here. I’m sensing that translating from the Dutch is not my strong suit.

Point is, though, I had been busily at work at the university teaching job which I began at fifty for four years already when this little tyke was just being born. Wish now I had not used up my quota of future shock examples. This one's a wowser.

I wasn’t born yesterday. I realize not everybody likes organ music. But I do. And I needed some relief from the bitter news that the U.S. Constitution will now be in the hands of traditionalist Roman Catholics for the next forty years or more, and that means sex is for reproduction only and gay people and women need to follow the law and become second-class citizens again. I know it’s a small minority of Americans who go along with this notion, but somebody (not me!) put together this form of government and it's not in our national DNA to go banging on pots and pans in the street to change it. So here we are. And you people over there in Ecuador who want to breastfeed your newborns? Suck it up (no pun intended). We are America. We are the Corporation. Nestle, in this particular case. What we say goes in your country. It's the American way, and along with citing scripture to justify pulling babies out of their mothers' arms, maintained that way by law-abiding people.

Any questions?

Leave me alone with my stupid jokes about pulling out all the stops and the erotic effect of watching young feet fly across the pedals. I’m trying to keep sane here.

Stop ranting about what a mess the world is in.

Give your kid a house organ.




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