I can’t believe it

Bach.

Yrs trly gets up each day about 6 a.m.
As a retiree, I don’t need to, but I can.
I also am a retired bus-driver, so I’ve had worse.
My worst was get up about 3 a.m., so I could pull out a bus around 5 a.m.
A lot of that time was getting dressed (uniform), eating breakfast, and then driving in.
Just getting to the bus-company, from out here where we live, took about 40 minutes.
When we lived in Rochester (NY) it was five minutes.
But we moved out here to the country because our house in Rochester needed total rehabilitation.
Plus its layout was goofy.
We wanted to build our own house, and the only available land was out in the country.
That was 1990; my stroke was ’93.
My stroke ended my career driving bus, although I eventually returned to driving.
My recovery was almost complete, although I have tiny stroke deficits.
I even went back to riding motorcycle, which my medical advisors consider miraculous.
It was a serious stroke, but apparently one you can recover from.
It was the same as that suffered by New England Patriots linebacker Tedy Bruschi (“brew-skee”), caused by a patent foramen ovale (“PAY-tint fore-AYE-min oh-VAL-eeee;” as in “hey”) in my heart that passed a clot.
That hole has since been sealed — open-heart surgery.
I actually get up about 6:05 a.m.
Our clock-radio comes on at 5:40 tuned to WXXI-FM, 91.5, the classical-music radio-station out of Rochester we listen to, publicly supported.
5:40 is still the nationwide all-night classical radio-feed out of Minnesota.
At 6 a.m. WXXI returns to local production, and it puts on recorded birdsong as it switches.
Then at 6:01 they switch to the NPR (National Public Radio) news-feed from Washington, DC.
That lasts about four-five minutes, and I roll out when they announce it’s NPR.
(WXXI is affiliated with NPR.)
Sometimes I don’t, but 98 percent of the time I do.
It isn’t that hard.
Today is Wednesday, March 21, 2012.
March 21, 1685 was Johann Sebastian Bach’s birthday.
I admit I am very much a Bach partisan.
To my mind, Bach wrote some of the greatest music of all time.
It’s very orderly and devoid of emotion (at least in my humble opinion).
The college I attended, Houghton College in western New York (“HO-tin;” as in “oh,” not “how” or “who”), was very much into Bach.
They held a Bach Festival I think every four years.
This was so a four-year student could enjoy a Bach Festival.
In fact, I was corralled into doing a poster for the Bach Festival.
I did a poster of Bach winking — an embellishment of the standard Bach illustration (above).
People were appalled.
I had committed sacrilege.
It was as if Bach was at the right hand of Jesus.
I wasn’t mocking Bach.
I loved Bach.
My greatest joy at Houghton was hearing Bach played.
Next to the Chapel-Auditorium was the original Music-Building, a brick structure that was always hot inside.
Music-students would have all the practice-room windows open, even in Winter.
A gorgeous cacophony of Bach music washed over us as we exited the Chapel-Auditorium.
(That Music-Building has since been torn down.)
The Chapel-Auditorium installed a mighty pipe-organ (3,153 pipes), and it was a baroque organ, not a Mighty Wurlitzer = schmaltz.
I’d listen in awe to students practicing Bach on that organ.
And if that college lets that organ go, they ain’t gettin’ another red cent!
That organ is the best physical asset they got.
A lot of my ancient record-collection is Bach.
And I have the entire Bach organ catalog.
Perhaps 12 hi-fi 33&1/3rd rpm vinyl records in a big green cardboard box.
Ya need two hands to lift it.
So I always remember March 21.
And for whatever reason there was no mention that today was Bach’s birthday — at least not early when I had the radio on.
Bach was the greatest composer ever.

• For 16&1/2 years (1977-1993) I drove transit bus for Regional Transit Service (RTS) in Rochester, a public employer, the transit-bus operator in Rochester and its environs. My stroke ended that. I retired on medical-disability.
• We live in the small rural town of West Bloomfield in Western NY, southeast of Rochester.
• I had a stroke October 26, 1993, and it slightly compromised my speech. (Difficulty finding and putting words together.)