Kings and metal

The choral group I'm in is singing three coronation anthems by baroque master Georg Handel. He wrote them to honor another George, King George II, and one of the pieces, Zadok the Priest, has been the must-have anthem for all coronations in England since then.

I pondered the meaning of "baroque," which comes from the Italian word for "bizarre." That definition seems the perfect tie-in to another piece of music I am studying: Be Quick or Be Dead by Iron Maiden.

The differences are obvious—mood, tempo (I will never be able to play lead guitar that fast), complexity. The similarities are more subtle. Handel wrote about king and God; Iron Maiden about sin and punishment (I think). Handel repeats lyrics over and over (I dare you to count the hallelujahs), so does Iron Maiden. Let's see, both have abundant hair, although Handel's was a wig. Handel had adoring fans, ditto Iron Maiden.

Different time, same message

I am in the middle of rereading Agamemnon by Aeschylus. I was inspired by The People's Light & Theatre's production of The Persians, which I saw last week. That play, a look at the losers in the bloody conflict between the Greeks and Persians, was a powerful statement against war written by a former soldier (and astonishing poet). Serendipitously, looking online for details of Taft's presidency, I found a snippet of audio, a speech that Taft gave a century ago, calling for the worldwide abolishment of war. Nearly 2,400 years separate Aeschylus and Taft, yet both men shared the same passion. How far have we advanced?

Empowered

I interviewed an electrician friend for research I'm doing on a novel. He said that most people don't understand just how unforgiving electricity is. The common question he gets on a job is "How soon will the lights be back on?" Although that's ultimately what he is aiming for, his priorities are different. "My first goal is that I don't get myself killed," he says. "Second, that I don't get anyone else killed. Third, that I don't start any fires." Fourth on the list are the lights.

Hard rock

I am imagining panning for gold, my garden trowel digging into the pebbled streambed. I fill my old kitchen sieve with sand and then swirl it repeatedly in the water of Poricy Creek until the sand has drained away. I am left with a small pile of rocks, small chips of stone, an occasional shard of glass, and bits of shell. The gold I am seeking has the burnish of prehistory, mollusks that inhabited this area when Monmouth County was a shallow sea more than 65 million years ago.

The fossils are embedded in the rock, but the work of water slowly earns their release. I can see the line of demarcation easily, the dark marl that holds the shells stretching from the waterline to a point at least a dozen feet above my head, where the reddish top soil takes over and soars to the cliff edge 30 feet up. At the water's edge, though, I can see the fossils peeking out and the impressions they made all those eons ago.

I follow the streambed for several hundred yards, careful where I step. The sand is so dense in places that it sucks off boots and shoes.

Later, after a quick sandwich and a several-mile drive to another fossil bed at Big Brook, I search in vain for fossilized shark teeth. Instead, I find only orange-colored pencils of stone—the remains of belmnites, squid-like creatures that had 10 arms.