September 11
It rained only two days during June, July, and August. Actually, it was not oppressively humid either, as it gets in these parts. Humidity was a problem for those who built the first Welland canal more than a century ago, and many got sick and died from the "ague". But a couple of days ago the clouds rolled in and it rained for two days.

Due to eye-strain (enough of eye-strain with my regular work) I have left off painting temporarily. I am now filling the gap with music, practicing, learning songs, studying some theory. I am intrigued by matters of meter. There is a system of notation for meters in hymns, indicated by series of numbers at the top of a page in a hymn book, which mean that the words of hymns with similar numbers can be matched with different melodies. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hymn#Hymn_meters).
I am also interested in something that I do not know the term for, but grouping notes in threes or fives against a regular beat. Now that I have experimented with it, I can see that it is a very common element of jigs and reels.
In my regular work, I make cards to collect foreign phrases. Oh, oh, thunder and wind is coming. Got to turn off the computer.
[…] Later (the next morning). It was quite a storm. I hurriedly shut down the computer, closed the window. And I got out of the house. The winds come from the west, and the topography of this place means that strong west winds get funneled by trees and buildings to around here. This morning I heard conversation at the next table. I was not the only one to suspect a tornado. Soon I will sit down to work again. Right now, I am translating an article about “făjià”—the Chinese school of legists. Always something interesting. Oh! How lucky it would be, if I were me!
[…] (a few minutes later). I just found this site. Poetry inspired by spam mail: http://spam-poetry.com. A little gem of a website.
[…] I was wondering, how is a sonnet (iambic pentameter) put to music? I searched, and I found this:
www.fiddleandburn.com/bardny/.
The story is that the reader, who wishes to remain anonymous, got into a brawl in a bar, and was ordered by the judge to participate in a program using poetry to make violent offenders less violent, either that or go to jail. He does a “rap” version of Shakespeare, and actually, it sounds somewhat on the violent side. However, it was by some sort of “rap” that Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey were passed on over generations, with each performer doing it in his own way.