I will be out of the country for much of the next two weeks and will not publish another update from the shack until I return. That’s a first. I’ve given you a long post, or a short story, about the farm to make up for my absence. Hope you like it.
I don’t know why I think of my parents now, or what triggers those thoughts. My Dad would be 105 this December and passed away in 1988. My Mom would have turned 103 this past New Year’s Day, having lived till 1996. It’s been a long time. I think of them often yet. Sometimes every day.
Monday afternoon I was scooping the driveway, again, bundled up in many layers of clothing. I refused to start until I found my mittens, which disappeared over the weekend. Turns out I left them at my local grocery store. I recovered them from their lost and found. These are double mittens my Dad called choppers. You can find them on line marketed as such. Choppers are a thick wool inner mitten which slips into a soft leather mitten, usually deer or elk hide. Mittens alone are so much warmer than gloves, and these double mittens are the absolute warmest. My Dad was wearing choppers on the day when he told me this story.
We were standing in his little shop, crammed with tools from throughout the life of our old farm. One wall, up to the roof peak, was a sort of history of local farming from God knows when; leather pads with a metal hook you strapped to your palm to shuck corn by hand, lanterns, buggy wrenches, sickle bar guards, planter plates, calf weaners, hand scythes, untold contraptions and tools. The longer you looked at the wall the more you saw. It was a terribly cold day. Wind was rattling the windows. We could see our breath.
“Did I tell you about your grandfather falling into the pond when they were chopping ice?” My father’s father, another grandfather I never met, was the son of the Irishman who came over on the boat from Antrim and managed to buy land.
“He was twelve years old when his father let him work at the pond for the first time. It was dangerous work. In weather like this, when it was the coldest in January and the ice was frozen the thickest, the farmers in the neighborhood would work together to cut and store ice for the summer. They had an ice house they shared, stacked blocks of ice there and covered them with sawdust. You’d be amazed how long it lasted.”
“There was a spring fed pond that produced nice clear ice two miles from their farm where they gathered with their horses and hand saws. Hard work. And in taking the ice, they created an open pool of freezing water. It was easy to slip and slide into the hole. If you went in and got under the ice, and couldn’t find your way back up, you could die quickly. Most those people didn’t know how to swim then. To let a kid work the ice cutting meant he was grown up. As he talked I was looking at the wall of tools.
“Is that one of those ice saws Dad?” I pointed to a curbed serrated blade with a stub handle on one side and a handle at the rear.
“No, that’s a hay knife. We used that to parcel out hay when we put it up loose in the mow, before there were hay balers.” He scanned the wall.
“I don’t think we have any of those saws anymore. No one has cut ice for forty years.”
“So what happened?”
“My grandpa the Irishman sent my Dad Willie up to the pond with the hired man. They took off with the team and wagon. All the farmers put their teams and wagons together to get it done as quickly as possible. It was a day like this. Windy and terribly cold. Grandpa, as Dad tells it, was helping a cow deliver a calf that was breach. He came later on his little gelding named Jack.. They used that gelding mostly for a small buggy but the Irishman loved to ride him single with a saddle. The Irishman was amazed he was able to even own horses, what with being so poor back in the old country. To have a good fast horse to ride to saddle, that was for rich men in Ireland. So anyway, my Dad and the hired man got to the pond and had been working about an hour when the Irishman rides up on his gelding. Called him Jack. Tied him to a fence post, put a blanket over him, and pitched in with the rest.”
“When you cut ice you started in the middle of the pond and worked back to shore till it was shallow. Trouble was the ice blocks were slippery. You could shove them to the edge of the pond all right, push them on the ice, but when you carried them up out of the pond they were damned heavy. You used two sets of tongs to balance yourself out, one in each hand, and carried two blocks up and heaved them on a wagon, where they stacked them. So there were cutters at the edge of the hole, those who pulled the blocks out of the water and slid them to the edge of the pond, those that lugged them up the bank to the wagons, and those that stacked them. Plus men drove teams of horses, hauling wagons full of blocks to the ice house, where other men were packing them away with the sawdust. When the roads were snow packed they put the box wagons on runners, making sledges. It took a lot of men. Hard work.” My Dad smoked Camels, short with no filters. He took off his mittens, lit a cigarette with a wooden match he struck by dragging it quickly on the leg of his overalls, and paused, blowing out smoke and the match as he scanned the wall of tools, one eye squinted shut.
“Look there,” he said walking to the wall and standing on the carpenter’s chest to reach up and remove a set of iron tongs. “Here are the ice tongs we used to use.” He spread out the tongs. As the jaws got wider the handles at the top got closer together. “They cut the blocks just the right size so when you got these jaws on either side you could grip the handle and swing that ice block up and tote it. Like I said, you put one in each hand for balance.” He looked around and put the jaws on a metal milk crate filled with scrap iron. As he lifted up the jaws closed around the crate and he lifted it off the ground.
“Try that,” he said, handing it to me. It was heavy. “The ice blocks were every bit that heavy. After a day cutting ice you know you’d worked a full day.”
“So what happened to Grandpa?”
“The Irishman hadn’t been there but an hour. He was sawing blocks. My Dad was working beside him, hauling the blocks out of the water and sliding them to the pond’s edge. It’s where most boys started. He was proud to be there, working beside his Dad and all. The Irishman had a block floating and had moved down to make another cut. Willie reached down to get his tongs around the block and his feet just went out from under him. He pitched forward head first. He tried to break his fall on the block just cut but it just went down under his weight and he went with it. The ice block bobbed back to the surface but my Dad didn’t. He was gone.”
“The Irishman ran to where the block was, pushed it into open water, reached down and swept his arm back and forth feeling for his son but there was nothing but water. He started to yell and the other men came running to his side.”
“Geeminy,” I said.
“How old are you David?”
“I’m twelve.”
“Can you imagine taking a swim in icy pond water on a day like this with all your clothes on? He didn’t know how to swim. Can you imagine how scared he would have been, my Dad? He was your age.”
“No I can’t.” I looked down at the floor, then back up at my Dad. “What happened then?”
“According to my Dad, Willie, he opened his eyes and the water looked brighter than he imagined. He could see sun shining through the ice and it looked beautiful. He continued to go down and thought he would just sink away, and he wasn’t scared. It was quiet and he thought he was going to die. But then he slowly stopped and ever so slow he started back up, floating to the surface. He said it took a long, long time and he wasn’t scared. His head hit the ice. And as it did, he felt a strong hand, the strongest hand he’d ever felt, on his arm. It was his Dad’s hand. The Irishman pulled him out from under the ice and put him on his back, back into the air of the world above, but not before Willie had swallowed a hatful of water.”
“I bet his Dad was so relieved.”
“Nope. As my Dad told it he was mad as hell. Willie looked up at the men around him but he couldn’t breathe and the Irishman pounded hard on his chest and said ‘Breathe god damn you. No son of mine is going to die.’ And Willie coughed up a bunch of water and breathed. And then he started crying. And the Irishman was still mad and said ‘There's no time for crying Willie’ and took him in his arms to where Jack the gelding was tied. He whipped the blanket off the horse, threw his son into the saddle, wrapped the blanket around him and said this to my Dad Willie, who was just a little boy after all.”
“He said, ‘Willie, you’ve got to make the ride of your life. You got to get warm fast or you’ll die, and the very fastest way for you get into warmth is to ride Jack here as fast as he can go, by yourself, to the home place. Jack wants to be back in his stall and he knows the way so all you got to do is hang on and kick him, he’ll do the rest. Don’t let him take you to the barn though. Make sure you pull the reins and bring him to the back door where you can yell for your mother. Your sister can put Jack in his stall and I’ll take care of him when I get home. I’m telling you don’t let him take you to the barn because you could be too cold to get from the barn to the house. Pull Jack up to the back door, yell for your mother, and she’ll take care of you from there. I follow soon enough.’
Willie said “Dad I’m scared.”
" 'You can do it Willie, I know you can,' the Irishman said."
"And with that he slapped Jack on the hind quarters and he and his son Willie went galloping down the road.”
Back in the shop I said “Why didn’t he go with him Dad?”
“Because Jack could ride faster with just a boy on his back than if he was carrying two people. He was a little gelding. With Willie on his back Jack would be faster than ever, like a racehorse with a little jockey. And the Irishman knew he had to get his son warm quick. He trusted both the horse and his son to make that ride.”
“So he really made him go alone?”
“Yes he did. He followed to make sure he didn’t fall off. They unhitched one of his draft horses from the team, the Irishman got on him bareback, and he headed off behind Willie. But he knew his son on that galloping gelding would be way ahead of him, and the faster he got to warmth the better chance he had of not freezing to death, or freezing his feet, losing his toes, whatever. I don’t know how much they knew about hypothermia and such back then, but they knew by god he was in big trouble. Let me finish the story David.”
“So as my Dad Willie tells it he hung on to the reins, kicked Jack in the withers like he was wearing spurs, and they flew down the road. Straight shot to their farm. He had to ride down the east side of the section, past a crossroads and another mile to their farm at the end of the next section. A two mile dash down a frozen dirt road. The Irishman had never let him gallop Jack before and he went like the wind. Only the faster they went the colder he got. He began to cry and his tears froze his eyelashes near shut. As he tells it, and he told this story over and over, he had lost his hat in the pond and was bare headed. His ears and his nose hurt terrible and he thought he would surely be frostbit. The blanket his Dad gave him flew out behind him like a cape and he couldn’t keep it on. Somewhere on the road he lost it. He just crouched up against Jack’s neck and hung on.”
“He’d never rode a galloping horse that long. He said that Jack got low to the ground, stretched out, took long strides, and settled into a rhythm of breathing in time with his stride. As he did plumes of white puffed sideways out his nostrils. My Dad said he felt so close to that horse, like the horse knew how important this ride was and wanted to help him get home fast. My Dad loved that horse ever since that day.”
Willie was scared he wasn’t going to make it. He could barely feel his feet. But he was wearing chopper mittens, the same kind I wear still, and said his hands were the only thing stayed warm. Did you know good wool keeps you warm even when it’s wet? It does.”
“By the time he got to the house, Willie said, he was shivering so bad he could barely yell out. Jack tried to go to the barn but he pulled him up to the back door like his Dad told him. His mother and sister finally heard him and came out, and when they saw him in the saddle, all covered with ice, they screamed and went to pull him off the horse, but his feet were frozen to the stirrups. Story goes that his Mom, my grandma, ran into her kitchen and fetched a kettle and poured boiling water on his boots, freeing them up, and that way got him down and in the house. In ten minutes or so the Irishman rode up on the draft horse, with the horse blanket he’d picked up along the way, and busted into the house. He was plenty wet himself, and still mad at Willie for being careless and falling in the pond. Grandma called her husband foolish, about the worst thing she ever said about him. And as soon as they got Willie warm again he was fine. Anyway, that’s the story.”
I remember the way I felt when my Dad was done with the story and how it made me feel. Emotional I guess. I could imagine how scared my grandpa must have been riding that horse in the freezing cold and it scared me all over again. I felt lucky not to live in those times, but at the same time had a strange yearning to be there with them all. A cold winter day, racing for your life down a snowy road on a fast horse, escaping death. What a story.
Years later I was sitting with my Dad at the kitchen table when he was old and I was in college. His chopper mittens were lying on the table. He had just returned from spreading manure, a daily chore on the dairy farm. It was another bitterly cold day and nothing was much colder than riding one of those Minneapolis Moline tractors with no cab and a steel seat down the road and spreading a load of cow shit on a cornfield. Dad had just come in, poured himself a cup of coffee, and added a small pour of Old Grand Dad whiskey. It was the sixties and our family had graduated from being one of the farmhouses that never kept liquor to one that at least had mixed drinks on Christmas Eve. Dad kept a bottle in the lower cupboard behind the shoe shine kit and Mom allowed it. She didn’t like it, but she allowed it. I guess it was the choppers that reminded me.
“Remember that story you told me about Great Grandpa and Grandpa cutting ice, and Grandpa fell in, and he rode a horse two miles home by himself to keep from freezing to death?”
“Yeah,” my Dad replied, taking a sip of coffee. When he added the whiskey he called it ‘coffee royale.’
“Do you suppose it is true?”
“I suppose it is as true as it can be. That story was told over and over. The Irishman told it for years, and your Grandpa Willie, who got his own farm and bought a threshing machine, he told that story at threshing dinners in the summer from here to damn near Iowa. Those threshing dinners were big to dos. And every day you got a new audience. After dinner it was all the talk to tell stories of things that happened on the farm. And they were Irishmen after all, like you and me, and they loved to spin a yarn. I mean no one’s ever written it down, so as you told it you could exaggerate one part, or downplay another, and no one would know the difference.”
“But is it true you ask? I think so. I know they cut ice, and I know it was dangerous, and from time to time people fell in the pond. Now did your Grandpa Willie go clear under the ice, and look up and see the sunlight, and think he was going to die? Well that’s hard to tell. He might have just fell in and got fished right out. And did the Irishman, your great grandpa, yell out that no son of his was going to die and pound him on the chest? Maybe so and maybe not. But does that really matter? Because they told that story we know what happened one day on a pond near Danvers, nearly a hundred years ago. By their ages I got that day pegged as happening about 1886. How many days do we have in our memory from that far back? Could be its not completely true. I mean it’s a story. But I’m figuring it is. And as an Irishman who likes a story that captures your heart, I’m damn glad we have it.”
“So did you add anything to the story Dad? Something you know is not exactly true?”
Dad paused before answering. He took a deep drag on his Camel, the cigarettes that would later give him emphysema.
“Yeah, to tell the truth I’m not sure my Dad loved that horse Jack. I’m not sure he didn’t feel about his farm animals like we feel about our tractors now, like they’re tools. But I was lucky enough to farm with horses, and I loved it. I loved them. Those draft horses would pull till their heart broke if you’d let them. Pull so hard they could hardly stand. And a galloping horse on a two mile run? There’s no reason a horse would run that hard that far if he didn’t sense you needed him to. So yeah, I guess I added that. I gave my own feelings to my Dad. But it helps the story.”
“You know the great thing about that story? When you’re a kid you identify with Willie, being put in a situation that scares the hell out of you. And when you’re a father you identify with the Irishman, being stern with your child for his own good and wondering if you’re doing right. It’s a story with heart for people of all ages. Try not to forget it.”
With that he drained his coffee royale, stubbed his Camel out in the ashtray on the table, and looked in my eyes as he put on his hat and stuffed his ears under the ear flaps.
“You know, if Willie would have drowned in that pond that day, or the Irishman would have made the wrong decision and let him die from the cold, we wouldn’t be here to talk about it. But because Willie lived and had me, and I had you, that’s the way our life has gone.”
He pulled on his chopper mittens and poked me softly in the chest. “So out of respect for your ancestors how about putting on some coveralls and boots and coming out to the barn to help your old man milk the cows?”
Saturday, February 1, 2014
Thursday, January 23, 2014
Music Appreciation: Chopin
I never wanted a TV here in the shack but I always wanted a good sound system. I’ve loved listening to recorded music since my sister’s 45’s in the 1950’s, then the big sound from the Telefunken cabinet stereo (our family’s first) my brother brought home from Germany when he got out of the army, to the sound of WLS Top 40 hits from the tiny transistor radio in my bedroom, and to countless systems and formats I’ve owned since then. While building the shack I strung wire for ear high speakers through the studs in the wall, put a sub woofer in the corner, and hooked them all up to a CD player, an FM tuner, and a turntable with a USB port.
But when I got down to serious writing I found music with lyrics distracting. So for most of the day, when I’m working up to my goal of two thousand words, I play instrumental music, saving the lyrical music for pure listening. That shortened my playlist.
I’ve turned more and more to classical music. I actually don’t know much about it, but I know what I like. And I like much of it, and most of the composers I’ve found, Chopin for one. Which, by the way, is pronounced Show pan. Show as in movie show, pan as in frying pan. Show pan. You would only know it was pronounced that way by being lucky enough to hear the name spoken while at the same time seeing it in print. His written name alone would leave you convinced he was Chop-in, pronounced like the slangy verb in the phrase “Choppin’ wood.” Pronouncing it so would fall into the realm of being an honest mistake, don’t you think?
As a farm kid growing up I learned such words primarily while reading alone. As a result, I was prone to honest mispronunciations. At ISU as a nineteen year old I distinctly remember being thrilled at finding myself in the apartment, for the first time, of a very pretty music major, a violinist. She invited me up after I attended one of her chamber music concerts. It was one of the first times I’d heard live classical music. She asked me to pick something to play out of her record collection while she fixed us drinks. She returned to the room with a bottle of wine and two stemmed glasses in her hand, which I thought was positively exotic because of the fancy glasses and also because the bottle had a cork and was neither Boone’s farm, Ripple, nor Bali Hai.
“Did you find something?” she asked.
“Yeah, I did.” I said, pulling an album up out of the many in the wooden crate. “How about this guy, Chop in?”
She laughed. Not just a giggle, a pretty big laugh. “He’s not Chop in. He’s Show pan. SHOW PAN.”
I felt like such a farmer. I might as well have had cow shit on my shoes and alfalfa hay in my hair. And while my musical faux pas didn’t ruin the evening, I sure never forgot show pan.
Forty three years later I bought a Chopin CD for a quarter at the last day of Treasures and Trash, the giant rummage sale the local women’s club has every year in our church It’s a non-descript recording made by Sony in 1994, part of its Infinity Digital series, featuring the piano playing of two Russian pianists Vladimir Shakin and Eva Smirnova. It’s titled The Romantic Piano-Chopin: Mazurkas, Nocturnes, Polonaises. Not an attention grabbing title, and likely not a big seller.
Fredric Chopin himself was something of a snob from what I gather at Wikipedia. One of those child prodigies who never worked or lived, for that matter, outside the world of high toned music, he was born in Poland, later becoming a French citizen. He hung around with the likes of Franz Liszt and Robert Schumann, moving around Europe writing music for, and playing, piano. Chopin was all about pianos, one at a time, occasionally two. At no time does his history suggest he ever once milked a cow or shucked corn.
Musicologists estimate Fredric Chopin performed only about thirty concerts in his short lifetime, preferring the solon rather than concert halls. That’s another way of saying he liked to perform privately in apartments and houses for friends and supporters rather than playing for the wider public. He lived only thirty nine years, from 1810 to 1849. Fredric (I bet he didn’t like to be called Fred) was not what you would call a robust guy. In fact, he was sick most of his life with tuberculosis. Good thing he was a composer and piano player. He would have made a lousy lumberjack.
Chopin was picky about his pianos. He was once holed up in a monastery on Majorca, nice Mediterranean island off the coast of Spain, with his lover George Sand. George Sand, the pen name of a French female author born Aurore Dupin, who published under a man’s name, I think, to improve book sales, was something of a bohemian as was Chopin. While on Majorca, Chopin complained that he could not compose properly on any instrument other than a Pleyal piano, which the company eventually shipped to him all the way from Paris. You have to think it’s a lot easier for a mandolin picker or a piccolo piper to prefer one instrument over another, but pianists? If you’re going to traipse all over Europe it would seem best to get used to other people’s instruments. Not Chopin.
Whether it was George Sand, the Pleyal piano, or the good weather his stay on Majorca turned out to be one of his most prolific writing periods. The liner notes to my cheap CD say that Chopin invented the instrumental ballade and that “his music represents the quintessence of the Romantic piano tradition and embodies more fully than any other composer’s the expression and technical characteristics of his instrument.”
Here’s how George Sand described in her own words an episode of Chopin creating music in the presence of she and a friend named Delacroix.
‘Chopin is at the piano, quite oblivious of the fact that anyone is listening. He embarks on a sort of casual improvisation, then stops.
“Go on, go on,” exclaims Delacroix, “That's not the end!”
“It's not even a beginning,” says Chopin. “Nothing will come ... nothing but reflections, shadows, shapes that won't stay fixed. I'm trying to find the right color, but I can't even get the form ...”
“You won't find the one without the other,” says Delacroix, “and both will come together.”
“What if I find nothing but moonlight?”
“Then you will have found the reflection of a reflection.”
The idea seems to please the divine artist. He begins again, without seeming to, so uncertain is the shape. Gradually quiet colors begin to show, corresponding to the suave modulations sounding in our ears. Suddenly the note of blue sings out, and the night is all around us, azure and transparent. Light clouds take on fantastic shapes and fill the sky. They gather about the moon which casts upon them great opalescent discs, and wakes the sleeping colors. We dream of a summer night, and sit there waiting for the song of the nightingale ...’
I hardly know what to say about that. I know nothing about suave modulations and color, let alone identifying notes of blue, opalescent discs, or moonlight in a song. But I do know that Chopin does a couple of things really well. He writes music that goes from fast to slow and loud to soft better than almost anyone. When I listen to his work I end up thinking he waits just the right amount of time between notes. This could be way off base but it strikes me that it is not only the notes that are played in a piece but the spaces in between the notes that make a song really good. When I close my eyes and listen to these piano players performing Chopin’s songs I find myself anticipating the next note, and when it arrives I think it’s exactly the sound that should have been played. It fits with everything else. And the music, just simple piano notes, somehow puts me in touch with how I’m feeling. It’s emotional.
The songs on the CD suffer from bad titles. You’re just never going to have the name of these songs on the tip of your tongue. Take for instance the first song “Barcarolle in F-sharp Major, Opus 60.” Come on Fredric. Is that snappy? There are plenty of instrumental songs with names that either roughly describe the music or are at least memorable. Glen Miller has “Moonlight Serenade”, Pat Metheny has “As Fall Wichita, So Falls Wichita Falls”, and Chopin has “Polonaise in A-flat Major, Opus 53”? I’d say marketing was not a concern in the early 1800’s. Actually if you heard “Polonaise in A-flat Major, Opus 53” you would probably recognize it. I think I probably heard Liberace play it on the Ed Sullivan Show, where he no doubt pronounced Chopin’s name correctly and I never saw how it was spelled.
On this particular Chopin CD you got your barcarolle, three mazurkas, a polonaise, a berceuse, three more mazurkas, two nocturnes, and you finish off with that famous polonaise previously mentioned. It takes a little research to figure out what is actually coming out of the speakers. A barcarolle is a song named and patterned after the long slow strokes made by a gondolier i.e., person rowing a gondola. A mazurka is a short Polish dance tune, although Chopin insisted his compositions were not pieces to which people should dance, rather they were made for listening. A berceuse is another name for a lullaby. When you listen to it that’s exactly the mood that Chopin creates. And a polonaise (simply the French word for Polish) is another dance in ¾ time “quite close to that of the Swedish semiquaver.” And if you know anything whatsoever about the Swedish semiquaver you’re a better man than I.
So there you have it; Chopin (say show pan): a man and his music. A farm boy review of that madcap Polish/French piano player and song writer from out of the classical past. He’s no Scott Joplin, but he’s worth a listen.
But when I got down to serious writing I found music with lyrics distracting. So for most of the day, when I’m working up to my goal of two thousand words, I play instrumental music, saving the lyrical music for pure listening. That shortened my playlist.
I’ve turned more and more to classical music. I actually don’t know much about it, but I know what I like. And I like much of it, and most of the composers I’ve found, Chopin for one. Which, by the way, is pronounced Show pan. Show as in movie show, pan as in frying pan. Show pan. You would only know it was pronounced that way by being lucky enough to hear the name spoken while at the same time seeing it in print. His written name alone would leave you convinced he was Chop-in, pronounced like the slangy verb in the phrase “Choppin’ wood.” Pronouncing it so would fall into the realm of being an honest mistake, don’t you think?
As a farm kid growing up I learned such words primarily while reading alone. As a result, I was prone to honest mispronunciations. At ISU as a nineteen year old I distinctly remember being thrilled at finding myself in the apartment, for the first time, of a very pretty music major, a violinist. She invited me up after I attended one of her chamber music concerts. It was one of the first times I’d heard live classical music. She asked me to pick something to play out of her record collection while she fixed us drinks. She returned to the room with a bottle of wine and two stemmed glasses in her hand, which I thought was positively exotic because of the fancy glasses and also because the bottle had a cork and was neither Boone’s farm, Ripple, nor Bali Hai.
“Did you find something?” she asked.
“Yeah, I did.” I said, pulling an album up out of the many in the wooden crate. “How about this guy, Chop in?”
She laughed. Not just a giggle, a pretty big laugh. “He’s not Chop in. He’s Show pan. SHOW PAN.”
I felt like such a farmer. I might as well have had cow shit on my shoes and alfalfa hay in my hair. And while my musical faux pas didn’t ruin the evening, I sure never forgot show pan.
Forty three years later I bought a Chopin CD for a quarter at the last day of Treasures and Trash, the giant rummage sale the local women’s club has every year in our church It’s a non-descript recording made by Sony in 1994, part of its Infinity Digital series, featuring the piano playing of two Russian pianists Vladimir Shakin and Eva Smirnova. It’s titled The Romantic Piano-Chopin: Mazurkas, Nocturnes, Polonaises. Not an attention grabbing title, and likely not a big seller.
Fredric Chopin himself was something of a snob from what I gather at Wikipedia. One of those child prodigies who never worked or lived, for that matter, outside the world of high toned music, he was born in Poland, later becoming a French citizen. He hung around with the likes of Franz Liszt and Robert Schumann, moving around Europe writing music for, and playing, piano. Chopin was all about pianos, one at a time, occasionally two. At no time does his history suggest he ever once milked a cow or shucked corn.
Musicologists estimate Fredric Chopin performed only about thirty concerts in his short lifetime, preferring the solon rather than concert halls. That’s another way of saying he liked to perform privately in apartments and houses for friends and supporters rather than playing for the wider public. He lived only thirty nine years, from 1810 to 1849. Fredric (I bet he didn’t like to be called Fred) was not what you would call a robust guy. In fact, he was sick most of his life with tuberculosis. Good thing he was a composer and piano player. He would have made a lousy lumberjack.
Chopin was picky about his pianos. He was once holed up in a monastery on Majorca, nice Mediterranean island off the coast of Spain, with his lover George Sand. George Sand, the pen name of a French female author born Aurore Dupin, who published under a man’s name, I think, to improve book sales, was something of a bohemian as was Chopin. While on Majorca, Chopin complained that he could not compose properly on any instrument other than a Pleyal piano, which the company eventually shipped to him all the way from Paris. You have to think it’s a lot easier for a mandolin picker or a piccolo piper to prefer one instrument over another, but pianists? If you’re going to traipse all over Europe it would seem best to get used to other people’s instruments. Not Chopin.
Whether it was George Sand, the Pleyal piano, or the good weather his stay on Majorca turned out to be one of his most prolific writing periods. The liner notes to my cheap CD say that Chopin invented the instrumental ballade and that “his music represents the quintessence of the Romantic piano tradition and embodies more fully than any other composer’s the expression and technical characteristics of his instrument.”
Here’s how George Sand described in her own words an episode of Chopin creating music in the presence of she and a friend named Delacroix.
‘Chopin is at the piano, quite oblivious of the fact that anyone is listening. He embarks on a sort of casual improvisation, then stops.
“Go on, go on,” exclaims Delacroix, “That's not the end!”
“It's not even a beginning,” says Chopin. “Nothing will come ... nothing but reflections, shadows, shapes that won't stay fixed. I'm trying to find the right color, but I can't even get the form ...”
“You won't find the one without the other,” says Delacroix, “and both will come together.”
“What if I find nothing but moonlight?”
“Then you will have found the reflection of a reflection.”
The idea seems to please the divine artist. He begins again, without seeming to, so uncertain is the shape. Gradually quiet colors begin to show, corresponding to the suave modulations sounding in our ears. Suddenly the note of blue sings out, and the night is all around us, azure and transparent. Light clouds take on fantastic shapes and fill the sky. They gather about the moon which casts upon them great opalescent discs, and wakes the sleeping colors. We dream of a summer night, and sit there waiting for the song of the nightingale ...’
I hardly know what to say about that. I know nothing about suave modulations and color, let alone identifying notes of blue, opalescent discs, or moonlight in a song. But I do know that Chopin does a couple of things really well. He writes music that goes from fast to slow and loud to soft better than almost anyone. When I listen to his work I end up thinking he waits just the right amount of time between notes. This could be way off base but it strikes me that it is not only the notes that are played in a piece but the spaces in between the notes that make a song really good. When I close my eyes and listen to these piano players performing Chopin’s songs I find myself anticipating the next note, and when it arrives I think it’s exactly the sound that should have been played. It fits with everything else. And the music, just simple piano notes, somehow puts me in touch with how I’m feeling. It’s emotional.
The songs on the CD suffer from bad titles. You’re just never going to have the name of these songs on the tip of your tongue. Take for instance the first song “Barcarolle in F-sharp Major, Opus 60.” Come on Fredric. Is that snappy? There are plenty of instrumental songs with names that either roughly describe the music or are at least memorable. Glen Miller has “Moonlight Serenade”, Pat Metheny has “As Fall Wichita, So Falls Wichita Falls”, and Chopin has “Polonaise in A-flat Major, Opus 53”? I’d say marketing was not a concern in the early 1800’s. Actually if you heard “Polonaise in A-flat Major, Opus 53” you would probably recognize it. I think I probably heard Liberace play it on the Ed Sullivan Show, where he no doubt pronounced Chopin’s name correctly and I never saw how it was spelled.
On this particular Chopin CD you got your barcarolle, three mazurkas, a polonaise, a berceuse, three more mazurkas, two nocturnes, and you finish off with that famous polonaise previously mentioned. It takes a little research to figure out what is actually coming out of the speakers. A barcarolle is a song named and patterned after the long slow strokes made by a gondolier i.e., person rowing a gondola. A mazurka is a short Polish dance tune, although Chopin insisted his compositions were not pieces to which people should dance, rather they were made for listening. A berceuse is another name for a lullaby. When you listen to it that’s exactly the mood that Chopin creates. And a polonaise (simply the French word for Polish) is another dance in ¾ time “quite close to that of the Swedish semiquaver.” And if you know anything whatsoever about the Swedish semiquaver you’re a better man than I.
So there you have it; Chopin (say show pan): a man and his music. A farm boy review of that madcap Polish/French piano player and song writer from out of the classical past. He’s no Scott Joplin, but he’s worth a listen.
Thursday, January 16, 2014
We're So Smart
In a week that saw a youth shot and killed at a Chicago bus stop reportedly for his cell phone, and two college students drowned in the Chicago river trying to retrieve a dropped cell phone, I’ve concluded we treasure these gadgets way too much. Calling them merely phones, however, understates their importance and value to us. They’re smart, these phones, and have become our link to knowledge and information, everyone we know, and in many ways the world around us. I think they’ve changed us.
I own an I Phone and have set it so that little sounds come from it to alert me to its activity. When I get a text a very short whistle, a single rising note from low pitch to high, like a person’s whistle through teeth and pursed lips, tells me it’s arrived. It’s a tiny sound. When I send a text the reverse whistle, high to low, lasting only part of a second tells me it’s on its way. I get e mails on my phone as well, but only when I log onto the Outlook program. When they come in a sound like an old fashioned typewriter announces their arrival. Voice mail messages arrive with the sound of a now obsolete teletype machine. And finally my one and only ring tone that alerts me to some real telephone caller waiting for me to answer, in person, with my voice, is the sound of muted horns that are used on fox hunts. The play a five note ditty, a half note and four quarter notes I think, that seems to say “tally ho.” I picked these sounds for no particular reason except that I like them, and I think of them as my own. Actually they’re stock sounds among a big list of sounds any I Phone user can choose from.
My wife, who also has an I phone, and I had to coordinate our sounds because at first we found we both had the same alert for incoming texts. When we were together and heard the little rising whistle we thought we both had received a text. It was annoying. She chose to change her incoming text alert to a little bell. Now when we’re alone in the house and we hear the sounds we know which of us is being supplied information via which medium. We get a lot more texts these days than we do phone calls. It’s happened gradually, but it’s a definite trend. It comes I think from people not answering phone calls.
It started with our kids. They never seemed to answer when we called, but they would eventually call us back.
“I see you called this morning,” they would say, calling us in the evening.
“Yeah, why didn’t you answer?” They would always have a reason of some kind, flimsy maybe, until finally my daughter admitted she usually has turned her ringer off.
“I check it often enough that I see when someone calls. I can’t always call back. But if you need something right away text me.” Phone etiquette no longer demands answering immediately via voice.
So we found ourselves texting our kids simply because they respond more quickly. They can text back anywhere, in a meeting, in the bathroom, on the L train. Texting doesn’t bother other people, its private, and you tend to get right to the point. It’s always more direct than a voice call, and shorter. I prefer texting now. I text rather than make a voice call most of the time, to nearly everyone. But then I’ve always preferred writing over talking. That’s why I’ve always loved e mail. But e mail with the kids? Pretty old stuff. If I send them something by e mail I text them to let them know so they check it. An effective way to contact a young person these days? Send a Face Book message. They live on Face Book. To tell the truth, I reside there quite often. No need to message one or a group of people there. You can talk to all your friends at once, along with those people you call friends but barely know.
And it’s not only communicating one to one that makes our smart phones so important to us. They are our guides. Gone are the days of detailed directions for smart phone users. We saw a lot of out of town relatives over the holidays and when they needed to go here or there we gave them old fashioned step by step directions like these we explained to our nephew.
“You take 80 to Route 47. At the top of the ramp go South, which is right, through the sort of North end of the business district, not the downtown you know, the new stuff up by the interstate. Follow that main drag till you go over a bridge. It’s not the Illinois River bridge, it’s more of a viaduct over railroad tracks and stuff. As soon as you’re off the bridge, at the very first right, take that street. Their house is about eight blocks down on the right. You’ll see their white van parked in the driveway. They have a concrete goose dressed up in clothes, probably as Mrs. Santa Claus. The house has a glassed in porch.”
My nephew, patient and politely attentive through the whole explanation, replied by saying
“Thanks but all I need is the street address. My phone tells me where to turn. Just give me the street and number.”
We don’t always know the street and number. We know how to get there. But that’s no longer necessary for smart phone users. Neither do they need phone books, maps, encyclopedias, dictionaries, the Physician’s Desk Reference, newspapers, magazines, books, flash lights, cameras, or watches. You name it and it’s available on your smart phone. You can look up anything at anytime from anywhere by using your smart phone. The format may not be convenient. You may prefer to look something up on your computer screen or tablet, because it’s easier to view, but you can get anything on your smart phone, especially when it is connected to Wi Fi.
Last spring we had a big party with young couples in attendance and their kids. Those that didn’t bring kids brought dogs, and some both, but that’s another story. So a five year old is in my kitchen, sitting at the counter flipping his finger over the screen of his I Pad while I’m making coffee.
“Mr. McClure?” he asked politely.
“Yes.”
“Does your house have Wi Fi?”
“Yes it does.”
“May I have your password?”
His digital experience (I have no idea what he was doing or why he wanted to be connected) and his life in general was, I guess, going to be enhanced in some way if he was connected to the internet. So I gave him my password. There is no reason not to give those you know, especially a cute five year old boy, access to the internet in your house. Understand that at five he knew independently how to log on to my network, plug in the password, connect and go on his merry digital way. It blew me away. I don’t know why. He’s grown up with the internet while I’m still catching on.
Actually I’m no less hooked than that five year old. My smart phone is with me constantly, except when it is charging, which is every night. That puts it within my reach every waking hour. I think I’m not unlike a lot of people. It’s my most useful tool, and most used. Without it I feel out of touch.
I visited my doctor this week and he and I had something fairly important to discuss about my health. I like this physician because he talks to me directly and personally. We were sitting across from each other in the little exam room, discussing something private, trying together to solve a sort of riddle posed by my aging body. He was asking me about symptoms and I was answering as carefully and accurately as I possibly could. At one point he said
“There’s a reason you need to watch out for this you know. There’s a possibility this could…”
And as the word “could” came out of his mouth a short rising whistle, not a second long, went off in the little exam room, interrupting the conversation.
“Is that your phone?” I asked.
“Yes, the damn thing. I swear I’m going to throw it away. That means I got an e mail.”
“I have the same sound. It could mean I got a text.” We both checked our phones. He had gotten an e mail. We finished our conversation. I’m going to be OK by the way.
“You can’t throw that phone away doc,” I said when we had finished with our anatomy discussion. “You have to respond when people need you, and now you can be reached all the time.”
“Yeah, but I hate it for that very reason.”
“Look, I keep my phone on all the time too even though I’m retired and don’t even have to respond anymore. I choose to. It could be my kids, my wife, one of my friends, someone else in my family. They stay in touch with me and I do the same. It’s the way we live now.”
“Yeah, but it’s sad in a way isn’t it?”
“It is. But it’s also good. I’ve never been in touch with so many people nor communicated better or more often. I think it makes us closer. It’s a trade off, I admit, but I choose frequent contact.”
“I know,” he said. “But it can still be a giant pain.”
He tapped an order for a medication into the laptop in the room and e mailed it to my pharmacy. He also wrote an order for a simple diagnostic test and e mailed that off to another part of the organization.
“You can go to the lower floor and get that test done right now before you leave if you like. They have my order already.”
That was never easier. I read the results of my blood tests now on line via e mail, not that I know what they mean. This same outfit sends me e mail reminders of appointments. My credit union sends me a text when my account goes below a level I determine. I can send a text back which prompts yet another text with my last few transactions. The world as we know it is not going digital, it’s already there. The train has left the station. We’re plugged in. And if you’re not plugged in now with via a smart phone, I predict you soon will be.
You are either reading this blog through a link in an e mail or as a link in a Face Book post. The device you are using could be your smart phone. But whatever device you use please stay in touch. You can comment on the Face Book post which brought you the blog link. If you received this piece via e mail you can close the blog link and simply reply to the e mail. Or you can comment on my blog itself in the comment section. However you communicate I’d love to hear from you. It’s easy. Have a good weekend.
I own an I Phone and have set it so that little sounds come from it to alert me to its activity. When I get a text a very short whistle, a single rising note from low pitch to high, like a person’s whistle through teeth and pursed lips, tells me it’s arrived. It’s a tiny sound. When I send a text the reverse whistle, high to low, lasting only part of a second tells me it’s on its way. I get e mails on my phone as well, but only when I log onto the Outlook program. When they come in a sound like an old fashioned typewriter announces their arrival. Voice mail messages arrive with the sound of a now obsolete teletype machine. And finally my one and only ring tone that alerts me to some real telephone caller waiting for me to answer, in person, with my voice, is the sound of muted horns that are used on fox hunts. The play a five note ditty, a half note and four quarter notes I think, that seems to say “tally ho.” I picked these sounds for no particular reason except that I like them, and I think of them as my own. Actually they’re stock sounds among a big list of sounds any I Phone user can choose from.
My wife, who also has an I phone, and I had to coordinate our sounds because at first we found we both had the same alert for incoming texts. When we were together and heard the little rising whistle we thought we both had received a text. It was annoying. She chose to change her incoming text alert to a little bell. Now when we’re alone in the house and we hear the sounds we know which of us is being supplied information via which medium. We get a lot more texts these days than we do phone calls. It’s happened gradually, but it’s a definite trend. It comes I think from people not answering phone calls.
It started with our kids. They never seemed to answer when we called, but they would eventually call us back.
“I see you called this morning,” they would say, calling us in the evening.
“Yeah, why didn’t you answer?” They would always have a reason of some kind, flimsy maybe, until finally my daughter admitted she usually has turned her ringer off.
“I check it often enough that I see when someone calls. I can’t always call back. But if you need something right away text me.” Phone etiquette no longer demands answering immediately via voice.
So we found ourselves texting our kids simply because they respond more quickly. They can text back anywhere, in a meeting, in the bathroom, on the L train. Texting doesn’t bother other people, its private, and you tend to get right to the point. It’s always more direct than a voice call, and shorter. I prefer texting now. I text rather than make a voice call most of the time, to nearly everyone. But then I’ve always preferred writing over talking. That’s why I’ve always loved e mail. But e mail with the kids? Pretty old stuff. If I send them something by e mail I text them to let them know so they check it. An effective way to contact a young person these days? Send a Face Book message. They live on Face Book. To tell the truth, I reside there quite often. No need to message one or a group of people there. You can talk to all your friends at once, along with those people you call friends but barely know.
And it’s not only communicating one to one that makes our smart phones so important to us. They are our guides. Gone are the days of detailed directions for smart phone users. We saw a lot of out of town relatives over the holidays and when they needed to go here or there we gave them old fashioned step by step directions like these we explained to our nephew.
“You take 80 to Route 47. At the top of the ramp go South, which is right, through the sort of North end of the business district, not the downtown you know, the new stuff up by the interstate. Follow that main drag till you go over a bridge. It’s not the Illinois River bridge, it’s more of a viaduct over railroad tracks and stuff. As soon as you’re off the bridge, at the very first right, take that street. Their house is about eight blocks down on the right. You’ll see their white van parked in the driveway. They have a concrete goose dressed up in clothes, probably as Mrs. Santa Claus. The house has a glassed in porch.”
My nephew, patient and politely attentive through the whole explanation, replied by saying
“Thanks but all I need is the street address. My phone tells me where to turn. Just give me the street and number.”
We don’t always know the street and number. We know how to get there. But that’s no longer necessary for smart phone users. Neither do they need phone books, maps, encyclopedias, dictionaries, the Physician’s Desk Reference, newspapers, magazines, books, flash lights, cameras, or watches. You name it and it’s available on your smart phone. You can look up anything at anytime from anywhere by using your smart phone. The format may not be convenient. You may prefer to look something up on your computer screen or tablet, because it’s easier to view, but you can get anything on your smart phone, especially when it is connected to Wi Fi.
Last spring we had a big party with young couples in attendance and their kids. Those that didn’t bring kids brought dogs, and some both, but that’s another story. So a five year old is in my kitchen, sitting at the counter flipping his finger over the screen of his I Pad while I’m making coffee.
“Mr. McClure?” he asked politely.
“Yes.”
“Does your house have Wi Fi?”
“Yes it does.”
“May I have your password?”
His digital experience (I have no idea what he was doing or why he wanted to be connected) and his life in general was, I guess, going to be enhanced in some way if he was connected to the internet. So I gave him my password. There is no reason not to give those you know, especially a cute five year old boy, access to the internet in your house. Understand that at five he knew independently how to log on to my network, plug in the password, connect and go on his merry digital way. It blew me away. I don’t know why. He’s grown up with the internet while I’m still catching on.
Actually I’m no less hooked than that five year old. My smart phone is with me constantly, except when it is charging, which is every night. That puts it within my reach every waking hour. I think I’m not unlike a lot of people. It’s my most useful tool, and most used. Without it I feel out of touch.
I visited my doctor this week and he and I had something fairly important to discuss about my health. I like this physician because he talks to me directly and personally. We were sitting across from each other in the little exam room, discussing something private, trying together to solve a sort of riddle posed by my aging body. He was asking me about symptoms and I was answering as carefully and accurately as I possibly could. At one point he said
“There’s a reason you need to watch out for this you know. There’s a possibility this could…”
And as the word “could” came out of his mouth a short rising whistle, not a second long, went off in the little exam room, interrupting the conversation.
“Is that your phone?” I asked.
“Yes, the damn thing. I swear I’m going to throw it away. That means I got an e mail.”
“I have the same sound. It could mean I got a text.” We both checked our phones. He had gotten an e mail. We finished our conversation. I’m going to be OK by the way.
“You can’t throw that phone away doc,” I said when we had finished with our anatomy discussion. “You have to respond when people need you, and now you can be reached all the time.”
“Yeah, but I hate it for that very reason.”
“Look, I keep my phone on all the time too even though I’m retired and don’t even have to respond anymore. I choose to. It could be my kids, my wife, one of my friends, someone else in my family. They stay in touch with me and I do the same. It’s the way we live now.”
“Yeah, but it’s sad in a way isn’t it?”
“It is. But it’s also good. I’ve never been in touch with so many people nor communicated better or more often. I think it makes us closer. It’s a trade off, I admit, but I choose frequent contact.”
“I know,” he said. “But it can still be a giant pain.”
He tapped an order for a medication into the laptop in the room and e mailed it to my pharmacy. He also wrote an order for a simple diagnostic test and e mailed that off to another part of the organization.
“You can go to the lower floor and get that test done right now before you leave if you like. They have my order already.”
That was never easier. I read the results of my blood tests now on line via e mail, not that I know what they mean. This same outfit sends me e mail reminders of appointments. My credit union sends me a text when my account goes below a level I determine. I can send a text back which prompts yet another text with my last few transactions. The world as we know it is not going digital, it’s already there. The train has left the station. We’re plugged in. And if you’re not plugged in now with via a smart phone, I predict you soon will be.
You are either reading this blog through a link in an e mail or as a link in a Face Book post. The device you are using could be your smart phone. But whatever device you use please stay in touch. You can comment on the Face Book post which brought you the blog link. If you received this piece via e mail you can close the blog link and simply reply to the e mail. Or you can comment on my blog itself in the comment section. However you communicate I’d love to hear from you. It’s easy. Have a good weekend.
Friday, January 10, 2014
Four Days from the Shack Journal
Monday, January 6, 2014: Some January 6th in Illinois may have been colder than January 6, 2014. It most likely was, given how long the earth has been around, which scientists armed with radiometric age dating gadgets say is 4.54 billion years old plus or minus .05 billion years. Fundamental Christian theologians armed with bibles they believe are divinely inspired and literally true say the earth is 6,244 years old. The bible centered folks don’t go much for plus or minus as a concept. As you can see there is a whole lot of difference between those two estimates. But neither of them matter particularly in this discussion given that we’ve only been keeping accurate and organized records of daily air temperature for 120 years or so. That is a drop in a bucket geologically. Hardly a drop even. For the very short record the coldest temperature in Illinois since they’ve been keeping records was recorded in Congerville in 1999 when it was -36. Nice little town, Congerville. It’s close to Danvers and Goodfield, in case you can’t place it.
So to be accurate January 6th has not been this cold since they have been keeping records. It was pretty cold in 1970, 44 years ago, but not this cold. On that day it was -12. I’m sure that was one of the nights I toted the car battery from my 63 Ford Galaxy V-8 into our college apartment by the railroad tracks on Hovey Avenue in Normal, Illinois so I might have a chance at starting my car in the morning. Today it is --17 and still going down. And there’s that wind to deal with. I have been burning wood like a bastard in the shack since 6:30 a.m. and have only gotten the inside temperature up to 51 degrees. Snow, tracked in hours earlier, is still not melting on the floor.
Speaking of snow I ignored it as long as I could. From the time it started piling up on Saturday night till Sunday night about 9:00 p.m. I simply walked through it. Then I realized if my daughter and her boyfriend were going to get their car off my driveway and back to Chicago we would have to shovel it. We made a skinny path to the street that I later widened. Glad they were here to help me.
Tuesday, January 7, 2014: It’s pretty gorgeous this morning. We have ten inches of snow, at least, maybe a foot. It is piled on the tops of the bare deciduous tree limbs, not melting, pure white against the dark bark. Our neighborhood has pines, behind me a blue spruce and a balsam, some others I can’t identify through the ravine. Snow packs the needles and weighs them down, making their green more striking and their shape more stately. The sky is clear and the sun bright. I filled the feeder with black oil sunflower seeds and the birds are mobbing it. Must be the only food around. The cardinals are out in force, along with the blue jays and wood peckers. I don’t know how they make it, or where they go at night. But it’s good to see them.
It’s quiet out here. Schools are closed, along with lots of businesses, and there is little traffic. Salt won’t melt ice when it’s this cold. Caton Road, the street in front of my house, is snow packed and almost polished slick. I got the Buick out and went to the store, looking to buy some salmon. The fish case was empty. Truck didn’t come in they said. No hamburger either. I settled on a nice skirt steak and we made fajitas, heavy on the peppers and onions, served with rice, beans and tortillas. The Mexican market on Madison was open and we got some good chorizo to flavor everything up. We stopped at Herman’s, our favorite liquor store, to stock up on provisions there as well. In this weather you can’t be too careful. The roads could drift shut at any time and then where would you be?
I went to church to clear the sidewalks and steps. My friend Steve Malinsky and I worked together. I ran the snow blower and he scooped. I love running the snow blower. I pretend I’m back on the farm driving the tractor. The church’s snow blower is a powerful beast that walked through that deep snow like it was nothing.
It was still below zero and during the forty five minutes or so we worked I got cold. I was wearing leather “chopper” mittens with thick wool inserts made in Bemidji, Minnesota. I thought my fingers would never get cold in those things but they did. My feel stayed pretty warm, with thick wool socks, my regular shoes and five buckle rubber boots. However, my moustache froze stiff. It was hard to smile. When we finished Steve and I stood in the alley and talked a while, but not long. Sub zero temperature limits outdoor conversations.
Wednesday January 8, 2014: I’m going through a lot of wood. I came out early, about 6:00 a.m., which is an hour and a half before sunrise. As I started a fire in the stove and estimated the wood supply that remained in the stack below the stove I figured I’d be good until 9:00 or so. But just as the sun was rising, close to 7:30, I was back outside at the wood pile filling a bucket and a milk crate with more wood. The cold just doesn’t let up. I have both pine and oak in my wood pile. The oak burns hotter. I keep the air intake wide open so the stove really cooks.
I’m doing some different writing this week. I’m part of a group, I Care International, which is going to Trujillo, Honduras in February to conduct eye exams, dispense glasses, and do cataract and other eye surgeries. Forty five volunteers will donate their time and pay their own expenses to make the ten day trip. This year we’re having trouble getting donations of supplies. We need eye drops like artificial tears and diabetic testing stuff; the little finger prickers called lancets and the test strips you put in the monitors. Companies seem to have tightened up on donations. Bill, my friend in Chicago, has a contact at a big retail drug store and we’re putting together a short proposal for their foundation. My job is to briefly summarize the history, purpose, and mission of the organization. I’m writing a one pager to go on top of his more specific proposal. I Care International has been around for 25 years and conducted 71 such missions. It’s hard to capture that on one page.
My other job this week is to write no more than five hundred words on child abuse for an annual report by a statewide outfit on the statistical state of the state for children. They want short narratives preceding each section of numbers. It’s harder for me to write 500 words than it is to write 2,000. Heck I’m at 1,156 right now and what have I said exactly? So that’s what I’m doing out here. Burning wood, writing, and listening to music. I listen to music without words when I write because lyrics are distracting. I’ve got Chopin on right now. I’m glad I’ve gotten to know that guy. I might write a review of his stuff one day as an update.
I’m looking forward to choir practice. We haven’t sung since Christmas Eve and I miss both my choir friends and just plain singing.
Thursday, January 9, 2014: They’re talking about it warming up and snowing again. I really have too much to do to shovel more snow. In addition to the I Care proposal and the 500 word deal for the statewide outfit I have to write the weekly piece for my blog. I thought one of the other pieces I was writing this week might serve as an update but I’m not sure they do. So I’ll crank out one more. It will be nice to get back to the normal and the novel. It’s been quite a week.
So to be accurate January 6th has not been this cold since they have been keeping records. It was pretty cold in 1970, 44 years ago, but not this cold. On that day it was -12. I’m sure that was one of the nights I toted the car battery from my 63 Ford Galaxy V-8 into our college apartment by the railroad tracks on Hovey Avenue in Normal, Illinois so I might have a chance at starting my car in the morning. Today it is --17 and still going down. And there’s that wind to deal with. I have been burning wood like a bastard in the shack since 6:30 a.m. and have only gotten the inside temperature up to 51 degrees. Snow, tracked in hours earlier, is still not melting on the floor.
Speaking of snow I ignored it as long as I could. From the time it started piling up on Saturday night till Sunday night about 9:00 p.m. I simply walked through it. Then I realized if my daughter and her boyfriend were going to get their car off my driveway and back to Chicago we would have to shovel it. We made a skinny path to the street that I later widened. Glad they were here to help me.
Tuesday, January 7, 2014: It’s pretty gorgeous this morning. We have ten inches of snow, at least, maybe a foot. It is piled on the tops of the bare deciduous tree limbs, not melting, pure white against the dark bark. Our neighborhood has pines, behind me a blue spruce and a balsam, some others I can’t identify through the ravine. Snow packs the needles and weighs them down, making their green more striking and their shape more stately. The sky is clear and the sun bright. I filled the feeder with black oil sunflower seeds and the birds are mobbing it. Must be the only food around. The cardinals are out in force, along with the blue jays and wood peckers. I don’t know how they make it, or where they go at night. But it’s good to see them.
It’s quiet out here. Schools are closed, along with lots of businesses, and there is little traffic. Salt won’t melt ice when it’s this cold. Caton Road, the street in front of my house, is snow packed and almost polished slick. I got the Buick out and went to the store, looking to buy some salmon. The fish case was empty. Truck didn’t come in they said. No hamburger either. I settled on a nice skirt steak and we made fajitas, heavy on the peppers and onions, served with rice, beans and tortillas. The Mexican market on Madison was open and we got some good chorizo to flavor everything up. We stopped at Herman’s, our favorite liquor store, to stock up on provisions there as well. In this weather you can’t be too careful. The roads could drift shut at any time and then where would you be?
I went to church to clear the sidewalks and steps. My friend Steve Malinsky and I worked together. I ran the snow blower and he scooped. I love running the snow blower. I pretend I’m back on the farm driving the tractor. The church’s snow blower is a powerful beast that walked through that deep snow like it was nothing.
It was still below zero and during the forty five minutes or so we worked I got cold. I was wearing leather “chopper” mittens with thick wool inserts made in Bemidji, Minnesota. I thought my fingers would never get cold in those things but they did. My feel stayed pretty warm, with thick wool socks, my regular shoes and five buckle rubber boots. However, my moustache froze stiff. It was hard to smile. When we finished Steve and I stood in the alley and talked a while, but not long. Sub zero temperature limits outdoor conversations.
Wednesday January 8, 2014: I’m going through a lot of wood. I came out early, about 6:00 a.m., which is an hour and a half before sunrise. As I started a fire in the stove and estimated the wood supply that remained in the stack below the stove I figured I’d be good until 9:00 or so. But just as the sun was rising, close to 7:30, I was back outside at the wood pile filling a bucket and a milk crate with more wood. The cold just doesn’t let up. I have both pine and oak in my wood pile. The oak burns hotter. I keep the air intake wide open so the stove really cooks.
I’m doing some different writing this week. I’m part of a group, I Care International, which is going to Trujillo, Honduras in February to conduct eye exams, dispense glasses, and do cataract and other eye surgeries. Forty five volunteers will donate their time and pay their own expenses to make the ten day trip. This year we’re having trouble getting donations of supplies. We need eye drops like artificial tears and diabetic testing stuff; the little finger prickers called lancets and the test strips you put in the monitors. Companies seem to have tightened up on donations. Bill, my friend in Chicago, has a contact at a big retail drug store and we’re putting together a short proposal for their foundation. My job is to briefly summarize the history, purpose, and mission of the organization. I’m writing a one pager to go on top of his more specific proposal. I Care International has been around for 25 years and conducted 71 such missions. It’s hard to capture that on one page.
My other job this week is to write no more than five hundred words on child abuse for an annual report by a statewide outfit on the statistical state of the state for children. They want short narratives preceding each section of numbers. It’s harder for me to write 500 words than it is to write 2,000. Heck I’m at 1,156 right now and what have I said exactly? So that’s what I’m doing out here. Burning wood, writing, and listening to music. I listen to music without words when I write because lyrics are distracting. I’ve got Chopin on right now. I’m glad I’ve gotten to know that guy. I might write a review of his stuff one day as an update.
I’m looking forward to choir practice. We haven’t sung since Christmas Eve and I miss both my choir friends and just plain singing.
Thursday, January 9, 2014: They’re talking about it warming up and snowing again. I really have too much to do to shovel more snow. In addition to the I Care proposal and the 500 word deal for the statewide outfit I have to write the weekly piece for my blog. I thought one of the other pieces I was writing this week might serve as an update but I’m not sure they do. So I’ll crank out one more. It will be nice to get back to the normal and the novel. It’s been quite a week.
Thursday, January 2, 2014
Inside the Shack
Two of my nephews came to visit over Christmas. Their Mom, my sister in law, told me a while ago they wanted to drop by to see us and visit the shack, but I knew their schedule was busy on their short visit back home. I was pleasantly surprised when they pulled in the driveway. I hadn’t seen either of the brothers in a while. Both of them have a lot going on.
Jim, an engineer living in Manila (the Philippines) is starting his own company there with the hopes of attracting overseas firms wishing to outsource projects. His brother Tim is a graphic artist and stand up doghouse bass player living, working, and playing honky-tonk joints in Austin, Texas. They came with their sons, both three. The great nephews had a good time playing in the yard on the tire swing and in the snow, while their Dads and I were in the shack having a Christmas drink. We kept an eye on them through the shack window. I got out the better Bushmills whiskey for my nephews, the single malt stuff old enough to drive that I keep tucked away. It tasted so good we had another. Tim was at the house and had seen the shack when it was halfway built but Jim had not.
“I’ve seen the outside of the shack on line,” Jim said. “But I always wanted to see what the inside looked like.”
Both Jim and Tim read this blog. I forget who’s reading this thing. By reading regularly they feel as if they knew what I was doing. But they wanted to know more about the shack. It’s a small place you know, 121 square feet, but they were curious as to where I got the idea for the design, how it was all working out, the insulation, the wood stove. As we talked they kept looking around and asking me about things they saw. Tim spied a little black and white framed photo on the wall.
“Is that Dylan?” Tim asked.
“Yeah. I snuck a cell phone picture of a picture in the Rock and Roll hall of fame.”
“How about that mask up there?” Jim asked looking up at the peak of the rafters. “Looks like a blue eyed devil.”
“It is. Dean and I bought it at the market in Chichicastenango in the Guatemalan highlands. We were there on an I Care mission.”
“And that blue circle thing up there?” He pointed to the opposite gable end.
“A gift from Kerem, Moe’s old boyfriend from Turkey. I forget the name of it. It keeps away the evil eye.” Kerem helped a lot while I was building the shack.
“Is it working?”
“So far.”
“And how about that picture?” They stepped closer to a little black and white on the wall.
“That’s the original shack. Two Australians and I built it on the Pacific coast of Ecuador, on land that no one seemed to claim, outside a little town called Sua. Hacked out a little clearing in the jungle on the edge of a cliff looking over the ocean. I lived there about three months. See? It had stick half walls on the bottom and plastic you could roll and unroll on the top half, with a plastic roof covered by palm leaves. So close to the equator down there you didn’t need much shelter, more a place to get out of the sun.”
“Lots of bugs?” Tim asked.
“Yeah. We each slept under full mosquito nets. And rats. We hung our food up at night with a coconut shell as a baffle on the rope so the boogers couldn’t get to it. Small inconveniences for such a beautiful place though. Went into town about every five days for supplies. Had to time the trip with the tides or the beach would be gone and you’d be washed against the cliffs and the rocks. We ate papayas off the trees. Closest I ever got to completely free living.”
“Uncle Dave,” Jim said. “I keep thinking you’re going to write that story about Scotland but I haven’t seen it on the blog.”
“What story?”
“About working with the Irishmen. You got a job through some people and they paid you cash? You were just out in the countryside and there was no safety or anything? They didn’t even know your name?”
“Did you read that or was it something I told you?”
“You told us at our house in Level Acres.” When I met Tim and Jim they were little kids living in a split level house in a nice subdivision near Geneseo before their Mom and Dad moved to a bigger place in the country. “I don’t know if you told us in particular or whether you were telling the grown-ups and we just listened. But I never forgot that. It was quite a story. You remember it Tim?”
“Yeah. They called you Yankee.”
“That they did,” I said. “Why do you think you both remembered that story?”
“I think because I’d heard of people doing things like that, I mean I was somehow aware of backpacking and hitch hiking, I’d seen it on TV or something, but I’d never really met someone who did it. And there you were. And you were a regular person.” Jim said.
“Yeah,” Tim said. “I mean we knew people that traveled with their job, or took foreign vacations. Our Dad traveled to Europe for work back then. But to quit work, to go places for that long, not knowing what was going to happen, to just improvise. That was brand new. And because you did it we knew it could be done.”
“Yeah, and it sounded so cool to us as kids,” Jim said. “Heck it still sounds cool.”
“I don’t know that I’ve written that down,” I said.
“Well, maybe you should.”
“You know Uncle Dave, we didn’t know that story you wrote about Dad working on the railroad in LaSalle till we read it in your blog. He never told us. Now we know.” Tim said. When I wrote a story their Dad Tom told me about burning down a freight car, I never thought I’d be communicating something new to his family.
“Yeah, you might be right. Maybe I should write that story about Scotland. But do you think you like it because you know me and we’re part of the same family? Or would you like it just as much if it was written by someone you don’t know?”
“I don’t know,” Tim said. “How did your other readers, the ones that don’t know Dad, like the railroad story?”
“They liked it. I had good feedback on that piece.”
My great nephews Kyle and Lex, Tim and Jim’s sons, interrupted our conversation by bursting through the shack door, simultaneously reporting on an altercation, airing grievances as it were, related to someone pushing someone else down in the snow. It wasn’t clear from their account of the incident exactly what occurred or who was at fault. To remedy the situation their Dads took their sons in their arms and held them on their laps. They needed to warm up anyway. It was nice and warm by the woodstove. The fight didn’t last long. Jim was still looking around the shack.
“And what about that hammer?” He was looking at an old tack hammer I have hanging on a nail by the stained glass windows, which we’d discussed earlier, custom made by a friend of mine especially for the shack.
“Uh, I’m afraid that’s just an old hammer. Not everything in here has a story.”
“You should make one up.”
Catching up on old relationships is the best part of the holidays. I realized I’d known those brothers, my nephews, for over 34 years. I’d watch them become men. If I can stretch this out I have a chance to see their sons grow up too.
It came time for them to go and we said our goodbyes. “Don’t stay away so long next time. And bring your boys back to see their Great Uncle when you come.”
“We will. Keep the stories coming,” they said.
“I’ll try.”
E mail, Skype, and Face Book are great but nothing beats a real visit.
Jim, an engineer living in Manila (the Philippines) is starting his own company there with the hopes of attracting overseas firms wishing to outsource projects. His brother Tim is a graphic artist and stand up doghouse bass player living, working, and playing honky-tonk joints in Austin, Texas. They came with their sons, both three. The great nephews had a good time playing in the yard on the tire swing and in the snow, while their Dads and I were in the shack having a Christmas drink. We kept an eye on them through the shack window. I got out the better Bushmills whiskey for my nephews, the single malt stuff old enough to drive that I keep tucked away. It tasted so good we had another. Tim was at the house and had seen the shack when it was halfway built but Jim had not.
“I’ve seen the outside of the shack on line,” Jim said. “But I always wanted to see what the inside looked like.”
Both Jim and Tim read this blog. I forget who’s reading this thing. By reading regularly they feel as if they knew what I was doing. But they wanted to know more about the shack. It’s a small place you know, 121 square feet, but they were curious as to where I got the idea for the design, how it was all working out, the insulation, the wood stove. As we talked they kept looking around and asking me about things they saw. Tim spied a little black and white framed photo on the wall.
“Is that Dylan?” Tim asked.
“Yeah. I snuck a cell phone picture of a picture in the Rock and Roll hall of fame.”
“How about that mask up there?” Jim asked looking up at the peak of the rafters. “Looks like a blue eyed devil.”
“It is. Dean and I bought it at the market in Chichicastenango in the Guatemalan highlands. We were there on an I Care mission.”
“And that blue circle thing up there?” He pointed to the opposite gable end.
“A gift from Kerem, Moe’s old boyfriend from Turkey. I forget the name of it. It keeps away the evil eye.” Kerem helped a lot while I was building the shack.
“Is it working?”
“So far.”
“And how about that picture?” They stepped closer to a little black and white on the wall.
“That’s the original shack. Two Australians and I built it on the Pacific coast of Ecuador, on land that no one seemed to claim, outside a little town called Sua. Hacked out a little clearing in the jungle on the edge of a cliff looking over the ocean. I lived there about three months. See? It had stick half walls on the bottom and plastic you could roll and unroll on the top half, with a plastic roof covered by palm leaves. So close to the equator down there you didn’t need much shelter, more a place to get out of the sun.”
“Lots of bugs?” Tim asked.
“Yeah. We each slept under full mosquito nets. And rats. We hung our food up at night with a coconut shell as a baffle on the rope so the boogers couldn’t get to it. Small inconveniences for such a beautiful place though. Went into town about every five days for supplies. Had to time the trip with the tides or the beach would be gone and you’d be washed against the cliffs and the rocks. We ate papayas off the trees. Closest I ever got to completely free living.”
“Uncle Dave,” Jim said. “I keep thinking you’re going to write that story about Scotland but I haven’t seen it on the blog.”
“What story?”
“About working with the Irishmen. You got a job through some people and they paid you cash? You were just out in the countryside and there was no safety or anything? They didn’t even know your name?”
“Did you read that or was it something I told you?”
“You told us at our house in Level Acres.” When I met Tim and Jim they were little kids living in a split level house in a nice subdivision near Geneseo before their Mom and Dad moved to a bigger place in the country. “I don’t know if you told us in particular or whether you were telling the grown-ups and we just listened. But I never forgot that. It was quite a story. You remember it Tim?”
“Yeah. They called you Yankee.”
“That they did,” I said. “Why do you think you both remembered that story?”
“I think because I’d heard of people doing things like that, I mean I was somehow aware of backpacking and hitch hiking, I’d seen it on TV or something, but I’d never really met someone who did it. And there you were. And you were a regular person.” Jim said.
“Yeah,” Tim said. “I mean we knew people that traveled with their job, or took foreign vacations. Our Dad traveled to Europe for work back then. But to quit work, to go places for that long, not knowing what was going to happen, to just improvise. That was brand new. And because you did it we knew it could be done.”
“Yeah, and it sounded so cool to us as kids,” Jim said. “Heck it still sounds cool.”
“I don’t know that I’ve written that down,” I said.
“Well, maybe you should.”
“You know Uncle Dave, we didn’t know that story you wrote about Dad working on the railroad in LaSalle till we read it in your blog. He never told us. Now we know.” Tim said. When I wrote a story their Dad Tom told me about burning down a freight car, I never thought I’d be communicating something new to his family.
“Yeah, you might be right. Maybe I should write that story about Scotland. But do you think you like it because you know me and we’re part of the same family? Or would you like it just as much if it was written by someone you don’t know?”
“I don’t know,” Tim said. “How did your other readers, the ones that don’t know Dad, like the railroad story?”
“They liked it. I had good feedback on that piece.”
My great nephews Kyle and Lex, Tim and Jim’s sons, interrupted our conversation by bursting through the shack door, simultaneously reporting on an altercation, airing grievances as it were, related to someone pushing someone else down in the snow. It wasn’t clear from their account of the incident exactly what occurred or who was at fault. To remedy the situation their Dads took their sons in their arms and held them on their laps. They needed to warm up anyway. It was nice and warm by the woodstove. The fight didn’t last long. Jim was still looking around the shack.
“And what about that hammer?” He was looking at an old tack hammer I have hanging on a nail by the stained glass windows, which we’d discussed earlier, custom made by a friend of mine especially for the shack.
“Uh, I’m afraid that’s just an old hammer. Not everything in here has a story.”
“You should make one up.”
Catching up on old relationships is the best part of the holidays. I realized I’d known those brothers, my nephews, for over 34 years. I’d watch them become men. If I can stretch this out I have a chance to see their sons grow up too.
It came time for them to go and we said our goodbyes. “Don’t stay away so long next time. And bring your boys back to see their Great Uncle when you come.”
“We will. Keep the stories coming,” they said.
“I’ll try.”
E mail, Skype, and Face Book are great but nothing beats a real visit.
Thursday, December 26, 2013
Blue Christmas
It’s just me, the two Sergei’s, and a couple of musicians out here in the shack this morning. I’m writing while Sergei Prokofiev and Sergei Rachmaninoff’s notes are filling my shack through the magic of digital recording. The musicians are Yo Yo Ma on cello and Emanuel Ax on piano. It’s amazing how much music you can get out of just a cello and piano. They’re playing Prokofiev’s Sonata for Cello and Piano in C Major Opus 119, and Rachmaninoff’s Sonata for Cello and Piano in G Minor Opus 19. The CD cover has the rapturous faces of Yo Yo (did his Mom and Dad have a sense of humor or what?) and Emanuel playing merrily away. My question, which should get top billing, the composer or the musicians?
Musicians tend to hog the credit. Lots of people can play the cello and piano, and those guys do a fine job, but who can write the kind of inspired music that emerges from their instruments, into to some gizmo or other, and later out the shack speakers into my ears this morning? It’s beautiful stuff. My vote is for the composers. These guys, Prokofiev born in the Ukraine in 1891 and Rachmaninoff in Russia in 1873, wrote music their whole lives, beginning when they were pre-schoolers. I imagine the notes in these sonatas taking shape in their heads, them hearing and seeing with no noise the sound of them, playing the notes perhaps, stringing them together, feeling the notes of one instrument complement the other, then writing it all down. I love the flow of these pieces, the beauty, the tenderness, the energy. I’d call them geniuses. They had a gift they shared with us, the Sergei’s. If they weren’t dead I’d thank them. Maybe I just did.
It started out overcast but the sun has broken through on this morning after Christmas Day. I don’t know what’s up with the squirrels in this neighborhood but five of them are chasing each other all over the place. From time to time they scamper on a dead run past the big window in the shack. Just a while ago they ran across my roof, jumped on a tree, and disappeared into the ravine. That must be where the expression “squirrelly” originated. Animals lead such simple lives, each day the same as their last. At times I envy them.
I’m quietly enjoying a new cast iron teapot, a Christmas present from my wife, and some high mountain green tea, yet another gift from Julie, my daughter’s friend in Taiwan. The best part of Christmas is the people we connect with. It’s them that make Christmas I think.
So what happens if Christmas Day comes and goes and the tension and anxiety you‘ve been feeling does not? What if you do everything; put up the tree, bake the cookies, buy the presents, cook the meal, attend the church service, greet the guests-and no Christmas miracle happens? What do you do then?
Sadly or not, I think we fake it, trying not to ruin everyone else’s Christmas. We certainly don’t talk about it. It’s kept inside. Blue Christmas is real for many people. And really, how can we expect one day, however well orchestrated, to cure our sorrows? How can we pin all our hopes, desperate as they might be, on the back of one little infant child, no matter how holy? Is it fair? Is it realistic?
If Christmas didn’t happen for you, if you found yourself silently in despair, you’re not alone. We’re deep in winter. The ground is frozen and the nights are long and dark. It’s okay if you weren’t touched by joy. We have each other and we have the rest of our lives. Most importantly we have today and the days ahead. Take it slow. Do what you can to make each day better. Don’t allow small defeats to weigh you down. Find peace in small things. And above all don’t be hard on yourself, or you’ll miss comfort and joy when it does happen in your life. It’s like not hearing the music when it plays.
Today’s Christmas has evolved into a single day but in the church it’s a season. In the liturgical calendar Christmas has twelve days, ending on January 5th. Even if you’re not religious you should take this concept and run with it. Today is only the second day of Christmas. You have time. Wait for it and be patient so you feel it whenever it arrives. Listen closely.
Musicians tend to hog the credit. Lots of people can play the cello and piano, and those guys do a fine job, but who can write the kind of inspired music that emerges from their instruments, into to some gizmo or other, and later out the shack speakers into my ears this morning? It’s beautiful stuff. My vote is for the composers. These guys, Prokofiev born in the Ukraine in 1891 and Rachmaninoff in Russia in 1873, wrote music their whole lives, beginning when they were pre-schoolers. I imagine the notes in these sonatas taking shape in their heads, them hearing and seeing with no noise the sound of them, playing the notes perhaps, stringing them together, feeling the notes of one instrument complement the other, then writing it all down. I love the flow of these pieces, the beauty, the tenderness, the energy. I’d call them geniuses. They had a gift they shared with us, the Sergei’s. If they weren’t dead I’d thank them. Maybe I just did.
It started out overcast but the sun has broken through on this morning after Christmas Day. I don’t know what’s up with the squirrels in this neighborhood but five of them are chasing each other all over the place. From time to time they scamper on a dead run past the big window in the shack. Just a while ago they ran across my roof, jumped on a tree, and disappeared into the ravine. That must be where the expression “squirrelly” originated. Animals lead such simple lives, each day the same as their last. At times I envy them.
I’m quietly enjoying a new cast iron teapot, a Christmas present from my wife, and some high mountain green tea, yet another gift from Julie, my daughter’s friend in Taiwan. The best part of Christmas is the people we connect with. It’s them that make Christmas I think.
So what happens if Christmas Day comes and goes and the tension and anxiety you‘ve been feeling does not? What if you do everything; put up the tree, bake the cookies, buy the presents, cook the meal, attend the church service, greet the guests-and no Christmas miracle happens? What do you do then?
Sadly or not, I think we fake it, trying not to ruin everyone else’s Christmas. We certainly don’t talk about it. It’s kept inside. Blue Christmas is real for many people. And really, how can we expect one day, however well orchestrated, to cure our sorrows? How can we pin all our hopes, desperate as they might be, on the back of one little infant child, no matter how holy? Is it fair? Is it realistic?
If Christmas didn’t happen for you, if you found yourself silently in despair, you’re not alone. We’re deep in winter. The ground is frozen and the nights are long and dark. It’s okay if you weren’t touched by joy. We have each other and we have the rest of our lives. Most importantly we have today and the days ahead. Take it slow. Do what you can to make each day better. Don’t allow small defeats to weigh you down. Find peace in small things. And above all don’t be hard on yourself, or you’ll miss comfort and joy when it does happen in your life. It’s like not hearing the music when it plays.
Today’s Christmas has evolved into a single day but in the church it’s a season. In the liturgical calendar Christmas has twelve days, ending on January 5th. Even if you’re not religious you should take this concept and run with it. Today is only the second day of Christmas. You have time. Wait for it and be patient so you feel it whenever it arrives. Listen closely.
Friday, December 20, 2013
Jail, Bail, and Christmas
It’s never made sense to me that Sunday starts the week but three hours into this one I was wakened by a cell phone call. I answered it by reflex. Calls in the middle of the night were always about work. I forgot. On the phone was a young man I’ve known his whole life, which represents about one-third of mine. He’s no longer a minor but he’s still a kid. I had a hard time figuring out what he was saying. He was loud, talking fast, and not letting me into the conversation. I kept saying
“Where are you?”
But he ignored me. Someone was yelling in the background, telling him to get off the phone. He yelled back. Before he hung up he said
“Call the police department!”
Five hours into the first day of this week I woke up, checked my cell phone, and found the same unknown number had called me three times, leaving three voice mails. I listened to the first one. It was a recording telling me how to accept a collect call. I called the police department and inquired about the young man who had called me earlier.
“He was here, we held him for a while, but all those kids are gone. Call the county jail.”
I called. He was there. I identified myself and ask what he was charged with. It wasn’t a bad charge in the world of law breaking, fairly minor in fact. Then I inquired as to the amount of bail required to get him out of jail. I weighed my connection with him against the dollar amount.
“I’ll be there in half an hour,” I said.
Sunday was bitter cold. The parking lot was largely empty and the jail was quiet. I found the second entry door locked. I looked into the brightly lit lobby and it was absolutely empty, save for a metal detector, a desk, and a stained cloth office chair. Dark windows covered most of the wall opposite me. I didn’t know how to get in. Then I saw a sign directing me to push the buzzer on my right. Before I could talk on the intercom the door buzzed, the electronic lock clacked open, and I entered the county jail. It was going on 5:30 a.m..
I didn’t know whether to go through the metal detector or not. I went around it, hoping I wouldn’t get in trouble for doing so. I couldn’t see anyone behind the dark glass. It was thick. Bulletproof. I could see the bank of video surveillance monitors with scenes flashing on and off; the front door, the lobby, the hallway, something else, repeat. Then a face, disembodied, really just the eyes and mouth, appeared behind the glass. A voice came through a speaker
.
“Can I help you?”
I identified myself again, identified the person I was there to bail out.
“Do I pay you?”
“See the unit on the wall? Looks like an ATM? Follow the instructions. When your payment is approved an officer will talk to you.”
It was a touch screen. Enter this, enter that, hit next. The amount of bail appeared. I’d brought cash. There was a slot for inserting cash but in large letters was a notice “ANY BILLS INSERTED HERE WILL BE RETAINED. THIS MACHINE DOES NOT GIVE CHANGE.”
My Dad kept a small wad of cash on the farm in case, as he once told me “I have to bail one of you kids out of jail.”
He smiled as he said that. It was just he and I in the basement.
“You think I’m going to get thrown in jail?” I asked, smiling back.
“You’d know that better than me,” he said.
I always thought bail had to be made in cash, that’s why I brought it. Clearly, this machine preferred my VISA card. Five minutes after the machine spit out a receipt a door opened and a real person appeared in the lobby. The first whole person I’d encountered since I arrived.
“Are you here for Jones?” (Not his real last name.)
“Yeah.”
“Do you have any clothing for him? He’s here without a coat, and I came in not long ago and know how cold it is out there.”
“My car is close.” I thought it was thoughtful of him to be concerned about my friend being warm.
“Has he been cooperative?” I asked.
“Yeah. He’s been quiet.”
“It’s just the one charge, the trespassing?”
“Yeah. Just that. Housing encourages local law enforcement to make those charges you know. Helps them control their properties better.”
“I know. I’m familiar with it. Are there other warrants out on him?” I asked. “Like in other states?”
“We only check locally on a small charge like this. If there was something outside the area we wouldn’t know. I have something for you to sign. I want to show you the paperwork for court. You’ll want to make sure he shows up.”
“He will.”
“OK. He’ll be out in a few minutes. I have to check out his belongings.”
He went back through the door. It shut hard and locked. I looked at the control room but saw nothing but the glow of the video monitors. I looked around the stark lobby. Walled off, with the doors locked all around me, I felt a bit like I was in jail too.
My young friend walked through the door where the guard had exited. He looked skinny and tired. He was wearing a thin hoodie and a T-shirt. His pants sagged. His eyes were bleary. He walked up and hugged me. He smelled like beer.
“I’m so sorry you had to come here. Thank you so much.” He was carrying a big sheet of cardboard. On it was everything he had on him when he came to jail, laminated in see-through plastic to the cardboard. Keys. Cell phone. Three lighters. A wallet.
“Let’s get out of here.”
Someone buzzed the door as we approached it. In the space between the first door and the outside door my friend realized he didn’t have his hat.
“My hat. It’s gone. I just got that hat.”
“You can get another one. You might have lost it in the squad car or on the street. Let’s keep going.”
The cold air hit us hard when we walked outside. He clutched his hoodie to his neck and bent down into the wind. When we got in the Buick he was shivering.
"I’m going to court with you. It’s January 15th. You have to be there. You understand?”
“Yeah. I have to be there cause you’re responsible.”
“That’s right. Not just because I’m responsible but because you want to stay out of trouble yourself. You should plead guilty and take your fine. I’m not going to apply the bail money to the fine. You’ll have to pay that.”
“Yeah. A guy in the jail said you can pay it a little at a time.”
“You want to pay it off as soon as you can. It’s a pain for everyone-judges, court staff, you. They can’t dismiss the charge till you pay that fine.” As I was saying that, I had no idea where he would get the money.
“Did you call your aunt?” His aunt was about the only family he had.
“No. She doesn’t have any money. She couldn’t have bailed me out.”
“Where you been staying?”
“With my girlfriend. She got arrested too. I don’t know where she is. I can’t go there.”
“So where am I taking you?”
“I guess to my aunt’s.”
“Does she have a place now?”
Yeah.”
“Will she let you in?”
“I think so.”
“Are you on the do not admit list at the shelter?”
“No. Not that I know of. My aunt is I think.”
“Well, you can always go there.”
“I don’t want to.”
“Then call your aunt.”
He fumbled around tearing the plastic from the cardboard to free his phone. When he got it out he powered it up and started to push in the numbers.
“I’m out of minutes.” He dropped the phone into his lap and looked out the window. “I feel so pathetic.”
“Look, you didn’t kill anybody. You got thrown in jail on a misdemeanor and now you’re out. Your future is all about work. Until you get work and some money nothing is going to change, nothing is going to get better.”
As I said that I looked at him. Scrawny kid, too old for youth programs, GED (he says), no work history, bad clothes, scraggly beard. Dishwashing maybe? I just don’t know. He doesn’t follow up on everything I suggest. But he tries. He hasn’t known much else for a long time.
I wish it was different. I wish he had grown up here and we could have served him at YSB. I wish he could have found some kind of success in our local schools. But he didn’t. He starts from where he is, and he’s not in a good place.
He directed me to his aunt’s new place as the sky was getting light.
“I’ll stay here till I see you get in.”
“OK.”
“Thanks again, I don’t know what I would have done without you.”
“I do. You would have stayed in jail. I can’t do this many times you know. You have to take care of yourself.”
“I know. I’m sorry.”
“Get some minutes on that phone or call me from someone else’s after the first of the year. You’re going to make that court date, and I’m going with you. January 15. 9:00 in the morning.”
“Don’t worry about that. When’s Christmas?”
“Next Wednesday.”
“Have a good one Dave.”
“You too.”
He went up the stairs and knocked on the door. The door opened. He turned and waved, then disappeared inside.
It’s my first Christmas on a fixed income and my first Christmas away from YSB since 1978. I thought maybe I would cut back a little on my Holiday giving but I haven’t. If anything, I want to give more. Since I’ve left social work I realize how low on the radar kids like my young friend fall. Puppies and kittens in America get more sympathy than children growing up in poverty. The agencies that have the ability, and the initiative, to help families with kids like the one I bailed out of jail, need our help more than ever.
I’ve become something of my own United Way. I give to those organizations I know need the money and do the most good. Tops on my list is YSB. I hope you remember to write them a check this Christmas. By doing so, you help young people who are the casualties of families who live in poverty, suffer family dysfunction, and fall to the bottom of the heap. The kids YSB serves find few friends and even less support. We somehow blame them for their problems. Agencies like YSB, however, are there for them. Please be there for YSB.
Merry Christmas to you and your family. Hold one another tight. You make each other strong.
“Where are you?”
But he ignored me. Someone was yelling in the background, telling him to get off the phone. He yelled back. Before he hung up he said
“Call the police department!”
Five hours into the first day of this week I woke up, checked my cell phone, and found the same unknown number had called me three times, leaving three voice mails. I listened to the first one. It was a recording telling me how to accept a collect call. I called the police department and inquired about the young man who had called me earlier.
“He was here, we held him for a while, but all those kids are gone. Call the county jail.”
I called. He was there. I identified myself and ask what he was charged with. It wasn’t a bad charge in the world of law breaking, fairly minor in fact. Then I inquired as to the amount of bail required to get him out of jail. I weighed my connection with him against the dollar amount.
“I’ll be there in half an hour,” I said.
Sunday was bitter cold. The parking lot was largely empty and the jail was quiet. I found the second entry door locked. I looked into the brightly lit lobby and it was absolutely empty, save for a metal detector, a desk, and a stained cloth office chair. Dark windows covered most of the wall opposite me. I didn’t know how to get in. Then I saw a sign directing me to push the buzzer on my right. Before I could talk on the intercom the door buzzed, the electronic lock clacked open, and I entered the county jail. It was going on 5:30 a.m..
I didn’t know whether to go through the metal detector or not. I went around it, hoping I wouldn’t get in trouble for doing so. I couldn’t see anyone behind the dark glass. It was thick. Bulletproof. I could see the bank of video surveillance monitors with scenes flashing on and off; the front door, the lobby, the hallway, something else, repeat. Then a face, disembodied, really just the eyes and mouth, appeared behind the glass. A voice came through a speaker
.
“Can I help you?”
I identified myself again, identified the person I was there to bail out.
“Do I pay you?”
“See the unit on the wall? Looks like an ATM? Follow the instructions. When your payment is approved an officer will talk to you.”
It was a touch screen. Enter this, enter that, hit next. The amount of bail appeared. I’d brought cash. There was a slot for inserting cash but in large letters was a notice “ANY BILLS INSERTED HERE WILL BE RETAINED. THIS MACHINE DOES NOT GIVE CHANGE.”
My Dad kept a small wad of cash on the farm in case, as he once told me “I have to bail one of you kids out of jail.”
He smiled as he said that. It was just he and I in the basement.
“You think I’m going to get thrown in jail?” I asked, smiling back.
“You’d know that better than me,” he said.
I always thought bail had to be made in cash, that’s why I brought it. Clearly, this machine preferred my VISA card. Five minutes after the machine spit out a receipt a door opened and a real person appeared in the lobby. The first whole person I’d encountered since I arrived.
“Are you here for Jones?” (Not his real last name.)
“Yeah.”
“Do you have any clothing for him? He’s here without a coat, and I came in not long ago and know how cold it is out there.”
“My car is close.” I thought it was thoughtful of him to be concerned about my friend being warm.
“Has he been cooperative?” I asked.
“Yeah. He’s been quiet.”
“It’s just the one charge, the trespassing?”
“Yeah. Just that. Housing encourages local law enforcement to make those charges you know. Helps them control their properties better.”
“I know. I’m familiar with it. Are there other warrants out on him?” I asked. “Like in other states?”
“We only check locally on a small charge like this. If there was something outside the area we wouldn’t know. I have something for you to sign. I want to show you the paperwork for court. You’ll want to make sure he shows up.”
“He will.”
“OK. He’ll be out in a few minutes. I have to check out his belongings.”
He went back through the door. It shut hard and locked. I looked at the control room but saw nothing but the glow of the video monitors. I looked around the stark lobby. Walled off, with the doors locked all around me, I felt a bit like I was in jail too.
My young friend walked through the door where the guard had exited. He looked skinny and tired. He was wearing a thin hoodie and a T-shirt. His pants sagged. His eyes were bleary. He walked up and hugged me. He smelled like beer.
“I’m so sorry you had to come here. Thank you so much.” He was carrying a big sheet of cardboard. On it was everything he had on him when he came to jail, laminated in see-through plastic to the cardboard. Keys. Cell phone. Three lighters. A wallet.
“Let’s get out of here.”
Someone buzzed the door as we approached it. In the space between the first door and the outside door my friend realized he didn’t have his hat.
“My hat. It’s gone. I just got that hat.”
“You can get another one. You might have lost it in the squad car or on the street. Let’s keep going.”
The cold air hit us hard when we walked outside. He clutched his hoodie to his neck and bent down into the wind. When we got in the Buick he was shivering.
"I’m going to court with you. It’s January 15th. You have to be there. You understand?”
“Yeah. I have to be there cause you’re responsible.”
“That’s right. Not just because I’m responsible but because you want to stay out of trouble yourself. You should plead guilty and take your fine. I’m not going to apply the bail money to the fine. You’ll have to pay that.”
“Yeah. A guy in the jail said you can pay it a little at a time.”
“You want to pay it off as soon as you can. It’s a pain for everyone-judges, court staff, you. They can’t dismiss the charge till you pay that fine.” As I was saying that, I had no idea where he would get the money.
“Did you call your aunt?” His aunt was about the only family he had.
“No. She doesn’t have any money. She couldn’t have bailed me out.”
“Where you been staying?”
“With my girlfriend. She got arrested too. I don’t know where she is. I can’t go there.”
“So where am I taking you?”
“I guess to my aunt’s.”
“Does she have a place now?”
Yeah.”
“Will she let you in?”
“I think so.”
“Are you on the do not admit list at the shelter?”
“No. Not that I know of. My aunt is I think.”
“Well, you can always go there.”
“I don’t want to.”
“Then call your aunt.”
He fumbled around tearing the plastic from the cardboard to free his phone. When he got it out he powered it up and started to push in the numbers.
“I’m out of minutes.” He dropped the phone into his lap and looked out the window. “I feel so pathetic.”
“Look, you didn’t kill anybody. You got thrown in jail on a misdemeanor and now you’re out. Your future is all about work. Until you get work and some money nothing is going to change, nothing is going to get better.”
As I said that I looked at him. Scrawny kid, too old for youth programs, GED (he says), no work history, bad clothes, scraggly beard. Dishwashing maybe? I just don’t know. He doesn’t follow up on everything I suggest. But he tries. He hasn’t known much else for a long time.
I wish it was different. I wish he had grown up here and we could have served him at YSB. I wish he could have found some kind of success in our local schools. But he didn’t. He starts from where he is, and he’s not in a good place.
He directed me to his aunt’s new place as the sky was getting light.
“I’ll stay here till I see you get in.”
“OK.”
“Thanks again, I don’t know what I would have done without you.”
“I do. You would have stayed in jail. I can’t do this many times you know. You have to take care of yourself.”
“I know. I’m sorry.”
“Get some minutes on that phone or call me from someone else’s after the first of the year. You’re going to make that court date, and I’m going with you. January 15. 9:00 in the morning.”
“Don’t worry about that. When’s Christmas?”
“Next Wednesday.”
“Have a good one Dave.”
“You too.”
He went up the stairs and knocked on the door. The door opened. He turned and waved, then disappeared inside.
It’s my first Christmas on a fixed income and my first Christmas away from YSB since 1978. I thought maybe I would cut back a little on my Holiday giving but I haven’t. If anything, I want to give more. Since I’ve left social work I realize how low on the radar kids like my young friend fall. Puppies and kittens in America get more sympathy than children growing up in poverty. The agencies that have the ability, and the initiative, to help families with kids like the one I bailed out of jail, need our help more than ever.
I’ve become something of my own United Way. I give to those organizations I know need the money and do the most good. Tops on my list is YSB. I hope you remember to write them a check this Christmas. By doing so, you help young people who are the casualties of families who live in poverty, suffer family dysfunction, and fall to the bottom of the heap. The kids YSB serves find few friends and even less support. We somehow blame them for their problems. Agencies like YSB, however, are there for them. Please be there for YSB.
Merry Christmas to you and your family. Hold one another tight. You make each other strong.
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