Remembering a Poet

Before the storm hits, both here in the Midwest and in Washington (though it seems like foul weather is now the norm in Washington) take a deep breath and consider poetry.  One of America’s wonderful poets died yesterday, Mary Oliver.  She was 83.  She won a Pulitzer Prize in 1984 for a collection of poems called American Primitive.  New and Selected Poems earned her a National Book Award in 1992.  Even with those accomplishments, she achieved only modest fame.  Because she was a poet.  Few poets achieve wide readership let alone notoriety.  It’s the quietest of the writing genres, the most obscure.  If you don’t know her don’t feel bad.  Most of us don’t.  She lived a quiet life in Ohio, where she immersed herself in nature most days of her life.

I came to Mary Oliver late, through a group of friends that meet monthly to read and listen, or just to listen, to poems; their own or other people’s poetry they admire.  We take turns reading, and then we comment or remark about each poem.  Had it not been for these friends I might not have encountered Mary Oliver.  We should not discount the riches that others give us.

A friend read her poem “Of the Empire” and I knew I was hooked.  Mary Oliver said what I felt but could not express.  When writers do that, when we feel that personal connection, we don’t forget them.  See if this poem speaks to you.

Of the Empire

We will be known as a culture that feared death
and adored power, that tried to vanquish insecurity
for the few and cared little for the penury of the
many. We will be known as a culture that taught
and rewarded the amassing of things, that spoke
little if at all about the quality of life for
people (other people), for dogs, for rivers. All
the world, in our eyes, they will say, was a
commodity. And they will say that this structure
was held together politically, which it was, and
they will say also that our politics was no more
than an apparatus to accommodate the feelings of
the heart, and that the heart, in those days,
was small, and hard, and full of meanness.

I am guessing Mary Oliver considered life far from a commodity.  The word that describes her view of life is probably “sacred.”  She wrote of the commonest forms in nature as is they were glorious.  Her writing found a way to make them glorious.

I like the way she finds metaphors in nature for her most hard to convey thoughts, the kind of thoughts most keep to themselves because words to express them escape us.  

                                        Knife

Something
just now
moved through my heart
like the thinnest of blades
as that red-tail pumped
once with its great wings
and flew above the gray, cracked
rock wall.
It wasn't
about the bird, it was
something about the way
stone stays
mute and put, whatever
goes flashing by.
Sometimes,
when I sit like this, quiet,
all the dreams of my blood
and all outrageous divisions of time
seem ready to leave,
to slide out of me.
Then, I imagine, I would never move.
By now
the hawk has flown five miles
at least,
dazzling whoever else has happened
to look up.
I was dazzled. But that
wasn't the knife.
It was the sheer, dense wall
of blind stone
without a pinch of hope
or a single unfulfilled desire
sponging up and reflecting,
so brilliantly,
as it has for centuries,
the sun's fire.

That’s what you have in store if you order a book of Mary Oliver’s poems.  She won’t be forgotten for a long time.  And that rock wall is no doubt still there, probably somewhere in Ohio.

Just Where am I Going?

I’m planning the route for my February road trip in the Buick.  It continues to run like a top. 

I drive to Pensacola in the panhandle of Florida to play golf with some guys from Illinois who fly there.  After that I join up with my wife who flies one way.  We visit relatives in southern Florida.  Then we drive back.  This year we’re stopping for a while in Memphis to pay our respects to the king, have some barbeque, and hear some blues.

That I am planning the route is something of a first.  On past trips I had a general idea, more of a direction really, but purposefully left out any details so that the trip would be spontaneous and surprising, even to me. Actually I started out that way this time.  Here was the original plan.  I knew it was counterintuitive when I tossed it around in my head, but I let it play out. 

I wanted to head to western Iowa to get into Rep. Steve King’s legislative district.  It’s out there around Sioux City Iowa.  I’ve met some folks from out there.  Damn nice people.  They remind me of the kind of regular small town folks and farmers I grew up with in downstate Illinois.  It seems crazy that they have elected an open and self avowed white supremacist, anti-immigrant, homophobe to the U.S. Congress 7 times.  But they have.  I saw myself getting out there and visiting coffee shops in small towns, asking guys how they are doing selling their soybeans, and then seeing what they like about Rep. King.  It’s the kind of first hand observation I’ve gotten hooked on.

From there I wanted to put myself and the Buick in the most remote parts of Nebraska.  I loved the black and white scenes from the movie of the same name starring Bruce Dern.   I don’t live in a congested place, but something about the emptiness of that part of America, and what life must be like there, draws me like a magnet. 

But when I began to look on maps, I saw that to get from there to the panhandle of Florida would require me to head south into Oklahoma and North Texas, then angle through Louisiana to get to Pensacola.  Big circle.  Way too many miles.  I should have known that when I imagined heading west on 80 into Iowa.  You don’t get to Florida by heading west.  You go south and east, or vice versa, but not west.   I try to keep this to a five day, four night trip.  I’m not particularly cheap but there is the cost of gas (low now though) and all those roadside motels and meals.  I decided it isn’t feasible.  Too damn far if you have to end up in Florida.  So I put that journey on the shelf.  Good trip, just not at this time.

Now I’ve got it figured to head east, a much more sensible direction.  Trouble is I’ve gone that way before.  But so what?  My challenge, like life itself, is to keep finding new experiences. 

I’m going to see if I can find the old Mike Pence, who may be President one day soon, out there somewhere in Indiana.  As the story goes his family ran a chain of gas stations that sold cigarettes in a big way, made a lot of money, and then sold their properties before they were condemned by the EPA for leaky underground gas tanks.  It’s going to cost taxpayers upwards of $20 M to clean them up, and the Pence family $0.  I’d like to see what people like you and me in Indiana think about their one time governor and six term member of the House of Representatives, now a heartbeat away from running the country.  He’s another arch conservative anti gay right wing white guy who has found himself on top of the heap.  Amazing isn’t it?  Maybe people that know him better than I see another side of him. 

From there I think I’ll go straight south, through Kentucky and Tennessee, and concentrate on Alabama.  While I was in the Chattanooga area late last year I read a paper that described what I thought were amazing political developments in Birmingham.  They elected, for the first time ever, an African American County Sheriff and State’s Attorney who ran on a liberal, progressive agenda.  I blogged about it.  People that know the area remarked that I should not think of the South as a monolithic pure red state through and through, but rather as a place with pockets of progressive voters.  Those pockets exist in more urban areas, but many think their numbers are growing and spreading. That doesn’t sound like the Alabama northerners have in their heads.  I want to see if I can find out more about that whole proposition.

I also want to visit the museum in Montgomery where they have documented lynchings throughout the South in one spot which represents them factually, symbolically, and artistically.  I’m embarrassed I know so little on that topic.  I had no idea of the breadth of the murders, or how recently they ended until I saw a show on CBS’s 60 minutes.  I think that will be particularly blog worthy.

From Alabama, it makes sense to head to Gulf Shores and see if I can spend a little time, at least an afternoon, on those nice beaches.  From there, it’s a hop skip and a jump to Pensacola and the links.

I share this with my readers thinking you many have suggestions of good places to stop along the way.  Perhaps I can make my trip your trip in a small way.  If you want to give me ideas the easiest way to communicate with me is by commenting on this in Face Book if you are reading me there, or privately through Messenger.  But if you receive a link to my blog via e mail just hit reply, and send me an e mail.  The comment section of Blogspot, my blog platform, seems problematic for many.  If I ever get organized I’ll upgrade that.  But for now, I’m trying to figure out where I’m going.

Namaste

Finally the sun broke through.  After what seemed like weeks of dense clouds and fog the morning was clear and I could see the sun across the ravine from the shack, shining red through the trees.  It was 7:21:22 a.m..    Within an hour the sun yellowed and was above the trees, throwing light into my shack through the east glass wall.  Light passed over my wood stove and threw wavy lines of heat shadows on my desk, the shadows more visible than the heat lines themselves.  The sky was bright blue.  The world around me was alive.  It’s amazing what sunlight does to lift my spirits.

We traveled over the New Year holiday.  I drove in fog and felt pressed down, not able to see the tops of buildings.  We walked through streets in the rain.  Water collected near clogged drains and cars speeding through puddles splashed pedestrians.  If not for the Christmas lights the gloom would have been constant.  We were with friends, and for the most part stayed indoors.  But the weather didn’t break.  Not particularly cold, no snow to speak of, it was a weird December.  Winter was taking its toll in an odd way.  My snow blower sits idle still.

We are living through mid winter in the North.  We shouldn’t be surprised.  Sunlight bottomed out on December 21, the winter solstice.  On that day the sun rose at 7:18:43 and sat at 4:29:34.  We enjoyed a mere 9 hours, 11 minutes, and 18 seconds of sunlight if the sun was even visible.  As I recall it wasn’t.  In that case you just get brightness, which fades to darkness.  Darkness had been winning, creeping up on us without notice, since the autumnal equinox September 21.  But at some point it becomes critical.  Before your day is through you find yourself in darkness, retreating to your house, seeking relief from artificial lights.  Darkness makes the world close up, and if we are not careful, we close up with it.

But we’re moving in the right direction now.  On January 2^nd we’d gained 5 minutes and 26 seconds more daylight over the solstice, bringing us up to 9:16:44.  Just two days later, on January 4^th, we’re already up to 9:18:35.  We cross the 10 hour mark on January 30^th, and though snow may fall and storms may blow, it’s all goodness and light from there, until we max out on June 20^st at 15 hours, 10 minutes and 4 seconds of daylight.  All it takes, when you winter in the North, is patience and faith that it’s going to happen.

I went back to yoga yesterday.  I am more than three months past total knee replacement and my therapist thought I was ready.  It was good to be back.  Lots of the old yogis were there along with some new ones.  It was a challenge doing my first plank, and downward facing dog.  It’s not just the knee but my overall fitness that needs work.  I’d thought about different poses and how challenging they might be, but I’d forgotten other parts of the yoga experience at the YMCA.

The music is so good.  While I was gone they replaced the sound system with a much better one.  Soothing music makes the whole class better.  While I held poses I anticipated the next notes and was carried away by the tunes.  You forget how your old muscles and bones are responding and focus on something outside of you.

I’d also forgotten the importance of the words of our instructor.  She talks about the practice of yoga throughout the session.  She said something yesterday that hit home.

“You are trying to find that place between easy and hard.  If you find a particular pose or movement too hard, back off.  Pain is not what you seek, but simply challenge.  Most of us are way too hard on ourselves.  You will not reach perfection in a day, or ever.  Try to better, but be easy on yourself.  Be patient.”

Since my surgery I have been terribly impatient at the pace of my recovery.  Even though others tell me I’m doing well, am on track, I want more now.  I have been terribly frustrated by what I cannot do.  And then in an instant, by listening to that short thought, I realized I should be thankful for what I have been given the new ability to do, and to be patient.  Not my strong suit, patience.  But I resolve to do better.

I wanted to get this short blog out to you today because I hope to return to a weekly post during the coming year.  I’m not terribly big on resolutions, but I hope to do better. And if I miss a week, I won’t beat myself up about it.  I hope you experience a good year ahead, with lots of sunshine. 

Namaste.

Santa Came to Town

I ran in to Santa unexpectedly this week.  He was heading into Opportunity School from the parking lot, clothing bag over his shoulder, dressed in jeans, red flannel shirt, and tennis shoes.  He had his head down, with a scarf wrapped around his neck.  I can’t remember seeing him before without the velvet robes and black boots.

“Santa, is that you?”

He looked up with a start.

“McClure, what are you doing here?

“I was just about to ask you the same thing.  I’m on the board here, came to do a little business.  How you been?  Haven’t seen you in a couple years.”

“I’ve been…oh…fair.”

Santa has this way of looking into your eyes that is piercing.  He can say a lot with a look.  His look troubled me some.

“I’m running late.  On track to meet three classes of little people here at the school today.  Couple more tomorrow.”

“Thanks for coming Santa, it means a lot to us.”

“Walk with me.  Maybe you can help.”

“I’m a little big to be an elf I’m afraid.”

“No such thing.  Come on.”

I’ve been running into Santa for twenty years.  At YSB we used to get fake Santas until we finally got disgusted with them.  We had a Santa come drunk, another with bad body odor, but mostly grumpy Santas.  Their hearts weren't in it. 

I didn’t know the protocol, but decided to reach out to the real deal.  To my surprise, he said yes.  Said his requests for personal appearances had been dwindling for centuries.  He put us on his calendar.  Streator Youth Group, Santa at The Kids’ Place day care, Pizza with Santa in Marseilles at Bobaluks, all over.  Very accommodating guy.

He did draw the line after “Pets with Santa”.  It was a well intentioned but half baked fund raising idea targeting animal lovers.  Let people come in and have pictures taken with their dogs, cats, birds, iguana, what have you, and asked for a donation for the privilege.  Guy came in with two boxers who totally slobbered out Santa’s velvet britches.  His thighs were soaked in dog drool.  That turned out to be a one-time event.

As we were going up the stairs to the library, where he would set up in a wing back chair by the fireplace, he seemed a little slower than usual.

“Something wrong Santa?”

"Knee’s been bothering me a little.  Getting better quickly though.  Good therapy is the key.”

“I didn’t think you had those kind of troubles Santa, being immortal and all.”

“Hey, just because you’re a beloved saint looking at life without end doesn’t mean you don’t feel things.”

Santa had sort of an edge to him I hadn’t seen before.

Santa suited up and the first class came in tentatively.  They were four and five years old.  Most of them had seen Santa before, but that didn’t mean they all wanted to get up close and personal.  At their teachers’ direction they sat on the floor quietly in front of Santa, some at his feet, some against the wall ten feet away, a few as close to their teacher as they could get, and one with his head buried in his teacher's chest, too scared to even look.  Santa can be an imposing figure.  I mean he’s a worldwide myth built up over fourteen hundred years.  In some ways he’s lost control of his persona.

He knows that of course and works immediately to connect and be human.  In addition to being mythical, he is human too you know.  Very human believe me.  He’s been working with kids a long time.  Sort of the ultimate youth worker.  There are some basic things that always work.  Santa starts in by raising his voice just a little and talking to them all at once, getting them to listen as a group. 

He asks if they know how long till Christmas day, how many more times they need to sleep before they wake up on Christmas morning.  He stresses the importance of being asleep on Christmas Eve, so he can come in their house, and puts in a plug  for leaving not only cookies and milk for Santa, but a carrot stick or two for the reindeer (8 of them, not counting Rudolf).  They get hungry too., he explains.  

And if they are paying attention well, which they often are, he points out the joy of not only getting presents but giving presents.  He suggests closely watching the faces of those opening presents you give them, and by doing so seeing firsthand the joy of giving. 

All that calms them down and gets them ready for the Santa moment everyone has come to expect, sitting on Santa’s lap for a picture.  Cameras changed everything for Santa at Christmas.  What used to be a private intimate moment is now caught in pixels somewhere so as to be a lifetime digital memento.  Parents will do damn near anything for that picture, including placing screaming terrorized children on Santa’s lap, regardless of the trauma, just for the picture.  Santa is not into it.  He has his own approach.

As he talked he closely watched the boy with his head buried in his teacher’s lap to see if his curiosity caused him to look up.  When he did Santa did all he could to return his gaze and smile.  Just look and smile, not talk directly to him, not stare him down, just engage him in a kind look and try to hold it for a few seconds, as if to prove that old men with white beards are not categorically scary.  

The session shifted to individual talk.  Santa invited those who wanted to talk to him, sit on his lap or stand beside him, to tell him what they wanted for Christmas.  Some were eager, insisting on being first, and came in with their arms wide wanting to be picked up.  Other’s moved not a muscle, weighing their options, holding fast to the possibility of skipping it once again this year.  He started with the willing.

Santa turned all his attention to whatever child was before him.  Not all of them wanted to look at him, but he looked steadily at them so that if they turned their head, they could look him in the eye.  Eye contact counts for so much.  Sometimes that’s all you get.  Santa has a boy on his lap, they look at each other while Santa asks if he’s been good.  No answer.  He remarks about the Christmas sweater he’s wearing with a reindeer and asks which reindeer he thinks that is.  In return he gets a mute unwavering stare.  Sometimes kids are transfixed and can’t talk.  But they are still having their Santa experience.

Invariably, because it is expected, Santa asks what they want him to bring them for Christmas.  This is the point at which he is most likely to get a response.  Most want one thing only.  They whisper it in the tiniest of voices.  Santa leans in to hear, asking them to say it again.  Sometimes they speak louder and sometimes not.  Sometimes Santa gets it and sometimes he fakes it.  But it’s not about the present, its about connecting. 

And then it’s over.  Santa thanks them for coming to see him.  He gives them whatever they appear to want as a closer-fist bump, high five, hug, or maybe just one more smile.  And as one child slides off his lap Santa looks again to where the shy little boy was.  He is watching closely, now facing forward, sitting not in his teacher’s lap but just in front of her.  Slightly closer to Santa.

It goes on.  The bold, talkative, outgoing kids talk and smile while others, more reserved, are quiet and polite.  Almost all have come to see Santa.  As children leave Santa’s chair and another approaches, he keeps engaging the shy little boy who hangs back.  He thinks he sees the shadow of a smile on his face.

“Has everyone seen Santa?” a teacher asks of the group.

Some of the kids who have seen him act like they haven’t but the teacher doesn’t go for it. 

“How about you?” one of the teachers says to the shy boy still sitting next to his teacher. 

The boy looks at her with a alarm.  The teacher next to him bends down and says something softly in his ear, offering to go with him Santa figured.

“You don’t have to sit on my lap,” Santa says quietly.  “You can just stand beside me.  Lots of kids do that.”

He stands up and takes steps toward Santa.  He had those shoes in which the heels flash blue when he walked.  Santa makes sure not to reach out, just lets him come at his own pace.  Soon he is standing in front of him. 

“Thanks for coming to see me.  How old are you?”

Very slowly he raises his right hand with four fingers.  

“I thought maybe you were five.  You seem five.”

“Have you been good?  I bet you have.”

He nods.  His eyes have not left Santa.  They shine; bright and clear.

“Can I bring you something for Christmas?”

He nods.

“Would you like to get up my lap and tell me what it is?”

He stands motionless and stares at Santa.  Then he lifts his arms.  Santa reaches toward him slowly, picks him up, and puts him on his knee.  He keeps looking at Santa.  Santa bends his ear towards him.  He speaks in a whisper.

“WolVol train.”

“WolVol train?  The elves have a lot of those.  They light up right?  Big item this Christmas, those WolVol trains.”

Not wanting to waste the moment, knowing it could be over any second, Santa said

“How about a picture?”

Santa and the little boy turn their heads to the teacher beside them with her cell phone. 

“Can you smile?”

Santa smiled.  The little boy tried, but it was too much.  Or maybe he did smile just a little.  Judge for yourself. 

As soon as the picture was over he slid off Santa’s knee and stood for just one more moment.

“Thanks again for coming to see Santa.  You were brave.  Have a Merry Christmas.”

And then he was gone.

That’s the way it went the rest of the morning.  Santa saw three groups of kids, used the same basic formula, engaged the shy kids, humored the talkers, cajoled the reluctant, and tried to bring joy to everyone.

After it was over I invited him for a drink at the Lone Buffalo, our local brew pub/restaurant featuring Tangled Roots beer.  He agreed right away.  Santa somehow looked like a guy who needed a drink.

“Where’s your sleigh?”

“I drove the Buick today.  The reindeer needed a break.”

“The Lone Buff is close.  We can walk.”

Soon we were there, Santa incognito, back in his jeans, the two of us at the bar relaxing with a couple of nice dark winter stouts. 

“Santa I can’t help but notice you seem a little down.”

“Yeah, well I’m sorry if it shows.  I’m not supposed to be anything but merry but I’m thinking about my trip Monday night and I’m apprehensive.”

“Apprehensive of what?”

“You Americans kill me sometimes.  So optimistic, so capitalistic.  You forget I live in an international zone at the North Pole.  Instead of being a man without a country, I consider myself a citizen of the world.  Americans tend to think of Christmas in terms of department stores, shopping, the holiday’s importance to the retail sector of your economy.  I think of Christmas in different terms.  I think of it as a spirit around the globe.  I think of it bringing hope and peace.”

He took a big swig of stout and looked a little longingly, I thought, at the bourbon bottles sitting in front of those big copper kettles.

“C’mon Santa.  We think of hope and peace too.  We’re not all jerks here in America.”

“I know that, but do you want to go with me to Yemen on Christmas Eve?  You know what the elves are packing in the bags for Yemen?  Enriched baby formula.  Nutritional supplements for malnutrition.  Cholera medicine.  That war doesn’t have to happen, and your country is part of it, your weapons are  being used.  You forget there are kids there, caught up in some political grudge match.  Starving.  Dying.”

“I didn’t realize you were political Santa.”

“Not wanting kids to starve to death?  Is that politics now?  It used to be decency, and kindness, and love.”

He took another drink.

“How about Honduras?  You want to ride in the sleigh when I visit the homes of the parents who were deported and whose kids are still detained at the border?  How do you think Christmas is going for them?”

I didn’t know what to say.

“Since the 1700’s, hell the 1600’s, when I flew over this part of North America I always felt good.  I thought you led the world in hope for change.  The U.S. was the change.  You stood for things.  The world coveted your freedoms.  A free press, the ability to speak your mind without fear, fair open elections, a political system regular people really owned.  Now I don’t know what to think.  France, Britain, they’re all struggling with you.  What the hell are you doing?”

“Santa.  Did you get a smart phone?  Watching too much cable news?  Don’t go getting morose on us.  We need you pal.  You can’t get down.  If we lose you, and what you stand for, we’ll be in even bigger trouble.  Can I buy you whiskey?”

“Maybe I need one.”I ordered us a couple of Basil Hayden’s on the rocks with a twist.

"Here’s to Christmas.”

We clicked glasses, took a sip, and settled our elbows on the bar, both looking straight ahead.

As if to change the subject Santa asked

"How are things going at The Kids' Place, your old day care operation in LaSalle?"

"They had to close.  Building was wearing out.  Enrollment had dropped."

"That's too bad McClure.  I always liked that place.  But you had a good run.  After all, you provided 30 years of day care."

"You're right.  YSB took it over in 1988.  How'd you know?"

"C'mon McClure.  It's part of my deal.  I know everything.  You know that."

“OK, yeah.  I forgot.  But you forget nothing.  Think back Santa.  Are things really so bad these days?  What was it like to do Christmas Eve in Europe during World War II?" 

Santa looked off and paused for a long time.

“It was hell.  Visiting the German Christian families, knowing what was happening to the Jewish families.  Flying the sleigh over Dachau.  I thought I’d never have to do that again.  But now I’m not so sure.”

Santa took a long pull on his bourbon. 

“Come on Santa, get it together.  You can’t go dark on us.  You’re Santa Claus, the spirit of Christmas.  You’re joy and merriment embodied in a real person.  If you lose that feeling I’m afraid we’re lost.”

“You should be afraid.  You take it all for granted.  I’ve seen it go bad in other parts of the world.  It could happen here,  and don’t think it couldn’t.  Instead of getting better, it feels like the world is regressing.  And the U.S. is now part of the problem.”

I took a big pull on my bourbon.  Santa was scaring me.

“You know me what keeps me going?  Now and always?  Maybe it will work for you.  Here’s what it is.  You look closely at the people around you, search for the beauty within them, and do all you can to reflect that beauty.”

“I don’t know what you mean.”

“Who am I around constantly?  Kids.  Children from all over the world.  I spend hours and hours looking into their eyes.  Like that little boy this morning who trusted me enough to get on my lap.  You know what I saw in his eyes?  An endless pool of hope.  Clear shining windows into a soul filled to the brim with hope and possibility.”

I’d never heard Santa talk this way.

“You know what else I see?  Trust.  Unqualified trust that the world will be all right and the adults in their lives will show them the way.  I think we have to let children lead us.  If we look to them we will find what our role in the world should be.  We have to do better for kids.  And if we concentrate on them, and their future, we will.”

I was blown away.  I sat there not knowing what to say.

“Don’t even think about ordering me another drink McClure.  I’ve got stuff to do.  There’s only so much time before Christmas, and kids are counting on me.”

With that he drained his glass, gave me a big smile and a pat on the shoulder, and walked out the door.

Outside, on LaSalle Street, he paused on the sidewalk and peered back through the window into the Lone Buffalo.  Spotting me he flashed  a thumbs up, put his hands on his belly, leaned back and gave me, and all those around him a very loud HO, HO, HO.  Before he made his way to the Buick he bellowed out, both to me and no one in particular:

“Merry Christmas to All, and to All a Good Night.”

Christmas Music

I just changed out the 5 CD’s I’ve had in my changer since my knee replacement in mid-September.  Actually, they were in there before that.  I listened to them all during the fall, and never grew tired of them.  They were:

               Chet- Chet Baker

               Playboys- Chet Baker and Art Pepper

               Disc 2 of the Modern Jazz Archive-Art Pepper

               Countdown (2 disc set)-John Coltrane

I’m compelled to find out about the lives of these people from whom I only hear notes.  I almost wish I hadn’t read Art Pepper’s story.  He and Chet Baker came to represent the American West Coast Jazz movement.  I love their music because they were wildly inventive and creative, Pepper on Saxophone and Baker on trumpet and vocals.

While both broke away from playing in bands and became their own musical masters, they couldn’t shake the tragedy of heroin addiction.  Art Pepper died of a drug-related cerebral hemorrhage in 1982 at 57.  Chet Baker OD’d in 1988 at age 58 in an Amsterdam hotel.  Both lived in and out of prison.  Their most productive musical years were interrupted by periods of poverty and squalor.  Better to listen to their passion, which was music, than study their very mortal lives.  That’s what they would prefer us to do I think.

John Coltrane’s time on earth proved to be a little better.  Born in 1926 he found success as a sax player while performing in a post World War II all-white U.S. Navy Band as a “guest” (but regular) performer.  Following his term in the service, he plunged into the blossoming bebop scene and never looked back, devoting the rest of his life to jazz.

Coltrane had a spiritual awakening in 1957, finding inspiration in all religions, and credits that discovery with his ability to overcome a heroin and alcohol problem that had plagued him since 1948.  He played with all the jazz greats and is regarded as one himself.

John Coltrane died suddenly at age 40 of liver cancer.  Other biographers attribute his death to chronic hepatitis suffered during his days as a heroin addict.  He was posthumously awarded a special citation by the Nobel Prize Committee in 2007 for his “masterful improvisation, supreme musicianship and iconic centrality to the history of jazz.”

As good as those musicians are, it is winter now and I switched to classical music.  Here’s what is filling the shack starting yesterday.

Brandenburg Concertos 1,2,3,4,5,6 (two discs)        - Johan Sebastian Bach

Symphony No.2/Karelia/Finlandia                            - Jean Sibelius

Clarinet Concertos in A Major                                   -W. Amadeus Mozart

Sheherazade, Russian Easter Overture, y mas           - Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov

The stories of these musicians is a whole different deal.  They were working earlier in history on a different and kinder model.  They lived in Europe, were valued by their countrymen, subsidized by both church and state, and supported according to their talent with money and privilege.  Their lives did not revolve around record sales or plays on iTunes.

J.S. Bach lived from 1685-1750, lasting 65 years.  Not bad for back then.  He was from a long line of Bachs supported by the church and the town of Eisenach, Germany.  Music was everything to him and his family.  He took up the family business and played the game.  Life was good. 

  

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart had the shortest life among this random group of five CD musicians.  He died at 35 and was buried in a pauper’s grave in St. Mark’s cemetery in Vienna, Austria.  Don’t feel too bad for him.  A child prodigy, he grew up to be eccentric, a little crazy, and a musical genius.  He lived hard, drank too much, but wrote over 600 pieces of some of the most haunting and lasting music the world has ever known.  Had he played the game differently, more conservatively, he could have lived comfortably like the other Mozarts.  Wolfgang went his own way.  Most like Art Pepper and Chet Baker methinks.

Nikolai Rimsy-Korsakoff lived in Russia between 1844 and 1908.  Like many classical composers, he was privileged, born into a family of Russian nobility, also supported by church and state.  Who else could afford all those modern instruments, hire all the players, and put them in a hall with large audiences?  It was a rich man’s game, and Nikolai played it well.  Ironically his music hearkened to Russian folk tales.  He took the tunes of poor Russians playing Balalaikas in a shacks and stoked them up with the rich tones that the new musical technology of his day afforded him.

Jean Sibelius lived to be 92, dying in 1957.  He cranked out seven symphonies while living in Finland, and a bunch of other tunes, before going silent during the last 30 years of his life.  It was like he retired.  They figure he was not pleased with the 8^th symphony.  Could be he had high standards.  He burned that 8^th symphony, along with the rest of his remaining unpublished stuff.  The people of Finland revered him.  He wrote beautiful music.  Be still my soul.

Wait a minute?  Isn’t this blog supposed to be about Christmas music?  Why yes it is.  Let me be brief.  Christmas music is sappy and sentimental.  There’s a reason it only gets played for a month once a year.  It’s not very good.

We do it to ourselves I think.  We romanticize both the Christmas holiday and the music around it.  I guess it is normal to reminisce, to hearken back to our childhoods, to want to recapture a feeling we had years ago.  In an effort to do so we listen to worn out tunes and anachronistic lyrics, sometimes recycled and sung by newer artists, until we can’t stand it.  And then the New Year comes and thankfully it’s over. 

Chestnuts roast, halls are decked, crooners pledge to be home, bells jingle, children laugh, noses glow, and Frosty the snowman’s appearance is described over, and over, and over.  I don’t want to be a Scrooge here, but we could do better.  We could at least improve the mix, and I don’t mean with “Grandma Got Run Over by a Reindeer.”  That’s a song, by the way, that my mother, as a senior citizen and a grandma herself, thought was simply awful.  I’m with you ma.

I’m searching for the modern, the not heard much, the Christmas songs with a twist.  Fact is Christmas is not a magical time for everyone.  Along with dreams of a white Christmas, melancholy and sadness can and does flood in. 

Not everyone wants to go home for Christmas.  Sometimes bad memories reside there, family strife, unresolved conflict.  I think we need to be extra kind and generous at Christmas because many around us are hurting.  Maybe you.  We need kindness.  It can seem as if the whole world is merry and bright but us.  Are there songs that capture that?

Try this one.  But first, check out the lyrics. 

River

It's coming on Christmas
They're cutting down trees
They're putting up reindeer
And singing songs of joy and peace
Oh I wish I had a river
I could skate away on

But it don't snow here
It stays pretty green
I'm going to make a lot of money
Then I'm going to quit this crazy scene
I wish I had a river
I could skate away on

I wish I had a river so long
I would teach my feet to fly
Oh I wish I had a river
I could skate away on

I made my baby cry

He tried hard to help me
You know, he put me at ease
And he loved me so naughty
Made me weak in the knees

Oh I wish I had a river
I could skate away on

I'm so hard to handle
I'm selfish and I'm sad

Now I've gone and lost the best baby
That I ever had
Oh I wish I had a river
I could skate away on

I wish I had a river so long
I would teach my feet to fly
Oh I wish I had a river
I made my baby say goodbye

It's coming on Christmas
They're cutting down trees
They're putting up reindeer
And singing songs of joy and peace
I wish I had a river
I could skate away on

It was written in 1971 by a young 27-year old Joni Mitchell.

She was probably hunched over a piano late at night in Laurel Canyon in Los Angeles where she lived at the time.  She feels bad about herself.  She pushed away a person who loved her, quite possibly a person she loved in return.  And as she tries to reconcile her actions with her feelings, she wants nothing more than to be somewhere else.

Maybe she wants to be a little girl in Saskatoon, Canada where she was born, with high boot white figure skates laced to her feet, a cold wind in her face at Christmas, skinny silver blades gliding across the ice on the Saskatchewan river, with that feeling of freedom you get when you are skating, flying away, and everything is good.  You never imagine then that when you are old it will be so hard to recapture the thrill of such moments.

So there’s that about Christmas, which points to a need for a different kind of Christmas song for many.  Please don’t feel alone if you feel that way.  You’re not alone at all. 

Let’s be kind to one another for a while shall we?

Merry Christmas everybody.

Press CTRL and click below to hear the song or find it and listen another way.  It’s beautiful.

http://www.psy.co/una-cancin-de-navidad-para-aquellos-que-tienen-una-temporada-de-vacaciones-agitada.html

Chattanooga Chugs On

I found myself reading a small southern newspaper, the Chattanooga Times Free Press.  I thought I ought to somehow.  I equated it with tuning into Fox News now and again.  I want to understand red states, and Trump voters.  There are a lot of them, too many to disregard.  And so I read the paper to see what I could find that was either different or new.  I also wanted to see what kind of news readers on the Lookout were getting.

Almost half of Chattanooga, Tennessee, if you didn’t know, which I didn’t, is in Alabama.  It’s near that Lookout Mountain area, where Tennesee, Alabama, Georgia, and South Carolina meet.  You might call it sort of a nexus of the South.   All I knew about that town, to be honest, is its distinction of being in the title of a famous jazz standard, Chattanooga Choo Choo, made popular by Glenn Miller.   We Americans can be fairly ignorant of one another without hardly trying.  But heck, it’s a big country.  Let’s not beat ourselves up.

Chattanooga has almost 180,000 people living in it.  Along with Knoxville it’s the biggest town in east Tennessee.  And, as Glenn Miller might have observed, there are lots of trains in Chattanooga and now Interstate highways.  It’s a transit hub.  As an American town it has what all our towns have, babies and old people in geriatric homes, school kids and retirees, working men and women along with the unemployed, the prosperous, the poor, gay, straight, everything.

Racially Chattanooga looks like this: White 58%, Black, 35%, Hispanic and Latino 5.5%, and not much of each of all the other categories.  It’s growing.  It’s still smaller than Knoxville but growing faster.  It had the first Coca-Cola bottling plant in the world.  Chattanooga is home to Little Debbie snack cakes.  It has a lot of distribution centers.

But now, THE NEWS.

I read both the Saturday and Sunday editions, November 17 and 18.  I don’t know newspapers like reporters and editors do but I know newspapers are changing, tasked with surviving by finding new business models and cheap sources of information.  I’m not sure where this paper gets all its content but it is diverse in origin. 

Someone is quite proud of the paper’s history.  They still quote the founder, a guy named Adolph Ochs (1858-1935) as giving them their motto “To give the news impartially, without fear of favor.”  Grand.

The current publisher, Walter Hussman Jr. has a pretty wordy statement on his philosophy of journalism.  There’s a lot of blah, blah, blah in there but he does say a news organization must not just cover the news but uncover it.  He talks a lot about the truth being not always apparent, and the duty of journalists being to present facts and let the reader decide what is true.  He also thinks there must be a clear and sharp distinction between opinion and news.

I read a story written by a woman named Anita Wadhwani from the USA Today Network Tennessee, picked up and printed by the Chattanooga paper, about a new execution date for a local guy named Leroy Hall, who was convicted of setting his girlfriend on fire in her car.  He was one of six men (why always men?) who had just received new dates to die in 2019 and 2020.

These murders have been held up by legal challenges to Tennessee’s lethal injection protocol.  A federal judge denied a request by another bad actor, David Earl Miller, who was convicted of murdering a Knoxville man in 1981.  He had argued for the right to die by firing squad. He is scheduled to die on Dec. 6,l but not by being shot in the heart by a gang of riflemen.  If he is killed on that day he’ll be the third to die at the hands of the Tennessee legal system this year.  Tennessee previously killed two men this year, one in August by lethal injection and another in November in an electric chair. 

Tennessee is ready to move forward with killing long term prisoners, barring further appeal and stoppage, by killing Donnie Edward Johnson who was convicted of killing his wife in 1985 by stuffing a plastic garbage bag into her mouth; Stephen Michael West convicted of stabbing a mother and daughter to death in 1986; Charles Walton Wright convicted to premeditated first degree murder of two men during a drug transaction in Nashville in 1985; Leroy Hall mentioned above; Nicholas Todd Sutton convicted in 1986 for killing a fellow convict by stabbing him 38 times (Nick was already in prison at the time of that crime, previously convicted of murdering his grandmother).  And last but not least is Abu-Ali Adfur’ Rahman, formerly known as James Lee Jones, for the 1987 murder of a marijuana dealer. 

All of those grisly grimes were alleged to have taken place more than thirty years ago, with death sentences just now being scheduled and presumably carried out.  I hadn’t read a capital punishment article in some time.  Illinois established a moratorium on the death penalty in 1999.  Then Gov. George Ryan said he was tired of having prisoners on death row exonerated, many as a result of a coordinated effort led by Northwestern University, the Innocence project, which applied new DNA technology to old crimes.  He believed, rightly so I think, that the chances of killing a wrongfully convicted prisoner were too great.  Illinois abolished the practice in 2011.  Truthfully I’d forgotten how awful it is to compound such grisly death with more death.  Sixteen states have abolished the death penalty and four more have placed capital punishment on moratorium.  Tennessee isn’t among them.

The Saturday editorial, right under the paper’s banner, was a commentary by S.E. Cupp, writing for some outfit called the Tribune Content Agency.  Her headline was “Reasons Trump May Not Want to Run Again.”  I’ll summarize her points.

He’s Running Out of Stooges-Republicans shielded him from investigations, and his aides carried out his imprudent ideas.  But that is all falling apart.

He Trusts No One-He continues to fire people.  The castle is crumbling from the inside and Trump feels like a ruler under siege.

His Base is Shrinking-He lost is constituency in the suburbs, he will not have the turnout he had in 2020 in 2016, nor will he face an equally horrible opponent.

It’s not Ego that Drives Him-It is his irrational, impulsive, insatiable id-the dominant part of his brain that craves immediate gratification and self soothing affirmation at all time.  He wants what he wants when he wants it.  As he gets less of what he wants, and finds fewer people to help him bend the rules, it is quite easy to imagine him deciding in the next year or so he’s had enough.

I didn’t expect that to be the lead editorial in Chattanooga for some reason.  I felt buoyed up somehow.

Another commentary they picked up and chose to run was written by Francis Wilkinson of Bloomberg News.

NRA DOESN’T SEEM SO INVINCIBLE ANYMORE

Paraphrasing again, Francis thinks the NRA took a bruising hit on election day, and then immediately shot itself in the foot by telling ER doctors to stay in their lane.  He observed that the NRA lost all over the place, and was outspent by gun safety groups.  His evidence?

Voters in Washington State approved a ballot initiative imposing expansive regulations on gun purchases and ownership. 

Nevada elected a Democrat for Governor who defeated an NRA backed opponent, and replaced a GOP governor who had consistently stymied gun regulation.

More than two dozen House races flipped from Republican to pro-gun regulation Democrats.  One, Kentucky Democrat John Yarmouth, regularly wears an “F” pin advertising his F rating from the NRA.

In Georgia, an NRA backed Republican incumbent U.S. Representative was defeated by a Democrat,  professional gun-safety advocate Lucky McBath.

In exit polls across the country, voters registered support for “stricter gun control measures by 59 to 37 percent.

And as for the reaction to their admonishment to ER doctors to keep their mouths shut, what ensued was nothing less than a social media avalanche, sharing pictures of blood-soaked scrubs and others consequences of our uniquely lethal gun policies.  Said one doctor, on a tweet that went viral, “Do you have any idea how many bullets I pull out of corpses weekly?  That isn’t just my lane, it’s my f***king highway!”

So read the people who we accuse of thinking of liberals as snowflakes, whom some of us dismiss as deplorable, in the November post mortem of the only poll that really counts-a national election.  I imagine it has them thinking.  As if they weren’t thinking before.  We’re all thinking aren’t we?

Finally I read a news article about Mark Pettiway written by Jay Reeves of the Associated Press.  Its title was “New Black Officials Rethinking Policing.” Mark Pettiway, a veteran law enforcement officer became that city’s first African American Sheriff of Jefferson County, in which lies Birmingham Alabama.  On that same day Jefferson County also elected its first black district attorney.

This is the same Birmingham Alabama, where on  September 15, 1963 members of the KKK planted 15 sticks of dynamite under the east steps of the African American 16^th Street Baptist Church.  The dynamite was attached to a timing device set to go off on Sunday morning.  Four young black girls attending Sunday School were killed by the explosion: Addie Mae Collins, Cynthia Wesley, Carole Robertson, and Carol Denise McNair.   That was but 55 years ago.

Mark Pettiway ran and won on an alternative message.  He favors decriminalizing marijuana, opposes arming school employees, supports additional jailhouse education programs to reduce recidivism, and plans for deputies to go out and talk to people more often, rather than simply patrolling.  Here is one of his thoughts about the future of Jefferson County.  I remind you, this is Birmingham, Alabama.

“Going forward we need to think about being smarter and not being harder.”

A strong turnout by African American voters, combined with national concern over police shootings of unarmed people of color, helped him defeat longtime Sheriff Mike Hale, a white Republican.

So there you go.  That’s what I read in a newspaper in what you might call the heart of the South.  It’s not for want of balanced news that those states are now red.  Print journalists, at least, are doing their job.

It appears thinking Southerners are beginning to change.  If they don’t change their party affiliation, perhaps the Republican candidates seeking their votes will change their positions to fit voters’ changing views.  Why do we fear our Southern and Western states will never change?  Change happens all the time.  Let’s watch for it, entertain it, and seek to bring it about.  Everywhere that people read and listen new information changes hearts and minds.  And people throughout the United States read, listen, and think.  

But we have to be able to read, listen, and think about their views as well.  It goes both ways.  How about this?  I’ll consider your point of view if you consider mine.  We don’t have to change each others’ minds right away, but I think we have an obligation to read, listen, and think it over.  Try it.  You might be surprised at what you learn.