Margotlog: The Slant of Memory
A good poem can bequeath you one or two lines: such as these from Maxine Kumin's Feeding Time:
Time which blows on the kettle's rim
Waits to carry us off. (Our Ground Time Here Will Be Brief, 1992)
I stand alone in the kitchen on dark winter mornings, as the teapot's steam marks this warning in the cold air. I say the lines to myself. They come at the end of her poem about feeding animals and loved ones at this coldest time of the year when the ancient knowledge of starvation waits just beyond the glass
Premonition and death also rise through the plot of Charles Dickens' A Tale of Two Cities. Like all his novels I've read, this one circles back to reverberate its initial scene. A master of headlong plotting, Dickens is also a master of infusing a scene with motion. Thoughts flowing through the bars of a prison: It is the French Revolution. The novel's denouement depends on that all-important first scene.And a recurring prison.
Now with the holidays I have time to read magazines several months old. A New Yorker writer, Anthony Lane offers Henry James as the greatest of all novelists, with his Portrait of an Artist. I flinch from this judgment, (and remember a BBC enactment I heard maybe five months ago). To my taste, James is deficient in chiaroscuro, the lights and darks of which Dickens is a master. Not to mention the ability to call characters out of the sod, the brick, the furnace. Dickens' scenes--from counting house to hovel, from rain-driven clod to cozy fire, from prison bars to sumptuous feast--create a full-bodied, cantankerous, ultimately satisfying world of invention.
Another set of lines recurs: A certain slant of light
on winter afternoons
oppresses like the weight
of cathedral tunes.
There is such sharply slanting light as I walk at the end of these short days. It carries terror with it. Emily Dickinson knew of what she spoke--that oppressive music.
We read to be carried out of ourselves, but also brought back: So lines from poems wend their way through odd moments, and the experience of novels so huge and insistent they envelope my life. I think I still know the difference between Dickens' Paris and mine own, though mine is now shaded, tortured by his. My London remains entirely his, since I've never been in it. But it is full of extraordinary characters and encounters. In Henry James' world, fine perceptions are spun into immense subtlety. That's that I remember: shading going from half sun to darker and darker grey until we stand in ultimate penumbra. .
Monday, December 24, 2012
Thursday, December 20, 2012
Margotlog: Thinking Things Over at Christmas
Margotlog: Thinking Things Over at Christmas
Carol Bly, one of Minnesota's finest essayists, published an essay with this title in her collection, Letters from the Country. It's probably my favorite, written when she lived in a small prairie community in the 1970s. She advised us, in that bossy way of hers, to sit in the dark and so discourage passing drivers from turning in at the driveway. Do not answer the door. Instead, think about all the subjects that can't be discussed with coffee-klatching neighbors.
It is a quiet night at my house, and I am drawing up a ledger of sorts, musings about this most cantankerous of years. I'm thinking about the shooting of 20 children in a Connecticut school and where to lay the blame. It's not possible simply to stand aloof. We in the middle class have become more and more in love with roughness and violence, and less and less aware of what it means to be truly desperate. This divergence between real suffering and the noise and menace we manipulate for enjoyment frightens me.
Item: After President Obama "saved" the Detroit automakers, instead of instituting guidelines for smaller cars with higher fuel efficiency, we porked out on bigger SUVs and 4X4s--souped up trucks so big they roar down residential streets like tanks. Flamboyant displays of power going nowhere!
Item: Sitting in a movie theater as far from home as you can get and not tread on Asia, we waited for a showing of "The Life of Pi." The previews were for shows you're supposed to see with kids. The screaming sound tracks nearly broke my eardrums. The images of mayhem and destruction were so huge and menacing, so "in your face" that I had to hide mine in my lap.Yet all around me, wriggling, jumpy kids kept eating their candy and popcorn, taking it all in.
Item: We know nothing, not really, about the 20-year-old who broke into the elementary school in Connecticut with enough ammunition to kill everyone in the school. We do know that his mother bought the assault-style weapons and the ponderous bullet cases he used. Is it possible that she, who never let anyone close to her house, was engaged in full-fledged terrorizing of her son? Is it possible that his horrendous act went twenty-eight shots beyond what he was experiencing at home?
I've just talked to educators who work with protection against, and prevention of school violence. About lock-downs, one said, "We practice what to do--lock classroom doors, never let anyone in during a class. But within days, all the doors stand open and anyone can appear at a classroom door and get the teacher's attention." The other one said, "Prevention is even more important than protection--talk to students who seem depressed. Ferret out the suicidal and get them help. It's often the suicidal who kills others, then himself."
Item: When I was in high school, we practiced what to do if someone dropped "the bomb." We filed out into the halls and hunkered down, our arms draped over our heads. Then on Saturday night we danced ourselves silly to loud rock 'n' roll. But there was only one shooting in my small South Carolina high school--it was an accident. A brother cleaning a shotgun killed a younger sibling at close range. He was a pariah afterwards, always walking alone, his head down. No one had ever heard of assault-style rifles. Television was silly comedy shows, boring new commentaries and Saturday morning cartoons on our small screen.
Item: My father drove like a maniac, arguing with my mother, lifting his hands off the wheel. In the back seat, I was terrified and furious. Even as a girl, I knew that he was using the car as a weapon to intimidate her.
There is only one conclusion and many corollaries: Humans will be violent, loud and bullying.
Corollaries: Arms control doesn't mean only a detente over the bomb. It also means removing the most dangerous weapons from civil society. Assault weapons and huge magazines of bullets should not be available to anyone except the military. Period.
Violence needs to be channeled to do the least harm: sports and challenging outdoor activities are the best. Children (and that includes teenagers and young adults) are particularly vulnerable to huge, loud, repeated images of aggression. Fed such junk long enough, they will be unable to distinguish between what is playful and what is harmful. The two will become melded. Fear will curdle in their chests and they will spew it on others.
Instead of such a diet, they (and the rest of us) need gentle, quiet, thoughtful activities. We as humans need to learn how to protect and care for living things smaller than and bigger than we are. We need to learn empathy for those around us. Otherwise, we all grow an exaggerated sense of our own power and place in the world, which is an awful set-up for dealing with the biggest challenge we face: repairing the planet in hopes of saving life as we know it before it's too late.
Carol Bly, one of Minnesota's finest essayists, published an essay with this title in her collection, Letters from the Country. It's probably my favorite, written when she lived in a small prairie community in the 1970s. She advised us, in that bossy way of hers, to sit in the dark and so discourage passing drivers from turning in at the driveway. Do not answer the door. Instead, think about all the subjects that can't be discussed with coffee-klatching neighbors.
It is a quiet night at my house, and I am drawing up a ledger of sorts, musings about this most cantankerous of years. I'm thinking about the shooting of 20 children in a Connecticut school and where to lay the blame. It's not possible simply to stand aloof. We in the middle class have become more and more in love with roughness and violence, and less and less aware of what it means to be truly desperate. This divergence between real suffering and the noise and menace we manipulate for enjoyment frightens me.
Item: After President Obama "saved" the Detroit automakers, instead of instituting guidelines for smaller cars with higher fuel efficiency, we porked out on bigger SUVs and 4X4s--souped up trucks so big they roar down residential streets like tanks. Flamboyant displays of power going nowhere!
Item: Sitting in a movie theater as far from home as you can get and not tread on Asia, we waited for a showing of "The Life of Pi." The previews were for shows you're supposed to see with kids. The screaming sound tracks nearly broke my eardrums. The images of mayhem and destruction were so huge and menacing, so "in your face" that I had to hide mine in my lap.Yet all around me, wriggling, jumpy kids kept eating their candy and popcorn, taking it all in.
Item: We know nothing, not really, about the 20-year-old who broke into the elementary school in Connecticut with enough ammunition to kill everyone in the school. We do know that his mother bought the assault-style weapons and the ponderous bullet cases he used. Is it possible that she, who never let anyone close to her house, was engaged in full-fledged terrorizing of her son? Is it possible that his horrendous act went twenty-eight shots beyond what he was experiencing at home?
I've just talked to educators who work with protection against, and prevention of school violence. About lock-downs, one said, "We practice what to do--lock classroom doors, never let anyone in during a class. But within days, all the doors stand open and anyone can appear at a classroom door and get the teacher's attention." The other one said, "Prevention is even more important than protection--talk to students who seem depressed. Ferret out the suicidal and get them help. It's often the suicidal who kills others, then himself."
Item: When I was in high school, we practiced what to do if someone dropped "the bomb." We filed out into the halls and hunkered down, our arms draped over our heads. Then on Saturday night we danced ourselves silly to loud rock 'n' roll. But there was only one shooting in my small South Carolina high school--it was an accident. A brother cleaning a shotgun killed a younger sibling at close range. He was a pariah afterwards, always walking alone, his head down. No one had ever heard of assault-style rifles. Television was silly comedy shows, boring new commentaries and Saturday morning cartoons on our small screen.
Item: My father drove like a maniac, arguing with my mother, lifting his hands off the wheel. In the back seat, I was terrified and furious. Even as a girl, I knew that he was using the car as a weapon to intimidate her.
There is only one conclusion and many corollaries: Humans will be violent, loud and bullying.
Corollaries: Arms control doesn't mean only a detente over the bomb. It also means removing the most dangerous weapons from civil society. Assault weapons and huge magazines of bullets should not be available to anyone except the military. Period.
Violence needs to be channeled to do the least harm: sports and challenging outdoor activities are the best. Children (and that includes teenagers and young adults) are particularly vulnerable to huge, loud, repeated images of aggression. Fed such junk long enough, they will be unable to distinguish between what is playful and what is harmful. The two will become melded. Fear will curdle in their chests and they will spew it on others.
Instead of such a diet, they (and the rest of us) need gentle, quiet, thoughtful activities. We as humans need to learn how to protect and care for living things smaller than and bigger than we are. We need to learn empathy for those around us. Otherwise, we all grow an exaggerated sense of our own power and place in the world, which is an awful set-up for dealing with the biggest challenge we face: repairing the planet in hopes of saving life as we know it before it's too late.
Monday, December 10, 2012
Margotlog: The Laysan Albatross and the Ocean of Plastic
Margotlog: The Laysan Albatross and the Ocean of Plastic
At the northern edge of Kauai, the most northwesterly of the main Hawaiian Islands, a point of land reaches out to a lighthouse. This is the Kilauea lighthouse. Once there were 14 lighthouses studding the rugged coast of Kauai, in the days of sailing ships and many ports of call, in the days before sonar. Now this one remains as a beacon for those who enjoy watching seabirds and searching the ocean for whales. We visit every time we come to Kauai, our favorite of the Hawaiian Islands, the greenest, least marred by urbanization and volcano activity. For spewing lava and plumes of smoke, go to the "Big Island." For high rises and Waikiki beaches, go to Honolulu. We've done both, and still love Kauai the best.
Several things have happened to the endemic birds of the islands. Odd word, endemic. For a while, every time I saw it, I read "epidemic." But it means "native only to this spot." High up in the sharp-sided mountains of Kauai, there remain some truly unusual birds--bright red with deeply curved beak, or bright yellow or bright red with black wings. They all have sonorous names in native Hawaiian, which of course I don't remember. It's hard for an Anglo to speak Hawaiian, though lovely to hear it, like whoshing wind or lapping waves. But one little endemic bird of Kauaii caught my attention: the apapane, reknown for its varied melodies and (poor thing) for being preyed upon by endemic and imported owls. When the apapane finds an owl in the vicinty, it hides in the leaf clusters of the ohia tree, and whimpers.
What does it take to extend empathy to other living things, the empathy we usually reserve forour own kind? Awe at its physical presence and splendor? Or a sign that it quakes with fear just as we do? Relief from our busy, demanding lives also helps. Quiet attention, absorbing into our very being what the other creature is experiencing. Then responding from our "deep heart's core."(quoting Mathew Arnold)
It's helped me to know that elephants mourn the one of their family. They will lie down beside the suffering one, and remain with it after it dies. If this isn't grief, I don't know what is. Whether elephants, surely one of the smartest animals, will also grieve the death of a creature not their own, I don't know, but there are reports of other kinds of animals forming close bonds--dog and duck, deer and goat.
Visiting the lighthouse at Kilauea I marveled at huge Laysan Albatross on the wing, I was awed by their wide wings (grey on top, white below), at their hooked beaks so close that I could see the hooks, and their regal white heads with goofy tilted eyes, which make them look cross-eyed, but probably are set this way to give wide range of vision--sideways, forward, maybe even above their heads.
They do not nest on the cliffs beside the lighthouse, as do the boobies, all white and not at all dumb. But instead the Laysan Albatross nests on the small islands that stretch west from the main Hawaiian chain. Laysan Island was ruined by a German named Max Schlemmer who introduced rabbits (among other irritants) who so denuded the foilage that all critters and eventually the rabbits themselves died. Eventually Schlemmer was hauled off the island. Rightly so, and the land somewhat restored. I can't tell you what happened to the Laysan Albastross during this environmental mess.
But I can tell you about the fate of a Laysan Albatross chick who was hatched on Green Atoll, which, I assume, lies not far from Laysan itself. (Here I advise you to take a deep breath and let it out slowly.) "Shed Bird" hatched beside a shed and proceeded to be raised by its parents. This was in the early 2000s. Humans of the atmospheric and oceanic type took note of Shed Bird but didn't bother it until they found it dead after (I'm guessing) maybe 4-5 months. By that time it was about a foot long.
Cutting into the stomach, they discovered it had been perforated a number of places. The stomach itself was crammed with junk, so much so that there was little room for jelly fish or flying fish, common food of the Laysan Albatross. Now here's where you and I come in. Two-thirds of the junk was plastic:
plastic bottle caps
aerosol plastic disperser tops
flat pieces of plastic with sharp edges
There was part of a wooden clothespin, part of a small paintbrush, part of a rifle shell.
Laid out in a circle and photographed, the junk inscribed a diameter of maybe two feet. Somewhat artistic in its diversity of shapes and colors. Horrible when seen photographed inside the cut-open bird who obviously had died of starvation. Dumb parents, you might say.
Albatross do not dive for food. They skim it off the ocean surface. Especially where currents meet and offer an upswelling of jelly fish and flying fish, their natural food sources.Dumb humans, I say. Dumb and heedless and ultimately accessories to murder of creatures too dumb to tell the hard crack of a small piece of bright-colored plastic from an iridescent jelly fish.
I stood at the display case where there were charming blue-green waves below the wall of photographs, waves inscribed with details of hump-back whale mating, of monk seal navigation, waves that made the ocean around Hawaii and Laysan and Green Atoll come alive with stories of creatures not human.
It took me a while to read all the stories and rest my eyes on the cut-open chick, on its inside stuffed with human junk, and to read the all-too-obvious message: the chick's death belonged to me as surely as if I'd shot it from the air. Then I wept. For the heedless stupidity and carelessness of my kind, for the beautiful flyers that are the adult Laysan albatross, and the danger that awaits their chicks in the wind-swept middle of the Pacific. Wept for all the pieces of plastic I pick up as I walk, even when I'm tired and grouse to myself that this is stupid, this is not my job, this particular green water bottle top will never reach a body of water.
But I usually pick it up anyway. And I urge you to do the same. Plastic filth is our business. It belongs to all of us. We throw it away to imperil all kinds of living things who are not human. But who are beautiful and deserve to live in a world that is not imperiled by our throw-away habits. Instead of throwing away, let's think about keeping and treasuring. About admiring and preserving. Let's think about our own chicks potentially threatened by minute pieces of plastic in their drinking water, the soil where they dig for fun, the air they breathe. Let's think about places where currents meet and where what we've thrown away returns to haunt and kill. Let's remember there is no place on earth where a substance as unnatural as plastic will not come back to haunt us.
I, for one, am ready to say Good-bye to plastic. Not better, recycleable plastic, but any plastic that can be thrown away by casual, heedless users. Glass is far better. Yes, it stays around a while, but its sharp edges are eventually ground smooth by wave action. It does not float, and eventually it returns to the sillica that is found in sand. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust, except in the case of plastic, which is light-weight, and breaks into smaller and smaller pieces, but will still be plastic forever.
At the northern edge of Kauai, the most northwesterly of the main Hawaiian Islands, a point of land reaches out to a lighthouse. This is the Kilauea lighthouse. Once there were 14 lighthouses studding the rugged coast of Kauai, in the days of sailing ships and many ports of call, in the days before sonar. Now this one remains as a beacon for those who enjoy watching seabirds and searching the ocean for whales. We visit every time we come to Kauai, our favorite of the Hawaiian Islands, the greenest, least marred by urbanization and volcano activity. For spewing lava and plumes of smoke, go to the "Big Island." For high rises and Waikiki beaches, go to Honolulu. We've done both, and still love Kauai the best.
Several things have happened to the endemic birds of the islands. Odd word, endemic. For a while, every time I saw it, I read "epidemic." But it means "native only to this spot." High up in the sharp-sided mountains of Kauai, there remain some truly unusual birds--bright red with deeply curved beak, or bright yellow or bright red with black wings. They all have sonorous names in native Hawaiian, which of course I don't remember. It's hard for an Anglo to speak Hawaiian, though lovely to hear it, like whoshing wind or lapping waves. But one little endemic bird of Kauaii caught my attention: the apapane, reknown for its varied melodies and (poor thing) for being preyed upon by endemic and imported owls. When the apapane finds an owl in the vicinty, it hides in the leaf clusters of the ohia tree, and whimpers.
What does it take to extend empathy to other living things, the empathy we usually reserve forour own kind? Awe at its physical presence and splendor? Or a sign that it quakes with fear just as we do? Relief from our busy, demanding lives also helps. Quiet attention, absorbing into our very being what the other creature is experiencing. Then responding from our "deep heart's core."(quoting Mathew Arnold)
It's helped me to know that elephants mourn the one of their family. They will lie down beside the suffering one, and remain with it after it dies. If this isn't grief, I don't know what is. Whether elephants, surely one of the smartest animals, will also grieve the death of a creature not their own, I don't know, but there are reports of other kinds of animals forming close bonds--dog and duck, deer and goat.
Visiting the lighthouse at Kilauea I marveled at huge Laysan Albatross on the wing, I was awed by their wide wings (grey on top, white below), at their hooked beaks so close that I could see the hooks, and their regal white heads with goofy tilted eyes, which make them look cross-eyed, but probably are set this way to give wide range of vision--sideways, forward, maybe even above their heads.
They do not nest on the cliffs beside the lighthouse, as do the boobies, all white and not at all dumb. But instead the Laysan Albatross nests on the small islands that stretch west from the main Hawaiian chain. Laysan Island was ruined by a German named Max Schlemmer who introduced rabbits (among other irritants) who so denuded the foilage that all critters and eventually the rabbits themselves died. Eventually Schlemmer was hauled off the island. Rightly so, and the land somewhat restored. I can't tell you what happened to the Laysan Albastross during this environmental mess.
But I can tell you about the fate of a Laysan Albatross chick who was hatched on Green Atoll, which, I assume, lies not far from Laysan itself. (Here I advise you to take a deep breath and let it out slowly.) "Shed Bird" hatched beside a shed and proceeded to be raised by its parents. This was in the early 2000s. Humans of the atmospheric and oceanic type took note of Shed Bird but didn't bother it until they found it dead after (I'm guessing) maybe 4-5 months. By that time it was about a foot long.
Cutting into the stomach, they discovered it had been perforated a number of places. The stomach itself was crammed with junk, so much so that there was little room for jelly fish or flying fish, common food of the Laysan Albatross. Now here's where you and I come in. Two-thirds of the junk was plastic:
plastic bottle caps
aerosol plastic disperser tops
flat pieces of plastic with sharp edges
There was part of a wooden clothespin, part of a small paintbrush, part of a rifle shell.
Laid out in a circle and photographed, the junk inscribed a diameter of maybe two feet. Somewhat artistic in its diversity of shapes and colors. Horrible when seen photographed inside the cut-open bird who obviously had died of starvation. Dumb parents, you might say.
Albatross do not dive for food. They skim it off the ocean surface. Especially where currents meet and offer an upswelling of jelly fish and flying fish, their natural food sources.Dumb humans, I say. Dumb and heedless and ultimately accessories to murder of creatures too dumb to tell the hard crack of a small piece of bright-colored plastic from an iridescent jelly fish.
I stood at the display case where there were charming blue-green waves below the wall of photographs, waves inscribed with details of hump-back whale mating, of monk seal navigation, waves that made the ocean around Hawaii and Laysan and Green Atoll come alive with stories of creatures not human.
It took me a while to read all the stories and rest my eyes on the cut-open chick, on its inside stuffed with human junk, and to read the all-too-obvious message: the chick's death belonged to me as surely as if I'd shot it from the air. Then I wept. For the heedless stupidity and carelessness of my kind, for the beautiful flyers that are the adult Laysan albatross, and the danger that awaits their chicks in the wind-swept middle of the Pacific. Wept for all the pieces of plastic I pick up as I walk, even when I'm tired and grouse to myself that this is stupid, this is not my job, this particular green water bottle top will never reach a body of water.
But I usually pick it up anyway. And I urge you to do the same. Plastic filth is our business. It belongs to all of us. We throw it away to imperil all kinds of living things who are not human. But who are beautiful and deserve to live in a world that is not imperiled by our throw-away habits. Instead of throwing away, let's think about keeping and treasuring. About admiring and preserving. Let's think about our own chicks potentially threatened by minute pieces of plastic in their drinking water, the soil where they dig for fun, the air they breathe. Let's think about places where currents meet and where what we've thrown away returns to haunt and kill. Let's remember there is no place on earth where a substance as unnatural as plastic will not come back to haunt us.
I, for one, am ready to say Good-bye to plastic. Not better, recycleable plastic, but any plastic that can be thrown away by casual, heedless users. Glass is far better. Yes, it stays around a while, but its sharp edges are eventually ground smooth by wave action. It does not float, and eventually it returns to the sillica that is found in sand. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust, except in the case of plastic, which is light-weight, and breaks into smaller and smaller pieces, but will still be plastic forever.
Thursday, November 8, 2012
Margotlog: Day of the Dead in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico
Margotlog: Day of the Dean in San Miguel
The small plane from Houston banked lower, the clouds parted, and there lay a wide, dry plateau spread with cactus like huge Gumbies ready to jig. The word arroyo came back to me: deep fissures in the earth, which would turn into torrents in sudden rains. But the rainy season had passed, said Daniel, our van driver from Leon. Daniel, with dual citizenship, had just finished his stint in the U.S. Marines. Which was worse? one of us asked, Afganistan or Iraq?
Iraq, he answered. There the enemy hid behind buildings. In Afganistan you could see them coming acriss the high desert. Just like here, I thought, and remembered Mary Morris' foray into the desert beyond San Miguel. Dangerous, she wrote in her book Nothing to Declare. Dangerous especially for a gringa, yet the landscape called, and jumping a sewage ditch, she climbed higher. A green hummingbird delighted her, and there at the mouth of a cave she spied a woman in white watching her. Perhaps a bujo, witch; perhaps her guardian spirit.
I came to San Miguel de Allende to teach a memoir class in the home of a friend. Thus my first significant impression was that home which one entered like a white labyrinth, winding back and back until the dust and noise of the street disappeared before a small green oasis of jade plants. On Pat's third floor terrace, we sat and drank wine, and I fell in love with the high sky full of puffy white clouds. A small bird landed in a nearby mesquit tree: brilliant red with black wings. Vermillion flycatcher, said the Aves (Birds) of Mexico book.
San Miguel is a city, not a town. A city of many faceless houses along narrow cobbled streets. Walking can be treacherous. The City of Fallen Women, I learned, and vowed not to fall. But the third day I got sick with some intestinal bug. I was the teacher stretched out on the sofa under the turquoise wool blanket. The concrete, modern house with its many small balconies and roof-top terrace was chilly. That night I asked Pat for an electric blanket and sank into the pleasure of chill-warming heat.
The Jardin (pronounded "hardeen") is the center of civic promenade. Like every other public park I saw, the Jardin (garden in English) is composed of rows of benches set under laurel trees pruned to look like boxes. It's a very odd sensation: box after box of green facing a church like a pink drip castle. Pat's grand-daughter, meeting this Parrochia, asked, "Does Cinderella live there?" She has a point.
We had come to take part in Day of the Dead, which began on our Norde Americano Halloween, with kids and parents threading through the Jardin with open tins or sacks. Many little girls were dressed in fluffy, elaborate outfits, yet their faces were skulls--Cristinas, I believe they are called. Death decked out in her finery! Very odd, indeed, embodied in children. Why am I not spooked by U.S. kids with skull masks, yet these girls troubled me? I think it was the combination of sexy beauty on a child, plus the skull face. Very creepy, but the kids seemed fine, if a little solemn.
Before we left, Pat and I visited the very old cemetery, recently cleaned of ancient filth, and the old tombs, odd-shaped, above-ground bulbous shapes, painted pale pink, grey, yellow, blue. To honor the dead, there were only marigolds--the traditional flower. Orange petal blankets around the tombs, bouquets of orange marigolds, marigold blossoms tucked in crevasses and climbing up trees. The brilliant simplicity took my breath away. Its beauty was both strange and commanding; Stop here, notice and honor, the flowers seemed to say, and we did.
The small plane from Houston banked lower, the clouds parted, and there lay a wide, dry plateau spread with cactus like huge Gumbies ready to jig. The word arroyo came back to me: deep fissures in the earth, which would turn into torrents in sudden rains. But the rainy season had passed, said Daniel, our van driver from Leon. Daniel, with dual citizenship, had just finished his stint in the U.S. Marines. Which was worse? one of us asked, Afganistan or Iraq?
Iraq, he answered. There the enemy hid behind buildings. In Afganistan you could see them coming acriss the high desert. Just like here, I thought, and remembered Mary Morris' foray into the desert beyond San Miguel. Dangerous, she wrote in her book Nothing to Declare. Dangerous especially for a gringa, yet the landscape called, and jumping a sewage ditch, she climbed higher. A green hummingbird delighted her, and there at the mouth of a cave she spied a woman in white watching her. Perhaps a bujo, witch; perhaps her guardian spirit.
I came to San Miguel de Allende to teach a memoir class in the home of a friend. Thus my first significant impression was that home which one entered like a white labyrinth, winding back and back until the dust and noise of the street disappeared before a small green oasis of jade plants. On Pat's third floor terrace, we sat and drank wine, and I fell in love with the high sky full of puffy white clouds. A small bird landed in a nearby mesquit tree: brilliant red with black wings. Vermillion flycatcher, said the Aves (Birds) of Mexico book.
San Miguel is a city, not a town. A city of many faceless houses along narrow cobbled streets. Walking can be treacherous. The City of Fallen Women, I learned, and vowed not to fall. But the third day I got sick with some intestinal bug. I was the teacher stretched out on the sofa under the turquoise wool blanket. The concrete, modern house with its many small balconies and roof-top terrace was chilly. That night I asked Pat for an electric blanket and sank into the pleasure of chill-warming heat.
The Jardin (pronounded "hardeen") is the center of civic promenade. Like every other public park I saw, the Jardin (garden in English) is composed of rows of benches set under laurel trees pruned to look like boxes. It's a very odd sensation: box after box of green facing a church like a pink drip castle. Pat's grand-daughter, meeting this Parrochia, asked, "Does Cinderella live there?" She has a point.
We had come to take part in Day of the Dead, which began on our Norde Americano Halloween, with kids and parents threading through the Jardin with open tins or sacks. Many little girls were dressed in fluffy, elaborate outfits, yet their faces were skulls--Cristinas, I believe they are called. Death decked out in her finery! Very odd, indeed, embodied in children. Why am I not spooked by U.S. kids with skull masks, yet these girls troubled me? I think it was the combination of sexy beauty on a child, plus the skull face. Very creepy, but the kids seemed fine, if a little solemn.
Before we left, Pat and I visited the very old cemetery, recently cleaned of ancient filth, and the old tombs, odd-shaped, above-ground bulbous shapes, painted pale pink, grey, yellow, blue. To honor the dead, there were only marigolds--the traditional flower. Orange petal blankets around the tombs, bouquets of orange marigolds, marigold blossoms tucked in crevasses and climbing up trees. The brilliant simplicity took my breath away. Its beauty was both strange and commanding; Stop here, notice and honor, the flowers seemed to say, and we did.
Sunday, November 4, 2012
Margotlog: Scrooge and the SPCO
Margotlog: Scrooge and the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra
Dear Saint Paul Mayor Chris Coleman, and beloved musicians of the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra,
Imagine Dickens' A Christmas Carol without Tiny Tim, the Fezziwigs' Christmas party, and Scrooge's redemption! That's what the cacellation of all SPCO concerts for November and December feels like. Scrooge has no ghostly visitations that turn his grasping greed into sympathy and generosity. He repents not his harsh treatment of his employees. He sends no huge turkey and trimmings to the Cratchit family on Christmas day. Offers no help to restore Tiny Tim to health. Arrives at the Fezziwig Christmas party with a scowl and threat, turning the party into a dull, lifeless affair. Finally he spends the last dark hours of the year in his cold office counting his winnings.
In its long history, the musicians of the SPCO have never before experienced such demeaning, intransigent, and potentially destructive treatment from those who "manage" their affairs. The current offer, rightly rejected by the musicians,defines the musicians as hirlings whose services may be terminated at any time, whose compensation is not guaranteed and may be changed by management on a moment's notice. It threatens that if musicians over 55 do not accept the current retirement incentive by the end of 2012, they may be terminated with significantly smaller severance payment. Moreover, it does not acknowledge that over the last ten years, the musicians have accepted significant reductions in salaries without strife, creating a $2.2 million savings for the organization, and helping it balance its budget in 16 out of the last 17 years..
For many of us who have learned to love these players for their many seasons of glorious music, such wrenching treatment by the "handlers" is offensive to the core. We believe they deserve far better. And with the hope of fostering this, we offer the following pot pourri of suggestions:
* That you, Mr. Mayor, declare a Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra Musicians "day or week or month."
* That you press current management to accept independent arbitration of this contract dispute
* That you gather a group of supporters and under the city auspices, sponsor one larger or many small musical offerings, for which enthusiastic audiences will pay significantly. All these funds will go to help the musicians survive this period of no salaries, and to encourage them to remain within the organization until a decent contact is reached.
As a friend who recently retired from corporate America pointed out: applying dictatorial, top-down, demeaning threats to human beings who are, in fact, the body and soul, the "product and equity" of an organization, not only displays the greed and high-handedness of management, but also poses a real threat to the viability of the endeavor itself.
Mr. Mayor, help us keep our beloved orchestra playing throughout our season of lights and many years beyond.
Dear Saint Paul Mayor Chris Coleman, and beloved musicians of the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra,
Imagine Dickens' A Christmas Carol without Tiny Tim, the Fezziwigs' Christmas party, and Scrooge's redemption! That's what the cacellation of all SPCO concerts for November and December feels like. Scrooge has no ghostly visitations that turn his grasping greed into sympathy and generosity. He repents not his harsh treatment of his employees. He sends no huge turkey and trimmings to the Cratchit family on Christmas day. Offers no help to restore Tiny Tim to health. Arrives at the Fezziwig Christmas party with a scowl and threat, turning the party into a dull, lifeless affair. Finally he spends the last dark hours of the year in his cold office counting his winnings.
In its long history, the musicians of the SPCO have never before experienced such demeaning, intransigent, and potentially destructive treatment from those who "manage" their affairs. The current offer, rightly rejected by the musicians,defines the musicians as hirlings whose services may be terminated at any time, whose compensation is not guaranteed and may be changed by management on a moment's notice. It threatens that if musicians over 55 do not accept the current retirement incentive by the end of 2012, they may be terminated with significantly smaller severance payment. Moreover, it does not acknowledge that over the last ten years, the musicians have accepted significant reductions in salaries without strife, creating a $2.2 million savings for the organization, and helping it balance its budget in 16 out of the last 17 years..
For many of us who have learned to love these players for their many seasons of glorious music, such wrenching treatment by the "handlers" is offensive to the core. We believe they deserve far better. And with the hope of fostering this, we offer the following pot pourri of suggestions:
* That you, Mr. Mayor, declare a Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra Musicians "day or week or month."
* That you press current management to accept independent arbitration of this contract dispute
* That you gather a group of supporters and under the city auspices, sponsor one larger or many small musical offerings, for which enthusiastic audiences will pay significantly. All these funds will go to help the musicians survive this period of no salaries, and to encourage them to remain within the organization until a decent contact is reached.
As a friend who recently retired from corporate America pointed out: applying dictatorial, top-down, demeaning threats to human beings who are, in fact, the body and soul, the "product and equity" of an organization, not only displays the greed and high-handedness of management, but also poses a real threat to the viability of the endeavor itself.
Mr. Mayor, help us keep our beloved orchestra playing throughout our season of lights and many years beyond.
Tuesday, October 23, 2012
Margotlog: The Tuba, the Orchestra, and the Business Model
Margotlog: The Tuba, the Orchestra, and the Business Model
No offense, Senor Tuba, but you mostly don't belong in a symphony orchestra. Like your overgrown business compatriot--the contemporary "business model"--your music is too raucous, too lumbering, too prone to go awry in favor of swagger and ump-pa-pa. Good for a military goosestep, or "down home" flashy parade, but not flexible enough for sonorous blends or wild, heroic shouts at the white whale of the world.
The Twin Cities of Minneapolis/Saint Paul are currently in the unenviable state of having both symphony orchestras "locked out" by managing boards composed largely of the "business model." I am not privy to these "heads" who are wielding the cleavers, but I've learned enough during the recent recession to be suspicious. Let's recall how the business model brought the world to its knees within recent memory.
As I understand the financial mess circa 2008, huge insurance companies were betting against their wealthiest clients. This meant insiders would benefit mightily if clients failed. Picture tall columns of glass and steel filled with computer savants who rigged schemes of gigantic proportions, so out of touch with real-life below that they believed they could tweak the strings of the world with impunity.
Compared with such high-flying machinations, cutting a symphony orchestra down to size is small potatoes. But the mentality may very well be the same. Something along the line of a tuba swaggering its big bulk and flashy golden bell, drowning out everything less brassy and exaggerated in its wake.
In the place of the tuba, substitute large expenditures on building renovations. Both Twin Cities orchestra boards have committed their players/audiences to expensive building renovations. One of them, the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra, has also kept ticket prices so low as to be offensive (especially now, given the cry of threatening insolvency).
I've seen similar moves in another area where the business model has taken hold: i.e. higher education. How many smallish, liberal arts institutions have been "blessed" with new buildings on campus, while within those buildings, staff and faculty are trimmed so tight that credible functioning is called into question?
Bricks and mortar versus the people that actually play the music. Big donors getting their names on glass and steel, while, horror of horrors, it's revealed that nearly 50% of the orchestra's budget is musicians' salaries! What else should an orchestra management be spending its money on?
A lovely young lady of my acquaintance recently commented that she thinks these orchestra boards simply don't want, in their heart of hearts, to do their jobs. Consequently, in her gentle parlance, they "need to be asked to step down."
I'm for it. It's time for the swaggering tuba to exit stage left. And let the serious tinkering necessary to preserve both orchestras begin.
No offense, Senor Tuba, but you mostly don't belong in a symphony orchestra. Like your overgrown business compatriot--the contemporary "business model"--your music is too raucous, too lumbering, too prone to go awry in favor of swagger and ump-pa-pa. Good for a military goosestep, or "down home" flashy parade, but not flexible enough for sonorous blends or wild, heroic shouts at the white whale of the world.
The Twin Cities of Minneapolis/Saint Paul are currently in the unenviable state of having both symphony orchestras "locked out" by managing boards composed largely of the "business model." I am not privy to these "heads" who are wielding the cleavers, but I've learned enough during the recent recession to be suspicious. Let's recall how the business model brought the world to its knees within recent memory.
As I understand the financial mess circa 2008, huge insurance companies were betting against their wealthiest clients. This meant insiders would benefit mightily if clients failed. Picture tall columns of glass and steel filled with computer savants who rigged schemes of gigantic proportions, so out of touch with real-life below that they believed they could tweak the strings of the world with impunity.
Compared with such high-flying machinations, cutting a symphony orchestra down to size is small potatoes. But the mentality may very well be the same. Something along the line of a tuba swaggering its big bulk and flashy golden bell, drowning out everything less brassy and exaggerated in its wake.
In the place of the tuba, substitute large expenditures on building renovations. Both Twin Cities orchestra boards have committed their players/audiences to expensive building renovations. One of them, the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra, has also kept ticket prices so low as to be offensive (especially now, given the cry of threatening insolvency).
I've seen similar moves in another area where the business model has taken hold: i.e. higher education. How many smallish, liberal arts institutions have been "blessed" with new buildings on campus, while within those buildings, staff and faculty are trimmed so tight that credible functioning is called into question?
Bricks and mortar versus the people that actually play the music. Big donors getting their names on glass and steel, while, horror of horrors, it's revealed that nearly 50% of the orchestra's budget is musicians' salaries! What else should an orchestra management be spending its money on?
A lovely young lady of my acquaintance recently commented that she thinks these orchestra boards simply don't want, in their heart of hearts, to do their jobs. Consequently, in her gentle parlance, they "need to be asked to step down."
I'm for it. It's time for the swaggering tuba to exit stage left. And let the serious tinkering necessary to preserve both orchestras begin.
Friday, October 19, 2012
Margotlog: The Painted BIrd
Margotlog: The Painted Bird
One of the strangest novels I've ever read. Yet as the small boy wanders from one grotesque encounter to another, uprooted and friendless in war-torn, peasant Poland, it is hard not to become fascinated, even obsessed with the bizarre horrors that envelop him.
Is this an autobiographical tale, or a series of macabre fantasies, engendered by folklore and wartime's loose civilization? Or it is both? Jerzy Kosinski, born Lewinkopf, was dubbed Kosinski, by his father when the family went into hiding during World War II. They were sheltered by peasant Catholics, who risked being discovered by the Germans for sheltering Jews. Jerzy even became a Catholic altar boy.
As does his character in the Painted Bird. But so inept and terrorized is the child, that he stumbles, drops the sacred text, and all hell breaks loose. By this time in the novel, however, we expect the worst. We expect brutish peasant fathers to force their daughters to copulate with goats. We expect an aged herb healer to stumble into death, pushed by boy she's taken in. We expect gangs of village boys to torture rabbits and wayfarers. We expect the kindly bird catcher to paint his favorite birds in gaudy colors, one by one, after his Ludmilla, a whore repeatedly raped by soldiers and villagers, disappears. When the bird-catcher sends the painted birds into the sky, they fly instantly to their kind, who attack them savagely, unable to recognize them through their gaudy disguise.
It's hard not to consider this an allegory of the artist's life, for Kosinski painted himself with one fable after another. He married an heiress who died shortly after from a brain tumor. She left him nothing. He was recognized as a fine polo player, he had a part in Warren Beatty's movie, Red. And he received grants and awards from a fake foundation he himself founded, as well as the bona fide Guggenheim. When he committed suicide in 1991, it's not hard to imagine that his own fictions were pecking him to death.
Still the powerful work remains, with its rather slow, subdued ending. As the war nears its close, the wandering boy is taken in by a group of Russian soldiers and becomes the side-kick of a crack marksman, as fine a shot as was the adult Kosinski himself who also enlisted with the Russians. When the boy finally is reuinted with his parents, a period of intense testing ensues. One can't help but consider this psychologically accurate. How could a child, forced to witness and participate in adult horrors, easily settle down to obedience?
Several times, I almost stopped listening to this novel. But after a period of disgust, I began again. It is an astonishing tour de force, and its truth, though extreme, became, for me, ultimately believable. Or at least knowable.
One of the strangest novels I've ever read. Yet as the small boy wanders from one grotesque encounter to another, uprooted and friendless in war-torn, peasant Poland, it is hard not to become fascinated, even obsessed with the bizarre horrors that envelop him.
Is this an autobiographical tale, or a series of macabre fantasies, engendered by folklore and wartime's loose civilization? Or it is both? Jerzy Kosinski, born Lewinkopf, was dubbed Kosinski, by his father when the family went into hiding during World War II. They were sheltered by peasant Catholics, who risked being discovered by the Germans for sheltering Jews. Jerzy even became a Catholic altar boy.
As does his character in the Painted Bird. But so inept and terrorized is the child, that he stumbles, drops the sacred text, and all hell breaks loose. By this time in the novel, however, we expect the worst. We expect brutish peasant fathers to force their daughters to copulate with goats. We expect an aged herb healer to stumble into death, pushed by boy she's taken in. We expect gangs of village boys to torture rabbits and wayfarers. We expect the kindly bird catcher to paint his favorite birds in gaudy colors, one by one, after his Ludmilla, a whore repeatedly raped by soldiers and villagers, disappears. When the bird-catcher sends the painted birds into the sky, they fly instantly to their kind, who attack them savagely, unable to recognize them through their gaudy disguise.
It's hard not to consider this an allegory of the artist's life, for Kosinski painted himself with one fable after another. He married an heiress who died shortly after from a brain tumor. She left him nothing. He was recognized as a fine polo player, he had a part in Warren Beatty's movie, Red. And he received grants and awards from a fake foundation he himself founded, as well as the bona fide Guggenheim. When he committed suicide in 1991, it's not hard to imagine that his own fictions were pecking him to death.
Still the powerful work remains, with its rather slow, subdued ending. As the war nears its close, the wandering boy is taken in by a group of Russian soldiers and becomes the side-kick of a crack marksman, as fine a shot as was the adult Kosinski himself who also enlisted with the Russians. When the boy finally is reuinted with his parents, a period of intense testing ensues. One can't help but consider this psychologically accurate. How could a child, forced to witness and participate in adult horrors, easily settle down to obedience?
Several times, I almost stopped listening to this novel. But after a period of disgust, I began again. It is an astonishing tour de force, and its truth, though extreme, became, for me, ultimately believable. Or at least knowable.
Thursday, October 4, 2012
Margotlog: To Grandfather's House We Go
Margotlog: To Grandfather's House We Go - Part One
"Over the river and through the woods/ To Grandfather's house we go" meant traveling three days and two nights on the train from Charleston, South Carolina to Hankinson, North Dakota. Grandfather's house was a glorious, gingerbread affair set on a huge lot with elm-shaded boulevards on two sides. In Charleston, our apartment lay at the back of the block-long, castle-like Old Citadel, with a row of palmettos in front and beyond that, the wide expanse of a gravelly Marion Square. Waking up mornings in Grandfather's Hankinson house was like waking up in another country.
Not only another country, but another way of life. In our Old Citadel apartment, sixteen-foot ceilings rose into shadows, and window-wells were so deep I could lean my elbows on them. But we had only four large rooms edged by a long narrow hall and narrow bathroom. Nothing like Papa Max's house with its six rooms downstairs and five bedrooms up, topped by an attic covering the whole house. The quiet was so intense I sometimes "heard" sun motes keeping time to Papa Max's canary Sweetie Pie singing in the bay window.
Hankinson, named for a colonel in the Civil War, sat on the edge of onetime prairie, turned into fields of wheat. Glacier moraines sloped gently above sloughs and Lake Elsie. When my grandfather arrived there as a young man from Sheboygan, Wisconsin, it was probably around 1890. Calculating back from my mother's birth in 1908, he must have married his first wife, the daughter of his employer, around 1892. They must have built the house, only one-story at first, a year or so later.
The first wife died in childbirth, leaving my grandfather with a daughter. He was on the go a lot as county auditor, "giving the horses' their heads" to carry him over snow-mounded fences home. It must have been during one of these trips around the county that he met my grandmother-to-be, a school teacher whose name was Augusta Olein. She'd been born in Sweden. I never knew her. She died five months after I was born.
Her parents, who brought the family to Fargo, left her a kind of orphan, to be raised by two older sisters who, for the rest of their lives, kept watch from a distance over Augusta and her children. These were the Aunt Emma and Aunt Hulda who eventually moved to Spokane, Washington, and whose cards of congratulations fill my mother's fat fat memory book. My mother Maxine was the second-born twin to brother Max,. He was sturdy, she was slow to thrive, plagued with rickets (which gave her spine "two curves") and a weak stomach all her childhood. But she outlived all her siblings to die in Charleston, South Carolina, aged 94.
By the time she took my sister and me on these cross-country train trips, she was intrepid, vigorous, and truly fond of "home," meaning Papa Max's house. By the time we started visiting in the late 1940s and early '50s, the roof had been raised on Papa Max's house. Its scalloped and diamond-shaped shingles, painted tan, taupe and light pinkish brown, made it look like a gingerbread house.
Yesterday I had a call from a woman who, out of the blue, just bought Papa Max's house on the internet. I kept calling her Carol or Carla--not her name. I don't know what go into me. Cindy wants to return the house to its former grandeur before Papa Max died and it was carved into apartments. We spent at least an hour talking, and I was amazed at my ability to guide her through the front door, and into the spacious entrance hall with the parquet floors and the three-tiered staircase ending in a bronze Winged Victory.
I remembered how the staircase divided just before its final descent, and one set of steps headed back to the kitchen, the other to the front hall. She corroborated that the beautiful stained-glass window at the top of the stairs had been walled in for the apartments, but she has retrieved it, and is having it repaired. "We will hang it in the dining room," she said, "so it isn't buffeted by weather."
She has also located the second stairway, very narrow and steep, and entirely closed off from view. This was for the live-in maid--whom my mother called something like "Ennutz," telling us it meant "good-for-nothing" in German, my grandfather's family tongue. It's this sharp humor I've come to associate with my grandfather, altogether a sharp-dealing businessman who bought up farms around Lake Elsie, when the original owners couldn't pay their back taxes during the Great Depression.
My grandmother's taste (with the funds to indulge it) ran to dark walnut and oak furniture, with subdued, embroidered silk upholstery and drapes. I have some samples handed from my mother to me: deep turquoise silk, with leaves and vines and berries and flowers embroidered in subdued yellows, greens, and reds. The parlor, to the left of the entrance hall, had only one wide window overlooking the porch. It was always cool and shaded . Then I was reading from huge volumes stored in glass-fronted cabinets below half-pillars which separated the parlor from the entrance hall. More half-pillars and glassed-in cabinets led to the much sunnier dining room and Sweetie Pie's cheerful singing. We two girls and our mother flanked Papa Max who sat at the head of the long table, a huge napkin spread across his vest, as he ate lettuce soaked with cream and sugar. To us girls, raised on our Italian-American father's salads dressed with oil and vinegar, this was as strange as eating dirt.
"Over the river and through the woods/ To Grandfather's house we go" meant traveling three days and two nights on the train from Charleston, South Carolina to Hankinson, North Dakota. Grandfather's house was a glorious, gingerbread affair set on a huge lot with elm-shaded boulevards on two sides. In Charleston, our apartment lay at the back of the block-long, castle-like Old Citadel, with a row of palmettos in front and beyond that, the wide expanse of a gravelly Marion Square. Waking up mornings in Grandfather's Hankinson house was like waking up in another country.
Not only another country, but another way of life. In our Old Citadel apartment, sixteen-foot ceilings rose into shadows, and window-wells were so deep I could lean my elbows on them. But we had only four large rooms edged by a long narrow hall and narrow bathroom. Nothing like Papa Max's house with its six rooms downstairs and five bedrooms up, topped by an attic covering the whole house. The quiet was so intense I sometimes "heard" sun motes keeping time to Papa Max's canary Sweetie Pie singing in the bay window.
Hankinson, named for a colonel in the Civil War, sat on the edge of onetime prairie, turned into fields of wheat. Glacier moraines sloped gently above sloughs and Lake Elsie. When my grandfather arrived there as a young man from Sheboygan, Wisconsin, it was probably around 1890. Calculating back from my mother's birth in 1908, he must have married his first wife, the daughter of his employer, around 1892. They must have built the house, only one-story at first, a year or so later.
The first wife died in childbirth, leaving my grandfather with a daughter. He was on the go a lot as county auditor, "giving the horses' their heads" to carry him over snow-mounded fences home. It must have been during one of these trips around the county that he met my grandmother-to-be, a school teacher whose name was Augusta Olein. She'd been born in Sweden. I never knew her. She died five months after I was born.
Her parents, who brought the family to Fargo, left her a kind of orphan, to be raised by two older sisters who, for the rest of their lives, kept watch from a distance over Augusta and her children. These were the Aunt Emma and Aunt Hulda who eventually moved to Spokane, Washington, and whose cards of congratulations fill my mother's fat fat memory book. My mother Maxine was the second-born twin to brother Max,. He was sturdy, she was slow to thrive, plagued with rickets (which gave her spine "two curves") and a weak stomach all her childhood. But she outlived all her siblings to die in Charleston, South Carolina, aged 94.
By the time she took my sister and me on these cross-country train trips, she was intrepid, vigorous, and truly fond of "home," meaning Papa Max's house. By the time we started visiting in the late 1940s and early '50s, the roof had been raised on Papa Max's house. Its scalloped and diamond-shaped shingles, painted tan, taupe and light pinkish brown, made it look like a gingerbread house.
Yesterday I had a call from a woman who, out of the blue, just bought Papa Max's house on the internet. I kept calling her Carol or Carla--not her name. I don't know what go into me. Cindy wants to return the house to its former grandeur before Papa Max died and it was carved into apartments. We spent at least an hour talking, and I was amazed at my ability to guide her through the front door, and into the spacious entrance hall with the parquet floors and the three-tiered staircase ending in a bronze Winged Victory.
I remembered how the staircase divided just before its final descent, and one set of steps headed back to the kitchen, the other to the front hall. She corroborated that the beautiful stained-glass window at the top of the stairs had been walled in for the apartments, but she has retrieved it, and is having it repaired. "We will hang it in the dining room," she said, "so it isn't buffeted by weather."
She has also located the second stairway, very narrow and steep, and entirely closed off from view. This was for the live-in maid--whom my mother called something like "Ennutz," telling us it meant "good-for-nothing" in German, my grandfather's family tongue. It's this sharp humor I've come to associate with my grandfather, altogether a sharp-dealing businessman who bought up farms around Lake Elsie, when the original owners couldn't pay their back taxes during the Great Depression.
My grandmother's taste (with the funds to indulge it) ran to dark walnut and oak furniture, with subdued, embroidered silk upholstery and drapes. I have some samples handed from my mother to me: deep turquoise silk, with leaves and vines and berries and flowers embroidered in subdued yellows, greens, and reds. The parlor, to the left of the entrance hall, had only one wide window overlooking the porch. It was always cool and shaded . Then I was reading from huge volumes stored in glass-fronted cabinets below half-pillars which separated the parlor from the entrance hall. More half-pillars and glassed-in cabinets led to the much sunnier dining room and Sweetie Pie's cheerful singing. We two girls and our mother flanked Papa Max who sat at the head of the long table, a huge napkin spread across his vest, as he ate lettuce soaked with cream and sugar. To us girls, raised on our Italian-American father's salads dressed with oil and vinegar, this was as strange as eating dirt.
Sunday, September 30, 2012
Margotlog: The Potted Plant, Grey Water and Corporations
Margotlog: The Potted Plant, Grey Water, and Corporations
Let's admit right from the start: this is not an obvious connection. Just as it's not obvious that we, in our excessively individualistic and commercial mindset, will notice and shift in time when disaster is barreling down on us.
First the potted plant: It's an old and beautifully flowering hibiscus, repotted a few times and now about three feet tall with a "wingspan" of three to four feet. Just about as heavy as I can carry up and down three flights of stairs twice a year. In mid-spring I carry it outside. In mid-fall, I bring it back to its south-facing, third-floor window. This year, perhaps because I moved it out of direct sun into partial shade, perhaps because we had fewer lower spring temps, it's become a blooming maniac, with lacy blooms measuring four to six inches across.
I left town over the weekend and forgot to water it immediately the day I returned. This morning, when I climbed the stairs with its huge pitcher of water, it was sadly woebegon: droopy leaves with many yellow ones hanging limp.
We are all, more or less, potted plants. Let that sink in a moment.
According to "my weather guy," this September is the second driest on record, following a set of extremes, with (thankfully) lots of rain in the spring, but very very little from July until now. Let that sink in (what little there is to sink). White Bear Lake, so my friend who lives there reports, is so low that various town and community groups toss back and forth notions for raising the level. A few days ago I sat on the Minnesota side where the Mississippi widens into that lovely expanse slightly reminiscent of Switzerland called Lake Pepin. The water level was significantly lower than I've ever seen it--exposing a spit of land much further into the lake, with a long bloom of migrating white pelicans.
In my fear for the imminent demise of trees and shrubs, I've been watering almost daily at various trunks and roots. As I walk the neighborhood and see newly planted boulevard trees with leaves either already crinkly brown or dropped, I occasionally put a slip of paper in the nearby household's mailbox. "Please consider watering your boulevard tree...." these tiny missives conclude with "A concerned neighbor."
I wake up in the middle of the night thinking about "grey water." Some western states allow water from showers and washing machines to be deviated into tanks for watering lawns. I tried to have this made part of the Saint Paul DFL platform four years ago, but was told it would be too costly to retrain licensed plumbers to do this. Now I'm thinking about asking someone who's handy but not "a licensed plumber" to make the shift in our water flow.
We obviously need a much bigger fix than my single household.
Now to the corporation. When corporations achieved the status of "persons" in the Citizens United suit, and even before, they exercised immense influence on our lives in the United States, often more than government at any level. Not persons, not really, corporations are huge conglomerates of very very rich executives (note the emphasis on execute) at the top, and widening pyramid of underlings. With the hybrid status they now enjoy--wealthy conglomerates plus "persons"--corporations and their "bottom line" mentality strive for the greatest possible revenue at the least cost. This has led to such changes in U.S. trade policy as the North American Free-Trade Agreement which allows corporations to out-source jobs to much lower paid populaces (India, Mexico, etc.) than those (often unionized) in the U.S. These out-sourced jobs not only lower manufacturing costs for many US corporations, but also deprive U.S. citizens of work.
As corporations ceased needing to abide by U.S. environmental (or any other) regulation, they developed what I see as hubris (i.e.pride) of a dangerous sort. They began to market (for instance) huge cars, SUVs, and trucks, just as the message of global warming was beginning to take hold. When what we needed were much smaller cars, with higher (much higher) mileage standards, we were treated to ads linking American icons--the West, the rancher, etc--with these huge new vehicles.
Fast forward to my block this relatively quiet Sunday morning. Up and down the avenue sit huge behemoths. Yes there are a few hybrids like ours. But mostly the "family car" has gone the way of wringer washing machines. For no good reason except corporate greed. And the gullibility and determined ignorance of the American consumer.
We are potted plants in the hands of these corporations, who are after all "persons." Persons who care little for the well-being of the plant/planet as a whole. Who would just as soon wreck mountain tops, river banks (for mining and fracking), who often operate far from their corporate office where just maybe local protest might curb their excesses.
My weather guy, Paul Douglas of the Strib, notes that at a recent gathering of weather reporters to discuss global warming, a Saint Thomas University expert noted that a magnolia tree was blooming on the Saint Thomas campus this past MARCH. Paul says in essence, that environment changes predicted to be in place by 2090, are already occurring.
I am very much afraid we will not act at all, much less act "in time." Remember, we are potted plants. Luckily my potted hibiscus belongs to a real-live, singular person who now feels guilt, who promises to be more vigilant. Who will in a few moments trot upstairs to the third floor with another pitcher of water. We, who are real persons, need to take the reins away from these pseudo-persons called corporations and demand that our governments at all levels make the extreme changes necessary to allow our survival. Then we need to walk, ride our bikes, take public transportation or buy hybrids or plug ins. And no, I own no stock in Toyota or Honda.
Let's admit right from the start: this is not an obvious connection. Just as it's not obvious that we, in our excessively individualistic and commercial mindset, will notice and shift in time when disaster is barreling down on us.
First the potted plant: It's an old and beautifully flowering hibiscus, repotted a few times and now about three feet tall with a "wingspan" of three to four feet. Just about as heavy as I can carry up and down three flights of stairs twice a year. In mid-spring I carry it outside. In mid-fall, I bring it back to its south-facing, third-floor window. This year, perhaps because I moved it out of direct sun into partial shade, perhaps because we had fewer lower spring temps, it's become a blooming maniac, with lacy blooms measuring four to six inches across.
I left town over the weekend and forgot to water it immediately the day I returned. This morning, when I climbed the stairs with its huge pitcher of water, it was sadly woebegon: droopy leaves with many yellow ones hanging limp.
We are all, more or less, potted plants. Let that sink in a moment.
According to "my weather guy," this September is the second driest on record, following a set of extremes, with (thankfully) lots of rain in the spring, but very very little from July until now. Let that sink in (what little there is to sink). White Bear Lake, so my friend who lives there reports, is so low that various town and community groups toss back and forth notions for raising the level. A few days ago I sat on the Minnesota side where the Mississippi widens into that lovely expanse slightly reminiscent of Switzerland called Lake Pepin. The water level was significantly lower than I've ever seen it--exposing a spit of land much further into the lake, with a long bloom of migrating white pelicans.
In my fear for the imminent demise of trees and shrubs, I've been watering almost daily at various trunks and roots. As I walk the neighborhood and see newly planted boulevard trees with leaves either already crinkly brown or dropped, I occasionally put a slip of paper in the nearby household's mailbox. "Please consider watering your boulevard tree...." these tiny missives conclude with "A concerned neighbor."
I wake up in the middle of the night thinking about "grey water." Some western states allow water from showers and washing machines to be deviated into tanks for watering lawns. I tried to have this made part of the Saint Paul DFL platform four years ago, but was told it would be too costly to retrain licensed plumbers to do this. Now I'm thinking about asking someone who's handy but not "a licensed plumber" to make the shift in our water flow.
We obviously need a much bigger fix than my single household.
Now to the corporation. When corporations achieved the status of "persons" in the Citizens United suit, and even before, they exercised immense influence on our lives in the United States, often more than government at any level. Not persons, not really, corporations are huge conglomerates of very very rich executives (note the emphasis on execute) at the top, and widening pyramid of underlings. With the hybrid status they now enjoy--wealthy conglomerates plus "persons"--corporations and their "bottom line" mentality strive for the greatest possible revenue at the least cost. This has led to such changes in U.S. trade policy as the North American Free-Trade Agreement which allows corporations to out-source jobs to much lower paid populaces (India, Mexico, etc.) than those (often unionized) in the U.S. These out-sourced jobs not only lower manufacturing costs for many US corporations, but also deprive U.S. citizens of work.
As corporations ceased needing to abide by U.S. environmental (or any other) regulation, they developed what I see as hubris (i.e.pride) of a dangerous sort. They began to market (for instance) huge cars, SUVs, and trucks, just as the message of global warming was beginning to take hold. When what we needed were much smaller cars, with higher (much higher) mileage standards, we were treated to ads linking American icons--the West, the rancher, etc--with these huge new vehicles.
Fast forward to my block this relatively quiet Sunday morning. Up and down the avenue sit huge behemoths. Yes there are a few hybrids like ours. But mostly the "family car" has gone the way of wringer washing machines. For no good reason except corporate greed. And the gullibility and determined ignorance of the American consumer.
We are potted plants in the hands of these corporations, who are after all "persons." Persons who care little for the well-being of the plant/planet as a whole. Who would just as soon wreck mountain tops, river banks (for mining and fracking), who often operate far from their corporate office where just maybe local protest might curb their excesses.
My weather guy, Paul Douglas of the Strib, notes that at a recent gathering of weather reporters to discuss global warming, a Saint Thomas University expert noted that a magnolia tree was blooming on the Saint Thomas campus this past MARCH. Paul says in essence, that environment changes predicted to be in place by 2090, are already occurring.
I am very much afraid we will not act at all, much less act "in time." Remember, we are potted plants. Luckily my potted hibiscus belongs to a real-live, singular person who now feels guilt, who promises to be more vigilant. Who will in a few moments trot upstairs to the third floor with another pitcher of water. We, who are real persons, need to take the reins away from these pseudo-persons called corporations and demand that our governments at all levels make the extreme changes necessary to allow our survival. Then we need to walk, ride our bikes, take public transportation or buy hybrids or plug ins. And no, I own no stock in Toyota or Honda.
Sunday, September 23, 2012
Margotlog: "It is a truth universally acknowledged..."
Margotlog: "It is a truth universally acknowledged..."
So begins Jane Austen's divine novel "Pride and Prejudice." Austen's satiric pen turns like a double-edged knife toward the reader and the characters in her novel. Let's try that tactic: It's a truth universally acknowledged, in the U.S. of 2012, that all houses, forever forward and aft, sport white goddesses reposing in their basements.
Segue back to Charleston, South Carolina of the 1950s. I rush in from school, the screen door slams behind me. My mother stands at the sink. Above her rises a 14-foot ceiling, deep with shadows and cobwebs. She is washing clothes--my school uniforms, socks, night gowns, my father's heavy khaki uniforms, her own cotton house dresses, my sister's play clothes.
Standing at a deep window well I stare out to a cobblestone parking yard. We live in the Old Citadel, built a hundred years ago to house cadets in a military college. Behind me, now, my mother is ironing the uniforms which she has starched and hung in the courtyard on a metal and rope contraption that looks like an upside down umbrella. She has sprinkled the stiff trousers and shirts with water, then rolled them into balls and let them sit. Once moisture has softened the hard starched khaki, she can manage to smooth them with her iron. If steam irons have been invented, we don't have one. Even as a girl in third grade, I understood that my mother worked very hard.
There was no white goddess in our basement. We had no basement. I had not yet met that era's version of a washing machine, and dryers meant the contraption she set up outside, letting the sun and wind do the work.
I've often thought of her as a pioneer housewife. Partly because she came from North Dakota and read to us from the "Laura and Mary" books--"Little House on the Prairie," etc. But also because her strength and resilience supported a physically demanding life. She did not have to cut wood for a stove--we had a gas range. But she did almost everything else "by hand," except bake bread. Though she was only a mediocre cook, we never went hungry. She sent me and my sister to walk across Marion Square with nickles and dimes clutched in our pockets. We bought loaves of bread, and bags of tapioca for puddings at a little grocer. The Mars bars tantalized. Sometimes we bought milk in a bottle, but most of the time, these clinking sweating dames were delivered by a man driving a horse and wagon. Later he acquired a truck. We had one car. My mother didn't learn to drive until I had graduated from college.
All this goes to say that truths "universally acknowledged" fly away with the wind. Times are changing all around us. I'm often besieged by thoughts of how to lower energy use. I'm stymied by this current drought, quite aware that by watering my trees (from the boulevard ash all the way to the backyard white pine and spruce), I'm using a precious, dwindling resource. What will happen to my beloved trees when the Mississippi runs so low, water can't be pumped to supply the Cities? What, ultimately, will happen to us if we have to live with one bucket of water per person, per day? Images of North African nomads flit through my mind. The women are clothed in layers of long flowing garments. Their faces are mostly covered. Sand stings. Bodies need protection from hot winds. The truth "universally acknowledged" that Minnesota with its 10,000 lakes will never run out of water, may one day crumble to dust.
For now, I conserve this way: I use and reuse and reuse water in the sink. First to wash hands, then catching the runoff in a dish, to swipe left-over food off plates after a meal, finally to clean cat-food cans before recycling them. Several years ago, I did an internet search on "grey water" usage--the recycling of rinse water and shower water for irrigating backyard lawns, trees, gardens. Several U.S. states allow this. Minnesota not yet. I tried inserting a proposal for grey water into the DFL platform, but met resistance from plumbers' unions. Plumbers would need to be retrained. "It is a truth universally acknowledged..."
I cut down on energy use: raising the blinds high for "natural" light, using long-lasting and minimal energy-use halogen bulbs, turning off all the way every computer once it's not being used. Putting TVs on power strips and turning them off all the way. Making a deal with my husband that if he completely unplugs the myriad "chargers" for his hand-helds, I won't run the outside water when he's exercising in the basement. Sensitive ears, that man.
I cook in bulk. I keep the freezer totally filled with frozen leftovers. In deep cold, we turn the heat down to 62, early in the evening, and raise it to 68 late in the morning. No, we don't wear wool against the skin, but we wear warm night-clothes, and, my one decadent indulgence, I use an electric blanket. I figure it's cheaper to heat one bed than a whole house. Recently we received an approval rating from Xcel Energy: we used 12% less energy than our neighbors. It's because we have no air conditioning. Fans will do.
And our dryer? The second of our two white basement goddesses? I dry my "wash 'n' wear" clothes maybe 3 minutes, then hang them on the line. Anything else--towers, sheets, napkins, socks, washcloths, nightgowns--dry on a line in the basement. The husband has to have anything that will touch hi sensitive skin fluffed in the dryer. Hmmm! I wonder how he managed as a kid. No dryers then. "It is a truth universally acknowledged..."
So begins Jane Austen's divine novel "Pride and Prejudice." Austen's satiric pen turns like a double-edged knife toward the reader and the characters in her novel. Let's try that tactic: It's a truth universally acknowledged, in the U.S. of 2012, that all houses, forever forward and aft, sport white goddesses reposing in their basements.
Segue back to Charleston, South Carolina of the 1950s. I rush in from school, the screen door slams behind me. My mother stands at the sink. Above her rises a 14-foot ceiling, deep with shadows and cobwebs. She is washing clothes--my school uniforms, socks, night gowns, my father's heavy khaki uniforms, her own cotton house dresses, my sister's play clothes.
Standing at a deep window well I stare out to a cobblestone parking yard. We live in the Old Citadel, built a hundred years ago to house cadets in a military college. Behind me, now, my mother is ironing the uniforms which she has starched and hung in the courtyard on a metal and rope contraption that looks like an upside down umbrella. She has sprinkled the stiff trousers and shirts with water, then rolled them into balls and let them sit. Once moisture has softened the hard starched khaki, she can manage to smooth them with her iron. If steam irons have been invented, we don't have one. Even as a girl in third grade, I understood that my mother worked very hard.
There was no white goddess in our basement. We had no basement. I had not yet met that era's version of a washing machine, and dryers meant the contraption she set up outside, letting the sun and wind do the work.
I've often thought of her as a pioneer housewife. Partly because she came from North Dakota and read to us from the "Laura and Mary" books--"Little House on the Prairie," etc. But also because her strength and resilience supported a physically demanding life. She did not have to cut wood for a stove--we had a gas range. But she did almost everything else "by hand," except bake bread. Though she was only a mediocre cook, we never went hungry. She sent me and my sister to walk across Marion Square with nickles and dimes clutched in our pockets. We bought loaves of bread, and bags of tapioca for puddings at a little grocer. The Mars bars tantalized. Sometimes we bought milk in a bottle, but most of the time, these clinking sweating dames were delivered by a man driving a horse and wagon. Later he acquired a truck. We had one car. My mother didn't learn to drive until I had graduated from college.
All this goes to say that truths "universally acknowledged" fly away with the wind. Times are changing all around us. I'm often besieged by thoughts of how to lower energy use. I'm stymied by this current drought, quite aware that by watering my trees (from the boulevard ash all the way to the backyard white pine and spruce), I'm using a precious, dwindling resource. What will happen to my beloved trees when the Mississippi runs so low, water can't be pumped to supply the Cities? What, ultimately, will happen to us if we have to live with one bucket of water per person, per day? Images of North African nomads flit through my mind. The women are clothed in layers of long flowing garments. Their faces are mostly covered. Sand stings. Bodies need protection from hot winds. The truth "universally acknowledged" that Minnesota with its 10,000 lakes will never run out of water, may one day crumble to dust.
For now, I conserve this way: I use and reuse and reuse water in the sink. First to wash hands, then catching the runoff in a dish, to swipe left-over food off plates after a meal, finally to clean cat-food cans before recycling them. Several years ago, I did an internet search on "grey water" usage--the recycling of rinse water and shower water for irrigating backyard lawns, trees, gardens. Several U.S. states allow this. Minnesota not yet. I tried inserting a proposal for grey water into the DFL platform, but met resistance from plumbers' unions. Plumbers would need to be retrained. "It is a truth universally acknowledged..."
I cut down on energy use: raising the blinds high for "natural" light, using long-lasting and minimal energy-use halogen bulbs, turning off all the way every computer once it's not being used. Putting TVs on power strips and turning them off all the way. Making a deal with my husband that if he completely unplugs the myriad "chargers" for his hand-helds, I won't run the outside water when he's exercising in the basement. Sensitive ears, that man.
I cook in bulk. I keep the freezer totally filled with frozen leftovers. In deep cold, we turn the heat down to 62, early in the evening, and raise it to 68 late in the morning. No, we don't wear wool against the skin, but we wear warm night-clothes, and, my one decadent indulgence, I use an electric blanket. I figure it's cheaper to heat one bed than a whole house. Recently we received an approval rating from Xcel Energy: we used 12% less energy than our neighbors. It's because we have no air conditioning. Fans will do.
And our dryer? The second of our two white basement goddesses? I dry my "wash 'n' wear" clothes maybe 3 minutes, then hang them on the line. Anything else--towers, sheets, napkins, socks, washcloths, nightgowns--dry on a line in the basement. The husband has to have anything that will touch hi sensitive skin fluffed in the dryer. Hmmm! I wonder how he managed as a kid. No dryers then. "It is a truth universally acknowledged..."
Saturday, September 15, 2012
Margotlog: The SPCO's Divine Coherence
Margotlog: The SPCO's Divine Coherence
The process of creating an orchestra is like working a manuscript through a thousand drafts, each adjustment, adding and subtracting, listening and blending, heightening and subduing finally produces a glorious resonance of refinement and depth. It's simply not possible to achieve--except with rare flashes of inspiration--without hours, days, months of constructive work. The same group of musicians must practice and perform together until they can hear each other with such finesse that their intelligent, lively coherence becomes a thing in itself. Like a forest where the trees talk to each other. Not possible if a tall beech or maple occurs every 500 yards with only stumps in between.
Those who know little about slow growth but lots about "cut and run" make extremely poor managers of organic wholes. In fact their mind-set is not to foster and maintain but to take away as much as possible, leaving only a skeleton of the glorious whole.The "screen of trees along the highway" mentality, beyond which lies a cut-over horror.
Unfortunately the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra has been put through a wrenching process by its managers, and the end is not in sight. After living through the summer with a draconian proposal hanging over their heads--reduce salaries more than 50%, cut the number of full-time musicians and the number of performances, and bring in "guns for hire"--the orchestra received what looked like a more acceptable proposal on the eve of their opening concert. Long-time players could retire with a comfortable settlement, newer players would be paid less than the current rate but not starved, and the number of performances would remain the same. Evidently a pot of money exists to support up to fifteen or so such retirements.
Though this "buy out" looked good at first blush, it has implications that could reduce the current memberships by so significant a number that the divine coherence, honed and crafted over years, may sadly dissipate.
There has to be a better way. Over the last decade, the musicians have "given back" around 2 million to the organization. Now we propose that the organization reciprocate. Take the millions set aside to pay for retirement and increase the yearly wage for all players, encouraging most to stay. It seems self-evident that retaining the divine coherence benefits the musicians as well as their eager audience. The solution will be received with such resounding gratitude that many of us who've enjoyed years of SPCO glory will dig deeper into our pockets. We will start a fund dedicated to the musicians and their continued well-being. It's the least we can do to honor the tradition of excellence fostered by players and conductors as well-known as Pinchas Zuckerman, Dennis Russell Davies, Christian Zacharias, Hugh Wolff, Edo de Waart, and many many others.
Let's step around the clear-cut proposal and keep the musical forest alive.
The process of creating an orchestra is like working a manuscript through a thousand drafts, each adjustment, adding and subtracting, listening and blending, heightening and subduing finally produces a glorious resonance of refinement and depth. It's simply not possible to achieve--except with rare flashes of inspiration--without hours, days, months of constructive work. The same group of musicians must practice and perform together until they can hear each other with such finesse that their intelligent, lively coherence becomes a thing in itself. Like a forest where the trees talk to each other. Not possible if a tall beech or maple occurs every 500 yards with only stumps in between.
Those who know little about slow growth but lots about "cut and run" make extremely poor managers of organic wholes. In fact their mind-set is not to foster and maintain but to take away as much as possible, leaving only a skeleton of the glorious whole.The "screen of trees along the highway" mentality, beyond which lies a cut-over horror.
Unfortunately the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra has been put through a wrenching process by its managers, and the end is not in sight. After living through the summer with a draconian proposal hanging over their heads--reduce salaries more than 50%, cut the number of full-time musicians and the number of performances, and bring in "guns for hire"--the orchestra received what looked like a more acceptable proposal on the eve of their opening concert. Long-time players could retire with a comfortable settlement, newer players would be paid less than the current rate but not starved, and the number of performances would remain the same. Evidently a pot of money exists to support up to fifteen or so such retirements.
Though this "buy out" looked good at first blush, it has implications that could reduce the current memberships by so significant a number that the divine coherence, honed and crafted over years, may sadly dissipate.
There has to be a better way. Over the last decade, the musicians have "given back" around 2 million to the organization. Now we propose that the organization reciprocate. Take the millions set aside to pay for retirement and increase the yearly wage for all players, encouraging most to stay. It seems self-evident that retaining the divine coherence benefits the musicians as well as their eager audience. The solution will be received with such resounding gratitude that many of us who've enjoyed years of SPCO glory will dig deeper into our pockets. We will start a fund dedicated to the musicians and their continued well-being. It's the least we can do to honor the tradition of excellence fostered by players and conductors as well-known as Pinchas Zuckerman, Dennis Russell Davies, Christian Zacharias, Hugh Wolff, Edo de Waart, and many many others.
Let's step around the clear-cut proposal and keep the musical forest alive.
Sunday, September 9, 2012
Margotlog: For the Love of an Orchestra
Margotlog: For the Love of an Orchestra
It's difficult to love a huge aggregate. But the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra is small by orchestra standards: thirty-some versus over a hundred (I'm guessing) for the Minnesota Orchestra. Saturday night's concert at the Ordway was for me a love fest. It came just after the board's announcement of a much more lenient package for the orchestra--instead of keeping only a small core and bringing in "players for hire"; cutting salaries as low as $25,000/year, and reducing the number of concerts, most salaries would hover around $62,000. A full complement of musicians would be retained, and there'd be a satisfactory retirement package to encourage some long-timers to exit.
The past week has been fraught with sadness and tension. Could the board truly institute its draconian intention? Many of us cried out, NO NO NO. The opening concerts were a love fest of relief between players and audience: the flayers had been sent away. Our beloved players in their jewel of a hall would gather another year to challenge and delight us.
The challenge came first in two "neoclassical" pieces by Stravinsky. As I write this, I'm listening to that Russo-American's 1920s ballet score "Pulcilnella," created for the Dyagliev Paris ballet, with sets designed by Picasso, and the music based on Pergolesi and the Commedia dell'Arte masked traveling Italian troupes. If time travel could take me back to that first performance, I'd bring the SPCO players with me. Stravinsky in "Pulcinella" is a more lyrical, story-telling composer than in the two pieces the SPCO played last night: a flute, woodwind and brass "Octet" from 1922, with some of the charming quick tempo and mood changes and "hoots" that always make me smile. But lacking the expansive charm of "Pulcinella." I liked better the other Stravinsky, a 1940s all string "Concerto in D." It had more coherence which helped with the rather dry melodic business.
After the intermission came the piece de resistance--Beethoven's "Eroica" symphony--grand, complicated expression of the heroic spirit, intended originally to honor Napoleon. Surely this work was chosen way back in the spring, before all the wrangling about continuing the orchestra took place. But it was a completely fitting shout of joy, and weeping in suffering and relief (the second "Marcia funebra" movement). I had to close my eyes to fully take in the glorious playing--Beethoven's fascinating shifts (sometimes almost like flying up stairs) from gloom to light, from plodding and slow to eager tripping, all gathered and consumed in the simplicity of a few dominating motifs.
The audience was (I'm guessing) to a person on their feet with applause. Then with my eyes open and full of tears, I looked at my beloved orchestra, the faces and figures I know almost like a family (though of course they don't know me--that odd one-way relation of performer and listener). And I saw relieved tears in some of their eyes too. They honored their vigorous, talented, steadfast maestro Edo de Waart who has stood with them in the week's public discussion. Thank you, indeed, from our hearts, with sadness for the initial, dismal way they were treated. And relief in hopes we may continue, full force and together, this exploration of excellent performing.
It's difficult to love a huge aggregate. But the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra is small by orchestra standards: thirty-some versus over a hundred (I'm guessing) for the Minnesota Orchestra. Saturday night's concert at the Ordway was for me a love fest. It came just after the board's announcement of a much more lenient package for the orchestra--instead of keeping only a small core and bringing in "players for hire"; cutting salaries as low as $25,000/year, and reducing the number of concerts, most salaries would hover around $62,000. A full complement of musicians would be retained, and there'd be a satisfactory retirement package to encourage some long-timers to exit.
The past week has been fraught with sadness and tension. Could the board truly institute its draconian intention? Many of us cried out, NO NO NO. The opening concerts were a love fest of relief between players and audience: the flayers had been sent away. Our beloved players in their jewel of a hall would gather another year to challenge and delight us.
The challenge came first in two "neoclassical" pieces by Stravinsky. As I write this, I'm listening to that Russo-American's 1920s ballet score "Pulcilnella," created for the Dyagliev Paris ballet, with sets designed by Picasso, and the music based on Pergolesi and the Commedia dell'Arte masked traveling Italian troupes. If time travel could take me back to that first performance, I'd bring the SPCO players with me. Stravinsky in "Pulcinella" is a more lyrical, story-telling composer than in the two pieces the SPCO played last night: a flute, woodwind and brass "Octet" from 1922, with some of the charming quick tempo and mood changes and "hoots" that always make me smile. But lacking the expansive charm of "Pulcinella." I liked better the other Stravinsky, a 1940s all string "Concerto in D." It had more coherence which helped with the rather dry melodic business.
After the intermission came the piece de resistance--Beethoven's "Eroica" symphony--grand, complicated expression of the heroic spirit, intended originally to honor Napoleon. Surely this work was chosen way back in the spring, before all the wrangling about continuing the orchestra took place. But it was a completely fitting shout of joy, and weeping in suffering and relief (the second "Marcia funebra" movement). I had to close my eyes to fully take in the glorious playing--Beethoven's fascinating shifts (sometimes almost like flying up stairs) from gloom to light, from plodding and slow to eager tripping, all gathered and consumed in the simplicity of a few dominating motifs.
The audience was (I'm guessing) to a person on their feet with applause. Then with my eyes open and full of tears, I looked at my beloved orchestra, the faces and figures I know almost like a family (though of course they don't know me--that odd one-way relation of performer and listener). And I saw relieved tears in some of their eyes too. They honored their vigorous, talented, steadfast maestro Edo de Waart who has stood with them in the week's public discussion. Thank you, indeed, from our hearts, with sadness for the initial, dismal way they were treated. And relief in hopes we may continue, full force and together, this exploration of excellent performing.
Monday, September 3, 2012
Margotlog: Sleeping Above a Lake
Margotlog: Sleeping Above a Lake
Getting from Saint Paul to Kalamazoo-ooo-ooo ain't easy. But "I gotta gal in Kalamazoo," as the old song goes--my friend Chris who was my new baby coach once upon a time, until life swept us apart. Now it's bringing us together. For the second year in a row, I'm on my way to Kalamazoo and Chris.
Fly to Midway Airport, take a CTA elevated train downtown among the skyscrapers, then with four hours to spare, visit the Art Institute, with a stop for a veggie sandwich and a Starbucks cup that sloshes gently in my hand as I trundle along. It's a warm midday The streets heading directly toward or from huge Lake Michigan are in shade. Those paralleling the lake in sun. It's not far, and soon I'm mounting the steps toward the huge grey lions which I remember from childhood.
We took the train from Charleston, South Carolina, to Cincinnati, changed for Chicago, changed for Minneapolis, changed for Wapeton, and Papa Max's house in North Dakota. Then too we had a long layover in Chicago: visiting the Museum of Science and Industry and the lions at the Art Institute. Among my earliest memories of travel. Now, heading toward Chris and Kalamazoo feels like a visit into the past.
In Union Station, crowded against the glass doors, I chat with a stylish white woman who's meeting up with her husband and children in Grand Rapids. Seated below us is a lanky African American man with a cute baby eating cheerios out of a plastic bag. "Hard working doing it alone," he admits. I'm suddenly alert: this young man is raising this toddler by himself!? We board the train and this odd couple take a double seat at a diagonal and back. When I turn my head I glimpse the baby sleeping on its father's chest. When it wakes up, it's talky in that almost-making-sense way that kids have before they actually do.
So interested to psyche them them out, I have trouble reading Julia Alvarez's How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents. Then there's a man with two canes trying to get into his big bag sprawled on the floor. He asks me to reach in for his shaving kit. I paw around and he gruffly corrects, "Not that, not that." Oh, oh, I think: accepting help from a strange white woman is hard for this aging white man. (Heck, we're both aging, but I have no canes.)
No wonder after the first rush of arrival, I'm fagged. The next day, Chris and I drive out to big Lake Michigan, heading to a lake house that belongs to her ex. Years ago when we were both in our first marriages, we stayed there together. Then it was closer to the lake, before the water level rose so high the house had to be moved back into the trees. I had forgotten the trees. Immense oaks and beeches and maples towering above us as we amble along a path up to the road and back. These are the famous sand dunes, which I heard about on the train but was almost too distracted to take in. Nothing like the little humps of sand along my childhood southern Atlantic. These dunes rise high as Chicago's steel and glass towers.
After our walk, we settle into a gazebo, chatting, snacking, reading. Soon we stretch out on adjacent lounge chairs, after lifting up the cushions to shoo out huge crickets. The air is alive with the rustle of leaves. We're too high to hear the lake lapping, but the water stretches blue and almost waveless to a quiet horizon.
We sleep so deeply that when I open my eyes, I have no idea where I am, gazing into pale blue edged with green. It is a moment of infinity. Then I turn my head and Chris and I continue stitching all those lost years forward to the present. We are both very happy.
Getting from Saint Paul to Kalamazoo-ooo-ooo ain't easy. But "I gotta gal in Kalamazoo," as the old song goes--my friend Chris who was my new baby coach once upon a time, until life swept us apart. Now it's bringing us together. For the second year in a row, I'm on my way to Kalamazoo and Chris.
Fly to Midway Airport, take a CTA elevated train downtown among the skyscrapers, then with four hours to spare, visit the Art Institute, with a stop for a veggie sandwich and a Starbucks cup that sloshes gently in my hand as I trundle along. It's a warm midday The streets heading directly toward or from huge Lake Michigan are in shade. Those paralleling the lake in sun. It's not far, and soon I'm mounting the steps toward the huge grey lions which I remember from childhood.
We took the train from Charleston, South Carolina, to Cincinnati, changed for Chicago, changed for Minneapolis, changed for Wapeton, and Papa Max's house in North Dakota. Then too we had a long layover in Chicago: visiting the Museum of Science and Industry and the lions at the Art Institute. Among my earliest memories of travel. Now, heading toward Chris and Kalamazoo feels like a visit into the past.
In Union Station, crowded against the glass doors, I chat with a stylish white woman who's meeting up with her husband and children in Grand Rapids. Seated below us is a lanky African American man with a cute baby eating cheerios out of a plastic bag. "Hard working doing it alone," he admits. I'm suddenly alert: this young man is raising this toddler by himself!? We board the train and this odd couple take a double seat at a diagonal and back. When I turn my head I glimpse the baby sleeping on its father's chest. When it wakes up, it's talky in that almost-making-sense way that kids have before they actually do.
So interested to psyche them them out, I have trouble reading Julia Alvarez's How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents. Then there's a man with two canes trying to get into his big bag sprawled on the floor. He asks me to reach in for his shaving kit. I paw around and he gruffly corrects, "Not that, not that." Oh, oh, I think: accepting help from a strange white woman is hard for this aging white man. (Heck, we're both aging, but I have no canes.)
No wonder after the first rush of arrival, I'm fagged. The next day, Chris and I drive out to big Lake Michigan, heading to a lake house that belongs to her ex. Years ago when we were both in our first marriages, we stayed there together. Then it was closer to the lake, before the water level rose so high the house had to be moved back into the trees. I had forgotten the trees. Immense oaks and beeches and maples towering above us as we amble along a path up to the road and back. These are the famous sand dunes, which I heard about on the train but was almost too distracted to take in. Nothing like the little humps of sand along my childhood southern Atlantic. These dunes rise high as Chicago's steel and glass towers.
After our walk, we settle into a gazebo, chatting, snacking, reading. Soon we stretch out on adjacent lounge chairs, after lifting up the cushions to shoo out huge crickets. The air is alive with the rustle of leaves. We're too high to hear the lake lapping, but the water stretches blue and almost waveless to a quiet horizon.
We sleep so deeply that when I open my eyes, I have no idea where I am, gazing into pale blue edged with green. It is a moment of infinity. Then I turn my head and Chris and I continue stitching all those lost years forward to the present. We are both very happy.
Monday, August 27, 2012
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Friday, August 17, 2012
Margotlog: Rembrandt at the MIA
Margotlog: Rembrandt at the MIA
The advance publicity does not do this exhibit justice: it is a major exhibit of Rembrandt's works from American collections, not just a comparison of a few "authentic" masterworks with many that have come under suspicion.
We saw almost from the first moment that we would learn to tell the difference between Rembrandt's exquisitely deep portrayal of character and the "flatter," more decorative works of students or colleagues. Even the quasi-historical portraits which are really contemporaries done-up in historical dress show Rembrandt's tendency to go to the heart of personality and character. Yet some of the works "under suspicion" are luminous and charming, such as the red-haired young woman in antique, brocade-and-pearl-topped cloak.She seems on fire with youth and promise, from her brilliant, wispy hair, on down.
By the time he was 30, Rembrandt was making very good money in this bourgeois, Protestant society where individual effort and talent, rather than inherited title and wealth elevated one above the mob. By then he had moved to Amsterdam from Leiden, married Saskia whose family had wealth, and was painting portraits of wealthy burghers and their wives. We muse on the difference between 17th century Dutch society and that in Italy where many artists flourished because Catholic churches commissioned monumental works. Not so with Protestant churches. We note that the Christs in many Italian works are beautifully proportioned, with soulful, regular features. Not so many of Rembrandt's burghers and their wives. They wanted a "likeness." These Rembrandt could provide. I find them often rather stiff and boring, but they helped make the artist wealthy.
More compelling is his huge portrayal of Saskia as Minerva, wearing the helmet and shield associated with Athena, the Greek counterpart to the Roman Minerva. She is not beautiful; in fact, her jowly, heavy-lidded face is strongly at variance with her lavish accoutrements and Rembrandt's sumptuous painting. It's a very strange work. And I may not have the proper attitude to rightly interpret it. Let's just say, realism trumps the idealized notion of goddess, or else her beauty is all in the eyes of the painter. Or our standards of female beauty have changed. This we debate afterwards, comparing Penelope Cruz whom we just saw in Woody Allen's "To Rome, with Love," with say, Marilyn Monroe--Marilyn being far more rounded and buxom even than the beautiful (to our eyes) Penelope. (Side note: Woody himself has a major role in this film, and he's way way way past whatever prime he had as a cinematic object. Ruemy-eyed and faltering--it's self-indulgence to the max.)
The exhibit also subtly chronicles Rembrandt's decline in status and wealth, even as his artistic power reaches its zenith. When Saskia dies, leaving him the proceeds of her estate as long as he does not remarry, Rembrandt takes up with first one, then a second mistress, both who work in the household. Years of poor management and mounting debt, plus one suspects a kind of depression, bring him to the edge of financial ruin. Plus, his second and must younger mistress Hendrickje is brought before the church court who charges her with being Rembrandt's "whore" and excommunicating her. (Such a thing would not have happened in the more accepting culture of Catholic Italy, I suspect, where most men from the popes on down indulged in extra-marital affairs. I mention this simply to emphasize another important difference in the ways religion affected artists in Protestant Amsterdam and Catholic Venice, let's say.)
It's in the last room of the exhibit, with the MIA's truly extraordinary "Lucretia," and off to the side, one of Rembrandt's greatest self-portraits in a flat, turban-like hat, that Rembrandt's genius deepens so as to beggar all previous works. His brush-work becomes looser and rougher, heightening the sense of immediacy. This is particularly vivid in "Lucretia," where the tear in the corner of her eye glistens almost as if the paint were still wet, and her blood-soaked chemise is so transparent, it seems to stick to her body. Did he paint this in one sitting, as suggests the Institute's commentary? If so, it must have been a day of agonizing empathy.
The self-portrait flatters only in its intense gaze--the eye more to the light being the "social," observing eye; the one more in shadow, more inward, sadly self-aware. Yet the head is proud, the lips firm, the nose bulbous and warty as in life. I hope to be so aware, and self-confident even in self-recognition amid decline. It is an unforgettable image.
We exit to the etchings, all from the MIA's extraordinary collection of works on paper. Here Rembrandt had far more freedom with subject matter. Here his bravura drawing, the intensity of his observation of character, and his flare for designing large groups for stunning effect make me wish he'd done more large works on canvas.There's "The Night Watch" in Amsterdam. I have to see it again--soon. I don't want to wait too long. Delta Airlines will be happy!
The advance publicity does not do this exhibit justice: it is a major exhibit of Rembrandt's works from American collections, not just a comparison of a few "authentic" masterworks with many that have come under suspicion.
We saw almost from the first moment that we would learn to tell the difference between Rembrandt's exquisitely deep portrayal of character and the "flatter," more decorative works of students or colleagues. Even the quasi-historical portraits which are really contemporaries done-up in historical dress show Rembrandt's tendency to go to the heart of personality and character. Yet some of the works "under suspicion" are luminous and charming, such as the red-haired young woman in antique, brocade-and-pearl-topped cloak.She seems on fire with youth and promise, from her brilliant, wispy hair, on down.
By the time he was 30, Rembrandt was making very good money in this bourgeois, Protestant society where individual effort and talent, rather than inherited title and wealth elevated one above the mob. By then he had moved to Amsterdam from Leiden, married Saskia whose family had wealth, and was painting portraits of wealthy burghers and their wives. We muse on the difference between 17th century Dutch society and that in Italy where many artists flourished because Catholic churches commissioned monumental works. Not so with Protestant churches. We note that the Christs in many Italian works are beautifully proportioned, with soulful, regular features. Not so many of Rembrandt's burghers and their wives. They wanted a "likeness." These Rembrandt could provide. I find them often rather stiff and boring, but they helped make the artist wealthy.
More compelling is his huge portrayal of Saskia as Minerva, wearing the helmet and shield associated with Athena, the Greek counterpart to the Roman Minerva. She is not beautiful; in fact, her jowly, heavy-lidded face is strongly at variance with her lavish accoutrements and Rembrandt's sumptuous painting. It's a very strange work. And I may not have the proper attitude to rightly interpret it. Let's just say, realism trumps the idealized notion of goddess, or else her beauty is all in the eyes of the painter. Or our standards of female beauty have changed. This we debate afterwards, comparing Penelope Cruz whom we just saw in Woody Allen's "To Rome, with Love," with say, Marilyn Monroe--Marilyn being far more rounded and buxom even than the beautiful (to our eyes) Penelope. (Side note: Woody himself has a major role in this film, and he's way way way past whatever prime he had as a cinematic object. Ruemy-eyed and faltering--it's self-indulgence to the max.)
The exhibit also subtly chronicles Rembrandt's decline in status and wealth, even as his artistic power reaches its zenith. When Saskia dies, leaving him the proceeds of her estate as long as he does not remarry, Rembrandt takes up with first one, then a second mistress, both who work in the household. Years of poor management and mounting debt, plus one suspects a kind of depression, bring him to the edge of financial ruin. Plus, his second and must younger mistress Hendrickje is brought before the church court who charges her with being Rembrandt's "whore" and excommunicating her. (Such a thing would not have happened in the more accepting culture of Catholic Italy, I suspect, where most men from the popes on down indulged in extra-marital affairs. I mention this simply to emphasize another important difference in the ways religion affected artists in Protestant Amsterdam and Catholic Venice, let's say.)
It's in the last room of the exhibit, with the MIA's truly extraordinary "Lucretia," and off to the side, one of Rembrandt's greatest self-portraits in a flat, turban-like hat, that Rembrandt's genius deepens so as to beggar all previous works. His brush-work becomes looser and rougher, heightening the sense of immediacy. This is particularly vivid in "Lucretia," where the tear in the corner of her eye glistens almost as if the paint were still wet, and her blood-soaked chemise is so transparent, it seems to stick to her body. Did he paint this in one sitting, as suggests the Institute's commentary? If so, it must have been a day of agonizing empathy.
The self-portrait flatters only in its intense gaze--the eye more to the light being the "social," observing eye; the one more in shadow, more inward, sadly self-aware. Yet the head is proud, the lips firm, the nose bulbous and warty as in life. I hope to be so aware, and self-confident even in self-recognition amid decline. It is an unforgettable image.
We exit to the etchings, all from the MIA's extraordinary collection of works on paper. Here Rembrandt had far more freedom with subject matter. Here his bravura drawing, the intensity of his observation of character, and his flare for designing large groups for stunning effect make me wish he'd done more large works on canvas.There's "The Night Watch" in Amsterdam. I have to see it again--soon. I don't want to wait too long. Delta Airlines will be happy!
Monday, August 13, 2012
Margotlog: Delta Wedding
Margotlog: Delta Wedding
Among the top ten novels I listen to on disc over and over, Eudora Welty's Delta Wedding gives me the most sustained pleasure. I admire Welty's long short stories and much shorter novel, "The Optimist's Daughter," which won the Pulitzer Prize. But for repeated pleasure, for sweep and quirky charm, for scene painting and character portraits, for deep immersion in a lost way of life, this American novel compares with Tolstoy.
The Yazoo Delta is north of the Gulf of Mexico, north of Faulkner country, Jackson, Mississippi, and east of Ole Man River. The Scotch descendants who people Shell Mound plantation, with its attendant others, The Grove, and Marmion, are a clan in the truest sense of the word. Nearly every reference in their huge and lively world is contained within their Fairchild clan. At its head are three brothers, two of whom--Denis and George--fought in the "War" (World War One). It is 1923.
The wedding of the title involves Dabney Fairchild, second oldest daughter of this intensely blond, straight-haired, wildly happy and free-spirited clan. Into this world comes an outsider cousin, Laura McRaven, whose mother has just died in Jackson. Her mother was one of the Fairchild sisters--including Tempie, Primrose, Jim Allen--sisters to the luminous brothers Denis who died, George who returned, and Battle who never left because (I assume) he is the head of this huge clan of wife and children, Negroes and cotton fields, overseer and village grocers.
The emotional center of the novel is a female trio: Ellen, the Virginia mother of the clan, Dabney the bride, and "little Laura McRaven," who is 9. We enter the delta on the "Yellow Dog" train, riding "up" from Jackson with Laura. Right away, precise details draw us in: Mr. Doolittle, the conductor, comes through the car and snatches the tickets he's stuck in people's hat brims. Right away we're tossed into a clan so numerous we ride high in a wonderfully springy blanket of names and antics. Children poke straws down "dooddle bug holes." Roxy, the main servant, throws her apron over her head and rushes in, crying "Bird in de house, bird in de house." Ellen gathers up Bluette, her 3 year old, and croons her a dream to put her down for a nap. The dream is of "Momma's little pin she lost." Ellen, so mild, so busy, dreams mistakes in the account books, the exact place where she's lost this little garnet pin, a present from her husband Battle during their courting days.
To fuel the story, there have to be outsiders and outlaws in the simplest sense: beyond the law of the clan. Some are "teeched" like Cousin Maureen who adds an "l" to every word and has wild outbursts of destruction. Some are outside the Fairchild bounty and extravagance--such as Robie Reeves, once a clerk at Fairchild town grocery, now miraculously married to golden-boy George. (Welty's scene of Robie swimming in her bra and panties, cavorting in golden spray with George, is one of the most beautifully handled evocations of sexual play I've ever read.) Then there's Laura herself--though by birth part of the clan, yet the place where she'll return, i.e. the Jackson of her small family, with only herself and her father, has a seriousness which hovers outside the glow of Shell Mound. Laura, I have to believe, is a stand-in for Welty herself, because she has some of the more intense, self-aware moments in the book, and grows up in Jackson.
The most important outsider, for the plot of the novel, is Troy Flavin, the young overseer who's from the mountains. He's to marry Dabney, and for quite a while, we wonder what she sees in him, except that he's a lone figure on a tall horse, riding the cotton fields. Then, just before the wedding rehearsal, Troy deals with violence among the Negro workers, and we appreciate his nerve and strength. He also loves his little mammy who sends the wedding couple some of her beautiful quilts. How can a little woman "no higher than a grasshopper," he wonders, have sewn those thousands of stitches to make "Snow on the Mountain," and "Hearts and Gizzards." If I'm not smiling through a lot of this book, I'm laughing outright. The love and charm in the writing are infectious.
The only thing that subdues my admiration is Welty's treatment of the Negroes. Set in 1923 and written in 1946, the novel treats race relations gently--there's one scene of violence, and many affectionate portraits of the house servants. Clearly they hold the esteem of the white clan. A few are outsiders, just like some of the whites. Pinchy is "coming through." I have no idea what this means except that Pinchy wanders in the heat, staring blindly ahead of her, unable to work, or talk. Then there's the old nurse Partheenie (I'm guessing on the spelling of these names since I've only heard the book, not read it on the page.) Partheenie brought up first-born Shelly, and now in her regal purple, taller than most others of either race, she carries a dignity that speaks to an ancient clan somewhere else across wide water.
Faulkner's The Sound and the Fury, written in 1928, portrays house servants with greater depth and self-awareness. The final section of this novel, devoted to the Negro matriarch Dilsey, is one of the finest portraits ever written of one who superficially has no power, yet through unstinting effort, faith and love keeps her white and black family together. Faulkner grasped a truth about the South which Welty does not entertain which is that the culture rides on the backs of both races and each is noble and fallible and often self-destructive. But Welty is writing pastoral comedy; Faulkner, tragedy. I've recently listened to The Sound and the Fury, and though I marvel at the invention and four sustained voices of its structure, yet I find myself sometimes bored by each section's narrow focus, except for the last, which is Dilsey's. There is no such narrow intensity about Delta Wedding. Its ability to charm, to stretch our thoughts to the stars, remains undiminished.
Among the top ten novels I listen to on disc over and over, Eudora Welty's Delta Wedding gives me the most sustained pleasure. I admire Welty's long short stories and much shorter novel, "The Optimist's Daughter," which won the Pulitzer Prize. But for repeated pleasure, for sweep and quirky charm, for scene painting and character portraits, for deep immersion in a lost way of life, this American novel compares with Tolstoy.
The Yazoo Delta is north of the Gulf of Mexico, north of Faulkner country, Jackson, Mississippi, and east of Ole Man River. The Scotch descendants who people Shell Mound plantation, with its attendant others, The Grove, and Marmion, are a clan in the truest sense of the word. Nearly every reference in their huge and lively world is contained within their Fairchild clan. At its head are three brothers, two of whom--Denis and George--fought in the "War" (World War One). It is 1923.
The wedding of the title involves Dabney Fairchild, second oldest daughter of this intensely blond, straight-haired, wildly happy and free-spirited clan. Into this world comes an outsider cousin, Laura McRaven, whose mother has just died in Jackson. Her mother was one of the Fairchild sisters--including Tempie, Primrose, Jim Allen--sisters to the luminous brothers Denis who died, George who returned, and Battle who never left because (I assume) he is the head of this huge clan of wife and children, Negroes and cotton fields, overseer and village grocers.
The emotional center of the novel is a female trio: Ellen, the Virginia mother of the clan, Dabney the bride, and "little Laura McRaven," who is 9. We enter the delta on the "Yellow Dog" train, riding "up" from Jackson with Laura. Right away, precise details draw us in: Mr. Doolittle, the conductor, comes through the car and snatches the tickets he's stuck in people's hat brims. Right away we're tossed into a clan so numerous we ride high in a wonderfully springy blanket of names and antics. Children poke straws down "dooddle bug holes." Roxy, the main servant, throws her apron over her head and rushes in, crying "Bird in de house, bird in de house." Ellen gathers up Bluette, her 3 year old, and croons her a dream to put her down for a nap. The dream is of "Momma's little pin she lost." Ellen, so mild, so busy, dreams mistakes in the account books, the exact place where she's lost this little garnet pin, a present from her husband Battle during their courting days.
To fuel the story, there have to be outsiders and outlaws in the simplest sense: beyond the law of the clan. Some are "teeched" like Cousin Maureen who adds an "l" to every word and has wild outbursts of destruction. Some are outside the Fairchild bounty and extravagance--such as Robie Reeves, once a clerk at Fairchild town grocery, now miraculously married to golden-boy George. (Welty's scene of Robie swimming in her bra and panties, cavorting in golden spray with George, is one of the most beautifully handled evocations of sexual play I've ever read.) Then there's Laura herself--though by birth part of the clan, yet the place where she'll return, i.e. the Jackson of her small family, with only herself and her father, has a seriousness which hovers outside the glow of Shell Mound. Laura, I have to believe, is a stand-in for Welty herself, because she has some of the more intense, self-aware moments in the book, and grows up in Jackson.
The most important outsider, for the plot of the novel, is Troy Flavin, the young overseer who's from the mountains. He's to marry Dabney, and for quite a while, we wonder what she sees in him, except that he's a lone figure on a tall horse, riding the cotton fields. Then, just before the wedding rehearsal, Troy deals with violence among the Negro workers, and we appreciate his nerve and strength. He also loves his little mammy who sends the wedding couple some of her beautiful quilts. How can a little woman "no higher than a grasshopper," he wonders, have sewn those thousands of stitches to make "Snow on the Mountain," and "Hearts and Gizzards." If I'm not smiling through a lot of this book, I'm laughing outright. The love and charm in the writing are infectious.
The only thing that subdues my admiration is Welty's treatment of the Negroes. Set in 1923 and written in 1946, the novel treats race relations gently--there's one scene of violence, and many affectionate portraits of the house servants. Clearly they hold the esteem of the white clan. A few are outsiders, just like some of the whites. Pinchy is "coming through." I have no idea what this means except that Pinchy wanders in the heat, staring blindly ahead of her, unable to work, or talk. Then there's the old nurse Partheenie (I'm guessing on the spelling of these names since I've only heard the book, not read it on the page.) Partheenie brought up first-born Shelly, and now in her regal purple, taller than most others of either race, she carries a dignity that speaks to an ancient clan somewhere else across wide water.
Faulkner's The Sound and the Fury, written in 1928, portrays house servants with greater depth and self-awareness. The final section of this novel, devoted to the Negro matriarch Dilsey, is one of the finest portraits ever written of one who superficially has no power, yet through unstinting effort, faith and love keeps her white and black family together. Faulkner grasped a truth about the South which Welty does not entertain which is that the culture rides on the backs of both races and each is noble and fallible and often self-destructive. But Welty is writing pastoral comedy; Faulkner, tragedy. I've recently listened to The Sound and the Fury, and though I marvel at the invention and four sustained voices of its structure, yet I find myself sometimes bored by each section's narrow focus, except for the last, which is Dilsey's. There is no such narrow intensity about Delta Wedding. Its ability to charm, to stretch our thoughts to the stars, remains undiminished.
Wednesday, August 8, 2012
Margotlog: Waste/Waist
Margotlog: Waste/Waist
English is full of such wonderful sound-alike, but mean-different words. And I pounce on them occasionally when like these--waste/waist--they hit a gong in my head.
ITEM: In my walks around the neighborhood--beautiful evenings, balmy as milk, and scented with phlox--I happen upon cars/riders idling. Most recently, an empty car pulled into a driveway near my house--windows open, a gaggle of people sitting a few feet away who kindly apologized for the car blocking my way. I paused in front of them: "Would you mind if I asked you something?" I said. "Why do you have your car running if you're not in it?"
They had the good sense to act a bit shocked that I'd trespass on private behavior (most Americans think the way they drive is private behavior). Then a lovely woman with her arms around a child answered, "If I turn it off, I can't get it started. It stalls."
This was not a lippy brush-off, but it did sound fishy. Yet, who was I to engage about the state of her car repair. OR to question her veracity. "That's too bad," I said, and walked around the spewing car toward home. The other two times I've tried this tactic this summer--once with a huge SUV idling/spewing in front of a house with a woman in the passenger seat, the other in a noon parking lot, windows rolled up, guy behind the wheel, playing with some hand-held device--I've either been brushed off--"OH, he's coming back in a minute!" or--ignored when I knocked on the window.
Idling wastes gas and it also spews CO2 into the environment. Gas wastage is a private matter, but spewing CO2 is public. Global warming affects us all.
ITEM: Here's another spin-off. Many of my mid-level writing students at a mid-level, four-year college which shall remain nameless are single mothers, often African-American, with passels of children. They are often slightly or grossly overweight. They also hold down full-time jobs. When time comes to write their big research paper, they've already had an earful and eyeful on the connection between American corn farming (See the great documentary "King Corn), the corn syrup it produces, and the outrageous amount of fast-food/corn-sweetened colas Americans consume, which feeds this country's epidemic of obesity and diabetes.
I encourage them to begin their papers with a personal depiction of the problem they'll discuss. Often what they show is a frantic life-style, a mother at the wheel of an enormous car pulled into a burger drive-up window, and ordering big and bigger burgers, plus tall tall full-strength colas. The food is relatively cheap, quick, and they can eat it on the run, i.e. meaning there is no physical exercise involved.
This is a horrible syndrome. The documentary movie "King Corn" slyly but effectively shows how devastating to health is the combo of no exercise, inbibing corn-syrup sweetened colas, and corn-fed beef (far higher in fat than grass-fed beef--see the movie to understand why). Yet I understand why it happens, especially with this particular population: the single mothers are desperately trying to better themselves, yet their adult responsibilities stretch across several generations. They are often working full time in relatively low-paying jobs. Their cars are as much their homes as whatever apartment they inhabit. And their lives are so fast-paced they can't "afford" the time to walk to the store. Not to mention that with busing their children likely do not walk to school.
These two bad bad habits circle like noxious whirl-pools:
ITEM: suburbanization and lack of urban mass transit put millions of Americans in their cars for long commutes. These shorten their time at home for cooking decent meals, walking in the evening with their children.
ITEM: Hours spent "in transit" thins a sense of community, not to mention the faceless sameness of so many suburban developments.Think about it: if most families are working far from home, and spend little time in their neighborhoods, they not only gain weight, but they lose a sense of shared fate. CARS FOSTER A SENSE OF UNIQUENESS, SOLITUDE, and IRRESPONSIBILITY. Forgive me. It sounds as though I hate suburbs, though I spent some of my childhood in one-in-the-making outside Charleston, South Carolina. But we had only one car and my father drove it across the long Cooper River Bridge into Charleston every day. I ALWAYS walked to school, from first grade through 12th. And I was not a thin kid. But there were no fast-food joints in the 1950s and early 60s. No colas ever entered our house. To buy a cola my teen friends and I had to walk blocks to the drugstore. At home we ate peanut butter sandwiches--not lowfat but better fat than corn-fed beef burgers. We drank lemonade by the gallons through those long southern summers.
ITEM: During long commutes, cars sit in traffic and idle (unless they're hybrids which blessedly shut off when they're stopped). Thus IDLING BEGINS TO SEEM NORMAL, if normal is defined as a norm, a shared experience, an accomplished fact. You stop being aware of it. It stops being something you might question or change.
The ramifications are probably endless. But consider this last tidbit: In the mid-19th century, sharp-shooters took trains across the prairies. From the trains they shot buffalo in such numbers that this practice essentially helped make the animal disappear from large parts of its range. Here's what I notice: a self-contained, speeding vehicle was used to create enormous environmental damage. The perpetrators came from elsewhere; they were not dependent on or familiar with what they destroyed. And they left immediately as they committed this predation.The sense of using enormous power in a scot-free manner strikes me as quite similar to Americans driving their cars long distances in daily commutes. They "pass through," they do not immediately or obviously suffer the consequences of their behavior. They feel entitled by their speed (despite those traffic jams) and power. They are, as we used to say, "flying high."
EXCEPT that lately those car-riders are beefing up. The "chickens are coming home to roost,"
English is full of such wonderful sound-alike, but mean-different words. And I pounce on them occasionally when like these--waste/waist--they hit a gong in my head.
ITEM: In my walks around the neighborhood--beautiful evenings, balmy as milk, and scented with phlox--I happen upon cars/riders idling. Most recently, an empty car pulled into a driveway near my house--windows open, a gaggle of people sitting a few feet away who kindly apologized for the car blocking my way. I paused in front of them: "Would you mind if I asked you something?" I said. "Why do you have your car running if you're not in it?"
They had the good sense to act a bit shocked that I'd trespass on private behavior (most Americans think the way they drive is private behavior). Then a lovely woman with her arms around a child answered, "If I turn it off, I can't get it started. It stalls."
This was not a lippy brush-off, but it did sound fishy. Yet, who was I to engage about the state of her car repair. OR to question her veracity. "That's too bad," I said, and walked around the spewing car toward home. The other two times I've tried this tactic this summer--once with a huge SUV idling/spewing in front of a house with a woman in the passenger seat, the other in a noon parking lot, windows rolled up, guy behind the wheel, playing with some hand-held device--I've either been brushed off--"OH, he's coming back in a minute!" or--ignored when I knocked on the window.
Idling wastes gas and it also spews CO2 into the environment. Gas wastage is a private matter, but spewing CO2 is public. Global warming affects us all.
ITEM: Here's another spin-off. Many of my mid-level writing students at a mid-level, four-year college which shall remain nameless are single mothers, often African-American, with passels of children. They are often slightly or grossly overweight. They also hold down full-time jobs. When time comes to write their big research paper, they've already had an earful and eyeful on the connection between American corn farming (See the great documentary "King Corn), the corn syrup it produces, and the outrageous amount of fast-food/corn-sweetened colas Americans consume, which feeds this country's epidemic of obesity and diabetes.
I encourage them to begin their papers with a personal depiction of the problem they'll discuss. Often what they show is a frantic life-style, a mother at the wheel of an enormous car pulled into a burger drive-up window, and ordering big and bigger burgers, plus tall tall full-strength colas. The food is relatively cheap, quick, and they can eat it on the run, i.e. meaning there is no physical exercise involved.
This is a horrible syndrome. The documentary movie "King Corn" slyly but effectively shows how devastating to health is the combo of no exercise, inbibing corn-syrup sweetened colas, and corn-fed beef (far higher in fat than grass-fed beef--see the movie to understand why). Yet I understand why it happens, especially with this particular population: the single mothers are desperately trying to better themselves, yet their adult responsibilities stretch across several generations. They are often working full time in relatively low-paying jobs. Their cars are as much their homes as whatever apartment they inhabit. And their lives are so fast-paced they can't "afford" the time to walk to the store. Not to mention that with busing their children likely do not walk to school.
These two bad bad habits circle like noxious whirl-pools:
ITEM: suburbanization and lack of urban mass transit put millions of Americans in their cars for long commutes. These shorten their time at home for cooking decent meals, walking in the evening with their children.
ITEM: Hours spent "in transit" thins a sense of community, not to mention the faceless sameness of so many suburban developments.Think about it: if most families are working far from home, and spend little time in their neighborhoods, they not only gain weight, but they lose a sense of shared fate. CARS FOSTER A SENSE OF UNIQUENESS, SOLITUDE, and IRRESPONSIBILITY. Forgive me. It sounds as though I hate suburbs, though I spent some of my childhood in one-in-the-making outside Charleston, South Carolina. But we had only one car and my father drove it across the long Cooper River Bridge into Charleston every day. I ALWAYS walked to school, from first grade through 12th. And I was not a thin kid. But there were no fast-food joints in the 1950s and early 60s. No colas ever entered our house. To buy a cola my teen friends and I had to walk blocks to the drugstore. At home we ate peanut butter sandwiches--not lowfat but better fat than corn-fed beef burgers. We drank lemonade by the gallons through those long southern summers.
ITEM: During long commutes, cars sit in traffic and idle (unless they're hybrids which blessedly shut off when they're stopped). Thus IDLING BEGINS TO SEEM NORMAL, if normal is defined as a norm, a shared experience, an accomplished fact. You stop being aware of it. It stops being something you might question or change.
The ramifications are probably endless. But consider this last tidbit: In the mid-19th century, sharp-shooters took trains across the prairies. From the trains they shot buffalo in such numbers that this practice essentially helped make the animal disappear from large parts of its range. Here's what I notice: a self-contained, speeding vehicle was used to create enormous environmental damage. The perpetrators came from elsewhere; they were not dependent on or familiar with what they destroyed. And they left immediately as they committed this predation.The sense of using enormous power in a scot-free manner strikes me as quite similar to Americans driving their cars long distances in daily commutes. They "pass through," they do not immediately or obviously suffer the consequences of their behavior. They feel entitled by their speed (despite those traffic jams) and power. They are, as we used to say, "flying high."
EXCEPT that lately those car-riders are beefing up. The "chickens are coming home to roost,"
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