42 and Accidental Racist

I heard the Accidental Racist shortly before going to see 42.  42 is the movie about Jackie Robinson's first year with the Dodgers and all the racism he faced as the first black player in the major leagues.  It was 1947. 

The weight of racism is shown as crushing.  White and Colored bathrooms in the South.  Blacks can't stay in white hotels even in many parts of the North.  Branch Ricky, the Dodger owner who decides he wants to bring up a black player - well colored or Negro in those days - has his manager kicked out of baseball by the commissioner of baseball as retaliation.  The other Dodger players wrote up a petition against playing with a black player.   And the Philadelphia Phillies manager Ben Chapman hurls epithets at Robinson that were nastier than the balls his pitchers hurl at Robinson's head.

To whites it wasn't crushing.  It was normal.  It was how things were.  Natural.  They weren't racist.  The other players slowly began to get it when the Philadelphia hotel they always stayed in told them their reservations had been canceled because they had a black player on the team.  Some of them reacted at first by blaming Robinson.  But after Chapmen's tirade on the field, one of the Dodger players finally walks over to Chapmen and tells him off.  Because the team is affected by the racism against Robinson, the other players begin to get it.  Peewee Reese, a player I got to see when the Dodgers moved out to Los Angeles in the 50's, plays a pivotal role in 'learning' about racism and how to stand up to it.  I'll leave it like that so as not to spoil it for those who haven't seen the movie. 

After we saw the film, I thought about the responses I've heard about other historical movies:  "Well, that's all in the past.  We don't have racism any more." This wasn't that long ago, it happened in my lifetime, though before I was old enough to know anything about it.




Like Robinson's teammates on the Dodgers who are only discovering racism through Robinson, Paisley has no idea that a Confederate flag has a negative meaning until the clerk at Starbucks reacts.  The flag is a powerful symbol, not of personal prejudice, but of institutional racism.  And while slavery ended, it was quickly replaced by an oppressive set of laws and practices that made blacks second class citizens to all the whites.  And when the most overt signs of legal barriers to blacks were dismantled - separate water fountains and bathrooms, separate schools and pools, etc. - there were still plenty of institutional barriers - financial barriers like redlining by banks and realtors, educational barriers, employment barriers, and marriage barriers to name some of the most significant, that made the black path to the American dream much, much harder.

Accidental Racist is taking a lot of hits from detractors.  Here's an example from Conservative Blog Central that has the "I'm not responsible for history" theme: 

Mr. Paisley is typical of white left-wingers who think this country is horrible because of blips in the past where we weren't on our best behavior or living up to our ideals. Jim Crow laws were awful. Segregation, etc., all of it was bad, and an affront to what this country says it stands for. But we reversed course long ago. A lot of men died to reverse that course, but nobody seems to remember that. Any racism that continues in this country is the fault of individuals, and I refuse to join the pity party and say that slavery is my fault.

No, you aren't responsible for slavery, but if you have ancestors who benefited from slave labor you've inherited some of that benefit either in actual tangible wealth or in an inherited sense of entitlement and superiority.  A lot more people than slave owners benefited.  People involved in shipping benefited.  Even if they didn't carry slaves, those ships that did were not in competition with those that didn't.  Merchants benefited if they  made profits from goods that slaves helped produce.  Consumers got cheaper goods.  But even if there was no tangible benefit, whites everywhere inherited the belief they were superior to blacks.  Even liberal whites. It permeates our culture. 

The point isn't to make people feel guilty.  Rather it's to just recognize the injustice that still exists and help to dismantle those institutions that put blacks at a disadvantage. 

Leonard Pitts makes this point at the end of this critique of Paisley's assertion that whites can't walk in black skin:

But the song also fails in a more subtle, yet substantive way. Twice, Paisley speaks of the impossibility of imagining life from the African-American perspective: “I try to put myself in your shoes,” he sings, “and that’s a good place to begin, but it ain’t like I can walk a mile in someone else’s skin.” As if African-American life is so mysterious and exotic, so alien to all other streams of American life, that unless you were born to it, you cannot hope to comprehend it.

That’ a copout — and a disappointment. Say what you will about his song, but also say this: Paisley is in earnest. His heart — this is neither boilerplate nor faint praise — is in the right place. Credit him for the courage, rare in music, almost unheard of in country music, to confront this most thankless of topics. But courage and earnestness will net him nothing without honesty.

Every day, we imagine the lives of people who aren’t like us. Those who care to try seem to have no trouble empathizing with, say, Cuban exiles separated from family, or Muslims shunned by Islamophobes. For a songwriter, inhabiting other people’s lives is practically the job description. Bruce Springsteen was not a Vietnam vet when he sang Born In The USA.

But where African-American life is concerned, one frequently hears Paisley’s lament: how a white man is locked into his own perspective. That’s baloney. Both history and the present day are replete with white people — Clifford Durr, Thaddeus Stevens, Eleanor Roosevelt, Leon Litwack, Tim Wise — who seemed to have no great difficulty accessing black life.

One suspects one difference is that they refused to be hobbled by white guilt, the reflexive need to deny the undeniable, defend the indefensible, explain the inexplicable. They declined to be paralyzed by the baggage of history. One suspects they felt not guilt, but simple human obligation.

We Are Respectable Negroes blog has a long and interesting discussion on this.  Here are a few parts:

"In the post-civil rights era, white folks apparently just want "forgiveness" and to "get past" this race stuff. Black and brown folks want some type of justice and an acknowledgement of how structural inequality along the color line persists into the present. The former want to limit racism to "mean words" and "hurt feelings." The latter would like to discuss substantive efforts at improving live chances and the social inequalities caused by racism, both structural and inter-personal. . .

Because America is "a country without a history"--perhaps except for black and brown folks--there is no reasonable way to negotiate this impasse.

This dynamic is made even more complicated by how white privilege allows white folks to conveniently discover their own history on terms that are amenable to them.

This move is often used to blunt conversations about how racial inequality is trans-historical with a living past and present, one that shapes American society even in the post-civil rights era."

Despite these criticisms, Accidental Racist at least cracks open the door on a subject many whites refuse to acknowledge - the continued existence of racism.  Paisley, like the Dodger players for the first time seeing racism from the receiving end, is now at a point where you can have a conversation that gets a little deeper into what Confederate flags symbolize to African-Americans, about how racism isn't simply about epithets, but more importantly about the legal, educational, and financial infrastructures that make being white a lot easier than being black.  And Paisley sings

"Lookin' like I got a lot to learn, but from my point of view . . ."

Recognizing he's got more to learn and that what he believes is "my point of view" rather than "reality" is a big deal.  It's the start to remodeling one's world view.  

Do go see 42 and take the kids above seven. 
And listen to Accidental Racist. 

Why Did The Cellist Use Pillows To Hold Up Her Cello?

When I'm Outside, people often ask me, "So, what's there to do in Anchorage?"  Well, here's some of what I've done the last two days.  And because this is Anchorage, I actually know some of these people.  

Friday night we went to an exquisite baroque cello concert.  Tanya Tomkins (you can hear snippets at the link) was accompanied by University of Alaska Anchorage music professor John Lutterman.  The picture was during a pause when they were answering questions from the audience.

Tanya preempted the question about the pillows.  These are baroque cellos so they don't have endpins like modern cellos.  Normally they are held between the legs as John is doing in the picture, but Tanya had a back problem last year and started using the pillows and she likes it.  And I thought the music was sublime.  So did others in the audience including some who actually know something about music. 

John also raised the question of whether his modern copy of a baroque cello might be more authentic than Tanya's 300 year old cello.  After all, he said, they didn't use 300 year old cellos in Bach's day. 

We heard two Bach suites (1 and 2)  for cello, a Vivaldi sonata, a Geminiani sonata, and a canon by Gabrielli.   The music flowed from the stage and caressed my music receptors. 


Saturday morning I went to a Citizens Climate Lobby (CCL) meeting.  This group is so incredibly well organized and informed.  We meet monthly and teleconference into an international (includes Canada) phone call and each month there are more chapters (92 Saturday.)  The mission is minimize the damage caused the planet by carbon based fuels.  The specific focus now is to get a carbon tax passed.  Local chapters all over the country educate their Congress members and Senators on how a carbon tax uses market principles to correct a market failure - the negative externalities caused by oil and gas.

Anchorage Climate Change Chapter Participating In National Teleconference

The speaker was Sam Daley-Harris on his updated book Reclaiming Our Democracy which will come out this summer.  He's added a chapter about CCL.  In addition to helping members get expertise on the various climate change issues, the group also talks about political strategy, and personal issues like how to get outside one's comfort zone to do what needs to be done.  For those who feel there's nothing they can do to overcome the numerous problems facing humans today, I'd strongly recommend listening to the audio of Saturday's conference call  which you can hear here.  (I couldn't get it using Firefox but I could in Safari.)  The intro to Sam starts about 8 minutes in. 


And Saturday night we walked through the new snow to the UAA concert featuring Ramblin' Jack Elliot, Dan Bern, and Alaskan musician, Doug Geeting.  Here are all three together on stage at the end of the concert.  I've been listening a lot to Dan's 2 Foot Tall album, but he didn't play anything from that.  This was a Woody Guthrie tribute concert. 

Geeting (l), Elliot (c), Bern (r)

It was good to have Dan back in Anchorage again after last October's songwriters' workshop.  

There was an opera and two different small venue plays that we had to skip cause you just can't do everything.  I did manage to bake a couple of loaves of bread. 

Jesus Is Deep Inside Me, And He Ain't Pulling Out"

That was probably the most over-the-top lyric of any of the songs in Paradise, which we saw last night, at the Ruskin Theatre in the Santa Monica Airport.   But it's the sort of humor this play relied on. 

The fact that we can walk over in ten minutes, and its intimate 90 or so seats, makes this our go to theater when we're visiting my mom.

J felt all the female characters were awful.

• A sparkly prostitute turned Jesus freak, named Chastity Jones. 
• A full figured lusty disgusty dynamo with a muddy face who tells everyone that just like Jesus, she was born in a barn named Cinderella Tiara Applebaum (Cyndi).
• A ratings obsessed reality show producer named Rebecca Washington.

I wasn't quite sure how to react to her comment.  I hadn't seen it that way.  Was I blind?  The other female character, Louanne Knight, preserving her dead mom's legacy by keeping the small dead coal mine town general store running and taking care of the the sundry inhabitants, was pretty close to normal and even noble. 

And the men were all very broad caricatures as well. 

• Mayor and Tater Gayheart - the easy to sway mayor who wants to bring money and attention to his town, plus his black son who wants to be an IT billionaire, not the broadway musical star his dad wants him to be.  And no, the name isn't accidental. 
• Old Man Johnson - the bluesgrass banjo and fiddle player is right out of Deliverance
• Rev. John Cyrus Mountain - the fast talking preacher who's sold his reality show idea to Hollywood so he could build his mega church above the coal mine.
• Peter Silverman, Rebecca's cameraman who just keeps the camera running. 

I think in farce broad character stereotypes are probably ok.  The audience knows each type is being made fun of.  Though J's comments are making me think about this.

All the cast were good.  Jonathan Root acting and singing as the Reverend (and a few other brief roles) stood out for me. And while they could all sing, Michael Rubenstone (the cameraman) had a really beautiful voice I wanted to hear more of.

Essentially this was The Music Man, with Harold Hill being the Rev. bringing in both a megachurch and reality tv to River City instead of a band.  And I don't foresee too many high schools putting on this musical.   Louanne is Marian the Librarian, who sees through the Rev who brings his own sweety with him (Chastity).  It's the cameraman who loses his heart to Louanne.

This is billed as a world premiere and it was, they said, the sixth or seventh sold out performance.  The music keeps your foot tapping and covers a lot of little flaws, but it's no Music Man.  In the end though, I have to admit, I was really getting upset as Louanne's resolve to keep reality tv out of Paradise is broken down - clearly the play had hooked me.

Set and Audience for Paradise just before the play began

Kid Music For Adults - Z and I Bond With Dan Bern's '2 feet tall'

Dan Bern was already my favorite contemporary song writer/singer before I took his songwriting class last fall.  

At that time I bought his CD "2 feet tall" knowing I'd have someone to listen to it with.

It's his first children's album, inspired by his own daughter.

Z and I listened to it as much as I could get away with while we were in Seattle with her.  The music sounds simple, but the melodies proved tricky when I tried to sing along, or worse, sing them on my own.  And the lyrics are fine for a baby or three year old, but the parents will hear their own stories.  For instance  'Milk' - has a chorus for the baby and then there's more for the parents which the baby will eventually grow to understand.  Here's a bit:

milk milk milk milk
milk milk milk milk
just milk (slurp slurp)
just milk (slurp slurp)

there’s kung pao chicken and garlic naan
green beans, walnuts, custard, flan
fish that’s filleted and beef that’s ground
but for now you’re a milk hound

And I had great appreciation for this song on Z's 6th week birthday:
you never give me sass or walk out of the room
you never chase the kittens around with a broom
you never say, I’m not coming in from the cold 
perfect little angel
6 weeks old
you never talk back to me
or monopolize the phone
you never say go away leave me alone
you never demand slippers made of gold
perfect little angel
6 weeks old

The 12 year old was too old for this - "why are you listening to this stupid stuff about the monkey and the kangaroo going to tea?"  And Dan's Dylanish voice didn't appeal to him either.  But as I said, the music is surprisingly complex - just try to sing it.  Dan's a very talented, imaginative, and sly singer. 

You grew, you grew, 
You grew you grew you grew
You grew, you grew, 
You grew you grew you grew

No authorities were notified,
No papers were filed
We’ll keep it between us
We’ll keep it on the sly

 But you have to hear these words with the music, and you can listen to short clips here.

Every parent, when alone with their baby, makes up silly songs.  But when a talented singer, songwriter with a wicked imagination does that, it makes a great album.  These are his silly songs.

And there are a lot of songs on this album.  They're each my favorite when they're playing, but here are a couple that have particularly grabbed me:

• 5 Things  - have you ever heard 1-5 sung so sweetly?
• Perfect Little Angel - right through my heart
• You Grew  - great for dancing with your baby to get the milk digested
• Screamin Dreamin - another sweet song to sooth a baby/toddler and any parent or grandparent can appreciate

So, while other people are giving clothes and blankets and Good Night Moon, here's a great gift for new baby. 

And poking around to find the audio I also found out that Dan will be at the Wendy Williamson Auditorium in Anchorage on April 6.   For the rest of you, his schedule (at the link) includes Salt Lake City,  three Colorado concerts, two in Iowa, and Winnipeg. 


BTW, it seems I cut out some of the songs in the image.  Here are the rest:

Watchin Over You

Labor Day

Favorite Cat

Monkey and the Kangaroo

Naked Outside

8 Weeks Old

Tomorrow is Another Day

Lulu's Lullaby 2

"If Love Is Deep Much Can Be Accomplished" Suzuki Plus Benaroya And Chihuly

 We went to a recital that two of the boys played in yesterday at Benaroya Hall.  Not being from Seattle, I had to look him up to find out who he was.  (And since I'm really crunched for time, I'm settling for the Wikipedia bio instead of looking for something better.)

Jack A. Benaroya (July 11, 1921 – May 11, 2012) was a noted philanthropist and prominent civic leader in Seattle, Washington. He supported cultural, educational, and medical groups, with his donations. He attended Seattle's Garfield High School. He was a former director of the Seattle Chamber of Commerce and the United Way of King County (Seattle).
The largest commercial real estate developer in the state of Washington, Benaroya established the family-owned Benaroya Company in 1956. In 1984, the company turned its focus to venture capital investments and philanthropic endeavors. Noted major donations include:

• Benaroya Hall, Seattle, Washington — facility for the Seattle Symphony; opened in 1998
• Benaroya Research Institute, Virginia Mason Medical Center, Seattle; opened in 1999

Benaroya was a supporter of:

• Juvenile Diabetes Foundation International
• The University of Washington Medical Center
• Children's Hospital and Medical Center, Lakeside School
• The Jewish Federation and Council of Seattle

Benaroya was an early investor in Starbucks. (Wikipedia)

This was a Suzuki recital with pianists, violinists, a violist, and a couple of cellists.  Probably around 80-90 kids altogether from four years old to 18.






From The Suzuki Association of the Americas:

"Shinichi Suzuki, the man who developed the Suzuki Method, was born on October 17, 1898, in Nagoya, Japan. He was one of twelve children and his father owned a violin factory. Shinichi and his brothers and sisters played near the factory and saw instruments being made, but the children never realized what beautiful sounds could come from a violin. When he was seventeen, Shinichi heard a recording of Schubert’s Ave Maria, played by a famous violinist named Mischa Elman. He was amazed that a violin could make such a beautiful tone because he had thought it was just a toy!

After this, Shinichi brought a violin home from the factory and taught himself to play. He would listen to a recording and try to imitate what he heard. A few years later he took violin lessons from a teacher in Tokyo. Then, when he was 22 years old, he went to Germany and studied with a famous teacher named Karl Klingler. Shinichi also met his wife Waltraud in Germany. They married and moved back to Japan, where he began to teach violin and play string quartet concerts with his brothers."

If love is deep - from the program

Here's a bit about the method from a different page on the Suzuki association website:

"More than fifty years ago, Japanese violinist Shinichi Suzuki realized the implications of the fact that children the world over learn to speak their native language with ease. He began to apply the basic principles of language acquisition to the learning of music, and called his method the mother-tongue approach. The ideas of parent responsibility, loving encouragement, constant repetition, etc., are some of the special features of the Suzuki approach.

Parent Involvement

As when a child learns to talk, parents are involved in the musical learning of their child. They attend lessons with the child and serve as “home teachers” during the week. One parent often learns to play before the child, so that s/he understands what the child is expected to do. Parents work with the teacher to create an enjoyable learning environment.

The other principles listed (each has more description) include:

• Early Beginning

• Listening

• Repetition

• Encouragement

• Learning with Other Children

• Graded Repertoire  (The description suggests this means steps not evaluation.)
  
• Delayed Reading.
  
  

This system must work, because the music was really good. 



I also noticed in the Bill and Melinda Gates Lobby this gigantic Chihuly chandelier.

 

To get a sense of the size, you can see it in context in the lobby in the lower right of the picture. From that angle it looks a little like a champagne glass.  

Born in 1941 in Tacoma, Washington, Dale Chihuly was introduced to glass while studying interior design at the University of Washington. After graduating in 1965, Chihuly enrolled in the first glass program in the country, at the University of Wisconsin. He continued his studies at the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD), where he later established the glass program and taught for more than a decade.
In 1968, after receiving a Fulbright Fellowship, he went to work at the Venini glass factory in Venice. There he observed the team approach to blowing glass, which is critical to the way he works today. In 1971, Chihuly cofounded Pilchuck Glass School in Washington State. With this international glass center, Chihuly has led the avant-garde in the development of glass as a fine art.
His work is included in more than 200 hundred museum collections worldwide. He has been the recipient of many awards, including eleven honorary doctorates and two fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts. (There's a lot more where this came from on the Chihuly website.)

Phillip King Natural Harpist

I ran into Phillip King and his harp at the Virginia Park Farmers' Market in Santa Monica today.   He's playing tomorrow (Sunday January 13, 2013) at Core Church (Washington and Overland) 8:30am, 10:30am, and 12:30pm services.  So I'm getting this up quickly.

This is not your every day harp music.  The International Harp Museum site says:

"The harp is one of the oldest musical instruments in the world. The earliest harps were developed from the hunting bow. The wall paintings of ancient Egyptian tombs dating from as early as 3000 B.C. show an instrument that closely resembles the hunter's bow, without the pillar that we find in modern harps.
The angled harp came to Egypt from Asia in about 1500 B.C. It was built from a hollow sound-box joined to a straight string-arm at an angle. The strings, possibly made of hair or plant fibre, were attached to the sound-box at one end and tied to the string-arm at the other. The strings were tuned by rotating the knots that held them.

 Celtic harp

During the Middle Ages the pillar was added to support the tension of extra strings. Stiffer string materials like copper and brass were used and these changes enabled the instrument to produce greater volume and a longer-sustaining tone. Paintings of these harps appear in many early manuscripts and their shapes hardly differ from those of the Celtic harps that are still played today."

Phillip said his harp is a Celtic harp.  You can hear him playing on this video I took.








He's got a CD too which you can get at his website universalharp.com.

Famous People Born 1913 Part II: 2 Still Alive And The List

These posts looking back back to see who was born 100 years ago (1908  1909  1910  1911 skipped 1912)  have been fun to do, though they take a lot of time (that's why 1912 never got finished.)  This time I'm doing it in several parts, since each will offer lots to read.  Three things I've found particularly interesting:

1. Seeing the people, born the same year,  in the same cohort, who would have been in the same class at school if they'd lived in the same place, and had the same world events shape their lives.  Yet they have different talents and different interests and they become known for different things.
2. Contemplating mortality.  I order their bios in order of death.  Even though they were all born they same year, they lived from 46 years to, well, two are still alive.  The life lottery beguiles me.  Why do some people only get a short time on earth and others longer? (And, of course, a human lifetime is is just a moment in the history of the world.)
3. Looking into their backgrounds, their family lives, their failures and triumphs.  It raises questions for me about what we think of as important and unimportant in the greater scheme of things.  Unfortunately, this year, it has been hard to find details of early upbringing and personal lives of many of the subjects. 

So, the first post gave a background on the year 1913, including a link to an interesting video with a panel talking about the cultural situation of 1913.  It was very much a time of change.  

This post has video of the two that appear to still be alive, both opera singers, Risë Stevens and Licia Albanese.   You can listen to them as you go through the table with the list in birth order.  When you think about it, as kids, six months age difference means a lot, so for the first 20 years or so, the age difference among them might have been significant. And then, it means nothing.  Especially as those who were older die and their age freezes in time and the younger ones go on living and getting older. 

Finally, I'll have two or three more posts with more information about each person. Looking at their lives, trying to find commonalities and seeing the differences, hopefully finding some insights.  As always, these lists tend to be heavy with white, Western, males, reflecting who has had power and fame - certainly during the lifetime of these folks - in the west. 

This list seems to have more unsavory characters than past lists. 


Two people on the list appear to still be alive:

Risë Stevens



And Licia Albanese






The Chart

People Born 1913 From Oldest to Youngest
Jan-June			June-December
Jan 4	Rosa Parks	Civil Rights	June 14	Gerald Ford	US President
Jan 6	Loretta Young	Actor	June 18	Sammy Cahn	Songwriter
Jan 6	Mary Leaky	Anthropologist	June 18	Red Skelton	Comic
Jan 9	Richard Nixon	US President	July 22	Licia Albanese*	Soprano
Jan 13	Mel Allen	Sportscaster	Aug 16	Menachem Begin	Israeli PM
Jan 14	Woody Hayes	Football Coach	Aug 25	Walt Kelly	Cartoonist
Jan 14	Jimmy Hoffa	Teamsters Boss	Sep 3	Alan Ladd	Actor
Jan 18	Danny Kaye	Actor	Sep 9	Bear Bryant	Football Coach
Feb 25	Jim Backus	Mr. Magoo	Sep 12	Jesse Owens	Track Star
Mar 13	William Casey	CIA Head	Sep 27	Albert Ellis	Psychologist
Mar 22	Lew Wasserman	Film Exec	Sep 29	Stanley Kramer	Film Director
Mar 26	Paul Erdos	Nobel Prize Math	Oct 10	Klaus Barbie	Nazi War Criminal
Mar 30	Richard Helms	CIA Head	Nov 2	Burt Lancaster	Actor
Apr 11	Oleg Cassini	Fashion Designer	Nov 5	Vivien Leigh	Actor
May3	William Inge	Playwright	Nov 7	Albert Camus	Novelist
May 16	Woody Herman	Jazz Clarinet	Nov 9	Hedy Lamarr	Actor
May 20	William Hewlett	Tech Exec	Nov 22	Benjamin Britten	Composer
June 11	Vince Lombardi	Football Coach	Dec 1	Mary Martin	Actor
June 11	Risë Stevens	Mezzo-Soprano	Dec 12	Delmore Schwartz	Poet
June 12	Willis Lamb	Physicist	Dec 18	Willy Brandt	German PM
June 13	Maersk McKinny Møller	Shipping Exec

HTML Tables

Part 3:  The list, with bios and pics, starting with the youngest one to die - Albert Camus.

Famous People Born In 1913 Part I: The Events of 1913

As 2013 opens, it's instructive to look back 100 years to 1913.  Particularly I want to look at some of the people whose lives impacted the world enough to gain widespread attention.  From the lists I've found, I've narrowed the list to 44 people who I was aware of or who seem to have made important contributions even if their names weren't well known.

The list has few giant events - but it was a year building up to World War I.  The Balkan War was ending. (pdf)

First though, let's review some of the things that happened that year:

Feb 17 - March 15 - Armory Show in New York - Duchamps Nude Descending a Staircase
Feb 25th - 16th Amendment ratified, authorizing income tax
Mar 4th - 1st US law regulating the shooting of migratory birds passed
Mar 4th - Woodrow Wilson inaugurated as 28th president
Mar 12th - Foundation stone of the Australian capital in Canberra laid
Mar 14th - John D Rockefeller gives $100 million to Rockefeller Foundation
Mar 21st - -26] Flood in Ohio, kills 400
Apr 8th - 17th amendment, requiring direct election of senators, ratified
Apr 9th - Brooklyn Dodger's Ebbets Field opens, Phillies win 1-0
Apr 21st - Gideon Sundback of Sweden patents the zipper
May 7th - British House of Commons rejects woman's right to vote
May 12th - Harry Green runs world record marathon (2:38:16.2)
May 13th - 1st four engine aircraft built and flown (Igor Sikorsky-Russia)
May 19th - Webb Alien Land-Holding Bill passes, forbidding Japanese from owning land
May 26th - Actors' Equity Association forms (NYC)
May 29th - Igor Stravinsky's ballet score The Rite of Spring is premiered in Paris, provoking a riot.
May 30th - New country of Albania, forms
Jun 2nd - 1st strike settlement mediated by US Dept of Labor-RR clerks
Jun 4th - Suffragette Emily Davison steps in front of King George V's horse Anmer at the Epsom Derby
Jun 5th - Dutch Disability laws go into effect
Jun 16th - South-African parliament forbids blacks owning land
Jun 21st - Tiny Broadwick is 1st woman to parachute from an airplane
Jul 3rd - Common tern banded in Maine; found dead in 1919 in Africa (1st bird known to have crossed the Atlantic)
Jul 3rd - Confederate veterans at the Great Reunion of 1913 reenact Pickett's Charge; upon reaching the high-water mark of the Confederacy they are met by the outstretched hands of friendship from Union survivors.
Jul 10th - Death Valley, California hits 134 °F (~56.7 °C), which is the highest temperature recorded in the United States.
Jul 19th - Billboard publishes earliest known "Last Week's 10 Best Sellers among Popular Songs" Malinda's Wedding Day is #1
Jul 23rd - Arabs attack Jewish community of Rechovot Palestine
Jul 30th - Conclusion of 2nd Balkan War
Aug 13th - Invention of stainless steel by Harry Brearley.
Aug 16th - Tōhoku Imperial University of Japan (modern day Tōhoku University) admits its first female students.
Aug 19th - Frenchman Pégoud makes 1st parachute jump in Europe
Aug 28th - Queen Wilhelmina opens Peace Palace (The Hague)
Sep 10th - Lincoln Highway opens as 1st paved coast-to-coast highway
Sep 29th - Sam S Shubert Theater opens at 225 W 44th St NYC
Oct 7th - Henry Ford institutes moving assembly line
Oct 14th - Explosion in coal mine at Cardiff kills 439
Oct 22nd - Coal mine explosion kills 263 at Dawson New Mexico
Nov 6th - Mohandas K Gandhi arrested for leading Indian miners march in S Africa
Nov 13th - 1st modern elastic brassiere patented by Mary Phelps Jacob
Nov 17th - 1st US dental hygienists course forms, Bridgeport, Ct
Dec 1st - 1st drive-up gasoline station opens (Pitts)
Dec 1st - Continuous moving assembly line introduced by Ford (car every 2:38)
Dec 8th - Construction starts on Palace of Fine Arts in SF
Dec 12th - "Mona Lisa," stolen from Louvre Museum in 1911, recovered
Dec 12th - Hebrew language officially used to teach in Palestinian schools
Dec 13th - Mona Lisa stolen in Aug 1911 returned to Louvre
Dec 16th - Charlie Chaplin began his film career at Keystone for $150 a week
Dec 21st - 1st crossword puzzle (with 32 clues) printed in NY World
Dec 23rd - President Woodrow Wilson signs Federal Reserve Act into law
Other Events in 1913:
Ernest Rutherford and Niels Bohr describe atomic structure.
Nobel Prize for Literature: Rabindranath Tagore (India)
US Population: 97,225,000

List sources: historyorb and  Infoplease.  I did find some errors, but haven't double checked every date, so there may still be a few.

Culturally, this was, apparently a major year of change.  Stravinsky's Rite of Spring was introduced and the Armory Show in New York introduced many European artists to the US.  

The Green Space offers a 70 minute video discussion of this tumultuous cultural environment of 1913.  Well worth listening to to get a sense of the cultural upheavels of 1913.  At about 50 minutes in, the discuss 1913's similarities to and differences from today. 

Post II has video of the two folks that appear to still be alive (both opera singers), Risë Stevens and Licia Albanese.   It also has the list of all 44 that I chose in birth order.  So the 'oldest' born January 4, 1913, Rosa Parks, starts the list.

Post III includes short bios and images in the order of their deaths, beginning with Albert Camus (1960) and ending with William Casey (1987).  Since these posts are so long, I'll divide them up into shorter posts.

Post IV has a video of Ruth Ungar Marx who's planning to celebrate her 100th birthday on May 26, 2013.

Goodbye to Ravi Shankar and Daniel Inouye

There are two classical concerts I can think of that transported me into another world.  Two memorable times when I was transformed from my auditorium seat and disappeared into the music.  One was the year I was a student in Germany.  I was at a concert in a beautiful new auditorium in Florence and David Oistrack played magic on the violin.  The concert ended.  The audience mostly left but there were maybe 15 or 20 other people who must have been inside the music with me who continued to stand in the place and applaud in the now mostly empty auditorium.  And Oistrahk walked back onto the stage and played an encore for this small group.  It was amazing.

A few years later, in Thailand as a Peace Corps volunteer, I learned that Ravi Shankar was giving a concert in one of the hotel ballrooms in Bangkok.  Despite the uncomfortable folding chairs, the sitar strains entered into my body and took me to another world.

Probably my first introduction to Shankar was watching Sanjit Ray's Apu trilogy with my father, though at the time I wasn't aware of who he was or that it was his music in the films.   I became aware of Shankar, as a name and muscian. along with much of the Western world, through George Harrison. I had missed his concert at the Monterrey Pop Music festival, so I made sure I got into this Bangkok concert while I had the chance.  Another magical evening.  Here's some video of Shankar the same year I saw him.

From NY Times Obituary of Inouye

I never was, to my knowledge, in the same room as Daniel Inouye, but I remember 'meeting' him through radio and television when he was a member of the Senate Watergate Committee.  The whole committee was impressive - both Republicans and Democrats took their jobs seriously.  While the Republicans challenged any unsubstantiated comments or charges against Richard Nixon, they didn't deny the truth that was unraveling in the hearings.  They didn't attack their Democratic colleagues or raise red herrings to distract from the focus on the White House and its role in the Watergate break-ins.

 As a young graduate student studying public administration with the summer off, I was mesmerized by the hearings.  I was taken, along with the rest of the nation, deep into the workings of government in a way my classes couldn't match.  And I was watching a Senate committee that was working as it was supposed to - seriously, deliberately, and intelligently.  The committee - Republicans and Democrats - worked together closely to make sure justice was carried out.  We got to know each of the committee members and as a Californian whose knowledge of the South was coverage of the civil rights movement and the violent resistance to integration by many government officials, I discovered that there were indeed intelligent Southerners. 

Daniel Inouye was one of the most junior members, but he stood out as the only person of color on the committee.  He also was missing an arm from a war injury.   He impressed me and the nation with his sober questions and serious dedication to the unpleasant task.   His New York Times obituary says:

In 1973, as a member of the Senate Watergate committee, which investigated illegal activities in President Richard M. Nixon’s 1972 re-election campaign, he won wide admiration for patient but persistent questioning of the former attorney general John N. Mitchell and the White House aides H. R. Haldeman, John D. Ehrlichman and John Dean.

Screenshot of Watergate Committee from MacNeil -Lehrer News on Youtube

The Watergate Hearings are my touchstone against which I compare the Senate and the US House today. If you watched the Watergate Hearings, you understand that despite the political divisions, the Senators at least acted like gentlemen and dealt with facts, even unpleasant ones, with dignity. That's not to say that they didn't scheme behind the scenes. But the Republicans didn't balk and stall because their president was being investigated.  Today's Senators and House members should all have to watch the Watergate hearings and the impeachment hearings to see how they are supposed to act.

Tired of the 21st Century? Go Back In Time Sunday

Time travel at the University of Alaska Anchorage Sunday as the Music Department takes you back a few centuries.

John Lutterman, the cellist, and a member of the new faculty group I'm working with, tells me:

The instruments are all modern reconstructions of instruments from the 16th-18th centuries.  The first half of the program is mostly short pieces from the 16th & 17th centuries by lesser-known composers: Milano, Ortiz, Hume, Simpson, Frescobaldi, Mico, de la Barre, Berteau.  The second half is mostly German high-Baroque: Telemann, Bach, and Handel.

4pm, UAA Theater/Arts Building Sunday, December 2, 2012

Moby Dick at San Francisco Opera

We had some world series the other day, so we should have a little opera.  A friend told us we could get senior rush tickets at 11 am of the day of the performance, so we walked down to the opera house and got in line.  We were in the orchestra, row S, for $30 each.  Student rush tickets are only $25.  And there are also tickets for a standing area for $10. 

Moby Dick was commissioned by the Dallas Opera for the opening of its new opera hall in 2010.  Jake Heggie was asked to write it.  He was at the pre-opera talk an hour before the performance.

You may not take pictures during the performance, but digital imaging and human imagination made made the ship and the ocean real on stage.  Particularly cool was the curved stage with 'steps' built into it.  This allowed cast members to be at different levels of the ship.  It also allowed them to be in rowboats (with the help of digital boat outlines and a digital ocean) and the fall overboard - sliding down the curved part of the stage to the floor.  You can see it in this picture below of Captain Ahab (Jay Hunter Morris) taking a curtain call, without his peg leg.

Here's the whole cast.

 

All the parts are male, but they used a soprano to play the 14 year old Pip.  Heggie explained in the talk that 14 year old boys were not the most reliable, would have to be miked, and his voice would be changing.  Using an older female soprano seemed the obvious solution.  

 Here's Heggie after the talk and before the performance. 

I liked the music, but I have no idea how to discuss it so I won't.  But you can judge for yourself in the Youtube video from UC television.  He goes to the piano to talk about Moby Dick at about 29 minutes. 

Sun, Snow, And Fixing Things Myself

It was a beautiful sunny day yesterday, the third in a row.  Here's a view from the University.

Although I did take my camera to the repair shop this week, I decided to try to fix my own headlight.  The manual helped me get the right bulb.  But what it looks like in the book and what it looks like under the hood are two different things.  Here's the book view:

 Here's what it actually looked like.

 It says to take off the cap that twists.  OK, I was able to figure that much out. And it's off in the picture.   But then it says to pull the wire connection out.  I could see the wires - they aren't shown in the book.  When I try to do the obvious and it doesn't work easily, I worry that I might be doing it wrong and if I try harder I might break something.  I tried to pull the wires connection, but it wasn't moving.  After looking at things several times and finding a head lamp to see it better, I just pulled that black part and it finally came out.

Then that wire thing - #2 in the picture.  Pull down, it says.  (The actual picture is looking down at the parts at issue.)  Well, after lots of head scratching I finally figured out that the wire loop at the bottom of the picture locks the light in place and it pulls out of the white part and pops open so the light can be pulled out.  Maybe figured out is the wrong term.  I played with it, and it just happened.  No real figuring on my part.  Pure trial and error.

From there it was easy.  Take the new bulb out of the package - careful not to touch the bulb itself - and pull the old one out and put the new one in.  Then reconnect the wire that holds the bulb tight.  Then reconnect the colored wires and screw on the cap.  Turn on the engine.  Turn on the lights.  Presto.  It works.

The sun shining through the windows yesterday also screamed loudly that our windows were pretty dirty.  With winter coming soon, I decided to get some of them cleaned up a bit.  A few years ago I bought a window cleaning kit with a nice gadget for scrubbing the windows, some cleaner (a spoonful per gallon), a squeegee, and a pole.  Five windows looked much better in under 30 minutes.  Only a few windows can be opened this way allowing me to clean from inside.


And just now, J called my attention to the fact that it has started to snow.

We're headed to the chamber music concert at the UAA Fine Arts building tonight.  One of the new faculty members in my group will be playing the Bach cello suite, one of my favorites.  7:30pm.  Other faculty string players will perform as well.

Mt. Ash berries with fresh snow

As Close As Most Americans Get to Ballet - Dan Bern on Bowling

Part of the charm of a Dan Bern concert is the chatter between songs and the rapport with the audience.  Out North is a perfect venue because it's so small - even with the extra rows in front it couldn't hold much more than 100.

From the Saturday night concert, here's Dan on bowling.

Dan Bern, My Favorite Songwriter/Singer, Packs Out North Friday Night

As I've said in previous posts this week, I first experienced Dan Bern performing in 1997 at Loussac library.  He blew me away. 

He carries on the tradition of Gutherie and Dylan's songs that commented on the state of the world.  Long narratives in a singing style that . . . well the first time I heard him, he came out and sang, then stopped, and said something like, "Some people say I sound like Dylan . . . but  you don't do you?" with a big grin on his face.

What struck me then was how his songs started with  unexpected premises and then wandered through a stream of conscious jumping from topic to topic, all the while telling the story.  Not unlike some of my blog posts.   "If Marilyn Monroe had married Henry Miller" for example.  These are sophisticated musical musings that are funny, thought provoking and musically seductive.  Sure, everyone knows who Marilyn Monroe is, but you also have to know who Henry Miller was and that Marilyn Monroe was married for a while to Arthur Miller (and who he was).

The Wasteland, one of my favorites from early on, wraps up the dilemmas of an age in evocative words and music that starkly express the darker side of American dream.  It starts:

Wasteland

Sound Clip

I saw the best of my generation playing pinball
Make-up on, all caked up 
Looking like some kind of china doll
With all of Adolf Hitler's moves down cold
As they stood up in front 
Of a rock and roll band
And always moving upward and ever upward
To this gentle golden promised land
With the smartest of them all 
Moonlighting as a word processor
And the strongest of them all 
Checking IDs outside a saloon
And the prettiest of all 
Taking off her clothes
In front of men 
Whose eyes look like they were in some little hick town 
Near Omaha 
Watching the police chief 
Run his car off the side of a bridge

 

He just tells the story and let's the audience work out what it means.

He also has a lot of baseball songs - including one about Pete Rose, the Hall of Fame, and betting, and another one I heard the first time Friday on Armando Gallarraga's perfect game stolen by umpire Jim Joyce's bad call on what should have been the last out.  Another on the golden voice of Vin Scully. 


 These photos were taken at Friday night's concert.  The purple shirt was before the break. 

Patrick McCormick stood in for his Dad Mike, the founder of Whistling Song productions which has been bringing up folkish musicians to Anchorage for a long time.  Mike's knowledge of music and hospitality has been the main reason we've had so many good musicians playing here.  Many, like Dan, have stayed at the McCormick's house when they were here.  Dan's talked about it being a wonderful change from most tour stops, being able to stay with a family.  And he's watched Patric grow up over the years he's been coming to Anchorage.   Patrick told a story about Dan coming to one of his basketball games when he was in the third grade. 

Having spent a good part of the week at the songwriting workshop and two concerts, I've got lots more to write and not enough time.  Rather than write one long, long post that won't get up til Wednesday or Thursday, let me stop here and I'll add more later.

Dan Bern Songwriting Workshop Anchorage Evening 2

 I took Mariano's digital art class after seeing what he did digitally to photos.  I thought, I can take photos and then play with them.  What I didn't quite realize was that it was an art class and the other students were serious artists.  An early assignment was to use a couple of the photo shop tools to draw a picture.  I started with a very simple round flower with roundish petals and a simple stem.  But I noticed the screen next to me had a perfect cowboy boot with all the details.  The screen on the other side had a great human figure.  I realized I was out of my league.  But Mariano encouraged me saying these people have to adjust from their normal medium (oil, or water colors, or charcoal) to digital and I would be starting with digital.  In the end it worked out reasonably well.

Dan's standing on the left

But at least I believed I had a visual sense, even if I couldn't execute what I had in mind, at least I had something in mind.

Music is different.  I don't think aurally.  Tunes don't pop into my mind.  I'm just not musical.  But the song writing workshop is forcing me to confront one of my own stereotypes about myself.  Don't get me wrong, there are serious song writers and musicians in this class and compared to them, my musical talents are, politely, in the most formative stage.  But I didn't completely bomb in the workshop Monday or last night.

Monday Dan talked about how little children go around merging words and melodies that they spontaneously create.  It got me thinking.  He talked about speech and singing not being that far apart.  Certainly not opposites that some imagine.  He said I should just relax.

I thought about students I've had who told me they were 'just not good at math.'  I'd always ask them, "Which teacher did this to you?"  and 90% could give me a name and a grade without a pause.  I still remember one student holding out his hands for the ruler as he said, "Sister Margarita in 5th grade."

And the light went on that I've been going around saying I'm just not musical.  OK, I admit the oboe and I were not a good match, but I shouldn't have given up on dating music.

All this is preamble to my fortune cookie based song.  (See the previous post.)

This group's work sparkled

I ended up choosing the numbers in the fortune rather than the words.  The first three in the sequence were 03 14 29 which I immediately translated into March 14, 1929.  I googled it and came up with obituaries of people born on March 14, 1929.  The first was just birth and death dates with locations of each.  Toronto and Desert Hot Springs.  I imagined a song that filled in the gap.  I found a woman who was born and died in Lufkin, Texas.  There was a little more about her.  A guy born in England who died in Santa Maria, California with a whole career and family.  Who were these people, did their lives cross paths?  There were all sorts of possibilities.

Getting further into the google results brought the fact that Mickey Mouse's 4th cartoon was released on March 14, 1929 - The Barn Dance.  Clearly, Disney had no idea who Mickey would become and Minnie ditches him for Pete, when Mickey can't stay off her toes.

And then there was this post on a German Einstein website:

In 1920, after Einstein's achievements had been widely recognized, Ulm also wanted to honour him. Thus, for example, in 1922 the decision was made to name a yet to be constructed street after him. Even though in Nazi-Germany this street was renamed Fichtestrasse (after Johann Gottlieb Fichte, 1762-1814, a German philosopher), it was named Einsteinstrasse again in 1945. On the occasion of his 50th birthday on March 14, 1929, Einstein was informed in a letter of congratulation by the then mayor that the city of Ulm had named a street in his honour. With respect to the Einsteinstrasse Einstein remarked in his reply: "I have already heard about the street named after me. My comforting thought was that I am not responsible for whatever is going to happen there." Between 1920 and 1929 a lively exchange of notes between Ulm and Albert Einstein developed which, interrupted by the political situation in Germany, was only resumed in 1949.

In 1949 Ulm wanted to grant Einstein the rights of a freeman of the city. Einstein however declined, pointing to the fate of the Jews in Nazi-Germany.

But how to put this all together?  I could focus on the day, but I also wanted to trace the paths, beyond the day, of those born on March 14, 1929.  And I had to try to sing it the next day in the workshop.

I ended up focusing on the Einstein story.  The line about taking comfort knowing he wouldn't be responsible for what happened on the street had a bittersweet sensibility.

Dan had told us Monday, in answer to a question about the problem of writing a song and finding out that someone had already written the melody.  The difference between a real songwriter and everyone else, is that the real songwriter will simply change some things here and there and call it his own.

And using the Mexican hat dance as the tune for our moose encounter songs Monday also showed me 1) how useful it was to have some structure, a skeleton,  like that to hold the words onto and 2) how hard it was to mesh - in my head -  the rhythm of the existing song to the rhythm of my newly created lyrics.

So, I decided to lift a Dan Bern song as my skeleton.  His songs are mostly stories put to music, but they do have melodies.  But I have to listen a few times to get them into my head. I picked Dan's Rome, from the "Dan Bern" album.  I tried to write lyrics, but the words from the Einstein website didn't flow with the music.  I had to start chopping back, finding words that were shorter, that had some rhyme.

I figured with my singing ability and the extra syllables here and there, no one would know where it came from.  Here's part of what I did compared to the lyrics of the original song.  I think I need another week to get this working.   But it's as far as I got before class.

March 14, 1929	Rome
Einstein got a letter from the Mayor of Ulm On the fourteenth of March Nineteen Twenty nine It wished him a happy Fiftieth  Birthday They gave him a street on which kids could play. Ulm was his birthplace Ulm was his past Ulm was the city That’d he’d return to last.	We pulled into Rome With blood in our eyes After days of travelin' Months of lies Taking our various Turns at the wheel Taking booze And pot and cigarettes. . . Rome was a bust Rome was a scream Rome was the final Rapid eye movement To this dream

HTML Tables

The Rome link gets you to the song so you can hear how it goes.

My last lines, which I left out here, just never could capture the Einstein quote.  Again, I need to find a totally different way to say it.

I also tried to throw my inhibitions to the draft and just sing.  Just as I'm doing here posting these lyrics on the blog.  This is a learning activity right?  The only lines that really work for me are the first two.  The rest need lots of massaging.  I stuck in the Ulm lines after listening to the Rome lines and I think musically, that worked best.  Clearly I have to toss the date altogether, it's just too clunky, and rely on it being the title.  But I guess that's part of the evolution of a song.

Dan asked if I played guitar, then pulled out his and gave me the perfect back up; that helped a lot.  Did he know what I was doing?

I did explain how I got to this point and read the class enough of the Einstein article to understand what I was trying to convey.

I asked Dan during the break if he had any idea what original song was my crutch.   He didn't and when I told him, he more or less congratulated me on a successful steal, "If I couldn't tell, no one else could."  I suspect that means I was so bad, there was no resemblance at all, but I'll humor myself. 

Musically,  mine was the shakiest.  The others in there are real musicians.  But they were kind, and I got credit for being the only one who found a way to use the numbers from the fortunes for the song.  Others were amazing, among them one who used a plastic cup and her hand for great backup percussion. 

Saturday, some of the members of the workshop (not me, I assure you) will present their songs at 2pm at Out North.  It's a pay what you like donation.  There are some gifted folks in the class and it should be fun.  I'm feeling a little like George Plimpton.

We had a series of interesting new exercises, including a group activity as you can see from the pictures.  I've got homework for tomorrow, plus my Chinese class meets again on Thursday.  So good night.