Well! I am curious about yesterday’s dearth of comments on Rogers and Hammerstein. Ben said they were too “Syrupy”. I suppose, but they fit their times. I remember finding a book in the local library when I was in Grade 7 that described most of the recent musicals of the early and mid 20th century. I was fascinated and researched all the musicals that I could, and surprised and exasperated my Grade 7 music teacher with all the things I knew about “All About Eve” with Lauren Bacall. It was the first musical sound track I bought.
We are challenged with deciding what we want to do when we visit New York in November. We want to see a musical.
Any suggestions from Baboons about current Broadway musicals to see? What musicals are your favorites? What is the first musical you remember? What about movie musicals?
I have a hard time saying “no, I can’t do that”. I tell the intake people at my work that my schedule is too full to take on new clients, and then I get a phone call from our county social services that they have five children who need therapy, and I am the only one in the area who sees children as young as the ones they are referring, and guess what? I have five new appointments for next week. People at work just laugh at me when I tell them I am going to put my foot down and not take any new clients. I have no one to blame but myself.
Is it hard for you say “no”? How do you manage to do it if you are able? What is hard for you to communicate to others? What is your favorite scene or song from Rogers and Hammerstein?
We returned on Sunday night from Santa Fe having purchased 1.5 pounds of ground Chimayo chili, woven place mats that came from Guatemala, a Green Chili cook book, a New Mexico history book, and two Pendleton baby blankets for some new arrivals of our acquaintance.
A person could sure spend a lot of money in Santa Fe on all sorts of Native American jewelry and clothes with Indian motifs, but there is something about them that make me very hesitant to wear such things. I don’t normally like to draw attention to myself, and I would feel so fake and pretentious wearing silver and turquoise jewelry. I think one of my problems with all this is that we have so many Indian friends. I would feel so odd and out of place if I showed up wearing their sacred cultural symbols on my clothes and jewelry. If we had more time and luggage space I would have bought pottery. I love the rugs and textiles. I know that many native Americans depend on the tourist trade for a living and want us to buy their wares. This makes me conflicted. I think I would rather donate to the American Indian College Fund.
We purchased a kachina corn god figure many years ago at the Mesa Verde National Park gift shop. I find the kachinas fascinating, but now that I know more about their meaning and significance, I would be hesitant to buy one, and I now know that I have to care for the one we purchased and not treat it as a decorative object. Sometimes knowledge can ruin all a person’s fun.
When I was six my parents arranged for the kids to meet a piano teacher. My sister was deemed to have talent, so she entered a program of piano lessons. The meeting must not have gone well for me. Afterward my father explained that I was musically impaired. His exact words were, “You couldn’t carry a tune in a bucket.” I had no reason to doubt him.
We were obliged to sing in my grade school, especially just before the holidays, when we performed a concert of Christmas carols. I dutifully performed, only I decided there was no reason to spoil the good singing of others, so I lip-synced the carols. Like Milli Vanilli, I got caught. That led to an epic showdown with my teacher, Miss Steele, the low point of my educational career.
While I couldn’t sing or play an instrument, I had ears. I thrilled to the popular music of my youth. I amassed a sizable record collection. In college I discovered classical music. Guys in my dorm introduced me to folk music. Occasionally I fantasized about making music, but mostly I accepted my fate as someone for whom that was impossible. Sometimes, to tell the truth, that seemed a blessing. I often woke up early in the morning to the sound of my sister plonking away on the piano when she would rather have been in bed, but piano practice was mandatory for her for years.
In the first week of graduate school I walked to the Scholar coffeehouse on the West Bank. The first act I caught—Koerner, Ray and Glover—amazed me. A day later I went back. The performer was a kid from Saint Cloud State who played 12-string guitar. The torrent of music coming from Leo Kottke’s guitar almost blew me off my stool. I’d never heard music remotely like that before, and it was one of the most thrilling events of my young life. I began hanging out at the Scholar, walking through blizzards if necessary in order to attend every gig Leo played.
It was inevitable: one day I bought a guitar, a classical model with nylon strings. At first I was delighted to be able to make any kind of music; just strumming a C chord made me giddy. I moved on to finger-picking, emulating my coffeehouse heroes. I grabbed every spare moment to practice. I took guitar lessons, starting with Carter family tunes and moving toward John Fahey compositions. Slowly, very slowly, I got better. I bought a steel-stringed folk guitar. Then—you knew this was coming—I got a 12-string. (I’d love to get back all the time I wasted trying to get that danged thing in tune.) And I practiced, practiced, practiced.
Alas, all those years when I did not sing or play an instrument had set limits on what I could accomplish as a musician. My brain and fingers could never coordinate well enough to enable me to master difficult material. I could do cheesy imitations of some Kotte or Fahey pieces, and that felt like a miracle. But I slurred many notes and muffed others. I had to cheat by simplifying the arrangements because my technique was so sloppy. After getting better month by month, I hit a wall I could not get past it. And I remained stuck there for years.
I finally realized the most graceful thing would be to accept my fate and simply enjoy the limited music I could make. While I was never going to play well, I was delighted to play at all. Then arthritis arrived, and I could no longer even play badly.
My performance career with the guitar now feels like some doomed romances from my past, romances that were fabulous in some ways but which failed. Sometimes things don’t work out, even if you passionately hope otherwise. I’m lucky to have those memories now and I’m sure I am a better listener than I could be before playing the guitar.
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Do you sing or play an instrument? What has that meant to you?
We always seem to meet interesting people when we travel, and this trip is no exception. We arrived late in the evening into the Albuquerque airport and had to wait for our prearranged shuttle to take us to Santa Fe. We waited with a fellow shuttle rider named Abdul. He was an Egyptian man, about 65 years old, who had just arrived in Albuquerque from Alexandria via Abu Dhabi and Los Angeles. He was very tall, well over 6 feet, and a professional chef who had worked for years in Santa Fe and was coming back to spend time in a cooperative community of scientists and artists outside of the town. He gave us some sage advice on good restaurants to try, and which hyped ones to avoid. He described preparing food as being just like composing and conducting music. We talked about how he manages his diabetes and how he loved teaching classes in Mediterranean cooking. I regret not being able to eat dishes he prepared.
Our second interesting meeting was with a man named Steven, a white man who owned a dusty shop chock full of indigenous art prints and native ledger art. He was in his late 60’s and was whittling bear root, an expectorant, to make into tea to help clear his chest from an attack of Spring allergies. He and I had a serious talk on why the Kachina figure I have in our living room gives me nightmares (he said I had to change my way of living). His art prints were in huge stacks that would take hours to go through. Husband plans to go back for more conversation and to look at more prints before we leave.
Tell about interesting people you have met on your travels.
Today we toured the New Mexico Museum of International Folk Art. The main exhibit is in the room the size of a basketball court. It is filled with part of the Girard Collection, the life time acquisition of Alexander Girard and his wife. Mr. Girard was a designer who worked for Herman Miller. The room we toured had 10,000 pieces of folk art, toys, miniatures, and textiles. It is only 10% of the entire collection, which the museum has stored somewhere. Mr. Girard arranged the collection display. There are textiles on the walls, and cases of incredible miniatures and folk art figures from about 100 countries. It is arranged to demonstrate the universality of folk images and folk life. We were so overwhelmed with the sheer visual density and the colors and places of origin crammed into interconnected display cases that we could only view a small part of it. It is not something you can ingest in one visit. Every display was full of meaning. If you get a chance, look up Girard Collection for some photos of this overwhelming collection.
When have you been overwhelmed by art? What art is accessible and what art is difficult for you to appreciate?
I am borrowing shamelessly from VS by posing this riddle for Baboons to consider.
We are not in ND. We are at an elevation of 6200 ft., but the only mountains are far in the distance. The air wherever we walk is filled with the smell of roasting meat and vegetables, as well as burning herbs and wood smoke. It is center of art and culture. Nearby there are 4000 to 5000 visiting archeologists. It has been a center of government for centuries.
Yesterday was the anniversary of the opening of the first free public library, the Peterborough Town Library in 1833. The decision to purchase books and open a tax-funded library happened at the Town meeting and for the first sixty years, the books were housed in the general store. In 1893 they were moved to the current location and there have been two expansions since then.
Here are a few fun library quotes:
“Well-run libraries are filled with people because what a good library offers cannot be easily found elsewhere: an indoor public space in which you do not have to buy anything in order to stay.” Zadie Smith
“The only thing that you absolutely have to know, is the location of the library.” Albert Einstein
“Libraries: The medicine chest of the soul.” Library at Thebes, inscription over the door
“My two favorite things in life are libraries and bicycles. They both move people forward without wasting anything. The perfect day: riding a bike to the library.” Peter Golkin
“I have always imaged that Paradise will be a kind of library.” Jorge Luis Borges
I’m a complete library junkie. One of the biggest selling points when I bought my house was that it was a block and a half from the Washburn Library. On the average week I am there twice. I know the hours by heart, am friendly with the librarians. I even have my library card number memorized. Twice I’ve had the opportunity to spend an afternoon in the Central downtown library in the upstairs reading rooms – times when I wanted to read resource material that they don’t allow you to check-out. It was warm and wonderful; so relaxing that I wasn’t sure I wanted to leave at the end of the day.
I just read the NOAA weather map for later this week. Oh my! Minnesota Baboons may get a lot of snow! Son and DIL could get 20 inches in Brookings.
It has warmed up sufficiently here that people are jumping into yard work, cleaning flower beds and mowing lawns (which they oughtn’t do yet as it is too early). Husband and I are waiting to do any yard work until we return from a trip next Sunday. We first plan to prepare the garden for pea, lettuce, and spinach seeds, which we will plant later in April. Husband tilled last fall, so we won’t need to do that now. The tomato and pepper seedlings are coming along under the grow lights, Tulips are up and crocuses are blooming. We have pruning and flower bed cleaning to do, too.
I always find April a chancy month to garden. One April many years ago I was awaiting the first blooming of some tulips I had planted in the fall, when, on April 28, we got 18 inches of heavy wet snow. The tulips had flower buds just ready to open, and there they were, frozen solid just above the snow line. I had to wait another year to see them bloom. April is the cruelest month. Sometimes March is just as bad, though.
What are your favorite and least favorite months? Any favorite T.S. Elliot poems?
On Saturday night I finished baking the last of the 10 dozen sweet rolls for our hand bell choir’s Easter breakfast. We plan to serve sweet rolls and egg bakes to our congregation on Easter Sunday as the first fundraiser for our trip to New York in November when we play at Carnegie Hall. They are quite large, and can be cut in two for an astounding number of rolls. The other bell choir members are supplying the egg bakes.
The rolls are in our freezers and just need to be thawed and iced on Easter. I will set them out to thaw in the church kitchen on Saturday when we rehearse with the brass quintet that is accompanying us on one of our pieces. We have two ovens in the church kitchen and we can have four egg bakes cooking and four keeping hot all at the same time. It will take some coordination as we play at both the 9:00 and 10:30 services and will need to bake and serve and play bells, since people will be eating from 8:30 until 10:30. I think we will be exiting and entering the sanctuary all throughout the services in between playing. I just love doing things like this.
In true Lutheran Church Basement Ladies fashion, members of the funeral service committee have volunteered to help out. It will be an exciting day.
What is the largest meal you ever helped prepare? What would you serve a crowd?
Trail Baboon 