For me, this is the day the music died. News of Mary Travers’ death yesterday moved me to tears. I never met her, but I felt about her as I have about some friends. I’d met Peter Yarrow during his Cornell years, when he came to sing at the fraternity house where my brother and boyfriend lived. I was in a sort of trance that night, listening to Peter sing, and when he sang “O Mary, don’t you weep, don’t you mourn”, I felt he was singing to me. Peter always stomped (not tapped) one foot, and that night he broke a floorboard at the frat house.
Anyway, this isn’t about Peter, it’s about Mary Travers. The first time I saw PPM perform, she appeared as a goddess—her statuesque body, her silky long blond hair that she continually tossed. Her voice was magic for me, because she was one of the few singers in whose key I could manage to sing. Her harmonies transformed the three people into one entity. I saw her as a real person—a woman not much older than I, who enjoyed singing, had a family, and had a cause. I admired her, not simply because she was doing what I loved to do myself—sing folk music—but she did it with grace and style. She didn’t have to wear sexy clothes, dance seductively, or scream into the microphone. She didn’t even have to play the guitar. She stood there, flipping her hair, clearly having fun, enjoying every moment. And Mary felt every song she sang; ergo, I felt every song she sang.
There was a mighty triumvirate of female folk singers (in alpha order): Joan Baez, Judy Collins, and Mary Travers. They inspired me, each of them in their own way. Joan and Mary were the ones I tried most to emulate, since their songs were more accessible to my limited vocal range. Joan wrote incredibly stirring lyrics, and sang them with great intensity. I can’t compare the three one against the other—they were different in many ways. But there was something about Mary.
Mary Travers, you were a light, an inspiration, and a goddess. Thank you, and rest in peace.
September 17, 2009
September 11, 2009
9/11
September 11, 2009.
Eight years ago today, our world changed forever. We all changed forever as well, perhaps each one of us differently, but we changed. For me, despair quietly walked in and sat down next to horror and disbelief. Fear lurked continually in the background, but I was somewhat successful at keeping fear at bay. The following year, a friend and I drove over to the coast and sat on the Bean Hollow rock headland and watched waterworks pretending to be fireworks, one exuberant burst-splash after another in military precision along the rocks. We believed.
I can't watch the endless showings of the planes into the towers. It becomes another movie, something almost unreal. It can't happen here.
We are now into a new administration, one that won on hope and change. One that I championed and voted for. And just 9 months into that administration, I am once again watching despair creep into my sanctuary. No, not because of our president, not because of the economy, nor the wars in Afghanistan. I am a patient person. OK, sometimes I'm not a patient person, but for these big things I am. These problems didn't happen all at once, and that won't be solved all at once. I'm amazed to hear people say the recession is over!
My despair is at the extremes that have so polarized our nation in the years since 9/11/2001. That didn't happen overnight either. I stood with my two grown sons in Buffalo, N.Y. watching the first bombs dropping on Afghanistan--we had all come together to share our national tragedy--and we all were sad and devastated, but we believed it was the right thing to do. Find that bastard bin Laden and make him dead! We believed.
It was over the next 7 years that the polarization started to grow and fester. And I neither need to nor want to cite chapter and verse. Suffice it to say that the divide between Conservatives and Liberals, Republicans and Democrats became deeper and wider, and in our confused grief, we began to vilify those on the other side of what became the Great Divide.
I believe that the "normal" divide became the Great Divide due, to a large extent, to the rise of Conservative Talk Radio--the Rush Limbaughs, the Sean Hannitys, the Bill O'Rileys--who are masters of manipulation and deceit. They prey upon those who do not tend to read newspapers, listen to NPR, communicate with their Congressional representatives, or use the Internet to check something on Snopes or FactCheck. These are not bad people, and they are not necessarily religious fundamentalists. They are people who go to work, kiss their children, vote, maybe go to church, and share BBQs with friends and neighbors. But they tend to let others do the thinking for them, and when it's said loud enough and often enough they begin to believe it.
Remember Sarah Palin saying that Barack Obama "pals around with terrorists."? Well, as my mother once told me--once something is said, you can't unsay it. There's a lot of that going around--the saying of things that can't be unsaid, and the purveyors of that misinformation know exactly what they're doing. Exactly. What. They're. Doing.
So--last week, hearing and reading the unbelievable protests against Obama speaking truth to power (our next generation of adults), I mentioned in a Facebook posting that I'm feeling despair again. How silly of me to believe that a new president, whose ideals I embrace, in whom I had (have, dammit!!) such great hopes, could escape verbal evisceration by such small-minded people.
I went to the freezer half an hour ago to empty the ice cubes into the ice container and saw this on my refrigerator:
The Peace of Wild Things
When despair for the world grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children's lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars waiting with their light.
For a time I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.
— Wendell Berry
Today is September 11th. It's my boss John Fleischer's birthday. And I am going to find some wild things to be among today. I'll pack up my despair, stow it way deep in the closet, and feel free, along with wood drake.
Eight years ago today, our world changed forever. We all changed forever as well, perhaps each one of us differently, but we changed. For me, despair quietly walked in and sat down next to horror and disbelief. Fear lurked continually in the background, but I was somewhat successful at keeping fear at bay. The following year, a friend and I drove over to the coast and sat on the Bean Hollow rock headland and watched waterworks pretending to be fireworks, one exuberant burst-splash after another in military precision along the rocks. We believed.
I can't watch the endless showings of the planes into the towers. It becomes another movie, something almost unreal. It can't happen here.
We are now into a new administration, one that won on hope and change. One that I championed and voted for. And just 9 months into that administration, I am once again watching despair creep into my sanctuary. No, not because of our president, not because of the economy, nor the wars in Afghanistan. I am a patient person. OK, sometimes I'm not a patient person, but for these big things I am. These problems didn't happen all at once, and that won't be solved all at once. I'm amazed to hear people say the recession is over!
My despair is at the extremes that have so polarized our nation in the years since 9/11/2001. That didn't happen overnight either. I stood with my two grown sons in Buffalo, N.Y. watching the first bombs dropping on Afghanistan--we had all come together to share our national tragedy--and we all were sad and devastated, but we believed it was the right thing to do. Find that bastard bin Laden and make him dead! We believed.
It was over the next 7 years that the polarization started to grow and fester. And I neither need to nor want to cite chapter and verse. Suffice it to say that the divide between Conservatives and Liberals, Republicans and Democrats became deeper and wider, and in our confused grief, we began to vilify those on the other side of what became the Great Divide.
I believe that the "normal" divide became the Great Divide due, to a large extent, to the rise of Conservative Talk Radio--the Rush Limbaughs, the Sean Hannitys, the Bill O'Rileys--who are masters of manipulation and deceit. They prey upon those who do not tend to read newspapers, listen to NPR, communicate with their Congressional representatives, or use the Internet to check something on Snopes or FactCheck. These are not bad people, and they are not necessarily religious fundamentalists. They are people who go to work, kiss their children, vote, maybe go to church, and share BBQs with friends and neighbors. But they tend to let others do the thinking for them, and when it's said loud enough and often enough they begin to believe it.
Remember Sarah Palin saying that Barack Obama "pals around with terrorists."? Well, as my mother once told me--once something is said, you can't unsay it. There's a lot of that going around--the saying of things that can't be unsaid, and the purveyors of that misinformation know exactly what they're doing. Exactly. What. They're. Doing.
So--last week, hearing and reading the unbelievable protests against Obama speaking truth to power (our next generation of adults), I mentioned in a Facebook posting that I'm feeling despair again. How silly of me to believe that a new president, whose ideals I embrace, in whom I had (have, dammit!!) such great hopes, could escape verbal evisceration by such small-minded people.
I went to the freezer half an hour ago to empty the ice cubes into the ice container and saw this on my refrigerator:
The Peace of Wild Things
When despair for the world grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children's lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars waiting with their light.
For a time I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.
— Wendell Berry
Today is September 11th. It's my boss John Fleischer's birthday. And I am going to find some wild things to be among today. I'll pack up my despair, stow it way deep in the closet, and feel free, along with wood drake.
September 3, 2009
My Guitar
In two weeks, my friend Cabby and I are having a pretty large yard sale. She has to schlep her stuff from Reno, and has already brought a bunch of items during her last two visits. I realize that what I'm doing is beginning to winnow out my encumbrances ahead of the need to leave this house, the place I've lived the longest since my childhood home. It is a major task, and this yard sale will be only the first winnowing, ridding my house of no-longer-fitting clothes, no-longer-used electronics, and no-longer-wanted accoutrements that have accumulated over many years.
I'm thinking of selling my guitar, which bears considerable thought. I've not been without a guitar since I was 19, with my first one, purchased from a Buffalo pawn shop, a Harmony with steel strings that Brian's father Bob restrung with nylon strings. I didn't learn until much later that it's not a good idea to put nylon strings on a guitar built for steel, and probably vice versa. In a few years, the strings had wandered further and further afield from the neck, making it difficult to play. But I played it anyway. That guitar went with me to Lawton, Oklahoma, when my Bob was stationed at Ft. Sill, and on evenings when thunderstorms killed the power in the service club, I'd sit on the stage and play the guitar and sing folk songs. I wasn't great, but it was better than sitting in the dark without music from the juke box. The soldiers whistled and hooted and I loved it. Sometimes my fingers bled from playing Sinner Man, even with nylon strings, but I played on. One Christmas, just a couple of weeks before Scott was born, both my father and my brother and his wife came to Lawton for the holiday. I used to hang the guitar by its strap in the coat closet, and one day as I was preparing dinner, my husband, father, brother and wife decided to play Bridge. The card table was also kept in the coat closet. My father, in his often hurried careless way, lifted up the card table, knocking the guitar to the floor. I cried with anger and disappointment, but it was only cracked, not broken, and could most likely be fixed. After the holidays, my husband and I took the guitar to a luthier in Lawton, who said he would fix it and not charge us much. He showed us a classical guitar he'd made, and we both strummed it a bit; it sounded like heaven. It had a full, mellow, clear, lovely sound that I'd not heard before, and we coveted it. He was asking $75 for it. I'd paid $25 at the pawn shop for the Harmony, and this wonderful guitar was only 3 times as much. But for us, then, $75 was what $750 is now--at least. That was our monthly rent. We couldn't buy it.
I can't remember exactly when I bought my present guitar, but I was back in the Buffalo area, and I played mostly in the summer when the family was at Kirk Kove, our Canadian retreat. It was a family fishing resort, with our house the first place on the right as you drove in, built in 1924, most likely before the resort was built. In the summer, when lots of kids were around, there were events in the rec hall, and Thursdays were "talent night". Skits were performed, mostly by kids, and then my 2nd husband John and I would sing folk songs--Four Strong Winds, This Land is Your Land, Whisky in the Jar, and too many others to list. One of my favorite memories of Kirk Kove is sitting on our porch at the top of the hill (a small hill, but a hill nonetheless) in the evening, watching the swallows swoop for mosquitoes, and rehearsing whatever we were going to sing that week.
But I neither sing nor play anymore, and the ol' fingers are quite rusty on the few occasions I've picked up a guitar. Both sons have at least one guitar that I could play when I visit them if the need arose. That thought makes me laugh. If the need arose. Right.
Several years ago I took classical lessons for a couple of months, and it was incredibly hard for me to make the stretches my fingers had to make. And aside from whatever pleasure I might eventually have for being able to play a tiny bit, what would I do with it? Impose on my friends and say, "Oh, look at what I learned over the last 6 months!"? No, that's not me.
Four years ago I attended my son Scott's first Gypsy Jam, held at the wonderful Pollywogg Holler in New York State's Southern Tier. I borrowed a friends hard case so I could check my guitar during the flights. I played a couple of things--badly, as I remember--but people were kind, and I knew it would be the only time I'd play at Gypsy Jam, no matter how many more times I might attend the event.
So I look at the once beloved guitar, in its case inside two plastic garbage bags, and wonder why on earth I should keep it around. There is no reason. Why, then, are these tears in my eyes? Eventually I will move from this house, and far more will have to be sold or given away. Perhaps I'll wait until I can let go of my guitar without tears.
I'm thinking of selling my guitar, which bears considerable thought. I've not been without a guitar since I was 19, with my first one, purchased from a Buffalo pawn shop, a Harmony with steel strings that Brian's father Bob restrung with nylon strings. I didn't learn until much later that it's not a good idea to put nylon strings on a guitar built for steel, and probably vice versa. In a few years, the strings had wandered further and further afield from the neck, making it difficult to play. But I played it anyway. That guitar went with me to Lawton, Oklahoma, when my Bob was stationed at Ft. Sill, and on evenings when thunderstorms killed the power in the service club, I'd sit on the stage and play the guitar and sing folk songs. I wasn't great, but it was better than sitting in the dark without music from the juke box. The soldiers whistled and hooted and I loved it. Sometimes my fingers bled from playing Sinner Man, even with nylon strings, but I played on. One Christmas, just a couple of weeks before Scott was born, both my father and my brother and his wife came to Lawton for the holiday. I used to hang the guitar by its strap in the coat closet, and one day as I was preparing dinner, my husband, father, brother and wife decided to play Bridge. The card table was also kept in the coat closet. My father, in his often hurried careless way, lifted up the card table, knocking the guitar to the floor. I cried with anger and disappointment, but it was only cracked, not broken, and could most likely be fixed. After the holidays, my husband and I took the guitar to a luthier in Lawton, who said he would fix it and not charge us much. He showed us a classical guitar he'd made, and we both strummed it a bit; it sounded like heaven. It had a full, mellow, clear, lovely sound that I'd not heard before, and we coveted it. He was asking $75 for it. I'd paid $25 at the pawn shop for the Harmony, and this wonderful guitar was only 3 times as much. But for us, then, $75 was what $750 is now--at least. That was our monthly rent. We couldn't buy it.
I can't remember exactly when I bought my present guitar, but I was back in the Buffalo area, and I played mostly in the summer when the family was at Kirk Kove, our Canadian retreat. It was a family fishing resort, with our house the first place on the right as you drove in, built in 1924, most likely before the resort was built. In the summer, when lots of kids were around, there were events in the rec hall, and Thursdays were "talent night". Skits were performed, mostly by kids, and then my 2nd husband John and I would sing folk songs--Four Strong Winds, This Land is Your Land, Whisky in the Jar, and too many others to list. One of my favorite memories of Kirk Kove is sitting on our porch at the top of the hill (a small hill, but a hill nonetheless) in the evening, watching the swallows swoop for mosquitoes, and rehearsing whatever we were going to sing that week.
But I neither sing nor play anymore, and the ol' fingers are quite rusty on the few occasions I've picked up a guitar. Both sons have at least one guitar that I could play when I visit them if the need arose. That thought makes me laugh. If the need arose. Right.
Several years ago I took classical lessons for a couple of months, and it was incredibly hard for me to make the stretches my fingers had to make. And aside from whatever pleasure I might eventually have for being able to play a tiny bit, what would I do with it? Impose on my friends and say, "Oh, look at what I learned over the last 6 months!"? No, that's not me.
Four years ago I attended my son Scott's first Gypsy Jam, held at the wonderful Pollywogg Holler in New York State's Southern Tier. I borrowed a friends hard case so I could check my guitar during the flights. I played a couple of things--badly, as I remember--but people were kind, and I knew it would be the only time I'd play at Gypsy Jam, no matter how many more times I might attend the event.
So I look at the once beloved guitar, in its case inside two plastic garbage bags, and wonder why on earth I should keep it around. There is no reason. Why, then, are these tears in my eyes? Eventually I will move from this house, and far more will have to be sold or given away. Perhaps I'll wait until I can let go of my guitar without tears.
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