pt at large

Indigenous People's Day in Watertown MA: Food, Culture, History

10.10.22 Branch Line Restaurant, Arsenal Yards, Watertown, MA

“Join us September 30th through October 10th to celebrate Indigenous Food Week! Organized by the Pigsgusset Initiative, a working group of Watertown Citizens for Peace Justice and the Environment. Pigsgusset Initiative and Branch Line have partnered with acclaimed Wampanoag Chef Sherry Pocknett to bring you three Wampanoag dishes: Three Sisters Garden Succotash, Corn Cakes, and Cranberry Chutney. By introducing diners to Wampanoag cuisine, we honor culinary traditions perfected across hundreds of generations by the original peoples to inhabit this land.”

Serendipity:  At a recent social at my house, the first since March 2020, my neighbor Mishy Lesser asked, “Would you put up a yard sign for this event?”

Mishy is one of the shakers and movers who created “Watertown Celebrates Indigenous People’s Day.”

Mishy floated the idea to  Branch Line Restaurant owner Garrett, who viewed it as an opportunity to widen the lens on the menu and serve cultural awareness along with food associated with Native American history.

Like a pebble tossed into a pond, the ripples of the original idea spread around town to lap against a well-known restaurant. a famous chef, community organizations and The First Parish of Watertown.

Thanks to a generous grant from the Watertown Community Foundation, Mishy reached out to Wampanoag chef Sherry Pocknett who developed a menu with Branch Line’s chef Ivan Conill.

The two chefs had fun in the together in the kitchen, tasting, tweaking, and beaming with delight. Then Chef Sherry and Mishy trained the kitchen staff in the in the culinary history and meaning of the dishes.

Saturday evening, October 1, Branch Line Restaurant

My dining companion and I enter a culinary time machine and sample both of Chef Sherry Pocknett’s Wampanoag dishes...Three Sisters Succotash (Paquahog Clams with local squash, beans, corn) and Journey cakes.

The 2 generously sized journey cakes, cornmeal flatbread cooked on a griddle were served with oh-so-good thick sweet cranberry chutney and garnished with chopped scallions. The journey cakes were the size of the dinner plate, a meal in itself. Likewise, the Three Sisters Garden Succotash, a large shallow bowl filled with  half a dozen Paquahog Clams with local squash, beans, corn, and chopped scallions. The clams are just one of the ways Chef Sherry adds protein to the dish.

A staple of Native American northeast coast tribes, required no refrigeration, were dried, and used in foods for months after harvest.

Journey Cakes, also known as Johnny Cakes, have their roots in Native American culture but recipes exist in latitudes from Newfoundland to southern states to the Caribbean and the Bahamas.

Confederate soldiers stuffed them into their pockets for sustenance on the march.

Johnny cakes were a staple for Rhode Islanders for centuries.

Here’s where the water gets deep. In the Ocean State, fist fights have broken out arguing about the provenance of johnny cakes.

https://www.nytimes.com/1981/07/15/garden/johnnycake-is-traditional-and-controversal-in-rhode-island.html

Keep this in mind when you branch out to try Johnny Cakes. 

Many thanks to Mishy Lesser who contributed facts to the story and corrected an earlier version.

Entering Branch Line during construction in Arsenal Yards

Branch Line, heated open patio on L and restaurant on R

Indigenous Food Menu

Rockey's Spritz - Aperol, Rockey's Liqueur, Cava, highly recommended by this writer.

Journey Cakes served as a pair, we each had one. Deliciously dense, moist, filling (and larger than appears in  photo).

Three Sisters Garden Succotash: a large shallow bowl filled with  half a dozen Paquahog Clams with local squash, beans, corn, and chopped scallions.

Branch Line, heated open patio on L and restaurant on R

Interior

Illuminated stack, remnant of original 1816 Watertown Arsenal Building reported to be one of the largest steel-frame structures in the United States, sized to accommodate both very large gun carriages and the equipment used to construct them. A venture to Branch Line serves as a appetizer to visitors interested in history of early American mechanized industry.

Photos by Paul A. Tamburello, Jr.

Other resources

https://whatscookingamerica.net/history/johnnycakes.htm

https://watertowncitizens.org/working-groups/pigsgusset-initiative/

Arrianna Huffington's Time to Thrive

January 16, 2020

from the archives...

 

Ten minutes well worth your time... it made me late to pick up dinner as I listened to the last few minutes of the radio program.

 

I recognized the sound of the woman's voice, the accent, and couldn't identify who it belonged to. Next day, I found a link to the program on the internet thanks to a helpful woman at WGBH radio.

 

https://mastersofscale.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/mos-episode-transcript_-arianna-huffington.pdf

 

The topic is entrepreneurship. As a retired elementary school teacher, it would seem to have little to do with me...except it turns out to it have everything to do with how I organize my life, manage time, and sensibly carve out a sense of well being on a daily basis.

 

Reid Hoffman’s questions and Adrianna Huffington’s responses in the transcript are fascinating. It took a life crisis to inspire Huffington to leave Huffington Post and launch Thrive Global in 2016. A research wonk, she found that 75% of healthcare causes and healthcare problems are stress-related and preventable. 

 

Wellness, enough sleep, corporate culture...would never appear in the same sentence before Thrive came along.

 

"Thrive is about only one thing (this Forbes interview explains Huffington's philosophy of managing performance using micro-steps): How do we build our best lives? How do we achieve everything we want without burnout and stress, bringing together ancient wisdom, the latest science, and new role models? " And all do-able since they're micro steps to build habits to reduce stress, improve well-being and maximize productivity." Her own bout with burn-out inspired the vision.

 

I’ve taken her last comment (below) to heart. It has changed my life (ok, a little hyperbole but not far from the truth). Her earlier comment about “prioritize” is a close second.

HUFFINGTON:​​ And wake up in the morning and have a minute, that's another micro step. Take a minute to remember what you are grateful for, set your intention for the day before you go to your phone. Over 70% of people sleep with their phones. The first thing they do is go to their phone. If you think of it, our phone is everybody else's agenda for us. Our bodies are flooded with the cortisol stress hormone before we have even gotten out of bed. These are small changes, small microscopic changes that can have a huge impact. That's what is so wonderful. That's why I'm so optimistic. These are not huge changes. We are not asking people to leave their jobs or move to a Caribbean island."

I guess the last sentence is optional.

 

The Queen: 1926-2022

The Queen... there was only one, a North Star for the globe. No need to add the word Elizabeth, and now she's gone. 

Queen Elizabeth II and the word dowdy would never appear in the same sentence… over the decades the wardrobe of vibrant pastels was remarkably lively in color, visually stating the Queen's outlook towards life. And let’s not forget those wide brimmed matching hats that she wore such easy grace. On any other, they may have seemed passé. With Elizaberh they were de rigeur.

And of course a reason for it. According to fashion expert Daisy McAndrew, she wanted to make sure that her people saw her, literally. Except for somber occasions, she succeeded magnificently. I literally smiled every time I saw a photo of her...and yes, she stood out from every other royal in the picture.

                        

In her day job she was a workhorse. In fashion she was more like one of her beloved showhorses. Like them, she drew attention for her poise, discipline and demeanor that underscored her role as mother and then grandmother of the kingdom.

She knew it, she acted it, she delivered it with measured grace. On rare occasions when she fell short, she followed up with apologies.

We never knew about her in her inner life, emotional state. It was not necessary. It would’ve cluttered her single-minded sense of purpose, duty, and service to her country and every citizen within it.

On June 2, 1952, I ran home from school to watch her coronation. My parents had purchased a huge RCA mahogany radio, television, record player console. I sat on the floor, fascinated by that pomp and circumstance and sense of history of the occasion captures on a 12 inch black-and-white TV in the console. Like most citizens of the commonwealth, she is the only Queen I have known.

Joni Mitchell famously sang, “You don't know what you've got 'till it's gone."

Well, we knew what we had and it still stings that we have lost it.

https://inews.co.uk/news/entertainment/queens-lighter-moments-sense-humour-shine-through-olympics-paddington-1841850

https://www.elle.com/uk/life-and-culture/culture/g41130520/queen-best-quotes/

https://www.cnn.com/2012/06/05/world/europe/rainbow-queen-outfits/index.html

https://www.townandcountrymag.com/style/fashion-trends/g22550728/queen-elizabeth-headscarf-photos/

During her ordinary days in the country, she wore a simple headscarf, a touch that endeared her to her subjects. For all the photos I've seen, the Queen in a headscarf remains one of the most affecting.

Post script 1

"I was willing to wait 24-48 hours. This is a woman who was so much more. She was modest. She communicated with us at our level," he says as he waits to pass the Queen's casket in Whitehall.

Post script 2

I'll bet the Queen was wearing her headscarf when this hilarious event took place as she was walking the hills near her home in Scotland.

https://twitter.com/davidmackau/status/1567894552744271872?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1567894552744271872%7Ctwgr%5Ee037588266682f773b6d830a4ef0a13fb6194907%7Ctwcon%5Es1_&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Ftwitter.com%2F

 Post script 3

I always read stories to my 4th graders. In the first years of my 34 year career,  I read "Mike Mulligan and The Steam Shovel," written by Virginia Lee Burton.  One of the lines that always got a chuckle was Mike asking about the steamshovel operator - "How does he go to the bathroom?" 

I wondered the same thing as I watched the miles long queue (line) waiting to pay respects to the Queen. The answer: https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2022/sep/13/toilets-and-first-aid-on-five-mile-queue-route-to-view-queens-coffin

Post script 4

There will be challenges to be managed. We shall find out whether King Charles III has the steady long view of his mother.

Cindy's Country Café

Cindy’s Country Café, 1324 West Main Road, Portsmouth, RI

August 26, 2022

Here we are at 1 PM the end of August, the roadside diner is filled with what every diner wants, a crowd of locals mixed with tourists and all of them hungry. A laid-back local establishment, everyone sitting at the counter knows the names of the servers and vice versa.

"We crack the eggs to make omelets and scrambled," our waitress Maureen says when my companion, lactose-intolerant, asks if milk is used to prepare eggs. "We don’t buy an egg mix at the store," in her opinion an affront to  her customers and a qualifying bona fide for the cooks in the kitchen.

The all-American breakfast menu is just what we wanted, Maureen recognizes us when we return for breakfast the next day... we feel like 'regulars' now!

Tourist season or not, Cindy’s is a happening place. In post pandemic America, it will keep thriving day in day out. It survived.

That's saying something.

Photos by Paul A. Tamburello, Jr.

Photos by Paul A. Tamburello, Jr.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Toad, Resurrected, July 27, 2022

Toad, July 27, 2022

 

Wednesday night July 27, 2022

The little band box on Massachusetts Avenue in Cambridge was stuffed with virtual tinder.

 

Like a spark from stone and flint, it erupted in one virtual soul and psyche purification flame when the righteous Fred Griffeth and his top-tier Fandango band struck the first chords of the first song. 

 

The ageless Fred Griffeth sang robustly to the good souls in Toad, in the cleansing ritual known by all as “choich“. 

 

How much joy can you stuff into a little outpost like this? How many angels can you fit on the head of a pin?

 

The set list was familiar. The faces in the crowd were sprinkled with a handful of newcomers.

 

The psycho emotional fervor of the flock was in need of a bi-weekly calling down of the spirit. Three songs in and we had all been led to the figurative river, gently immersed, baptized bona fide, and ready to testify. Rapture was within reach. Given the daily news diet of human and ecological mayhem, we were pilgrims, supplicating, waiting for 90 minutes of salvation. 

 

If there were drones circling overhead to manage the electrical grid of Cambridge, they might have called in an alert for the inexplicable dot of energy coming from 1912 Mass Ave.

 

Close inspection would show no cause for alarm, no danger to the grid. Data would show that a similar energy vortex would be detectable every other every Wednesday from the same address.

Photo courtesy of Carol Fondé

 

Many of the flock were perched at the mahogany bar, others sitting on the brawny ancient curved bench leading up to the bandstand. A few people strolling past the door were sucked into the righteous rock and blues house of worship and found themselves surrounded by kindred spirits from legal drinking age to card-carrying members of the AARP.

 

Griffeth, always animated and spontaneously emoting, sang from the soles the flip flops on his brown feet, tapping into the energy from the roiling core of the earth. At some point, I don’t know whether he even saw us.  Consumed by stagecraft and the art of connecting, Griffeth merged into a sublime fourth dimension, the musicians soloing in intent pursuit.

 

The man was speaking in tongues of gospel, rock n roll, blues, and Americana. Griffeth left the song charts behind.  In musical legerdemain, he became a euphoric energy dervish that, like a black hole, sucked us deep into our own euphoria. Critical mass was achieved, early and often.

 

I had not been to Toad since March 2020. The place had become shuttered. Many believed that it would fall to the pandemic malaise and become a footnote in our collective memory.

 

But no… A physical space can become abandoned boarded up and obliterated. But with a force fueled and kept alive by the collective memory of those who seek salvation, (is there any other word for this?), there on Wednesday nights, not so much.

 

I showed my vaccination card, walked in the door, sucked in my breath, and nearly sobbed. I was home. 

 

Safe. Amongst kindred spirits. And this bar of such compact dimensions wrapped its arms around me, warmly whispering, “Hey Stranger, where have you been?”

 

“You waited for me!” I whispered, pleased with the recognition.

 

“That’s what friends do,” said the disembodied voice from above the purple neon “TOAD“ sign just above the door.

 

https://toadcambridge.com

Fandango

Fred Griffeth, vocals

Andy Santospago, guitar

Chris Anzalone, percussion

Steve Monahan, bass

Ryan Claunch on keys

                    

Photo courtesy of Carol Fondé

As always, comments welcome

                                                                                                                          

J.M.W. Turner Sunset

June 4, 2022

Gobsmacked...once I saw the first incandescent cosmic explosion, I drove westward through streets to get a better view, leaning outside the car window to photo and once in a while shooting right through the windshield. Reminded me of walking through a gallery of J.M.W.Turner's paintings that fiercely capture the evocative power of his palette to envision apocalyptic moments in history...a condemnation of the slave trade, a ghastly vision of slavers hurling slaves overboard with a typhoon bearing down on it, and the burning of the House of Commons October 16, 1834.

He must have held these moments in his imagination and kept on adding layers of pigment after the events occurred.

I let Nature do the heavy lifting. I found roads that offered better views, eyes on the glorious colors changing like a kaleidoscope by the minute from 7:58 PM till 8:19 PM and it was over. A cosmic palette a la J.M.W.Turner.

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Photos by Paul A. Tamburello, Jr

Dusk Vanishes Into Evening, July 3, 2022

July 3, 2022

Porch sitting...

A routine...8:08 PM

A dog barks in the distance. Crows make their final caws before choosing their resting places high in the trees. A jet at about 20,000 feet is sounding taps for the day,  

8:58 PM

Gathering dusk has eased into its armchair. A great stillness envelops the land. Ink blue sky turns cheek to pillow, dusk enveloping the cosmos as the earth makes its quotidien turn from the sun. Evening slides its arms into its sleeping robe, ready to preside until dawn.

Photos by Paul A. Tamburello, Jr.

 

Letting off steam...

June 21, 2022

Roger Angell: This Old Man

May 10. 2022

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2014/02/17/old-man-3?utm_source=onsite-share&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=onsite-share&utm_brand=the-new-yorker

Oh boy what a thrilling read that brings out images of past present and future. In a few thousand words Roger Angell squeezes the enormous river of life through a literary funnel , molecules of each stage of life, a line dance we’ve been learning and living for decades.

I'm a few floats down the the mortality parade from Angell's, but relate with way too much of his brilliant ruminations.

 

American Routes Goes To The Circus

22/04/24 American Routes: MUSIC CIRCUS

Arlo Guthrie once sang, ‘You can get anything you want,,.at Alice’s Restaurant…”

Well, the same can be said of FM radio.

FM radio offers news, daily commentaries, thoughtful programs like TED Radio Hour, The Moth Radio Hour, This American Life, and The New Yorker Radio Hour.

For a music lover, there’s American Routes. http://americanroutes.wwno.org/archives/show/1270/Music-Circus

American Routes is blues and jazz, gospel and soul, rockabilly and country, Cajun and swamp pop, Tejano, Latin… and beyond. Songs and stories from musicians describe a deep and diverse nation with sounds and styles shared by all Americans. From the bayous to the beltways, from crossroads to crosstown, on interstates and city streets, turn up your radio for the sonic journey!

The weekly radio program is produced in New Orleans by Nick Spitzer, who created it in 1998.

Over the years, Spitzer’s had conversations with Willie Nelson, Tom Waits, B.B. King, Dr. John, Dave Brubeck, Elvis Costello, Ray Charles, Randy Newman, McCoy Tyner, Lucinda Williams, Rufus Thomas, Jerry Lee Lewis and scores of musicians and singers you may never have heard of and will google because they’re characters whose life stories are as compelling as the music they make.

When the April 24 program is titled “Music-Circus”, I’m thinking what the heck does circus have to do with music. Circuses are visual experiences, music essentially an aural one.

What follows is an astonishing array of songs loosely related to the Big Top plus interviews with the aerial artist who defies gravity in the most inventively curated show I’ve ever heard…I mean who else could fill two hours with songs related to the circus, one of the most red white and blue pieces of Americana, in such a lovingly cohesive 120 minutes.

The theme is universal. While most of American Routes shows dig into music he connects broadly to Louisiana, this show is a bouquet to America, Americana music, American entertainers and the most recognizable piece of American culture, The Big Top, that has thrilled and chilled children of all ages for 146 years.

How creative? Check out the set list… makes you dizzy with wonder to how Americana ring master Spitzer pulls you in with everything from Ella, The Coasters, Everly Brothers, Al Jolson, Randy Newman, Los Lobos, several acts you’ve never heard of plus a segment of organ grinder music. Geez, everything but the popcorn.

Pairing interviews with New Orleans singer and former circus glass eater Meschiya Lake with high-wire trapeze artist Dolly Jacobs in two separate interviews, Spitzer makes sure you know that the circus isn’t ready to be covered in cobwebs like a piece of furniture in an abandoned Victorian mansion. It’s still a thing. Shot out of a cannon.

Buy a bag of peanuts. Tune in.

American Routes Goes To The Circus

22/04/24 American Routes: MUSIC CIRCUS

Arlo Guthrie once sang, ‘You can get anything you want,,.at Alice’s Restaurant…”

Well, the same can be said of FM radio.

FM radio offers news, daily commentaries, thoughtful programs like TED Radio Hour, The Moth Radio Hour, This American Life, and The New Yorker Radio Hour.

For a music lover, there’s American Routes. http://americanroutes.wwno.org/archives/show/1270/Music-Circus

American Routes is blues and jazz, gospel and soul, rockabilly and country, Cajun and swamp pop, Tejano, Latin… and beyond. Songs and stories from musicians describe a deep and diverse nation with sounds and styles shared by all Americans. From the bayous to the beltways, from crossroads to crosstown, on interstates and city streets, turn up your radio for the sonic journey!

The weekly radio program is produced in New Orleans by Nick Spitzer, who created it in 1998.

Over the years, Spitzer’s had conversations with Willie Nelson, Tom Waits, B.B. King, Dr. John, Dave Brubeck, Elvis Costello, Ray Charles, Randy Newman, McCoy Tyner, Lucinda Williams, Rufus Thomas, Jerry Lee Lewis and scores of musicians and singers you may never have heard of and will google because they’re characters whose life stories are as compelling as the music they make.

When the April 24 program is titled “Music-Circus”, I’m thinking what the heck does circus have to do with music. Circuses are visual experiences, music essentially an aural ones.

What follows is an astonishing array of songs loosely related to the Big Top plus interviews with the aerial artist who defies gravity in the most inventively curated show I’ve ever heard…I mean who else could fill two hours with songs related to the circus, one of the most red white and blue pieces of Americana, in such a lovingly cohesive 120 minutes.

The theme is universal. While most of American Routes shows dig into music he connects broadly to Louisiana, this show is a bouquet to America, Americana music, American entertainers and the most recognizable piece of American culture, The Big Top, that has thrilled and chilled children of all ages for 146 years.

How creative? Check out the set list… makes you dizzy with wonder to how Americana ring master Spitzer pulls you in with everything from Ella, The Coasters, Everly Brothers, Al Jolson, Randy Newman, Los Lobos, several acts you’ve never heard of plus a segment of organ grinder music. Geez, everything but the popcorn.

Pairing interviews with New Orleans singer and former circus glass eater Meschiya Lake with high-wire trapeze artist Dolly Jacobs in two separate interviews, Spitzer makes sure you know that the circus isn’t ready to be covered in cobwebs like a piece of furniture in an abandoned Victorian mansion. It’s still a thing. Shot out of a cannon.

Buy a bag of peanuts. Tune in.

The Bakehaus: Thriving after opening in March 2020

April 12, 2022

The Bake Haus

442 Common Street, Belmont, MA 02478

The Belmont Center version of “Cheers” except caffeine, not hops, is the beverage of choice and yes, everyone seems to know your name.

A steady stream of customers enters during the 45 minutes I am here. Repartee between them and the wait staff and each other fills the narrow space.  The unmistakable aroma of coffee and croissants energizes the appetite.

The mask mandate has been lifted, some wear them, some do not. These days, having been vaccinated and boosted, I am getting more comfortable leaving my mask in my pocket.

"Baking Is A Science", says the sign that owners Michael and Brian  placed above the order counter. So is the art of combining it with the range of homemade pastries, sandwiches and choices of coffee that makes The Bakehaus a neighborhood hangout.

Deuces with comfortable high backed Parsons chairs against the right side and the inviting plush couch on the left are occupied as are several wrought iron tables and chairs on the sidewalk outside.

On this sunny mid 60s afternoon after a succession of raw rainy days, everyone is itching to get outdoors, feel the golden rays of the sun kissing their bodies, reminding us that spring has sprung.

Heck, the daffodils and tulips have been popping out for a week. It’s our turn to permanently welcome spring.

“Claire and Bob, your order is ready,“ says the server to a couple comfortably ensconced at the table in front of mine.

Explains why I haven’t seen customers picking up orders to go and then leaving… they ordered online and want to enjoy the ambience inside or at the tables in the sunny outside.

The panini press married the flavors of my Caprese Tuscan Chicken, served between layers of a warm baguette,  to perfection. I am a huge fan of muffins and scones. The poppy seed muffin was good and the moist recently out-of-the-oven blueberry scone was divine.

Talk about timing...the Bakehaus had a grand opening in March 2020 as the emerging pandemic began to steam-roll our way of life as we literally feared for our lives every time we ventured to markets and drug stores.

It's a miracle that the little outpost survived. It's staying power is rewarded by loyalists who show up day after day to enjoy coffee and pastries and paninis in a business with local roots. I cannot imagine a Dunkin’ Donuts or a Starbucks franchise on this stretch of Common Street or in Belmont Center… Neither can the parade of customers marching in and out of the Bakehouse today.

Daffodils are happily sprouting from the cold damp earth. What heralds Spring more than the fragrant yellow harbingers? And enjoying lunch al fresco, with winter and the worst of the  pandemic in the rear view mirror.

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"Baking Is A Science", says the sign that owners Michael and Brian  placed above the order counter. So is the art of combing it with the range of homemade pastries, sandwiches and choices of coffee that makes The Bakehaus a neighborhood hangout.

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Photos by Paul A. Tamburello, Jr.

American Routes: Plumbing the Roots of Our Music Every Week

April 3, 2022

All you need is a radio or an internet connection to dig into this weekly radio program…

For a music lover, American Routes is a deep dive into the sources of our music - jazz, country, rhythm 'n blues, country, swamp pop, Cajun, zydeco and the subtle ways they interconnect. Every week, Nick Spitzer curates two hours featuring the work of songwriters, singers, musicians and a featured interview - this week with Corey Henry, who grew up in the Tremé district of New Orleans.

You don't grow up in the Tremé without having music pulsing through your veins or, for that matter, the smell of rice and beans cooking in a pot every Monday. Henry's father, grandfather, uncles, and now nieces are familiar names to New Orleanians.

Spitzer's lens is wide open. This week's show, "Antique & Modern New Orleans Style: "Corey Henry and The Tremé Funktet", sounds like an homage to New Orleans music - until you check the set list in the first hour that includes Cannonball Adderley, Lester Young, Peggy Lee and  Benny Goodman, Waylon Jennings and Nancy Sinatra (yes), Betty Carter. Spitzer is setting the table for the next two hours. The wonder is how he weaves them together to support his theme of the week.

The second hour is New Orleans specific, featuring Spitzer's interview with Corey Henry that shows that music runs in the family in so many New Orleans bands. And that performers like Henry consciously intend to offer something uplifting and positive to combat the crime in the city. New Orleans has its share of gun violence.

Other weeks feature two hours of music ranging from blues and jazz, gospel and soul, old-time country and rockabilly, Cajun and zydeco, Tejano and Latin, roots rock and pop, avant-garde and classical wrapped in a theme that Spitzer chooses. For 20 years, Spitzer's been opening our eyes to how New Orleans music has influenced American culture and the influences that informed New Orleans musicians to create it

Today’s interview is with Corey Henry is more than keeping the  spirit of New Orleans music alive. Henry wants his people to stay alive so they can enjoy it. "Trumpets Not Guns" is a direct appeal that comes from a respected voice who uses his pulpit to preach for an end to gun violence.

Henry's "Sunny Side of the Street", an upbeat bouncy take on Louis Armstrong's song of the same title, shows Henry's grasp on the many strands that simmer together in the pot of New Orleans music.

The show ends with Corey Henry's "Suite for the Candlelight Lounge", a homage to longtime proprietor Leona Grandison. I spent many Wednesday nights listening to The Tremé Brass Band play at Leona's place on North Robertson in the Tremé.

Get on board American Routes any time right here.

WWNO

• American Routes is blues and jazz, gospel and soul, rockabilly and country, Cajun and swamp pop, Tejano, Latin… and beyond. Songs and stories from musicians describe a deep and diverse nation with sounds and styles shared by all Americans. From the bayous to the beltways, from crossroads to crosstown, on interstates and city streets, turn up your radio for the sonic journey!
• American Routes—produced in New Orleans since 1998

http://americanroutes.wwno.org

 

• American Routes is blues and jazz, gospel and soul, rockabilly and country, Cajun and swamp pop, Tejano, Latin… and beyond. Songs and stories from musicians describe a deep and diverse nation with sounds and styles shared by all Americans. From the bayous to the beltways, from crossroads to crosstown, on interstates and city streets, turn up your radio for the sonic journey!
• American Routes—produced in New Orleans since 1998

http://americanroutes.wwno.org

 

 

A Date For Mad Mary, An Irish Film

A Date For Mad Mary

One of the most deeply informed films, with all the complexities of human nature explored perhaps best through the lens of Irish women. Specific to a time and place but universal in layers of friendship, family, platonic and physical love,  the constraints of conformity on behavior and relationships and the price characters pay for willfully stepping outside those constraints.

Did I mention that the film begins as Mary is released from jail after roughing up a woman in a bar in her home town of  Drogheda, an industrial and port town in County Louth on the east coast of Ireland. And that Mary has issues, that are sympathetically surfaced during the 122-minute film.  The title? Mary, upon release from jail, is tasked to find a date for the wedding of her best friend Charlene who's about to be married.

The linchpin holding it all together is the relationship between Mary and her musician friend Jess whose truth telling to Mary is a device to take the story to its most elemental level and suck us all in with its power because, as with Mary and Jess, there is a piece of vulnerability in each of us,

https://www.irishtimes.com/culture/film/a-date-for-mad-mary-review-the-wedding-zinger-you-ve-been-waiting-for-1.2775609

Teach Your Children | Playing For Change Band | Live in Brazil

Turn off the TV...play this.

Now is the time to teach your children well...or set an example yourself for others to follow.

Complete with the late Grandpa Elliott Small on harmonica, the band hitting stride with a run of scat singing at the 6 minute mark

Teach Your Children | Playing For Change Band | Live in Brazil

And for the fun of it, a cover of The Grateful Dead's  "Ripple"...you almost get a whiff of patchouli in the air.

And Taj Mahal and company, "Queen Bee"

https://www.playingforchange.com/videos/queen-bee-feat-taj-mahal-ben-harper-rosanne-cash-song-around-the-world

And "Down By The Riverside" from Phoenix...with Grandpa Elliott Small "making noise" on his harmonica at the 7:30 minute mark.

Playing For Change Performance and Interviews "One Love" & "A Better Place" with Grandpa Elliott at the 5:35 mark THE BACK STORY  Playing For Change performance and interviews at the 2014 Skoll World Forum on Social Entrepreneurship in Oxford England.

The Changing The World Foundation

https://www.playingforchange.com/membership

I signed up as a Lifetime Member

 

 

 

 

Elvis Presley - The King, a film

Elvis Presley - The King, a film

From impossibly beautiful man to one impossibly bloated, the story of Elvis Presley is an allegory about the cultural history of America from the 1950s to today. “The King” has all the subtlety of car crash. It poses questions, it offers answers. Some are not pretty. It puts a serious hurt on the notion that if you work hard you can achieve what you want….aka The American Dream.

It’s poignant. It’s revelatory. It’s complicated. It digs into the taproot of the divide in America: race. At times, I squirmed in my seat as the dots were connected between race, music, commerce, and the myths and platitudes we tell ourselves to this day.

Twenty minutes into the film, I realize this is a documentary whose ambition is to connect the zeitgeist between the 1950s and America of 2017, forty years after Elvis dies at 42 of a heart attack caused by abuse of painkillers. This is no gauzy portrait encased in amber. As one reviewer  comments, “We go from Graceland to Trumpland.”

How did Elvis happen? How did he become The King? Whose King? Why did we love him? Who were his people?  What made him tick? How did he become packaged and merchandised to within an inch of his life? Why did he never take the reins and become himself? Did he ever comprehend his power and the possibility of using it for social or racial betterment?  Was he simply the most successful cultural appropriator in history? (David Simon’s comment about that is probably as close as you can get to an answer).

Somewhere under the popular image was a country boy whose ambition, noted in archival footage, was to sing the music he loved.  It all started in 1954 while 19 year-old Elvis was trying to make an impression on Sam Phillips at Sun Records in Memphis.

After he sang some unimpressive country-ish popular songs, the demo tapes stop rolling. Elvis loosens up, probably to decompress, and begins singing with the unbuckled energy and style of the blues, gospel, and rhythm ‘n blues he’d been listening to on black music stations and in his neighborhood churches since he was a kid.

With irrepressible abandon, he begins to sing his version of Willa Mae "Big Mama" Thornton’s “You Ain’t Nothing But A Hound Dog, ” a white boy covering a decidedly black influenced song with all the unbound juice it called for.  Of note, "hound dog" was common black slang for a cheap gigolo, not the dog I imagined when I heard the song.

Philips runs in from his office and tells Elvis to keep singing. He had finally found what he’d been looking for. A white kid whose sound could bring the music of black America to a wider audience. The legend was born.

The film’s brilliant conceit is Elvis’s 1963 Rolls Royce. Director and co-writer Eugene Jerecki gathers a collection of big-name celebrities, including Chuck D, Emmylou Harris, Alec Baldwin, Ethan Hawke, Van Jones, James Carville, Mike Myers to sit in that car and paint a multi-dimensional, occasionally contrarian portrait of The King, much like the country he ruled (and that ruled him).

Jerecki tricks out that dream car with state-of-the-art audio and video equipment and takes it on a road trip from Memphis to New York to Las Vegas and down the rural lanes of Tupelo, Mississippi. The real time segments shot in the Rolls Royce are quilted with archived black and white and color footage that contrasts reality with myth. That car is a rolling sound stage. It feels like part of the cast. Its occasional breakdowns during the filming may be the exotic car’s commentary on its owner’s life.

Rapper Chuck D and Van Jones speak the truths about race and culture that I reckon were true. They sting. The most jarring observations about America are made by a truck driver and several residents of Tupelo, Mississippi, the King’s sleepy hometown.

One minute, people like me who grew up when Elvis turned the country upside down, relive the liberating youthful moments he changed our worlds. The next moment, in news clips of the time, I felt uncomfortable to confront an America that, like Camelot, was never what I believed it was.

A giant qualifier: That “we” is a huge chunk of white men and women of a certain age. The larger lens includes comments from today’s black community and a younger generation that never saw the arc of popular American music change with the comet named Elvis. The conversation about cultural appropriation?

David Simon says it best.

“The entire American experience is cultural appropriation.”

Consider that In 1952, Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller, two twenty-something rhythm 'n blues loving songwriters from Jewish families, wrote the song “Hound Dog” specifically for Thornton. “It took them 15 minutes to write the song,” said Gil Anthony. Of note: “Hound dog” was common black slang for a cheap gigolo, not the literal hound dog I thought about when I heard the song.

The film is brutally honest and complex. Director Jarecki shines light on history found not in books but in newspaper accounts around the country. Black and white photos of lynched black men hanging from a tree with a bunch of white people standing around are bone chilling. This is one of the most disturbing and provocative films you will ever see, a deep dive into American culture.

The 120-minute film’s clips weave his early career, first recordings 1953-1956, his commercial breakout 1956 – 1958, his mother’s death and military service 1958-1960, film career 1960-1967, his comeback to the stage 1968-1973 with archival footage and hit you upside-the-head contemporary comments by those passengers rolling along in that Rolls Royce.

“There are three kings, BB King, Elvis, and Martin Luther King, Jr.,” says one commentator connecting the dots as we see vintage footage of the Lorraine Hotel in Memphis and hear the voice of Martin Luther King, Jr. delivering the “I’ve Been To The Mountaintop” speech in April 1968.

Jarecki exposes the self-promoting role Colonel Parker took in commanding Elvis’s career choices before Presley’s ignominious self-destruction in Las Vegas. Elvis was the unscrupulous Parker’s piggy bank. Parker set Elvis up in Las Vegas, willfully ignored his descent into a sad parody of himself as he became a blubbering mess with pain killers coursing through his veins. Elvis doesn’t get off the hook, choosing the most lucrative next step for his career, no matter what the cost to his soul or his art. 

How is Jarecki going to end this, I wonder as the film hits 115 minutes. The footage of Elvis five minutes before the film ends will keep you transfixed in your seat long after the credits roll. Jarecki lets you draw your own conclusions.

In panoramic detail, director Eugene Jarecki takes us on a road trip showing us how we got here. The biggest question - where do we go from here?

Documentary filmmakers want to make you think.

My takeaway? Who are our idols? Who are our role models? Beyond wishful thinking and envy, do they change the way we live or behave or are they an anesthetic that numbs us to the rocky social conditions in which we live?

We are so out of touch with our authentic history. “The King” is shock therapy that makes us look beyond our next order on Amazon and the next bizarre story about a government in dysfunction. After you see this film, make a vow to snap out of living in a world of tweets and do one small thing every day to make America a better place.

Elvis Presley (January 8, 1935 – August 16, 1977)

https://www.newyorker.com/culture/the-front-row/the-king-reviewed-a-documentary-about-elvis-that-wants-to-be-a-documentary-about-america

found after I wrote this

 

 

 

Grandpa Elliott Small: An Appreciation

Grandpa Elliott Small 1944-2022

One more star is twinkling in the firmament tonight and one fewer icon is holding down the unvarnished street character of the New Orleans French Quarter... one more magnificent voice is in the celestial choir, with a New Orleans accent and spin on everything he will talk about up there...Grandpa Elliott Small.

Known for decades as Grandpa Elliott, the man was a living legend, dressed in his trademark denim overalls, red shirt,  floppy hat, his bushy Santa Claus beard poking out from under it. Most nights, there he was at the corner of Royal and Toulouse, sitting on a milk crate, his suitcase by his side.

Born in the Lafitte Housing Project, the man everyone calls "Grandpa Elliott" had been making music for years. Locals knew him by sight and shouted hello as they pass by. Tourists on Royal Street stop in their tracks when they walk past the legend, crooning and playing his harmonica. If street musicians are royalty, some like Grandpa Elliott wear their crowns with nonchalant elan.

Music is the rosetta stone of New Orleans. One of the best places to hear it is on the streets of the French Quarter. He would have been a top tier memory if you happened to walk by the corner of Royal and Toulouse and hear him croon and back it up with his harmonica.

The man was an embodiment of New Orleans spirit, warm, full of stories, outgoing, engaging, accepting.  He unfailingly lifted the spirit of any who come in contact with him. Totally blind since 2005, he doesn't seem to miss much of what's going on around him.

December 2012. The man gets around.

There's Grandpa being transported in a wheelchair to the same American Airlines flight as mine at Louis Armstrong International Airport.

"Hello, Grandpa, it's PT from Boston. I really enjoy listening to you sing in front of Rouse's on Royal Street. A million people have clicked on the Playing For Change 'Stand By Me' video."

He laughs, says thank you, adjusts his glasses, right side an empty frame, left side a deep sun-glass tint to block light.

"Since I recorded that video, Aaron Neville has sung it, Dr. John has sung it."

He holds out his big hand, says thank you.  "I'm heading to Spain to make a 'Playing For Change' video."

“You’re really stirring things up,” says I, "see you back in New Orleans.
 I'll get you another Dr. Pepper at Rouse's!"

Grandpa was one of the musicians playing Ben E. King's  "Stand By Me" on the uplifting award-winning documentary, Playing For Change: Peace Through Music, (the late Roger Ridley sings the lead and Grandpa Elliott is featured at the one minute mark sitting next to Jackson Square as he sang) the first of many 'Songs Around The World' produced by Playing For Change. That song has been viewed 177 million times.

It could be an anthem for the times we live in.

"My eyes hurt me,"  he said to me one night.

"Do you mean pain?" says I.

"No, that I can't see."

It was a rare admission from a man who overcame growing up in rough circumstances to occupy a seat of royalty on Royal Street in New Orleans. This is a man who performed to a crowd of more than 40,000 at Dodger Stadium, Los Angeles, California, on June 30, 2009. He couldn't see them. He sure felt them.

• 
• 
• 
• 
• 

You may have seen him perform in the Playing for Change videos.

BONUS: Grandpa playing in Brazil! (Grandpa kicks in at the 3:30 minute mark with the PFC Band)

And rocks the house in San Salvadore in 2018

https://www.playingforchange.com/band

From the web

How can musicians change the world?

Music can help in healing, in breaking down barriers and borderd, in reconciling, and it can also educate. s a cultural right, music can help to promote and protect other human rights (civil, political, economic or social). There are many amazing examples of music being used as a tool for social change around the world.

How Grandpa Elliott got connected with Playing For Change. I couldn't remember the  name of Playing For Change.I couldn't remember the name Playing For Change. Grandpa helped me out.

Photos and 2 videos by Paul A. Tamburello, Jr.

 

 

The Vibe of a Mardi Gras parade in post Pandemic New Orleans

It may be tricky to download this link but New Orleans writer Keith Spera's story encapsulates the ironies, contrasts, and spirit of New Orleans today.

https://www.nola.com/entertainment_life/keith_spera/article_49a55c30-9bf0-11ec-8dd9-3b5ed6ca681c.html

Scott Alarik: An Appreciation

December, 2021

 

It took me a few days to figure out why Scott Alarik’s "Folk Tales" radio program, was being aired outside his regular program time…until I heard “the late Scott Alarik” and my heart sank. Scott Alarik 1951-2021

 

"Folk Tales," told in Scott’s gentle, deeply informed avuncular tones, was a regular must-listen program, the kind that made me dash from my car to turn on the radio when I got home so I wouldn’t miss more than a few sentences.

 

Roots music? 

 

Scott dug his fingers into the rich earth of the origins of songs, the historic arc of the folk movement and artists who populated it. Without fail, I would want to hear a Folk Tale again to learn details that I couldn’t absorb in one listen. If you didn't hear it on Saturday, and one repeat on Sunday, you were out of luck,

 

I am so grateful that WUMB-FM intends to put Scott’s entire archive on its website, certain that I will listen to this master story teller add threads to his folktales quilt as I replay years of his studiously researched program in which every sentence was an important strand in a one hour tale.

 

As tightly written mini-tale, every word in service of the narrative, listening was like finding a pearl in an oyster. Exhibit A...https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N4rwN3PgF1c

 

Folk Tales is the east-of-the-Mississippi equivalent of Nick Spitzer’s American Routes. Both are wide ranging, deeply engaging programs that every week examine a specific facet of our aural cultural landscape and the artists who shaped it. 

 

With gratitude that the station intends to archive his programs on its web site.

 

"Carry it on…” was Scott's out-tro...and WUMB is doing just that.

Wednesday March 26, 2022  Scott Alarik Memorial

https://www.passim.org/live-music/events/scott-alarik-memorial/

 

MORE about Scott Alarik

https://wumb.org/saddened-by-the-loss-of-scott-alarik/

https://www.scottalarik.com/bio

https://www.scottalarik.com/blog/stories/intro/

selection of Scott's writing from his blog

https://www.scottalarik.com/blog/blog/c/299

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KdK5A0IYDZg

Informative bio if you can get by the digital audio voice

Wendy Moten: Country/Western Pure and Simple

I'll bet this has happened to you. You're searching for a song and come across one that stops you in your tracks...melody, tempo, evocative voice, an old-fashioned, unadorned country ballad.

Today's rabbit hole... an artist I've never heard of, Wendy Moten.

Till I Get It Right

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R6qknOC6A-M

Pure voice, piercing lyrics sung in a simple time tested uncluttered arrangement, laptop steel, guitar, percussion, bass.

These lyrics are so country classic. I warn you, you're going to play this a few times in a row.

"I'll just keep on fallin' in love til I get it right
Right now I'm like a wounded bird hungry for the sky
But if I try my wings and try long enough
I'm bound to learn to fly
So I'll just keep on fallin' in love til I get it right

My door to love has opened out more times than in
And I'm either fool or wise enough to open it again
Cause I'll never know what's beyond the mountain til I reach
The other side
So I'll just keep on fallin' in love til I get it right

If practice makes perfect then I'm near bout as perfect as I'll ever
Be in my life
So I'll just keep on fallin' in love til I get it right."

Source: LyricFind

Songwriters: Larry Henley / Red Lane

Tammy Wynette recorded the song in 1972. At the time, it was Wynette's 12th number one song.

Another show stopper, I played this a few times in a row too.

"Each Time Yoiu Touch Me"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xv0H1BSepdo

Both sung in the style of the greats...Tammy, Loretta, Patsy...but not in the color of their skin...Wendy Motin is Black.

https://www.allmusic.com/artist/wendy-moten-mn0000247691/biography

MORE

https://musikandfilm.com/wendy-motens-country-ep-produced-by-vince-gill-ive-got-you-covered-1-2/

Whoa...any singer who can croon "Till I Get It Right" in classic C/W style and belt out Aretha's "Freeway of Love" has something special going on.

Mr. Persip

January 4, 2022

While exploring memories of childhood on Coltland Drive, I remembered watching “Mr Persip,” as we knew him, striding purposefully across the field in front of our house, ramrod straight, lean as a rail, wearing his garrison cap and U.S. Army uniform jacket. I didn’t have the word in my young vocabulary yet but distinguished, dignified, and proud come to mind.

His home on Pomeroy Avenue was within sight of 7 and 15 Coltland Drive, the only two houses on the dirt road, where Sammy Colt and I lived.

Sammy Colt and I were the "eddieandbill" of Coltland Drive. From kindergarten to 6th grade, we were inseparable. We walked to school together, were safety patrol "officers" holding red flags to halt motorists when kids crossed the street in front of Redfield School, a fifteen minute walk from home. We found endless ways to entertain ourselves...yet another story to unpack.

One day when we were playing marbles on the dirt road in front of our houses, 8 or 9 year-old Sammy and I got invited to visit Mr. Persip's home.

We didn't know it but we were about to be introduced something we'd never seen before, probably the reason Mr. Persip invited us, a large macaw parrot, with shimmering tropical hues of green and gold on its feathers that made it appear regal, housed in an oversized wire cage in the living room.

We were transfixed watching its herky-jerky movements, the way it would watch us with its head cocked, one eye turned our way. Its giant scary looking beak that gobbled sunflower seeds made us keep a safe distance from its cage.

On the day it actually talked, we were gobsmacked…”Polly want a cracker,” I swear it said. 

I can see Mr. Persip chuckling to himself. He enjoyed watching our youthful rapture while looking up at that big golden wired cage every time we visited, waiting for that miracle to happen again.

To us, he was Mr. Persip, happy to be known as a kind neighbor by these two little kids.

Recently I learned that he was the grandson of Civil War veteran Charles Hamilton of the famous all black Massachusetts 54th Regiment. Looking back, I know he felt a connection with his grandfather, reflected in the dignity and pride in the way he moved, behaved, and likely the reason he entered the army.

I had no idea about his charitable work cited in his obituary. I wonder what it was in his chemistry that pushed him to act with such empathy and kindness. I speculate that being a man of color, he was not always afforded the respect he showed to others. Maybe ‘calling’ is a better word to describe what he did.

He did some of his charitable work mentioned in the news clipping at the former Union Railroad Station, a hundred yards from my immigrant great-grandfather's store on West Street… a trove of memories for another time.

How I’d love to talk to Mr. Persip today.

Image courtesy of Dave Laczak, senior assistant, Local and Genealogy Department
Local History & Genealogy Department
Berkshire Athenaeum
One Wendell Avenue, Pittsfield, MA 01201

 

POST SCRIPT

A charter member of the American Legion Post 68 since 1919, his 151st Depot Brigade took part in the Meuse Argonne offensive in WW I. He was district Sergeant At Arms for 25 years and Post Commander in 1956. He never missed a Memorial Day or Veterans Day parade that I watched every year as a kid. He was, in fact, known as "Mr. American Legion." He made 92 trips to Union Station with the legion color guard to give local draftees a proper send off. A story in his obituary that I love; for 12 years, he led collections at movie theaters for the March of Dimes, Jimmy Fund, Will Rogers Fund and Multiple Sclerosis Funds. He collected about $75,000. When he was presented with a purse of $500 at one of the many testimonials for his activities, he turned around and gave it to the hospital for which he had been raising money. To a man living on what I assume was a small military pension,  he could have used it to pay for food and utilities for a long time.  He was a giver. It just did not square with his nature. His service, let alone the grace with which he lived his life, is a shining example of America's  "greatest generation".

Beverly Cleary: An Appreciation

Beverly Cleary

APRIL 12, 1916 — MARCH 25, 2021

I thought of her as she was included in To those who departed in 2021: A look back at the notable figures who died

Whether by pictographs in caves or the printed word, we as a species are hard wired to tell and listen to stories. Beverly Cleary was a story teller who had an uncanny touch to reach her audience.

As a fourth grade teacher at the John Pierce School in Brookline, MA for 34 years (1970-2003, an era in which an iPhone was not carried along to school with lunch), I chose Cleary's book "Ramona The Pest" to  join the ranks of many books I read aloud to my students. Cleary was the one of the subjects of "Making The Grade,"  a column I wrote for the Brookline TAB in the last two years of my career.

https://ptatlarge.typepad.com/ptatlarge/2016/04/beverly-cleary-turns-100.html

April 11, 2016

Beverly Cleary turns 100 today. The Oregon housewife wrote some of the most popular children’s books of the twentieth century. Amazingly, the books still have standing…and popularity today.

For years, books like “Ramona The Pest” and “The Mouse and the Motorcycle” were a feature of my reading/writing program at the John Pierce School in Brookline. Cleary’s books were great read-aloud stories. The author had a canny sense of how to portray children navigating bumps that are part of the process of growing up.

I often chose “Ramona The Pest” as a first class read-aloud. From my point of view, the lively discussions and writing responses were a first step in establishing a bond, a shared experience, that shaped a class identity that fostered empathy, cooperation, teamwork and a positive work ethic .

My fourth graders, at nine years old, were old enough to be able to look at Ramona Quimby’s questions and actions in the rear view mirror. They were several years older than Ramona in her first few months of kindergarten, could feel quite a bit more grown up and empathize with her behavior. They really got it when Ramona was told on her first day of kindergarten to "sit here for the present" and she does, waiting for her present.

Cleary kept it simple but Ramona’s questions and dilemmas were universal and her character indelibly drawn. Cleary’s cast of characters usually involved Ramona’s older sister Beezus (Beatrice), her parents, especially her mother, and her friend Henry Huggins, but Ramona was the axis around which the stories were told.

Beverly Cleary captured a child’s universe with a charming economy of style and keen observation. Ramona was no angel. She had trouble paying attention sometimes, and once was sent home for gently pulling the hair of the girl sitting in front of her because it looked so much like a spring and out of curiosity she wanted to see if it worked like one.  My fourth graders chuckled when Ramona called herself a “kindergarten drop out”. And they reveled in their blooming maturity when Ramona talked about singing the "Dawnser song" in her first days of kindergarten, her interpretation of "The Star Spangled Banner.

I liked Beverly Cleary’s books because, in a non-preachy format, her books offered a platform to talk about values, character, and issues like sibling rivalry, being picked on, a father losing his job, unfairness in life... described by the author with a forthright but tender touch. Some of the discussions we had about what made Ramona tick resurfaced later in the year as we read other books or dealt with real life situations.

Peel back the personas of many teachers and you’ll find an entertainer… that certainly applied to me from 1974 to 2004. Sitting in the chair next to my cluttered desk, with twenty nine-year-olds sitting on the carpet in front of me, adopting voices for each character, pausing for effect in dramatic moments, using a little body English to embellish, making eye contact with my audience, I wanted the stories to come alive. If it involved theatrics, all the better. And I loved it.

Cleary published her first book, “Henry Huggins,” in 1950. Between 1955 and 1999 Ramona was featured in eight books and published in 20 different languages. The fact that she still has adoring fans, and still has a wry sense of humor, is remarkable. Her response to the question about the secret of living to be 100 sounds like it could have come from the mouth of Ramona Quimby.

“I didn’t do it on purpose.”

Photo of Cleary and fans by VERN FISHER/MONTEREY HERALD VIA AP/ FILE

https://www.beverlycleary.com/

https://ptatlarge.typepad.com/ptatlarge/2016/04/beverly-cleary-turns-100.html

Top Five Beverly Cleary Books by Lynn Lobash, Manager of Reader ServicesMarch 26, 2021

• #1 Ramona the Pest (1968)
• #3 Dear Mr. Henshaw (1983) NOTE: Cleary said she began the novel after "two little boys who didn't know one another asked me to write about a boy whose parents were divorced. And I had never thought about it, but I said I'd—give it a try." Kirkus review said this.
• #4 Ribsy (1964)

Joan Didion: A Moment With The Author

https://ptatlarge.typepad.com/ptatlarge/2002/10/on_reading_joan.html

In 2002, I took my first writing class, held at Cambridge Center for Adult Education. A first assignment was to read an excerpt from a Joan Didion essay.

Joan's response to this essay is below this story.

On reading Joan Didion for the first time
by Paul Tamburello

Why I write.
That was the title of the first article I was required to read in the first writing class of my writing career. After reading Joan Didion’s essay, I feel compelled to write a sequel:
Why I don’t write.

I don't want to write any more because Joan Didion just killed me. She killed me with her intellect, she killed me with her imagination, she killed me with her keen sense of observation, and she killed me with her ability to structure a piece that, like a Charlie Parker solo, started off with an expressed idea, hurtled off into impossibly twisting and turning tangents, and then miraculously landed on its feet where it started. The murder weapon had the fingerprints of “voice” smeared all over it.

How could she do that? Or more to the point, how could I ever in my lifetime even come close to writing like Joan Didion. I just don't have the required tools.

Joan wonders about everything. Joan sees a woman walk into a room and she gets an idea to write not just an article on, say, the effect of exotic perfume on bystanders, but an entire novel. And it’s not like she sees some broad outline, but she nails descriptions, details, and a whole chapter. I look at the same woman striding into a room and see hips, legs, arch of the back in relation to arc of the bosoms. Hopeless. Joan wonders “why she was in the airport and why Victor didn't know”. I wonder what’s her phone number. Hopeless.

I don't mind that Joan admitted that she stole the title of the essay from George Orwell. All writers steal, they’re an incestuous lot. I should know from my other career. I'm a teacher. We steal ideas from each other regularly, then, like blue jays homesteading in the nests of other birds, we transform them into our own. I also get ideas from reading the news, columns in the newspaper, listening to the radio, and looking out the window. Ideas are a dime a dozen. Nothing’s new under the sun. Writing something worth reading...well, that’s another matter entirely. Even if you do it with a purloined idea.

Joan says writing is an aggressive act, “an invasion, an imposition of the writer’s sensibility on the reader’s most private space.” Then she unleashes a dazzling display of literary firepower, leaving a trail in my writer’s mind like a tank rolling through a corn field. Her writer’s voice is as strong as a nuclear reaction. If Joan Didion were a country, George Bush would be declaring war on her for creating a weapon of mass destruction, causing developing writers to shrink back to their intellectual borders and not even think about penning a piece of literary journalism and signing it.

And I'm not fooled by that Brutus-like disclaimer that she drops on page 18, saying that she doesn't consider herself a writer because she doesn't think in the abstract. About ten words after that, she tosses off a phrase like “I found myself contemplating the Hegelian dialectic and would find myself concentrating instead on a flowering pear tree outside my window and the particular way the petals fell on my floor.” The lady doth protest too much. Since when do you cite Hegel to prove you’re not an abstract thinker? I felt like she flipped me her literary middle finger and smirked.

She says she never took drugs but when she says she wanted “to write a novel so elliptical and fast that it would be over before you noticed it, a novel so fast it would scarcely exist on the page at all.”, I rolled my eyes and said, “Yeah, right.” I can just see her in her tiny Berkeley apartment, toking up on some really good “tops” from Nepal, and riffing with her classmates about “a book in which anything that happened would happen off the page”, and seeing the really deep and connected nature of the universe. She’s just one of the lucky ones who could wake up the next day and actually remember those riffs with enough clarity to write them down.

Whatta grandstander. If she were a football player she’d be spiking the ball into the end zone abut every fourth paragraph. Take the bevatron for example. When she first gratuitously drops that name in the fourth paragraph, I thought it was something you sat on to get yourself cleaned up up after going to the bathroom. Is there any good reason why a bevatron should show up in this essay, other than to embarrass the rest of us with our ignorance of the contraption, whatever it might be.

Just about the time I decided to get up and leave the class, having had my vote canceled by the sheer virtuosity of the first three pages of this essay, I read the sentence “It took me some years to discover what I was. Which was a writer.”

It dawned on me that Joan might not be trying to kill me after all, but was offering to rescue me from giving up my desire to pound on the keys. By the time I finished the essay, I realized that Joan was telling me, with extended metaphors and her intellectual “A” game, what I knew from reading Donald Graves, Don Murray, Annie LaMott and others who have the compassionate habit of writing in plain English, that writing “tells you, you don't tell it” . And that you learn to write better by writing often. And probably taking a class and getting ideas from other fledgling writers.

So I guess I won’t drop out of class and sign up for cooking. I’ll keep writing , even though I know I have a ‘shaky passport” when I put my fingers on the keyboard. I’ll just keep plunking along so I can, like Joan, find out what I already know. But please, someone show me the door if I so much as breathe anything about a bevatron.

October 2, 2002
I handed my essay to Joan when i met her briefly after she spoke at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts not long after I wrote it. Here's her response.

JOAN'S NOTE
Dear Paul Tamburello,
Thanks for giving me the "Why I Don't " piece. Needless to say, it pleased me! RE the bevatron, it was a major presence on the Berkley campus, everyone's symbol of (hard to decipher) up the hill. All my love, Joan

Billy Conway: An Appreciation

It didn’t take a lot for drummer Billy Conway to make a big impression

https://www.bostonglobe.com/2021/12/22/arts/it-didnt-take-lot-drummer-billy-conway-make-big-impression/

Billy Conway, 1956 - December 19, 2021

The appreciation is a start, but the youtube below is a philosophical riff, wide ranging, with elegant off the cuff metaphors and similes that make it sing. Responding to the interviewer, Conway strings together exquisitely specific responses that, like his intuitive, spare drumming, are never showy and always in service to shaping the narrative that his interviewer is seeking to elicit.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pm9XIETEzBo

Billy Conway, a totally engaging human being...erudite, humorous, perceptive, self-reflective...this is a master class in music, bands that produce it, and a musician who lived it and left a singularly defining legacy when he died, a legacy that will shape the next time I listen to live music.

As a cancer survivor, I am in awe at Conway's response to the interviewer's question about his cancer diagnosis. Conway's response is so inexplicitly dispassionate,  matter of factly describing  his spreading cancer and the ravages of chemo on his body with nary a trace of self pity. His slightly hoarse,  charged voice evokes vitality, wisdom and a sly charm.

A quote I read recently, "Pain is inevitable, suffering is not," comes to mind.

Conway, 1956 - December 19, 2021

By his example, I've had a clue how to engage life when my next battle looms over the horizon. Thank you, Billy. Losing you is a blow to every man, woman, and child who has ever been in, and felt, your sage, gentle presence.

Christmas 2021

December 24, 2021

 

Looking out the landing window at the top the stairs tonight, there will be the spirit of a seven-year-old boy residing in the body of a grown man, certain that any minute now he will see a sleigh drawn by eight tiny reindeer streaking through the midnight sky, destined to land gracefully on the roof, the Jolly man in the red suit and iconic cap with white trim climbing down the chimney to distribute gifts I have yearned for all year long, staying just long enough to fortify himself with the plate of cookies I have left by the fireplace, then continue on his mission to deliver joy and a welcome bit of normalcy to the world, if only for a few hours.

Noel…

Merry Christmas!

 

Ramble In The Mist

December 2, 2021

12:30 AM

42°F, clear skies at 1:27 AM after persistent rain showers had abated, the smell of damp earth and decaying leaves redolent in the chill air, the urge to ramble strikes. I am out the door.

Down the porch steps to the road… Go left? Go right?

Resolved by some internal whimsical compass, no matter how many times I venture down a familiar path, it is never the same, the quality of light, the dome of the cosmos overhead, the time of night, the season. Familiar sites become mischievous changelings, surprise me, the nocturnal rambler.  My mind wanders to the thought of a woman applying a foundation to highlight the subtle makeup she will apply before a night on the town with me, accessorizing with hues subtle but noticed by a rambler accustomed to her appearance and her ways.

A rambler's shoes and photographers eye - roof lines and architectural elements compete for attention with the patterns of a crosswalk, the sheen of rain reflected by streetlights in brilliant granular black and white.  Overhead the aesthetic beauty of a huge electronic transformer stationed regally atop a telephone pole, its throne an elegant geometric design befitting a powerful deity. 

Every ramble serves up a surprise and an image I could never anticipate... a walking jack-in-the-box ramble.  I look with my eyes then through the lens in my camera. The ramble shifts from physical to aesthetic, from seeing to noticing. When I drive to do errands, my eyes are blinkered like a New York carriage horse seeing only what is straight ahead. Practical, safe, and life preserving.

Rambles? No blinkers. 360° beckon.

Every object has a personality that blossoms in the dark. Carefree on the open road, I feel the energy and joy of a Walt Whitman, seeing beauty in unexpected quarters. Having left my travails at the door, I engage myself with the joy of the open road. Expectations are not part of the process. I will see what I will see. It’s all already out there.

Seeing as a survival skill. Noticing adds aesthetic joy to my rambles.

Tonight, Christmas lights begin to adorn houses, black macadam pavement reflects street lights with granular precision, the chill air gives my ramble a seasonable envelope, crisp air amplifies the colors, architectural and arboreal, as I navigate the route of the ramble.The irony of familiar sites showing small eccentricities, some small detail I had not noticed before, a little prank on the  rambler. 

Everything is the same. Everything is different.

Paradoxical. True.

Photos by Paul A. Tamburello, Jr.

Midnight Ramble In The Mist

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Music, Emotion, Well-Being and Why You Choose It

The past 20 months of living with a  pandemic changed everything. 

Listening to music has been my safe, soul stirring, dancing in the kitchen source of joy. Every culture has a musical outlet, social, secular, spiritual, and I'll bet each of them uses music as a buffer.

What's with that?

Well,

• musical pleasure (think dopamine, same effect as food, sex and drugs)

• musical anticipation (whether expected or surprising)

• refined emotions (stimulate emotional processing of different parts of your brain)

• memories (the durable power of music triggers connections and creates associations)

• action tendencies (wanting to shake your booty)

• emotional mimicry (can make you feel sad or happy)

• consumer behavior (background music)

• mood regulation (refuge from cares of the day)

• time perception (pleasant music seems to tends to mitigate thinking about your shopping list and cares of the day)

• and identity development (popular music reminds us of memories or future anticipations) are in the mix.

All in all, a positive alternative to a cup of coffee to diminish fatigue or a sip of your favorite beverage to buoy you up. Free, legal, and morale boosting.

SOURCE

https://www.psychologytoday.com/intl/blog/science-choice/201908/music-emotion-and-well-being

Nietzsche on Music and other quotes

Friedrich Nietzsche was my kind of guy. He stretched his definition of  'dance' like silly putty to consider matters philosophical, whimsical and practical. His thinking pre-dated psychological studies like this one .

Consider this collection...
"I do not know what the spirit of a philosopher could more wish to be than a good dancer. For the dance is his ideal, also his fine art, finally also the only kind of piety he knows, his 'divine service.' "

"Without music, life would be a mistake... I would only believe in a God who knew how to dance."

"Dancing in all its forms cannot be excluded from the curriculum of all noble education; dancing with the feet, with ideas, with words, and, need I add that one must also be able to dance with the pen?"

"Real dancers are the ones who can hear the music in their soul."

"He who would learn to fly one day must first learn to stand and walk and run and climb and dance; one cannot fly into flying."

"And those who were seen dancing were thought to be insane by those who could not hear the music."
"We should consider every day lost on which we have not danced at least once."

"One must still have chaos in oneself to be able to give birth to a dancing star."

"He who would learn to fly one day must first learn to stand and walk and run and climb and dance; one cannot fly into flying."

"At present I am light, now I fly, now I see myself below me, now a god dances through me."

"Every day I count wasted in which there has been no dancing."
 
"And those who were seen dancing were thought to be insane by those who could not hear the music."

No wonder I feel like I'm in an altered state every time I'm on the dance floor.

Quotes like this are tossed about often, usually without knowledge of the man who coined them.

"It is not a lack of love, but a lack of friendship that makes unhappy marriages."

"That which does not kill us makes us stronger."

 

Marcus Roberts: "Gershwin For Lovers"

Coffee Series servings...notes scribbled while listening to my CD collection as I enjoy my first cup of coffee...

MARCUS ROBERTS, Gershwin for Lovers, Columbia, 1994

This album - piano, bass, drums - is the penultimate classic jazz trio collaboration. Roberts interprets Gershwin as swing, a subtle rumba, and jazz infused ballads. He mixes it up with gorgeous lightly struck chords and arpeggios that nail the personal groove he stamps on Gershwin songs.

I’ve heard Gershwin 100 times. This is one of the most refreshing. Swing, sly Latin, a soft hint of blues, all three musicians in the same groove, point and counterpoint. Percussion soft sweet and definitive, the arrangements are inventive and totally in spirit with the Gershwin intent that can be performed buoyantly, or as a ballad, or soft or lazily swinging.

Roberts finds the groove between fresh and traditional. Upright bass of Robert Veal and fresh riffs by drummer Herlin Riley take off in flight that is always in the vapor trail of Marcus Roberts lead.

A Foggy Day

The Man I Love

Our Love Is Here To Stay

Summertime

Someone To Watch Over Me

It Ain’t Necessarily So

Nice Work If You Can Get It

They Can’t Take That Away From Me

How Long This Been Going On?

But Not For Me

Produced by Marcus Roberts

Executive Producer Dr. George Butler

A Nocturnal Ramble

October 12, 2021

Nocturnal ramble up Palfrey Street and beyond. 

 

A perfect cloudless autumn evening, dusky dome of the universe overhead, Jupiter presiding in regal resplendence, this is a night for rambling and ruminating.

 

Trees lining the street, not yet yielding their chlorophyll, exhale the oxygen I am breathing in by the lung-full on an inspired march up the 45° incline of Palfrey Street.

 

The organic olfactory rush of just-cut grass, freshly laid down mulch covering gardens and flowerbeds, the uncomplicated quality of it in the still of the night, catches me by surprise, transports me to my earliest memories of autumn evenings when I was a kid. 

 

I’m overwhelmed by nostalgia, grateful for the time travel to a simpler, less complicated world, one in which the biggest choice that I  pondered for the whole month of October was how would I make a really fun costume, one in which my mother would perennially come to my rescue.

 

The Halloween lights and decorations along Palfrey Street, eye popping or subtle, a welcome tonic showing home owners having fun in these days when we’re grateful to be reminded of a sense of normalcy. 

 

Feet propped up as I sit on my front porch, I'm satisfied with an invigorating march around my neighborhood  with surprising reminisces from the past and an aromatherapy session to boot.

Watertown from one of the highest elevations in town.

 

Photos by Paul A. Tamburello, Jr.

 

 

CVS Orchestra Al Fresco

October 10, 2021

Phil, also known as Dutch (not Doug) Is bringing the joy to the quiet parking lot behind CVS on Main Street in Watertown.

This man is no amateur. He got his affinity for music by listening to his mother’s piano playing and singing when he was a kid. After learning music theory at the Berklee College of Music, he joined a bunch of rock ‘n’ roll music bands , one of which opened for Ray Charles (not sure where or when). Star struck, he and his mates got to watch Ray perform from the wings at the side of the stage.

Today, situated behind the back door of CVS on Main Street, Watertown, there’s always lots of foot traffic. Street musicians and buskers have to have a specific frame of mind to perform. They go through stretches of time where people pay more attention to the parking meters or their phones than to them and their music.

Buskers like Dutch Phil (not Doug, as I refer to him in the video) are here because they they need to play, sort of like they need to breathe.They may pocket a few dollars to cover gas money and a meal or two. When they perform solo, they’re playing for their muse and to feed their psyches with the creative process that, like a songbird in its cage, needs the freedom to stretch its wings and explore the world before returning home.

There is a lotta magic that Phil coaxes from his Yamaha electric keyboard - powered by a cord attached to the battery of his car a few spaces away from his makeshift bandstand strategically set up across from the exit of CVS.  Musicians like Phil have a vast library of standards tucked away in their memory cells. It amazes me that he can switch from blues to the American songbook to swing to rock ‘n’ roll at his own whim or the request of a passerby.

His sense of phrasing and tempo is elegant. His spontaneous riffs and quotes from other songs appear then disappear back into the main frame of the song like the beams of the headlights disappear after passing his bandstand.

His curly gray hair poking out from under his baseball cap, he is totally present. Nevermind this is a bland concrete parking lot. This man is a commanding presence with the improvisational spirit of a Keith Jarrett. Who cares if the audience is a bunch of empty cars and the occasional shopper at CVS or visitor to the ATM machine at the bank next-door. My guess is that he's imagining playing for a full house at the Chevalier Theatre in nearby Medford, MA.

He doesn’t appear to have a definite schedule. He does have an unshakable presence and a remarkably nimble style that that samples music from every genre he’s ever heard..he's a one man mood elevator, as powerful as a prescription you just got from CVS.

This rollicking video of "When The Saints Go Marchin' In" is Dutch Phil in full, with impressive keyboard panache in his over the top concluding riff.

 

Video by Paul A. Tamburello, Jr.

Apologies, this it Dutch playing, not Doug.

 

 

 

Hanging Out To Dry

Hanging out to dry...a rare sight, colorful, reminiscent of a time BD...before dryers.

And memories of watching my grandmother take clothes from the washer, squeeze water from them in a hand driven wringer attached to the washing machine then take them outside to dry on the clothes line... in all seasons.

Photo by Paul A. Tamburello, Jr.

An Autumn Nocturnal Ramble

A nocturnal ramble up Palfrey Street and beyond...

 

A perfect cloudless autumn evening, dusky dome of the universe overhead, Jupiter presiding in regal resplendence.

 

This is a night for rambling and ruminating.

 

Trees lining the street, not yet yielding their chlorophyll, exhale the oxygen I am breathing in by the lung-full on an inspired march up the 45° incline of Palfrey Street.

 

The organic olfactory rush of just-cut grass, freshly laid down mulch covering gardens and flowerbeds, the uncomplicated quality of it in the still of the night, catches me by surprise, transports me to my earliest memories of autumn evenings when I was a kid. 

 

I’m overwhelmed by nostalgia, grateful for the time travel to a simpler, less fraught world, one in which the biggest choice that I  pondered for the whole month of October was how would I make a really fun costume, one in which my mother would perennially come to my rescue.

 

The Halloween lights and decorations along Palfrey Street, eye popping or subtle, a welcome tonic showing home owners having fun in these days when we’re grateful to be reminded of a sense of normalcy. 

 

Feet propped up as I sit on my front porch, I'm satisfied with an invigorating march around my neighborhood  with surprising reminiscences from the past and an aromatherapy session to boot.

Jupiter, a luminously present, nearly upstaging the moon.

Watertown from one of the highest elevations in town, Palfrey Street.

 

Photos by Paul A. Tamburello, Jr.

 

 

Terrence Blanchard: From New Orleans To The Met

The murder of George Floyd, captured on video for the world to see, was an inflection point in America.

In tandem with or a result of the ghastly sight and evolving Black Lives Matter consciousness, companies began to realize that black people were consumers. Commercials for clothing, electronics, insurance, cars and trucks, home repair products, are pitched by black men and women and interracial couples. The abrupt change would not have  happened before George Floyd. Rational talk about racism are becoming a  regular feature on radio and TV.

Not everyone may be thrilled about that. But the persistent  history of neglected acknowledgement of contributions of creative black talent is being registered.  Much is written about how immigrants, which most of us were at one point, enriched America. Black people, to state the obvious, were transported here and became enslaved people. The effects on them and on us are rippling through our culture this very minute.

Black writers, singers, dancers, actors, actresses, film makers have occupied a sub-strata of our culture for decades. No longer.  Think about the singers and  songs seared into memories of your teenage years, songs that were the backdrop of your romancing and dancing. And remain embedded there with everyone from Aretha, James Brown and their successors to this day.

This is more than entertainment. It shaped our culture.

Tine to give due respect to the creative talent, inventiveness, with which they enrich our lives. I have listened to Terrence Blanchard play at the annual Satchmo Summerfest in New Orleans. 

Terrence Blanchard's creative juice was obvious at Sculler's Jazz Club in 2010.

https://ptatlarge.typepad.com/ptatlarge/2010/09/terence-blanchard-trumpeter-and-trio-at-scullers-jazz-club-1.html

But I'll bet no one in the audience would have guessed his genius would be in full bloom at another stage, nearly another planet away culturally, The Metropolitan Opera in October 2021.

Seeing his work at the Met is a huge step forward, an eye opener, a reminder of the depth of the pool of black talent and its pervasive influence on me and generations of white folks before me and after me. I am watching an inflection point become a cultural shift that affects all of us.

FIRE SHUT UP IN MY BONES, TERRENCE BLANCHARD,

 

 

Willie Nelson singing for his supper...

WHAAATT!?

C'mon, Willie...

I was startled then downright dismayed...two seconds into a commercial break on CNN, here you come singing "You Were Always On My Mind." for a Fed Ex commercial…."Willie Nelson x FedEx | Delivering for Earth"

What are  you thinking?

Your voice belongs in lots of places, from Farm Aid that you founded in 1985 to Honky Tonk road houses, but this Fed Ex business is a bridge too far.

The only damn thing that will make me feel at all better is if every penny Fed Ex pays you goes straight to the United States Revenuers to pay for your federal taxes this year. We all remember what happened in 1990 when the IRS raided your home, seized your  possessions and auctioned them off to pay a $16.7 million dollar tax debt.

You've never been short on telling us what's on your mind. I'm not entitled to do anything but listen to your vast and adventurous catalog of songs but I sure would like to know why oh why you agreed to hitch your wagon to Fed Ex.

You support environment causes and farmers who depend on a stable environment.

The Fed Ex commercial touts its commitment to reducing its carbon imprint  but hey, FedEx had more than 200,000 motorized vehicles in its fleet in 2019. To its credit it added 2944 electric vehicles that included delivery trucks, forklifts and airport ground service equipment.

Fine and dandy, but FedEx's airline cargo division boasts a huge fleet of 691 aircraft, twice as many as Ryanair, Europe's largest airline, and nearly three times as many as British Airways.as of 2017. In 2018, it's estimated that global aviation – which includes both passenger and freight – emitted 1.04 billion tonnes of CO2. This represented 2.5% of total CO2 emissions in 2018. Aviation emissions have doubled since the mid-1980s. That ain't hay.

As my dear readers have figured out after watching tons of hours of TV since March 2020, the songs pitched to sell product aim for our hearts then make a break our our wallets or try to improve our opinion of the aspirations of the corporation.

Hearing a song by Willie or Smokey Robinson transports us to the first time we heard it, who we were with, what we were doing, and the world in which we were living at the time... a cagey strategy to co-opt our buying choices by playing on my emotions.                       

Corporations began to capitalize it in 1926 when they knew most of America was tuned into their radios. Since March 2020 most of us have been glued to our TVs. Branding by using songs deeply embedded in our consciousness is a sneaky, powerful soft sell. Not fair. But effective on TV.

Willie, maybe Fed Ex delivers your monthly supply of weed.

For god's sake, grow your own.

PS

Amanpour & Company interview shows Willie's amazing memory

https://www.pbs.org/wnet/amanpour-and-company/video/legendary-musician-willie-nelson-his-letters-america-nie80g/

 

 

 

 

 

John Prine - Angel from Montgomery

John Prine - Angel from Montgomery

Simple, Direct. Poetic. Imagery that made John Prine one of the great songwriters of all time.

If these first eight lines don’t duck you under the water to get a John Prine baptism nothing will.

I am an old woman
Named after my mother
My old man is another
Child who's grown old
If dreams were lightning
And thunder were desire
This old house would've burned down
A long time ago

I’ve listened to this song for years. And assumed that an “Angel from Montgomery” was some form of miraculous visitation that would carry the lonely woman off to another kitchen filled with rich conversation and a partner who made her feel alive.

Prine says that “I think the more the listener can contribute to the song, the better; the more they become part of the song, and they fill in the blanks.”

He relished the idea that your idea wasn’t the same as what had in mind.

I always thought that Angel from Montgomery would transport the old woman to a life rich with relationships and things that mattered..

One of the blanks I filled in…
An "Angel from Montgomery" refers to a pardon for a prison sentence from the governor. It is also used to refer to a last-minute pardon from the death sentence. The phrase originated in Alabama where the capital is Montgomery. I thought she was praying for a pardon from a loveless marriage that would set her free to find her cowboy. I think that John would appreciate that one.
https://www.jpshrine.org/lyrics/songs/trivia/angelfrommontgomery_t.htm

Once he wrote the line about a cowboy, he got obsessed with finding an image to hang it on. He rooted around till he found the cover of a book of Grand Ol’ Opry posters. Lo and behold one poster shows a man atop a bucking bronco with the title “Angel From Montgomery.”

Serendipity meets creativity.

The first time I heard Bonnie Raitt sing it, those words pouring out of her heart, I assumed she wrote it. No idea it was composed by a man. Prine is probably the only male who could think of writing it as a woman and pull it off. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=toJ3ZYWRh24

And Raitt performing it with Prine in 2020

https://www.npr.org/2020/04/10/830101087/watch-and-weep-john-prine-and-bonnie-raitt-perform-angel-from-montgomery

John Prine wrote a three-minute song that captures a lifetime of living.

XXXXXXX

"Angel from Montgomery" written by John Prine, originally appearing on his self-titled 1971 album John Prine.

Lyrics

I am an old woman
Named after my mother
My old man is another
Child who's grown old

If dreams were lightning
And thunder were desire
This old house would've burned down
A long time ago

Make me an angel
That flies from Montgomery
Make me a poster
Of an old rodeo
Just give me one thing
That I can hold on to
To believe in this livin'
Is just a hard way to go

When I was a young girl
Well, I had me a cowboy
He weren't much to look at
Just a free ramblin' man

But that was a long time
And no matter how I tried
The years just flowed by
Like a broken down dam

Make me an angel
That flies from Montgomery
Make me a poster
Of an old rodeo
Just give me one thing
That I can hold on to
To believe in this livin'
Is just a hard way to go

There's flies in the kitchen
I can hear 'em there buzzin'
And I ain't done nothing
Since I woke up today

How the hell can a person
Go to work in the morning
Then come home in the evening
And have nothing to say?

Make me an angel
That flies from Montgomery
Make me a poster
Of an old rodeo
Just give me one thing
That I can hold on to
To believe in this livin'
Is just a hard way to go

To believe in this livin'
Is just a hard way to go

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sOg7mAkrKJw

tiny desk in march 19, 2019 , also shows Prine's puckish sense of humor

Prine's tongue in cheek song, "Jesus, the missing years.." https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=suoJ6mLVBlU

and his last recorded song

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L21Tc_DtL6M

John Prine died of Covid related illness in April 2021

https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-country/john-prine-obit-253684/

 

 

 

Gerard's Sky High Priced Pies

May 1, 2021

By the time you pass the hand painted sign in white chalk on a black piece of plywood, the one that reads, “HOME MADE PIES” it’s probably too late. Doing about 50 mph eastbound on busy Route 2 you are passing Gerard’s Panetta’s Farm. Unless you have very quick reflexes, you’ll have to wait till next time to see how good those homemade pies might be.

Last year a house guest brought a Gerard’s Pie for dessert. It made an impression on my taste buds.

Today, the farm stand is the last stop after a stroll down Main Street in Concord. As soon as I saw the first sign, I was on a landing path to the quirky farm stand. It looks like countless other such stands in the area. Except for the giant refrigerator packed with those pies that dominates one side of the store. 

 I am about to buy two large 9 inch pies till my travel companion tugs on my sleeve, pointing to this sign... "Fresh PIes Daily LG $27.95, SM $17.95"

After recovering from sticker shock, I settle for a 4-and-a-half-inch strawberry rhubarb pie at $17.95 and head for the counter nearly hidden by a wall of bric-a-brac.

 “We’ve been making pies for 26 years,” says Amy. Her husband is the real deal Gerard.

“Once we began selling more and more pies, we outsourced the baking. Companies gave us great samples. Once we got into production, the quality went downhill and didn’t match what our pies tasted like. We decided to make our own pies.”

Judging by her age, they must have started in their young twenties.
They’re doing something right.

“50% of our customers are loyal frequent buyers,” Amy says. “Last week one of them gave a pie to a friend in Westborough. Two days later, the recipient drove here to buy some of her own.”

There are over 50 pies in the giant cooler.

I have a friend who makes the best pies, crust, fillings I’ve tasted since the days my grandmother’s pies ruled the earth. Gerard’s don’t compete with those but are some of the best non-homemade pies around.

They taste real good…but $27.95 good? I don’t think so.

  

Aside from the range of classic farm stand products, those two refrigerators against the wall are filled with a Pillsbury inspired gold mine.

The rest of the offerings at the farm stand are in line with those of other stands in the area. The small strawberry rhubarb pie? I'm still scratching my head at the price but give credit to Gerard and Amy for having a sense of supply and demand and the power of their reputation.

Photos by Paul A. Tamburello, Jr.

 

 

Loretta Lynn: Still Woman Enough...at 89!

And, according to this interview with Raina Douris, she still is.

https://www.npr.org/2021/04/23/990217558/loretta-lynn-transforms-classic-songs-on-still-woman-enough

No way you'd ever guess the woman belting our these songs on this album was anywhere close to her age. She's got the pipes, the attitude, and the overwhelming desire to let those vocal chords and coal country lungs loose. I don't believe she can spend a day without singing any more than she can spend one without breathing.That Kentucky twang and her emotional grounded-ness in the hollers around her is as deep as those coal mines a few miles from where she  was born. Her natural beauty has been enhanced by modern day face lifting...vanity, commercial necessity? Who knows.

Nothing artificial is necessary to alter that piercing, achy, proud, pure tone of voice with pitch perfect tonality she's had no inclination to cap since she was born in Butcher Hollow, Kentucky on April 14, 1931.

"She became a part of the country music scene in Nashville in the 1960s. In 1967, she had the first of 16 No. 1 hits, out of 70 charted songs as a solo artist and a duet partner.^[10] Her later hits include "Don't Come Home A-Drinkin' (With Lovin' on Your Mind)", "You Ain't Woman Enough (To Take My Man)", "Fist City", and "Coal Miner's Daughter".^[11]

Lynn focused on women's issues with themes about philandering husbands and persistent mistresses. Her music was inspired by issues she faced in her marriage. She increased the boundaries in the conservative genre of country music by singing about birth control ("The Pill"), repeated childbirth ("One's on the Way"), double standards for men and women ("Rated 'X'"), and being widowed by the draft during the Vietnam War ("Dear Uncle Sam").^{[12]" Wikipedia}

^{During the interview, Lynn says "Tell the truth in your songs."}

That's exactly what she did, in subjects so far ahead of public taste that some radio stations refused to put then on air.

https://www.allmusic.com/album/still-woman-enough-mw0003469057

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loretta_Lynn

Personal aside: a photo of Loretta Lynn before she had all that youth culture work done on her face would be a master stroke against ageism that apparently equates age and appearance with ability ...or even worse, your relevance.

Is it too hard to equate what your ears are hearing with this lovely aging face taken a few years ago (much more appealing than the plastic face she acquired more recently?)  C'mon, Loretta, your face right there is inspiring for young singers to grow into and for your contemporaries to be proud of.

 

The Ice Panda

 

February 26, 2021 

He appeared this morning  . On a small patch of snow. The only remnant of the 2 feet of a snow bank, now evaporated,  that had lined my street for the past 10 days.

Upright. Indomitable. Inscrutable.

A mystery, a miracle, a little soldier of fortune

He was about a foot away from where my snowblower would have shredded his poor furry body. And another foot from where a giant snow plow would have relocated him Lord knows where and how far away.

He scared a neighbor who thought it was a deranged overgrown possibly rabid chipmunk to be avoided at all costs earlier in the morning.

Close inspection revealed he must have been a well-loved object of affection by a child somewhere within plowing distance of the front of my house. Its gray matted down and soaked weight and the fact its tiny feet were frozen to the ground helped him maintain an upright posture, looking alert, perhaps a sentinel guarding against other marauding soaked toy animals with malicious intent.

Three hours later, after a trip to Home Depot to buy supplies, there he was, not having moved one inch. By nightfall, his island of snow had totally disappeared and there he stood watching, waiting for something to happen.

An act of kindness was in order, A gesture, a salute, recognition of a minor miracle. I lashed him to the top of the fire hydrant a few feet from where he had been keeping watch to give him a better view of the surroundings. And elevate him to the safe throne he so richly deserved after all his travails.

Sometime in the coming days he may be seen and retrieved by his owner. In the meantime there's a glint of satisfaction in his two tiny black eyes. Against all odds, he has prevailed and has a future.

POSTSCRIPT

His nickname was suggested by a friend who recalled the discovery of Otzi the "Ice Man" found in Italy's south Tyrol mountains in 1991, although not with a copper ax in in hand!

First appearance of the Ice Panda after a warm windy night evaporated the  remainder of a snow bank in front of my house.

Vigilant night...

and day...

The Icc Panda appeared after a major ice melt of the snowbank over a week of unseasonably warm temperatures.

Photos  by Paul A. Tamburello, Jr.

 

"Virus’s long reach imposes a heart-wrenching isolation on all of us...

... imposes a heart-wrenching isolation on all of us."

March 28, 2020

The story resonates today in different forms and still animates the way we live our lives on earth these days...

https://www.bostonglobe.com/2020/03/28/metro/viruss-long-reach-imposes-heart-wrenching-isolation-all-us/

These are the kinds of stories I need to read these days, kaleidoscopic scope and breadth about the young, the old, and the in-between, how we are navigating roiled waters, managing our dreams, aspirations, callings, making peace with them in a disorienting present, uneasily, but resolutely.

Luminous details, small brush strokes, bore right down to the bedrock of who we are and connect us in unexpected ways...all important reminders of our shared humanity usually overshadowed by the surface tension of what used to be daily life.

PT

Opening Day at Fenway Park - Covid19 Vaccinations!

February 1, 2021

https://www.boston.com/news/coronavirus/2021/01/30/coronavirus-vaccine-fenway-park

Phase 2 of the Massachusetts rollout of Covid vaccine began yesterday, February 1 at Fenway Park in Boston.

 

The Cambridge Innovation Center (CIC) hit a Grand Slam..

No Fenway Franks, no hawkers tossing paper bags of peanuts up ten rows in the grandstand with better accuracy than some of the pitchers on the mound,  no guys standing on milk crates in the concourse selling programs, no sound of a full house crowd cheering on the Sox - something waaay better - the first round of vaccinations in Phase 2 in Massachusetts.

The concrete concourse inside the 112-year-old diamond in the rough known as Fenway Park (or 'Paak' depending on where you grew up) had a lineup of volunteers and professionals who worked together with the efficiency of the crew that covers the entire infield in five minutes flat when the rain begins to fall during a ball game.

Today demanded that kind of efficiency - a nor'easter was on the way. In a blast email from CIC, everyone with an appointment after 2 PM was urged to cancel or report in the morning. I was in the lineup at 10 AM, my friend Susaan at 3:30 PM. We rolled out to Fenway at 9 AM. Beat the storm, maybe even beat the crowd. We did beat the storm. Beat the crowd not so much - lots of people had the same idea we did.

Not to worry. The CIC logistics managed the plan like a veteran manager would pencil in his lineup for a big game. This huge set up with hundreds of moving parts from entry at Gate A on Jersey Street to the exit on the same street. It was flawless.

Show your confirmed appointment at Gate A. Enter the concourse. Read the signs inside the door. Stay on the circular 6 foot decals. Get a little loose about compliance and a floor manager points to the decal. You sheepishly stand right on it. When you reach a row of desks separated by plexiglass, show your insurance card,  sign a form confirming normal temperature and no contact with anyone with Covid19 symptoms and you join the line ahead.

The line snakes way up the concourse to a destination unseen as yet. Every 30 to 90 seconds follow the person in front of you to stand on the next 6 foot decal. After half an hour, notice the 15 minute waiting area in which people are sitting after being vaccinated. You're getting close.

Ten minutes later see a row of chairs, tiny desks and a nurse or medical student vaccinating those ahead. One raises her hand. I'm walking from the on-deck circle to the plate.

I am inexplicably nervous for a moment then full of anticipation. Amanda greets me, has a sealed vaccination needle of Pfizer–BioNTech COVID‑19 vaccine ready. Which arm?  Take off shirt. Right arm. A quick alcohol rub to clean then a shot i barely felt. WOW...DONE!

Amanda fills out a COVID-19 Vaccination Card with my DOB, Product Name,  Manufacturer and Lot Number on one side and "Reminder! Return for a second dose! with 2/22/21 she's inscribed on the reverse side.

Another card she gives me - "Important Next Steps" has  an address cic-health.com/Fenway and a QR code on one side and "Please remain in the observation area until 11:07 AM on the other side.

I am directed to a chair by a volunteer who checks the time. A few minutes later another volunteer with a laptop on a rolling cart greets me. "Would you like to schedule your second dose?"

"Yes indeed!" Then and there I officially sign up for my second dose on February 22.

While waiting for the next 15 minutes I peruse the "What to Expect after Getting a Covid-19 Vaccine" brochure.

What seamless planning and execution! Fenway Park is easy access by public or private transportation, the whole shebang happens undercover and indoors so no worries about weather.  Semi-trailer sized space heaters keep the concrete and steel interior warm. It is 32 degrees F outside.

A first dose of vaccination is not a magic bullet. I still need to mask up, wash my hands, keep a small social bubble. I'll do the same after the second dose. I'm doing what's necessary because some day down the road I want to go dancing, head to my favorite eateries, and visit my friends in Lafayette, LA.

Everyone here today has hopes, dreams, and anticipation for a future without Covid. Some have had losses so much deeper than mine, losing friends, parents, businesses. I am healthy enough. My friends and families have not been savaged by Covid 19. I am mindful and grateful for that.

I'm in that crevice between grieving for what's lost and hoping for what can be recovered. Time and again i remind myself of the words of the poet Antonio Machado as he considered the 600-mile pilgrimage walk  El Camino Real -  "There is no road, walking makes the road."

I'm walking.

XXXXXXX

Start at Gate A on Jersey Street

 Line up, sign up

Follow the line...

My turn !

Make an appointment for second shot while in recovery area

 

Photo opp on the way out...

Who knew the most important event this year at Fenway would have nothing to do with baseball!

Photo by Paul A. Tamburello, Jr.

 

Helpful sites

https://www.nbcboston.com/news/coronavirus/public-to-get-first-glimpse-of-fenway-mass-vaccination-site/2288562/

https://www.boston.com/news/coronavirus/2021/01/30/coronavirus-vaccine-fenway-park

https://www.mass.gov/info-details/covid-19-vaccination-locations

or Google "how long is the california el camino real"

 

 

 

Photo Essay Draft: Tuscany

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Joan Baez: A New Stage

December 28, 2020

20/12/28 Joan Baez/Stacey Abrams

Joan Baez: A New Stage

When 79 year-old Joan Baez announced her farewell tour  ending her public singing career I assumed she was sailing over the horizon and anchoring at some distant island of quiet retirement. Wrong.
https://ptatlarge.typepad.com/ptatlarge/2018/09/joan-baez-fare-thee-well.html

Today my friend Myke Farricker dropped in to deliver a Christmas present.

From the size and shape I could tell it must be a photo, perhaps one of the historic fundraising bike rides we have done for the ALS (amyotrophic lateral sclerosis)s) cause . Wrong again.

The bold and beautiful limited-edition portrait of Stacey Abrams stunned me.

“Check the name of the artist,” Myke says. Another shock.

Joan Baez.

It’s not a far leap to know that Baez as always had a social activist streak.

Now instead of using her one-of-a-kind immediately recognizable voice she is using color and canvas to make her point.

I don’t know whether artistic ability comes from the left brain or the right brain or the heart. All I know is that her drive to put her shoulder and talent to the wheel of social justice is unrelenting. Never happy with the status quo of politics in general, the past four years have been a car-crash affront to her political sensibilities.

She is pushing back.

To her, music has always had a point.In her politically framed songs, she knows that her sentiments can be a driver to raise consciousness...and money.

Painting has become her new voice, she is a force to be reckoned with. This may be the most important stage in her life.

Case in point: 100% of proceeds pledged to Abram's "Fair Fight" PAC

 

 

• DETAILS
• Handmade

 

• Height: 15.5 inches
• Width: 11 inches

Description

 

Limited edition (250) archival pigment prints of the Stacey Abrams portrait painted by Joan Baez titled "Georgia on my Mind." Printed on Moab Entrada natural paper, these prints measure 11" x 15.5" including a one inch deckled border. Each print has been personally hand-signed and numbered by Joan Baez and comes with a certificate of authenticity. Prints are $200 each. Shipped in durable triangular tubes.

 

Another portrait ...sent to me by Susaan Straus...a friend  just tried to  purchase...SOLD OUT!

This photo from  Joan Baez website

Photos by Paul A. Tamburello, Jr.

 

Winter Holiday: Solstice, Hanukkah, Christmas and Kwanzaa: American Routes Radio

The vapor trail from Santa's sleigh heading back to the North Pole may be dissipating but the music in his wake is still ringing in my ears thanks to American Routes...

LISTEN right here...http://americanroutes.wwno.org/archives/show/1200/Winter-Holiday-Solstice-Hanukkah-Xmas-Kwanzaa

This week's edition of American Routes - Two hours of Americana that celebrates a whole range of songs for the season.

Tune in and feel the pulse of the season in as many flavors as you find in a fruitcake - rhythm & blues, blues, ballads, country and rock, in as many tempos as the number of ornaments on your Christmas tree, Hanukah bush or colors on your Kwanzaa candle holder.

Spitzer is the equivalent of a Santa Claus with a bag of gifts that satisfy the soul thirsting for seasonal sentiments only quenched by voice and instruments. Not to mention that a few of them are played as universally as Rudolph The Red Nosed Reindeer.

From the first selection to the last, Santa Spitzer dispenses gifts he has shopped for all year long, hidden in his closet, and gleefully stuffed in the bag he opens for us today.

The first hour features several artists you'd never hear on your radio and rock or croon righteously. The second hour is loaded with familiar artists moved by the spirit of the season and deliver chestnuts disarmingly recast from the original versions. Eartha Kitt, Chuck Berry, Willie Nelson, Otis Redding, Herbie Hancock with Corinne Bailey Rae, John Coltrane all slide into the program as easily as the big man with the round belly slides down our chimneys.

The second hour is more dedicated to songs celebrating Hanukah, Kwanzaa, Christmas and New Year. Opens with lyrical Andy Statmam's Klezmer clarinet solo "Old Brooklyn" followed by a marzipan collection of Carole King (Hanukkah songs), New Birth Brass Band, Chuck Berry, Willie Nelson, Otis Redding,  Herbie Hancock with Corinne Bailey Rae, Bruce, John Coltrane, among others. 

Spitzer doesn't just drop presents under the tree. While you open his carefully wrapped gifts he tells you stories of where he found them and how they fit so synchronously with the other presents. After Chuck Berry's bluesy "Merry Christmas Baby" ... "Berry is covering in 1958 the original that Charles Brown made famous in 1947. Other covers were made by Elvis, Otis Redding, and Mae West..."

After the first of John Coltrane’s two compositions," This is a 1963 take on 'Greensleeves,' the old ballad from 1580 with Coltrane joined by his legendary quartet, piano McCoy Tyner, bass Reggie Garrison, and trumpet Freddie Hubbard."

I love this. Music has roots, songs and interpretations have antecedents. Every week Nick Spitzer digs in and tells us about them on American Routes.

"With Kwanzaa upon us, we'll close with music from the Georgia Sea islands, Lord Invader and his calypso composition Father Christmas," Spitzer says. Up comes West Indian singer Lord Invader joined by playful saxophone, drums, hand cymbals and hand clapping  followed by the Georgia Sea Island Singers "Join the Band" with an up-tempo penny whistle and hand clapping song that carries the message just fine.

My memories of Christmas past evoked by this day's American Routes is as intense my memory of incense wafting over the pews at Midnight Mass at Mount Carmel Church when I was a kid.

Listening brings home to me that the grip these secular songs have on me is as strong as any traditional or religious songs recalled from my youth. And reinforces how deeply embedded the contributions of Black musicians and singers are in our Christmas songbook and culture.

 

Frank Morgan: Listen To The Dawn

First cup coffee series...listening to a reorganized  collection of CDs while enjoying those first sips of rich coffee...

Frank Morgan: Listen To The Dawn, 1993

Frank Morgan, alto saxophone; Kenny Burrell, guitar; Grady Tate, drums and a young Ron Carter on bass, for 5 of the 8 tracks.

First track,"Share The Dawn," a Kenny Burrell composition - rarely have sax and guitar shared the same bed with such easy intimacy. Their take on Rogers and Hammerstein's chestnut "It Might As Well Be Spring" is as fresh as a daisy. The trio of Morgan, Burrell (three originals),  drummer Grady Tate and, for 5 of the 8 tracks, a young Ron Carter (one original composition) on bass are on a groove of intuitive repartee.

Soft swing with Morgan's signature bop inflected solos flights are underpinned seamlessly by Burrell, Tate, and Carter. A dawn to dusk mix of spritely,  one touch of sly Latin (Ellington's "I Didn't Know About You," and tender melancholy are stirred and not shaken. Morgan and Burrell finish where they started on the last track, "Goodbye."

 

 

 
 Frank Morgan (1933-2007) learned from and played with the best. He also fell into a drug habit, as did many of the best including his mentor Charlie Parker, but clawed his way back for the last set of his career. He persevered...not many musicians have a stint in San Quentin on their resumes.

OF INTEREST

https://www.michaelconnelly.com/extras/sound/

Sound of Redemption: The Frank Morgan Story is an absorbing documentary about a gifted alto sax player and Charlie Parker’s protégée, Frank Morgan

AND

>Harry Bosch – had a particular affinity for the saxophone. Its mournful sound, like a human crying out in the night, was what he was drawn to. The detective saw the worst of humanity every day on the job. He found solace every night in the sound of the saxophone."

Harry Bosch,  a fictional character in a series of Connelly's books, is a veteran police homicide detective with the Los Angeles Police Department. Connelly weaves together his complex, layered character over several books.

Michael Connelly asked Morgan to compose beginning and ending solos and between chapter clips for one of my favorite Connelly audio books, The Overlook.

Connelly drops names of musicians and songs in every book he's written...impressive.

I had to go to google when he dropped the name of. trumpeter Tomasz Stanko , one of Harry Bosch's favorites.

 

Noel Ramble

December 21, 2020

'Tis the season...and a perfect night for a pre-Christmas ramble in the neighborhood illuminated by holiday displays and the light of a waning Beaver Moon.

 

Noel Ramble

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The Benny Green Trio: That's Right

First cup coffee series...listening to a reorganized  collection of CDs while enjoying those first sips of rich coffee...

A very together trio - Benny Green, piano; Christian McBride, bass; Carl Allen, drums, 1992

Dexterous piano riffing, inventive, swing to bop, creatively arrangements, cool ensemble work throughout. No wonder this seems familiar even though it's first time I've played it in years. Ideas from playing for 4 years with Betty Carter and 2 1/2 with Art Blakey and  listening to the likes of Bud Powell, Tad Dameron, Erroll Garner, Horace Silver, John Coltrane and Miles Davis ( "Something I dreamed Last Night") have percolated and informed his style and approach to each cut on the album.

Elements of shuffle, stride and swing - they're all in there. He plays "Cupcake", a Green original (there are 4 originals here), in a really cool swing beat.

In the liner notes, Leonard Feather comments on Green's 'double handed chording' that learned from listening to George Shearing and played on "Me And My Baby" and that "Hoagie Meat" is played in 24 bar blues in 3/4 time -  that tells me  how little I know about the structural elements that are embedded in the music I love and how much all forms of music have antecedents.

This album is gonna get lots of play. I'll feel quite proud of myself if I can pick out those 24 bar blues in 3/4 time and realize where else I've heard it used. The list of songs in 3/4 time above surprised me.

Nearly an  hour's worth of music to enjoy and learn from.

Harvard Square: A Sunday Uplift From The Grips Of A Pandemic

Sunday, December 13, 2020

Manna from heaven comes in many forms during these months of pandemic. A Sunday afternoon jaunt to Harvard Square ranks right up there with the miracle of the fishes and the loaves of bread. Since March, only places I have frequented are the market, Home Depot, CVS and my favorite restaurants to pick up takeout food at their doors. For those of you keeping count, that’s 9 months.

Lately, I have been beset by maddening intractable technical issues on my desktop. A trip to one the most iconic places in metro Boston is just the ticket. If my computer can’t reset, I can.

Harvard Square on a Sunday afternoon is a destination known around the world. Battle scars from the pandemic are obvious. Some of the stores that have anchored the square for generations have been shuttered. Some have moved to another part of the square when their rents were jacked up, others have reestablished themselves in other neighborhoods. Some sadly will never reopen. Despite the economic toll the square is still a drawing card of the first order.

There is enough meat left on the bones of the place to give old timers like me a sense of continuity on this circumscribed patch of Cambridge that has drawn locals and visitors to it for generations. 

The emergence of free and fabulous street entertainment in the past 15 years - jugglers, magicians, pantomimists, acrobats, goofy and dog and pony shows without the ponies and hallelujah – music - is a huge draw. 

You’re not tripping over them as you walk from store to store, the city regulates where they can entertain. The most coveted place for entertainers is the section smack in the middle of Brattle Square, at the intersection of Massachusetts Avenue, Brattle Street, and John F. Kennedy Streets

On warm summer nights, spectators by the hundreds make a beeline there to be thrilled by some of the most original street acts in any town you’ll ever visit.

Heading down Brattle Street from what used to be Nini’s Corner (forced to move after decades), we hear the strains of a righteously ramped up cover band. Whatever else was on the to do list is immediately scratched. Live music, talented musicians, outdoors in the fresh air, real dance music, totally fabulous, oh yes, we are heading there right now.

Most people are tapping their feet or swaying to the music or wiggling their butts. A few are free styling  the music by themselves. All wear masks.

I have absolutely got to dance right now. I have not partner danced since March. This feels like the oasis I have been dreaming about for months. 

“Baby, we’re going to dance,” says I.  

My shopping companion, the one who came up with this idea, is quite the rug cutter at her Arthur Murray Dance Studio and knows the steps to just about any dance known to man. She and her teacher compete in routines they’ve practiced with total sang-froid in front of tables of judges and loads of spectators. 

She is hesitant to dance outside her familiar territory of polished oak floors and nattily attired cohorts.

I flunk at memorizing a routine. I intuitively follow the beat and channel it into dance…with style, joy, and absolute confidence that I can make it work no matter my partner’s level of expertise.

We step out of the crowd.

After so long a time without live music and a place to dance, I feel like a lemming inexorably heading toward the cliff. A sense of the preordained in play, I’m positively certain that when I reach it, I’m going to defy gravity, soar, and take her with me.

Partner dancing fills a place in my heart and psyche that has not been fed since March. For the next 15 glorious minutes, my partner relaxes, erases her habit of dancing to a creative routine she has mastered and goes with my flow.

I am in an altered state and have no fear of being arrested for it. My troubles and cares have dissipated in 4/4 time. A vital part of my life has been a resurrected like Lazarus. No drugs, no alcohol. Just following the stylings of fabulous singer Lois Lane and The Daily Planets. Christmas has come early. 

I lead. She follows. It is as simple as that.

Heading down Brattle toward the action in Brattle Square.Everyone wears a mask..it's the law.

 

Teen band in front of new Harvard Coop; on the way down Brattle Street

 

Harvard Yard across the street; original Harvard Coop on corner of Brattle and Massachusetts Avenue. Everyone wears a mask.

Lois Lane and band cover the classics...first rate mood elevator...Lois Lane and The Daily Planets

SIDEBAR

"Lois Lane and the Daily Planets are a mainstay in the Boston area music scene. Specializing in R&B, funk, soul, jazz, rock and pop, Lois Lane and the Daily Planets are sure to satisfy even the most demanding audiences! Once the crowd is on its feet they do not sit down.

Lois Lane herself, is a phenomenal singer and a natural entertainer and is known for getting and keeping the crowd on their feet dancing and laughing. Gifted with outstanding people skills, Lois reaches out and touches the heart of everyone from nine to ninety! You are guaranteed to have a great time listening, dancing and celebrating to this great entertainer and band.

Backed by a powerful rhythm section in guitarist Peter Fedele, bassist Lee Lundy and drummer Cliff Goodman, the show is always energy-packed experience to remember!:

https://www.reverbnation.com/loislaneandthedailyplanets

Up and comers...snag a place between the two Harvard Coops and their own echo chamber

https://www.bostonglobe.com/2021/11/01/arts/introducing-pair-14-year-old-harvard-square-buskers-with-sound-beyond-their-years/

Photos and videos by Paul  A. Tamburello, Jr.



 

Keith Jarrett: The Köln Concert

First cup coffee series...listening to a reorganized  collection of CDs while enjoying those first sips of rich coffee...

 

His left hand pounding with vigor and occasional rhapsody, right hand trilling like a lark with occasional riffs reminiscent of a choir at a distant white clapboard church,  is an acoustic balm to ease soul and body in troubled times.

A reader told me about Keith Jarrett's current health, his penchant for perfectionism, and stand-offish relationship with a  live audience. .https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/21/arts/music/keith-jarrett-piano.html

The 1975 recording is of sweepingly surpassingly in the moment lighting caught in the bottle.As of now, the bottle may be capped forever.

 

Horace Silver: Songs For My Father

First cup coffee series...listening to a reorganized  collection of CDs while enjoying those first sips of rich coffee...

 

1963,1964

The first cut on this album, "Songs For My Father," John Tavares Silver, who happens to be the nattily dressed man on the album cover, is still today the most recognizable Horace Silver composition. All but one of the ten cuts were composed by Horace at the piano.

Blue Note has a great catalog of jazz from the mid-fifties to the late sixties, one of the richest periods in jazz history. Horace gives his side men plenty of space to play around him, from rich solos to subtle underpinnings to his 88 key center of gravity.