pt at large

2012 Bayou n Boogie, Sterling, CT

Bayou n' Boogie Festival
May 26, 2012

Sterling, CT

Ruben Moreno is barely 22. After listening to him sing the last four songs of his set, I predict the kid has a promising future. Born in Houston, he's got Creole, Spanish, and Italian blood coursing through his veins. The live music he heard growing up in his grandmother's house got his motor running. He first hit the stage as a ten year old playing washboard for Leroy Thomas when he played a gig in Houston.

Ruben sings in the zydeco tradition but there's something about his sound that sets him apart from his peers, even his elders. He listens to rock. swing, ska, and country and and you get whiffs of those styles in his music. In the last few years, he's been learning accordion, which he  played today. He's a work in progress, no matter which way he goes, he's likely to be good at it.

The kid has aspirations to expand the boundaries of zydeco music. He grasps that zydeco is not bound in tradition. He recalls that Clifton Chenier put the zydeco world on its ear, and probably on the map, with his bluesy versions of both traditional and pop songs. Ruben Moreno has the lineage and the drive to succeed.

An Australian who plays a fierce mouth harp and a digeridoo…whaaat? The promoters took a chance on Harper and MidWest Kind. Dancers didn't know what to make of him. Only the most inventive danced to his songs but his music was fun to listen to. So was trying to decode his thick Australian accent. I guarantee this. No other cajun zydeco festival has featured a digerigoo player.

Listening to Harper get into a blistering harmonica number and following it with a hauntingly bluesy song on a digeridoo was mind bending. I, for one, had never seen a digeridoo, couldn't have picked one out of a lineup of music instruments if my life depended on it. He probably won't become a regular on the zydeco circuit but Harper and his band from Michigan (don't ask) were certainly a bold addition to the day's music. If world music has a blues/rock/funk category, Harper would fit quite nicely in it.

Leroy Thomas and The Zydeco Roadrunners - Old Faithful of the zydeco scene. OK, scratch the "old" part and replace it with 'reliable'. Leroy and his Zydeco Roadrunners have cooked up a good foot stomping show with enough waltzes and slow drags ever since the first time I heard him play in 2009. The man knows that there is more than one speed to play zydeco and we dancers love him for that. The dance floor filled up right to the edges the minute Leroy began his set.

"I've been playing for twenty five years," he told me after the show. He was referring to the fact that this is the first year he and his band haven't caravaned from Louisiana to their gigs east of the Mississippi. "I explained to the bookers that I just can't do that kind of driving any more and if they want me, they need to pay airfare for us to come up."

He said he swallowed hard before asking because he wasn't sure how it would go over. None of the bookers balked. They know the man and his band deliver the goods. If they have to add a few bucks to the ticket cost, so be it. Leroy's fans know they'll get a damn good show and leave happy.

Members of The Revelers and Brain Cloud jam at the end of their sets

The Revelers and Brain Cloud are two works in progress but don't let that fool you. The Revelers formed about a year ago and Brain Cloud less than a year before that. The Revelers are from the Lafayette, Louisiana area, one of the biggest gumbo music pots in America, if not  the known universe. Made up of members of the Red Stick Ramblers and The Pine Leaf Boys they've known each other for years.

As bass player Eric Frey says in the promotional video he created, "Glen Fields (drums) and I have this magical thing going on, we've been playing together for going on ten years and when you play with someone for that long you get really tight." Those two plus Chas Justus (guitar), Daniel Coolik (fiddle), Blake Miller (accordion) play a wild rumpus of Swamp-pop, Cajun, Country, Blues and Zydeco.

Brain Cloud hails from the other side of the Mississippi, the New York City to be precise. Dennis Lichtman, musician, arranger, sideman, and talented mandolin, clarinet and fiddle player has played in jazz, bluegrass and Brazilian music festivals. In 2010, Lichtman convinced songstress Tamar Korn, fellow member of the Cangelosi Cards, to join him in a group that would make a potent musical mash of country jazzy bluegrass western swing. By the time they added Skip Krevens (guitar and vocals), Raphael McGregor (steel guitar), Kevin Dorn (snare drum), and Andrew Hall (bass) they were up to about 100 proof.

Some pretty sweet music filled the tent when Brain Cloud collided with the musical weather system known as The Revelers for the last part of the Revelers afternoon set.

Jeffery Broussard is old school zydeco, a lot more of Clifton Chenier in his style than younger  singers like Andre Thierry or Cory Ledet. Like so many of his peers, he comes to zydeco by birth - his dad was highly regarded Delton Broussard so he heard all kinds of zydeco from the time he was rocked in his cradle, probably to the beat of music going on in the parlor. He understands that all zydeco "doesn't have to be played at 1000 miles an hour," as KRVS Louisiana radio host Herman Fuselier would say on his weekly show The Zydeco Stomp. The tempos vary, enough bluesy slow drags to keep dancers a chance to do "a little belly rubbin'," to quote Herman Fuselier again.

Mitch Woods and His Rocket 88s

Mitch Woods has one foot in Chicago and one in New Orleans. As he said onstage, "I'm the boogie part of this Bayou n Boogie weekend," and he was all of that. The guy is a throwback to earlier times. He learned from masters like Archie Shepp, made  a name for himself as a man who could hold his own with musicians like The Fabulous Thunderbirds, The Neville Brothers,  and James Brown. From 1988 onward, Woods has produced CDs that got lots of airplay. He began band leading and discovered he could sing over his piano - things got more interesting when he discovered he was pretty good at adding the 'patter' with his singing.

In the 1990s, he discovered New Orleans. "New Orleans reveres piano players, if you're good, you get in," he said. Woods got in with his style of boogie boogie and blues. He's most proud of "Keeper of the Flame," a record he made with surviving kings of blues James Cotton, Johnnie Johnson, James Lee Hooker, Earl King, and Lee Allen who all sang classic tunes with him. Swing dancers love his style and were in force on the dance floor. With Sax player Amadee Castenell and a crack band, Woods fit right in with his blend of New Orleans, jump blues, and bluesy boogie.


Andre Thierry and Zydeco Magic

Lots of dancers love him. Maybe I was tired but Andre Thierry was a disappointment to me. One of the main sins is when a band gets on a roll and one song sounds pretty much like the other in rhythm and tone. In the six songs i stayed for, there wasn't one that jumped out and called me to the dance floor or sounded different from the others. I didn't feel that Andre engaged with the audience but in honesty they were out there in force dancing away and many crowded the front of the stage to listen. I'm sure I'll hear him again soon. Let's see what happens.

Photos by Paul A. Tamburello, Jr.

Memorial Day in Westport, MA: A small town honors its men and women who served

Memorial Day,Westport, MA, May 28, 2012

Nearly fifty veterans, from the Revolutionary War to Operation Iraqui Freedom, are buried in Beech Grove Cemetery in Westport, MA. Today's parade route is from Town Hall to Beech Grove Cemetery then back on Main Road to Town Hall for closing ceremonies and refreshments for all. The event lasted approximately two hours.

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A Day of Celebration and Commemoration

A parade, especially the Memorial Day Parade, is the glue that holds this little town together. Westport men have fought in wars from The Civil War to Afghanistan. There are scores of red, white and blue flags waving in the gentle breeze at Beech Grove Cemetery today.

The Memorial Day Parade was the first parade that hundreds of today’s spectators marched in when they were kids themselves. Yes, they’d heard school lessons about the patriotic meaning of the day but it was really special because they got to wear their uniforms - band or baseball or cub scout or brownie - and hear cheers from their relatives and friends along the route from Town Hall to Beech Grove Cemetery.

Now grown, they are lining the parade route to snap photos of their own children, grandchildren and peers. They understand the excitement on children’s faces.

Understand this. In Westport, nearly everyone in public service and youth organizations marches. It’s been that way a long time.

Dana Reed born 1926, now 86, was in his first parade as an 11 year old with his Westport Boy Scout troop. “They lined us up and taught us how to march, they don’t march properly today,” Reed observed. He knows a thing or two about marching. A Navy veteran, he served in the North Atlantic for WWII and was called back to sea again for the Korean War. Today he was right on cadence with the men of James Morris Post 145 American Legion of Westport, MA.

The Beaulieu brothers, Douglas and Barry, standing with their families atop the stone embankment near the Friends Meeting House, have been coming to the parade since they were kids, heck, they marched in this parade when they were kids. One Beaulieau son is a policeman, one a fireman who served in Iraqui Freedom, one niece is in the band and their granddaughter’s third grade teacher who’s wearing his Cub Scout Leader hat today is leading his “pack”. There’s a sense of pride here. This will be a joyfully loud place to be when these Beaulieu representatives march by.

Veterans of WWII, Korea, Viet Nam, Iraq, and Afghanistan march. The Board of Selectmen marches. State Police, Color Guards from surrounding towns, firemen, police and auxiliary officers march. Like “the wave” at Fenway Park, a quiet and respectful applause ripples down Main Road as each of these groups pass the spectators. And about a hundred of those cub scouts, brownies, and “The Blue Wave” Westport Schools band march. Some day these kids will watch their own kids march.

As the procession makes a turn into the cemetery, the day’s mood abruptly veers from festive to solemn. Those granite headstones point to our ultimate destination, at least for those old enough to understand that life is a finite proposition. Even the children are a little spooked. They don't need much of a reminder to quiet down.

A hush descends upon hundreds of onlookers as they form around the tall white pole with its flag at half staff in the center of the cemetery. The citizens may argue about warrant items at Town Meeting but there’s no discord here. It’s time to remember those who served the country, and to be thankful for what we often take for granted.

Jerry LeBoeuf, entering his second year as Westport Veteran’s Agent after taking over for highly regarded Ron Costa, his recently retired predecessor, sets the tone by reading President Barack Obama’s Memorial Day Prayer For Peace.

One after another, men in uniform come forward. They understand the pain of families like those of Westport's Michael Bono, who served in Operation Iraqui Freedom and died in a non-combat related accident at Camp Merrill in Georgia. The cost of war is not a line item in the budget. It is blood.

Words like “the fallen,” “heroes,” “the ultimate sacrifice,” “died for our country,” echo in this cemetery and probably in thousands of burial grounds across America today. The words are true, the sentiment is right, but one of the last men to speak says in less than a minute the truest words I hear all day.

“War is ugly. I hate wars. Hate the war but honor the warriors.” David Cordier, a burly uniformed man in black beret, a man long on sentiment and short on sentimentality, Commander of the Vietnam Veteran’s of America Westport MA Post 207, hit the mark.

A lone bugler blows a mournful “Taps”. A contingent of the parade group retraces its route to Town Hall. Prayers are spoken. The flag is raised to full staff. This Memorial Day is history. Hundreds of spectators head to the rear of town hall to socialize with cold milk, hot coffee, doughnuts, water, juice and home made blueberry cake.

How American is that?

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Photos by Paul A. Tamburello, Jr.

 

Jeanne Aquilla (photo Left) and Helene Hardin (photo Right) hand flags to spectators. Jeanne Aquilla’s husband Joe has been Commander of the James Morris Post 145 American Legion Post Westport MA for the past five years. “He’s giving his first Memorial Day speech today,” Jeanne says. Five area veteran’s groups rotate hosting the annual Memorial Day event. The Aquillas have lived in Westport for 32 years.

Douglas and Barry Beaulieu and their families (details in story) and Tillie of North Westport, her son and granddaughter.

Every man who served in the military is invited to march

A color guard precedes WWII decorated veteran Leo St.Onge

Longtime Veteran's Agent, recently retired Ron Costa photo at left

Three members of Westport's Board of Selectmen; State Police

Westport's Blue Wave Marching Band; Brownies, Girl Scouts, Cub Scouts and Scout pack leader "Mr. T", fourth grade teacher...

Beech Grove Cemetery...

The family of Michael Bono, who served in Operation Iraqui Freedom and died in a non-combat related accident at Camp Merrill in Georgia, returns to their seats after laying a wreath at the flagpole

Veterans listen as Veteran's Agent Jerry LeBoeuf (former Marine) reads President Barack Obama’s Memorial  Day Prayer For Peace

Everyone at "parade rest"

Cub scouts, Brownies, high school children lay wreathes at the flagpole; a 21 gun salute

Back to Town Hall for flag raising ceremony

Organizers said the turnout for the parade was one of the largest in recent memory

Post parade socializing and refreshments

A busy line at the refreshment stand behind Town Hall; pt and Dana Reed, WWII and Korea Navy veteran


 

NYC: Twelve Blocks Up Seventh Avenue

Emerge into the sunlight from the depths of Penn Station to the hustle and bustle of NYC. A fifteen minute walk up Seventh Avenue through Times Square to W46th Street, a tiny window into the city at work and play... the avenues are long concrete and glass canyons stretched out to the vanishing point, taxis, buses, and cars whiz and honk, pedestrians obey the walk signs - not to would invite a calamity.

Streams of people pass silent protestors, lovebirds...

Powwows to determine what to see next... a photo opp with a cartoon character

Amateur photographers are everywhere as are human billboards handing out promotional material, and guys trying to navigate their handtrucks through the crowds.

Enormous digital advertisements add to the razzmatazz of Times Square...

so does a spash of nudity...a topless guitar player smack in the middle of Times Square, none other than Sandy Kane, "Naked Cowgirl", "The Lady Gaga of Times Square." Even in NYC this sight was enough to make scores of passersby a little gaga.

Photos by Paul A. Tamburello, Jr.

Jeff Kelly Lowenstein: My Walking Talking Lifetime Achievement Award

Jeff Kelly Lowenstein. Google the name. Ten pages worth of Jeff Kelly Lowenstein later, Google’s still rolling out his name. Impressive.

Let’s see. Award winning reporter for the Chicago Reporter; currently Database and Investigative Editor for the Chicago Tribune’s Spanish language newspaper Hoy (and is becoming fluent in Spanish while he’s at it); the 2007 Racial Justice Fellow at the Institute of Justice and Journalism at USC’s Annnenberg School of Communication; one of a handful of journalists from around the world to be selected in the Climate Change Media Partnership’s first Fellowship Program to send journalists to the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Durban (COP17) in November 2011; contributor to the Huffington Post; awarded a Dennis Hunt Fellowship in 2011; currently president of the Dart Society…I could go on. Run that Google search and see for yourself.

I’ve known him since he was nine years old. And I'm mighty proud of him.

“I want Mr. Tamburello for my fourth grade teacher,” he remembers telling his mom in 1974. Alice Lowenstein was on the board of the Parent Teacher Organization. Jeff was placed in 4T. He was one of the bright spots in a really interesting bunch of kids in my 1974-75 class at the John Pierce School in Brookline, MA.

Jeff (R) interviewing a classmate on the first day of school in 1974

There must be a gene that creates the ability to connect the dots that link human relationships. Jeff is a natural. He made friends with every kid in the class. His style was subtle and steady. Kids respected him, an act that mirrored what they experienced from him. His voice is deeper now but his style hasn’t changed a jot.

He’d stop by to visit me after school from grade 5 through his years at Brookline High School, then during vacations when he returned to the east coast from Stanford (graduated Summa Cum Laude). When Jeff’s mom and dad were involved in a terrible automobile accident after he graduated, his mother nearly died. Fate drew him back to Brookline.  Jeff and his brothers Jon and Michael shared home care for their mother’s arduous recovery and rehabilitation. It was a long road. Jeff needed some structure and a sense of familiar territory to hold his days and nights together. He walked over to the Pierce School.

“We are family,” was principal Alvin Fortune’s motto. A big man with a bigger heart, he offered Jeff a job, knowing that Jeff was not only a caretaker for his mother, but needed some TLC himself. Our teaching community embraced him.

After a stint of running our recess program and the less exciting task of shelving books for our two motherly librarians who fed him snacks every day, Jeff asked if he could sit in on my classes, maybe help teach for a couple of hours a day. The smartest thing I ever did was to say yes. The next two years were the most exciting of my 34 year career.

That summa cum laude from Stanford was not just an impressive certificate to hang on the wall. Jeff authored terrific American History lessons, engineered activities that involved every level of student. Kids loved his style. They knew he was present, a huge gift, and that his desire to teach was balanced by his desire to know who they were and what they needed to succeed. He learned to manage a class of ten year olds. Watching him teach was fun.

Jeff added a program to my series of “Life Talks,” which he called “The You Can Do Anything Program” in which he invited artists, musicians, writers – all friends of his – to talk about the paths that led them to their callings.

Talking with him after class about strategies for content delivery, class management, which kids looked involved and which ones needed help, where the lesson would lead tomorrow… those sessions were a gift. They gave me insight into the depth of experience I hadn’t realized I’d absorbed in my first 18 years of teaching. And I learned a lot by watching Jeff work a room with an inclusive style that made every kid feel like he or she was in the game.

Jeff was an astute observer. I asked him to write anecdotal comments about each student and used them when Jeff sat in with me when we met with parents for conferences about their child twice a year.  Jeff owns a memory that rivals a purse seine trawler for its capacity to collect (and retain) data. When he spoke about their kids, he included specific examples for everything he wrote.

Twenty-four looks pretty old when you’re nine. My students would examine photos pinned to my bulletin board of Jeff as a fourth grader in 4T, look at him as a grown man, then try to figure out how ancient I must be to have been his teacher in the olden days. It was a gas.

Over the past forty years I’ve known Jeff as a student, mentor, fellow teacher, and, for the past twenty-five years or so, as a friend. I’ve witnessed him embrace challenges through his first career as a middle school teacher and through his evolutions as a reporter. He brings an incandescent energy to the cause of social justice that inspires his colleagues. Honest to goodness, I’ve seen him operate with this vision since he was nine years old.

I call Jeff Kelly Lowenstein my “Walking Talking Lifetime Achievement Award.”

On May 17, I’m heading to New York City to the second annual fund raiser/auction for the Dart Society, an organization of journalists that works to tell stories about trauma and violence with sensitivity and compassion, and that also works to help journalists deal with the impact of doing that work. Jeff Kelly Lowenstein is president of the organization.  A perfect match.

Jeff and pt through the years

1974 Jeff learning about Japanese culture with classmates in 4T

1989 Goofing around  as The Dynamic Duo during Pierce School's annual  "Dress Up Day" ; 2001 recording commentaries for NPR affiliate WFCR-FM in Amherst, MA

B/W classroom photos by Paul A. Tamburello, Jr.

Elena's Ashes

Palm Beach Shores
April 17, 2012

 
If it fits, we ship. There she was. My mom. In that 4x6x2 inch US Post Office carton. Most of the rest of her ashes are interred next to my dad’s grave in Pittsfield, MA.

Way back before she died in 2005, she began telling me how she wanted her burial and funeral arrangements to go. A pillow in her den read, “I’m not pushy, I just have better ideas.” You get the point.

Outside in the real world, I was a successful teacher, respected by colleagues and parents in the community, an honest to goodness adult.

But every time I walked into the door of 15 Coltland Drive, I became an adult son, emphasis on the son part. You do what your mother tells you. I swear, some days I felt like I was standing in the kitchen in short pants with a bag of marbles in my pocket. So, when she told me she wanted to be cremated, did not want a wake, and did want me to throw a party for her after her funeral, that’s exactly what I did.

‘I want some of my ashes to go in the plot with your father,” She also said, “I want to wear a hot red dress for the cremation.”

“And I’d like to have some ashes scattered down at Palm Beach Shores at the Lake Worth Inlet.” I hunted around the house and found a pretty Japanese vase, a wedding present that had sat in the living room ever since I could remember.

“Perfect,” she said. I felt like I’d earned a gold star. The sense of approval from a parent never gets old.

Elena had spent a couple of months in Palm Beach Shores (Singer Island) every winter after she and my dad bought a condominium there in the 1970s. My dad, my mom’s sister and her husband, and my sister and her two young sons were in the annual rotation from January through March.

Elena was a regular at the pool, played cards with the ladies, and strolled around the beach. Late in the afternoon, her favorite jaunt was to head a half mile down to the Lake Worth Inlet, a deep-water canal for cargo and pleasure vessels bound to and from West Palm Beach. Over time, benches were built along a stretch of the inlet. Tourists, condo owners, and local fisherman would banter or just sit to watch the endlessly changing seascape

“Going there when my brother and I had school vacations is one of my biggest memories from when I was little,” says my elder nephew Chris. “I remember Poppi putting the bait on my fishing poles in the first years we went, and after that even Nonni did it for me. We used to fish way out by the abandoned water tower at the end of the jetty.”

A robust tidal current was always running. The water was that impossible Florida blue, the kind New Englanders dream about when they’re shoveling a foot of snow in January. Today, I wasn’t shoveling snow. I was keeping a promise. I was about to scatter Elena’s ashes into the canal.

The next day, the page would be turned on the condo at Mayan Towers North. My nephews had resisted selling the small unit and I can’t blame them.  When one of your fondest memories is being bundled up to fly down to Florida and spend time with doting grandparents who take you everywhere and show you off like prizes, it’s hard to let go.

I found a gold rimmed bowl in the condo, poured Elena’s ashes into it and smiled. She would have loved the synchronicity, another piece of her china used to hold her ashes. I’m not sure how she’d feel about the can of cold Bud Light I brought along to seal the deal, champagne was more her style for an occasion.  But I had no doubt she'd agree that a libation was part of the ceremony.

It took me an hour to work up the resolve to fling her into the onshore breeze. At 7:30 PM, the sun about to settle into the horizon, I timed the swells rolling down the inlet, saw one particularly determined one about to crest in front of me and flung Elena’s ashes from the delicate bowl. The fresh breeze held the powdery remains in a glorious translucent gray cloud that trailed along the inlet, the heavier particles spilling into the water at my feet.

Floating along in the dissipating cloud came the memory of my mom singing to me when I was little until I fell asleep.

I loved to watch trains of all kinds with my grandfather, who often took me to the train depot at the edge of town to watch what he called “the roundhouse,” a huge lazy-susan arrangement that would turn the locomotives around to send them down a different track. Sort of like the track I was sending my mother along with right now.

I was fascinated watching endlessly long processions of coal cars, ice cars, gondolas, tank cars, low riders packed with iron, cattle cars, boxcars in a metallic rainbow of colors, each bearing the symbol or lettering of companies from distant states that made me think of the wild west, and those funny looking cabooses and the grizzled men in railroad hats standing on the rear deck, who would, if I had a great stroke of luck, wave to me and my grandfather (Elena’s father), as we watched them from the hillside above the depot.

Elena knew these images ruled the rails of my imagination. After she tucked me into bed, she would sit beside me in the dark and make up songs about the colorful procession of freight cars…I could hear her softly singing those songs to me as her cloud vanished into the wind. 

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Postscript

When your mother tells you to scatter her ashes and make a party of it, you do what she says.