"Quite Enough of Calvin Trillin: 40 Years of Funny Stuff"

Upon Reading In The Middle Of The Night

Don’t plan on reading "Quite Enough of Calvin Trillin: 40 Years of Funny Stuff" if you happen to be sleeping with someone. By the time you’re halfway through one of his Funny Stuff riffs, “Corrections” for example, you will have guffawed awake your (fill in one) girlfriend, wife, husband, boyfriend, family dog, children in the next room, who will probably not share your hilarity since it is 3:20 AM, an hour customarily reserved for sound repose.

You will quite possibly be greeted with sullen stares at the hour of normal reveille. Citing Trillin as a master of dry, urbane, witty humor who should be on any intelligent reader’s list won’t get much traction. You will likely discover that your copy of said book has gone missing by nightfall.

It’s hard to believe a guy could have a writing voice so damn funny, slyly literate, and keep it going for forty years. His ‘stuff’ has appeared in The New Yorker, The Nation, and a bunch of books. Ordinarily when you see a list like this, you’re thinking, well those are high falutin’ places, he’s probably pretty stuffy. Wrong.

There are about two hundred bite sized essays and short zippy poems in the twenty sections of Funny Stuff – a few categories: “The Media – Liberal Elite and Otherwise”, “Tales Of A Clean Plate Ranger” (figure that one out), “High Society and Just Plain Rich People”, “Twenty Years Of Pols – One Poem Each”, “Family Matters”, “Beasts Of The Field, Fish Of The Sea, And Chiggers In The Tall Grass,” “English And Some Languages I Don’t Speak,” and “Foreigners.”

Ol’ Calvin can elevate everyday stuff into hilarity that makes you laugh out loud. A few titles: “People In Charge,” “Chicken A La King,” The Italian West Indies,” “Thoughts On Power Neck Wear,” “Economics, With Power Steering,” “Voodoo Economics Up Close,” “Social Questions From Aunt Rosie,” “T.S. Eliot And Me,” “Slip Covers Just Bloom In The Spring, Tra La,” “Holistic Heuristics,” “Killer Bagels,” “Molly and the V Chip,” “Losing China,” … the list goes on.

There are other authors I could add to this DNR (Do Not Read In The Middle Of The Night) list. Billy Collins comes to mind in the poetry department. I’m sure you have a list of your own books that if read during the hours in which you’re supposed to be collecting REM, can cause relational distress.

Remedies might include slipping down to the den or garage (where it’s likely your copy has been hidden) when you have the urge to read such books as a dark of night diversion. I could suggest that you never crack open Trillin’s book but caveat emptor. Once you do, it will be too late.

PS If you have doubt about Trillin's sense of humor, watch the clip of Calvin Trillin on The Daily Show. (If I were clever enough, I'd write a poem about it).

More Trillin...

http://www.npr.org/2011/09/09/140338165/an-anthology-and-a-life-full-of-funny-stuff

Daily Show with Jon Stewart

http://minnesota.publicradio.org/display/web/2012/02/24/daily-circuit-calvin-trillin/

and

https://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/29/books/review-in-jackson-1964-calvin-trillin-reports-on-race.html

October 30, 2023 in Commentaries | Permalink | Comments (0)

Scott Alarik's Folk Tales

09/30/23 Scott Alarik

https://scottalarik.com/bio/

WUMB 11AM September 29, 2023

Scott Alarik was as good storyteller as they come. His weekly program “Folk Tales”, still rebroadcast on weekends, was a deep dive into the roots of Americana music from Appalachia, the Ozarks, Midwest to panhandles in Texas to Florida.

From 1972 until 2021 his program was a must listen… so good that it is rebroadcast Saturdays long after his untimely death of a heart attack at his home in Cambridge, MA December 1, 2021 at 70 years old.

His voice, as author, storyteller, lecturer, is instantly recognizable after you’ve heard it. Melodious and authoritative, it feels like the voice you dreamed of listening to around a campfire after a day of trekking the Appalachian trail.

The September 30, 2023 rebroadcast on WUMB FM is a crystal clear through-line between music sung by black slaves in the 1800s that are part of the American songbook (“Wade In The Water”, for example) filled with metaphor not grasped by white slave owners as songs of resilience and ways and means to flee Northward and freedom.

Like I felt when I listened to camp counselors tell tall tales around a campfire on overnight camping experiences as a Boy Scout, the power of listening to a good story never gets old.

Scott Alarik’s uncanny ability to connect roots stories scattered all over America was/is a magical synthesis of Americana. I love sitting around his figurative campfire every Saturday.

September 30, 2023 in Commentaries, Music | Permalink | Comments (0)

Little Richard Penniman: The Architect of Rock 'n Roll Part 1

PART 1

Little Richard Penniman (1932 - 2020)

“I am a creator, emancipator, inventor, the king, originator, a beauty, the Bronze Liberace, original Georgia peach, a human atom bomb, international treasure, living flame and a Southern child.” Last paragraph of this link.

It ain't bragging when you're telling the truth.The man was a fearless showman, "out" and loud and proud before it was acceptable to acknowledge. Unapologetic. Makeup. Wild attire. Pompadour atop his head as formidable as the prow of an ocean liner.

A genius, extrovert and trail blazer on the national stage, Richard Penniman was totally certain of his destiny and willed it to become reality. His white audience (me included) had no clue what the lyrics of his songs meant. Like me, they were swept up with the rocket fueled energy whether on the radio or on 12 inch black and white TVs in the 1950s. His falsetto that punctuated his songs nearly punctuated the speakers on the radio turned up to maximum volume.

In the early1950s, Elvis was a meteor. Little Richard was a super nova.

Rhythm 'n Blues began to surface on the charts. "Race music" was not a feature of the two AM stations in my home town. Hell, it wasn't even a thing people discussed...all we knew was that radio stations in Troy, NY whose signal barely reached Pittsfield, MA spoke to our budding teenage energy and yearnings in the midst of puberty.

I listened to the music in my best friend's living room. All we knew was Elvis, Jerry Lee Lewis, Bill Haley and The Comets, Buddy Holley and The Crickets. Then came Ray Charles, do wop music of the Penguins, Johnny Otis, The Coasters.

Tutti Frutti released in 1956 was the beginning of a Penniman tsunami.

His 1956 “Long Tall Sally, (the best-selling 45 in the in history of Specialty Records spotlighting Little Richard's distinctive boogie piano was recorded in New Orleans' famed J&M Studios of Cosimo Matassa).

Little Richard was the Big Bang that is still reverberating today.

September 03, 2023 in Commentaries, Music | Permalink | Comments (0)

MLK 60th Anniversary of "I Have A Dream" speech

In my email box last week…

Anniversary of the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom August 28

“You are all invited to a commemoration of the 60th Anniversary of the March on Washington at First Parish Watertown, 35 Church Street, on Monday, August 28th at 6:00pm. Following the reading of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.'s speech, local folk singer Jean Gauthier will lead us in singing songs sung at the march.

“Please join the First Parish Watertown Social Action Committee for a reading of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. 's speech, "I Have a Dream," as we celebrate the 60th anniversary of the March on Washington August 28. We will gather on the patio of the First Parish Watertown Memorial Garden at 6:00 PM Monday. After the reading we will take a few moments to discuss what the speech means for us today. We will end the program by singing songs of the Civil Rights Era, including "We Shall Overcome."

Monday August 28, 2023

About two dozen people spanning 8 decades gathered on the patio of the First Parish Watertown Memorial Garden at 6:00 PM. Using copies of the speech, we were invited to take turns reading passages from the iconic speech. As I suppose happened in 1968, the speech gained momentum and meaning paragraph by paragraph.

Living history. A woman in the audience was in that crowd at the mall in Washington. Mary talked about coming out of Union Station and being only100 feet away from MLK, Jr. on his way to the event at which he would deliver one of the most eloquently stirring speeches in American history.

After the reading, in the tradition of Friends Meetings, we were invited to say something about what the speech means for us today.

“His speech has no impact unless you and I do something to propel the cause of equality, inclusion, and a just society, When friend and world class sailor Rich Wilson rounded Cape Horn in 2009, he considered efforts to eliminate Apartheid and wrote 'Hope without action is of no use.' " True today more than ever.

Young black men and women put their lives on the line to sit at the "Whites Only" lunch counter in Greensboro, North Carolina in on February 1, 1960. On March 7, 1965, men and women were beaten by police as they attempted to walk across the Edmund Pettus Bridge outside Montgomery on March 7, 1965. In hindsight, a page in history was turned by those ordinary men and women who felt the call to act.

Led by Joan Gautier, we sang “We Shall Overcome” to close the meeting...and have no idea how much courage it took to sit at those lunch counters in Selma in February 1960 and the "Bloody Sunday" march across the Edmund Pettus Bridge led by 25 year old John Lewis on March 7, 1965. Broadcast on TV, the brutality shocked a national audience.

We have a long way to go. Martin's speech is a call to action...action that starts with one person at a time. It's my turn.

Organizer Eileen Ryan (second from left) heads the Social Action Committee at the First Parish Watertown.

Joan Gauthier leads us in "We Shall Overcome".

Living history...seated woman in blue attire recalls attending MLK 1968 "I Have A Dream" speech in Washington.

POST SCRIPT 1

A little known fact about how How a ten cent comic book read by John Lewis fueled a movement,

A link to Rich Wilson's initiative that resulted in connecting to thousands of school children in a round the world solo ocean race.

Photos by Paul A. Tamburello, Jr.

August 29, 2023 in Commentaries | Permalink | Comments (0)

Tony Bennett Reading List

The Tony Bennett reading list:

START HERE: Tony Bennett's Jazz Journey on Charlie Rose (1996 Interview)

watch?v=06ssRQ7K1hQ

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9MselAkjXbM Bill Evans with Tony Bennett on Johnny Carson's Tonight Show 10/27/75 shows how much fun he had singing

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

T ony Bennett, Lady Gaga - I Get A Kick Out Of You (Official Music Video)

Anderson Cooper on witnessing Tony Bennett's final act in 2021 | 60 Minutes

From the archives Tony Bennett and Lady Gaga

Tony Bennett's final act in 2021 | 60 Minutes

Tony Bennett & Lady Gaga @ Jazz at Lincoln Center • New York • [Juillet 2014]

Tony Bennett goes Gaga on ‘Cheek to Cheek’

PBS Newshour: Tony says "Always stick with quality" ...and credits African Americans in New Orleans who created the American art form Jazz.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jyUzwmf7YwM

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7GFDI4WjdX8

Tony Bennett Exclusive: Tony and his wife Susan talk about Bennett's founding of the Exploring the Arts Program in 1999

Tony Bennett Exclusive Part 2

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5nQrvk_PHWo

Tony Bennett Interview with George Stroumboulopoulos

Lady Gaga and Tony Bennett - Interview on CBS Sunday Morning 21.09.2014

Bill Evans with Tony Bennett on Johnny Carson's Tonight Show 10/27/75

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9OhpSSIhihU Lady Gaga and Tony Bennett's musical collaboration | 60 Minutes Australia

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1ocV_M4tmZA Tony Bennett honors Frank Sinatra's 100th birthday

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9MselAkjXbM

Bill Evans with Tony Bennett on Johnny Carson's Tonight Show 10/27/75

https://stylecaster.com/entertainment/celebrity-news/1618244/how-tony-bennett-die/

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/07/21/arts/music/tony-bennett-dead.html

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/07/21/arts/music/tony-bennett-lady-gaga.html?smid=url-share

https://ptatlarge.typepad.com/ptatlarge/2023/03/the-lady-is-a-tramp-lady-gaga-and-tony-bennett.html

https://twitter.com/keaaaaley/status/1682375890884329472

https://www.bostonglobe.com/2023/07/21/arts/8-must-watch-tony-bennett-performances/

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

July 23, 2023 in Commentaries, Music | Permalink

A 48-minute August 20, 2021 FRESH AIR interview with Tony Bennett by Terry Gros...worth every minute.

RIP the pop and jazz vocalist legend, dead at 96 on July 23, 2023

A MUST READ....

A 48-minute August 20, 2021 FRESH AIR interview with Tony Bennett by Terry Gros...worth every minute.

Bennett's pinpoint memory responding to Terry's questions reveals his philosophy of singing with specific examples. He was diagnosed with Alzheimer's in 2019. Some aspects of his memory was so hard wired that he accessed it with astonishing clarity.

On July 21, 2023, we lost a singer, a keeper of the flame, and a deeply rooted connection with The American Songbook. His responses to Terry's questions eloquently speak to his respect for the women and men who wrote and performed the songs he sang. His place is secure in the pantheon of American music.

July 22, 2023 in Commentaries, Music | Permalink | Comments (2)

Tony Bennett: RIP to an Enduring Legend

July 23,2023

Tony Bennett.. Anthony Dominick Benedetto, has left the building. Part of my heart went with him. Heck, part of the hearts a few million others figuratively soared up and away with him.

Bennett was an omnivore of good material. He had a sense of what made the song tick...and once he sang a song, it was hard to imagine any other version that satisfied as much as his.

Many of his songs were recognizable after the first phrase. And some not so much, like "My Reverie", "a 1938 popular song with lyrics by Larry Clinton and melody based on the 1890 piano piece Rêverie by the French composer Claude Debussy."

He was drinking from the trough of history to satisfy his need to learn, grow, and create anew. His inquisitive nature needed to be nourished by blowing on the embers of a song created in a composition over 100 years old. Who does that these days?

Bennett was not only interesting but interested....in people, history, contemporary events and the arts. He walked the walk and sang the talk. He was genuine and generous, never strayed far from his ethnic roots. He took up painting late in life. And was well regarded. The art shows he participated in weren't because he was already famous. It was because he was a good artist.

I cried when he was diagnosed with Alzheimer's Disease in 2019. I cheered when, with specific memories undisturbed by the disease, he performed a show with his friend Lady Gaga.

His definitive rendition of "I Left My Heart In San Francisco" was in heavy rotation in my early romantic life. An old adage says "when we go somewhere that changes us, we leave it with the parts of us that it was able to change, grow, and adapt." Tony has left us.

I'm not singing "I Left My Heart In San Francisco." I'm singing "Tony left a little part of his heart in Tamburello."

July 21, 2023 in Commentaries, Music | Permalink | Comments (3)

Song and Surprise Of The Day: "Don't Be Cruel," More A Reinvention Than A Cover

Whooeeeee.... never thought someone could, or would, take this song by you know who, turn it upside down, let the sound of the coins falling from its trousers produce a song track, utterly its own, groove heavy, emotionally convincing, reeking of the 1950s, everything going on... voice, gospel phrasing undertones, backup singers and tight band that makes every note count. And the bass line running through like a freight train with a metronome in the firebox. I don't remember dancing to the original but this version begs you push the chairs back in the kitchen.. Oh my, 4 minutes and 17 seconds of retro listening pleasure.

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

Let the song play through and wait for the cherry on top, the rock 'n rolly rockabilly, Billy Swan's "I Can Help".

July 01, 2023 in Commentaries, Music | Permalink | Comments (0)

Porch Sitting Monday June 26, 2023

Thursday 8:31 PM 2023

In the evanescent minutes before sunset, cirro-cumulus clouds look for a pillow before ceding the cosmos to twilight ... joined in a gavotte by gentle zephyrs that insistently caress the boughs of the giant oak trees on the stage across the street from my porch. Three robins swoop from a power line to forage for tiny insects. Within minutes, their internal alarm will sound curfew.

June 26, 2023 in Commentaries | Permalink | Comments (0)

Porch Sitting Sunday June 25, 2023

Sunday June 25, 2023
8;01 PM

Evening porch sitting, David Bigelow green tea in hand. Utter Sunday stillness. no cars or trucks on the asphalt still damp from afternoon rains. Newly born rabbits pad about in their new world. soft, Reliable breeze comes courting from the southwest to rise leisurely up Oliver Street, late for dinner robins peck through the grass for a late night appetizer If you were looking for the heart of Sunday night atop Oliver Street, you’d be pumping through its atriums and out its ventricles right here.

June 25, 2023 in Commentaries | Permalink | Comments (0)

Summer Solstice June 21, 2023

8:25 - 8:34 PM

In the evanescent minutes before sunset, cirro-cumulus clouds look for a pillow before ceding the cosmos to twilight. Gentle zephyrs insistently caress the boughs of the giant oak trees on the stage across the street from my porch. Three robins swoop from a power line to forage for tiny insects. Within minutes, their internal alarm will sound curfew...they silently wing it to find their perches for the night.

In 9 minutes, daylight will merge into twilight then night. The longest day of daylight will take a bow, to return next year. The hours of daylight will imperceptibly diminish for a few seconds a day until the winter solstice...a reminder of the passing of time and a not so gentle reminder that solstices are immutable...our time on earth, not so much.

Last call for dinner...

Mr. Robin and family nesting for the night...will be up early tomorrow with foreknowledge that the early birds get the worms.

Photos by Paul A. Tamburello, Jr.

June 23, 2023 in Commentaries | Permalink | Comments (0)

Intimations of a forest primeval

Tuesday, May 13, 2023

1:30 PM Eerie quietude, not a decibel registers, robins on radio silence. Butterflies flit on shimmering gossamer wings. An early afternoon breeze, induced by updrafts from the steadily warming earth, arouses the broad oak leaves on the hill with a lover’s caress. Intimations of a forest primeval, pristine, pure, transform the moment in amber.

Photos by Paul A.Tamburello, Jr.

June 13, 2023 in Commentaries | Permalink | Comments (0)

Tiger Moan Testifies at The Burren

Sunday June 4, 2023

The Full Flower Full Moon overhead was in its waning gibbous phase. There was no energy waning inside the walls of the Back Room at The Burren in Somerville when Amy Kucharik and her A - List musicians, with special guest Cheryl Arena, stepped onto the stage.

Full moons are notorious for casting energy with the sweep and intensity of a cosmic purse seiner. The Burren was in its thrall from the jump. Tiger Moan promises “Vintage and modern blues with sass and class.” Add the sense of call and response heard in a Sunday morning clapboard church south of the Mason-Dixon Line and you get the idea.

Tiger Moaning? No sir…Tonight was Tiger Testifying.

Scores of blues and swing dancers deftly swirled around the packed dance floor with uncanny radar they’ve acquired from dancing at close quarters to smoky blues and syncopated swing. From the jump, the crowd was ready to rumble. They were not disappointed.

Amy Kucharik - vocals, ukulele, guitar; Greg Toro - bass; Erica Risti - saxophones, backing vocals; Tim Lewandowski - trombone; Michael Valdez - piano; Stephan Chaggaris - drums’ and special guest Cheryl Arena were locked and loaded.

There was nothing rote about solos by Kucharik, Arena, Toro, Lewandowski, Valdez, and Risti. Their eyes were not focused what was in front of them but what was spinning a mile a minute as the music spilled like a geyser from their brains into the fingering or mouthpieces of their instruments. Fresh paint, fresh newsprint, still wet.

Performances so uniquely creative that several dancers stood transfixed to admire the sheer artistry. You had to see it to believe it.

In the midst one smoky blues number, the only sound from the stage was Stephan Chaggaris’s soft subtle brush work accompanying the kind of slow drag that blues dancers love. Not one iota of energy was lost in the the downshift.

The gold standard for blues dancers, this is Tiger Moan’s second year of residency at The Burren. In these turbulent times, their music is a restorative elixir that, for a few transformative hours, lifts our load, fortifies our resolve, joins us in affirmative community.

Amy Kucharik - vocals, ukulele, guitar; Greg Toro - bass; Erica Risti - saxophones, backing vocals; Tim Lewandowski - trombone; Michael Valdez - piano; Stephan Chaggaris - drums’ and special guest Cheryl Arena

Cheryl Arena...

Ensemble

Tiger Moan testifying...

Hitting the groove...Energy from last night’s Tiger Moan show still keeping time in the marrow of my bones.

Hallelujah.

Photos by Paul A. Tamburello, Jr.

June 06, 2023 in Commentaries, Music | Permalink | Comments (1)

Ernie Pyle: The Great Chronicler of GIs in WWII

May 29, 2023 MEMORIAL DAY

A perfect day to salute the memory of Ernie Pyle, born in Dana, Ind., Aug. 3, 1900 - Died on the island of Shi ma in the Philippine Sea , April 18, 1945

Nominally the best reporter to capture the unglorified daily life of GIs in WW II, 1940-1945.

The term “embedded” had not even been invented when Pyle followed troops in combat, ate what they ate, ducked into foxholes with them when bullets and mortar shells landed. Pyle had the gift of memory so lucid that he wrote his columns when he could get his hands on his typewriter after exchanges with enemy troops and document how soldiers faced danger or looked forward the occasional letter from home.

He asked for no protection or special status and was respected by the men with whom he served. He died on April 18, 1945 when he popped up in a bunker to see the terrain and was killed immediately when struck in the head by a sniper’s bullet.

One of Pyle’s most simply eloquent stories was "The Death of Captain Waskow".

Ernie Pyle wrote of Captain Waskow: "In this war I have known a lot of officers who were loved and respected by the soldiers under them. But never have I crossed the trail of any man as beloved as Capt. Henry T. Waskow of Belton, Texas". It's a strange word to use, but I've never read a more endearing story about the humanity of men at war.

^{Like a sketch artist, Pyle's ability to capture detail that personifies his subject is fully charged in his story about the death of Henry T. Waskow.}

Below: "Killing Is All That Matters." Pyle's observation describing how soldiers spend their time before being ordered into combat, an experience that will change them forever, December 1, 1941, is stunning in its contrasts.

https://erniepyle.iu.edu/wartime-columns/killing-is-all-that-matters.html

A collection of Pyle's columns about war and the men waging it ..so few words, every word in service to the moment.

https://erniepyle.iu.edu/wartime-columns/index.html

Long form journalism about what Ernie Pyle saw on the Normandy beach on D-Day was published so Americans could read about the carnage and pay respects to the dead by buying war bonds to pay for the war. If read only one link, read this one from the New York Times. Ernie would have loved it. (NOTE you will be able to read as a guest or logon if a subscriber)

https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/learning/general/onthisday/bday/0803.html

New York Times fully dimensional obituary for Ernie Pyle, April 19, 1945

Morning Coffee Series: Duke and Trane

Composed while relaxing into my morning cuppa coffee...

Morning coffee series

Alexa play Duke Ellington and John Coltrane …

“Playing music by Duke Ellington and John Coltrane” she says and along comes “My Little Brown Book” by Duke Ellington and John Coltrane.

Coltrane’s tenor saxophone floats like a butterfly above Ellington’s spare chord changes that subtly repeat during a brotherly reverie. Grounded, melody pure and simple. Composed by Billy Strayhorn and recorded in 1962 it preceded John Coltrane‘s evolution into bebop and harder edged free flow visceral energy. Spare brush work by Elvin Jones and Aaron Bell’s softly persistent chords add to the misty feel of the contents of that little brown book. This piece should be encapsulated for the ages in amber.

Next, my digital disc jockey plays “In a Sentimental Mood“ by the same group. Coltrane’s solos this time have the energy of a bird flying through the open door of its cage and practicing gentle barrel rolls in the space outside its cage, presaging the free-form style he will adopt in the coming years, never again to be contained by the comfortable cage.

Hard edged bebop was in the air. Coltrane felt the updraft. Reveries morphed into cascades of circle of fifths theory, deeply felt emotions, social commentary through the voice of his tenor saxophone, and perhaps a safety valve to express rage at his place as a black man in 1960s America…an inflection point, the obverse of Little Brown Books and Sentimental Moods.

May 03, 2023 in Commentaries, Music | Permalink | Comments (0)

Toupés, Tresses and Teeth

Observations based on watching the news on CNN

The teeth of some commentators look as bright as cars driving my way at night with their high beams on. Many apply dental veneers. Not subtle.. LINK My eyes are drawn to their impossibly perfect pearly whites like iron filings are drawn to a magnet,. Hard to focus on content when their choppers are show-stoppers. Even Fox News chimed in.

I’m used to TV anchors of both sexes using some kind of blush to give their faces a health glow. It’s taking a little longer to normalize hair pieces. For men, some toupées look more like helmets that could keep coiffed in a gale force wind. I’ll give a thumbs up if I ever see a commentator with messy hair.

What gives? Are you less manly if you have thinning hair or are balding? Some black commentators look perfectly manly when they shave their heads. Fewer white commentators take that route. The way some men plop a toupee on a balding spot reminds me of what my lawn looks like after I spot seed my lawn with a dose of Scott’s Turf Builder.

Female reporters and anchors have way more options. Buns, braids. extensions, ponytails, bangs, chignons, all to perfectly match their hair color.

Rampages from global warming, mass murders, wars in the Ukraine, Sudan, upheavals in South America causing mass migration towards the United States are unsettling reminders of chaos. IMHO, viewers connect with commentators better when anchors’ appearances are predictable and unchanging, offering some kind of stability in a world that seems anything but.

April 18, 2023 in Commentaries | Permalink | Comments (10)

Homegrown Yard Art Springs up in Watertown, MA

April 1, 2023

https://ptatlarge.typepad.com/ptatlarge/2023/04/homegrown-yard-art-springs-up-in-watertown-ma.html

A bunch of my neighbors have a playful quirky sense of humor that pops up every April. Like daffodils they are instant mood enhancers.

If you couldn’t travel to San Capistrano to witness the arrival of the swallows in March, you can drive around Watertown, MA to witness yard art displays that nest in yards all over town every April.

The idea of YARD ART, one of the few upsides after COVID-19 shut the country down in 2020. It gave a bunch of my neighbors an idea to allay anxiety about the scary pandemic.

YARD ART invited Watertoonians to take part in a town wide art project that could be done safely and energize our sense of community - a brilliant idea by which we could get in touch with our inner kindergartener or Picasso and put it on display.

Subject matter wide open. “It can be an assemblage, a sculpture, an art project, a lighting arrangement—let your imagination run free! Installations will be on display the entire month of April.”

The idea took off like an untethered helium balloon…and lifted spirits right along with it. https://www.wickedlocal.com/story/watertown-tab/2021/03/30/woman-behind-yardart-watertown-outdoor-art-exhibt/4814814001/

After a year of isolation, vaccinations, boosters, washing everything down with antiseptic wipes every time I masked up to go to the market, I was more worn down than I realized. I didn’t sign up to make YARD ART. No matter. When I drove around, I felt a tribal sense of community and was tickled by the kooky displays. Whether intentional or not, the project was an affirmative mental health initiative.

Oh boy. The neighbors ran with it. See photos below.

Yard Art participants are masters of scale. One display a few blocks from my home hangs all the way down the two floors of the house, indolently fluttering with the breeze that comes late in the morning.

Another is so small that I’d have driven right by it if the YARD ART sign hadn’t been planted next to it.

https://ptatlarge.typepad.com/ptatlarge/2023/04/homegrown-yard-art-springs-up-in-watertown-ma.html

Photos by Paul A. Tamburello, Jr.

April 05, 2023 in Commentaries | Permalink | Comments (11)

“The Lady Is A Tramp”, Lady Gaga and Tony Bennett

"Alexa play some music by Tony Bennett and Lady Gaga," says I.

I could have asked, “Play something by two artists at the top of their games but separated in age by about 60 years“ or “Play a song that will make me laugh and cry with joy and admiration at the camaraderie between two artists, confident of and using every element in their each of their deep musical repertoires“ or “Play a song by two artists, whose synergy together is powerful enough to split an atom.“

In a digital heartbeat Alexa loads up a 2011 version of “That’s Why The Lady Is A Tramp“.

The irony that Bennett has Alzheimer’s Disease and is singing on sheer instinct ignited by his chemistry with his friend Lady Gaga makes me cry and cheer from the first moment of this shot out of a cannon duet.

https://ladygaga.fandom.com/wiki/The_Lady_Is_a_Tramp_(song)

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

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/tony-bennett-lady-gaga-alzheimers-disease-60-minutes-2022-06-26/ ...by the way, Bennett was 95 years old at the time of the concert.

March 27, 2023 in Commentaries, Music | Permalink | Comments (1)

Boston Symphony Orchestra Review Sparkes with Charming Vigor

February 17, 2023

Insight, information, interpretation... Jeffrey Gantz gave me a front row seat at the February 16, 2023 BSO concert at Symphony Hall featuring Prokofiev, Rachmaninoff and St. Saens.

https://www.bostonglobe.com/2023/02/17/arts/lahav-shani-makes-powerful-symphony-hall-debut/

All the way to his final observation, a perfect fit for the closing moment of Rachmaninoff’s “Symphonic Dances.”

Guest conductor Lahav Shani conducted sans baton, using his hands and body language.

Reviewer Jeffrey Gantz conducted with his keyboard.

Both at the top of their game.

February 21, 2023 in Commentaries, Music | Permalink | Comments (0)

Homage to André Kertész

Homage to André Kertész (1894 - 1985) American (b. Hungary)

Andre Kertész was a pioneer of street photography and a remarkable still life photographer. In a career that spanned seven decades, he captured everyday life with poetic beauty and elevated ordinary objects to exquisite art.

https://photogpedia.com/andre-kertesz-quotes/

Kertész on Kertész

I like high shots. If you are on the same level, you lose many things.

Everything is still interesting to me. You do not have to imagine things; reality gives you all you need. Everything is a subject. Every subject has a rhythm.

I do not document anything. I give an interpretation. The moment always dictates in my work. What I feel, I do. This is the most important thing for me. Everybody can look, but they don’t necessarily see. I never calculate or consider; I see a situation and I know that it’s right, even if I have to go back to get the proper lighting.

Seeing is not enough; you have to feel what you photograph.

I just walk around, observing the subject from various angles until the picture elements arrange themselves into a composition that pleases my eye.

Kertész high shot

Tamburello high shot

February 11, 2023 in Commentaries | Permalink | Comments (4)

Henri Cartier-Bresson: Relevant More Than Ever

https://photogpedia.com/henri-cartier-bresson-quotes/

If you're not familiar with his name, ask Siri "Who was Henri Cartier-Bresson".

I am guilty of taking photos on my iPhone just because they are in front of me. I'm too embarrassed to say how many photos are in my library. This link, "The 75 Greatest Henri Cartier-Bresson Quotes", is a refreshing guide that, pardon the metaphor, opens the lens in my thinking.

Sure, my phone has many useful purposes.

One of the most valuable reasons to carry my iPhone with me?

I quote the master: "For me, photography is instant drawing. For me, the passion is to look, to look, to look."

Monsieur Cartier-Bresson, I'm looking.

February 10, 2023 in Commentaries | Permalink | Comments (0)

Sarah Huckabee Sanders

Arizona governor Sarah Huckabee Sanders Republican response to President Biden’s State of the Union address...
brash, tone deaf, vitriolic, delivered with the subtlety of announcing a kick boxing match rather than a counter narrative to the president's generally upbeat address.

Her job, of course, was to provide a counter narrative... but not a speech filled with knee jerk culture war phrases like woke mobs and critical race theory that stoke the flames of division within the country. Easy to throw bombs. Would have been helpful to counter with Republican policies or programs that mend us, not tear us apart.

Characterizing the President's speech as crazy? Her snarky remarks were more appropriate for a red meat stump speech as if she was running for president...which might be the case.

February 10, 2023 in Commentaries | Permalink | Comments (0)

Arctic Parking

January 23, 2023

54 days before Spring...

Photo by Paul A. Tamburello, Jr,

January 24, 2023 in Commentaries | Permalink | Comments (1)

A Christmas Tradition: Read-aloud of Dylan Thomas "A Child's Christmas in Wales"

December 25, 2022

"A Child’s Christmas in Wales" by Dylan Thomas

FIRST PAGE OF THE BOOK

Recounted in the voice of a man recounting his memories of Christmas in his home town in Wales.

"One Christmas was so much like another, in those years around the sea-town corner now and out of all sound except the distant speaking of the voices I sometimes hear a moment before sleep, that I can never remember whether it snowed for six days and six nights when I was 12 or whether it snowed for 12 days and 12 nights when I was six.

All the Christmases roll down toward the two -tongued sea, like a cold and head long moon bundling down the sky that was our street; and they stop at the rim of the ice-edged fish-freezing waves, and I plunge my hands in the snow and bring out whatever I can find. In goes my hand into that wool-white bell-tongued ball of holidays, resting at the rim of the carol singing sea, and out come Mrs. Prothero and the firemen."

THEN THIS PAGE the young narrator says...

“But that was not the same as snow,” I say. “Our snow was not only shaken from white wash buckets down the sky, it came shawling out of the ground and swam, and drifted out of the arms and hands and bodies of the trees; snow grew overnight on the roofs of the houses like a pure and grandfather moss, minutely white, ivied the walls and settled on top of the postman, opening the gate, like a dumb, numb thunderstorm of white, torn Christmas cards.”.

Stop. Take a minute ro read this aloud. Right now. Read it a couple of times till you get the rhythm. I wonder if you can picture it as your mouth, tongue and lips wrap themselves around the postcard description.

The words came naturally to Thomas. Everyone around him spoke in the Welch tongue, rich with simile, metaphor and descriptive language as thick as the white smoke from the peat turf drifting from chimneys in his neighborhood.

The language, the imagery, the words... beg to be read aloud. And capture the wonder of a lad with Christmas Day unfolding during December in Wales. I am old enough and lucky enough to have fond memories of sitting on the cushioned piano bench at the end of my grandmother and grandfather's dining room table, aunt and uncles along each side, my grandmother at the head of the table and my grandfatber to her left, where he would carve the turkey.

I read to my fourth graders every year of my 34 year career. I have a gift for language, speak functional French and Hindi. I feel the rhythm of Thomas's prose, revel in the way they roll off my tongue with a Welsh lilt.

I've listened to Thomas's version, It is heresy and self aggrandizing but I read it with the pace and flair of a natural born reader of stories. And that the bard would buy me a Guinness after listening to my version.

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

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Child's_Christmas_in_Wales

January 16, 2023 in Commentaries | Permalink | Comments (0)

January 7, 2023, Democacy Struggles

January 7, 2023

I do not usually post political essays...but after watching about 14 hours of congress electing a Republican Speaker of the House, this is an exception...raw and not much edited.

Dangerous, Destabilizing, Detrimental

All played a role in the 14 rounds of choosing a Republican Speaker of the House

The impact of venal behavior by members of the house and the senate put our institution of democracy at risk.

Collegiality? Compromise?

No.

A clown-car masquerading as democracy.

Third-world countries have had smoother transitions.

For right wing idealogues, the opportunity to get print and TV air time and preen to their constituents appeared to be their goal. They met the moment.

In the past, debate, disagreement, discussion have been followed by forms of reconciliation that all can live with. Not today.

Country first?

Kicked by the wayside by politicians whose only interest is self interest. Peacemakers were overtaken by chest thumping ideologues eager to feed a ready made audience. The tumult around the election of the speaker of the house set the house on fire.

An open question… Will functional democracy survive?

Where were the voices in the house and the senate who aim to resuscitate the democracy we have known for over 200 years?

Job-seeking speaker of the house, Republican Kevin McCarthy, in his struggle to maintain power , gave away so many concessions to the right wing so called “rebels” that the inherent authority of his office has been diluted to the point of functional impracticality.

All to secure his lifelong dream , a dream for which he has been a sycophant to President Trump and others in order to attain.What will survive after this high stakes political food fight.

I was witnessing a bunch of adults behaving like an unsupervised group of high school students on a field trip. Kevin McCarthy brought most of this upon himself in his lifelong dream to become speaker of the house. His dream became a nightmare for civility, for democracy, and for the country.

Country first?

How quaint.

We are in political quicksand.

McCarthy’s longtime ambition was nipped at the heels by egomaniacal politicians drunk on the desire to gain time on television and print to nurture their own ill-defined aspirations.

Country first.

How quaint.

Predictions by Ben Franklin…

“It’s a democracy if you can keep it.”

Abraham Lioncoln.

In a January 1838 speech to a group in Springfield, Illinois, Lincoln stated: "At what point then is the approach of danger to be expected? I answer, if it ever reach us, it must spring up amongst us. It cannot come from abroad. If destruction be our lot, we must ourselves be its author and finisher. As a nation of freemen, we must live through all time, or die by suicide."

Perhaps most appropriate at the moment…

In the words of the immortal Pogo, “I have seen the enemy and he is us.”

Here we are.

In his effort to become speaker McCarthy agreed to give away powers that used to make the Speaker’s office authoritative and an axis, for better or worse, around which Congress revolves.

The speaker of the house? More likely a bunker striving to torment Democrats with allegations about Afghanistan and Hunter Biden.

Is that a legislative program?

He has brought this upon himself. His visit to Mar-a-Lago to kiss the ring of Donald Trump in order to secure his path to the house was shameless an affront to the men and women who tried to defend the Capitol from the January 6 marauders who sought to overturn the election.

His act to weasel into the job he coveted rivals Faust’s deal with the devil…giving away his soul for his ambition.

This is about not about Republican and Democrat. This is about power and the cost of grasping it and holding on to it.

Ambition has driven men and women to great heights and great losses.

Will Democracy be a casualty to ambition?

Even odds.

January 13, 2023 in Commentaries | Permalink | Comments (0)

January 7, 2023, Democacy Struggles

January 7, 2023

I do not usually post political essays...but after watching about 14 hours of congress electing a Republican Speaker of the House, this is an exception...raw and not much edited.

Dangerous, Destabilizing, Detrimental

All played a role in the 14 rounds of choosing a Republican Speaker of the House

The impact of venal behavior by members of the house and the senate put our institution of democracy at risk.

Collegiality? Compromise?

No.

A clown-car masquerading as democracy.

Third world powers have had smoother transitions.

For right wing idealogues, the opportunity to get print and TV air time and preen to their constituents appeared to be their goal. They met the moment.

In the past, debate, disagreement, discussion have been followed by forms of reconciliation that all can live with. Not today.

Country first?

Kicked by the wayside by politicians whose only interest is self interest. Peacemakers were overtaken by chest thumping ideologues eager to feed a ready made audience. The tumult around the election of the speaker of the house set the house on fire.

An open question… Will functional democracy survive?

Where were the voices in the house and the senate who aim to resuscitate the democracy we have known for over 200 years?

Job-seeking speaker of the house, Republican Kevin McCarthy, in his struggle to maintain power , gave away so many concessions to the right wing so called “rebels” that the inherent authority of his office has been diluted to the point of functional impracticality.

All to secure his lifelong dream , a dream for which he has been a sycophant to President Trump and others in order to attain.What will survive after this high stakes political food fight.

I was I witnessing a bunch of adults behaving like an unsupervised group of high school students on a field trip. Kevin McCarthy brought most of this upon himself in his lifelong dream to become speaker of the house. His dream became a nightmare for civility, for democracy, and for the country.

Country first?

How quaint.

We are in political quicksand.

McCarthy’s longtime ambition was nipped at the heels by egomaniacal politicians drunk on the desire to gain time on television and print to nurture their own ill-defined aspirations.

Country first.

How quaint.

Predictions by Ben Franklin…

“It’s a democracy if you can keep it.”

Abraham Lioncoln.

In a January 1838 speech to a group in Springfield, Illinois, Lincoln stated: "At what point then is the approach of danger to be expected? I answer, if it ever reach us, it must spring up amongst us. It cannot come from abroad. If destruction be our lot, we must ourselves be its author and finisher. As a nation of freemen, we must live through all time, or die by suicide."

Perhaps most appropriate at the moment…

In the words of the immortal Pogo, “I have seen the enemy and he is us.”

Here we are.

In his effort to become speaker McCarthy agreed to give away powers that used to make the Speaker’s office authoritative and an axis, for better or worse, around which Congress revolves.

The speaker of the house? More likely a bunker striving to torment Democrats with allegations about Afghanistan and Hunter Biden.

Is that a legislative program?

He has brought this upon himself. His visit to Mar-a-Lago to kiss the ring of Donald Trump in order to secure his path to the house was shameless an affront to the men and women who tried to defend the Capitol from the January 6 marauders who sought to overturn the election.

His act to weasel into the job he coveted rivals Faust’s deal with the devil…giving away his soul for his ambition.

This is about not about Republican and Democrat. This is about power and the cost of grasping it and holding on to it.

Ambition has driven men and women to great heights and great losses.

Will Democracy be a casualty to ambition?

Even odds.

January 11, 2023 in Commentaries | Permalink | Comments (0)

Thursday December 29, 2022

The overhead canopy of the cosmos has been so extremely clear that it feels like I'm standing in an open air planetarium. Jupiter rules every night. Mars and Saturn are frequent sights. Amazing that I can capture a tiny sense of their grandeur with my iPhone.

Thursday December 29. 2022, Jupiter, mighty in the solar system, is the tiny dot to the right of a crescent moon.

Photos by Paul A. Tamburello, Jr.

January 01, 2023 in Commentaries | Permalink | Comments (0)

A Christmas Tradition: "Miracle On 34th Street"

Deccmber 24, 2022

I’m going to give away the skinny about the movie from the get-go. It didn't detract from my film experience when I watched it years ago after reading the same things...and viewing it again on this Christmas Eve. Watching the film felt like wishing on a star that the world would evolve, like the characters in the film, into a kinder gentler place. Emulating Kris Kringle, I vow that one way that I will contribute is by performing random acts of kindness.

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0039628/

After a divorced New York mother hires a nice old man to play Santa Claus at Macy's, she is startled by his claim to be the genuine article. When his sanity is questioned, a lawyer defends him in court by arguing that he's not mistaken.

At the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade, the actor playing Santa Claus is discovered to be drunk by a whiskered old man. Doris Walker, the no nonsense special events director, persuades him to take his place. He proves to be a sensation and is quickly recruited to play Santa at the main store. While he is successful, Doris learns that he calls himself Kris Kringle and he claims to be the actual Santa Claus. Despite reassurances by his doctor that he is harmless, Doris still has misgivings, especially when she has cynically trained herself, and especially her six-year-old daughter, Susan, to reject all notions of belief and fantasy. And yet, people, especially Susan, begin to notice there is something special about Kris and his determination to advance the true spirit of Christmas among the rampant commercialism around him and succeeding in improbable ways. When a raucous conflict with the store's cruelly incompetent therapist, Granville Sawyer, erupts, he finds himself held at Bellevue where, in despair, he deliberately fails a mental examination to ensure his commitment. All seems lost until Doris' neighbor, Fred Gailey, reassures him of his worth and agrees to represent him in the fight to secure his release. To achieve that, Fred arranges a formal hearing in which he argues that Kris is sane because he is in fact Santa Claus. What ensues is a bizarre hearing in which people's beliefs are reexamined and put to the test, but even so, it's going to take a miracle for Kris to win.—Kenneth Chisholm ([email protected])

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

MY TAKE...

The 1947 black-and-white film was a good fit for the post World War II years. The country had been through five years of war. And was in no mood for introspective films. Westerns and mysteries were in vogue. It didn’t take long to figure out who were the good guys, who were the bad guys and who should get their just desserts. “Miracle on 34th Street” was not just a good movie. It was an emotional tonic that the country gulped down with appreciation.

To add an infusion of magnanimity which the zeitgeist of the time seemed to need, the film floated the notion, through the character of Kris Kringle, played by Edmund Gwenn , that Christmas needed to be re-anchored to kindness, charity and giving.

In the very first scenes, Kringle decries what he sees commercialism overtaking charity. Through the magic of Hollywood’s clever screenplay and a perfect cast, charity and belief in the spirit of Christmas are reinvigorated.

The casting to match characters and their roles was brilliant. So were the men and women who played them. The lynch pin…Edmund Gwenn, a slight, mildly portly man with a full gray beard and a twinkle in his eye brighter than the North Star. His Kris Kringle was a perfect balance of kindness, empathy, perceptiveness, and sense of calling. His kind face is luminous. Amongst a group of fine actors, he is the grain of yeast that makes the whole film rise, the axis around which the entire film revolves scene after scene. All the other actors might’ve come from central casting, but Kringle may as well have come from the North Pole or somewhere at a considerably loftier altitude.

I weep every time I watch it, even though I know exactly what’s going on, including a developing romance between the lead actors and the tension produced by the little girl who doesn't believe in Santa Claus.

Believing in something or someone can be tricky. Inevitably your belief will be challenged. The film’s characters grapple with this from first scenes until the final scenes. The way their beliefs are resolved results in The Miracle of 34^Th Street.

The acting, the perfectly cast characters, the themes...this movie is worth watching any day of the year.

December 27, 2022 in Commentaries | Permalink | Comments (0)

Noel...

DECEMBER 24, 2022

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....

Photo by Paul A. Tamburello, Jr.

December 25, 2022 in Commentaries | Permalink | Comments (1)

Duke and 'Trane

"Alexa, play Duke Ellington"

A big surprise when first two songs are arrangements with John Coltrane, whose nimble evocative phrasing are harbingers of where he will take it as he ventures over the horizon toward the dense introspective opaque arrangements he will play in his later career.

Both songs are from the Impulse album "Duke Ellington/John Coltrane" featuring the tight group of Elvin Jones, drums; Jimmy Garrison, double bass; Aaron Bell, double bass; Sam Woodyard, drums.

MY LITTLE BROWN BOOK

Composed by Billy Strayhorn, a lyrical inside-the-lines light-as-a-feather reverie, Duke and double bass (Aaron Bell) lay down a foundation for Coltrane's alto sax that perches in your memory long after its final notes fade. Ellington's spare phrasing, brilliantly timed chords swirl with Coltrane's sweet trills that are intimations of where Coltrane will be headed as he breaks new ground after this.

ANGELICA

This arrangement lifts off like a kite in a late afternoon breeze... your psyche riding along as your memory bank opens a door to a sweet moment in your love life when the mixtures were calibrated just about right...three minutes of sweet melancholy.

Upbeat with Elvin Jones' muffled drums pounding an insistent beat, Jimmy Garrison's on-time double bass, Duke piano in hot pursuit in a ripe swing with vaguely a Latin lilt, Coltrane’s tenor sax that he favored after 1947 riffing along with increasingly be-bopping swoops and trills for a couple of minutes before Duke sets it gently to earth with familiar riffs that fade into silence as the song ends three minutes later.

Hard to find Duke and John Coltrane pull off a better example of where 'Trane's train is heading.

Keep asking Alexa to play John Coltrane. Hear Coltrane's solos fly into the wild like a bird swooping from its comfortable nest into his locomating Blue Trane, 'Trane at the throttle pushing his band-mates to pour some of their own coal into the fire box.

And when you have an hour or so... read this out then play "A Love Supreme".

John Coltrane – bandleader, vocals, tenor saxophone; Jimmy Garrison – double bass; Elvin Jones – drums, gong, timpani; McCoy Tyner – piano.

And for a chaser. John Coltrane Full Album: Stardust...put this band in a studio and they chilled like a bowl of jello.

"Stardust" (Hoagy Carmichael, Mitchell Parish) – 10:44 "Time After Time" (Sammy Cahn, Jule Styne) – 7:45 "Love Thy Neighbor" (Mack Gordon, Harry Revel) – 9:21 "Then I'll Be Tired of You" (Yip Harburg, Arthur Schwartz) – 9:27 Personnel[edit] John Coltrane – tenor saxophone Wilbur Harden – flugelhorn (track 1), trumpet (3) Freddie Hubbard - trumpet (4) Red Garland – piano Paul Chambers – bass Jimmy Cobb – drums (1, 3) Arthur Taylor – drums (2, 4)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0vf6E2Pu7Hc

October 23, 2022 in Commentaries, Music | Permalink | Comments (0)

Farewell To A Beloved Man of Substance

October 16, 2022
4:45 PM Sally, O’Briens Bar, Somerville, Massachusetts.

I arrive a few songs after the band hit the stage. Something feels off.

Something beyond the usual, late Sunday afternoon vibe with the Natural Wonders singing their usual set list in the order that feels like Sunday catechism. Rather than incense and the ringing of altar bells we have hip shaking rock 'n roll, smokey slow drag blues, and a dollop of do-wop. No wonder that the faithful call this gathering “choich”.

If energy had a color, this afternoon’s would be the iridescent purple of a priest’s vestments at High Mass.

The late Jesse Burkhardt, Jennifer Hawkins, Fred Griffeth

A scattering of men and women I’ve never seen here before sit at the tables and occupy some of the seats at the mahogany bar. I can’t see it, but I feel a form of energy not usually in the Sunday vibe.

Maybe they wandered in from the three blocks of vendor tents cheek by jowl lining Somerville Avenue in front of Sally O’Briens and every other establishment on that side of the street. It’s a bit of a retail madhouse out there.

Maybe they were swept in by some kind of retail fairy dust and floated in like dust motes and settled themselves into the tables and shares around the dance floor.

That must be it, says I.

Wrong.

Some men and women join the crowd on the dance floor. They clearly are not dancers. It’s as if some unseen spirit is bidding them to get up and do something that is not a natural response from them. A gesture to make their presence felt for reasons known only to themselves.

The Natural Wonders finish their set. No one moves. A man steps up to the microphone on the stage. The crowd turns to listen. I walk from my seat at the bar to the middle of the dance floor to hear what’s going on.

A man is speaking with a muted sense of urgency The kind that makes people stop their conversations out of respect and curiosity. I have no idea what’s happening, have never seen anything like it at this place where high octane music is an answered prayer to absolve any of our shortcomings. Or at least my shortcomings during the week. If dancing to high and high octane music is my penance, I will come here to confess every Sunday afternoon. But I digress.

Begorrah... I realize that I’m in an emotionally charged Irish wake in which stories about the deceased are meant to greases the skids for his trip to the great saloon in the sky. At ground level, richly detailed stories about the man assuage our grief and bid farewell. For those who didn’t know him, they’re a window into a man whose kindness and eccentricities were legend.

By the third story, I realize that he was the tall thin character who wore an oversized cloche cap, perfect sartorial choice for the thin-as-a-rail man with a carefully trimmed Van Dyke beard. By every story told, Jesse Burkhardt was a social fixture in the Cambridge scene known for his kindness. And the conspiratorial mischievous glint in his eyes.

Jesse was a Plough and Stars presence then a regular Sunday parishioner at St. Sally’s. And in the best Irish tradition, after each story about this man, we raise our glasses in thanks for the memories.

I didn’t know him personally but I sure do remember his incandescent presence. And the energy vibe that surrounded him like a halo.

By every account he was the witty fellow with the gift of uplifting the spirits of everyone with whom he encountered.With a mix of humor and stoked grief, every speaker added a story that certified the man's presence, as outsized as his cloche cap.

Jesse loved the music. You couldn’t miss him on the dance floor. He danced like a stork out of water with intention and immense joy. He’s one of those guys who perfectly fit the saying “Dance like nobody’s watching“ as he danced like a long-limbed stork out of water. Watching him express it was a joy in itself.

This afternoon a mighty cloud of grief was softened by heartfelt stories told by his dear friends, one after another, about the man’s gift of connecting and uplifting every one in his considerable aura.

Photos by Paul A. Tamburello, Jr.

Credit to Susaan Straus for forwarding the photo of Jesse Burkhardt, Jennifer Hawkins, and Fred Griffeth and Susan Sullivan for photo montage of Jesse

October 17, 2022 in Commentaries | Permalink | Comments (2)

"Don't Be Cruel" Billy Swan Channels Elvis

Re-posting because like a birthday cake, you only see/feel the layers after you've opened it with the first slice. I've heard layers of the song that I missed the first time around - a churchy organ thread, small piano bluesy piano riffs, muffled guitar licks, angelic backup singers. impeccable timing of the whole arrangement, a first rate mood enhancer for a music lover of any stripe.

"Don't Be Cruel" - Reinvented

Whooeeeee, never thought someone could, or would, take this song by you know who, turn it upside down, let the sound of the coins falling from its trousers produce a song track, utterly its own, groove heavy, emotionally convincing, reeking of the 1950s ... voice, phrasing, backup singers, and tight band that makes every note count. And a bass line running through it like a freight train with a metronome in the firebox.

The organ coda swirling like incense from the first chord holds it together with an incongruously religious thread.

I don't remember dancing to the original but this version begs you push the chairs back in the kitchen. Oh, my. This song has it all going on.

Forget Elvis. Billy Swan owns this song.

Don't waste time. Play it now.

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

"I can help"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fsSxdGZni3Y

October 06, 2022 in Commentaries, Music | Permalink | Comments (0)

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.

September 29, 2022 in Commentaries | Permalink | Comments (0)

The Queen...Till We Meet Again

A global event, watched by millions lining the streets of London all the way to her final resting place in Scotland, and possibly billions watching on TV.

A personal bookend...On June 2, 1952, I ran home from school to watch her coronation.

In the days after September 8, 2022, I witnessed her funeral.

September 10, 2022 in Commentaries | Permalink

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.

September 09, 2022 in Commentaries | Permalink | Comments (6)

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.

USE SAFARI TO SCROLL THROUGH PHOTOS

Photos by Paul A. Tamburello, Jr

July 17, 2022 in Commentaries | Permalink | Comments (0)

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.

July 03, 2022 in Commentaries | Permalink | Comments (11)

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.

April 29, 2022 in Commentaries | Permalink | Comments (0)

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

March 01, 2022 in Commentaries, Music | Permalink | Comments (0)

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".

January 07, 2022 in Commentaries | Permalink | Comments (11)

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)

January 01, 2022 in Commentaries | Permalink | Comments (0)

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

December 29, 2021 in Commentaries | Permalink | Comments (2)

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.

December 26, 2021 in Commentaries, Music | Permalink | Comments (1)

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!

December 24, 2021 in Commentaries | Permalink | Comments (27)

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

December 13, 2021 in Commentaries | Permalink | Comments (0)

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

November 26, 2021 in Commentaries | Permalink | Comments (0)

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."

November 26, 2021 in Commentaries | Permalink | Comments (0)

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

November 22, 2021 in Commentaries, Music | Permalink | Comments (0)

reviews, commentaries, stories: paul tamburello's take

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Then here to hear range of Tony's style, "Some Other Time" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=06ssRQ7K1hQ

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9MselAkjXbM Bill Evans with Tony Bennett on Johnny Carson's Tonight Show 10/27/75 shows how much fun he had singing

PBS Newshour: Tony says "Always stick with quality" ...and credits African Americans in New Orleans who created the American art form Jazz.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9MselAkjXbM

Bill Evans with Tony Bennett on Johnny Carson's Tonight Show 10/27/75

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

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