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)

A Nocturnal Ramble

October 12, 2021

Nocturnal ramble up Palfrey Street and beyond.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Watertown from one of the highest elevations in town.

Photos by Paul A. Tamburello, Jr.

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

Hanging Out To Dry

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

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

Photo by Paul A. Tamburello, Jr.

October 16, 2021 in Commentaries | Permalink | Comments (0)

An Autumn Nocturnal Ramble

A nocturnal ramble up Palfrey Street and beyond...

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

This is a night for rambling and ruminating.

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

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

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

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

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

Jupiter, a luminously present, nearly upstaging the moon.

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

Photos by Paul A. Tamburello, Jr.

October 13, 2021 in Commentaries | Permalink | Comments (3)

Terrence Blanchard: From New Orleans To The Met

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

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

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

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

This is more than entertainment. It shaped our culture.

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

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

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

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

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

FIRE SHUT UP IN MY BONES, TERRENCE BLANCHARD,

October 01, 2021 in Commentaries, Music | Permalink | Comments (5)

The Ice Panda

February 26, 2021

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

Upright. Indomitable. Inscrutable.

A mystery, a miracle, a little soldier of fortune

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

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

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

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

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

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

POSTSCRIPT

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

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

Vigilant night...

and day...

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

Photos by Paul A. Tamburello, Jr.

February 28, 2021 in Commentaries | Permalink | Comments (19)

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

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

March 28, 2020

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

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

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

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

PT

February 21, 2021 in Commentaries | Permalink | Comments (0)

Opening Day at Fenway Park - Covid19 Vaccinations!

February 1, 2021

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I'm walking.

XXXXXXX

Start at Gate A on Jersey Street

Line up, sign up

Follow the line...

My turn !

Make an appointment for second shot while in recovery area

Photo opp on the way out...

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

Photo by Paul A. Tamburello, Jr.

Helpful sites

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

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

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

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

February 03, 2021 in Commentaries | Permalink | Comments (14)

Joan Baez: A New Stage

December 28, 2020

20/12/28 Joan Baez/Stacey Abrams

Joan Baez: A New Stage

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

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

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

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

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

Joan Baez.

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

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

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

She is pushing back.

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

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

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

DETAILS
Handmade

Height: 15.5 inches
Width: 11 inches

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

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

This photo from Joan Baez website

Photos by Paul A. Tamburello, Jr.

December 30, 2020 in Commentaries | Permalink | Comments (13)

Noel Ramble

December 21, 2020

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

Noel Ramble

December 21, 2020 in Commentaries | Permalink | Comments (0)

Mini Pre-Midnight Ramble: Halloween Treat - Blue Moon and Mars

October 31, 2020

I bought a couple of bags of candy but not one trick or treat kid came to the door tonight. Not surprising considering the pandemic now have enough chocolate to snack on for a month.

When it was clear that the streets would be empty for the night, I took a brief walk in search of he full moon I had read would be rising up there somewhere.

A minute later, red tinged Mars showed up to join the 'Blue Moon', a pretty neat trick on Halloween.

“Once in a blue moon” explained…

The Oct. 31 full moon also happens to be a "blue moon," a designation for the second full moon to occur in a single calendar month. Blue moons are relatively rare as well, occurring on average just once every 2.5 years or so. Blue moons are relatively rare as well, occurring on average just once every 2.5 years or so. It won't happen again until 2039.

By then I will have consumed all that candy.

Whoa, from my history of Midnight Rambles, I recognize that reddish planet.

Surprise...Mars in the clear sky!

Photographs by Paul A. Tamburello, Jr.

November 02, 2020 in Commentaries | Permalink | Comments (0)

Song Of The Day: "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. I don't remember dancing to the original but this version begs you push the chairs back in the kitchen. And is that an organ introducing the song? Oh, my. This song has it all going on.

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

September 12, 2020 in Commentaries, Music | Permalink | Comments (9)

I Voted!

August 24, 2020

Creative dropbox located between the Watertown Free Public Library and Town Hall, Watertown, MA...return your books or return your ballot!

A sad, and scary, comment on the uncertainty that ballots sent through the USPS may not reach their destination on time. I'm taking no chances. My ballot was mailed to me August 13, 2020. My ballot was tabulated at Town Hall the day after I put it in the drop box. No worries about recently appointed Postmaster General Louis DeJoy, businessman and Republican Party fundraiser, messing with my vote.

I never thought the day would come when I would question the safety and sanctity of my right to vote.

Photo by Paul A. Tamburello, Jr.

FLASH...UPDATE!

I tracked my ballot at www.TrackMyBallotMA.com

9/1/2020 State Primary

Ballot Mailed: 8/13/2020

Ballot Received August 25, 2020

Status: Accepted

My ballot was scanned and accepted at Town Hall. The ballot was transported to my voting precinct location, scanned and counted.

I will receive a ballot for the November election soon. I will complete the ballot and return it to the same drop box and track my vote the same way. As in the primary election, my ballot will be transported to my voting precinct location, scanned, and counted.

I am horrified that the president is casting doubt on the election process.

Postmaster DeJoy's meddling with the systems of the country's drop boxes and the internal systems of sorting mail, including mailed ballots efficiently, is an assault on citizens' right to have their ballots received and tallied on time.

NB: Read and follow instructions, especially where to sign and date. Ask your town hall if you have questions. Melania Trump's vote was disqualified because she did not sign where required. Pay attention!

PLEASE VOTE and VOTE EARLY!

August 24, 2020 in Commentaries | Permalink | Comments (1)

Mid-Day Ramble: "We Can Do It!"

Oh boy! I smiled when I noticed them on a Midnight Ramble. The smile on my face was as bright as the noonday sun when I read the inscriptions on the stones today. The colors on the stones outdid the flowers nearby. And the messages? See for yourself.

This has to be the mail deliverer's favorite stop of the day. For everyday passersby, it's a shrine.

In times of flux, social change and uncertainty, words matter. They mattered when, in 1883, Emma Lazarus wrote these words inscribed on the base of The Statue of Liberty:

“Give me your tired, your poor,/Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,/The wretched refuse of your teeming shore./Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,/I lift my lamp beside the golden door!” words inscribed on the base of The Statue of Liberty in New York Harbor.

Today we are masked masses, eager for the day we can breathe free again, who can appreciate a momentary uplift by reading the messages painted on these petra-petunias arranged on the steps.

We're learning to see through our masks and connect through our eyes, our laughter, and our attitude.

YES we can!

Easier some days than others...that's why we need those messages on the other stones!

That's when the fun begins...

The best rock garden ever!

and you can see it all the way down the street.

FLASH...I just learned that these artistic rolling stones were painted and captioned by the homeowner. She recently painted messages honoring women's rights...stay tuned for a photo update.

Photos by Paul A. Tamburello, Jr.

https://www.biography.com/writer/emma-lazarus

August 19, 2020 in Commentaries | Permalink | Comments (0)

Midnight Ramble: Firefighter Memorialized

August 15, 2020

Midnight - Mars rising as I head down Oliver Street. I never know what might be revealed on the ground during a Ramble. Overhead, I can count on bright Jupiter, as close to a neon sign you'll ever see, dominating the cosmos, along with Saturn, the Big and Little Dippers, Polaris, and a host of constellations that became more visible after Covid-19 closed the state down and emissions from automobiles cleared away.

Tonight's Ramble has a target - drop off my Water/Sewer quarterly payment, due today, into a drop-box next to Town Hall.

Pieces of Watertown history are abundant on the way to Town Hall.

Even before Covid-19, death can visit suddenly as it did with this beloved 20-year veteran of the Watertown Fire Department. Cemeteries aren't the only place to memorialize the departed.https://patch.com/massachusetts/watertown/2-alarm-fire-watertown

On Main Street Rt 20, a virtual gravestone...

reminds citizens and firemen alike that the call of civic duty has hazards...

that need to be acknowledged.

Photos by Paul A. Tamburello, Jr.

August 15, 2020 in Commentaries | Permalink | Comments (0)

George Washington: Good Trouble in Watertown, MA

August 3, 2020

If you'd been standing around this corner, a main thoroughfare not far from the Boston Post Road, in the spring and summer of 1775, you'd have seen a who's who of American history riding through the streets of Watertown, MA.

When passing through Watertown, George Washington spent the night at Widow Dorothy Coolidge’s tavern. The tavern was located at the present site of the MBTA Bus Terminal landing next to the Charles River.

“We lodged in this place at the House of a Widow Coolidge near the Bridge, and a very indifferent one it is.”

High rating for historic significance but Widow Coolidge's lodgings get a pretty poor rating on Ye Olde Trip Advisor.

What was really on the menu was what the late Congressman John Lewis would say was getting into 'good trouble'...plotting to overthrow the British Government and embrace self-rule.

TO BE CONTINUED WITH FURTHER RESEARCH

MANY THANKS TO NEIGHBOR AND HISTORIAN MARILYNNE K. ROACH FOR INVALUABLE INFORMATION ABOUT ALL OF THIS!

August 09, 2020 in Commentaries | Permalink | Comments (0)

Don Lemon: Anchor, Bridge

June 22, 2020

Don Lemon: CNN Anchor, Bridge

Don Lemon is paving the way every night to expand the conversation about racism in America. He is thoughtful, presents his authentic self every night, and differentiates his opinions from the news clearly.

He’s deceptively good at tackling the heretofore third-rail subject of racism, touchy to explore even with a CNN audience. Low key before the George Floyd murder, he registers the event with sense of the now, recognizing that this is the time to open up the talk and that he is going to use his platform to do it.

I can think of no other highly visible black man in the media constellation who has the credibility, sensibility, and a smoldering repugnance at a nearly profane sense of systemic racial injustice regarding black men in particular.

George Floyd's murder in plain daylight, captured on video, lit a fuse in the national psyche. Lemon lets it burn. But in a way that he intends, figuratively speaking, to cause as much imploding as exploding. When white folks begin to notice then come to grips with entitlement and privilege that comes with their skin color and begin to notice it without feeling called out that’s quite a feat.

Lemon is doing that. When he launched a podcast titled "Silence Is Not An Option," he put his words into action.

Excerpt from "Silence Is Not An Option"

I know that this issue, like this country, isn't just black and white — we're all impacted by this, and we all have work to do. Listening to this podcast won't wash away your sins, and you won't get a certificate at the end. You may still say the wrong thing — hell, I am sure at some point I'm gonna say the wrong thing — but silence is not an option. We've got to talk about this and find some concrete steps forward, together.

The stone he’s cast into the pool of race consciousness is making a ripple on shores heretofore unlapped . A news anchor, yes. And a bridge to a national consciousness about race.

June 25, 2020 in Commentaries | Permalink | Comments (22)

Regular Sex: Mature and Often

June 23, 2020

What makes your skin feel more supple and makes you appear five to seven years younger? No, not Oil of Olay… SEX !

That high-pitched sound of bed springs creaking in senior living communities across America is because residents just read this comment by Dr. David Weeks on the bulletin board of their recreation center. Weeks says people formerly called elderly can “shave between five and seven years” off their appearance by having regular sex. The more orgasms the better. Let endorphins rage.

Those endorphins are leeetle miracle workers, he says. They can act as a natural pain-killer, reduce anxiety, boost circulation and release a human growth hormone that makes the skin more elastic. Forget ibuprofen. Break out the Viagra.

"Sexual satisfaction is a major contributor to quality of life, ranking at least as high as spiritual or religious commitment …” he added. That finally answers the question of why people experiencing orgasms so often shout, “Oh, god!”

“….more positive attitudes towards mature sex should be vigorously promoted," he said. I guess that means I’d been having immature sex until I was eligible for my AARP card. I wonder how mature sex is different. Well, I haven’t used the trapeze lately, maybe that’s a sign I’m having mature sex.

Here’s the interactive part of this post. We should be able to create a top ten list of signs of mature sex. Here’s a starter list. Feel free to weigh in.

•You can wait till you get to the bedroom before you start.
•You haven’t had sex in a car in a few years.
•You have sex with your socks on.
•You wonder whether you DVRd your favorite TV show while you’re having sex.

OK, readers, your turn to add to the list. You don’t necessarily have to be of AARP age to add your comment…

June 22, 2020 in Commentaries | Permalink | Comments (0)

George Floyd: Watertown Vigil In Solidarity for Justice

June 2, 2020

Today’s Watertown, MA, vigil wasn’t heralded on CNN or Fox News but it happened where it needs it most, to wake up white citizens in every day places like Watertown, MA, all over the country. It was sparked by what we saw on the gut wrenching video of George Floyd being murdered by a police officer in Minneapolis last week.

35,954 people, not counting children, live in the 4.2 square miles of the city eight miles from Boston.

This message showed up on my neighborhood list serv.

The vigil tonight will be held on "The Delta," the green space in the middle of Watertown Square. If many people come, we may spread out to the street corners.

Word spread. So did the crowd.

An inter-generational swath of them showed up at 5:30 PM to 6:30 PM to fill "The Delta," the grassy area in the middle of Watertown Square, the nexus of the city, and spill onto every adjacent sidewalks and street corner. I wouldn’t describe Watertown as a hotbed of activism. Tonight it was a city with a conscience. We held hands with small towns across the land.

The video showing George Floyd's murder was a defibrillator. It shocked us into taking a step to address racial bias and institutional injustice against people of color. What began as a visceral reaction to gross inhumanity has to continue with pressure to change culture across the board.

For me, I confronted my own conscience.I have always voted for justice. This was a moment to stand up for it. We joined hands with everyday people in Paris, London, Amsterdam, Syria, New Zealand and hundreds other places around the globe, revulsed from watching the video of a black man murdered in broad daylight by a white police officer.

The white people here might fear that the police might ticket us for speeding. Black men and women fear that police might ticket them because of their color. White privilege is hard to acknowledge. I haven't thought much about it because I don't have to. I understand it better today.

The Watertown Police Department just issued this document describing guidelines for "use of force."

And this: "On behalf of the WPD Chief Lawn would like to thank all who attended the peaceful vigil last night. Chief Lawn attended & was impressed by the over 500 people . We are proud of Watertown and our community’s commitment to advocate for social justice. Thank You!!!" @watertowngov

Watertown's citizens read the tweet. A thank you from the Chief is good. I have had no personal experience to the contrary but Watertown's adherence to live up to the "use of force" guidelines will be essential. They will certainly be held to the guidelines they stand for.

The governor of Minnesota said, "We have only one chance to get it right."

The hard work has begun.

This story in the Huffington Post helps me figure out ways to keep it going.

People walked into Watertown Square from every quarter in the city. From 5:30 PM until 6:30 PM, the area swelled with people who needed to stand up for justice...

Three generations...

SAY THEIR NAMES...every sidewalk and median strips was occupied by protesters bearing homemade messages with messages they wanted to express

At every traffic light change, drivers of passenger cars, UPS and Postal Service trucks and 18-wheelers leaned in their car horns.

High school kids made very specific signs...

.

Everyone wearing masks. Social distancing observed better in some groups than others.

Critical: We need to take action with votes and voices.

Protesters raise signs, drivers lean on horns to demonstrate support

What will this boy remember about this? How has his mom explained it? The governor of Minnesota said, "We only have one chance to get this right."

Scores of home made signs...

to send a message to the political system and to each other.

At 6:20 PM, the entire square suddenly became quiet. I look around. Everyone is kneeling.

Everyone is kneeling. I had no idea this was in the plan. No one utters a word. Everyone is processing why they are here, what the moment calls for.

We are aware of the momentous disquiet across the land, that we are part of a movement for change. It's up to us to do more than kneel.

The hard work begins now. How will parents talk to their kids about this? What kind of conversations will begin between the teenagers present? What steps do I take?

This story in the Huffington Post helped me figure out where to start. This post is a start.

6:35 PM...heading home. It is up to me and everyone in this crowd to put our shoulders to the wheels of justice.

Photos by Paul A. Tamburello, Jr.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2G8j2TxTXEA

Watertown Square, all ages vigil gathers

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7TJ0qNXp0s8&list=TLPQMDYwNjIwMjC1VjDgTqGOrg&index=1

Crowd stand in solidarity, most holding home made signs

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

Every corner filling up with over 500 people standing for justice

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

6:21 PM

One minute later, a powerful 8 minutes and 46 seconds of silence, the time frame a Minneapolis policeman kept his knee on the throat of George Floyd, killing him.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=liQPu_oSSI8

Kneeling at 6:22 PM

June 03, 2020 in Commentaries | Permalink | Comments (13)

Tags: George Floyd, Watertown MA

Midnight Ramble Series - May 21, 2020

May 21, 2020

2:00 AM

These midnight rambles have evolved from a substitute for exercise at my health club into a walking form of contemplation, meditation, and sheer wonder at the contrasts all around me, light and shadow, emptiness and density, deep silence spliced with the rustling of the wind through tree branches overhead.

I can feel it. Every night, like coming upon an old friend, it wraps around me in the first moments I pull the front door closed and walk into the zen like territory of sound/no sound.

The smell of budding trees, lilacs and primrose, the earth coming to life in the spring unmitigated by pollution of any sort, awaits me. I have been sucked into this eddy of silence and fragrance, addicted to and embraced by the sum of all of it.

In the nine weeks since I began rambling in the middle of March, the earthly shutdown has acted like a massive physic for the cosmos. Reminded me of a science experiment my sixth grade teacher demonstrated. She poured dirt into a large beaker of water and stirred it up. You know what happened in the next hour.

The canopy overhead looks like a blue/purple blanket onto which a mighty force has arranged the cosmos. Like me, it takes a ramble every night. Each of us has our own neighborhood. Mine varies according to my whim. The constellations plot their well worn paths every night.

"Look for Venus tonight!" a friend texted me. What I saw blew me away.

I downloaded a couple of apps. Rambling at about 2 AM last night (this morning) I see a brilliant star, high overhead. Open the "Sky Guide app", point my iPhone overhead. JUPITER! I first spotted the planet low in the southern sky around midnight two weeks ago, outwattaging every other body around it. Tonight two hours later, it looks like a beacon in a sea of lesser stars and planets.

https://history.nasa.gov/SP-349/ch1.htm

Ursa Major and Ursa Minor are a celestial halo, giggling and pointing fingers at grain-of-sand-me staring at them through my phone as I slow march past Victory Field along the yellow traffic lane in the middle of Orchard Street.

The Greeks,Romans, Hindus have told Ursa Major, Ursa Minor creation stories for eons. Runaway slaves used the Little Dipper's handle, aka the North Star, to guide them to freedom. Little did their owners realize "Follow The Drinking Gourd" was a celestial road map from sun down to sunset.

Below...Jupiter rising in the southwestern sky

The smaller 'star' to the left of Jupiter...SATURN! It turns out that May is the best month to get this view of the duo.

The smaller 'star' to the left of Jupiter...Saturn!

Photos by Paul A. Tamburello, Jr.... 2 AM...rambling

May 23, 2020 in Commentaries | Permalink | Comments (8)

A Visit to the Dentist, Mitigation Reigns

May 20, 2020

I'm nervous when I shop at my local Stop & Shop. Imagine how I feel when I had to visit my dentist. On March 20, my two upper incisors needed to be capped. Custom ceramic replacements were scheduled for March 5. The pandemic changed that.

My dentist opened for business last week. In full mitigation mode. One patient at a time. I begin to feel relaxed when I see the plexiglass barrier at the receptionist's window. And her mask. And the gloves, mask, hair covering on his assistant who ushers me into the room with all the paraphernalia of the trade.

The doc enters ten minutes later, sits down, we talk. He's relaxed. And reads my mind. "I shower and change scrubs between every patient. I'm taking care of both of us." His assistant, wearing a plexiglass shield over her masked face, stands behind me in a corner.

I'm relaxed. He examines the temporary caps on the incisors.

"Your gums are a little soft. I want the gums to be firm when I install your new ceramic crowns to get the best fit. But take a look. I think the color matches your own enamel," showing me my new pearly whites.

Five minutes later, I've purchased an Oral-B Genius Professional Exclusive Rechargeable Toothbrush made by Braun. "I add $10 to my cost," he says, "I offer them so you have the best chance to keep your gums healthy. Reschedule for two weeks. Call us if you have any questions about using the toothbrush."

Back to the receptionist's alcove. Slide my credit card under the plexiglass. She wipes down the pen I'm about to use with a sanitary wipe. Same to my credit card when she returns it. His assistant brings me a clean new fabric bag with the new toothbrush.

I'm coming back in two weeks. Hopefully with firm pink gums. And a dose of confidence that I'm being cared for by a very highly motivated team of professionals aggressively managing and mitigating.

The one thing that overrides everything?

Trust.

May 21, 2020 in Commentaries | Permalink | Comments (0)

The Miles Davis Tadd Dameron Quintet in Paris Festival International de Jazz May 1949

May 19, 2020 P.E.

"I haven’t played this in years. In perfect condition. Ecstasy!"...

says my dear friend. I've been swapping stories and adventures with him since he moved across the street from me as we entered our first year at South Junior High School. We've been on the same wave length since Elvis, Mickey Mantle, Duke Snider, Little Richard,the Boys Club Friday night dances, the list goes on...

Friendship matters. Thick and thin. We're in the thick part. Past, present, future swirl around like the disco ball at the Boys Club dances, casting bright beams, illuminating memories long forgotten but ready to comfort with the power of shared recollection. Where would my psyche be without these connections during isolation? When I listen, cascades of memories from a less complicated time flood in surges, an inchoate tumble of laughter and melancholy roll over well worn milestones. Opportunities taken, opportunities lost are matters of fact. Recalibrating and reimagining are in order. My timeline is limited. Not so my imagination.

So here I am with Miles...

Listening now, music only, no video but who cares. I can smell the smoke filled room, see the band through the haze as I squeeze into a wrought iron chair at a tiny deuce crammed in with a bunch of people who appreciate what they’re hearing. Bebop must have just been bolting from the gate. Incandescent energy of a live concert…the riffs at the 29 minute mark start with the known then plunge into spontaneous reverie, sort of a stepping stone from tradition to new territory that the French, god bless them, really understood for what it was.

Check the credits at the end.

This brought me back, way back.

Later

Swallowed whole into the belly of youtube, I hear Miles Davis - February 1955 at the Hi-Hat Club, Boston, on the corner of Columbus and Mass Ave.

And a treasure trove of Bill Evans

Isolating with giants of jazz...

May 19, 2020 in Commentaries, Music | Permalink | Comments (7)

Tags: nd had played the 1970 Awakening album just last week.

Mother’s Day with Irma Thomas, WWOZ, May 10, 2020

May 10, 2020

Mother’s Day with Irma Thomas, WWOZ, 12 PM - 2 PM

Today would have been Irma's 37th (yes, 37th) annual Mother's Day performance at the Audubon Zoo. New Orleans does not give up its sense of tradition for anything, a pandemic included.

The two-hour program that Thomas usually performs is being broadcast on flagship radio station WWOZ....a virtual feat that uses a fabulously curated collection of her songs over the years.

Just as WWOZ did with Jazz Festing in Place, the radio station today is one giant PSA sending love to moms and thousands of listeners sheltering in place. I have watched Irma light a place on fire.

Sadly, my internet is down until 1:15 PM… then

...finally Thomas's still poignant “Cold Cold Rain” (Katrina) pours down from the ionosphere and here’s the Mother’s Day Salute by Irma Thomas, The Soul Queen of New Orleans. If New Orleans has an earth mother, it has to be Miss Irma.

"You Can Have My Husband but Please Don’t Mess With My Man” 2011 continues the set that spans from resilience to rejoicing. “Can’t Break Away From You,” 2011, “Time On My Side,” a proclamation of female resilience charged with comeuppance for an inattentive lover, I am listening to one in-charge woman. #metoo, meet Ms. Irma Thomas.

Listen to that cackle at the end of “I Wish Someone Would Care About Me.” Right about now I am throwing bouquets to the engineers and producers who integrated pace and style of this salute as mightily as the Mississippi River threads its way around the city.

Here comes “I Done Got Over It.” When the Queen says, “This is the audience participation part, we’re gonna have an indoor second line. We celebrate everything in New Orleans with a second line, births, deaths, weddings, funerals, when a pregnancy test comes back negative! Get out your hankies, shake your tail feathers (cackles)” the audience needs no encouragement.

“Iko Iko,” another New Orleans anthem.

I can’t stand it. I’m bounding down the stairs, JBL Flip speaker blaring in hand. Out the front door to dance in the sunlight on my front porch. Someone in the audience shouts, “We love you, Irma!”

“So do I! Happy Mother’s Day Miss Irma!”

Photo top PT, bottom courtesy of WWOZ

Irma Thomas at the Regatta Bar, Cambridge, MA April 9, 2009

May 10, 2020 in Commentaries, Louisiana, Music | Permalink | Comments (0)

Midnight Ramble Series - May 7, 2020 - Photos

May 7, 2020 Midnight Ramble

Walking from residential neighborhoods to the middle of a ghost town to post a letter.

The Flower Moon , the last supermoon of 2020, begins to bloom...

A sign of the times...

Mount Auburn Street 100 yards from Watertown Square heading east...would get arrested if tried this BP (before Pandemic)

Walking the line...

Empty bus on midnight run...

A verified midnight ramble!

Amazing colors at midnight...

Luminous golden glows pour like rivers from mute homes that stare at me as I walk past in the silence.

Photos by Paul A. Tamburello, Jr.

May 08, 2020 in Commentaries | Permalink | Comments (6)

Midnight Ramble Series - May 7, 2020

May 7, 2020

In response to Governor Baker's updated public gathering ban, my health club closed on March 16. A gym rat for decades, I needed to feel the burn. Or at least a simmer. On March 20, I began walking. Which heretofore I have hated. Pound out a steady rhythm on an elliptical machine till I break a sweat. Love it.

Walk around the quarter mile track a quarter mile from my home? No way. Until March 20. The state is in a shelter in place mandate. If you're not an essential worker, stay home. Markets, pharmacies, liquor stores are open. Everything else closed. No cars moving on the streets. The skies hushed with no air traffic.

Around midnight March 20, my will to exercise told my ideas about walking to...well, take a walk. I donned a parka, headed out for parts unknown. That first midnight ramble has become a habit as steady as my commitment to show up at my health club.

Mitigation at that date: wash hands, do not congregate in groups of more than 10. No mention of masks yet.

The idea to walk at midnight wasn't a plan, a strategy to keep away from contact with others. I was wide awake. I really wanted to stay in shape. I actually thought that there was a possibility that I could resume dancing before too long (a delusion no doubt, we all have ways of dealing with a crisis) and I was going to be up for it physically.

What happened stunned me. I could not hear a thing. Anywhere. Not a single car. Not a single person on the streets. Nothing moved. Lights glowed from living rooms, kitchens, bedrooms. I stopped in my tracks several times trying to arrange this in my head. Many homes were dark, inhabitants asleep. Clearly there was activity in others but not even muffled sounds from the TVs flickering inside. I was walking through the set of a science fiction movie.

The total silence, sounds of human activity, of any kind, totally inaudible. The deep silence unnerved me.

After six weeks now, I still choose to ramble at midnight. In a way I haven't yet grasped, the silence comforts me.

The part of the ramble I like most - I walk straight down the middle of the street right on the yellow line not a car to impede me. Sort of a heady disregard for normal rule of law in a time so much has changed. Walk in the middle of the road? Every step I take reminds me I'm living in a global moment in history in which the outcome is unknown. For me, too.

Luminous golden glows pour like rivers from mute homes that stare at me as I walk past in the silence. In an hour, I'll be back in my own living room, the warm glow one of many pouring onto my steely silent street.

PHOTO ESSAY NEXT PAGE

Photos by Paul A. Tamburello, Jr.

May 08, 2020 in Commentaries | Permalink | Comments (11)

Social Distancing At Close Quarters

A PUBLIC SERVICE ANNOUNCEMENT!

Social Distancing At Close Quarters

Dr. Wendy Walsh psychologist Saturday, April 25 on CNN at about 2:45 PM In a weekly segment hosted by CNN anchor Frederica Whitfield.

Whitfield asks Walsh to respond to a viewer question. "We are a couple living in a small apartment. How can we maintain distance and avoid conflict in our small space?"

Dr. Wendy Walsh’s Answer

“There are two kinds of distance,” she says,”physical distance and emotional distance.”

“When emotions are running high we should not judge our partners by their coping ability. With this kind of stress, everyone has a certain neuro-chemistry that wires them to respond in a certain way when dealing with stress. So don’t go into this thinking I’m going to leave this person because they cannot endure the stress. Instead focus on forgiveness, forgiveness, forgiveness.”

“Ask yourself every day what can I do to catch them doing something good and verbalize that. Because you want to water what you want to grow. Otherwise it inspires criticism and when you complement your partner it reminds your brain of why you fell in love with him/her in the first place.”

“Regarding physical distance, you need to talk about this especially in a small apartment. This is your corner, this is my corner, during these hours. Let’s make a game strategy for this team. Always think about it In times of conflict. If this relationship wins, then you both win.”

Walsh's advice about emotional distance can apply to everyone in the house/apartment. Making a team effort could quite possibly keep the team in the winning column by the time the period of isolation is over.

PS April 8, 2020 Corona Disease Guidance from City of Boston

April 27, 2020 in Commentaries | Permalink | Comments (0)

"March the Ninth Twenty Twenty" : A Poem by Mariangela Gualtieri, Italy

March 23, 2020

“March the Ninth Twenty Twenty”

A day in the midst of a pandemic...
A Poem by Mariangela Gualtieri, trans. by Lucy Rand and Clarissa Botsford

From Edizione Black Coffee written in Italian *
https://lithub.com/march-the-ninth-twenty-twenty/

Published on March 23, the poem

The poet's sentiment resonated with me. I spent time in Rome in June 2018 and in Rome, Castelfiorentino, Florence, Siena, and Bologna in 2019. I've walked the streets, been seduced by the architecture, colors, cobbled streets, sounds the expressive Italian language, a linguistic Tarantella echoing in my ears. I swear I've been on the same street as the photo accompanying Mariangela's poem. I worry about the health of the people I met in my hotel, restaurants and shops I visited.

The poem speaks truth across continents and oceans. It was true for Mariangela Gualtieri the day she wrote it. It is true for me as I read it.

The poet's two words "I think" in the final stanza, are aspirational. It remains to be seen if, in the words of the poet, "Our hand will be more delicate in the doing of life now that we know how sad it is to stand one meter apart."

“March the Ninth Twenty Twenty”

I’m telling you this
we needed to stop.
We knew. We all felt it
that it was too furious,
our frenzy. Being inside of things.
Outside of our selves.
Squeeze every hour – make it yield.

We needed to stop
and we couldn’t.
We needed to do it together.
Slow down the race.
But we couldn’t.
There was no human force
that could hold us back.

And since this
was for all of us a tacit wish
like an unconscious will –
perhaps our species has obeyed
loosened the bonds that protect
our seed. Opened
the innermost cracks
and let it in.
Perhaps this is why there was a leap
in the species – from the bat to us.
Something in us wanted to be opened.
Perhaps, I don’t know.

Now we are at home.

It is extraordinary what is happening.
And there is gold, I believe, in this strange time.
Perhaps there are gifts.
Nuggets of gold for us. If we help one another.
There is a very strong call
of the species now and as a species
we must each see ourselves. A common fate
holds us here. We knew it. But not well enough.
Either all of us, or no one.

The earth is powerful. Truly alive
I feel it thinking a thought
that we do not know.
And with what’s happening now? Let us consider
whether the earth is not what’s moving.
Whether the law that rules
the entire universe, whether what’s happening, I wonder,
isn’t the full expression of that law
that governs us too – just like
every star – every particle of the cosmos.

Whether the dark matter was this
being bound together in an ardor
for life, with the sweep of death that comes
to rebalance every species.
Keep it within its dimensions, in its place,
going in the right direction. It is not us
who made heaven.

An imposing voice, without words
tells us to stay home now, like children
who are in trouble and don’t know why,
and won’t get kisses, won’t be hugged.
Each within a suspension
that takes us back, perhaps to the slowness
of ancient ancestors, of mothers.

Look more at the sky,
daub a dead man ochre. Bake bread
for the first time. Look intently at a face. Sing
a child softly to sleep. For the first time
hold someone else’s hand tight
feel the strength of the agreement. That we are together.
A single organism. The whole species
we carry within us. We are saving it inside us.

To that grasp of a palm
in another person’s palm
to that simple act that we are now forbidden –
we will return with expanded awareness.
We’ll be here, more attentive, I think. Our hand
will be more delicate in the doing of life.
Now that we know how sad it is
to stand one meter apart.

My friends at La Dispenza del Podere in Rome

Bologna - Centro Storico

Photos by Paul A. Tamburello, Jr.

April 23, 2020 in Commentaries | Permalink | Comments (0)

Tags: Mariangela Gualtieri

What Day Is It?

It's taken me three weeks to get used to feeling unmoored to daily schedule. I have to check my iPhone to figure out what day of the week it is. I can tell if it's day or night, refine that to morning or afternoon by looking outside. I need a schedule or I feel like I'm trying to hold water in my hands. I tune into Governor Andrew "FDR" Cuomo every morning for a dose of facts from a man with command of them, a sense of empathy aimed at New Yorkers, the elderly, the entire medical community, neighboring Governors of New Jersey and Connecticut, the Federal government when applicable, and clearly separates the facts from his opinion. The whole country tunes in for his daily fireside chat.

I need a sense of structure and routine each day to counter a world out of control just outside my door...so, I ...

• play whatever appeals to me from a pile of CDs I haven't listened to in ages... classical (Claude Debussy's "Images 1894, Series I, II),Glenn Gould's "Back Goldberg Variations" recorded in 1955); Jazz (The Modern Jazz Quartet (Lonely Woman 1987), Bill Evans "Conversations With Myself" 1963); Django Reinhart (Jazz Masters 38); Opera (Roberto Alagna and Angela Gheoghiu "Duets and Arias").

• reconcile months and months of my checkbook

• finish at least one household task on my long to do list

• look out the window

• let a day go by doing not much of anything

• improvise the day's meals with an ever diminishing supply of food in cupboard, fridge and freezer

• learn how to order groceries online (still feels so strange)

• get lost in youtube rabbit holes

• download Zoom to talk with a bunch of friends, make sure i shave and have a decent backdrop for the session

• wash my hands

• worry about running out of toilet paper

• get over feeling like a Martian on the rare times I go to the market and wear my mask

• steer clear of others in the one way aisles in the market

• obsessively worry about how to wipe down every damn thing from the grocery store

• have a staging area just inside the door before taking anything inside

• appreciate silence

• take a walk every night around midnight

MIDNIGHT RAMBLES: Not a sound outside, nothing, no cars, no people, the silence is unsettling and eerie.

Photos and videos by Paul A. Tamburello, Jr.

April 15, 2020 in Commentaries | Permalink | Comments (1)

The Pandemic: You Gotta Have Heart

April 5, 2020

As far back as The Plague of 1348, art was created in some form or another to counter grim reality. Giovanni Boccaccio wrote The Decameron, with ten stories that ranged from witty to bawdy,during the plague in Italy. Any way to keep the plague at bay. Today we're emailing friends, long lost or near and dear. It's diversion, but more important, it's gathering our friends around a figurative communal campfire.

In the Art vs Virus department, my neighbors are putting up a fight. As the song goes, "You Gotta Have Heart."

They're displaying teddy bears and rainbows in their windows. We need to be amused, consoled, but more than anything, feel a sense of community. Just the search for something to display made me feel good...ended up hanging Mardi Gras beads on my front porch and displaying a goofy puppet of Santa Claus in the front window. I was in my '"we're all in this together" mode.

Taking a page from Boston's Sidewalk Sam of yore, my neighbor ordered a bucket of chalk and drew radiant rainbow hearts on every section. Aside from a trip to the grocery or drug store, a walk around the neighborhood is one of our only options in the Stay Home reality. That sidewalk was the show for several days. It took two days of rain to erase the chalk. The joy I felt after seeing of those knockout colors and the memory of watching her create the mini masterpiece with her son? It's still there.

Break out the chalk...

With a little help from her son...

and teaching moments..."I need the yellow chalk now, can you find a piece?"

my neighbor lights up the sidewalk...

Use what makes you feel good...for me, Mardi Gras beads I've collected from numerous Mardi Gras parades in New Orleans and Lafayette and a "throw" from (Krewe de Vieux) 2019 Mardi Gras parade on Frenchmen Street in New Orleans; and a goofy puppet of Santa Claus!

Photos by Paul A. Tamburello, Jr.

April 10, 2020 in Commentaries | Permalink | Comments (18)

Venus and Trump

During my midnight rambles up the hills in my neighborhood, I walk right up the middle of Palfrey Street. The Stay at home mandate = no cars = less pollution overhead. Watertown is right under jet flyway routes leaving Logan Airport. Not now.

I have never seen Venus this bright in the evening sky.

Why such a clear sky?

The Editorial Board of the Boston Globe shed light on the subject. Virus or no virus, we’re all in it together as far as the environment is concerned.

XXXXXXXXXXXXX

Boston Globe Editorial: April 8, 2020

Trump’s team finds new ways to harm our health

Polluters already were enjoying a reduction in enforcement, but the administration keeps on giving. Lawmakers should keep pressure on the Environmental Protection Agency.

Even as the White House bungles its response to the coronavirus pandemic, the Trump administration is endangering public health in other ways — by eliminating or undermining protection of our air and water.

It’s bad enough that this is happening during a pandemic outbreak of a respiratory illness, given that air pollution worsens lung disease in general and appears to be having the same effect with COVID-19. But the effects of various rollbacks in pollution standards could linger long after this crisis subsides.

During his time in office, Trump has ransacked the environment so vigorously that advisory boards appointed by his own administration have criticized the administration’s disregard for scientific evidence in its approach to regulating pollution. Last week, the White House finalized a plan to cut vehicle gas-mileage requirements to a degree that was even more extreme than the deregulation sought by several automakers. And yet Trump and Andrew Wheeler, the former coal lobbyist who heads the Environmental Protection Agency, keep finding new ways to give industry a pass when it comes to contaminating the environment.

On March 26, the EPA announced that it will refrain from requiring companies, including oil refineries, chemical plants, and other industrial facilities, to monitor and report their discharges of hazardous material if those companies can show that the coronavirus got in the way of such work. As a result, companies that were already enjoying a reduction in the enforcement of pollution rules under Trump now have a new excuse for avoiding responsible stewardship of the air and water. The public is left to hope and pray that companies don’t exploit this moment and instead continue to uphold their obligations to avoid poisoning communities.

Companies that release hazardous pollutants may be keeping many employees home to slow the spread of the virus. But if the facilities are still staffed enough to operate as normal with employees on production lines — as many power plants and petrochemical facilities are — they should be able to keep looking for leaks, testing emissions, and reporting discharges, says Eric Schaeffer, who formerly directed civil enforcement at the EPA and now heads the Environmental Integrity Project, a watchdog group.

Schaeffer argues that the EPA didn’t have to deviate so far from the process it usually follows when natural disasters or pipeline breaks force companies out of compliance with environmental rules: The agency writes specific, short-term waivers. But this EPA didn’t put a time limit on its COVID-19 policy. Companies are instead urged to “return to compliance as quickly as possible.”

Perhaps it seems there’s some margin for environmental error now, with overall air pollution way down as stay-at-home advisories keep people out of their cars. But that’s not true for the employees and neighbors of big industrial facilities. “If you’re living next to a smelter, or a metal-finishing operation, or a refinery, it’s business as usual for them. They could be putting out stuff that’s pretty nasty,” Schaeffer says. And those toxins are very likely to go undetected if the companies stop monitoring what they’re putting into the air and water. “The problem with most pollutants is that they don’t have color, they don’t have taste, they don’t have sound,” he says.

To put it another way: If industrial facilities can’t say whether they’re operating safely, maybe they shouldn’t be allowed to operate at all.

Overturning some of Trump’s most damaging environmental policies, especially ones related to global warming, will require voters to throw him out of office. But it’s still worth trying to persuade the administration to rethink the pollution-monitoring holiday and other unhealthy policies it’s formulating. Six senators, including Elizabeth Warren and Ed Markey of Massachusetts, asked the EPA last week to halt “several proposals that would likely have a negative impact on air quality and public health.” These proposals cover, among other things, the allowable amounts of mercury, methane, and coal ash in the environment.

Such requests could make a difference, even now.

Before the coronavirus outbreak, the EPA was in a hurry to sharply reduce the influence of public-health studies on environmental regulations. Wheeler has been claiming, disingenuously, that epidemiological research is insufficiently transparent unless its raw data, including individual medical records, are publicly released. Wheeler and his Republican allies know full well that releasing such data could be unethical or illegal, and their real goal is to discredit the studies.

In March, the EPA opened up a relatively brief 30-day window for public comment on this insidious proposal; nearly 24,000 comments have come in. But in light of the disruption caused by COVID-19, critics asked for more time to respond and the EPA extended the comment period to May. Anyone concerned about the intimate connection between the environment and our health should be sure to weigh in.

In the meantime, Congress should keep the heat on the EPA to continue enforcing the nation’s pollution rules amid the pandemic. Public health depends on it.

Photo by Paul A. Tamburello, Jr. /iPhone 11 Pro

April 09, 2020 in Commentaries | Permalink | Comments (2)

Hilary Sallick Poetry: Asking The Form

Hilary Sallick’s web site is one of the cleanest, most seamless, easily navigated, and transparently spirited that I have seen in a long time. Then there’s the matter of content, graphic and literary, and how it is demonstrated. In her new collection, Asking The Form, her concept of using audio clips to read her poems embedded in the site is brilliant. How often do you get a sense of content and the author in the same moment? The result makes an indelible impression that, like the puffy parachutes of a milkweed pod, can float in your memory for a languorously long time.

The photographs of her on the site evoke an image, a notion, of the woman behind the stanzas, from whom the words were created, formed, rewritten, reformed and finally hammered into print. A friend recommended her previous collection, Winter Roses, a collection of poems and vignettes that capture mystery and wonder. Most are constructed like an artist's still life, a moment in time to be savored. It's unusual for vignettes to be included in a work of poetry but Sallick's vignettes have the same balance of opacity and specificity as her poems.

The three poems from her new collection, Asking The Form, are reproduced on her web site, with the benefit of her reading them aloud. Her poetry is more about flow, mood, and reflective observation than meter, rhyme, and stanzaic structure.

Writers like Sallick elevate events so ordinary in our own lives that we don't register them. After reading Winter Roses, I was more conscious of the mini dramas occurring all around me, in the street, cafés, and subways. For Sallick, they are her palette. The colors she chooses give us a glimmer of the woman forging the words.

The book cover, Paul Cézanne's portrait of Gustave Geffroy, a subject of one of her poems, is a metaphor for her own style. As in Cézanne's portrait, the viewer/reader is left to fill in unfinished or suggested elements with their own experience.

As a teacher, artist, poet, woman, human being with the antennae to absorb her surroundings, she transforms uniquely personal experience into moments that readers can relate to, and feel resonate internally like a tuning fork, with moments we’ve experienced ourselves.

Such is poetry, the compact art form that, in a few stanzas, can illuminate, resonate, uplift, affirm, and manage to be mysterious and comprehensible all in the same layered moment.

April 04, 2020 in Commentaries | Permalink | Comments (0)

Andrew Cuomo: Let’s ‘Kick Coronavirus’s Ass’

There's a reason Maureen Dowd had won a Pulitzer Prize: Here she is writing in the New York Times about New York Governor Andrew Cuomo

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/27/opinion/sunday/cuomo-new-york-coronavirus.html?smid=em-share

My unedited response a minute after reading it.

I laughed, i cried. Since the first time I saw him do a briefing in early March, I tune into TV around noon every day to watch, to listen to him minister to the country with FACTS, a command of numbers and what they mean and portend, pride for his state and its willingness to take on his proposals to collectively manage the unthinkable and flashes of humor that defuse tension.

His personal stories about mother or his “Cara is that true?” questions to his 22 yo daughter sitting at the rear of the room show a mix of paternal pride and his ability to have a big tent mind-set to collect facts from all quarters and put them to work in policies. I guess what that’s the kind of positive bullying that Maureen Dowd talks about.

Her reporting on Cuomo, mixing anecdotes, quotes, reporting about his bullying ways, with references to his father who he sounds and talks so much like, made her comparisons to Trump factual and not polemic. No question that the governor is a driven man but I like the road he’s driving down.

Spanish poet Antonio Machado wrote, “There is no road…walking makes the road.” That’s Cuomo. He’s walking the walk.

NOTE

You can watch his press briefings on youtube

March 31, 2020 in Commentaries | Permalink | Comments (0)

Tags: Andrew Cuomo, Maureen Dowd, pandemic

Louisiana: New Orleans to Lafayette in Crisis

Dispatches In A Time Of A Keep Your Distance Stay Home Pandemic

March 29, 2020

Louisiana, especially New Orleans, is getting crushed by COVID-19. I was introduced to New Orleans and southwest Louisiana in 2009. The experience changed my life. Check the "Louisiana" archives on this page.

My born-and-bred Baton Rouge guide loved knew just about every good place to eat, dance, and see some history every mile down I-10 from New Orleans to Lafayette. She taught me how to pronounce words a Yankee would never ever get right if he said them like they were spelled (or could pronounce in the first place). I learned how to dance to Cajun and zydeco music, tasted exotic (to me) foods boudin, gumbo, jambalaya, alligator, shrimp grits and gravy,po'boys (dressed!), andouille, crawfish étoufée, muffuletta for starters.

From 2009 till last February, I've met some of the friendliest, most welcoming people on the planet. I've visited Lafayette scores of times since my first visit in 2009. It was named the happiest city in the USA in 2014. Based on my most recent visit with dear friends in February, that hasn't changed much.

Last Saturday, I sat in front of my computer and tuned into a Zoom party organized to give all of us required to stay indoors a lift and put some money in a tip jar for the Lafayette musicians whose performance fans from southwest Louisiana, both coasts and lord knows where else watched.

Like everyone else, I've been watching the COVID-19 numbers in Louisiana getting larger and larger. I am praying all my friends are safe and stay healthy.

A few days ago, I sent this image with the note, "To all my Louisiana friends...sending positive energy and luminous love your way..."

We can't have dinners or dance together but there's comfort in staying connected with Zoom and Skype and text until we get to the other side of this.

March 29, 2020 in Commentaries | Permalink | Comments (8)

Robin Redbreast Chirps..."Play Ball!"

Dispatches In A Time Of A Keep Your Distance Stay Home Pandemic

March 28, 2020

Chirrup, chirrup...

The gate to the track was locked. I headed for home.

I stopped in my tracks when I heard that familiar chirp. A flood of memories ensued. Since I was a kid, seeing, and especially hearing, robins had been a sure sign that Spring had arrived.

Time to take my trusty leather Rawlings baseball glove out of the closet, oil it up, put a baseball in the glove's 'pocket' and stuff it under the mattress to form the shape I wanted. No matter that playing in the field across the street a couple of weeks after the snow finally melted meant wear an extra layer of sweater and sacrifice a pair of sneakers for the next couple of weeks, mud season. The field was still squishy, the grass hadn't even begun to green up. The leather baseball we agreed to sacrifice felt like a shotput by the time a game was finished. Nevermind that in early Saturday morning games you could see your breath. We were playing baseball!

As the years passed, the field appeared to get smaller as we got bigger. Hitting a homer was no longer a prodigious feat but watching the ball carry across the street and into the woods was still a major satisfaction

Standing in front of that locked gate, it was comforting to let the childhood memory envelop me. I felt the contours of the glove on my hand, the camaraderie of boys immersed in play, the smell of the soaked grass underfoot…a wonderful time travel moment, consoling and momentarily freeing from the exigencies of life in this moment in time.

Today, the threat of COVID-19 has closed every park in town. The robins thank god are not under order to stay in their nests. A few chirps was all it took to take me back to a simpler time, when all I had to worry about was being on time for dinner and keeping my beloved baseball glove oiled and ready.

Photos by Paul A. Tamburello, Jr.

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/baseballs-glove-man-77865726/

March 28, 2020 in Commentaries | Permalink | Comments (18)

Sign Of The Times

March 24, 2020

State and local lockdown...unprecedented measures, themes of science fiction become reality.

Photo by Paul A. Tamburello, Jr.

March 28, 2020 in Commentaries | Permalink | Comments (0)

Puccini in a Tshirt

Dispatches In A Time Of A Keep Your Distance Stay Home Pandemic

March 24, 2020

One of my favorite tenors, Roberto Alagna, in jeans and T shirt,in rehearsal with with wife Aleksandra Kurzak, sing "Vogliatemi bene" for Puccini's Madam Butterfly..totally blew me away, watching the singers and orchestra, dressed more like Saturday afternoon in the back yard, sing and play some serious stuff.Their was nothing held back in the singing or orchestra and an occasional outburst of playfulness, some mugging by the two stars, that was amazingly refreshing.

I'm playing the chorus...opera in a T shirt and jeans...a mind boggling way to see how art is created.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7tpVBbZtak8

and in concert!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CvCx9dMn6pE

March 25, 2020 in Commentaries | Permalink | Comments (0)

LitHub: A Literary Lifeline In A Time of Pandemic

Dispatches In A Time Of A Keep Your Distance Stay Home Pandemic :LitHub - A Literary Lifeline In A Time of Pandemic

March 22, 2020

State of mind...

Desperate is not the right word but it's in the ballpark playing left field with pandemic in center and stay at home in right. Reminds me of Abbot and Costello's Who's On First. For me, a sense of humor these days is a necessity to balance anxiety, fear, and walking in the dark. So is music, subject for another day.

Today's life ring for the waters I'm bobbing around in...literature. If reading is one of your things, LitHub is a godsend. Sign up and you get an email with links to several stories a day. You can cherry pick ones that look appealing or just click into unknown territory.

Another cool thing. Every email starts with an image captioned TODAY and a piece of literary trivia.

I need information and balance. A dose of fear, anxiety, and social responsibility keeps me 6 feet away from anyone else on my daily walks. To be honest, I wouldn't have latched on so appreciatively to this literary link in non pandemic times. I embrace this link and literature today more than I probably should have in my years at St. Michael's college.

If you're of a certain age, required to grasp the cultural references, here's a start that might perk you up.

Go to https://lithub.com/ , scroll down right side column to SUBSCRIBE TO THE LITHUB DAILY, ENTER YOUR EMAIL

I spent two weeks in Rome,Tuscany, Milan in July, before the contagion. When I saw this photo for the poem on the March 23 Lit Hub, I knew where it was from.

March 23, 2020 in Commentaries | Permalink | Comments (10)

Arianna Huffington's Time to Thrive

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 Arianna 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.

January 16, 2020 in Commentaries | Permalink | Comments (0)

Tags: Arianna Huffington

The Statue of Liberty: A Closer Look

December 12, 2019

The torch, the crown, the Greco-Roman stylized robe flowing gracefully from Lady Liberty's broad shoulders to her perfectly formed feet, we all know what she represents. Her powerful arms bearing the torch seem to illuminate the path to a land of possibilities. For over 100 years, the popular narrative is that the Lady is welcoming the "poor huddled masses." Wrong.

Those immigrants may have been immigrating from countries with monarchies, iron clad social strata, and bleak penniless futures. Surely, their eyes were on the Lady, regal, resolute, representing the end and the beginning of their journey...but what about those chains and broken shackles around her beautifully formed toes.

...a Washington Post May, 2019 story upended just about every idea I had about the The Statue of Liberty. The purpose of the monument, originally developed in France, was to celebrate the end of slavery in the United States, not, as I have believed for years, to welcome the arrival of immigrants.

What happened? Why? Will the original purpose be restored?

The monument was imagined in 1865 by Édouard de Laboulaye , a Frenchman passionate about the cause of freedom. He was an abolitionist, a friend of Abraham Lincoln, and a scholar of the U.S. Constitution. The French Revolution had torn through his country 65 years before that. The emancipation of slaves in America and freedom as a universal right rang a bell for him. He gave epic speeches about freedom and by 1867 floated the idea of creating a commemorative gift that would celebrate importance of the liberation of slaves in America.

The French artist Frédéric-Auguste Bartholdi had proposed a statue resembling Lady Liberty for the opening of the Suez Canal in 1869. His idea was rejected. Bartholdi recalled that Édouard de Laboulaye had proposed in 1865 that a monument representing freedom and democracy be created for the United States. Thus began a 16-year campaign of fund-raising and politicking by these two enterprising Frenchmen.

By 1884 Bartholdi had completed the statue in France. In 1886 he oversaw the statue's reassembly on Bedloe's Island, an outcropping in New York harbor that he saw on one of his fund raising trips to America and immediately envisioned as its placement (6 years before the nearby Ellis Island became a gateway to America).

Immediately after the statue's dedication, the Black Press pushed back. Racism, discrimination, and segregation persisted. The two Frenchmen's ideal was heartfelt, perhaps propelled by projected wishes for an end of the monarchy in their own country. For African-Americans, it was a bitter pill to swallow. Still is.

The new Statue of Liberty Museum in New York harbor will surprise, shock is not too strong a word, most visitors. Forget the plaque with the Emma Lazarus poem — “Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free” — added until 17 years later, in 1903.

The 305-foot statue's original purpose was to celebrate the end of slavery.

In an early model of the statue by the French sculptor Frédéric-Auguste Bartholdi from 1870, Lady Liberty is depicted holding broken chains in her left hand, a clear reference to emancipation. Bartholdi based the statue on the Roman goddess Libertas, who is usually depicted wearing a Phrygian cap, traditionally worn by freed Roman slaves.

In Bartholdi’s final model, the broken chains in the statue’s hand were replaced with a tablet that represented the rule of law. Bartholdi placed the broken shackle and chains beneath Lady Liberty’s feet, making it nearly impossible for visitors to see at most angles.

Above and below: pull-quotes in italics from a May, 2019 New York Times story:

The museum doesn’t shy away from the fact that this symbol of “universal liberty” was far from a reality for people of color and women during the late 19th century and for decades afterward.

That point is highlighted by a quote taken from the African-American-owned Cleveland Gazette, which wrote one month after the statue’s opening, “Shove the Bartholdi statue, torch and all, into the ocean until the ‘liberty’ of this country is such as to make it possible for an inoffensive and industrious colored man in the South to earn a respectable living for himself and family, without being ku-kluxed, perhaps murdered, his daughter and wife outraged, and his property destroyed.” It also quotes a suffragist pointing out the inconsistency of using a female figure as the face.

The Statue of Liberty...The American Myth or The American Dream?

I had to revise the narrative I've believed for years.

How about you? Pass the story along, the timing is perfect.

xxxxxxx

Photo courtesy of Statue of Liberty Museum

https://libertyellisfoundation.org/statueoflibertymuseum/gallery.html

December 13, 2019 in Commentaries | Permalink | Comments (7)

Mr. Rogers: A Beautiful Day In The Neighborhood

July 24, 2019

Stop what you're doing. Set aside ten minutes to read a story about Fred Rogers that will change your life for a few minutes or maybe forever. The stop and set aside ten minutes is not negotiable. You might start skimming the story. Sorry. Not possible. By the fourth paragraph you'll be hooked by a story that grabs you by the lapels and lets go only after the final word. Stories like this just don't come around that often.

The story about Fred Rogers made me laugh out loud, cry, sob, think of life in ways in which I've forgotten register it. A tour of Mr. Rogers Neighborhood from its birth to its place in heaven...the story will remind you of all that is important in life.

The innate ability of this man to connect deeply, intuitively, intentionally, with men, women, children, strangers, his TV audience... a rare gift - that's Mr. Rogers. Never overt, the power of prayer, simple, unadorned, unaffected, and a well of empathy deeper than the ocean, motivated him. So did grace, found in every corner of the man's life and neighborhood.

Mr. Rogers' story unearthed the entrance to my own rabbit hole of memories, over time buried with the turf of life, illuminated nooks and touched chords, like the ones Mr. Rogers played on his piano, and practically ordered me, with a need that took me by surprise and fullness of heart, to sing along.

The story by Tom Junod, a journalist who slowly, with an initial bit of skepticism, found his way into Mr. Rogers Neighborhood as he shadowed the man over time in 1998 and updated in 2017 is the most deeply realized story you'll read in a long, long, time.

Tom Hanks as Mr. Rogers in a "A Beautiful Day In The Neighborhood", a film based on Tom Junod's story, will be released in late 2019...Hanks, who can convey the natural grace of Fred Rogers with the ease of, well, Mr. Rogers himself, and right around Thanksgiving...how perfect.

https://www.esquire.com/entertainment/tv/a27134/can-you-say-hero-esq1198/

July 24, 2019 in Commentaries | Permalink | Comments (0)

Tags: Mr. Rogers; Fred Rogers; Mr. Rogers Neighborhood; Tom Hanks

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