Chief Justice Robert M. Bell, of the Maryland Court of Appeals, who made Black History twice.

In September of 1967 I arrived in Cambridge to begin my first year at Harvard Law School. I had some trepidation, thinking I was entering a sort of F. Scott Fitzgerald world where most of my classmates would be prep school and Ivy League college grads from wealthy families and I, a graduate of a then little known state university in Florida with parents who never went to college, would be considered a hopeless rube. As I got to know my dorm neighbors this fear was dispelled. Most were from middle class backgrounds, and only a few sported Ivy undergraduate degrees. One whom I found particularly welcoming was Bob Bell, a second year student and thus a helpful source of information on what to expect from certain professors and other bits of local lore. As explained below, he would go on from law school to a career that culminated in what I can only call poetic justice.

Bob and I found a bond in our shared love of music. My musical taste at the time ranged from classical to country to folk to rock, but I had little exposure to contemporary jazz. One weekend afternoon I sat in Bob's room as he played Yusef Lateef's album Psychicemotus. I was particularly taken by the track Bamboo Flute Blues because I'd long loved flute music (despite having tried and failed to learn to play flute when I was in fourth grade) and because it sounded like nothing I'd ever heard before. I had a budding interest in blues, largely thanks to the Rolling Stones. 

In the spring of 1968 I brought to Bob's room the Paul Butterfield Blues Band's latest album, The Resurrection of Pigboy Crabshaw, which I had bought at the Harvard Coop. I didn't know anything about Butterfield and his group but I was intrigued by the album's cover and title ("Pigboy Crabshaw," I've since learned, was a nickname for Elvin Bishop, who played guitar and sang in the group). I wasn't sure what Bob would think of a blues group made of mostly White guys (at the time "Resurrection" was recorded, of the eight members of the group only one, alto sax player Gene Dinwiddie, was Black) who, on this album, did covers of seven songs by Black blues or R&B artists along with two originals by Butterfield, one of them co-credited to Dinwiddie. He liked the album. I recall his especially liking the line "Big legged woman gonna carry me to my grave" from the cover of "Born Under a Bad Sign", originally recorded by Albert King.

Bob didn't mention it to me, but I learned from other students that he had a peculiar distinction: he was the only student at HLS at the time whose name appeared in our Constitutional Law casebook. This was because in July of 1960, when Bob was sixteen and president of his class at Baltimore's all Black Dunbar High School, he recruited several classmates to join with some students from Morgan State College, now Morgan State University, in a sit-in demonstration. They entered Hooper's Restaurant in downtown Baltimore, known to have a Whites-only policy, and demanded to be seated and served.* When asked to leave, twelve of them, including Bob, took seats and refused to leave. The restaurant's owner went to the nearest police station, swore out a warrant, and Bob and the others were arrested and charged with criminal trespass. They were tried and convicted in the Circuit Court of Baltimore City and fined ten dollars each.** 

At that time, sit-in demonstrations, inspired by Rosa Parks' refusal to give up a bus seat to a White man, were becoming popular as a way to protest racial segregation in privately owned places of public accommodation, such as hotels and restaurants. In 1954 the U.S. Supreme Court decided Brown v. Board of Education, holding that segregation in public schools violated the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. Attorneys active in civil rights litigation believed this principle could be extended to racial discrimination by private entities, at least if the use of police and courts to enforce such discrimination met the "state action" requirement. Prominent civil rights lawyers, including Juanita Jackson Mitchell and Thurgood Marshall, who would later become the first Black justice of the U.S. Supreme Court, voluntarily represented Bob and the others in an appeal to the Maryland Court of Appeals, the state's highest court. Despite their efforts, on January 9, 1962 the Court of Appeals upheld the convictions. 

An appeal from Maryland's highest court could only be taken to the U.S. Supreme Court. At this stage, Bob and the others were represented by Constance Baker Motley, who later became the first Black woman to be made a federal judge, and by Jack Greenberg, who had been active in the appeal of Brown v. Board of Education and later succeeded Marshall as Director-Counsel of the NAACP's Legal Defense and Education Fund. For most kinds of cases, the Supreme Court is not obligated to take appeals. Counsel for the appellants must petition the Court to take the appeal. In the case of the Baltimore sit-in petitioners, which became known as Bell v. Maryland (Bob's name getting pride of place because it was first alphabetically), the Court took the appeal.

Greenberg, who argued for the appellants before the Supreme Court, said the Court should overturn the convictions because they violated the equal protection and due process principles of the Fourteenth Amendment. However, the Court's majority didn't reach that conclusion. Instead, it noted that after the appellants' convictions and after the Court of Appeals' affirmation of those convictions, 

Maryland has enacted laws that abolish the crime of which petitioners were convicted. These laws accord petitioners a right to be served in Hooper's restaurant, and make unlawful conduct like that of Hooper's president and hostess in refusing them service because of their race.***

The Court then noted that

Maryland follows the universal common law rule that, when the legislature repeals a criminal statute or otherwise removes the State's condemnation from conduct that was formerly deemed criminal, this action requires the dismissal of a pending criminal proceeding charging such conduct. The rule applies to any such proceeding which at the time of the supervening legislation, has not yet reached final disposition in the highest court authorized to review it.****

Accordingly, the Court vacated the judgment of the Maryland Court of Appeals and remanded the case to that court which, upon remand, held that the Baltimore and Maryland public accommodations statutes, along with the subsequently enacted federal Civil Rights Act of 1964, operated only prospectively and therefore could not invalidate the Hooper's sit-in demonstrators' convictions.***** However, this was not the end of the story. As Professor Reynolds notes at the conclusion of his previously cited article:

On December 14, 1964, the Supreme Court issued its opinion in Hamm v. City of Rock Hill, holding that the 1964 Civil Rights Act did indeed abate all pending prosecutions of those who had been arrested for activity that the Act protected. Although Hamm readily appears controlling, the Court of Appeals waited nearly five months to issue an order on April 9, 1965, reversing the convictions and assessing costs against the State, thereby ending the historic case of Bell v. Maryland.******

Just over a year after the Court of Appeals issued its final order in Bell v. Maryland, Robert Mack Bell received the degree Bachelor of Arts in History from Morgan State College. Later that year he matriculated at Harvard Law School, from which he graduated with the degree Juris Doctor in 1969. He then returned to his home town, Baltimore, and was in private law practice for six years.

In 1975, Bell was appointed to the District Court of Maryland, District 1, in Baltimore City and served there until 1980. He was an Associate Judge, Baltimore City Circuit Court, 8th Judicial Circuit, from 1980 to 1984, when he was appointed to the Maryland Court of Special Appeals. Seven years later he was appointed to the state's highest court and became the chief justice in 1996. He was a member of the Court of Appeals Standing Committee on Rules of practice and Procedure from 1977 to 1982; the Commission to Revise the Annotated Code of Maryland, 1980-82; and the Board of Directors, Judicial Institute of Maryland, 1982-84. In August 2006, Bell was named Chair of the National Center for State Courts' Board of Directors. At the same time, Judge Bell also was named president of the Conference of Chief Justices.*******

In 2013 he reached the mandatory retirement age of seventy for Maryland judges. His career was significant for Black History in two ways. First, he helped to instigate and carry out a sit-in demonstration that led to litigation that clarified the legal status of such non-violent demonstrations. Second, he became the first Black Chief Justice of the Maryland Court of Appeals (now called the Maryland Supreme Court) and, in a delicious bit of irony, thereby became Chief Justice of the very court that had affirmed his conviction in 1962. 

In 2008 he made this observation about how he considered the significance of his case:

I think my case has given me that point of reference, and it also makes me appreciate the extent of progress that has been made. And it also made me able to gauge the extent of the progress which has yet to be made. I think, not just about that case, but about that era in that fashion. The unfortunate thing is that younger people don't remember it. They don't know what happened. And therefore you're finding a different kind of attitude and a complacency which I think is more dangerous than anything else. So our job is pretty hard.********

I believe this observation is still relevant in 2025.

__________

*For Bob's own account of the events leading up to, on the day of, and after the Hooper's sit-in, see Maryland State Archives: "Robert Mack Bell, Baptism by Fire" in Irons, Peter, The Courage of Their Convictions, The Free Press (1988) at pp.141-152.

**For a thorough and insightful discussion of the factual circumstances, personnel, and legal issues involved in the litigation arising from the Hooper's sit-in demonstration, see Reynolds, William L., "Foreword: The Legal History of the Great Sit-In Case of Bell v. Maryland" (2002). Faculty Scholarship. 576.

***Bell v. Maryland, 378 U.S. 226, 229 (1964).

****Id. at 231, citing Keller v. State, 12 Md. 322 (1858).

*****Bell v. State, 236 Md. 356, 369 (1964).

******Reynolds, supra, at p.794 (footnotes and citations omitted).

*******Center for Civil Rights in Education

********Maryland State Archives, supra, at p.152.

Photo: 1msulax (talk) 13:26, 4 May 2008 (UTC).The original uploader was 1msulax at English Wikipedia., Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Robert Burns' birthday, and my wife's, celebrated thanks to Repast Baroque and Anna O'Connoll

This past Saturday, January 25, was the 266th birthday of the Scottish poet and lyricist Robert Burns (1759-1796), and coincidentally that, of fewer digits, of my wife of almost 34 years, Martha Foley. The Burns birthday, and Martha's, were celebrated at a "Burns Supper" graciously hosted by Frances Stern at her apartment on Manhattan's Upper West Side. Her supper included salmon, roasted tomatoes, tattie scones, and delicious shortbread.

The program was provided by members of Repast Baroque, joined by harpist and soprano Anna O'Connell. In the photo Ms. O'Connell is at the left, with her Celtic harp. Repast members, left to right, are: Sarah Stone, on baroque cello; Gabe Shuford on keyboard (at Repast concerts Gabe plays harpsichord; the space here was too small to fit one); and Stephanie Corwin on bassoon. The festivities began with Ms. O'Connell's spirited reading of Burns' poem, "The Flowers of Edinburgh." This was followed by a number of Burns poems set to music by various composers, which Ms. O'Connell sang in her clarion clear and wide ranging soprano voice. She also performed several pieces by Scottish composers inspired by Burns, solely on harp.

It being Martha's birthday, I was delighted that one of the Burns poems set to music chosen for the program was "My Wife's a Winsome Wee Thing." I don't know if this was inserted on Martha's behalf, but the musicians did break from the Burns performance to lead us all in "Happy Birthday," and a cake was presented. The program continued with a lively "There's Nae Luck About the Hoose," and concluded with "The Parting Kiss" and what is Burns' best known poem, "Auld Lang Syne," in which we all joined.

Repast's next concert will be on Saturday, March 15 at 3:00 PM, at the McKinney Chapel of the First Unitarian Congregational Society, 116 Pierrepont Street, Brooklyn, celebrating The Ides of March, at which Sarah, Gabe, and Stephanie will be re-joined by violinist and new mother Natalie Rose Kress and by guest musician Margaret Owens on oboe and recorder. The program will feature music by Handel accompanied by projections of the 1908 silent film Julius Caesar and other early silent films. The concert will be repeated the following day, Sunday, March 16, at 3:00 PM, at the Manhattan Country Day School, 150 West 85th Street.

Rest in Peace, President Carter

I can't think of words more eloquent to mark our nation's great loss than those of Robert Reich, who served in President Carter's administration, as well as in that of President Gerald Ford, and who was Secretary of Labor under President Bill Clinton. I especially like this passage from Reich's message:

"Carter believed passionately in the capacity of human beings to create civil societies that would contain the beasts in all of us. Civilization would prevail over brutality. Humanity over inhumanity.

Carter was a religious man who lived by this simple civil religion. He not only saw the good in others but he practiced the good. He was far from the best president America has had but he was one of the best and most decent people ever to serve as president."

UPDATE: Sabrina Lippman, CEO of Habitat for Humanity New York City and Westchester County, offers this remembrance:

“New Yorkers and global citizens alike have lost one of our greatest advocates for affordable housing, self-help homeownership, and shelter for all. We add our voices to the chorus around the world celebrating a life well-built.   

President Carter’s leadership and commitment to decent, affordable housing was rooted in his faith, belief in family, and an unwavering dedication to the idea that we can create a better life for all by lifting each other up and working together to accomplish our shared goals.

We cannot overstate our appreciation for just how much Habitat for Humanity and the people we’ve served around the world have benefited from the support of President and Mrs. Carter, may they both rest in peace." 

Photo: Department of Defense. Department of the Navy. Naval Photographic Center, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons 

 

Bing Crosby - Adeste Fideles (O Come All Ye Faithful) (Visualizer)

This isn't the same Bing Crosby rendition of Adeste Fideles my parents had on a Christmas album of his from the early 1950s, but it's close enough to evoke some cherished memories.

"I grow old ... I grow old ..."

 "I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled."

When I was in high school and first read this couplet from T.S. Eliot's (photo) "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" I assumed that a man's having the bottoms of his trousers rolled, or cuffed, was a new fashion trend in 1915, when the poem was written, and that Eliot ascribed to the aging Mr. Prufrock a desire to appear au courant.

This morning a different reason occurred to me as I tucked, or rolled under, the bottoms of my trousers. From my teen years until now I have worn trousers with a thirty inch inseam. However, I now find that instead of the desirable "break" at shoe level, I get an unsightly sprawl. The reason became evident when a doctor measured my stature and found it was five feet seven, down from the five feet ten it had been for most of my life. I had, for some time, noticed that people, especially women, seemed on the average taller than I was used to seeing. 

This I now know, is because a loss of stature frequently occurs during aging. According to this article, by losing three inches I've lost the maximum expected amount. I hope that's true.

Perhaps, then, poor J. Alfred had lost an inch or more growing old, and that's why he needed to roll his trousers.

Photo: Thomas Stearns Eliot with his sister and his cousin by Lady Ottoline Morrell.jpg: Lady Ottoline Morrell (1873–1938) derivative work: Octave.H, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Donnacha Dennehy's "Land of Winter: I. December" by Alarm Will Sound

Thanks to the Irish Arts Center I've become aware of the composer Donnacha Dennehy and of his suite Land of Winter, the title of which is a translation of Hibernia, the Roman name for Ireland. It "is a gorgeous orchestral exploration of the subtleties of Ireland's seasons through twelve connected sections representing the months of the year." Evidently Dennehy followed the liturgical calendar because he placed December first in the progression of months. 

The audio clip above is of "December" from Land of Winter, performed by Alarm Will Sound, which the New York Times called "as close to being a rock band as a chamber orchestra can be" (I once wrote something similar about Repast Baroque), conducted by Alan Pierson, whom the Times has called "a musical visionary." The entire suite is available on Nonesuch Records. 

Marshall Chapman sings Waylon Jennings' "You Asked Me To" with James Burton on guitar.

James Burton, 85, has played guitar with an impressive list of country and rock stars, including Elvis Presley, Ricky Nelson, Jerry Lee Lewis, the Everly Brothers, Merle Haggard, Emmylou Harris, Gram Parsons, the Monkees, and Elvis Costello. In 1991 he was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame; his induction ceremony was presented by Keith Richards. He developed a style of playing, using a straight pick and a finger pick on his middle finger, along with re-arranging the strings on his guitar and substituting some with banjo strings, that is called "chickin' pickin'." 

He played guitar on Marshall Chapman's version of Waylon Jennings' "You Asked Me To" (co-written by Jennings and Billy Joe Shaver) that was the final cut on Marshall's second album, Jaded Virgin (1978). At the song's close, she gives him credit (video above). I've had the pleasure of knowing Marshall for many years, and whenever possible tune in to her Saturday afternoon livestream.

A tour of Dr. Konstantin Frank's vineyards and winery, followed by a paired tasting.

What is now New York State has produced wine since the 17th century, when Dutch and Huguenot settlers began making it in the Hudson Valley. From then until now, the bulk of that wine has been made from native American grape varietals, mostly of the species Vitis labrusca. Wines made from labrusca, both from red and white varietals, have a bold, assertive flavor that some wine drinkers like. Wine from European grapes of the species Vitis vinifera mostly have more subtle, complex flavors preferred by many others. 

For years there were unsuccessful attempts to grow vinifera vines in New York. This was blamed on the cold climate. The first to succeed was Dr. Konstantin Frank (photo above). A native of Ukraine, Dr. Frank earned his PhD in viticulture (the science of wine) with a thesis on growing vinifera grapes in cold climates. He emigrated to the U.S. in 1951, and in 1958 bought some land near Keuka Lake, one of the Finger Lakes, and planted Riesling, a white vinifera varietal that originated in the relatively cool climate of Germany's Rhine Valley. He made several award winning wines from this first planting, ranging in style from very sweet to dry. He went on to introduce many other vinifera varietals, both red and white, to the Finger Lakes climate and soil, and to make widely praised wines from them. After his death in 1985 his son Willy took over management of the winery, and began making sparkling wines using the French méthode champenoise. He also continued making varieties of still wine his father had been making, although he reduced the number of them from sixty to twelve. Willy died in 2006 and was succeeded by his son, Fred. Fred's daughter, Meaghan, has now assumed much of the management responsibility, so the winery and vineyards have had the attention of four generations of the Frank family.

Dr. Frank was a mentor to many other winemakers in the Finger Lakes and elsewhere. Among these are Jordan Harris of Heron Hill, Morten Hallgren of Ravines Wine Cellars, and Sébastien LeSeurre of Domaine LeSeurre, all of which Martha and I visited when we toured the Finger Lakes wine region in 2021. This year Chris Bennem and Lisa Moore invited us back to Glen Hollow for a long weekend, and arranged for us to take a tour of the Frank winery followed by a paired tasting of selected foods with Frank wines.

On our way to the winery we walked through a vineyard. Here's a close-up of the raw material of winemaking. 

Here's a view of the vineyard on a hillside overlooking Keuka Lake. These are very old vines that may date back to Dr. Frank's original planting.

On our arrival at the winery our guide, Allyn briefed us on the winemaking process and what we were about to see. The machine behind him crushes and presses the newly harvested grapes.

These tall tanks are where fermentation takes place.

The fermented wine then undergoes clarification and filtration.

The wine is then aged in casks made of French oak which, depending on the length of time the wine remains in the cask, imparts a very subtle or discernable flavor to the wine. Allyn tapped a cask containing 2023 vintage Cabernet Franc, a red Bordeaux varietal that does well in the climate and soil of the Finger Lakes (as well as, believe it or not, Cape Cod), and gave us all a taste. With at most a year's cask aging, the wine was well balanced with full varietal character of forward, cherry like fruit but with subtle undertones of citrus.

The capstone of our tour was a four course paired food and wine tasting. Left to right, the courses were as follows:

First course: wine poached pear and honeydew balls, delicata squash, lemon zest, and olive oil, paired with sparkling Blanc de Noirs 2013. The wine had more forward fruit and complexity than most sparklers. This went well with the sweetness of the fruit and the mellower flavors of the squash and olive oil.

Second course: roasted local organic carrots, curry carrot puree, carrot & orange juice, paired with 2013 Winter Solstice Gewürztraminer. This Alsatian varietal, vinified dry, has more complexity and spice than most whites, so stood up well to the carrot and curry flavor. Sips of the wine, alternated with sips of the carrot and orange juice, made an interesting serial "cocktail."

Third course: Brussels sprout leaves, pork belly lardon with red wine reduction, paired with Cabernet Sauvignon Nouveau 2023. Dr. Frank's website doesn't have an entry for the 2023 Nouveau, although it does for the aged 2021 vintage. The nouveau lacked tannin, but its lively fruit went well with the pork and sprouts, and the wine reduction added some complexity.

Dessert course: pumpkin pie, Graham cracker hill, sweet puree of spaghetti squash, whipped cream, paired with Reserve Riesling 2023. The Riesling had a good balance of sweetness and acidity that complemented the not overly sweet dessert.

Many thanks to Chris and Lisa for another delightful weekend of wine. We look forward to visiting them again soon, perhaps with a chance to taste something from their newly acquired vineyard. 

Photo of Dr. Konstantin Frank, Finger Lakes Wine Country; all others by C. Scales

Box of Rain (2013 Remaster); remembering Phil Lesh (1940-2024)

Sometime in the mid to late '70s -- why this sticks in my mind I don't know -- I saw a large piece of graffiti, simply "PHIL LESH," on the side of a building. I remember thinking he was part of the Grateful Dead, but wasn't sure what part he played. Whatever it was, I thought, it must be important to justify such a tribute.

Now that he has died, I know from his New York Times obituary that he played bass, sang harmony, and occasionally did lead vocals. His vocal is the lead in "Box of Rain" (video above), a song he co-wrote with frequent Dead lyricist Robert Hunter, as a tribute to Lesh's father, who was dying of cancer at the time.

Lesh's father, a piano player, encouraged his son to take up music. Lesh is part of that small set of rockers, like Elton John and the Van Halen brothers, who can be described as "classically trained." His early training included learning to play classical pieces on violin and trumpet, and later he studied under the contemporary Italian composer Luciano Berio. Lesh was also fond of big band and be-bop jazz. These influences showed in his performance as the Dead's bassist. As New York Times pop music critic Jon Pareles put it in this piece, 

Lesh’s bass lines hopped and bubbled and constantly conversed with the guitars of Jerry Garcia and Bob Weir. His tone was rounded and unassertive while he eased his way into the counterpoint, almost as if he were thinking aloud. Lesh’s playing was essential to the Dead’s particular gravity-defying lilt, sharing a collective mode of rock momentum that was teasing and probing, never bluntly coercive.

As Pareles also noted:

His bass lines held hints of Bach, jazz, bluegrass, blues, Latin music and far more, as he sought out new interstices each time through a song.

The reference to bluegrass, a style of music I've long enjoyed, intrigued me. According to the Times obituary, Lesh first met Jerry Garcia when Garcia was playing bluegrass banjo at local East Bay nightclubs. The obituary quotes Lesh on hearing Garcia on banjo:

That was my first intimation that music with that kind of directness and simplicity could deliver an aesthetic and emotional payoff comparable to that of the greatest operatic or symphonic works.

Lesh told Garcia he wanted to learn to play bass. The rest, as the saying goes, is history.

Goodbye, Mets.

I'll say the obvious comforting thing: they did better than expected. They started inauspiciously. At the time I noted that the pundits' consensus was for them to finish fourth in the National League East division. In fact, they finished the season in third place. They had an identical record, 89-73, with their frequent nemeses, the Braves, but the Braves were awarded second place because they had a winning record against the Mets for the season. On September 7 I was cautiously optimistic. I thought the worst they could do was finish third, which they did, though this still got them a wild card slot. They won their three game wild card playoff against the Brewers 2-1; then won the five game divisional playoff against the red hot Phillies 3-1. Some dramatic late inning scoring leading to victories in several games had "team of destiny" chatter going. 

It was not to be. The Mets' regular season record against the Dodgers was 2-4; that also proved to be their record in the National League Championship Series. The Dodgers will now be facing the Yankees in a World Series for the twelfth time, though the first since 1981. Their 1955 Series, when the Dodgers were still in Brooklyn, is memorable for me. This time, though, I'll be rooting for the Yankees.
 

Kris Kristofferson, 1936-2024

Kris Kristofferson, songwriter, singer, and actor, died yesterday at 88. I put "songwriter" before "singer" because that's how he had his greatest success in music. In the clip above he sings my favorite of his songs, "Sunday Morning Coming Down," in a memorial concert for Johnny Cash, his friend and mentor, who had a hit with it in 1972. He also wrote "Me and Bobby McGee," a posthumous hit for Janis Joplin in 1971. My friend Marshall Chapman mentions another of his songs in what I consider her signature song, "Why Can't I Be Like Other Girls?" She recalls trying to make it as a singer and songwriter in Nashville. One night she's performing at "the Doubleknit Bar" (very '70s) when some lout calls out, "Hey, little miss, sing one by Kris/ I'll help you make it through the night/ But I had written the song/ And when he couldn't sing along/ I knew I had it coming all right."

Kristofferson had a prolific second career as an actor, appearing in over fifty movies. A favorite of mine is Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore (1974), in which he plays a rancher who has a stormy but ultimately successful relationship with the widowed mother Alice, played by Ellen Burstyn, who wants to make it as a singer. In the 1976 version of A Star Is Born he played opposite Barbra Streisand, and sings this lovely duet with her:

Brooklyn Waterfront Artists Coalition's "Salon des Refusés" Exhibition features works by Andrea Biggs

 The photo above is of our friend and neighbor Andrea Biggs with three of her recent paintings. Top to bottom they are: "Burst of Energy"; "3 Emerging Roses"; and "The Inception." They are part of the Brooklyn Artists Waterfront Coalition's 2024 Salon des Refusés exhibition, which opened yesterday. Many of Andrea's paintings, like these, are based on floral imagery, but depart from pure representation to express vibrancy and dynamism. She also does landscape paintings that show the influence of the nineteenth century Hudson River School artists. One of these, I'm glad to say, hangs on the wall of our living room, along with one of her floral paintings.

The Salon des Refusés exhibition includes works of painting, sculpture, photography, and multimedia by many artists. It is open Saturdays and Sundays from 1:00 PM to 6:00 PM through October 13, at the BWAC Gallery, 481 Van Brunt Street, Red Hook, Brooklyn, New York.

How 'bout those Mets?

 The 2024 season started badly for the Mets. At the time, I noted that "most pundits" predicted they would finish fourth in the National League East. Things began to look better as the season progressed, and I was tempted to post some encouraging words, especially when they completed their four game season series with the Yankees with four wins, thereby securing New York City baseball bragging rights, however temporarily. Fans of the Bronx Bombers will remind me that their team has an 81-60 record while the Mets' is 77-64, that the Yanks are a mere half game behind the division leading Orioles, while the Mets are tied for second in the NL East with their often nemeses, the Braves, and are eight games behind the streaking Phillies.

So I've held off posting. With each bit of encouraging news, I've  remembered what I posted sixteen years ago, about the Mets' "ability to rouse hopes, then smash them like cheap china." Now, as I write this, the Mets are sitting on an eight game winning streak, which could end in what is now a rain delayed game against the Reds. Last night the Mets prolonged their streak with a 6-4 ten inning win over the Reds in an at home series opener. As so often, there's a dark side to this: second baseman and reliable slugger Jeff McNeil is lost for the season with a wrist injury. 

The other bad news is that the Mets now face a challenging schedule until the end of the season.  They have seven games against the division leading Phils, three against the Braves, and end the season, as they started it, with three games against the Brewers, the same team that swept them in their season opener.

What can I say now? The best I can anticipate is that the Mets overtake the Braves, finish second in the NL East, get a wild card slot, and Carlos Mendoza is named Manager of the Year. The worst is that they finish third in the division, at least a bit better than pre-season predictions. 

Update: it's now a nine game winning streak; the Mets beat the Reds 4-0 today. Also, it looks likely the Mets will go a full game ahead of the Braves, who trail the Blue Jays 6-1 in the bottom of the 6th.

Woody Guthrie's "Union Maid"

English singer and songwriter Billy Bragg, along with Mike Merenda and Ruthy Ungar (banjo, fiddle, and vocals), Dar Williams (guitar and vocal), and the New York City Labor Chorus do a stirring rendition of  Woody Guthrie's labor anthem, "Union Maid." The performance took place on May 3, 2009 at Madison Square Garden, during a concert in honor of Pete Seeger's 90th birthday. 

Willie Mays, 1931-2024

In the summer of 1954 I was eight years old, and my parents and I returned from a three year sojourn in England, where my father, a U.S. Air Force officer, had been stationed. I had been the only American in an English school, so I had been thoroughly Anglicized. I knew of cricket, of what my schoolmates had called "football" but we call soccer, and of something called "rounders," which I later realized had some vague resemblance to baseball. Of baseball itself, though, I knew nothing. Neither of my parents were fans, so it hadn't been part of my acculturation. 

On September 29, 1954 my third grade classmates at the Eglin Air Force Base Elementary School and I were excused from our classrooms early in the afternoon to go to the "cafetorium," where a big black-and-white TV was set up on the stage for us to watch the opening game of the World Series, pitting the New York Giants against the Cleveland Indians. I don't recall having any rooting interest, though I may have favored the Giants since I had been to New York but never to Cleveland (I still haven't, unless you count the airport). One thing remains engraved on my memory from that game: Willie Mays of the Giants making "The Catch" (video above). That was enough to convince me that baseball was something worth watching, and knowing. Thank you, Mr. Mays. 

Willie Mays, considered by many the greatest all-around baseball player ever, died today at 93. I can't help adding that he ended his playing career with the Mets, and that his last hit was a run scoring single in game 3 of the 1973 World Series. Joan Whitney Payson, then the Mets' principal owner, had promised that his number would be retired, but she died in 1975 and her promise remained unfulfilled until Old Timers' Day in August of 2022.

Peter Myers, Octogenarian

The photo above is of three stalwarts of the Bells of Hell, a Greenwich Village pub that served as my second home from the summer of 1977 until it closed in the fall of '79. On the left is Barry Murphy, who tended bar and provided lively conversation. In the center is Pierce Turner, who, along with Larry Kirwan, as Turner and Kirwan of Wexford (their Irish hometown), were the house band at the Bells during much of my tenure there. On the right is Peter Myers, half owner of the Bells from the time he and Tony Heyes bought it from its founder, Malachy McCourt until the late weekend afternoon in '79- I was present at the time - when Peter and Tony got into a physical scuffle, started by Tony and Gary Sellers, the first person I met after first crossing the Bells' threshold in '77, and which resulted in Peter making Tony the sole owner while he went on to found Myers of Keswick, Keswick being Peter's English hometown. 

The occasion of the photo was a party to celebrate Peter's 80th birthday, given at Myers of Keswick. It was a grand affair, bringing together a sizeable collection of surviving Bells alumni. Specialties of the house, including Cornish pasties, Scotch eggs, and sausage rolls, were in profusion, as were beer and wine. I was able to catch up with some old friends I hadn't seen in some years. The store is now managed by Peter's daughter, Jennifer Myers Pulidore, whom I remembered as a kindergartener. By all appearances she's doing an excellent job. I also had some pleasant conversation with Peter's wife, Irene, whom I hadn't seen since the Bells days. 

The photo was taken as the party was ending, and Pierce was singing "The Parting Glass."

The clip above is of an exquisite rendition of this beautiful song by Celtic Woman.

As I was leaving the party, I saw Peter and a friend sitting on a bench outside the store. I stopped for a bit of last minute chat. Peter reminded me that, after his unfortunate encounter with Tony, I had offered my opinion that Tony's words, "It's your f---ing bar!" were not sufficient to transfer ownership, especially given Tony's state of intoxication at the time.  Peter was happy with this advice. 

I then recounted an anecdote I'd read some years ago, about an anthropologist who visited one of the remotest of the Scottish Western Isles and sought someone who would have a long memory and knowledge of the island's lore. He was directed to an old man who, when asked his age, said seventy-something. The anthropologist asked if there were any octogenarians on the island. The old man said, "Octogenarians ... oh, yes, there were two. But my brother shot the one, and the other flew away." I suggested that Peter should avoid the Western Isles. "I go there all the time," he said. Good luck, Peter.

The "Ode to Joy" from Beethoven's Symphony No. 9 - Royal Scottish National Orchestra and Chorus

Today is the 200th anniversary of the first public performance of Beethoven's Ninth, or "Choral" Symphony. It was unique in its addition of the human voice in the fourth, final movement. In his analysis of the Ninth in today's New York Times, Daniel Barenboim states that, of all Beethoven's works, it is the one "most likely to be embraced for political purposes."

It was played at the 1936 Olympic Games in Berlin; it was performed in that city again on Christmas 1989 after the fall of the Berlin Wall, when Leonard Bernstein replaced the word “Joy” in the choral finale with “Freedom”; the European Union adopted the symphony’s “Ode to Joy” theme as its anthem.

Nevertheless,  Barenboim argues, "[m]usic on its own does not stand for anything except itself," and that the "greatness" of the Ninth "lies in the richness of its contrasts." In this respect, Barenboim states for music what Frank Stella did for visual arts.

The video above is of the climactic "Ode to Joy" finale of the Ninth, performed by the Royal Scottish National Orchestra and Chorus, under the direction of Thomas Søndergård.

Frank Stella, 1936-2024

Frank Stella, an American artist whose works included painting, sculpture, printmaking, and architecture, died today at his home in Greenwich Village at the age of 87. The video above, by Christie's, shows him giving a tour through his studio in 2019 in which he shows some of his works and talks about his creative process and his views about art.

According to his New York Times obituary:

Mr. Stella, a formalist of Calvinist severity, rejected all attempts to interpret his work. The sense of mystery, he argued, was a matter of “technical, spatial and painterly ambiguities.” In an oft-quoted admonition to critics, he insisted that “what you see is what you see” — a formulation that became the unofficial motto of the minimalist movement.

Despite his early committment to a minimalist aesthetic, his later works, some of which can be seen in the video, are exuberant in color and design. This might be expected of an artist who has cited Caravaggio as an influence.

Of Tom Rush, Joni Mitchell, and Neil Young

Tom Rush has been a favorite singer of mine since I first heard him in the spring of 1968 on Boston's WBCN, which had recently adopted what came to be known as an "underground rock" format. I was in Cambridge then, finishing my first year of law school, and missed the chance to see him live at Club 47, now Passim. The clip above shows him singing "The Circle Game" at the Firehouse Center for the Arts in Newburyport, Massachusetts on January 31, 2020. At 82 he's still doing shows, although he's limited his early 2024 travel to the New England and Middle Atlantic coasts.

In January I got on my Facebook home page this link to a post by Canadian music historian John Einarson that tells the story behind the song "The Circle Game." I had forgotten that it was written by Joni Mitchell, whom Rush got to know when they were both on the Boston/Cambridge folk circuit in the late sixties. Einarson quotes Mitchell from a talk she gave during a concert at London's Albert Hall in 1970:

"In 1965 I was up in Canada, and there was a friend of mine up there who had just left a rock 'n' roll band (...) he had just newly turned 21, and that meant he was no longer allowed into his favourite haunt, which was kind of a teeny-bopper club and once you're over 21 you couldn't get back in there anymore; so he was really feeling terrible because his girlfriends and everybody that he wanted to hang out with, his band could still go there, you know, but it's one of the things that drove him to become a folk singer was that he couldn't play in this club anymore. 'Cause he was over the hill. (...) So he wrote this song that was called "Oh to live on sugar mountain" which was a lament for his lost youth. (...) And I thought, God, you know, if we get to 21 and there's nothing after that, that's a pretty bleak future, so I wrote a song for him, and for myself just to give me some hope. It's called The Circle Game."

The friend who inspired Mitchell to write "The Circle Game" was Neil Young. It would be some time before the "better dreams and plenty" promised near the song's close came his way. As Einarson tells it, he went through a time of frustration trying to succeed as a folk singer in Toronto, where "Young's career stalled amid stinging criticism of his material." In December of 1965 he traveled to New York and the offices of  Elektra Records. He "remains unsure who secured this" but hoped for a full scale studio recording session. Instead, he was sent into the tape library and greeted by Peter K. Siegel, whom I heard discussing his experiences as a producer at Folkways and later at Elektra last November at the Brooklyn Folk Festival. Siegel gave Young what he, quoted by Einarson, described as "this funky old tape recorder" and told him to sing into it. 

One of the songs he sang into that tape recorder was "Nowadays Clancy Can't Even Sing." According to Einarson,  

"Young identified 'Clancy' as his former Winnipeg high school classmate Ross 'Clancy' Smith. Young described Smith as a 'strange cat'—an aberrant figure tormented by others for singing blithely."

Young did not sing "blithely" for Elektra's tape recorder; consequently, Elektra had no interest in signing him. The clip above is audio of Young singing "Clancy," accompanied only by his acoustic guitar and by piano, at Carnegie Hall in December of 1970. In the five years since his failed Elektra session, he'd had plenty of "practice" to get there. This included his time with Buffalo Springfield (1966-68), which recorded "Clancy," with vocal by Richie Furay instead of Young, and issued it as their first single. It became a local hit in Los Angeles. It was also included in their self-titled first album.

Now, back to Tom Rush. The song that made me a fan of his in the spring of 1968 was his cover of another Joni Mitchell song, "Urge For Going."

The clip above, audio only, is the version I heard on WBCN many times as I sat at my desk, often into the early morning hours, trying to focus on what I needed to know for my forthcoming first year finals. It was springtime in Massachusetts. Why did this song about autumn falling into winter resonate so with me? 

For thirteen years, from 1954, when my parents and I returned from our three year sojourn in England, to 1967, I had lived in Florida. We had "seasons" there, but nothing so dramatic as going from a New England winter with the ground covered in snow for months on end to a riotous spring with almost  every tree on Cambridge Common in bloom. Perhaps it was this sense of what I had missed that made the melancholy of "Urge For Going" meaningful for me.

"Spring Breeze" by Yuxian Deng, performed by the Joshua Guitar Band

A treat for Earth Day:

Why is a widely used app named for a tenth century Scandinavian king?

Your smartphone, like mine, likely has the logo at left on it somewhere. I knew that "Bluetooth" was the name given to an ancient Scandinavian king, but had no clue why the app was named for him. Now, thanks to Rick Spilman in The Old Salt Blog, I know the reason. 

The logo is the Viking rune of King Harald "Blåtand" Gormsson, "Blåtand" is "Bluetooth" in English. The rune is a "bindrune" that combines the runes for "H" and "B." Bluetooth was a Danish king (940-981) who united Denmark with Norway. According to Spilman, Jim Kardach, an engineer who was heavily involved in developing the technology that became Bluetooth, was responsible for giving it that name. Spilman gives a helpful link to an article by Kardach that explains the history. It's a long, complex, but amusing story, including an account of "a pub crawl through wintrily [sic], blustery Toronto." Kardach sums it up as follows: 

When asked about the name Bluetooth, I explained that Bluetooth was borrowed from the 10th century, second King of Denmark, King Harald Bluetooth; who was famous for uniting Scandinavia just as we intended to unite the PC and cellular industries with a short-range wireless link.

So, sometime soon, I will raise a glass of Aquavit and toast Harald Bluetooth, who inspired my ability to play WQXR on my stereo sound system from my smartphone.

 

Mets swept at home in season opening series

The Mets were swept by the Milwaukee Brewers in their season opening three game series at Citi Field. The last time the Mets began a season 0-3 was in 2014. That year they finished 79-83, tied for second in the NL East. Nothing great; but not disastrous. They did better than the fourth place finish that most pundits have predicted for the Mets this season. 

 

There's some reason for hope. Starter Kodai Senga is back to throwing in a recovery program that is said to be "making progress" and closer Edwin Diaz is back and has pitched one inning, allowing no runs and getting one strikeout. Still, injury problems keep cropping up. Tylor Megill, who is taking Senga's place in the starting rotation, was taken out of today's game after four innings, having struggled with control and feeling shoulder tenderness. He will get an MRI.

Along with problems on the mound, the Mets were weak at the plate. They were outscored 14-9, and had twenty hits to the Brewers' thirty one. In one respect the Mets were better: Mets batters struck out twenty one times to the Brewers' thirty. 

A reason to be upbeat is that so many times I've seen a hot start devolve into a "meh" season. My wife is a Red Sox fan. She believes it's a good sign if the Fenway lads struggle as the season begins. They're 2-2 now, in a three way tie for last in the AL East.  I guess she can feel cautiously optimistic, as do I about the Mets.

Pierce Turner, "Hail Glorious St Patrick"

Pierce Turner is an old friend from my days in the late '70s when I was a regular at a Greenwich Village club, the Bells of Hell, where Pierce and fellow Wexford native Larry Kirwan, as Turner & Kirwan of Wexford, were the house band for some time, playing songs that "mixed traditional Irish folk music with full-blown progressive rock."  Later they added a bassist and a drummer (as Turner & Kirwan, Larry banged a drum using a pedal while he played guitar and sang; Pierce played Moog and sang) and became The Major Thinkers. In 1985 Pierce returned to Ireland and began a very successful solo career as a singer and songwriter. Larry remained in New York, became frontman of Black 47, and later conceived and co-wrote the musical Paradise Square, which was nominated for ten Tony awards, including Best Musical. 

The song "Hail Glorious St. Patrick" is "[b]ased on a hymn that was first published in 1853, with words attributed to Sister Agnes, of the Convent of Charleville, County Cork." The music, according to Pierce, "is credited with being 'ancient' -- an apt description, as the melody is as familiar as your mother's scent -- it slips on like an old woollen winter coat, there is no avant-garde challenge." For his version, Pierce kept the chorus and second verse of the original, and "rewrote the rest updating the song for the 21st century, for a world where 'a new kind of evil has blinded our minds.'" 

Pierce's old partner, Larry, has this to say:

Pierce Turner is an Irish national treasure. So, what better man to reimagine Hail Glorious St. Patrick. This is a track for the ages. But don't just take it out for the big day -- it will sound great on the other 364 too. I'll be playing it.

Beannechtai na feile Padraig!  

Flaco the Owl, 2010-2024

Flaco ("skinny" in Spanish, though he appeared anything but), a Eurasian eagle owl, was hatched in a sanctuary in North Carolina in March of 2010. Two months later he was taken to New York's Central Park Zoo, where he lived alone in an enclosure until February 2, 2023 when a vandal broke the screen and allowed him to escape. In the photo (Wikimedia Commons) he's peering through the window of poet, playwright, and lyricist Nan Knighton. 

During his year of freedom, Flaco was often seen in and around Central Park, though he occasionally ventured to other parts of the city. Not surprisingly, he became a local celebrity and favorite photographic subject. To the dismay of his many admirers, though to the relief of the local rat and pigeon populations (but they still have to contend with red-tailed hawks), yesterday Flaco was found dead on an Upper West Side sidewalk, apparently the victim of a collision with a building.

Adios, Flaco. Gracias for the joy you gave to so many during your flights around the city.

Peter Schickele ("PDQ Bach"), 1935-2024

Peter Schickele, who died Tuesday at 88, was a serious composer of "more than 100 symphonic, choral, solo instrumental and chamber works" who also did arrangements of folk music for Joan Baez and Buffy Sainte-Marie; however, somewhat to his regret, he was best known for a fictional character he invented, P,D.Q. Bach, the least known of Johann Sebastian Bach's myriad children. Schickele claimed to have discovered P.D.Q. and his works while serving as professor of music at the University of Southern North Dakota's branch campus at Hoople.

The clip above shows Schickele introducing P.D.Q. Bach's "Classical Rap," followed by audio of the piece. Schickele explains that P.D.Q. wrote it about a neighborhood in early 19th century Vienna, but that he modified it to describe life on Manhattan's Upper West Side. 

Martha and I were fortunate to attend several P.D.Q. Bach concerts some years ago. Most began when Schickele "slid down a rope suspended from the first balcony." If I recall correctly, the opening number for one was another favorite of New Yorkers, the Concerto for Horn and Hardart. For non-New Yorkers, Horn and Hardart was the company that owned the famous "Automat" restaurants.

Thomas Curtiss, Jr., 1941-2023

The photo is of one of the the last times Tom Curtiss and I were together, some years ago, when he and his husband, Charles Neeley, visited New York from L.A., and Martha and I had lunch with them at a Midtown restauruant.

Tom and I were classmates at Harvard Law School from 1967 to 1970.  He stood out in the photo book given to entering students because he was wearing a dress Marine Corps officer's uniform. It showed his home as Novelty, Ohio, a suburb of Cleveland. We didn't have much contact during our first or second years. The third year we both joined a club for law students called Lincoln's Inn, named for one of the London Inns of Court. After we had been together there during meals and parties, he invited me to join a group that met in his large corner dorm room on Friday evenings to drink beer or cheap Scotch, socialize, and listen to tapes on his Akai reel-to-reel deck. These included Joan Baez's Farewell Angelina, Bob Dylan's Bringing It All Back Home,and a collection of Wagner orchestral pieces, including the overture to Die Meistersinger.

The gatherings at "Club 222," as we called it after Tom's dorm room number, were typically all male. Tom was known to date women from time to time. One, a fellow Clevelander, became known by the sobriquet "Long Suffering Kate." There was a proposal to open membership in Lincoln's Inn, which had been male only, to women. I was in favor. Tom said, "A woman should be a date on your arm, not a competitor for a seat at a table." Tom lost; women were admitted. 

Tom had the sort of background that, before I arrived in Cambridge, I feared most of my classmates would have, and that would make them consider me, a public school and state university graduate from the South, something of a yokel. He was a corporate executive's son with impeccable prep and Ivy credentials: Exeter and Yale. The friends he chose for Club 222 didn't conform to those specifications.  They were more like our class as a whole, except for the absence of women or Blacks, both of which groups were under-represented in our class.  They were almost all non-Ivy graduates, about half from state schools, and from middle class families with homes in various parts of the country.

As Tom and I spent more time together we found common interests beyond drinking and music. I was from a military family, and was in Army ROTC during law school as draft deferments for graduate students had ended the year I entered. Tom had deferred law school to join the Marines. He told me he had been accepted by both the Harvard and University of Virginia law schools during his senior year at Yale. When his four year Marine Corps tour of duty was almost over, he wrote to both schools, noting that he had been accepted before going on active duty, and asking if he could now attend. Virginia turned him down, saying their admission standards had increased, but Harvard said he was still welcome. Tom gave me some advice on what to expect during my active duty term. We also found a common passion in running. One time, after the party at 222 went later than usual, I collapsed on his couch. In the morning he said he was going for a run and invited me to join him. We ran down to the Cambridge bank of the Charles River, went about half a mile downstream, crossed to the Boston side, then ran back. We repeated this several times before graduation. 

I found a law firm in New York that was willing to take me on knowing I would have to leave for a possible two year Army commitment a year after graduation. Tom chose a firm in Los Angeles, a city he had come to love during his active duty Marine years. In October of 1970 I took my first vacation from my law firm and visited Tom in L.A., a city with which I was then unfamiliar. Tom was sharing an apartment with Joe, another Marine, Tom told me there's no such thing as an "ex-Marine"; one is a Marine for life. He suggested dinner at a Mexican restaurant. We got in his car and went a mile or so on the freeway, exited, and found the restaurant closed. He said, "There's another not too far away." We got back on the freeway and went what seemed like three or four miles in the direction opposite from which we'd come. We had a delicious Mexican meal, and I gained an appreciation of what "not too far" means in L.A. terms.

The rest of our short visit Tom showed me the Santa Monica Pier and some things off the usual tourist trail. One of these was a sprawling outdoor farmers' market. Several years later he told me he had walked by a live poultry stand and spotted an unusual looking rooster. Intrigued, Tom bought him and took him to the backyard of the house he'd bought on Micheltorena Street, where he made a coop. Hearing his staccato crowing the next morning, Tom gave him the ironic name Chanticleer.

Over the succeeding years Tom and I got together in L.A. and New York several times, and once at a Law School reunion. After a succession of housemates, Charles Neeley became a constant. I began to suspect that Charles was more than a housemate when Tom called and said both of them would be staying in New York for a few days before leaving on a trip to Europe.  During that visit Martha had a commitment one afternoon, so Tom, Charles, and I took Cordelia (then known as Liz) in her stroller on a tour of SoHo and the Village. Martha developed an immediate liking for both Tom and Charles.

Their last visit to New York was about fifteen years ago. They went with Martha, Cordelia, and me to mass at Grace Church, and after to brunch at Jack the Horse Tavern, a favorite neighborhood spot named for a lake in Minnesota, the owner's native state. During brunch, I asked Tom if, during our law school years, he'd been so far in the closet he didn't know he was there. He said , "No"; he had known he was gay since his teens. He also said he'd had a discreet affair with one of the Club 222 members.

After brunch I invited Tom and Charles to join me on a walk down to Brooklyn Bridge Park. Tom regretted that he couldn't; he was bothred by neuropathy. After that his health went into decline, and our communications became, apart from Christmas cards, exclusively electronic. It came as no surprise when Charles announced his death on December 23.

Tom's and my friendship lasted over fifty years. We came from different backgrounds and had some differing views, but it was a friendship from which I believe we both benefited. I will miss him.

"Angels We Have Heard On High" by the Portland Choir and Orchestra

This is one of my favorite carols, in part because of how "the 'o' of 'Gloria' is fluidly sustained through 16 notes of a rising and falling melismatic melodic sequence" (Wikipedia). It is based on a French traditional carol and on the nativity story in Luke 2:1-20. In the clip above an arrangement by Mack Wilberg is performed brilliantly by the Portland (Oregon) Choir and Orchestra, conducted by David M. Thomas and featuring soprano soloist Emily Thomas.