Remembrances and appreciations, 2020

I gave 2020 the bum's rush in my last post, but promised to follow up with my annual post offering remembrances of those lost the previous year, along with appreciations of those who have helped or inspired me. Here it is.

The year 2020 saw a grievous loss to the Hamill family, to Brooklyn, to New York City, to literature and journalism, and to the alumni of the Lion's Head, including me, in the deaths, in unseemly quick succession, of the brothers Pete Hamill and the much younger John Hamill. Pete had been in poor health for some years, so his death was not unexpected, but still felt deeply. I first met Pete in 1995, when I went to a midtown Barnes & Noble to buy a copy of his autobiography A Drinking Life and have it signed. As I handed him the book, I told him I'd started drinking at the Lion's Head about a year after he'd quit drinking, and that I knew his brothers John and Denis Hamill. This got a necessarily short conversation going - there were others in line to get their books signed - and Pete wrote in mine, "For Claude, who keeps the flame alive." About nine years later, having had no further personal contact with Pete. I saw that he would be on a panel discussion at Brooklyn Borough Hall, and I went because whatever they were discussing interested me and because Pete would be there. When the discussion ended, I went up to Pete, sure that I would have to re-introduce myself. Before I could say anything Pete held out his hand and said, "Claude, how are you?" I saw him again twice before he died. The first was at a memorial gathering for the late Lion's Head bartender Paul Schiffman, during which we had a longer conversation than we'd had at Barnes & Noble; one that left me laughing appreciatively. The last was at a panel discussion at the Brooklyn Historical Society (now the Center for Brooklyn History) about the Brooklyn Dodgers, roughly ten years ago. After this, he had to be helped off stage and put into a wheelchair. This done, I went to him and mentioned my name. He seemed to remember, and we simply exchanged best wishes. 

I got to know John when he became a bartender at the Lion's Head. Mixology was just one of John's many talents. As his obituary notes, he was a reporter for the New York Daily News, as was brother Pete, who later became its editor. Brother Denis is a Daily News columnist. Like Denis, John was also a screenwriter, co-authoring two Hollywood screenplays. Despite his having opposed the war in Vietnam, John served there as a combat medic, was awarded a Purple Heart and a Bronze Star, and is credited with having saved the lives of at least two fellow soldiers.

John and I quickly became friends when he started his Lion's Head gig. We shared two loves: the Mets and Irish music. We also had similar views on social, political, and economic issues. (At the time I was probably more "conservative," which is to say "liberal" in the classical sense, on the economic stuff.) We lost touch for a while after John moved to California, but re-connected through Facebook, where we became avid readers of, and commenters on, each other's posts. Our last Facebook exchange was a few days before his death from COVID-19, which must have come quite quickly. Before I started writing this, I looked at his Facebook page, which is still lively with reminiscences by family and friends. It was there that I found the image that I put at the head of this post, the Irish toast, "May we be alive at this time next year." It was posted there by his friend Chris Tracy.

Along with the one-two punch of the deaths of the Hamill brothers, there was another death that hit me hard, that of Judy Dyble. Like that of Pete Hamill, hers was not entirely unexpected. In my Remembrances and appreciations, 2018 and '19 I told of how I had fallen in love with her voice in 1970, when I acquired the first Fairport Convention album, how we had met, if only electronically, in 2008, and how this blossomed into a trans-Atlantic Facebook friendship that led to my learning of her lung cancer diagnosis in 2019. We stayed in touch through the first half of 2020, with her delighting me with news of the British music scene, photos of her rescued greyhound Jessie, and zany recipes that usually culminated in a kitchen-destroying explosion. There were few mentions of medical problems; nothing that seemed immediately dire. In early July she posted that Jessie had gone for a visit to her daughter's; this should have been a warning. After a few days silence came the announcement of her death.

Above is a video of Judy, with Songs from the Blue House, doing Joni Mitchell's "I Don't Know Where I Stand." This is the song she sang on Fairport's first album that made me fall in love with her voice. Many years later, that voice was still lovely.

In earlier posts I've noted, ruefully, that with advancing age each year brings increasing numbers of losses of family and friends, as well as of people I've admired in various realms, such as art, literature music, theater, politics, and sports. 2020 unsurprisingly proved no exception to this sad rule. Certainly the most consequential loss was that of Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. I consider the loss of singer and songwriter John Prine, for the beauty, incisiveness, and influence of his writing and singing, very significant. Others from the music world I mourn are Bob Shane, the last surviving founding member of the Kingston Trio; Bonnie Pointer of the Pointer Sisters; Rush drummer Neil Peart; Fleetwood Mac guitarist Peter Green; and bluegrass guitar ace Tony Rice. From showbiz, Sir Sean Connery left us shaken, if not stirred; Alex Trebek, game to the end, gave his final answer; and Terry Jones has made his last foray into medieval history. Baseball lost three great pitchers: Whitey Ford, the Yankees' "Chairman of the Board"; Cardinals' fireballer Bob Gibson; and Tom Seaver, "Tom Terrific" or "The Franchise" to long time Mets fans. Oh, yes; the Mets had a lousy season, but more about them in the "appreciations" below. Ailurophiles and existentialists mourned to loss of Henri, le Chat Noir.

In addition to the loss of the two Hamill brothers, the ranks of former Lion's Head regulars continued to be thinned. Those we mourn include jazz critic and "combative cultural gadfly" Stanley Crouch; Pulitzer winning journalist Jim Dwyer, poet Derek Mahon, and raconteurs par excellence Arthur Friedlander and Jerry Schindlinger. I'm sure to have missed a few; my apologies. My thanks to Dermot McEvoy for keeping us informed.

2020 was an unusually violent year. New York City suffered a large increase in homicides, though other serious crimes declined. The deaths of Breonna Taylor and George Floyd led to protests nationwide.

It was a very trying year for friend and fellow Robinson High alum Cheryle Cerezo-Gardiner, who had to witness the ravages of cancer on her oldest son, Martin Jacinto Cerezo, who finally succumbed in January. 

On, now, to the positive side of this long screed. In my remembrances and appreciations for 2019 and 2018 I paid my respects to two women whose courage I had found inspiring: Jennifer Garam and Lauren Jonik. Both are still well and flourishing. As a cancer survivor, Jennifer recently had a check-up to assure the cancer was not recurring. Everything proved OK. I'm sorry to know that, with the onset of the pandemic, she decided to leave Brooklyn. I regret no longer having her as a neighbor, though even before COVID our face-to-face, as opposed to on line, encounters were rare. Perennial optimist that I am, I don't share her outlook for the city's future, though I realize some things will never be the same. In any event, I respect her reasons for leaving.

Lauren, who lives with the ongoing effects of Lyme disease and who survived sexual assault, is continuing her work toward a master's in media management at The New School, and with her writing and photography. 

About those Mets: When Steve Cohen was announced as the new principal owner, I had some trepidation. I worried that, as a successful finance guy, he would assume he knew all he needed to know to get top performance from a baseball team, and would staff the baseball operations with sycophants. I was encouraged when he said he would make my fellow Harvard Law alum Sandy Alderson (we didn't overlap; I was class of 1970, he was of '76, but I got to meet him at an alumni gathering when he was the Mets' General Manager) as the team's President. During his tenure as GM (2010-18), which was cut short by a bout with cancer, many players who are mainstays of the current roster were acquired, and the Mets went to their fourth World Series (2015). I know little about Alderson's choice for GM, Jared Porter, but his record seems encouraging. I can't quibble with retaining Luis Rojas as manager; the Mets recent woes seem not to stem from inept field generalship but rather from uninspired, and sometimes inept, play. The trade that brought Francisco Lindor to the Mets has scribes wondering if this could make them at least divisional title contenders next season. As a long suffering Mets fan who once remarked on the team's "ability to rouse hopes, then smash them like cheap china," I'm leery of being too optimistic. Still, it's new ownership and management, and reason for hope. Update: Hardly had I written this than the news came out that Porter has been fired as GM after confessing to sending an "explicit" photo to a woman reporter several years ago. Trust the Mets to come up with some last minute drama.

There are many others I could praise for the encouragement they have given me along the way, including, as always, my wife, Martha Foley and my daughter, Cordelia Scales. (For those familiar with her as Elizabeth or Liz, she has decided to be known by her middle name. I think it's a fine name - ask Shakespeare - and I approve.)

2020, here's your hat. What's your hurry?

On New Year's day 1980, as I recall, someone observed, "Here's to the passing of a real kidney stone of a decade." The seventies had their ups and downs for me, but on balance more up than down. They began with my finishing law school and getting a job in New York. After a year I had to leave temporarily to do two years' Army Reserve active duty. When I returned, I settled into a Greenwich Village that was still an affordable neighborhood for artistic and journalistic sorts, and had bars like the Bells of Hell and the Lion's Head where I could enjoy their company. I had a brief marriage that didn't end traumatically; Joanna and I remained friends until her untimely death in 1993.

I found that the temptations of the Village demimonde didn't mix well with being an associate at what was becoming a high powered corporate law firm, so I left and took an in-house job with a corporate client. When I found even that more than I wanted to handle at the time, I decided to go back to school. My work in regulatory law had sparked an interest in economics, and New York University offered an MBA program with an econ major. With the GI Bill, indulgent parents, and the availability of part-time work, I was able to enjoy a slightly before mid life sabbatical from the demands of full time law practice. I ended the seventies as I had begun them, as a student. They also saw my brief moment of glory as a movie actor, thanks to my friend Charlie McCrann, who would later die in the World Trade Center. There's more about my late seventies adventures here.

Like the seventies, 2020 started for me on a comfortable note. I was still working; my profligacy in my younger days had assured that retirement would be a distant goal. Martha, my wife of over 28 years, was working on interesting projects for clients concerning their archives and genealogy. When COVID-19 hit, I was able to transition to working at home. Martha had already been doing most of her work on her computer here, with occasional visits to her clients to examine archival material. The COVID restrictions had no impact on our ability to continue our gainful employment. 

It did affect our social life, though not in a completely devastating way. About a month after the restrictions were imposed, our favorite place to sit at the bar, have a light supper with cocktails or wine, and socialize with friends or with strangers we met there, along with the bartenders and floor staff, and with Tim, the genial owner who would sometimes join us at the bar, Jack the Horse Tavern (Tim named it for a lake in his native Minnesota), closed permanently. Other places around us managed to keep going, and in good weather we could meet friends for drinks and snacks at outdoor tables, dine on take out, or dine indoors while it was allowed, with strict occupancy limits and spacing. Now that indoor restaurant dining is banned and winter weather is putting a severe crimp on outdoor dining, despite the gas heaters and overhead canopies many restaurants have provided, we fear for the survival of our other neighborhood haunts.

We live in a large building, and have several close friends in the building with whom we've been able to socialize in very small gatherings. We've had Zoom sessions with our more far flung friends and relatives. Our daughter, Cordelia, and her boyfriend came up from Philadelphia for two days during the week before Thanksgiving. We shared our Thanksgiving meal with one friend, and had Christmas dinner by ourselves.

As I noted here previously, the COVID restrictions imposed in March initially made us give up in person church services. These were replaced by Zoom and live streamed ones. When the infection numbers declined, unfortunately after Easter, we went back to in person services, but with attendance limited - reservations required - and strict social distancing. When infection rates went up, just before the Christmas season, we were required to go back to Zoom and live streaming.

The "New Normal" has, for Martha and me, so far been tolerable, though its long term effects may be less so. We support the requirements intended to limit the spread of the pandemic, such as mask wearing and social distancing. I know that COVID-19 has been disastrous for many other less fortunate people, often fatally. It has also intensified, or at least made more evident, a rift in our social and political fabric. I hope to do whatever I can, in my small way, to mend that rift. I know that those on my side of the rift - one of the few things I celebrate about 2020 is the outcome of the presidential election - have no monopoly on virtue. 

It's been my custom, sometime in January, to look back on the previous year and note those among my friends, relatives, and heroes who have died, along with those who have been helpful to my writing venture or inspirational in a broader sense. I will continue that custom this coming month. As for now, goodbye 2020. Don't let the door hit your backside on the way out. 

"I Dreamed I Saw Joe Hill" - a song for Labor Day

 Joe Hill was a songwriter and labor organizer. He was born Joel Hägglund in Gävle, Sweden in 1879. After a childhood made difficult by the death of his father from an occupational accident and later of his mother from complications following back surgery, he emigrated to the United States in 1902. He had almost no formal education, having been forced to work after his father's death, when Joel was nine. 

After arriving in America, he worked various jobs and adopted the name Joe Hill. He was fired from a job in Chicago for trying to organize a union. Afterwards, he hit the road, getting involved in labor organizing in California, where he joined the International Workers of the World (the "IWW" or the "Wobblies"). This led to his spending some jail time in San Pedro where, he said, "I was a little too active to suit the chief of the burg." In 1911 he was also involved in an abortive attempt to start a revolution against the government of the Mexican dictator Porfirio Diaz. During his time on the West Coast he wrote a number of songs that were later collected in the IWW's songbook.

In January of 1914 Joe Hill was in Salt Lake City, and asked a physician to treat a gunshot wound to his chest. That same night a grocer and his son had been killed, but the son got off a shot that hit one of their assailants. Hill was arrested and charged with the murders. He said he had been shot in a fight over a woman, but declined to identify her or the shooter. He was tried, convicted of murder, and executed by firing squad. This was despite pleas by President Wilson, the Swedish ambassador to the U.S., Helen Keller, and others for his sentence to be commuted. In recent years William M. Adler, in his biography of Hill, The Man Who Never Died, revealed an old letter from Hill's girlfriend, Hilda Erickson, in which she said Hill had been shot by the man she jilted to take up with Hill.

Ten years after Hill's execution, Alfred Hayes wrote a poem, "I Dreamed I Saw Joe Hill Last Night." Ten years after that, Earl Robinson set it to music, and it became an anthem of the labor movement. It's performed masterfully in the video below by the great Paul Robeson.

The photo of Joe Hill is in the public domain. Its source is identified by Wikimedia as the Utah Division of Archives and Records Service.

Happy 75th, Van Morrison

Yes, you've been saying some crazy stuff lately. Indeed, you've always been something of a loose cannon outside of your musical persona. Still, I love your music, and have made it a tradition to salute you on your birthday here for the last ten years. Admittedly, this is in part because you share the exact birth date - August 31, 1945 - as someone who profoundly, though unwittingly, affected my life. 

I've always posted a video of a song of yours with these birthday wishes. Because there have been so many, I had to look back at posts from previous years to make sure I don't repeat. This year I've picked "And It Stoned Me" from the Moondance album. I'm surprised I hadn't used it before, as it's long been a favorite of mine; but then, there are so many ....

 

Mets flounder, but the Gray Lady has interesting ideas for MLB.

A week ago Friday I posted here, noting, with tongue firmly in cheek, that the Mets were in first place in the National League East -- a distinction I failed to note they shared at the time with the Miami Marlins -- by virtue of their 1-0 opening day victory over the Atlanta Braves. The following day the braves won 5-3 in ten innings, thanks to a lately all too common blown save by Edwin Diaz and some help from the new extra innings rule, which gave the Braves a runner on second to start the tenth. In the rubber game Atlanta provided an ice water bath as the Braves prevailed 14-1. 

Starting a four game series with the Red Sox, the Mets got themselves back into winning territory with two victories. In game three the Mets did what seems to me so characteristic of them. They started the bottom of the ninth down by two, and loaded the bases with no outs, but from there were only able to bring in one more run, and the Sox won  6-5.  They lost the final game to the Sox 4-2. Yesterday, again facing the Braves, this time in Atlanta, they squandered another late inning opportunity and lost 11-10, bringing their record to date to 3-5 and fourth place in their division.

Yesterday's game gave some credence to my curse of the ex-Met theory, as the much traveled Travis d'Arnaud, shown in the photo during his Mets days, drove in five of the Braves' runs. 

Update: the Mets are now 3-6, having lost to the Braves 7-2 yesterday and, as if things couldn't get worse, Yoenis Cespedes has gone missing. 

My wife is a Red Sox fan, and has a theory that the worse they do early in the season, the better they are likely to finish. I don't think this applies to the Mets, although the 2008 Mets showed that a hot start was no favorable omen, and led me to write this diatribe. As a postscript to that screed, I'm now rooting for A-Rod and J-Lo to succeed in their bid to buy the Mets. Mr. Rodriguez knows a thing or two about baseball; enough to make me forgive his background as one of the shock troops for the Evil Empire.

Turning to less gloomy things, last Monday the New York Times published a piece, unfortunately without a web link, titled "How to Make Sports Better: 60 Modest Proposals." This was a joint effort by the Times' sports staff. Suggestions for the M.L.B. were, I'm sure, made by Tyler Kepner, the senior baseball writer. He began with "Speed up the game, but for real."  This would involve nixing mound visits, limiting warm-up pitches, and enforcing two minute gaps between innings. To my surprise and delight, though, he broke with what seems to be a consensus on one way to shorten game time. "Eliminate the designated hitter," he proposes. I'm with him on that. His arguments are much the same as mine, noting that many pitchers are also good hitters. He notes that "many were stellar hitters in their youth" and adds, rhetorically, "[R]eally, there's not enough time for batting practice in those four days between starts?" If "[y]our best hitter can't play the field," then "prop him up somewhere and work around it."

Kepner's other suggestions include reducing game day rosters, as is done in the N.F.L. and the N.H.L., in order to "[l]imit the incentive to substitute"; making the bases bigger because "just a few inches will decrease the distance between bases and help bring speed back into the game"; making a gap between the outfield fences and the stands to allow outfielders to make over-the-fence catches without fan interference; and having umpires "[e]nforce the strike zone that is in the rule book." Some of Kepner's ideas are whimsical, like tying concession prices to a team's record. I like this one: "Last place? Your beer is a buck."

Travis d'Arnaud photo: Keith Allison on Flickr (Original version)  UCinternational (Crop) / CC BY-SA (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0)

Mets First in NL East!

A squeaker to start a shortened season with silent stands. We'll see how this goes.

Robert Ward's The Stone Carrier; 1970s New York, Uptown and Downtown

Robert Ward's The Stone Carrier is a book that will grab you and not let you go. I read it because the author and I hung out at the same Greenwich Village bars during the late 1970s, and reviews promised that the novel captured the zeitgeist of New York City at that time. I can vouch for its accuracy about the downtown scene, which was my milieu. (One small quibble: I never knew the Bells of Hell to smell of "moldy bread and dog piss." I took my parents there once. If it had, my mother would have taken one step in, wrinkled her nose, and demanded that we leave.) Two beloved Lion's Head staffers, bartender Tommy and waitress Sha, get fond remembrances; Sha even plays a small part in the action, and there is plenty of that.

Much of that action, including a climactic scene that unfolds over the novel's last few chapters, happens at Elaine's, a bar and restaurant on Second Avenue near 88th Street, that was the favored hangout of New York's glitterati. I never entered Elaine's, though when I arrived late for a party given by my former roommate and his wife, who lived near there, I said I had been walking past Elaine's, looked in, saw Oscar de la Renta and Francoise de Langlade (then New York's top power couple) beckoning to me, and had to join them for a drink. My friends believed me, or more likely pretended to.

Terry Brennan, the central character in The Stone Carrier, is known at Elaine's, and at Studio 54, the disco that drew many of the Elaine's crowd and where more of the novel's action happens. His admission ticket to these places was an article he wrote for Rolling Stone about Thaddeus Bryant, whose first novel, The Debt, was a great success and is being made into a movie. In evident gratitude, Thaddeus introduces Terry to Elaine's and to some of the celebrities he's met there, including Norman Mailer. Terry tells Mailer it was reading his work that inspired him to become a writer. Mailer says, "if that's the truth, then you better be good. 'Cause I don't want to inspire any hacks."

The Stone Carrier (the cryptic title is explained in chapter 32) begins, not at Elaine's, but with a double murder in Central Park at two a.m. The victims are Joey Gardello and his brother Ray. Joey is a boyhood friend of Thaddeus and struggling to make it as a filmmaker. Like he has for Terry, Thaddeus brings Joey into the charmed circle of Elaine's. The murder sets in motion a series of events that lead to Terry's being pursued by both the NYPD and by henchmen of Nicky Baines, a thinly disguised version of Nicky Barnes, the drug kingpin of Harlem. While the plot elicits many surprises, it never strains the reader's - or at least this reader's - willingness to believe. My reaction to plot developments was often "Wow!" but never "WTF?"

Like many, if not most, stories set in New York City, the central theme of The Stone Carrier is ambition; of how small missteps, like allowing a friend to deal coke from your apartment, can threaten it; but mostly about how it can keep you from questioning things that seem to be too good to be true, because they may be.

It's a terrific read.

Andy Irvine and Donal Lunny, "My Heart's Tonight in Ireland"

Here's a wistful song for this subdued St. Patrick's day. Beannachtaí na Féile Pádraig oraibh!
 

Giving up church for Lent

I don't usually "give up" anything for Lent. I've had some clerical support for this. Lent isn't about renunciation, I've heard in homilies, but about reflection. I try to do that. Four years ago I posted about my reflections looking back on Lent from Easter Sunday.

Still, as well as being a time of reflection, Lent should be a time of liturgical devotion; of faithful attendance at services, participating in communal worship and prayers, and taking of the Eucharist. That's why I was saddened, although I recognize its necessity, by the announcement that the Episcopal Diocese of Long Island is suspending, effective yesterday (Saturday, March 14) "all public worship" until Thursday, March 26, at which time it will be decided whether to continue the suspension. Any continuation would certainly extend through Holy Week; a sad prospect indeed. No Passion Narrative on Palm Sunday, in which, four years ago, I had the "honor" of reading the part of Pontius Pilate. No Stations of the Cross - a new, High Church addition to our liturgy this year. Worst of all, no Rev. Allen Robinson, our Rector, proclaiming on Easter Sunday, "Alleluia, Christ is risen!" and our responding, "He is risen indeed, Alleluia!"

So it was that I had a bit of a lie-in yesterday morning, knowing I was relieved of my duties of ushering and of being intercessor; that is. leading the Prayers of the People. But I missed the opportunity to join with my friends in worship, to greet our clergy - Allen, Erika, and Catherine - afterward, and to socialize at Coffee Hour (sometimes jokingly called the Eighth Sacrament of the Episcopal Church).  Update: Grace Church clergy are doing Morning Prayer services that are live-streamed on the church's website. 

Another thing I'll miss is the weekly in-person meeting of the Education for Ministry class, in which I'm in my second year. This is a class given by extension from the University of the South at Sewanee, Tennessee, that is not for preparation to become clergy, but rather to educate lay Christians about scripture, church history and theology. Its intention is to prepare lay people for their ministry in daily life. We're looking for a way to continue meeting on line. Today I began reading one of our assigned texts: Life Together (1939) by Dietrich Bonhoeffer. For those unfamiliar with him, he was a Lutheran pastor and theologian, born in Breslau, Germany in 1906. His opposition to the Nazi regime led to his arrest in 1943 and execution by hanging in the Flossenburg concentration camp in April 1945, just two weeks before the camp was liberated by U.S. soldiers and a month before Germany's surrender. This gives a particular poignancy to the title of his best known work, The Cost of Discipleship (1937).

Life Together is a much shorter work than The Cost of Discipleship. Here is Bonhoeffer's preface:

The subject matter I am presenting here is such that any further development can only take place through a common effort. We are not dealing with a concern of some private circles but with a mission entrusted to the church. Because of this, we are not searching for more or less haphazard individual solutions to a problem. This is, rather, a responsibility to be undertaken by the church as a whole. There is a hesitation evident in the way this task has been handled. Only recently has it been understood at all. But this hesitation must give way to the willingness of the church to assist in the work. The variety of new ecclesial forms of community makes it necessary to enlist the vigilant cooperation of every responsible party. The following remarks are intended to provide only one individual contribution toward answering the extensive questions that have been raised thereby. As much as possible, may these comments help to clarify this experience and put it into practice.

Bonhoeffer's words convey a sense of urgency. They were written at the time when the Nazi regime was preparing Germany for war with its neighboring countries, and solidifying its racist doctrine that would lead to the Holocaust. He stressed the need for collective action.

The COVID-19 crisis may seem to be an impediment to our ability to act collectively, as it prevents us from physically gathering together. Technology that Bonhoeffer couldn't imagine lets us communicate in ways well beyond the printed word, radio, and telephone of his time. This technology has its well known downsides - it facilitates the propagation of falsehoods, enables on-line bullying, and lets us tune out all who disagree with us. Still, it does allow us to work together for the good, even if we must be physically separated. Let us do so, until this crisis has passed, as I fervently hope and pray it will soon.

Remembrances and appreciations, 2018 and '19

For some years I posted a remembrance of the past year, including a summary of the remembrances of those, either friends or those I admired, who have died, and an appreciation of those who have been helpful to my blogging. I last did these together in 2016. In 2017, the look back and the remembrances got separated. In 2018 I posted remembrances, promising "happier reminiscences soon," but never got around to that. Last year I began this post in February, and have left it in very incomplete draft form until now.

I posted individually during 2018 in memory of Aretha Franklin, Rusty Staub, Roger Bannister, and the congregants of the Tree of Life Synagogue murdered in the Pittsburgh massacre. These would have been included in my 2019 remembrances, had I gotten around to posting them. In 2019 I posted for Doris Day, Bill Buckner, Sandy Denny (although she had died 41 years before), John Phillips (not the one from the Mamas and the Papas), and Nick Tosches.

In recent years I've lamented the increasing number of people either that I had known in person or admired as artists, musicians, sports figures, or otherwise, who were dying. I put this down as a natural result of my growing old, and it mostly is. Of those who died last year and were noted on my blog, three - Bill Buckner, John Phillips, and Nick Tosches - were younger than me. I had known John for his entire life. Indeed, my first contact with him was when he was in utero. I was fourteen at the time, and his mother, Mary, during her eighth month of pregnancy, invited me to put a hand on her distended belly, where I could feel one of his feet moving.

The youngest of those I knew who died last year was Jack Hatton, 24. Jack was a year behind my daughter, Liz, in elementary school on September 11, 2001. Their school was close to the World Trade Center, and the principal decided to evacuate the students, either to a school farther north or, at parents' discretion, to home. Jack's mother, Marie Hatton, and I both decided to take our children home to Brooklyn Heights. Since transit wasn't working and the Brooklyn and Manhattan bridges were closed, Marie, Jack, Jack's brother Harrison Hatton, Liz, and I had to take a long, circuitous walk through the Lower East Side, where the Tenement Museum provided a respite, giving water and access to restrooms, then across the Williamsburg Bridge. On the Brooklyn side we were greeted by Hasidim offering us cups of water. Once off the bridge we found rest on the steps of the Peter Luger Steak House, where the staff gave the kids fries. I was able to reach Jack's father, Mark Hatton, by phone. He came and gave us all a ride back to Brooklyn Heights. Jack was the youngest in our group, but he never complained.

There are others whose passing I didn't note on the blog, not because I thought them less significant, but because their deaths came late in the year, when I was preoccupied with holiday preparations and events. Amy Talcott was a friend of many years, an administrator at Plymouth Church, a skilled seamstress who made dresses for several of our friends, and a loving wife to Ahsan Farooqi and mother to Amos Farooqi. Another loss was Elisabeth Brewer, mother of my friend Geoff Brewer and wife of my friend Wally Brewer. She was a stalwart of our own Grace Church and always a lively and engaging conversationalist. Annabella Gonzalez was a superb dancer and choreographer who led her own dance company. Her dances drew on various influences, including the traditions of her native Mexico as well as more contemporary themes. I got to know her many years ago when she married my previous colleague and long time friend Richard Grimm and later became the mother of Henry Grimm.

Other sad news came with the announcement that Congressman John Lewis had been diagnosed with cancer. I had a brief encounter with him in 1966, long before his election to Congress, when he was head of the Student Non-violent Coordinating Committee and we were both attending an Ecumenical Conference on Urbanization and Technology at Emory University in Atlanta. I don't recall the specifics of our short conversation, except that it stiffened my resolve to continue in the fight for racial equality and justice.

Another cancer diagnosis that hit me hard was that of Judy Dyble. I fell in love with her, or at least with her voice and artistry, in 1970 when I acquired the first Fairport Convention album (yes, the band still exists after more than forty years, with some personnel changes), and heard her cover of Joni Mitchell's "I Don't Know Where I Stand." In 2008, I posted an iPod Log that included a video clip of "Time Will Show the Wiser," a song from the first Fairport album, on which Judy sings harmony. This led to my getting in contact with Judy via email. Later that year I posted a video clip of Judy with some present Fairporters and others doing an obscure Bob Dylan song in French. This has, as they say, gone viral, though many of the hits have come from Russia and Ukraine. Is there something about Dylan in French that has peculiar appeal to the Slavic soul? More recently, Judy and I became friends on Facebook, which is how I learned of her diagnosis. She has begun a course of chemotherapy, keeps the proverbial English "stiff upper lip" about hair loss and such, and treats me with news of the British music scene and with photos of her rescued greyhound Jessie.

Despite all this sadness, there was much to celebrate in 2019. I've taken considerable inspiration from two courageous women. Jennifer Garam is the daughter of Peter Garam, with whom I shared an office when I first came to New York in 1970. I met Jennifer some years ago at a gathering of Brooklyn bloggers, and we became Facebook, as well as occasional encounters on the street, friends. Two years ago she was diagnosed with late stage ovarian cancer. She underwent surgery and chemotherapy, is now cancer free, and still writing compellingly.

The other is Lauren Jonik, whom I first got to know through her comments about my posts on the Brooklyn Heights Blog. I learned she was a skilled photographer, and met her face to face at an exhibition of her works. You can see her photos at Shoot Like a Girl Photography. She told me she had suffered a severe case of Lyme disease that struck her in her teens and kept her from completing her education on schedule. Nevertheless, she had since managed to study both photography and writing, and is now finishing her studies for a Masters in Media at The New School. She is the co-founder and editor of The Refresh, for which she wrote an essay about Mary Oliver, a poet whose works I love. Stephen Muncie, please take note.

It's de rigueur in pieces like this to express gratitude to one's immediate family, but it's not a sense of duty that makes me credit my wife, Martha Foley, and my daughter, Elizabeth Cordelia Scales. Yes, Martha has been patient about my hours of absorption with writing, but she and Liz have also been helpful as a critical audience for my ideas, often helping to sharpen my thinking.

There are many other friends, on Facebook and otherwise, who have been very helpful. They are too numerous to try to list. Among them are some with whom I disagree profoundly on some issues, but whose opinions I am always keen to understand. Please know you have my sincerest appreciation.

Sarah Stone and friends perform English and Scottish music at Communitea.

On Friday evening Sarah Stone, on cello in the center of the GIF above, along with (left to right) Francis Liu on violin, Kevin Devine on harpsichord and hurdy gurdy (you can see him cranking it in the GIF), and soprano Madeline Healey, shown above tapping on a small drum similar to what in Irish music is called a bodhrán, gave a delightful concert of English and Scottish songs and instrumental pieces at Communitea, in Long Island City, Queens.

This was not "classical" chamber music, although some of the tunes were by classically esteemed composers like Purcell, but rather "pop" or "folk" music of its time. The first set began with three songs about drinking and food. "The Wine Was Made to Rule the Day" introduced us to the awesome (an adjective that actually belongs here) voice of Ms. Healey, with its crystalline clarity and precision. "A Song in Praise of Old English Roast Beef" had us joining in on the chorus. "Ye Mortals That Love Drinking" described all, or at least most of all, of us there.

Some of the remaining pieces in the set gave Mr. Devine a chance to show his skill with the hurdy gurdy. The first three of these were selections from the Scottish composer James Oswald's Airs for all Seasons, all of which are named for seasonal flowers: "The Fox Glove"; "The Periwinkle": and "The Rocket". There were five Playford Dances: "The Virgin Queen"; "Young Jemmy"; "Never Love Thee More"; "Coxes Dance"; and "Up Its Aily". John Playford adapted these from an informal folk dance tradition popular among "country" people, who had no time nor money for formal dance instruction. City sophisticates took to these because on a long evening they would tire of the elaborate formal dances typical for their class. A modern parallel to this can be seen in the "urban cowboy" craze of about forty years ago.

Playford dances are still done in England, as the video above shows.

After an intermission, the second set began with three Scottish songs, sung spritefully by Ms. Healey (I was searching for an adjective that would describe her singing while continuing an "s" alliteration; I may have been influenced by my first car's having been an Austin-Healey Sprite). The first song was a lullaby, "O Can Ye Sew Cushions", followed by the mournful ballad "Auld Robin Gray", written by Lady Anne Lindsay, but the third was much sprightlier.

"There's Nae Luck About the House" is a lively ballad with lyrics by the poet Jean Adam, sung in the clip above in its intended Broad Scots, by the Glasgow Irish singer Ella Logan, as it also was by Ms. Healey.

The set, and the evening's program, concluded with a series of short songs recounting the courtship of Jenny and Jockey. I'll quote here from Ms. Stone's notes, which lead to a sad conclusion:

Ending the program is the everyman story of Jenny and Jockey, told again and again by composers throughout England. Jockey is a shepherd. Jenny loves Jockey. Jockey is a wagg and doesn't want to get married. Someone should warn Jenny before her 'Maiden's Treasures' gone or (according to Purcell) 'she'll 'go to London-town... to Kiss for half a Crown'.

As with many a song tradition that has found root in various parts of the British Isles - see, for example, my summary of my late friend Nick Tosches'discussion of the evolution of the Greek Orpheus legend in British folk music (the summary is in the fourth paragraph of the linked post) - the Jenny and Jockey story has many variants. In Scotland,it may have a happier ending.

This was a most enjoyable evening, and we look forward to Ms. Stone's next performance at Communitea. We are also delighted that she has become a regular member of the Repast Baroque Ensemble, whose concerts we regularly attend (and I'm tickled pink that I'm quoted in the second paragraph on their home page).

Nick Tosches, 1949-2019

Nick Tosches died yesterday. I hadn't seen or been in communication with Nick for years, but there was a time, from the late 1970s to the early nineties, when I counted him as a close friend, and I believe he would have said the same of me. There was no rupture because of a disagreement. Marriage and fatherhood pulled me away - though not so quickly as my wife would have liked - from long hours in the Greenwich Village demimonde where Nick and I spent time together. Meanwhile, Nick was entering an especially prolific time in his writing career. Martha, my wife, says she still has somewhere a letter Nick wrote celebrating the birth of our daughter. As I recall, he wrote that it was an occasion "making November 4 a holiday."

Nick and I got to know each other at the Bells of Hell. What got our friendship going was a common love of country music. My fondness for it began in mid-childhood, when every summer my parents and I took a triangular trip from Florida to central Pennsylvania to visit my mother's relatives, then across Ohio to southern Indiana to see my father's family, then back to Florida. On these trips the car radio was always on, and in the territory we traversed country was the music you got. I came to associate it with these trips, which I enjoyed very much, partly for the visits with my grandparents, including a great grandmother who lived to be 103 and could remember the Civil War, but also because I loved seeing the country. My maternal grandmother lived near the then four track main line of the Pennsylvania Railroad, and I became a railfan early in life. In those pre-Interstate days of two lane blacktop, highways often paralleled railways, and I got to see trains on many different lines, including the sleek green, white, and gold diesels of the Southern, and the hulking steam articulated locos of the Norfolk & Western.

Nick's interest in country music stemmed from his love of rock and roll, a love I shared. Nick's first book, titled Country, was published shortly before I met him. Its original subtitle (see image of cover above) was The Biggest Music in America, but the third edition had a new one: The twisted roots of rock 'n' roll. Another thing we had in common was a love of history; I once loaned him my copy of William Appleman Williams's The Roots of the Modern American Empire, which I never got back. As a writer about rock, Nick became interested in its origins, which took him back to several sources. Three of these were in Black music: Delta blues, jump blues and rhythm and blues. Another was a style called "rockabilly," which took elements from the Black styles and combined them with the Appalachian ballad tradition.

One chapter of Country that I especially enjoyed was titled "Orpheus, Gypsies, and Redneck Rock 'n' Roll," in which Nick interviewed rockabilly artist Warren Smith, who years before had recorded a song called "Black Jack Davy."  Nick asked Smith where he got the song; Smith said, "I wrote it." Nick's next paragraph begins, "Cut to Athens, 800 B.C." He then tells of the origin of the Orpheus legend, and over several pages gives a detailed history of its inclusion in Ovid's Metamorphoses, its retelling in Latin by Boethius, King Alfred's translation of Boethius into Old English, and the Orpheus legend's subsequent metastasization into English, Irish, and Scottish folklore. Here it became the story of a Gypsy, eventually known as Black Jack Davy, who steals a nobleman's wife. In later versions, she chooses to stay with the Gypsy.

Another short chapter, "The Girl Singer," that Nick later described, in the preface to the Da Capo edition of Country, as "truth masquerading as fiction masquerading as truth," tells of his apparent encounter with a transgender person.

Nick's second book was Hellfire: The Jerry Lee Lewis Story. The British newspaper The Guardian rated it first in its list of the fifty greatest music books ever. Nick told me that, when he was interviewing Jerry Lee. he asked about an incident in which Jerry Lee shot his bassist. This had been ruled an accident. Nick asked if it really was an accident. Jerry Lee said, "A sanctified preacher don't make no mistakes."

Nick had many more books, some but not all of which I've read. I gave a copy of Dino: Living High in the Dirty Business of Dreams, Nick's biography of Dean Martin, to my father, who liked it very much. It's referred to in Neil Genzlinger's NYT obituary, which is linked at the top of the post but linked here again for your convenience.

While I earlier wrote that there was no disagreement between Nick and me, I think that, on a fundamental level, one that nevertheless didn't affect our friendship, we were very different. The NYT obituary includes this observation, given in response to a Times interviewer in 1992 concerning the Dean Martin book: “Life is a racket,” he [Nick] added. “Writing is a racket. Sincerity is a racket. Everything’s a racket."

Nick's cynical view may reflect his background, growing up on the streets of Jersey City, while mine, which holds that things may improve despite human imperfectability, could reflect my having been the cosseted only son of parents of middle class means. This is a topic I mean to explore further in future posts.

Saying Farewell to John Phillips

Two weeks ago Martha and I attended a memorial service for someone I thought would be an honored guest at mine.

By way of background, my father retired from the Air Force in February of 1958, when I was on the cusp of twelve, and we moved to Tampa. We settled into 3910 Wyoming Avenue, and were warmly greeted by our neighbors from 3912, Burt and Mary Phillips. Burt, a Gulfport, Mississippi native, worked for an oil company; Mary, who grew up on a farm near Conway, Arkansas, was a nurse. I'll confess to having had an adolescent crush on tall, auburn haired Mary.

After a couple of years, Mary became pregnant. She and my mother had become very close, and during what must have been her eighth month, Mary was at our house for a visit. She said to me, "Come here," as she lifted her shirt. Pointing to a spot on her distended belly, she said, "Put your hand here." I did, and felt movement. "That's a foot," she said. So it was that my first contact with John happened before he was born. Many years later, when I told John this story, he said, with mock horror, "You did THAT to my mother?"

As an infant, John was our next door neighbor for a couple of years, until Burt and Mary moved to a spiffier neighborhood on Tampa's north side. Nevertheless, their friendship with my parents and me remained strong, and we were frequent guests at their new house. I was a teenager; John was a little kid. Our contacts were minimal; he was often off on play dates during our visits. Indeed, I had little contact with John, other than at the occasional holiday meal and party we shared with his parents, through my high school, college, and law school years. One detail I remember, told by Mary, was of his having adopted a cat that he named Jennifer. When a vet said the cat was male, John called it "Jennifer He"; perhaps an adumbration of gender fluidity.

My friendship with John began in the 1980s when he, having graduated from Stanford, came to New York to study for an M.B.A. at New York University's Graduate School of Business Administration. We became bachelor neighbors in Greenwich Village, as he lived in a dorm a few blocks from my apartment. We had in common having taken courses at G.B.A., now called the Stern School after alum and birdseed magnate (Hartz Mountain) Leonard Stern. I introduced him to the Lion's Head. After his first visit there, when I was there alone, a woman friend asked, "When is that cute John Phillips coming back?"

Eventually, John let me know he had fallen in love with someone he met at G.B.A., Alyssa Cohen. Martha and I were together when we attended their wedding, and rode to and from it (It was in Nassau County; Alyssa's home) on something someone has called the "Gator Bus" because it was full of people from Florida.

After the wedding, Martha and I visited John and Alyssa at their apartment in Manhattan's Chelsea district. Later, they moved to suburban Larchmont. They had two daughters, Sarah and Veronica. We visited them on several occasions, sometimes with Burt and Mary up from Florida. On one of these visits, Mary, in her Arkansas patois, kept referring to Alyssa and her parents, Gabe and Ina, as the "Coynes." This made me wonder if she thought John's wife and in-laws were Irish. Of course, she would have noticed the rabbi at the wedding. On one of our visits, John, who had been working in television, told me of being fired by Lou Dobbs. He didn't seem upset by this; I thought it was a badge of honor.

We also stayed in touch through correspondence, in which John and Alyssa kept us advised of their travels, their daughters' accomplishments, and other matters. The messages we received always reflected John's bizarre sense of humor.

Martha and I were both dismayed by the news of John's death, while in his fifties, from pancreatic cancer. We attended his memorial service at an Episcopal church in Larchmont, at which the celebrant was a priest who had been John's high school classmate. There were many testimonials by high school, college, and grad school classmates, in which I learned, among other things, that he and I shared a love for the humor of Monty Python,

I wish I had known him better.

The Mets play it well, but not well enough.

Back in March, I asked if the Mets' winning their opening game was a bad sign. I noted there that my wife, a Red Sox fan, believed that a team's early success portended later collapse. That's what happened to the Mets in the early season. They started red hot, then went into a funk that lasted until the All Star break. After that, they went on a winning streak, but one punctuated by couple of short instances in which they were swept by divisional rivals. They managed to stay in contention for a wild card spot until a few days before the regular season ended. They finished third in their division, one spot ahead of where they finished last year.

I'm delighted by the Mets' Pete Alonso having set a new record for home runs by a rookie, beating that set by the Yankees' Aaron Judge. I have nothing against Mr. Judge, who I'm sure is a fine person as well as a superb player, but I always love to see the Mets eclipse the Yankees in any category. This year they tied the Yanks, 2-2, in their interleague series.

Next year they'll have a new manager, as Mickey Callaway was given his walking papers today. If they can resist trading away promising prospects for aging "quick fix" superstars, and if the injuries that have long plagued them are kept to a minimum, they could have a very good 2020.

The Met's "Play It Loud!"

I saw the Metropolitan Museum of Art's exhibition Play It Loud: Instruments of Rock & Roll yesterday, two days before its closure on Tuesday, October 1. There was a very long line, as the galleries were packed and people were being allowed in five or six at a time. The first instrument on display, at the exhibition's entrance, was the Gibson ES-350T hollow bodied electric guitar (photo above) that was owned by Chuck Berry. Giving this instrument pride of place was appropriate as, although Chuck Berry didn't invent rock and roll, he probably had more influence on its development than any other artist.


The video clip above shows Berry in live performance in 1958, doing "Johnny B. Goode," probably his best known song, which George Thorogood called "the rock and roll national anthem." It also shows him doing his famous "duck walk."

The first gallery displayed instruments by some of rock's pioneers and early stars. The Selmer Mark VI alto saxophone above was owned and played by Louis Jordan, whose "jump blues" style is considered an important precursor of rock.

This video shows Jordan, age about 58, performing "Saturday Night Fish Fry" on TV in 1966. Note the go-go dancers.

Another genre that had profound influence on rock was the electric blues that, from the late 1940s on, evolved in Chicago from the acoustic blues of the Mississippi Delta. The Fender Telecaster guitar shown above, called "The Hoss," belonged to one of the greatest exponents of this style, McKinley Morganfield, better known as Muddy Waters.


The video above shows Muddy doing "I'm a King Bee" at ChicagoFest 1981.

Bo Diddley was another very influential artist in early rock. He popularized the "hambone" or "shave-and-a-hair-cut, two bits" rhythm found in the work of many who followed him. I'd long wondered why he often played rectangular guitars like this one, which he called the "Twang Machine," and which was custom made for him by the Fred Gretsch Manufacturing Company of (Yay!) Brooklyn. According to the text accompanying this display, Bo "built his first guitar from a rectangular piece of wood fitted with a pickup made from Victrola turntable parts."

 
The video above is of Bo doing "Who Do You Love" at the Sevilla Expo '92 with Steve Cropper, Dave Edmonds, and others. This song has been covered many times by, among others, the Doors, the Blues Project, Tom Rush, Quicksilver Messenger Service. George Thorogood and the Destroyers, and Elise LeGrow.

Early rock wasn't an all male show. Wanda Jackson, who played this customized Martin D-18 acoustic guitar, was called the "Queen of Rockabilly."


Here's Wanda doing "I Gotta Know" on the Marty Stuart show. The song, written by Thelma Blackmon, was recorded in 1956. It starts slowly and mournfully, but quickly gets wild.

This "baby grand" piano, painted gold, was the home piano of Jerry Lee Lewis. I had the pleasure of seeing and hearing Jerry Lee in the fall of 1979 at the Lorelei, a former German beer and dance hall on East 86th Street in Manhattan that someone had bought and turned into a Country and Western venue (this was during the "urban cowboy" craze). Jerry Lee, being a "rockabilly" artist, was considered appropriate for this setting. Indeed, he was preceded that evening by Otis Blackwell, an R&B artist and  prolific songwriter whose works were recorded by Elvis Presley and others. The hall's owner hadn't touched the decor; seeing Jerry Lee pumping his piano under posters of Mad King Ludwig's Bavarian castles was close to psychedelia.

 
Above is Jerry Lee doing "Meatman" at Church Street Station, Orlando (date not specified).

The gallery with instruments of pioneer and early rockers was relatively uncrowded, but those of later stars, such as the Beatles, Stones, Prince, and Joan Jett, were so tightly packed that it was difficult to get good photo shots. Above are some art nouveau style posters for shows during the "Summer of Love" psychedelic rock period. I did manage to get a shot of an instrument I considered significant, below.

I've long loved the look of the Gibson "Flying V" guitar. This one was played by one of my favorite artists, Neil Young, although his "furious and melodic sound is most often created with another Gibson guitar, his modified 1953 Les Paul."

Here's Neil, making the most of that Les Paul in a live performance with Crazy Horse at FarmAid in 2012, of my favorite song of his, "Like a Hurricane."

I'm glad I got to see this exhibition, but sad I didn't see it in time to tell others how great it was. At least I can share some of it with those of you who didn't, or couldn't, see it.

What We Did on Our Holidays - Part 2

Our second mini-vacation was to the Glimmerglass Festival, held at the Alice Busch Opera Theater (photo) near Cooperstown, New York. We've attended Glimmerglass together for several years. With our friends Marc and Stuart we rode in Marc's car from Jersey City to Cherry Valley, New York.

There we checked into the Limestone Mansion, where we have stayed now for three summers, enjoying the comfortable rooms and the sumptuous breakfasts prepared by Wolf and Loretta; the latter enjoyed in surroundings like that shown in the photo above.

We arrived mid-afternoon Friday, which gave me time to stroll around Cherry Valley's little "downtown" and discover this "historic" laundromat.

Cherry Valley is about a ten minute drive from the Alice Busch Opera Theater. On Friday evening, we dined on sandwiches and salads from the Festival's outdoor cafe.

We then saw our first opera of the Festival, the world premiere of Blue. It began with a young black man in street clothes alone on the stage. Three policemen emerged from offstage, evoking the possibility of an arrest. Instead, one of the policemen handed the black man a blue shirt and pants. The black man, known throughout only as "The Father" and played by Kenneth Kellogg (photo above, from his website), went offstage and returned in his new blue uniform, and there were handshakes all around.

The Father then married The Mother (Briana Elyse Hunter; photo, from her website) and she became one when a son was born, to great celebration by all, including The Father's police colleagues. All went well until The Son (Aaron Crouch) reached his teens. He was a good student, showing promising talent at art, but he also became involved in demonstrations against police brutality. This  caused a confrontation with The Father, ending with The Father's assurance that he would love The Son, no matter what. Shortly after, The Son was shot dead by one of The Father's fellow policemen, though not one of his friends, while The Son was participating in a demonstration.

The plot then turned to The Father's reaction to this tragedy, told through his interactions with The Reverend (Gordon Hawkins). First he wanted revenge, later he questioned his belief in God. At The Son's funeral, The Mother asked Jesus to take him in his hands as she had asked The Father to take him when he was a newborn. There is a final, poignant scene: a flashback to the family around a table, where The Son announced that his art teacher said he showed great talent, and thought he could get a scholarship to RISD (the Rhode Island School of Design; a highly regarded institution). He then casually mentioned his intention to participate in a peaceful demonstration.

I've described the plot of Blue without mentioning the singing or the orchestral music, both of which were excellent. The music is by Jeanine Tesori and the libretto by Tazewell Thompson, who also directed the performance. The orchestra was conducted by John DeMain.

On Saturday morning we went into Cooperstown and spent some time in Willis Monie Books, a labyrinthine store offering both new and used books at attractive prices. At eight bucks apiece, I couldn't resist Producers versus Capitalists: Constitutional Conflict in Antebellum America, by Tony A. Freyer, University Research Professor of History and Law at the University of Alabama, and The Rosy Future of War (who could resist such a title?) by Philippe Delmas.

We didn't visit Cooperstown's most famous attraction, the National Baseball Hall of Fame, on this trip; we had visited it on an earlier one, and will return someday.

Later we went to the Fenimore Art Museum and viewed the exhibit of photographs by Herb Ritts, who shot photos of many stars of rock, pop. jazz, folk, and blues. The introductory panel featured his photo of Tina Turner.

David Bowie showed up in grungy street clothes, but had a costume for his photo session. Ritts wisely suggested he stay grungy.

Jazz trumpeter Dizzy Gillespie had the ability to inflate his cheeks, which assisted his playing. Ritts wanted to get a photo of it, but Gillespie refused. Ritts happened to turn quickly and got this shot.

Ritts got this lovely profile of Joan Baez; yes, that's her own hand.

Little Richard: "A-wop-bop-a-loo-bop, A-wop-bam-boom."

Ritts mostly worked in black and white, but he got this shot of Madonna on the beach at Malibu in color.

On Saturday afternoon we saw our second opera, The Ghosts of Versailles, with music by John Corigliano and libretto by the late William M. Hoffman. Ghosts had its premiere in 1990 at New York City's Metropolitan Opera, and has played at several other venues since. The photo above is of the scrim before the opening of the opera's first act. Several "ghosts" are visible, including Marie Antoinette (Yelena Dyachek) and some courtiers at the right in the photo, and Louis XVI (Peter Morgan) at the left.

The central character in Ghosts is Pierre Beaumarchais (Jonathan Bryan). Beaumarchais had a remarkable life as a watchmaker, playwright, musician, spy, and lover. In Ghosts he is portrayed as being in love with Marie Antoinette, who desperately wanted to be brought back to life. Beaumarchais promised to do this by means of an opera, based on Mozart's Marriage of Figaro, which was itself based on a play written by Beaumarchais. In this opera, Figaro (Ben Schaefer) is to steal a valuable necklace and use it to bribe for Marie Antoinette's release before her execution, after which Beaumarchais would take her to safety in America. "We will live in Philadelphia!" he exclaimed, which evoked laughter from the audience.

Beaumarchais' scheme went awry when, in the opera-within-an-opera, Figaro rebelled and refused to cooperate. All was resolved at the end, when Marie Antoinette decided it is best not to disturb history, but to enjoy her afterlife with Beaumarchais.

Ghosts is long, has many characters, and with its nested operas structure, is complex. At times it made me think of Firesign Theatre's "Further Adventures of Nick Danger". Hoffman inserted bits of humor, such as the "Philadelphia" line and some others that got chuckles from opera buffs. At the close of one particularly chaotic scene a woman wearing a helmet with horns and a breastplate emerged from backstage and proclaimed, "This is not opera. Wagner is opera!"

As with Blue, the singing and the orchestra, here conducted by Joseph Colaneri, were excellent. Ghosts also featured some superb dance performances.
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Glimmerglass always includes one Broadway musical comedy in each summer's roster of performances. This year's selection was Show Boat (Jerome Kern/Oscar Hammerstein, 1927). I'd never seen Show Boat on stage, though I did see the 1951 movie version when I was about six years old. One thing I remember from the movie is William Warfield's rendition of "Ol' Man River." In the Glimmerglass production, it was sung by Justin Hopkins as Joe. I'd rate his performance as equal to Warfield's. In the video clip above, Hopkins sings it accompanied by the Philly Pops. Perhaps the other best known song from Show Boat is "Can't Help Lovin' Dat Man," sung beautifully at Glimmerglass by Judith Skinner as Queenie.

The plot of Show Boat is probably familiar to most readers, and certainly to fans of Edna Ferber, on whose novel the show is based. There's a sub-plot, certainly controversial in 1927, concerning Mississippi's anti-miscegenation law and the notorious "one drop rule," the latter of which, ironically, saved Julie La Verne (Alyson Cambridge) and Steve Baker (Charles H. Eaton) from imprisonment, though they both had to abandon their leading roles in the boat's itinerant drama.

The main story concerns Magnolia Hawks (Lauren Snouffer), daughter of the boat's captain, Andy Hawks (Lara Teeter), and the riverboat gambler Gaylord Ravenal (Michael Adams) with whom Magnolia fell in love. She and Gaylord replaced Julie and Steve in the show's cast, but when Cap'n Andy's wife (and Magnolia's mother), Parthy Ann Hawks (Klea Blackhurst), opposed their marriage, they left the boat and eloped.

For a time, Gaylord's luck ran well, and they lived in Chicago's elegant Palmer House. Then it turned bad; they got evicted, and Gaylord, in shame, abandoned Magnolia, whom he didn't know was pregnant. Magnolia gave birth to a daughter, Kim, and raised her as a single mother while developing her own career as a cabaret singer. Eventually, she and Ravenal were reunited, he met his daughter for the first time, and presumably all was well thereafter.

Again, the singing and the orchestra, conducted here by James Lowe, were superb.

As always, we were impressed by Glimmerglass' selection of musical offerings and by the quality of the singing and orchestral performances. Our special congratulations to Artistic Director Francesca Zambello.

Some of us had to be back to work on Monday, so, with reluctance, we packed, enjoyed one last Limestone Mansion breakfast, and headed back to New Jersey and New York City. I took the photo above of the countryside just east of Cherry Valley, with Lake Otsego in the background, from the window of Marc's car.