Self-Absorbed Boomer
"[A] delightfully named blog", (Sewell Chan, New York Times). "[R]elentlessly eclectic", (Gary, Iowa City). Taxing your attention span since 2005.
Tuesday, December 03, 2024
Donnacha Dennehy's "Land of Winter: I. December" by Alarm Will Sound
Wednesday, November 27, 2024
Marshall Chapman sings Waylon Jennings' "You Asked Me To" with James Burton on guitar.
Tuesday, November 19, 2024
A tour of Dr. Konstantin Frank's vineyards and winery, followed by a paired tasting.
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.Photo of Dr. Konstatin Frank, Finger Lakes Wine Country; all others by C. Scales
Saturday, October 26, 2024
Box of Rain (2013 Remaster); remembering Phil Lesh (1940-2024)
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.
Monday, October 21, 2024
Goodbye, Mets.
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.
Sunday, September 29, 2024
Kris Kristofferson, 1936-2024
Sunday, September 22, 2024
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.
Saturday, September 07, 2024
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.
Sunday, September 01, 2024
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.
Tuesday, June 18, 2024
Willie Mays, 1931-2024
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.
Sunday, June 02, 2024
Peter Myers, Octogenarian
Tuesday, May 07, 2024
The "Ode to Joy" from Beethoven's Symphony No. 9 - Royal Scottish National Orchestra and Chorus
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.
Saturday, May 04, 2024
Frank Stella, 1936-2024
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.
Friday, May 03, 2024
Of Tom Rush, Joni Mitchell, and Neil Young
"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.
Monday, April 22, 2024
Saturday, April 20, 2024
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.
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.
Sunday, March 31, 2024
Mets swept at home in season opening series
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.
Saturday, March 16, 2024
Pierce Turner, "Hail Glorious St Patrick"
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!
Saturday, February 24, 2024
Flaco the Owl, 2010-2024
Adios, Flaco. Gracias for the joy you gave to so many during your flights around the city.
Friday, January 19, 2024
Peter Schickele ("PDQ Bach"), 1935-2024
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.
Sunday, January 07, 2024
Thomas Curtiss, Jr., 1941-2023
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.
Friday, December 22, 2023
"Angels We Have Heard On High" by the Portland Choir and Orchestra
Friday, December 08, 2023
Andy Irvine's "Never Tire of the Road," a tribute to Woody Guthrie
I had the pleasure of meeting Andy some years ago, after a performance at the old Eagle Tavern on East 14th Street in Manhattan. I was introduced by my companion that evening, the now late Zane Berzins, who was possibly the only native of Latvia to be fluent in Irish Gaelic. I once asked her if Zane was the Latvian equivalent of Jane. She said, "No, it's more like Carol." I later learned that Martha, now my wife of over 33 years, was at the same performance. I had yet to meet her.
I hope you enjoy the song, with its references to the Dust Bowl, California, World War Two Merchant Marine service, and a chorus that's hopefully relevant today.
Sunday, October 22, 2023
Queen Claude and Anne Boleyn
The connection between Queen Claude and Anne Boleyn is, as Ms. Brown notes, that Anne served as the Queen's "teenage demoiselle" following her service as "maid of honor" to Margaret of Austria. About these youthful exposures to women in Continental courts, Ms. Brown quotes Mr, Guy and Ms. Fox, "Anne found herself in a world in which women could exercise power in strikingly different ways." This was, according to Ms. Brown, in contrast to "the dour, dutiful sewing circle serving Katherine of Aragon at the British court," to which Anne returned. She found Henry still in his unhappy marriage to Katherine, and Anne's younger sister Margaret as his favorite mistress. During and after the divorce from Katherine, he turned his attention to Anne. What ensued is well known. Ms. Brown notes that a special executioner "had been summoned from France" and that "the only remnant of Anne's Francophile influence was her executioner's axe."
The supreme irony is that, although a reason for Anne's execution was her failure to produce a male heir, her daughter, Elizabeth, eventually succeeded to the crown and became one of Britain's most revered monarchs.
Saturday, September 30, 2023
Gram Parsons & Emmylou Harris. "Hickory Wind"
Sunday, September 10, 2023
Does being romanticized in a 1960s or '70s pop song spell present day disaster for a city?
Saturday, September 02, 2023
Secrets of the global art market, revealed through family drama.
I also learned from the Times story that the Wildensteins held a substantial number of paintings, perhaps 180 out of the estimated 700 or so the artist had produced, by a painter I admire, the French "post-impressionist" (it seems now that everything artistic is "post" something) Pierre Bonnard. In 2009 I saw an exhibition of his paintings and drawings at the Met, "Late Interiors," and posted about it here. The photo at left, which comes from another post about "Late Interiors" in Carol Gillott's "Paris Breakfasts" blog, shows Bonnard at work, using his unconventional technique of painting while his canvas is fastened to a wall,
Bonnard died in 1947. His wife predeceased him and they had no children. According to the Times story, his most proximate heirs were "three estranged nieces-in-law." Daniel found another relative with a colorable claim, bought his inheritance rights for $1 million, and funded a lengthy lawsuit on his behalf that led to a settlement in which Daniel acquired 500 paintings and the nieces got 25, though "Daniel promised them more to avoid further litigation." The Times story tells how Dumont Beghi and an appraiser went to the Geneva Free Port to examine the Bonnards kept there by Daniel. She found there paintings by an artist "known above all for his radiant use of color" that were "locked behind an armored door" in a "gloomy bunker."
Jimmy Buffett, "A Pirate Looks at Forty"
The video above is of my favorite of his songs, "A Pirate Looks at Forty," a wistful mid-life take on what he'd seen and done and what he wished for. I liked his melange of country and calypso, and his commitment to the environment. Fair winds, Jimmy.
Wednesday, August 02, 2023
A bold prediction; a chastened update.
The Mets will be a better than .500 team for the rest of the season; this despite what appears to be a daunting schedule. It won't be enough to make the playoffs, but may at least lift them to third in the Eastern Division.
Why? Because of something I suggested in a post seven years ago. They will no longer be burdened by expectations. I've seen them display this sort of resilience in the past when, say, a key player suffered an injury, and the rest of the team responded with better play.