The Roches, "Good King Wenceslas", and the Feast of Stephen

Good King Wenceslas looked out,
On the Feast of Stephen,
When the snow lay all about,
Deep and crisp and even....

So begins what is, to most of us, a very familiar Christmas carol. What, though, is the Feast of Stephen, and who was Wenceslas?

The Feast of Stephen is, in fact, today (a day which, where I am, in Eastern Standard Time, is rapidly fading), December 26, the day after Christmas. It is the day established to celebrate Saint Stephen, reckoned to have been the first martyr for the Christian faith (his story is told in Acts of the Apostles, chapters six and seven). "Good King Wenceslas", then, is really not a Christmas carol, but a day-after-Christmas carol. Nevertheless, it expresses what those of us who celebrate Christmas consider the true spirit of the holiday: bringing comfort and joy to others, especially to those less fortunate than us.

Wenceslas, sometimes spelled Wenceslaus, wasn't a king, at least during his lifetime. He was a Duke of Bohemia, now part of the Czech Republic. Emperor Otto I, of the Holy Roman Empire (later famously declared by Voltaire to be none of the above) bestowed on him the regnancy posthumously. Wenceslas was born around 908, and assumed ducal authority in 924 or 25. He was in contention with his younger brother Boreslaw (sometimes called "the Bad" or "the Cruel"), who had Wenceslas murdered in 935.

During his brief life and dukedom, Wenceslas was known for Christian piety and for deeds of kindness to the poor and unfortunate. We don't know if the words of the carol accurately reflect one of these deeds, but it seems intended to reflect his nature. Wenceslas was, like Stephen, declared a martyr for his faith and canonized as a saint.


The clip above is of a superb performance of "Good King Wenceslas" by the Roches at a Christmas concert at the long lost and lamented Bottom Line, in Greenwich Village, in 1990. Suzzy ("the Humble Servant"), on guitar, gives a long spoken introduction, evoking the sisters' late father and his love of the carol, which is well worth a listen. She's joined by sisters Maggie (the "Rich King") on keyboard, and Sarah (the "Lovely Narrator"), also on guitar.

Alison Krauss and Yo-Yo Ma, "The Wexford Carol"

Bluegrass great Alison Krauss here joins with cello virtuoso Yo-Yo Ma to perform one of my Yuletide favorites, "The Wexford Carol", with lyrics dating to the twelfth century and a tune probably older than that.

That a bluegrass musician should sing an Irish song is no surprise; the Appalachians and the bluegrass country to their west attracted immigrants from Ireland, most of them Ulster Scots, or "Scotch Irish", descendants of Protestant Scots whose ancestors had been "planted" in northern Ireland in an effort by the British crown to subdue the Catholic Irish.



As for Maestro Ma, listen to him in the Celtic groove with Mark O'Connor and Edgar Meyer on "The Green Groves of Erin/The Flowers of Red Hill".

To my Christian friends, merry Christmas! To my Jewish friends, on this year when our holidays coincide, happy Hanukkah!

Leonard Cohen (1934-2016), "Suzanne" solo and with Judy Collins

Leonard Cohen, songwriter, singer, novelist, and poet--probably best known for those talents, in that order--died today at 82. Was he Canada's Bob Dylan? Their careers ran roughly in parallel, and there were similarities in their talents, but also differences in their works. Dylan's lyrics and music have their roots in American traditions running from Walt Whitman to blues hollers and Appalachian ballads. Cohen's seemed to me to stem from French symbolist and English romantic poetry, with perhaps a touch of Jewish mysticism. He observed the Sabbath along with, late in life, becoming a Zen monk.

The first song of his I knew was "Suzanne", written for his friend Suzanne Verdal, a dancer who lived in a warehouse made into a studio on the bank of the St. Lawrence River. In the clip above, he sings it solo, after a spoken introduction in which he tells how he was cheated out of his rights to it.


The first version of "Suzanne" I knew was by Judy Collins, from her album In My Life. It was played on WBCN, Boston's first "underground" album oriented rock FM station in my delirious spring of 1968 when, as a Florida resident of many years, I had endured my first Massachusetts winter and, being helplessly but hopelessly in love, saw the earth come again to life. I was fortunate to find the clip above, in which Leonard and Judy joined in the song.

Erratum and addendum: when I wrote this, I assumed that the song "Suzanne" was about Suzanne Elrod, mother of Cohen's two children.  Thanks to my friend Stephen Crews Wylder, I now know that it was about Suzanne Verdal, a friend from before he met Elrod, and I've corrected the post above to reflect this. Stephen gave a link to this NPR piece, which tells of the origin of "Suzanne", explains that the reference to "tea and oranges" is to Bigelow's "Constant Comment" tea, and tells the story of the tea's origin. By coincidence, the agency where I've been working keeps a supply of Bigelow teas in the break room, and of late I've become fond of Constant Comment. There's more about Cohen and Verdal here.

The Repast Baroque Ensemble, "Queen Christina's Musical Realm"

On Friday evening we went to a performance by the Repast Baroque Ensemble. In the photo above they are, left to right: Katie Rietman, baroque cello; Gabe Shuford, harpsichord; Amelia Roosevelt, baroque violin; and Stephanie Corwin, baroque bassoon. They were joined for this event by violinist Beth Wenstrom. Their concert consisted of works by composers who were contemporaries of Christina of Sweden (1626-1689; reigned as queen 1644-1654); some of whom knew or performed for her. Most are Italian, for she settled in Rome following her abdication of the Swedish throne, but two are from the Low Countries, her initial destination after leaving Sweden. One is by a Spanish monk, Bartolomeo de Selma y Salaverde, whose music was popular in Italy when Christina was there, and one is by the English composer Matthew Locke. Christina never visited England, but while she reigned in Sweden she was visited by a delegation from Oliver Cromwell who are said to have thought very well of her, and gave her examples of contemporary English music. That Cromwell's representatives admired Christina proved ironic when, after her abdication, she converted to Roman Catholicism.
 
Unfortunately, there is no video or audio available on line of Repast doing any of the works that were included in Friday's concert. The clip above, which gives audio along with a still image, is of them (with Claire Jolivet instead of Ms. Wenstrom as guest violinist) performing Sonata No. 6 by Carolus Hacquart, one of the two Low Country composers included in their Friday concert, although the work they played there was Hacquart's Sonata No. 3. It does give you a good sample of their sound.


Another piece I especially enjoyed was "Susana", by the Spaniard Bartolomeo de Selma y Salaverde, which featured the bassoon; de Selma was a bassoonist. There's no video of Repast doing anything by this composer, but I found the clip above of his Canzona Terza performed by a group led by Pedro Sousa Silva, who plays recorder. The bassoon plays an important role in this piece; unfortunately, the bassoonist is not identified.

After the concert, I met both Stephanie Corwin and Amelia Roosevelt, and said to both, "You rock!" In each instance, this evoked a slight wince, but I think Repast plays with something of the spirit of a rock band. They play off each other with great alacrity, and their music swings, as I believe baroque music was intended to do. I'm looking forward to the rest of their 2016-17 season performances; the schedule is here.

The Cubs win the pennant! The Cubs win the pennant!

As I've written before: how could I resist (given that my Mets are out of the picture) rooting for a team that hasn't won a series since the administration of William Howard Taft? Like Harper Lee, whom I was surprised to learn was a fellow Mets fan, I have a 2X4 size chip on my shoulder for underdogs. Clevelanders, having not won a series since 1948, can also claim underdog status, but not as subterranean as that of the Cubs. Besides, they play in the Phony Baseball League.

Bob Dylan, "Blowing in the Wind"

My first Dylan album was The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan, his second after his eponymous debut, which I acquired shortly after. Freewheelin' included the first song of his I knew, "Blowing in the Wind", which I first heard by Peter, Paul & Mary. See and hear an early live performance of that song, which captured like no other the mid-sixties longing for a better, more just world, below:

Mets vs. Giants: shades of 1951?

On a July afternoon in 1985 I was in the stands at Shea for the first time, courtesy of Pat Carroll, a Brooklyn native then living in London but on a visit home. Several days before, we had been sitting together at the bar of the Lion's Head and Pat had offered me a ticket his mother couldn't use to the Mets-Cardinals game the following weekend. I accepted, and saw the Mets win on a two-run homer off what was then called the "unlikely bat" of Howard Johnson. During the game, Pat said to me,"What you have to understand is that the Mets are really the Brooklyn Dodgers continued by other means." At that moment, I became a Mets fan, and have remained one ever since. The Dodgers had been my first love in baseball, for reasons explained here.

So, tomorrow's sudden death wild card National League playoff game can be seen as a reprise of the 1951 best-of-three tiebreaker series for the NL pennant (there were no divisions back then), a mini subway series that pitted the Brooklyn Dodgers against the New York Giants. The Giants won the opening game 3-1 on Brooklyn's home turf, Ebbets Field. Game 2 was at the Giants' home, the Polo Grounds, and the Dodgers pounded their rivals 10-0. They returned to the Polo Grounds for Game 3. The Dodgers, who were the betting favorite to win the pennant, led 4-1 going into the bottom of the ninth. One run had scored when the Giants' Bobby Thompson came to bat with one out and runners on second and third.
 
Thompson's three run walk-off homer, known since in baseball lore as "The Shot Heard 'Round the World", gave the Giants the pennant and allowed them to advance to the World Series, where they would lose in six games to that other New York team, the Yankees.

I'm hoping that the 1951 result gets reversed tomorrow, with the "Dodgers Continued by Other Means" prevailing. There are others, though, including my friend Dermot McEvoy, whose loyalty to the Mets is based on their ties to the New York Giants. When the Mets were established as an expansion team, the owners decided to adopt the colors of both of the previous New York City NL teams. The Dodgers' colors were blue and white; the Giants' were black and orange. The Mets cap (photo above) is blue with orange lettering. For those like Dermot, tomorrow's game will be the New York Giants Continued by Other Means against the Apostate Giants, who deserted New York for San Francisco.

Update: Unfortunately, it is 1951 again, with Conor Gillespie as this year's Bobby Thompson.

Welcome back, Wavertree!

In my last post I bade farewell to the bark Peking, which had been a feature of the South Street Seaport Museum for over forty years, and which is to be returned to her original home port, Hamburg, Germany, to serve as the centerpiece of a maritime museum there. For the first time in decades lower Manhattan's East River waterfront was devoid of any tall ship. This wasn't to last long, though. On the morning of Saturday, September 24 I saw Wavertree being towed across the harbor (photo above) to her berth at South Street, which she had left some time before to undergo extensive renovation and restoration work at a shipyard on Staten Island.

Seven years before South Street acquired Peking, it bought Wavertree, a wrought iron hulled bark built in England in 1885 that lost her topmasts in a gale while rounding Cape Horn in 1912. She then spent many years as a floating warehouse in Punta Arenas, Chile and later as a sand barge in the harbor of Buenos Aires. When she was brought to South Street her hull was sound, but her topmasts and spars were still missing, and she required extensive work to be put into condition for public touring. The Museum made her restoration a long term project, then acquired Peking which, having served as a floating school after being retired from trading, arrived in almost turnkey condition. For over forty years Peking was the centerpiece of South Street's ship collection, while Wavertree sat forlornly at a neighboring pier, off limits to all but museum workers, and still missing her topmasts and spars.

South Street's galleries, shops, and other facilities on land suffered extensive damage from Hurricane Sandy, which in turn caused complete loss of revenue from admissions and sales for a long period of time. Although the museum was able, with government assistance, to repair the physical damage, the financial damage, partially ameliorated by private contributions, remained. Because of her size, Peking is a very expensive ship to maintain. Consequently, South Street entered into discussions concerning Peking's disposition, hoping to find a new owner that would maintain her as a public museum piece. Fortunately, the German government was able to fund her return to Hamburg, and South Street was able to fund the restoration of Wavertree.

As Wavertree approached South Street, she was greeted by the retired fireboat John J. Harvey, now privately owned. For my earlier encounter with Harvey see here.

Tugs turned Wavertree, preparing to guide her to her berth at South Street's Pier 16, recently vacated by Peking. At the left in the photo is the Gloucester fishing schooner Lettie G. Howard, part of South Street's ship collection but also used as a sail training vessel by the New York Harbor School.

Here's Wavertree, two days later, secure at her berth. Her masts aren't as tall as those of Peking, but she's more representative of the ships that docked along South Street in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. I'm glad to have her there.

Auf wiedersehen, Peking!

As I noted here last year, the barque Peking, launched in Hamburg, Germany in 1911, will return to her birthplace and original home port, where she will be the centerpiece of a new maritime museum. She was taken in tow by two tugs Wednesday morning and left her berth at Pier 16 of the South Street Seaport Museum for an initial short voyage to the Caddell Dry Dock on Staten Island. She'll spend the winter there, then in spring will be carried across the Atlantic to Hamburg on a semi-submersible heavy lift ship.

Peking's place at Pier 16, and as centerpiece of South Street's historic ship collection, will be taken by Wavertree, which returns to South Street on September 24 following extensive restoration and maintenance work.

I took the photo above as Peking glided past the Brooklyn Bridge Park Marina on Wednesday morning.

Idris Davies' "The Bells of Rhymney" by Pete Seeger and by the Byrds

Idris Davies (1905-1953) was the son of a Welsh coal miner who followed his father into the mines after leaving school at fourteen. He lost a finger in an accident, and participated in the General Strike of 1926, which led to a long period of unemployment during which he educated himself and then took courses to qualify as a teacher. While working as a teacher he wrote three volumes of poetry, the first of which, Gwalia Deserta (1938), included "The Bells of Rhymney", a poem inspired by his experience in the General Strike.

In 1958 the American folk singer Pete Seeger set the words of The Bells of Rhymney to music. In the clip below he performs it live in concert, on a twelve string guitar, which gives the impression of pealing bells, rather than the six string shown in the still photo that accompanies the clip.



The best known version of the song is not the one performed by Seeger, but that by the Byrds on their 1965 debut album Mr. Tambourine Man. Jim (later a.k.a. Roger) McGuinn's jangling Rickenbacker electric guitar gives a chiming quality similar to that of Seeger's twelve string.



There's an odd thing about the Byrds' rendition: it changes one repeated word from Davies' poem. Instead of "Who robbed the miner?" it asks "Who killed the miner?" Davies was inspired to write "The Bells of Rhymney" by his experience as a participant in the 1926 strike. The liner notes to the Byrds' album say it was about a "mine disaster." I can only speculate that someone--perhaps the album's producer, Terry Melcher (son of my first childhood celebrity crush, Doris Day), or more likely someone higher up at Columbia Records (although Columbia released the earlier Seeger version)--decided that a song about a strike, accusing mine owners of robbing miners, was just a little too Bolshie for the American mass market.

Happy Labor Day!

Photo: Welshnot.

Happy 71st, Van Morrison!

You've known gladness and sadness in the year since you celebrated your 70th birthday. In February Prince Charles dubbed you a knight, making you Sir Ivan Morrison. In June, you buried your mother, Violet, who was a musical inspiration to you and to your daughter, Shana. And you carry on. May you keep on carrying on, and in so doing continue to inspire me and many others, for years to come.

In the clip below you do one of my favorites of your many great songs, "Saint Dominic's Preview":



Photo: Wikipedia.

240 years ago: Washington's "great escape" from Brooklyn.

It was at about the time I'm writing this, the evening of  August 29, 1776, 240 years ago, that General George Washington began moving his roughly 8,000 strong Continental Army out of Brooklyn Heights, where I now sit, down to the shore of the East River. From there, they were ferried across to Manhattan on boats manned by members of Glover's 14th Continental Marblehead Regiment, made up mostly of fishermen from Marblehead and nearby on Massachusetts' North Shore. Their boats were like those in the photo above.

This move was crucial to the success of our War of Independence. Two days earlier Washington's army had engaged British forces in what is now Prospect Park. Park Slope, and Green-Wood Cemetery. This was the first time regular Continental troops, under Washington, instead of local militia, had faced Royal Army troops. Despite valiant rear-guard actions, one of which, by a Maryland regiment at the Old Stone House, was especially effective though resulting in 259 casualties, the Americans were forced to retreat. They camped on Brooklyn Heights, and rainy weather protected them from a British advance while Washington planned his escape. Had they not succeeded in crossing the East River to Manhattan that night and early morning, an improvement in the weather could have allowed the British fleet, anchored off Staten Island, to sail into the East River. This would have cut off Washington's escape route, and effectively ended the colonies' bid for independence.

S.S. United States won't sail again. Can she be saved?

I had a feeling it was too good to be true. As I noted in my earlier post, the cost of making the S.S. United States suitable for use as a cruise ship, including hazardous substance remediation and removing her steam turbine engines and replacing them with diesels, would prove prohibitively expensive to her prospective owners, Crystal Cruises. Now my misgivings have been confirmed.

In my previous post I opined that the cruiser conversion was likely the Big U's last chance to avoid the fatal trip behind towboats to the beach in India where she'd be cut to bits like an enormous stranded whale. The story linked above notes that Crystal will donate $350,000 to the SS United States Conservancy as a good will gesture to help with the ship's preservation. Proposals to bring her to New York, possibly as a hotel, a museum, or just a static display, are still being considered. The cost of doing that wouldn't be nearly as great as for making her a cruise ship, but they would still be substantial. I'm hoping one or more of our local grandees will see the value of bringing back this part of our city's history, and that the fate Oliver Wendell Holmes feared for "Old Ironsides"--"The harpies of the shore shall pluck/ The eagle of the sea"--will not befall S.S. United States.

TBT: Tony Bennett, "I Left My Heart in San Francisco"; happy 90th!

Tony Bennett, born Anthony Dominick Benedetto in Astoria, Queens ninety years ago yesterday, will appear on stage with Lady Gaga at Radio City Music Hall on September 14. Meanwhile, he will appear at the Fox Theater in Detroit on August 12 and at the Ravinia Pavilion in Highland Park, Illinois on August 13. In October, he'll be back on the road, performing at the Rama Casino Resort in Ontario, Canada on the seventh and the following night in the Kodak Hall at the Eastman Theatre in Rochester, New York. On the 23rd he'll be at The Segerstrom Center for the Arts in Costa Mesa, California and on the 28th at Overture Hall in Madison, Wisconsin. Not bad for a nonagenarian!

The photo shows him in profile, in 1964 with the composer Harold Arlen.

My choice of a song to commemorate this event is perhaps a banal one, but I love the song anyway. The clip below shows him singing it at the sprightly age of 85:


Addendum: I've now learned, thanks to the Brooklyn Eagle, that the song was written right here in Brooklyn Heights by an expatriate San Franciscan gay couple who were feeling homesick. The story of how Bennett picked it up, and made the couple rich enough to move home, is wonderful.

Photo by CBS Television (eBay item photo front photo back) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

Tom Kibble, physics pathfinder, 1932-2016

In a 2012 post about the then discovery of the Higgs boson, a particle the existence of which was first theorized by several groups of physicists, I noted that, but for timing of publication, the elusive particle might have been called the Kibble boson. The story is a bit more complicated than that. It's true that in 1964 Tom Kibble, then and until his death on June 7 of this year a member of the physics faculty at Imperial College London, and his American collaborators, Gerald Guralnik and Richard Hagen, published a paper that, according to The Guardian's obituary, "demonstrated how particles that transmit nature’s fundamental forces, and which on general theoretical principles should be massless, can nonetheless gain mass." Why is this a big deal? It's because, if the "general theoretical principles" preferring masslessness prevailed, the universe would be very unstable.

Unfortunately for Kibble and his collaborators, two other papers--one by the Belgian physicists Robert Brout and François Englert; the other by Peter Higgs himself--stating essentially the same theory were published earlier that summer. Higgs also posited the existence of a mediating particle, which became known as the "Higgs boson". A boson is an elementary particle that conforms to certain requirements set out in the Standard Model physicists have developed over the past half century to explain the "fundamental structure of matter" (for a more complete explanation, see the CERN website linked immediately above).

The existence of the Higgs boson wasn't confirmed until 2012. The following year, Higgs and Englert (Brout had died, and Nobel prizes aren't awarded posthumously) shared the Nobel prize for physics. In the Guardian story linked immediately above, Kibble is quoted:

My two collaborators, Gerald Guralnik and Carl Richard Hagen, and I contributed to that discovery, but our paper was unquestionably the last of the three to be published ... and it is therefore no surprise that the Swedish Academy felt unable to include us, constrained as they are by a self-imposed rule that the prize cannot be shared by more than three people.

My sincere congratulations go to the two prizewinners, François Englert and Peter Higgs. A sad omission from the list was Englert's collaborator, Robert Brout, now deceased.

The discovery of the Higgs boson wasn't the only work to which Kibble contributed that led to a Nobel Prize. The 1979 award to Abdus Salam, a fellow Imperial College faculty member, along with the Americans Steven Weinberg and Sheldon Glashow, as well as the 1999 award to Gerardus 't Hooft and Martinus J.G. Veltman, were made for work that drew on insights of Kibble's.

He was, in full, Sir Thomas Walter Bannerman Kibble, but he is almost always simply called "Tom", and that's how I'm sure this brilliant but hard-working and humble man liked it.

Do the Mets suffer from the Avis syndrome?

Back in the day, Avis Rent-A-Car tried a lemonade-out-of-lemon advertising tactic based on their being the second largest company in their business, after Hertz. Their slogan was, "We try harder." I don't know how Avis ranks today by rental volume or revenue, but in customer reviews they are doing badly.

At the beginning of spring training the New York Times' baseball writer Tyler Kepner wrote a piece in which he began by noting how, at that time of year, all fans can imagine their teams, no matter what problems they had the preceding season, having a shot at winning it all. He then gave a worst case forecast for each MLB team (except the Cubs, for whom he wrote, "a championship is inevitable"). I quoted his forecast for the Mets in an earlier post, but will repeat it here:

The starters try hard to keep the ball out of play -- to minimize the impact of the team's shaky defense -- but their 2015 workload wears them down. David Wright's spinal stenosis limits him again, and while Yoenis Cespedes struggles in center field, he hits well enough to exercise his opt-out clause and repeat his protracted free-agent dance.

Here we are at the All-Star Break, and some of Kepner's predictions seem accurate. Wright's back and neck problems have more than limited him; they've led him to have surgery that, at best, may allow him to return to play in September. While Cespedes hasn't struggled much with fielding, he is batting well, so Kepner's prediction of another "protracted free-agent dance" may prove spot on. Indeed, the "shaky defense" prediction may be the one most off the mark, while the surmise that the starting rotation would be worn down seems an understatement. Matt Harvey, following a mostly miserable three months plus, is having surgery and will be out for the rest of the season and probably much of the next. Noah Syndergaard and Steven Matz both have bone spurs in their pitching elbows. This leaves Bartolo Colon, Jacob deGrom, and the recently called-up Logan Verrett as the only completely (for now) healthy pitchers in what was, at the season's beginning, considered MLB's most fearsome starting rotation. Zach Wheeler, recovering from Tommy John surgery, was expected to rejoin the roster about now, but his return keeps getting delayed.

Following the Nationals' having taken three of a four game series just before the All Star break from the Mets, putting the Mets six games behind in the NL east and tied with the Marlins for second place in the division, Kepner wrote another Times piece, with the title "The Baseball Gods Clobber the Mets". He began by noting that Nats ace Stephen Strasburg, who pitched against and beat Syndergaard and the Mets during that series, had, along with Nats management, decided that he would not pitch in the All Star Game in view of his recently having been on the disabled list with back problems. By contrast, Kepner quoted Mets skipper Terry Collins, who would manage the NL team, as saying Syndergaard would pitch because his was "not a muscular situation", that "he deserves it", and that "I think the world needs to see him...."

As it turned out, Syndergaard didn't pitch because, as Kepner put it, "instant karma" got the Mets. In Friday's game, Syndergaard started strong but by the fifth inning his velocity had plummeted and he had given up three runs. He left the game, claiming his problem wasn't related to the bone spur but instead to shoulder fatigue. In the same inning Cespedes, also slated to appear in the All Star Game, strained a quadriceps.

Kepner quotes Syndergaard as saying after the game that this would be his first full season in the majors and that so far he had pitched more innings than any other Mets pitcher. Kepner then noted Strasburg's record to date: 12-0 following the Friday victory over the Mets, and after a year in which he was taken off duty before the playoffs "because of a post-surgery innings cap." To counter the argument that pitchers today "just break" Kepner then turned to another Nats starter, Max Scherzer, who has pitched nine seasons without missing a start because of injury, and this season tops the majors in strikeouts.

Scherzer stands out as a pitcher now benefiting from uncommon youthful maturity. He pitched many big games for the Detroit Tigers, but never allowed his competitive drive to overrule physical warnings. Scherzer cited that trait — as well as his innings program and work habits going back to the University of Missouri — as reasons for his durability.

Kepner concludes:

This is not to suggest that the Mets’ pitchers are reckless, or lack the relationship with Collins that Scherzer has had with his managers. But Harvey, Jacob deGrom, Steven Matz (who has a more troublesome bone spur than Syndergaard) and the slowly recovering Zack Wheeler have all had Tommy John surgery. Another major injury could be catastrophic.

I have to wonder: does the Mets' status as an almost perpetual (exceptions: 1969 and 1986) second place team in New York City cause them to "try harder"?  Has it inculcated a team culture that makes players extend themselves beyond reasonable limits? Are they really plagued by the "injury bug" more than most other teams? I haven't done a statistical search to see if this is true.

Happy birthday, Ringo!

Paul McCartney posted this photo of himself and Ringo taken at AIR Studios on the Caribbean island of Montserrat, probably in 1981 during the recording of Ringo's album Tug of War. Ringo turns 76 today.

The clip above shows Ringo joining country legend Buck Owens to do Ringo's song "Act Naturally".

The Mariners, handsomest of cargo ships.

In July of 1954, my father, mother, and I boarded the USNS Geiger at Southampton for our return voyage to the U.S. following Dad's three year tour of duty in England. Geiger was one of three--her sisters were Barrett and Upshur--passenger and cargo liners that had been under construction during the early 1950s for American President Lines but, because of the Korean War, had been taken for military service (they were heavily subsidized by the government, which allowed this option). As we boarded Geiger I saw a sleek new cargo ship docked astern of us, also in Military Sea Transport Service livery, with the name Cracker State Mariner. We departed Southampton that afternoon, with Cracker State Mariner still at dock. After a smooth summer crossing, we arrived several days later at the MSTS terminal on Staten Island. As we pulled into our dock, I could see, already docked at the next pier, Cracker State Mariner, which had outpaced Geiger, a new ship herself, across the Atlantic.

The photo above shows Cracker State Mariner after she left government service in 1956 and became part of the American President Lines fleet, renamed President Coolidge, She remained with APL until 1974, when she became Export Defender of American Export Lines. Four years later she reverted to government ownership and to her original name. As breakbulk freighters were quickly going out of style at that time, I suspect she went out of service and was laid up in the government's reserve fleet. In 1992, having survived a respectable 38 years, she went for scrap in India.

Sometime in the mid 1970s I was taking a mid-day stroll around Battery Park, at the southern tip of Manhattan, and saw the Thomas Jefferson, of the Waterman Steamship Corporation, heading outward through the channel between Manhattan and Governors Island. I didn't know it, but this was to be my last view of a Mariner class ship. She was originally Golden Mariner, completed, like Cracker State Mariner, in 1954, but on the opposite coast. Golden Mariner named for California, the Golden State, was built at Bethlehem's San Francisco yard; Cracker State Mariner at Newport News Shipbuilding in Virginia. In 1955 Golden Mariner became part of the Pacific Far East Line fleet, and in 1961 she was renamed California Bear. She was acquired by Waterman and became Thomas Jefferson in 1973, not long before I saw her. She was broken up at Kaohsiung, Republic of China, in 1980.

No doubt I'll get some disagreement with my calling the Mariners the handsomest of cargo ships. There are many rivals, American and foreign. My nominee for runner up in that category is the Victories, the war emergency class that preceded the Mariners and succeeded the "ugly duckling" but much loved Liberties. I've written before about American Victory, one of three surviving members of that class, that is now a floating, and sometimes mobile, museum in my old home city, Tampa.

Photo of President Coolidge ex Cracker State Mariner: Photographer / Collection: Bar, Marius / Boman, J. Robert – Source: Sjöhistoriska Museet, Stockholm, Sweden – (Swedish Maritime Museum), via 7seasvessels.com, from which I got historical information about the ship, as well as about Thomas Jefferson ex Golden Mariner.

Guy Clark, "Texas 1947" and "Let Him Roll"

Guy Clark (1941-2016), who died on May 17, was a songwriter and singer from Texas. Although he was a very good singer, he's better remembered as a songwriter, because only one of his recordings of his songs charted--"Homegrown Tomatoes" in 1983--but a number of covers did. Among these were "L.A. Freeway" and "Desperados Waiting for a Train" by Jerry Jeff Walker (my favorite cover of "Desperados" is by Tom Rush, about whom I wrote here), and "Heartbroke" by Ricky Skaggs. Clark served as a mentor to many younger members of the country music scene, among them Rodney Crowell and Steve Earle. He also became a master luthier; a builder of guitars.


My favorite Guy Clark song, given that I'm a train buff, is "Texas 1947", which you can hear in the clip above, along with "Let Him Roll", also from his first album, Old No. 1. "Texas 1947" is autobiographical, telling of his going at the age of six to "the depot" in his hometown, Monahans, Texas, to see something new.

That "something" proved to be a streamlined passenger train, no doubt the Texas Special of the Texas & Pacific Railroad (photo above), pulled by a then novel diesel locomotive ("Big and red and silver, she don't make no smoke"). Although he was five years my senior, Clark and I shared seeing what railfans call the "transition years", when steam gave way to diesel.

The clip above shows Clark in a 2011 live performance of "My Favorite Picture of You", a song about his wife, the singer, songwriter, and painter Susanna Clark, who died in 2012. This became the title song of Guy Clark's last album, and the only one to win a Grammy.

It's Spring Astronomy Day, and here's the Ring Nebula

Today (Saturday, May 14) is Spring Astronomy Day. I almost missed it. There's also a Fall Astronomy Day--this year it's Saturday, October 8--which makes sense because we see different nighttime skyscapes in spring and fall. I'm celebrating it by posting a photo of one of my favorite astronomical objects, the Ring Nebula, found in the constellation Lyra, which constellation can be seen in the night sky from here in spring.

The photo is by The Hubble Heritage Team (AURA/STScI/NASA),

April 24, 1916: a day to remember.

April 24, 1916 was Easter Monday that year. On that day members of the Irish Citizen Army, a volunteer force led by James Connolly and Patrick Pearse, took control of Dublin's General Post Office (photo) and other nearby buildings, and proclaimed a Provisional Government. British response was initially slow; Britain was embroiled in World War I, and only about 400 troops were garrisoned in or near Dublin. After reinforcements were brought in, the response was overwhelming. The GPO was recaptured, the leaders arrested, and sixteen of them were executed shortly after.

The Rising did not immediately stir the Irish people to resist British rule, which had been in place for many centuries. The executions, however, did have an effect. Michael Collins led a successful guerrilla campaign, which gained popular support, and which led to the treaty, negotiated by Collins with Winston Churchill, that led to the foundation of the Irish Republic. These events are well described in Dermot McEvoy's The 13th Apostle.

Perhaps the best known remembrance of the Easter Rising is William Butler Yeats' poem "Easter 1916", read in the video below by Tom O'Bedlam:

TBT: Merle Haggard (April 6, 1937--April 6, 2016), "Sing Me Back Home"

This, I'm sad to write, is another TBT/RIP. Merle Haggard died on his 79th birthday, Wednesday, April 6, 2016.

As the Times obit  tells it, he was a California native who spent his first few years living in an abandoned boxcar his father had fixed up during the depression years as a family home. His teens and early adulthood were marked by scrapes with the law, culminating in 1957 in his his being sent to San Quentin Prison for burglary.


He was paroled in 1960, and went on to become one of country music's most influential stars. Early on, he worked with Wynn Stewart, a Missouri native who moved to California and was the first exponent of what came to be called the "Bakersfield Sound", named for a city near the southern end of the San Joaquin Valley, north of Los Angeles. Country music from Bakersfield was more hard-edged than that coming from Nashville at the time, when Nashville was trying to broaden its appeal with what guitar wizard and producer Chet Atkins called "countrypolitan". Bakersfield music provided the roots for what in the late 1970s was called "outlaw" country, exemplified by Waylon Jennings and Willie Nelson, along with Merle.

According to the Times obit, Merle included among his influences Lefty Frizzell, who gave Merle's career a boost by inviting him onstage after hearing him sing along from the audience; Elvis Presley; Jimmie "The Yodeling Brakeman" Rodgers, considered one of the founders of modern country music; Chuck Berry; and the King of Texas Swing, Bob Wills.

He influenced many, including Waylon and Willie, and my great favorite, Gram Parsons. The song in the clip above, "Sing Me Back Home", one that Merle wrote based on a prison experience, I first heard sung by Gram with the Flying Burrito Brothers.

Goodbye, Merle. I like thinking that you, Waylon, and Ol' Possum George Jones are singing great harmony now.

Photo at the top of this post is public domain: Merle Haggard dressed for Kennedy Center Honors at the White House, December 2010.

An inauspicious opener for the Mets.

Trying to forecast a team's season from early results is chancy at best. It's widely agreed that spring training game records are meaningless. That's a good thing for this year's Mets, as theirs was miserable, although they ended with an 8-1 victory over the Cubs, who are the favorites of some pundits to win this year's World Series. If the Cubs do go all the way, it will be for the first time since the administration of William Howard Taft.

This year I didn't follow spring training very closely; I had a day job that was keeping me busy, along with the Brooklyn Heights Blog. It's just as well; I missed some embarrassing moments. This seemed to bear out what the New York Times' Tyler Kepner wrote back at the beginning of spring training, in his analysis of what could go wrong for each team. I quoted in an earlier post what he wrote about the Mets, but will repeat it here:

The starters try hard to keep the ball out of play -- to minimize the impact of the team's shaky defense -- but their 2015 workload wears them down. David Wright's spinal stenosis limits him again, and while Yoenis Cespedes struggles in center field, he hits well enough to exercise his opt-out clause and repeat his protracted free-agent dance.

 In yesterday's opening game, the Mets were fated to face the Kansas City Royals, the team that had beaten them in last year's World Series, at Royals Stadium. Hopes for revenge were high. Matt Harvey, the ace of what is regarded as the most fearsome starting rotation in the Majors, was to take the mound despite an earlier medical scare. All else seemed well.

Kepner's prediction seemed to be mostly accurate as to what happened in the opener. Perhaps it was Harvey's efforts to keep the ball out of play that contributed to his miserable start; he gave up eight hits and was tagged for three runs--a fourth was unearned because of a fielding error by, you guessed it, Cespedes--over five and two thirds innings.  Wright's throws--especially one on a grounder to third with a runner headed for home and another on a bunt--seemed less than perfect. Cespedes managed one hit and drew one walk; he scored once but did not have an RBI. Most importantly, he ended the game by swinging at an outside fastball after having dueled the Royals closer, Davis, through seven pitches. He stranded runners at third and first, with the Mets down by one.

On the bright side, the Mets bullpen was perfect, allowing no runs, one hit, and no walks over three and a third innings. Conversely, Mets batters were able to mount a rally against the Royals' pen, scoring three runs on three hits and two walks.

While this game may not have been an omen for the whole season, a loss in April counts as much as one in September.  As usual in season opening series, the teams had today off and will meet again tomorrow evening. The Mets will have Syndegaard on the mound. We can hope.

Update: the Mets are now a .500 team, thanks to a fine outing by Syndegaard, who had to work out of a couple of jams but allowed no runs, to a two run blast in the fourth by Neil Walker, and to another perfect showing by the bullpen. Oh, yes, and no errors. Downside: no scoring, apart from Walker's homer. In the seventh and eighth the Mets managed to mount scoring threats, only to leave runners stranded.

At Lent's end.

It's late on Easter Sunday. This morning The Reverend Stephen Muncie proclaimed, "Alleluia, Christ is risen!" I, along with the rest of the Grace Church congregation, responded, "He is risen indeed; alleluia!" For now, though, I'm looking back at what has just ended.

Nine years ago and again eight years ago I posted at the beginning of Lent about my state of mind entering that most profound of Christian liturgical seasons. Mostly these were about the doubts I held, both about Christian doctrine and about myself. This past December I posted at the end of Advent, noting that it had seemed more like Lent to me, reflecting as I was on the loss of friends and my own advancing age, and on the disastrous turn I saw our civic discourse taking.

As in Lents before, this year I didn't undertake any traditional "discipline" in the form of giving up something. I thought that by reading the Lenten devotions supplied by Grace Church along with the scripture readings by which they were inspired, and meditating on them I would get somewhere. After two weeks, I gave up on the devotions and scripture. I put this down to the demands of my paying work and of the Brooklyn Heights Blog. The world was too much with me.

I also attended a class, given after church service by our resident seminarian, She guided us in writing a "spiritual memoir". I didn't get far. After our first session, I managed to write this, which gives a clue as to why, besides the distractions of everyday life, I stopped reading the Lenten devotions:

In the Lenten readings, there are several passages the belittle the role or efficacy of human wisdom, e.g. 1 Corinthians 3:19 ("For the wisdom of the world is as foolishness to God" and "The Lord knows the thoughts of the wise, that they are futile.") Is wisdom or intellect futile, or even an impediment, in trying to understand God? 

As an extension of the thought above, a thread that runs through much of Christian teaching is paradox. One must lose one's life to gain it, the first shall be last, and, perhaps most fundamentally, the nature of Christ as fully human and fully divine.

The "paradox" part didn't bother me; indeed, I rather liked it. As I acknowledged in an earlier post, I have an attraction to paradox, to the tension between the known and the unknown; between, as Steve Muncie put it, "mastery and mystery." While I prize intellect and knowledge, I also cherish the quotation Steve gave me from the "born-again paradox" Anne Lamott: "“The opposite of faith is not doubt, it’s certainty.”

Image: Locus Theologicus.

Floradora: Floral and flora-inspired paintings at Art/Place Gallery, Fairfield, Connecticut.

My wife and I went to the Art/Place Gallery in Fairfield, Connecticut for the opening of the exhibition Floradora, featuring works by the painters Mollie Keller and Susanne Andover Keany. All images of artwork in this post are © Mollie Keller or © Susanne Andover Keany, and are posted here with permission.

Paintings by Mollie Keller:

Mollie is a long time friend of my wife's and, more recently, of mine. The photo above shows her standing among an array of her more recent paintings, which are in a more abstract, floral-inspired style than her earlier ones. As she wrote in her artist's statement accompanying the exhibition:

In these pictures I have traced my personal relationship with flowers. I began as a careful observer, eager to catch every line and lilt of a petal so that the viewer would really see the bloom. I moved on to more painterly portraits in which I used watercolor to convey the interplay of form and light in a blossom. And now I am using oil to capture the sensations I feel when I contemplate the particular essence of each bud.

The paintings in the photo above are, from left to right: Blossom, Kaddish for Ruth, Vine, and Kaddish for Deni.

Here's a closer view of the small painting Blossom, showing the quality of Mollie's brushwork in oil.

Here are some of Mollie's earlier works: from left, Iris, top right Nosegay, and bottom right Bluebells, all watercolor on paper.

This shows the same three paintings, along with three other of Mollie's earlier works, top to bottom: Dandelion, Chinese Lanterns, and Calla Lily; all watercolor and pencil on paper. These are examples of her more "painterly portraits".

Here are three of Mollie's more recent works: Spring (oil on canvas), top left; Overgrown (oil on paper), bottom left; and Hibiscus (oil on canvas).

These: Red Rose I, II, and III, all oil on canvas, exemplify Mollie's contemporary, highly impressionistic style.

Here is Mollie's one non-(or post) floral entry in the show: the elegant miniature Golden Fruit (ink, gouache, and gold leaf, on parchment).

Paintings by Suzanne Andover Keany:

Suzaanne Andover Keany, whom I met for the first time at the exhibit, works in what, on the surface, seems a very naturalistic style. The paintings above are, from left to right: Amaryllis, Wish I Was There, and Before the Rain (all oil on canvas). Her artist's statement includes the following:

Painting is a surprising journey...All the literary meanings come into play. Flowers greet us and send us off. They mark our journey. They celebrate love and commemorate grief. They are everywhere for everyone.

Painting for me is a luxury, a dialogue with what is.

Here are four of her tempera on paper studies, Clockwise from bottom left: Blooming, Busy Lizzie, Close Up, and Spring.

Here are two of Ms. Keany's oil on canvas paintings that include other than floral elements: Valentine (left), that has shells along with a long-stemmed rose, and For Georgia, an homage to Georgia O'Keefe, who incorporated cattle skulls and feathers as well as flowers in her works.

Floradora will remain open through Sunday, March 27, 2016. If you're in or near Fairfield, or can get there, I recommend it highly.

Pontius Pilate: arch-villain, fall guy, or saint?

This year I volunteered, as I have done for some years, to participate in the Passion reading at the Palm Sunday service at Grace Church. Last year I was Narrator (effectively St. Mark, from whose gospel the reading was taken), which meant I had more lines than anyone else. This year the reading was taken from Luke, and I was given the role of Pontius Pilate.

"Not the most appealing of characters," I thought. At least I had more than one or two lines. This got me to thinking about the enigmatic character of Pilate. The image above, by Giotto de Bondone (1266-1337), shows him looking devious--note the averted eyes--but also weak, as indicated by his soft, fleshy features. No one who didn't see Pilate in the flesh knows what he looked like; there are no surviving portraits, drawings, or sculptures from life, if indeed any ever were made. Giotto's fresco comports with the accounts in the gospels, which describe Pilate as vacillating, initially appearing to sympathize with Jesus, although willing to have him flogged before releasing him, but later yielding to the demands of the crowd and ordering him crucified.

To most contemporary Christians that yielding and that order cements Pilate's characterization as a Very Bad Guy. I remembered, though, having read that Coptic Christians in Africa consider him a saint. The Biblical Archaeology Society gives an account of how this came to be. St. Augustine of Hippo, an African, believed Pilate to have been a convert to Christianity. Pilate's washing of his hands and declaring himself "innocent of this man's blood" (Matthew 27:24) is seen as a parallel to Jesus' sacrifice washing away the sins of humanity. Pilate's wife was also canonized in the African and Greek Orthodox churches on the basis of her message to Pilate, reported in Matthew 27:19, that he should not harm Jesus because "I have suffered a great deal because of a dream about him."

Some biblical scholars have argued that the quasi-sympathetic portrayal of Pilate in the gospels is a result of the gospel authors' seeking to shift the blame for Jesus' crucifixion from Roman authority to the Jews. This was because, at the time the gospels were written, Christianity, which initially had been a sect within Judaism, was beginning to separate itself from its Jewish origin and was seeking Roman approval, or at least a measure of tolerance. The starkest indication of this is in Matthew 27:24-25, where Pilate washes his hands, declares his innocence, and gets the response, "His blood is on us and on our children." For many centuries, it was Christian doctrine that the "us" in that statement meant all of the Jewish people, at least apart from the few who were Jesus' disciples or followers. This was the basis for many centuries' persecution of Jews in pogroms and ultimately in the Holocaust, although the latter also had non-religious origins. On October 28, 1965 Pope Paul VI promulgated Nostra aetate ("In Our Times"), a declaration of the Second Vatican Council that the Jewish people as a whole, including all Jews living since the time of Jesus, were innocent of Jesus' death.

The vilification of Pilate appears to have begun with the conversion of the Roman Empire to Christianity, and a concomitant desire to break with Rome's earlier paganism, to which Pilate bore allegiance. It has been years since I read (in translation) Dante's Inferno, and I was curious to recall where in the circles of hell the poet placed Pilate. As it turns out, Dante nowhere mentions Pilate by name in the Inferno, or anywhere else in the Divine Comedy except in Canto XX of Purgatorio, where Dante calls Phillip IV of France "the new Pilate" for his having delivered Pope Boniface VIII to his enemies. There is an ambiguous reference in Inferno Canto III, where Dante sees the vestibule of hell to which the uncommitted--those who did not choose between good and evil--are condemned. Here he sees "the shadow of that man who out of cowardice made the great refusal." Some readers have interpreted this to refer to Pilate, whose "great refusal" was not to defy the crowd's demands to crucify Jesus. Others think it refers to Pope Celestine V, whose abdication of the Papacy led to the accession of Boniface VIII (the same mentioned in Purgatorio XX), whose policies led to Dante's being exiled from his native Florence.

Consideration of Pilate's nature brought me to an uncomfortable realization. In an earlier post, I noted that the then Episcopal Bishop of Alabama had joined other prominent local Protestant, Catholic, and Jewish clergy in calling on Dr. Martin Luther King, then jailed in Birmingham, to call off the peaceful demonstrations against segregation and for civil rights that he led. Reading that letter, with its calls for moderation and patience, I realized that, had I been in the position of that bishop at that time, I would have been strongly tempted to sign the letter. While my heart was on the side of those demonstrating for justice, my inclination has always been to avoid confrontation where possible, and not to alienate those in power, in the hope that in time they can be persuaded to do the right thing. What would I have done had I been in Pilate's position? Could I have mustered the courage to defy the crowd? Can I find that courage now?

Addendum: see John Wirenius on Pilate.

TBT: Black 47, "Livin' in America"; happy St. Patrick's Day!

I got to know Larry Kirwan (photo) in 1978 when he and Pierce Turner, as Turner and Kirwan of Wexford, were the house band at the Bells of Hell. The clip below is of their live performance of Larry's song "Livin' in America" at the Hudson Valley Irish Fest in Peekskill, New York. The song is by Black 47, a band Larry put together in 1980 and which I once described, with some poetic license, as "traditional Irish thrash metal hip hop punk," which is to say, I loved it. They disbanded on amicable terms last year. The song is about two Irish (legal) immigrants living in New York in the 1980s, before Ireland's economy took off, luring many back, only to be disappointed after 2008. He (Larry) works in construction; she (Mary Courtney) as a nanny. One of the things I love about this song is that the tune is that of the great Irish rebel song "The Foggy Dew":
:

Tomorrow (St. Patrick's Day), I'll be at B.B. King's to hear Larry and a partial reunion of Black 47, along with David Amram and others. I'm looking forward to a great evening.

 Photo: by Wes Washington (Own work) [CC BY-SA 3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

Sir George Martin (1926-2016), Brian Wilson, and "God Only Knows".

I wanted to do a TBT about Sir George Martin, who died last week, but responsibilities to work, family, and the Brooklyn Heights Blog got in the way. My natural first impulse was to use something he'd done with the Beatles, since his career was so intertwined with theirs. In the Rolling Stone piece linked above, Sir George is quoted as saying he had initial doubts about the four Liverpudlian lads, but that one of the things that impressed him was that "there was more than one person singing." There were harmony vocals in doo-wop and girl group pop at the time, but straight ahead rock, with the exception of the Everly Brothers, was dominated by solo singers.

I was delighted to discover the clip below, which documents a meeting of Sir George and Brian Wilson of the Beach Boys. Sir George credits the Beach Boys as an influence on the Beatles; surely there was a complementary one in the opposite direction. The Beach Boys' early work was built on Chuck Berry riffs and vocal harmonies from quartets like The Four Freshmen, whose music today would be classified as "easy listening". The Beatles were influenced by Berry (they covered "Roll Over Beethoven") and other American rock and rockabilly stars, but also by skiffle--the Beatles grew out of a skiffle group led by John Lennon called the Quarrymen--and by something that didn't come to the fore until Sgt. Pepper, the British music hall tradition.
. In the video, Brian begins the conversation by talking about songwriting; about how songs seem to burst from his chest. Then they repair from the piano to the mixing board, where Sir George plays with the knobs, first reducing the song "God Only Knows" to its bare essential: Brian's vocal. Sir George then plays with the knobs some more, adding bits back in and changing the balance, until he creates a mix that Brian credits as better than the one that was used on the Beach Boys' most critically acclaimed album, Pet Sounds.

Oh, and I do love Sir George's early 1960s red Caddy convertible.

Photo: By Adamsharp (Own work) [CC BY-SA 3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

The Arc of American Advertising

As a leading edge member of the baby boom generation, I've been witness to how the dominant themes of advertising have changed over the course of my long (I'll be 70 in a week and a half) life. It has followed an arc largely defined by my "pig in the python" generation, though with some deviations aimed at older and younger cohorts. Here are my observations:

1950s to mid 1960s: ads were aimed at my parents' ("The Greatest") generation. The basic theme was, "If you use our product, your family will adore you, and your neighbors will turn green with envy."

Late 1960s through early 1970s: my generation reached puberty and beyond. Ad message: "If you use our product, you will be attractive to the opposite sex, and maybe even get laid" (or, if you don't, vice versa).  There was an undertone of "If you use our competitors' products, you will be perceived as queer." (I'm thinking of Camel Filters ads circa 1970-71: "Do you have any of those oval cigarettes?")

Late 1970s through 1980s: my generation graduated, got jobs, got married, got kids, got mortgages. Ad message: "If you don't use our product, you will fail in your career." (Think of the Hertz "Not Exactly" ads: "'Still expecting that promotion, Jones?' 'Not exactly.'")

1990s: "If you use our product, you will prosper and enjoy a comfortable retirement, and your car will make neighbors and old friends turn green with envy."

Today: "If you use our product, your digestive system will function properly, and you can still get laid (but watch out for those side effects)."