tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-77214681406636614872024-03-20T00:16:44.485-07:00Look Read ListenLook, Read, Listen concerns itself with reviews, thoughts and musings on art, music and other cultural spheres.Andrew K. F. Amelinckxhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03625189659258963004noreply@blogger.comBlogger45125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7721468140663661487.post-55659971899691669042016-12-02T09:52:00.001-08:002016-12-02T11:59:55.752-08:00One Man's Quest for Spiritual Fulfillment and the Rise of Islam in America <div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><i>Editors Note: I first wrote about Alexander Russell Webb and his work to bring Islam to the United States back in 2009 for the Register Star and later expanded on the subject in 2012 for Columbia County History and Heritage magazine. The following is adapted from the latter. I felt in the current climate of Islamophobia it was worth highlighting the nation's historical view of that religion and of the man who helped spread its message at the turn of the century. </i></span></div>
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<span class="s1">Alexander Russell Webb felt the sun on his face and listened to the birds chirping, glad to be out of Sunday school. Even then, just a young boy, he felt closer to God out of doors than in the stuffy confines of the church.</span><span class="s2"><sup></sup></span></div>
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This restlessness of both body and spirit would lead Webb from Hudson, New York, where he was born in 1846, to Chicago, the frontier towns of Missouri, and later to more exotic locales. It would also take him on a spiritual journey from his staid Presbyterian upbringing to a total embrace of Islam, which he would help spread across America. And although he may not have known it, the city of his birth, by dint of time and place, may have planted the seeds that led him to his faith.<br />
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<span class="s1">As a youth he was not inclined toward religion and by his twenties had completely given up on the church and was a self-proclaimed “materialist” whose only compass was the Golden Rule: do unto others as you would have them do unto you.</span><span class="s2"><sup></sup></span><br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Hudson, N.Y. about the time Webb was born there. </td></tr>
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His break with the church apparently came after the loss of his first wife and destruction of his jewelry business in the Great Chicago Fire of 1871. Webb had moved to the city after graduating from Claverack College. Webb, like so many other young men of his generation, had left the East and headed to the wild and bustling cities of the Midwest to seek his fortune. <span class="s1"></span></div>
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After the fire he moved to New York City before again returning to Chicago where he eventually made enough money to buy a small newspaper, the<i> Unionville Republican</i>, located in Unionville, Mo. Webb’s journalistic interests were likely due to his father’s influence. Alexander Nelson Webb had been the editor of the <i>Hudson Daily Star</i> for years. <span class="s1"></span></div>
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<span class="s1">The younger Webb would eventually find himself drawn to a spiritual life and sought this out by reading such writers and philosophers as John Stuart Mill, Immanuel Kant, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel and Aldous Huxley. Webb found their theories, explanations and conclusions on spirituality wanting. His studies of Buddhism, Theosophy and Christianity likewise left him feeling unfulfilled.</span><span class="s2"><sup></sup></span></div>
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<span class="s1">While working as the editor of the<i> Missouri Republican</i> in St. Louis, Webb began corresponding with Hazrat Mirza Ghulam Ahmad, the founder of a Muslim community in India. There is some dispute on when exactly Webb converted, but by the late 1880s when Webb was consul general to Manilla, in the Philippines, he was publicly calling himself a Muslim and corresponding with a number of Islamic scholars in India.</span><span class="s2"><sup></sup></span></div>
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<span class="s1">President Grover Cleveland appointed Webb to the position as consul in 1887 during Cleveland’s first administration. Webb left the job five years later to travel in India in order to further study Islam. </span><span class="s1" style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">His second wife, Ella, and their three children went with him. </span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">Webb would later say of his conversion that it “was not the result of misguided sentiment, blind credulity, or sudden emotional impulse, but it was born of earnest, honest, persistent, unprejudiced study and investigation and an intense desire to know the truth.” </span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">He believed that Islam was “the best and only system adapted to the spiritual needs of the humanity.”</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">Webb never publicly addressed, what, if any, influence his hometown played in his quest for spiritual fulfillment, but the fact remains that Columbia County and its environs, especially Western New York, was a hotbed of religious fervor when he was growing up. Umar F. Abd-Allah in his 2006 book, “A Muslim in Victorian America,” believes that this era which saw an upswing of Christian off-shoots come to the fore may have played a part in Webb’s later embracing of the Muslim faith.</span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;"> </span><span class="s1"></span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">“There is no question that the religious ambiance of the times helped form the attitudes and expectations that guided Webb through life,” he wrote.</span><span class="s1"></span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">In Columbia County, besides Roman Catholics and a number of protestant denominations, there were also the Shakers and Quakers, while in Western New York, during this period known as “the Second Great Awakening” there were a slew of new religious movements that sprang up. Known as the “Burned-Over District” so often had it been swept by religious fervor, the area was home to the Mormons, tent revivals, the Oneida Community — which practiced a form of free love — the Millerites, who believed the end of the world was nigh (the original 1843 date was incorrect and the end was pushed back a few times), and the followers of Jemima Wilkinson who believed she was the reincarnation of Christ in female form, to name a few of the spiritual and religious groups that came from this well-spring.</span><span class="s1"></span></div>
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<span class="s1">Webb’s spiritual rebirth was completed in India and he soon longed to return to America to proselytize. With the backing of a group of influential Muslim leaders in India, Webb set off from Bombay in December 1892 and was soon back in New York. </span></div>
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<span class="s1">In Manhattan he established a weekly journal “to be dedicated to an exposition of Islam,” according to The New York Times. He also had plans for founding a publishing company.</span></div>
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<span class="s1">Back in the U.S., Webb was shocked by the lack of knowledge Americans had of Islam. </span></div>
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<span class="s1">“Since my return…I have been greatly surprised, not only at the general ignorance prevalent among so-called learned people regarding the life, character and teachings of the [Muhammad],” he wrote, “but also at the self-confident readiness and facility with which some of these same people express their opinions of Mohammed and the Islamic system.”</span></div>
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<span class="s1">Three months after he arrived in New York City the first copy of his “Moslem World” came out and although the journal would later fold, Webb would continue to promote Islam in America by writing, publishing and lecturing on his faith until his death in Rutherford, N.J. on Oct. 1, 1916.</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">Webb’s long quest for spiritual fulfillment spanned many years and took him to distant lands. But it was likely his early life in Hudson during a flowering of religious expression that provided him with the openness of spirit that helped lead him to what he had so fervently desired. </span><br />
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<span style="text-align: center;"><b>Sources and Notes</b></span><br />
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Abd-Allah, Umar F. <i>A Muslim in Victorian America: The Life of Alexander Russell Webb</i> (New York: Oxford University Press, 2006). Pgs. 27-28.<br />
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<span class="s1"><i>Islam - Our Choice</i> (Karachi:Begum Aisha Bawani Wakf, 1970).</span><br />
<span class="s1">Webb, Alexander R. <i>Islam in America</i> (New York, 1893).</span><br />
<span class="s1">Some information was taken from the transcript of a speech given by Nadirah Florence Ives Osman at a meeting of Muslims held in Steinway Hall, New York, in November 1943</span><br />
<span class="s1">There seems to be some disagreement on when exactly Webb became a Muslim. A letter from 1886 seems to indicate he was already following the tenants of the religion, but other sources have Webb self-declaring his faith publicly around 1889.</span><br />
For more on Western New York's religious past see John H. Martin’s wonderful “Saints, Sinners and Reformers: The Burned-Over District Re-Visited” from the Fall 2005 edition of The Crooked Lake Review.<br />
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</style>Andrew K. F. Amelinckxhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03625189659258963004noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7721468140663661487.post-91564956287626578682016-11-06T08:14:00.001-08:002016-11-06T08:23:03.627-08:00"Hitler and Trump: A Scary Comparison" by Dan Udell <br />
<i><br />I've decided to do something I've never done before on Look, Read, Listen and venture into the political arena by publishing an op-ed from my friend Dan Udell. </i><br />
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<i>I met Dan and his lovely wife, Mary, about a decade ago </i><i>when I was a reporter in Columbia County, NY, and soon realized that if there was a social/political/environmental issue being publicly discussed, it was guaranteed Dan and Mary would be there fighting the good fight. I</i><i> love that he and Mary not only espouse progressive views but live their beliefs. Unfortunately, my former newspaper decided against running this piece on their opinion page so I'm doing my small part by publishing it here. </i></div>
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<i>Now in his 80s, Dan provides a long view on both life and politics. As he says, he's lived through everything from the Great Depression to the election of our first African American president, so he can speak with an authority on our current election unlike most pundits who can't bring the same breadth of experience to bear in their views. </i><br />
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<b>Hitler and Trump: A Scary Comparison</b></h2>
Being in the Octogenarian’s Club, we have had the privilege of witnessing some of the most momentous events in our country’s history: the Great Depression, WWII, the Atomic Bomb, Moon Landing, the creation of Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, Watergate, the Voting Right Act, School Desegregation and the election of the first African American, Barack Obama, as President of the United States.</div>
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But that is nothing compared to World War II in our nation’s ability to come together -- to defeat Nazi and Japanese militaristic aggression. The threat was very real, and the outcome uncertain. In the early 1940s, our ships carrying needed supplies to England — the only surviving European nation — were being sunk right outside our harbors by U-Boats. All discretionary U.S. manufacturing was stopped and diverted to building thousands of tanks, planes and ships every week — assembled in large measure by our able-bodied female population. General Eisenhower went on to command the largest amphibious invasion in the history of the world at Normandy. That was the beginning of the end for Nazism. </div>
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The lesson of that war, which we need to reflect upon today, is how Hitler was able to take a highly advanced and cultured nation like Germany and turn it into a hideous war machine. Populism and nationalism were on the rise, and Germany was suffering under crushing inflation, which was wiping out savings and tearing at the economy. Hitler’s evil genius was to invent an enemy, the Jews of Europe, which he could blame for all the country’s ills. And to literally wipe out anyone who did not fit the ideal Ayran (read German) mold: Gypsies, Jews, “inferior races,” and most anyone mentally or physically challenged. It was basically a “Make Germany Great Again,” philosophy. And its success depended on three major factors: An anxious, low information population looking for easy answers; a Hitler-directed campaign of hate directed at the above elements in the population; and as Edmund Burke once said, "The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing."<br />
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Fast forward 80 years. The stage is eerily similar. Populism and nationalism are again on the rise. People are looking for easy and quick answers. It’s each country for itself, consequences be damned. Look at how the U.K. has shot itself in the foot by leaving the European Union with BREXIT. </div>
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Donald Trump is, frankly, following many of Hitler’s crowd-rousing techniques. First is “Make America Great Again,” which is taken right out of Hitler’s appeal to anxious Germans in the 1930s. Then, there is antagonism and hatred against Mexicans, Syrian refugees, people of color, the physically and mentally challenged. Even disparaging remarks about women who don’t measure up to an Aryan ideal. And he is offering quick solutions for all the country’s ills. It’s basically the argument of Hitler in the 1930s: Let me take over and I, and I alone, will solve all the country’s problems. Those are the pronouncements of a dictator.</div>
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So the issue for everyone entering a voting booth next Tuesday is not to examine the latest string of accusations between candidates, but to look realistically at what’s going on in the world and the country and who can lead us through it. Not just to cover it over with bluster, but to lead. <br />
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Hillary’s motto is “Stronger Together,” which is an inclusive philosophy, and it’s just what we did, nationally and internationally, in the 1940s to win World War II. Right now, there is a movement in the world toward xenophobia, and the world is looking at us to lead the way back to sanity. The answer is to work with our international partners. We need them, and they need to trust us.</div>
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And nationally, we think Hillary has developed a broader view of what needs to be done to solve our country’s internal challenges because of her contest with Bernie Sanders. Finally, as Bernie has said, “Enough of your XXXX emails.” Yes, she admitted that setting up a personal email server was a mistake and she apologized. So, Hillary has shown that she can change. And we think that is the most important characteristic for a President of the United States. Take a measured view of the challenges ahead and work with our partners in the House and Senate to achieve solutions, not to cling naively to an exclusionary ideology. </div>
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But we know one thing will be constant, and that is her untiring efforts over the years to give all of our children a better, brighter future. And we are sure that she and her good friend, Michelle Obama will continue these efforts over the next four years. </div>
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We are voting for Hillary next Tuesday!</div>
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Dan and Mary Udell<br />
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Andrew K. F. Amelinckxhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03625189659258963004noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7721468140663661487.post-15954007396290766382015-10-30T06:03:00.003-07:002015-10-30T06:03:50.391-07:00My book "Gilded Age Murder & Mayhem in the Berkshires" is now available from Arcadia Publishing/The History Press. Fourteen heart-pounding true crime stories from between 1870 and 1911 await! Check it out <a href="https://www.arcadiapublishing.com/9781626197985/Gilded-Age-Murder--Mayhem-in-the-Berkshires">here</a>.<br />
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Andrew K. F. Amelinckxhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03625189659258963004noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7721468140663661487.post-71886286011971176852014-08-03T06:42:00.001-07:002014-08-03T06:42:32.791-07:00I'm happy to announce I'll be having my book about murder and mayhem in
the Gilded Age Berkshires (1870-early 1900s) published by the History
Press. Look for it in the fall of 2015. I'll update readers on my
progress as it moves along. Andrew K. F. Amelinckxhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03625189659258963004noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7721468140663661487.post-44356541641164106802014-04-26T06:02:00.000-07:002014-04-26T06:28:27.965-07:00Wind, Some Rain, the Hot Sun: An Interview with John Darnielle of The Mountain Goats<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<i><span style="font-size: small;">Editor's Note: This is the unedited email interview with John Darnielle, the man behind the band The Mountain Goats, and sometimes the only member of the band. This interview was used for a story that originally appeared in The Berkshire Eagle on April 17, 2014. </span></i><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;"> Amelinckx: When you finish writing a song do you have an idea of how you plan to approach the recording process -- just you and your guitar or lusher arrangements, (drums, backing vocal, cello, piano, etc.). </span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">Darnielle: I'm usually not thinking of arrangements when I write - if I am, it's only if I'm thinking "this one should remain somewhat skeletal." These days, though, I'll sometimes sketch out some </span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">other instrumental ideas in the demo - a second guitar line, or a small keyboard idea. Once I've got the songs together then I start thinking about what other textures might complement the songs - woodwinds, strings, and so on. We flesh out the basics, the drums/bass/me stuff, when we get together to rehearse, usually - though Peter sometimes overdubs bass ideas onto the original demo I send him & then sends it back to me for feedback.</span><br />
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Amelinckx: In a related vein, are there certain songs you prefer to play/ don’t like playing when you go on the road solo or with the rest of the band.<br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">Darnielle: The songs take on such different...not "moods," but "aspects," I guess, when I play them solo - I can get looser with tempo, and be more improvisatory with dynamics (which sounds very high-minded but what I mean is "I can get real quiet if it feels like the right move and I won't be acting unilaterally in a group context"). It's really fun and interesting to see how a song feels when I take away everything but the chords and the words and the vocal melody, especially if it's already spent a lot of time getting played in the trio format. Some songs it becomes a real challenge, when there's an especially strong drum part, say - "Sax Rohmer #1," for example. But meeting that challenge solo is really fun and rewarding.</span><br />
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Amelinckx: When you perform do you feel forced to play certain songs because you know fans really want to hear them? <span style="font-size: large;"> </span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: large;">Darnielle: Well, there's a few songs that I know everybody wants to hear - not a huge number, maybe three or four - but that's an honor, really. I saw Lou Reed in 1986 and he gave a spiel about how he never got sick of playing "Walk on the Wild Side" because he loved knowing that there was a song everybody in the room wanted to hear, and that stuck with me - I can legitimately say that I enjoy "This Year" every time we play it. Although I don't feel like it works as well solo and of the three or four Mountain Goats "standards," it's the one I usually bench in solo sets...Peter's bass line is a huge huge part of that song. </span><br />
<br />
Amelinckx: I once saw a Dylan show in the early 90s where you could tell he was just burning through his hits without any heart, but then completely shifted gears when he played his newer stuff. Do you still enjoy playing your older material?<br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: large;">Darnielle: I do - I'll say that it does take some work, sometimes, some diligence, to make sure I'm connecting with the song - but when that happens, we all know it, and we talk about it, and then we give the song a rest for a tour or two. But I don't tour nearly as hard as Dylan. Dylan is a tour monster who goes out for months at a time, huge worldwide tours, and I'm sure that when that old stuff was new, he played it literally hundreds of times. He's in a bind, really, anybody that big is, because he's pretty much obligated to play the big big old songs or people will be mad since they paid a lot to get in, but how can you connect with a song you've been playing 200 times a year for thirty years? The Dead benched "Dark Star" for a number of years, I consider them the model of how to keep the set fresh even if it means nobody gets to hear "St Stephen" for a while.</span><br />
<br />
Amelinckx: Certain images and themes float through your work -- animal, ghosts, cold water -- what draws you to them?<span style="font-size: large;"> </span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: large;">Darnielle: It's really hard to say - weather, too, I'm always having some wind or some rain, or hot sun - I try not to interrogate my inspirations too hard but just let them work it out for themselves. </span><br />
<br />
Amelinckx: With We Shall All Be Healed and The Sunset Tree you moved into autobiographical material. Was it a surprise to you how listeners responded to more personal material? <br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: large;">Darnielle: It was a huge surprise. I was really nervous, especially on The Sunset Tree - it was pretty raw. But that opened up whole new avenues of writing for me, really - it made the story songs I make up more personal, put me in touch with something in myself. It was like a system reboot for me as a songwriter, really - I think of the stuff before that as stuff from a different age. </span><br />
<br />
Amelinckx: Do you prefer making up stories with your lyrics or going to that well of your own life?<br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: large;">Darnielle: I mean, at this point, there's a sort of synthesis for me - when I'm telling a story, I feel like it's also necessarily somehow about me, somewhere - if not directly, then in spirit, you know? It's not really either/or. </span><br />
<br />
Amelinckx: Born in the Midwest, growing up in California, and now living in the South, in North Carolina, have the places you lived at all influenced your approach to music? I grew up in Louisiana and when I go back home there is a brief period of adjustment and then I find myself slowing down, the way I talk, even move. Has the South changed you at all?<br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: large;">Darnielle: Sure, I assume so. But I am not super reflective about what I'm like, how I'm changing - that's really for others to say. I think my work's gotten a lot better since I moved down here ten years ago, that I'm just a more diligent, more honest writer. I feel like you have to put some of that down to the people around me, and the cycle of the seasons being something I connect to (I happen to love the miserable summers, can't get enough), and the terrain. </span><br />
<br />
Amelinckx: Has fatherhood changed your outlook on life, specifically the life of a touring musician?<br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: large;">Darnielle: It is harder to leave for tour. I fly home a few times during longer tours. That's the main thing. I try not to make any broad philosophical observations on fatherhood - I've only been a dad for two years, I don't figure that short amount of time is enough to really say what's changed about how I look at life generally. It's made me more aware that I'll die, though - this I think is Goth Dad's destiny, to think about how, when you become a parent, that means that somebody you will no longer be around to be a parent any more. It makes me want to fill my days with good work, I have become more aware of time.</span><br />
<br />
Amelinckx: It seems in much of your early work the songs have an instantaneous or conversational feel about them, without a ton of revision and that your newer work is in a sense a completed thought, fully formed, a paragraph rather than a single sentence. Has age, time, affected your approach to making music in the sense that as we get older there is a tendency to not just blurt things out, but rather approach things in a more measured way?<br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: large;">Darnielle: Well, I think my aesthetic priorities changed a lot - the very early stuff, spontaneous expression was a huge value for me - although it was more revised than it sounded, some of those lyrics took a lot of work to sound tossed-off. I'm a better musician now than I used to be, and with that comes a feeling of awe for how melody and lyric sort of elevate one another into this one-of-a-kind style of expression - but I still write pretty quickly, I've just gotten better at it. </span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: small;">Amelinckx: Was it a challenge going from writing songs to writing a novel? (Darnielle's novel "Wolf in White Van" is soon to be released). Was it difficult to sustain the writing process over weeks/months? Has writing the novel influenced your songwriting?</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: large;">Darnielle: Too early to say on that last question. I was writing prose before I wrote songs - when I was a teenager, I wrote short stories all the time, it was my heart's desire to become a science fiction short story writer. I think the energy feeds from the songs to the prose - that sense of play, like when I'm writing a song how I'm not thinking "this has to be good" but just following ideas that seem cool to me - that's something I tried to remember always while working on the book. </span><br />
<br />
Photo credit: Steven Keys and KeysPhotography.com<br />
<br />Andrew K. F. Amelinckxhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03625189659258963004noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7721468140663661487.post-54478366753353362562014-01-18T06:29:00.001-08:002014-01-18T06:30:40.814-08:00Righting a Wrong: The Civil War, Stolen Documents, and a History Sleuth <i>Editor's note: A version of this story originally ran in The Berkshire Eagle </i><br />
<div class="style18">
<br />
The court document
ordered tobacco farmer Robert Ashby Jr. to pay the local mercantile 3
pounds he owed, plus a fine of 79 pounds of tobacco.</div>
<div class="style18">
It was dated 1753. And it was issued in Stafford, Virginia.</div>
<div class="style18">
So how that document and another one dated some 20 years later ended up in an attic in South Worthington in 2005 was puzzling.</div>
<div class="style18">
<img align="right" src="http://www.focusnewspaper.com/images/images/body_images/features_columns/12.19.13/Bresnick.jpg" height="168" hspace="10" vspace="10" width="252" />Dr.
George Bresnick was digging through ``the proverbial old trunk in the
attic’’ at a neighbor’s South Worthington home when he stumbled across
the documents.</div>
``They had absolutely nothing to do with
the other papers,’’ said Bresnick, an ophthalmologist who now resides in
St. Paul, Minn. ``I was confused for a while.’’
<br />
<div class="style18">
After some research, Bresnick came up
with the only reasonable explanation: They were stolen by Union forces
from Western Massachusetts during the Civil War.</div>
<div class="style18">
And now he plans to return them to where they belong.</div>
<div class="style18">
It was November 1862 and Union forces,
including the 37th Regiment, Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry, which had
been mustered in Pittsfield earlier that year, were occupying the town
of Stafford, Va., as part of the Fredericksburg campaign.</div>
<div class="style18">
The area around Stafford was overrun by
130,000 Union troops and the once pristine woods were decimated by the
force for housing, defensive fortifications and heating. Farmland was
torn up, homes were looted, and fences ripped out.</div>
<div class="style18">
The county courthouse in Stafford
received similar maltreatment as the locals’ homes, two thirds of the
county’s records, which likely dated back to the 1660s, were ``burned,
stolen or scattered,’’ Bresnick said.</div>
<div class="style18">
He believes the documents were taken as
souvenirs by Pvt. John D. Smith, a West Chesterfield resident who had
enlisted with the 37th and would later be killed during the Battle of
The Wilderness in 1864. Bresnick surmises that Smith sent the papers
home and they ended up in the trunk in the attic of an old Methodist
Episcopal parsonage that had once belonged to a Smith descendant.</div>
<div class="style18">
<img align="left" src="http://www.focusnewspaper.com/images/images/body_images/features_columns/12.19.13/Documents.jpg" height="220" hspace="10" vspace="10" width="180" />Back
in 2005, Bresnick and his wife were living in the village of South
Worthington, across the road from the old parsonage where an elderly
woman resided. He helped go through the neighbor’s home after her death
and that’s when he discovered the legal documents. They, along with
everything else in the house, ended up with an antiques dealer. Bresnick
later bought the documents, along with many others related to
Chesterfield and Worthington, for $100.</div>
<div class="style18">
<span class="style20">One of the documents, dated 1776</span></div>
<div class="style18">
Eventually, he came up with a plan to return the documents from whence they came, in order, he said, to ``right a wrong.’’</div>
<div class="style18">
According to Bresnick, there are both
``practical effects’’ of the loss of Stafford’s courthouse records, the
inability to verify a deed on a property before 1862, for instance , and
the psychological effect that comes with the loss of written records
that help tell the story of Stafford’s history.</div>
<div class="style18">
Bresnick’s plan was two-fold. He traveled to Washington, D.C., in November to hand over the
papers to U.S. Rep. Richard Neal, D-Springfield, who in a symbolic
gesture gave the documents to Rep. Rob Wittman, R-Va.</div>
<div class="style18">
``For documents that were clearly removed
from their place of origin to be returning after more than a hundred
years, it’s certainly symbolic,’’ Neal said. ``History has an interest
in seeing these artifacts, and I think it speaks well (of Bresnick), who
wants to really respect these documents by returning them to the people
of Stafford, Va.’’</div>
<div class="style18">
Neal, besides being a congressman, is a
professor who lectures in history and journalism at the University of
Massachusetts-Amherst. He told The Eagle he was interested in seeing
these documents returned ``in the context of their importance to
history.’’</div>
<div class="style18">
The congressman said that people contact
his office on a regular basis ``looking to reconnect with things from
the past. Sometimes it’s about a memorial, an event or a place. This is
something different.’’</div>
<div class="style18">
A day after Bresnick’s meeting
with the two congressman, he presented the documents to Barbara
Decatur, the Stafford County clerk of court, at a ceremony at the
courthouse in Stafford. The documents now permanently grace the
courthouse walls.</div>
<div class="style18">
``I’m happy (the documents) are going back to their home,’’ Bresnick said.</div>
<div class="style18">
The two legal documents that were found
in an old trunk in South Worthington were believed stolen from the
courthouse in Stafford, Va., by Union troops during the Fredricksburg
campaign of the Civil War.</div>
<div class="style18">
The first document, dated 1753, is a
court order informing the sheriff of Stafford County to bring a tobacco
farmer named Robert Ashby Jr. (c.1720-c.1780) to the courthouse for a
hearing that May. Ashby owed the mercantile firm of Patrick and William
Bogle a little more than 3 pounds, likely from a past due store account.
The court ordered Ashby to cough up the 3 pounds along with a hefty
court fine of 79 pounds of tobacco. If he didn’t pay, the court could
then order Ashby’s personal property sold to pay the debt.</div>
<div class="style18">
The second document was a promissory note
dated Feb. 24, 1776, obligating Joel Reddish (c. 1748-1826), to pay 11
pounds, four shillings, six pence, half-penny on a loan from James
Ritchie & Co. of Glasgow, Scotland. According to Bresnick, Ritchie
was one of the ``Tobacco Lords’’ of Glasgow who imported tobacco from
the colonies and sold it in Europe. The company was also in the business
of loaning money to farmers in order to get their tobacco crop into the
ground. Reddish was a Virginia tobacco farmer who had taken a loan out
with the company.</div>
Andrew K. F. Amelinckxhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03625189659258963004noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7721468140663661487.post-48167015826931386392014-01-05T06:52:00.000-08:002014-01-05T06:52:21.860-08:00History is a Funny Thing: A book review of "The Men Who United the States."<i>Editor's note: This review first appeared in the Dec. 8, 2013 edition of the Berkshire Eagle. </i><br />
<br />
History is a funny thing. What may start as fact often becomes clouded by fancy and the personages whose names still
trip off the tongue today may overshadow the true heroes whose names have been wiped clean, if they were ever there at all,
from the popular imagination.
<br />
<br />
In
Simon
Winchester
's newest book, "The Men Who United the States," the author tells the story of America through its "connective tissue"
and introduces, or reintroduces, the many obscure and half- forgotten men who helped unite the country via exploration, road,
canal, and railroad building, electric generation, the radio, television and the Internet.
<br />
<br />
While the more famous folks, Thomas Jefferson and Thomas Edison, for example, do get their due, the book's focus remains
on the lesser known men whose work helped unite the country.
<br />
<br />
The narrative structure of this unique retelling of America's history by the British- born best selling author, and
recently naturalized U. S. citizen, is held together via the five Chinese elements - wood, earth, water, fire and metal -
corresponding to early exploration, geology, canal building, locomotives and other mechanized transportation and the telegraph,
telephone and other electronic communication.
<br />
<br />
He did something similar in his last book, "Atlantic: Great Sea Battles, Heroic Discoveries, Titanic Storms, and a Vast
Ocean of a Million Stories," in which he uses the "Seven Ages of Man" monologue from William Shakespeare's "As You Like It"
as a framework.
<br />
<br />
In
Winchester
's able hands, the stories of these pioneers - many considered cranks and misfits - and their contributions provide
a lesser traveled journey through the country's past without losing sight of the bigger picture.
<br />
<br />
It should be noted the title does not lie and that the book almost exclusively looks at men's achievements. Sacagawea,
who helped guide the Lewis and Clark expedition across the West in the early 1800s is the only woman who gets much of a mention
in the book, something
Winchester
said he knew he would get some grief for, but that "It has to be
accepted, like it or not, that most of those [connections]
were created by men."
<br />
<br />
Winchester
's personal reminiscences that dot the book's pages provide nice
counterpoints to the main stories, by connecting historical
moments to the present, uniting themes, giving resonance to particular
ideas.
<br />
<br />
One of the most touching of these is a story he relates about
being in a remote area of Northern Australian in the mid-1990s
and demonstrating the Internet to a 7-year-old boy whose mind was blown
by its potential after seeing a video of a B1 bomber
and a close up photograph of Mars, which the boy had previously only
seen by looking at the night sky with his father's binoculars.
Winchester
left the computer for the boy and was soon receiving emails from him.
<br />
<br />
Another personal story comes in the book's epilogue, in which
Winchester
describes life in Sandisfield, where he has a small farm, and of the uniting of the village through a new community
newspaper.
<br />
<br />
The author says in the book's final pages that the work of the nation's agencies and individuals "helped bind ever more
tightly the peoples of the country together." The same could be said of
Winchester
's book, which gives us a prismatic and unusual take on the nation's past and the strange, enigmatic and down right
cantankerous men who helped make it what it is and will become, and provides - during this seemingly divided time in our history
- insight into what has kept us whole.
<br />
<br />Andrew K. F. Amelinckxhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03625189659258963004noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7721468140663661487.post-8720080188926638142014-01-01T13:11:00.001-08:002014-01-18T06:37:47.457-08:00A Love Affair with America: An Interview with Simon Winchester<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjDEFv_tXtgOY2Alm1NXEIQpu84hOUZ05tA93tSUqOtofMxs2PdDth2iZwcEuHsyyzBz7jtXcvdejI53gJRKXEjc5d6fz0bCWioT5VCyEkKGlJDyIlkv-Z9YX8MsAmo7tr0feIMv_kXJkU/s1600/books.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjDEFv_tXtgOY2Alm1NXEIQpu84hOUZ05tA93tSUqOtofMxs2PdDth2iZwcEuHsyyzBz7jtXcvdejI53gJRKXEjc5d6fz0bCWioT5VCyEkKGlJDyIlkv-Z9YX8MsAmo7tr0feIMv_kXJkU/s1600/books.jpg" /></a></div>
<i> Editor's note: This article originally appeared in the Nov. 25, 2013 edition of the Berkshire Eagle. </i><br />
<br />
Chopping wood in the late afternoon on his small farm, writer
Simon
Winchester
vaguely resembles one of the rough and tumble characters he writes about in his latest non-fiction book, "The Men Who
United The States." But later, as he sits in the small cottage in which he works, surrounded by hundreds of books, talking
of history, his British-accented voice filling the space, another image of the man emerges.<br />
<br />
Such is the dichotomy of this
Oxford-educated writer of more than 20 books, this journalist, traveler and adventurer who once briefly left an Arctic sledding
expedition for an interview with a New York Times columnist at an Upper West Side Italian restaurant, only to return to the
freezing north to finish what he started.
<br />
<br />
His latest book seems imbued with the 69-year-old writer's multifaceted personality, encompassing both history and personal
narrative. It tells the story of the nation through the lives of the men who explored its wilderness, surveyed
its natural resources and brought it physically together
by rail, road and wire. It is also a love letter to
Winchester
's new homeland.
<br />
<br />
"Without wanting to sound too sappy about it, I've been enraptured by this country for a very long time," he says." The genesis was born out of my love affair with the country."
<br />
<br />
In 2011,
Winchester
became a U.S. citizen, standing on the deck of the U.S.S. Constitution in Boston Harbor on a blazing hot July 4.
Winchester
says it was a moving experience, but it was another event a short time later that brought home the realization of his
new status as a citizen.
<br />
<br />
He explains: "I got my passport and went to England almost immediately. I returned from London to Kennedy Airport [in
New York City] and I had this shiny new passport and the guy opened it and stamped it, stood up, and said: 'Welcome home.'
That was a great feeling, I must say. It really was."
<br />
<br />
Winchester
's enthusiasm for America started early.
<br />
<br />
He came here as a hitchhiker in the early 1960s, spending eight months on the road and finding everyone he met to be
"terribly kind." It didn't hurt that a friend worked for NBC and was a buddy of John Frankenheimer, the director of classic
films like "The Manchurian Candidate," who introduced
Winchester
to Burt Lancaster, Johnny Carson and Kirk Douglas.
<br />
<br />
"It was astonishing. I had this amazingly good impression of America," he laughs.
<br />
<br />
He was later returned as a correspondent for a British newspaper and covered Washington, D.C., during Watergate scandal.
<br />
<br />
In 1997, he moved to New York and in 2001 bought his home in Sandisfield, Mass., a bucolic agrarian space with geese, chickens
and gardens. He and his wife, former National Public Radio producer Setsuko Sato, split their time between the farm and New
York City. They also found time to start a local monthly newspaper, the <i>Sandisfield Times</i>.
<br />
<br />
Winchester
signed the contract for his latest book around the time he became a citizen, feeling like the moment was right to try
his hand at American history. The question was how to approach his subject.
Winchester
says that after "a number of experiments," he "just started ruminating" on the idea of "uniting."
<br />
<br />
"How did the country remain united - despite the Civil War, of course - for so long and so successfully in a way that
so many other great big countries, like Canada and Russia … have not succeeded [in doing]?"
<br />
<br />
America, a "mongrel" of disparate peoples, ideas and beliefs, says
Winchester
, has managed to remain whole thanks to the "connective tissue" of exploration and the physical structures of canals
and railways and even radio. He decided he wanted to explore the men who helped build these "tissues" that "bound the country
together."
<br />
<br />
While working on the book, he hit upon the idea of structuring it around the five Chinese elements: wood, earth, water,
fire and metal.
<br />
<br />
"It had to be something that had narrative logic to it, but that was perhaps slightly unusual that offered a different
perspective. I happened to be writing to a friend of mine in Shanghai - I lived in China for a long time - and we had been
talking about the classical elements. And I thought, 'Well, why not?' Maybe these 120 odd people, who I had established I
wanted to write about, could be put into these various categories. So all the American explorers went under wood because they
went through forests. The early geologists fit into the category of earth. The canals, and so forth, would go under water.
Fire-breathing things like trains, planes and automobiles would go under fire. And then metal - the telegraph, telephone.
It all seemed to work."
<br />
<br />
In each category, he came up with the names of the people who had been instrumental to the various fields, from canal
building to the electrical grid, and to his "delight and astonishment," he found that "many of them were unknown."
<br />
<br />
He ended up focusing on the less famous of these men, believing truly famous people like Thomas Jefferson, Samuel Morse
and Guglielmo Marconi, needed less space.
<br />
<br />
"There wasn't a great deal of a point in retelling the story of
Marconi, except in a perfunctory way. The man who gave
us AM and FM radio, allowed us to broadcast the human voice or music -
Marconi only allowed us to do Morse code - he was unknown.
He was named Reginald Fessenden. And he was such a colorful character.
He was a big, bluff, bearded chap. A classic maverick
and tinkerer. So I very much went to town with him. … He's just as
important. Yes, it was a question of highlighting the forgotten
and giving no more than their due to the famous."
<br />
<br />
During
Winchester
's research, he came upon a story of interest related to the Berkshires, specifically Great Barrington.
<br />
<br />
"It was the first place in the world to get alternating current
electricity. The first place to get distributed electricity
of any kind was Edison, N.J., because that's where Thomas Edison worked
and then he did the same thing in lower Manhattan.
Then there was this war of the currents between Westinghouse, who
preferred AC, [and Edison and direct current]. Once it was
decided that it was going to be AC, then the first place to get AC was
Main Street in Great Barrington. There's a little plaque
that memorializes that fact. I think attention should … be paid to the
fact that this was the first place in the world. No
one would ever know that."
<br />
<br />
Winchester
's love for the subjects in his book comes across as he talks about them. It also shown by his manuscript, which came
in 45,000 words longer than intended.
<br />
<br />
"I really wrote with tremendous enthusiasm on this book and ended up with 195,000 words. My contract was for 150,000
words. My editor liked it, said it was wonderful, but it was 'too much wonderful.' "
Winchester
was asked to pare it down, which he managed to do.
<br />
<br />
He's currently working on a book about the Pacific Ocean, having already written one about the Atlantic.
<br />
<br />
According to
Winchester
, he prefers to write for the general public, eschewing the academic for the more personal approach.
<br />
<br />
With a wry smile, he says, "I see no reason why a serious subject can't be made readable and accessible and nonacademic."<br />
<a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0062079603/ref=as_li_ss_il?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=0062079603&linkCode=as2&tag=anhointhki-20"><img border="0" src="http://ws-na.amazon-adsystem.com/widgets/q?_encoding=UTF8&ASIN=0062079603&Format=_SL110_&ID=AsinImage&MarketPlace=US&ServiceVersion=20070822&WS=1&tag=anhointhki-20" /></a><img alt="" border="0" src="http://ir-na.amazon-adsystem.com/e/ir?t=anhointhki-20&l=as2&o=1&a=0062079603" height="1" style="border: none !important; margin: 0px !important;" width="1" />
<br />
<a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0062079603/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=0062079603&linkCode=as2&tag=anhointhki-20">The Men Who United the States: America's Explorers, Inventors, Eccentrics and Mavericks, and the Creation of One Nation, Indivisible</a><img alt="" border="0" src="http://ir-na.amazon-adsystem.com/e/ir?t=anhointhki-20&l=as2&o=1&a=0062079603" height="1" style="border: none !important; margin: 0px !important;" width="1" />
Andrew K. F. Amelinckxhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03625189659258963004noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7721468140663661487.post-47203975018012431812013-07-16T05:55:00.001-07:002013-07-16T05:55:52.112-07:00More of my old time crime from Modern Farmer. This one on the horrific, and real crime, of <a href="http://modernfarmer.com/2013/07/old-time-farm-crime-a-crime-of-a-different-feather/">ostrich feather theft</a>. Andrew K. F. Amelinckxhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03625189659258963004noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7721468140663661487.post-77762669721540501382013-06-22T05:07:00.000-07:002013-06-22T05:15:06.982-07:00I've begun writing a bimonthly series for Modern Farmer magazine called Old-Time Farm Crime. Here's the <a href="http://modernfarmer.com/2013/06/old-time-farm-crime-dick-turpin-horse-thief/">first piece</a>, a look at an 18th century horse thief and highwayman named Dick Turpin and some contemporary examples of equine thievery. Andrew K. F. Amelinckxhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03625189659258963004noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7721468140663661487.post-33352672462303040422013-03-23T06:32:00.000-07:002014-09-14T07:00:13.486-07:00CJ Ramone: Punk, Family and a New Album<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjoTPQWIMLu3VuzZbw4Obw7n6eryp31mkIEDN6nzjx83G1neNg7QTWvZ1Cw-xxE4l7Ly0GfrLZkAoOPKkGwbiuQzCVQoKMFP6vBG3KCqqupalfQvwNFiA_pcU4VISkPnyL2jLFrU1GK5cI/s1600/-2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjoTPQWIMLu3VuzZbw4Obw7n6eryp31mkIEDN6nzjx83G1neNg7QTWvZ1Cw-xxE4l7Ly0GfrLZkAoOPKkGwbiuQzCVQoKMFP6vBG3KCqqupalfQvwNFiA_pcU4VISkPnyL2jLFrU1GK5cI/s200/-2.jpg" height="200" width="200" /></a></div>
<span style="font-size: small;"> <i>Editor's note: <span style="font-size: small;">A different version of this story<span style="font-size: small;"> appeared <span style="font-size: small;">in the Ber<span style="font-size: small;">kshire Eagle on March 22, 2013. </span></span></span></span></i></span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: small;">Chris Ward was in the midst of trying to learn 40 songs at break-neck speed.
It was 1989 and five weeks after his release from a Marine brig in
Virginia, he was about to go on tour as the bass player for one of the
most influential, and by many accounts, the first punk rock group of all
time: The Ramones.</span>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<span style="font-size: small;">“It was
like ‘how did this ever happen?’ It was the ultimate … rock star dream,”
he said in a phone interview from his Long Island, N.Y., home. </span></div>
<span style="font-size: small;">
</span><br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<span style="font-size: small;">He was
in his early 20s and had been a fan of the band that was formed in
Queens, N.Y., in 1974 by Douglas Colvin, John Cummings, Jeffry Hyman and
Thomas Erdelyi, better known as Dee Dee, Johnny, Joey, and Tommy
Ramone. </span></div>
<span style="font-size: small;">
</span><br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<span style="font-size: small;">By 1989,
Dee Dee, Johnny and Joey were still playing together, but had gone
through several different drummers. Mark Bell, AKA Marky Ramone, was the
drummer at the time. </span></div>
<span style="font-size: small;">
</span><br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<span style="font-size: small;">Dee Dee
was burned out from the road by this point, but continued to write songs
for the Ramones while Ward was hired to replace him as the band’s bass
player and sometimes-singer. Ward was reborn CJ Ramone and would end up
in the band until their retirement in 1996. </span></div>
<span style="font-size: small;">
</span><br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<span style="font-size: small;">He said it was a strange sensation going from watching them from the audience to being on stage playing with them. </span></div>
<span style="font-size: small;">
</span>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<span style="font-size: small;">“One day
I'm bouncing up and down in front of Johnny, and the next I look over,
and there's Johnny and Joey and I'm playing on stage with them,” he
recalled. “I was 21 or 22. I grew up listening to them. It was
tremendous … overwhelming.”</span></div>
<span style="font-size: small;">
</span><br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<span style="font-size: small;">CJ Ramone’s first show with the band was on Sept. 30, 1989, in Leicester, England. </span></div>
<span style="font-size: small;">
</span>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<span style="font-size: small;">“Whenever
I'm in a situation that's stressful … I just get out of my head,” he
recalled of his early days with the band and of his first show in
particular. </span></div>
<span style="font-size: small;">
</span><br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<span style="font-size: small;">“Yeah, I
made some mistakes that night. … Johnny was mad as hell and yelled at
me for five solid minutes after the show. I stood there listening and
then I ran back stage, drank some beer and celebrated. I knew I had it. I
got the whole Ramones thing on stage," he said.</span></div>
<span style="font-size: small;">
</span><br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<span style="font-size: small;">For the
other band members, the rock and roll lifestyle was commonplace, but for
C.J., who was younger by nine years and unused to it, he was enthralled
by the famous people they hung around with. </span></div>
<span style="font-size: small;">
</span><br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<span style="font-size: small;">“I was
so not cool when I was in the band. … I was going on pure instinct,” he
said. “When I met Lemmy (the lead singer of English rock band
Motörhead), I was out of my mind. I told him, ‘We have to
party!’” They did, he said. </span></div>
<span style="font-size: small;">
</span><br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<span style="font-size: small;">But even
in the midst of rock and roll excess, he never “fell into the rock-star
thing” he said, keeping the same friends he had always had, living in a
small house and refraining from splurging on extravagant purchases. He
did buy himself a motorcycle, he admitted. </span></div>
<span style="font-size: small;">
</span><br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<span style="font-size: small;">Following the break up of the band in 1996, Ramone stopped playing music altogether for a short time. </span></div>
<span style="font-size: small;">
</span>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<span style="font-size: small;">“My son [Liam] was born in 1997 and a year or two later was diagnosed with autism,” he said. </span></div>
<span style="font-size: small;">
</span>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<span style="font-size: small;">Ramone
said he was told by his son’s doctors that his son needed him to be at
home. Ramone is heavily involved in the autism community. </span></div>
<span style="font-size: small;">
</span>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<span style="font-size: small;">He said
Metallica asked him to play bass for their band twice, but he turned the
mega-selling and multi-Grammy-winning heavy metal band from Los Angeles
down after he was told by his son’s doctors that he would be doing his
son a great disservice if he took the job. </span></div>
<span style="font-size: small;">
</span><br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<span style="font-size: small;">“So I packed it in,” he said. </span></div>
<span style="font-size: small;">
</span>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<span style="font-size: small;">He said he doesn’t regret the decision. </span></div>
<span style="font-size: small;">
</span>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<span style="font-size: small;">“I had
already done it all. Playing with Metallica would have been amazing, but
I already played with the greatest rock and roll band in history,” said
Ramone.</span></div>
<span style="font-size: small;">
</span><br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<span style="font-size: small;">While he
later started two other bands, Los Gusanos and Bad Chopper, both now
defunct, before recording and touring as CJ Ramone he had always hoped
The Ramones would re-form. </span></div>
<span style="font-size: small;">
</span><br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<span style="font-size: small;">“I had
always waited for the [phone] call telling me we were going to get back
together and going on tour. … Instead, I got the other calls,” said
Ramone. “With Johnny and Joey, they were both sick [so] it was expected.
… Dee Dee’s death was probably the biggest blow because it was sudden.”</span></div>
<span style="font-size: small;">
</span><br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<span style="font-size: small;">Joey
died from lymphoma in 2001. Dee Dee died from a heroin overdose the next
year. And Johnny lost his battle with prostate cancer in 2004.</span></div>
<span style="font-size: small;">
</span>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<span style="font-size: small;">Ramone said he was one of the last people to see Johnny before he died. </span></div>
<span style="font-size: small;">
</span>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<span style="font-size: small;">“I got the chance to say good-bye and thank him,” he said. </span></div>
<span style="font-size: small;">
</span>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<span style="font-size: small;">He also
saw Dee Dee before his death in 2002. According to Ramone, in the past
Dee Dee hadn’t always been nice to him, but that night was different. </span></div>
<span style="font-size: small;">
</span>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<span style="font-size: small;">“He told
me, ‘You were always cool to me.’ It was out of character for him. I
waited for him to crack a joke. He didn’t and I didn’t know what to say.
A couple of weeks later, he was dead.”</span></div>
<span style="font-size: small;">
</span><br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<span style="font-size: small;">The
dynamic of “fan/friend, friend/ mentor” between himself and the other
members was “like the ‘Twilight Zone.’ It was so odd. I’m still trying
to get my head around it,” he said. </span></div>
<span style="font-size: small;">
</span><br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<span style="font-size: small;">His
first solo album recording under CJ Ramone, “Reconquista,” Spanish for
reconquest, is meant as a tribute to Joey, Johnny and Dee Dee, and was
influenced by that band’s sound, but, he said, there are hints of his
two later bands that come through on the album as well. </span></div>
<span style="font-size: small;">
</span><br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<span style="font-size: small;">“Reconquista”
was recorded three times, said Ramone, and was released digitally last
year. After two attempts that ended in results he just wasn't satisfied
with, he called up his friend Steve Soto of The Adolescents, a punk band
from Southern California, who helped him produce the album that he had
intended to make.</span></div>
<span style="font-size: small;">
</span><br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<span style="font-size: small;">Recorded
in Orange County, Calif., with the help of a who’s who of punk and new
wave musicians from such famed bands as X, Bad Religion, Blondie and
Social Distortion, among others, Ramone said it was fun to record and
the results made him proud. </span></div>
<span style="font-size: small;">
</span><br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<span style="font-size: small;">Before
the recording session when Soto mentioned the list of people who wanted
to help out on the record, Ramone was at first a little taken-aback. </span></div>
<span style="font-size: small;">
</span>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<span style="font-size: small;">“In the
back of my mind I’m thinking: ‘How much is this going to cost?” he said.
“None of them asked for a dime. They did it because of The Ramones
name. In honor of them. That's the power of the Ramones.”</span></div>
<span style="font-size: small;">
</span><br />
<div style="-moz-font-feature-settings: normal; -moz-font-language-override: normal; font-family: Helvetica; font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">
<span style="font-size: small;">The album was released through <b>PledgeMusic</b>, an online <span style="color: #1b45ad;">direct-to-fan</span>, <span style="color: #1b45ad;">fan-funded music</span> platform which bypasses record companies. </span></div>
<span style="font-size: small;">
</span><br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<span style="font-size: small;">“It’s about as DYI as you can get,” said Ramone. “It's anti-corporate music business.”</span></div>
<span style="font-size: small;">
</span>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<span style="font-size: small;">With a
wife, Denise, and three kids — Liam who is 15, Lilliana, 12, and
3-year-old Mia Dove — he has scaled back his touring schedule and when
he can, brings the family on tour with him. </span></div>
<span style="font-size: small;">
</span><br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<span style="font-size: small;">“We're playing at Fuji Rock Festival in Japan this summer and I'm bringing the family,” he told The Eagle. </span></div>
<span style="font-size: small;">
</span>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<span style="font-size: small;">As if on
cue, his 3-year-old daughter broke in to the interview with a question
for her father about “Dora the Explorer,” a children’s TV show. And by
the sound of it, Ramone was washing dishes as we spoke by phone. </span></div>
<span style="font-size: small;">
</span><br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<span style="font-size: small;">Ramone’s
two older children were with first wife, Chessa, Marky Ramone’s niece
from whom he’s divorced, and his youngest was by his second wife,
Denise. </span></div>
<span style="font-size: small;">
</span><br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<span style="font-size: small;">His
oldest daughter, who herself is a multi-instrumentalist, was into punk,
but is listening to progressive music these days. “But every once in a
while, she breaks out some Green Day,” said Ramone. </span></div>
<span style="font-size: small;">
</span><br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<span style="font-size: small;">He was
happy to see punk attain such popularity in the 1990s with bands like
Rancid and Green Day, but inevitably, the music industry got its hands
on it and helped produce mediocre music, said Ramone. </span></div>
<span style="font-size: small;">
</span><br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<span style="font-size: small;">Punk rock was originally created by and for disenfranchised youth, he said. </span></div>
<span style="font-size: small;">
</span>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<span style="font-size: small;">“As long as their are young, angry and alienated teenagers their will be punk rock,” he said, </span></div>
<span style="font-size: small;">
</span>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<span style="font-size: small;">Beyond that, punk surmounts age differences, he said. At his shows he has fans both young and old. </span></div>
<span style="font-size: small;">
</span>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<span style="font-size: small;">“I don’t think there is another type of music that transcends the generations, … and that’s a very wonderful thing.” </span></div>
<span style="font-size: small;">
</span>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<span style="font-size: small;">He said
when he played in Glasgow, Scotland, he met several people in their 50s
who were had been in the scene since the 1970s and were still dedicated
to the punk ethos.</span></div>
<span style="font-size: small;">
</span><br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<span style="font-size: small;">“For them it’s not a musical style, it’s a lifestyle,” he said. </span></div>
<span style="font-size: small;">
</span>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<span style="font-size: small;">Ramone hopes to continue to play and record for “the rest of my days.”</span></div>
<span style="font-size: small;">“I’ll always play The Ramones’ songs live. [The fans] love to hear it,” he said. “I do The Ramones justice.”</span>Andrew K. F. Amelinckxhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03625189659258963004noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7721468140663661487.post-24657475511608475042013-01-27T07:12:00.000-08:002013-01-27T07:12:06.417-08:00MLK in Berkshire County<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhmcyCn3kpz3FHpvDLS1tPiyyLvB-nxfLsC-4TjsZpAI5QMabmxIizvd75uQGDm2H0dtGezK4nUDp4_DiVQOsX5eREE11FmStmEnF0P2pdi9JOpszEdILFEoRg2wvGR7J51IS8Mf_iJQTE/s1600/20130121__King22_300.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhmcyCn3kpz3FHpvDLS1tPiyyLvB-nxfLsC-4TjsZpAI5QMabmxIizvd75uQGDm2H0dtGezK4nUDp4_DiVQOsX5eREE11FmStmEnF0P2pdi9JOpszEdILFEoRg2wvGR7J51IS8Mf_iJQTE/s320/20130121__King22_300.jpg" width="217" /></a></div>
<br />
<i>Editor's note: A different version of this story appeared in the Jan. 22 edition of the Berkshire Eagle.</i><br />
<br />
Two years before his famous "I Have
a Dream" speech and seven years to the month before being cut down by
an assassin's bullet, the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. visited Berkshire
County, MA. and gave three talks to Williams College students in a single day
to explain his ideas on civil disobedience.
<br />
<br />
"Frankly, we are breaking laws in the South," King told one rapt
audience at the college in Williamstown on April 16, 1961. "But there
are two types of laws -- just laws and unjust laws. I believe that if
society brings into being unjust laws, a moral man has no alternative
than to rise up."
<br />
<br />
Six months earlier, King had backed up those words when he was
arrested, along with about 300 other protesters, during a sit-in at the
segregated restaurant at Rich's, a department store in Atlanta. King was
sentenced to six months of hard labor at the Georgia State Prison, but
was released through the intervention of then-presidential hopeful John
F. Kennedy and his brother, Robert F. Kennedy.
<br />
<br />
King's visit to Williams College in April 1961 was part of a barnstorming tour of colleges in
Western Massachusetts. His visit to Williams came a day after he was at
Smith (where his daughter, Yolanda, would later receive her bachelor's
degree) and a day before an appearance at Amherst College.<br />
<br />
At Williams, King addressed a dinner for a student religious group,
gave a sermon at the college chapel, and participated in a
question-and-answer session with students. In total, more than 1,000
people saw him during his visit to the school.
<br />
<br />
King told his listeners that the idea behind the sit-ins
concerned resistance without violence, hatred of segregation without
hatred of the segregationist, and a desire to raise the consciousness of
the opponent rather than to humiliate him, according to a Berkshire
Eagle article that appeared the next day. The reporter described King,
then 32, as "a short, handsome man" who was "an intense, direct and
inspiring speaker."
<br />
<br />
The sit-ins of segregated lunch counters began in 1960 with four
black college students in Greensboro, N.C., and quickly spread
throughout the South.
<br />
"This movement is more than a lot of noise about hamburger. I
don't think these students are hungry. It's a demand for respect," King
told his audience.
<br />
<br />
King invoked the Boston Tea Party in his discussion, calling it
"one of the highest expressions of civil disobedience" and said that
"those of us who break segregation laws feel we are in noble company."
<br />
<br />
The response from the students was overwhelming.
<br />
"Dr. King's talk at the dinner drew a standing ovation of more
than a minute for its spiritual and intellectual quality," the Eagle
reporter, Arthur Myers, wrote.
<br />
<br />
It would be three more years before a federal Civil Rights Bill
was passed that banned discrimination against blacks at hotels and
restaurants, barred employers from discriminating based on race and
allowed the federal government to sue school systems that refused to
desegregate. King continued to fight for the rights of minorities and
the underclass until his murder on April 4, 1968 as he stood on the
balcony of his motel room in Memphis, Tenn.
<br />
<br />
In 1974, Massachusetts, along with Connecticut, passed laws
making his birthday a state holiday a decade before it became a federal
holiday. Illinois was the first state to make King's birthday a legal
holiday.
<br />
<br />
<em><br /></em>Andrew K. F. Amelinckxhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03625189659258963004noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7721468140663661487.post-50386036224596801782013-01-18T04:46:00.000-08:002013-01-18T04:47:59.633-08:00Dr. Swift and FDR<a href="http://nationalpostarts.files.wordpress.com/2012/09/huds.jpg?w=620" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" class="attachment-single-post-thumbnail wp-post-image" height="149" src="http://nationalpostarts.files.wordpress.com/2012/09/huds.jpg?w=620" width="200" /></a><br />
If you are like me and wonder how accurate a historical film or bio pick is (sometimes to the detrement of fully enjoying the movie) historian Dr. Will Swift will be discussing that very subject in regard to "Hyde Park on the Hudson," a film that premiered this fall at the Toronto Film Festival and went into general release last month.<br />
<br />
The film, starring Bill Murray as President Franklin Roosevelt and Laura Linney as his cousin, and lover, Daisey Suckley, recounts a weekend in 1938 in which King George VI and Queen Elizabeth were
guests of the president at Hyde Park, the Roosevelt's family home in Dutchess County.<br />
<br />
Swift, the author of "The Roosevelts and the Royals," will parse out truth from fiction and give the real story of that well-known weekend.<br />
The event will be held this Saturday January 19th at 3 p.m. at the Chatham Public Library <br />
<br />
The program is sponsored by the Friends of the Chatham Public Library. A reception <span class="il">will</span> follow <span class="il">Will</span> <span class="il">Swift</span>'s talk. For more information go to http://chatham.lib.ny.us/. <br />
<br />
<br />
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Andrew K. F. Amelinckxhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03625189659258963004noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7721468140663661487.post-19056901318331236702012-11-18T07:23:00.001-08:002012-11-18T07:30:26.578-08:00Mohawk History, Mohawk Pride<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhdRg4_G2U2dw-B5aaFK06QtxYvyNNVyXpbnIU1bmkZqkCgZqVPFcdYpMPO5XnsJiwjGvbjs7JniylfcqM34oHvet4zkzmJR7hOrqwZz7tIxUYrsInRBneyYQNL-qR-N4WgFVXAhx8w2G8/s1600/photo-46.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhdRg4_G2U2dw-B5aaFK06QtxYvyNNVyXpbnIU1bmkZqkCgZqVPFcdYpMPO5XnsJiwjGvbjs7JniylfcqM34oHvet4zkzmJR7hOrqwZz7tIxUYrsInRBneyYQNL-qR-N4WgFVXAhx8w2G8/s320/photo-46.jpg" width="221" /></a></div>
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<i>Editor's note: A different version of this story appeared in the Nov. 10, 2012 edition of the Berkshire Eagle. </i><br />
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Jerry Thundercloud McDonald recalled the first time he entered his clan’s longhouse when he was 12, following the death of his mother.<br />
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"It was like watching a moving picture show," he said of the dancing and singing. "I was very inspired to learn about the tribal history of our people."<br />
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He recently shared the history of the Mohawk Nation and the Six Nations Iroquois Confederacy through song, dance and storytelling. The versatile singer, storyteller, dancer, choreographer, and actor,
was dressed in traditional costume, which included a headdress and a variety of hide clothing.<br />
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McDonald is a member of the Wolf Clan and lives in the Mohawk Nation of Akwesasne, a tribal area along the banks of the St. Lawrence River that straddles upstate New York and the Canadian provinces of Quebec and Ontario.<br />
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The longhouse, the center of tribal activity at Akwesasne and elsewhere, is a place of "joy and inspiration" where McDonald learned "a great deal of respect," he said.<br />
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McDonald discussed the various traditional instruments used in Mohawk ceremonies, from the water drum, which as the name suggests is filled with water, to the big drum, a moose-hide-covered instrument you can feel in your chest when he beats out a rhythm.<br />
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McDonald described how the Great Law of Peace, the oral constitution of the Iroquois Confederacy -- a union of five tribes that some scientists believe dates back close to a thousand years, (a sixth tribe joined the confederation in the 18th century) -- helped inspire the Founding Fathers in their writing of the U.S. Constitution, including the ideas of checks and balances and the separation of powers. Several of the nation’s symbols, including the Eagle holding arrows (look for it on the back of the dollar bill) comes directly from the Iroquois tradition, according to McDonald.<br />
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McDonald was also a so-called "skywalker," one of many Mohawk men who have worked in New York City doing skyscraper construction work, scampering along thin steel beams thousands of feet in the air. His last job was on the new Yankee Stadium, he said. He once fell several stories while working and woke up to find he has crushed his left clavicle. <br />
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His father, whom he never met was also a skywalker, as had been his father before him. Andrew K. F. Amelinckxhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03625189659258963004noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7721468140663661487.post-3984384582199232622012-10-06T06:30:00.000-07:002012-11-24T07:37:09.876-08:00Powys finds a home<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span class="paragraph-0"></span><br />
John Cowper Powys was happy. He was cold,
but happy. He stood watching the sunrise from his Hillsdale, N.Y. home that
December morning in 1930 taking the moment in.<br />
<br />
<span class="paragraph-1">He and Phyllis Playter, an American he had met in Missouri nearly
a decade earlier and who was 22 years his junior, were now living a
much different life, far from the crowds of New York City and his hectic
schedule. No more crisscrossing the country lecturing on other, much
more famous writers. Now the 58-year-old Powys would be focusing on his
own work in this Utopian setting thanks to the success of his novel
“Wolf Solent.”<br />
</span>
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<br />
Born in Derbyshire, England in 1872, the son of a
vicar, Powys seemed to be destined for the staid life of a country
schoolmaster. By 1904 he was married and a father, but America — and the
freedom from restraint and convention — called.<br />
<br />
In the United States, Powys became an itinerant, and
much sought after, lecturer. Over the course of the next two decades he
would speak on a myriad of subjects, from philosophy to politics to
literature, especially literature. During a lecture on the writer Fyodor
Dostoyevsky, where Powys first met Playter, two of the other attendees
allegedly fainted from the sheer sensual power of the presentation.<br />
<br />
Powys gave about 10,000 lectures in his career by his
own account and also picked up a number of influential friends and
admirers along the way, including the writers Theodore Dreiser and Henry
Miller.<br />
<br />
During his time as a lecturer, Powys also wrote
prodigiously, but didn’t find success until his 1929 novel “Wolf
Solent,” a 900-page epic that became a bestseller, opening the way for
him to take up writing full-time and to move to the hamlet of
Harlemville, which lies in the town of Hillsdale.<br />
In their little farmhouse at the foot of Phudd Hill,
which Powys dubbed “Phudd Bottom,” the couple spent four productive and
happy years. Powys would write two novels, “A Glastonbury Romance” and
“Weymouth Sands,” as well as an autobiography and a book on philosophy:
“A Philosophy of Solitude.”<br />
<br />
While Powys was busy with his literary efforts, he
still had time to explore the area and found joy in the county’s flora
and fauna, old farms and his neighbors.<br />
Some of his neighbors, according to at least one
account, thought Powys a bit odd. The writer was idiosyncratic to say
the least. The often disheveled-looking Powys was known to tap his head
against his mailbox in the belief it would ensure the safe delivery of
his mail and he would bow to the rocks and trees on his sojourns.<br />
<br />
He was adverse to technology, drawn to the abnormal
and multi-phobic, but to many he was, and remains, an overlooked and
important writer — a “gigantic mythopoeic literary volcano” in the words
of poet Philip Larkin.<br />
<br />
For four years Powys made Hillsdale his home. He and
Playter would move to England in 1934 and then to Wales the following
year where Powys remained until his death in 1963, a few months shy of
his 91st birthday. Playter followed him to the grave in 1982.<br />
<br />Andrew K. F. Amelinckxhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03625189659258963004noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7721468140663661487.post-88758953714752791752012-06-17T07:42:00.000-07:002014-06-08T18:43:28.214-07:00A Sailor's Life in Fiji<br />
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<div class="MsoNormal">
John Gaul, lying in his bed in Lakeba with a sore
leg, began to write his life story. After more than 30 years in Fiji he was
once again communicating with his family and his brother had asked him to
relate all that had transpired in the three decades since they had last seen
one another. And what a life it had been. </div>
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Gaul left Hudson, N.Y. in 1855, a scrappy 14-year-old full of
wanderlust and a deep sadness over the recent death of his mother. He found his
way to New York City and then sailed to Fall River, Mass., most likely working
for his passage. From there he walked to New Bedford, a 15-mile trek, and
shipped out on a whaler, the Elizabeth, headed to the South Pacific.</div>
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The sailor’s life was hard: filled with violence, poor food
and little sleep. Gaul recalled the beatings he took at the hands of the
captain and mates over trivial matters. At one point he was tied to a mast and
whipped for fighting with another crewmember. According to Gaul, the fight
broke out when he sat down to eat before a Portuguese sailor. The man shoved
Gaul out of his seat and Gaul retaliated by slamming a keg of molasses onto the
man’s head, nearly drowning him in the thick fluid as the sailor stumbled around
blindly before finally being freed with the help of several other men.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div>
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Gaul gave as good as he got, nearly killing one of the mates
with whom he had an on-going dispute. The mate would beat the boy savagely any
chance he got, but was unfortunate enough to be caught sleeping on his watch by
Gaul who stole some gunpowder, piled it near the man’s head and set it alight,
burning the man’s hair and face. </div>
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Gaul, tired of the beatings, jumped ship, was caught,
beaten, and tried again. This time he made his escape by swimming to shore with
a sailor from Pennsylvania. Gaul made it to Upolo, one of the islands that make
up Samoa, then known as the Navigator Islands by westerners, but his friend
wasn’t so lucky. He was killed by sharks as the two made their way to land. </div>
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It wasn’t long before Gaul was once again at sea, this time
on a schooner shipping coconut oil. This captain seemed only marginally better
than the first, since he beat Gaul for complaining about being worked too hard
without food or water, but afterward made Gaul a mate, with a $5.00 a month
raise. From there Gaul moved on to another trading vessel plying the waters
between Australia and Fiji.</div>
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Gaul eventually settled in Fiji, a group of islands in the
South West Pacific where cannibalism was still practiced at the time. His
descriptions of the custom border on the fantastic and are more likely based on
hearsay than on personal observation. </div>
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According to Gaul, the native people would dig up the dead
and feast on their bodies and would steal one another’s children to eat. He
also alleged that Ratu Seru Epenisa Cakobau, who united Fiji under his control
in the 1850s, had an island where he would fatten up his victims before eating
them. The King Of Bau, as he was known, had in fact repudiated the practice of
cannibalism and took up Christianity in 1854, before Gaul settled in Fiji.
While cannibalism was practiced there it was usually reserved for special
occasions, such as the eating of one’s enemies after a battlefield victory, and
the practice died out not long after Gaul’s arrival. </div>
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By the 1860s Gaul was married with children — he would
eventually have four — and had taught himself to read and write. He said that
the little schooling he had in Columbia County before he ran away hadn’t stuck.
Gaul held a series of jobs from cotton plantation manager to store clerk, but
continued to be drawn to the sea, often working as a sailor when land-based
jobs dried up. </div>
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He was a conundrum when it came to his views of the
aboriginal people of the islands, often describing them as savages, thieves,
and “very saucy” to “whites.” At the same time, he married a native woman and
treated her well, became fluent in the language and seemed to think more highly
of the native people than the missionaries, drunken Europeans and the officials
of the British colonial government installed in 1874 when the country became a
British possession. </div>
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At one point he tells of fighting on the side of a tribe
that lived near him against their enemies. Gaul led a charge during a pitched
battle that helped secure victory for his neighbors. The next day the tribe,
celebrating their success, invited Gaul to the festivities, but he refused and
when they left gifts at his doorstep he sent them back. </div>
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Gaul was very protective of his wife and children and fought
both whites and natives on several occasions when he thought his family’s honor
was being trampled. He obviously loved his wife a great deal and described how
when a letter from his father eventually reached him, his wife memorized it and
would recite it to her children before bed. She, along with thousands of other
native people, died from a measles epidemic that struck the islands in the
1870s. Gaul never remarried. </div>
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Ten years later Gaul finally wrote home and his personal
history may have remained merely correspondence between two long-separated
siblings, but for a writer named William Drysdale. </div>
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Drysdale was a roving reporter for the New York Times when
he received Gaul’s narrative, possibly from Michael Gaul, and published a series
of articles in the summer of 1890 on John Gaul’s life. Drysdale was a
distinguished newsman during the boom years of the industry in the mid-1800s
who started his career at the New York Sun before finding his way to the Times
where he remained for two decades. He would eventually become a well-known (at
the time) children’s book author. </div>
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<div class="MsoNormal">
In 1888, two years before Gaul’s story was eagerly being
read at breakfast tables across the country — the story ended up in newspapers
as far away as California — he returned to New York, 35 years after he left,
and was reunited with his father and two brothers.</div>
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Gaul was uncomfortable with life in America, telling
Drysdale that he never should have left Fiji where “as long as you lived you
knew where your dinner was coming from, and when you were dead you did not
care.” It was unclear whether Gaul ever returned to the land where he had spent
so much of his life, thousands of miles from the country he had left behind as
a child. </div>
Andrew K. F. Amelinckxhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03625189659258963004noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7721468140663661487.post-34175424373985308362011-07-28T05:18:00.000-07:002011-07-28T05:51:59.538-07:00Sanctuary for the winged wounded<span style="font-style:italic;"><span style="font-style:italic;"> Editor's Note: A different version of this story appeared in the Berkshire Eagle July 17, 2011. For pictures, directions, and more information on Berkshire Bird Paradise click <a href="http://www.birdparadise.org/">here</a>.</span></span> <span style="font-style:italic;">For more information on the work of Barbara Chepaitis click <a href="http://www.wildreads.com/">here</a>.</span><br /><br />Mitch, a steppe eagle from Afghanistan, has become quite a celebrity over the course of the past year, but remains humble, sharing his living quarters with a golden eagle named Thor and Buddy, a red-tailed hawk.<br /><br />"I think he considers Thor like a father figure," said Pete Dubacher as we watched the birds.<br /><br />Dubacher runs Berkshire Bird Paradise in Grafton, N.Y., where Mitch will be living out the rest of his life, thousands of miles from where he was shot by an Afghani soldier and rescued by a U.S. Navy SEAL team.<br /><br />Dubacher’s role in Mitch’s rescue began with an unexpected call.<br /><br />"Last June I got a call from Afghanistan," Dubacher said. "I thought it was a prank."<br /><br />It wasn’t.<br /><br />A special operations unit had taken the bird in after it was shot in the left wing at a rifle range. The team, while working in a combat zone, spent four months caring for the eagle they named "Mitch" after the snake in the movie "Road Trip."<br /><br />"It shows compassion," Dubacher, a Vietnam veteran, said of the soldiers’ actions. "It’s a testament to our country."<br /><br />The soldiers had heard about Dubacher’s work and asked him to take the eagle.<br /><br />"Of all the places in the country, they called me," said Dubacher. "I’m a nobody. I’m in the middle of nowhere."<br /><br />In truth, Dubacher has made a name for himself nationally for his dedication to the thousands of birds he’s rescued<br />Advertisement<br />over the years.<br /><br />He’s been caring for birds since 1972, a hobby that quickly spiraled into a life’s work.<br /><br />"People would call me and ask me to take these birds," he said. "I can’t say no. If I don’t take care of them who will?"<br /><br />By 1975 he had converted his parents’ 20-acre farm into a bird sanctuary.<br /><br />He admits it’s not an easy life. He does most of the work himself, which helps keep costs down, but is hard on him and his family.<br /><br />"You make a lot of sacrifices. I have no social life. You put everything into it, but I’m loving what I do," he said.<br /><br />After the phone call from Afghanistan, Dubacher called his friend, the writer Barbara Chepaitis, to help in trying to coordinate getting Mitch to America.<br /><br />"She doesn’t take no for an answer," he said.<br /><br />Chepaitis spent the next 137 days tirelessly taking on numerous government agencies.<br /><br />"I delved into it with gusto," she said. "It felt impossible to get one good thing done. I devoted myself to proving that wrong."<br /><br />Her fight went all the way to the White House, she said, and by September Mitch was allowed into the country. After a month in quarantine he was at his new home in upstate New York.<br /><br />The experience taught the writer that "change is possible if you are persistent," something she also finds in Dubacher.<br /><br />"His perseverance is what inspires us all," she said.<br /><br />Dubacher, she said, works on the edge between "all possibility and all risk," a place she was drawn to as a writer.<br /><br />She ended up writing a book about Dubacher and his work, "Feathers of Hope," and is now working on a book about Mitch -— "Saving Eagle Mitch: One Good Deed in a Wicked World."<br /><br />And as for Mitch he has adjusted well to his new life, according to Dubacher, and is once again healthy, although unable to fly.<br /><br />Mitch is just one of more than a thousand birds as well as tortoises, squirrels, deer, and orchids at Berkshire Bird Paradise and Dubacher seems inspired by them all.<br /><br />He also raises bald eagles he releases into the wild, helping to repopulate the species in the region.<br /><br />Saturday, he was doing a "soft release," with a 13-week old bald eagle, beginning the process of teaching it to live on its own.<br /><br />"I’m so proud right now," he said watching the eagle soar across the sky. "I’ve got goose bumps."<br /><br />Turning away from the scene he seemed reflective. <br /><br />"I'm blessed to be able to pull this off," he said. "When you do things for the right reasons, put your body and soul into it, there's a power out there that will take care of you."Andrew K. F. Amelinckxhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03625189659258963004noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7721468140663661487.post-60554290158743415212011-05-28T05:43:00.000-07:002011-05-28T06:14:14.231-07:00Hazel Rowley on the Roosevelts<span style="font-style:italic;">Editor's note: Hazel Rowley, a biographer whose most recent work dealt with the complicated relationship of first couple Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt, died suddenly March 1 after a series of strokes related to an undiagnosed infection. I had interviewed her only weeks before for this piece, a version of which ran in the <span style="font-style:italic;">Register-Star</span> Feb. 10. I found the 59-year-old Australian-reared writer funny, brilliant and giving. She told me she was planning on writing about the era just after FDR's death when a pall of conservatism hung over America. I only wish she could have finished</span>. <br /><br /><br />In Hazel Rowley’s newest book she explores one couple’s “extraordinary marriage.” That couple happens to be made up of two singular Americans — Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt — who helped define an era and hold a country together during the dark days of the Depression and World War II.<br /><br />According to the author, she hit upon the idea of writing "Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt: An Extraordinary Marriage," while visiting the Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library and Museum in Hyde Park.<br /><br />She said that while on the tour people kept asking questions about the Roosevelts’ marriage. Many were interested in the couple, it seemed, as was Rowley, so much so that she spent three years writing the book. <br />And in her opinion, it was an extraordinary 40-year marriage and one that moved from a conventional Victorian relationship — the distant cousins were married in 1905 — to one that encompassed an openness that included romantic friendships with others, but remained rooted in abiding love and respect.<br /><br />Theirs was a “community marriage,” said Rowley, filled with close-knit family, including FDR’s overbearing mother, and friends.<br /><br />When Franklin contracted polio at 39 the circle grew, since he needed help almost 24-hours a day. The disease created a situation where the couple were living at close quarters with a number of aides and others who were fiercely loyal to them and in return received the same.<br /><br />“They were an unconventional couple ... after Franklin got polio in 1921 their marriage opened up,” Rowley said.<br /><br />Distance would seem to have been one factor in the nature of their relationship.<br /><br />“There was five years — between 1923 and 1928 — where he was away from home more than at home,” said Rowley.<br /><br />For example, FDR was away from home during the period between 1925 and 1928 for 116 weeks while trying to recover from his disease. His wife was with him for four of those weeks, while his social secretary, Missy LeHand, with whom he ended up having a long romance with, was with him for 110.<br /><br />“He had to find himself again as a man,” said the author. “(Eleanor) understood that.”<br /><br />Eleanor’s role also changed after FDR contracted polio. She pushed him to continue his political career and took on much of the burden of making his political life possible.<br /><br />“It was her passion,” said Rowley. “It was the glue that held their marriage together.”<br /><br />FDR apparently understood this.<br /><br />“He knew what he owed to Eleanor,” she told me. <br /><br />While Eleanor denied the fact that she wanted to be First Lady, saying as much in her autobiography “This is My Life,” Rowley doesn’t buy it.<br /><br />“She said it in her autobiography, but that doesn’t mean we need to believe it,” the author said.<br /><br />Rowley said it was written while the couple was in the White House, at a time when the Republicans were looking for fodder against the administration and already calling Eleanor a “petticoat president.”<br /><br />Rowley doesn’t believe the Roosevelts could have lived the life they did in today’s world.<br /><br />She said it was a different time, with the press respecting their privacy and the president’s public image, going so far as to never film FDR being lifted in and out of his car.<br /><br />After FDR’s death in 1945, Eleanor continued to be a progressive voice in a newly conservative America, said Rowley.<br /><br />This period, beginning just after the Roosevelt era, when a “fog of conservatism” fell across America, in Rowley’s words, will be the subject of her next book.<br /><br />The author, who resides in New York City, has written a number of other biographies including one about the relationship of Simone De Beauvoir and Jean-Paul Sartre.Andrew K. F. Amelinckxhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03625189659258963004noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7721468140663661487.post-65092300684034464632011-02-05T05:56:00.000-08:002011-02-07T11:08:18.550-08:00The crime commission comes to Hudson<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgHX1Ju8akMjdjeutUmGyMy4pxZDwfBytz5ssIY5pVkVW1uCuLlVTXhSGNW-u1m68XrVogXyOC4UPxYPjQXGO7pn4H-8FNsYAGxltCtIrKyq3E3rKB3zw72tF1bZa8YaQYwzkIi_FHd_CE/s1600/hos.jpg"><img style="float:right; margin:0 0 10px 10px;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 176px; height: 207px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgHX1Ju8akMjdjeutUmGyMy4pxZDwfBytz5ssIY5pVkVW1uCuLlVTXhSGNW-u1m68XrVogXyOC4UPxYPjQXGO7pn4H-8FNsYAGxltCtIrKyq3E3rKB3zw72tF1bZa8YaQYwzkIi_FHd_CE/s320/hos.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5570215848301014306" /></a><br /><br />Mention Hudson’s Diamond Street to people of a certain age in the area and you may be likely to hear a story about a neighborhood known for its flaunting of the law, a place where gambling and prostitution thrived.<br /><br />The funniest story this reporter heard related to Diamond Street, by then renamed Columbia, involved a man I met in Kinderhook. It was the late 1940s and he and his new bride, on their way south to honeymoon, stopped in Hudson for the night. Not knowing their way around, the newlyweds ended up on Columbia Street looking for a hotel. The man left his bride in the car and went to find out the price of a room at what appeared to be a small hotel. He soon realized his mistake when he was greeted by the denizens of the establishment. Needless to say the couple didn’t stay.<br /><br />Our friend in Kinderhook may not have been aware of Hudson’s reputation, but he was apparently in the minority.<br /><br />“The little town with the big red-light district,” as Hudson was known for many years, had a reputation that stretched along the east coast and through history, beginning almost from the founding of the city in 1785.<br /><br />Everyone from early sailors who plied the Hudson to Albany politicians who came down from the capitol on Fridays, allegedly after knocking off early from governmental duties, spent money and time with the painted ladies of Hudson. While there they could also take a roll of the dice, plunk down cash for a chance to win at the numbers, or place a bet for horse races anywhere in the country they happened to be running.<br /><br />Everything seemed to be running smoothly with Hudson’s vice trade until that warm summer night when a long line of trucks and sedans slowly pulled onto Columbia Street.<br /><br />Fifty state troopers quickly smashed in the doors of six “disorderly houses” as the newspaper delicately put it, located on Columbia Street between North Third and Fourth Streets. Twenty three women were rounded up, as were two Hudson Police Officers who were in one of the houses of assignation at the time. Four of the women were charged with operating the houses; the others, prostitutes all, were charged with vagrancy.<br /><br />A pinochle game was raided as well that night, with other gambling house raids following.<br /><br />While the raid stirred the city and county up and generated some headlines regionally, it also turned the head of a man who had of late lost a run to the White House.<br /><br />A year and a half after the raid, in December 1951, then-Gov. Thomas Dewey issued an executive order that sent his State Crime Commission, created by Dewey in April 1950, to Hudson to look into “the relationship between organized crime and units of government.”<br /><br />The committee reported its findings to the governor and legislature.<br /><br />Hudson was only the third place the commission had been to, the others being Staten Island, where waterfront corruption was looked into, and St. Lawrence County.<br /><br />The public hearings, according to Judge Joseph Proskauer, who headed up the commission, were being done for the sake of “the public peace, public safety and public justice.”<br /><br />The commission came to Hudson and set up camp at the county courthouse for three days, from Dec. 17 to 19, subpoenaed 200 county residents and ripped the lid off a corrupt system that included collusion between government officials, gamblers, and houses of prostitution. Several wire services were also brought to task for providing tickers so that illegal horse room operators could get up to date information on horse races around the country.<br /><br />Interestingly, the only connection the commission found between organized crime and Hudson’s inner-workings was between a gambler named Raymond Van Buren, who ran an illegal horse room and had a tenuous connection to Frank Erickson, New York City’s “King of the Bookies.” Van Buren allegedly gave a good bit of money to the Hudson Democratic Committee in order to keep his business open.<br /><br />What it did find included a city police force and city officials who seemed to look the other way when it came to prostitution and gambling and both Republican and Democratic committees that shook down vice peddlers and used some of the money to buy votes.<br /><br />John Gibbons, the former Democratic County Committee chair from 1931 to 1951, admitted that he would meet with other committeemen at the Register-Star building, then known as the Evening Register, to dole out funds to be used “as they saw fit.”<br /><br />When asked if the money was used to buy votes, he answered in the affirmative, adding “anybody likes a dollar bill.”<br /><br />When confronted with paperwork that showed the party disbursed more money than they had taken in, he had no answer.<br /><br />The Republicans, according to testimony given at the hearings, apparently ran things the same way.<br /><br />Former district attorney and city judge Thomas Kennedy told the commission that he made “contributions” to the county Republicans and that the amount paid was directly “calculated on length of term and salary.”<br /><br />John Fardy, the former head of the Hudson City Democrats and police commissioner, told the commission that there was an arrangement with the Republican Party to divide up city government positions, giving the example of the Republicans agreeing not to run anyone against the Democrats’ city judge candidate and in exchange the Democrats allowed the Republicans to run the mayoral candidate unopposed.<br /><br /> Vera Faith, who operated a house of prostitution at 340 Columbia Street, was brought before the commission. She said she usually had between one and three girls working for her at any one time. An advertisement in a Poughkeepsie social event program that read “Vera’s, Come on up boys. Sporting Merchandise” was trotted out for the hearing.<br /><br />Carol Desmond, the operator of a house at 325 Columbia Street, also appeared. She was a little less forthcoming than Faith, saying that the three girls that worked for her—Donna, Patricia and Billy—“sold things.”<br /><br />When a stack of cards with the girls’ names and heart-shaped punch holes was proffered, Desmond answered simply that they “were used in my business.”<br /><br />In the eight month period, in 1949-1950, she operated her business, Desmond made $24,000, almost $220,000 in today’s dollars. She didn’t pay taxes on any of it.<br /><br />The citizenry, when brought to bear for Hudson’s rampant vice, pretty much had the same attitude as Samuel Berman.<br /><br />“They might profit by it, but I don’t think they condone it,” he said of the city’s business community.<br /><br />Berman owned the house at 325 Columbia Street, which he rented to Desmond and eventually sold to her.<br /><br />He told the committee that he suspected what the house was being used for, but didn’t know for sure.<br /><br />When Kennedy was asked why he didn’t clean up the city while D.A., he answered that he had tried to get outside help for an undercover investigation, but was told that he would have to go through regular channels, that is, Hudson’s mayor and the governor’s office.<br /><br />“I might just as well put it in the paper,” he said.<br /><br />The district attorney who did finally help clean up the city was John McLaren. He went directly to the governor’s counsel, who put him in touch with the NYS Police superintendent, leading to the Hudson raid.<br /><br />He told the commission that he had had trouble getting the Hudson Police to cooperate. They balked in regard to getting warrants, he said.<br /><br />But even McLaren had balked at untangling the strings that led from vice to government.<br /><br />He told the commission he would be “glad to prosecute gamblers and hoodlums, but...to bring some political figures in here, as you’ve done...it’s tough.”<br /><br />After the dust cleared from the commission’s presence, a dozen Hudson officers are brought up on different charges, with nine being reinstated with back pay. Benjamin Goldstein, a crap game operator, does a year in jail and the houses of prostitution, its denizens and Hudson’s colorful past fade into history.Andrew K. F. Amelinckxhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03625189659258963004noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7721468140663661487.post-5869236889655749152011-01-19T09:01:00.002-08:002011-01-22T07:35:29.023-08:00Hudson's WPA art project<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjlTeOQ0IKzHtTz-EKSkhTYUHXevDuHToGvnEr7UiReleEakOYNeBGEOM4RTvHAxgvw3Jb18fHUI25I5lKwmY7hYXwNz-XWIfpliz4IROQVWtxdIl_49M3yixuAdNUUJJg9e88YDqvTBtg/s1600/normal_00165-FWA-PBA-Paintings-and-Sculptures-for-Public-Buildings-bas-re.jpg"><img style="float:right; margin:0 0 10px 10px;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 205px; height: 320px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjlTeOQ0IKzHtTz-EKSkhTYUHXevDuHToGvnEr7UiReleEakOYNeBGEOM4RTvHAxgvw3Jb18fHUI25I5lKwmY7hYXwNz-XWIfpliz4IROQVWtxdIl_49M3yixuAdNUUJJg9e88YDqvTBtg/s320/normal_00165-FWA-PBA-Paintings-and-Sculptures-for-Public-Buildings-bas-re.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5563947400730777794" /></a><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiUJO_j5_bODXdxkPbxLrCToGr_VmFm1HOtCbAoZlujfFjw7TfMvcykFdlsm7x3RA4xYnc27YSjd0r8VzwRYIkOxXuM7upbfiDmQ0YyPfH-vmQhu1CoUJjtAdAZqfigqYOqlVwoGnb7koc/s1600/3f05568v.jpg"><img style="float:right; margin:0 0 10px 10px;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 218px; height: 320px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiUJO_j5_bODXdxkPbxLrCToGr_VmFm1HOtCbAoZlujfFjw7TfMvcykFdlsm7x3RA4xYnc27YSjd0r8VzwRYIkOxXuM7upbfiDmQ0YyPfH-vmQhu1CoUJjtAdAZqfigqYOqlVwoGnb7koc/s320/3f05568v.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5563945662602515026" /></a><br />It was 1938, in the midst of the Great Depression, and Hudson’s post office, located at Union Street and South Fourth Street, was expanding. It was also getting a new wall full of sculptures depicting the evolution of transportation.<br />Built between 1909 and 1911, the post office saw an expansion project that was first authorized in 1931 under an amendment to the federal “Public Buildings Act of 1926” that helped fund the construction of more than 100 federal buildings across the United States, including Federal Triangle in Washington D.C. <br />The project was reauthorized in 1934 and construction finally began in 1938 after the purchase of adjoining land. <br />The Hudson Daily Star of Feb. 2, 1938 makes mention of the deal struck between Catherine Tracy and the federal government for the purchase of her property for $12,500. The house was torn down in order to make room for the expansion to the east side of the post office building. <br />Catherine Tracy, née Cadman, was the widow of Dr. Aurelius Tracy, who had died a few years prior to the sale. He was a graduate of Cornell University and the Homeopathic Medical College in New York City. He had a practice in Hudson from 1887 until his death. <br />Among the 1938 additions to the post office was an art project funded by the Works Progress Administration, one of President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal programs. While the WPA provided the grant, the sculptures that grace the inside of the post office were actually created under the auspices of the Treasury Department Art Program. Created in 1935 through a $530,000 grant from the WPA, the project’s mission was to employ out of work artists to decorate federal buildings that had no money in their construction budget for art. The total project costs were $771,521, close to $12,000,000 in today’s dollars. <br />Headed by Olin Dows, himself a painter, TRAP was the smallest and most competitive of the New Deal programs, becoming known among artists as “the Ritz,” making reference to the famed New York hotel. <br />The program was allowed to hire 450 artists, but 75 percent were required to come from relief rolls. The requirement was initially overlooked in order to maintain the quality of the work, in the administrators’ opinions, and only 356 artists were hired during its existence. <br />While Dows was TRAP’s head, the program was supervised by the Treasury Department’s Section of Painting and Sculpture, which had been established the year before, also under the auspices of the WPA. The Section, as it was known was administered by Edward Bruce, who was also an artist, but had made his name as a lawyer, newspaper owner and banker. Both Bruce and Dows were born in the Hudson Valley, Bruce in Dover Plains and Dows in Irvington-On-Hudson, in Westchester County.<br />It was Bruce who felt relying strictly on out of work artists would reduce the caliber of the work being made for the federal buildings and it wasn’t until several artists’ unions protested that the number of artists in the program went from around 250 to a little more than 350. <br />The program, which lasted until the end of 1938, helped create 85 murals, 39 sculptures and 10, 215 easel works. <br />Among the lucky artists to be employed by TRAP were, according to Jacob Baal-Teshuva in his 2003 book “Rothko,” a laundry list of now famous American artists, including Mark Rothko, Willem De Kooning and Jackson Pollock, among others.<br />Another artist who was hired by TRAP, was the Russian-born sculptor Vincent Glinsky who, with the assistance of Leo Schulemowitz, created the Hudson Post Office piece. <br />The wall of sculpture, located on the north end of the building, depicts a Native American and Henry Hudson, among other figures. The piece also includes a number of smaller panels that illustrate various modes of transportation, from sailing ships to an airplane. <br />The sculptures were created using the cast stone process, a technique dating back to at least the 1100s, in which crushed stone or cement is poured into molds and, as the name suggests, cast. It resembles sculpted stone and is often more durable. <br />Glinsky was born in 1895, emigrated from Russia as a young man and attended school in Syracuse before moving to New York City where he studies at a number of institutions, including Columbia University, City College and the Beaux Arts Institute of Design. He received a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1935 and went abroad to Italy and France. When he came back to the United States it was the height of the Depression, but was able to get a job as a TRAP artist. <br />Known for his directly carved stone sculptures, mostly of the female nude, he also worked in wood, terra cotta, watercolor and lithography. After completing his piece in Hudson he began teaching at his alma mater , the Beaux Arts Institute of Design, and would become a sought after instructor, working at both Brooklyn College and in Columbia University's Adult Education Division during the summers. His work was shown at a number of prestigious galleries and museums, including the Guggenheim Museum, Metropolitan Museum of Art and Museum of Modern Art, all in New York. He died in 1975.<br />Glinsky’s work, although sometimes straying into abstraction, was of an older tradition. His assistant on the Hudson project, Schulemowitz, who was 16 years Glinsky’s junior and once remarked that “art Is the highest form Of play,” was of a more experimental vein, working in a non-objective style for much of his career. Even so, while working for TRAP and later for the WPA, he worked in a figurative style. After completing the post office commission in Hudson, Schulemowitz was given his own projects, including a piece, “Indian and Trader,”—created in 1942—that hangs in another post office, this one in Miamisburg, Ohio.Andrew K. F. Amelinckxhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03625189659258963004noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7721468140663661487.post-58882160074253208032010-10-18T06:58:00.000-07:002014-09-14T07:08:38.293-07:00Menus and Memories: An Interview with Ruth ReichlThe sense of taste and our memory are, say scientists, inexorably linked, so perhaps it’s natural that one of the country’s preeminent food writers has made a career out of penning memoirs. Ruth Reichl, author and the former editor-in-chief of Gourmet Magazine and New York Times restaurant critic, will be in Hudson Oct. 9 for a day that incorporates both food and memory.<br />
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Since her background is in art history it seems Reichl became a food writer almost by chance.<br />
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“I fell into it,” she said, “like most people fall into things.”<br />
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She said after graduate school at Michigan State University she moved back to New York City.<br />
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“I thought I would just waltz into MOMA and they’d need a new curator,” she laughed. “To my horror they didn’t.”<br />
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She was living on Manhattan’s Lower East Side and having large dinner parties for friends. At the time, she said, the neighborhood was still an ethnic enclave with Little Italy still vibrant and Chinatown close by. She began “cooking all these foods and collecting recipes.”<br />
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A friend suggested she write a cookbook and the 21-year-old took her friend’s advice.<br />
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“In those days you could do that. No one asked me what my credentials were,” she said. “Everyone thought I was a food writer and it went from there.”<br />
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Two years after her cookbook “Mmmmm: A Feastiary,” was published in 1972, Reichl was living in California and was the co-owner and cook of the collective restaurant The Swallow. She was part of what would become known as the “culinary revolution,” centered around Berkeley, which focused on using fresh, seasonal and local ingredients in cooking. From this small epicurean epicenter began a mass movement that changed the way many Americans eat.<br />
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Reichl said she has happily watched “the great evolution of American food culture and how it has become part of the popular culture. I’m thrilled, but not surprised. My whole career I’ve been waiting for Americans to wake up to food.”<br />
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Food has seemingly always played an important part in Reichl’s life as evinced by three of her four memoirs in which food looms large, the overarching theme that ties her life together.<br />
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Writing about the people in her life Reichl’s descriptions can often seem unflattering, but, according to the author, she always writes the truth.<br />
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“If you’re writing a memoir what’s the point if you’re not going to tell the truth,” she said. “If not, you might as well write fiction.”<br />
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Reichl admitted that she probably couldn’t have written her first memoir, “Tender at the Bone: Growing up at the Table,” had her parents still been alive.<br />
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Her latest memoir is “For You Mom, Finally,” which explores her mother’s life and how that generation of women were mostly relegated to being housewives.<br />
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In a way, she said, it was an atonement for how she presented her mother in the first memoir.<br />
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While her earlier descriptions are all true, she said, so are those in the latest book. “It’s just the other side of the coin,” she said. “She was a very difficult and exceedingly generous woman.”<br />
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The change in her perception of her mother came about gradually as she read through a box of old letters and diaries her mother had been writing for a better part of her life.<br />
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“I didn’t know,” she said of this other side of her mother. “It was a side she kept to herself.”<br />
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The impetus for the book began with a speech Reichl had written for what would have been her mother’s 100th birthday.<br />
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“I knew from my speech that ... I had empathy for my mother and her whole generation of women,” she said. “I did not expect to find self-awareness. It was a real surprise.”<br />
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Reichl said that through writing the book she discovered just how much her mother had sacrificed for her daughter.<br />
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“It was a really difficult experience,” she said. “I cried practically every day while writing that book.”<br />
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Writing the book, she said, finally allowed her to “grow up fully” and see her parents not just as her parents, but as people. “You let go of them,” she said.<br />
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According to Reichl, another big surprise for her was how some of her readers reacted to the book.<br />
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She said she discovered that there was a generation of young women in America who seemingly don’t want to have the kind of life her mother’s generation yearned for, that is, a meaningful existence outside of the home in a job that they loved.<br />
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In the book’s afterward, Reichl recalls a young woman in her late teens in the audience on one of her book tour stops who told her that she didn’t want to “be Superwoman” and hadn’t yet decided between career and family, apparently believing doing both wasn’t an option.<br />
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“I couldn’t believe that this still existed in this country,” said Reichl.<br />
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The book went through a name change when it came out in paperback. It was originally titled “Not Becoming My Mother.”<br />
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The title was chosen by her editor, but Reichl felt it sounded harsh. When the paperback version was released it had the title that the author had originally pushed for.<br />
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Reichl’s next memoir will be exploring her time at Gourmet Magazine, where she was editor-in-chief for a decade before the publication was shuttered in October 2009.<br />
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She recently signed a book deal with Random House for the memoir, along with a new cookbook and her first novel, “Delicious.”<br />
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When she spoke to the <i>Register-Star</i>, she had just returned from a month-long stint at the MacArthur Colony in New Hampshire where she was working on her novel.<br />
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“It’s about halfway done,” she said.<br />
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She has also accepted a position at Random House as an editor-at-large where she will be working on her books and looking for new titles, among other duties.<br />
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When asked if there were more memoirs on the horizon, Reichl answered that with the next one she’ll be caught up, so “it depends on how long I live.”Andrew K. F. Amelinckxhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03625189659258963004noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7721468140663661487.post-45980103464928414472010-10-15T06:40:00.000-07:002010-10-15T07:02:34.707-07:00The Death of Sanford Gifford<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhMm0gRfCmpjVvrnitIr-KiJwZIs_WGVUYq17JIMHm622btztHNoSe6jfpFprHZt20PXKOaitGUg0nol-CmRqQk6wi3nFMq74pvc4vfTSHhoXffazIqVBUfqlSV4VZp8pSIRjNtwZMYeYw/s1600/431px-Sanford_R._Gifford.jpg"><img style="float:right; margin:0 0 10px 10px;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 230px; height: 320px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhMm0gRfCmpjVvrnitIr-KiJwZIs_WGVUYq17JIMHm622btztHNoSe6jfpFprHZt20PXKOaitGUg0nol-CmRqQk6wi3nFMq74pvc4vfTSHhoXffazIqVBUfqlSV4VZp8pSIRjNtwZMYeYw/s320/431px-Sanford_R._Gifford.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5528272896674841170" /></a><br /><span style="font-style:italic;">Editor's Note: This story by Andrew Amelinckx originally appeared in the Oct. 9, 2010 weekend edition of the register-Star Newspaper. It has been altered from its original form.<br /></span><br /><br />The sun shone through the trees in the Hudson Cemetery and a light breeze carried the smells of summer, on this, the last day of August. Several of the men who bore the remains of their friend were more inclined towards wielding brushes than bodies and represented, along with a number of those in the large crowd, some of the best known painters of America’s first great art movement, the Hudson River School. They were there to bury one of their own, Sanford Robinson Gifford.<br /><br />Many had come by train from New York City where Gifford had spent a good part of his later life and where he had died two days earlier, on Aug. 29, 1880, of malarial fever. While he possibly contracted the disease during a trip to Minnesota, in mid-19th century America malaria was prevalent across the country, including in New York City.<br /><br />Writing to his mother while he lay in bed, burning with fever, he told her “he was happy, ready to die and had the consciousness of having done his duty as he understood it” and going on to say that his “faith in immortality was strong and settled.”<br /><br />Among his friends who bore his body to the grave that summer day was Jervis McEntee, a fellow painter who had traveled with Gifford in Europe in 1868 during a trip that would eventually result in the creation of a painting that Gifford considered his crowning achievement—“The Ruins of the Parthenon.” The painting of the famous Greek temple in Athens brilliantly displays Gifford’s ability to paint light and atmosphere, in a style that would come to be called “Luminism.” The artist himself said the work wasn’t a painting of a building, but of a day.<br /><br />Like most of his fellow Hudson River School artists Gifford created his larger works based on sketches made out in the field, and also like those fellow artists, he traveled extensively both in America and abroad. <br /><br />Gifford made several trips with Worthington Whittredge, another well-known artist of the Hudson River School, traveling in Europe in the mid-1850s and the western US in 1870. That sad summer day in 1880 Whittredge would be another of Gifford’s pallbearers.<br /><br />Gifford had met many of the men he would call friends and artistic peers at the Tenth Street Studio Building, located at 51 West 10th Street between Fifth and Sixth Avenues in Manhattan. Built in 1857 it would become the center of the American art world for the next half-century. Among his contemporaries who had a studio there was Frederic Church, one of the best known of the Hudson River School Artists whose stately mansion, Olana, still stands today in Greenport, NY. Church had also been on the European excursion that Gifford had taken with McEntee and McEntee’s wife in the late 1860s.<br /><br />Church, called “an intimate friend of the deceased” by the Hudson Republican Newspaper, was in attendance at Gifford’s funeral as well.<br /><br />The day began with a 3 p.m. service held at the Gifford Family home at 337 Diamond St. in Hudson. Gifford’s father,Elihu, was a wealthy industrialist who in 1823, the year of Gifford’s birth, bought into an iron foundry in Hudson, which he renamed Starbuck, Gifford and Company. He would go on to organize the Farmers’ Bank and serve as its first president as well as founding the Hudson and Berkshire Railroad. His wife was the first director of the Hudson Orphan Asylum and a professor of religion. According to McEntee, Gifford’s mother had hoped that he would have also followed that pursuit. But it seemed Gifford was destined to become an artist.<br /><br />Born in Saratoga County,NY., Gifford grew up in Hudson, NY., in the proverbial shadow of Thomas Cole, the man regarded as the founder of the Hudson River School who lived in Catskill.<br /><br />After attending the Hudson Academy Gifford spent two years at Brown University before moving to Manhattan to study art in 1845. His career followed a straight path to the National Academy, the center of American art at the time, where he first showed work in 1847. His life was devoted to art and he continued to paint even as he served in the Civil War. Gifford was a corporal in the Union Army’s 7th Regiment of the New York Militia from 1861 to 1863.<br /><br />He was a tall, thin, dark-haired man whose character was, as defined by a friend after the artist’s death, “serene and placid, resting on resources within himself,” but whose placid exterior harbored a “depth…that flowed within, whose floods, and swirls, and eddies often caught him from the light and carried him into cavernous depths of shade."<br /><br />Perhaps McEntee was thinking only of his friend’s exterior when he wrote, “the face of the dead reflected the whole life and bade all look upon Gifford’s serene and hopeful and contented face.”<br /><br />The funeral service was officiated by the Rev. W.H. Bellows, a well-known Unitarian minister from New York City, who commented afterwards “it was fitting that the painter of the summer should go to his rest on this last beautiful day of the summer.”<br /><br />The other pallbearers who helped lay Gifford in the ground included artists R.W. Hubbard and John F. Weir. The final man carrying Gifford’s casket was Richard Butler, who was one of Gifford’s major collectors and through whom Gifford’s work can still be seen thanks to the donation of his paintings to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, which held an exhibition that autumn featuring 160 of the artist’s 700 known works.Andrew K. F. Amelinckxhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03625189659258963004noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7721468140663661487.post-54772353992626305932010-09-29T05:16:00.000-07:002014-09-14T07:14:08.881-07:00The Saddest Music Ever Written<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg05hMmDXUH1SRqz6crEdN0aV0fDzTs15Cpvw96Eqs9ro1yuc_vVgnEdV-B6IqWE21Z5PceiYzvx9a-3NXOfkwvRncW4IEhzVuBDX-Mw9J-Lvlpeh1jti0YhXmXrCw-C4-DkUPjRE6HUnM/s1600/saddest+music.jpg" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"><img alt="" border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg05hMmDXUH1SRqz6crEdN0aV0fDzTs15Cpvw96Eqs9ro1yuc_vVgnEdV-B6IqWE21Z5PceiYzvx9a-3NXOfkwvRncW4IEhzVuBDX-Mw9J-Lvlpeh1jti0YhXmXrCw-C4-DkUPjRE6HUnM/s320/saddest+music.jpg" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5522312930634935442" style="cursor: hand; cursor: pointer; float: right; height: 320px; margin: 0 0 10px 10px; width: 214px;" /></a><br />
<span style="font-style: italic;">Editor's note: This piece by Andrew Amelinckx originally appeared in the Register-Star's on-line edition Sept. 20 in a slightly different version. </span> <br />
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The soldier runs toward the helicopter, which is fast leaving the ground. His comrades look on in desperation at the seemingly hundreds of enemy troops on the man’s heels. The music swells as he falls to the ground, hit by a number of bullets, only to get up again, the action in slow motion.<br />
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The music that gives this scene from the 1986 film “Platoon,” written and directed by Oliver Stone, its power and gravitas is “Adagio for Strings” by Samuel Barber.<br />
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This piece, written in 1936 as part of Barber’s “String Quartet , Op. 11” was the topic of a lecture at the Hudson Opera House given by Thomas Larson.<br />
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Larson is the author of “The Saddest Music Ever Written: The Story of Samuel Barber’s ‘Adagio for Strings’,” recently published by Pegasus Books.<br />
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The book encompasses history, culture and the personal as it relates to “Adagio for Strings,” and seems to have haunted the author and journalist far longer than the 10 months it took him to write it.<br />
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“Each book is an odyssey,” he said.<br />
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Between the ages of 10 and 32 Larson considered himself a musician and composer and earned a degree in musical composition, but at age 32 he abruptly shifted gears, leaving music behind for writing.<br />
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He said he has never fully understood why he stopped making music, but believes it was at least partially motivated by a “messy divorce.”<br />
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He eventually returned to music in a different way, through language, but struggled with how to convey the idea of music through the written word.<br />
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“Why do so many of us try to explain the beauty of music, thus depriving it of its mystery?” he quoted the famed conductor Leonard Bernstein as saying.<br />
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“I struggled with it for years,” Larson said. But eventually he was able to make it work in “Adagio for Strings” through the inclusion of various writing styles — a hybrid narrative, he calls it — from personal memoir to biography and musical analysis. He also included three fictionalized episodes involving his father, mother and grandmother hearing the Barber piece.<br />
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“All the facts are true,” he said, “but I also imagined their inner lives ... This was the way I was able to write about music.”<br />
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Larson’s relationship with the Barber work stretches back to the 1970s when he heard the piece on a record of orchestral music by the New York Philharmonic conducted by Thomas Schippers.<br />
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He said an image of Barber on the back of the album reminded him of his father, a World War II veteran, who had died two years earlier. Barber, he said, seemed to have the same sense of sadness his father had.<br />
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He listened to the piece a lot that summer, he said, not sure whether it was from grief or another one of the emotions he was feeling at a time when his life was in flux.<br />
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Whether it was grief or not that drew the young Larson to “Adagio for Strings,” the work would, over the course of several decades, take on that role for many Americans, beginning with the death of President Franklin D. Roosevelt on April 12, 1945.<br />
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“That weekend Barber’s ‘Adagio’ played on the radio,” said Larson. “It got into (Americans’) bones...After 1945 the appropriation began in earnest.”<br />
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The piece was later heard at memorials and funerals for such notables as Albert Einstein, John F. Kennedy and Grace Kelly.<br />
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From there it found its way into a number of films, including 1980’s “The Elephant Man,” “El Norte” from 1986 and another film from that year, “Platoon.”<br />
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“It sums up the moral quagmire of Vietnam better than anything I know,” said Larson of the aforementioned scene in the film.<br />
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“Adagio” has also been heard in parody form on such television shows as “Seinfeld,” “The Simpsons” and “South Park.”<br />
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DJ Tiësto, a Dutch musician, created an electronic version of “Adagio” that was heard by a reported four billion people, due in part to its being played at the 2004 Olympic games in Greece.<br />
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Barber, according to Larson, probably wouldn’t be too happy with the results since he was apparently disgruntled by the piece’s popularity in his own lifetime.<br />
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“He refused to have it played at his funeral,” said Larson.<br />
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Barber, born in West Chester, Pennsylvania in 1910 already knew at age 10 he was going to create music, writing a letter to his mother that year in which he tells her he will never be an athlete, but would be a composer.<br />
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Larson drew the conclusion from the letter that there was also an unstated, but inferred reference to Barber’s homosexuality.<br />
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Barber created the piece when he was 26 during a summer in Italy with his longtime partner Gian Carlo Menotti, also a composer, who Barber met when they were both studying at Philadelphia’s Curtis Institute.<br />
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Menotti recalled that the couple “were so happy” that summer, leading one man at Sunday’s event to wonder aloud if “Adagio” wasn’t a love song that had somehow become appropriated as a piece associated with mourning.<br />
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“Adagio,” taken from the middle section of Barber’s “String Quartet” was reworked by the composer for the famed conductor Arturo Toscanini as a piece for string orchestra, which was first performed in 1938.<br />
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For Larson, one of the greatest performances of “Adagio” was at the Royal Albert Hall by the BBC Symphony, conducted by the American Leonard Slatkin four days after the Sept. 11 attacks.<br />
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The piece, which is nine minutes long, said Larson, was stretched out to more than 10 minutes.<br />
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Slatkin said it was the most emotional night he had ever spent in a concert hall. <br />
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“It commands attention like few works do,” said Larson.<br />
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<iframe frameborder="0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?lt1=_blank&bc1=000000&IS2=1&bg1=FFFFFF&fc1=000000&lc1=0000FF&t=anhointhki-20&o=1&p=8&l=as1&m=amazon&f=ifr&md=10FE9736YVPPT7A0FBG2&asins=160598115X" style="height: 240px; width: 120px;"></iframe>Andrew K. F. Amelinckxhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03625189659258963004noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7721468140663661487.post-11158645961642505232010-05-29T05:22:00.000-07:002010-05-29T09:04:27.976-07:00Little Stories: Sedat Pakay on Walker EvansIt was the late 1960s. Walker Evans, a photographer who helped document the Great Depression three decades earlier through his haunting images of the rural poor, was teaching at Yale University in Connecticut.<br /><br />A young Turkish photographer, who aspired towards filmmaking, convinced Evans to <br />become the subject of a short film.<br /><br />“Walker was very modest, very shy,” said Sedat Pakay, the photographer and filmmaker who now lives in Claverack. “I talked him into it.”<br /><br />At age 21 Pakay had come to Yale to study photography under Evans.<br /><br />“I was with him for two years,” he said.<br /><br />During that time Yale didn’t have a separate photography department.<br /><br />“It was under graphic design,” said Pakay.<br /><br />Most of the students were graphic artists concerned with magazine work, said Pakay, while he, like Evans, was “obsessed with photography.”<br /><br />The two men hit it off and it was during this time that Pakay broached the subject of making a film about his mentor.<br /><br />The first version of the film, completed in 1969, was 20 minutes long and shot on a 16 millimeter camera owned by Yale.<br /><br />Pakay was living in New York City by then and would edit the film whenever he could find the time.<br /><br />After the film’s completion there was little interest, he said, due to Evan’s being considered “a has been” at the time, as well as the fact that documentary filmmaking wasn’t popular.<br /><br />“Documentaries weren’t on anyone’s radar,” he said. “I think I made about 600 bucks from it.”<br /><br />According to Pakay, it was a time when a number of new feature filmmakers, including Francis Ford Coppola and George Lucas, were coming to the forefront.<br /><br />Evans, who was born in St. Louis, Mo. in 1903, took up photography in 1928 and would eventually become part of the Farm Security Administration’s photographic unit.<br /><br />The FSA was a New Deal agency and under the leadership of Roy Stryker, the photographic unit worked to underscore the need for President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s programs as well as document a decade’s worth of national troubles. <br /><br />According to Pakay, Evans and Stryker had a very tumultuous relationship.<br /><br />“Stryker didn’t like him and he didn’t like Stryker,” he said.<br /><br />Evans was living in New York City doing magazine work at the time and considered it a chance to travel and make photographs, according to Pakay.<br /><br />“It was a major opportunity for Walker,” he said.<br /><br />Pakay, who loves Evan’s FSA work, believes that the years between 1935 and 1937, when Evan’s was with the agency, were some of his best.<br /><br />“A lot of artists have shining moments,” he said. “These were Walker’s years.”<br /><br />By 1938 Stryker and Evans had reached an impasse.<br /><br />“Stryker would give him an assignment and Walker would ignore him,” Pakay said. “He was doing whatever he wanted to do.”<br /><br />Pakay said Evans did the same thing when he and James Agee were sent on assignment by Fortune Magazine to do a story in 1936.<br /><br />“(The magazine) wanted something glorifying American capitalism,” said Pakay, “and (Evans and Agee) chose three families of share croppers.”<br /><br />The magazine never published the article.<br /><br />“No one cared,” he said.<br /><br />The piece was eventually published in 1941 as the book “Let Us Now Praise Famous Men” and told in words and images the story of three white tenant families from Hale County, Ala.<br /><br />Pakay said 1,000 copies were printed and a little more than half, about 600, sold.<br /><br />“There was little fanfare upon its publication,” he said. “Now they’re almost impossible to find.”<br /><br /> The time in which it was published played a large part in its failure to sell, said Pakay. It was on the eve of World War II when America was still reeling from the Great Depression.<br /><br />Stryker eventually fired Evans from the agency, but according to Pakay, Evans had said on numerous occasions that he caused himself to be fired.<br /><br />The year Evans was fired was the same in which he was honored with a solo show at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City, the first dedicated to photography.<br /><br />Evans later worked for a number of magazines and eventually became an editor at Fortune Magazine.<br /><br />“He left Fortune (in 1965) and went to Yale to teach,” said Pakay.<br /><br />This was where the two men met. Pakay had gotten a full scholarship to Yale and eventually received his Masters in Fine Arts there in 1968.<br /><br />As a teacher Evans never gave assignments but would discuss the subject matter of the work. “The clothing, environment and background,” said Pakay.<br /><br />Both men were interested in subjects that “were very American,” he said.<br /><br />Pakay’s teacher was much more interested in the subject than the technical aspects of his art.<br /><br />“Walker didn’t care at all about darkroom techniques,” he said. “Not at all. Zip.”<br /><br /> Evans, he said, was capable in the dark room, but chose instead to have his work done by professional labs.<br /><br />During this time Pakay was moving towards filmmaking.<br /><br />“I was already trying to put little stories into one frame of film,” he said, adding that filmmaking allowed him to incorporate “sound and motion” into his work.<br /><br />Pakay would go on to make two other documentaries. One was a 2006 film on Josef and Anni Albers titled “Josef and Anni Albers: Art is Everywhere.” The Albers were German born American artists, he, a painter and influential educator, she, a textile artist and printmaker.<br /><br />Another was a short film from 1973 on the famed African-American writer James Baldwin titled “James Baldwin: From Another Place.”<br /><br />Pakay had met Baldwin in Istanbul, Turkey in 1964 and became the writer’s unofficial photographer.<br /><br />“I jumped into it with the vigor and ambition of an 18-year-old,” he said of his photography during that period.<br /><br />Of the Evan’s film, "Walker Evans: America," it would be nearly 30 years before it would reach its final state.<br /><br />It wasn’t until Pakay and his wife Kathy bought a weekend house in Claverack,NY., two hours north of new York City, in 1984—to which they moved full-time three years later— that the idea for a longer film came to fruition.<br /><br />Pakay said he approached WMHT, the local PBS affiliate in Albany,NY., about doing something longer.<br /><br />“I had the goods,” he said of his earlier documentary.<br /><br /> Evans had died in 1975, but Pakay was able to expand the film through interviews with a number of Evans’ friends and colleagues, including John Szarkowski, the former curator of the Museum of Modern Art in Manhattan, who was living in East Chatham at the time.<br /><br />A National Endowment for the Arts grant, as well as funding from the Park Foundation, helped get the new version of the film completed in 1999.<br /><br />The film was eventually picked up by PBS and shown across the country around the same time that MOMA held a major retrospective of Evans’ work.<br /><br />Pakay said that in the last decade he has returned to photography and has even, tentatively, embraced the digital age.<br /><br />In 2008 he began working with Emily Upham of Germantown for a book on aging and loss.<br /><br />He said he bought a digital camera for the project, “a play camera” he called it, but also brought his 35 millimeter film camera along.<br /><br />The book contains 17 portraits of women authors and artists who have dealt with loss and aging, including Gail Godwin, Erica Jong, Vivian Gornick, Tina Howe and Sharon Olds. The book contains narratives by the artists and interviews by Upham and is due out from Simon and Schuster this spring.<br /><br />Pakay said that he enjoys the “instant gratification” of digital cameras, but feels that digital prints still don’t match up to traditional silver gelatin prints.<br /><br />According to him, if Evans was still alive he would most likely be using a digital camera.<br /><br />When the SX 70 Polaroid camera came out Evans immediately began using one, he said.<br /><br />“He spent years with it,” said Pakay.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">Addendum</span><br /><br />I interviewed Pakay at his home in Claverack one February morning. As I exited my truck I was greeted by two large poodles who came bounding towards me full tilt. On the porch stood Pakay, a smallish man with glasses and a smile that peaked out from the corners of his mouth. <br /><br />We drank mint tea at his kitchen table and talked and every so often he would get up to let the dogs in or out. "They're obsessed with squirrels," he explained. They would see a squirrel through the kitchen window, go crazy, be let outside to chase said squirrel and then return inside to repeat the entire process. <br /> <br />Besides discussing Evans, we touched upon Pakay's series of photographs that he did of such renowned photographers as Andre Kertesz and Edward Steichen as part of his graduate thesis.<br /><br />He also photographed Mark Rothko, the reticent Abstract Expressionist for the project.Pakay said it took months for Rothko to finally agree to sit for him. The young photographer met the older and famously reserved painter at Rothko's Manhattan studio, a converted 19th century horse barn.<br /><br />The resulting image shows Rothko, his mouth slightly open, standing between two of his smaller works that hung in the hallway of his studio.<br /><br />Pakay was then invited into Rothko's work space where the artist was in the midst of creating the large scale paintings that would eventually hang in the Rothko Chapel in Houston, Texas.<br /> <br />Rothko, who was known to consume large quantities of whiskey, offered Pakay his first taste of bourbon. <br /><br />"I had never tasted it before," he said. "I still love it, even though I'm not supposed to drink it anymore."Andrew K. F. Amelinckxhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03625189659258963004noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7721468140663661487.post-61649034741762222522010-05-09T06:50:00.000-07:002010-05-09T06:59:46.461-07:00The World She Made: Heller on Rand<span style="font-style: italic;">Editor's Note: My interview with Anne Heller originally appeared in the Register-Star Newspaper April 30, 2010.</span><br /><br />“She was a complex, contradictory character,” said Anne Heller of the writer-philosopher Ayn Rand.<br /><br />Heller spent five and a half years working on her 2009 biography of Rand titled “Ayn Rand and the World She Made,” published by Doubleday.<br /><br />Rand, born Alisa Zinov’yevna Rosenbaum, in Russia in 1905 wrote a number of works, including the two best selling novels, “The Fountainhead” (1943) and 1957’s “Atlas Shrugged.”<br /><br />She was also a philosopher whose ideas, which came to be known as Objectivism, continue to be influential today as a wellspring for Libertarianism and other ideologies.<br /><br />Heller, a magazine editor and journalist, first began reading Rand after Suze Orman — the financial advisor and best-selling author — sent her a passage from “Atlas Shrugged” about money, as a way of illustrating the point of Orman’s essay that Heller was editing.<br /><br />“I’m not even sure if she is a fan of Rand,” Heller said of Orman. But the passage was enough to pique Heller’s interest.<br /><br />“The passage surprised me by defending limitless wealth in a way that was logical, original, complex, and, though somewhat overbearing, beautifully written,” stated Heller in her book’s preface.<br /><br />Soon she was reading more of Rand’s work.<br /><br />Heller made the leap to writing Rand’s biography after she began “looking around at the work out there” on Rand.<br /><br />She said that most of the books were either written by Rand devotees or by authors who “dismissed her out of hand.”<br /><br />“There was nothing objective out there,” she said.<br /><br />Heller’s biography is based on original research done in Russia, along with interviews with Rand’s friends and former acolytes.<br /><br />She said that while writing the book she was surprised to discover how determined Rand had been throughout her life.<br /><br />“Nothing was a coincidence in her life,” she said. “She knew what she wanted.”<br /><br />In Heller’s book she describes a well known scene in which the famed Hollywood director Cecil B. DeMille meets Rand for the first time. It has been said that the meeting, which helped launch Rand’s career as a Hollywood screen writer, was just sheer luck. But Heller, based on her research, believes the meeting was more than a coincidence.<br /><br />“Of the people I talked to nobody believed that happened (by chance),” she said.<br /><br />Another aspect of Rand’s personality that Heller was surprised, and saddened by, was how Rand’s ideas became more rigid as she grew older.<br /><br />Rand had a wonderful mind that changed decade by decade, said Heller.<br /><br />She believes this was due, in part, to the cult-like atmosphere that surrounded Rand in her later years.<br /><br />Beginning in the 1950s, Rand, while living in New York City, was surrounded by a small group of acolytes, whom Heller called “gatekeepers” who kept those who disagreed with Rand away from her.<br /><br />“She let it happen,” said Heller. “She was charmed by flattery like the rest of us.”<br /><br />Rand’s philosophy which places the individual good above that of the collective continues to be felt close to 30 years after her death in 1982.<br /><br />“You can draw a line from Objectivism straight through to Libertarianism,” said Heller.<br /><br />She said the Tea Party movement has also latched on to Rand.<br /><br />“People use her a lot,” she said. “I don’t know if what they are doing has much to do with her ... she was pro-abortion and anti-religion, ferociously so.”<br /><br />Alan Greenspan, the economist who served as the country’s chairman of the Federal Reserve from 1987 to 2006, was also influenced by Rand.<br /><br />“He was a steadfast friend to her until the end of her life,” said Heller.<br /><br />According to Heller, Greenspan said that Rand put the moral basis in capitalism for him — the idea that capitalism is the only economic system that respects the individual and is determined by the individuals right to produce.<br /><br />“A couple of years ago,” said Heller, Greenspan repudiated the theory that it was in a business person’s best interest to be honest, a long held Randian belief.<br /><br />“It’s shocking to me that he lived at the pinnacle of world economics and didn’t realize that people would cheat if they had the chance,” she said.<br /><br />Rand’s fiction also continues to do well, with close to a million books being sold in 2009. But for Rand there was no line between her philosophy and her novels.<br /><br />“Rand used her novels as a way of illustrating her ideas,” said Heller. “She always thought that people are much more influenced by stories than by lectures.”Andrew K. F. Amelinckxhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03625189659258963004noreply@blogger.com1