Inventing the Telephone

Alexander Graham Bell patented the electric telephone on March 7, 1876. Three days later he made the first successful phone call to his assistant, saying, “Mr. Watson, come here, I want to see you.” In the 20^th Century, he might have said, “What’s up?”

Calling Long Distance

The poet William Stafford’s father was born 15 years after the invention of the telephone. He explained to his son that he didn’t need a phone to call long distance. To demonstrate, he climbed onto the roof of his house and shouted to a friend who lived down the street.

In the 50s and 60s, calling long-distance was more expensive after three minutes. When I was in college in Austin and called my mother in Dallas, I used a small hourglass of white sand to measure the time.

Telephone Prefixes

Our telephone prefix was Dixon 2-2298, which later became Fleetwood 2-2298. That was close to the number for the Circle Theater, so we’d get calls asking about when the next feature started. I was always tempted to give them some random time, but instead I explained that they had the wrong number.

Pennsylvania 6-5000 was a Glenn Miller melody, named for the hotel where The Glenn Miller Orchestra had played:

Dial M for Murder

Alfred Hitchcock made a movie of this play, with the telephone playing a key role:

One Ringy Dingy

In the days when we interacted with phone operators to place long distance calls or ask questions about phone numbers, there was the wonderful Lily Tomlin playing that role on the TV show Laugh-In:

Party Lines

Beginning in the late 1800s and into the 20^th Century, the Bell System offered Party Lines, so that more than one phone user might share the same telephone circuit. “The last standard residential party line in the United States was removed in 1991 in Woodbury, Connecticut.” Kimberly Holland, Southern Living).

I remember once dialing a number and overhearing a conversation between two girls I didn’t know. I engaged in a short conversation with them, a strange but not unheard-of moment.

“All Alone by the Telephone”, by Ken Peplowski

Described by British jazz critic Russell Davies as “arguably the greatest living jazz clarinetist”.

Calling All Angels

This beautiful song from the movie Pay It Forward is about another kind of calling: reaching beyond to help us get through difficult times by calling a friend, calling out for help, to be together.

When I was a young boy, a lot of my world included going to school, taking music lessons, and playing with kids in our neighborhood. But it was listening to the radio, watching television, and going to the movies that exposed me to the larger world.

Radio and TV

I recall a small radio shelf next to the refrigerator in our kitchen, where I first heard Harry Truman speak. I also remember seeing the newly elected Dwight Eisenhower speak on a TV that was set up on the elementary school stage. Radio was also how we first heard Amos and Andy and The Lone Ranger episodes before we could see them on TV.

In the beginning, the TV showed a station identification image, then there were live videos of people walking around the state fairgrounds in Dallas. We saw kids’ shows like Kukla, Fran and Ollie and Hopalong Cassidy as well as shows for the whole family like I Love Lucy, Ozzie and Harriet, and The Honeymooners.

There’s a story that in 1953 more people watched the I Love Lucy episode about the birth of their baby boy Ricky than they watched the coronation of Queen Elizabeth, which aired at the same time.

An early musical inspiration for me was the incredible Les Paul and Mary Ford in 1951. They had invented multi-tracking, creating layers of sound for guitar and voice.

My first electric guitar was a Les Paul Gibson, a few years after it came on the market in 1951. I could only play basic chords back then, but it led to playing with a band with my brother at the University of Texas. We each made $25 for playing four hours at parties, and tuition was only $50 a semester. The good old days.

Movies

When I was a kid, I would go to the Inwood Theater to see Saturday matinees, which typically included a black and white western followed by the main featured movie.

Of course, in those days there were cartoons, as well as shorts like Joe McDoakes’ Behind the Eight Ball:

At the intermission, we got to see dancing popcorn boxes to the ditty “Let’s All Go to the Lobby” so we could buy some candy or popcorn.

Before the main feature, I once saw a man come on the stage and demonstrate fancy yo-yo tricks, including one called “walking the dog” as well as getting two yo-yos into the air at the same time. This was all very educational, and they gave out free yo-yos!

My First Date

My first date was with Erin Barger. We went to see King Solomon’s Mines, starring Stewart Granger as the safari guide and Deborah Kerr who wants to find her missing husband in Africa. I’m pretty sure we held hands. My mother drove us there and back, this being the early 50s when I didn’t have a driver’s license. But I was smitten with Erin.

50s Movies

When I was a little older, we could go to midnight movies. The one I remember was D.O.A. (Dead on Arrival), a film noir from 1950 about a man, played by Edmond O’Brien, who knew he’d been poisoned and spends his remaining time before he dies trying to track down his killer.

One of the 50s movie genres I recall were sci-fi/horror. Here’s a clip from The Thing from Another World:

Another favorite scary movie, which was re-made at least twice, was The Invasion of the Body Snatchers in 1956:

Alfred Hitchcock

Probably the most memorable scenes in the movies for me were in Alfred Hitchcock’s movies, like this one from North by Northwest as Cary Grant faces an impossible life or death situation:

I do miss those early movie experiences, including the invention of Cinerama and 3-D. One time we went to see our first 3-D movie The House of Wax, starring Vincent Price. After the movie, Vincent Price, Frank Lovejoy and Phyllis Kirk appeared on stage. It’s hard to imagine that happening these days.

Movie Music and Politics

I got hooked on Dimitri Tiomkin’s movie music.

He actually composed music for 160 movies, including High Noon, It’s a Wonderful Life, Dial M for Murder, and The Old Man and the Sea.

He appeared before McCarthy’s House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC), as did Carl Foreman, who wrote the script for High Noon, which was considered a political allegory about McCarthyism. Tiomkin won an Oscar for Best Original Song in High Noon:

Aaron Copeland was also accused of being a communist. He composed some of my favorite music like “Appalachian Spring” and for the movies Of Mice and Men and Our Town:

We stopped going to the movies during COVID, which first led us to stream Hamilton and then many things appearing on TV—like Ted Lasso, Shrinking, Bosch, The PITT, Hacks, Slow Horses, and so many others. But I’m glad to see that movie-going is coming back.

That’s All Folks!

I really don’t spend a lot of time thinking about death. But every now and then death and maybe even angels require my attention, mostly in books, movies and in my own life.

Wings of Desire

This is a clip of the 1987 movie Wings of Desire, about angels keeping watch on Berlin, when it was still divided by the infamous wall that didn’t come down until two years after the movie was made.

Here’s an actual part of the Berlin wall—a photo I took when we visited the Newseum in DC, which sadly is no longer there:

Seeing Dead People

The Sixth Sense is a movie about a boy who can see dead people:

In the 2023 issue of Psychology Today, Dr. Mark Shelvock reports that “People of all ages have reported seeing dead spouses, pets, family members, and friends.”

An Afterlife?

Kevin Brockmeier’s novel A Brief History of the Dead feels familiar but takes a different tack on death. Here is an excerpt from Laura Miller’s review of that book in Salon, from 20 years ago:

“It begins in a city, or rather “the city,” a metropolis not unlike New York (it has a river, a subway and a Christopher Street) but that has no discernible boundaries — in fact, it seems to go on forever. The people who inhabit the city work in diners, banks and jewelry shops; there’s even a modest newspaper . . . Everyone in the city is well aware of the fact that they are dead. Inhabitants gather together in one neighborhood and contemplate the theory that their city is an intermediate zone and that they “would remain there only so long as they endured in living memory.”

Remembering

Remembering family members who have passed away can be painful. I will always miss my grandparents, mother, father and brother. I still see my father bending over the piano, cigarette smoke drifting in the light over his head as he tried to play a melody.

And photos are evidence of the past: him wearing a light shirt, his hair dark and full, his face like a young William Holden. There’s one of him next to an old Dodge, pointing a clarinet toward the sky. My mother had written a joking note below the picture: “Alias Benny Goodman”. This would have been when they were dating or newlyweds around 1939-1940.

Remembering the Alamo

I like this comment I came across somewhere:

“I think the story of the Alamo is almost a metaphor for life. You know you’re not getting out alive. What matters is what you do before the inevitable end.”

It’s a reminder about what counts—the life we’re living, the people we love and who love us, the things we can accomplish to benefit others, and caring for each other.

A relative of mine was Willis Avery, who fought in the Battle of San Jacinto during Texans’ fight for independence. Avery’s stepfather Gordon Jennings was the oldest member who died at the Alamo in 1836.

What I Don’t and Do Believe

Franz Kafka once wrote, “The meaning of life is that it stops.”

I don’t believe that, since the meaning of life is in fact the life you’ve lived, as well as your life as remembered by all who knew you, or only read what you’ve written, or even seen you in the grocery store and waved in your direction. All life has meaning and value, even though some politicians don’t appear to believe that. But we know better.

John Steinbeck on Trees:

“The redwoods are not like any trees we know, they are ambassadors from another time. They have the mystery of ferns that disappeared a million years ago into the coal of the carboniferous era. They carry their own light and shade. . . One feels the need to bow to unquestioned sovereigns. I have known these great ones since my earliest childhood, have lived among them, camped and slept against their warm monster bodies.” — Travels with Charley

Growing Up with Trees

In the house where I grew up, there were two pecan trees in the front yard that lived at least 60 or more years until my mother moved out to join us in San Antonio. A few years ago on returning to our old North Dallas neighborhood, I saw that the new owners had torn down our house and built a modern two-story. They had also taken down the pecan trees.

I do miss the house and the trees. Of course everything eventually goes away. Speaking of which, here is a picture of my mother, father, brother, aunts, nieces, and grandparents sitting on our front porch in early 1943. I’m with my mother on the right, and my brother is with my grandmother on the left.

Across the street, I remember the very tall tree in my friend’s front yard. One day I climbed that tree and couldn’t figure out how to climb down. My mother came over to watch me dangle from a branch and eventually drop to the ground. Nothing was broken, except maybe my pride. Another neighborhood friend had tied a long rope to a tree, and all the kids would swing out from the back porch over the yard and jump down.

Tree Houses

Clearly, playing in or around trees was an important part of being a kid in those days. My brother and I built a tree house in our backyard. It wasn’t very sturdy, but we liked the idea of sitting there, taking in the world from that perch.

Unlike our crude effort, there are amazing tree houses in the world, some meant for travelers to stay instead of in a hotel or motel. Here are a few amazing examples:

Of course, none of these trees compare with the long lifespan of Steinbeck’s redwoods. But they too are ambassadors of the past. Like this oak tree in the front yard, which has been here long before we moved into our house:

And a Tree Poem

I wrote this thinking of my relationship with trees when I was growing up. They are an alternate, god-like place to see the world from a different perspective—an escape, a hidden adventure. It was just the kind of thing kids would do in an era of bicycling, walking, running, playing hide-and-seek at the end of the day, or sitting on the floor playing Monopoly with friends.

                                     A God for Small Things

                             A roof or tree house is a fine place to be 
                             when the weather is right, the morning sun
                             haloing around the large oak’s highest 
                             leaves, as you survey the new day:
                             newspapers on driveways of the three people 
                             on your street who still subscribe,
                             window curtains or blinds gradually open
                             as neighbors awaken to the morning.

                            Who else watches over the robins
                            wrens and cardinals who have begun
                            to pass along the news of birds?
                            Who else tracks the clouds bunching up 
                            just now in the west, or takes note 
                            of the ants making their way single file?  

                            Is there divine surveillance of princes, 
                            armies and eggshells too?
                            Perhaps our mission is to notice 
                            the small things in the margins,
                            the music of the moment – 
                            lost as the world races ahead 
                            unless we pick up the curious stone 
                            in the road and open our godlike eyes.

Sometimes different events will connect or somehow fold into each other in our minds. Let’s say you’re driving to the grocery store and the image of another grocery store in another town where you once lived comes to mind. This is how the brain goes where it wants to go.

Something like that happened to me while reading Ann Patchett’s great novel Whistler. There’s a scene about a car in a serious accident with two people stuck inside.

Then another car pops into my head, in the lyrics from my favorite Tom Waits song “Take It with Me”. It’s a sentimental, emotional song that grabs me every time I hear it. In the song there’s this line:

“All broken down, on the side of the road,

I was never more alive or alone”

The song is about memories of the world you’ve known, the people you’ve loved, who you want to keep in your mind and heart, the things you want to take with you when you go. This is Rachael Price’s version:

Another Car Story

The story and the song led me to recall my own long ago car incident. Mother was driving an old Dodge with me and my brother as we headed down Lover’s Lane in Dallas, approaching a stoplight at Inwood Road. Vince and I were fighting over who got to sit in the funny pull-down seat behind the driver’s seat (I’ve never seen that contraption in a car since).

As we approached the red light, the right wheel came off the car and started rolling toward a Centennial Liquor store on the corner, with lots of plate glass windows. Then a man who happened to be on the sidewalk saw what was happening, caught the tire and saved the day.

What does this story mean, if anything? A book reminds me of a song, which reminds me of another car incident. I think everything means something, which is why it sticks in your mind. As Tom Waits sings, “I’ll take it with me when I go”.

A Monkee Story

Another memorable event occurred after Susan and I got married almost 60 years ago. We’d moved into an apartment above a dentist’s office in Waltham, Massachusetts when I was in graduate school and she was Assistant Director of the Brandeis Computer Center.

On the day we were moving into the apartment and unpacking boxes, I was surprised to see my old school friend Mike Nesmith wearing a green cap and standing at our back door. I welcomed him in and said, “This is my wife Susan.” He shook her hand saying, “Hello, wife Susan”. Then he invited us to join him for a press briefing at the Boston Sheraton to promote a new TV show. So we joined him in a limo, which was the first and I think only time we’d been in a limo.

James Burton

On the way downtown, Mike said he’d been taking guitar lessons from James Burton, who had been Ricky Nelson’s lead guitar player. Burton is also the man who inspired me to play the guitar when I first saw him on TV in 1958, as Ricky Nelson sang “Believe What You Say”:

Here’s Burton a few years later playing the “Johnny B Goode” riff—with the guitar behind his head, while Elvis watches!!!

A Movie, a Coach and a Tornado

Then there’s the time Susan and I went to see “Dr. Zhivago”, our first movie together after we were married earlier that day. When we arrived we saw my junior high school football coach Mr. Kimball. I remembered that he’d escaped from a tornado that struck Dallas a few years before. He jumped into a ditch by the side of the road and managed to survive.

On the day of the tornado, I saw the sky turn a shade of green while I was playing pick-up basketball on an outside court by Sudie Williams Elementary School. Later in the week, I recall seeing a mattress on top of a telephone pole when we went to visit Grandma Clark.

A Letter

I recently found a sort of love letter an elementary school boy had written to my mother in 1933. Had they eventually married, I wouldn’t exist and wouldn’t be writing about these strange tales. But that’s the way life works, intersecting stories leading to the final story. They’re all meshed together in what’s left of my mind, both small and consequential moments in my life.

That’s Life

And so I identify with Tom Waits’ song lyrics: “I’ll take it with me when I go” -- all of the sometimes small sometimes beautiful moments that add up to a life.

Ingrid Michaelson’s beautiful, sad and mysterious song “Wonderful Unknown” sums up a lot of this for me. It’s about moving through our lives, taking things as they come, not knowing what’s next, finding our way as we move along:

“Oh, got your father’s wristwatch on,
the one your mother gave him when they thought the world won’t end,
Oh, we will be there one day with a smile and nothing more to say goodbye to a friend”

. . .

“Here we go, going in alone,
into the dark and wonderful unknown,
let us go let us go”

I suspect this picture was influenced by Spielberg’s Close Encounters of the Third Kind.

A few weeks ago, I came across one of Gregory Crewdson’s photographs—not in a museum but in the packaging inside a box of clothes, of all places. It was a startling, beautiful and intriguing image. So I decided to find out more about him. Here’s a good description of what makes his work different:

“A professor and the director of graduate studies in photography at Yale School of Art, Crewdson makes large-scale, cinematic, psychologically charged prints of staged scenes set in suburban landscapes and interiors. He directs a large production and lighting crew to construct his images.” (Wikipedia)

. . . And those images are a very large scale, anywhere from 4 x 7 to 5 x 8 feet wide.

Crewdson on His Work and Influences (Vanity Fair Maggie Coughlan, August 7, 2024)

“I’ve always said that I think every artist has one central story to tell, and they circle around that story, over and over again, over a lifetime, reinventing aspects of it and challenging others and trying to push things forward. But at the core of it, it’s like the central preoccupations remain fixed.”

“I do remember when I was very young, my father bringing me to the Diane Arbus retrospective at MoMA, and that was my first inkling of how powerful pictures can be psychologically. But it wasn’t until undergraduate when I first took my photo I class and saw that first image come up in the developer and realized that, oh, this is something I kind of understand. I was dyslexic, still am, I think. So the idea of a frozen, still image, it’s something I could read.”

It’s no surprise that Crewdson says he’s influenced by the movies, since his work resembles stills from movies. He lists favorite influences, including Vertigo, The Night of the Hunter, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Blue Velvet as well as the work of Edward Hopper and Diane Arbus.

His Process:

From Wikipedia; “Crewdson’s photographs are elaborately planned, produced, and lit using crews familiar with motion picture production who light large scenes using cinema production equipment and techniques. . . He works much like a director with a budget similar to that of a movie production, each image involves dozens of people and weeks to months of planning.”

Brief Encounters: Here’s a video on his process:

“My pictures are about a moment . . . a perfect moment . . . blurring reality and fiction . . . to try to draw out something psychological.”

An Eclipse of Moths: Here you get to see the many dreamlike images he has created:

Beneath the Roses:

In this video. Crewdson comments on how he came to make his photos, developing an idea. You get to see the size of his work at an exhibition:

Images from Vanity Fair by Maggie Coughlan, August 7, 2024:

For me, Crewdson’s images are fascinating, sometimes a little disturbing, and captivating. We’re seeing a world that is both ordinary and something that might have arrived from another planet. His photos are like paintings, scenes from movies, or something simply unique.

My Town

There have been times in my life when I felt deeply connected with others. I wish our polarized society could find ways to build bridges with each other, but I know it’s too complicated and often a matter of chance. Today we know most of our neighbors to varying degrees and are friendly even with the ones who had Trump signs in their yard.

There are a few key moments in the past when I knew I was both connected with others and mostly just plain lucky to be in the right place at the right time. I didn’t grow up in a small town but in a sense I actually did: I played with the other kids in our neighborhood, walked to school, rode my bike to piano lessons or to get a haircut.

My boyhood memories, which include having a great mother, helped shape my generally optimistic attitude about life. And I know it was sheer good luck to have had that boyhood and family. I couldn’t know it at the time, but it was the perfect place for a kid to grow up. Seeing Our Town simply confirmed my own good fortune to have grown up where I did.

Our Town

I’d seen the black and white movie of Thornton Wilder’s 1938 play Our Town with a young William Holden, as well as the 1955 musical version with Frank Sinatra as the Stage Manager, who sang “Love and Marriage”.

In 1959 I saw the traditional play at the Dallas Theater Center, which was designed by Frank Lloyd Wright. The set was sparse, and I recall a scene with a boy jumping over an invisible puddle of water on his way to see his girl . . . with applause from the audience.

Here are some moments from the movie with the great Aaron Copeland’s music:

What I like about Our Town is the closeness of the community, where everyone has a place, is a neighbor, and is a part of the whole . . . a better world.

Here is James Taylor’s song “Our Town”:

As Donald Haberman writes in Readings on Our Town, “Wilder is reminding the audience of how precious daily life is, because it determines our true reality. . . the play serves as a sober indictment of how humans sleepwalk through their days. The true tragedy is our inability to truly appreciate the miracle of everyday existence while we are living it.”

Thomas Siebold notes in “Our Town as Allegory” (San Diego: Greenhaven Press, 2000): “The fictional village of Grover’s Corners contains quaint activities of yesteryear:

A doctor walking through town, making house calls. A milkman, traveling alongside his horse, happy in his work. Folks talking to one another instead of watching television. No one locking their door at night.”

An Our Town Footnote:

Here’s the great Roz Chast’s take on being lucky, or not, about where you live:

Harriet Schock

Going through so many things I’ve accumulated over the years, I came across the first edition of D Magazine. I’d saved this in part because my friend David Ritz had an article in it about the singer Harriet Schock, who grew up in North Dallas. All of which led me to her wonderful song, “Dancing with My Father”.

The Penguin Café Orchestra

I came upon ”Music for a Found Harmonium” maybe 20 years ago, and it really gets to me. Part of what I like about it is the gradual addition of different instruments as the music goes along.

And there are so many instruments: cello, pizzicato, ukulele, viola, cuatro, clarinet, mandolin, guitar, bass, piano, trombone, oboe, and harmonium—an instrument that was new to me.

Simon Jeffes, co-founded of the Penguin Orchestra Café with cellist Helen Liebmann, has said that the idea came to him in a dream, after he had gotten sick from “bad fish” in a French restaurant. (We’ve all been there—just kidding).

Then there’s the story of the harmonium which, according to Wikipedia, Jeffes found in a back street where he was staying in the summer of 1982 after the ensemble’s first tour of Japan.

This is “Telephone and Rubber Band,” that begins with a commentary by Jeffes:

Clara Weiss

Here is the comment associated with this song “A Voice from the Ruins”:

“Clara Weiss was only a child when the war took everything. No one knows where she came from. By the age of 10, she began singing songs no one had ever heard… yet somehow, everyone felt like they remembered them. Some say these recordings were lost. Others believe they were never recorded at all. This is one of them.”

Wailing Jennies

I have loved the Wailing Jennies since first seeing them on TV maybe 25 years ago. Here they are singing “Long Time Traveler”:

A commentary I found about this song:

“This is a song of death. The narrator of the song is lamenting, saying that there is nothing left on earth that brings them joy and that they have lived for too long away from their heavenly home. They are wishing their friends farewell but are saying that they happily go to angels up above.”

Violin Music that Inspired Me

Here are three songs that inspired me to play the violin: “Southern Soldier Boy”, “Ashokan Farewell” and Bruce Springsteen’s “American Land”:

Patrick Omire

This is “Southern Soldier Boy”, which I came across one day and thought that I’ve got to learn the violin:

Jay Ungar

“Ashokan Farewell” I first heard watching Ken Burns’ documentary on the Civil War:

Bruce Springsteen

“American Land” has two violinists playing along with all the other musicians, creating a sense of joy and excitement. I was lucky to get to play one of the violin parts at our church.

Can you imagine how much Trump would hate this song, which celebrates the arrival of immigrants who have enriched the life of our country.

Music can be so powerful, uniting us, blessing us, telling us stories from across the years.

Recently, I came across a poem I forgot I’d written. It’s about an iconic Austin restaurant, Shady Grove. Unfortunately, Shady Grove had to close in 2020, due to COVID. But I understand that a new spin-off restaurant will be opening sometime this year—with a great name: “A Little Shady”.

Shady Grove
Austin, Texas – June 30, 2012

We wait for a table beneath an oak tree
that’s high enough to brush the sky’s underbelly
in the soft near dusk and wide enough
to cast a green spell over lingering diners,
barkeeps and waitresses dappled in the leafy light.

Cary Grant and Peter Lorre make an appearance
on a screen mounted above the Airstream trailer
(that serves as Men’s and Women’s), and we watch
Arsenic and Old Lace soundlessly unfold,
blessing us with its mad-cap good cheer.

Lights have started to glow among the lower branches
of this old sheltering tree, and it’s good
to count yourself among the fortunate to pass through
Shady Grove – hungry for tortilla-crusted catfish
and thirsty for respite along life’s uncertain journey.

The 1944 movie Arsenic and Old Lace has been described as “a screwball black comedy crime film”. It was directed by Frank Capra, best known for It’s a Wonderful Life and Mr. Smith Goes to Washington.

Here’s a clip from the movie that played over the Airstream at the Shady Grove the day we were there:

And here’s a short video of Shady Grove:

Another good Austin restaurant that had to close because of COVID, The Magnolia Cafe had one of my favorite signs:

Another look at Shady Grove. As Bob Hope used to sing, “Thanks for the Memories”:

I like to recommend things. Here, in no particular order, are some of my past and present favorite books, music and poetry.

The Women, by Kristin Hannah

I’m part-way through this book and want to spread the word. The story is about a young nurse who enlists during the Vietnam War. She finds herself operating on seriously wounded soldiers, sometimes when the lights go out, during a monsoon, or taking on enemy fire. Hannah describes the social and political issues surrounding the war. It’s some of the best writing I’ve encountered in a long while.

“Ain’t Talkin’, Just Walkin’”, Bob Dylan

This video blends moments from 38 Westerns accompanying Dylan’s song. I recognize some of the movies, such as High Noon. It’s a reminder of how important Westerns have been in movie history, especially in the 50s when I was growing up. That decade was also the period of war movies, with WWII still in our collective minds.

“Gate A-4”, Naomi Shihab-Nye

I got to know Naomi when we were living in San Antonio, and I’d invited her to read her poetry at one of our writer events at San Antonio College. I’m so proud to be her friend, for her generosity and of course for her wonderful poetry.

An Unexpected Footnote: Naomi won the 2019 Robert Creeley Award. Ironically, Robert Creeley’s poetry and prose were the subject of my dissertation at Brandeis University.

Dick Cavett with Oscar Peterson, 1979

I love this moment with Oscar Peterson demonstrating different jazz piano styles on the Dick Cavett Show. Susan and I got to see Peterson at the very smoky Lennie’s on the Turnpike back in the 60s. Here’s an article about the club and some of the many greats who performed there:

https://richardvacca.com/lennie-sogoloff-jazz-along-the-turnpike/

“Piano Lessons,” Billy Collins

Billy Collins has been one of my favorite poets for at least the last 25 years, when I first heard him read a poem on the radio while I was working in the backyard. He’s usually funny and clever, with a wonderful take on the world. From his book Sailing Alone Across the Room, here are the first and last stanzas of “Piano Lessons”:

My teacher lies on the floor with a bad back
off to the side of the piano.
I sit up straight on the stool.
He begins by telling me that every key
is like a different room
and I am a blind man who must learn
to walk through all twelve of them
without hitting the furniture.
I feel myself reach for the first doorknob.

. . .
Even when I am not playing, I think about the piano.
It is the largest, heaviest,
and most beautiful object in this house.
I pause in the doorway just to take it all in.
And late at night I picture it downstairs,
this hallucination standing on three legs,
this curious beast with its enormous moonlit smile.

Leif Enger

I recommend Leif Enger’s novels Virgil Wander and his newest book I Cheerfully Refuse. In Virgil Wander, Virgil has a concussion that changes his whole life and personality, and the townspeople accept the new him. He has a wry sense of humor, for instance describing his best friend as “a high school athlete defeated by pastry”. Virgil’s neighbors in Greenstone, Minnesota, are fond of him. His disability allows him to help or deal with people, including taking in a mysterious, kite-flying, old Norwegian.

And More Books:

I’ve been a member of a book group at our church for the last 17 years. Looking back to the many books we’ve read, I’d like to recommend some of my favorites, in no particular order:

Herb’s Pajamas, by Abigail Thomas, who has also written wonderful memoirs. You can find her here at https://substack.com/@abigailthomas?utm_source=global-search

Still Life, Sarah Winman

Plainsong, Kent Haruf

Staggerford, Jon Hassler

The Things They Carried, Tim O’Brien

Train Dreams, Denis Johnson (This is now a movie available on Netflix)

Beautiful Ruins and So Far Gone, Jess Walter

Olive Kitteridge, Elizabeth Strout

Bel Canto, Ann Patchett

Station Eleven, Emily St John Mandel

All the Light We Cannot See, Anthony Doerr

News of the World, Paulette Jiles

A Gentleman in Moscow, Amor Towles

The Dreamers, Karen Thompson Walker

The Anomaly, Herve Le Tellier (What happens when two planes land in two different locations, both carrying the same pilot and the same passengers?)

And More Music:

I’ll end this list with a favorite song, Tom Waits’ ”Take It With Me,” as performed by Rachael Price:

Thanks for reading and listening to this grab-bag of some of my favorite things.

Going through some of the many things I’ve accumulated over the years, I came across a poem I’d written about James Dean. I don’t remember writing this, but I do remember that James Dean was my favorite actor when I was a kid. The poem references Dean’s characters in the movies East of Eden, Rebel Without a Cause, and Giant as well as the man involved in the crash that killed Dean on September 30, 1955.

The Ballad of James Dean

Cal found his mother was a whore,
His father made of stone,
Jim banged a desk with knuckles bare:
He knew he was alone,

Jett worked his timeless taunting rope trick
On plains of dust and bone,
And even when the oil came thick
He knew he was alone.

When Turnupseed drove out too far
did Dean’s dead parents moan,
and as Death hugged his shredding car,
he knew he was alone.

Early TV Episodes

I never saw James Dean in TV dramas. Here is a glimpse of him before he was a movie star:

East of Eden

This was James Dean’s first movie, directed by Elia Kazan, who also directed A Streetcar Named Desire and On the Waterfront, both starring Marlon Brando.

For some reason, the East of Eden theme music has stayed with me all my life:

Here’s a clip from the movie:

Elia Kazan said about James Dean in East of Eden: “His body was very graphic; it was almost writhing in pain sometimes.” (The Guardian, Philip French Sat 17 Apr 2010 19.07 EDT)

Rebel Without a Cause

Martin Scorsese commented on Rebel Without a Cause in a video that fascinates me. Scorsese said he was 13 when he saw this movie. I was 12 at the time. It’s interesting to hear his director’s take on the film and his daughter’s reaction to the movie, looking back:

Giant

Here’s the theme from Giant, with beautiful photography:

A Death Foretold

Part of the story is actor Alec Guinness’ eerie prediction of James Dean’s death, as covered by The Hollywood Reporter:

“There in the courtyard of this little restaurant was this little silver thing, very smart, all done up in cellophane with a bunch of roses tied to its bonnet,” Guinness told Parkinson, adding that he asked how fast it could go. Dean replied it would do 150 mph. “I said, ‘Have you driven it?’ and he said, ‘No. I have never been in it at all,’”

Guinness said. “And some strange thing came over me. Some almost different voice and I said, ‘Look, I won’t join your table unless you want me to, but I must say something: Please do not get into that car, because if you do’ — and I looked at my watch — and I said, ‘if you get into that car at all, it’s now Thursday (Friday, actually), 10 o’clock at night and by 10 o’clock at night next Thursday, you’ll be dead if you get into that car.’”

Dean brushed off the warning, and the group proceeded to have a “charming dinner,” Guinness told Parkinson, “And he was dead the following Thursday afternoon in that car,” said Guinness. “It was one of those odd things. It was a very, very odd, spooky experience. I liked him very much, too. I would have loved to have known him more.”

An Ironic PSA

During the filming of Giant, Dean appeared in a TV PSA with the actor Gig Young warning people to drive safely. This appeared one week before the accident:

Final Thoughts

James Dean was one of the few actors who made an impression on me when I was growing up. And at age 12, I was very impressionable. Looking back decades later, I can see that I identified with some of the characters he portrayed.

He fell in love with unreachable women (Julie Harris in East of Eden and Elizabeth Taylor in Giant) and had tension with his fathers (Raymond Massey in East of Eden and Jim Backus in Rebel Without a Cause).

A Musical Footnote

While I began reading my long-lost poem about James Dean, I happened to be listening to Mary Chapin Carpenter’s “We Traveled So Far”. This song gets to me for its wise, partly sad, and beautiful lyrics (”the future begins with the past”). It fits with discovering my old poem and remembering where I’ve been. I believe this is called “synchronicity”:

. . . It’s worth it all learning at last
The future begins with the past
Step out of the shadow it casts
And let the sun shine on your shoes
Kick them off in the rain if you choose
There’s nothing like nothing to lose

We traveled
We traveled so far
We traveled
We traveled
We traveled so far

“Eating razor blades became Leon Samson's specialty.”

Years ago, I came across this short and certainly strange newspaper article:

Metal-Eating Strongman Plans to Finish Off Auto — ADELAIDE, Australia (Reuters)

A Greek-born strongman said here he had accepted a $11,000 bet that he could eat an automobile in four years. Leon Sansom, 30 years old, said he would have to eat two pounds of metal a day to finish off the car in four years. He said that until now he had confined himself to razor blades and pieces of glass. Then he “sampled several cars and decided on a Holden,” a medium-sized Australian car.

“I decided on this because I wanted to do something different,” the 210-pound strongman said.

Eating razor blades became Leon Samson’s specialty. As a young man, Leon Samson ripped six-inch nails in two with his teeth, broke boulders on his head, rested cars on his chest, and once even tried to eat a car.”

Then I came across more unusual headlines, which of course had to become a poem:

Newstropes
Circa 1978

Man Eats Auto.
Seaweed Pops.

Graduate Can’t Read Own Diploma.
Whole Village in France Goes Mad.

Roy Has Heart Trouble; Trigger Is Stuffed.

Here are the other stories that led to the poem:

Seaweed Pops:

Yes, it does. You can eat seaweed and experience it popping. Here’s what Rachel Lambert has to say about this on her website:

“Bladder wrack or popweed (Fucus vesiculosus) – the seaweed of my childhood – is a common, edible seaweed with air bladders that can be popped like bubble wrap! It also has amazing health benefits including the ability to inhibit a common gut bacteria.”

https://wildwalks-southwest.co.uk/bladder-wrack/

Graduate Can’t Read Own Diploma:

I came across this headline at least 15-20 years ago and was surprised to find this strange event coming up again.

https://www.latintimes.com/student-sues-high-school-insisting-she-cant-read-write-despite-graduating-honors-i-didnt-577005

Here’s a recent video commenting on a problem with many students’ inability to read and comprehend:

Whole Village in France Goes Mad

This was the funeral procession for a victim of the Pont-Saint-Esprit incident.

“A boy tried to strangle his mother, the postman claimed he was shrinking, a man smashed furniture to ward off imaginary beasts. What made residents of a small French town lose their minds – and some lives? A journey back to the site of madness.

“Nearly 60 years ago, a French town was hit by a sudden outbreak of hallucinations, which left five people dead and many seriously ill. For years it was blamed on bread contaminated with a psychedelic fungus - but that theory is now being challenged.”

https://www.haaretz.com/world-news/2019-03-09/ty-article-magazine/.premium/what-drove-an-entire-french-town-mad-on-a-summer-day-in-1951/0000017f-e249-d7b2-a77f-e34fe1690000

Roy Has Heart Trouble, Trigger is Stuffed:

“When Trigger died in 1965, Roy decided to preserve him like the animals in the Smithsonian. He had a Burbank taxidermist stuff and mount the horse so fans could continue to enjoy him in their museum. Roy did the same with “Bullet” after he died, the German shepherd who was in his western movies. When they were onscreen, both animals got letters from fans all around the world.” (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trigger_(horse).

According to the Los Angeles Daily News of July 15, the sale of all the contents of the Roy Rogers/Dale Evans Museum was complete at Christie’s in New York City. Trigger sold for $266,500.

Happy Trails to you, dear reader. Hoping you come across your own strange but true stories.

Looking back to the summer of 1961, it’s hard to imagine how much was happening in the world and in my life. It was the first year of John Kennedy’s presidency, and Yuri Gagarin became the first human to go into space. This was an exciting era of change—for me personally and for the world.

I graduated from high school and was heading to college in the fall. That summer I worked in the maintenance department at Southwest Airmotive—my first real job. Joan Baez’s first album had come out the previous summer, with her crystalline voice in those early days of folk music. Here’s her take on one of my favorite songs from that era:

Stan Kenton

I was interested in all music, which led me to attend the Stan Kenton Band Camp at SMU that year. I took guitar lessons with one of his band members and got to listen to some of the best. The attendees included kids of all ages. I was out of depth, but it was still a great experience, and the camp culminated with a performance at the state fairgrounds. Here’s a short sample of Kenton’s huge sound:

Road Trip

But this is also a story about leaving Dallas to go on a road trip with my friends David and Franklin back in the summer of 1961. Our goal was to stop in Santa Barbara to visit with Franklin’s parents, then on to Berkeley where David’s uncle taught English.

Being young, on the way there we thought nothing of sleeping in the car on the side of a steep Colorado road. Jack Kerouac’s On the Road had been published four years earlier, so the idea of a road trip was in the air.

Peace Corps

On the way there, we saw a crowd of people outside a college in New Mexico and realized they were signing up for the Peace Corps, President Kennedy’s effort to send young people to countries that could use their help. Legislation for the Peace Corps was signed into law just a few months earlier. It turns out that, five years later, David would in fact join the Peace Corps and be assigned to Iran, where he tutored the Shah’s daughter. A very different Iran back then.

We also stopped to see the Grand Canyon. Foolishly, we decided to walk down a narrow trail into the canyon. This was a fine idea at first, but it also meant walking back on the steep incline. I was fairly fit I thought, but maybe not so much after all.

Arrival

In Santa Barbara we visited Franklin’s parents. I remember being taken with the beauty of the town. Then on to Berkeley, a beautiful place, with the eucalyptus trees, the cold mornings followed by humid afternoons. This was before Berkeley became a famous protest site during the Vietnam War, when Gov. Reagan called in 2,000 National Guards.

We stayed a few days at Professor Smith’s multi-level home. My other memory of that visit was falling in puppy love with their young daughter. We also went with Dr. Smith to meet a Life Magazine reporter, who photographed and interviewed him about his new book on Mark Twain.

Looking Back

I’ll never forget those heady days. The Stan Kenton experience surrounded by great musicians while I was still learning the guitar. Exploring America with my friends: I had not been that far from Dallas, and never to the western states. Those were good days, with many more just ahead of me.

I often think about today’s politics as a morass that we’re stuck in. Each day seems to get worse as our president and his cronies find new ways to lie, hurt innocent people, launch wars, enrich themselves, and the list goes on and on.

I think I wrote this poem early in Trump’s first term. We thought it couldn’t get any worse, until of course it did. So I was moved to imagine a better day, a mythic time when all humans befriend each other, discover kindness, and see each other as equals. Of course, this will never happen. But I can dream.

The Myth of Someday

Someday a simple figure
will emerge to show us

how to unplug the politicians’
drumming noise factory
that feeds and profits from our ignorance

and tear down the Members Only signs
along the winding path
to the many-roomed mansion.

We will learn to look deeply again
and rediscover the beauty in the margins:
a bird’s trilled syllables, an aimless walk,
a neighbor’s frail smile, the world leafing around us.

We will unwind the memories that make us small
and rise in spirit like a child’s first kite
fluttering and soaring over the summer fields.

Our words – each by each
or massed in meadows of meaning,
will blossom in our hands.

Someday we will walk as friends
through the ancient archway
to the future, the wakening world.

Memories can be a strange scattershot of images. My old piano teacher will suddenly pop up in my mind, along with the icebox in her kitchen. I’ll suddenly remember John Updike giving a talk in the 60s, or when I was a kid reading a book while standing over the floor furnace in our house, which is no longer there.

That’s the kind of thing that led me to write this poem, conjuring up memories of elementary school, 1950s politicians, and of course . . . an alligator.

The Feather

When President Eisenhower delivered his first
Inaugural Address, I was listening
in a darkened auditorium
at Sudie Williams Elementary School,
taking in his pale face that flickered
on the black and white TV screen.

The memory is fixed in my brain
much as the “I Like Ike” button my mother
kept inside a little wooden box
on her bureau, preserved for history
with bobbins, rubber bands and paper clips.

The summer before, we’d seen Adlai Stevenson
in Juarez on the cover of Life,
then driving through El Paso we saw a famous
alligator roaming an enclosure –
a small white feather somehow stuck
to his long, unforgettable nose.

Here’s the campaign button my mother kept in her little wooden box:

And the 1952 cover of Life magazine featuring Adlai Stevenson, who ran against Eisenhower for president.

Here’s the alligator on display in El Paso in the early 50s. The arrow points to the alligator’s egg, next to a man who seems to be in harm’s way even if he’s carrying a stick. Everybody knows not to stand by an alligator’s egg.

Moving on from bananas, buttons and alligators . . .

Here’s Eisenhower giving the first televised news conference in history on January 19th, 1955. I like his opening remarks: “Well, I see we’re trying a new experiment this morning. I hope that doesn’t prove to be a disturbing influence.” Jumping ahead to today, one might say to those reporters in 1955, “You ain’t seen nothing yet”.

It’s impossible to remember the details of Eisenhower’s inaugural address or his first press conference. But who could forget El Paso’s alligator and the banana salesman with a slight spelling problem (might have been a good sales technique).

The things we remember are indeed a jumble of images, people, ice boxes, buttons, politicians, and bananas. The longer you live, the bigger the jumble. I think you could say “That’s life”.

A few years ago, I read about Dan Winters in a New Yorker article. He had taken a photo of a Sphinx on the East River and commented, “I now find peace in the realization that countless potential masterpieces happen each moment the world over and go unphotographed. The world owes a great debt to all those who have, from a state of exceptional awareness, preserved stillness for us to hold.”

The idea of “potential masterpieces” occurring throughout the world may be obvious. But it’s also fascinating, a way of looking at and thinking about the world, which led me to write this poem:

The Sphinx on the East River

Biking to work in 1988 over the Brooklyn Bridge,
Dan Winters was stopped cold by a sphinx
gliding down the East River on a barge,
its origin and destination unknown.
A photographer, he caught the image
and later wrote in The Road to Seeing:
“Countless potential masterpieces
happen each moment the world over
and go unphotographed.”

In a city somewhere a young woman,
lost in thought, curls and uncurls a lock
of auburn hair round her finger as a yellow cab
passes on the wet pavement reflecting the stoplight
and pieces of blue sky: unphotographed,
yet some passersby can see these things
and will carry them inside without knowing it,
without knowing how much the world’s profligate,
mysterious beauty shapes who they are and
who they will become.

Here is Winters’ photo:

. . . and his thoughts about his photography and what moves him:

And Now Down the Sphinx Rabbit Hole:

There are several theories about the damaged nose of the Sphinx: 1. It was shot off by a cannon, caused by Napoleon’s troops or 2. It was mutilated in the 14th century to protest idolatry.

Here is Lucy Davidson’s take from her article “Who Broke the Giant Sphinx’s Nose?”

“ . . . a mid-18th century drawing of the Sphinx by Danish Naval Captain and explorer Frederic Louis Norden depicts the statue without a nose. Since this predates Napoleon’s army, it disproves the folk tale.”

https://www.historyhit.com/who-broke-the-giant-sphinxs-nose/

In some of my favorite songs, there’s a mix of sadness, sweetness, and simple truths. Like most people, I associate a song with where I was when I first heard it and was moved by it. I recall our living in New Orleans when I heard Barbra Streisand’s “The Way We Were” from the movie of the same name.

I want to share some of the songs that have stayed with me. They are songs that can carry a power to move us and simply make life so much better.

Randy Newman

When we lived in Decatur, Georgia I first heard Randy Newman’s “Louisiana” as he sang about a major flood in 1927.

In a New York Times article about the song’s resonance decades later, Louisiana-born blues singer Marcia Ball said:

“For a long time after Katrina, there just wasn’t a dry eye in the house when I did that song.” While Katrina inspired many songs, she said, this one became the anthem because it has “one of those simple, irresistible Randy Newman melodies and lyrics that were so real. In truth, so many people did get washed away.”

James Taylor

Here’s James Taylor’s song “My Traveling Star” in his 2007 One Man Band concert. It’s about his father’s never wanting to stay in one place, and how this impacted Taylor’s life. In some ways, this reflects my own father’s life.

Joni Mitchell

Speaking of needing to move on, Tom Rush’s song “Urge for Going” tells restlessness brought on with the change of seasons . . . like the seasons of one’s life. I like Joni Mitchell’s version because of the purity of her voice.

John Prine

“Clay Pigeons” is a song by Blaze Foley, but I like John Prine’s version. Another song about moving on, and the lyrics just get me:

I’m tired of runnin’ ‘round
Lookin’ for answers to questions that I already know
I could build me a castle of memories
Just to have somewhere to go

Count the days and the nights that it takes
To get back in the saddle again
Feed the pigeons some clay, turn the night into day
And start talkin’ again when I know what to say

Tom Waits

The first time I heard about Tom Waits was seeing him appear in the movie Tiger in the Snow. There’s a sweetness to his song about renewal in nature and our lives: “You Can Never Hold Back Spring”.

Beth Nielson Chapman

“The Color of Roses” is one of my favorite songs, which I suspect many people don’t know about. It’s hard not to get emotional watching this video as Chapman is accompanied by a large choir and musicians. Here’s some of the lyrics that stay with me:

“And gravity throws all these rules in our way
And sometimes the spirit refuses to play
Only the ones who believe
Ever see what they dream
Ever dream what comes true”

Paul Simon

Paul Simon’s “America” takes us on an American journey on a bus. Here are some of the lyrics and the mood changes:

So I looked at the scenery
She read her magazine
And the moon rose over an open field
“Kathy, I’m lost”, I said
Though I knew she was sleeping
“I’m empty and aching and
I don’t know why”

Counting the cars
On the New Jersey Turnpike
They’ve all come
To look for America
All come to look for America
All come to look for America

Bruce Springsteen

“Chimes of Freedom” by Bob Dylan -- Bruce Springsteen’s version

Here’s the story. In 1963 President Kennedy gave a speech at the Berlin Wall that had been built the year before, separating east & west Berlin. This was five months before Kennedy’s assassination.

In July 1988, Springsteen performed Bob Dylan’s powerful “Chimes of Freedom” at the Berlin wall, one year before the wall came down in 1989. Here is that performance before 300,000 people. He addressed the crowd in German. Here’s the message in English, “It’s nice to be in East Berlin. I want to tell you that I’m not here for or against any government, I have come to play rock’n’roll for the East-Berliners, in the hope that one day all barriers will be torn down.”

We are blessed to have so many great musicians and songs that, in their own way, stitch our lives together. Music now feels more important than ever.

Piano Beginnings

My first instrument was growing up with my family’s piano, a Haddorff vertichord, which we still have. It is probably a late 30s to early 40s vintage, and it was always there in our house. On the music rack are two songs I’ve composed: “Closing Time” and “Long Story Short”, which is still in progress.

The Seth Thomas metronome is as old as the piano. You turn a key on the right to wind it up, and there’s a weight on the bar to gauge how fast you want it to tick. I have electronic metronomes, but the Seth Thomas stirs good memories and has a beauty to it.

Guitars

Then came an inexpensive acoustic guitar, followed by an acoustic Gibson which dates back to the 40s, and a Gibson Les Paul Custom guitar from the 50s. My father was for a time a traveling salesman for Continental Music Company, so he got good prices on instruments. I remember going with him to Whittle’s Music store in downtown Dallas to buy the guitar. I also took guitar lessons at McCord’s Music store a few blocks away.

I played that guitar in a band with my brother at the University of Texas at Austin in the early 60s. He had a Fender Jazzmaster guitar. One of my biggest mistakes in life was selling that guitar at a time when I didn’t think I’d be playing with a group again. The money helped me and Susan fly back to Dallas from Boston. That guitar now sells for the price of a good car or a house ($25,000 - $100,000).

Ocarina and Autoharp

The oddest musical instrument of mine is an ocarina. The sound is created by air vibrating within the enclosed chamber, which escapes through a hole near the mouthpiece (similar to a recorder). I never figured it out, but some day I should give it a go. This is a beautiful one, but mine was all black.

When Susan and I were in the Boston area we bought her a 12-string Autoharp, which lets you press a bar to play different chords while you strum. We still have it, but it needs now strings. I think it was that same store where we bought a recorder.

Violin

Around 2010 I started to feel the need to learn the violin, having listened to Springsteen’s “American Land” with two violinists playing along, from his Seeger Sessions album. Thinking about this song these days is a stirring reminder of the importance of immigrants and their many contributions to the American land:

My teacher went with me to Kat’s Guitars to help me buy a violin. After taking lessons, I actually got to play the violin, along with a much better violinist, on “American Land” at our church.

After playing the violin a few years, someone mentioned that a friend had found an old violin in their closet and I could have it! There’s no paper inside with the make or date, but they said their great grandfather kept it dating back to the early 20^th century.

Clarinet and Banjo

I guess I just couldn’t stop myself from buying two things on the Order Up app. One was a clarinet, which I’ve been unable to learn on my own and decided I’m not so good at wind instruments. The other was a Kansas brand banjo, which I occasionally get to play though I’m not very proficient. If I live long enough, I want to take banjo lessons.

What inspired me to play the banjo was watching Pete Seeger play one on the 1960 TV show Playboy Penthouse Party. Playing a long-neck banjo, Seeger talked about the banjo’s origins and even got the group to sing along with him.

I was lucky to see Seeger perform about a year later at the old Y auditorium across from the University of Texas campus. There were demonstrators outside handing out leaflets calling Seeger a communist, since he’d appeared before the House Un-American Activities Committee. That committee chair Senator Joseph McCarthy had been rebuked by Joseph Welch: “Have you no sense of decency, sir, at long last? Have you left no sense of decency?”

I’ve only gotten to play the banjo a few times at our church, the last being “Wandering Stranger”. Here’s how the banjo is supposed to go on that song:

Lap Steel Guitar

I bought online a lap steel guitar for about $100. With G tuning, it’s pretty easy to play along with others. I learned how to mute strings while playing with a metal bar. It adds a lot of interest to many songs. Here’s one of the all-time greatest, David Lindley:

12-String Guitar

Back to Kats Guitars, I bought a 12-string acoustic guitar, which I love because of the fullness of the sound. The last time I played it was on Peter Gabriel’s song “Solsbury Hill”. Here’s a 12-string guitar in a great rendition, sung by Ray Wilson.

Mandolin and Ukulele

I’ve borrowed a mandolin to play the Grateful Dead’s “Ripple”. I like the sound, but I’m not that good without more practice. Our daughter gave me a small ukulele from Hawaii. I owned an even smaller plastic one as a kid. The tuning for the four strings is G C E A which go with the tune “My Dog Has Fleas” – in case this comes up.

Keyboard

I bought a small Yamaha keyboard with a case for $25 at a rummage sale. I like the fact that you can set it for a variety of sounds. I was fooling around on the Yamaha and came up with an instrumental I sent to our musical leader, who used it to go with a slow-motion video of a rose unfurling its petals. He titled it “Elegy to a Rose”:

The video has been used a few times at our church for a short period of meditation, which makes me happy that one of my random melodies was given an audience:

Bass Guitar

I bought an electric bass from a friend and played it with a group for several years. But when a better bass player came along I switched back to the guitar. I recently gave the bass to our granddaughter, who has quickly learned to play it really well—much better than I ever did.

More Guitars

One day I opened the front door to see a box with a Harley Benton guitar in it, which my brother had sent to me. It’s an inexpensive German-made guitar that beautifully replicates the look of an electric Gibson model. Later the same year, he sent me another Harley Benton.

For my 80^th birthday, my family gave me a Les Paul Epiphone, which has a smooth tone and is a beautiful instrument. The guitar I’ve used most for the last 15 years is a Fender Stratocaster, which has a great sound and feel. I had to get it re-fretted recently, having worn down the frets over time.

Slide Guitar Geniuses

I’ve tried playing the slide guitar, but I’m not very good at it. There are true slide guitar geniuses in their own place in the guitar stratosphere. These include Ry Cooder, Derek Trucks, Duane Allman, George Harrison, Joe Walsh, and Bonnie Raitt to name a few. Here’s the great Bonnie Raitt playing the slide and singing “A Thing Called Love”:

So much music, so many instruments, so little time.

I got to know Thomas Whitbread when I was a student at the University of Texas at Austin in the early 60s. I remember him as both brilliant and funny — as a teacher, poet and human being.

My last communication with him (I was in San Antonio and he was in Austin) was to tell him how much I enjoyed his poetry from the book Four Infinitives, especially “A Pool” and “N.B.A. Prelim, Boston Garden”. He joked with me liking “A Pool”, saying this “bears deep looking into”. I want to share both poems with you.

A Pool

This is a pool which bears deep looking into
Beneath moon-shadow trees, beneath the mud
I imagine at its bottom, and beneath
All its appearance as just a pool.
It is a special pool because the train
I am in has stopped indefinitely beside it.
I am the National Limited standing still.
I am the pool my eyes are stopped beside.
I am all Ohio deep in night and snow.
I am midway somewhere. Where, I do not know.

Whitbread was a basketball fan, and his enthusiasm and humor are both clear in this poem. The way he breaks the poem into uneven lines conveys to me the sense of movement at the heart of the scene he describes. All these years and I still remember this poem and hope it will now get under your skin as well.

N.B.A. Prelim, Boston Garden

Two-pointer by New York! Boryla leaps!
       Neutral, the Boston crowd
   Makes medium, polite applause:
The Knicks now lead, 116-115.
       Five seconds left. Sure thing!
   But Philadelphia takes time out
            To stop the clock,
Jump the ball to midcourt (that’s six Russell steps),
     And plan (ha, ha) a play.
The Knicks and most of the fans guess what it is:
                  They’ll try
            To pass, quick as they can,
                 To the angular man
                 With tonight’s on eye.
                 That’s what they do:
                      One
                  To another
                   And then
To Neil Johnston, waiting ten feet out on the right.
       He starts toward his soft right push
           But the ball stays where
           His torso was
           And his strained arm is:
           Instantaneous change!
           The fingers draw 
           Him wholly back
And around, away, to complete control of the ball.
           His back to the hoop, no time to turn,
           In a high round arc which the buzzer cuts in half
And, everyone gasped, it goes without tickling the rim
               Through the swishing strings
           Just as Johnston turns around
And jumps! Jumps up and down! Jumps! Jumps in one spot
And waves his arms, while the Celts’ crowd roars, and jumps
Till his teammates hold him down with arms of joy.
     Only a game, a business, true,
            But as Pritchard said,
It was deeply moving, seeing Neil Johnston jump.

Some final thoughts.

There are some poems and stories and songs and moments in movies that make me catch my breath. This is my reaction to Whitbread’s poetry. It’s moving and emotional. About the man and his poetry, I say, they bear “deep looking into”.

Some memories of Thomas Whitebread from the UT English faculty:

https://liberalarts.utexas.edu/english/news/remembering-thomas-whitbread

“We tell ourselves stories in order to live,” from Joan Didion's The White Album.

“I write entirely to find out what I’m thinking, what I’m looking at, what I see and what it means. What I want and what I fear.”  
Quotes from https://www.joandidion.org/about-joan-didion

Joan Didion

There’s a story Joan Didion once told decades ago that helps me make some sense of the world we’re living in right now. It’s about some people’s resistance to reality.

In June 1968 when Joan Didion and her husband John Gregory Dunne were boarding a plane to Hawaii, preliminary news came that Robert Kennedy had been shot. But news reports were not available on the plane (no phones, of course, and no TVs on planes back then). When they arrived in Hawaii, the news still hadn’t caught up with events until the next day, and Didion’s reaction was vertigo, nausea and throwing up.

Strangely, other guests at their hotel didn’t want to hear the news, didn’t want their vacation spoiled. When Don Ho ended his performance and began singing the Lord’s Prayer, the guests walked out, complaining they didn’t want “more church”.

My Father & Me

Three years earlier when President Kennedy was killed, my father’s reaction was not sadness but to say that the stock market was up. We were standing in the kitchen of his new home with his new conservative wife after divorcing my mother. My father’s unwillingness to offer a human touch or feel anguish about such a tragedy feels like Joan Didion’s experience.

However, he once warned me not to join any civil rights protests. We’d all heard about the murders of civil rights activists Chaney, Goodman and Schwerner in Mississippi in 1964.

What We’re Facing Now

What happened to protesters in 1964 seems all too true of today’s political divide. Innocent people are shot on the street for protesting, followed by our lawless government’s denials.

I worry for our future as a country, wishing all of us to have the empathy, love and respect that seems to have left the station, as Don McLean’s “American Pie” told us way back in 1971.

Not a word was spoken,
The church bells all were broken
And the three men I admire most,
The Father, Son and the Holy Ghost.
They caught the last train for the coast.
The day the music died.