Near Miracles

A few years ago, I was having no luck plunking annuals in the ground out front in an empty area.  Despite pretty diligent watering and fertilizing, they would grow feebly and burn up in midsummer.  So one year I spotted a pot of daffodils on sale and gave them the spot in which to do or die.  With even less water and fertilizer, they have dependably greeted early Spring with enthusiasm every year since.  Especially as the deprivation of Winter ends, we are very grateful for this spunky bulb family, and everything else green, growing, flowering, furry or feathered that is right outside the windows. 

Bird seed put out front and in the back on the deck rewards us with generations of squirrels, chipmunks and birds.  The pair of cardinals stop by most days, and later in the season the hummingbird pays a nervous visit.  Blackberry (the cat) twitches with excitement as busy groups of sparrows -- or best of all, doves -- peck and scatter the seeds.  No one is sure if cats feel gratitude, but it is clear he appreciates the show a great deal.

Cicero said, "Gratitude is not only the greatest of virtues, but the parent of all the others."  I think it does strengthen character, makes one more positive and happier, and thus may be a basis for other areas of self improvement.  It did not make the list in the ancient world (those virtues were: temperance, wisdom, justice and courage) or later on in the Christian Catholic era (there are seven, counterpoised to the seven sins: chastity, temperance, charity, diligence, patience, kindness and humility).  The Book of Wisdom in the Apocrypha holds that wisdom, not gratitude, is the font of the virtues; so it appears Cicero was alone in his estimation.  Gratitude is formalized in Thanksgiving Day and prayers of thanks, but like all the best things it's really free and unlimited and you can enjoy it any time.  Those best things can be big as the serene blue sky or small as a bee. And we should always be especially grateful for the bees.

Sometimes gratitude is hard to come by:  are children, prisoners, soldiers or the privileged very grateful for their food and shelter?  It is hard to feel positive when you have little control over your life.  Your perspective improves if you are in a different situation where you are more independent, secure and less distracted.

The motto of the Campbell family of Cawdor Castle in Scotland says it best:

  

    

No Burke, Please

"I'm a writer," Wade said.  "I'm supposed to understand what makes people tick.  I don't understand one damn thing about anybody."

-- from Raymond Chandler's The Long Goodbye

A while ago I decided to read some of the classics I hadn't gotten around to, and that project has been aided by a rich harvest from local library sales.  In fact, last week I bought a sealed grocery bag labelled "classics" for one dollar.  Everything in it turned out to be good, so I'm set for the rest of the year (most are very long).

I had already started with several volumes from home and previous sales, but it's been disappointing.  For example, I began with one of Sir Walter Ralegh's histories of voyaging and exploration.  Yikes! the first paragraph was a distressing page and half long.  In his time, and continuing through the Victorians, more was definitely always more:  the vastness of your vocabulary and prolixity of your words demonstrated inarguably that you were an educated gentleman to be taken seriously by others.  Fine, but you're unreadable.

Next up was George Eliot's Middlemarch, picked due to my interest in the setting and time (Great Britain and the Reform Act era).  But I will never know what it had to offer since I could not get past the first overblown and pretentious page. 

I was beginning to think classics are like 1950s cars:  icons surely, but unsafe, uneconomical, unreliable and a pain to park.  Today professional restorers can retain the look (body and interior) while greatly improving the original badly executed parts and mechanical design.  A sorely needed corps of editors could do the same with those creaky literary classics.

Edmund Burke wrote what is considered the founding classic of conservatism, Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790), which should definitely be on anyone's starting list of classics along with Adam Smith and many others from the Enlightenment.  It turned out, however, that Mr. Burke seems to have not noticed the Enlightenment at all.  His arguments seem to come from the medieval era instead.  The tone of the tract is emotional and outraged:  he is incensed that the Church was separated from the State by the revolutionaries, that the King was removed (government is divinely ordained and not to be touched by the unworthy governed!), and that titles and tradition were, to put it mildly, questioned.  He believed that power in government derived only from ownership of land.  He particularly loathed paper money (feeling it was illegitimate wealth not tied to land). In other words, change is not a challenge that societies should meet positively: though the Industrial Revolution had made the feudal order obsolete and dangerous, there were no solutions outside of established religious and aristocratic authority.  The wild emotions of the mob and the folly of the new self-made political philosophers in France were not good bases for the needed change in government, true, but Mr. Burke's devotion to the selfish, shortsighted and reactionary establishment at home was equally misplaced.  Extremism -- too much revolution or too much tradition -- is always bad, whether you're holding tight to the royal standard or the red banner.

(Why the illustration above?  I was going to write about gratitude and got off the rails.  Will try again.)

  

Small Towns With Spirit(s)

It was a small town in western Iowa, just a half-square mile in size, with a shrinking population.  It might have well disappeared like many other specks of settlement on the prairie but instead became notorious.  That was due to a law known as the Volstead Act which implemented the new Eighteenth Amendment to the Constitution, going into effect on 17 January 1920 --Prohibition.

These few hundred farmers were having none of it.

One of them, Alphons Kerkhoff, is said to have developed the recipe for a fine rye whiskey and was one of the biggest producers.  The bootleggers hid their stills (one supposedly in a church basement), and their product for the customers in hollowed fence posts and local cemeteries.  None other than Chicago's Al Capone became aware of the quality of the product from Templeton, which he not only distributed to cities all over the Midwest but called "the good stuff," by which slogan it has been known ever since.  The bad stuff -- hooch, bathtub gin, rotgut -- was made even more lethal in 1926 when the government required a larger quantity of poisonous methanol be added to industrial alcohol (which bootleggers used as a base from which they made their chancy fake liquor) to discourage illegal drinking, which Prohibition was failing to do.  They also promoted adding chemicals such as benzine and mercury; it is estimated that 10,000 people died taking the risk of possibly purchasing deadly tainted alcohol.

From 1920 to 1933, the bootleggers of this enterprising little town brought in three railroad car loads of sugar a month while sending out cattle cars to Chicago filled with barrels, not bovines.  Alphons' grandson Meryl  resurrected the legendary brand, respectably legal now, in 2006.  His birthday is coincidentally January 17, which has been declared Bootleggers Day.  You can't keep a good Iowan down.

(2021 update:  Today's revived Templeton Rye had actually been made in the giant MGP distellery in Lawrenceburg, Indiana, but a class action lawsuit forced the deletion of claims on the label of "small batch" and "Prohibition Era Recipe."  Flavor had been added to approximate the original.  Now a new $35 million distillery, visitor center and museum has opened back in Templeton Carroll County, Iowa which will produce 2.4 million bottles annually.  The founder's grandson, one of the principals, says "Grandfather would say this is great, but where's my cut?")

                                                                            ***

Prohibition did not interrupt the 121-year operation of Nelsen's Hall and Bitters Club on remote Washington  Island, Wisconsin or even break its stride.  Originally opened as a dance club but thriving as a bar and social center, owner Tom Nelsen wasn't about to close its doors after January 1920, Constitutional amendment or no.  The law allowed medicinal alcohol or sacramental wine to still be served, and Tom had noticed pharmacies selling Angostura Bitters (which happens to be 90 proof, or 45% alcohol) for stomach disorders.  So, with nothing else to sell except for (bleh) near-bear, he offered shots of this "medicine" after he cleverly procured a pharmacist's license.  A visiting Federal agent thought this sure looked and operated as a speakeasy, and charged Nelsen with a Volstead Act violation.  In court, this creative barkeeper demonstrated that it tasted pretty awful and could only be considered a medicine.  The judge agreed that no one would purchase it as an enjoyable drink, so the G-men had to take the loss while Wisconsinites kept on taking the ferry to the Club.

Today you can become a card-carrying member of the Bitters Club (if you can down a shot) and be entitled to "mingle, dance, etc., with all the other members."   

October 8, 1963

The original "Jazz Corner of the World" at 1678 Broadway, NYC

The first LP I ever bought was Dave Brubeck's "Time Out."  Still have it, and it has aged like a fine French wine -- even better now than then.  Most things (think 70s fashion) are quickly dated and lose their appeal.  So we know what a classic is: that rare other that defies the damage of time and tide.

Someone decided to record the John Coltrane Quartet at the original Birdland club (1949 - 1965) on a particular night.  The album issued a few months later only included three selections (just 27 minutes +), with two added from a studio session from following month.  These five cuts on "Coltrane Live at Birdland" are all you really need to know, so be sure to take this disc when you depart for that desert island.

Another thing lost today, in our era of mindless "beats" and tattooed morons, is the extensive, thoughtful liner notes that used to be commissioned for LPs.  Poet LeRoi Jones wrote the essay for this recording, and I'm glad he did.  He says "the few people who were at Birdland that night of October 8 who really heard what Coltrane, Jones, Tyner and Garrison were doing..."  Emphasis on heard, because the club could seat 500 and surely it was pretty full for this appearance of giants, but people are also out to socialize, too. Ah, if one could go back in time...

I'm in full agreement with Mr. Jones on the role that drummer Elvin Jones played:  "...rising in the background like something out of nature...a fattening thunder, storm clouds or jungle war clouds."  His work alone bears several listening-throughs, it's that surprising and bold.  And Mr.Coltrane plays soprano sax in addition to tenor, a delicious treat.  On top of all that, legendary Rudy Van Gelder was the recording engineer -- a rare alignment of the stars!

Stars, indeed: the club was named after already popular Charlie "Yardbird" Parker, who was on hand the opening night.  Jack Kerouac lyrically described hearing Lester Young there in "On The Road."  There was a dark side, too.  In 1959, Miles Davis was beaten by a city policeman while outside on the sidewalk.  The same year co-owner Irving Levy was stabbed to death after a January midnight and nobody noticed for hours. 

All these people have gone on now, but the magic of that one night is ours still, to be grateful for.

Thirty Two Years Gone

Cold currents run slow and deep in the oceans, one I've heard of taking thousands of years to flow from Greenland's glaciers past Hawaii.  So do the things that pass into our hands and back out again.  Some keep their stories, most are lost to the landfill, and others float through the lower levels of the economy anonymously.  A cut glass punch bowl set for sale at the Goodwill store is surely a legacy of Christmas and Thanksgiving holidays, maybe a retirement party, of some family whose name you will never know.

The other day we dropped in on one of the regular half-price sales at said local Goodwill store, immediately finding one thing we'd been looking for (new, for only $5).  Then we threaded our way to the back corner where the artwork, frames and books are to be found, our favorite spot.  One old painting was on the floor, propped against the end of the metal shelving, which made me do a double-take.  It looked familiar, the way something would if you had donated it yourself and saw it again, surprised.  It looked like the reproduction oil painting (in the exact frame, too) that was on my grandparents' living room wall above the long grey sofa for the entire time they lived there -- 38 years -- and had probably been in two previous homes they had in the area.  My father had given it to them at the end of the Thirties, when he was working downtown and living at home.

I had always liked it, and was sorry to see it disappear when the auctioneer cleared out their house after my grandfather's death in 1988.  I was at work all week and missed my chance.  Not knowing the artist or its title, I couldn't look for another.  What were the chances it stayed in the community for thirty two years -- who knows where -- and just we happened upon it?  So, for $3.50 and quite a long wait, it came back with us.

The label on the back with the title and artist noted, along the yellowed, torn backing paper, looked right for being from either side of 1940.  Online, I found there were several other very similar pictures by Anthony Thieme of the same scene from different viewpoints, one copyrighted 1939.  The title, "Sunny  Afternoon," was also shared, with slight variations, with some of them. He was quite a prolific landscape painter, whose work is still in museums, galleries and at auctions today.

I had always guessed this Impressionist work was by a 19th century artist who depicted a familiar French village, due to the sycamore tree and the look of the houses with red roofs, shutters and white stucco exteriors, as well as its feeling of serene timelessness.  Good thing I'm not pretending to be an art appraiser.  It is actually a 20th century rendering of a street in Rockport, Massachusetts.   Despite the facts, I'm going to keep on thinking quiet French village anyway.

Anthony Thieme, 1888 - 1954

  

What Were They Thinking?

A scene from a movie ten years ago just sticks in my head, so I've got to pry it out and leave it here for you.

In "The Social Network," the film about the beginning of Facebook, this scene take place in the office of Harvard President Larry Summers.  The Winklevoss twins have an appointment to protest Mark Zuckerberg's takeover/theft of their idea, presenting it as an honor code violation.  The president has a visceral dislike of the twins, calling them "A-holes" later, and is instantly put off by their appearing dressed up in blazers and ties.  He accordingly dismisses their complaint, thus setting in motion legal battles and a lot of bad publicity. What has bothered me about this is that the president's decision not to look into the situation and deal with it seems to have been based on emotion and irritation, which is less than what we expect of someone in his position.  There are so many other examples of experienced, educated professionals in positions of power and authority who similarly disappoint, and I'm sure you have seen them personally. 

Rational thinking is derailed by ignorance, prejudices, borderline personality traits, beliefs and fear.  Damage is done which could have been avoided.  Recently I saw another story about an unthought-out decision:  a woman had graduated at the top of her law school class in Chicago in the mid 1920s, and had high hopes when applying for a position at law firms.  She was told coldly that they "did not hire women," and sent packing.  A conservative knee-jerk reaction instead of a little thought -- society was changing after World War I and the adoption of the 19th and 20th amendments, and there are opportunities in such times which are lost when ignored.  A top female lawyer in the firm could have brought in significant new business from female clients in need of estate planning, in business matters or those having marital problems.

Boxed-in thinking can have a much wider impact.  It seems CIA Director J.J. Angleton was obsessed with the idea of false Soviet defectors misleading his agency, acting as double agents.  Valuable information from these defectors was ignored, and one individual was even mistreated badly due to such suspicion (he was, it turns out, genuine). The ongoing hunt for a mole inside the intelligence community also caused much pointless damage.  Ordinary police work would have revealed that the mole was their own Aldrich Ames, who, along with his wife, clearly lived too lavish a lifestyle (home, cars, etc.) for his income and visited parks at night far too often (to make coded information dead drops, of course, not to feed the squirrels).  Pervasive fear and unfounded beliefs usually drive out common sense.

Clinging to an orthodoxy of belief usually precludes clear thinking.  Herbert Hoover, intelligent, capable and educated as he was, kept to his conservative principles and declined to intervene to the extent the emergency required when the stock market crash of 1929 could have been mitigated by bolder action.  The Irish starved and died during the Potato Famine of the 1840s while effective aid was denied by those in ruling England who believed it would upset the market.  A century and a half later, economists like Laffer and others blindly perpetrate the same misunderstandings of Adam Smith. to the applause of conservatives and the misfortune of millions.  In stark contrast to Hoover, Thomas Jefferson completely and brilliantly violated his small government principles to make the Louisiana Purchase.  He might have agreed with Emerson that a foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds. 

      

An Ancient Student's Lament

Cuneiform, cuneiform
How'd that get to be the norm?
You Akkadians, Sumerians and Elamites, 
That's no way to write!

I say it's just a batch
Of silly chickenscratch!
Incising marks in clay is bad --
Have you never heard of a legal pad?

The Israelites across the sand
Put things down in a handsome hand.
But I can't help it, I'm just averse
To reading and writing in reverse!

I'll take a ship with sails unfurled
To Western lands, a whole new world!
Yes, I can only dream of it:
To finally write in Palmer script!