Category: This ‘n’ That

miscellanea

Reunion

I mentioned making a quick trip to New York earlier this month. It was a last minute decision to attend a school reunion. The fact that is was an elementary school reunion seems to be of much amusement to my friends from recent years. It wasn’t until I noticed their amused or bewildered reaction that I realized, or rather remembered, just how unusual, and privileged, my early schooling was — privileged for two reasons, neither of which being that it was a private school. The first reason is the school’s philosophy, described today on their website as follows:

“Education at the School is experience-based, interdisciplinary, and collaborative. The emphasis is on educating the whole child — the entire emotional, social, physical, and intellectual being — while at the same time, the child’s integrity as learner, teacher, and classmate is valued and reinforced.”

The School for Children is a demonstration school for what is now known as the Bank Street College of Education. When it began in 1916 is was the Bureau of Educational Experiments, a research group founded by Lucy Sprague Mitchell. The group decided that they could best study child development, with the fewest restrictions, if they had their own school, so they started with a nursery school in 1918. Mitchell was not the only one with progressive ideas, a Dewey-esque learning by doing approach; her two colleagues, Caroline Pratt and Elisabeth Irwin also founded schools in Greenwich Village, City and Country School and Little Red Schoolhouse, respectively. And when BEE’s kids “graduated,” most continued their education at one of those schools.

In 1930 the school acquired and converted the old Fleishman’s yeast factory at 69 Bank Street, that was the building where we attended school, but it was not until the late 50s that they decided to start adding classes so that the oldest students could stay on…and so that they could continue to study us and train teachers in our classrooms. When we graduated from 8th grade we were only the third class to do so. We were 69 Bank Street’s Class of 69. We were a special group; I thought that then, and I still do.

The second privilege, likely a result of the first, is that my little class (class size was always small, about 18) was more like a family than a class, and that closeness became evident once again when we began to reconnect. Half of our class attended school together, grew up together, for nine, ten, and eleven years. Although most of us had not been in contact since our only prior reunion in 1994, and some had been out of touch since graduation, it was as if the intervening years melted away – the fondness of one another, the school, and I suppose our lost youth, coupled with curiosity, eroded any obstacles. Of course we are each closer to some than to others (as it was then, so it is still today), but if old sibling-like rivalries existed in the past, they are no longer evident and the strong bond forged in the 1960s remains today.

Soon after we graduated the school moved uptown, grew in size, and its attitudes changed with the times. Their focus shifted to their immediate operations and they lost track of and interest in their graduates. They even lost our records. We found that out when we organized our own reunion twelve years ago. Of course their interest peeked when someone told them of our 25th-year reunion and gave them addresses – suddenly they were interested…in our checkbooks.

Most of our teachers are gone now, a few retired or moved on to other careers, but many have died. They were the ones who, with guidance from the educators at the college, saw us through. We are happy to have also reconnected with Pearl Zeitz, our 7s teacher (we didn’t have “grades”), and Peter Sauer, our science teacher who came on board during our last two or three years because parents began to get nervous about how we would fare in “the real world.” And of those no longer with us there are a few who we miss and remember fondly: Hannah McElheny (6s), David Wickens (8s), Betty Crowell (9s), Muriel Morgan (10s and 13s), and Hugh McElheny (music). The educators who studied us are long gone, replaced by administrators and fundraisers. I’d like to think that Lucy Sprague Mitchell, Barbara Biber, Edna Shapiro, John Neimeyer, and others at the College, along with our teachers, would have wanted to know how we, their experiments, turned out. I think they’d all be pleased.

Nothing Is Simple, But It’s All Good

I got a lot done yesterday, although no blogging. The morning started with a trip to the dentist for an 8 AM teeth cleaning. I have to do this every three months because the radiation treatments burned out my salivary glands and left my teeth unprotected. Hard to complain about such things when the alternative was death… And there’s always an upside: the dentist’s office manager bought a copy of “Men, Women, and Girl Singers” as a Father’s Day gift.

Anyway, I hurried back to my home office and set up to record a phone interview. In 1998 we installed 4-line phones throughout the house, but GE’s proprietary wiring or whatever prevents me from simply plugging in my recording device. I use an inexpensive single-line princess phone coupled with a Telephone Recording Control (both purchased at Radio Shack) that plugs into my minidisc recorder.

At precisely 9:30 AM the phone rang and my long-awaited conversation with Sir Simon Rattle began. Because of his hectic schedule, and the time difference, it took months to arrange this call. But again, I cannot complain because we spoke at leisure for just over an hour and he was gracious to call me on his dime. (Granted, he has more dimes than I do, but generous nonetheless.) He was calling me from Berlin and had just concluded a rehearsal that he said was hard work but went well. He told me how the Classic Ellington project came to be, described the fear and the excitement experienced by all parties when the Birmingham Symphony joined together with some heavy-weight jazz artists (Clark Terry, Joe Lovano, Regina Carter, Bobby Watson, Joshua Redman, Geri Allen, Peter Washington, and Lewis Nash) to perform a complete program of Luther Henderson’s orchestrations.

While I was transferring the recorded interview to my computer, I started filling out worksheets given to me by the folks at ArtistShare. I mention ArtistShare on this blog from time to time, usually in reference to Dad or Maria Schneider or Bob Brookmeyer, but I don’t think I’ve told you that I have been thinking about launching an ArtistShare site of my own. It’s been on my mind for some time now, and it will soon be a reality. ArtistShare is all about sharing the creative process, but planning the experience is a well-thought out and intricate process all its own…hence the worksheets.

I am actually planning to launch three projects, if not simultaneously then in quick succession, but I will not be going it alone. One of the projects will be a new CD by Clairdee, to be recorded in September at the Manchester Craftsmen’s Guild. John is Clairdee’s personal manager so I asked him to start on the worksheets for that project while I tackled the other two projects (more about those soon).

At some point yesterday I took a break from ArtistShare to check the audio levels on the recorded interview and when satisfied, I sent the file, via the Internet, to my trusty transcriptionist. I took other breaks — one for a brief phone conference with a client who needed me to edit a press release, another to re-write a Nancy Wilson press release, and lastly to cook and eat dinner — but it was after 11 PM when finally I emailed one set of worksheets to my Project Coordinator and toddled off to bed.

Today is a new day and this morning my reward will be to go horseback riding. Hi ho, Silver, away……….

Memory Lapse

My induction into the world of technology dates back to the behemoth days, when mainframe systems took up entire ice-cold floors of office buildings. In the 1970s I wrote programs on punch cards in languages such as COBOL and MARC IV. When a program malfunctioned (usually at 2 or 3 AM) I would get a call from sys ops (the system operators) and have to head for the office in the dark where I would then read the “dumps” — stacks of green and white striped paper, often a foot or two high, of densely packed hexadecimal code that when properly interpreted would lead me to the broken line of program code and/or the offending data record that caused the program to abort. I had worked my way up from programmer to analyst and system designer in the days when databases were new and required experts to create the requisite “data dictionaries.”

By the early 80s I had left the corporate world and opened shop as a publicist, sharing an office suite with John. I bought one of the first IBM PCs for our office and taught myself a new database programming language called R-Base so that I could build a custom-made program for John’s management business. Over the years I moved the system from R-Base to Microsoft Access and now it’s a web-based application built with php, but functionally it is the same.

Eleven years ago I wrote one of the early books on how to build a web site, and while I don’t even attempt to learn all the new languages and programs, I still keep an eye on the trends and new developments…and I do acquire useful gadgets. I love my PDA (personal digital assistant). I was particularly happy to find that my new PDA, a Palm, was equipped for wireless connections to the Internet, a capability that enables me to pick up email and visit websites. The screen is small to be sure, but it fits in my purse, which my laptop does not. So, for the first time in many years, this past week I went out of town without my laptop.

It was a quick, four-day trip to New York, and I didn’t expect to have much time for writing. Just in case I did find some extra time to work on the Henderson biography, I loaded all the interview transcripts onto the PDA so that I could read them and make some notes. Of course, with the wireless connection, I fully expected to blog, even if inputting the text would be laborious.

I tell you all of this so you will appreciate the full extent of my chagrin as to the cause of my absence from DevraDoWrite this week. Bright and early on Tuesday morning I cruised to my blog site and…I could not remember the login code. The program in which I store such information was at home on my laptop. My little gray cells were not functioning. Another example, I suppose, of “use it or lose it.”

Taps Reprise

It’s Memorial Day, and that explains the momentary explosion of stories about the origin of Taps. Embedded in many of those accounts is the stuff of myths and legends. Here is a reprise of the brief history of taps that I posted last summer:

It is perhaps the most famous of all bugle calls, and is comprised of just 24 notes. I don’t know for sure when I first heard that haunting melody. I keep thinking that it was probably at summer camp signaling ‘lights out’ – the original purpose of the call – or perhaps in an old war movie soundtrack, playing as darkness enveloped the barracks of the good guys. Fond memories aside, my first exposure was most likely while watching television coverage of John F. Kennedy’s funeral – I was barely eight years old. Over the last forty years, the American public has come to know Taps all too well. For many days following 9/11 we heard it several times a day, and now as soldiers and civilians in all corners of the world die at terrorist hands in political and religious wars, I only hope that we never become inured to the sadness that Taps evokes.

Taps, as we know it today, was first sounded in July of 1862 for the Third Brigade, First Division, Fifth Army Corps, Army of the Potomac, under the command of Union General Daniel Butterfield. Its origins are much disputed, and the truth is confounded by verbal accounts that have grown into myth. Master Sgt. Jari A. Villanueva, a longstanding member of the United States Air Force Band and respected bugle historian, traces today’s Taps back to an earlier version of the call Tattoo used “to signal troops to prepare them for bedtime roll call.” In his comprehensive essay that covers the history and the mythology of Taps, Villanueva writes, “In the interest of historical accuracy, it should be noted that it is not General Butterfield who composed Taps, rather that he revised an earlier call into the present day bugle call we know as Taps.”

Other stories of Taps’ origin include a Union Army father finding the musical notes on a slip of paper in the pocket of a dead Confederate soldier…his own son. Villanueva has traced this tall tale back to a Ripley’s “Believe It Or Not” story that was later spread by re-telling in an Ann Landers or Dear Abby column.

Villaneuva also explains the circumstances under which Taps was first used at a military funeral during the Peninsular Campaign in 1862. Captain Tidball, worried that a loud gun volley would alert the enemy nearby, ordered Taps to be played at the burial of a fallen soldier. “The custom, thus originated, was taken up throughout the Army of the Potomac, and finally confirmed by orders.” Taps can be heard as many as thirty times a day at Arlington National Cemetery. Villanueva, himself a bugler, says that this duty “is the military musician’s equivalent of ‘playing Carnegie Hall.’”

“Taps should be played by a lone bugler,” says Colonel Arnald D. Gabriel, Commander and Conductor of the United States Air Force Band from 1964 – 1985. “Some have tried to harmonize it, but it destroys the simplistic beauty of the lone bugler. The most heart tugging time to hear it is at Arlington Cemetery when a veteran is buried and there are no family members present, just the Chaplin, the honor guard and the pallbearers. To hear taps in that setting is gut-wrenching.”

Music is a powerful communicator.

Art & Commerce

I’m not sure how I feel about Starbucks becoming a major cultural influence, but they are doing some interesting things.

Listening Library, Random House’s children’s audiobook imprint, and Starbucks Hear Music have teamed up to co-release two audiobook titles from the lauded and long-out-of-print Rabbit Ears Collection of celebrity-narrated recordings, which was acquired by Random House/Listening Library earlier this year. The Velveteen Rabbit and The Night Before Christmas, both read by Meryl Streep, and featuring music by George Winston and Mark O’Connor respectively, will each be available for a four-month stretch, exclusively, at Starbucks locations in the U.S. and online at www.starbucks.com/hearmusic. Following the initial exclusive period, the two selections will receive traditional retail distribution. The Velveteen Rabbit will debut in Starbucks outlets on August 29; The Night Before Christmas will hit the coffee giant’s shelves on November 7.

I am glad that these recordings are being re-issued, and I read that Listening Library is planning to re-launch all of the Rabbit Ears titles. Now I wonder if any of that would have come to pass had it not been for the Starbucks deal.

——–
Courtesy of The New York Times I read that commercials have come to Broadway.

No, to answer your question, there is nothing sacred. The advertisement, which is itself advertised as the world’s first live theatrical commercial, is a creation of Visit London, a tourist organization. There have already been performances of the live commercial on stages in Dublin and Hamburg, said Ken Kelling, Visit London’s communications director, and there is to be another on Friday in Pittsburgh. “They’re a captive audience,” Mr. Kelling said. “They can’t switch channels or change over or walk out once the thing is started.”

And they want us to pay $100+ for a ticket? I wonder what Terry Teachout will have to say about this.

Missing In Action…Again

Sorry to have been so inconsistent in posting of late. Today all I have to offer is a bit of miscellanea. Between a quick trip to New York and juggling of multiple projects, I just can’t seem to marshall any coherent thoughts into decent prose.

  1. John’s appearance at the Tribeca Performings Arts Center as part of their Salute to Lost Jazz Shrines went well, and they gave him a very lovely plaque — at this rate he’s going to need a trophy room.

    2. —–

  2. In my May 1st post, I wrote “there must be a reason why immigrants risk life and limb to get here illegally; if the legal alternative was feasible don’t you think they’d prefer it?” In the May 17 issue of The Press Democrat an article, “The Waiting Game,” by Martin Espinoza contains the following information:

    The Census Bureau estimates about 500,000 illegal immigrants enter the country every year, but only about 5,000 visas are available to low-skilled workers. Immigration attorneys said the door is closed to millions of foreign-born nationals with no family or employers in the United States to sponsor them.

    Read the whole article here.

    3. —–

  3. A friend emailed me a copy of “Love will outlast Bush” by Garrison Keillor which ends with:

    Take the day off, dear reader, and ignore the world and let the president play his fiddle. Find the one who means the most to you and make yourselves happy. If that be ignorance, make the most of it.

    You can also read it here and here.

    4. —–

  4. I used to love PBS – masterpiece theatre and the Mystery series were among my favorites, but “they” seem to have lost their taste. You know how I feel about Ramsey Lewis’ so-called jazz program , and now I hear from Terry Teachout that the Nat Cole program was a travesty. How disappointing!

    5. —–

  5. A press release from IDC with the headline “Billion Dollar Opportunity: Internet Video Services Primed for Explosive Growth, According to IDC,” began “FRAMINGHAM, Mass., April 5, 2006 – Internet video services are on the brink of becoming a mainstream phenomenon in the United States…” On the brink? The release mentions hurdles that include licensing and other legal issues, but it seems to me that we are already there.

    Video stories are featured on most major newspaper web sites. CultureGrrl recently noted video clips on the New York Philharmonic web site. She wrote:

    Something new, informative and enjoyable on the NY Philharmonic’s website : video clips of composers, conductors and musicians involved in upcoming performances.

    Most poignant is the clip of the 97-year-old Elliott Carter, explaining that his “Allegro scorrevole” of 1996 was inspired by a bubble in a painting by Chardin, which “symbolizes the fragility of life…finally disappearing into the sky.”

    And I recently became addicted to the amazing assortment of free video clips at VideoGoogle – my most recent discovery there is their archive of American Television Interviews (from the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences Foundation) with people such as Norman Lear, Julia Child, Ted Turner, Richard Crenna, Carroll O’Connor, Diahann Carroll, Ossie Davis, and Fess Parker to name just a few. As a biographer, interviews fascinate me.

May Day or Mayday II

I launched DevraDoWrite one year ago today, so happy anniversay to me.

On that day I learned a little about the derrivation of “mayday” as a cry for help as well as the history of May Day. May 1, 1886, American workers gathered to demand a more reasonable eight-hour workday, and today, 120 years later, immigrant workers are gathering and marching for what they perceive to be their rights. I say “perceive” because there is much disagreement even among “supporters.” Even I disagree with myself on some parts of this. I believe that if you want to live here and work here then you should learn the language and obey the laws. I do not believe that my money should be spent on creating a bi-lingual alternative to everything from classrooms to voting instructions. I think immigrants should enter the country legally and pay taxes like everyone else.

Of course, here the issues get murky and I suspect that it’s American business greed and politics that is at the root. First of all, it is admittedly hard to keep a straight face while writing “pay taxes like everyone else” when I well know that the rich get richer by leaping through those great big tax loopoholes designed just for them. Second, and perhaps more important, there must be a reason why immigrants risk life and limb to get here illegally; if the legal alternative was feasible don’t you think they’d prefer it? Why would someone stow away or dodge bullets while hopping a fence? Desparation implies no alternatives. And why is it so hard to get in legally? I can only surmise that it suits the employers to have leverage over their illegal workers, forcing them to work for less and without benefits.

Here’s an excerpt from “Illegal workers: good for U.S. economy,” an article on CNNMoney.com

A crackdown in illegal immigration in 2004 caused a shortage of workers needed to bring in the lettuce crop in the Western United States, said Powell, which he said caused a $1 billion loss for the industry as many growers had to leave their fields unharvested.

“To hire Americans to do it, they would have had to raise wages so far, it wouldn’t have been worth it for them,” said Powell at the Independent Institute. “It caused less of a loss to leave the crop to rot.”

As for complaints that many critics of immigration cite – demand for social and government services by immigrants – most economists believe that is outweighed by the increased economic activity, even if some specific school districts or public hospitals struggle with the costs associated serving the immigrant community.

So today the immigrants cry out for help as they celebrate May Day with their own demands. If they want to do as we do here, in English, them we must do unto them as we would have others do unto us.

“Hi ho, Silver, away!”

I was three or four years old when I first met a horse. My mother and I were living out West and because she took me almost everywhere with her, I got to go riding at an early age. I won’t claim to have a vivid memory of this, but I feel like I remember it. I have some other very clear memories of that time in my life, clearest being the floor plan of our house in the cul-de-sac. I remember going to the hospital emergency room when I punctured my ear drum, swallowing a quarter, digging for worms, twirling a baton (or trying to), playing with a lamb (a real live one), eating a dog’s Milk Bone, and riding in a jeep. And I remember the picture on the wall over my bed. But my memory of riding a horse is hazy, just a feeling, perhaps from photos I’ve seen long ago, perhaps not. Still, it must have been a good experience because seven or eight years later I became a pretty good rider, albeit back on the East Coast and in an English saddle. The photo at left is yours truly at summer camp, age 11.

I was fairly fearless as a young horsewoman, not afraid to ride bareback (emergency dismount was easy), and eager to participate in the local shows at which I won an occasional ribbon. I also remember a horse we named Camel because he liked to lie down and roll in the sand dunes at the end of one of the trails. I recall a few spills but I always got right back on the horse who threw me. Now, more than a few decades later, I have a fear of falling, a sensation that I do not recall feeling back then. But I still love to ride.

It’s been more than ten years since I have ridden. The last time was in Oregon, on vacation with my girlfriend, Alice. We had flown to Portland, rented a car and driven many hours down along the Columbia Gorge. Our plan was to slowly wend our way back toward Portland, stopping to spend a day in each town along the way. One day Alice said she wanted to go riding and she found a place listed in the telephone book. We called and booked a half-day trail excursion for the next afternoon. It was absolutely beautiful, but oh boy, we paid for it, and I don’t mean in cash. The following day we could do little more than sit by the pool at the Motel 6; any and all movement was painful. But it was worth it!

So here I am, at it again; the picture on the right is from yesterday. I’ve been going once a week and this is my third time. The first time the trainer put me on Contessa. She’s an older horse, stubborn but not wicked like some of the 3 year olds. We stayed in the arena that day and Contessa ran the show; I was just happy to stay seated. Last week, a friend went out with us and they convinced me that I could handle Flicka. I was doing fine in the arena, but then my friend talked me into going out on the trail. Wow. Or more appropriately, Whoa. First of all, to get from the stable to the arena you have to ride down the street with an occasional car passing by. The horses seem used to the cars, but lawnmowers spook them. The arena is in a large park, but to get to the trail you have the leave the park and ride down Lincoln Avenue, a fairly major street. At times, we rode on the sidewalk. The only thing missing were the hitching posts. Given the price of gas right now, perhaps not a bad idea. It was an exhilarating trip, even if half of the exhilaration was just plain terror. I acquitted myself well, and had some measure of control over Flicka, though I suspect only as much as she allowed me. This time it was back to Contessa and I stayed in the arena. We battled a bit, but I felt more in control. I went out in flat shoes because last week my ankle gave out and it may have been due to the heels on the boots I was wearing (I haven’t worn shoes with heels in more than six years). This felt a little better, so perhaps I’ll treat myself to some boots without heels. We’ll see. Gotta keep those heels down.

Outrageous

This quote is floating all over the net and in lots of mail order catalogues without attribution — I rather like it:

I want to be an outrageous old woman who never gets called an old lady. I want to get leaner & meaner, sharp edged & earth colored, till I fade away from pure joy.

Granted, I have a ways to go…or at least I hope so.

Spring Cleaning

Spring cleaning often means organizing piles of memorabilia — thank you who invented scanners. My latest cleaning/organizing/scanning project was a direct response to John’s desire to share with his family (all the way down to those great grandchild) the events surrounding the honor he received this past January. I scanned all the NEA Jazz Masters and IAJE memorabilia we collected, added in some photos (by Leroy Hamilton), audio and video clips, plus a little narration and a bunch of clippings to create a computer CD. When I decided to create the presentation as if it were a web site (so that anyone with a browser could open the files regardless of what computer system they use) my tech guru, Robert, suggested I use a free WYSIWYG (What-You-See-Is-What-You-Get) open source web authoring program called
NVU. Worked like a charm.

Speaking of a great use of photos, I recently took time to really check out Bill Crow’s new web site. WOW! Bill has posted beaucoup photos, and you really should browse the whole site so as not to miss Bill’s four-up head shot for commercial casting or the one with him riding off to a gig on his Lambretta motor scooter with his bass strapped on to the back. And don’t limit your meanderings to the photo pages, there are wonderful pix accompanying the bio and lots of links to other great sites. (Thanks, Bill, for including me on the links list.)

While I’m on the subject of visuals and spring cleaning, online re-designs are in the air: two of note this week are The New York Times and All About Jazz. In addition to a cleaner-looking more readable appearance, and the inclusion of more multimedia and podcasts, the other latest/hottest must-have “element” seems to be a listing (withy links) of the most popular stories — either the most read, and/or the most emailed. The Times also has a list, updated hourly, of the “most blogged.”

These lists put a new spin on the idea of word-of-mouth or grassroots. It used to be that one person told five (or fifty or even five hundred), and they who were told in turn told others, who told others, and so forth. In that scenario, the telling takes place amongst the audience or consumers. With these lists, supported by the automated aggregation of data, the publisher or originator is now a direct and ongoing participant in the propagation. I’m not sure how that is going to change things, but I suspect it will have some impact down the road. I’ll bet Malcolm Gladwell would have an opinion about this.

As always, time will tell. Meanwhile, what do you think?