The loss to this world is impossible to gauge because Steve still had decades of productivity left in him and a strong will to serve others. There are very few people I have met in my lifetime about whom I can truly say, “knowing him made me a better person.” But that is certainly true of Steve. He was always an example to me of the best the Religious Left can produce – a social liberal, but also a person who respected the conservative viewpoint, particularly the conservative Catholic viewpoint. At his funeral, it was noted that Steve was a Pope Francis Catholic before there was a Pope Francis. And that tells you everything you have to know about Steve. He wasn’t concerned about judging others. He was concerned with helping them in any way he could.
To say I will miss him is to state the obvious. All that I want to say is that I will never, ever forget him.
Gone with the wind – And good riddance
June 2015
It was just last summer when I was somewhat surprised to find the Confederate flag being flown at my first NASCAR event. Here we were, more than 100 miles north of the Mason Dixon Line with the battle flag of the Confederate States of America flying alongside the stars and stripes.
When I asked my friends “What’s up with that?” they explained to me that the Confederate flag was the unofficial flag of Redneck Nation. It was also a symbol of Southern pride. I immediately looked at the license plates of the cars around the stars and bars and found nothing but Pennsylvania and New Jersey plates. So these were just rednecks.
Then I asked “But don’t they understand that flying that flag for black folks is like flying the swastika for Jewish people?” They told me that the people flying that flag were clueless about its origin and how African Americans might feel about it. I wanted to see how black racing fans might feel about it and then I looked around and could not find a single black face anywhere in the crowd of tens of thousands of people. And that made me very uncomfortable. Suddenly I felt as if I had stumbled into a Ku Klux Klan rally.
Fast forward just 10 months, and suddenly all of America has become just as uncomfortable with the Confederate flag as I was last summer. Walmart, Amazon and eBay announced that they will no longer sell merchandise bearing the Confederate flag. States throughout the South dropped the stars and bars from their state flags. Even rednecks turned their back on this relic of the Civil War.
The fall from grace of the Confederate flag was even more dramatic than the rise of support for gay marriage. But it’s long overdue. The Civil War ended 150 years ago last April. The South lost. Yet for the last century and a half we Northerners have had to put up with a flag that represented people who fought against us in the cause of enslavement of black Americans. This was a flag under which hundreds of thousands of Northern soldiers were fired upon and killed or injured. And yet we have accommodated Southern pride in a remarkable display of patience. Well this week the patience ran out. The Confederate flag is on its way out and soon it will be as Gone With the Wind as the Confederacy. And I couldn’t be happier.
Returning to “Mockingbird”
July 2015
This week saw the publication of Harper Lee’s Go Set a Watchman, in which the characters of her masterpiece, To Kill a Mockingbird, are seen later in life. The book was apparently written more than 50 years ago and was rejected by the publisher at the time. Lee went on to write To Kill a Mockingbird and Go Set a Watchman was shelved. I have not read the book yet, and I actually have reservations about doing so, because I love To Kill a Mockingbird so much and it might be painful if this “new” book is not up to par.
There are a lot of lawyer stories on television and in movies. Most of them are not very flattering. I think of TV shows like LA Law and The Good Wife. Lawyers are often called upon to do the most unpleasant things for us. They sometimes have to act like monsters so we don’t have to. It’s no wonder the public has such a poor perception of lawyers. And yet the practice of law can be an honorable, even a noble profession.
Exhibit A is a Southern lawyer with the unlikely name of Atticus Finch, the protagonist of To Kill a Mockingbird. There is no nobler lawyer in American literature than Atticus Finch. His demeanor, intelligence and ethical values are what many lawyers aspire to, but seldom attain.
Atticus doesn’t want his children to have guns and doesn’t have a gun in his house, but when a rabid dog needs to be put down, the police chief calls on “deadeye” Atticus to make the shot. He accepts payment from poor farmers in produce. He is known far and wide as a fair man. That reputation gets him appointed counsel for a client that no one else would represent – a poor black man in Depression-era Alabama who is accused of raping a white girl.
If you’ve seen the marvelous 1962 movie starring Gregory Peck no further explanation of the story is need. If you haven’t, I envy you the thrill of meeting Atticus Finch for the first time. But as good as the movie is (and the adaptation by Horton Foote is up there with the best) the book is even better. If you have never read it, I urge you to pick up a copy. These days you can even listen to it as an audio book with Sissy Spacek doing a fine job of narrating.
A few years ago, my wife and I were touring the Southeast as part of our decade-long plan to visit every state in the nation. We learned that the Court House in Monroeville, Alabama was the one that was recreated in Hollywood for the movie. That’s because Monroeville is the home to this day of Harper Lee, the woman who wrote To Kill a Mockingbird. She grew up just a couple of blocks away.
The real courtroom in Monroeville, Alabama
As we headed South on I-65 from Montgomery on our way to New Orleans we took a slight detour to visit the old Monroe County Courthouse. It’s now a museum full of items that lawyers of Atticus Finch’s time would have used. The museum is nice, but the star attraction is the old courtroom itself. It looks exactly like the movie since Henry Bumstead, the art director on the film, came there and took pictures and made drawings so that he could reproduce it in Hollywood.
As you walk into the courtroom you can just imagine yourself in a scene from the movie. Fortunately, it is possible to climb the stairs up to the balcony where the less prominent citizens, including children, could watch the proceedings. In the story, Jem and Scout (children of Atticus) and their friend Dill (who Harper Lee based on her childhood friend Truman Capote) sit on the floor of the balcony dangling their legs through the wooden supports that make up the balcony railing. The accused’s family sits nearby along with their minister. My wife and I were able to sit and get a Scout’s-eye view of the courtroom. It was a surprisingly moving experience. But that’s the power of good storytelling.
And they do more than just have the setting for To Kill a Mockingbird in Monroeville. Every summer they actually populate the courthouse with actors and put on a play version of the story. The audience gets to sit in the spectator portion of the courtroom while the actors stage the trial. It’s the hottest ticket in Alabama.
In the story, Atticus puts on a splendid defense for his client, Tom Robinson, after which, with head held high, he packs up his briefcase and heads for the door. Tom Robinson’s family waits for Atticus to gather his things and stands in silence while he walks to the exit. In a show of the depth of the respect for Atticus in the community, the minister prods the Finch children to “Stand up; your father’s passing.” Can you imagine a lawyer today being that respected and beloved?
There’s a bathroom on the right, and other mistaken lyrics
August 2015
We’ve all done it. We think we know the words to a song, only to be embarrassed to find out that we are sadly mistaken. Musicians are notorious for mumbling lyrics. Does anyone know the real words to “Louie Louie?”
An example that comes to mind for me is the old England Dan and John Ford Coley song “I’d Really Love to See You Tonight.” The chorus says “I’m not talkin’ ‘bout movin’ in.” But I have a friend who thought they were saying “I’m not talkin’ ‘bout Bolivia.”
And there are so man
y more. Someone thought Paul McCartney’s “My Love” was “My Glove.” And the instrumentation made my daughter think that “Everybody Plays the Fool” was “Everybody Plays the Flute.”
But my favorite mistaken lyric was to the Credence Clearwater Revival song “Bad Moon Rising.” The song ends with the line “There’s a bad moon on the rise.” Well to me it always sounded like John Fogerty was singing “There’s a bathroom on the right.” I know it makes no sense. But did “I Am the Walrus” make any sense? It was the ‘60s man.
Poetry in music from across the pond
September 2015
Some of the songs that we refer to as part of the Great American Songbook were actually composed on the other side of the Atlantic. An example is “My One and Only Love,” a favorite of mine that was composed by Englishmen Guy Wood and Robert Mellin. Another great example of superior British songwriting is “These Foolish Things (Remind Me of You)” with lyrics by Albert Eric Maschwitz (AKA Holt Marvell) and music by Jack Strachey.
It was written in 1936 for Joan Carr, a singer on a late-evening BBC radio program. Maschwitz was Head of Variety at the BBC when the song was written. He is said to have written the lyrics during the course of one Sunday morning at his flat in London. A few hours later, he dictated them over the phone to Jack Strachey who quickly came up with a memorable tune to fit Maschwitz’s poetry.
It’s referred to in the trade as a list song because it is made up of a list of things that the singer is remembering. It begins:
A cigarette that bears a lipstick’s traces
An airline ticket to romantic places
And still my heart has wings
These foolish things remind me of you
I find the opening lines tremendously evocative. They have the same melancholy that the lyrics to “I’ll Be Seeing You” by Irving Kahal would have two years later. It’s all about lovers separated and how everyday things bring the lover to mind.
The lyricist continues:
A tinkling piano in the next apartment
Those stumbling words that told you what my heart meant
A fairground’s painted swings
These foolish things remind me of you
It’s not hard to imagine how the sound of a “tinkling piano,” particularly playing a memorable song could bring the departed lover to mind. But what I especially like about the first couplet here is the rhyme of “apartment” with “heart meant.” It’s a sophisticated rhyme that’s a cut above the “June” “moon” rhymes we too often got from Tin Pan Alley. And while we’re talking about sophisticated lyrics, the internal rhyme with “things” in the last line of every stanza is really nice.
Next up is the bridge. It’s quite simple and I think elegant.
You came, you saw, you conquered me
When you did that to me
I knew somehow this had to be
Why is the singer in this state? Because he or she has been vanquished as surely as Caesar vanquished in Gaul. We continue:
The winds of March that make my heart a dancer
A telephone that rings but who’s to answer?
Oh, how the ghost of you clings
These foolish things remind me of you
And of course, it is just because the ghost of the lover clings that these foolish things remind me of you.
I think it’s a great piece of songwriting and it’s no wonder the song has been recorded by just about every jazz singer in the world. Some of my favorite renditions are by Mel Torme, Johnny Hartman and Ella Fitzgerald. But perhaps the best is by the queen of melancholy, Billie Holiday, with music by jazz great Teddy Wilson. Check it out.
What would Francis Scott Key think?
November 2015
America is great when it lives up to the last words of the national Anthem – “the land of the free and the home of the brave.” So often in our history, we have been a beacon of freedom. So often our people have shown bravery in the face of evil. Right now is not one of those times.
Today, a very un-brave Congress voted 289 to 137 to deny freedom to thousands of Iraqis and Syrians. The bill, with nearly 50 Democrats supporting it, would require that the director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the secretary of the Department of Homeland Security and the director of national intelligence confirm that each applicant for a visa from Syria and Iraq poses no threat to the United States. This is, of course, impossible. Albert Einstein wouldn’t have passed this screening, because it’s always impossible to prove that anything, or anyone, is absolutely safe. And that’s where bravery comes in.
We live in a dangerous world. There’s absolutely no doubt about that. But to expect our government to provide a 100% safe environment in such a world is to have a child’s mindset. Adults accept that there is always some risk in life. The only way the government can take perfect care of us is to watch each one of us all the time. Do we really want to embrace Big Brother? Already in the wake of the Paris terrorism there are calls by very un-brave politicians to outlaw encryption of messages. The number of cameras in our streets will surely multiply. And the very people who decry a “nanny state” when it comes to environmental and other “liberal” issues shout the loudest for the government to protect them, to be their nanny.
Well folks, this is not the brave America that Francis Scott Key was talking about. This is the home of the trembling Toms and the nervous Nellies. There is no bravery in effectively putting yourself under house arrest and proposing that the military “nuke ‘em all.” First off, who would you bomb? The enemy here is not a country, it’s an ideology of terror. And even if you could bomb someone, haven’t the last two decades demonstrated that doing that will only raise up thousands more? Do we really want to play a nuclear game of Whack A Mole?
America needs to “man up” and stop seeing imminent threats where there are none. We are well-protected by the best military money can buy. We already spend so much on the military that we can’t fix our schools, roads and bridges. So let’s trust them to do their job and show a little courage to maintain our liberty. Let’s resist the bunker mentality. Let’s stop playing into the hands of terrorists. Reasonably safe should be safe enough for a courageous country. We can be reasonably safe without closing the borders to needy refugees. We can trust our prisons to hold Guantanamo inmates. We can stop buying guns in record numbers. The bottom line is we can’t be the land of the free, unless we’re also the home of the brave.
A letter to my granddaughter on her birth day
November 9, 2015
Dear Caroline:
Welcome! We have been expecting you for several months and it’s great to finally have you with us. Let me bring you up to date on what’s been happening in this world in which you breathed your first breath a few hours ago.
First, you are so fortunate to have the mom and dad you have. You will find that they are pretty good at taking care of you. You see, they got a lot of practice in the last two years taking care of your big brother, Bryce. More about him in a moment.
Second, you are so fortunate that you took that first breath in one of our most beautiful states. I know you will enjoy the mountains, the lakes and the beautiful fall foliage in Vermont. Bryce was Jersey-born like his dad; you are a Vermont girl like your mom. And that seems just perfect.
Now about this fellow Bryce we keep mentioning. He’s your brother and brothers are a sort of good news/bad news thing. The bad news is that he will tease you to tears, beat on you and he’ll try to boss you around. But the good news is that he really loves you and he will always protect you and be your friend for life. He’s the only one who will really understand when you think that your parents are being mean. He’s your ally. But you have other allies as well.
Let me introduce myself. I’m your grandfather. You have two of those so you always have a spare. You’re lucky to have one grandfather who lives just a few minutes away. I live a bit farther away, but when you get older you will be able to see and
talk to me over a computer. You’re going to find that grandfathers are great because they pay a lot of attention to you when you see them, they’re willing to play with you and they often will let you do fun things that your parents won’t. Just ask Bryce.
So as you join us in the last weeks of 2015, I think you should know that although our country has been at war for the last 14 years, women are not forced to go and fight. Men aren’t either right now, but they do have to register and could be called upon to serve. So, as you can see already, our world will treat you differently just because you’re a girl. It’s not fair, but it’s reality and you’ll have to learn to deal with it. Don’t worry, you will have lots of great women in your life to show you how. And there’s even a chance that by the time we have your first birthday party, a woman will be elected president. Wouldn’t that be neat! Of course, I wouldn’t mind if a certain Vermont grandfather got elected instead. No, not your grandfather, but a great guy called Bernie Sanders who comes from your area. He has some great ideas for helping people have better lives, and that’s important.
You missed some hard economic times the country has been in since 2008. It looks like we’re coming out of them now and that’s a good thing. You also missed many incidents of fatal shootings at schools and churches during this year and every year of this century. It doesn’t look like that’s going to get any better anytime soon. That’s something we adults are going to have to work on for you.
Finally, you just missed meeting your great-grandmother Margaret. She died just about 50 days ago and she was so looking forward to meeting you. You would have really liked her. She played the harmonica and made delicious food you would have loved. She even worked in a candy store and that would have meant lots of sweets for you. She never had a daughter and so she really loved your Aunt Jenn when she was born and she would have loved you as well. But don’t worry, your Aunt Jenn still works at that candy store from time to time so she’s got you covered on the candy. The rest of us, including your great grandfather, will tell you all about your great grandmother and her wonderful life.
Tales of the Tarantula Page 14