Want to know what my daughter Laura’s and husband Harold’s poodle — named Noodle — has to endure in exchange for food, fun, companionship, a nice home in North Carolina, and a chance to be ogled by big dogs who chew tobacco and eat grits instead of dog food and ride around in the back of pickup trucks whistling at cute little poodles from New York?
This photo says much, much more than any words could communicate…
Happy Thanksgiving, Noodle. Here’s hoping some of your human friends slip you a little turkey under the table when Laura isn’t looking…
Life is what happens to you when you’re making other plans. So sang John Lennon — and that song’s been a soundtrack for me during the past year as my own life has swerved and careened and accelerated to warp speed and slowed to a near halt, as it has sometimes seemed like someone — when I wasn’t looking — flipped a switch to put me on automatic pilot, my destination programmed and out of my control. It’s been a sad, chaotic, disorienting and often disillusioning period of my life.
But it’s also been a time in which I’ve encountered unexpected wonders and wonderful revelations. And many of those wonders and revelations have had something — everything — to do with love and its power to heal, inspire, rejuvenate, to restore one’s faith, to revive, to resurrect, to make life come alive once again, to appear and come to the rescue when you least expect it and all seems lost.
I’ve experienced a miracle. I don’t mean I’ve seen the blessed Virgin bearing messages or had stigmata appear on my hands and feet. No flowers have fallen to the ground when I’ve opened my cloak. I have not, like St. Catherine, risen to the top of the room. I have not heard voices — except the tender, warm, soothing voice of true love and pure affection. How many people can say that? I’ve realized there are so, so many people in this world who never feel true love.
These thoughts are inspired by a piece of writing, a burst of emotion, that’s way, way better than what you just read. Read the latest installment of SilverLining (complete with great photos of a young deer encountered on the path around a pond). Speaking of miracles. Speaking of giving thanks. Speaking of love. Speaking of life happening to you when you’re making other plans…
Here’s Ella Fitzgerald — from my hometown of Yonkers, N.Y. — singing about hope and happiness…singing about blue skies:
I’m not admitting this because I’ve gotten into the holiday spirit. I’m not admitting this because my body’s been taken over by holiday spirits. And I’m not admitting this because I’ve imbibed too much (or, in fact, any) holiday spirits.
I’m admitting I was wrong about Bob Dylan’s album of holiday music, “Christmas in the Heart,” because I’ve just watched (three times) the new video for “Must Be Santa.”
Why wasn’t I invited to this party? Oh, wait, I know. Because I said Dylan’s Christmas album stunk. OK. I admit it. I was wrong. Leave a lump of coal in my CD player, Santa Bob. I deserve it.
I am a sojourner in civilized life. But today I am thinking of the day we stepped onto the curved and narrow path around that pond, seeking the way where silence and song are one and the same, where simple beauty outstrips ornate, where all is love and love is all, where beams of sunlight stream through the trees in hues arrived from another world, tints which are tinctures which heal wounded souls.
Autumn leaves at Walden Pond
A man collects trash around these peaceful waters, an admirable enterprise requiring no new clothes. But he is not calm, not joyful at his labors, and he stabs at the trash with anger, not blissful, not wishful, far from finding the higher ground at the end of his path. I pray he finds the proper prayer to chant each day, the words, the song, the holy hum, the soothing thrum to overcome his desperation.
It is written that the only remedy for love is to love even more.
But who would need such a cure, I wonder, who would feel afflicted? I catch you in my gaze, hold love softly in my hand, and here by the waters of Walden I lay down and weep, softly from joy, and here we have found the fire of love, and we are warmed by its heat and guided by its light as we walk around this pond and find our way down this path which is lit a thousand times by a thousand rays of sun.
Red leaves at Walden
Simplify. The waters are calm. The sun shines off the water. Ducks swim in a row. People stroll all in a row. You find a lady’s slipper tucked into a shaded glade. We see red leaves against a blue sky. Woods surround the pond. A slight breeze. Simple. And we are simply here.
A duck -- perhaps a mallard -- at Walden
But what if the ducks swam out of sight, then flew away? What if rough winds roiled the water? What if the lady’s slippers did not fit the lady’s feet? What if the blue sky turned to black? What if all the people all in a row scattered in all directions? What if lumberjacks cut down the woods? What if that winding path suddenly slithered away like a snake? What if the pond drained and dried? What if a thousand beams of sun dimmed to darkness one by one?
Then I would front only the essential facts of life, to see if I learned what it had to teach, whether I had managed to learn these truths so I would not come to die and find that I had not lived. And I would know I had learned these truths, had learned the chant, the whispered prayer: I glory in the glow of the light of love’s bright fire and know that its flames will keep us always warm.
Maybe it’s not Bob Dylan. Maybe it’s Bob Dylan channeling Tom Waits and Louis Armstrong.
Or maybe it is Bob Dylan. Maybe he got into the eggnog and didn’t know someone had spiked it with a bit too much rum. Or maybe he knew about the rum.
Or maybe there’s just no way to describe how awfully bad — and impossible to explain — “Christmas in the Heart” really is.
Or maybe you just have to hear it to believe it. This album could change your life…you might, for example, stop believing in Santa…or you might decide that those dancing elves you saw when you drank too much spiked eggnog at that Christmas party weren’t a figment of your alcohol-drenched imagination. They were really there. They were Dylan’s backup singers on “Winter Wonderland.”
Ho-ho-hold on to your hat –
Here’s the set list:
Here Comes Santa Claus, Do You Hear What I Hear?, Winter Wonderland, Hark The Herald Angels Sing, I’ll Be Home For Christmas, Little Drummer Boy, The Christmas Blues, O Come All Ye Faithful (Adeste Fideles), Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas, Must Be Santa, Silver Bells, The First Noel, Christmas Island, The Christmas Song, O Little Town Of Bethlehem.
The 12th annual Delaware Valley Poetry Festival’s this weekend — Saturday, Oct. 17, at 8 p.m., at the historic Prallsville Mills along the Delaware River in Stockton, N.J.
Rita Dove
The main attraction, of course, will be chance to hear and meet Rita Dove, two-time U.S. poet laureate and winner of the Pulitzer prize for poetry. In addition to reading from her work, Rita will sign books at two locations: Book Garden on Bridge Street in Frenchtown, N.J., at 3:30 p.m, and directly after the reading, right in the recently restored sawmill where the reading will take place, sponsored by the Borders bookstore in nearby Flemington.
But here’s a special added attraction: Laura Swanson and Keith Strunk, my ultra-talented friends and colleagues who are the principals of Frenchtown-based River Union Stage, will be staging a presentation based on a segment of Rita Dove’s latest book, “Sonata Mulattica,” which is based on the extraordinary life of George Bridgetower, a violin virtuoso to whom Beethoven initially dedicated the “Kreutzer” Sonata.
River Union Stage has partnered with me to stage the Delaware Valley Poetry Festival since 2006, and in past years has performed a shor, theatrical treatment of a selected work by the featured poet as a curtain-warmer. For Diane Wakoski’s Thanking My Mother for Piano Lessons, RUS created a film treatment of the poem with appropriate visuals and music. For the 10th anniversary of the festival, featuring Robert Pinsky, RUS had a child actor, a 40-something actor and Robert himself in performance of To Television, representing Pinsky at different stages of his life, illuminated by the glow of a “television” throughout.
This year RUS, with considerable imput from Ms. Dove herself, will offer a theatrical interpretation ofThe Performer, a section from “Sonata Mulattica.” Starring will be Ryan Quinn, who performed in a previous RUS production of It’s A Wonderful Life. He received his MFA from Yale School of Drama, and has since performed in numerous regional houses and off-Broadway with many Shakespeare credits under his belt.
Ryan Quinn
It will be an extraordinary evening of poetry and theater this Saturday at Prallsville as the extraordinary Rita Dove adds her name to an impressive roster of poets who’ve come to our remote cultural outpost in western New Jersey: In addition to Pinsky and Wakoski, add the names of nationally acclaimed poets Louise Gluck, Paul Muldoon, Thomas Lux, Stephen Dobyns and Gerald Stern (of nearby Lambertville, N.J.) and other outstanding New Jersey-based poets including Maria Mazziotti Gillan, Charles H. Johnson, BJ Ward and the amazing Joe Weil.
Try to make it to Stockton, N.J., this Saturday night. And try to get there early. Since admission is free (N.B.: Donations are welcome to help offset production costs for the poetry reading series at a time when government funding for the arts has been trimmed or eliminated), seating is first-come and first-served. Lines of people were waiting to get in when Robert Pinsky read for the festival’s 10th anniversary. I expect, and hope, there will bne similarly long lines of poetry fans arriving early to get a good seat for a great night of theater and poetry.
I’ve written before about Maria Mazziotti Gillan, who’s one of my favorite poets — and favorite people. Maria, who has read several times at the annual Delaware Valley Poetry Festival, writes provocative, emotional, touching poems which address simple, basic issues — love, friendship, aging, illness, ethnicity — in spare, simple, powerful language that elevates, invigorates and inspires listeners and readers.
Maria runs the master’s program in creative writing at SUNY-Binghamton. She’s founding editor of the Paterson Literary Review. She’s mentored and encouraged dozens and dozens of New Jersey poets. I could go on and on, and just might, except it might be best to let you hear it for yourself.
10/29 Wesleyan University, 229 High St, Middletown, Ct. 8 pm.
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If you live anywhere near the Nutmeg State, try, try, try really hard to attend on her appearances. You will leave feeling better about life than you felt before you heard Maria’s beautiful, powerful and stirring poems.
I admire her. I like her. I know her. And I’ve never met her. She’s Ann Hutt Browning. And she’s just published a book of poetry – her first book-length collection – titled “Deep Landscape Turning.”
Here’s a brief biography:
Ann Hutt Browning has two master’s degrees, one in psychology and one in architecture, four grown children, five grandchildren, and one husband of 50 years. Born in England, raised in southern California, she attended Radcliffe College and has lived in Missouri, Kentucky, France, Macedonia, Chicago, Virginia and now Massachusetts. She and her husband, Preston, a retired English professor, operate Wellspring House in Ashfield, Massachusetts, a retreat center for writers and artists. Some of her poetry has appeared in The Carolina Quarterly, The Southern Humanities Review, The Dalhousie Review, The Ecozoic Reader, Dogwood, Peregrine, Out of Line, Salamander, and several on-line poetry journals.
Here are two of her poems:
AN ORDINARY LIFE
When she awoke in the morning
She threw back her all cotton sheet,
Cotton woven in a far off country
By a dark skinned girl chained to her large loom.
When she went into her kitchen
She ground beans to brew her coffee,
Beans grown, roasted in a far off country
Where the tall trees were cleared off the land
For the coffee bushes to be planted
And tended by boys not in school and men
Old before their time and where all the waste
From treating the beans is flushed and dumped
In the river, adding that detritus
To the human waste and chemical run
Off already there in the gray water
And where downstream others used the water,
That dark water, for cooking and bathing.
After her children boarded the school bus,
Wearing clothing made in the Philippines,
Mauritania, Taiwan, a hodge-podge
Of imports from other worlds, far off countries,
Where sweat shops flourished,
Filled with child workers,
She went shopping:
Guatemalan cantaloupes, Mexican tomatoes,
Chilean oranges, California lettuce,
Carolina rice, Michigan peaches,
Blueberries from Maine, all bought because
In her garden she grew hybrid tea roses,
Siberian iris, cross-bred daylilies in six colors,
Held down by pine bark, chipped in Oregon.
Then she roamed the market aisle marked
“Special,” and bought a basket, its colors
Imitative of Mexican folk art, made in China,
The price suggesting child or prison labor
Dyed the fronds of grass, wove the basket
And attached the label.
She ate a quick lunch of a hamburger,
The ground beef from a far off country
Where the virgin forest was burned off
So cattle could graze on tropical grass,
The bun made from Canadian wheat
And the ketchup, again those Mexican tomatoes.
She drove home to prop up her feet
On the foam cushioned sofa, turn on the TV,
Assembled in Nicaragua,
In a maquiladora by a woman
Who rose at five a.m. to walk three kilometers
To the bus, who then rode twenty-five miles
To the factory in the tax free zone,
Who worked from eight to five
With a quarter of an hour to eat
Or use the toilet,
Who got home at eight o’clock
To bathe and feed her three children,
With eighteen cents an hour in her pocket
On good days.
The woman on the sofa
Watched two soap operas
As usual on a week day,
And ate ice cream,
American ice cream.
She liked American ice cream.
She lived an ordinary life.
___________________________________ AFTER SEPTEMBER 11, 2001
What happens now,
In the moments of our nights,
In the continuity of our days,
Shall be written in blood lines
Of darkened hearts, in the liquid
Gold plate of our broken souls,
In the long ligaments of naked limbs,
In the marrow of our fractured bones.
We stumble on with hesitant bodies;
We fall back, floundering.
How many are victims,
How many witnesses?
Can reason comprehend
The horror of explosions,
Lost lives of ordinary persons
Going about their ordinary work.
Hands touch and grip fast,
We embrace for soul’s sake.
Bond now and breathe together.
Breathe in, breathe out.
Take breath from autumn trees,
From ripe tomatoes on brown vines,
Grown old now, just as we
Are grown old
Before our time.
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I encountered Ann Hutt Browning’s poetry through her husband Preston, who has worked long and hard to gain his wife’s poetry the attention it deserves — and to publish “Deep Landscape Turning.”
I heard all about Ann — and came to feel like I know her — during a week-long stay in spring of 2009 at Wellspring House a writers and artists retreat Preston and Ann started in Ashfield, Mass., in the eastern foothills of the Berkshires, in the neighborhood of Northampton and Amherst. It’s a beautiful dream-come-true, and the spirit behind it — the vision shared by the Brownings — permeates the place. During my stay, I joined a few others in an informal readings of our works, five of us gathered around the hearth in Wellspring House’s cozy downstairs living room/library. Preston, a writer and scholar in his own right, chose not to read some of his work, but instead to read some of Ann’s poetry – and she was there in the room with us, even though she couldn’t be there, as Preston’s beautiful reading of his wife’s writing made it clear that his effort to get “Deep Landscape Turning” into print was nothing less than a true labor of love.
“Deep Landscape Turning” was just published by Ibbetson Street Press in Somerville, Mass. Here’s how to order the book. Ann’s poetry is lovely and intelligent, lyric and insightful, both personal and universal. Her book costs just $15. And how can you go wrong spending just $15 on a new book by a fine poet named Browning?
It’s like Jimmy Durante, say, tried to croon “Try a Little Tenderness.” It’s like, um, Screaming Jay Hawkins tried singing “Do-Re-Mi” from “The Sound of Music.” It’s like, er, Andrea Boccelli trying to sing “Run, Run, Rudolph.” It’s like, um, Bob Dylan trying to sing “Moon River.” OK, it’s very much like Bob Dylan singing Henry Mancini’s song from “Breakfast at Tiffany’s.”
I’m talking about the not-an-urban-legend reports that the old elf himself has, indeed, recorded an album of Christmas songs. The album, due out soon, is titled “Christmas in the Heart.” All proceeds from the album’s sales will go to the charity Feeding America.
Would I lie to you about anything having to do with Christmas? No, Virginia. In fact, here’s the actual album cover:
And here’s the track list….imagine Santa Bob singing these Yuletide tunes: Here Comes Santa Claus, Do You Hear What I Hear?, Winter Wonderland, Hark The Herald Angels Sing, I’ll Be Home For Christmas, Little Drummer Boy, The Christmas Blues, O Come All Ye Faithful (Adeste Fideles), Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas, Must Be Santa, Silver Bells, The First Noel, Christmas Island, The Christmas Song, O Little Town Of Bethlehem.
At the top of my I-can-wait-to-hear this list: Dylan singing the “barump-bum-bum-bum” part of “Little Drummer Boy,” Dylan singing the “kids dressed up like Eskimos” part of “The Christmas Song,” and Dylan singing “the ding-a-ling/hear them ring” part of “Silver Bells.”
In fact, I think the great Dylan may have found yet another way to surprise us the way he’s surprised his fans during a nearly 50-year career filled with unexpected twists and turns. I think he should consider putting out a karaoke album — who wouldn’t want a chance to sing their very own karaoke making-believe-I’m-as-cool-as Dylan rendition of, um, “Desolation Row? How about a polka album with a Jimmy Sturrs-type take on, say, “All Along the Watchtower?” Or how about recording some children’s songs? Wait, he’s done that already. Here’s Uncle Bob singing for all of you red-diaper great-grandbabies:
Dylan singing “The First Noel?” Next thing you know, Porky Pig’s going to try to sing Elvis Presley’s “Blue Christmas.”
How different would our world be if Les Paul had not electrified the world with his classic electric guitar, the Gibson Les Paul? Here’s CNN’s report on the death of the patron saint of electric guitar devotees:
Les Paul, whose innovations with the electric guitar and studio technology made him one of the most important figures in recorded music, has died, according to a statement from his publicists. Paul was 94.
Les Paul, whose innovations helped give rise to modern pop music, played guitar into his 90s.
Paul died in White Plains, New York, from complications of severe pneumonia, according to the statement.
Paul was a guitar and electronics mastermind whose creations — such as multitrack recording, tape delay and the solid-body guitar that bears his name, the Gibson Les Paul — helped give rise to modern popular music, including rock ‘n’ roll. No slouch on the guitar himself, he continued playing at clubs into his 90s despite being hampered by arthritis.
“If you only have two fingers [to work with], you have to think, how will you play that chord?” he told CNN.com in a 2002 phone interview. “So you think of how to replace that chord with several notes, and it gives the illusion of sounding like a chord.”
Guitarists mourned the loss Thursday.
“Les Paul was truly a ‘one of a kind.’ We owe many of his inventions that made the rock ‘n roll sound of today to him, and he was the founding father of modern music,” B.B. King said in a statement. “This is a huge loss to the music community and the world. I am honored to have known him.”
Joe Satriani said in a statement: “Les Paul set a standard for musicianship and innovation that remains unsurpassed. He was the original guitar hero and the kindest of souls. Last October I joined him onstage at the Iridium club in [New York], and he was still shredding. He was and still is an inspiration to us all.”
Slash said, “Les Paul was a shining example of how full one’s life can be; he was so vibrant and full of positive energy.”
Lester William Polfuss was born in Waukesha, Wisconsin, on June 9, 1915. Even as a child he showed an aptitude for tinkering, taking apart electric appliances to see what made them tick.
“I had to build it, make it and perfect it,” Paul said in 2002. He was nicknamed the “Wizard of Waukesha.”
In the 1930s and ’40s, he played with the bandleader Fred Waring and several big band singers, including Bing Crosby, Frank Sinatra and the Andrews Sisters, as well as with his own Les Paul Trio. In the early 1950s, he had a handful of huge hits with his then-wife, Mary Ford, such as “How High the Moon” and “Vaya Con Dios.”
His guitar style, heavily influenced by jazzman Django Reinhardt, featured lightning-quick runs and double-time rhythms. In 1948, after being involved in a severe car accident, he asked the doctor to set his arm permanently in a guitar-playing position.
Paul also credited Crosby for teaching him about timing, phrasing and preparation.
Paul never stopped tinkering with electronics, and after Crosby gave him an early audiotape recorder, Paul went to work changing it. It eventually led to multitrack recording; on Paul and Ford’s hits, he plays many of the guitar parts, and Ford harmonizes with herself. Multitrack recording is now the industry standard.
But Paul likely will be best remembered for the Gibson Les Paul, a variation on the solid-body guitar he built in the early 1940s — “The Log” — and offered to the guitar company.
“For 10 years, I was a laugh,” he told CNN in an interview. “[But I] kept pounding at them and pounding at them saying hey, here’s where it’s at. Here’s where tomorrow, this is it. You can drown out anybody with it. And you can make all these different sounds that you can’t do with a regular guitar.”
Gibson, spurred by rival Fender, finally took Paul up on his offer and introduced the model in 1952. It has since become the go-to guitar for such performers as Jimmy Page.
“The world has lost a truly innovative and exceptional human being today. I cannot imagine life without Les Paul,” said Henry Juszkiewicz, chairman and CEO of Gibson Guitar, in a statement. “He would walk into a room and put a smile on anyone’s face. His musical charm was extraordinary and his techniques unmatched anywhere in the world.”
Paul is enshrined in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, the Grammy Hall of Fame, the Inventors Hall of Fame and the Songwriters Hall of Fame. He is survived by three sons, a daughter, five grandchildren and five great-grandchildren. Until recently he had a standing gig at New York’s Iridium Jazz Club, where he would play with a who’s who of famed musicians.
He admired the places guitarists and engineers took his inventions, but he said there was nothing to replace good, old-fashioned elbow grease and soul.
“I learned a long time ago that one note can go a long way if it’s the right one,” he said in 2002, “and it will probably whip the guy with 20 notes.”
Here’s a great Wikipedia list of guitarists who played Gibson Les Pauls, ranging from Allman to Zappa: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Gibson_players
And here’s a video clip of Les Paul jammin’ with Chet Atkins:
