DOMA Dead!

California's hateful Prop 8 seems dead as well.

Preliminary opinion seems to indicate a great day for human rights in America.

As the commentators weigh in I am fighting back tears -- tears of joy of course.

BREAKING NEWS10:43 AM ET

Supreme Court Ruling Clears Way for Same-Sex Marriage in California

How far we've come:

In a reminder that many religious groups now support gay marriage, the Washington National Cathedral and churches across the country were going to ring their bells at noon Wednesday to celebrate the Supreme Court’s decisions. (Laurie Goodstein, New York Times)

Hard work and creativity

I am a very hard worker. Those of you who know my Yale routine might scoff, for my job is not the most demanding, but I do it better than many would, and I do it efficiently and professionally.

I also work hard at home. I keep the house running: feeding and walking the dogs every day, taking them to the vet as needed, keeping the place moderately clean, doing the laundry, paying all the bills, etc.. With one exception, which I’ll get to in a minute, I do all the housework.

Truly successful people both work hard AND are creative. That is not a word that fits me. I love hearing and seeing the result of creative folk’s work, but I do not create any myself. With all my knowledge of music, and all my experience listening to it, I still do not read music nor can I talk intelligently about one performance over another, more than to say which one I liked better.

Ransom is the true embodiment of a hard-working AND creative personality. He’s proven it over a long career as a flute phenomenon, a teacher and a conductor. Yesterday he proved it again.

As part of New Haven’s Arts and Ideas Festival, Ransom led his ensemble, Le Train Bleu, in a performance of John Luther Adams's songbirdsongs. I heard Ransom lead this piece at the Galapagos Art Space in Brooklyn, back in the fall of 2011, and was thrilled by it. The New York Times called it a "gorgeous performance" and "a strange, thrilling immersive experience." (November 27, 2011).

About one performance the News and Courier/Evening Post (Charleston, S.C.) wrote

…exquisitely gentle evocations of wilderness sounds…songbirdsongs transformed the auditorium into the aural equivalent of some enchanted forest…. The effect was musical magic.

Ransom took it one better yesterday. He staged the piece in a real forest, at New Haven’s Marsh Botanical Gardens, outside, under the trees. The ten musicians were spread out over perhaps an acre of land; the audience sat on camping chairs or on the ground, or wandered about, following the musicians, who went from instrument to instrument. You’d hear a piccolo in the distance, followed by some chimes and two more piccolos from another direction. The wind would rustle the branches of the huge tree pictured below while a timpanist banged away. There was a marimba and a xylophone, bell chimes and hand-held chimes and a glockenspiel, as well as bongos, wood blocks and other percussion instruments. And through it all there were birds, real birds, adding their harmonies.

It was, indeed, musical magic. It was, in fact, one of the best concert experiences I’ve ever had.

With apologies to Tara Helen O'Connor who is next to Ransom but hidden by the trees

All five percussionists gathered around the marimba

Oh, and that one bit of house work that I don’t usually do: cooking of course, the chore that requires the most creativity. Ransom excels at it and I am grateful every night that he’s home.

The cost of culture

I took a mental health day Friday and headed to the city for a New York Philharmonic concert. It was a $21 TDF ticket* – what a deal – and a great concert. Opened with Dukas’s The Sorcerer’s Apprentice, moved on to Prokofiev’s Violin Concerto 2 and ended with Kodály’s Dances of Galánta and a thunderous Firebird Suite (Stravinsky). I had an orchestra seat, the Philharmonic was in top form, it was a 2pm concert – all was perfect.

Until I tried to go home.

I made it to Grand Central in time for the 4:15 train. Scheduled to arrive Stratford at 5:48; I’d be home by 6:15. The dogs would be happy.

Didn’t work out that way. As we pulled into the Greenwich station the conductor announced that a bridge in East Norwalk was stuck in the up position and all trains were being held. We weren’t going anywhere and no one could say for how long. What to do? Sit and wait or get off the train and scramble?

I believe this is the offending bridge - 117 years old!

Not one for patience, I got off the train, along with dozens of others. It was a curious scene as maybe 80 people stood near each other all talking separately on their cell phones, trying to make plans. A taxi dispatcher was in the midst of the throng and he had no good news. The situation had developed some time ago and all 60 cabs at his disposal had been sent ahead to ferry people from earlier trains. He was friendly and clearly wanted to help, but there was no queue and no clear path to portioning out the few cabs that were returning.

I am by nature pretty shy with strangers. The woman next to me on the train down had said, “Good morning,” and I thought that was pretty weird. But standing there at the Greenwich station I knew that shyness was not going to get me home. So I started asking who was going to New Haven. I shortly found two women who were, and then corralled the dispatcher, telling him we had three ready to go.

The first cab took some folks to Danbury, but persistence -- and a glowering scowl – paid off and we got into the second cab to show up. The dispatcher set the fare at $67 a person. Fine, whatever. So we headed off – into the Friday afternoon hell that is Interstate 95 North on a summer Friday rush hour. Along with all the commuters you have the weekenders heading to the beaches; the highway resembled a rolling parking lot, and it was rolling pretty damn slowly.

I paid the driver with a credit card, looking with surprise at my fellow travelers, both of whom had cash. (Life lesson here: carry more folding money). I gave the cabbie a $10 cash tip – every bill I had. We crawled up 95, finally getting to Stratford at almost 7pm. I was home by 7:20.

So what is the cost of culture? Well, $21 for the concert, $11 for the trip down, $5 round-trip subway, $18 rush hour ticket home and $77 cab fare. Comes to a tidy $132 I think. Not such a cheap concert after all. (Sorry, honey, not my fault). But a great concert.

*Note: TDF is the Theatre Development Fund. They promote theatre in New York by, most visibly, running the half-price tickets booth (TKTS) in Times Square. They also allow members to buy tickets online to many events, though not the biggest Broadway hits. Events include theatre, dance and music.

Fifty Years Ago

Fifty years ago, on June 10, 1963, President John Kennedy, in one of his greatest speeches, called for a “strategy of peace.”

Fifty years ago, on June 11, 1963, Governor George Wallace, who famously said, “Segregation Now, Segregation Tomorrow, Segregation Forever,” stood in the schoolhouse door at the University of Alabama to deny an education to Afro-Americans.

Fifty years ago, on June 12, 1963, Medger Evers was killed.

Fifty years ago, on June 13, 1963, Vostok 6 lifted the first female astronaut into space.

I remember all of those events, though the last one is vague and it’s not clear how aware I was of any of them on the day they happened. They have all entered my historical consciousness, probably more after the fact than during. But I remember well what happened the next day.

Fifty years ago, on June 14, 1963, the NSTS Patrick sailed from Yokohama, Japan, to Oakland, California, filled with military personnel, their wives and families. My brother and I were with my parents on that voyage and it marked a real turning point in my life.

I wrote about that sailing in a very early post on this blog. You can read about it, including the pirate flag under the Golden Gate Bridge, here.

Today though I’m thinking about the three years in Japan that ended on Flag Day, 1963. I had attended Zama American High School from the seventh through ninth grades and I would describe those years as the happiest, most carefree of my early life. I was old enough to be out and about on my own, or with my friends, and living on an Army base in the early sixties was about as safe an existence as one could imagine. I doubt that my parents ever worried about us – well, wait a minute, they were parents, so of course they did – but they also knew we were safe.

Two best friends come to mind. Will Buergey was my age; he was tall and thin and very good-looking -- more so than in the only picture I have of him (left). Unfortunately he didn’t live on the same base as I did and, even though his was only a few miles away, it meant I saw him mainly at school, not in the neighborhood. We reunited stateside at the New York World’s Fair. He became a pilot and the chair of the Delta Master Executive Council of the Airline Pilots Association, Intl. I haven’t seen him in decades, but we’ve talked; it’s possible he piloted a plane I flew on.

My other friend was Gary Winston, a year younger than I. We became buds in the summer of 1962 and remained best friends through my last year at Zama. I have fond memories of playing pool at the teen club; taking long, slow walks home on sultry summer nights; talking endlessly on his front porch; and riding busses to basketball games (he played on the JV squad). He wrote my all-time favorite nine words as he signed my ninth grade yearbook: “To the best friend a boy could ever have.” I have – obviously – never forgotten those words, or him. Alas, I have never seen him since that bright day in June, fifty years ago today. Along with many of our friends, he was waving goodbye as the ship slid away. I stood at the railing until the pier was no longer visible and then headed to my cabin where I cried the night away.

The 60s quickly became a very tense, and intense, decade. We were back in the States only five months when John Kennedy was killed. Then there was the war in Vietnam, the assassinations of Martin Luther King and Bobby Kennedy, the Poor People’s March on Washington, the police riot at the Democratic National Convention and, just into the new decade, the killings at Kent state and Jackson State.

I remember all of that very well, but I also remember a peaceful, idyllic sojourn in the quiet countryside of Japan. It was a time when I was eager to learn and eager to experience new things and new people. I walked through life with my eyes wide open and my heart near bursting with happiness.

Oh where has that young optimist gone today?

Random Train Thoughts

I was sorry the other day I no longer have a decent phone; I wanted to take a picture I would have entitled “What’s Wrong with America.” I was on a Metro North train heading to the city. It was an old train and has four sets of ridiculous seats in every car: two facing two and two facing three. They’re so close together that you almost never see four or five people in them at a time; there’s just no room for legs.

What I saw that day was one guy, occupying a two/two section. He was large, maybe 275 pounds, and had several bags with him. He occupied one double seat; the bags covered the opposite seat. In this image was America in a nutshell: overweight and selfish, living with too much stuff.

It would have made a good picture.

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I don’t have a decent phone because I gave my iPhone 4 to Ransom, whose 4S was stolen in Brazil. He had one day before leaving for Texas and faced a six hundred dollar replacement charge, since he had only had his phone for a few months. It made sense to give him my 4, almost off contract. I ended up with an old Samsung flip phone: no address book, no calendar, no web access and tedious texting – at least it seems to work well as a phone.

I really flounder when I’m deprived of technology I’ve gotten used to. I was at the doctor Monday morning and he wanted to schedule a follow-up. “Just give me whatever you’ve got,” I said. “I’ll see if I’m available when I get back to my computer.” Without a phone I have no datebook. How can I cope?

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I sat on the train next to an extraordinarily beautiful young blond man. Of course I did not talk to him; that kind of beauty scares me.

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Finally, I have a Grenen watch. They’re made for Kohl's by Skagen, the Danish watchmaker. I love Skagen watches, and Grenens are acceptable alternatives. (Note: I will NOT spend a lot of money on a watch; the most expensive Skagen I ever bought was $100; Grenen watches are even cheaper). I need a new battery for mine, but Kohl’s doesn’t carry that watch anymore, so I found this website:

"Restoring Excellence to your Grenen Timepiece." Great, just what I need. Then I clicked on the "Get Started" link:

WTF?!

What’s wrong with this ad?

I’m remembering a moment in a film --  Love! Valour! Compassion! maybe -- when a gay man goes nearly apoplectic after a younger gay man says that he loves Evita so much that he plays the soundtrack over and over. (He’s talking about the Broadway show, which had not yet been made into a movie when L!V!C! was filmed).

There ARE NO SOUNDTRACKS to Broadway musicals. There are Original Cast Recordings. Soundtracks are for movies.

Or at least they used to be.

A friend of mine went out for an evening’s entertainment the other night and enjoyed himself. There were actors on stage who also sang at times; there were energetic dancers who, my buddy said, were the best thing about the show. There were sets and costumes and there was music, of a sort.

Was it a play? Yes. Was it a musical? I’d say no.

A musical has all of the above: singing, dancing, acting, sets and costumes -- all on stage -- and an orchestra, or pit band, or combo or, at the very least, a pianist -- in the pit.

This show had loudspeakers.

And a pre-recorded soundtrack.

The company, one I respect and in fact have supported financially, made the decision to put on this show with no live musicians. They rented the “soundtrack” and the actors sang along.

My friend said it was diverting. The show is enjoying a sold-out run and may be extended. Audiences are largely enthusiastic.

I’m appalled. I’m married to a musician and I count many musicians among my friends and acquaintances. Most of them struggle to make a living: classical music doesn’t pay much and very few Americans ever attend concerts: studies show that only 10-15% of us go to  classical music events.

Many New York musicians wouldn’t survive were it not for the occasional Broadway gig they land. Broadway musicals are all about singing and dancing – and live musicians making music! To present a Broadway show but not use live music is sacrilegious.

A couple years ago I didn’t make it to intermission of a Broadway tour of West Side Story. The actor playing Tony was not great; Maria was worse. Still, we might have stayed but the sound coming from the pit was worse still: it was made by five musicians, four on keyboards and one on percussion. Not a string, wind or brass instrument to be heard. All electronic and all terrible. Loud and tinny, bright and empty. I thought to myself that this was a travesty and that things couldn’t get worse.

I was wrong. Singing along to a pre-recorded track is worse. I’m only glad I wasn’t there.