Day 194/365 Jazz In All the Right Places

One of my addictions is a Sixties TV show The Avengers, the episodes with Patrick MacNee and Diana Rigg. As a child I remember playing Avengers in the backyard with friends, using sticks as stylish British canes, and imagining myself wearing one of Mrs. Peel's leather catsuits.

Somehow John Steed and Mrs. Peel always manage to solve the crime with style, dry wit, and a disdain for guns.

My kind of crimefighters.

The distinctive theme song sounds just as intriguing today as it did 45 years ago. (That HAS to be a calculator error, it cannot POSSIBLY be 45 years since Emma Peel sauntered across TV screens).

Last Saturday Sir John Dankworth passed away - one of Britain's great jazz musicians, husband to jazz singer Cleo Laine, influenced greatly by Benny Goodman and Charlie Parker, and, composer of The Avengers theme.

Enjoy.

Day 193/365 Marching' Saints

WHO DAT GONNA BEAT DEM SAINTS?

Day 192/365 Bri

Sometimes you get these phone calls out of the blue and they always seem to be bad news. This time it was a bittersweet call from an dear friend, to tell us about the death of another dear friend.

I have looked and looked to find our pics from the old days but no luck yet. So I borrowed her facebook photo - I know she won't mind. I especially like it because it looks exactly like her, as if she's just on the edge of laughing.

This beautiful face belongs to the young woman who became a part of our family when my daughter was two years old. She went from being my daughter's teacher to her friend, to our family friend, to essentially a second daughter and member of our family.

Eventually we moved away, and we kept in touch a little less than we should have. The last really long email I got from her was last July, when she briefly shared that the doctors had diagnosed her with endometrial cancer. Then she moved on to how her young son was doing, and how proud she was of him.

Somehow between then and yesterday, the cancer won. She leaves behind a huge loving family and many, many friends, including our family.

Bri, just knowing you was a joy. Your love for my daughter and your friendship to our family was always appreciated. No matter how far away we moved or how infrequently we spoke - you remain in our hearts.

Day 191/365 Norman Norman Norman

Big thanks to Google for reminding me today is Norman Rockwell's birthday!

This calls for a quick cross-blog posting of some of my favorite paintings, as well as some more obscure Rockwell artwork.

In reference to yesterday's post on the new International Civil Rights Center & Museum in Greensboro, North Carolina, the Rockwell painting above is The Problem We All Live With,painted in 1964. It commemorated the brave desegregation of New Orleans Public Schools by little Ruby Bridges.

Notice the absolute determination in Ruby's posture, and in the arms of the U.S. Federal Marshalls in spite of the graffti and the splatters of paint.

Here's a lesser known Rockwell, painted the same year -1964- after the deaths of Michael Schwerner, James Chaney, and Andrew Goodman, the three Civil Rights workers murdered in Mississippi and left dead inside an earthen dam.

One of Rockwell's best, and most intense - Southern Justice. One young man lies dead on the ground, one is dying as he is held by the last of the three, who faces his coming murder with calm acceptance. Rocks and sticks are strewn about, but only the shadows of the murderers are shown. The only bright color is a bloody handprint.

Happy Birthday Norman - thanks for so much.

Check out Green and Chewy and While Reading to the Dog for more Norman Rockwell.

Day 190/365 Ordering Coffee and Doughnuts

International Civil Rights Center & Museum


February 1, 1960: Four young men sit down at the Woolworth's counter in Greensboro North Carolina and order coffee and doughnuts.

And began to change the world.

This was not the first "sit-in", but thanks to television and honest news reporting (versus entertainment, the youngest of you will not recognize the difference), it became the face of the segregated South.

February 1, 2010: The International Civil Rights Center & Museum opens in that very same Woolworth's, complete with the original historic lunch counter, never moved from it's original location.

In 1960, I was 6 years old in Louisiana. Everyday, whether or not I went to school was determined by the morning news. Were the schools open? Was Ruby Bridges actually going to show up and try to go to school at William Frantz? Were the police there? Was it safe? Would there be riots? For those who weren't there, Ruby Bridges was the 6-year-old child asked to integrate New Orleans schools. She was the first black child to attend an all-white elementary school in the South.

So even at the age of 6, the civil rights movement was part of everyday life for deep South children, both black and white. The adults made the laws and the decisions to overturn them. We kids, both black and white, were along for the ride.

In retrospect, I'm so proud that it was our generation that took that ride, sat in those lunch counter seats, rode the buses, marched in the streets, and reached across the artifical divide.

As soon as the weather clears, I plan on being down at that museum.

The International Civil Rights Center & Museum

203 South Elm Street

Greensboro, N.C. 27401

http://sitinmovement.org/home.asp

Day 189/365 That'll Be the Day

This time of year always brings Buddy Holly to mind. The songs never get old. The story never gets any less poignant: that of young talent dying well before its time. That spot in the fenceline still has flowers next to it, and it's still just as dark, with cornfields covered in light snow.

Thanks to YouTube, now we can hear Buddy's voice for ourselves, self-recorded for his own purposes.

The background: In 1956, Buddy Holly recorded several songs in Nashville , working with producer Owen Bradley. Bradley would later become famous producing Patsy Cline, Brenda Lee, Loretta Lynn, Conway Twitty and others. One of the songs Buddy recorded was "That'll Be The Day". Unfortunately, Owen Bradley hated rock n' roll, and the production was horrible. The songs were left "in the can". As a result of Decca's seeming lack of interest, Buddy ended up in New Mexico, recording That'll Be The Day with his own arrangement. This would become the famous version, the monster hit of rock n roll.

The problem was his contract with Decca. Decca owned all rights to the songs Buddy recorded. According to his contract, he couldn't release any version of them. He decided to call Decca and try to get a release from them. For some reason, he secretly taped the conversation.


Decca refused to give him the rights to his own song, but fortunately for the world, Buddy eventually violated his contract by releasing his version of That'll Be the Day.


Here's Buddy Holly, in his own words, fifty-three years ago:





Buddy Holly, R.I.P. February 3, 1959

Day 188/365 Remembering The Help

I've just finished one of those books - those rare ones that are so amazing I dread turning the last page. The ones that make me (a speed reader) slow down and savor the way the author uses words as if they were tiny paint brushes meant to create a landscape in the readers mind.



Last time it was Thirteenth Tale, this time it's The Help, by Kathryn Stockett (a southerner herself born in Jackson, Mississippi and raised by a black domestic in the 1960s).



The basic premise tells the story of several women in the south, including Skeeter Phelan, just graduated from college in the early 1960s, moved back home to Jackson, no engagement ring on her finger, and no prospects. The other women include her circle of semi-friends, mostly married. That circle grows to include the black women who work for those friends when Skeeter gets an idea to collect the stories of black maids: what it's really like to work for a white woman, how bad and,in some cases, how good it is.

Having been raised in the deep South myself, this book hits a chord with me. Reading customer reviews on Amazon, I see lots of folks bogged down in how accurate the dialect was (black or southern white), or was there any way a white woman could write this book, or if a white woman had the right to tell this story, etc. Fortunately I read the book first.

I'd just like to say I didn't notice the dialect one way or the other. So I'm thinking that means it rang true. I found the most direct hit by this author- the most accurate observation - was the sense of questioning and confusion between black and white women. It was (to para-quote Dickens) "the best of times, the worst of times." Times in the early 1960s were changing at a dizzying speed, age-old customs were falling by the wayside faster than they could be acknowledged, and whatever was understood to be true in the evening would be turned upside down by morning, no matter who was involved.

And as a thank you to Ms. Stockett for this book, I'll tell you my own story. My father and his four brothers were raised by a woman named Kathleen. His mother, and her family for as far as she could remember, were all raised by black women. My father was born in 1929, and until 1980, Kathleen continued to work for my grandmother. As a child, when my family visited, from the moment we walked in the door, I answered to Kathleen. She ran the household, the meals, and the children with an iron hand.

When my grandmother passed away, Kathleen retired. My grandmother left her $5000 and her personal set of Samsonite luggage. I have no idea of Kathleen's last name. I never met her husband, or her children. I have a vague memory of my dad driving my grandmother to Kathleen's home with food when her husband passed away. We have never seen her since my grandmother's funeral. Yet, she was an integral part of the household for at least 55 years.

My dad's family was fairly well-off. My mother's family was not, being instead poor rural Virginia farmers who were very accustomed to doing for themselves. When we lived in Louisiana, we were the only family on our street that did not have "help". My mother simply couldn't see the need for it, coming from her farm background. All of my friend's families had maids. It was literally a way of life - having someone else to come in daily to clean your home, run your errands and raise your children.

To this day, I have no memory of any of my friend's parents, but I remember every maid' s face and name. My best friend next door, for all intents and purposes, rarely saw her own mother. All questions and requests for playtime were referred to the maid.

The closest we ever came to having a domestic was at nursery school at church. This was the very youngest of the Sunday School groups, and the black woman that ran it was named Doretha. I remember sitting on her lap, having gotten in trouble for something.

There were thousands upon thousands of black women working as domestics in the 1960's south. I have no doubt there are still a few in some forgotten corner of Mississippi or Lousiana. Now almost every trace of them has disappeared, except in the memories of those white children they raised, and in the memories of their own children.

Ms. Stockett's book brought all those memories back. It is an intricately crafted book for those trying to sort out how they feel about things they may have forgotten.

I've included some excerpts over at While Reading To The Dog. Nothing like the whole book though -it's one to savor. You can find a copy at Amazon -there's a link on my bookshelf.