Friday, February 26, 2010

The Conundrum of Snow

Snowman-Larry does most of the heavy lifting of snow moving at our house. Notice that I said moving, not removal. It doesn’t really go away; it’s not removed. Like blame, it just gets shifted. He moves it from the paved areas to the top of the snow mounds that he created back in the autumn. Those mounds are in areas where I think that that there may be grass. By February, it’s hard to remember.

Sometimes, in the spirit of team play, instead of just standing in the window watching him do all of the work, I suit up and join him outdoors to help with the task. My role is that of the finisher. I fine-tune the areas that he has mostly-cleared. Lately, during those stints, I’ve taken to considering the snows of my life. It seems to be the classic love/hate relationship.

On the one side of the argument, there is Thomas J. Watson:

Oh! the snow, the beautiful snow,
Filling the sky and earth below, . . .
Dancing,
Flirting,
Skimming along.

Contrast that with Carl Reiner’s:  “A lot of people like snow. I find it to be an unnecessary freezing of water.”

Growing up in the South, snow was a rare and magical thing. Snow falling in the night was the most magical. Go to bed: normal, grey winter. Wake up: that lovely, blue-white-snow-light bouncing off of a world made soft and rounded by snow that covered the earth like white, winter kudzu. One time, I remember it snowed what seemed like an incredible blizzard, probably about 8”, and life came to a complete and quiet halt. Nothing to do but go into the yard in my rustley-sounding snowsuit and use the snow, an amazingly adaptable material, to build a snow dog, man, fort or any creation that caught the imagination. (How I hated those “leggings” part of the snowsuit on normal, non-snow days! You would arrive at school, take them off, and the skirt of your dress would be mussed and wrinkled for the entire day.)

Here in Michiana, it’s not like that. The snow definitely is not rare. Most years, the Snow Belt is buckled around us as early as November and “Give us this day our daily snow” becomes the refrain. Oh, it can be magic, but the repetition of the trick dulls our delight. New snows cover “used” snows and give the occasional fresh, clean illusion. By March though, familiarity indeed has bred contempt. “Disgusting filth” is a mild description of the visual of months-old snow encrusted with salt and sand and road dirt. Even the thought that “large dollars,” i.e. at least twenties, might come rolling out of the melting mountains doesn’t do much to inspire joy. Just a winter or two of real-life experience breeds a cynicism by showing that at best, the occasional, barely-recognizable penny is the yield. The experience is similar to the current interest rates on money-in-the-bank: hardly worth the effort.

Counter that experience with the positive health effect. Soon after my move to Michiana, as I became accustomed to daily snow shoveling, I hypothesized that if I didn’t fall over dead immediately from the exertion, it might cause me to live forever. Anecdotally, I observed robust, 80-year-olds out there throwing snow. Heartening.

My son swears that when he was living in southwest Indiana, he heard a weathercaster exclaim with astonishment, “My God! It didn’t even snow in South Bend today.” So, as you grumble and crawl out of your igloo here near the end of this bumper-crop snow season, think about how special having survived it makes you. Lift high your snow shovel and feel proud that we, the snow-shifters, are admired as a tough and vigorous people.

Broadcast by Jeanette Saddler Taylor on February 26, 2010 • WVPE's Audio Archive
Customs & Rituals • Home & Garden • Nature & Outdoors • Permalink • Printer Friendly

Friday, February 19, 2010

The Night Shadows

Music is a conversation with history. Its provenance has so many facets: when was it composed, who for, when and who first performed it. What instrumentation was used, what style, where did I hear it, who played it then. Why did it have the power to change my life?

Last month I found a CD compilation of a memorable local band from my high school days. It was 1963, forty-six years ago; I was a senior at Marist Catholic military school in Atlanta. Judy Argo and the Night Shadows played for our Homecoming dance. They were white. The men in the band, clean-cut, dressed in dinner jackets, but Argo’s leather-punked look was a tipoff. The CD confirmed my memory; they had done their homework. Their music was very, uh, . . . black.

The priests at our school had a laissez-faire attitude toward those we hired for school dances. The nuns at Atlanta’s parochial high school shunned the black rhythm and blues styles, so the St. Pius girls trolled the Marist boys for dates if they wanted to hear good music and avoid the “phone book rule.” (Ask your mother.) There was a serious recession in the early ’60s and great black blues and R&B music was a bargain in Atlanta.  How lucky I was to be growing up then!

In addition, bands like the Shadows led anyone with an ounce of curiosity to discover the—often locally available—black musicians upon whose shoulders they stood. I had by that time already found, and experienced live, many black performers. Underage, I snuck into a Jimmy Reed New Years Eve party. He still is an avatar for me and many others. Baby Hughie and the Baby Sitters, with their enduring hit, “Messin’ With the Kid,” played for our Catholic Youth dances. We all knew Doug Clark and the Hot Nuts, with their double-entendre song, “Hot Nuts, Get ’Em from the Peanut Man.” The immortals, now, were only stand-outs then, but destiny had bigger plans for them: James Brown performed a show-stopping “rubber leg” dance at one of our school mixers; Ray Charles, on piano and sax, with a small band and the Raylettes, was driving crowds to a frenzy at the Royal Peacock on Auburn Avenue with his hit, “What I Say.” More than anything, I wanted to do that.

Soon I would recognize the cynical exploitation of black musicians by some record companies. But for the Shadows, and later myself when I came to Notre Dame and brought that music north, we respectfully rooted our music in their history; if we got real lucky, we talked and played with them. I took full advantage of the Notre Dame Blues Festivals, and later met, and sometimes got to play with, many blues people I could have only revered from afar. Only then, if it mattered to us, could we white kids put out respectable versions of their material.

I did a similar thing when I began to perform social movement music, and later the Irish traditional music I discovered and embraced up here. It’s one thing to sing “Solidarity Forever” in a coffeehouse; it’s another to lead dozens of laid-off auto workers singing it on a frigid wet street in South Bend. Only then can you feel the power of the song’s birthright. Play the “Foxhunter’s Reel” in a south Chicago Irish working-class pub on Paddy’s Day with a sixty-year-old tradition-bearer from Sligo. That’s a conversation with history.

A person can learn a lot about life, connections, and generative growth from listening and participating with traditional musicians in many genres. With an ear to the past, I live today with centuries of blues singing, of marching, cheering working people, of old Irish, fiddling, filling the air behind me. It steadies my feet and lifts up my heart, and I want to lead you to feel the same way. Honest, I do.

Broadcast by David James on February 19, 2010 • WVPE's Audio Archive
Arts & Entertainment • Education • Family & Friends • Permalink • Printer Friendly

Friday, February 12, 2010

A Sparkling New Year

You know, it is a funny thing about the new year:  We get this sparkling clean fresh new start, but we treat it exactly the same every year!  Already well into 2010 and most of my resolutions lie in a smoking heap on the floor.

I am a big fan of all things new and love to write out thoughtful Resolutions on New Year’s Day.  After several years of trying to cleverly rewrite the same goals as everyone else; ‘loose weight’ becomes ‘eat healthier’ and ‘stop swearing’ becomes ‘be kinder’ I finally realized that just because the year is new doesn’t mean my life will be new too.  A change in the calendar year doesn’t give me a leg up on stopping my nasty old habits or give me the magic moment to be a sparkling clean and fresh new version of the best parts of me.  It is simply a way to mark the passage of time.

We get excited about the New Year because we need the chance to believe in a better year, a better us, a better life.  Especially with the challenges we each face in this economy, political transition, and with difficult world events.  Our waistlines expand, our banks accounts drain, our families change and people we love die...surely there is a way to do more, to do better with our our lives.

I still scratch out a few things to keep in mind, goals if you will or insights...of course you could just give in with me and call them Resolutions but I hope against hope every year something will be different.

Last year I found some questions on the ‘Spiritual Disciplines.org’ website and some of them jumped out at me as quality themes to help me mark this particular passage of time in a more meaningful way.  Even if none of my goals are accomplished.  Even if 2010 is as wonderful as 2009 but still not the shining change we all hope for, some of the questions I will be pondering are:

What is the single most important thing you can do to improve the quality of your family life this year?

What is the biggest time waster in your life, and what will you do about it this year?

What single thing that you plan to do this year will matter most in ten years?

Who do you most want to encourage this year?

Of course I know that loftier goals like these, when made on New Year’s Day or...much later....are still New Year’s Resolutions.  And I realize that I may neglect to review them on a regular enough basis to thoroughly apply them to this nice new year of 2010.  Despite this grim likelihood and my dismal track record with Resolutions, I plan to keep making them, pondering them and yes, even breaking them.

Deep in our hearts we want the sparkling New version of us that only seems attainable once a year when the calendar flips.  Our desire to be better, to do better, to feel better and to use our daily lives better will eventually lead us to actually make some improvements.  Eventually.  I resolve to live the next year well, with and without my sparkling new resolutions...and I have a good feeling 2010 will be a great year.

Broadcast by Heather Curlee Novak on February 12, 2010 • WVPE's Audio Archive
Customs & Rituals • Permalink • Printer Friendly
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A random pick from more than 460 Michiana Chronicles -- refresh the browser to see another set:

April Lidinsky -- On Euphemisms and Their Limits / More essays by April

Joe Chaney -- More essays by Joe

Ken Smith -- More essays by Ken

Jeanette Saddler Taylor -- The Conundrum of Snow / More essays by Jeanette

Heather Curlee Novak -- A Sparkling New Year / More essays by Heather

David James -- The Night Shadows / More essays by David

Elizabeth Van Jacob -- More essays by Elizabeth

Jeff Nixa -- More essays by Jeff

Louise Collins -- More essays by Louise

Jonathan Nashel -- More essays by Jonathan