Don't Know Much About....

There were hats.  Almost everybody wore one.  As the women filtered through the doors one or two at a time, the Wednesday Club might have been a hiccup in the time space...or was it a time-place continuum:  a dignified, brick, white columned place with a boardroom, a century plus of history, and a structure which charged each member with a task: from pouring coffee to running the state of the art sound system to inviting the guest lecturer in one of twelve different disciplines.  Two women in the restroom adjusting their Halloween finery were discussing the whereabouts of a third: ‘Has anyone seen her yet?’

‘Well, no, and I called at eight and there was no answer….’

Oh no! I thought, imagining an injury or bad fall…..

’But she may be playing tennis…’

So much for preconceived notions...my mental vision is shattered by a two handed backhand...

Our hostess is a member of Missouri Farm Bureau and has read Blake’s opening articles in the Farm Bureau’s Show Me Magazine.  In one of her introductory letters, we learn she and her husband have a farm in Crawford county and they understand that cattle need protection from predators and the elements and why some people need to harvest three deer  “to make it through the winter.” In her words, “this is likely not know by many in the city”. Blake’s talk will have to deal, at least tangentially, with the approved topic in the History section: Omission in U.S. History in the Media.  Whew!  Because it is very clear that discussing spitting contests and name calling, whether social media present or yellow journalism past, is beyond the pale of the good manners and propriety of the Wednesday Club, Blake’s talk mentions what the media gets wrong, but its main focus is what agriculture gets right.

 Every day and in every way, today’s agriculture overcomes obstacles of weather and climate, disease and fertility to feed the people of the world. But you have to get past the “bad news” to learn about this a modern day miracle.

Fortunately, the women (and man) of the Wednesday club are receptive to this tale.  They are folks of a generation that understands science; many have been associated with medicine or Washington University in their professional lives.  They are also of an age to enjoy or at least tolerate multiple pictures of cute grandchildren and to poke gentle fun at the minor technological snafus posed by holding a mouse backwards.  This is an audience unfazed by the science of genetic modification, but a little ouchy about ethanol; after all, one of their previous guest lecturers was from the Danforth Plant Science center. Someone asks about food deserts and another member seems quite concerned when Blake mentions that we have been using no till farming for twenty years on our highly erodible soils.  Turns out her farmland is in Illinois where seldom is heard a discouraging word and the soils are deep, black….and flat.

Off to lunch, where, in a flashback of nostalgia,  I halfway expect to be served a cottage cheese filled pear on a lettuce leaf.  Didn’t happen. Instead, I compliment the coffee and eat my Halloween hued cupcake, enjoying the cheerful chatter from the tables all around.  When we were first married, I accompanied Millie to a couple of meetings of the neighborhood Morning Sun Extension Club where the ladies were primarily of Blake’s Grandma Hurst’s generation with names like Eunice, Gertrude and Velma.  And, later, I was a faithful member of the Atchison County Republican Women and an erratic attendee of the Tarkio Garden Club with stalwart women all a generation or two older than me. But kids and work took precedence over civic groups and meetings and I hardly noticed when local organizations like these faded away.  The women of the Wednesday Club shore up their volunteerism with a hearty dose of accountability and duty; surely the full tables this Halloween are indicative of a relentless and iron willed civic spirit. Today’s individualistic bent allows us to tailor our self improvement on our own at any time and place of our choosing.  But associations like the Wednesday Club keep the “community” in “betterment”. The past of our grandmothers, if not the hats, lives on at the Wednesday Club, and the culture of our future is better for it...

Starstruck

Starstruck. Transported. Carried away. Enchanted.

I was very young, sitting with my mama and sister in a theater south of Chicago somewhere. My father was playing in the pit orchestra. The houselights went down, the curtain opened...and the first plaintive ethereal strands of the Carousel melody rose from the orchestra. It was my first Broadway musical, my first Broadway melody, and I have never forgotten this beginning to a life long love affair.

Show tunes were part of the cultural common core back then. We might hear 'To Dream the Impossible Dream" (Man of La Mancha, 1964) or "The Rain in Spain" (My Fair Lady, 1956, movie 1964) or "If Ever I Would Leave You" (Camelot, 1960) on the car radio en route to the grocery store. The Beatles were but part of the gossip at school; I first heard Petula Clark's iconic "Downtown" on a jukebox in Kalamazoo enroute to my aunt and uncle's wedding in Michigan.

But what Elsa is to little girls today, Julie Andrews was to little girls in the '60s. Our Girl Scout troop went to see "The Sound of Music" on the big screen in a packed Saturday afternoon matinee. We didn't know any history, but we could all sing Edelweiss and My Favorite Things in our bobbed Julie Andrews haircuts.

Even today, I would wager that most people have heard tunes like "Seventy Six Trombones"  or "Hello Dolly" even though folks who frequent the Broadway channel on xm are mere specks on the data map of popular music.  

Which is why I am always thrilled and encouraged when November comes around and it is time for Tarkio High School's fall musical production.  For an entire semester, the cast and production crew are immersed in the language of the best American theater can offer, tried and true and lasting songs and stories and melodies.  Here is music with melody and grace; dialogue with humor...and wit.  The musicals are the masterpieces of our popular art and have stood the test of time  to transcend the era for which they were written.  A cast of twenty or thirty can sing the same tunes that Irving Berlin or Richard Rodgers wrote...and perform them to a packed house, whether that crowd is at the Starlight Theater in Kansas City...or in the red padded seats at Tarkio High School. 

 Putting together a musical requires heart, hands, eyes, ears, and voice.  It stretches the imagination, exercises memory, and, at its best, makes goose bumps appear. Like a good book, the two and a half hours of song and dance and storytelling transports performer and audience alike to another world...at least until the house lights go up, but, perhaps, for days after.

If our schools don't promote and perform musical theater, a part of our heritage will be lost.  Who wants to live in a world without Nathan Detroit...or Nicely Nicely...or Marian the librarian....or Ado Annie?  These are characters as American as we are...with the enviable advantage that, when in the throes of a crisis they "they sing and they dance, which is so much more interesting than just whining about it,’’ in the immortal words of the Man in the Chair in another musical, The Drowsy Chaperone.

Is this a shameless plug for amateur theater?  You bet.  To join is to be part of our cultural fabric, woven into the seamless score of those past and present that can sing along....

Shhhhh...the lights are dimming...time for the second act.....wherever you are.....

Come on along and listen to

The lullaby of Broadway

The hip hooray and ballyhoo

The lullaby of Broadway

See Music City

I came to Nashville as kitchen help, the chief cook and bottle washer for a group of writers on a blitzkrieg assignment covering all that made the mid South vibrant, various, and enterprising. Blake was part of the group, and while we were often in awe of the intellectual pedigrees of our companions, we felt less like impostors when the subject of music came around.  Not a twang in the bunch; not a soul who could quote lyrics chapter and verse like our daughter at home.  No one possessed a basement of eight track tapes of Charlie Rich or Charlie Pride, Tompall Glaser or Tom T Hall.

I know Nashville is more than music, but for me, the city will always have a sound track. That first visit found us pulling our journalistic trench coats against the chilly wind as we sought the heart of honky tonk on a nearly deserted Broadway. Tootsie's was steamy and raucous, but the Buddy Holly hair, driving snare and vintage silver mikes of the band in the chilly bar down the street kept us nursing our beers and wishing we knew their names. They played their set with grit and gravel in their voices and disregard for the audience or lack thereof.  I could have boogied out the door on a cloud of cigarette smoke.

Deep in the labyrinth of warehouses, potholes and unfinished construction where the soul despairs the accuracy of its Google map,  there is jazz in Nashville.  Midway between the city sewage treatment and the Bicentennial Mall, Music City shows its talent is more than sequin deep when seasoned performers and composers fill the intimate space with waves of rhythm and chord as the eclectic listeners (for jazz, is there any other kind) sip beverages, mingle and keep the beat.

There is reserved parking downtown for bands to unload; there is good natured hollering and ribbing as equipment emerges from vehicles I can only describe as beat on all four corners. At 10:30 in the morning, the quartet at Tootsie's is not a headliner; three vets going through the motions and a young lady on vocals making the mistake of playing songs folks know like the back of their hand.  A couple sets down their beers (bottle, no tap) and takes a twirl alongside the bar; they tell the barkeep how much quieter it is than the night previous.  There's no coffee at Tootsie's either...keep it simple.  In the daylight its possible to appreciate the old publicity shots and group photos peeling like mica behind yellowed Plexiglass. Does Tootsie's actually work at being a dive, or does it just come natural?  When I learn there are at least two other establishments nearby owned by the Tootsie's conglomerate, I lean toward calculating...

But  somehow that's not the prevailing atmosphere in downtown Nashville.  Of course, all that neon is meant to attract tourists, but I also feel I could walk right into a time warp, hear the air crackle like celluloid, and look around at a landscape out of a Hatch Show Print.  Maybe its a visit to the Country Music Hall of Fame; maybe its plaster Elvis swiveling for neon Betty; maybe its the Ryman itself,  a mother hen of music hovering over it nest of honky tonks.  I've heard music in both the Opry venues; one has all the personality of a theater show in Branson, but the Ryman is a church and the folks on stage are preachin' to the choir.

What I'm sayin' is that I love a good cliche'. And Nashville parades its cliches' with aplomb.  Biscuits and gravy, jam and pie?  See the Loveless Cafe complex on the Natchez Trace where the merchandising balances precariously on the foundation of the 1950s motel.   Shrimp with grits, homemade pimento spread and hummingbird cake? Presented tea room style at the Chef's Market with recipes to go and the implication that they taste the very best if one wears an apron.

Alas, its time to head west, leave the cultured past and return to the frontier.  Goodbye Cumberland, goodbye chandeliers, farewell to fountains and literary gardens.  No more nightly serenades....til next time.

 I guess it's the process 

Of learning to excess  

All of those things 

That you already know...

......Lyle Lovett 'Good Intentions'