You never know what we'll churn up in cleaning a stall
a bass in the Balkan choir has a low C securely
or lower depending on the day, so he admits
what he’s hitting today is three steps below
my best rumble
with luck
or even two, on good fortune
the singers warm up on a modal scale
those two telling flats against a major
rehearse in three locations across the state
and come together at events like the one I’m at
and then dance, in lines not quite Greek
For the Passamaquoddy people at their Sipayik Reservation at Pleasant Point. Before the causeway was constructed in the 1930s, the waters of Passamaquoddy Bay mingled powerfully with those of Cobscook Bay here. There are plans to restore that.
For him, that also shook up the universe.
The 150th anniversary of the birth of the American maverick takes place Sunday, the 20th, and despite his relative obscurity, he was a giant as an uncompromising modernist classical composer and as an innovative executive in the insurance industry.
Born in Connecticut and a graduate of Yale, Charles Ives’ musical transformation was certainly one of the most extraordinary cases in history, made all the more remarkable by the fact that he was forced to compose largely without hearing many of his adventurous works played by an orchestra or soloists until a half-century or more after their composition. Even the sonatas, songs, and chamber music suffered from widespread neglect.
As a matter of confession, I am quite fond of his music, from the wonderfully rich late-Romantic scores of his youth to the craggy, thorny modernist fireworks of only a few years later. I am among those who feel scandalized by the fact that this season orchestras aren’t playing even one of his symphonies in celebration, much less all four. Two of them did win Pulitzers, by the way, once they were finally aired, and riotous cheers often break out at the conclusion when the works are performed.
For a biographical overview of this American original, turn to my post, “Thoughts while listening to Charles Ives,” of November 5, 2013, at my blog, Chicken Farmer I still love you.
Today, I’m offering a Double Tendrils. Let’s start with ten quotations about music.
~*~
And here are ten Ives quotes about life itself.
It was a rustic summer home style in the mountains of upstate New York. Here’s how it looks in Castine, Maine.
Fairy tales for adults. That’s what I first thought on encountering Brautigan weeks after I graduated from college. More accurately, playful children’s stories for young adults of a hippie leaning.
With his surrealistic or perhaps warped vision taking a simple voice, and his fondness of simile and imagery, his was a unique voice that amused many of us and annoyed many others.
Trout Fishing in America barely touched on fishing of any sort. Confederate General at Big Sur and In Watermelon Sugar were about, well, shyness and innocence as much as anything.
His usually very short poems were mousetraps of longing and loss.
Their freshness still beat 99 percent of the literature that surrounded them.
If only his sweet sadness weren’t soured by the pressures of success.
Every morning, we had to lift anchor to get on our way. Our schooner relied on a four-person winch, plus a helper to keep the anchor chain orderly for the trip.
Continuing the history of our old house:
In September 1983, Elwood Stackwood Richardson and Mary Blanche Richardson of Smithville, Tennessee, took possession for use as a summer home. They already owned and operated the Dennys River Inn, a B&B in neighboring Dennysville, Maine. A decade later, the house was conveyed to Mary Blanche’s daughter and son-in-law, Wayne Henry and Mary Jo Warner of McMinnville, one county south in Tennessee. The move was essentially to handle the details of selling the site.
This stage of occupancy centers on Mary Blanche, who was born in 1916 in Puyallup, Washington, to a family of transplanted Maine lumbermen. After 1976, she married widower Elwood Richardson, born in 1907 in Bristol, Pennsylvania, and relocated with her daughter, Mary Jo, to Philadelphia. That’s where Wayne Henry Warner, born in 1941, enters the picture. He married Mary Jo, born in 1943, and became a high school football, track, and baseball coach in Tennessee.
Thus, they all would have been adults in their times in Eastport.
For them, Eastport was a summer home, one not rented out in winter, in part because of its rundown physical condition, as Mary Jo told me. Her mother had relatives in Maine, either in Whitney or Whitneyville, neither one far from Eastport. She also loved antiquing. Guests during the family’s summer often liked to tour the Franklin D. Roosevelt estate across the water in Canada, causing her to quip that she visited Campobello more than Eleanor had.
Elwood, meanwhile, enjoyed fishing.
Bicycling and taking nearby ferries were other summer activities.
Mary Blanche was responsible for having the shingles put on the exterior and would have appreciated our raising of the roof upstairs. “It was something she wanted to do,” I was told. The move was apparently inspired by New England author and illustrator Tasha Tudor. Mary Blanche did have a cat named Tasha, reflecting the fondness.
Mary Jo also confirmed that the beams in the front parlor existed at the time, along with the “rather basic” kitchen and its Montgomery Ward stovetop. The property across the street also a house trailer blocking a direct view of the ocean. The modular home came later. And she remembered how small the only bathroom was.
She also asked about the sewage situation in the cellar. What?
And then about our contractor, quite surprised that he shows up on time and sticks to his promises. No comment there.
She was equally delighted to learn that the downtown is no longer boarded up and that the arts scene has emerged. Her stepfather, Elwood, took up painting in his summers in Eastport and was part of a circle that had outdoor shows in town.
Eastport did look quite different that recently. It was a time when the population was sinking and many of the remaining but vacant canneries and their piers lining the downtown were falling into the sea, one by one.
In a free government, the security for civil rights must be the same as for religious rights.
James Madison in Federalist No. 51
Jnana's Red Barn 