You never know what we'll churn up in cleaning a stall
When I first drafted this novel three decades ago, little did I expect it to be a requiem for a profession I’ve loved and served all my life. Now, though, as the history has unfolded, I’m left hoping against hope it’s not a requiem for community after community across America as well. Read it and weep – yet laughing along the way. We are, after all, still a resourceful people
~*~
To find out more about Hometown News or to obtain your own copy, go to my page at Smashwords.com.
Another of the festering wounds of the ’60s and ’70s is the matter of illicit drug use. It wasn’t just hippies, actually, not once the troops in Vietnam turned to it, too.
It’s a troubling legacy on many fronts. For one thing, the United States has the highest incarceration rate in the world – much of it regarding drug traffic. In other words, there’s a demand for the product, and if you believe in a free market, maybe you need to listen.
I won’t go into the history of banning many of the substances that are now verboten, even if it suggests a political tradeoff in repealing the Prohibition. But the basis of declaring the substances illegal appears to have been made on reasons other than the ones officially proclaimed. Let’s be honest about tobacco and alcohol, including their ability to be taxed, in contrast anything you might be able to grow on your own. (This, let me add, is coming from a former homebrewer.)
On the other hand, the widespread, frequent use of mind-altering substances among the young – and I’m including tobacco, alcohol, and activity-inhibiting legal prescriptions – leaves me deeply concerned.
That extends to the parents who give their kids pot … or even allow them to sell it at school.
That, in turn, points to a divergence between hippies and stoners.
Faced with a decision on the legalization of marijuana, I’m not entirely sure how I’d vote. But I do know the current policy isn’t working – and is doomed to continuing failure.
Why can’t we have a frank discussion on the issue … without all the hubris?
My entire life I’ve harbored a bias regarding quality in the world of writing. Even though I’ve long been a front-line journalist, I’ve believed the text in a hardbound, academic or commercially published book must somehow be superior to what’s presented in a newspaper.
For that matter, magazines were, in that measure, a degree above newspapers, but a step or two below either paperback or hardbound volumes.
In the past few years, though, that misconception has been shattered, in part because of conversations I have with one of America’s top literary voices and in part because of encounters with a host of other living authors of more mundane accomplishments.
Yes, we have every right to expect a work that requires a year or two to draft to be superior to reports written on the fly, but in some ways, that long work often turns out to be little more than a series of daily reports strung together. What turns up can be as formulaic as any pyramid-style news dispatch, and filled with more cliche and unchallenged bombast. Read carefully and you might notice a higher standard of editing in your daily paper.
What I now realize is that I had expected the books to be eternal monuments that would sit forever on public and private library shelves. I never expected them to be commodities with their own precariously short shelf life, with rare exceptions. Even public collections have only so much space and so much patience. Rarely do I find there a recommended piece I desire.
What this all comes down to is that reality that good writing is good writing, no matter the place it appears. That, in itself, is cause for celebration.
Now, for more on the newspaper dimension, there’s my Hometown News novel. Adding a further twist to this plot, though, is the fact it’s available only as an ebook.
Through much of the summer, the sun on the barn roof makes it difficult for anyone to spend much time in the loft, and later, the depths of winter add their own limitations. But there are stretches of spring and autumn that can be heavenly when it comes to a time and place to retreat.
Yes, we’ve discussed remodeling the loft to make the space usable year-round, but frankly I rather like it as is, with all of its rustic charm.
My favorite moments often come in the afternoon as I call an early happy hour, pour myself a martini, and nestle into the papasan in front of the open hay door. The view over the garden or out either window at the ends of the barn can be delightful, and in many ways I feel I’m in a tree house. This fall I’ve been catching up on issues of The Paris Review and a host of symphonic tapes, so it can even feel uplifting.
As we slip into the second half of autumn, though, I’m all too aware this pleasure’s about to come to a close again. Already we’ve had a few evenings of sitting in front of a wood fire and watching the flames dance.
Long ago I discovered how essential such seemingly short breaks are to my sanity. And then it’s full-bore back into the vortex.
Newspapers have long run on a peculiar business model.
People buy the paper mostly for the news, but what they pay for the product covers only a fraction of the actual cost. Traditionally, advertising generated the other 80 to 90 percent.
That imbalance always resulted in an inherent tension in the executive offices, where any expenditure for news coverage was viewed with suspicion, especially when few of the publishers – the top local executive – came from the news-gathering side.
The rest of the operation included the composing room and related departments that manufactured the actual pages that then went to the presses, plus the “mail room” where supplements were inserted and the bundles were arranged for distribution, the circulation department, and then the ad sales reps, accounting, community services/promotion, and human resources. Especially accounting. In more recent decades, the computer techs assumed their own role.
For a bit of perspective, go to a store and buy an artist’s newsprint sketchpad and then compare its cost and the amount of paper against what the typical paper carries. You’ll see what a bargain the daily paper has been. What you pay for the news essentially covers the cost of getting it from the end of the press to the place you read it.
So this is how things ran until the Internet came along. And then, for a host of reasons, publishers began putting websites up and readers began getting the news without having to view any of the surrounding advertisements that were paying the bills. That, in itself, was a recipe for disaster.
Curiously, long before the arrival of the Internet, I’d noticed that what the readers paid for a paper would be sufficient to staff a newsroom and its supporting services. Leap ahead, and you can see that if users would pay for their local news online, you could create journalism that would not have the advertisers lurking in the corners. Unfortunately, online users have become spoiled and rarely pay for anything. Attempts at firewalls, as we’ve seen, have also failed.
At the moment, the future of American journalism looks grim. And that’s bad news for our political structure and the lives of our communities themselves.
~*~
To find out more about Hometown News or to obtain your own copy, go to my page at Smashwords.com.
The cult of celebrity continues to baffle me. The mass-media fascination with people who are famous for being famous draws none of my interest except, maybe, for a few who are simply breathtakingly gorgeous – the ones, I should add, whose words and actions aren’t completely repugnant. As you might guess, the photos are worth far more than any accompanying text.
OK, I’ll push the blame away from mass media and on to the audience that prefers celebrities to real reality. (Not to be confused with “reality television.”)
To see this outlook at work, we can extend the People magazine and supermarket tabloid spotlight beyond the realms of Hollywood and Nashville, high-level fashion models and designers, professional athletes, monarchy, and rock stars.
In the publishing industry, for instance, we have “bestselling author.” At least there’s an accomplishment to back up the fame, regardless of quality. The recognition level, let’s be honest, will be lower than in the aforesaid big-money glamor fields. But my guess is that these aren’t the writers who are high up on your own list of favorites, either. For that matter, few who make it to the bestseller list ever gain that widespread recognition. No, we are far from the days of Hemingway, Faulkner, Steinbeck, Thomas Wolfe, Mitchner, Sandberg, or Frost in the eyes of the general public.
Likewise, in classical music or opera, where fame is a crucial component of box-office appeal, we’re far from the era when having “Sol Hurok presents” as part of an artist’s credentials spelled a degree of celebrity. Hurok was an artist manager who handled all of the big names, or so he made the world believe. But the cult of celebrity still plays a role, as Yo-Yo Ma, Renee Fleming, and Lang Lang demonstrate. (Note, though, that by now we need both first and last names.) And, we should acknowledge, you don’t get there without talent.
All of this, though, is by way of introducing my favorite conductor ever: Max Rudolf (1902-1995).
As another former Metropolitan Opera conductor once told me, “Rudolf could have been as famous as Leonard Bernstein, if he had wanted it.” Obviously, he didn’t.
What impressed me – and continues to impress – is that what he really wanted was to make music of the very highest level and to nurture that tradition. This could follow a much different route than mere celebrity, even in the arts.
At the time, Rudolf was music director of the Cincinnati Symphony, which he headed for 13 years.
To be honest, the first time I heard the ensemble, I was not impressed. It was on a road trip to Dayton, and Rudolf was pushing for rhythmic precision at a time when I wanted plush sonic, well, uprisings of bombast. Only later did I comprehend what he was instilling – a unity of perfection of structure and meaning.
He offered his players precise, expressive, often restrained gestures and obtained “maximum results with minimal effort,” as I think one critic observed. Unlike the over-the-top dramatic Bernstein, I should add. What I now see is that the gravity of playing was somewhere back in the orchestra, rather than focused on the podium. In other words, despite all of his Germanic authoritarian roots, something organic was happening. And, as I would see, they played as one – more than some of the famed soloists I’ve heard.
His lineage runs back to the opera at Prague, where he worked under George Szell, and ran to the Metropolitan Opera, where he wound up as administrative assistant to Rudolf Bing. (Two abrasive personalities, from all we’ve heard.)
When he accepted the Cincinnati post, others had cautioned him not to go. “You’re making a name for yourself here in New York. You’ll give that up if you leave.”
Thankfully, he followed his heart, and classical music has been all the richer.
One of the things I remember is the amber sound he developed, not just in Cincinnati but in some of his other recordings as well – the Metropolitan Opera and even Italy.
As one of this first-chair players once told me, his mantra was, “First it must be in time.” And then the rest could follow. The trills, for example, as miniature roller coasters rather than flutters.
The former first cellist told me he received eight coaching sessions a week as a young player. How remarkable!
Even in the recordings, I still marvel at the entire ensemble playing with more unity than some soloists I’ve heard. If the Cleveland Orchestra was the Rolls-Royce, then Cincinnati was a Ferrari … fast, tight cornering.
He once lamented to a reporter that, at the time, the Cincinnati audience did not appreciate Mozart. He was one of the greatest Mozart conductors, ever.
And then there were his discoveries, beginning with Erich Kunzel and James Levine, who achieves some of the sound I associate with Rudolf.
There is, after all, a theory that your ideal orchestral sound is the one of the first great orchestra you heard. For me – and I believe, Levine – that’s Cincinnati.
Unfortunately, Rudolf came down with hepatitis, blamed on seafood during his summer in Maine, and that cut short one season and more. In his place came the Michigan native Thomas Schippers, assuming his first and, lamentably, only orchestral leadership post. As Time magazine lamented, the operatic master Schippers could not take over the Metropolitan Opera when the opening occurred because he was tied down in Cincinnati. And then, all too early, both Schippers (an addicted smoker) and his wife died of cancer. He was 47.
I can only assume Rudolf had been somewhere in the background pushing for Schippers’ appointment, and no doubt did the same in getting the young James Levine a position in Cleveland under Szell.
Rudolf went on, in part at his friend Rudolf Serkin’s urging, to create an opera program at the Curtis Institute in Philadelphia, and then a conductor’s program there. Among his prodigies on the podium are Robert Spano, Michael Stern, and Paavo Jarvi, who later spent a decade at the helm in Cincinnati.
~*~
Back now to James Levine, who went on to the top of the conducting world. The story I want to hear is what role Rudolf had behind the scenes. In Levine’s music-making, I hear Rudolf as well – the sound of the musicians making music together (a center of gravity back in the band, not simply at the podium). And the warmth, that amber sound in the strings I so admire.
Levine more or less moved into Rudolf’s earlier role at the Met, but then he expanded it all into his own. Aficionados can argue all they want, but both Rudolf and Levine will probably wind up in the top two dozen opera conductors ever.
Just as Rudolf did in Cincinnati, Levine later restored the Boston Symphony to its glory. Its sister band, the Boston Pops, had its own Rudolf legacy – Keith Lockhart, who came by way of Kunzel, that former Rudolf assistant.
I hate to think what might have been lost if Rudolf had followed the advice not to go to Ohio. Could he have exerted the same influence in Manhattan? I doubt anyone could.
Looking at yet another recording of Vivaldi’s now ubiquitous Four Seasons reminds me of the first time I encountered the work. Two of our local FM stations each had an hour of classical music each night, and there it was, taking up the entire program, or at least most of it.
At the end of the piece, the announcer came on, leaving me to exclaim, “Who was that? Never heard of him.” A nobody composer, then. (Actually, I think my reaction was more graphic. In those days, I wanted BIG NAMES.)
A month later, the same thing.
And a month after that, the reaction continued.
I must have been a sophomore in high school. By my senior year, Vivaldi had gained enough traction to have one of the Four Seasons concertos be included in a Cincinnati May Festival concert I attended (Robert Shaw conducting), and even Leonard Bernstein and the New York Philharmonic had recorded an all-Vivaldi album that was a mainstay of my budding collection.
How times have changed.
I remember, too, discovering Mahler through a Boston Symphony recording under Erich Leinsdorf, probably about the same time. By my senior year of college, Mahler had gained enough visibility that I heard two live performances of his Fifth Symphony, one by an Indiana University orchestra and the other by the Cincinnatians under Max Rudolf – and that was within a span of one month.
Now that Mahler and Vivaldi are regulars in the repertoire, I keep hoping for a similar discovery of John Knowles Paine, George Whitefield Chadwick, Amy Beach, and their American Romantic-era colleagues.
Yes, times and tastes can change. There’s so much more to discover and embrace.
So what have our children learned, as far as religion goes? What seeds have we planted? Actually, I’m thinking of this not so much as a curriculum matter for the Religious Education committee or as a reflection for parents but rather as a consideration of what’s happened in American society in general – the kind of place where soccer practice is now seen as more valuable (“value enabling”) than Sunday School. Or where a child may develop an aversion to being viewed, in any way, as a “Miss Goody Two-Shoes.”
My thoughts leap ahead to the tension many of us feel in the workplace. As Michael Lerner writes in The Left Hand of God, it’s the conflict of values between our dog-eat-dog competitive economy and those we hold dear and sacred. Fundamentalists, at least, attempt to resolve it by separating the two worlds, but at what cost? Children, of course, pick up on this, tuning out what they see as useless to their survival. And that includes what they observe at home. (Should we note the popularity of so-called “reality TV” – as manifested in The Survivor?) The Amish and other old orders attempt to hold the values of workplace, home, and faith in one sphere, but we can easily imagine the difficulty that, too, presents.
Obviously, I’m not going to resolve any of this in the next few sentences. Without the music of hymns and praise songs, the pageantry of robes, processions, lighting of altar candles, and communion, or the attentive consideration to set prayers and sermons, what do we give our children to cling to? (In the old days, did the plain clothing and “thee/thou” speech offer some refuge or rooting?) Or what invitation do we extend to those “voted off the island”? What I am going to suggest is that the answer is not found so much in any catechism or ceremony as in the way we treat our smallest members, our moments of laboring together, and, yes, the repeated ritual of a certain casserole on youth retreats and its reception.
I’ve never really liked the “baby boomer” description. Besides, I think there’s a major barrier between the early experiences of those born before ’47 or ’48, and those after. Around ’48, my wave, was when TV sets were present from the very beginning of our exposure to the world. We can’t remember ever not having one at least somewhere in the neighborhood. (Suddenly, I remember being three or four and having the Sullivan brothers show up to watch “Howdy Doody” with me. They didn’t yet have a tube of their own.)
Every year as our class advanced, our new round of teachers was baffled. All they knew was we were “different” from the previous ones. So to some extent, the TV influence feeds into the hippie outbreak. We were, in effect, wired differently from our seniors. Still are, for that matter.
But the other big shortcoming in the boomer classification is the way it ignores the huge fissure within our generation between those who supported the Vietnam Conflict and those of us who opposed it. That’s something that’s never fully healed, and it’s certainly crippled our ability to come together to advance the ideals some of us, at least, so passionately embraced. I suspect there are many politicians and corporate executives – the dreaded Establishment, that is – who actively worked to keep the wound festering.
So here I am, calling for a renewed vision of our legacy. That’s been one of the promptings of the novels in my series Hippie Trails. You’re welcome to come along on the trip.
