Tag: Life

As for my spiritual quest from yoga (or before) to here

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

As I reflect on the many facets of my life to this point – including the zig-zag route that has led me to here – I realize what draws them together is the two central metaphors I’ve found in the early Quaker movement: divine Light and the corresponding Seed. One, as spirit, draws forth; the other, as physical matter, responds. These two, however abstractly, are embodied in both my writing and spiritual practice.

Not that anything’s been quite that easy or direct, even before our current dark times.

At least I haven’t been alone.

~*~

In my fiction, they’re most prominent in Kenzie’s Tibetan Buddhist discoveries in the novels Pit-a-Pat High Jacks and Subway Visions and in Jaya’s practices in Yoga Bootcamp, Nearly Canaan, and the Secret Side of Jaya.

Not to be dogmatic in any of this. What I have now is what I found missing in both the Protestant circles where I grew up and the Eastern practices later. The second, as the ashram, was a step that taught me to sit in silent meditation as well as to live in community, lessons that flowered in relation to my Quaker, Mennonite, and Brethren circles that followed.

Trying to live in the “real world” of employment and a partner and family definitely thickened the plot as these have unfolded. As I’ll concede, a spiritual life needs to be grounded. That is, the gritty realities.

~*~

Trying to be faithful to the Way as it has opened before me was hardly the path I would have expected. It has, though, been blessed with mutual irradiation, in Douglas Steere’s brilliant term, including a Greek Orthodox infusion.

More recently, attempting to get back to some of the basic hatha yoga exercises, has inflicted the humbling blunt recognition of what 50 years of neglect can do to the physical body.

And cutting through the platitudes and BS of the literature remains a challenge.

~*~

These elements drive the essays of my book Light Seed Truth, examining the three central metaphors of Quaker Christianity. It really becomes a different way of thinking.

Here are some of the things I’ve noted along the way.

I’ve been a Quaker for nearly four decades now, coming to the faith of my ancestors by chance after living and working on a yoga farm in Pennsylvania. Lately, I’ve been uncovering a revolutionary understanding of Christ and Christianity – one the early Quakers could not fully proclaim in face of the existing blasphemy laws but experiences they couched in metaphors of the Light, Seed, and Truth. As I systematically connect the dots 3½ centuries later, I’m finding a vibrant alternative to conventional religion, one full of opportunities to engage contemporary intellectual frontiers, individual spiritual practice, and societal crises. As an established writer – a professional journalist, poet, and novelist – I’ve organized these insights into a book-length manuscript. Would you like you to see it?

What I’ve found is an astonishing course of religious thought no one else has previously presented systematically. Reconstructed, their interwoven metaphors of the Light, the Seed, and the Truth provide a challenging alternative to conventional Christianity, one full of opportunities to engage current intellectual frontiers ranging from quantum physics and Asian spiritual teachings to psychology and contemporary poetry.

Embedded under the conventional interpretation of the scriptures and teachings about Jesus is an alternative definition of Christ and Christianity.

When early Quakers in mid-1600s Britain experienced this as their “primitive Christianity revived,” they were forbidden by the blasphemy laws from proclaiming their understanding openly. Instead, they couched it in overlapping metaphors of the Light, the Seed, and the Truth.

Embracing holy mystery, I’ve found the Hidden Path emerges.

Forget everything you’ve heard about Christianity. Let me show you an alternative portrait of Christ, and a much different practice that results. It can change your life. For starters, you need to realize that Christ is bigger than Jesus.

I can introduce you to the Universal Christ, which is quite distinct from Jesus. It can transform your spiritual understanding and make your life deeper and richer.

This can revolutionize your experience of Christ and what it means to be Christian.

This is not simply an intellectual exercise, but a visceral awareness

The results will startle and provoke, not just across the spectrum of today’s Society of Friends, but among Christians everywhere.

Sometimes I experience the act of writing as prayer. Neither is done for outward compensation, much less any guarantee of results, but rather to open one’s heart and mind to what is eternal and true – and attune oneself to that, regardless.

Culling my collection of photography and tearsheets, I’ve recognized I no longer desire to travel many places I haven’t been, but would rather revisit places I have. Either in person or, in the case of Tibet or Japanese temples, in my thinking and study. I also recognize that could change, given different economic circumstances and an influx of free time.

I now seethe early Quaker vagabonds were Dharma bums, too. The itinerant ministry proffers its own humor.

Quakers are still around, all right. And more relevant than ever. Just listen.

You can find it in the digital platform of your choice at Smashwords, the Apple Store, Barnes & Noble’s Nook, Scribd, Sony’s Kobo, and other fine ebook retailers. You can also ask your public library to obtain it.

Among the advances in human society, don’t overlook toilets

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

Ever wonder how they work? No electricity, motors, or anything like that? Flush toilets are taken for granted by half of the world’s population, except when there’s a malfunction.

For perspective, check this roll. Well, actually two rolls today – it’s a Double Tendrils occasion.

  1. You visit a toilet about 2,500 times a year. And that’s under normal conditions.
  2. The bathroom is a leading cause of arguments among couples. As for other family members or housemates?
  3. In a public restroom, the first toilet cubicle in a row is the least used and thus the cleanest of all. Not the last one?
  4. The more features your smart phone has, the longer you sit on the can.
  5. More than 7 million people in the U.S. admit to dropping their cell phones in the bowl.
  6. The average kitchen chopping board has twice as the fecal bacteria than a toilet seat. And mobile phones have 18 times more bacteria than do toilet handles.
  7. When it comes to replacing the toilet paper, three out of four people put the flap in front, away from the wall.
  8. For the latest in modern comforts, high-tech toilets can lift their lids when they sense you approaching or instantly warm the seat to your body temperature. Some will wash your rear and blow warm air to dry it, a feature of note for mobility-limited people.
  9. Some high-tech toilets even clean themselves. I assume that would ease some of those arguments back in item 2.
  10. Much of the other half of the world population relies on dry privies such as outhouses, pit latrines, port-a-potties, composting or incinerating toilets, and “treebogs” surrounded by nutrient-absorbing plants.

Now, for some historical and global angles.

  1. The ancestor of the modern porcelain john was created by Sir John Harington, a godson of Queen Elizabeth I. Banished from the court on account of his bawdy verses and humor (how appropriate), he wound up in Bath in southwest England and devised a flushing toilet in 1596. Its system of handles emptied water from a tank at the same time the user opened levers to flush the toilet contents down the drain to who knows where. Allegedly, the contraption brought him back into the queen’s good graces.
  2. The modern household throne typically relies on two developments. The first is the ballcock, the bobbing mechanism inside a toilet tank, which prevents water from overflowing in a storage tank. Invented by Mexican priest and scientist Jose Antonio de Alzate y Ramirez around 1790 and early applied to steam engines, it eventually provided toilets with the flush of water that generates a siphon that sucks the toilet bowl contents up and over a trap and then away. Thus, the second breakthrough development, the S trap by Scottish mechanic Alexander Cumming in 1775, collects water in the bowl and prevents sewer gases from escaping into the bathroom. Further advances soon followed, largely in England.
  3. Contrary to legend, plumber and businessman Thomas Crapper did not invent the flush toilet. Versions of that were already widespread in water-closets in middle-class homes, especially in London once a sewage system was constructed. He did refine the throne and obtained appropriate patents but is best known for popularizing toilets in Victorian England. In 1870, he opened the first showroom and even allowed customers to try out the merchandise before purchase. With his name emblazoned on the overhead tanks, he soon became synonymous with the product. For the record, though, the slang term “crap” traces back to Middle English.
  4. Flushing toilets appear as early as settlements in the Indus Valley of 2,500 B.C.E., though antecedents have been found back to the Neolithic period. For that matter, the oldest toilet is still functioning about 4,000 years after it was built. It’s Knossos, Greece, in a small castle.
  5. Toilet paper may have been invented in China in the 6th Other early wipes included pebbles carried in a sponge on a stick common among ancient Romans; a small bag of pebbles carried by Jews; wool, lace, or hemp for the wealthy or – catch your breath – rags, wood shavings, leaves, dry grass, moss, sand, ferns, plant husks, seashells, corncobs, and, of course, water, by the general populace.
  6. Modern commercial toilet paper originated in the 1800s, although Joseph Gayetty is widely credited with introducing the product in the United States in 1857 Gayetty’s Medicated Paper was sold in packages of flat sheets, watermarked with the inventor’s name.
  7. A patent for roll-based dispensers was awarded in 1883, and its application extended to toilet paper in 1890 the Scot Paper Company was the first to manufacture what would become the long strips of perforated paper wrapped around a paperboard core found within reach of the majority of toilets.
  8. Toilet paper also comes folded as interleaved sheets in boxes, or in bulk for use in dispensers.
  9. Colored toilet paper, popular from the 1960s, has largely faded from the marketplace, replaced largely by embossed patterns or color designs. And, as a selling point, “softness” or “fluffiness” is a bonus.
  10. The average American uses 141 rolls a year, double the rate in other Western countries or Japan. One factor for the difference is that folks elsewhere use bidets or spray hoses to clean themselves.

A surge of activity after seemingly nothingness

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

In the renovation, we had periods were seemingly nothing was happening but then, BLAM!, things suddenly moved on all fronts.

This was especially true when we were at the mercy of other tradesmen and their schedules – plumbers, high on the list.

One of those involved the crew that would do the sprayed foam insulation on the front half upstairs. We decided to go with a different company than the one that had done the back, in part because the new one got back to us with a bid promptly, unlike the other. Not only that, they could get to work for us sooner than later.

That did put some pressure on Adam to get the electrical wiring and outlets in the framing before the crew showed up, so it was crunch time there.

But then the electrical panel in the basement blew out.

We were without power going into the weekend. And without heat.

Adam did have an amazing storage battery that we plugged the refrigerator into while he patched the old system.

As he said, the only thing holding the panel together was rust and spider webs.

This came only months after he had rewired the pretty much the whole house, everything but the panel and circuit-breaker box. They were scheduled for later.

And then, the whole town lost power for a few hours, all just before the weekend and the foam-spray guys on Monday.

As a further complication, we had to be out of the house for 24-hours after the foam application. We got a two-night reservation near West Quoddy State Park, in a delightful cabin overlooking Lubec Channel and all the way up to a corner of Eastport. We were so close to home and yet a world away.

The bad news came when we determined the extent of damage done by the power surge. Four of our surge protectors were fried, as was the outlet to our washer (for a while, we thought it was gone), and then a unit in our furnace was also kaput – requiring a night call for service.

It was quite a whirlwind for us.

That sprayed-in foam insulation also covers the wiring. It’s amazing.

We still needed a new electrical panel and, while they were at it, a new circuit-breaker box, too. Adam called in some allies to tackle that, and they got to us quicker than usual. The problem was getting the electric company to come promptly to cut off the power to the house and restore it.

Whew, it did happen, though the utility forgot to include a ladder with the first truck it sent out.

~*~

Perhaps this is the time to explain why we passed on the Generac backup when we moved to town. You might get a charge out of this.

Most of us, at least in the industrialized world, take reliable electrical wiring for granted. An old house, especially if you’re updating it, can remind you otherwise.

I’ve already mentioned the hot topic that Maine is prone to widespread electrical power outages. The state does have some arcane accounting details that likely abate the problem, but I’ll spare you the common rants about our utility companies and their higher-than-average rates.

One upshot is that many houses around here have emergency generators emplaced to kick in at the outbreak of an outage. Sometimes we hear that before we realize our lights and other conveniences are out.

We nearly got one ourselves, despite the high price. The tripping point turned out to be where to put the unit itself, its concrete pad etc., but especially the propane tank – a much bigger one than we thought necessary. The only viable site in our yard was in the heart of our best full sunlight, a spot we deemed more valuable as a future garden bed.

That didn’t rule out a smaller portable Honda generator in the future, though it wouldn’t go into service automatically and requires attention for the duration of an outage.

Better yet, the portable battery Adam lent us looked like the ideal solution for us, especially after we found one on sale.

We’re thinking between that and our wood stove we can ride out the typical outage.

We’ll see.

How much of my story is not directly my story?

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

Rather, so much arises in the intersections with so many others. It’s part of the role of the artist as a witness.

We could consider the death of my ex-spouse’s second husband, for example, or the death of my current spouse’s first. Some hit closer to home than others.

Even the activities of others in our own households that aren’t exactly ours individually.

Add to that the ways others would see us, in contrast to our own versions.

These are typical of things that still impact our own individual life stories. Our lives could have led to so many other possible outcomes, after all.

Let me admit that my life is enriched by what others do around me, even when I’m not actively engaged. I want to share in their glory … or whatever. The way a sports fan does.

A writer is ultimately an observer, not just a participant.

For example, as a poet and professional journalist, I found that the police radio scanner in the newsroom more accurately reflected romantic relationships in America today than any collection of English love poems. You didn’t have to sit next to a police scanner to perceive how sexual relationships had taken a peculiar turn.

Or, from another perspective, growing up in Ohio, I had thought our family had no colorful traditions or legacy. Only after moving on to both coasts and, by chance, embracing the faith of my ancestors did I come to see how much Grandpa and Grandma were discarding the very things I was reclaiming and how thoroughly they were adapting to a changing urban environment. Despite all the time my sister and I spent with them, I came to realize I really didn’t know them, after all. Just who are grandparents, anyway? Does anyone’s fit our idealized image? Only recently, learning that Grandpa proudly advertised himself as Dayton’s Leading Republican Plumber, did I find the key to unlocking their story and its place in history.

I had no idea Grandpa’s lines had been Quaker through North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Northern Ireland, and Cumbria, England. There was nothing of the pirate attack that left an orphan to arrive in the New World, where he eventually settled on the frontier of Pennsylvania and later the Carolina Piedmont. Nothing of our gold mine or the pacifism in the face of the Confederacy, either. Grandma’s lines, meanwhile, had been Dunker – another pacifist denomination – and a pioneer family settling a corner of Montgomery County, Ohio, that up until the First World War was as Pennsylvania Dutch as the Lancaster and York counties it had left. These are not the American histories we typically see.

What kind of person would describe himself as Dayton’s Leading Republican Plumber? My grandfather did, though it was only years after his death that that tidbit finally allowed me to know who he really was. It’s really a remarkable story.

As for the others who crossed my path in college or the upheavals after?

I have no idea where most of them have gone.

Of the others, the results aren’t always what I anticipated.

I do know that none of what I see around me is being faithfully examined on television or the movies, something I’ll argue is cultural impoverishment.

Piracy today, yes, it’s real

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

If you think that pirates are a long-ago thing or are cute and romantic along the lines of Disney’s Pirates of the Caribbean series or actor Johnny Depp, think again. This Tendrils won’t even attempt to name the ten best pirate movies ever or ten best pirate actors or ten examples of the crazy language employed there. Egads, matey?

Instead, let’s take a look at what’s taking place in the 21st century.

  1. After a trend of declining activity, the International Maritime Bureau reported a global increase in piracy against shipping in 2023, with an especially alarming rise in the number of crew being taken hostage. I don’t think we can blame Covid, though. More recent data are difficult to sift. There’s so much jargon and legalese, perhaps because of the insurance companies.
  2. The leading hot spots today have been the Gulf of Guinea, the Callao anchorage in Peru, and the Singapore Strait along with Southeast Asia in general. Look them up on the map.
  3. The majority of vessels targeted by attackers were bulk carriers, that is, merchant ships specially designed to transport unpackaged bulk cargo such as grain, coal, ore, steel coils, and cement. Tankers and containerships were also hit, as were smaller vessels such as commercial fishing boats. Even yachts have been at risk.
  4. Incidents were nearly evenly split between vessels anchored or underway. For those that were anchored, that usually meant attackers shimmying up the anchor chain in the depth of the night.
  5. Consider an attack undertaken in broad daylight when six pirates in a skiff began chasing the MSC Jasmine and opened fire with automatic weapons and rocket-propelled grenades. The master the ship raised an alert, sent most of his sailors to the ship’s citadel, and ordered his security team to return fire. The pirates retreated, but didn’t get far. Two warships, one American and one French, responded the distress signal, intercepted the skiff, and caught its mother ship to boot. Twelve pirates were taken into custody.
  6. In another violent attack, the Singapore-flagged product tanker, MT Success 9 was boarded along the Ivory Coast by 12 pirates wearing ski masks and gloves and armed with guns. They hijacked the tanker, restrained the crew with cable ties, and kept them hostage while part of the oil cargo was stolen. Before leaving the vessel, the pirates also destroyed the tanker’s navigational equipment.
  7. Other pirates even used military helicopters. So much for walking the plank.
  8. Southeast Asia, however, remains the primary area for piracy attacks. Most of those were petty crimes with ship stores or property stolen.
  9. Incidents in the Callao Anchorage in Peru and the Indonesian archipelago have also been rising, to the point that Indonesia’s 17,500 islands and surrounding waters may now take the title as the world’s most heavily pirated.
  10. Most of the attacks are driven by factors ranging from corruption and institutional weakness to depleted fishing conditions and a lack of economic opportunities in countries outside of the Western nations’ primary focus.

Online and intellectual piracy is a whole different matter.

The upstairs front half wasn’t nearly the snap we expected

~ Jnana Hodson ~ 4 Comments

Now, to update you on much of the demolition and rebuilding that transpired while we engaged in uncovering the history of our old house. Or as I can now say with confidence, our historic house. I do hope you enjoyed reading those findings.

While I’m confident we do not have ghosts in our crannies, unlike some of our neighbors in theirs, I can say that after learning of the families who previously resided here, I am conscious of the earlier residents’ imprints. Our is not just any old house, then, but a manifestation of Eastport itself. I do wonder how the parade of earlier inhabitants would react to what we’re doing to the home. The few still living whom I’ve spoken with have been encouraging. And Anna M. Baskerville is, I hope, smiling over all of it.

My biggest lesson to date is that ours is an ongoing project, a work-in-progress, far from finished much less ever perfect. Still, we keep trying to come a bit closer to that ideal.

~*~

As we entered 2024, we still had the front half of the upstairs to rip away and enlarge.

The biggest hurdle was already behind us — the insertion of the ridgepole the length of the roof and the four supporting columns. It was needed to hold up the old front rafters until they were replaced, and needed afterward, as well. The new front rafters would connect to it.

This round promised to be a piece of cake in comparison to what came before. There would be no plumbing to contend with.

We now knew how the roofing would come off, as well as the way that removing the knee walls would extend the wall of the new dustpan dormer out further than the two small dormers that were becoming history. Also, the color of the new metal roofing was already decided.

We even knew the brand and style of the windows.

If only it went that easily.

~*~

We anticipated resuming full-force in the spring, but it was closer to the beginning of summer. Our contractor had a few earlier commitments to follow up on, for one thing, and then rainy weather forecasts set us back, for another, as well as health issues for our hardworking contractor.

And then those little dormers turned out to be far more complicated than expected. When they were added, apparently sometime after 1850, the rafters above them were simply severed, with no structural support. Adam was appalled. What were they thinking? How did it ever hold up, especially once a slate roof was added?

Weather didn’t cooperate, either. And then when all the debris would have been generated, we couldn’t get a dumpster – turns out they get booked out a year ahead around here for the town’s big Fourth of July festivities. Who’d a thunk?

And there were other delays.

Our plumber, for one, wound up on a big project out in Indiana and then another in Seattle. He promised to be back.

Some people thought we staged this as a theatrical statement, but the big tarp was a desperation replacement for several smaller ones – and it, too, got torn up in some fierce weather. We had some water “raining” in the two front parlors, despite the best efforts otherwise.

The roofing, eaves, window framing, new electrical lines, and spray-foam insulation all took time.

And there was the delay when the electrical panel in the cellar blew out and had to be replaced, along with the circuit-breaker box.

The upshot was that the front upstairs wasn’t buttoned up until Halloween, a bit over a year after we set forth, and then interior framed and drywalled finished just before Christmas.

Many people told us that was moving quickly by Eastport standards.

Uh-huh.

It has been an adventure, one that fluctuates wildly between elation and despair.

My literature and histories are not all about ‘back then,’ exactly

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

If it’s not personal, what’s the point? While I am talking about writing, in particular, let’s extend that to religion and politics and life in general, wherever we can.

Please make every effort to see those points where we may connect with mutual respect if we’re to advance the human condition. Period.

~*~

I’m left with the realization that my “serious” writing, meaning literary rather than the quickly perishable daily journalism, originated as contemporary poetry and fiction but now falls into historical.

So much has changed, it’s almost hysterical.

Photography, for instance – the career of a central character in four of my novels – no longer requires film, dark rooms and developers and enlargers, or light meters and F-stops.

As for rotary-dial telephones and thick books of people and their numbers?

Instead, I’ll start with the fact that America has never come to terms with its hippie past – positive as well as negative. At least my cool end of it. I’ll let the uptight ‘Nam side defend itself. For my side, it’s like we’re scared or embarrassed of what opened our hearts and minds. While we retreated from the general effort to push the envelope, to advance to Edge City, to demolish boundaries, we also failed to examine what we learned and carry from that experience. Instead, there was a society-wide state of denial that was bound to erupt in unanticipated ways – likely, without any sustaining wisdom. I’ll insist that’s why the nation is in the state that it is now.

For now, my novels stand as a witness to that era and experience and the root of many changes for the better we take for granted today. I do wish there were more voices to tell of that revolution, thwarted as it eventually was. Histories, whether of the scholarly sort or as the art of its time, sustain societies.

~*~

To that let me note that daily fresh air essential for my well-being. The outdoors counteracts feelings of entrapment or engulfment and depression I’ve been susceptible to otherwise. I need to get a taste of wild nature – my feet on the ground, my fingers in the soil, my eyes on the horizon and sky.

It’s part of my spiritual recalibration, even when I was living in the yoga ashram in Pennsylvania’s Pocono mountains.

In this, every day counts, good weather or bad.

~*~

Personal relationships have certainly changed within my lifetime. My parents’ generation suffered many more unhappy marriages in contrast to today, though many youths at the moment have only an envy of deep connection and commitment.

My love poems of the turbulent ‘80s and ‘90s stand as witness to that transition, as do my novels Daffodil Uprising, Pit-a-Pat High Jinks, and Nearly Canaan.

~*~

I am embarrassed for Ohio and Indiana since I’ve left. They had such greatness and potential.

~*~

You’ll find my novels in the digital platform of your choice at Smashwords, the Apple Store, Barnes & Noble’s Nook, Scribd, Sony’s Kobo, and other fine ebook retailers. They’re also available in paper and Kindle at Amazon, or you can ask your local library to obtain them.

Slatkins and the Hollywood String Quartet

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

From what I saw of the classical music scene in America when I was growing up, the West Coast in general and Los Angeles, in particular as its primary metropolis, were seen as something of a backwater, despite some of the city’s celebrity musicians such as violinist Jascha Heifetz, pianist/composer Sergei Rachmaninoff, and serialist composer Arnold Schoenberg.

In the classical field, the city’s music-making was dismissed as subservient to the film industry. There wasn’t even any opera, in contrast to San Francisco.

That perception has changed, especially since the opening of the Walt Disney Concert Hall along with the Los Angeles Philharmonic’s rise under Esa-Pekka Salonen and Gustavo Dudamel to what prominent critics have deemed the most important orchestra in the nation.

Meanwhile, LA’s earlier life is getting reconsideration these days, thanks to the Slatkin family and its history that centers, especially, on the Hollywood String Quartet.

Here’s why.

  1. The quartet, drawn from film industry musicians but known largely through its recordings on Capitol Records, was critically acclaimed as the best string quartet ever in America. But because of conflicting schedule demands among its four members, it was unable to tour outside of California except on rare occasion. That did dampen their awareness in the larger artistic world. Listen to their recordings, though, or view their only video performance on YouTube, and the case is compelling. We can argue about the amazing American ensembles that have come since. These days, I’ll say simply the Hollywood Four remain unsurpassed but are now rivalled, which I see as a blessing. And here I had dismissed their name as somehow celebrity gloss.
  2. Let’s start with the first violinist, Felix Slatkin. Born in St. Louis, Missouri, to a Jewish family from Ukraine, he studied violin under Efrem Zimbalist and conducting under Fritz Reiner at the Curtis Institute in Philadelphia. It doesn’t get any better than that. At age 17 he joined the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra as assistant principal violinist before becoming concertmaster for Twentieth Century Fox Studios, where he soloed in several acclaimed soundtracks. He and his new wife also cofounded the quartet in 1939. As a conductor, he founded the Concert Arts Orchestra, comprised largely of studio musicians, and led the Hollywood Bowl Orchestra, local professionals in the summer season. He recorded widely on the Capitol label with both the quartet and the two orchestras. He was also Frank Sinatra’s concertmaster and conductor of choice. He died of a heart attack at age 47.
  3. His wife was a New York native of Russian Jewish extraction, Eleanor Aller, the principal cellist of the Warner Bros. Studio Orchestra. Not only was she the first woman to hold a principal chair in a studio orchestra, hers was a position no woman held in any of the major orchestras of Europe or America, due to her sex. Kudos on the breakthrough. Oh, yes, she did make her mark as a soloist on major soundtracks as well as on the concert stage. Shortly after their marriage, the couple established the Grammy-winning quartet while continuing to work as studio musicians.
  4. Today, their son Leonard is the best-known family member. American conductors have faced an uphill battle against Europeans when it comes to prestigious positions, but this Slatkin has earned a well-placed distinction. At the early age of 33, he was offered the music directorship of three fine American orchestras and chose St. Louis over Minnesota and Cincinnati, in part because of the support the management offered in his development. As he led St. Louis to world-class recognition, many highly acclaimed recordings followed. Later appointments had him heading the National Symphony of Washington and those of Detroit, Nashville, and Lyon, France, as well as the BBC Symphony. He also had significant roles in Chicago, at the Aspin festival in Colorado and Blossom festival in Ohio, and even in Las Vegas. It’s quite a resume, even before getting to opera.
  5. Over its 22-year span, the quartet had two second fiddles and two violists. The original second violinist was Joachim Chassman, joined by violist Paul Robyn. With the outbreak of World War II, the quartet disbanded when the three males enlisted in the military. When the quartet resumed in 1947, Paul Shure replaced Chassman. Alvin Dinkin took over the viola chair in 1955.
  6. All of the members were leading studio musicians during a period noted for its vibrant, lush movie scores. How could that not influence their chamber music as well? They were all Jewish, trained at either Juilliard or Curtis, and of relatively the same age.
  7. Frank Sinatra, yes, Ol’ Blue Eyes, was accompanied by the quartet on several acclaimed records during the ‘50s. He even became a close professional and personal family friend of the Slatkins. For perspective, listen to Chuck Granata’s contention that “In Slatkin, Sinatra found a kindred spirit, as the violinist’s immaculate playing paralleled what Sinatra sought to achieve with his voice; serious listeners will note many similarities comparing Sinatra’s and Slatkin’s individual approaches to musical interpretation. One hallmark of the HSQ was its long, smooth phrasing which was accomplished through controlled bowing techniques; Sinatra utilized breath control to realize the same effect. Likewise, where Felix would frequently add slight upward portamento to a critical note and neatly strike an emotional chord, the singer would often inflect a note upward or downward or seamlessly glide from one key to another.” Friends, that’s real music-making.
  8. Capitol Records played a supportive role. Based in Hollywood, the label recorded not just Sinatra during this period but also most of the quartet’s albums and Felix’s Hollywood Bowl and Concert Arts Orchestra vinyl disks. It’s an impressive list.
  9. The parents did have a rivalry. Son Leonard was awed by his father’s being able to pick up the violin after three or four weeks of neglect (due to conducting demands) and still polish off the Tchaikovsky concerto or some other demanding solo work in contrast to his mother, who practiced up to five hours a day just to maintain level. He said it was a cause of resentment. Understandably. He also pointed out that his father’s bowing arm control was unsurpassed, something the video confirms.
  10. Victor Aller, Eleanor’s brother, appeared with the quartet as pianist. He studied at Juilliard under Josef Lhevinne and became a distinguished film industry pianist and manager.

My first encounter with the quartet was, I vaguely remember, on a Contemporary Records release I found at the Dayton Public Library, perhaps with a very young Andre Previn on piano. Alas, I find no reference to it now. Son Leonard’s rise as a conductor would have come much later.