So many years ago that this is almost a story that could start with "once upon a time", my family lived in a very big house, a legacy of the days of grand families and grand architects. The realtor called it a mansion. My family still calls it The Big House.
The first floor was indeed very grand. There was a parlor for company, and a library with built-in shelves. A dining room that overlooked a formal rose garden. A ballroom. The second floor had the good bedrooms, big as New York City studio apartments, with much nicer baths than I have ever had since.
My spirit's home, though, was up one more flight, in the small third floor servants' quarters. There, in a little monk's cell of a room with one window, I had a desk, a chair, a box of onion skin paper, my Sheaffer fountain pen, and a box of ink cartridges. And my companion, Jo March. I wanted to be just like Jo March, and to that end I scribbled page after page of - what? stories, probably, and perhaps some poems. I don't remember, and as my family moved a lot, nothing remains of all that ink except the memory of the texture of the paper, and the sound the pen nib made as I wrote line after line after blotted line. Oh, I wanted to be a writer.
Singing turned out to be easier, and my dear Lord is aware that I rather enjoy the spotlight. But this "words thing" never went away. I care about lyrics, I read aloud to people whenever I can, I do inspirational speaking, Shakespeare's King Lear leaves me sobbing on the floor, for Jo's spell has never worn off. And particularly at this time of year, the connection I feel to this fictitious character and to the extraordinary woman who created - or released - her is especially strong. It has long been my Christmas season practice to read Little Women again. Every year, somehow, it seems a better book.
My pretty little red leather-bound copy is currently in storage with the rest of my things, so I went to the local library. Their copy is for in-library use only - can you imagine? I'd have to wear shoes! But I found another treasure that I could take home: Marmee and Louisa by Eve LaPlante (2012). As far as I know LaPlante is the first author to explore the relationship between Lou and her mother, Abigail. Ever since her death in 1888, conventional wisdom has held that Louisa was her daddy's girl through and through, educated by him, inheritor of his gifts, beneficiary of his attention. That never set quite right with me. If the Alcott family was the model for the March family, why was the father absent for most of the book? Well, as it turns out, Bronson Alcott was also much absent in real life, and he never made a living. His mind on higher things, he seems to have been content to let his wife and daughters do all the work for the lowlier purposes of rent and food. Unlike his wife, Alcott did not particularly believe in the equality of women, and he came late to the abolitionist's cause. It was Abigail (Marmee) who encouraged her daughters to live full, good lives and to work to utilize their gifts, Marmee who wrote volumes of journals. And it was Marmee who worked until her health was ruined, as did Louisa, whose writing supported the family until she died at 56 (her royalties did so thereafter). The relationship between mother and daughter was deep, and necessary for both women. LaPlante's is a beautiful and calmly fierce book, well-researched and well-written, sad in many ways, but ultimately inspiring. Abigail was left out of history; Eve has fixed that.
You can buy the book through LaPlante's website, to which I have inserted a link above. Amazon has it, of course, but if you possibly can, please get it from an independent bookseller.
...it is in my DNA. Both my parents had fine voices, and though as a teenager I was embarassed in church because they sang so loudly, theirs were the best voices in every choir they were in.
But the singer line runs primarily through my mom. Her father, Leonard Kranendonk, is the man standing on the right in this photo. From him, my mother and my uncle (on the left) inherited their voices; from my mother, my sister and I inherited ours.
Mom was a coloratura soprano of astonishing range. She now sings tenor with her choir. My Uncle Bob, a true musician-singer, has a rich smokey baritone voice, and my sister's is a contralto as sweetly dark as buckwheat honey. But we did not all become professional vocalists; only my grandfather, my uncle, and I followed that path.
My grandad was for many years the lead baritone of Fred Waring's Pennsylvanians, an internationally-renowned glee club that started in the late 1930s. My uncle also sang with them for a time. You may not have heard of them, but there would be no Glee TV show without them (and possibly no Robert Shaw Chorale, since that's where Shaw got his start). Waring had a weekly radio and then television show, and they are considered, I learned last year, to have been the original Show Choir. English was my grandfather's second language (he emigrated from The Netherlands), but his own perfectionism and Waring's Tone Syllables, a diction technique, resulted in what you will hear on this opening track from his only solo album.
Leonard Kranendonk The Lord is My Light
My grandfather and I did not agree on the role of improvisation, but I think he was proud of me, and I feel him with me every time I sing in church. And because he sang sunrise Easter services on a mountaintop, and blessings at the Thanksgiving table, I reckoned I could, too. Singing anytime, anywhere, without accompaniment was normal.
It's autumn in upstate NY. As winds tug at the leaves of gold and flame, the trees simply let go, and drop them (you want lessons in attachment and non-attachment? Look to the deciduous trees). It's getting colder. Both my grandparents lived into the 21st century, and I lost them only 11 years ago, my grandmother Elsie (who sang alto) in October 2011, my grandfather the following spring. I feel them, and feel the pull of the old songs that are my my most valuable inheritance, and the voices that carried them. All these years later, I'm the one singing loudly in church. But really, whom then shall I fear, when I never sing alone?
A princess, yes, and children, yes, but not in a Disney way...
The performance opens with Hymn to the Muse, an ancient Greek song I recorded in 1999 for my Feather and Bone CD. Though there are older song fragments, this is perhaps the oldest complete piece we have in western musical tradition. I'll be singing it live, and then carrying on as The Nurse (also not in a DIsney way). Bram Lewis has created a powerful adaptation - do come if you can.
I have always been a Beatles fan. Always. I remember the first time I heard them, and from that moment on, as far as I was concerned, they were The Ones.
But I had friends, tin-eared and delusional, who thought the Rolling Stones were The Ones. Poor dears! Their sonic worlds were clearly different from mine, and they were clearly wrong.
One thing was certain: nobody liked both. In fact, it was tacitly understood that one was not allowed to like both.
Which meant that I deprived myself, on principle, of the raucous splendor of the Stones music for many years. I still like the Beatles best, and probably always will. But I know now that there are times when only Keith Richards' guitar tones will do.
Over the years, I watched heated arguments over whether Kiss was categorically better than Alice Cooper, jazz better than rock, fusion indisputably better than swing, countertenors better than female altos. Yikes! Either/or, either/or. Choose or lose! Yes, it's necessary, to a certain extent. But it's also choose and lose. The best musicians I know listen to everything, and borrow from everything. Both and all would seem to be their motto, and I think this is the best way to be.
I bring this up today because I am tired of hearing wonderful musicians and singers (including me) complain about Lady Gaga. I think we should stop doing that. Most of us can't do what she does, and there are a lot of folks who really love what she does. Fair enough. Her music and performance style are not to my taste, and so they're not part of my daily life. What does seem to be part of my life is the ceaseless growl of negative comments made by some of the artists I do like.
Most of us are old enough to know better. I think we can do better, if only when in front of other people.
Let's lighten up on each other. Let's speak with a greater measure of grace and dignity, and stop flaying the girls in the meat dresses and the short dresses and no dresses at all. Let's stop muttering about J.K. Rowling's wealth, too (you know who you are). Success does not ensure a trouble-free life. Things can happen. The Wheel of Fortune can turn very quickly. Believe me. I know this very well.
Benjamin Disraeli is credited with having said, "Never complain, and never explain." I'm going to try that, at least for the rest of the afternoon.
Once I have loaded my steampunk laptop (see previous post) into the gypsy caravan, along with my sister Babette, her dog, my cat, and a teakettle (of course), this is the map we will be consulting:
Map via danmeth.com
We'll be singing all the way.
Hot, sultry breezes ruffling the leaves, neighbors out walking, kids getting ready for the fireworks - it's Independence Day. Mrs. Peel and I have been celebrating our freedoms all day here - freedom to have breakfast, freedom to play with the feather-on-a-string-thing, freedom to take naps. What a country!
I am still savoring the sweetness of Western and Swing Week at Ashokan Fiddle and Dance Camp, and am a little between worlds, as I always am when I first return home. That this holiday is falling right after camp is a blessing; it gives me one more day before I have to make sentences for humans.
You may remember that I had, at the last minute, lost my cat care person due to a scheduling conflict. I was a little frantic until I thought to ask friends who go to camp every year and live in the area if we could stay at their house. They generously agreed, and so Mrs. Peel had her first long road trip. It's one thing to be in her little crate in the car for as long as it takes me to move it for alternate side parking. She had done well with that. A two and a half hour car ride is another thing entirely, and she made quite a few objections, in the raspy baby voice she usually only uses for yelling about dinner. Imagine Tina Turner complaining in the passenger seat. She was obviously not happy.
When we arrived at the M's house, they were loading their car with camping gear, and getting their dog settled, so there was a fair hullabaloo going on. I took Mrs. Peel up to the guest room and let her out of her crate. She fled under the bed, and stayed there most of the next two days, until she felt safe. Then she started zipping and zooming around the room, exploring at high speed.
I traveled back and forth several times a day, to feed her and play with her, and I slept there at night, and it all worked out. We were both given little revelations. The sunny spot on the floor was a new experience for her, as our city windows don't get any direct light. She liked the warmth, and was entranced by the dust motes that dance in sunbeams. Watching her, I could see for the first time the faint tabby striping in what usually looks like a night-black pelt. There was a dressing table in the room, with three mirrors, each reflecting a cat who looked just like her. How alarming! Much posturing and puffing up and skittering ensued. But when the mirror cats proved incapable of coming up with any new ideas, Mrs. Peel lost interest. She then invented a new game to play: bat the ball hard. She's ready to join a soccer team as goalkeeper. Or, since balancing on a broomstick is as easy as lapping up cream, to be Keeper on a Quidditch team.
She ate well, she behaved beautifully, all this I expected. What I had not entirely anticipated was the effect of being able to bring her, how merry it would make me, even though it prevented me from staying at the camp itself.
On the way home, she voiced her complaints again, all the way to my sister's house, where I stopped in for a glass of cool water and a hug. Babette suggested Mrs. Peel might like Mozart. Once back in the car for the last leg of the trip, I turned on the radio, and found no Mozart, but - to my delight! - a station playing Louis Armstrong records from the 1930s. Perfect music to listen to after such a joyous week, at least for me. At the first sound of that golden horn, she stopped talking. Her ears flicked forward in interest. A minute or so later, she stretched, and yawned, listened a litle longer, and then fell asleep.
I should not have been surprised. Mrs. Peel is one hep kitty. And Pops? Well, he really was the cat's pajamas.
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