Laurel Massé

To the Christians in the House

I once had a manager who thought he was John Galt. Or at least a John Galt. Even though I adored him, I knew he wasn't. And when he went on to embezzle a substantial sum, it bore out my literary instinct.

I knew, though, who he was talking about because I had read Atlas Shrugged as a younger girl. So much younger, in fact, that my mother had taken the book away from me, saying, "You don't need to read that. You're selfish enough already." But I eventually read through to the end.

So when Ayn Rand's writings came back into public notice with the advent of and media attention to the Tea Party and the Libertarians and Paul Ryan's Randian Catholicism (an oxymoron), I did not have to run out to buy the book to understand that there would be trouble ahead for women, immigrants, and the poor from anyone who followed her precepts. Which are horribly, horribly selfish precepts, and idolatrous, and about as far as one can get from the teachings of Jesus.

A group of Christian faith leaders (Faithful Filibuster) gathers every day Congress is in session across the street from the Capitol  building to read scripture out loud, especially the 2000 verses that tell us how to care for the poor. This is both a protest, and a public education service. Obviously there are a few folks in the government who have clean forgotten that the Bible has any use other than as a weapon with which to bludgeon people.

Those same forgetful folks have also forgotten their Ayn Rand. For it is not, in Atlas Shrugged, the heroic capitalists alone who bring down the government, and with it, the entire culture. It is the giddy, greedy, cruel Wesley Mouches, out for themselves.

You have changed the rules in the House so as to prevent any change in direction. You bark about the Constitution. You would edit out the uncomfortable bits of Jesus' words. Show me how you are not a Mouch.

Listen up, House. You dance yourselves into a tunnel of an ever-shrinking width. It is not the narrow path to heaven. It is a death trap. You will soon lose the ability to turn around. You are worshipping power, and money, and individualism. You are throwing other people's children into the fires of Moloch, in the belief that wealth and particular interests will take care of you if you legislate the sacrifice of others. They will not take care of you. They will use you, and devour you, and fail you, and forget you. They are false idols.

Relent. Repent. Come back into the daylight. Help save our country by saving its people. The Lord, which you claim to proclaim, said to love God, and love our neighbor, to heal the sick, and raise the dead. 

It's time to take Him seriously. It is time to turn around. Come back to your senses. We need you. Come back to us.

 

One united theory

If any, if even one, of my science teachers in elementary school had been able to communicate their delight in science, to show there is joy and beauty in science, and that gravity is not grave...

Well, then. Who knows?

Thank you, Tim Blais, for giving us this A Capella Science video. Viewers, watch past the end to see links to Tim's other projects. And thanks, Canada!

 

                          

 

Still Jo's girl

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.

 

 

 

Cool school

This is wonderful on many levels. It's a great story about jazz and the culture of jazz, a story about being, and trying to be, cool, and, most wonderfully, a story that can teach you how to tell a story.

 

The Manhattan Transfer opened for Mr. Cosby at the Las Vegas Hilton in - oh, what was it? - 1975? Maybe. It was an amazing experience, and not just because of Cosby. James Moody was in the house orchestra! Which was very cool.

The thing about cats

In my one brief shining moment at graduate school, I had to read about the male gaze. Or, more precisely, read about the disquisition about the male gaze. "In feminist theory, the male gaze expresses an asymmetric (unequal) power relationship, between viewer and viewed, gazer and gazed" (thank you, Wikipedia). I also had to write about what I had read, distilling others' opinions but never venturing my own. This last constraint probably accounted for the brevity of the shining moment. Outside the ivy'd towers, any woman who has walked past a construction site in the city already knows pretty much all she needs to know about that gaze.

 It would have been much more interesting to me to read and write about the feline gaze, as has poet Jean L'Heureux. L'Heureux means the happy one, and perhaps some of that happiness resulted from observing and being observed by cats, rather than reading up on the scholarly disquisition, and from writing poems rather than graduate theses. Just an opinion, folks. Here's the poem: 

 

The Thing About Cats

Cats hang out with witches quite a lot:

that's not it.

 

The thing about cats is

they're always looking at you.

Especially when you're asleep.

 

Some cats pretend they're not looking

until you're not looking.

They are not to be trusted.

 

Some cats scowl because they're wearing

imitation fur. they feel inferior.

 

Some other cats look at you straight on

so that you can't drink your drink

or make love

                    but keep thinking

that cat's looking at me straight on.

 

But all cat's do the same:

they look at you

                         and you look out

and in.

 

What I'm saying is

                            why are they looking?

 

Jean L'Heureux

 

International Women's Day

Voiceover by Judi Dench, as "M". Daniel Craig, as 007, James Bond.

The video, created by the photographer and film-maker Sam Taylor Wood, has been made for EQUALS, a partnership of leading charities brought together by Annie Lennox to celebrate the centenary of International Women's Day on Tuesday 8 March.

via www.telegraph.co.uk

 

A word in your ear...

Grammy awards were given out last night, and I didn't watch. Anything I want to see from that event will be on YouTube; this freed up my evening considerably for practicing and chatting with friends and Thinking About Things. I do want to make one comment on this year's music biz love-fest: Esperanza Spalding is very good, and I am very happy that a female jazz musician/singer of her caliber also has the good looks and the good industry support to take the award in the Best New Artist category. This meant, among other things, that an actual living jazz artist was on the televised part of the show, and not relegated to the pre-ceremony announcements. I can't think when a jazz artist - jazz, not jazz-y, jazz-like, or jazz-lite - won that award, and I find it quite remarkable. Let's hear it for the girl! None of the other awards surprise me.

Because of Esperanza's Grammy, I predict a surge in enrollments at Berklee College of Music and in high school jazz programs (if any are left after the horrifying cuts in education that seem to be on the way). Several years hence, the surgers will graduate with jazz degrees and impressive tuition-induced debt. But there aren't now, and won't be then, enough venues in which to play. Wait - there are venues, but most of them don't pay enough to bring musicians within riffing distance of the poverty line, much less allow them to crawl over that low bar. Same thing is going on in theater education: more and more graduates, fewer and fewer theaters. 

Nevertheless, we are going to be singing songs forever, whether we are paid or not, and therefore I have something important on my mind, something I think about every time I teach a master class, or attend a singer's performance. Coaches and critics talk often about the necessity of commitment when singing (and acting. Non-singing actors reading this can substitute "scene" for "song", and "line" for "lyric", because they're the same). No matter how beautifully or convincingly it is done, when a someone sings a song, or even a single word in a lyric, that he or she does not completely understand, I can tell.
Furthermore, the whole audience can tell. We can tell that you don't know what you're talking about. Even though your listeners might not be able to put their fingers on how they know this, and what exactly is amiss, their exquisitely sensitive bull-detectors will ring a tiny alarm. Ring that alarm often enough during your performance and, though your audience members may be sitting in their seats, they will be emotionally and intellectually gone, thinking about the laundry, or the events in Egypt, or the likelihood of being downsized, all of which they could be doing at home in a much more comfortable chair.

We singers especially can be a lazy lot, but don't be lazy about this. Get help. If it's a word you don't understand, look it up. In an ideal world of my designing, I would send you to your personal copy of the Oxford English Dictionary, but for heaven's sake, who can even lift the thing, much less afford it? You all have computers. Google away. Type "distingué: define", and discover what Strayhorn really meant in Lush Life, and why he chose that word over others that mean roughly, but not exactly, the same thing. Learn how to pronounce it, too. And if it's the meaning of the whole song that's eluding you, do some homework. Dig deep into it. Ask a director. Ask a coach. Ask an elder. FIgure it out. If none of that helps, and you have the choice, put it on the shelf and live a little longer, and then try it again. Meanings matter. If you know what lyrics mean, your audience will, too, even if they didn't before you sang them. Until you have experienced this a few times, just trust me on this. It's magic. And it's true.

A proppa cuppa - one woman's opinion

When I run for president - in my next life, of course - I will have a very short agenda. If you are serving black tea, use boiling water when you make it. Simple, yes?

Apparently not. Unless I go to a dedicated tea room, like the slice of sassy British heaven that is Tea and Sympathy here in Manhattan, the aromatic, magical potion that results from pouring boiling water into Yorkshire Gold and letting it steep for the proper amount of time is not what I am going to see coming toward me when I order tea at a restaurant.

I have been a drinker of the sacred beverage since I was ten, and I cut my tea-teeth in Solihull, England, at the daily afternoon break at St. Martin's School for Girls. It was a strong black brew, whitened with whole milk, and sweetened, if you liked it that way. "If you are cold, tea will warm you," said William Gladstone. "If you are too heated, it will cool you; if you are depressed, it will cheer you; if you are exhausted, it will calm you."  Tea at St. Martin's did all that, and set the imprint for what I expect from a cuppa: flavour, heat, energy, and something a little more intangible: gentling.

Let me make it clear that I am talking about tea made from the tea plant, camelia sinensis. Herb tea is made with herbs other than real tea. Confused? Not surprising. It's a simple failure of language. In French - and perhaps in other languages, but French is the one I know - thé is made with real tea, and herb teas (infusions made with herbs, not tea) are called tisanes. It makes sense to have two different words, because most of the time the two are not prepared in quite the same way.

Flavour starts with providing a good black tea to begin with. This tea will not say Lipton on the box. Nor will it say Bigelow, Stash, or the name of an American chain supermarket (I am talking about you, Key Foods!). I'm personally not all that fond of Twinings (as sold in the States) either, because it always seems so, oh, trying hard but too weak in the end to get the job done. My current favourite is Yorkshire Gold, a rich, malty blend that helps me sit a little straighter and think a little faster, and restores my optimism. If there is a good tea and coffee purveyor in your town, you'll be able to get beyond brand names into loose teas from all over the world, and will end up knowing more than I do about the stuff.

Now, dry tea tastes like sticks and leaves (a dry tea bag tastes like sticks, leaves, and paper). You need water, boiling water, to unlock the flavours of black tea. What this means, to the weary traveler, is that one can almost never get a good cup of tea in a restaurant south of the Canadian border, because most of the time the water used has been heated by running it through the coffee maker. Coffee makers are set to heat water to just below the boiling point, because coffee is appalled by boiling water. So it's never going to be hot enough. Then the water, hot-ish and smelling faintly of coffee filters, is poured into a too-small mug, and the mug, with a tea bag (Lipton, most likely) next to it, is brought to the table. Let me recap: it wasn't hot enough to begin with, it's less hot now, and the consummation devoutly to be wished, water and tea together in cup, still hasn't happened. 

One drops the tea bag into the cup and waits; the cold, weak brew that results is just plain discouraging. One may drink it, but why? In fact, why bother with anything? It's all so hopeless, really. Nothing matters.

One is hard-pressed to Get Up And Get On With It.

Furthermore, if it is a gentling of the buffeting winds of life that one was hoping for, and that same sense of being cherished that had extended from teacher Miss Waugh as she poured tea for this little newcomer to a school, a community, and a country... well, it just can't happen. None of the necessary ingredients are present: not the good tea, not the boiling water, not the trusting nature of childhood, and not Miss Waugh.

Therefore, I've resolved that henceforth I shall travel with a little electric kettle and a stash of good tea so that, when it's All Too Much, I can fill that kettle, boil the water, and, conjuring a sweet and personal past, brew some smashing tea, knowing that I wlll, no matter where I am, find therein the strength to Carry On.

Miles to go before we sleep

                                 photo by John C. Goodwin - Dr. MLK at Riverside Church 4/4/1967

Just about anyone reading this blog can access audio or print of Dr. Martin Luther King's I Have a Dream speech on the internet. Many media outlets are reprinting, or streaming that speech today, on Martin Luther King, Jr. Day. Rightly so. It is extraordinary on so many levels: ideas, passion, preaching, theology, and rhetorical skill. I think even those who disagree with its content can appreciate its delivery.

Of course, Dr. King made many other speeches in his brief but intense lifetime that are not as well known. It is saddening to think this may be simply because they are longer. Of these, Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break Silence is one of my favorites, for it shows the broadening of King's definition of the term "civil rights", and of his overall vision. For this he was heavily criticized even by those in the civil rights movement. The speech is both critical and hopeful.

Even more compelling, in my eyes and heart, is the sermon King preached at The National Cathedral on March 31, 1968, four days before his assassination. I listen to Staying Awake Through a Great Revolution with a measure of personal sorrow, not only because the man speaking was silenced so soon after speaking these words, but because they are still true, and because I am aware of how often I fall asleep.

By clicking on the links for each speech, you will be able to hear and read them. These are not soundbites. They are speeches. They are long. They are worth your time.

The passionate reader

  My drug of choice is a proper cup of tea. Yorkshire Gold, preferably. That, and a good book, will get me through any winter storm, as has been proven several times in the past month or so.

It is so much more pleasurable to read something good than to watch something bad that I don't at the moment have a TV. But it has to be a good book. I have no patience with poor writing, no matter how gripping the story is supposed to be, or how impressive the sales numbers. When a reader picks up a book, he or she is making a commitment of time and trust. That first page is the beginning of a conversation between the reader and the writer that can take hours, or days, or weeks to complete. When the writing makes me roll my eyes, though, that's it. "Period, paragraph, turn the page, close the book", I once heard a priest say at the end of a sermon. "Bye-bye, Dan Brown", say I.

Good writing, on the other hand, holds me like a passionate embrace. Here are a few titles I recently have found to be entrancing, challenging, inspiring, and "worth the whistling".

Blessings in Disguise by Alec Guinness. In this age of ghost-written memoirs, here is a gem of an autobiography. Guinness is an actor worth knowing more about, and a thoughtful, observant, and very witty writer. I so enjoyed getting to know him that I've just checked his A Positively Final Appearance out from the library.

Confessions of an Actor by Laurence Olivier. Articulate and fascinating, Olivier unfolds his story like a long conversation, with frequent digressions that give a looping timeline to the work. Reading this book, I began to understand that the bright and dark angels of the man were brighter and darker than I'd previously imagined.

Charlotte and Emily by Jude Morgan. This is an historical novel about the Brontë family. From the first sentences - Oh, my children. O, God, my poor children - I was fully engaged in the story. That the book is about three of my favorite storytellers (Anne, Emily, and Charlotte Brontë), and their brother Bramwell, made it even more compelling. I don't know, however, whether a reader unfamiliar with Agnes Grey (by Anne), Wuthering Heights(by Emily),  and Jane Eyre (by Charlotte) would enjoy it quite as much .

Another book I have enjoyed that refers to an earlier work is To Say Nothing of the Dog, by Connie Willis. I found this a while ago, courtesy of my stepmother. I have read it several times, and it always makes me laugh. It weaves itself through the story line of Jerome K. Jerome's Three Men in a Boat, but it stands alone equally well. Chaos theory, time travel, romance and a carpetbag - what more could one want?

I did not link these titles to an online bookseller. Instead, I want to suggest that you look for them at your local library. If they are not on the shelves there, ask the librarians if they can get them from another library in the system. It is my understanding that part of what determines the funding any given library gets - funding that is always inadequate these days, and shrinking all the time - is the circulation numbers. That means how many books get checked out. So when we borrow books instead of buying them, we help that library stay open earlier, later, more days, with more books on the shelves, more computers in the computer room, more visiting artists.

It's as simple as that.