From Pools to Schools

If you think that recent attacks on public education have only to do with the teaching of history, think again.

If you are surprised by the intensity of attacks, including death threats against school board members across the USA, you have either forgotten history or your classes ended at World War Two.

If you are shocked that the Republican Party has allied itself with the movement and made it a priority in elections both local and statewide, you stopped paying attention when Newt Gingrich contrived his “Contract for America” in 1994.

And, yes, “Contract on America” would be the honest title for a fire hose aimed at privatizing all that is public.

True, this backlash–or whitelash as it would be more accurately termed–was triggered by the 1619 Project published by the New York Times to mark the 400th anniversary of the arrival of enslaved Africans in the American colonies. The idea was to set the record straight.

Whitelash was inevitable from those who don’t want it set straight. No amount of research or documentation mattered. Nor was the report read by those who want to cling to the myth that slavery was, for the most part, a benevolent arrangement. Instead, it was scanned for buzzwords that would act like a naked flame to the gasoline of ingrained prejudice:

“Critical race theory.” Bingo!

The word “critical” sounds menacing all by itself, and how dare anyone suggest that America to any degree is or ever was a racist country. “Theory”? Can’t get any more elitist than that. Works like an angry charm. Groups with names like “Concerned Citizens for Responsible Education” have convinced parents in every state that any attempt to address racism in schools is the educational equivalent of cancer. As such, it was the only issue for their successful candidate for governor in Virginia last year.

Get ready to hear Republicans harp on it as they campaign in every state this year.

But don’t be fooled. The parents disrupting school board meetings may think its all about curricula and text books, but for Republican officials and candidates the subject of history is a Trojan Horse. Their real intent is getting people to take kids out of public schools and enroll them in private schools.

Republicans have wanted to defund and eventually erase public schools for years. This is why they promote charter schools every chance they get–and why a billionaire whose wealth is drawn from exorbitant interest rates from student loans served herself and her cronies playing the role of Trump’s Secretary of Education. Reducing enrollments at public schools will justify slashing public budgets even further than the bare bones level most have been operating on for years.

This dynamic played out in the 1950s. When whites saw blacks at the newly integrated public swimming pools, the manufacturers of home pools saw business skyrocket. Public pools then went without maintenance and most of them disappeared. This unintended consequence of integration would form an opening chapter of a book published just months after Trump’s election titled Fortress America: How America Embraced Fear and Abandoned Democracy.

From pools to schools, it’s in the Republican playbook.

Unfortunately, many of those who support public education play right into their hands. Consider this meme making the rounds on social media:

Not sure where this “parents-should-control-what-is-taught-in-schools-because-they-are-our-kids” is originating, but they do have the option to send their kids to a hand-selected private school at their own expense.

Yes, that’s what Republican politicos want their voters to do. As enrollments sink, so will budgets. If the private schools put gag orders on history and literature teachers and restrict their curricula and libraries to white-washed texts, that’s just vanilla frosting on the angel cake.

The meme’s picture is of the carved-in-granite inscription above the entrance to a public school:

THE PUBLIC SCHOOL IS THE BEST DEFENSE OF A DEMOCRATIC NATION

As far as I can tell, this is an adaptation of a line from Thomas Jefferson’s rationale for the First Amendment:

The best defense of a democracy is an informed electorate.

While contradicting the misguided first line of the meme, it also serves as rationale for the second and final line:

The purpose of public education is not to teach kids only what their parents want them to be taught, but to teach what society needs them to know. The client of the public school is not the parent, but the entire community, the public.

Do we want them to be schools or nursing homes? Those who believe that education should never make their children “uncomfortable” are unavoidably at odds with schools whose purpose is to educate them as citizens.

Dive below the surface, and put your goggles on. This is not so much about history as it is about privatization.

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https://www.bookbrowse.com/mag/reviews/index.cfm/book_number/3695/fortress-america

While *Fortress America* focuses on public swimming pools in America in the 1950s and puts them in a larger context, this book is all about swimming wherever it was and is done, reaches back in time and bringing it right to 2009 when it was published.
https://uncpress.org/book/9780807871270/contested-waters/

Who We Need to Be

Tempting to say that the new documentary film, Who We Are, is must-see for anyone who cares who Americans now are. Or, as we lately express it, anyone alarmed by what America has become.

Surrounded by friends or relatives who will insist that this is not a racist country, we get nowhere with political views and theories. We give up.

In this context, Who We Are serves as an instructional manual for those who, for whatever reason, can’t give up.

Co-founder and CEO of the Who We Are Project, Jeffery Robinson casts his presentation not as argument, but as questions that he answers with quotes. And while we hear from George Orwell–Who controls the past controls the future; who controls the present controls the past–and at length from Martin Luther King, most quotes are from the Constitution, landmark Supreme Court decisions, declarations of succession from southern states that contradict all modern claims that the Civil War “was not about slavery.”

In other words, words of American law and lawmakers. Words woven into America’s fabric. Systemic words whether we are ever aware of them or not–whether we want to admit them or not.

In the Constitution, we see how the word “slavery” was avoided by the use of “property” and “such persons.” In a Tennessee newspaper, we see Andrew Jackson’s offer of a bounty for a runaway–with extra payment if the runaway is whipped before return. Even Francis Scott Key, a virulent anti-abolitionist who believed that slavery was a benevolent institution, has his say with the third–but never heard–stanza of his anthem. Here’s a few lyrics with references to Hessian mercenaries (“hirelings”) and enslaved people who might fight for their own freedom:

No refuge could save the hireling and slave
From the terror of flight or the gloom of the grave,
And the star-spangled banner in triumph doth wave
O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave.

The film let’s us hear that sung by a gospel group, making us wonder if it’s bitter satire. It’s one of many insertions that co-directors Emily and Sarah Kunstler (yes, daughters of…) place into Robinson’s presentation, along with interviews and archival footage, that make the film as ear-opening as the celebration of African-American culture they run with the end-credits.

Most eye-opening are the irrefutable answers Robinson offers for the complaints often made under the banner of “cancel culture.”

If your uncle complains that taking down the statues of Confederate officers will lead to the loss of memorials of Washington and Jefferson, remind him that the Confederates’ only claim to fame was killing American soldiers for the right to own people. Washington and Jefferson are not memorialized for owning enslaved people, but “for, oh, I don’t know, founding the country?”

Tell your aunt that these memorials went up long after the Civil War was over as a reinforcement for Jim Crow laws challenged when African-American soldiers returned from European wars.

Tell your neighbor that Reconstruction was not abandoned because it was a failure, but because it worked. Thousands of freedmen gained the right to vote in the south. Many owned property, businesses, farms. In a backroom deal with southern pols, President Hayes withdrew the northern troops in 1877, and the KKK ran roughshod.

Tell your friend that an African-American section of Tulsa was not destroyed because of any sinful or illegal activity, but because it was thriving. So successful were its businesses that it was known as “Black Wall Street.” Not something that white people in Oklahoma wanted to see.

Today, judging from the protests and threats aimed at school boards, white people from coast to coast don’t even want to hear about it. They certainly don’t want their children hearing about it.

Expense? Tell your representative that reparations were already made: To white people. Soon after Emancipation, the federal government reimbursed plantation owners millions of dollars–billions in today’s money–for their lost “property.”

Yes, it’s American history too long withheld. The backlash to the 1619 Project and the out-of-context distortion of “critical race theory” are screaming attempts to keep it that way.

Who We Are offers the questions that must be asked no matter how uncomfortable it makes anyone feel, no matter it makes us feel when we pose them, if there’s to be any truth to America’s flag-waving, anthem-standing claim:

Land of the free, home of the brave.

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https://www.austinchronicle.com/daily/screens/2021-03-24/sxsw-film-review-who-we-are-a-chronicle-of-racism-in-america/

Get in the Car

Not until after I saw Drive My Car did I learn that it is the first Japanese film to ever gain an Oscar nomination for Best Picture.

Following three hours of surprise, I won’t be surprised if it wins.

All reviews I’ve seen praise the film. All use phrases such as “meditation on grief and loss” and “a path of love, loss, acceptance, and peace.” Some add the words “betrayal” and “reconciliation.” Also “a haunting road movie,” though the road is mostly a commute in and out of Hiroshima, a city that resonates as a setting for characters who refer to each other as “survivors.”

One calls its length “baggy,” an objection that seems to satisfy some self-imposed obligation to find some small fault to offset the otherwise profuse praise. To be fair, length is mentioned in most reviews to introduce the presentation of the film’s opening credits–40 minutes after Drive My Car begins.

But length goes unnoticed in a story paced by twists and turns that you’d expect from, say, Pedro Almodovar. Revelations made by several characters drip-by-drip throughout the film would clinch an Oscar for Most Ah-Ha Moments if such an award existed. And it will convince you of the improbable, such as an actress in a stage play speaking in sign with subtitles projected above her.*

“Chekhov is terrifying,” her director insists, “when you say his lines, it drags out the real you.”

Everything about the film is unusual. Not an adaptation of Anton Chekov’s Uncle Vanya, but an Oriental scramble of it. Yes, it recalls Louis Malle’s 1994 Vanya on 42nd Street, but the concept is closer to The French Lieutenant’s Woman which launched the careers of Meryl Streep and Jeremy Irons in 1981. For those whose memories go way back, think Orson Welles’ 1955 Moby-Dick Rehearsed.

Any of them might be called “a play within a play,” as if the reflection of art in life merely equals that of life in art, but the art is greater than the living sum of its parts. And then there are the auditions and rehearsals when you wonder if they are acting at all. In the end, there is a road trip in the sense of the term as we know it. The destination is Chekov: “My hardships might even be greater than yours, but I don’t give in to despair.”

To borrow Yusuke Kafuku’s gratitude for Misaki Watari, his assigned driver, Drive My Car is so smooth, you’ll feel weightless and forget you’re in a car.

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* Fans of Chekov will want to know that the muted character is Sonya, Vanya’s niece and the only character who refers to him as “uncle,” an item which, in a previous life, caused me to write an essay for a graduate seminar claiming that it is Sonya, not Vanya, who is the play’s real protagonist. That impressed my faculty advisor so well that I followed it up with a case for Horatio being, for Shakespeare’s intent, the main character in Hamlet. That one seemed to lose all the points I had just gained. When I tried to atone for it with an essay claiming that Herman Melville’s Benito Cerino has three characters with equal claim to top billing, she mumbled something about needing a bottle of Excedrin III.

Mass Pike Pit Stop

Sturbridge Coffeehouse, Sturbridge, Mass.

Been over two years since I last stopped here, but the routine is the same:

“I’ll have the greatest BLT in the history of the planet!”

Invariably, the young women behind the counter smile and make the notation. The woman before me today is new, or at least new to me, so she asks: “Your name?”

I tell her, then add, “like in the trunk of your car.”

She laughs and shakes her head before disappearing behind the door with the order.

“That’s so you’ll remember it!” I call after her.

It worked for the several years that I made pit stops here about once a month on the Marrakesh Express into Connecticut. They’d greet me by name when I walked through the door, and they’d jot down the order for the kitchen before I spoke. But I always spoke:

“I’ll have the mother of all BLTs!”

Another time: “I’ll have the finest BLT since the invention of upper-case letters!”

One day I felt daring: “I’ll have your kick-ass BLT!”

Whimsical: “To BLT, or not to B without LT!”

Patriotic: “Give me BLT, or give me tofu!” (That’s the Japanese word for “nothing,” in case you ever wondered.)

There was also: “Make it the BLT that should win a Noble Prize!”

And: “I’ll have the straight-A, magna cum laude BLT!”

And on and on with variations on Sturbridge Coffeehouse’s own theme. As they put on their menu board behind the counter: “World’s Best BLT.”

With toasted rye bread, I agreed on first bite, and the women there have suffered my dad jokes ever since. But they laugh politely, and have as good taste in music to dine by as they do in what to dine on. Never have I heard any screaming, pounding, shrill angst as what makes so many otherwise comfortable restaurants and coffeeshops unsittable.

Today I sit down to the voice of James Taylor singing about the road I just hopped off and will soon hop back on:

Now the first of December was covered with snow
So was the turnpike from Stockbridge to Boston
The Berkshires seemed dream-like on account of that frosting
With ten miles behind me and ten thousand more to go

Halfway between the two ends of the Mass Pike that he names, I wonder if he stopped here. I’ll bet anything that the guy who wrote “Fire and Rain,” “Carolina on my Mind,” and “Mexico” would love the house blend served here.

By the time I finish my own, Carly Simon, a dear friend of Sweet Baby James back in the day if memory serves, is singing the song I’ve always thought was about me. Well, it was 43 years ago this month I saw a total eclipse of the sun. No, not in Nova Scotia, but in North Dakota. Close enough.

On my way out, one of the staff is bussing tables. I can’t resist a bit more culinary harassment. Call it dessert:

“Say, the BLT was delicious, as always, but my curiosity demands that I ask you a question.”

“Now what?” her expression says. “Sure,” her voice manages.

“Does anyone ever object to your ‘world’s best’ claim?”

She laughed as one does when presented with something both welcome and unexpected. And then, “No. A lot of regulars say it themselves.”

“Glad to hear it!”

Then it’s her turn: “But you’re the only one who exaggerates it.”

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https://www.sturbridgecoffeehouse.com/index.php

There it is on the in-house chalk-board behind the counter, bottom of the middle column. If you go to the “menu” page on their site, it’s listed simply as “BLT,” but the description suggests that, well, maybe it is since, after all, customers tell them it is.

The Massachusetts Turnpike. Sturbridge is the halfway point, right where you see I-84 veer south quickly into Connecticut on a diagonal through Hartford aimed right at NYC. Stockbridge is about where the Pike crosses US-7 near the New York State border. And, for the record, I live (and the Marrakesh Express begins) on Plum Island, the barrier beach in the northeast corner of this map. The indent of water at the northern end of PI is the Mouth of the Merrimack River.

“Sweet Baby James”:

https://video.search.yahoo.com/search/video?fr=mcafee&ei=UTF-8&p=sweet+baby+james+youtube&type=E210US1494G0#id=1&vid=f4196dd6ddd71d84ebc400c8836cabac&action=click

Jane Austen’s Fire Hose

Two years ago this month, before the plague shut us down, we at the Newburyport Screening Room were eagerly anticipating the arrival of Emma, a new adaptation of one of Jane Austen’s classic novels.

Jane Austen fans are as prominent as any in our demographic.

By middle March, the owner was almost comatose at the thought of how Emma would have filled the house for three weeks, only to sputter for a week as our aging demographic, which is most of it by far, quarantined in advance. Turned out to be Andrew Mungo’s last show.

Hold the sympathy. He was planning to retire anyway, already looking for new owners who would keep the place independent. Mission accomplished, but I’m still here–as if I came with the furniture, all 99 seats of it.

But I’m in the projection booth just one day and night per week as I devote most of my semi-retirement to the Newburyport Melville Society. This week’s task was to answer correspondence from Helena Basquette, Professor of Literature at D’arcy College and co-founder of the Goddard Austen Society which formed to share interests in the prolific, if short-lived, 19th Century British novelist following our NMS example. When she read my interpretation of Herman Melville’s first novel, Typee, as an indictment of colonialism, she wanted me to know that Dear Jane had nothing to do with those English ships.

Her co-founder, Helen Frye, archivist at D’arcy’s Fitzwilliam Memorial Library, added that Austen had no interest beyond England’s shores:

The word “America” appears only once in all her work, in Chapter 12 of Mansfield Park (1814), in what appears to be a female character’s attempt to get the attentions of a doctor, asking him to tell her what to think of the “strange business” in America.

“Strange business” is an odd way to refer to a war. Especially when your country is in it, though it was across the Atlantic. Born the year before American independence, Austen wrote Mansfield Park when hostilities between fledgling America and Mother England were renewed in what we call the War of 1812–or what John Adams called “The American Revolution, Act Two.”

Frye continued:

I also searched Austen for “colony,” “colonies,” and “revolution,” finding nothing pertinent to the USA. Also looked for signs of George III and IV, but found no obvious references. She seems to have avoided all politics beyond those of town, family, and marriages. It would be fun to interrogate her about all of this, if I knew a reliable medium.

If she wrote that last line on social media, she’d have a dozen applicants for the job before she logged out. But I interrupt:

There are 30 or so uses of “abroad” in Austen’s novels, a few in the context of military service, though the locations (America?) are unspecified. In the case of “abroad,” I came to that passage in Emma today, and wondered if that term might have been used by her as a euphemism for military action. But the vast majority of occurrences had no clear connection with military campaigns.

When I mentioned that the film Emma closed the Screening Room for 18 months, Frye’s response was immediate:

Loved Autumn de Wilde’s 2020 film. Quick comparison must be made with Joe Wright’s 2005 Pride & Prejudice.

When they specify directors and dates, you know you’re dealing with film buffs:

A clear superiority goes to Wright’s camera operator(s), with those incredibly long shots, but de Wilde’s are beautiful too. The casts & ultimate effects are equally touching. De Wilde’s film benefits from soundtrack contributions from The Watersons, Maddie Pryor, & June Tabor which almost make up for some rather muddy dialog editing in many scenes. Not mixed for home stereo, I suppose; common flaw lately.

Fine, but I was more curious about her word-searches. Is there a “concordance” for Austen as there is for Shakespeare and the Bible?

Having enjoyed another Austen-based film, I spent $3 for a Kindle file which includes all the Jane Austen novels. All on my tablet. They are in one file ($3!) which I can read via the Kindle app. A term comes to mind, and I use the search tool. It is a plain old text search, like that in a word processor, not with Artificial Intelligence heuristics or algorithms like web search engines use. It sifts the file and presents fragments in which the term occurs. It also sifts any passages I have already highlighted, and lists those hits separately.

Does it have an index?

Indices in ebooks? I have seen very few that worked well. The search tool works better, though it is more of a fire hose than a well-curated index.

And then she changed the subject:

I have wondered if anyone has studied Austen’s influence on Dickens.

This piqued my interest. If Austen influenced Dickens, she influenced Melville. Basquette broke in to our back-and-forth with an unlabeled and somewhat redacted passage:

———- was an orphan, the only child of ——–’s youngest daughter. The marriage of Lieut. —– of the __ regiment of infantry, and ————-, had had its day of fame and pleasure, hope and interest; but nothing now remained of it, save the melancholy remembrance of him dying in action abroad — of his widow sinking under consumption and grief soon afterwards — and this girl.

This was a test. Not if I could identify the title, but the author. Sure is Dickensian in style and character. Before I could guess, Frye hastened to summarize the Dickensian plot:

Lieut—–‘s regimental friend, Col. —–, believed —– had saved his life, and felt indebted when he returned to England, offering to rescue 3-YO —- from her life of poverty with her grandmother & her mother’s talkative sister. He promised to give —– a good education, moving her to his family’s London home, etc.

Ah, wish I could be in Goddard enjoying almond croissants at the Mansfield Park Cafe to talk it over with Helen and Helena! Maybe attend a seminar at D’arcy College. But I’ll settle for my seat here in Newburyport’s Thirsty Whale with NMS, content to raise a toast to GAS.

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A mere 19 years ago, Helen Highwater and I first met Helena Basquette and Helen Frye at the Woodhouse Writers Conference in Minneapolis where we happened to catch this staged adaptation of Pride and Prejudice. Quite powerful with much laughter and an occasional hankie to the eye, aided by the playful and graceful musical accompaniment of the late, legendary composer, Helen Bach. Most memorable were the actresses who played Elizabeth Bennet’s younger sisters as if they were a pair of corgis:
https://www.playbill.com/article/austen-power-guthries-pride-and-prejudice-begins-perfs-july-26-com-114473

Melville’s Trojan Horse

Revelations of Herman Melville’s twelve-year-long affair with a woman as married as he sent shock waves through the Newburyport Melville Society.

All these years we’ve been led to believe that the author of Moby-Dick went well-inland to Massachusetts’ Berkshire Mountains and stayed there for the sake of seclusion. Moreover, gay rights groups have long claimed Melville as one of theirs on no better evidence than his all-male casts and the flowery, metaphorical dedication of his most adventurous book to Nathaniel Hawthorne.

Do they think women hunted whales and he chose to ignore them? Do they not know that artists impregnate each other with ideas?

Rather than wasting time with those rhetorical questions, the Newburyport Melville Society is now exploring the premise of Melville in Love. No small task. The book claims that Melville, never a farmer, bought a farm adjacent to one owned by Sarah Morewood and her very rich and mostly absentee, all-about-business husband for the purpose of keeping company with her. It also claims that, based on newly surfaced letters written by Melville to his neighbor-with-benefits, Sarah Morewood inspired the conception and creation of Moby-Dick.

The recent biography also calls to attention Melville’s first book, Typee, written years before he met Mrs. Morewood, as a key to understanding Melville’s sexuality. For that, NMS–both of us–picked Typee for our next reading. Didn’t take long for me to realize what would open our next talk. It’s something that my fellow English majors and teachers of American literature need to address:

Typee is a Trojan Horse.

The coincidental commercial brand name notwithstanding, this has nothing to do with sex, although the book’s subtitle might suggest otherwise: A Peep at Polynesian Life. “Peep” as in “peep show”? Most of the book–novel? romance? adventure? travelogue? memoir?–is a close look the natives of a Marquesan isle and an account of Melville’s few weeks living with them before his escape.

Given his descriptions of young women in all stages of undress and the company he frequently keeps with “the beauteous Fayaway,” readers might wonder why he would want to escape. Let’s leave that question to the book, but let’s also note that Melville’s stand-in narrator, Tommo, gushes over Fayaway much like the author would years later in letters to Sara Morewood.

Accounts of exotic places were standard fare for American and English audiences in the 19th Century, but most all of them were written to advance one or more of three causes: scientific, military, and/or missionary. Typee does none of this. Instead, Melville offers a way of life, its pastimes, work, recreation, habits, meals, feasts, all free of any editorial call for change, control, or conversion.

At times he does probe military and missionary efforts for the sake of contrast. Most all of them describe the Sandwich Islands (i.e. Hawai’i), sometimes with mention of Tahiti. Structurally, these are reminiscent of the many tangents in Moby-Dick, but those are mostly about whales and the whaling industry, germane to the story being told. Moreover, in Moby-Dick, Ishmael, while he frequently challenges widely accepted beliefs, is content to poke fun rather than issue indictments. One such poke sells a t-shirt available in the gift shop of the New Bedford Whaling Museum:

I’d rather sleep with a sober cannibal than a drunken Christian.

Compare that to Typee:

The enormities perpetrated in the South Seas upon some of the inoffensive islanders wellnigh pass belief. These things are seldom proclaimed at home; they happen at the very ends of the earth; they are done in a corner, and there are none to reveal them.

With this, Melville offers a passage that, if you change nouns and dates, describes more recent events wrapped in the flag and carrying the cross:

It may be asserted without fear of contradiction that in all the cases of outrages committed by Polynesians, Europeans have at some time or other been the aggressors, and that the cruel and bloodthirsty disposition of some of the islanders is mainly to be ascribed to the influence of such examples.

Europe’s lead aside, the most damning line has echoed throughout American history, all across the Great Plains and from “Remember the Maine” to “Gulf of Tonkin”:

We breathe nothing but vengeance…

How did Melville get away with it? Fayaway? The “river-nymphs” who “swim about me like a shoal of dolphins”? In the late 1840s, Typee was an instant success that made Melville the most popular writer in America and England. Many people, including his wife before they wed, called him “Typee.” Specifically, the exotic hints at sex made him a man that, as we sometimes say of a modern male celebrity, “every woman wanted and every man wanted to be.” The better question may be how he got away with that.

He damn near didn’t. The publishers soon heard complaints from others visitors to the South Pacific that Typee was pure fabrication. Given their experiences in Hawai’i and Tahiti, such a tribe as Melville portrayed could not possibly exist. Some howled that a common sailor was incapable of writing a book–a tactic we see frequently today: When you can’t answer questions, attack the people raising them.

Though those casting doubt were all connected with either the military or the missions, made brief visits, and kept a distance from tribal villages, they outnumbered Melville. Since one was an impossible number to sustain, the publishers started to cave. Until…

In Typee, another sailor goes AWOL with Tommo and lives with the natives for about a week before he disappears. This is about halfway into the book, after which Tommo is left wondering what became of Toby right to the narrative’s end. Typee‘s publication startled a newspaper editor in Buffalo, New York, named Richard Tobias Greene who was delighted to learn that his buddy was alive and well and living in America.

But Greene was soon distressed by the controversy as it played out in letters to various publications. He made himself known, went to NYC for a meeting with Melville, and the controversy vanished. He also told Melville the details of his own escape, which was written up and added as a sequel in Typee‘s next and all subsequent editions.

Powers that be can always beat one, but as soon as you get to two, they have a problem.

So it is that we have this early indictment of the colonial and imperial reach of America, England, and France, assisted by the Catholic and Protestant churches. Overshadowed by Moby-Dick, but just as available for students to check out of a library or for teachers to assign their classes. Easy it is for this former lit teacher to imagine assigning an idyllic “peep” at an exotic South Sea island as a way to steer college students into the brutal path that lead to America’s annexation of Hawai’i:

What has [the native islander] to desire at the hand of Civilization?… Let the once smiling and populous Hawaiian islands, with their now diseased, starving, and dying natives, answer the question. The missionaries may seek to disguise the matter as they will, but the facts are incontrovertible.”

In a time when many prefer to avoid historical truth by limiting what students read and what teachers discuss, Typee–novel? romance? adventure? travelogue? memoir?–offers a deceptive choice. Trojan Horses always do.

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https://artsone.arts.ubc.ca/2021/07/19/herman-melvilles-typee-and-margaret-cavendishs-the-blazing-world-a-comparison/

Naked Flame to Gasoline

Other than the foibles of another orange-haired bozo, news from the UK is that The Zealot Gene, a new album by Jethro Tull, is number four on the British charts in its first week of release.

Not bad for a band that formed 55 years ago–whose last top-ten album was 50 years ago.

Make that two albums. Thick as a Brick and a compilation album, Living in the Past, both reached number three in 1972. Tull’s commercial success then subsided, but the group retained a faithful following that bought enough albums and filled enough concert halls to keep them performing non-stop until 2012. Americans never noticed, but Tull became Europe’s Grateful Dead, playing as many concerts in a year as other bands play in a decade. America had Dead Heads; the European Union and the former Eastern Bloc still have Tull Skulls.

Though on this side of the Atlantic, I guess I’m one, having attended at least 30 from here to Minneapolis, although the last few have not been billed as “Jethro Tull.” In 2012, front man-flautist-vocalist Ian Anderson and lead guitarist Martin Barre went separate ways, both releasing solo albums and touring with separate bands. A few Tull Skulls have chosen sides, but most of us remain true to both.

Now the name is back. Barre and friends, including a few of the dozens who played for Tull at some point, are playing to rave reviews in the US in a tour billed as “the music of Jethro Tull.” Truth is that Barre adds plenty of his own fine songs and transforms Tull classics such as “Fat Man” into his own brand of hard-driving, how-the-hell-is-this-not-in-the-Rock-Hall-of-Fame rock-and-roll.

Setting out on a year-long tour of Europe and a few former Soviet Republics, Anderson has put the name on the group that has been with him for the recent solo albums, Thick as a Brick II and Homo Erraticus. That would make it easy to say that Zealot Gene is another solo show.

Well, it is musically related to the recent works, but the prominence of guitars, drums, keyboard, accordion–and the play between them as well as with Anderson’s flute and voice–harken back to sounds from This Was to Crest of the Knave. “The Betrayal of Joshua Kynde” is a five-way conversation that you would rather not end. And, as with Aqualung and most every album that followed, the lyrics range from whimsical:

Half of us are in the apple
Half of us are in the pie
All of us are in the pudding
When the last bus has gone by
Someone has to take the high road
Someone has to make the bed
No-one has the right to tell you
To lie down when all is said

To charged:

The populist with dark appeal
The pandering to hate
Which xenophobic scaremongers
Deliver on a plate
To tame the pangs of hunger
And satisfy the lust
Slave to ideology
Moderation bites the dust

And that’s just the title track. Somehow, Classic Rock described the music as, “light, bright, tight, and recognizably Tull.” No question about those last two. As for light and bright, the energetic opening track, “Mrs. Tibbetts,” and the charming “Where Did Saturday Go?” will delight fans of “Mother Goose” and “Nursie Dear.”

On the other hand, the menacing “Mine Is the Mountain” is quite recognizable as the descendant of “Heavy Horses” and “Farm on the Freeway.” “Sad City Sister” could be the daughter of “Beside Myself,” maybe the granddaughter of “Pibroch (Cap in Hand)” from Songs from the Wood, an album echoed throughout Zealot Gene. Musically, the final track, “The Fisherman of Ephesus,” will recall “Cold Dead Reckoning” from Homo Erraticus, but its lyrics, as well as those of other tracks, echo the religious themes of Aqualung and Passion Play.

In keeping with past Tull and Anderson albums, the main theme is topical, summed up in a chorus:

Carrying the Zealot gene
Right or left, no in between
Beware, beware the Zealot gene
Naked flame near gasoline

Prog magazine’s review included a line that fits the album as well as the surprising harmonica fits “Jacob’s Tale,” calling the album “ripe with fresh inspiration and resonant of past glories.”

For Tull-Skulls–at least for this American fan who first heard Tull play at the Hampton Beach Casino 52 years ago–The Zealot Gene serves as a spirited reminder for “being who you really want to be.”

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A review of the 2018 tour, photo by Nick Harrison: https://www.shropshirestar.com/entertainment/music/2018/04/11/jethro-tull-symphony-hall-birmingham—review-and-pictures/

Reading the Diet Act

Iron-Town Diner, Saugus, Mass.

At least eight years ago, I awoke in the middle of the night and, as aging men must, started to get up to go to the bathroom.

Instead, a paralyzing pain shot up and down my right side, keeping me still, as well as terrified. I waited, counted to ten, counted to thirty, took deep breaths, motionless. Minutes later, I dared move a bit. A jolt of pain, but tolerable. Moved again, stopping at each jolt. Thankfully, I was able to put nature’s call on hold long enough to answer it pain free, albeit very slowly.

Back in bed, I wondered if I should go back to sleep or to the hospital. I’ve had cramps before, many of them in my sports-crazed teenage days, but never an entire side of my body. That day I had performed at a Renaissance faire, which is something of an athletic event for a strolling minstrel, but I had been playing at that for years, and this weekend was mid-season.

Next morning, though I barely slept, I didn’t drive to the hospital, but back to the faire where, before cast call, I resolved to corner Nigel, a physical therapist in real life who I figured would know what happened.

“That’s dietary,” he said without hesitation, needing no questions of his own. “You need to start eating bananas and spinach.”

He added a description of abductors, adductors, extensors, flexors, and other horrors that, though horrifying at the time, has left me with an understanding that should prove helpful if this should ever reoccur. No, knowing the science would not prevent or even alleviate the pain, but it would be reason not to panic.

Not a bad lesson to take from an event that took place years before the entire country would be plunged into a war of science vs. paranoia.

On the ride home that night, I stopped at a supermarket for bananas before getting on the highway. Every bunch in the bunch was green, but I bought one and munched on one of that one, tough as it was. Next day, I had another greenie, but the rest turned yellow, and before they ran out, I bought another bunch of greens, something I do to this day.

Did I say eight years? I’ve had a banana every day since Nigel read me the diet act.

Spinach became a destination for the Marrakesh Express.

No way I’m going to forego crisp Romaine in salads I toss at home, and spanakopita (spinach pie), though I love it, is beyond my culinary skills. Women have told me that my fear is foolish, but they all pretty much say that I’m foolish, so since it’s all Greek to me, I leave spanakopita to the Greeks. They cook, I eat. Efharisto!

By the time I saw Nigel next weekend, I was able to report that I had two spinach pies, one of them beyond delicious, and was sure to have at least one each week. Can’t recall where one of those stops was. But I’m sure the one I still tasted was Iron Town Diner in Saugus, an easy stop for Marrakesh, as strategically convenient and rewarding as Rein’s Deli halfway on any trip to NYC.

Not far from base, I could often finish the southern route on Wednesdays and sometimes the western route on Thursdays in time to sit at Iron Town’s counter by 1:30. With Marrakesh Express empty, there was no worry that anything could melt or freeze.

Before long, waitresses would ask “spinach pie?” before I was seated. No menu, no delay. Once, due to an unusual schedule, I popped in for breakfast.

“Spinach pie?”

She looks so much like Maria Callas that it’s impossible to disagree with her: “For breakfast?”

She tosses her head to the side: “Why not?”

If you want to try one, bring your appetite. With the pie, they serve a generous salad–with Romaine lettuce I’m happy to report. And I’ve noticed that this is the custom at each restaurant I’ve found serving mouth-watering spanakopita: Depot Diner in Beverly, Vernon Diner in Connecticut, Malibu in Manhattan.

Good thing those three are off the beaten Marrakesh Express paths or I wouldn’t get back in the van. Hell, I wouldn’t fit in the van. As it was, I averaged one stop at Iron-Town per week before the pandemic shut things down, but have yet to return since coming out of retirement in November. It’s just a day or two a week, and always north or west, but I’ll find a well-placed spot before long.

Meanwhile, I have a banana each day. Cramps? Not a single one, not even a small one since I was read the diet act. Did I mention it’s been eight years? Efharisto, Nigel!

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This photo was taken from the counter by someone named Bob P. in 2016. It’s a fairly long counter that bends toward the door to the kitchen at the left of the photo. That last chair at the counter is where I usually sit, and the fellow in it in this pic could well be me. Even the shoe seems to fit.

Marrakesh Chowder

The Bitter End, Wells, Maine

On Fridays the Marrakesh Express runs up the Maine coast, sometimes as far as Freeport, but usually no further than Kennebunkport, well short of Portland.

Kennebunkport is known as the summer home of the first President George Bush, and the tourist trap shops in its center sell t-shirts, hats, postcards, mugs, placemats, and lots more worthless junk with his and what appears to be Alfred E. Newman’s pictures to remind us.

Before you reach K-port, you pass through the town of Wells which is known for absolutely nothing but which does have more than its share of attractive seafood restaurants lined up on both sides of US Route 1.

Regrettably, the Maine run is always first thing in the morning for the Marrakesh Express, and I would no more have seafood for breakfast than I’d have old cold cannibal stew, so I can’t tell you about any of them.

However, there was another restaurant, a sports pub judging by its signage and flags, that long held my curiosity due to its improbable name. How could a place well-inland on a US highway, midway between Portsmouth and Portland, really in the middle of Maine’s south coast summer tourist action, be called The Bitter End?

Every now and then, some customer has a special need for Marrakesh to arrive earlier or later than usual, and sometimes the accommodation is made by running the entire route backwards. On one such Friday, before returning home in mid-afternoon, I took a craving for clam chowder to The Bitter End.

When alone, I prefer to sit at the bar, so the service is quick, and the barkeep always close by. She heard my spoon clatter on the bar after my first taste, but I spoke before she could ask what was wrong:

“I can’t believe how good this is!”

Couldn’t tell if she was more relieved or surprised: “Well, glad you like it!”

Took another spoonful of the thick broth as she served beer to two fellows at the end of the bar. On the wall behind them, a framed page from a newspaper caught my eye. Over a story with a large picture of a football player running into the end zone while two defenders lay on the field in his dust was a headline in a huge font: “Bitter End.”

Figuring that this solved the mystery of the pub’s name, I resolved to read about that game when I left. Meanwhile, between gulps of one of the best clam chowders I’ve ever tasted–even though I usually prefer a thin broth–I took in all kinds of sports paraphernalia attached to the walls and ceilings.

All four Boston pro teams were well represented with photos autographed by players as far back as Carl Yastrezmski and Bobby Orr; basketballs autographed by Auerbach, Russell, Cousy, and teammates; red jerseys worn by the then-Boston Patriots.

As if for comic relief, there were items of the kind that teenage boys would steal to display in college dorms, including signs for the parking lot in San Francisco’s late and lamented Candlestick Park and the concessions at Baltimore’s late but not-at-all-missed Memorial Stadium.

My memory may be off on those, but please forgive me. I was savoring the chowder way too much to take any notes. Instead, I called to the barkeep:

“What gives it this smoky taste?”

“Ah, let me ask.” When she disappeared into the kitchen, I figured the chef would refuse to give away the secret, or that he or she would name some other ingredient unique to The Bitter End’s recipe. She returned and spoke with conviction:

“Frank’s Hot Sauce.”

Going along with the ruse, I nodded, and made my taste buds concentrate. Yes, there’s a touch of hot sauce, but what I’m tasting is bacon.

Before leaving, I went to inspect the wall-hanging, but those two fellows at the end of the bar were still seated. I didn’t want to inconvenience them. All I could see was that someone in a black and red uniform had outrun two New England Patriots, in a game that the smaller headlines identified as a Super Bowl. As any Pats fan knows, our only Super Bowl losses in this century were to the New York Giants and the Philadelphia Eagles, and to the Green Bay Packers and Chicago Bears in the last. None of those teams wear red and black.

Back to the barkeep: “Say, that picture makes no sense.”

Her laughter told me that I was far from the first customer to ask this question, and so her reply was well prepared:

When the Atlanta Falcons surged to a 28-3 lead in the third quarter of the 2017 game, the Boston Globe decided to go to press for the Maine (and likely New Hampshire) run rather than delay distribution any later than they already had. The story never says that the Patriots lost, but the implication was that defeat was inevitable, and the headline sealed the deal.

It is the sports page version of “Dewey Defeats Truman.”

Since the Globe updated the story with a glorious photo of the victorious Patriots after the Maine run was out the door, subscribers in Massachusetts or Rhode Island never saw it. So it came as a shock to me:

“Ah, so that’s where the name comes from!”

The barkeep denied it, saying it was a gift from a local customer, but I thought that was just more of her hot sauce. On the way home, the Marrakesh Express made an unscheduled stop for the ingredients to make my own chowder. A day later, I put them together and came reasonably close to The Bitter End’s. Give me a few more tries.

Yes, the hot sauce matters, but that smoky flavor has more to do with smoked bacon, trust me. As for the name, here’s a summary of what the barkeep claimed as it appears on the website:

Opened in 2018 by Kate and Peter Morency who after 97 years collectively in the restaurant business decided to do “just one more” after Pier 77 and The Ramp as well as Pedro’s in Kennebunk. We wanted a name that implied it will be the last restaurant we’ll run, hence, The Bitter End. Not knowing when we named it this is a nautical term for the end of a working line or rope. Perfect.

Yes, it is perfect, certainly preferable to a laughable headline.

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All About Almodovar

If there’s anything to the theory that a way to understand a controversy is to put it in other contexts, Parallel Mothers may well be called a gift to the USA.

Set in Spain, director Pedro Almodovar’s new film begins with Janis (Penelope Cruz) enlisting the aid of a forensic archeologist to exhume the remains of several of a small town’s ancestors who were “disappeared” by the Franco regime.

Her rural home town needs closure, her grandmother and aunts need closure, and one of them knows where the shallow, mass grave is. Janis has since become a fashion photographer in the city with plenty of connections. She can get this done for them.

Whether Janis and Arturo were already lovers or were turned on by this grim investigation is a question that Almodovar lets hang, as he so often does, throughout the film. Historical intrigue and the archeologist recede into the background as the film focuses on Janis in a maternity ward about to deliver.

Nearing 40, she befriends an unwed teenager, Ana, also about to deliver. The next scene is a scream in both senses of the word, and could easily become a social media sensation titled, “Dueling Deliveries.”

All of that serves as a launching pad for a classic Almodovar labyrinth of mistaken identity, contradictory clues, unexpected twists and turns, every frame of it vibrant with color and rich with curious wall-hangings, furniture, and oddities all around. A t-shirt that Janis wears when she has Ana over for dinner works both as sight gag and as a statement of the underlying theme of Parallel Mothers–perhaps of all of Almodovar’s films.

No, I’m not going to tell you what it is, but it is an indirect reminder of the grave historical plot that lurks in the film’s background.

Though the two moms have nothing more in common than due dates, their relationship takes us from the hope of one to uncover difficult history to the realization of the other, a generation younger, that history matters.

As he often does, most memorably with writer Alice Munro in Julieta (2016), Almodovar pays tribute to artists he admires. Janis is named for Janis Joplin, whose soulful rendition of George Gershwin’s “Summertime” accompanies a love scene, and he gives Uruguayan writer Eduardo Galeano the last word:

No history is mute. No matter how much they own it, break it, and lie about it, human history refuses to shut its mouth.

In a time when American news is flush with reports of attempts to restrict the teaching of history in schools and keep our past buried, Parallel Mothers reflects what’s at stake for us by putting it in a different context. When Janis has to explain the need for closure to Ana, no American fan of Almodovar can help but hear pleas made to those who would rather not know history, who accept white white-wash.

Though most of the film is a classic Almodovar romp, entertaining and fascinating at every turn, the relationship of Janis and Ana turns from parallel mothers (and then some) into mother and child (with child).

In the end, from this side of the Atlantic, the parallel is of Spain and the USA.

So good to see that Almodovar is back to the form of All About My Mother (1999), Talk to Her (2002), and Volver (2006).

If I may be more blunt, it’s a relief that he is well beyond that dreadful airplane film that was even worse than its inane title, I’m So Excited (2013). Truth is, he recovered from that wreck with excellent films since, Julieta and Pride and Glory (2019), but the airplane film was such a crash-landing piece of stench that it had to have discouraged Screening Room patrons from seeing those two gems.

Three decades ago, Almodovar gained a faithful following with Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down! (1990) and the equally provocatively titled Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown (1988). From what I’ve heard, I’d say that Screening Room fans are evenly split between those who consider those two his best, and those who prefer Mother and Talk.

I’m in the latter category, but I must add there’s not a lot of difference between the two camps, as we all praise the other’s choices. And the few who saw Julieta and Pride & Glory praise those as well, and now Parallel Mothers–all eight patrons who, combined, saw it in two shows Wednesday.

Another film highly regarded by all Almodovar fans is Bad Education (2004). My recollection of it is clouded by a scene that begins with the outlines of two people blocking half the view of a school building across a street. In the audience, I might have turned my head to see who was blocking the projector from the screen, but as the projectionist, I was compelled to go into the audience and ask them to move or sit.

But no one was standing. So what happened to the lens!!! Race back up into the booth, but find nothing wrong. Instead, after an impossibly long, nerve-wracking minute, the two shadows move forward, turn into the two main characters, and cross the street to enter the school.

Apart from this and other tricks he plays on projectionists, it’s tempting to say that you can’t go wrong with Almodovar. Too bad the airplane film grounded that notion. If we were to compare filmmakers to musicians, his use of color, his playfulness, his reverence, his tight focus, his deft presentations of serious themes and psychological drama would make Almodovar analogous to the best in any genre.

The airplane film? It’s as if Jimi Hendrix paused between “Purple Haze” and “Voodoo Child” to write “Pop Goes the Weasel.”

Sorry for harping on it, but a projectionist at an art cinema in the Hudson Valley noticed the same drop in attendance of Almodovar’s films following the belly-flop of I’m So Excited. And if you were ever wondering where Pepto-Bismol got the idea for a commercial where flight attendants emerge from the cockpit to serenade passengers with an upbeat song about heartburn and diarrhea, you can thank Pedro.

I’m still thanking Pedro for his acceptance speech at the 2003 Oscars for Talk to Her‘s Best Screenplay award. In a ceremony charged with the conflicting cries for and against war in the Middle East, Almodovar offered a short, soft-spoken most heartfelt tribute to “all those who are raising their voices for peace, respect of human rights, democracy, international legality, and all that is essential to live.”

At the time it was lost among louder, angry declarations in the run-up to American and Allied troop commitments. In memory, it stands as one of Oscar’s finest moments.

Would be remiss not to add how Parallel Mothers echoes a 1990 German film, The Nasty Girl. In translation and context, “problematic” would be more accurate for the German schreckliche, but box office success in the USA called for the far more alluring “nasty.” Either way, both are stories of reconciling the present with an uncomfortable past.

In a country highly and increasingly conflicted about how–or if–our past should be taught in schools, these are other contexts that can shed light on our own.

That light had to be in Almodovar’s focus when ended his new film with a quote from Galeano’s 1998 book, Upside Down: A Primer for the Looking-Glass World, so let’s end this review of the film and retrospective of the director with the line that follows it: