We Shall Overcome

While at the Quaker Institute on Non-Violence on Rideau Lake in the summer of 1963, I learned about a march on Washington  DC led by the Rev. Martin Luther King. Next thing I knew, I had organized a carful of Canadians to join a multi-racial crowd over 200,000 strong, marching toward the Lincoln Memorial on the morning of 28 August 1963.

We started the march spontaneously, and earlier than the organizers had planned. By the time the first row of marchers had reached the monument, more were crowding behind them. Those at the front peeled back, in eddies through the oncoming demonstrators. I saw a State Trooper pass by like a leaf on a stream, helplessly and good-humouredly going with the flow. Eventually the river of humanity sorted itself out, and settled on the grass to wait, some with picnic lunches, all with water bottles. It was a scorching day.

Seeing me taking photos of the friendly crowd, a black teenager cheerfully offered to climb with my camera to the top of a small tree for a panoramic view of the historic scene. All day I saw people helping each other in loving ways. I saw a white man looking after a young black girl who felt sick. A black nurse spotted me nearly fainting with heat exhaustion, and took me to a temporary sick bay in a government building to lie down, drink water and rest.

Toward mid-afternoon the sun began to relent its heat, and a cool breeze fanned our foreheads. Great singers sang, at least those who could get through the throng. All movement stopped and all sound stilled when King took the podium, and his unforgettable voice sounded the refrain: “I have a dream.”

Now, 50 years later, we still have dreams, and popular movements like "Idle No  More" are on the move. New leaders are emerging. Perhaps the early years 2000 are the new nineteen-sixties.

The Orillia Youth Symphony Orchestra Highlights Its Chamber Ensembles

Seven chamber ensembles of the Orillia Youth Symphony Orchestra (OYSO) played for the Canadian Club on a Wednesday afternoon in December at St. Paul’s United Church. A senior audience lapped up the young performers’ 2012 Christmas program and sang carols with gusto in breaks between the instrumental music.

Madame Mayumi Kumagai, Director of the OYSO, introduced the self-directed chamber groups. Students aged eight to 18 gravitate together according to their chosen instruments. Each mini-ensemble decides what to play, chooses a leader and invents a name for their group. In concert, the leader introduces the chamber group and its chosen pieces.

Silver Bells are three flutists: Ayana Murray, Meghan Bowman and Natalie LoSole-Stringer. Two trumpeters: Jennie Davison and  Laura Couture and two trombonists: Viki Lentini and Patrick Smith form the quartet No Strings Attached. The current string ensembles have named themselves The Continuo, Nguyen and the Viba Quartet. Team Effort brings three clarinets to the stage, demonstrating the wide range and possibilities of that instrument. Percussionists Cole Mendez and Bayze Murray call their battery Hit or Miss. Their snaredrum duet, “On the March” was a hit with me.

Christmas music offers a wide gamut of moods. The Viba Quartet: Sawyer Glowanlock, Jenice Mun and Hannah Fletcher, violins, and cellist Jocelyn LoSole-Stringer opened the program with a rousing “Hark the Herald Angels Sing” followed by a sturdy “O Tannenbaum”, both arranged by the musicians themselves. I was impressed by their smooth tone and excellent rhythmic treatment of the tunes, all blending beautifully together thanks to their natural discipline of listening to each other.

Speaking of blending, the “Dixieland Duet” by the brass ensemble No Strings Attached and “Hedwig’s Theme” by the clarinetists Team Effort (Kyle Lau, Daniel Clarke and Claire Tazzio) both worked well with the brasses’ seasonal “Christmas Song” and the clarinets’ arrangement of Bach’s chorale “Sheep May Safely Graze.” The Dixieland sound brought an upbeat note while “Hedwig’s Theme” and the D Minor “Clarinet Duo” by Kyle Lau and Daniel Clarke were just that dark touch needed. After all, dark matter pervades most of space, in contrast to the glow and sparkle of distant nebulae and closer stars. So a little darkness serves to set off songs evoking Christmas lights.

Joel Lamontagne and Solivan Lau, violins, along with Natalie Jackiw, viola and Dylan McCullough, bass viol, form The Continuos. Their jolly “God Rest Ye Merry, Gentlemen” contrasted with the more sober, majestic “We Three Kings”. In between the dignified Kings and the minor mood of the Clarinet Duo came a solo fiddler: Sawyer Gowanlock.

When people ask me if a fiddler plays a different instrument from a violinist I have to answer, “It’s the same instrument.” Fiddlers have their own technique, often passed down from generation to generation, and especially in demand for dancing. That means an excellent command of rhythm, staying power and very nimble fingers. “Evelyn’s Waltz” was pivotal to the program that winter afternoon. And, yes, Sawyer comes from generations of fiddlers, in addition to being a violinist of the classical (or perhaps even jazz) persuasion.

Violinists Harvey Li, Andy Lee and Erin Kim, plus cellist Bobbi-Jo Corbett constitute the ensemble called Nguyen. I was amazed at how effectively this combination of instruments re-created the “March of the Nutcracker” without having all the resources of a Russian orchestra. I wondered how the “Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy” would sound without the celeste and bassoon originally scored by Tchaikovsky. Since the age of four, when my father first introduced me to the “Nutcracker Suite” I had associated the dainty celeste and grandfatherly bassoon with the tinkly fairy dance. The inspired arrangement chosen by Nguyen swept away a concept that for me had lasted nearly 75 years. Immediately, their delicate violin treatment made me forget the celeste, while the cello tossed off the bassoon part as to the manner born.

Crisply symphonic in their black trousers or skirts and white shirts, all the chamber groups united as an orchestra under the baton of Mayumi Kumagai for a rousing Trepak from the “Nutcracker Suite”, complete with kettledrums. And so a delightful afternoon finished with a grand Russian flourish.

Music on Davisville

When the Salvation Army band was not rattling our windows with their brief Lord's Day parade along Davisville Avenue, our walls were constantly vibrating from inside with music from the sublime to the silly. We had a piano for kids to start hammering on as soon as they could sit upright. We could turn on the radio to hear popular hits like “The Three Little Fishes” or soul-stirring symphonies under the baton of conductors like Stokowski.

Our collection of 78 rpm discs ranged from Rudy Vallee crooning “Mmmm, Would You Like to Take a Walk” to Frank Crummit’s “Frankie and Johnny” to the jazz collected by Peter from age ten, all dominated by Dad’s ever expanding collection of classics.

Relatives who could sing and play piano and banjo often brought live music into our living room. Many an evening when I was very small, I lay awake after bedtime, listening to cousin Mary’s charming mezzo soprano, with our Aunt Jessie accompanying her at the piano downstairs. Mary let a song sing itself, its cadences falling and rising as it moved her voice along - moving  listeners and accompanist as well. A Highland lullaby, “Husha-ba, Birdie, Croon, Croon”, soaked itself into my bones.

Uncle Jack’s magnificent baritone voice could handle Handel, then switch as effectively to a rollicking sea chantey or a music hall gem garnered in London on leave during in the first World War. We often clamoured for the calm beauty of “Where’ere You Walk”, the nostalgia of “Road to the Isles” and “Trade Winds”, or “Oh, Mr. Brown”, where Jack imitated a simpering, but forward, young lady, impatient of her much too gentlemanly caller.

Our ornately carved piano had a moveable keyboard that allowed us to adjust  pitch, but also tended to slow down slightly the action of the keys. This dear old upright never had one day of rest. I still have a photo of Peter's spaniel, Honey, lying in the crook of the left-hand support and the back of the piano, looking up at me with melting eyes as I stumble through a favourite Bach piece or a new folk song discovery.

My two brothers and I each took a year or so of lessons, then continued on our own. My younger brother had the nimblest fingers, and a quick ear. Within a couple of months of finding his way around a guitar, clarinet or flute, he could play with any tune that struck his fancy, in any style, even on our sluggish piano.

Some children bring home stray animals. I collected stray songs, beginning in kindergarten with "The Friendly Beasts", a carol about a donkey, a cow, a camel, a sheep and two doves. When I brought them home, my parents had all the advantage of a menagerie with none of the attendant barnyard noises or smells. They didn't have to walk or feed anything. All they had to listen to was my piping voice, and be glad it was not caroling the cumulative joys of "Old MacDonald's Farm."

I became a tireless collector of traditional folk music from all over the world and across Canada. I was as absorbed in learning new tunes with words in their original tongue as the lads who tinker with cars in their driveways are intrigued by engines. A song from Mongolia about a horse fascinated me with its giant leaps between notes. I learned how to pronounce Hungarian well enough to sing, although the exact meaning of all the words was beyond me. At least I understood the French and German songs in my collection.

The bulk of my folk repertoire was in English, however - from all over the British Isles and North America.  Irish songs like “My Love’s an Arbutus” were among my mother’s favourites when I sang in the evenings to the accompaniment of Dad’s home-crafted authoharp.

My ingenious father had created his own autoharp, enhanced with a much wider range of harmonies than available on commercial models. We could perform classics with all the original chords, as well as simple folk music. Dad’s gifted  fingers wove a variety of rhythmic patterns.

I mentioned the sublime and the ridiculous. “Rudolph, the Red-nosed Reindeer” was not one of the Friendly Beasts who played their part in a story two thousand years old. The imaginary reindeer with a nose that glowed bright in the dark sprang into fame, and to the top of the Hit Parade “one foggy Christmas Eve” in the 1940s. The tinny little tune to the tango rhythm didn’t catch on with one snobby teenager - me, already on the Bach beat.

My Saturday job at Christmas took me to the middle of Simpson’s Toyland, where the popular Rudolph counter reverberated with several versions of the Rudolph song in different keys, all at once, while we sold Rudolph pencil boxes, music boxes, cuckoo clocks. The tune that I cringed at came back to taunt me years later, in India, of all places.

Helen Heubi’s Thanksgiving Letter, October, 2012

Thanks for:

- the maples  turning colour up in Muskoka, where I lived for the last 17 years or so.

- selling my house in Gravenhurst to a young family.

- finding a lovely apartment in Orillia within days of the sale

- Mary, who found the new digs with me

- Eric for taking a day off work to pile my heavy stuff into truck and trailer, getting it safely to Orillia, transferring it to my new place, with Mary

- Janet LoSole, Jocelyn and Natalie for getting me out of the movers and shakers' way by taking me out for a latte and shopping.

- Lloyd Stringer for sharing with me the bounty of his garden. I had never tasted ground cherries before. Those tomatoes springing spontaneously from the compost are a wonder.

- the Lostrins (Janet, Lloyd, Jocelyn and Natalie) for their company at a meal straight from their garden at Foxfell.

- Lloyd for guiding me by cell phone from Noble Towers to Foxfell by shortcuts, a stroll of about 10 or a sprint of 5 minutes.

- Mary and Eloïse for bringing me another load of household goods

- Mary and Oliver for delivering another truckload of my things

- Vianet, my internet server, for providing me with instant internet and phone service, once the technician had installed a “dry loop” to by-pass Bell, and for my new phone number 705 393 3910, a Barrie number that connects without long distance charges to Gravenhurst and Orillia as well and also echoes my street number.

- the autumn colours beginning to show in Orillia, which I left in 1973. Yes, you’re right. I’ve come a full circle back to Orillia after nearly 40 years.

- YouTube, providing gorgeous choral works to sing along with, complete with score on screen. Examples: Angels' Carol: https://www.youtube.com/watch?NR=1&feature=endscreen&v=KOIhzqutZuQ

Fauré Cantique: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wKwHiGg21KA&feature=relmfu

Sing We: http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=endscreen&v=ciIvhB-zTfc&NR=1

Abend: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nuRpHnz2ZJo&feature=related

Well, that’s a start of my Thanksgiving for October, 2012.

Weeding out the Bad News and Cultivating the Good

First of all, is there any other kind of news than the bad? Occasionally, yes, a “brightener” is allowed space, but can be quickly chased out of a news broadcast or written report by Breaking News of some disaster or by a dire development in an ongoing “story”.

A great mentor, Bijan Anjomi, recommends a total divorce from news reports on any media, for the good of our health and our peace of mind. This makes sense. We all know that the news media live on what’s wrong with us, and Them, and anything happening in the world, or our community.

The fact is, however, that the news can fascinate me, and has ever since  my year of training as a journalist at the University of Western Ontario in the late 1950s. We gathered around the teletype machine just outside the J-lab to glean the latest on the Hungarian revolution. We stayed up all night to follow the US election results. I would have to check history to find out who won in 1956, because it wasn’t the outcome that mattered to me then. It was the process, the ups and downs of the election returns, the excitement, the suspense that kept me rapt over and wrapped around the teletype.

All that cascade of thrills was long ago and far away when I spent happy months in the back country of Provence, far from newspapers. I had to find excuses for this disloyalty to my profession of journalism. It had already dawned on me that news items fade in importance rapidly. There was a certain toll on my emotions from the roller-coaster effect of a crisis developing, peaking and diminishing - at least according to the media. I could tell myself that the whole package of a newscast on television depends on how the stories are gathered, shaped and delivered. I can still remark cynically that the language of the news anchor is deliberately designed to poke my fear buttons. And so, I argued to myself that I wouldn’t miss all the drama, and might even enjoy something like peace of mind. This proved true.

Months after my blissful stay in Provence as a recluse, I shocked a friend with my ignorance of the assassination of a bishop in Africa. That was the only world event that escaped my notice while wandering over hills fragrant with wild lavender and thyme.

Over the years since that experiment far from the media I have been developing my sensitivities in various directions - some new to me, and finding I feel the better for it. I had been reading about our hollow selves, but I couldn’t take such philosophizing too seriously. It made me think of Gilbert’s play, “Patience”, where the Poet declaims a ditty about being “hollow, hollow, hollow” and asks the fetching milkmaid if she too feels hollow. Patience replies, “Thank you, sir. I have dined.” If there is a hollow in my inner being, all the better. That’s where my imagination is free to play - imagination that has been growing muscles.

My inner world and the world around me have been on a collision course like a couple of galaxies meeting and duking it out between pieces of themselves and mostly steering clear of each other, easily avoiding any direct impact. It can be distracting. Occasionally as I scan the news out of the corner of my eye, my imagination will seize upon an item that triggers a powerful emotion, like something bad happening to a baby. My imagination fills in the horrors around the details given in the news report, and won’t let them go. Never mind that there are millions of happy babies living sweet lives, loved and cherished, gurgling and opening innocent eyes on a world of wonders. I have to teach myself to focus on these children, and stop imagining that I could have done something to protect the little one in the terrible news report.

Discipline dictates that I must focus more and more on what’s going well in the world - beginning with me. As Richard Bartlett writes, the universe will simply echo the whining and complaining of my Inner Brat when things don’t go my way. Perhaps until I get inspired by what I do want, I could step back and take a break.

I wonder what’s going on in my inner garden? Neglect? Weeding out of emotions evoking the worst of the past? Cultivating the ground for seeding sweet blooms, and watering the places where they will soon send up delicate green shoots? Can I cultivate the patience to give seedlings time to show themselves, no matter how tempted I may be to yank them up to see how they’re doing?

How’s your garden these days?

SEAWEED À LA PROVENÇALE

Who was it got the dippy notion
of plumbing briny depths of ocean
to raise this seaweed from its bed,
and in his ancient wisdom said,
“Seaweed is a dainty dish,
more delectable than fish,”
and, having taken this posish,
left us with these lanky strands
dripping from our hapless hands?

Before it passes through our lips,
are we to cut it into strips,
or do we simply boil and boil
and also fry? If so, what oil
will do the trick to make it tasty?
By no means let us now be hasty.

Such culinary challenges
do not really need unhinge us.
This one leave us quite undaunted.
“Just what I have always wanted!”
are the words we hope to hear
round our board, resounding clear,
as the connoisseurs proclaim:
“Seaweed! Yet another name
to conjure with in cooking books
and rouse your neighbour’s envious looks!”
As, with lightly racing pulse,
you graciously serve up your dulse.

While I was writing these verses, my husband got down to business in the kitchen. He seized the seaweed and cut it into strips, stared at it meditatively, then sliced the strips into diamond-shaped pieces. These he fried lightly in olive oil, adding soup flavouring, fennel, thyme, garlic and tomato sauce, but deliberately  omitting salt. He topped up the  mixture with water, covered it and simmered it gently until tender. Then we tasted it.
It tasted like seaweed soaked, fried, smothered in tomato sauce and herbs and gently simmered until tender.

©Helen Heubi, 1977

Versatile Blogger Award

Back in December just before the Christmas rush (excuses, excuses), I received a magical message from Mary Chase, Ph.D. I had been graced with the Versatile Blogger Award.

I am now notifying you that I have accepted this award, which qualifies me to pass it on to each of you. You are in random order with at least one of your blogs:

Leticia Austria
http://spectrumofperspectives.blogspot.com

Jennifer Jilks
http://mymuskoka.blogspot.com/

Karen Harbaugh
http://pollyannaofkaren.blogspot.com/

Nancy O’Carroll
http://www.femininepowerplay.blogspot.com/

Monika Aebischer
http://theolivesparrow.typepad.com/

Justice Bartlett
http://justice-bartlett.blogspot.com/

There are a few rules, below, if you like. You will find them by scrolling down in Mary's email. I am adding my perspective to them here:

Thank you, Mary, for this delightful honor. In your honor I have even used American spelling, at least in this paragraph. I may backslide later. For the information of the other recipients your blog is: http://nulla-mary.blogspot.com/

You dedicated your blog with tongue in cheek to one of your (and my) anti-heroes. I dedicate mine and my websites to all who are prepared to read at least one page of them and who actually do so. I love to be read, don't you all? Some of mine are: http://itllcometome.blogspot.com/, http://cometothegravenhurstoperahouse.blogspot.com/, http://greenwoodsongs.blogspot.com/, http://alongwoodlandpaths.blogspot.com/. My websites: http://intoverse.com/, http://eccolibrium.com/,
http://pro-coaching.ca/

My request: if you are not in touch with each other yet, please do write each other welcoming emails, and let us know all your blogs and websites.

Seven things about me:

I. I look forward to Isaac Tigrett's unveiling of his new project on the Mystic Inn of the Seventh Ray on 1 February 2012. We are into sevens here. His website is: http://www.mysticinnofthe7thray.org/

2. I have just finished re-reading Jeoffrey Kendal's autobiography, The Shakespeare Wallah, and feel like starting it all over from page one.

3. I'm thrilled that I've been able to create three websites with an obsolete version of RapidWeaver on my 2005 Mac mini with the now obsolete Tiger OS. Obsolete or not, the effect can be immediate. If I want to change a comma, I can go right in there and do it myself. Sometimes with the very obliging customer service help of FatCow.

4. About great singers, I went backstage to say hello and goodbye to Elisabeth Schwarzkopf after her farewell concert in Toronto. We established that we were both going to live in Switzerland and would yodel to each other from one mountaintop to another. What a great lady with a swift sense of humour. From her sotto voce discussion with her husband as I drifted up to be first in line I gathered she did not appreciate the "bravo man" in the gallery, who effectively destroyed every pin drop silence that she should have had at the end of a particularly moving piece. So, I wish to all singers and other musicians many perfect pin drops to come.

5. My funniest backstage encounter was after a concert by Lois Marshall in Barrie, Ontario. Her accompanist, Weldon Kilbourne, introduced me as one of his pupils, and we all broke out in raucous laughter at the sight of both me and Lois wearing a leg cast each. I had fallen down some stairs and she in her bathtub. That looked as if I were carrying hero worship a little too far. A great lady, fine musician and superb singer she was.

6. Mary believes in reincarnation. Even before I was sure I did I used to take people back into possible past lives. Now I do, and still do after further research and training, I have learned that with Past Life Regression (PLR) - you never know what's going to happen. The tour guide into the past has to be totally on the alert and ready for anything. I love it.

7. It's OK for the Facilitator in a PLR to go partly into trance as the time traveller does completely. What a relief to learn this from a top level PLR guide. And, yes, it is not only possible but quite desireable to be both in trance and highly alert.

Thank you all for delighting with your writing. Be reading you soon.

Cheers,
Helen


This is what Mary Chase wrote to me:
Sunday, December 11, 2011
The Versatile Blogger Award
How nice is this? Fellow blogger and writer extraordinaire, J.D. Mader, has made me a recipient of the very distinguished Versatile Blogger Award. For a very good read, check his blog, Avoiding the Stairs. I can only say that I am humbled and would like to dedicate my award to Newt Gingerich, in hopes that he will pass along his lead in the Republican race to another more worthy than he (but still beatable) -- as I am doing in  accordance with the rules of this reward.

Yes, there are rules.

1. Thank the blogger who honored you and be sure to link to his or her blog, as I have above. Thank you, J.D. You are a gem.
2. Share seven things about yourself.
3. Pass the award on to five deserving bloggers.

So seven things... I am advised these ought to be witty, but will hope readers will settle for succinct.

1. I am currently reading Catherine the Great: Portrait of a Woman by Robert K. Massie. Next on the bedside table is Death Comes to Pemberley by P.D. James.
2. My favorite line from a movie: "Are you a good witch or a bad witch?"
3. It took me nine years to get a B.A. because I kept changing my major (classical studies, French, drama, folklore, English).
4. I love opera. When I was twelve I sneaked backstage and got Joan Sutherland's autograph.
5. I also love Willie Nelson. He hugged me once in Augusta, Maine.
6. I believe in reincarnation.
7. Last time, I didn't.


And now, the next recipients of the Versatile Blogger Award are:
Helen Heubi
Bill Woolum
Tish Jett
Tom Kepler
Peter Pappas

So, newly honored writers, enjoy your moment in the sun. Speak only the truth. Go forth and enlighten.