A Joyful Morning in the Berkshires

There is no setting more perfect for listening to classical music than on the grounds at Tanglewood in the Massachusetts Berkshire Mountains. The grass is always green, soft, and perfectly mown, and there is never a weed in sight—or so it seems. It’s possible that Alan Jay Lerner had recently visited the grounds at Tanglewood when he wrote about Camelot, the land where imperfection would never be allowed to exist.



 

Now, that may be overdoing things a bit, but not based on our visit to Tanglewood last Saturday morning. We were making our annual summer visit to the Berkshires to be immersed in the classics—from Shakespeare to modern dance to symphonies. Saturday morning found us camped on the lawn at Tanglewood to hear the Boston Symphony rehearse for its performance the next day of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony. We came with folding chairs, a tarp (in case the ground was wet), some snack items, suntan lotion and bug spray, and even reading matter to enjoy along with the music. (If this had been an evening performance, we would have also been shlepping a cooler filled with perishable items and wine, a picnic basket filled with utensils and more foods, a blanket, a citronella candle, and possibly a folding table. Others around us would probably have added candlesticks, silverware, crystal goblets, and the occasional duck or lobster feast. Tanglewood brings out the classy and pretentious in all of us.)

The entire program this day was Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, the one that ends with the oh-so-familiar “Ode to Joy” chorus. You know the one. It goes, “BAH, bah, bah, bah/ BAH, bah, bah, bah / BAH, bah, bah, bah, BAH-be-bah.”  I recently read that the “Ode to Joy” was adopted by the European Union as its inter(national) anthem. The powerful opening chords are also pretty familiar, but I won’t try to imitate them. Take my word for it, you’ve heard the opening fanfare played on newsreels or cartoons. Or you can hear it here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ufn_dS7s4Oc

As the music started flowing Saturday morning, most of us reclined comfortably and let our minds wander. That was until about three minutes into the fourth movement of the symphony. That’s when the “Ode to Joy” melody made a first sneak appearance, played by one or two cellos and then picked up by a few violins and French horns. Now, I’m no music critic, and neither were most of the people on the lawn, but we knew what was happening. We started to sit up and pay attention.

What happened next went like this: After the orchestra played around with the melody for perhaps four minutes, a single deep baritone voice began booming out lyrics to go with the music. Then a few higher voices joined in. The German lyrics talk about magic and sparks and brotherhood, and, of course, joy.

But who could be certain just what the singers were telling us? We just knew that we were being moved into “joy mode.”

The single voice and chorus was replaced by two voices, one deep and one high. Then the chorus jumped in again, and three voices followed, then four, then a whole bunch.

By now, not only was almost everyone on the lawn sitting up at attention, but perhaps thirty people were standing and serving as pseudo-conductors. Right arms were counting out time with imaginary batons, a veritable pride of Leonard Bernsteins. I saw one couple throw their arms around each other as the music crescendoed.  Ah, joy!

In my mind, I could hear my mother-in-law humming the melody in her slightly off-key but exuberant way. The annual trip to Tanglewood was always one of her great joys. She would sit perched princess-like in her folding chair, wrapped in a familiar red jacket and covered by a blanket to keep out the cold. No matter what the orchestra played was wonderful to her, especially if she could hum along.

Finally, after a 20-minute ride, the chorus completed its joyful journey, and the audience exchanged its imaginary batons for real applause. It was quite an experience.

And, for those few minutes, I had also been transported back in my imagination to my days in the Savannah High School band, playing part of a Beethoven overture on the tenor saxophone or even (gasp!) on the bassoon. Only this time, all the notes I played were the right ones, which made the experience joyful (and a little surprising) for my parents and the other mothers and fathers in the audience. Talk about a beautiful spark and magic!

In My Heart, I’m an Immigrant

Lately, I have been researching my family roots, trying to find out where my father’s family originated, how my paternal grandparents wound up coming to the U.S., and how they ended up in small towns in Mississippi, Arkansas, and Louisiana. Two Internet tools I have been using are ancestry.com (which costs money after an initial search) and familysearch.org, a totally free site put up by the Mormons for all of us to use. (Thank you.) I am one of millions of Americans who have tuned into these websites. And do you know what all of us have discovered? If we look far enough back, we have found that ALL of our ancestors (other than possibly a few Native Americans) originated outside of the United States. So, somewhere in our past, all of us have family members who were immigrants. Live with it!

Amazingly, I learned about familysearch.org from a cousin I never knew I had. She came across some of my blog posts about my Southern roots and realized that her grandmother was actually my father’s sister. So she put a comment on one of my posts, and we followed up with emails and phone calls. You know the kind of things that cousins do. We have combined tidbits of knowledge about our ancestors that we each knew independently, and we now have a much fuller picture than before. Except neither of us knows just where my grandfather was living before he arrived in the U.S. in the 1880s. But arrive he did, probably through Castle Garden in New York. Then he somehow moved to the Midwest, took on the last name Goodman, and eventually met my grandmother in Indianapolis, where her family had settled after arriving from the Ukraine in Russia. Then they moved to Mississippi, of all places. So now I know the awful truth—both of my paternal grandparents were immigrants. Live with it!

Part of why I am thinking about this stuff is that I recently watched Ann Coulter and Sean Hannity—whose ancestors I’m sure came from somewhere in Ireland or elsewhere in Europe and were subjected to abuse after arriving in the U.S.—discuss how the country will be “lost” if a new immigration bill is passed and immigrant children living in this country since birth are offered a chance to stay here as citizens or others who entered illegally are granted amnesty. The country will be lost because we will become a country filled with immigrants. News flash! We already are. Live with it!

There is a quote attributed to former Texas governor Miriam Amanda “Ma” Ferguson, who in speaking against bilingual education in her state said, “If English was good enough for Jesus Christ, it is good enough for Texas schoolchildren.” Now, even Wikipedia has some doubts about whether Ma Ferguson actually said those astounding words, though the Wikipedia writer is certain they were indeed spoken by some Texas politician, perhaps as early as the 1880s. Deep in his Texas heart, Rick Perry (or even Ted Cruz amazingly) might want to echo the sentiments if not the words of Ma’s quote. And he would sound just as silly. Live with it!

 

"Ma" Ferguson contemplating her next big idea

 

Last Sunday morning (and this is a true story, not made up for effect), I went for a ride on bike paths linking my town and the town of Saddle Brook, some five miles away by bike. In one half-mile stretch, I passed patches of grass on which groups of Indians or Pakistanis were playing cricket, groups of Latinos were playing soccer (futbol), and a mixed group of kids—white, black, and brown—were playing baseball. I also heard lots of Russian, Polish, and Chinese spoken by people I passed along the way, and probably a little Hebrew and Yiddish too. And I’m sure that the region in which I live is no more ethnic than are the regions of most Americans these days, no matter how much we try to isolate ourselves. We are all former immigrants trying to blend in. Live with it!



Cricket playing in some Saddle Brook somewhere



I know that I am riding on a “high horse” here, but the tone of the debate today on immigration is a little sad and a lot scary. Just as our ancestors (even Sean Hannity’s and Ann Coulter’s) eventually were “included” in this country (sometimes after a very bumpy beginning), today’s immigrants will, over time, find their place too and maybe even be accepted. The country will survive, and we will be better off for the experience. Live with it!    

 

Hello, Out There!

The hottest trend in education today involves the teaching of 21^st Century Skills. I’m not sure that everyone agrees on what those skills are, but nearly everyone would include facility with contemporary and future technology as core concepts.

My family put on a 21^st Century Skill clinic yesterday, and I’ll be damned if I fully understand just what went on.

It all began when my daughter Amanda, who is currently somewhere in Cambodia (having already passed through Thailand and Laos and soon heading to Bali and Malaysia) sent an IM to my wife on her iPhone. (Beware: I am planning to use initials, acronyms, and the occasional technology abbreviation in this post. BTW, if you do not understand these items, then you are probably hopelessly lost in the 20^th century with me.)

The IM noted that Google had suspended her gmail account because the company’s techno-bots suspected that her account must have been hacked or taken over by someone else. The reason: why else would she be sending and receiving messages in so many different countries so far from her Jersey or Georgia homes?

No problem, you say. Just let Google know that she was actually she. They would send her a code to re-activate her account, she would communicate the code via text message, and all would be well. Oh, ho! And Oh, no! You see, Amanda had not purchased an international data plan before heading to Southeast Asia. She planned to latch onto wi-fi where she could to send emails via the Internet and use IMs even from the jungle to communicate via iPhone to my wife, who would then let me in on whatever news I needed to know by voice (using the old-fashioned face-to-face communication method).


Can you hear me now?

Google sent the code, but Amanda had no way to activate it without using 4G technology to send a text message. (Are you following this so far?) So she sent an IM to Audrey asking her to contact Verizon in order to purchase a day’s or a week’s worth of cellular data so she could send her text message. Now, Audrey might have trouble carrying out the instructions, but luckily our son Brett was around for the morning, and he has a firm grasp on 21st century skills. Following his direction, Audrey used our 20th century phone (we really should look into more up-to-date equipment) to call Verizon and make the purchase. To do this, of course, Audrey had to first check her handwritten file of passwords to make sure that Verizon would accept her as being herself. Done and done.

Audrey then sent a return IM to Amanda. There was a brief mention of Buddhist temples and other marvels of Cambodia and a quick thank you for making the data purchase--or so I have been told.

 

She says she's having a great time!

 

Unfortunately, as of last night, Amanda was still having some difficulty sending her text to Google. Until that time, she may need to resort to sending smoke signals. I keep looking at the sky hoping to see her latest update. It’s a brave new world we live in!