Wandering, but Not Lost

Can anybody tell me why green olives are almost always packed in glass jars and black olives are almost always packed in steel cans? (Does it have to do with the ferrous oxide added to the solution they are preserved in, about which I learned when I was researching whether olives are a fruit or a vegetable [see below] {they are a fruit}.)

Can anybody tell me why the only way you can buy most ordinary mustard today is in squeeze bottles...but mustard doesn’t squeeze out like ketchup, the first drops are usually water, and a whole lot is left in the bottle after you can squeeze it no more?

The May 7 issue of Time reports that at 9 months, American babies get 48% of their vegetable calories from yellow, orange and dark green veggies. When those same babies are 2 years old, they are getting 41% of their daily vegetable calories from french fries.

I am not sure I understand all that data, but the obvious implication is that American teen-agers get 100% of their vegetable calories from french fries. Unless they get some of those calories from the ketchup they dip them in. (Ketchup is still a vegetable, isn’t it?...but I reveal my age.) What percentage of their fruit calories comes from olives (see above)? Now the questions are getting tough.

Speaking of cans and bottles and all the other stuff we throw away, I commend for our discomfort Wendell Berry’s really tough observation about American environmental degradation: “There is no sense and no sanity in objecting to the desecration of the flag while tolerating and justifying and encouraging as a daily business the desecration of the country for which it stands.” (from What Are People For?, as reported in the May issue of The Sun)

Wonder how Wendell Berry carries his mustard home. (“He makes his own, dummy!”)

The Human Art of Puzzle

We visited the Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh last weekend. Warhol was as much a cultural phenomenon as an artist - some say he was more a phenomenon than an artist. I appreciated the opportunity to gain a deeper understanding of his artwork, and found more to it and in it than I had anticipated.

Warhol was born and raised in a working class family in Pittsburgh, and was baptized in a Byzantine Catholic Rite church. He considered himself a Catholic all of his life, and attended daily mass. There’s a picture of him in an audience the Pope. Warhol was buried in a Catholic ceremony with his family in Bethel Park, a Pittsburgh suburb.

Warhol profited greatly from mainstream culture, but was an icon of New York City’s counter culture. The museum’s notes tell of drug use and of a succession of male sexual relationships. Many of the videos he made are at the least edgy.

But when it came to the possible healing power of crystals, Warhol wasn’t so sure. He was afraid trusting crystals to heal was contrary to his Catholic faith.

How many ways we have of fitting all the pieces of us into one human frame!

And we do not have to be artists to know we are puzzles whose pieces often overlap, leave gaps, get bent out of shape, and sometimes never really find a place to fit in.

More on "Two Ideas at Once? Three, Even?"

Religions seem particularly unable to consider more than one thing at a time. And the more fundamentalist/conservative/retrograde - and often concurrently more passionate - the religion, the even harder the time it has doing that. Consider the very public religious affiliations of presidential contenders.

Until recently the only reasonably likely choice the Republicans seemed to have had was between a Roman Catholic and a Mormon. Rick Santorum, a very conservative Roman Catholic, has now dropped out of the race, so talk is that he might be Mormon Mitt Romey’s VP choice. It’s hard to imagine the two of them sharing lunch in the Oval Office when they come from religious traditions that call upon the name of Jesus but practically deny the historical existence of one another. Which of them would say grace?

Mormons believe there was no valid church on earth between the death of Jesus’ original disciples and the coming of Joseph Smith, and Roman Catholics build huge chunks of their theology on tradition developed through those very centuries. They both believe those outside their own faith tradition cannot possibly be saved. (I don’t think all Roman Catholics believe that, but I’d be surprised if Santorum does not, given his own faith’s conservatism.) To work together they’d each have to be able to consider and even respect more than one idea at a time, which Santorum surely cannot do and retain the purity he likes to claim. Romney seems very able to consider many ideas serially, but that’s a different matter.

Meanwhile, Barack Obama’s most recent religious affiliation was with the United Church of Christ, which he (unfortunately) hastily abandoned before the last election. Some charged he’d been listening to a preacher who did not buy the historical blindness of the heresy called “American exceptionalism”. So far as I know, he and his family are not presently affiliated with any church, so maybe he’s still UCC at heart. That’s a faith tradition with room for lots of ideas at the same time, which is a sign of the President’s intellectual prowess and also, in this political atmosphere, of his vulnerability.

Maybe, should a Romney/Santorum ticket win (which I am not advocating, but I can consider things I like and things I don’t like at the same time), they’d invite Barack Obama to offer grace when they eat together...after which they would, self-righteously, try to eat him alive.

Mahler #2: A Personal Encounter

I wrote the following yesterday to help my Singers' Club friends make their way through a symphony many have not heard in its entirety. Several said it was helpful to them, and I decided to fix a couple of things in it and post it. Following it are three pictures I took just before rehearsal last night. Listen to us at 8:00 tonight (4/18) on WCLV or wclv.com.

While outside cleaning out flower beds this afternoon I got a notion to write something to share with you about Mahler #2 and me...how we were introduced and (very briefly) how I understand it. Many among us know far more about music than do I, and what follows hardly had time to researched, so corrections of fact, if not my experience, will be gratefully accepted.

From 1965-1968 I was a seminary student in the San Francisco Bay Area, and several of us attended concerts by the San Francisco Orchestra quite regularly. They were held in the old War Memorial Opera House, and Joseph Krips was the Conductor and Music Director. If I’d ever heard any Mahler before, it may have been his First Symphony, but I was not familiar with it. I believe Krips conducted. I was probably overwhelmed and awed and a bit mystified by the first 4 and a half movements, but when the chorus intoned “Aufersteh’n” mid-way through the 5th movement, I knew I had never heard anything like it in my life.

As soon as I could find a few extra dollars, I bought Leonard Bernstein’s 1963 stereo LP of it. I have treasured it ever since, and several years ago bought it on CD, Bernstein and the New York Philharmonic, same recording. People argue about Bernstein’s way with music, but he is often credited with the rediscovery of Mahler. (He was aided by the invention of LP records; how many 78’s would it have taken to record Mahler #2?)

Here is a brief summary of what I hear in the five movements, since I don’t know what kind of program notes will be available to us and when, and they may be your scholarly check on my personal perceptions:

The first movement is a 20-minute-plus funeral march (Mahler called it a “Funeral Celebration), some say representing the funeral of the hero of Mahler’s First (known as the “Titan” Symphony). But this is not the quiet, meditative kind of funeral music you’d hear in churches and funeral homes nowadays; in fact, the music might be the cause of death, so poundingly anguished it is. Interspersed with the terror are more mellow passages that promise some kind of relief or hope from death’s power, but they do not last.

The second movement is a Länder. It is so different from the first movement that Mahler wanted a five-minute silence after movement one. A Länder is a waltz-like folk dance, a style often heard in Mahler’s works. It has a gentle, pastoral feel to it, but it, in turn, is interrupted by dramatic and almost violent outbursts. I love this movement.

Movement three is a based upon a melody from Mahler’s setting of a poem from his collection Des Knaben Wunderhorn (“The Youth’s Magic Horn”). He omits the words, and transforms the melody into an ironic expression of doubt and despair. The particular song is called “St. Anthony of Padua Preaches to the Fishes,” and here it goes:

They listened to the sermon...

They liked the sermon

And they remain like everyone else:

The crabs still go backward,

The cod stay stupid,

The carp gorge themselves, 

They forgot the sermon,

They liked the sermon, 

And they remain like everyone else.

The words won’t be sung, so don’t listen for them. But meditate, if you will, on the text behind them. I do.

You will hear words sung in the fourth movement. It is called Urlicht (“Primal Light”), and features the alto singing another song from Des Knaben Wunderhorn. The poem is addressed to a rose, and confesses humanity’s great need to go to heaven. Though an angel may try to bar the way, the poet will not be turned back because he/she is of God and to God shall return. God will lend light and send the poet to “eternal blessed life.” The music is tranquil, its melody speaking of a passionate quest for God and faith.

The final movement begins in a long struggle between death and hope. It alternates between high promise and deep despair, until finally powerful trumpet (and other instrumental) calls summon all to the last judgment (think Sistine Chapel). Finally, we come in with the words that promise humanity shall rise again. The first words are by an 18th-century German poet named Klopstock; Mahler wrote the words beginning with “O glaube...” You can find the words online in Wikipedia.

The only other time I sang this was also in Severance Hall, at the celebration of the 200th Anniversary of the Cleveland Catholic Diocese. I was in the University Circle Chorale, and I think we were joined by choirs from Catholic Churches all over Cleveland. The CIM orchestra also played that one, but I don’t remember who conducted.

Strangely, it’s hard to see Mahler #2 as expressing a Christian view of resurrection. Not only does it not mention Jesus, but it also seems to argue that resurrection depends upon us, and our ability to conquer death and pain on our own. I’m not in any way saying this as a criticism of the work itself; to me if offers great encouragement to soldier on when things get tough. Mahler himself was a Jew, and the poem may be more faithful to that tradition than to Christianity. That’s fine with me. I love the work.

I still have two texts from a class in Music History I took in college, published in the late 1950’s and 1963. Both hardly mention Mahler and Bruckner, and what they do say is not complimentary. We now know (or it seems to me) that if Brahms summed up the late-Romantic symphonic tradition, Mahler and Bruckner pushed it to its breaking point, and composers who followed them in some senses were starting over. There was nothing else to say.

Since that evening in San Francisco I’ve come to appreciate many of Mahler’s other works, especially his symphonies, and I may even “like” some better than the Second. But it has a very special place in my life, and if I seem a bit absorbed as we hear it tomorrow night, you will know why.

Two Ideas at Once? Three, Even?

How hard is it to consider more than one idea at a time? Apparently, very hard.

The question came to me as I struggled to understand a minivan’s bumper sticker: “My Soldier Defends Freedom for Your Honor Student.” A National Guard emblem on the same vehicle told me the owner’s soldier was probably in that branch of the service, so she or he may well be among the many National Guard soldiers deployed abroad. I honor his or her commitment and dedication.

But why does honoring my soldier require challenging someone else’s honor student? I have known soldiers smart enough to be very honored students. And many honor students become very fine solders. History is full of men and women who were, and are, both. And why is “defending freedom” something to be done at the end of a gun and not with the point of a pencil? And isn’t freedom more likely to be found in the realm of ideas than on the battlefield?

Unfortunately our nation is unable to think about more than one thing at a time, especially when it comes to politics. Republicans are very good at thinking about reducing taxes and cutting spending, while Democrats excel at thinking about raising taxes (but only on the 1% among us) and maintaining or increasing spending. Can any one person think about both - indeed all - of the budgetary options we need to consider? Yes, but he or she is apparently not in office or running for office. Something about the need to win elections freezes the brain of the political animal so it can think only one think at a time.

George Washington and Thomas Jefferson were representative of that brave group of courageous soldiers and honor scholars who got our nation off to a sound start. I doubt they wasted much time wondering whose efforts were more important to the securing of our freedom. Neither should we.

Easter's Moon

Easter's Moon

At sunrise, Easter’s Day, 2010, I caught Easter’s Moon
slipping across the southern pre-dawn sky.
Partially obscured by fresh budding trees,
near its last quarter,
it waned its way from the stalking light--
from full toward new,
from sun’s shine to earth’s.

A fractured half eggshell on the move,
it scooped up the darkness ahead of it,
calmly trying to consume it all before
it itself was obliterated by the relentless rising sun.
Easter’s sunrise chased Easter’s moon into retreat and obscurity.

The sun boldly marches forth (so it seems) every morning,
to reclaim from earth that loaned light
it had so lately brushed upon the moon.
But the moon strolls back (it seems) every 28 days,
reclaiming sun’s light to wash and watch
the earth from the dark sky.

Easter’s sun vs. Easter’s moon:
Do the faithful who gather at dawn on the first day of the week
know the high cost of the sun’s eternal rising from the dead?
Do they lament the dying of moonbeams’ gracious glow
upon the glint of sun’s shining double-edged sword--
the disfiguring of one who has a human face
by one into whose eye they dare not look
lest they become forever
blind?