Walking the Berkshires

Tangled Up In Reviews

What planet are these reviewers from?  Are they too cool to admit how irredeemably dreadful Bob Dylan's new holiday album really is?

Rolling Stone lays it on thick:  

"The effect is like a Woodstock snowfall with the defiance of 1970's Self Portrait: another way of saying his roots are everywhere."

Perhaps, but from where I'm sitting his visionary talent is nowhere in evidence.

The Chicago Tribune's music critic gives the old man a gentleman's C:

"I'm willing to cut him a break here. Besides, the CD actually isn't that bad, and in some cases ("Here Comes Santa Claus" for example) is actually pretty damn hilarious."

Yes, comedy.  And everyone keeps saying that Dylan plays it straight, so the joke must be on those of us not hip enough to get it.

From Pop Matters:

"It’s a double shot of straight sentimental corn syrup, and it’s the closest Dylan has come to crooning since Nashville Skyline, his lovely 1969 country ode to domesticity. The years and cigarettes have had their way with the man’s larynx, and he can’t match the warm honeycomb baritone that surprised and confused his fans three decades ago—frankly, he often comes off as a lunatic warbling carols with almost terrifying conviction—but nevertheless, his damaged voice is full of warmth and sweetness. “Although it’s been said many times, many ways… Merry Christmas to you,” he sings, and he sounds like he means it more than Mel Torme ever did. For all the world, the record doesn’t feel like a charity album or a goofball lark or an odd experiment—it just sounds like the work of a dude who really, really loves Christmas."

Crap.  Now I'm the Grinch 'cause I say it's not just the weather outside that's frightful.  And I tend to go for screwball novelty recordings, as a rule. 

Somebody stick a Pitchfork in him; he's done:

It's not hard to presuppose that Dylan-- who has an entire encyclopedia, dozens of nonfiction treatises, and at least a handful of college courses dedicated to parsing his lyrics and intent-- is either deeply irritated or deeply bemused by his anointment, and is responding to over-the-top canonization by doing deliberately oddball stuff (see also: leering at underwear models in a Victoria's Secret commercial). Even the title-- eerily reminiscent of Kenny Rogers' 1998 turd, Christmas From the Heart-- feels tongue-in-cheek. But maybe that's a trap, too-- maybe, like zillions of red-blooded, religiously ambiguous American dudes, Bob Dylan just likes Christmastime and Adriana Lima. And we're stupid for presuming anything more.

Again with "We are not worthy?" This is embarrassing. Jolly Old St. Bob left his sooty footprints all over the carpet and the critics are in denial.

Why not call it like it is;  the man is getting more attention for this "charity offering" than any of his largely irrelevant recordings of the past decade.  And I'm not buying it.

Ho ho ho.

Snow Falling on the Old Year

The snow is falling in a heavy, fine powder.  It swirls through the branches of the old sugar maple in our backyard, and spreads its crisp white sheet over the great swathes of leaves I never managed to rake.  The birdfeeders beyond the kitchen window are swarmed by scores of pine siskins, with the odd slate-colored junko added to the mix for contrast.  Only their frenzied tracks mar the surface of the snow - not even the sidewalk plow has churned its way down the street - and later the children will dash outside, catching flakes on their tongues and making fallen angels here on Earth.

It is a good day for the last day of the year.  It is the kind of day where, to paraphrase Frost, the mind skates circles around itself as it moves, plucking the strings of memory in a slowly spinning vortex.  New Year's Eve is my least favorite Holiday: all style and denial and pitched toward the young and fabulous.  I suppose I could be seduced by a night of glitter and light, a swing band riffing on the Nutcracker as we step out in suave and sequined splendor.  Pyramids of champagne burst into airy nothing while all the city shimmers in the ebon dark and revelers gorge on beluga and oysters and Brie. 

But those Winter Palace Romanovs on Wall Street and the silver screen are dancers in a hollow shell.  Not every bursting bubble is Champagne.  Fabergé stopped making eggs in 1917 when the Red curtains came down. Fantasies of sleek limbs and sequins do not reflect what I see in the mirror, and tonight will be another New Year's Eve spent at home and not at the ball, let alone watching it drop on the old year like the proverbial other shoe.  What we have done, and left undone, abides and broods when left to their own devices.

Those moments when we can look both back and forward with hopeful peace of mind cannot be scripted.  Nostalgia and melancholy leave their tracks where snowflakes go to lose themselves.  But grace comes unexpectedly at the turning of the year, brings you up short like the first intake of breath on a icy morning.  It comes and curls into the crook of your arm with boundless faith in your security.  It glistens where water wisps glaze the trees above the freezing river.  It is slick and sheer like black ice on a windswept lake, brittle like starlight, soft like snow in a silent forest.

If we must have a date where we carve another notch in our walking sticks, let it be the darkest night of the year when we look to the light returning.  Let it be the crackle of fire and dancing shadows beneath the winter trees.  Life is not linear.  Time to step outside.

Cabinet of Curiosities #12: Greatest Story Ever Told Edition

Welcome to the 12th edition of Cabinet of Curiosities, where today we're tossing out the milk and cookies and leaving Santa some legs and lox instead. This is how curious holiday traditions begin, you see, so that nowadays we think nothing at all of dragging trees indoors and festooning them with chintz and tinsel to celebrate the birth of the son of God and the arrival of his secular avatar in the red suit.  'Tis the season when even the most irreligious among us are steeped in ritual, be it our evergreen curiosity cabinets or that handed down recipe for coffeecake without which whatever Holiday you adhere to just wouldn't be right.

M. Diane Rogers of CanadaGenealogy decks the halls with some of her Christmas Curios, including "any number of chipped, cracked, broken, or otherwise unwanted items that I've saved for Christmas over the years."  My grandfather had a name for the moth-eaten angels, armless porcelain cupies and bedraggled feathers from Easter bonnets that my grandmother gave second lives as ornaments.  "Shmelts!", he would snort, and banish them to the dark side of the Tannenbaum.  There are Shmelts on every tree, and even when they do not make it out of the box we cannot bear to part with them.

Janet the Researcher favors a holiday tableau from her childhood featuring a plastic church and evergreens.    

Midge Frazel of Granite in my Blood tells the wonderful story of the Norwegian paper cut-out of girls dancing with trollsthat has a treasured, if incongruous place in her holiday display.  Our Skandi friends are open minded sorts, and would not begrudge a Tomtin a little merriment with the merry maids.  They also are open to museums that take on such uninhibited subjects as homosexuality among non humans, or so we learn from Dr. Martin Rundkvist of Aardvarchaeology who notes that the Stockholm Museum of Natural History has an ongoing exhibition that includes a model depicting nasal intercourse among two presumably consenting male dolphins.  Really.  I wonder if you can get it as an ornament from the museum gift shop? 

Gay dolphin statues are not yet part of any known Christmas tradition, but there are even more curious sculptures that apparently are.   Daylife asserts - and offers photographic evidence for the claim - that "Statuettes of well-known people defecating are a strong Christmas tradition in Catalonia, dating back to the 18th century as Catalonians hide [them] in Christmas Nativity scenes and invite friends to find them."   Rather makes the case for Catalan nationalism.

When Lorine McGinnis Schultze thinks about holiday fare, it features Christmas Toast in a Victorian toast rack which belonged to her English great-grandmother.  

Brian at Ancestors at Rest turns to a very special bowl full of goodies that was a wedding gift to his great-grandparents in 1904.  "The poor old thing may not look like much, the flowers are faded and worn, the rim has a large chunk that was broken and then glued back (with not too much success) by my Great-Grandfather. It has no monetary value whatsoever. But to me it is priceless."

Over at Caroline's Miscellany, there is magic in a cup, for she has a a treasured collectionof lithophanes!  "In the bottom of each cup is a picture. In fact, the bottom of each cup is a picture. When you first look inside, it just appears to be a bumpy surface, but the moment you hold the cup to the light, an image appears. The different thicknesses of porcelain provide the light and shade."

Melody Lasalle of The Research Journal has the story of a Christmas curiosity of an entirely different sort: her grandmother's lost pajamas!  The December holiday season spawns countless family legends that we delight in dusting off through the years as if they were ornaments of blown glass and finest crystal.  In our family, we have the tale of the Christmas Eve when my cousins drove all the way to Boston from Chicago, and ten minutes after they arrived their station wagon and all it contained had been stolen.  Boston was then - and may still be - a contender for the car theft capital of the country, but nevertheless my father immediately went from block to block with the notion that he could find it and save Christmas.  And he did.  Except for the hot wired ignition, nothing had been taken.

For those of a pagan persuasion, Gil of Gilocafe offers up a tale from Aztec Mythology and the star-crossed lovers Iztaccíhuatl and Popocatépetl  who the gods covered in snow and changed into mountains.

Here's wishing you and yours all the joys of this curious season, and if you happen to find meat-flavored cologne in your stocking this year, it probably has no bearing on whether you've been naughty or nice.  Just that bags featuring Carla Bruni in the buff were unavailable at Burger King.

Call for Posts: Cabinet of Curiosities # 12

The next edition of Cabinet of Curiosities returns home for the holidays after stepping out with other fine hosts.  This is the season when we dust off the household gods, deck the halls with items wonderous strange, and mabe repeat the stories behind the objects as they emerge from the tissue paper or wadded newsprint to find a place of honor on hearth or bow.  Perhaps you will be inspired to share some of your treasured holiday curiosities, be they the one-legged jumping jack that your great grandfather made that hangs on your tree or the candy dish your ancestor swiped from the Waldorf Astoria that now holds the thin mints next to the holiday roast.  Send your submissions by Sunday December 14th via the handy carnival submission form.

Balancing at Scale in a Sea of Trouble

"Who am I"  What is my purpose?"  These are not just matters of personal philosophy or religious creed; they are fundamental to the ultimate success or failure of institutions both large and small.  In times of crisis and uncertainty, losing track of the answers to these questions can bring down the whole house of cards.  You cannot adapt to new opportunities and challenges if you don't know what to retain that is at the very core of your corporate or personal identity and what is non-essential.  You cannot scale up and sustain your efforts at scale unless you know what key qualities of your prior success must be sustained at the new level.  And you cannot spend all your time trying to answer these questions because you will get steamrolled by events and miss the chance altogether.

I have been part of organizations that have tried to go to scale and ended up losing vital parts of their identity, culture and effectiveness.  I have been part of companies that have stuck to one model of doing things long after it became clear that continuing to do so would result in certain failure.  I have been part of coalitions that tried to reinvent themselves without a clear idea of what would appeal to funders, and indeed lost sight of their raison d'etre.  All of us have had similar experiences in our professional lives and personal relationships.  Look no further than Wall Street and the national divorce rate to see that this is so.

Nathaniel Philbrick, author of  "In the Heart of the Sea; The Tragedy of the Whaleship Essex, observes that effective ship Captains and 1st Mates posses complimentary but quite distinctive personal qualities and that both are requirements of group survival at the extremes of existence.  One should possess the vision and authority to act decisively on the best available information and make course corrections when conditions require, and the other have the ability to rally the crew, implement the vision, be alert to changes in the wind: essentially play the role of Mother to the Captain's pater familias. The same relationship doubtless exists in the army command structure between the Company Captain and the senior NCO.

If your organization lacks decisive and authoritative strategic thinkers and effective and perceptive implementers (or, God forbid, both), you are unlikely to weather the crisis when it comes.  Getting the proper balance between planning and action, and recognizing that each of us by nature tends to fall on one or the other side of that continuum, is a critical leadership skill.

So pick your institution facing transformational change and new challenges and crises, and ask whether it is clear about its identity and direction and has the right combination of leadership and resilience to make those changes.  Pick your politician or your CEO (or spouse, if you let your head guide your heart) with the same eye.

An Aunt Kate Day

What a day for sailing this would be!  The wind is blowing across the bay from the West, so there would be no need to tack against it to gain the Islands on the horizon or run before it to return.  Later it will shift to its customary southwest breeze. The sky is free of haze or cloud, and the air is clean and bright. Ospreys soar along the bluff and call out in the wind.  How my earthbound feet want to fly across the waves with a sail for wings.

There is a curious craft with a red sail making its way toward the west end of the Cape Cod Canal as I write.  She's made of wood - that much is clear through the scope by the great picture windows facing the bay - but her sail is stiffened throughout with stays like those of a Chinese Junk.  There actually is, or was, a Junk that sailed the waters of Buzzards Bay when I was growing up.  There are sloops and yawls among the pleasure craft today, and on very windy afternoons the windsurfers dance across the waves like skipping stones. Later today I may see a great rainbow-hued spinnaker billowing before the mast of some inbound vessel. 

To my mind there are not enough sailing craft in the bay today for such a glorious late summer Sunday.  Some of the best sailing weather is yet to come, in autumn wind with the whitecaps foaming, but today would be a day to savor summer to the dregs with the wind in my face and the blue water sparkling alongside. 

Tonight, if the weather holds, I'll bring the children down to the beach and into the water to swim as we watch the stars.  Maybe there will still be phosphorus glowing around us as there were earlier in summer.  Maybe the pale face of Jupiter will leave a shining path on the face of the water. 

My Great Great Aunt Kate, so I am told though she died when I was still an infant, had a favorite psalm for days like these:

"This is the day that the Lord hath made.  Let us rejoice and be glad in it!"

Such days as these are "Aunt Kate Days".

A Pause In Praise of Place

Maggie's Farm in all its glory.

Tremont Nails, originally from Wareham, MA,  make it to Deb's homestead in Minnesota.

Chet Raymo has been to the mountaintop.

Sissy Willis, as only she can, serves up her sumptuous blend of cultural, social, economic and political history.

Sarpy Sam at home on the range.

Migratory restlessness somewhere in New Jersey.

Though our relationship to places is personal, love of land is bipartisan.

Sacred Cow, Hold the Fries

If Jesus can appear in the tinted glass of a hardware store, why not the name of Allah in boiled beef?

"Diners have been flocking to a restaurant in northern Nigeria to see pieces of meat which the owner says are inscribed with the name of Allah.

What looks like the Arabic word for God and the name of the prophet Muhammad were discovered in pieces of beef by a diner in Birnin Kebbi.

He was about to eat it, when he suddenly noticed the words in the gristle, the restaurant owner said."

He mooves in mysterious ways.

"Seagulls Sing Your Hearts Away"

"Bring tea for the Tillerman
Steak for the sun
Wine for the women who made the rain come"

The grand encampment of Barker and Ogden kith and kin over the 4th of July weekend at Windrock involved so many friends and relations one needed a scorecard to keep track of them all.  Fortunately, my cousin John's wife Megan used her graphic design skills to collect and display two family trees with names dates and thumbnail photographs for practically everyone in 5 generations from my maternal great grandparents on down to a baby on the way.  Several of us provided the genealogical data and tracked down needed images, but the end result allowed us all to puzzle out such things as who went with whom and what a 2nd cousin once removed looks like.

I took fewer photographs of the festivities than I had intended, or rather I focused on recording certain stages while actively participating in others. I have no pictures of the extraordinary drip castles on the unexpected sand bar revealed by an unusually low tide, nor the swarms of children who helped to construct them or dig quahogs rooted out by searching toes.  I did not get pictures of the intergenerational baseball and soccer games that sprang up on the lawn.  I had many conversations with wonderful people, and so have no regrets on that score.

"Seagulls sing your hearts away
'Cause while the sinners sin, the children play"

There were some things that defied photography, like the phosphorescence that made the still waters glow for midnight swimmers, and the fireworks that erupted up and down the shore on both sides of the bay and behind Great Neck. 

No one, I believe, wanted any pictures of the most dramatic and terrifying event of the weekend, when the Angle of Death dipped so near we could feel the beating of its wings. My cousin Colin broke out in hives and soon went into anaphylactic shock in the water where quick heads, sound medical knowledge and other people's EpiPens kept him alive until the EMTs arrived.   My cousins John and Margaret happened to be with Colin when he collapsed and pulled him to shore, and they were outwardly shaking (as were we all inwardly) for hours afterward.  In our number there were an EMT, a doctor, and the head ER nurse at the local hospital (who as it happens is also Colin's mother).  My cousin Jay and my cousin Leila's husband Pete the EMT together had three EpiPens and it took two of these to have any effect.  But for them and the grace of God, we would have suffered a terrible tragedy.  The next morning when Colin walked toward us like Lazarus with his family as we laid my grandmother's remains in Earth, he was greeted with shining eyes and a round of spontaneous applause.  There was even more joy and thanksgiving in the church that Saturday from this largely secular family as we celebrated my Grandmother's life and our personal Passover.

"Oh Lord how they play and play
For that happy day, for that happy day"

There are three stones where my grandparents remains reside.  One of these is the veteran's stone that acknowledges Grandpop's service in the Pacific during WWII.  There is now another paired with it that lists Gran's full name and the Hebrew word "Mizpah", with which she used to close many a letter to loved ones away from home.  It may be translated:

"May the Lord watch between me and thee, when we are absent one from another."

The third stone comes from Windrock itself and is newly etched with her first and maiden names and years of birth and death.  It says Barker on another of its faces, and on the top are two words - "Gone Fishing" - which are less irreverent than they seem.  My Uncle Rob, when a young boy, learned about the water table in school and decided that when people are buried they could go fishing there.  This so tickled my grandfather that he said he would like those words on his tombstone, and this was remembered many decades later and dutifully done. 

Those two inscriptions are fitting bookends for these two extraordinary lives, the earthy and the ethereal, and are streams that run deep in all of our veins.

"Oh Lord how they play and play
For that happy day, for that happy day"

                                  - Cat Stevens

Catching a Glimpse of the Soul

Chet Raymo's wonderful Science Musings Blog considers a John Singleton Copley painting of a young boy and his pet flying squirrel and asks;

"How is it possible that mere oil on canvas can capture the ineffable thing that separates us from brute creation?"

Read the whole thing.