Frida in Nature

How inspired of the New York Botanical Garden to make their theme this year center on Frida Kahlo.  Her paintings make surreal use of nature, with dense natural settings, humans morphing into plants, and loads of birds, insects, and animals.

The exhibition at the Library explains how hybridity in Kahlo’s work refers not just to this crossbreeding between plant and human-animal, but also to Mexico’s dual ethnic heritage (Native and Spanish).  She cleverly blends all the themes in her 1931 portrait (above) of Luther Burbank, known for hybridizing plants.

Flower of Life from 1944 brings in Kahlo’s interest in depicting sexuality, with its red angel trumpet flower and Mexico’s native poinsettia.  Can you read her references?

Kahlo was known for her self portraits, and this show features one of her most famous: Self-Portrait with a Thorn Necklace and Hummingbird.  With the bloody spots and dead bird at her neck, no one would describe Kahlo as subtle.  Yet her color palette and brazen display of personal experience never fails to compel me to look and look and want to know and try to understand her.  And maybe her pet monkey, too.

Contemporary artist Humberto Spindola pays tribute to another famous positing, Two Freda’s.  It’s a 3D installation that can come even more to life as performance art.  Two women pose as the painting’s figures, while wearing the tissue paper and bark recreations of the native costumes Kahlo favored.  The tissue paper and bark are also not a terribly subtle to Kahlo’s simultaneously fragile and tough nature.  Alas, no one was performing when I was there; hopefully, you’ll get to see it.

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As ever, the Botanical Garden also converts its displays over to the theme.  The candy-like Conservatory building is full of Kahlo’s environments, ranging from desert to rainforest, from arid cacti to verdant moistness.  Being immersed here, we can see and smell and hear what Kahlo saw, smelled, and heard.

 

The artist's studio

The artist’s studio

 

Frida's color palette

Frida’s color palette

 

Enjoy these slide shows until you can get there in person.  What a charmer!

The arid desert

 

The lush rainforest

 

Secrets

Everyone knows about the not-so-secret societies at Yale, but did you know about the indoor practice polo pony at the gym?

First of all, the Payne Whitney Gym is in a 9-story Gothic cathedral-like tower.  This is Yale after all, and Gothic’s the thing.  Second, according to the Guinness Book of World Records, this gym is the largest in the world.

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Now, with the important stuff out of the way, we get to the trivia I love.  The practice polo pony.  Admit it, we all need one.  This one is so precious, it’s kept in a locked room.  Still, I send you a ghostly picture of the very one, behind bars.  Oh, I how I longed to ride it and practice my swing!  Alas, too secret for me.

Mory’s is a 110 year old, private club loosely associated with Yale, without actually being a part of it.  It has its own Board of Governors, but members have to be affiliated with the university in some way to enjoy it.  Why?  Another mystery.  But no mystery that it started as a ‘boy’s club.’

 

Julie and I ventured in tonight, just to look around.  A friend of a friend, Ify was happy to give us a tour.

2015-05-29 19.32.51She showed us the President’s Room and the Captain’s Room (sports, not sea) and the Temple Bar, where the students go.  There’s a dress code–business casual–and oldies but goodies on the menu, like Welsh Rarebit (hot cheddar cheese poured over toast, not rabbit).

 

Bush spells it Maury's

Bush spells it Maury’s

 

 

And there are lots of pictures.  My favorite was of George Bush, who misspelled the name Mory’s.  So what else is new?

 

 

 

 

 

Like any private club, Mory’s has its rituals.  A capella groups come here to sing for their dinner.  Yes, the Whiffenpoofs included.  Mory’s is basically their home spot.  Women’s a capella groups sing there now, too.   They sit at a table, order dinner, and not long after, start to sing.  Then they wander around the club singing.

The singing tradition also links to the drinking ritual of the Cups.  Groups order a cup of mixed alcohol, designated by color.  Some are champagne-based (gold), others beer-centered (amber), and liquors can get mixed to make purple, blue, and green Cups.  Hmm.

The Cup–no, not a little thing, but a trophy-sized cup–is then passed around the group, each taking a drink, while singing a drinking song.  The last to drink from the Cup, puts it upside down on a cloth, or harder yet a paper, napkin.  if the napkin gets wet, that person has to pay for the Cup.  Oh boy!

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Did I mention that there’s a Cup room?  A room of these trophy like Cups.

 

 

 

After 1972, women were allowed into Mory’s, so our presence wasn’t remarkable.  The secrets are out, if you can get in…

 

Surprise Whimsy and Delight

Carolyn and I visited the Yale Collection of Musical Instruments and what a surprise this place is.

Russian Bassoon

 

Yes, there’s your basic snake-headed, 1820s Russian bassoon and of course, the bell in the shape of a carp.  You can see those, well, just about nowhere else in the world, I imagine.

This carp-shaped bell apparently has an “ugly” sound when rattled

Who wouldn’t be enchanted by this peacock instrument from South India?  You play it by sitting on the floor by the peacock, resting the long tail of the instrument on your shoulder to accompany women’s dances.

You know I love a good connection to Connecticut history.  Today, we learned about the old Connecticut woodworking tradition and its intersection with woodwinds.  Yes, those Colonials and early Nationals loved their fifes, flutes, and clarinets.

Here's your instruction manual, so you can learn to play

Here’s your instruction manual, so you can learn to play

In the 1750s, a German wood turner immigrated to New York and worked in the instrument trade.  By 1800, the first ad for instruments by a professional firm appeared in a Hartford newspaper.  Clockmakers, written about in this blog post, also turned their hands to instrument construction.  Hopkins spent ten years from 1828 to 1838 making woodwinds as well as clocks.

Curator Susan Thompson, herself an oboist, told us that woodwinds were played at home for pleasure, to accompany socials and dances, and in military bands.  The violin was the most popular home instrument, but flutes were right up there.

Elephant calling bell

 

The bells collection was ear-opening for me.  I hadn’t really thought about this, but surely, we all need a bell to call in our elephants.

And we have the 19th-century Queen Elizabeth I bell.

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Queen Elizabeth 1 bell

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The anonymous figure bells are just charming, too.  Here’s an English, 19th century bell.  Can’t you just hear the homemaker calling in the hoards for lunch?

And this lovely little Art Nouveau bell by H. Pernot, c1900.  Sweet!

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My favorite was the Devil’s Bell.  I’m not sure if we’re ringing to summon or repel the Devil.  Hmmm.

 

 

 

 

Now to the category of gorgeous.

What about this 1702 German-made guitar by Joachim Tielke, celebrating love?

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a close look at the side, with its French sayings about love

And this dreamboat of a harp from around 1850.

We called him the dreaming Prince

We called him the dreaming Prince

 

16th century Italian lute

1785 Lute-Guitar by Jean Charles

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

2015-05-27 14.09.21We got a wonderful tour of the keyboard collection from mezzo-soprano Kelly Hill, doing a multi-year internship here.

She explained that keyboards make sound from either pipes or strings.

She then demonstrated how this Chamber Organ works.  You either pump the pedal or have an able, likely child, assistant pull on a leather strap on the side to activate the bellows that project the notes.  You can also change the tone of the sound by shifting from “diapaison” or organ sound to “flauta” or flute.  Kelly wasn’t able to demonstrate that, but you can see how it works clearly below

 

Kelly pulls on the strap to depress the pedal, which operates the bellows

Kelly pulls on the strap to depress the pedal, which operates the bellows

To change the tone

To change the tone

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

She then took us through the development of the stringed keyboards, from the relatively simple clavichord to the much more complex harpsichord.

The clavichord was home or rehearsal-type instrument, because its sound is muted.  Kelly asked us to imagine Bach with his household full of children.  He could play the clavichord without upsetting sleep patterns.  And it was the flirtatious instrument, as the gentleman caller would have to sit quite close to the lady playing in order to hear properly.

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Kelly pulled out pieces from this ornate and intricate harpsichord, with its double keyboards that generate more sound.  We then examined these pieces, including a plucker made from a crow’s quill.  See it here?

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Plucked stringed instruments first gained popularity because of the love of French and Italian lute music.  The development of the harpsichord then opened up concert-level performances.

By the way, the regular keys are black and the minor keys are in white on many of these early instruments.  Why?  Well, you start with your wood key, and yes, this could warp, which would mess with your playing.  Then you covered it with either ebony or ivory.  If ebony was less expensive, then you used it for the majority of the keys.  Makes sense.  Early on, the number of keys and the color of the keys were not standardized.  What was important was the ’emotion’ of the sound.

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When pianos came in, particularly in Vienna, you get early experiments with the upright piano.  What about this gorgeous swan-headed pyramid?

 

 

 

There are many treasures in this collection, so you’ll have to visit in person or go to the informative website to learn more.  I’ll leave you with my favorite — this 1591 Flemish, ‘mother-and-child’ Virginal.

The oldest instrument in the collection

The keyboard on the left can actually slide out, to play elsewhere or to stack on top of the keyboard on the right for double-keyboard playing.  The mother-and-child keyboards also invite duets.
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The decoration is adorable.  Kelly explained that for artists, decorating an instrument was not a top drawer commission, and the painters remained anonymous.  So often the makers of the instrument would find buddies in the tavern to come work on the decoration in their spare time.  Many hands might decorate one instrument.  Still this one comes together and tells a fun musical story.

The satyr Pan challenges Apollo to a musical duel.  Pan was known for his flute playing, but Apollo was the chief musician of the gods.  This was some challenge.  They needed a fair and wise judge and chose Tmolis, the god of mountains, since mountains were the ultimate of wisdom.

Well, birds sang when Pan played, but ladies swooned with Apollo.  King Midas sides with Pan as the better performer.  Not so wise, as Apollo gave him donkey ears, which you may be able to make out alongside his crown.

Who won the contest?  That hardly matters.  We all do when the music plays on!

Heritage Weekend

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On this crisp spring day, Wethersfield had its local Memorial Day parade, but what’s that?  A fife-and-drum corps and Revolutionary War soldiers marching alongside the Cub Scouts and Rotary?  Just who is Colonel John Chester that his name should appear on these drums?

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These are big questions, and there are no easy answers.  But I can assure you that today in Historic Wethersfield was almost completely about the Revolutionary War, marked through its annual Heritage Weekend.

You’ve seen it all before.  You know, the troops line up opposite and shoot each other like ducks in a carnival game.

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Women write in their diaries with lamp oil for ink.

Your pouch can get repaired by the leatherman, who adroitly works two needles at once.

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The cannon is shot periodically with a woman to help load.

 

 

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The apothecary will entice you with his curious tools.

And there are the horses from the Dragoons.

 

 

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The day was perfect for spinning outside.

And refreshments over the open field fire.

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All the stuff you encounter all the time.

Before heading off to do my duty at the Hurlbut-Dunham House though, I became entranced with the minuteae of the militia.  That is, the clothes.

I admit I didn’t know the difference between the militia and the Continental Army.  Now, shwew, I do.

A militia men saluting the soldiers on parade

A militia men saluting the soldiers on parade

Membership in the militia was mandatory for all men from age 16 to 60.  Wow.  This wasn’t a draft situation.  You just did it.  Or else.  If your town or village was threatened, your militia did its duty.  Read, Lexington and Concord.

If you really like taking on the enemy, then you made your job the Continental Army.  Like our Army today, participation was a choice, and you got paid to fight.  You marched and marched and marched to wherever the next skirmish or battle took place.  You want to see the world, you join the army.  Defending your home?  That’s when you stay at home and do the militia.

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Now everyone in that period was a farmer.  If you were a lawyer, you were a farmer, too.  So when called, you put on your very best coat to go fight with the militia.  Why?  We don’t know.  But the consensus here was that if you were killed, then you looked good doing it.

A militia officer in his fine blue coat, gaiters, and gorgette

A militia officer in his fine blue coat, gaiters, and gorgette

Most men wore shoes, then added matching-colored leather gaiters over their pants, so they looked like they were wearing boots.  The officers wore boots.  The gaiters helped when wading through mud, too.

Officers got the extras.  Whether in the militia or in the army, officers wore a gorgette.  This metal piece was a remnant from medieval fighting, when knights flung themselves at each other on horseback attacking with spears.  The metal was placed at your throat to protect it from piercing. Yikes!  So it’s a piece of armor.  Here and then, it was honorary and a signifier of status.

Note the red sash and red ribbon on his hat

Note the red sash and red ribbon on his hat

Officers also wore red, like the ribbon on this Adjutant’s hat. What’s an adjutant?  A secretary.  A great way to keep the older officers’ knowledge and experience in military combat.

And the sash.  Oh my.  The sash was red, not for visibility as I guessed, but in case the officer was wounded in battle.  The sash was long enough that his attendants could open it up and carry him away from the action on the sash as a stretcher, and his blood wouldn’t show.  We wouldn’t want to panic the soldiers.

Well, no, but surely, the soldiers could figure out what it meant when the red sash was unfurled, and their officer was carried off the field of battle.,

This officer is part of the Sons of the American Revolution (SAR).  He’s been doing his genealogy and has traced it back to 600 C.E.  I can go back about 125 years and am delighted to do that.

Anyway, the SAR in Connecticut existed a full year before there was a DAR–Daughters of the American Revolution.  During that year, 88 women were members of the SAR.  I like that idea much better than the segregated groups that have emerged and entrenched.

Now, there’s even a Children of the American Revolution.  These children are also DAR or SAR, but as children learn the how to’s of their ancestors.

Ah, we’ve answered one big, burning question.  Those children marching in today’s parade were CAR, building their skills, so some day, they can shoot muskets and cannons at each other.  Long live the traditions!

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Even the tradition of, yes, the red onion–developed here and traded out of Wethersfield’s working waterfront.

The Historian

The Historian (2014) PosterIt’s not often than academic politics are the subject of a movie, and I’m not sure “The Historian” entirely succeeds.  Still, here’s a film with a top drawer cast and an eery-thriller cadence, that was written, directed by, and stars a Latin professor at the University of Southern Mississippi.  So there’s certainly an air of truth, as well as clear self-congratulations.

If learning, knowledge, and wisdom, plus where these fit into the ‘real’ world, intrigue you, I bet this film will, too.  If you watch it, let me know what you think.

Thankful

Imagine living in a one room house with several small children, over your general store in the basement.  Oh, and it’s 1795.  Yes, the Revolutionary War is over, and Connecticut is building its way to new prosperity.

You are certainly not poor.  Your house has a fireplace and wide wood planked floors.  You have a decent herb garden for medicinals and grow apples for cider, hang them to dry and have plenty left over for cold storage where they’ll last six months or more.  Apples are an important part of your diet.  But you can also afford to buy produce from neighbor-farmers.  Life’s pretty nice.  Just a bit crowded.

That’s where Thankful Arnold found herself early in her marriage, living right across the street from the busy Haddam courthouse and just a few steps from the Connecticut River, the source of economic vitality for the region.

Thankful had 12 children, with all seven sons making it to adulthood, a real rarity.  Two daughters, Nancy and Sarah Elizabeth, did, too.  She and her husband could afford to expand the house, and all was going well, until her husband died.

Even though he was a businessman, he didn’t leave a will.  In Connecticut, an estate left intestate had major implications for the widow.  Thankful was entitled to live by law in 1/3 of the house.  She had to sell 2/3 to afford to stay there.  Think about it.  She had six small children and faced the prospect of living in 1/3 of her house while strangers moved into the rest.  Best case, the children would be sent to live with other relatives.  Many widows faced this fate.

Thankful Arnold as a widow

Thankful Arnold as a widow

Fortunately for Thankful, her grown son Isaac bought the other 2/3, and the family home stayed intact.  Thankful took in boarders to help pay the bills and was aided by her daughters who never married.  Thankful lived to age 73, longer as a widow than wife, so the house was known as the Widow Arnold House and now as the Thankful Arnold House, on the historic trail of the Connecticut Women’s Hall of Fame.

A note on her name.  Thankful was not a Quaker, as I guessed, but instead was a Congregationalist.  A hot baby naming trend for your average Colonial was to name your child for a virtue.  A man might happily be named Wealthy, Prosper, Consider, and certainly Freelove!  But oh, to be a woman and be named Submit, Obedience, Relief, Mindwell, or Silence.  I didn’t know these as names, maybe because these women fell into obscurity.  Not hard to wonder why.

Mercy did not, famously as Mercy Otis Warren, Revolutionary War heroine, and Prudence of Prudence Crandall fame, written about in this blog, made her mark, too.  Puritans indeed would name their daughters Patience, Increase, but Desire?  How in the world did that young lady stand a chance of preserving her reputation?

Thankful’s daughters were good girls.  Sarah Elizabeth acted as the family nursemaid, going to live with various relatives to care for the sick and elderly.  Nancy helped in the boardinghouse and educated her nieces on how to run a household, through their ‘apprenticeship’ at the family home with its boarders.  Miss Nancy lived in the house until age 84 in 1884.  One of her niece’s Sabra came to live in the house as a widow until the 1920s.  Her son Charlie Ingersoll lived here until 1962.

Red HouseCharlie was a house painter, and he and his wife supplemented their income with a local hot spot–The Red House Tea Room.  Being right across the street from the courthouse insured street and foot traffic, and New England roads were quickly becoming tourist havens for road trippers in newly affordable automobiles.  Who doesn’t like a scenic drive with a refresh stop at a tea room?  I covet that Cheese Dream, which LIsa, the Director, told me was likely an open-faced grilled cheese sandwich.  I could dream of more…

 

Cheese Dream

The Old Red House Tea Room menu

When the house was vacated in 1962, the timing coincided with Haddam’s tercentenary.  A cousin bought the house and donated it to the Historic Society.  Not, unfortunately, until all the goods and furnishings were already sold.  Happily, an inventory from 1823, conducted when Thankful became a widow, led to furnishing and interpreting it to her period.

Note the 'tin kitchen' rotisserie on the hearth

Note the ‘tin kitchen’ rotisserie on the hearth

We can see the 1823 kitchen, with its hanging, drying herbs and cod.  The original fireplace was revealed when a wall was opened up.  The old bake oven is there, too.  The hearth was used as a stove top.  Pull coals out of the fire to the hearth, then place your spider (frying pan with legs) on top.  No more leaning over dangerous open fires.  This hearth also comes complete with a ‘reflected over’ or ‘tin kitchen’ which works like a rotisserie for your meat.

I climbed carefully up steep, narrow steps to the dark attic.  Yes, there are two finished bedrooms each with a tiny fireplace off the central chimney, where boarders likely lived.  But the children–they slept under the eaves, catch what space they could around the typical attic storage stuff.  Pretty cold in the winter, too.

So Thankful had a lot to be grateful for, as all worked out for her family and her house in the long run.  Me?  I’m thankful for central heat and a gas stove cooktop!

Hurry Up and Relax!

In all the rush of the day, what a relief to finally make it to the Aromatherapy class at my Hamden library.

Aromatherapy Workshop

Aaaahhh.

The aroma could be drunk in all the way out the Friends Room down the stairs to the front door.  Nice.

Kim Larkin started by walking us through how we might want to use essential oils (not fragrance oils) for their healing qualities.  Here are 8 ways:

Smell – just take a good whiff

Diffuse – scent up your room

Local applications, for the particular healing properties

Hot compresses

Cold compresses

Massage enhancement

Tenting – that is, put a few drops in a bowl of hot water, drape a towel over your head as you lean over the bowl and get a homemade, delicious steam facial

Misting – spray your room, which I do all the time to my great pleasure with rose scent.  Did you know it takes 60,000 petals to make one ounce of oil?  No wonder it’s so expensive!

You know I can’t resist sharing a bit of history with you.  The Ancient Egyptians used perfume as part of their embalming process.  The word ‘perfume’ means ‘through smoke’, so we can get a sense of how the scents were disseminated.  Frankincense and myrrh were known for their healing properties.

Another real discovery was fleurage–the process of steaming the plant to separate its oil for harvesting.  This, plus trade routes, brought scents across cultures.  In India, ayurvedic medicine, or life knowledge, used the oils.  Ancient Romans, health conscious as they were, used oils for good hygiene.  Persian doctors used Chinese oils to perfect their medicines.  Later, monks used herbal remedies to cure leprosy and other diseases.

While eating a root may have been the ancient form of medicine, we had to cycle through noxious chemicals and pills and antibiotics, before returning to, simply, eating a root for good health.

The essential oil came back to us from Italian doctors and French chemists who worked in perfume factories in the early 1900s.  When one severely burned his arm, he dunked it in a nearby vat.  Turns out, the vat was filled with lavender oil.  His arm didn’t blister, and the burn didn’t scar.  He was convinced and started a crusade for oils that continued through World War II when medical supplies ran low and on to Dr. Bach.

Bach rejected traditional medicine in favor of botanicals that he equated with 38 states of mind.  Use the botanical to heal an imbalance, with one or a blend of Dr. Bach’s flower essence remedies.  For fun, you can complete the questionnaire and see what you think.  I’ve enjoyed using these flower essences in the past and got inspired to look them up again.

You might also get a kick at looking at the healing properties of the oils.

We wrapped up the night by making three goodies to take home: a bath salt, a facial scrub, and a dream pillow.

Our bath salt mix is a spring detox – coming at just the right time.  It’s made with Epson sale and sea salt, as well as the oils.  I chose to blend citruses for invigoration and rosemary for clearing the head and as a memory aid.

Believe it or not, the facial scrub is made with granulated sugar (for exfoliating) and a couple of drops of oil, combined with a carrier, such as grapeseed, almond, or avocado oils.  I used grapeseed, because I had it handy.

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My dream pillow will go under my pillow tonight and has lots of rosemary, as well as jasmine–the King of Oils, which takes 8 million flowers to make just 2 ounces–for self-confidence and easing of the joints, plus lavender and chamomile for calming relaxation.  It smells like a little bit of heaven.

These are all super simple.  Give them a try and let me know what you think.

 

Playin’ it Zany v Safe

While standing in line

While standing in line

The new Whitney Museum building.  I visited today and glad I didn’t go on a weekend.  The lines were long, the galleries were crowded.  Is it worth it?  Here’s my assessment.

I wish the architect/Whitney decision-makers had the courage to do something other than the contemporary art museum factory.  In the mold of MoMA, this place has no personality, with its concrete floors, color-coded walls, and standard museum installation and lighting
Is the work well served?  Yes, I would say so, but its greatest hits mentality doesn’t distinguish itself as did the vision of its wealthy and visionary artist/founder–Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney.  Even less than at the Breur  Building, there doesn’t seem to be room for the quirky, the discovery.

Robert Henri, Gertrude Whitney, 1916

Yes, there’s lots of room to show more work, which is wonderful.  An artist new to me is placed next to a well known work.  It all feels very carefully…curated.  Charming, it is not.  Fresh, it is not.  Bland?  Yes, even with the great works, that’s how I would describe my experience.  Not bad.  No, far from bad.  Just very safe.
Joseph Stella, Brooklyn Bridge, 1939

Joseph Stella, Brooklyn Bridge, 1939

Agnes Pelton, Untitled, 1931 she is new to me, and we are invited to view the work in light of Stella's masterwork

Agnes Pelton, Untitled, 1931
She is new to me, and we are invited to view the work in light of Stella’s masterwork

George Tooker, The Subway, 1950

George Tooker, The Subway, 1950

Louis Guglielmi, Terror in Brooklyn, 1941 Earlier than Tooker's stunning work

Louis Guglielmi, Terror in Brooklyn, 1941
Earlier than Tooker’s stunning work

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The architecture itself has some fun elements, like the terraces on each upper floor, with their good views.  I particularly like the view of this terrace.
The stairwell gives you an interesting industrial view.
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And I had a fun meal at the Studio Cafe on the 8th floor.  The toasts are the quirkiest thing in the building.  I had the brocollini, glazed carrots, and smashed beans with shaved provolone in toast.  Delish.
Definitely not anything rotten there, like at the theater.  “Something Rotten” is as self-consciously zany as the Whitney is tame.  If you love Shakespeare or American musicals, or better yet both, you will definitely get a supreme kick out of the clever silliness and silly cleverness of the word smithing and musical numbers in this new show.

Brian d’Arcy James and Heidi Blickenstaff in “Something Rotten!” Credit Sara Krulwich/The New York Times

What fun to see Brian D’Arcy James do comedy and be so at ease and charming with it.  Christian Borle’s ticks, which I normally can’t stand, work fine here as the rock star, egotistical Shakespeare.
Definite shades of “Shakespeare in Love” and “The Producers” don’t get in the way at all.  After all, wasn’t Shakespeare the ultimate thief?  The more references you catch, the more fun you’ll have.
We, in the audience, wondered which Tony voters would choose as the best–“Something Rotten” or the gorgeous “American in Paris“–apples and oranges if there ever were.  Fortunately, you don’t have to choose.  Get thee to the theater!

Operatic Chocolate

The end of the school year blooms with Yale concerts.  For me, this year’s highlight is the one-act opera centered on, what else?  Chocolate.

The stage set-up

The stage set-up

Julia Child and chocolate cake to be specific.

Bon Appetit! features music by Lee Hoiby and a tour de force performance by mezzo-soprano Leah Hawkins, pearls and all.  Oh, and words by Julia herself.
In other words, we get a cooking lesson expanding on Julia’s natural mezzo voice.  Can’t you just hear that  pitch in your mind’s ear?
The opera captures Child’s natural charm and darling humor.  As Hawkins literally whips up the batter for a French chocolate cake, she sings her warning, that we “don’t want to play croquet in the middle” of a particular step in the process.
She wonders if we have a self-cleaning kitchen like she does.
Leah Hawkins in action

Leah Hawkins in action

Mmmm, she sighs in her lustrous voice, showing us the batter.  “Just as good if you eat it this way!”

She relishes a race where no matter what, she’s the winner: which will beat the egg whites best?  Her mixmaster or her hands?  Which, you are wondering?  Only use your mixmaster if you’ll use the results right away.
Irreverently, Hawkins drops the pans on the counter “to settle everything” she sings.  “It will puff up and sink down,” she demonstrates with hands, body, and voice.
My favorite moment was the blissful note she holds, enjoining us to make the cake “light like a soufflé.”  Aaaaah.
This opera may have the best stage business ever, culminating in the moment when Hawkins pounds her knife into the cake and scoops out a delicate piece for us all to admire.  What a tease.
In Julia’s inimitable words, “That’s all for today…Bon Appetit!”

Heroes and a heroine for all time

indexDione Longley has written Heroes for All Time: Connecticut Civil War Soldiers Tell Their Stories by compiling their words from letters and diaries.  She quipped that writing this book took longer than the war.  But clearly she never lost the heart of the storytelling, as she shared with us at the New Haven Museum with her book signing.

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She recounts how Connecticut farmers, factory workers, and college students rallied as Citizen-Soldiers, as called upon by President Lincoln the day after the firing upon Fort Sumter.

Longley follows one fighting regiment in particular, through the painfully evocative writing of Nathan Taylor, a tinsmith, who described the rush to training camp, the inexperience of the recruits, and the details of battles throughout the war.  Unlike so many others, Taylor made it through the war with only one minor injury.

What Longley does in the book is bring familiar skeleton facts to life.  Taylor describes the fear he felt while on watch.  He heard a noise and was sure it came from a Confederate soldier.  Turned out to be a hog.  The next day, the battle at Bull Run began.  The juxtaposition between an ordinary experience and colossal chaos and fear become alive in the solder’s words.

It was a long war for the Connecticut troops.  The house painter Lucius Bidwell, from the Connecticut 14th, fought from 1862.  He was wounded at Fredricksburg, then went on to fight in 8, yes 8, more engagements before he died at Wilderness.

Captain John Griswold’s gravestone in Old Lyme, CT

From a different point in the soldier spectrum, Captain John Griswold came from a famous family and was a Yale grad.  When he was fatally shot at Antietam, he didn’t die right away.  A classicist and a gentleman, he apologized to those who had to care for him, “sorry to be a bother,” and spent his last hours quoting poetry with another officer.  He recalled the “flash of sunlight off Antietam Creek.”  Has anyone else capture that kind of remembrance of Antietam?

Henry Wing, in the 27th Color Guard, made clear how dangerous carrying a regimental flag could be.  In the noise and confusion and smoke of battle, when an order couldn’t be heard, the flag was essential for helping soldiers find their own.  The flags were huge, often 6′ x 9′, proudly displaying the regimental colors.  Consequently, they became a target.  On both sides, the ultimate pride came from capturing an enemy flag.

Wing wrote they’d all willingly die before giving up a flag.  That’s why 12 men were needed to carry 2 flags.  The death rate was appalling.  During one battle, he wrote, he was “proud for a minute” before the “murderous fire of rebel artillery” threatened the flag again.  After being shot in the leg, he crawled around looking for the flag, noting “ten of my fellows were dead.”  He wrote there’s “no romance, no glory.  Just disgust for those who planned such slaughter.”

Rev. Henry Clay Trumbull

Rev. Henry Clay Trumbull

I was completely surprised by the image this story makes.  Reverend Henry Clay Trumbull of the 10th Connecticut Regiment described the small pleasures of watermelon.  Not at camp, but in battle.  “What could be more refreshing under fire?”  He described officers “carrying slices, taking a bite between each command.”

The stories go on and on.  They are so terribly personal, while also sociological.  What kind of people are we that we fought this kind of war?  Toby Kellogg was captured and put at the notorious Andersonville prison, where the men had no shelter through the winter and were starved.  Meager rations were brought in on the same carts that carried out the dead.  He wrote, “it takes no great courage to die in battle, with fame undying and comrades to care and cheer for you,” while POWs “gain no sympathy” and “are dying by inches.”

And then there were the Wadham brothers from Litchfield County.  Headed toward a battle for Richmond, the three fought in different regiments, coming at the battle from three different directions.  Luman wrote of riding off to visit his brother Henry, only to learn he had just been killed.  Luman, Henry, and Edward all died within a two week period.  Imagine being that mother.

You’ve been waiting for me to mention women.  Longley only told us about one.  But oh what a story she had!  Harriet Ward Hawley, an abolitionist and cousin to Harriet Beecher Stowe, followed her husband Joseph Hawley after he joined up.

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“I wish I could enlist,” she wrote.  She got on-the-job training as a nurse, tending the soldiers.  “They suffer terribly.  You do not dream of what these men undergo.”  Berating herself because she always considered herself good in an emergency, she fell into despair.  “45 dead today.  A piece of my life went with each one.”

After the war, her husband became governor of Connecticut.  And she had a bizarre cart accident with a recovery that involved staying in a darkened room for two years.  Now that would make you nuts.

But Hawley never forgot the soldiers.  She advocated for their pensions.  The wounded often could not work after the war and yet had no recompense for the devastating results from their service.  Hawley never stopped fighting for these men, even at the end of her life, when she was frail and walked with crutches.  When she died in 1886 at age 54, she received a “soldiers burial,” with a ritual flag-draped coffin and decorated headstone.

What soldiers they all were.  Ordinary, heroic.  To be remembered.