by Debbie Walker

My newsletter from Farmer’s Almanac dated 2/22/22 is titled , 20 Strange Remedies That Work looked like something to share and maybe a few extra comments. As with any other column dealing with health issues, please don’t take my word for it. Questions? Discuss with your doctor or nurse.

Let’s start:

1. Cuticle infection: White vinegar treat torn up and infected cuticles – glass of equal parts distilled white vinegar and warm water. Soak for 15 minutes once a day until infection heals.

2. Hiccups: Wasn’t there a song about ‘a spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down’? In this case the sugar stops the spasm that cause hiccups.

3. Removing warts: Yet another use for duct tape. Apply a strip of duct tape over the wart. Keep it on for three days; remove, rub, rub the wart area with a pumice stone and then reapply with new tape. It suffocates the virus. Another cure I have tried is to cover wart with nail polish. After a day pull off the polish then cover again. Been there, done it and it did work.

4. Beets for constipation: This one was new to me. Eat fresh steamed beets, then drink the water.

5. Potatoes for bug bites: Create a poultice by grating a peeled potato and put into a piece of cloth. Secure with a rubber band. Apply to cleaned bite until the potato is dry.

6. “Drunkin” raisin for joint pain relief: I know my Mom tried this but I don’t know what her opinion was. Soak golden raisins in gin over night and eat ten daily. Don’t drive until you know the effect on you!

7. Banana peels for poison ivy relief: Rub the inside of a banana peel against the poison ivy rash. It’s supposed to relieve itching. You can also shine your shoes.

These next ones are from an article called The Very Best Old-Time Remedies.

I don’t know where they came from originally.

• If you carry three potatoes with you at all times and pain will not settle in your bones when you are old.
• Never leave the clippings from your hair on the floor because doing so will cause the achy kind of arthritis to settle in your bones when you are old.
• Eat an onion a day to keep your blood flowing smoothly. You will be less likely to have a heart attack or stroke. (Won’t have many people hanging around you either.)
• Include at least one clove of garlic in your diet each day and you may never need to worry about having too much cholesterol in your blood.
• Each morning and evening, pat orange juice onto the skin around the eyes. You will be rewarded with wrinkle-free skin for all of your life.
• Sip warm onion soup at bedtime and you will be able to sleep in a short time.
• Never allow hate to live in your body. It will stir up the mind, corrode the spirit and lead to an early death and sleepless nights.

Enough for now.

I’m just curious what old cures you have heard over the years. Contact me please with questions and comments at DebbieWalker@townline.org. Have a great week and thanks for reading!

George B. Shaw

by Peter Cates

Mahler Symphony

Gustav Mahler

The Mahler Symphony I would pick for beginners is the First, composed in 1888 when he was 28 years old. It has melodic appeal, it evokes the sounds of the natural world with coloristic sonorities from the woodwinds and double basses to heighten brooding, spooky tension and finally it utilizes brass and percussion for blazing crescendos.

I first encountered the piece via the 1962 Boston Symphony recording under then newly-appointed Music Director Erich Leinsdorf (1912-1993), a very inspired performance with the orchestra in peak form. A number of other distinguished recordings are available, such as those of Seiji Ozawa, Jascha Horenstein, Sir Adrian Boult, Hans Rosbaud, Sir Georg Solti etcs. but this Leinsdorf remains a first choice.

It is also accessible on YouTube.

A couple of quotes

Sir Richard Burton

As the world turns with what is perhaps rightfully perceived as extra stress, I am a bit haunted by a couple of quotes.

First the 19th century author of travel books, Richard Burton once wrote, “Peace is the dream of the wise. War is the history of mankind.”

The main character of James Joyce’s difficult to read masterpiece, Ulysses, states that “History is a nightmare from which I am trying to awaken.”

On a more cheerful note, George Bernard Shaw recalled, “I learned long ago, never to wrestle with a pig. You get dirty, and besides, the pig likes it.”

Harry Truman gently but tartly rebuked the cynics, “A pessimist is one who makes difficulties of his opportunities and an optimist is one who makes opportunities of his difficulties.”

by Peter Cates

Sarah Orne Jewett

Sarah Orne Jewett

I have read very little of Maine writer Sarah Orne Jewett (1849-1909) but that little includes a story I very much consider a masterpiece, The White Heron. It depicts a nine-year-old girl, Sylvia, who lives with her grandmother on a farm in a seaside community based on the ones near Jewett’s native South Berwick, such as Wells Beach, Ogunquit and Kittery.

Sylvia has the daily task of driving a cow back from the woods surrounding the house for milking. While doing so, she hears from a visiting hunter that he has seen a white heron, which is a rarity in Maine:

“‘You would know the heron if you saw it….A queen tall white bird with soft feathers and long thin legs. And it would have a nest perhaps in the top of a high tree, made of sticks, something like a hawk’s nest.'”

The description of Sylvia climbing 100 feet or more to the top of an adjoining pine tree atop the highest ridge to get a closer look at the heron and its nest constitutes one of the scariest passages in a story for any reader such as myself who suffer from vertigo:

“Sylvia’s face was like a pale star, if one had seen it from the ground, when the last thorny bough was past, and she stood trembling and tired but wholly triumphant, high in the tree-top….Westward, the woodlands and farms reached miles and miles into the distance; here and there were church steeples, and white villages; truly it was a vast and awesome world.”

Nebraska novelist Willa Cather (1874-1948) once commented that My Antonia was heavily influenced by Sarah Orne Jewett’s own sense of place.

The Mississippi writer Eudora Welty (1909-2001) wrote the following about place in fiction: “the goodness-validity in the raw material of writing…the goodness in the writing itself-the achieved world of appearance, through which the novelist has his whole say and puts his whole case.”

In her depiction of Sylvia’s own peak experience atop those dangerous heights, Sarah Orne Jewett achieved a magnificent sense of place.

Takashi Asahina

by Peter Cates

Takashi Asahina

Japanese conductor Takashi Asahina (1908-2001) achieved renown in his native country throughout most of his lifetime but was little known elsewhere until the early 1990s when he was 85.

I found out the general details during a phone interview with former Chicago Symphony manager Henry Fogel. He was visiting friends in Japan and invited to attend a symphony concert. He told of witnessing an elderly gentleman hobbling to the podium and figuring that the concert would be nothing special.

He quickly found out that this presumption was erroneous. The scheduled work was the Alpine Symphony of Richard Strauss, a piece demanding not only the usual 100 musicians, but also extra brass and percussion including a wind machine, and an organ.

And the moment the elderly gentleman lifted his baton, sheer power and magic occurred. Henry told of being so unexpectedly stunned by an unknown conductor that he went to a record store in Tokyo and spent $250 or more on every recording of Asahina that was in shock.

Daniel Barenboim

Upon his return to Chicago, he told then- Music Director Daniel Barenboim of his experience and suggested Asahina for a guest conducting gig; to which Barenboim smiled skeptically. Pulling out a CD of one of the Bruckner Symphonies, he then pleaded with that Maestro to just listen for 20 minutes.

After 10 minutes, Barenboim told Henry to engage Asahina for three weeks of guest appearances. Those concerts were a hit with orchestra players and audiences.

A CD of Mahler’s hyper intense and gorgeous 6th Symphony features Asahina conducting the Osaka Philhar­monic, one of several orchestras he regularly appeared with in Japan. He gave a performance that built from beginning to end with an astute balancing of rhythm, dynamics and subtlety of detail.

At the Symphony’s first performance during the early 1900s, the composer was a nervous wreck before it began, wringing his hands and crying like a baby.

YouTubes abound of Asahina’s broadcasts and are well worth exploring.

Bernstein and Rodzinski in 1943.

by Peter Cates

Meatloaf

Meatloaf

Rock singer Meatloaf, born Marvin Lee Aday, died this past weekend from covid at the age of 74. His 1977 album Bat Out of Hell has sold 65 million copies worldwide, still logging in annual sales of 200,000. In recent years, he guest-appeared on the BBC comedy show Benidorm and the CBS’ Elementary.

I need to confess that the title Bat Out of Hell quashed any interest in hearing his music making, much as the music making of such late ‘70s groups as Alice Cooper and Black Sabbath. But his singing on Benidorm was appealing and he will be missed by many.

Artur Rodzinski

Artur Rodzinski

Artur Rodzinski’s recording legacy is represented by a number of discs on my shelves and one of his finest is the 1945 Columbia Masterworks album of Wagner’s complete Act 3 of Die Walkure with the New York Philharmonic, the Metropolitan Opera chorus performing the roles of Valkyrie warriors and soprano Helen Traubel (1899-1972) as Brunnhilde and baritone Herbert Janssen as Brunnhilde’s father and king of the Norse gods, Wotan.

The eight 12-inch 78s contained a magnificent one hour stretch of music that encompassed a large dynamic and emotional range evoking both tenderness and wrath.

Because this conductor had fired his fair share of bad musicians from both the Cleveland Orchestra and New York, he got his share of death threats and carried a loaded pistol to rehearsals, which he knew how to use.

Leonard Bernstein

During Rodzinski’s tenure as music director in New York from 1943-47, he invited Leonard Bernstein (1918-1990), who would himself become music director in 1958, to become his assistant. But their relationship soon soured.

Both men had huge egos. Bernstein would try to upstage Rodzinski publically. One time, he was giving a lecture with the piano while Rodzinski was observing from the back and yelled, “Artur, come turn pages for me if you’d be so kind.”

He also gave interviews and statements to the press and got more favorable reviews than the older man. Finally, Rodzinski lost his temper, grabbed Bernstein by the throat and threw him against the wall. Bernstein commented later that Rodzinski was as strong as a bull.

However, Rodzinski was a loving husband and father (his widow Halina published a memoir of their life together) and was a secret pal to more than a few musicians going through hard times.