by Peter Cates

Keiko Lee

Keiko Lee is a 56-year-old jazz singer, born in South Korea and now living in Japan. She has rightfully achieved fame for her understated performances in concerts and on CDs since 1995.

A 2010 CD, Smooth (Sony Music Japan S70614C), contains 10 songs that include Hoagy Carmichael’s The Nearness of You, Burt Bacharach’s A House Is not a Home, Stevie Wonder’s Weakness, and John Lennon’s Across the Universe. Several of her performances are on YouTube.

Kheigh Deigh

In addition to Jack Lord’s (1920-1998) very persuasive Chief Steve McGarrett of the Hawaii State Police on the first Hawaii Five-O, which ran for over 12 years on CBS from 1968 to 1980, I was very entertained by Kheigh Deigh (1910-1981) as the frequently appearing Chinese Communist spy Wo Fat who conveyed both sly wit and slimy malevolence in his fierce determination to loyally serve Mao’s government.

Earlier in 1962, he gained fame as the doctor supervising experiments on kidnapped American soldiers in Frank Sinatra’s classic film The Man­chur­ian Can­didate, in which he states, “We not only brainwash our subjects, we dry-clean them.”

Deigh also appeared as Genghis Khan during the late ‘70s on Meeting of Minds, Steve Allen’s talk show in which historic figures discussed major issues.

Kheigh Deigh was born Kenneth Dickerson, in Spring Lake, New Jersey, to a man whom he described, “as Portugese, Italian and Zulu, while Mother was Chinese, Spanish, English and Egyptian.”

Great Songs of Christmas

For several years starting in 1961, Columbia Records, in conjunction with Goodyear Tires, released the annual Great Songs of Christmas, an anthology of Xmas favorites performed by different artists in Columbia’s record catalog, and sold them for $1 per record.

I first encountered Album 2, from 1962, at a friend’s house almost 60 years ago and now own it and this gentleman’s other records; his widow left it to the Vassalboro Historical Society, after which its representatives made me an offer I just couldn’t refuse.

That particular Album 2 consists of 21 Yuletide favorites performed by Columbia’s musical stars – Percy Faith, Eileen Farrell, Andre Kostelanetz, André Previn, the Mormon Tabernacle Choir, Leonard Bernstein, etc. Particularly enjoyable were Faith’s Hark the Herald Angels Sing, the Norman Luboff Choir’s The Holly and the Ivy, and Bernstein conducting the New York Philharmonic in Tchaikovsky’s Nutcracker excerpts.

by Peter Cates

Winter poetry

As winter’s balmy freeze approaches with increasingly grim ur­gency and inevitability for the next six to seven months, some brief depictions of the ice cold season are offered.

Poet Christina Rossetti (1830-1894) gives a slightly humorous perspective in the following lines from Winter: My Secret:

“Today’s a nipping day, a biting day;
In which one wants a shawl,
A veil, a cloak, and other wraps:
I cannot open to everyone who taps,
And let the draughts come whistling through my hall.”

Gardiner’s native son Edwin Arlington Robinson (1869-1935) conveyed the following contrasting images in his 1923 poem, New England:

“Here where the wind is always north-north-east
And children learn to walk on frozen toes,
Wonder begets an envy of all those
Who boil elsewhere with such a lyric yeast”

Robinson’s slightly younger contemporary Robert Frost (1875-1963) pulled the following long evening of November in his ironically titled Desert Places:

“Snow falling and night falling fast, oh, fast
In a field I looked into going past,
And the ground almost covered smooth in snow,
But a few weeds and stubble showing last.”

Southern poet John Crowe Ransom (1888-1974) wrote in his Winter Remembered of the loss of a once true love, preferring the less painful numbness of the outdoor frostbite:

“Better to walk forth in the frozen air
And wash my wound in the snows; that would be healing;
Because my heart would throb less painful there,
Being caked with cold, and past the smart of feeling.”

Will Rogers (1879-1935) succinctly commented, “I was just thinking, if it really is religion with these nudist colonies, they sure must turn atheist in the wintertime.”

The footage of the Russian wilderness during winter in the 1965 film Doctor Zhivago has, for me, never been surpassed, although the Coen brothers 1997 film Fargo comes awfully close.

My favorite portion of Antonio Vivaldi’s 4 Seasons has always been Winter and numerous performances of it abound on YouTube.

by Peter Cates

Scott Elledge

Scott Elledge’s 1984 E. B. White: A Biography, was published when White was still living (he died in 1985) and is well worth dipping into for those, like myself, intrigued by the man who contributed to the success of the New Yorker magazine, wrote unsurpassed prose and raised ducks and geese on his Brooklin, Maine, farm.

The book mentions White supervising renovations on the farmhouse, consisting of 12 rooms, which he and his wife Katherine purchased for $11,000 in 1933 and included a barn and other outbuildings, along with 40 acres of land that ran down to Allen Cove, not far from Blue Hill:

“On a day like this it is inconceivable we should live anywhere but here. The spring began yesterday afternoon: I was working down by the cow shed in the pasture (the turkey house I mean) and suddenly the frogs began. The wind dropped, the sun concentrated on my back; from the woods came a thrusts pure composition; and into the cove sailed a vessel and came to rest in the calm illuminated evening. Today was a continuation, with warmth, new green, NW breeze bluing the bay, and in the afternoon a sun shower and rainbow.”

The book recounts much information about his marriage to Katherine for over 40 years and his friendships with the irascible founder/editor of the New Yorker, Harold Ross, and the legendary James Thurber. It goes into absorbing detail on the process by which his most famous book, Charlotte’s Web, came into being between 1949 and its publication in 1952.

A Star is Born

I have not seen the 1954 film classic A Star Is Born since I was a kid but recently listened to the CD transfer of the soundtrack (Columbia/Sony CK 65965) with the magnificent songs of Ira Gershwin and Harold Arlen and the top notch singing of Judy Garland who poured blood, sweat and tears into every single note.

 

 

by Peter Cates

The Klansman

by William Bradford Huie

A 1965 novel The Klansman, by William Bradford Huie (1910-1986), depicted the exacerbated racial tensions in a Deep South town in Alabama during the Civil Rights Movement. What particularly distinguished it from other novels was Huie’s ability to convey the attitude of the sheriff, himself a racist; a childhood friend who is not; and a host of other characters ranging from members of the KKK to civil rights workers risking their lives.

Most importantly, Huie was one incredible storyteller; I read the 400 and more pages in less than 24 hours while the plots and sub-plots moved right along.

Huie also wrote a non-fiction book Three Lives for Mississippi dealing with the 1964 murders of Civil Rights workers Schwerner, Chaney and Goodman by the Klan and local law enforcement officers. A book which is also recommended.

An Inspector Calls

by J. B. Priestley

An Inspector Calls is a suspenseful 1945 play by J.B. Priestley (1894-1984) in which a British police inspector calls on a wealthy family at their country estate during a dinner party celebrating the daughter’s engagement. The year is 1912 and each family member is smug and selfish.

The inspector is investigating the suicide of a young woman and shows her photo to the parents, son, daughter and her fiancé. From the looks on every face, he correctly ascertains that all five crossed paths with the young woman and may have contributed to her destruction.

A 2015 BBC film assembled a very good cast led by David Thewlis as the inspector is available on Pluto TV and DVD.

Haydn String Quartets

Two very beautiful Haydn String Quartets – the Opus 20 #4 D major one and the Opus 76 #2 D minor – were recorded in 1961 on a Concert Disc LP by the then Chicago-based Fine Arts Quartet consisting of first violinist Leonard Sorkin, second violinist Abram Loft, violist Irving Ilmer and cellist George Sopkin .

By the late 1970s, Sopkin (1914-2008) would retire from the group after almost 40 years to live in Surrey, Maine, not too far from Ellsworth. I met him in 1980 at the Blue Hill Congregational Church where he performed as part of the Maine Trio with violinist Werner Torkanowsky, who had also been music director of the New Orleans Philharmonic and in later years led the Bangor Symphony before his death in 1992, and with pianist Mike Ikemiya.

The Trio was formed for the purpose of giving free chamber music concerts in small Maine villages that had never experienced these events. One very worthwhile endeavor.

by Peter Cates

The Beast That Walks Like a Man

The Beast That Walks Like Man is a 1955 history of the grizzly bear by author, naturalist and explorer Harold McCracken (1894-1983).

He writes “I have never lost that deep fascination which Old Ephraim inspires, and in the matter of personal experiences with these marvelous creatures, out in their natural haunts, I have been considerably more fortunate than most men.”

The book is rich in anecdotes of his own experiences in the grizzly country extending from the western United States and Canada to Alaska. It recounts much anthropological information and legends of the creature’s relationship with native Americans and other groups.

McCracken also provides an appendix listing 86 known species of the grizzlies and big brown bears of North America, starting with the Big Plains Grizzly or Ursus Horribilis Horribilis – huge in size, long massive skull, long curved claws and a killer of buffalo.

The author quotes an account of the explorer Kit Carson (1810-1868) in one vivid encounter:

“While out procuring meat for camp, Kit shot an elk with his muzzle-loader; and he hardly had time to observe the effects when the echo of the blast ‘was broken in upon and completely lost in the terrific roar from the woods directly behind him …..and he instantly saw two huge and terribly angry grizzly bears. As his eyes first rested upon the unwelcome guests, they were bounding towards him, their eyes flashing fiery passion, their pearly teeth glittering with eagerness to mangle his flesh, and their monster fore-arms, hung with sharp, bony claws, ready and anxious to hug his body in a close and most loving embrace.”

I found my copy, still with its dust jacket, for a quarter at a yard sale but noticed a penciled in price of $40 for a previous owner at a used bookstore, so there is no telling what prices for it are being listed on Ebay. And its research findings have been probably surpassed by ones published since 66 years ago.

But its colorfully written style does score points for connoisseurs of these delightful beasts of prey.

State Fair

The 1945 Rodgers and Hammerstein film musical State Fair stars Dana Andrews, Dick Haymes, Jeanne Crain, Fay Bainter, Vivian Blaine and Charles Winninger; features such classic songs as It’s A Grand Night For Singing, and It Might As Well Be Spring; and has very pleasing technicolor cinematography in its Iowa locale, making it one DVD worth re-watching numerous times.

* * * * * *

For a few months, I have been working my way through a megaset of 40 compact discs comprising the complete recordings of French pianist/conductor Alfred Cortot (1878-1962). They cover the years from 1919 during the acoustic era to 1959 when stereo lps had been developed.

His musical interests ranged from Bach and Beethoven to Brahms, Chausson and Falla but his interpretations of the keyboard works of Frederic Chopin, Robert Schumann and Claude Debussy had a special eloquence and insight based on close study and outstanding virtuosity that did include wrong notes but brilliant wrong notes.

He collaborated in several recordings of trios by Beethoven, Haydn, Mendelssohn etcs with cellist Pablo Casals (1876-1973) and violinist Jacques Thibaud (1880-1953).

Conclusion to Robert PT Coffin’s Kennebec Crystals

Finally, the concluding paragraphs from Robert PT Coffin’s essay Kennebec Crystals about the ice harvesting industry in Maine:

“Now the Kennebec icehouses are rotting and falling back into the earth. Their interiors are taken over by the wasps and the mice. The old piers are sinking into the water. No ships come up in tow of a tug through the first leaves of May. School keeps week after week, and there are no bells ringing out to greet the steamer that leads up the spring. The gougers and saws are rusted half away.

“For the Kennebec crystals, last harvest of Maine’s finest river, have joined the white pine and the spruce, the sturgeon and shad and salmon. The end is elegy. The day of natural ice is done. New men, outside New England, bring their sons in their strength to the work of refrigerating homes and factories. And the small farmhouses, back from the river, that once housed great numbers of young men and boys, are full of empty rooms where the swallows bring up their young, or they have only a few children who work at their tasks and never need turn their heads toward the river, where the strength of their fathers lay and their fathers’ lives.

“The other day my good Kennebec friend whose great house looks up the river and down, over a twelve-foot hedge of spruce, took me out and showed me the tools of the ice harvesters. They were dark with rust and covered with cobwebs. They had joined the flint arrows and bows that once bent to bring life to the men along the ancient Kennebec.

When we were coming back we passed a strange depression in the woods, grown up with lusty spruces. It was the refrigerator men of my friend’s house used 150 years ago. It was the ruins of the earth cellar where they had stored their vegetables in summer and winter, to keep them from heat and cold. It was the Kennebec refrigerator his ancestors and mine learned how to make from the Indians when they drove them away into the everlasting dark from the bright blue river. That refrigerator was a ruin, and the Kennebec was as young and lusty as ever as it hurried toward the sea. Someday our own sons’ far great-grandchildren may find among the timbers of my friend’s house the rusted shards of the electric refrigerator that serves the house today. And the Kennebec will be going down to the sea, as young and as fresh and blue as ever.”