John F. Kennedy (AI generated)

by Peter Cates

John F. Kennedy

The 35th President John Fitzgerald Kennedy (1917-1963) was a most vivid, vibrantly alive presence on the family Philco TV set from when I first saw him debate Richard Milhous Nixon (1913-1994) during October 1960, it being a very cold Friday night, to the assassination in Dallas; I remember Kennedy’s highly strong Irish Boston accent and debonair appearance versus Nixon’s coarse bass speaking voice and the derailing 5 o’clock shadow.

On Election Day in 1960, my 4th grade East Vassalboro School teacher Susan Brondmo all but declared Nixon the winner and everyone in class applauded, except one girl whose family was both Catholic and Democrat. The following day when the Illinois vote came in, she was the only one smiling.

Key events during Kennedy’s 1,000 days in office have been chronicled in detail – the inaugural ceremonies with Robert Frost reading a poem for the occasion (Frost was a dyed in the wool Republican and a huge fan of Eisenhower but was thrilled to be invited by Kennedy that freezing snowy day in January 1961); the Bay of Pigs fiasco; First Lady Jackie’s televised tour of the White House; the enrollment of the first African-American student, James Meredith, at the University of Missisippi, with the National Guard called in; the, for me personally, nightmarish week of the Cuban Missile Crisis; Kennedy’s phenomenal charm at his press conferences; and finally November 22, 1963.

One occasion just a month before Dallas was Kennedy’s visit to the University of Maine/Orono when Dr. Lloyd Elliot was president there and which I watched on TV.

A 1975 book, Conversations With Kennedy, by former Washington Post editor Benjamin C. Bradlee (1921-2014), provides fascinating anecdotes of a close personal friendship between the two men and their wives, beginning in 1958 when Kennedy was still a Senator and he and Bradlee were neighbors.

A few examples:

Early in his campaign, Kennedy admitted to feeling strange about running for the Oval Office himself but then stated that “I stop and look around at the other people who are running for the job. And then I think I’m just as qualified as they are. ”

Joe Kennedy Sr. was testily against his son running in the 1960 West Virginia primary because of its hostility to Catholics. Kennedy ran anyways and won; he and Jackie invited the Bradlees to fly from D.C. to Charleston for a victory celebration and the very bumpy ride terrified Bradlee’s wife Tony and JFK’s sister Jean Smith who kept screaming for her husband Steve.

During the Cuban Missile Crisis, Kennedy consulted with Nixon, with whom he had similar views about the Cold War, but expressed relief that Nixon wasn’t president at the time.

Kennedy was friendly with Ed Muskie and the two went sailing off the Maine coast. He loved the ocean but otherwise preferred city life to the countryside.

As overnight guests at the White House, the Bradlees once witnessed the president wandering around in his night shorts wondering aloud what life was like in that mausoleum known as the Kremlin while the couples were watching an NBC special on it.

Kennedy had a deep admiration for Vice-President Johnson’s talents as a political sharpshooter but found LBJ’s presence at times creepy.

Kennedy sometimes enjoyed listening to gossip on other politicians.

Adlai Stevenson’s reputation as an intellectual may have been overrated. Kennedy read 10 books for every one that Stevenson read.

During the weekend when the country was grieving, Bradlee and his wife were at the White House and witnessed long time Kennedy family friend Dave Powers helping to assuage Jackie’s grief at odd moments with stories of hilarious moments during the 1960 campaign, but then the tragedy would intrude again from the TV coverage and all the other details.

The concluding paragraph – “Jackie was extraordinary. Sometimes she seemed completely detached, as if she were someone else watching the ceremony of that other person’s grief. Sometimes she was silent, obviously torn. Often she would turn to a friend and reminisce, and everyone would join in with their remembrance of things forever past. There is much to be said for the wake. Led by Dave Powers, this one was more often than not surprisingly cheerful, and always warm and tender. “

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

by Peter Cates

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

One of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s finest poems is My Lost Youth, originally published in his 1858 volume, The Courtship of Miles Standish. Having been raised in Portland, the poet wrote some verses that evoked what must have been for him the then unspoiled beauty of the Pine Tree State’s city by the sea.

“Often I think of the beautiful town/That is seated by the sea;/Often in thought go up and down/The pleasant streets of that dear old town, /And my youth comes back to me./And a verse of a Lapland song/Is haunting my memory still:/’A boy’s will is the wind’s will,/And the thoughts of youth are long, long thoughts’….

Longfellow powerfully poeticizes certain geographic details of the city – the harbor; “the black wharves and the slips…sea tides tossing free….Spanish sailors with bearded lips…the beauty and mystery of the ships…magic of the sea.”

The poet then evokes his boyhood memories of the city’s wonderful Deering Oaks:

“I can see the breezy dome of groves,/The shadows of Deering’s Woods;/And the friendships old and the early loves/Come back with a Sabbath sound, as of doves/In quiet neighborhoods.”

Being also a realist even when being a outpouring romanticist, his ability to balance these sides of himself is one of his greatest strengths as a thinker in poetic form and he writes here:

“There are things of which I may not speak;/There are dreams that cannot die;/There are thoughts that make the strong heart weak,/And bring a pallor into the cheek,/And a mist before the eye.”
But Longfellow grandly concludes in a bittersweet wistful manner:

“And Deering’s Woods are fresh and fair,/And with joy that is almost pain/My heart goes back to wander there, /And among the dreams of the days that were,/I find my lost youth again.”

The poem is included in the 1989 Maine Speaks anthology.

Two recent viewing experiences:

Christopher Walken

The 1997 Suicide Kings featured a cast in which the only actor familiar to me was Christopher Walken. He also gave the only decent performance as a Mafia kingpin who is kidnapped by a group of college age idiots and held for ransom.

The film was highly recommended by movie reviewers. I disagree, having found it, except for Walken, a bore.

Another viewing experience is the TV series Madmen, which ran for seven seasons on AMC from 2007 to 2014.

It is a skillfully produced period piece drama depicting the 1960s world of Madison Avenue advertising agencies and their constant high pressure work environments, complete with constantly fascinating period details and surroundings – the dialog, clothing, cars, city streets, constant cigarette smoking indoors and outdoors, suburban gossip, adulteries, very small screen TVs, department store interiors, etc.

The acting of the entire cast is superb; and yes, two performances stand out – those of one agency CEO and founder portrayed by the great Robert Morse (1931-2022) and January Jones who gives an eloquent nuanced characterization of the wife of one of the ad men. She conveys the harrowing emotions of a woman leading a life of quiet desperation.

Rosa Ponselle (left), Barbara Maurel (right)

by Peter Cates

Rosa Ponselle
Barbara Maurel

A 1919 Columbia ten inch acoustic 78 rpm shellac has a very lovely duet of sopranos Rosa Ponselle (1897-1981) and Barbara Maurel (1889-?) performing the very well-known funeral hymn Abide With Me, which was often sung as a special number on non-funeral church Sundays by my father and three of his brothers during the GOLDEN DAYS of my little boy years growing up on China Lake’s non-swimming East Vassalboro side.

This and two other recordings of it, the megahit Victor Red Seal 1915 shellac by soprano Alma Gluck (1884-1938) and contralto Louise Homer (1871-1947); and a 1997 YouTube by Leslie Garrett with a magnificently huge choir and orchestra can be heard via YouTube.

Serge Prokofiev

Serge Prokofiev

Russian composer Serge Prokofiev (1891-1953) struggled for well over 20 years with his opera War and Peace and subjected it to frequent revisions, especially when cordially requested to do so by the Central Committee of the Stalinist Soviet Union; portions of it were performed a few times in both small and large halls but a full-scale production was delayed until six years after Prokofiev’s death when a 1959 Bolshoi Opera premiere occurred.

A friend, cellist Mstislav Rostropovich (1927-2007), premiered the Cello Sonata and a couple of other pieces. By 1970, Rostropovich had also taken up conducting and, during the mid-1970s after he and his family had been forced to leave the Soviet Union because of his friendship with the exiled novelist Alexander Solzhenitsyn, he was appointed music director of the National Symphony Orchestra of Washington DC.

In 1986, Rostropovich recorded the complete War and Peace in Paris with a cast that included his wife, soprano Galina Vishnevskaya, in one of the lead roles on an Erato set of four compact discs. The music is wide-ranging in its emotions with a massive orchestra augmented by extra brass, percussion and simulated artillery fire sound effects in its depiction of Napoleon’s early 1800s invasion of Russia. There are grand marches, choral numbers, moments of sublime beauty, and the colorfully abrasive rhythms and sonorities that exemplify Prokofiev’s compositional genius.

Eugene Ormandy

Eugene Ormandy

A 1957 Columbia Masterworks monaural LP, ML 5261, features the consistently great Eugene Ormandy (1899-1985) conducting the Philadel­phia Or­chestra in a group of colorful show pieces of classical music- Smetana’s Moldau, Liszt’s Mephisto Waltz, Weber’s Invitation to the Dance, and three excerpts from Berlioz’s Damnation of Faust. The record has been out of print for decades but its contents can also be heard on YouTube.

Gene Pitney

Gene Pitney

Singer Gene Pitney (1940-2006) achieved much success among adolescents with such early ‘60s rock and roll hits Town Without Pity, and Only Love Can Break A Heart. His 1966 LP Blue Gene (Musicor MM 2006) has his rough-edged but riveting renditions of Burt Bacharach’s 24 Hours From Tulsa – for me, the best item on the album with Bacharach doing the arrangement; the very high quality title song; and covers of I’ll Be Seeing You, Autumn Leaves, Answer Me My Love, Maybe You’ll Be There (a hit for Gordon Jenkins in 1948 on a Decca 78) etc.

Remington

Remington was the first inexpensive classical record label and started issuing its $2 releases in 1951. A 1952 three record set of Verdi’s opera Rigoletto was taped in Florence by names known only to opera buffs but ones who were very good – baritone Ivan Petroff as the hunch-backed, vindictive title character, soprano Orlandina Orlandini as Rigoletto’s daughter Gilda, and tenor Gino Sarri as the Duke who comes courting Gilda on the sly because he is detested by her father.

It is also an opera breathing with phenomenally beautiful arias and other set pieces and choruses and its story line gets on with it.

Erasmo Ghiglia conducted the ensemble of soloists, choristers and orchestral musicians in Florence more than 70 years ago and it too is available for listening on YouTube.

Harry S. Truman

by Peter Cates

Harry S. Truman

The 33rd President Harry S. Truman (1884-1972), upon being sworn in as FDR’s vice-president, was told by his mother, “Now you behave yourself.”

Like every other president since George Washington, Truman was, warts and all, a character. A highly controversial 1974 book, Plain Speaking, by Merle Miller (1919-1986) has Truman recounting a number of fascinating stories about his life.

One in particular recounts his problems with General Douglas MacArthur (Old soldiers never die, they just fade away!). It seems that MacArthur had a very high opinion of himself and treated Truman as a small town hick from Missouri. He also disregarded several orders from Truman which included talking to the press out of turn and trying to provoke a full scale war with Red China.

Truman finally fired MacArthur and the before and after repercussions have been extensively documented elsewhere. Truman commented that he fired MacArthur for insubordination, not because he was a dumb [son of a gun, censorship of the other word Truman used instead of gun because this is a family newspaper]. He also stated that if generals were jailed for stupidity, three quarters of them would already be there.

Truman’s daughter Margaret published her own biography, simply titled Harry S. Truman, in 1973 and provides some hilarious details of her parents later years in Independence, Missouri. One tells of Truman’s own laziness about mowing the lawn, instead wanting to hire a neighborhood kid, against the opposition of his wife Bess, who could be just as stubborn.

One Sunday morning, Truman told his wife he was going to mow the lawn. Bess quickly realized that people would be driving by their house on the way to church and would see the former president of the United States mowing his lawn on the Sabbath Day instead of going to church. She decided to hire a neighborhood boy.

When Truman was vice-president for a few short months, he rarely saw Roosevelt. However, a photo was taken of them having lunch at the White House; Truman later commented that Roosevelt was already showing signs of his failing health and that, when the latter lifted the cup of coffee to his mouth, he kept spilling it due to his shaking hands.

FDR kept Truman in the dark about a lot of national security issues, including the Manhattan Project, at Los Alamos, New Mexico, but Truman made the decision to drop the bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, believing that it would force Japan to surrender a whole lot sooner than otherwise.

At the 1944 Democrat Convention, Roosevelt’s decision to replace vice-president Henry Wallace with Harry Truman became known as the Second Missouri Compromise.