A couple of weeks ago, I went off to a lunch sponsored by one of our oldest cultural organizations. As part of the event, several performers from an organization I had only heard of, sang a few holiday selections from a cultural tradition I knew nothing about. (When it comes to music, I don’t know very much at all to begin with, and I seem happiest when I’m wandering through English choral music, Mozart, Broadway, and contemporry Celtic music – pretty ordinary stuff, I suppose, by today’s global standards.
This group was so intriguing, I made certain to attend one of their holiday concerts – it was beyond enjoyable – it was terrific. A dozen young singers singing a program of Czech and Polish Christmas music from centuries ago, and the scholarship which undergirded the evening’s presentations was, in a hyphenated word, first-rate.
Why am I rambling on like this? For two reasons. The first is that there is beauty everywhere waiting to reveal itself if only you can get out of your own encrusted habits and to be open to it, but you knew that, didn’t you?
These days, we’re reading about charitable organizations which are having a hard time finding support after the autumn horrors in our country, and that’s probably especially true for the arts.
So here’s the second reason: Go out and explore, find a young arts organization with excellent leadership and lots of possibilities, and “adopt” it: Attend events, write a check or two of support, enjoy the beauty of what they present, take and talk to friends, advertise in their program or newsletter.
In my case, it’s a group called The Rose Ensemble in Saint Paul, MN. You can visit their website by clicking here. There will be something worthy like it in your neck of the woods, so in 2002, resolve to find that organization and give it a hand.
There is something exhilarating about the shock of the new, and it’s a great stimulus for the heart and mind. Oh, go ahead!
Saturday, December 15, 2001
Tuesday, November 20, 2001
For Thanksgiving, 2001
In a difficult time, full of shared anxiety and concern, Thanksgiving seems almost a day of irony this year. Families and friends will gather to honor their connections to one another, and it is important that they do so, as they have for years and years.
I wish you a happy time, and I hope you are able to take time to reflect – to reflect on those who gather together in deep sorrow to remember family and friends lost, on those who work tirelessly to retrieve remains and clear the wreckage so that the process of renewal can begin, on those volunteers and others who support them, and on those who, both known and unknown to us, fight to stop terrorism in all its forms.
Be well, and carry on.
Nick Nash
Thanksgiving, 2001
I wish you a happy time, and I hope you are able to take time to reflect – to reflect on those who gather together in deep sorrow to remember family and friends lost, on those who work tirelessly to retrieve remains and clear the wreckage so that the process of renewal can begin, on those volunteers and others who support them, and on those who, both known and unknown to us, fight to stop terrorism in all its forms.
Be well, and carry on.
Nick Nash
Thanksgiving, 2001
Thursday, November 15, 2001
Friday, October 12, 2001
The New Yorker
The New Yorker magazine has always been in my life. I suppose I started looking at the cartoons when I was seven or eight and didn’t understand most of them….Peter Arno’s drawing of a blonde in a strapless dress sitting on a bar stool with her older boy friend next to her saying to the bartender, “Fill ‘er up!” Or Helen Hokinson’s dowagers, or Charles Addams’s wonderfully bizarre drawings, many without captions.
Eventually, I started reading The New Yorker, mostly the Talk of the Town and the non-fiction pieces, a habit which continues to today.
I remember the years when William Shawn edited the magazine, and every word seemed cut like a diamond, perfect in a perfect place, and then I grew weary as the magazine began to wander in an editorial wilderness, culminating in the fascinatingly strange years when the magazine was led by Tina Brown who was interested – or so I thought - in the plumes of spray from the waves of contemporary culture.
She finally moved on and was replaced by David Remnick. I don’t know much about Mr Remnick, but in the one or two glimpses of him I’ve had on the television, he seems full to the brim of intellectual intensity. Based on the magazine he edits, he has a strong pragmatic side, too, and I suppose that comes from his background as a writer.
The result has been that The New Yorker no longer sits in the middle of the pile of periodicials which I will get around to; it is always at the top, not because it is entertaining but because it is, once again, important, and there is something in each issue worth savoring, thinking about, remembering.
In the current issue devoted to the arts, Remnick himself writes in the Comment section of Talk of The Town an essay called “Many Voices.” In this brief piece, he refers to Walt Whitman, a United Airlines pilot, the LA Times, the New York teachers’ union, and George Kennan, but I would like to quote his last paragraph, without his permission:
Acts of terrorism cannot always be averted but terrorists
Themselves can be defeated. It will take military and
Investigative daring to do so now; it will also require
A sustained national self-possession, a refusal to fall
Into the welter of panic and recrimination that terrorists
For two hundred years, since the days of Robespierre and
Saint-Just, have counted on as allies more precious than
Arms.
The issue is the one with Art Spiegelman’s drawing called “The Tenth Music,” with all the muses of ancient Greece ball-and-chained to the largest (and newest) muse of all, “Moolah.”
Eventually, I started reading The New Yorker, mostly the Talk of the Town and the non-fiction pieces, a habit which continues to today.
I remember the years when William Shawn edited the magazine, and every word seemed cut like a diamond, perfect in a perfect place, and then I grew weary as the magazine began to wander in an editorial wilderness, culminating in the fascinatingly strange years when the magazine was led by Tina Brown who was interested – or so I thought - in the plumes of spray from the waves of contemporary culture.
She finally moved on and was replaced by David Remnick. I don’t know much about Mr Remnick, but in the one or two glimpses of him I’ve had on the television, he seems full to the brim of intellectual intensity. Based on the magazine he edits, he has a strong pragmatic side, too, and I suppose that comes from his background as a writer.
The result has been that The New Yorker no longer sits in the middle of the pile of periodicials which I will get around to; it is always at the top, not because it is entertaining but because it is, once again, important, and there is something in each issue worth savoring, thinking about, remembering.
In the current issue devoted to the arts, Remnick himself writes in the Comment section of Talk of The Town an essay called “Many Voices.” In this brief piece, he refers to Walt Whitman, a United Airlines pilot, the LA Times, the New York teachers’ union, and George Kennan, but I would like to quote his last paragraph, without his permission:
Acts of terrorism cannot always be averted but terrorists
Themselves can be defeated. It will take military and
Investigative daring to do so now; it will also require
A sustained national self-possession, a refusal to fall
Into the welter of panic and recrimination that terrorists
For two hundred years, since the days of Robespierre and
Saint-Just, have counted on as allies more precious than
Arms.
The issue is the one with Art Spiegelman’s drawing called “The Tenth Music,” with all the muses of ancient Greece ball-and-chained to the largest (and newest) muse of all, “Moolah.”
Tuesday, September 25, 2001
Reflecting on September 11, 2001
So how are you doing? I mean in terms of what happened to us on September 11th?
I live so far away from the East Coast that it is difficult for me to grasp the breadth and depth of the trials and tribulations in New York City, Washington, Pennsylvania, and in all the affected families here and in nearly eighty countries around the world.
All of it is very hard to comprehend, and God knows, many of us have tried.
So we go to our offices, look at the mail, answer the calls, write the letters, but I think many of us are in the same pickle I find myself in – we’re ignoring the complex projects which are ticking in the pile of papers on our desk.
Those tasks don’t seem very important just now, no matter what anyone says. We are trying to infuse the future with meaning and not fear. We are trying to return to normal, as the President and Mayor Giuliani would have us do. But there is no normal any more.
Like the papers which flew down from of those collapsing buildings, the images on the television which we have seen hundreds of times flutter through the shards of our normalcy.
And we know that what we saw on television bears no relationship to the horrific impact of the thing itself. Television allows us to disconnect from what we see on it, helped certainly by repetition of the images, but perhaps we are lucky to be protected in that way.
So how to understand all this, how to give it an expression which allows one to grasp the parameters of what happened to our country.
Think of it this way: If every radio and television network commemorated a victim each day until all had been remembered, the last name on the list would be commemorated sometime late in the year 2018.
Something over seventeen and a quarter years, in other words.
And if that doesn’t give you a sense of scale and make you mad as hell, then, friend, you just haven’t been paying attention.
Carry on, not in spite of those who did this, but because they did. There really is no choice.
Nick Nash
I live so far away from the East Coast that it is difficult for me to grasp the breadth and depth of the trials and tribulations in New York City, Washington, Pennsylvania, and in all the affected families here and in nearly eighty countries around the world.
All of it is very hard to comprehend, and God knows, many of us have tried.
So we go to our offices, look at the mail, answer the calls, write the letters, but I think many of us are in the same pickle I find myself in – we’re ignoring the complex projects which are ticking in the pile of papers on our desk.
Those tasks don’t seem very important just now, no matter what anyone says. We are trying to infuse the future with meaning and not fear. We are trying to return to normal, as the President and Mayor Giuliani would have us do. But there is no normal any more.
Like the papers which flew down from of those collapsing buildings, the images on the television which we have seen hundreds of times flutter through the shards of our normalcy.
And we know that what we saw on television bears no relationship to the horrific impact of the thing itself. Television allows us to disconnect from what we see on it, helped certainly by repetition of the images, but perhaps we are lucky to be protected in that way.
So how to understand all this, how to give it an expression which allows one to grasp the parameters of what happened to our country.
Think of it this way: If every radio and television network commemorated a victim each day until all had been remembered, the last name on the list would be commemorated sometime late in the year 2018.
Something over seventeen and a quarter years, in other words.
And if that doesn’t give you a sense of scale and make you mad as hell, then, friend, you just haven’t been paying attention.
Carry on, not in spite of those who did this, but because they did. There really is no choice.
Nick Nash
Wednesday, August 15, 2001
We're Havin' a Heat Wave, A Tropical Heat Wave...
Whew!
Here in Minnesota, we’ve just gotten through the worst “heatstorm” - as our television weather people called it – in the last thirteen years or so. Broadcasters tend to want to describe things in extremes, but for the last couple of weeks, no one in these parts would disagree with their nomenclature…fiercely hot, terrifically humid, and altogether unyielding.
Now what is horrific here is probably quite normal for anybody dealing with summer and living in Texas, Alabama, the Carolinas, Mississippi, and similar places, and it seems clear that we do not know how to handle this particular challenge.
For example, I live in an old farmhouse with no air conditioning, except in the bedroom. Normally I close the house up in the morning, and if it gets hot, the house is about 79 degrees when I return in the afternoon. Not too bad, in other words.
During this last bout of heat, the house was 86 degrees upon my return, so I would retreat to the bedroom for much of the evening – reading, going through piles of stuff and organizing them into new piles, and having the occasional evening meal. Well, it was the only part of the house that was 74 degrees.
My solution to the evening meal was two microwaved hot dogs, a similarly prepared ear of corn, potato salad, and raw carrots. Not much heat, not much nutrition -–I guess – but it was enough.
In the second week, people’s temperaments began to express themselves more colorfully – more active facial expressions, more and louder vocal behavior, and plenty of those digital signals which indicate displeasure with the acts of another in a nearby automobile.
And then, mercifully, the heat moved East to destroy people’s sense of equilibrium out there.
So if you live in the American South or someplace equally hot, I don’t expect any sympathy at all from you about our recent profound thermal discomfort.
But come December and January, we’re at our best in the snow and ice and wind. We know how to live in that stuff – why we go outside in t shirts and beat our chests in defiance of Mother Nature, when those of you who get the occasional inch of snow turn up your toes and retreat back to bed.
Do you know what the best part is about living in Minnesota? We can complain ferociously about the weather every darn month of the year…just part of the character of our state.
Cheers,
Nick
Here in Minnesota, we’ve just gotten through the worst “heatstorm” - as our television weather people called it – in the last thirteen years or so. Broadcasters tend to want to describe things in extremes, but for the last couple of weeks, no one in these parts would disagree with their nomenclature…fiercely hot, terrifically humid, and altogether unyielding.
Now what is horrific here is probably quite normal for anybody dealing with summer and living in Texas, Alabama, the Carolinas, Mississippi, and similar places, and it seems clear that we do not know how to handle this particular challenge.
For example, I live in an old farmhouse with no air conditioning, except in the bedroom. Normally I close the house up in the morning, and if it gets hot, the house is about 79 degrees when I return in the afternoon. Not too bad, in other words.
During this last bout of heat, the house was 86 degrees upon my return, so I would retreat to the bedroom for much of the evening – reading, going through piles of stuff and organizing them into new piles, and having the occasional evening meal. Well, it was the only part of the house that was 74 degrees.
My solution to the evening meal was two microwaved hot dogs, a similarly prepared ear of corn, potato salad, and raw carrots. Not much heat, not much nutrition -–I guess – but it was enough.
In the second week, people’s temperaments began to express themselves more colorfully – more active facial expressions, more and louder vocal behavior, and plenty of those digital signals which indicate displeasure with the acts of another in a nearby automobile.
And then, mercifully, the heat moved East to destroy people’s sense of equilibrium out there.
So if you live in the American South or someplace equally hot, I don’t expect any sympathy at all from you about our recent profound thermal discomfort.
But come December and January, we’re at our best in the snow and ice and wind. We know how to live in that stuff – why we go outside in t shirts and beat our chests in defiance of Mother Nature, when those of you who get the occasional inch of snow turn up your toes and retreat back to bed.
Do you know what the best part is about living in Minnesota? We can complain ferociously about the weather every darn month of the year…just part of the character of our state.
Cheers,
Nick
Wednesday, August 1, 2001
Dining Out Requirements For Geezers
Last week, a group of us went off for dinner to one of those “hot new places” in Minneapolis, one of Saint Paul’s many fine suburbs.
This one specializes in fish, and in truth, the setting was handsome, lots of glass, comfortable chairs, and tables far enough apart so the congenital eavesdroppers in our bunch could not practice their artlessness too easily. Very contemporary.
Even better, the food was good and the crème brulée absolutely delish. I suppose that when we have enough money saved up, we’ll go back.
As I looked at all the folk happily chatting and drinking and eating, I wondered how I would define a perfect restaurant, then I realized I was eavesdropping on myself and postponed my defining process until now.
I have reached the point in life where having a good conversation is more important than knowing I am in the latest of an endless series of “hot spots,” so the first requirement of my ideal restaurant is that it be quiet enough that good conversation can sparkle. In other words, less glass, more carpet and soft furnishings, with tables far apart. These days the noise level in these places might convince some that they’re having a wonderful time – and – but the blur of sound makes conversation nearly impossible, but perhaps that’s the design of contemporary gathering places.
Next, there has to be enough light so that one can read the menu unaided, and while we’re at it, how about a menu with a font large enough to allow reading without bifocals? (How on earth can you be romantic as you fumble endlessly for your glasses?)
Another element is a waitstaff which has enough sense to refer to the customers not as folks but as sir and ma’am. I hate being a “folk.” I might dress like one, but I do not think of myself as one. Oh, and they should never interrupt ongoing conversation as they do now with such glittering inquiries as, “Everything alright, folks,” or “Would you like to hear our specials tonight?”
They should wait until the punch line to the joke has been revealed, the proposal made, the toast completed. We are the main event, not them.
Like many others, I have gotten accustomed to the piece of salmon draped like a chiropractor’s patient over a semi-mound of garlic mashed potatoes, while swirls of God-knows-what decorate the plate, with the inevitable artistic dessert to conclude the meal.
In truth, what I would really like is a slab of medium rare roast beef, a baked potato, a salad with good old Rocquefort dressing, and about three popovers, along with a bottle of decent red wine, all finished off with a hot fudge sundae.
So I’m thinking about opening a restaurant called O.F’s. When I suggested the name at our meal, one of us said that Old Folks might be not quite appropriate as a name for a restaurant.
All I could do was smile….
Cheers,
Nick
This one specializes in fish, and in truth, the setting was handsome, lots of glass, comfortable chairs, and tables far enough apart so the congenital eavesdroppers in our bunch could not practice their artlessness too easily. Very contemporary.
Even better, the food was good and the crème brulée absolutely delish. I suppose that when we have enough money saved up, we’ll go back.
As I looked at all the folk happily chatting and drinking and eating, I wondered how I would define a perfect restaurant, then I realized I was eavesdropping on myself and postponed my defining process until now.
I have reached the point in life where having a good conversation is more important than knowing I am in the latest of an endless series of “hot spots,” so the first requirement of my ideal restaurant is that it be quiet enough that good conversation can sparkle. In other words, less glass, more carpet and soft furnishings, with tables far apart. These days the noise level in these places might convince some that they’re having a wonderful time – and – but the blur of sound makes conversation nearly impossible, but perhaps that’s the design of contemporary gathering places.
Next, there has to be enough light so that one can read the menu unaided, and while we’re at it, how about a menu with a font large enough to allow reading without bifocals? (How on earth can you be romantic as you fumble endlessly for your glasses?)
Another element is a waitstaff which has enough sense to refer to the customers not as folks but as sir and ma’am. I hate being a “folk.” I might dress like one, but I do not think of myself as one. Oh, and they should never interrupt ongoing conversation as they do now with such glittering inquiries as, “Everything alright, folks,” or “Would you like to hear our specials tonight?”
They should wait until the punch line to the joke has been revealed, the proposal made, the toast completed. We are the main event, not them.
Like many others, I have gotten accustomed to the piece of salmon draped like a chiropractor’s patient over a semi-mound of garlic mashed potatoes, while swirls of God-knows-what decorate the plate, with the inevitable artistic dessert to conclude the meal.
In truth, what I would really like is a slab of medium rare roast beef, a baked potato, a salad with good old Rocquefort dressing, and about three popovers, along with a bottle of decent red wine, all finished off with a hot fudge sundae.
So I’m thinking about opening a restaurant called O.F’s. When I suggested the name at our meal, one of us said that Old Folks might be not quite appropriate as a name for a restaurant.
All I could do was smile….
Cheers,
Nick
Friday, July 13, 2001
It appears that we live in a time when rage is, well, the rage. Road rage, fan rage, and now stage rage.
According to a survey in London, 92 percent of respondents reported annoyance by others in the theatre. Rustling candy wrappers led the pack, followed by talking, and the ringing of cell phones.
I inherited a walloping case of stage rage from my father, and I can remember when I got it. He and I were in Boston at a pre-Broadway performance of Frank Loesser’s “Most Happy Fella,” and two of Boston’s infamous dowagers were sitting behind us, chatting away.
When the overture began, the chatting did not cease, so my father turned toward them, but said nothing. When the chat continued, he turned around and managed a baleful expression, but this did no good, and then he turned back again, and said, “Would you two old bats kindly shut the $%!@$@#$ up, so we can hear the show?”
Silence reigned throughout the balance of the performance. Later, I asked him about it – he matter of factly said that his view was that nothing was ruder than making unnecessary noise in a theatre unless it was being late to the performance, and that he’d paid good money to see the show, and if the ladies wanted to talk, they should go to the lobby and do so without impairing the pleasure of others.
He didn’t know it, but that moment, I joined the “stage ragers.”
It appears that we live in an age of “wrongful entitlement,” where, if we want to do something, we just go ahead and to hell with the consequences. Or some of us…certainly not you…or me.
I sit behind one older female at a concert series, and I have concluded she must take leave of the tuberculosis ward in order to destroy, with calculated determination, the pleasures of a recital. After a variety of uncovered sniffles and coughs, she SNAPS open her purse, unwraps the CRINKLY AND NOISY material covering her lozenge, then SNAPS her purse shut again. This occurs several times each concert.
The only good I derive from her actions is that I understand more clearly why crimes of passion occurs.
Today, I discovered a new kind of rage – catalogue rage. The LL Bean catalogue arrived in the mail today for autumn, AUTUMN. It is not even the middle of July, and we should have visions of dead leaves, cold nights, imminent snow in our heads – NOT!?
I have refused to open it – in fact it’s in the tickler file for the first of September. I can wait, and frankly, so should they.
Cheers, grrrrrrr!
Nick
According to a survey in London, 92 percent of respondents reported annoyance by others in the theatre. Rustling candy wrappers led the pack, followed by talking, and the ringing of cell phones.
I inherited a walloping case of stage rage from my father, and I can remember when I got it. He and I were in Boston at a pre-Broadway performance of Frank Loesser’s “Most Happy Fella,” and two of Boston’s infamous dowagers were sitting behind us, chatting away.
When the overture began, the chatting did not cease, so my father turned toward them, but said nothing. When the chat continued, he turned around and managed a baleful expression, but this did no good, and then he turned back again, and said, “Would you two old bats kindly shut the $%!@$@#$ up, so we can hear the show?”
Silence reigned throughout the balance of the performance. Later, I asked him about it – he matter of factly said that his view was that nothing was ruder than making unnecessary noise in a theatre unless it was being late to the performance, and that he’d paid good money to see the show, and if the ladies wanted to talk, they should go to the lobby and do so without impairing the pleasure of others.
He didn’t know it, but that moment, I joined the “stage ragers.”
It appears that we live in an age of “wrongful entitlement,” where, if we want to do something, we just go ahead and to hell with the consequences. Or some of us…certainly not you…or me.
I sit behind one older female at a concert series, and I have concluded she must take leave of the tuberculosis ward in order to destroy, with calculated determination, the pleasures of a recital. After a variety of uncovered sniffles and coughs, she SNAPS open her purse, unwraps the CRINKLY AND NOISY material covering her lozenge, then SNAPS her purse shut again. This occurs several times each concert.
The only good I derive from her actions is that I understand more clearly why crimes of passion occurs.
Today, I discovered a new kind of rage – catalogue rage. The LL Bean catalogue arrived in the mail today for autumn, AUTUMN. It is not even the middle of July, and we should have visions of dead leaves, cold nights, imminent snow in our heads – NOT!?
I have refused to open it – in fact it’s in the tickler file for the first of September. I can wait, and frankly, so should they.
Cheers, grrrrrrr!
Nick
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
