Sensei and Sensibility

THEODORE ROOSEVELT'S BIRTHPLACE, PHYSICAL EMBODIMENT OF AMERICAN STORY

"Our shared outdoor spaces our attics of history and graveyards of sacrifice...are being overlooked.  The physical embodiment of the American story are being ignored by too many," wrote Timothy Egan on The New York Times Sunday Opinion page, July 12, 2009.

This article caught my attention for a couple reasons:  I love visiting these places, parks, birthplaces, museums and more, and, as recently as Saturday, a friend and I had visited Theodore Roosevelt's Birthplace, a brownstone at 28 East 20th Street in the modern-day Gramercy Section of NY City.  (The family lived here from 1854 until the fall of 1872 when Theodore, Jr. was fourteen.)

The focus of our guided tour of five period rooms was the 19th century lifestyle of the Roosevelts during the Civil War and into the Gilded Age, the period of TR's growing up years.  Our guide encouraged us to imagine ourselves women of that era.  This engaged us and our visit was lively!

I've already begun planning a trip to Sagamore Hill, TR's home on Long Island.  Before I go, I expect to have read Theodore Rex by Edmund Morris.  (It has been on the book shelf for a long time, but no longer.)   That's how visits to historic sites work.  One thing leads to another, and, before you know it, the adventure is under way!

*Theodore Roosevelt's birthplace is a National Historic Site run by the National Park Service, U.S. Department of Interior, in cooperation with the Theodore Roosevelt Association.  Admission is $3.

WORK: AN EVOLVING VIEW

"Work:  What Is It Good For?" was the topic of a rousing conversation recently. Because the twelve of us who were going to discuss the topic have done knowledge work and because different points of view do so much to stimulate, energize and inspire conversation, all were encouraged to read Matthew Crawford's article, "The Case for Working with Your Hands."

Crawford's article proved to be a provocative read, and, though there was disagreement with parts of it, with one point there was general agreement.  Work done with your hands can't be outsourced!  Given the current perplexity in the economy, that is a good thing.

"Work" carries a load, even as a word.  The word "work" in the Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary has twenty-six definitions.  Our definitions included working for pay/means of livelihood, volunteering for "symbolic" pay and engaging in any activity that involves effort.  (One person observed, in planning a big birthday party, she had used all the skills she once used in publishing!)

What is the role of work in a life fully lived?  To this question, there were as many responses as people in the room.  For some, security has been/is paramount; for others, regular, messy upheaval has been most important.  Many of the possibilities in between were presented as well.

In our career years, work was often the way we defined ourselves.  I am lawyer, a doctor, a professor of English etc.  However, at this stage of our lives, as I see it, we stand on the shore of a new invitation--to open our lives to something more--to what is left undone.  To do this, it is important to let our hearts enjoy a different rhythm and to have the courage for a new approach to time.

"Allow [time] to slow until you find freedom to draw alongside the mystery you hold and befriend your own beauty of soul," is how John O"Donohue describes it in his blessing, "For Retirement."  "Now is the time...to awaken the depths beyond your work and enter into your infinite source," he concludes.

If we are to accept this new invitation, then our relationship to work, as we knew it in our career years, has to change.  One of the sweet discoveries of this place of transitioning is the different experience of time and all the discoveries that come with slowing down.

It is from this slowing down place that "our gaze seems to soften" (Crawford's phrase) and our definition of work, too.  Work becomes "any activity (a new venture, or not) we choose that involves effort" along with (likely) feelings of pleasure, enjoyment and a sense of well-being.

BORN ON THE FOURTH OF JULY

Having just celebrated the birthday of our nation, it makes me smile to imagine the Founding Fathers enjoyment of it as well.  For starters, the "George" of the Philharmonic's concert in the afternoon at Avery Fisher Hall, Lincoln Center, was not King George III but rather George Gershwin.  

The orchestra played "Strike Up the Band," variations on "I Got Rhythm," for piano and orchestra and "Rhapsody in Blue," also for piano and orchestra.  This was followed by Aaron Copland's "Appalachian Spring."  The finale was left to John Philip Sousa who knew a thing or two about birthday music for a nation!  

The composition of the orchestra was changed a little by the requirements of this music.  Saxophones were needed for the jazz portion of the concert.  With Sousa, it was a matter of bringing on more trumpets, more trombones and the bass tuba.  

The first two marches were "Hands Across the Sea" and "The Washington Post."  This was stirring music, and all of us wanted an encore.  (The program notes revealed that "Hands Across the Sea" had to be repeated on the spot three times when the piece was first premiered in 1899 at the Academy of Music in Philadelphia.) What would the nation's birthday be without "Stars and Stripes Forever"?  Happily, for everybody, we got it, complete with crashing cymbals, chirping piccolos and bombastic brass.

The day ended with an "illumination," the word our Founding Fathers used.  The view from atop a building on the Hudson was aesthetically spectacular and entertaining.  It was a perfect ending to a perfect "birth" day. 

ON THEATRE, POETRY AND LIVING LIFE FULLY

Theatre is a means of entering more fully into life.  So, too, is poetry.  When they come together as they did for me this weekend, I felt it.

Friday night I saw Thorton Wilder's "Our Town," Barrow Street Theater, after an interlude of many years. What a difference some years make!  

I knew "the story."  Wilder's message, in this meditation on mortality, was to make sacraments of the simple things recognizing that life is precious and ordinary.  It is a simple message.  This time, however, I experienced  a confluence of forces and the impact was anything but simple.  

The directing by David Cromer, who also played the role of Stage Manager, was pointed, engaging and sensory-rich.  The roles of Emily Webb and George Gibbs were played by actors who made the simple things poignant and heartfelt.  Feelings were heightened and insights, too.  The final blackout was extraordinarily dark.  It was in short a magnificent night in the theatre.

The second part of this one-two punch showed up in a poem by Mary Oliver:

          To live in this world

          you must be able

          to do three things:

          to love what is mortal;

          to hold it

          against your bones knowing

          your own life depends on it;

          and, when the time comes to let it go,

          to let it go.  

ONE GARDEN, TWO NAMES: PEACE FOUNTAIN GARDEN AND CHILDREN'S SCULPTURE GARDEN

The garden next to the Cathedral of St. John the Divine, at Amsterdam and  112th Street, New York City, has two names:  Peace Fountain Garden and Children's Sculpture Garden.  I met friends there yesterday. We toured the cathedral and stayed for Evensong at 4:00 p.m.  In between, we explored the garden.

The dominating feature of the Peace Garden is a 40-foot-high baroque Peace Fountain so chock full of images, symbols and stories that three of us walked around it commenting on our observations for some 20-30 minutes.  The wings of the Archangel Michael soar at the top of the sculpture and the head of a strong but decapitated Satan hangs below.  That's the overarching story of this sculpture by Greg Wyatt, good triumphs over evil.

"What's the meaning of the giant crab?" we wondered aloud.  (Later we learned it is meant to remind us of life origins in sea and struggle.)  Also easy to identify were the drowsy moon facing West and a joyous sun facing East.  

As we continued to look and discuss, we saw so many giraffes, I was motivated to investigate their significance as totem.  I discovered that giraffes are social animals.  They like each other's company. With their head in the sky and their legs and feet on the ground, they can see long distances and they have the ability to progress--admirable qualities in peace makers.

One-hundred-twenty bronze reliefs and sculptures, many of them whimsical, encircle the fountain. Many were sculpted by local children.  This explains the Children's Sculpture Garden.  Examining these was great fun.

Taken whole, this garden was both charming and engaging.  Eventually though, our attention diminished and Lynn noticed the Hungarian pastry shop across the street.  (We came home with an apple strudel and a rum and chocolate confection "to die for.")

THE CAMERA AS STORY TELLER

"The Model as Muse:  Embodying Fashion" is one of the exhibits currently on view at the Metropolitan Museum.  Having seen the exhibit twice, I am struck with the power of the photograph(er) to tell a story--and to sell.  I've  known this.  Now I've felt it, too.

For starters, the exhibit opens by making reference to Richard Avedon's  iconic fashion image, that of "Dovima with the Elephants."  You know the one!  (When I googled "woman between two elephants, image," this is what showed up first.) 

In the Met's show, the dress, the first designed by Christian Dior by his new assistant, Yves Saint-Laurent, is shown before two cutouts of elephants.  The dress is simple and elegant. It is a beautiful dress. Placed between two live elephants, all of this changes. The excitement/danger quotient is punched up--big time.  The feeling is one of beauty calming the beast, and the whole, including the dress, takes on the power of myth.  It is thrilling.

Something similar happens with this elegant evening gown of white silk jersey and gold lame--by Madame Gres.  In the photograph, the model is in a glamorous casino.  Gaming supplies the excitement/danger here.  

To my mind, one of the most beautiful features of the dress, the pooling of fabric on the floor, is omitted from the photograph.  To look from photo to actual dress, back and forth, is to discover just how transforming the photograph is.  The significance/power of the dress is enhanced by the surround.

Camera images invent realities that are obviously contrived.  We suspend disbelief and the story becomes all.  A sale is often the result!

ADULTS ARE OBLIGED TO HAVE FUN. . . .

Outsider Art has come to the windows of Bergdorf Goodman, Fifth Avenue, New York.  It commands attention and rewards with delight and surprise.

Window dressers at Bergdorf Goodman, Fifth Avenue, last week transformed their windows with works that feature Visionary Artists from the American Visionary Art Museum in Baltimore.  I visited that museum years ago.  I remember it still.  Quotations were an important part of that viewing experience and the same is true in the current display.

I feel an obligation to pass on this quote posted on the Bergdorf window:  "Adults are obliged to have fun so children will want to grow older."  Hobart Brown, Glorious Founder, Kinetic Sculpture Race.  (Is this an inspired way to combat ageism or what?)

YOU ARE INVITED TO TEA AT THE ST. REGIS

My experiences of afternoon tea continue to accumulate.  Saturday I joined a former high school classmate and his wife for tea at the St. Regis Hotel.  Both have lived all over the world, and high tea at the Regis is one of Lynn's favorite things.  

I was curious to discover why this was so.  It didn't take long to understand.

The entry to the hotel is quiet--like a vestibule.  It points the way to The Astor Court named after the hotel's original owner, Col. John Jacob Astor IV.  The Astor Court is both elegant and serene.   Live music (first harp and later piano) was lovely.  The "tea" was sumptuous.  But "the icing on the cake" was the conversation.

Sharing the present (as in tea and talk) was splendid and so, too, was the shared re-visiting of our past in rural Iowa.  The passing of the years affects our perspectives.  I suspect setting does, too.  Anyway, Saturday's tea was sweet and satisfying! 

EXPERIENCING THE WONDER OF RAIN AS WATERFALLS

My friend, Vickie, may remark on "chlorophyll withdrawal" in the city, but that isn't the case in her current surround.  Anita and I visited her yesterday in rural New York State, two hours by train out of New York City

With all the rain we've had--and continue to receive, the green of the trees, the pastures and parks was verdant.  A sky predominately gray, with patches of blue, provided contrast to this study in light and dark.

Water's presence was visible everywhere--present, as building in the rivers and rushing in the streams, and past, as carver of rock.  Vickie, you see, took us to see Kent Falls (the most visited falls in Connecticut) in nearby Kent Park.  There we could see the cascading and falling water that drops 250 feet in a quarter of a mile before flowing into the Housatonic River.  (Though I am no judge of the quantity of water flowing over the falls, when I Googled it, the maximum mean flow was set at 111 gallons a second!)

Entering through the covered bridge, which spans the stream, we began the procession to the falls.  A trail winds  a quarter mile up along the falls with scenic vantage points provided along the way.

Here the rocks "talk," and Vickie translated.  She explained that this part of Connecticut was once coral reefs.  Later, these were squeezed together and buried under other rock.  With increasing heat and pressure, the former reefs turned into marble.

At the first two cascades, the marble is flat-lying; at the third cascade, the rocks have been turned on end.  Because of the composition of the bedrock, with alternating hard and soft layers, flowing water has created a natural wonder.

There is something for everyone here:  the picnicker, the artist, the fisherman, the geologist and the casual day-tripper.  It is a sensory joy--in seeing, hearing, smelling and touching--for all.  

I was surprised yesterday.  My weariness of rain falling changed to wonder at waterfalls and water falling in only a matter of seconds. What a difference a change in perspective makes!

Note: Kent Park is part of the Connecticut Impressionist Art Trail and a trout park with a 2-a-day creel limit.

FLOWERS WELCOME SUMMER

The giant orb of the allium, the black-eyed Susan, the cosmos, summer bloomers all, combine nicely to announce the coming of a new season.  These are simple flowers.  Though maybe not so rustic as the sunflower, they are deserving of such descriptors as "not elaborate or showy, modest and unostentatious."  I enjoy my explorations of "simple."

Fittingly, after completing my first arrangement, I left the remainder of the flowers in the galvanized flower bucket used for conditioning the flowers.  They looked perfectly at home there.

As Ariel and I talked about our arrangements last week, we observed that "center and centering" predominate in my flowers.  They are "centered on Summer," we might say.  Ariel's, we agreed, seemed a little drowsy. They might be going to sleep--or waking up.  (Naps and napping are always sweet but perhaps specially so in summer!)

Many encourage us to "slow down and smell the flowers."  I enjoy "listening to them," too.  I'm confident these are whispering, "Welcome, Summer!"