Category Archives: nostalgia

BlueGrass.

September 5, 2015classical music, nostalgiaAppalachia, Ashokan Farewell, beaches, Bert Kempfurts orchestra, bluegrass, Chris Sedelmeyer, country music, davenport, Davy Sturtevant, Dunkirk NY, fiddlers, Great Lakes, Helen Barth, Little Brown Church in the Vale, Little Man With The Big Voice, Montovani, Nashville fiddlers, Nobody's Darlin But Mine, Palermo Brothers, peninsula, Philco stereo, swinging your partnerruth ann scanzillo

NPR is running a bluegrass instrumental.

It comforts me.

Never used to.

Never liked bluegrass, particularly. Too, of course, “country”, synonymous with “uneducated”. Pretentious, I was.

Dad liked country music. The hymns that lulled my little brother and me to sleep every single night, on the Philco stereo, were sung by Helen Barth, the Palermo Brothers, and country artists, like The Little Man with the Big Voice.

We never knew his name, my brother and I. He was just the Little Man with the Big Voice. Kinda like Dad.

But, bluegrass.

Music finds its way into our realm in all sorts of ways. Sometimes it is the song our grandmother sings to us, as babies – “The Little Brown Church in the Vale”. Little melodies, faintly intoned by delicate voices, right next to our ears. Sometimes it is our father, with his strong anthem or big band croon, “Oh, Lord My God”, “You’re Nobody’s Darlin’ But Mine, Love”.

Other times, whole orchestras, again on the radio, Bert Kaempfert’s or Mantovani, making our pre-pubescent bodies ache with ephemeral desire beside an imaginary pool in the bright summer sun, lovers from the 1960’s with their lacquered, teased, bleached flips and their hairless chests. And, us, curled up on the davenport while mom ran the sweeper, our heads burrowed into the deepest corner of the upholstery until we found the portal, the escape into fantasy.

I was raised on the Great Lakes. Home wasn’t home without a waterfront, and a peninsula of endless beaches. Bluegrass was music from a foreign country.

No matter that most of the genre found its roots in the mountain range just south of here, called Appalachia. In these parts, we’d have to take a day trip across the state line, to Panama Rocks, to hear it played live, and even then. Seems bluegrass was a type of lawn, came from Kentucky.

But, right now, I am comforted. It pulls from my memory vignettes, little shadow box scenes. The first, of a tall, muscular blonde with shoulder length hair and a mouth full of teeth who danced to it, in the dark wood- floored bar in the town of Dunkirk, NY. He swung his partner, and his irresistible body swung, too.

The second, a skinny boy, who played trumpet in high school, and then grew to be a seasoned song writing singer with a voice like Randy Travis and the attitude of one who knew I’d eventually come around. He even wrote a song named after me. He can still play it on his guitar, or his violin, from the south all the way to the cozy gathering corners of Maine.

But, the real fiddler was a child who became a young man and moved to Nashville. He’d come home, with his traveling band, and play private concerts at his grandparents senior living center. And, it was at the first of these that I decided that bluegrass had to be experienced live. Something about the bass pulse, and all the harmonic sonorities. Recording couldn’t touch the music of the mountains and the south; it required true atmosphere, like being outside eating a picnic made all food taste better.

So, now, I can hear bluegrass anywhere, and am provoked by these connections. It has spun its weave around me, and I am listening. Dimly, I see a sinewy, lean boy, and he is playing for me.

9/5/15 All rights those of the author, whose name appears above this line. Thank you for listening.

littlebarefeetblog.com

The Man In The Room.

August 26, 2015classical music, contemplative essays, nostalgiadaughters, elder brothers, family dynamics, family heirarchies, fathers, men in the room, patriarchal societies, role of women in Christian sects, sistersruth ann scanzillo

I am a woman. Always have been; had no choice in the matter. My fetus did not grow external gonads.

At birth, how was I to know that I would never really be alone? No; wherever I would be, go, or do, there would always be a man in the room.

******

The first man in the room was late.

He was sitting at a bar, drinking, on a Friday night – shirking the very responsibility for which any woman in his position, at least in those days, would have immediately jumped to respond. He was an obstetrician. He was my mother’s doctor. And, he was definitely On Call.

When the phone reached him, he likely chuckled with the bartender about cervical dilation and other, baser aspects of the female anatomy over which he claimed domain. And, he probably ordered another beer. After all, who was this infant to proclaim any birth rite at prime time on a Friday night in April? It was pouring rain. Time out.

Back in labor and delivery, my mother was practicing female obedience. No woman, in the history of the world, did this better. I was crowning, and the nurses, frantic to enact their version of submission, pecked about, insisting that the doctor would be there “any minute”. To my mother, the directive was unanimous: “Just hold ON!”

So, my mother obeyed the nurses, who were obeying the doctor, who was calling for shots by now in the bar. And, she held a birthing baby in her vagina until it felt certain her entire body would explode. The man was not yet present in the room but, at that interminable moment, he was everywhere. He was squeezing my mother’s abdomen, suffocating me, and holding lit matches to every nurse in the wing. What a masterful grasp wielded that drunken sailor on such a wet and inconvenient night.

When he finally appeared, as doctor, the gurney carrying my mother and me was propelled so fast down the hallway toward delivery that it nearly toppled and, at about 8:45 pm (well after the downbeat), the next baby girl was finally permitted entry into the world. Through the caul that draped my soaking face, I screamed bloody, spitting murder at the man in the room.

The second man in the room was just returning from work.

He was my father.

To hear him tell it, I would be the embodiment of his every gift…a “born” artist and musician, a singer like him, his – for all practical purposes – first-born child. He would hold me with tender arms and soft hands, feed me, sing to me. I would love him with my whole heart. He would go to work, come home, bring the money with him, count it on the kitchen table, and share with me a teaspoon of his hot tea with milk and sugar.

On his day off, he would come and go as he pleased. And, he would take me with him. I would sit in the car, singing to myself, while he did what he had to do inside the store or the other man’s house. He would eat his supper after dark, make his lunch, go to bed, and get up before everybody else in the house was even awake to walk to work. He owned his own barber shop, made his own hours and, when his day was over, he was done.

Mom’s day was never done. She’d stay up til after midnight, finishing the sewing that needed to be ready by the next day’s pick up, and get up before we would in the morning to prepare our breakfast, shrieking us awake so that we’d be ready for school before she was nearly late for work.

On the weekends, not otherwise pulling a shift at the machine shop, she’d run the sweeper and dust around us as we tried to practice our piano lesson or read. On Sunday, she’d get us ready for morning worship at the Gospel Hall and we’d all go, to spend most of the day there listening to: men. Mom finally took her nap, on Sunday afternoon, while Dad would spend the afternoon chewing on a toothpick seated on a park bench watching us pet the small animals at the zoo.

The third man in the room reached puberty when I was almost a toddler. He was my elder brother.

A very ripe 11 at my birth, he had been the only child for those first ten precocious years, surrounded by adoring adults substituting for the father who was not yet there. I was an intrusion, a stray dog, a reluctant pet, an object of derision. I was in the spot reserved for him, and this was not to be.

My brother would manifest as the man in the room for the rest of my life in that house. He would ride his bike wherever he pleased, growing to be an active teen with the capacity to socially organize and initiate all manner of events in the basement, where he held court. I grew, too, but the playpen that corralled me was the only point of view from which I could define the world. He was, when not placed in my exclusive care, always outside of the box – and, ever-present, in the room.

If there were rules, they never applied to him; if there was law, he learned to rule it. When I came of age, he dictated to my parents just what the outside world was all about and, in spite of my creative gifts clearly matching or surpassing his, my choices were decreed: for the daughter, there would be no further education. Doctorate degrees were there for the men to take; girls should get a job, learn to cook, and prepare for the husband God had in mind.

God, on the other hand, frightfully busy making more men and the women intended to serve them, tried to present the man for me on more than one occasion. In the first offering, there were other men with power in their laps who determined that the man God had clearly chosen for me should stay away. Because they were in a position to claim their dictates as from God directly, the fact that they weren’t listening to what I was hearing seemed to have no bearing on the outcome God intended. I just chalked it up to the men themselves, and peered at them, from across the room.

From that point forward, the man in the room took many forms. He was a boss, or a hired hand, or a curious customer, or a band mate. And, I was ready to pass his test. When I graduated to the ranks of professional, Union card carrying musician, he became the Maestro – an object of my adoration. If I couldn’t please God anymore, then perhaps I could revere the baton in his hand.

******

The man is still there. He still waits to tell me when to speak, when to act, and when to acquiesce. He decides my value. He directs my course. He expects me to be there when he needs me, and to disappear when the time is right. He may not have any idea how much power he holds because, to him, he is just in his world – the world he inherited from his mother’s womb.

He’d best preserve that power for as long as he remains strong; a world without a woman in it would change his forever.
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littlebarefeetblog.com

New York.

July 23, 2015contemplative essays, Deep Thoughts, nostalgiaanonymity, art, art museums, beauty, big cities, big opportunities, bloom where you're planted, buying a house, collectives, dreams, Erie Art Museum, extended families, goals, home, hometowns, human value, isolation, living and working, making art, Manhattan, Mary Engelbreit, mutual value, neighborhoods, New York City, realization, small towns, studio families, Studs Terkel, talent, the center of the universe, tiny apartments in big cities, truth, working at home, working where you live, working.ruth ann scanzillo

July 23, 2015 11:20pm

Just because you stay home doesn’t make you any less qualified to be alive.

I’m from a city that just barely made it to the big map. Bad council decisions, insular geography, what have you. The rest of the world moved on without it.

About twenty five years ago, my friend Sally found me a house here. She said it was the prettiest in town. More importantly, this one and a half story original from 1895 was located on a corner between two main arteries, a full ten minutes max from anything I needed or wanted to do. For $34,5. I grabbed it, and never looked back.

And, then I went back. To work.

Work. Studs Terkel had quite a bit to say about work. In fact, he wrote the book. And, Studs was from a county town only minutes from here.

Work, for me, would be the becoming. Being an artist, I set about to make a thing of beauty. First, I used materials. Later, I would use people. Children. Sometimes, losing sight of the fact that the materials in my works of art were living, breathing organisms with worthy needs and wants of their own. Young beings, fragile and sensitive. That was probably my biggest failing; I would wonder, to this day, if I’d ever hurt a child irrepairably in my determination to complete the masterpiece of my imagination.

But, no one could say that I hadn’t worked. And, the efforts made bore their own fruit.

We are all called upon, whether we hear the voice doing the calling or not, to make something of value out of our lives. Some of us are given more than one set of gifts, of a type easily identified by the masses. These are called Talents. Each are meant to be developed, and then expressed, in some meaningful form. Sometimes they come forth easily, finding their place with little effort; others take more care to refine. But, sooner or later, one born with talent is just going to be out there embodying the gift. There’s a certain inevitability to it all.

Others are given quieter functions. Curiosity. Compassion. Empathy. Nurture. These, too, are gifts. And, when all are presented to the greater society, everybody benefits. From every nook and cranny of the world, people who are actively contributing to truth, and beauty, and growth, are the lifeblood of the planet.

I’ve also been to New York – the center of the known universe. And, I know plenty of others who have. Some have even lived and worked there. And, the report from the front has not always glittered with gold.

Moving to the bigger city to seek one’s fortune has, historically, been the pattern of the emerging fledgling. Somewhere, somebody said that, the greater one’s inherent potential, the more important to place oneself in the midst of the most recognized centers of society.

This may have been truer when life was smaller, overall. When the perimeters could be more cleanly defined. When the goal could be more clearly visible, the horizon within view.

But, for every expectant bundle of energy that gets off the plane or the bus or the train, there is a lifetime of encroaching realization waiting at the station. A tiny apartment, on a dusty sidestreet. One precious collection of minor opportunities that somebody says will eventually grow into the bigger one. And, perhaps a decade or two of increasing isolation, anonymity, maybe even disappointment.

Mostly, those who become self sustaining in New York do so because they manage to find a smaller collective. A studio. A neighborhood. An extended family of others, who share their loves and propensities. You know. Like a small town.

Mary Engelbreit said: “Bloom where you’re planted.” Oh; maybe she wasn’t the first. But, she said the words out loud. And, then she repeated them, using pretty colors and shapes, until they were everywhere. Back in the 1980’s, Mary’s constitution of this meme had quietly found its place on the greeting card rack of life. Most never knew Mary. But, many lives would come to benefit from what she did.

Friday evening, I will be meeting a lovely young woman for, as they say, coffee. She’s in town for a few days, visiting family and friends, and we haven’t seen each other in over twenty years. But, back in the day, Charline was my student, and neither of us ever forgot the other. Like so many who are part of the thriving throng, she made a life for herself as a teacher in another small town, much as I had. This will be a good reunion, the best kind. We will celebrate the most important part: mutual human value.

We won’t be meeting at a cafe in Manhattan. We won’t have to. There will be no agents, eager for a piece of us. There’ll be no wannabes, seizing our favorite table. We’ll be attending Gallery Night at our local art museum, where just as many beautiful things and people can be found as any of their kind, anywhere. And, those who gather there will have every bit as much to offer the world as anybody else.

We’ll be thankful for our village, the place we call home. And, we’ll be fully qualified to say so.

littlebarefeetblog.com