My sweet cousin-in-law, Sylvia, wrote on her Facebook page "My heartfelt apologies on behalf of the incredibly short-sighted, greedy, never-learn-from-our-mistakes human race to Mother Earth for the horrible damage we have wrought upon the gorgeous Gulf Coast."
To that I can say Amen! ... but apologies are not enough. It's time to act. Our leaders (are there any in sight?) must marshall this nation's will to break our dependency on cheap petroleum from tin-horn autocrats (friends or foes) by going cold turkey.
What does that mean? Perhaps a $3 tax on gas at the pump; tax deductions for trading in petrol cars for electrics or converting to natural gas; subsidies for natural gas storage, transport and neighborhood stations; excise tax on all but domestically produced crude oil; subsidized research into alternative, renewable sources; and subsidies for bio-diesel engines. And immediate cancellation of all continental shelf oil drilling. The gas tax and excise tax revenues are to be pledged to these energy habit-changing programs and not to fund other federal goodies.
Will it hurt? You bet. So does going cold turkey off alcohol or heroine -- and our habit is just as destructive as those.
Now, Mr. Obama, Now....
Tuesday, May 25, 2010
Sunday, May 23, 2010
A Death of Kodaly
I was reminded this morning, upon hearing some Kodaly, of a short tale that came to me suddenly and full blown while listening to Kodaly's Duo for Violin and Cello at a Seattle Chamber Music Summer Festival concert a few years ago. I don't know how such things happen, but just for the hell of it, here it is....
A Death of Kodály
The Nazi patrol must have heard it, too – the sinuous keening of a violin snaking its way through the moonless forest; we all held our breath.
“Merde!” whispered Kostan, in his international patois of swearwords, “what the hell is that?” in his native Hungarian. I said it sounded like the theme from Kodály’s duo for violin and cello. “Tres merde!” He spat out orders to Bela and The Knife (we never did learn his name): “go, get him before the basta Boche do!” They melted away in silence. “All we need next is a fucking (in English) cello.”
We waited in silence, eleven of us and three mules loaded with plastic explosive and detonators. The crying violin ceased. Another interminable wait, then three figures, like wraiths emerging from the ground, Bela and The Knife, pushing forward an older man – perhaps 50 or so, it was hard to judge these Hungarian country folk, so ground down since the mobilization of ’42 and the abduction of Horthy in Fall of ‘44.
He was not peasant, after all, Kostan’s interrogation revealed, but a teacher. “Of music?” “No, of languages. The violin is just my companion.” “Which?” “German and English.” ”Shit” spat out Kostan, “Western, decadent shit.”
“Hungary is a bridge” bravely answered the old man, “a bridge between East and West – between the culture of the West and your new society coming from the East.” He had correctly sized up his guardians/captors as red partisans. “We need to know many languages to play our role in the new Europe.”
“The dawn comes from the East, old man” said Kostan sardonically. “Now Hungary is to be for Hungarians; we need know only Russian.” “What was that you were playing?”
“Only folk themes. No real piece.”
“It sounded like Kodály” I interjected in my painful Hungarian. “That’s because Kodály sounds Magyar”, said the oldster. “Where are you from? Not Hungary. What brings you here?”
“Right, I learned Hungarian from my parents in Pittsburgh. I’m American.”
Kostan: “Shut up, both of you. I ask the questions here.”
“Many Hungarians went to America”, said teacher in his English. “Our loss; your gain.”
“Yes, teachers like you, and mathematicians and musicians and just steel-workers like my Dad. Our gain; maybe that’s why I’ve come back to help.” What indeed brings me here? I thought. Dropped into Transdanubia with two Tommy sappers to help harass the German retreat from besieged Budapest, to blow rail lines and impede escape to Vienna and Bratislava. Now we were just eleven, eight red partisan and the three of us, survivors, never sure whether we were harassee or harasser.
I went on: “My mother loved Kodály; I grew up with him.”
Kostan: “This Kodály, the composer, right? One of the toadies of the Austro-Hungarian Empire allied with the Kaiser, right? Now a Budapest parasite, right?”
Both teacher and I reacted. “No, no, a great Hungarian”; “a cultural asset”; “his music is timeless”; “his views are very liberal”; “he translates Magyar music for the world”.
“For the Western world” Kostan disdained. “He sells our folk arts to the wealthy, an exploiter of native culture, one who works to keep us ‘native’ and in chains. He is a collaborator, an enemy of the people.”
“You can’t politicize his art.” “The Nazis weren’t even born when he wrote that theme.” “He composes for the world.” “He writes from the soul, not to serve some political plot.” “Art is art; politics is politics.” I can’t remember clearly who said what, teacher’s and my protests tumbling forth.
Kostan coldly looked at us. “Art.” He spat. “All art is politics. Art is rooted in its society. You judge art by who creates it, to what use it is put, then and now…. And now, we must move.” To Bela and The Knife: “This teacher is of no use to us and good use to Germans. Get rid of him. No shooting.”
“No! You can’t!” I protested, but the three were disappearing into the wood even as I started up. Moments later, Bela re-appeared with violin in hand. “What do I do with this?” “Bury it”, said Kostan, ”it’s just a violin.”
I stared open-mouthed.
Kostan paused; then in his Hung-lish: “Americanski, you too bourgeois for health. You good go west when Red army comes. I no can longer protect you after kill Nazis.”
His chill words crackled with truth.
The Nazi patrol must have heard it, too – the sinuous keening of a violin snaking its way through the moonless forest; we all held our breath.
“Merde!” whispered Kostan, in his international patois of swearwords, “what the hell is that?” in his native Hungarian. I said it sounded like the theme from Kodály’s duo for violin and cello. “Tres merde!” He spat out orders to Bela and The Knife (we never did learn his name): “go, get him before the basta Boche do!” They melted away in silence. “All we need next is a fucking (in English) cello.”
We waited in silence, eleven of us and three mules loaded with plastic explosive and detonators. The crying violin ceased. Another interminable wait, then three figures, like wraiths emerging from the ground, Bela and The Knife, pushing forward an older man – perhaps 50 or so, it was hard to judge these Hungarian country folk, so ground down since the mobilization of ’42 and the abduction of Horthy in Fall of ‘44.
He was not peasant, after all, Kostan’s interrogation revealed, but a teacher. “Of music?” “No, of languages. The violin is just my companion.” “Which?” “German and English.” ”Shit” spat out Kostan, “Western, decadent shit.”
“Hungary is a bridge” bravely answered the old man, “a bridge between East and West – between the culture of the West and your new society coming from the East.” He had correctly sized up his guardians/captors as red partisans. “We need to know many languages to play our role in the new Europe.”
“The dawn comes from the East, old man” said Kostan sardonically. “Now Hungary is to be for Hungarians; we need know only Russian.” “What was that you were playing?”
“Only folk themes. No real piece.”
“It sounded like Kodály” I interjected in my painful Hungarian. “That’s because Kodály sounds Magyar”, said the oldster. “Where are you from? Not Hungary. What brings you here?”
“Right, I learned Hungarian from my parents in Pittsburgh. I’m American.”
Kostan: “Shut up, both of you. I ask the questions here.”
“Many Hungarians went to America”, said teacher in his English. “Our loss; your gain.”
“Yes, teachers like you, and mathematicians and musicians and just steel-workers like my Dad. Our gain; maybe that’s why I’ve come back to help.” What indeed brings me here? I thought. Dropped into Transdanubia with two Tommy sappers to help harass the German retreat from besieged Budapest, to blow rail lines and impede escape to Vienna and Bratislava. Now we were just eleven, eight red partisan and the three of us, survivors, never sure whether we were harassee or harasser.
I went on: “My mother loved Kodály; I grew up with him.”
Kostan: “This Kodály, the composer, right? One of the toadies of the Austro-Hungarian Empire allied with the Kaiser, right? Now a Budapest parasite, right?”
Both teacher and I reacted. “No, no, a great Hungarian”; “a cultural asset”; “his music is timeless”; “his views are very liberal”; “he translates Magyar music for the world”.
“For the Western world” Kostan disdained. “He sells our folk arts to the wealthy, an exploiter of native culture, one who works to keep us ‘native’ and in chains. He is a collaborator, an enemy of the people.”
“You can’t politicize his art.” “The Nazis weren’t even born when he wrote that theme.” “He composes for the world.” “He writes from the soul, not to serve some political plot.” “Art is art; politics is politics.” I can’t remember clearly who said what, teacher’s and my protests tumbling forth.
Kostan coldly looked at us. “Art.” He spat. “All art is politics. Art is rooted in its society. You judge art by who creates it, to what use it is put, then and now…. And now, we must move.” To Bela and The Knife: “This teacher is of no use to us and good use to Germans. Get rid of him. No shooting.”
“No! You can’t!” I protested, but the three were disappearing into the wood even as I started up. Moments later, Bela re-appeared with violin in hand. “What do I do with this?” “Bury it”, said Kostan, ”it’s just a violin.”
I stared open-mouthed.
Kostan paused; then in his Hung-lish: “Americanski, you too bourgeois for health. You good go west when Red army comes. I no can longer protect you after kill Nazis.”
His chill words crackled with truth.
Zoltan Kodaly stayed in Budapest throughout the war, and became an important part of Communist Hungary's arts and teaching communities. He is regarded as a national hero by Hungarians of all political stripes.
Sunday, May 16, 2010
Directing or Managing ... or Meddling?
“If you’re managing, you’re meddling.” So said a lecturer in a Chicago conference; he was talking about trustees of retirement communities. I was there in my role with Horizon House. But it’s true for all boards, large or small, corporate or non-profit. His admonition is right on -- when trustees or directors begin to manage, it signals there’s something wrong. As a trustee of Horizon House, Seattle’s leading continuous care retirement community, I hear his admonition ring in my ears when I feel the urge to tell staff how to do their job.
Directors should be stepping in only
- when staff has asked for help
- or when a job must be done for which staff is unavailable
- or when management must be changed in order to carry out the org’s mission.
But in each case, directors should be asking themselves ‘what is the underlying problem indicated by a need to step in?’
Directors of small, young theatre, dance and music companies often have no choice but to help manage, for they are chronically understaffed. So is that “wrong?” No, not wrong, but unsustainable over time. Committed, volunteer directors and part-time staff can keep an enterprise moving for a time, in some cases for years. But eventually they wear out; if an org is to sustain itself, the time comes for adequate staff resources and professional management systems.
That’s been the case with SRJO: we have reached that awkward stage of being too big to run out of a part-time Exec Director’s back pocket yet too small to afford a full time staff yet too large and complicated to run out of someone’s back pocket. Our directors have stepped up to undertake management tasks in order to get everything done. Our season brochure and concert programs have been produced via collaboration between staff and directors; our fund raising letters are director-written; our terrific new SRJO blog is produced by Bruce Moore, a director; our Jazz Scholars project is mainly director-managed by Susan Jenkins.
But long term, this isn’t healthy. Such shared project management may strain the trustee/executive director relationship as well as compromise the objectivity and independence that trustees must protect.
It’s a stage of growth with all the strains and emotions of a painful adolescence. And like adolescence, it is best grown through and put behind one.
Jim Tune, President of ArtsFund, has seen a number of arts orgs founder by failing to get through that transition. Whether the problem is lack of funding to afford professionals or resistance to change on the part of long-term directors and/or founders, the “problem” is best viewed as an opportunity to arm the organization with the professional staff and systems that will enable it to reach more audience and become a sustainable contributor to the community’s arts culture. Sustainability demands change and growth.
So, what are we doing at SRJO? Setting about to fund supplemental staff – no mean task in this economy – and recruit executive talent. But with transition to executive staff, directors should be able to withdraw from managing (or meddling) and focus on directing, on mission and vision once again.
Sunday, May 9, 2010
Scenes of Exuma
Friends from the sea -- that's bro-in-law Tom on the right
Santana's -- beach-fresh seafood with rice and beans
The National Family Islands Regatta: Bahamian smacks can really move
Santana's -- beach-fresh seafood with rice and beans
Jerry, the basket weaver lady
Sam, the conch man. Conch salad made on the spot.
The National Family Islands Regatta: Bahamian smacks can really move
The after-regatta parade, where the kids march and dance....
... and folks come to see and be seen.
Friday, May 7, 2010
Dateline: Hooper's Bay, Great Exuma, The Bahamas
Hooper’s Bay -- a long arc of w
hite sand, framed in green palms and sea grape, lapped by crystalline aquamarine waves, empty save for green turtles and us – Ann, Jan, Tom and I. Balmy air – all a balm to body and spirit.
In truth, this is being written from Seattle, for I so easily had succumbed to Anne Morrow Lindbergh’s admonition: “The beach is not the place to work; to read, write, or think.” All I had gotten on paper was “Dateline: Hooper’s Bay, Great Exuma, The Bahamas.”
The Bahamas lie amidst the bajamar, the Spanish called it, the shallow sea. The land so stingy, the sea so fruitful.
Poor Bahamas. Its sine wave history of exploitation, booms and busts, exploiters moving on but always the blacks left in patient struggle to survive. The brown natives, the Lucayans, did not survive, driven into extinction by 1520 through Columbus’ gifts of servitud
e and desease. Came 17th Century seagoing entrepreneurs -- privateers, in war, pirates in peace -- who berthed in Nassau until the Crown drove them away after the Spanish wars. Then the Loyalist Tory’s taking refuge from the revolution of ‘76, bringing cotton and slaves. The plantations were wiped out by 1820 – the “worm” and the thin soil. The planters left, their slaves left behind. Next the boom of Civil War blockade running, with cotton transshipped to the mills of Britain for gunpowder and manufactures returned. The shallow draft, beamy Bahama smacks ideal for running blockades and landing in Confederate coastal estuaries. The peace of Appomatox killed that boom. Then wrecking and salvage – gifts from the sea -- until the era of steam and better navigation. But along came Prohibition, and bootlegging via Bahama smacks, until repeal ended that too. Today? Tourism and tax havens … and always the sea.
I was last there ’68. Paradise Island was Hog Island then. Lyndon Pindling had just become PM, the 1st black PM. The rush of black power, the echos of Carmichael and Malcolm X made for an uncomfortably self-conscious visit.
This trip was so different, as were the Exuma locals. Conservative, deeply religious, patient. Not hostile to touring white visitors, but with a reserve that makes one self-conscious in another way, that makes me wonder whether they accept my respect or suspect me of
insincere condescension. And which of us is the exploiter now?
We watched the National Family Islands Regatta, where islanders r
ace those colorful smacks. We bonefished with Garth, who could see fish afar that we did not see until almost landing them. We walked the beaches and ate conch and drank rum and accepted the peace of the shore.
Anne Morrow Lindbergh said it best:
“The sea does not reward those who are too anxious, too greedy, or too impatient. Patience, patience, patience, is what the sea teaches. Patience and faith. One should lie empty, open, choiceless as a beach — waiting for a gift from the sea.”
hite sand, framed in green palms and sea grape, lapped by crystalline aquamarine waves, empty save for green turtles and us – Ann, Jan, Tom and I. Balmy air – all a balm to body and spirit.In truth, this is being written from Seattle, for I so easily had succumbed to Anne Morrow Lindbergh’s admonition: “The beach is not the place to work; to read, write, or think.” All I had gotten on paper was “Dateline: Hooper’s Bay, Great Exuma, The Bahamas.”
The Bahamas lie amidst the bajamar, the Spanish called it, the shallow sea. The land so stingy, the sea so fruitful.
Poor Bahamas. Its sine wave history of exploitation, booms and busts, exploiters moving on but always the blacks left in patient struggle to survive. The brown natives, the Lucayans, did not survive, driven into extinction by 1520 through Columbus’ gifts of servitud
e and desease. Came 17th Century seagoing entrepreneurs -- privateers, in war, pirates in peace -- who berthed in Nassau until the Crown drove them away after the Spanish wars. Then the Loyalist Tory’s taking refuge from the revolution of ‘76, bringing cotton and slaves. The plantations were wiped out by 1820 – the “worm” and the thin soil. The planters left, their slaves left behind. Next the boom of Civil War blockade running, with cotton transshipped to the mills of Britain for gunpowder and manufactures returned. The shallow draft, beamy Bahama smacks ideal for running blockades and landing in Confederate coastal estuaries. The peace of Appomatox killed that boom. Then wrecking and salvage – gifts from the sea -- until the era of steam and better navigation. But along came Prohibition, and bootlegging via Bahama smacks, until repeal ended that too. Today? Tourism and tax havens … and always the sea.I was last there ’68. Paradise Island was Hog Island then. Lyndon Pindling had just become PM, the 1st black PM. The rush of black power, the echos of Carmichael and Malcolm X made for an uncomfortably self-conscious visit.
This trip was so different, as were the Exuma locals. Conservative, deeply religious, patient. Not hostile to touring white visitors, but with a reserve that makes one self-conscious in another way, that makes me wonder whether they accept my respect or suspect me of
insincere condescension. And which of us is the exploiter now?We watched the National Family Islands Regatta, where islanders r
ace those colorful smacks. We bonefished with Garth, who could see fish afar that we did not see until almost landing them. We walked the beaches and ate conch and drank rum and accepted the peace of the shore.Anne Morrow Lindbergh said it best:
“The sea does not reward those who are too anxious, too greedy, or too impatient. Patience, patience, patience, is what the sea teaches. Patience and faith. One should lie empty, open, choiceless as a beach — waiting for a gift from the sea.”
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