Tom Hale -Psikoterapia zentroa

Ruthie Foster

    While I generally try to stay abreast of most of the new music, and having a daughter in college has been really been extremely helpful, sometimes I feel like I am slowly sinking and getting more and more out-of-synch of the evolutional march of the new stuff.   Rolling Stone and the new on-line Paste Magazine  helps me fill in the blanks.

    For my wife's birthday last week, we went over to Norfolk and saw a blues singer, Ruthie Foster, whom I have been hearing much about over the past year.   She played at the Attucks Theatre on Saturday, a restored African-American small venue that we usually visit a couple of times a year.  

    Foster, a young woman out of Texas seems to have paid her dues for some years on the small venue/festival circuit and is on the verge of the "big-time".    Playing Norfolk was a little bit of a homecoming for her because she had served in the Navy for at least one term and had been stationed at Norfolk's Little Creek Naval Base.   So she had a lot of friends in the place so the place was excited.  

    It was a fine evening and, wow, she can really sing.   She had an all-woman group of relatives I believe, and played alot of covers and some songs she wrote.   She closed with "No Woman No Cry" that went on wonderfully for ever and I couldn't find a copy of it for this post.   But she sang this Reverend Gary Davis song that is a favorite of mine that was available.

 

 

2012

    I've been away from my desk for a couple of weeks now and for some good reasons.  I've intentionally taken some time off because of the Holidays and a need to spend more time with my daughter who was home from school because of them.  I've unintentionally been away because I've had a terrible sinus infection that has lingered on and on and ....., sapping my energy and making me only half-present much of the time and unable to literally taste anything through all of it.  

    The Season was fine by itself, we visited with old and new friends, had a wonderful experience at the Celtic celebration we had at "our service" at church, made/ate lots of good food, saw relatives, travelled to DC to see my daughter off, and ate at a couple of popular DC restaurants.

    Aside from the religious/secular component of Christmas which I enjoy for about a week in total, I found myself more impacted by the changing of the yearly numbers on the calendar.  It's is 2012 and all of 2011 is now history.  Reflections on the last year are moving for me and probably more on a National/International level then on a Community one.  Of course, the videos provided by the various media giants encourage that focus.   Here is a Google's effort and probably my favorite for 2011:

 

 

    But as I write this, I am aware that I am also listening to Bob Seger's newest CD.   Seger recently played at MSG and Bruce S. came out and sat in for a couple of songs with him; the performance sparked alot of interest.   My personal music nostalgia, having come from the bowels of another "motor city" not unlike Detroit, does not include the Beach Music of the Carolina Coasts or Sweet Baby James.    It's the hard-core-stuff of Seger  that I remember most and that can still bring tears to my eyes every, every time I hear it.   Especially Night Moves,  I tried to find a video version of it for this space and couldn't find anything to do it justice.    

If I would have an anthem for all of us right now, it would be this one.  Sorry, there's no good video:

 

 Take A Chance

You take a chance on an airplane
You take a chance when you cross the street
You take a chance when you love somebody
When you're standing near the heat

You take a chance when you're honest
You take a chance when you tell lies
You take a chance when you trust somebody
When you look 'em in the eyes

Take a chance on me
Take a chance on me
I'm exactly what you see honey
Take a chance on me

You take a chance when you're indecisive
You take a chance when you're aloof
You take a chance when you judge somebody
When you've really got no proof

You take a chance when you refuse to hear
You take a chance when you're unkind
You take a chance when you refuse to grow up baby
You end up left behind

Take a chance on me
Take a chance on me
I'm exactly what you see honey
Take a chance on me

You take a chance when you're ruthless
You take a chance when you're cruel
You take a chance when you make a vow babe
To be nobody's fool

You take a chance when you're distant
You take a chance when you live inside
You take a chance when someone loves you
And you leave them with no pride

Take a chance on me
Take a chance on me
I'm exactly what you see honey
Take a chance on me

Oh take a chance on me
Take a chance on me
I'm exactly what you see honey
Take a chance on me

 

 

Trying to think of something useful To say about marriage .........

The Merger

by Charles W. Pratt

              for my son

Trying to think of something useful
To say about marriage, I remember
A morning when I was twenty-plus,
Self-absorbed in my tinny pink
Renault Dauphine, my Little Toot,
And I tried to get by a tank-truck on
A bendy road too briefly straight.
Shuddering, pedal floored, my frivolous
Vessel leveled with the cab
Like a pilot fish by a shark's grim grille.
Then there was a car ahead of us
And, as I tried to floor a pedal
Already on the floor, the blue
Of ice I hadn't seen. Spinning 
Toward the implacable hugeness of the cab, looking up
Into the eyes of the truckdriver, I felt
Only the sweet certainty of
Submission, call it love, as if
Already I had left myself and could look
Down with the driver's godlike and loving 
Eyes at a comical pink Dauphine
Sliding backwards down the road, then spinning
Again and into a snowbank, tilted
Against a tree. One flat tire
And a dent in the roof I pushed out myself.
I made it to work on time. Because
The truckdriver had seen the oncoming car
Before I had, had seen the patch of blue
And had slowed to let me by, I met
And married your mother, and you were born
And have grown up to meet and marry, and I
Have begun to understand the blind
h Release of self to the will of another
And the answering wise, dispassionate
Restraint of the merger we call marriage.

"The Merger" by Charles W. Pratt, from From the Box Marked "Some Are Missing". © Hobblebush Books, 2010.

 

 

Some thoughts on marriage, again.

    The last phrase in this poem is so powerful:

    "I have begun to understand the blind 

 Release of self to the will of another

And the answering wise, dispassionate

Restraint of the merger we call marriage."

 

    In an earlier post, I talked about the presence of this concept in successful modern marriages that seem be based on a "democratic" model of organization.    The "release of self" to another and the "answering ... restraint" seem to summarize it well.   We are called,if we want to be successful in these mergers, to enter into the intimacy of the union by trusting in the restraint of our partners - including our fellow drivers on the roads of life - to be caring and wise.  

But There Is Still Joy in the World - After a Nasty Week

    Paul Krugman, Nobel Prize winning economist, posted this yesterday on his blog.   After a "nasty week" indeed for many people around the world, and especially in Oslo where they are trying to make sense, as we all should be,  of a man who killed over 90 people predominantly children, in the name of his personal Christian god. 

 

    I've included the words to Peter Gabriel's music to help you understand its full meaning.   I suspect mild-mannered Dr. Krugman might have just seen Gabriel in concert and was inspired to share his music.

 

 

July 22, 2011, 8:09 pm

But There Is Still Joy in the World

To lift our spirits after a nasty week.

 

via krugman.blogs.nytimes.com

 

 

 

 

 

                            We are shaking the tree

 

Waiting your time, dreaming of a better life

Waiting your time, you're more than just a wife

You don't want to do what your mother has done

(she has done)

 

This is your life, this new life has begun

It's your day -- a woman's day

It's your day -- a woman's day

 

Turning the tide, you are on the incoming wave

Turning the tide, you know you are nobody's slave

Find your sisters and brothers who can hear all the truth

In what you say

They can support you when you're on your way

 

It's your day -- a woman's day

It's your day -- a woman's day

 

We are shaking the tree

 

Changing your ways, changing those surrounding you

Changing your ways, more than any man can do

Open your heart, show him the anger and pain

So you heal

Maybe he's looking for his womanly side

 

And you feel you had to be so strong

And you do nothing wrong, nothing wrong at all

We're gonna to break it down

We have to shake it down, shake it all around

 

We are shaking the tree

Ben Sollee and Oxfam

    Interesting morning I've had.    While getting ready for the day, I was listening to The Carolina Chocolate Drops on  Pandora Radio, when an alternate group/singer, Ben Sollee, came on.  I don't remember what the song was but I just had to sit down and listen.    Later in the morning, I logged on to iTunes, found his album and downloaded Dear Companion.   I didn't intend this to be a post/advertisement but it's turning out that way, isn't it?

        

 

    These are the words to the song:

 

 

Try, try, try

Try to move a mountain without a shovel in your hand

 

Choose, choose, choose

How to choose

When there ain't no right or wrong

That must be why we've invented fate

 

Sky, sky, sky

Can't see it all at once

 

Tell, tell, tell

Theres no telling what history will bring

That must be why we've learned to pray

 

I can't wait to hold your little hand

Hold your hand, child

Hold your hand

 

Why, why, why?

Why did Socrates apologize?

 

Run, run, run

You can't run from your shadow in the light

That must be why some people crave the dark

 

I can't wait to hold your little hand

Hold your hand, child

Hold your little hand

 

Give, give, give

How to give it all to someone not yet born

That must be how

We’ve learned to love

 

 

    My intent was to write about food this morning and I will soon.   Ben Sollee is also a supporter of Oxfam America,  an international organization with a branch in the US, of which I am rapidly learning about; I encourage you to do the same.  This is from their site:

 

    Who we are:

    Oxfam America is an international relief and development organization that creates lasting solutions to poverty, hunger, and injustice. Together with individuals and local groups in more than 90 countries, Oxfam saves lives, helps people overcome poverty, and fights for social justice. We are one of the 15 affiliates in the international confederation, Oxfam.

    Our vision: A just world without poverty

    Our mission: To create lasting solutions to poverty, hunger, and social injustice.

 

    Interesting how sometimes just waking up in the morning to an alarm can set off an explosion of learning.

 

American Health Care

    My bookgroup met last night and discussed our current selection, The Healing of America, by T.R. Reid.   Subtitled, A Global Quest for Better, Cheaper, and Fairer Health Care, it is a review of all the major health care systems throughout the world and their delivery models, evaluating them using several different criteria.  The author, an American who recently retired from the Washington Post, clearly was using his work as a means of trying to understand our own health care system, its effectiveness and how we might improve it.

    It's a disturbing, and yet inspiring, book because while we have much work to do, there are clear examples in the world today of countries much like ours who have addressed these same issues and are succeeding.   His message of the: we can do it - if we decide to.  My intention here is not just to produce a rant against our health care system, but to provide some resources by which we might all evaluate if we are getting what we want and what we pay for.   Since we are paying more per capita for our care then almost any other country in the world, we should be getting a lot for our bucks. 

    One of the first criteria Reid uses is accessibility; do all citizens of the country have access to its health care.    Clearly the answer must be a resounding "no".   We have at least 45 million people here who are uninsured and therefore do not have access.   The free clinics we have around the country cannot handle all of them, particularly when the majority of them live outside urban areas where the public facilities usually exist.   An even more salient question here then is, "why do we as a country tolerate this inequity when virtually no other country in the world does?" with the notably exceptions of India and China which have for centuries used a combination of western and traditional medicine.   In both of these countries, huge numbers of people in their entire life never see a doctor.   Are we headed in that direction?

    It is a timely, well-written book.   We had a lively discussion that, interestingly enough, did not center on possible errors in the book, but on what we, as individuals and as a group, could do to make a difference.

    I also read, as a supplemental book to this study, Deadly Spin, by Wendell Potter which is an "inside look" by a former public relations firm executive.   The book is about his efforts while as an insurance company employee,  to discourage not just change in the health care system but to even minimize any realistic discussion of it.

    Later that evening, my wife and I went with friends to see the Carolina Chocolate Drops, an astoundingly good group of four African-American musicians who celebrate, among other things, the jug band music of the African-American community.   Their jug band music, has long been associated by many with Jim Crow and minstrel shows and put on the shelf.   Well, it's off and these four bring it back in a rousing style.

    I add it under this topic because (1) they are my new favorite group and (2) they reflect the continuing growth we are still seeing in racial harmony in this country.   The audience, in Richmond, Va. of all places - the heart of the Confederacy, was a mixed group, all ages, all races and all genders.    It was a wonderful evening and they closed by noting that it was the 50th anniversary of the civil rights movement (also in N.C.) and the Civil War.   I still have hope for our America, on all fronts, and if we remain a solidified union, we can even have good health care.

 

 

The Accompanist

 

The Accompanist

by William Matthews

 

Don't play too much, don't play

too loud, don't play the melody.

You have to anticipate her

and to subdue yourself.

She used to give me her smoky

eye when I got boisterous,

so I learned to play on tip-

toe and to play the better half

of what I might. I don't like

to complain, though I notice

that I get around to it somehow.

We made a living and good music,

both, night after night, the blue

curlicues of smoke rubbing their 

staling and wispy backs

against the ceilings, the flat

drinks and scarce taxis, the jazz life

we bitch about the way Army pals

complain about the food and then

re-up. Some people like to say

with smut in their voices how playing 

the way we did at our best is partly

sexual. OK, I could tell them

a tale or two, and I've heard

the records Lester cut with Lady Day

and all that rap, and it's partly

sexual but it's mostly practice

and music. As for partly sexual,

I'll take wholly sexual any day,

but that's a duet and we're talking 

accompaniment. Remember "Reckless

Blues"? Bessie Smith sings out "Daddy"

and Louis Armstrong plays back "Daddy"

as clear through his horn as if he'd 

spoken it. But it's her daddy and her

story. When you play it you become

your part in it, one of her beautiful

troubles, and then, however much music

can do this, part of her consolation,

the way pain and joy eat off each other's 

plates, but mostly you play to drunks,

to the night, to the way you judge

and pardon yourself, to all that goes

not unsung, but unrecorded.

 

This poem appeared on Garrison Keillor's blog today and I like it a lot.  By chance I picked up the new edition of The Oxford American which calls itself, "the magazine of southern culture".    The magazine started out being published in Oxford, Miss. but financially stumbled and moved over to Little Rock, Ark. in 2004.  

 

I've been a reader of the OA since probably 1999 when it first hit the magazine rack.  While I am no longer a subscriber, I do usually pick it up quarterly.  I am somewhat ambivalent about the longstanding preoccupation/pretensions by Southern Americans with their literary history since I am by birth a Midwestener.   There is no doubt a long and proud history of great writers from the South but you can say the same thing about any part of the country, including but not restricted to, the Midwest.  Jim Harrison, from Michigan and an MSU alum., for my money is our best living American writer; he is treated like a rock-star in Europe.  But I respect the pride taken in Southern art and especially its music.

 

This month's OA theme is their tribute to Southern Music and the issue is devoted to the music of Alabama.  It comes with a CD of music played by 29 Alabama artists, from Charlie Louvin to Sammy Salvo to Sister Gertrude Morgan.   It's a fine CD and very much worth the price of this issue.  

 

Here is some information on Sister Gertrude:

 Sister Gertrude Morgan (1900-1980) was a preacher, missionary, artist, musician, and poet who worked in New Orleans in the 1960s and '70s, and was notable primarily for her folk art.    Born in 1900 in Lafayette, Alabama, and moved to Columbus, Georgia at the age of eighteen. She was married briefly, but at the age of 38 heard a voice from God telling her to become a street evangelist. She left her family and husband to move to New Orleans, where she organized an orphanage with two other missionaries.

 God told her to begin painting in 1956 and in 1957 heard a voice telling her that she was the Bride of Christ. Hearing this news, she adopted a white habit and moved out of the orphanage to establish "The Everlasting Gospel Mission" in the French Quarter of New Orleans.

 Music was one of the tools of her ministry, and in the early 1970s, Let's Make A Record was recorded in order to capture Morgan singing and playing her tambourine.    She painted in order to create visual aids for her preaching, and her paintings use a colorful religious iconography. Some of her favorite subjects are the Book of Revelation and her and Jesus flying in an airplane, this last accompanied by the poem "Jesus is my air Plane." She painted on whatever was at hand, including styrofoam trays, window shades and even toilet paper rolls.  She died in 1980.

 

 The CD is full of the music of other interesting artists, all well worth hearing.    You might want to pick it up.

 

 

 

Alice Dancing Under the Gallows

via www.youtube.com

If you haven't seen this you should and if you have, it's worth watching again. "Every Man Dies Alone" is still so fresh in my mind that this video has special meaning now.

What do we do now? ........

We are going to see singer/songwriter John Hiatt, long one of my favorites, on Saturday at the Norva.   I have also always found Hiatt to be extremely funny and he actually reminds me of Kramer on Seinfeld.   In spite of his humor, I have always encountered his work to be intensely personal with a very serious contrast to the humor.  Once called (believe it or not!) the American "Elvis Costello", his songs have been recorded by many other artists, including Bonnie Raitt, Delbert McClinton, Bob Dylan, Joan Baez, Eric Clapton and Aaron Neville.  

I can't count the number of times I've seen him in concert and every time he is great; not only is he a great songwriter but also a true performance artist - you really need to see him to fully enjoy his work.   He's an original American artist, in the same category as Tom Russell and Rodney Crowell, and has just never had the popular acclaim he deserves.  But then, many peopel toil at their chosen professions and are just simply glad to be able to make a living at it.

In preparing for the concert, I was reviewing some of his work by listening to the CDs of his I have in my collection.  The CD, Crossing Muddy Waters, the one I started with, was his 15th album and was a completely acoustic endeavor.  

The third song, What Will Do Now?, is a song about a couple who are struggling in their marriage and wondering what should they do.

What do we do now

What do we do now

What do we do now

What do we do now 

When it's lying there with a busted heart

Like a piece of glass where do you start

Do we pick it up or say goodbye

Is there one tear left for us to cry 

CHORUS 

What if I can't stay

What if you can't stay

What if I can't leave

What if you can't leave 

What if I believed

Every word you say

What if you believed

Until today 

Do we call the kids

Or call the cops

Can you hold me 'till

This howling stops 

CHORUS 

Gimme back my steel,

Gimme back my nerve

Gimme back my youth

For the dead man's curve

For that icy feel when

You start to swerve

Give us back the love

We don't deserve 

'cause we rode it long,

We drove it hard

And we wrecked it

In our own backyard 

The sentiments expressed in this song are typical of the ones shared by many of the people whom I see regularly in treatment.  It isn't easy to be unhappy in marriage, especially when you've been married a long time and there are "kids" - and you still love each other.

Do we call the kids

Or call the cops

Can you hold me 'till

This howling stops 

Well, one of things you can do is ask for help.   In spite of all of the criticism marital therapy has recently received, and I'll write some on that soon, it can and does work for many people.   

So, in between songs about "Breaking perfectly good guitars" "Memphis in the meantime", there will be songs about people howling with pain over broken relationships that won't be funny.   And most of us will be deeply touched.

I'll keep you posted after the concert.

Tom Russell

Tom Russell’s new album, titled Blood and Candlesmoke  is a collection of songs of Amerikay - cowboy, California, the southwest, Mexico, carnival, Indian, and “green” with a couple of Afrikay (his and the Irish pronunciation) ones thrown in for autobiographical purposes.   Russell has and continues to receive praise as one of the very best songwriters working anywhere today; this album clearly shows that he deserves all of the current attention he is garnering and even more.   It is a tour-de force, full of history, poetry, spirituality and humor.  

    I recently sent an iTune gift certificate to a friend  as a thank-you for many years of integrity and work suggesting that he buy Russell’s new offering with it because, for starters, it has two songs of Afrikay on it; my friend had spent much of youth in Afrikay with his missionary parents and has fond memories of the continent and the people who inhabit it.   One of those songs, East of Woodstock, East of Vietnam, is an amazing coming-of-age piece of doing just that but in Africa.    

    My professional work with “third-culture kids”   helps me better understand the complexity of this song ever more and is one of few songs I know about that group of people who grew up in a foreign culture and ofter never feel really ‘at home’ in the world of their parents; they can never belong to the foreign culture because of the very aspect of their alien-ness from it. They ultimately end up observers of both worlds.  Growing up in another culture is a a double-edged blessing and has been described in great detail by some great writers.        

    One of Russell’s gifts has been to consistently produce fresh, creative work in a rather constricted artistic medium which burns many people out regularly or al least causes them to publish material that offers little new.    We’ve seen several examples of that this year by great musicians who are probably embarrassed by what they had to do justify another tour or a new house/divorce.    Bruce Springsteen (Queen of the Supermarket) and Jackson Browne (Time the Conqueror) are perfect examples of that.    Russell’s new work is consistently of great creative integrity.

    My wife and I traveled to the Jammin'Java in northern Virginia recently to see Russell on his current tour.   It was a good night to see him, for the venue is small - which means good seats, has decent food,  a musically sophisticated crowd, and best of all, Russell had a group of friends in the audience (whom he honored) which seemed to motivate him to sing with more interest and tell some great stories about his life and these particular friends.    He is also very articulate and a great story-teller.  So the evening was full of all that and of his songs which are very much about his life, personal development and values. He even covered a couple of songs, which I’ve never heard him do before.   Russell could certainly play to crowds in larger venues - with a cross-over move of sorts - but obviously choses to “limit” himself to places like jj and the Ashland Coffee and Tea Co. I think he even had a good time playing for us.   

    To see another side of Russell, look at his recent blog effort as an example of his journalistic skills that puts him in the company of Matt Tiabbi and Dave Eggers.    Good company, indeed.

    Anyway, it was a fine evening.  He also made us laugh with stories about David Letterman, Dave Van Ronk, Townes VanZandt, and Bob Dylan.   He ended with Who's Gonna Build Your Wall?, nobody from the beltway crowd was offended and we all went home early with smiles.    Do see Russell in concert sometime and buy the album. It’s a classic and enjoy, Milton.  (This is not a paid advertisement.)