CHRISTMAS EVE 1972

Sometime in the late autumn of 1972— when I stayed at home in Harrisburg, Central Pennsylvania to help my parents get re-settled after the flood of Hurricane Agnes– my father's friend and older assistant pastor, Wallace J. Cummings died. I don't recall the exact circumstances of his death, but I do remember his funeral.

Following my reflexive, spontaneous remarks from the pulpit the Sunday after Christmas 1969— a traumatic time in my life— when during a student-led service I said that I hadn't been sure about my faith in God since I had been a child, but appreciated all the support I had recently been given— Pastor Cummings informed Dad that I had told a different story when I had given a talk, concerning young people's doubts about religious faith, to the Men's Bible Class at Hart's diner in Paxtang two years before.

I clearly recall that talk, and remember how I very carefully phrased and characterized my remarks as "not necessarily my own." In fact, they mostly were. But I had learned the lawyer's – or politicians trick— of plausible deniability.

At Wallace Cummings' funeral, the Grace Church Chancel Choir sang a chorus from the Du Bois "Seven last Words", a traditional Good Friday anthem at Grace Church. Most of the choir was in tears, and could barely make it through the piece. For some reason, I was strangely unaffected.

But the Sunday afternoon before Christmas, when we sang the same chorus—from the rear gallery below the marvelous Tiffany Ascension window—as part of the annual Christmas pageant, I had a delayed reaction, I guess, and blubbered throughout the entire piece.

Later that week, we had choir rehearsal in the Robert Lee George Chapel— for the Christmas Eve Candlelight Service. My father's organist, Robert Clippinger, had been there for years. He was a superb musician with impeccable technique. He never made finger errors. His entire family –wife, two sons, and a daughter, who had made extraordinary efforts to be there— and his entire choir – were at the rehearsal.

Half way through a "Halleluia" from a Bach Christmas Cantata, Dr. Clippinger had a cerebral hemorrhage. He started to make mistakes, again, something he had never done in my memory. I was sitting behind him. I couldn't see his face, but he kept on playing. With almost super-human effort, he finished that piece. Then he toppled over—never to regain consciousness. He died two days later. For all practical purposes he died at the rehearsal.

Think about it: an organist with his family and choir at Christmas rehearsing Bach. It doesn't get much better than that.

Image:answers.com

INDIA PUDDING'S ARRIVAL at SFO 1997

Twelve years ago today is when my sister Cynthia sent that charmingly assertive and passionate, red and white Blenheim Cavalier King Charles Spaniel, Tara's Miss India, from Miami straight to San Francisco. What an extraordinary gift! What wonderful memories!

Dennis’ first and favorite Cavalier, Nell, had died several years before. When she was failing, we made arrangements with the vet at Pets Unlimited on Fillmore Street to come to the house, so that Nell would not end her life in a cold antiseptic doctor’s office. In a way it paralleled Dennis’ arranging a vet to come to his flat on McAllister when Nell gave birth to her five puppies. As Dennis described it, Nell didn’t need any assistance then. In her basket on the rose patterned window seat in Dennis’ yellow bedroom, she was transformed from a cute and dizzy puppy to the very personification of Earth Mother. “I had puppies…..what have you done?”

Now Nell’s fragile tricolor daughter, Lady St. Albans, was ailing. I called her Winkie or ‘Libet. (When my Mother heard that one of the puppy’s names was ‘Elizabeth Lady St. Albans,’ she exclaimed: “Ah, my namesake!”) Winkie’s end seemed near, but we decided not to call the vet. Everything seemed to be progressing naturally.

One Thursday I went to work and told my fellow supervisor, Dale Ilderton, that one of my dogs appeared to be dying. A few minutes later my boss, Francean Rible, came and told me to go home to be with her. I spent the day holding her in my lap or taking naps with her on the bed. For years ‘Libet had slept next to me and cuddled so close that Dennis remarked you'd have to separate us with a knife.

Late in the afternoon I needed to leave because I was in a Thursday night show at the Bohemian Club. It was Vaudeville Night. Dennis came to dinner and the show. He was dressed in a business suit and appeared to have a good time. On the way home, after getting off BART at 24th Street, Dennis turned right on Bartlett Street and stopped by a front yard rose garden to tell me that Winkie had died fifteen minutes after I had left the house. We wept, then continued home.

Dennis’ Irish side was soon apparent. Lady St. Albans was lying in state in a basket in the middle of the dining room table surrounded by four large silver candlesticks. A white linen napkin covered her body, and on top was a garland of white lilies.

A few days later Dennis had an accident at his temp job. After a cigarette break he rushed in the side entrance to Tiffany’s and slipped on the granite floor and landed on his shoulder. In great pain he went back to work until he started to faint. It turned out he had broken his clavicle. But he didn’t find that out until more than two hours later.

I think he missed only a single day of work, then returned with his arm in a sling. He was not going to lose that job at Tiffany’s. People were so impressed that soon he was offered a permanent position.

Meanwhile my sister Cynthia in Florida was considering sending a plant to honor the memory of ‘Libet. But Cynthia decided that she’d rather give us a puppy. She checked online and learned that puppies were out of her price range, so next she considered two and three year old dogs. Cynthia found a very attractive Blenheim with a breeder north of her, but concluded the dog was rather snooty. Then she visited another three-year-old Blenheim (red and white) with a breeder south of her in Homestead. This dog had a funny looking mouth— slightly undershot— but appeared to have a wonderful personality.

So Cynthia telephoned me to ask if it would be appropriate to give a dog to Dennis. I replied that it was extremely thoughtful and generous of her, but that Dennis was very particular and would want to choose his own dog. Furthermore, he would insist on a puppy because he would want to train the dog from scratch.

A few days went by. Then casually I mentioned Cynthia’s offer to Dennis. He stopped and thought about it for a few minutes, then said that it might not be such a bad idea to have an older dog. Lord Dundee was an older dog himself and might have difficulties adjusting to a rambunctious puppy.

So I called Cynthia back and asked if we could reconsider her offer. Cynthia went to Homestead and bought the dog and brought her home to Stuart. After two days, her husband Bob said they needed to send India to California immediately. He was afraid that Cynthia would bond with the dog and never give her up. So Bob and Cynthia got up at three in the morning to drive to Miami International and put a spunky little red and white dog on a direct flight to San Francisco.

I took the day off work, rented a car, and drove to SFO with my tricolor Lord Dundee in the back seat on December 23rd 1997. I parked on the roof of the parking garage and opened the rear windows a crack so Dundee had air.

At baggage claim I waited for an attendant to bring the airline kennel. I took a photo as he approached. When I opened the grated door, out pranced a happy, assertive— rather comic looking— red and white Blenheim girl. Her mouth was a little undershot. But she had beautiful markings and a luxurious coat.

I carried her in the kennel until we got to the car. Then I put her on a leash, opened the door and introduced her to Lord Dundee. He didn’t know what to think of her at first. I got a good photo of their meeting.

After taking Dundee home, I drove downtown and parked near Union Square. Carrying India in my arms when I got to the front door of Tiffany’s, I walked to the silver room in the back. With India on one arm and a camera in the other hand, I spoke from behind and said: “Mr. Graham” and Dennis turned from his customer and broke into a wonderful grin.

I was home only a few days. This was the day before Christmas Eve. After midnight mass at St. Francis, we celebrated Christmas early in the morning – or, middle of the night, as was our custom— before flying to Pennsylvania to spend a week with Mother at her retirement community, Green Ridge Village, in Newville near Carlisle.

All four children, Julie, Sherry, Cynthia and I, spent several days with Mother to enable her to divide her many possessions among us as she moved from her own retirement house into a single room in a main building for assisted living. She had waited until all of us could be there.

While I was gone, Dennis spent a lot of time with India. Her formal name was Tara’s Miss India. There was a Gone With The Wind theme to her litter. She was named for Scarlett O’Hara’s sister. Indeed, one of her own sisters was named Tara’s Miss Scarlett.

For the first few days Dennis said to her: “You’re not as beautiful as Nell. You’re not as cute… you’re not even as clever as Nell.” But then one day, Dennis picked her up in his arms and said: “You’re not as beautiful as Nell. YOU are as beautiful as INDIA….You are my India Pudding!” From that moment on she was completely his.

My sister Julie used to have a large St. Bernard named Pudding. Partly as a joke, we called our nineteen pound Blenheim Cavalier “India Pudding” and it stuck.

One time Dennis came home from work and greeted Lord Dundee, lying on the edge of the bed (with a pile of pillows leading to the trunk to help him to get up). He was a distinguished senior dog entitled to special privileges. India observed all of this, pranced over, hopped on the bed and whacked Dundee on the head with her paw. She considered that she was entitled to be greeted first!

Dennis used to comment on India Pudding’s assertive personality: “What would you expect from a dog born on Elizabeth II’s birthday, the day after Adolf Hitler’s … with a jaw like Mussolini!”

India loved to spend time with Dennis— in the garden, in the kitchen, especially in the car (when we had one) Of course, all our Cavaliers have had a passion for riding in cars.

When Dennis and I took our Mediterranean cruise from Rome to the Greek isles, ending in Istanbul, we left our three dogs (by that time Dundee had gone and I had bought my black and tan boy Rupert— named for Prince Rupert of the Rhine, nephew of Charles I, and commander of the Royalist cavalry during the English Civil War— and as a fee for his paternity duties, Rupert had ransomed his ruby sister, Rose) with our friend Nijole Adams in Sebastopol. Nijole had seven or eight Cavaliers of her own and slept with all them in a large king-size bed in the middle of her bedroom. Our dogs just joined the crowd.

From Rome, Dennis and I called Nijole to check on the dogs. Nijole said that Rupert was fine. What a sportsman. He loved to play ball. He never stopped! Her arm was about to fall off! And Rose… what a sweetheart. She was rather shy and stayed by herself a lot.

And India…how is Miss India? Nijole paused…….then slowly said: “Everybody knows she’s Queen!”

So India Pudding had joined a household with eight other Cavaliers …….and took over!!

Later when Dennis was let go from Lang Estate Jewelry, he helped out occasionally at our friend Chris Wahlgren’s rug store on 24th St. India loved to spend the time alone with Dennis at the store (since Rose and Rupert had proved unreliable, or rather too predictable with accidents on the rugs.) India romped over the rugs and exalted being with Dennis, whom she adored.

In his twittier moments, Dennis called India Pudding by the sobriquet “Contessa Zuppa Inglese” a special Italian pudding. How he loved her!

GIACOMO PUCCINI ~ December 22, 1858 ~ November 29, 1924

Giacomo Antonio Domenico Michele Secondo Maria Puccini (22 December 1858 – 29 November 1924) was an Italian composer whose operas, including La bohème, Tosca, Madama Butterfly and Turandot, are among the most frequently performed in the standard repertoire. Some of his arias, such as "O mio babbino caro" from Gianni Schicchi, "Che gelida manina" from La bohème, and "Nessun dorma" from Turandot, have become part of popular culture.

The subject of Puccini's style is one that was once treated dismissively by musicologists; this can be attributed to a perception that his work, with its emphasis on melody and evident popular appeal, lacked "depth." Despite the place Puccini clearly occupies in the popular tradition of Verdi, his style of orchestration also shows the strong influence of Wagner, matching specific orchestral configurations and timbres to different dramatic moments. His operas contain an unparalleled manipulation of orchestral colors, with the orchestra often creating the scene's atmosphere.

The structures of Puccini's works are also noteworthy. While it is to an extent possible to divide his operas into arias or numbers (like Verdi's), his scores generally present a very strong sense of continuous flow and connectivity, perhaps another sign of Wagner's influence. Like Wagner, Puccini used leitmotifs to connote characters (or combinations of characters). This is apparent in Tosca, where the three chords which signal the beginning of the opera are used throughout to announce Scarpia. Several motifs are also linked to Mimi and the bohemians in La bohème and to Cio-Cio-San's eventual suicide in Butterfly. Unlike Wagner, though, Puccini's motifs are static: where Wagner's motifs develop into more complicated figures as the characters develop, Puccini's remain more or less identical throughout the opera (in this respect anticipating the themes of modern musical theatre).

Another distinctive quality in Puccini's works is the use of the voice in the style of speech: characters sing short phrases one after another as if they were talking to each other. Puccini is celebrated, on the other hand, for his melodic gift, and many of his melodies are both memorable and enduringly popular. These melodies are often made of sequences from the scale, a very distinctive example being Quando me'n vo' (Musetta's Waltz) from La bohème and E lucevan le stelle from Act III of Tosca. Today, it is rare not to find at least one Puccini aria included in an operatic singer's CD album or recital.

Unusual for operas written by Italian composers up until that time, many of Puccini’s operas are set outside Italy – in exotic places such as Japan (Madama Butterfly), gold-mining country in California (La fanciulla del West), Paris and the Riviera (La rondine), and China (Turandot).

Pulitzer Prize-winning music critic Lloyd Schwartz summarized Puccini thus: "Is it possible for a work of art to seem both completely sincere in its intentions and at the same time counterfeit and manipulative? Puccini built a major career on these contradictions. But people care about him, even admire him, because he did it both so shamelessly and so skillfully. How can you complain about a composer whose music is so relentlessly memorable, even — maybe especially — at its most saccharine?"

Image & text:wikipedia.com

JEAN RACINE ~ December 22, 1639 ~ April 21, 1699

Jean Racine (December 22, 1639 – April 21, 1699) was a French dramatist, one of the "Big Three" of 17th century France (along with Molière and Corneille), and one of the most important literary figures in the Western tradition. Racine was primarily a tragedian, though he did write one comedy.

In his own time, Racine found himself compared constantly with his contemporaries, especially the great Pierre Corneille. In his own plays, Racine sought to abandon the ornate and almost otherworldly intricacy that Corneille so favored. Audiences and critics were divided over the worth of Racine as an up and coming playwright. Audiences admired his return to simplicity and their ability to relate to his more human characters, while critics insisted on judging him according to the traditional standards of Aristotle and his Italian commentators from which he tended to stray. Attitudes shifted, however, as Racine began to eclipse Corneille. In 1674 the highly respected poet and critic Nicolas Boileau-Despréaux (also known simply as "Boileau") published his Art Poétique which deemed Racine's model of tragedy superior to that of Corneille. This erased all doubts as to Racine's abilities as a dramatist and established him as one of the period's great literary minds.

Butler describes this period as Racine's "apotheosis," his highest point of admiration. Racine's ascent to literary fame coincided with other prodigious cultural and political events in French history. This period saw the rise of literary giants like Molière, Jean de La Fontaine, Nicolas Boileau-Despréaux, and François de La Rochefoucauld as well as Louis Le Vau's historic expansion of the Palace of Versailles, Jean-Baptiste Lully's revolution in Baroque music, and most importantly, the ascension of Louis XIV to the throne of France.

Under Louis XIV's revolutionary reign, France rose up from a long period of civil discord to new heights of international prominence. Political achievement coincided with cultural and gave birth to an evolution of France's national identity, known as l'esprit français. This new self perception acknowledged the superiority of all things French; the French believed France was home to the greatest king, the greatest armies, the greatest people, and, subsequently, the greatest culture. In this new national mindset, Racine and his work were practically deified, established as the perfect model of dramatic tragedy by which all other plays would be judged. Butler blames the consequential "withering" of French drama on Racine's idolized image, saying that such rigid adherence to one model eventually made all new French drama a stale imitation.

Image & text:wikipedia.com

SHERIDAN WATSON BELL, JR. ~ December 21, 1908 ~ October 30, 1982

How difficult to believe...my Dad, Sherry Bell, the Rev. Dr. Sheridan Watson Bell, Jr., was born one-hundred-one years ago today!! Dad was the youngest of four children, as am I, so my paternal grandfather, Sheridan Watson Bell, Sr., whom I never knew, was born during the American Civil War!!

Sherry Bell was a loving man of conviction, warmth, generosity, passion, impulse, flamboyance, gusto, humor, spontaneity, balance, dedication, support, vocal gifts, drama, wise counsel, compassion and faith: a pastor of people, rather than a great preacher, though occasionally a speaker of profound ideas and natural eloquence. I’m lucky and so very proud that he was my Father.

LOUISIANA PURCHASE Completed December 20, 1803

1803 – The Louisiana Purchase is completed at a ceremony in New Orleans.

The Louisiana Purchase (French: Vente de la Louisiane "Sale of Louisiana") was the acquisition by the United States of America of 828,800 square miles (2,147,000 km2) of the French territory Louisiana in 1803. The U.S. paid 60 million francs ($11,250,000) plus cancellation of debts worth 18 million francs ($3,750,000), a total cost of 15 million dollars for the Louisiana territory.

The Louisiana Purchase encompassed all or part of 14 current U.S. states and two Canadian provinces. The land purchased contained all of present-day Arkansas, Missouri, Iowa, Oklahoma, Kansas, Nebraska, parts of Minnesota that were west of the Mississippi River, most of North Dakota, nearly all of South Dakota, northeastern New Mexico, the portions of Montana, Wyoming, and Colorado east of the Continental Divide, and Louisiana west of the Mississippi River, including the city of New Orleans. (The Oklahoma Panhandle, and southwestern portions of Kansas and Louisiana were still claimed by Spain at the time of the Purchase.) In addition, the Purchase contained small portions of land that would eventually become part of the Canadian provinces of Alberta and Saskatchewan. The purchase, which doubled the size of the United States, comprises around 23% of current U.S. territory. The population was estimated to be 97,000 as of the 1810 census.

The purchase was a vital moment in the presidency of Thomas Jefferson. At the time, it faced domestic opposition as being possibly unconstitutional. Although he felt that the US Constitution did not contain any provisions for acquiring territory, Jefferson decided to purchase Louisiana because he felt uneasy about France and Spain having the power to block American trade access to the port of New Orleans.

Napoleon Bonaparte, upon completion of the agreement, stated, "This accession of territory affirms forever the power of the United States, and I have given England a maritime rival who sooner or later will humble her pride."

Image & text;wikipedia.com

Naturalists John Muir & J. Horace MacFarland

Image::wikipedia.com

Below is a reposting from December 3, 2008:

When I was a young child, my Dad’s study was in the parsonage at 216 State Street, a handsome four story Federal-style detached brick house (circa 1916) next door to the stone Gothic revival church just down the street in front of the State Capitol, a successful architectural pastiche with the general layout of the capitol in Washington, the staircase from the Paris Opera, and the dome of St. Peter’s in Rome (before the church turned the old parsonage into the church offices and bought a grand detached stone house uptown as the new parsonage).

Occasionally I visited Daddy in his study on the second floor at 216 State Street. I remember seeing Thanksgiving Day parades from the bay window. Other times we watched from the street by the green, where we used to have strawberry festivals – before they turned it into a double-sided car park.

This is reminiscent of the McFarland gardens at Polyclinic Hospital. It had been one of the premier rose gardens in the United States, with reflecting pools, arcades, and a handsome bronze fountain of the Three Graces, which Milton Hershey— of chocolate fame— had commissioned for his private garden. But Mrs. Hershey found the nudes offensive; so Mr. Hershey donated the fountain to the McFarland rose garden. J. Horace McFarland, a doctor and a founder of the American Rose Society, had created and endowed these gardens at his hospital.

The connection to the former green in front of Grace Church is almost a direct quote from an old Joni Mitchell song: “They paved paradise … put up a parking lot.” That’s exactly what they did to the rose garden. They turned it into a three-block parking lot. Dad did what he could to prevent it; but was unsuccessful. It broke his heart. I still have a jar of potpourri made from some of the last roses. Dad, however, was instrumental in preserving the Three Graces and placing them in the middle of Italian Lake, just a few blocks from the old rose gardens.

Previously he had recommended the new site above Italian Lake for the relocation of the Civil War obelisk commemorating “The Suppression of the Rebellion,” which had blocked traffic on Second Street in front of the Capitol and had been a genuine traffic hazard. Dad was able to suggest these changes because he had been a friend of the two mayors at the time. Both events occurred when I was in junior high school or at Mercersburg, in the early or mid sixties.

When Mother sold the house on North Second Street to move to a retirement community about thirty-five miles away, I took an extended leave from my job at Neiman-Marcus to assist her. (My parents had bought the house after the Hurricane Agnes Flood.) It was some of the most strenuous physical labor I’ve ever done.

While cleaning out the detached garage, I went through several boxes of assorted objects and papers from Miss Helen McFarland’s house. (Helen was the distinguished spinster daughter of J. Horace McFarland and had lived alone for many decades in her Victorian mansion, Breeze Hill, that had an uncanny similarity to the house in Psycho, though it was a much finer house. Helen McFarland was a close friend of my Dad’s and his great friend, Helen Heisey. The two of them worked together on a Decorator Showhouse at Breeze Hill after Miss McFarland’s death.)

A small Christmas card caught my attention. It had a sepia photo of the "Lone Cypress" at Carmel. I picked it up and read the note. It was from John Muir to his friend J. Horace McFarland and was dated 1914. I happened to know that John Muir died Christmas Eve 1914, and thought at first this must be one of the last things he wrote. But on closer examination, the card was notated “Rec’d 1/10/14” so it was from Christmas 1913. Even so, it’s a very special communication.

The card’s inscription reads:

“Dear Mr. McFarland,
Many warm thanks for the great work you have done and are doing for God’s beauty. Tho our long hard fight for Yosemite Park is lost, some compensating good must come from the aroused conscience of the whole country.Yours with love and admiration

John Muir”

I think the reference was to Hetch Hetchy Valley, which was dammed to provide a reservoir for San Francisco. Even today there is discussion about whether or not to restore the valley to its former natural state. I don’t think that will happen. We really need the water. But I’ve double framed the card, and consider it one of my most valued possessions.