John Lennon ~ October 9, 1940 ~ December 8, 1980

John Lennon

By VERLYN KLINKENBORG

The New York Times

December 7, 2010

I don’t remember how I heard that John Lennon had been shot. Thirty years ago, on a warm December night in Manhattan, it was suddenly, in the air, on the street — with only a brief, grim gap between news of the shooting at the Dakota, on 72nd Street and news of his death at Roosevelt Hospital. I called my brother in California and then sat in the stairwell of a building at 27th and Third, numb and grieving, like everyone else.

It was a new kind of death — not a political assassination like the ones that claimed the Kennedy brothers and Martin Luther King Jr.; not the self-immolation that took down Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendrix, and Jim Morrison. Lennon survived the ’60s and ’70s, and by 1980 he was living in New York City as normally, as modestly, as he and his wife, Yoko Ono, could. Then a deranged young man, Mark David Chapman, found a secular scripture in J.D. Salinger’s “The Catcher in the Rye” and shot Lennon in hopes of becoming Holden Caulfield.

Every day I’m at The Times, I pass a photo of the Beatles taken at a press conference during one of their early visits to New York. In the picture, Lennon’s hands are folded behind him, and he stands, with the other Beatles, in a corona from the press lights. Invariably, it reminds me of the famous portrait Annie Leibovitz shot the morning of the day Lennon was killed — the one where he is lying naked, fetal, clinging to Yoko Ono, the ridge of his back so terribly exposed.

We remember what we remember of Lennon, and of that night. When I was young, he was the only adult that mattered outside my family — the Beatle of Beatles. I loved his wit; his irony; his “Help!”; his urgent, reedy voice; his unceasing transformations. Like everyone else who loved him, I can’t help grieving, even now, for all the transformations we lost 30 years ago when John Lennon was only 40.

JEAN SIBELIUS ~ December 8, 1865 ~ September 20, 1957

Jean Sibelius (8 December 1865 – 20 September 1957) was a Finnish composer of the later Romantic period whose music played an important role in the formation of the Finnish national identity.

The core of Sibelius's oeuvre is his set of seven symphonies. Like Beethoven, Sibelius used each one to develop further his own personal compositional style. Unlike Beethoven who used the symphonies to make public statements, and who reserved his more intimate feelings for his smaller works, Sibelius released his personal feelings in the symphonies. These works continue to be performed frequently in the concert hall and are often recorded.

In addition to the symphonies, Sibelius's best-known compositions include Finlandia, Valse Triste, the violin concerto, the Karelia Suite and The Swan of Tuonela (one of the four movements of the Lemminkäinen Suite). Other works include pieces inspired by the Kalevala, over 100 songs for voice and piano, incidental music for 13 plays, the opera Jungfrun i tornet (The Maiden in the Tower), chamber music, piano music, 21 separate publications of choral music, and Masonic ritual music.

Sibelius composed prolifically until the mid-1920s. However, soon after completing his Seventh Symphony (1924), the incidental music to The Tempest (1926), and the tone poem Tapiola (1926), he produced no large scale works for the remaining thirty years of his life. Although he is reputed to have stopped composing, he did attempt to continue writing, including abortive attempts to compose an eighth symphony. He wrote some Masonic music and re-edited some earlier works during this last period of his life, and retained an active interest in new developments in music, although he did not always view modern music favorably.

Image & Text:wikipedia.com

Today is also the birthday of my musician friend John Kelley. Best wishes to him today and always.

CHRISTMAS GINGERBREAD CASTLE

Image:thoughtdistillery.com/2004/12/13/74

Years ago, I used to eat Sunday brunch at Café Mozart on Bush Street between services at Grace Cathedral. The owner was a Viennese named Claus. One Christmas, he made a large gingerbread castle in the shape of a familiar landmark. “Oh Claus!” I said, “What a wonderful gingerbread model of Neuschweinstein.” “Neu- SCHWEIN- stein?!!!! Don’t you know the difference between a schwein and a schwan?!!!!” Now.... I do.

(See my post "California's Connection to WAGNER'S RING DES NIBELUNGEN" September 7, 2008 for a description of Ludwig II's castles in Bavaria.)

PEARL

Today, December 7, is Pearl Harbor Day. Because of that, a good friend, and perhaps first partner, was born in a detention camp in Topaz, Utah.

On September 1, 1976, a bearded Japanese-American man, whom I had seen on occasion, wrote his name and phone number on the back of a fellow Sloane’s employee’s business card, and left it for me. That’s how I met Gary Murakami. He later told me he had been loaded, or he wouldn’t have been so bold. I hadn’t noticed. September 1st was Mother and Dad’s 39th wedding anniversary.

We started seeing each other. And for several years, I spent more time at Gary’s place on Pierce Street than at home on 23rd. Several times I offered to move, so that we could find a place together. But he hesitated. Gary said he could never live with me. Later, I learned that was because of a dependence problem. He thought he could disguise it, if we didn’t live together. But we virtually lived at his place—a tiny studio with a bath and kitchen. It was very elegant – in a modern, Japanese fashion. Gary was a wonderful cook, and a beautiful man. He had had several lung operations as a teenager, and had matching scars from his nipples, under the arms to his back. He called them his angel wings. His lungs were atrophying, and would eventually have killed him. I think that added to his anxiety, and contributed to his alcohol dependence.

When I first met Gary I wrote:

SYNTHESIS OF EAST AND WEST

DIVORCED

FROM LINGUAL HERITAGE

BY RANK INJUSTICE

ALL IN BUT ONE DAY

MANY ENEMIES AGO

CONFISCATED PROPERTY

BROKEN PORCELAIN

TRANSPLANTED PEARL

CAST IN THE DESERT

UNTO SWINEHERDS

IN UTAH

AFTER CROWDED STABLES

DARKENED TRAINS

TO BE ABANDONED

IN THE WILDERNESS

BORN IN ISOLATION

AMID SALT FLATS

AND DESERT FLOWERS

PERHAPS

PARENTAL RETICENCE

UNDERSTANDABLE

WITH RIGHTFUL DIGNITY

AWAITING RESTORATION

EVEN NOW

OVERDUE

AN ONLY SON

WITH FAMILIAL OBLIGATIONS

AND HOPE

OF MANY FUTURES

DESPITE THE PAST

OR

BECAUSE

OF LARGER PASTS

A STYLE IMPECCABLE

AND SERENE

WHITES AND WICKERS

TAILORED

APPROPRIATENESS

SIMPLE ELEGANCE

TRANQUILITY

CAN THERE BE

NO BITTERNESS?

###

BEAUTY SEEN

EXPERIENCED

AND TRANSMITTED

MAY I KNOW MORE?

He said yes-- for almost five years. But Gary was always extremely moody on Pearl Harbor Day.

PROHIBITION ENDS ~ December 5, 1933

In the history of the United States, Prohibition, also known as The Noble Experiment, is the period from 1919 to 1933, during which the sale, manufacture, and transportation of alcohol for consumption were banned nationally as mandated in the Eighteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution.

Under substantial pressure from the temperance movement, the United States Senate proposed the Eighteenth Amendment on December 18, 1917. Having been approved by 36 states, the 18th Amendment was ratified on January 16, 1919 and effected on January 16, 1920. Some state legislatures had already enacted statewide prohibition prior to the ratification of the 18th Amendment.

The "Volstead Act", the popular name for the National Prohibition Act, passed through Congress over President Woodrow Wilson's veto on October 28, 1919 and established the legal definition of intoxicating liquor. Though the Volstead Act prohibited the sale of alcohol, it did little to enforce the law. The illegal production and distribution of liquor, or bootlegging, became rampant, and the national government did not have the means or desire to enforce every border, lake, river, and speakeasy in America. By 1925, in New York City alone, there were anywhere from 30,000 to 100,000 speakeasy clubs.

Prohibition became increasingly unpopular during the Great Depression, especially in large cities. On March 23, 1933, President Franklin Roosevelt signed into law an amendment to the Volstead Act known as the Cullen-Harrison Act, allowing the manufacture and sale of certain kinds of alcoholic beverages.

On December 5, 1933, the ratification of the Twenty-first Amendment repealed the Eighteenth Amendment.

Image & text: wikipedia.com

In Memorium WOLFGANG AMADEUS MOZART

January 27, 1756, Salzburg ~ December 5, 1791, Vienna

First THANKSGIVING in VIRGINIA ~ December 4, 1619

On December 4, 1619, 38 English settlers arrived at Berkeley Hundred, which comprised about 8,000 acres (32 km²) on the north bank of the James River, near Herring Creek, in an area then known as Charles Cittie, about 20 miles (32 km) upstream from Jamestown, where the first permanent settlement of the Colony of Virginia had been established on May 14, 1607.

The group's charter required that the day of arrival be observed yearly as a "day of thanksgiving" to God. On that first day, Captain John Woodleaf held the service of thanksgiving. As quoted from the section of the Charter of Berkeley Hundred specifying the thanksgiving service: "We ordaine that the day of our ships arrival at the place assigned for plantacon in the land of Virginia shall be yearly and perpetually keept holy as a day of thanksgiving to Almighty God."

During the Indian Massacre of 1622, nine of the settlers at Berkeley Hundreds were killed, as well as about a third of the entire population of the Virginia Colony. The Berkeley Hundred site and other outlying locations were abandoned as the colonists withdrew to Jamestown and other more secure points.

After several years, the site became Berkeley Plantation, and was long the traditional home of the Harrison family, one of the First Families of Virginia. In 1634, it became part of the first eight shires of Virginia, as Charles City County, one of the oldest in the United States, and is located along Virginia State Route 5, which runs parallel to the river's northern borders past sites of many of the James River Plantations between the colonial capital city of Williamsburg (now the site of Colonial Williamsburg) and the capital of the Commonwealth of Virginia at Richmond.

Text:wikipedia.com

Image:symonsez.files.wordpress.com/2008/12/berkeley_thanksgiving.jpg