Wednesday, December 28, 2011

Under God

When I saw stars along Hollywood Boulevard dedicated to people like Joseph Szigeti, I realised that classical music was once American popular culture.


There are stars also to people like Stravinsky, Pierre Monteux, Paderewski, and the great Wagnerians Lauritz Melchior and Lotte Lehmann.

I love LA. I love the look of LA streets. The distant hills stop them from looking totally like Parramatta Road, or any anonymous-ville else.




I love the fact that you can see coyotes up in the hills and that they warn you about rattlesnakes on the trails.


I love that it often looks like 'that great Alice Springs on the other side of the sphere' (to paraphrase Herman Melville's comment about Australia)


Most of all I love that movies are made here.

This mural on the eastern wall of Hollywood High, Kate's father's old school, portrays some of the famous alumni - Lawrence Fishburne, Judy Garland, Carol Burnett...Check the way the guy on the side is pulling aside the curtain. A reference to the famous American painting of a fellow in his athenaeum (whose title I forget), I imagine it means this 'Old School Tie' is a producer, unlike the eastern wall's front-of-camera performers.


Not everyone likes Hollywood though. I saw this on the way down to San Diego earlier in the year.


A big red slash through the Hollywood sign.

And that's got me thinking about America's religiosity. Presidents these days end their speeches with 'God bless you. God bless the United States of America.' It wasn't also so. And wasn't until recently. Even a president as devout as Jimmy Carter ended his farewell address with 'Thank you, fellow citizens, and farewell'. Richard Nixon launched into a bigger arabesque, 'We come from many faiths, we pray perhaps to different gods - but really the same God in a sense - but I want to say for each and every one of you, not only will we always remember you, not only will we always be grateful to you but always you will be in our hearts and you will be in our prayers.' But then ended, merely: 'Thank you very much.' I wonder if any modern president would dare leave out the 'God bless you' mantra.

An Australian prime minister would not dare put it in! Australians give short shrift to public figures wearing religion on their sleeve. Wave the Bible and you are less likely to be elected. And there are advantages to this lower key. Has intense religiosity ever spared America immoral behaviour? Has it prevented shonky behaviour on Wall Street in recent years? Has it weeded out corporate sociopathy?

But here's an upside. Regardless of the work they're doing, Americans act joyfully. An Australian behind the counter will often give you resentful service; grunt when you say thank you rather than say, 'You're welcome'. You don't find that much here. Americans may simply be making lattes day in and day out, ringing up a cash register, driving a bus along the same route, but they behave as if they're part of the performance, the Divine Comedy. My current theory? I think they feel reassured they're doing what God wants them to do. It may not be forging a treaty or building a dam (always), but they feel that they fit into the grand design.

There's enough of the larrikin in me to be amused by the heckler who calls out 'bullshit' at the end of a ringing religious phrase, but it would be nice if Australians had a bit more of a sense of working for a higher power (or ideal). There are advantages to a higher key. I think this is partly how America built Wall Street, Silicon Valley - and Hollywood.

Saturday, December 17, 2011

"Wie, hör’ ich das Licht" (Thus I hear the light)

I have noted before that America is a land rich in sound. You have the accents, the music, the birds, the streets - fire engine sirens several times a day in Charleston, bells from Savannah churches, the tweet of pedestrian signals in Atlanta. We walked through New Orleans one night earlier this week and Bourbon Street was a melange of different types of music.

Next morning though, as fog shrouded the uptown skyscrapers, it was clearly taking a while to wake up.


Not to worry, we have caught the train to Los Angeles, and at one of the meals in the dining car speak to a guy who describes for us all the accents of North Carolina! As we pass an antebellum mansion, an African-American woman behind us whispers through the crack between our seats: 'Miss Alice would have sat on that porch drinking mint juleps, know what I mean?'

The Amtrak whistle is one of the defining sounds of America. Shoot a film in Australia and you could still fool the audience it was set in America if you had the Amtrak whistle on the soundtrack.

In the capsule of the train compartment, however, hurtling across the country, the sound reduces to a rattling on rail tracks, carriage doors hissing open and the ubiquitous whistle.

Let this country pass even in 'silence', though, and it is still spectacular, as we travel through Houston


and West Texas towns


and plains


to the sunshine and snow-capped peaks of California.



In Los Angeles we return to noise at the other end, police helicopters overhead, la gente que habla español, and going to the movies where the intensity of the SurroundSound reminds us we are savouring the fruits of the industry of this town. It is altogether a fitting conclusion to the cross-country soundtrack.

Bringing forth?

Presidential contender Newt Gingrich's comment about the Palestinians being an invented people is puzzling if meant to be pejorative. One of the great things about the United States of America is that it was invented - elevenscore and fifteen years ago. Australians too should know roughly when the word 'Australia' was first used to mean the nation we know today. On 25 August 1804, the explorer Matthew Flinders, who had circumnavigated the coastline, wrote to his brother Samuel: 'I call the whole island Australia...' He later pushed for Australia to be the official name.

Friday, December 16, 2011

The 200 year-old debate

In Savannah, I was often fascinated by the after-effects of the Civil War - the house where General Joe Johnston lived for example:


(Out in North Carolina, we had seen the farm where Johnston had surrendered his army to General Sherman in April 1865)






Whenever we walked down Bull Street, I would also stop and take a look at Comer House, where ex-Confederate president Davis was entertained when he visited Savannah in 1886.




I was always fascinated by the way the vanquished Southern leadership was feted in after-years.

I asked a friend from Georgia how this could be, and the best explanation he could come up with (with a shrug) was: 'Family'. Of course, some family members would bristle at my word 'vanquished'. At a lecture we attended, the president of the Georgia Historical Society, W. Todd Groce, warned his audience beforehand that they might find he has some complimentary things to say about General Sherman, the Union general who occupied Savannah from December 1865 to February 1865. And there was an audible shuffle (of discomfort?) when he mentioned that actually, prior to the war, Sherman had been first president of LSU (Louisiana State University).

I admit I, too, wonder to what extent the Southern leadership was vanquished. To a large extent they were incorporated. The stars and stripes flies outside Johnstone's house.


(Of course, Johnston later served in federal administrations.) But I wonder if this approbation is an example of Lincoln's 'let 'em up easy'?


Or is this process of lauding Confederate leaders a way of legitimizing States' Rights as an authentic strand of American life? In the movie Gettysburg, 'General Longstreet' says, 'We should have freed the slaves and then fired on Fort Sumter.' That would have focussed the issue. Fact is, though, they didn't [free the slaves], and they couldn't keep it [the issue of slavery] 'in the family'.

Which, given that Americans live with this oppositional view in their midst, got me thinking about the place of contrary views in American society. Because, as another example, if you think about it, the major American political parties have become their polar opposites over the years. I know I was dismayed to learn, some years ago, that the 'big government' Democratic Party traces its origins back to Jefferson who was a proponent of States' Rights and 'government is best which governs least'. On the other hand, the greatest presidents from the small government, States' Rightist Republican Party were Lincoln and Teddy Roosevelt, who enlarged the federal government, enforcing its authority and regulating industry respectively. Do the supporters of either party recognise these flips? Or recognise them as flips? As someone said on the morning chat show Morning Joe the other day the debate between state and federal government and Strict Construction vs Hamiltonian interpretation (the federal government is empowered to do whatever is necessary to achieve its ends under the constitution) is 200 years old. Is embodiment of this debate, without any requirement to be consistent, enough to register authentic Americanness?

On Monday we left Savannah and took the bus to Atlanta (reversing the path of Sherman's march to the sea. I can see why it would have taken him so long to cover the distance.)


In Atlanta, ninth-largest metropolitan area of these united States, we found the following sign proudly displayed on the corner of Spring and Peachtree Streets:


Here were the outer defences of Atlanta in 1864.

Tuesday, December 6, 2011

The size of the contribution?


A number of musicians have lived in Savannah. Lowell Mason was here for a time. I know him mostly for the hymn, Watchman, which is one of the themes of Charles Ives' Fourth Symphony. So too was the composer of Jingle Bells, who, I see here, served for a time in the Confederate Army.



Leaving aside the pros and cons of having fought for the South, I am always intrigued by musicians who move out of their studio, so to speak. 

I remember reading once that 19th century military men and diplomats who met the virtuoso Franz Liszt would regret that such a brilliant man was wasted on music. When I read that, as a music student, I resented such oaf-headedness. But now I look at the stories that fascinate me.


I am trying to produce an opera on Philippa Duke Schuyler, the Harlem-born concert pianist, who died ferrying schoolchildren to safety during an attack on Hue in the Vietnam War. I have always admired the fact that Faubion Bowers, Scriabin's biographer, was General MacArthur's aide-de-camp in occupied Japan, and is credited with saving Kabuki theater. The other day I read that the actress Hedy Lamarr worked with the composer George Antheil on a radio navigation system for anti-submarine torpedoes during World War II.


What is my fascination with these stories? Am I somehow concerned about classical music's relevance to life? I also remember reading Richard Taruskin’s account of how, in the era of Soviet oppression, his Russian friends would hang out for the latest Shostakovich. Do we do that for any classical composer now? Yet, it wouldn’t be true to say that music is not important. People get very het up over their favourite music. It’s so much an issue of who we are. 

I do get concerned though when I see orchestral seasons simply re-combining the same 75 or so works.

Monday, November 21, 2011

Sightseeing and Soundhearing

I love the sight of Live Oaks here in Savannah. They're not purely native to the area, but they come from hereabouts; huge pines were the original vegetation up here on the bluff.

Last night we heard a choral service by candlelight at Christ Church, and walked back through darkened streets made even more atmospheric, if not spooky, by the sight of Live Oaks hung with Spanish Moss.

But what I notice most, and what I will always now associate with Savannah, is the sound of acorns dropping on pavements and other hard surfaces and the crunch of them underfoot. America is a country rich in sound.

Monday, November 14, 2011

Sister cities?

I'm fascinated by the contrasts and similarities between Savannah and Charleston, southern cities only two hours apart. Both are immensely walkable. People walk the battery in Charleston or sunbathe in Marion Park. Yet Savannah's broader footpaths are easier to walk abreast on and their 22 squares draw the neighbours in. We've noticed people meeting in the middle for a glass of wine of an evening, weddings taking place, the odd strolling guitar player, and then, on Saturday morning, of course there are the exercise classes...


These squares, whether they were designed by Oglethorpe in 1733 as rallying points for militia or not, really invite 'use'.

In many respects both cities support our contention that university towns are best. Charleston has the Medical University of South Carolina, College of Charleston (est.1770), Charleston School of Law and Virginia College of Charleston. In Savannah, SCAD, the Savannah College of Art and Design is the big juggernaut, owning a building on just about every street it seems, and certainly the old movie houses, which it operates as live theaters. We saw Audra McDonald at the SCAD Theater last Wednesday night and she was a revelation, not only for what she revealed of a repertoire I thought I knew well (songs from shows like Fiorello and Do-Re-Mi, for example), but for the way she could 'tell' a song. And then when we thought she couldn't be any more talented she sat down and accompanied herself on the piano in a song by Adam Guettel, Richard Rodgers' grandson...

But Charleston and Savannah's charms are longstanding. They were lovely towns 15 years ago, before we noticed any university presence. They both have interesting similarities - their share of Revolutionary history (patriots died over by what you can see over your left shoulder if you turn around), their respective chapters in the history of slavery, their own memorials to 'our Confederate dead', the presence of voodoo. I notice a little more Savannah's association with piracy. Well, Treasure Island's Captain Flint is supposed to have died in Savannah. Charleston has Porgy and Bess of course (how fantastic to have an iconic show associated with your town). But I notice here a slightly higher historical presence of the Creek Indians. Tomochichi's grave is in town. And Samuel Wesley spent two years here in the 1730s and credited Savannah as being the locale of one of two revelations which led to his creation of Methodism (the other revelation took place in Oxford).

But what I notice here also is the fullness of cultural life that exists in a city this size. It doesn't have a first-run cinema downtown (it's miles away in the malls), I really feel the lack of a nearby pool, and it doesn't have an opera company (though somebody is working on that). But it has that sense of 'something on every night if you want it' which I've noticed in similar sized towns before. Let's see: last Monday if we had wanted to we could have gone to hear Tim Drake of Clemson University talk about Death and Burial Customs in the 19th Century at the Kennedy Pharmacy. On Wednesday, Dr Martha Keber spoke at the Savannah History Museum about The burning of 'La Francaise' and 'La Vengeance' by a Savannah mob in Nov 1811 as part of 'The War of 1812 Lecture Series', and the next night Prof. Christopher Baker at First Baptist Church talked on The King James Bible: Four Centuries of Influence. There's no excuse to be bored.

You can also dig endlessly into the architectural history of both cities too. But it looks to me that Savannah's architectural periods extended later. There was a real extension of prosperity into the Victorian era (after the Civil War?). There is even a Victorian District. Forsythe Park sits in it.


My strongest impression of Charleston architecture I suppose is of wood. Savannah is to a far greater extent built of brick.

Saturday, November 5, 2011

Multiple threads

Charleston, SC - Not just monumental shifts like the Fall colours but small details tell me when I'm somewhere different - the septuplet click of the wait signal at Richmond Virginia pedestrian lights; the acronyms in various places (like CARTA for Charleston Area Regional Transportation Authority); the names of people I wouldn't have heard of if I hadn't visited a place, like Ravenel or Manigault, big family names down here in Charleston, or artists like the blacksmith Philip Simmons whose work was so fine it's ended up in the Smithsonian.




Note here the rattlesnake motif in the gates he designed for the mansion that belonged to Gadsden who designed the 'Don't Tread on Me' flag from the War of Independence. Look close. Simmons prided himself on how he tapered the ends.

Then there is also Antwon Ford the master sweetgrass basket maker or 'spinner', or Charleston's early women artists like Henrietta de Beaulieu Dering Johnston.

You notice sounds too, not necessarily the chuck-chuck-chuck of woodpeckers such as you would hear around Falls Church, but the constant sound of fire engines in this wooden city - and their really ugly horns. You hear them several times a day.

Then there are the incredible sloping porches. Why? Do they get torrential rain here?


I notice little differences because I compare the swimming pools in the various places. They often have their own rules, which you don't know about until you've broken them. At the YMCA in Greenpoint (New York), the attendant yelled at me because I was keeping a circular motion around the centre line (as you would in Australia). 'No, no, no, straight up and down,' he yelled as if I was an idiot for not knowing. I also found out, after I'd arrived, that I was meant to have my own bathing cap. The public pools in NYC are free but they won't let you in without a padlock. The pool here at the Medical University of South Carolina is excellent, nice, clean, new, with a great weekly rate. There's an indoor running track above your head. It even has a spin drier for your swimmers. I could possibly write a book Pools I Have Known. It is definitely a theme running through my life.

Monday, October 31, 2011

The feeling in the streets

Going to see Dracula at the Dock Street Theatre and then walking back through the darkened, gaslit streets kind of gives a flavour to Charleston.


I was more impressed, however, by the fact that the first play produced here, at America's oldest theatre, was George Farquhar's The Recruiting Officer. I read this on a sign further up Church Street the next day.


It says here (second paragraph) that one of the earliest occupants of this house had written the prologue for that Dock Street Theatre production.

Coincidentally, The Recruiting Officer was the first play produced (by a cast of convicts and guards) at Sydney Cove in 1789. How interesting that this play, a satire on authority, was such a favourite in both early colonies.

Does it say something about our common attitudes to authority? In both countries I think people would agree we have a common disrespect for power. But the circumstances suggest subtle differences too. Australia's production took place in the context of a penal colony, arguably a precarious situation for those in charge. Yet the governor, Capt. Phillip, was comfortable enough to let it take place. And to this day, Australia's leaders tolerate a very knockabout sort of, well, 'knocking'. Perhaps while Americans fear government (you get the impression sometimes that tyranny is only a president away; despotism always a possiblity; gotta keep a hold on our guns), Australians have a rougher, more familial disrespect for their leaders. Australian politicians will never be tyrants; but they'll always be 'slackarses who don't do what we pay 'em to do'.

Wednesday, October 26, 2011

Breaks to new mutiny?

 Two households, both alike in dignity,
In fair Verona, where we lay our scene,
From ancient grudge break to new mutiny,
Where civil blood makes civil hands unclean.
 - Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet: prologue


At Manassas, site of the first Civil War battle


we met a woman who said she reckons another Civil War is coming, 'the way this country's going. It's getting worse by the day.'

I didn't ask her to elaborate. I made certain assumptions. We were in Virginia, which has always resented the federal government. We were in an historic downtown which looked reasonably prosperous. When you run into someone in a CBD who says what she said, they're usually railing about federal taxes (well, taxes state and city as well, but the feds cop it). And we're in an environment where the other side's motives are always purely venal and evil ('the Tea Party are stupid'; 'the Occupy Wall Street people are a mob', although they're actually unhappy about many of the same things). This is a superstition maintained on both sides of politics of course - it is no longer the case that people can concede that both sides have something to offer and that each falls short - so I figured I didn't need to query further.

We are now in Charleston, nine hours away by train from 'Orange Cones; No Phones' and signs of Fall - changing colours, squirrels getting busy carrying oversized nuts, pumpkin lattes...


We've put away winter clothes for now


I wonder if the unhappiness that is expressed to us is at root a symptom of the tectonic plates of American tribalism shifting; the distrust and absolutist opinions a natural consequence of a society opening up its former divisions, an anxiety about the fact that new and more people are these days, as they once sang in the fields round here, 'gwine to sit down at de welcome table'.

Thursday, October 20, 2011

Notes on the State of Virginia

Excuse the Jeffersonian title, but after a visit to Richmond, I am wondering what I might say in a modern-day version of the Notes.

Clearly the history of the place is overwhelming. Richmond is virtually the historical navel of the country. Go down to the water's edge (to the banks of the James) and, not only do you get a sense of the bridges that once carried Confederate troops over it, but you read that Richmond (Powhatan) was the navigable limit of the James reached by Captain John Smith in 1608.

Go out to Hanover Tavern, half an hour away - Hanover for George I, by the way - and you read how in 1781, Lord Cornwallis and General Washington missed each other here by a matter of days, only to turn east a mile south of here and meet for the final showdown at Yorktown. Stuart rode around McClellan's forces stationed here at Hanover Courthouse in 1862.


In Richmond, capital of the old Confederacy, I also get a sense of having stepped into the other side of the great debate (to coin a phrase for the Civil War). Am I imagining it, or do I now really get a sense of what the South must feel, just from wandering around, adopting an awed attitude to DC (the monolith up the road), or from walking along Monument Ave, that grand thoroughfare, and seeing the statues erected to J.E.B. Stuart, Robert E. Lee, Jefferson Davis and Stonewall Jackson in the late 19th century?


It is hard to believe the South lost, or that these men were 'in rebellion', so highly are they honoured. And at first I thought it was sympathy for the underdog that had possessed me. 'He lost his life defending the South', read a headstone in Hollywood Cemetary, and I thought, 'That's it. You automatically admire those who are defending their land against the invader.' Except that, then I reminded myself that the South fired first. The strength and persuasiveness of this 'homage' says something about the power of the mere act of 'veneration'. You don't even have to agree with the honoree to be affected; the veil of romanticism has been created.

I kind of get it - States' Rights. If you think of the states as separate countries, it makes sense. No wonder so few Americans have passports - California, Maine, Louisiana, Wyoming... are sufficiently different to sustain interest. When Jefferson said, 'my country', he mostly meant 'Virginia'.

And this was the experiment in government the Virginians wanted to make - 'separate countries' loosely bound by a few, undeniable but limited, continental concerns. As a Virginian explained, to Virginians the federal government may only exercise the powers specifically delegated to it under the Constitution. (I haven't yet asked a Virginian why a Virginian, Washington, accepted Hamilton's definition of implied powers. And the John Marshall House was shut when we were there,


so I didn't get a chance to hear how the guides presented the longest-serving Chief Justice's work, which basically, in most of his judicial decisions, cemented a stronger union.) But the looser form of federalism is meant to work. Is it the case that it hasn't been allowed to? And is there a resentment that it was Virginia, so slighted, that produced four of the country's first five presidents? (In Fredericksburg, we saw James Monroe's 'town plot'.)



As I say, I kind of get it - States' Rights. 'So do I', said an African-American woman we met, 'but to me it means "Jim Crow".'

But yet, I liked Richmond. It has leafy, walkable suburbs, with cafes.


It has villages and cinemas. When we were here in 1996 the city seemed very run down, and yet there is renovation everywhere.


There is history galore.




Jefferson modelled this, the Capitol, on the Maison Carree. Here former vice president Aaron Burr was tried (by John Marshall) for treason. Here, Lee received his commission.

 Parts of it reminded me of Melbourne: Royal Parade...


or Sydney Road, Coburg or North Carlton. Perhaps it's not a superficial comparison. At first I put it down to the presence of a university. Find a nice village here in the States, and you're bound to find a university - Berkeley, San Luis Obispo, Princeton, Chapel Hill...But beyond that I put it down to old English ideals of town living - harmony, community...

Of course, as long as you weren't a slave. But visiting here has made me want to look deeper into this. What makes Richmond tick? And what is a true history? And now something else occurs to me. Jefferson, who owned property in slaves, specifically omitted 'property' when he copied George Mason's list of 'unalienable rights' into the Declaration.


Friday, October 7, 2011

Let's not forget they were farmers

Of course, the founding fathers were also - a lot of them - slaveowners, but I have always appreciated the fact that they understood harvests, tides, seasons, flowerings. Most were farmers.

I find it moving that there are still native trees on Mt Vernon that were planted by George Washington himself.


And I've always been touched by the passages in the founders' letters where they discuss farming and husbandry among affairs of state: a new crop rotation method, a new form of plough, Jefferson discussing the form of government in a letter to Washington and then informing his fellow Virginian that 'asparagus has just come to table' (out west, in the Piedmont).

The fact that the founders were farmers tells us a lot about the country they envisaged. They managed little fiefdoms. Washington was so traumatised (not too strong a word I would suggest) by the inability of the individual states to reliably finance the continental army during the Revolution that he urged a strong central government, but should we temper that knowledge by acknowledging also that they probably saw life on this broad continent as a series of little settlements?

And as for Jefferson's ideal of agrarian democracy (a piece of land for each man to work - as he scribbled on a piece of paper that is now in the Library of Congress), if people had actually achieved it, might we have continued to adhere closer to a remembrance of the natural world? On the other hand, could every individual in today's 300 million-strong population have 'a little farm to work'? And did Native Americans appreciate the idea that they should be taught agriculture in order to be able to work smaller plots of land, surrendering their vast domains for Europe's starving thousands?


We went out to Mt Vernon (Washington's home), and I sat on the porch.



In 1798 Washington wanted John Marshall (the future Secretary of State and future Chief Justice) to run for congress. Marshall was unenthusiastic; he had just begun his law practice. Washington worked on him at Mt Vernon for several days to no avail. On the final morning of Marshall's stay, he came to say goodbye to the general on this porch. Washington, who had a great sense of theatre, had put on his full dress uniform. It instantly said to Marshall, I could have stayed here in my favourite place on earth, but I have always put service of the nation first. It worked. Marshall ran for election.

The view you see from here today is essentially what Marshall and Washington would have seen.


The Maryland shore is virtually untouched. You can see it through the colonnade. The swamp oak in the foreground below dates from 1770.


According to one of the guides, in the 1950s, Maryland wanted to put an oil refinery opposite; it was Maryland, their land. But the Ladies Committee of Mt Vernon lobbied the federal government and the government acquired the land. Today it is a federal reserve. Because of that you can just about see what Washington and Marshall saw on the opposite bank for the entire turns of your heads. Just as well for tourists these days that the 1950s federal government took Washington's more continental view.

Sunday, October 2, 2011

A European note

As an Australian who has worked in classical music, I have long been fascinated with the intersections of indigenous cultures with the European tradition. The meeting of German and Arrernte cultures at Hermannsburg in Central Australia is a case in point.

In North Carolina, I have been intrigued by Old Salem, just south of the Winston-Salem CBD in the Piedmont area.


The town was founded in the mid-1700s on land granted to followers of Jan Hus, who, several decades before Martin Luther tacked his petition to the door of a church, was burnt at the stake for rebelling against the Roman Catholic church. His followers, Moravians, had originally been offered sanctuary in Germany by a Count Zinzendorf. Hence, the people who turned up in America to take up land offered to them by Lord Granville, were German speakers. But what struck me as a familiar concordance was meeting the guy there at the Moravian Music Centre who has just finished co-editing the third volume (there will be four) of Records of the Moravians among the Cherokees. I dare say the Moravian missionaries could speak Cherokee, just as the German Lutheran missionaries at Ntaria (Hermannsburg) spoke Arrernte. As I say, this conjunction has a familiar ring to someone who has studied the history of Central Australia.


Even to this day, Old Salem, has a strong German flavour. The Moravians still own many of the buildings; there are plaques all over the place marking where people like Schober, Shultz, and Winkler once lived. (Very Meistersinger-ish, even the architecture in places).


Of course, I am always also in awe of people such as the Lutherans and Moravians who could live in remote places like this in those days. The green woods of North Carolina are seen as scenic and beautiful in these comfy air-conditioned and wi-fi days, but they would have been fearful wilderness then and Old Salem a cultivated patch hacked out of a new and alien world. I guess I must have a fascination with Europe off-centered. 

Thursday, September 29, 2011

To North Carolina

A couple of things struck me on our drive to North Carolina. They form an excuse for a little photo essay.

1.


It looks innocuous doesn't it - a mere road sign? But it leads to the site of the first battle of the Civil War.


2. In keeping with other photographs of culinary oddities, I include this plaque on the side of a building in Durham:


The building is now being converted into lofts.

3. Call me dense, but it took me a few minutes to work out that the geezer in the hose had to be Sir Walter Raleigh.

 
4. And of course, there are the other little footnotes of history you come across in places like this:


Henry Clay apparently wrote his letter opposing the annexation of Texas under the oak tree in the background. Some think his position cost him the presidency.

Friday, September 23, 2011

Liberty

In Washington, the seat of government, my thoughts turn to the concept of 'liberty'.


There are those who pursue the idea of liberty down to questioning the need for a Federal Emergency Management Agency FEMA ('more Washington', 'more regulation'). And yet, there is always a point where even the most libertarian politician will call a halt to all-out freedom. It might be a woman's right to choose, it might be gay marriage...


There always seems to be a point where even Liberty's staunchest advocates tolerate some hemming in. In the Declaration of Independence, 'liberty' shares its keynote clause with 'life' and 'the pursuit of happiness'. In the Constitution, as a keyword search tells me, 'liberty' appears only once along with a whole list of other aims. In Gouvernor Morris's great words: 'to form a more perfect Union, establish justice, insure domestic Tranquillity, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty...'

I suppose 'liberty' is better suited to a clarion call than some of the other aims. After all, Patrick Henry did not cry, 'Give me general Welfare or give me death,' or 'Give me happiness or give me death.' But it would be interesting to find out how liberty came to be almost exclusively the only virtue.

Of course, there is a lot of wriggle room to achieve liberty in. In a country like Australia, where we have far more government intervention, an atheist, red-haired, unmarried woman who lives with her boyfriend can become Chief Executive.

Thursday, September 1, 2011

There's a boat that's momentarily delayed

There are other things to mention about New York.

I think the people are what truly make it. New Yorkers have a reputation for unfriendliness. I haven't found it so. In fact I found them helpful. And what I love most is the way they try to shape a conversation, round it off, end with a witticism or crack. It's always entertaining.

I walked past some guys on a corner in Harlem and had to chuckle as I caught one of them saying to the others: 'Just 'cos yo' name William don't mean yo' English'.

Tuesday, August 30, 2011

There's a boat that's leaving soon from New York

As we prepare to leave New York, we're thinking of all the places that we've developed an affection for:

- Indian Road Cafe, in virtually one of the last buildings on Manhattan Island (behind the white building on the point)...


- the Hudson River with its New Jersey cliffs...


- Hastings-on-Hudson, with its Norman Rockwell streets....


- and the walk over the George Washington Bridge into New Jersey, with its backward glance at lower Manhattan...


It strikes us that these are all out-of-town experiences, or at least on the fringe. If we came back to live here, we would probably want to live somewhere like this, away from the radiant heat of the endless sidewalks and walls of buildings.

But what are you going to do? We've been knocked out by the standard of theatre and the galleries, the music... This is New York: when you've seen the Gauguins,Chagalls, Braques, Picassos, and Seurats at one place, you go down the street to the next place and see theirs. Isn't  it the size of New York that generates this height of excellence? Although I do wonder about the size of Pliny's Rome or Mozart's Vienna. Is inspiration always human, social and external?

Last week, we even saw evidence of New Yorkers' desire to green their city - the High Line, the disused railway line at the third-storey level downtown that has been converted into an urban garden.


 It immediately became one of those places we've developed an affection for.