Roberta Flack's "First Time Ever..." was 50 Years Ago

The first time ever I saw your face,
I thought the sun rose in your eyes.... - Ewan MacColl, 1957

Singing those lines at the piano, Roberta Flack set such a slow tempo that the producer of her debut album 50 years ago asked, "Ok, so you don't care if it's a hit?" She replied, "No sir." (Credited in Wikipedia to Flack's interview with Elinor J. Precher, Louisville Courier - Journal, 11/11/1983.)


But if Flack didn't care to make a hit, and the producer didn't care enough to stop her, then what did they care about? Art.


Flack's artistry begins with her unique voice, and how she modulates it. Whether she belts high notes or coos from her low range, she has the same warm, smokey timbre; she sustains long lines, and keeps them straight, using vibrato or the ornamental bending of notes only sparingly. At her tempo, in the space between "first" and "time," we hear the singer's tongue on the teeth for each "t," sounding both tender and sensuous. Roberta Flack's slow crescendo from the opening whisper to a wide - open melisma on "rise" mirrors the lyric's dawning sun. By the time she gets to "the first time ever I lay with you," we're ready for the earth to move.


"The First Time..." wasn't a hit until director Clint Eastwood used it in his film Play Misty for Me. The song went to #1 in 1972, and the album First Take climbed the Billboard charts.


I didn't like the song. Too slow. Too intimate. (I would have said "Weird.") I'm a late Boomer, 10 years old when Flack recorded the song, 12 when it played on the radio, absorbed in my comic books, TV, and upbeat pop music.

But even I was aware of a counter - culture of albums, clothes, "experimental" movies and plays, weird poetry, "underground" comics -- things that older boomers bought to express contempt for the commercialism of the 1950s. And I was aware of the Beatles, on their pedestal of art and experimentation above merely mortal rock groups.

This was continuation of a development in pop culture from the 1950s. With the advent of the long - playing record (LP), singers and producers experimented with making albums more than a collection of dance tunes and ballads. They could be intentional about the sequence of songs they chose to perform; they could break the 4 - minute limit to 45 - rpm "singles"; they could make a statement about themselves and the world. Already, in the late - 50s, Sinatra with arranger Nelson Riddle had made albums with themes (travel, loneliness, young love); in the mid - 60s, Beach Boys and Beatles won both commercial success and critical esteem for technical innovations and thematic connections on their albums Pet Sounds and Sgt. Pepper; in 1971, Marvin Gaye would release What's Going On?, a sound collage of interlocking musical motifs and social commentary.


So Roberta Flack in First Take, enabled by producer Joel Dorn, could still sell albums without making concessions to pop tastes. The album opens with Gene McDaniel's "Compared to What?", each verse targeting a different aspect of life in America, ca. 1969, such as the President with his war, "Folks just don't know what it's for," and this bitter couplet: "Unreal values, crass distortion / Unwed mothers need abortion." Flack pounds the chords and sneers the refrain - "Keepin' it real - but, compared to what?" Waiting for the next song to start, we barely hear an isolated plucked note on string bass, a long silence, then another. When Flack sings, the lyrics are Spanish, a poem "Angelitos Negros" by Andres Eloy Blanco that challenges a black painter who adorned a church with conventional images of white cherubs. Flack sings, (here in translation), "Even if the Virgin is white / Paint little black angels for me / Since they also go to heaven." For more than five minutes the song builds with Spanish guitar and violin, until Flack slips into wordless vocalese around the sixth minute of the track, and full strings play an orchestral apotheosis for the title's "Angelitos Negros," little black angels.

In 1973, when Roberta Flack made number one on the Billboard Charts with "Killing Me Softly," I bought the album, partly for the cover picture of Flack at a grand piano. (It's actually a grand piano superimposed on a photo of Flack standing at a microphone on stage.) By then I was into Carole King, Carly Simon, and Melissa Manchester - singer / songwriters who played piano. I'd memorized Flack's title song (music by Charles Fox, lyrics by Norman Gimbel), singing it with the radio in Dad's car on the way to school every morning (Lord, bless Dad for tolerating that). I learned the upbeat numbers on Flack's album -- a honky - tonk crowd pleaser called "When You Smile"; a funky break - up song "No Tears (In the End)" ; and "River," a hand - clapping Gospel number for the Age of Aquarius: "There's a river somewhere, / Flows through the lives of everyone." But on the more numerous slow songs, I could not keep up with Flack's long lines. For the song "Conversation Love," while she sustained each line, I gulped for air two or three times:

Throw sad reflections to the wind where they belong
Surprising things will rise to the top
And hand-painted dreams flow... (Hear "Conversation Love" on Youtube here.)

I learned from that album how to appreciate a slow cumulative effect. Flack's 10 - minute long arrangement of Leonard Cohen's "Suzanne" includes ruminative piano, incantatory singing, a driving rhythm, and, near the end, a windstorm of strings playing scales: mysterious, sensuous, and, in the end, epic. I still don't know what it's talking about, but I've always had the sense that this was deep. I love it.

So now, nearly 50 years later, I've listened to First Take. It sounds fresh and authentic, not like a relic. To appreciate it takes concentration, patience, and an open mind: it's not background music.  Though Flack demands less of us in her easygoing recordings of standards in the 1990s and Beatles songs  a few years ago,  her voice retains its power and smokey beauty.

My Blogposts on related topics:
• "Carole, Joni, and Carly in Context" (07/04/2012)
  
• Melissa Manchester (04/06/2015
  
• "Discovering Joni Mitchell 40 Years Later" (07/06/2012)
  
• "Beatles, for Boomers" (07/05/2019).

First Teen President and Other Teen Power Fantasies

What if a middle school boy had the power of his wildest fantasies? Current events, the film Shazam!, and some 50 - year anniversaries have recently reminded me how my imagination between ages 11 and 13 was taken up with dreams of power -- mostly supernatural, sometimes political.


First Teen President Comic book creator Jack "King" Kirby, a hero of my early teens, imagined "the first teen president." Perhaps he was playing to the comic book nerds who could only imagine wielding power, or maybe it was his own fantasy of a fresh start for America. Prez premiered in a time of the Vietnam War, nuclear proliferation, riots, and minority group "liberation" movements, while President Nixon each day seemed more deeply enmeshed in the net of investigations spreading from the Watergate break in.

[Photo: The cover of Jack Kirby's short - lived comic series Prez from the Kirby museum. Read my blogpost on Kirby's art and life (06/05/2015).]

I don't remember anything about Prez, not even if there ever was a second issue in the series. But I do remember how I imagined tackling America's problems if I got the opportunity:

• America, only. "S---hole countries" was not a phrase that would have occurred to me in 8th grade, but it covers the basics of my foreign policy. I argued with my carpool that the starvation of millions on the other side of the globe had no effect on us, their failure to modernize was their own fault, and we should keep our own money for our selves.
  
• Forget diplomacy, just trust me. I felt like the whole Vietnam War thing could be solved if I could just talk sense to the leaders of both sides, make them see that war just hurts everybody, and offer rewards if they'd agree to end the fighting. That's just what the President's son - in - law did at a convention this spring for factions in the Arab - Israeli conflict, talking sense and offering investments; the President trusts his "very good, very close" relationships with dictators to change their behavior.
  
• Take back the country ...from bad guys and weirdos. For this member of Richard Nixon's "Silent Majority," the middle - class white families we watched on TV sitcoms defined "normal." Not normal, but scary or ridiculous, were hippies, Black Panthers, gays, socialistic college students, feminists, "Chicanos" and "Amerindians" demonstrating for respect. Nixon's 1968 campaign broadcast a montage of activists with this tag line: "Vote like your life depended on it." I felt that way at 10; I would have readily responded to the slogans "Take America Back" and "Make America Great Again."
  
• Strength. The tallest strongest boys in our 7th grade class, Cody and Mike, each had a loyal fan base. I was with Mike, the goofier and less intimidating of the two. In fact, I don't remember anyone else from the class except Robert, from team Cody, who remarked on my "broad shoulders." From Vice President Pence's endorsement of his running mate for his "strong, broad shoulders," to Trump's effusive praise of Putin, Kim, and others as "very strong," to his grip contest with France's president, I sense that he and his circle admire strength in itself, as I did.
  
• Hit harder. I'd hoped to learn magic spells in The Satanic Bible by Anton LeVey, Priest of the Church of Satan, back in 1971. All I took away from furtively skimming pages at the store, though, was LeVey's response to something Jesus said that I'd never heard, "if someone slaps you, turn the other cheek." LeVey's commandment made more sense to me in 7th grade, "Hit him back, harder." I would've cheered along with the crowd hearing Melania Trump's version, "My husband will hit back ten times as hard."
  
• Positive Magic. While my parents kept The Power of Positive Thinking on a bookshelf, Trump's parents had the author Norman Vincent Peale as a family friend. Back in 1971, I understood Peale's idea to be that anything you say with enough conviction will become true, as if by magic. Our President practices this religiously, but he also has staff and media commentators to help to make his positive statements true. For example, when he said that "millions" of illegal voters obscured his popular mandate in 2016, a commission formed to prove him right, disbanding only after the President's "alternative facts" couldn't be verified.
  
• Congress, Courts, Constitution: Why? In middle school, I didn't know what the Constitution was or how Congress related to the House of Representatives and the Senate. What I knew of the court system was just what I saw on Perry Mason. I would've identified with our President when he complained about old fashioned rules in Congress that slowed down his agenda.
  
• Secret Plan Honestly, in 7th grade I wanted to be a super - villain more than President, and my secret plans came from TV's Batman: you launch some attention - getting device (Joker's laughing gas, Penguin's magnetized umbrellas) and "in the confusion" get away with whatever you want. Our President demonstrated how it works a couple Mondays ago, when the President's attacks on Black members of Congress captured media attention while the administration issued a new asylum policy that came as a surprise to the agencies enforcing it.
  
• Be Very, Very Afraid! In my super - villain fantasies, the most fun part was issuing threats and imagining how everyone would cave. Our President is not afraid to go all out with threats of "fire and fury" to North Korea, "retaliation such as the world has never seen" to Iran, or a casual remark that he could "wipe" Afghanistan off the map if he doesn't get the response he wants.
  

I thought I had little in common with this President. Now I see: This is the President I always dreamed of when I was 13.

[Photo: Zachary Levi and Jack Dylan Grazer in Shazam! (2019) ]

Super Powers

What if a young teenage boy had super powers and a secret identity? That's the premise of DC's film Shazam!. Lonely orphan Billy Batson (Asher Angel) simply says the eponymous magic name -- anagram of Greek gods including Hercules and Zeus -- and he becomes tall, buff, fast, invulnerable, able to fly and shoot lightning from his fingers. 

I knew this hero in his trademark gold - braided white cape and bright red onesie. In the early 1970s, DC published reprints of him from the 1930s, and revived the character. For understandable reasons, DC now suppresses the fact that Billy Batson's alter - ego was named "Captain Marvel."

For all his power, Billy is still a fourteen - year - old. In this movie version, Billy resists the fostering of his foster family, instead continuing his search for the birth mother who lost her toddler Billy in a crowd. Played by adult actor Zachary Levi, the super - hero is easily distracted, too sure of what he thinks he knows, desperate to be liked and admired. Our super - hero uses his super - powers to perform stunts for social media, to charge cell phones, and to show off for crowds. When the real bad guy shows up with powers to match his own, Billy just wants to quit; his climb out of despair to help his newfound family gives emotional resonance to a movie that's otherwise, light, fun, and funny.

"Ordinary Grace" More than a Mystery

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In William Kent Krueger's novel Ordinary Grace, deaths by "accident, nature, suicide, and murder" befall a small Minnesota town during the summer of 1961 when the narrator was just 13 years old. Yet for me, more gripping than any dramatic reveal of a corpse was Frank's realization about his younger brother: "You're my best friend, Jake. You're my best friend in the whole world. You always have been and you always will be" (196).

Though Krueger is author of the series featuring detective Cork O'Connor, and this novel won the mystery writers' "Edgar" award, the  mystery of who did it is secondary to another kind of mystery of grace in adversity.

[Image: William Kent Krueger. Ordinary Grace. New York: Atria, 2013.]

Our affection for some characters deepens throughout the novel. For example, Frank and his brother Jake "adore"(40) their older sister Ariel. She is "the hope and consummation of [their] mother's own unfilfilled longings," heading to Juilliard in the fall, dating the rich kid Karl Brandt, typing the memoir of Karl's uncle Emil, but always attentive to her little brothers. Frank sees that she has been sneaking out of the house at night, but he promises not to tell. When Frank comes home a mess from mischief that got out of hand, he finds her sobbing at the piano, unaware that he is watching:

"Frankie," she cried leaping from the bench. "Oh, Frankie, are you all right?"
She forgot in an instant whatever was the source of her own suffering and she turned all her attention on me. And I, in my selfish innocence, allowed it. (95)

The mystery of Ariel's sadness is the throughline for the story while Frank is involved in episodes with other town characters. Conflict simmers between daughter and mother about Ariel's decision not to attend Juilliard after all. There's a natural building up of tension in the preparation for the premiere of her original patriotic chorale for the town's Fourth of July, and the mystery of what has happened when she doesn't come home after the concert.

Another character, Gus, has as much growing up to do as Frank does, though Gus is a generation older. He's drunk the first time we see him, getting bailed out of jail by Frank's father, the pastor Nathan Drum. Gus calls the pastor "Captain," having served under him in the war, and Gus now serves him as gravedigger and handyman at the church. With a bad boy grin, he shows Frank how to eavesdrop on the pastor's office visits through the ductwork. But when he and his pal the odious Officer Doyle drag Frank into mischief involving alcohol, fireworks, and animal cruelty, Gus owns up to his part. It's a turning point in Gus's life; in every crisis that follows, Frank can rely on Gus.


Then there's Jake, sweet, empathetic to others, highly intuitive.


Jake's stammer makes him a victim of others in ways that Frank only begins to understand during this summer of 1961. Through Jake, Frank becomes more sensitive to other outsiders in town. That includes Warren, an itinerant Sioux Indian with family ties to a neighbor of the Drums, object of suspicion; the gentle but mentally slow boy Bobby; and even the town's rich man, Emil Brandt, blind and scarred by war, living with his sister Lise, deaf and autistic.


Frank's empathy encompasses even characters we hate. Mean Officer Doyle understands what Frank needs at a critical moment, and bends the law to help him (257). Frank overcomes his fear of a malevolent older teen named Morris Engdahl, who ends up an object of Frank's sympathy (304).


While Frank always reveres his father Nathan, he comes to appreciate his father's inner life, his wisdom and vulnerability. Inebriated, Gus says, "Captain, you're still a son of a bitch.... They're all dead because of you, Captain" (15); the boys wonder what Gus means, but don't ask. When the boys discover a corpse, Nathan opens up about the shock of seeing death on the battlefield, admitting "You never get used to it"(37). He is offering the boys a chance to share their feelings, but he "gave no sign that he was disappointed in our silence" (38). Trying to help the family of a veteran who abuses his wife and child, Nathan seems to seek fatherly counsel himself from Emil Brandt, a man blinded in war:

"Sometimes, Nathan, I think that it wasn't so much the war as what we took into the war. Whatever cracks were already there the war forced apart, and what we might otherwise have kept inside came spilling out.... You may have gone to war thinking you were going to be a hotshot lawyer afterward, but I believe that deep inside of you there was always the seed of a minister."
"And in you?"
"A blind man." Brandt smiled. (68)

Nathan handles pastoral duties with competence and compassion. Frank, eavesdropping on a counseling session with a contentious married couple, hears his father ask how they first met, redirecting them toward what drew them to each other in the first place (87). Eavesdropping again, Frank hears his father's calm, accepting response to a young man distraught about being a homosexual "freak" (243). When Frank sees his father, his tower of strength, weeping in a rainstorm (192), we weep, too. When, for once, the pastor is at a loss for words, there's a kind of miracle, the title's "ordinary grace"(270).

Aside from the pastor, statements about faith are largely negative. Frank's mother Ruth is a fan of Ayn Rand (18) and chronically disappointed that her "hotshot lawyer" came back from the war to be a poorly paid country preacher. When crisis hits the family, Ruth is so angry at Nathan for running to God, that she leaves him; Frank feels that he's praying to "empty air" (174); and Jake is so angry at God that he won't even bow his head at grace for meals (183). Ruth tells Frank, "There is no God to care about us. We've got only ourselves and each other" (224), but Frank thinks silently how faith had fortified his father. When things seems to be at their worst, Frank and Jake are uplifted simply by the "good scent of summer... the fresh wet of the laundry [on the] clothesline... the luscious mud smell of the river two blocks away" (237). Frank reflects at the funeral home how "ritual is the railing we hold to...that keeps us upright and connected until the worst is past" (259). And Jake sums up everything he learns about "grace" when he says it means "not being afraid anymore" (282).


At the burial of a vagrant, the pastor speaks from the heart in his inspirational homily for just Frank and the pallbearers:

Even this man who is unknown to us was known to God and God was his constant companion. [God] never promised that we wouldn't suffer, that we wouldn't feel despair and loneliness and confusion and despeartion. What he did promise was that in our suffering we would never be alone. And though we may sometimes make ourselves blind and deaf to his presence he is beside us and around us and within us always. (71)

The sermon for his own daughter deepens that thought, taking off from the cry of Jesus on the cross, "My God, why have you forsaken me?"

Aside from the story and its wisdom, Krueger's technical expertise gives the novel some highpoints of joy, when, in a single line, there's a fitting - into - place of theme, conversation, event. For example, at the conclusion of that chess game between Nathan and Emil, during which each move has been described aloud for the benefit of the blind man, all the threads of their conversation dovetail with the winning move (69). Another time, his mother takes his hand at the funeral, pulling together emotions and conversation and story in a gesture (258). Most satisfying of all is the moment, alluded to in the title, that ties together themes of faith, the story of a family, and the character of Jake.


As I review the book, typing this, I keep running across more details that I want to explore. This is one mystery novel that warrants reading again.

Thanks to my friend Nancy Calhoun for giving me her copy; I've already started to read Krueger's Iron Lake, first in his detective series.

[See my responses to other Krueger books]

|| → Use arrows to see the books in sequence.

Gratitude for Mia

Mia, curled up on a cushion nearby, naps as she has done most hours of the past five days. There have been flashes of Mia's usual curiosity and delight, as when our friend Susan has walked with us in the cemetery.

Still, listening to Mia (see blog post of 07/17/2019), I hear that it's time: she is not taking pleasure in her own life, uninterested in food or snacks, letting the squirrels run rampant on her deck, giving only a couple of slow tail - wags when I offer to take her for a walk.  I've made an appointment this afternoon for her with the doctor who years ago repaired Mia's tendon, who diagnosed Mia's cancer fifteen months ago.


Mia, here is a favorite photo of you from just a few months ago. In it, you've just come running to the door of the kitchen, having heard the jingle of my car keys; you are politely seated, head tilted, ears cocked, tail wagging, eyes searching mine for a clue: will we be going for a walk?


I am so thankful that I've had seven years with you. I am grateful also for Susan, who has been a companion for you through to the final hour.


PS from the following day: When I went upstairs to change for our appointment with the vet, Mia surprised me by jumping up to join me.  She hasn't been upstairs much these past few months. She hopped on the bed to watch me.  I knelt at the bedside, she laid her head on my left arm, I stroked her head and cheek with my right hand, and she closed her eyes, so ready to sleep that I thought she might have already passed right there.

Moon Landing: Also Remember What Might Have Been

Admiration, amusement, and somehow, tears come from listening to NPR Stories this week remembering the moon landing of July 20, 1969.

The Pulse from WHYY tells us that the retro - rockets fired two seconds late, putting the lunar landing module two miles off - base, heading straight to a "football - arena - size" crater ringed with automobile - sized boulders, "Pretty rocky area" said pilot Neil Armstrong. The computer -- less powerful than my cell phone -- was flashing an unfamiliar code that turned out to be an "executive overload" alert, warning that too many tasks threatened to overwhelm its capabilities and it would abort the mission if one more task were added to the queue. Radio communication with Mission Control broke up. And Armstrong had to get the landing right the first time; he had only enough fuel to fire for 30 seconds.

Aldrin said, "Soft touch," to describe the touchdown in lunar powder; he remembers that neither astronaut was aware that they had fully settled on the surface. No wonder Mission Control responded that they could breathe again after Armstrong said, "The Eagle has landed."


We learned how the dust, unhindered by air or gravity, shot off in all directions. We learned how the moon smells: dust in the cabin when they took off their helmets smelled like "the air after a fireworks display."


At that point, there was still the plausible horror that the lunar module would be unable to re - connect with Michael Collins' capsule, orbiting the moon, waiting to use the moon's gravity to fire them all back at earth.

[Photo, left to right: Neil Armstrong, Michael Collins, Edwin "Buzz" Aldrin]




What brought tears was the text of a speech prepared for President Nixon by his speech writer William Safire, to be delivered "in the event of a moon disaster":

Fate has ordained that the men who came to the moon to explore in peace shall stay on the moon to rest in peace. These brave men, Neil Armstrong and Edwin Aldrin, know that there is no hope for their recovery. But they also know that there is hope for mankind in their sacrifice.

I have the same reaction when I re - read a terse announcement that General Eisenhower wrote in his own hand before he knew how the D - Day invasion worked out:

Our landings in the Cherbourg-Havre area have failed to gain a satisfactory foothold and I have withdrawn the troops.My decision to attack at this time and place was based on the best information available. The troops, the air, and the navy did all that bravery and devotion to duty could do. If any blame or fault attaches to the attempt it is mine alone.

(A photo of the paper is available at MHN: Military History Now)
The day was a horror for the men who lived it, but their work to establish bases on land made the liberation of Hitler's captive nations possible. Eisenhower had made a gamble, launching the attack in bad weather; his willingness to take responsibility fills me with admiration.

Then, there are the words that President Reagan spoke when disaster did occur, just what we needed to hear. From From Nasa's web site here, here are highlights, the parts I remember from 1987:

...The Challenger Seven... were aware of the dangers, but overcame them and did their jobs brilliantly. We mourn seven heroes: Michael Smith, Dick Scobee, Judith Resnik, Ronald McNair, Ellison Onizuka, Gregory Jarvis, and Christa McAuliffe. We mourn their loss as a nation together. 

For the families of the seven, we cannot bear, as you do, the full impact of this tragedy. But we feel the loss, and we're thinking about you so very much. Your loved ones were daring and brave, and they had that special grace, that special spirit that says, "Give me a challenge and I'll meet it with joy." They had a hunger to explore the universe and discover its truths. They wished to serve, and they did. They served all of us. 

...And I want to say something to the schoolchildren of America who were watching the live coverage of the shuttle's takeoff. I know it is hard to understand, but sometimes painful things like this happen. It's all part of the process of exploration and discovery. It's all part of taking a chance and expanding man's horizons. The future doesn't belong to the fainthearted; it belongs to the brave. The Challenger crew was pulling us into the future, and we'll continue to follow them. 

...We'll continue our quest in space. There will be more shuttle flights and more shuttle crews and, yes, more volunteers, more civilians, more teachers in space. Nothing ends here; our hopes and our journeys continue. 

...I want to add that I wish I could talk to every man and woman who works for NASA or who worked on this mission and tell them: "Your dedication and professionalism have moved and impressed us for decades. And we know of your anguish. We share it." 

...The crew of the space shuttle Challenger honored us by the manner in which they lived their lives. We will never forget them, nor the last time we saw them, this morning, as they prepared for their journey and waved goodbye and "slipped the surly bonds of earth" to "touch the face of God."

P.S. for the record: Newly turned 10 years old, I was unaware of the dangers for Apollo 11, just that my dreams of space travel and friendly aliens with super powers were on the edge of reality. My family watched during a visit to the Ohio home George and Marcella, who'd been my parents helpful neighbors at the University of Illinois at the time of my birth.

Close Call on Bike

After an hour with the dental hygienist, I was eager to get on the Silver Comet Trail for a quick ride. I started at Powder Springs, GA in sunshine with scattered fluffy white clouds; mid - way back from Smyrna, around mile 12,  wind was whipping a downpour into little stinging pellets of water. After about five minutes of that, I was glad to come to a small tunnel at an overpass, where one other cyclist was already sheltered, standing at the entrance. Just as I passed him, he said, "Whoa! Look at that!" A thick tree had just fallen across the path just behind me. As I prepared to photograph it, an older gentleman stopped to pull segments of the trunk off the path. Here's the photo:

I sent this photo to friends with Peter Benchley's famous remark, "I need to get out of this wet suit and into a dry martini."

Listening to Mia

Mia, I hear you bark a warning to the squirrels in our neighborhood: Bow! Bow, wowowow. It's music to me, because it tells me you still want things.  [Photo: Squirrel! A few years ago.]


Your doctor has warned me that the tumor that started in your bladder 15 months ago has now destroyed one kidney, and is working on choking the other. When that happens, the end must come right away.


Already, this morning, you watched me from your cushioned mat at the entrance to our den, while I searched for pee pads that absorbed overnight overflow from your surgically - reduced bladder. This morning, just three, nothing spilled on floor or cushions: good girl! Finished with that, I asked if you wanted to eat, and you lifted your head and cocked your ears; in no time, you emptied the bowl.


This is so different from yesterday, when I couldn't find you in any room, on the deck, or down the stairs in the yard, and you still didn't come when I called with food.  I found you curled up in a corner of the patio behind a chair, trembling. I got the message that you were in pain, and I wondered if you were telling me that the time had come to take you out of this life.  [Photo: Mia in February of this year.]


We went through this same cycle a week ago, and I actually made the appointment. One last good weekend, I thought, and then... My friend Jason came to visit, and you rose to the occasion, excited to sit at his feet with your chew bone while we talked into the night. When Monday came, you dragged me across the parking lot at Publix to chase a delivery truck, and I called off the appointment.

Yesterday in the hot afternoon, as we were walking with our friend Susan through our neighborhood cemetery, Susan poured her bottled water for you into my cupped hands. You lapped up the liquid, took a look around, nose quivering to pick up scents in the breeze, then lapped up some more, your tongue exploring all the creases in my palm. "Language" literally means "tongue," and your tongue was saying that life is good.

Mia, keep telling me what you want.

[Photos: (top)Mia and me, on my birthday, after I called to cancel our appointment. (below) Sunday, Mia with Susan in Marietta's Confederate cemetery.]

See my page Loving Dogs for a curated list of articles about dogs in my life and in the lives of authors.  [Photo below: Mia on July 16.]

60 Miles at Almost 60: Unplugged

The day I turned 34, I rode 34 miles around Oxford, Mississippi with friend (and former student) Buck Cooper. That night at dinner with Buck's family and a visiting priest, I announced that would be the start of a birthday tradition, to ride my age in miles. The priest prophesied my obituary: "92 - year - old man dies on birthday...."

Today, with doctor's appointments scheduled during the week of my birthday, I did my 60 mile ride early. Starting at Mile 0 of the Silver Comet Trail, I went to mile 30, just shy of the trail's most spectacular landmark, the vast and acoustically - miraculous Brushy Mountain tunnel.

[Photo: Selfie at mile 30, 30 more to go. The Brushy Mountain tunnel is just around the corner; you can tell, because its vast shaded space cools the air hundreds of yards on either side of the entrances. Sent this to friend Susan, but was too far out for the message to reach her!]

Today I rode the first 40 miles unplugged from media, listening to cicadas, birds, and the cadence of my own pedaling. I'd heard Public Radio comedian Peter Sagal talk about unplugging during long - distance running, echoing Pascal's observation of 400 years ago, "People today are afraid of being left alone with their own thoughts." What did I think about? Mom; the Nicene Creed; blogposts to write; my buddy Jason's visit later this week, Mia's last weeks with cancer, and how I wished I'd brought a second Almond Energy Bar!

60 miles, a little more than three and a half hours, 16.5 m.p.h.

Beatles, for Boomers

Introducing the director of Yesterday, a film made with Beatles music, the radio host admitted caring not so much as Boomers do about the songs. "But I get it," she said, "the Beatles were good."

No, she does not get it. For Boomers, the Beatles never were just a rock band to be ranked among others, but something different in kind, Apple to oranges.


For me, a late Boomer, the Beatles had the same cachet as sex.


I gawked while a dozen teenaged cousins spun Beatles LPs on their stereos (wondrous new technology at the time). I had my little - kids' version, "Alvin and the Chipmunks Sing the Beatles." My older sister Kim and her friends read Beatles fan magazines, and I listened in when Kim called the radio station to vote against playing "Back in the USSR," danceable though it was, because its words promoted Communism. (We missed the whole Beach Boys parody connection.)


Then, Kim found out what the lyrics of songs really meant in a library book of illustrated Beatles songs. (What other group would have a shelf full of books about them?) She explained how "Day Tripper" was about sexual things, "if you know what I mean." (I didn't.) The fifth grade's coolest guy gave me the lowdown in his basement. While his Beatles LPs played, Alan explained the facts of life: the hallucinogenic "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds" was about LSD (true) and "Hey Jude" was about heroin, how you "let her under your skin" (not); Paul's bare feet on the cover of Abbey Road signaled to the world that the real Paul McCartney had died, a secret confirmed by the distorted voice in "Strawberry Fields Forever" that says "I buried Paul." Also, Ringo wasn't very smart.


After the Beatles broke up in 1970, the music continued to play in basement parties and automobile tape decks for the rest of my teens. You could start any tune, and others would join in singing. For a pick - up line, guaranteed ice - breaker, we could always ask, "John, or Paul?"


Even behind the Iron Curtain during the coldest days of the Cold War, Beatles melted the ice. In 1977, our Westminster Ensemble, touring Communist - dominated Poland, encountered neighborhood kids in Gdansk's town square singing "Yellow Submarine." We joined in. Our guitarist David Weissman played "Blackbird" at our concerts.


The other thing that set Beatles apart was their artistic development. I myself owned two Beatles LPs, just four years apart but in different worlds. Meet the Beatles was a boy band's program of short, catchy originals about girls and holding hands, along with covers of Chuck Berry's "Roll Over Beethoven" and a Broadway balad, "Till There Was You." Magical Mystery Tour included much longer songs, surreal lyrics with electronic effects, a brass band for "Penny Lane," and a psychedelic instrumental "Flying" based on 12 - bar blues. Dad's eight - track tapes (the Red and Blue compilations) filled in the music in between, such as the exuberant love song "Got to Get You Into My Life" with its off - beat rhythm and challenging intervals; and "Eleanor Rigby," a string quartet the sole accompaniment for a haunting and clever lyric about an elderly exemplar of "all the lonely people":

Eleanor Rigby
Wearing the face that she keeps in a jar by the door:
Who is it for?

The Beatles' growth as artists, album by album, stimulated our imaginations. So we talked endlessly about the creative friction between sardonic rocker John Lennon and cheerfully eclectic Paul McCartney, about the contributions of spiritual seeker George Harrison, about the way the songs in Sgt. Pepper develop a theme. Wikipedia's article cites Jonathan Gould's book Can't Buy Me Love: The Beatles, Britain, and America. New York: Three Rivers Press, 2007:

According to Gould, the Beatles changed the way people listened to popular music and experienced its role in their lives. From what began as the Beatlemania fad, the group's popularity grew into what was seen as an embodiment of sociocultural movements of the decade.

I was there, and that's what it felt like, even as it happened.

My Life in Dogs

"Maybe we should look from our dogs' perspective," my nephew Craig suggested last month. I'd conveyed sad news that my sweet Mia's cancer has grown back, and her time is short. The brevity of our dogs' lives makes each day with them more precious, I'd said. But Craig observed, "From their point of view, we're great immortal beings that care for them. We're their miracle."

It's a beautiful thought. I repeated it this week at lunch with my mentor Frank Boggs. Remembering his father's phone call to his dorm with news that the family's Spitz had died, a memory 75 years old, Frank teared up. He cried again, recalling the German Shepherd who 40 years ago would sit on his feet and press his head up against Frank's thigh, inviting a neck rub.

How dogs bless us, how we bless dogs -- is a theme I've developed over years of blogging about my own dogs. For photos and articles about Brandy, her immediate predecessors Bo, Luis, Mia, and Mom's Sassy, and for reflections on dog - related books, see my page, "Loving Dogs."

The rest of this article is dedicated to the dogs of earlier decades of my life, going back to Dad's beloved Peggy, whose influence on Dad lasted all his life.

Cleo first appeared at the carport door of my home in Jackson, MS, when I was about to take old Churchill for his walk. Churchill and I stood in the open doorway, surprised, while she bowed, stretched, and stepped past us into the house, tail high and swishing. While she chewed on both of us, I tried a couple of weeks to find her true owner before accepting her as our own. Her signature whine was a yawn, from low to high, four octaves, like the jazz singer Cleo Laine. Flirtatious, playful, she added years to Churchill's life, and grew suddenly old when Churchill died. That same month, I moved with her to the Atlanta area, and I adopted Bo, a younger version of Churchill, and she perked up again. With Bo, she lived a good seven more years, until the day in 2004 when, following a walk and ride in the car, she suddenly seemed to be in great pain. I left her with the emergency vet for tests and overnight observation, but she died before the vet could run even one test on her. A favorite memory: When I came home in a wheelchair from six weeks at the hospital, Bo danced and barked, but Cleo stood on her hind legs, hooked her paws over my wrists, leaned into my face, eye to eye, and moaned. Was that a welcome home? A plea? I took it as a reprimand: Don't you ever leave us like that again!

[Photo: (above)My young friend Jason, some years after he was a 7th grader in my class, who got me involved with cycling. He knew Cleo from the day she chose me. That wild - eyed look and prancing step of hers were typical. (below) Cleo in repose late in her life.]

Churchill, a pure - bred Yellow Lab, had lived four years with the Headmaster of the school where I taught in Jackson, MS. When the Headmaster moved,  he offered Churchill to the young baseball coach Rick Edie, who rented a room in my house. We brought Churchill in, built a wire fence around the yard, and adored him. There was a scary moment during our house party when Churchill stumbled, trembled, and seized up. Instantly we carried him like a piece of furniture to the back of my station wagon. We feared poison; it was epilepsy. When Rick moved to Australia, I got custody. Strong, fast, friendly, curious, Churchill was a classy guy. A favorite memory is what happened when I took him for a walk at our North Campus, where there's a lake. Without hesitation, he pulled the leash out of my hand and jumped in. Instinct, I guess. That same walk, he encountered a bull on the other side of a wire fence: like mirror images, both males lowered their heads, growled, and shot up the hair on the backs of their necks.

[Photo: When I took Churchill to a soccer game, he was a kid magnet. Here, from a portion of a photo collage, is Churchill, embraced by eighth grader Scott Jones.]

Colonel was a West Highland Terrier brought over from Scotland by my grandmother's friend, an interior decorator whose home was overstuffed with brittle antiques. What was she thinking? So we shipped her "little Elstead" down to Atlanta, re-christened him "Colonel Sanders" for his white beard, and gave him the attention and playtime he needed. Fiercely territorial, he alerted us to every dog or person who passed by the house, and bit at the window frames in his excitement; Dad had to build a wire shield across the windows. When a neighbor's child pulled Colonel's tail, Colonel snapped at the child; so we regretfully passed our Westie to a rural couple where we thought he'd be happier running free. Instead, he ran off their property, and they called to let us know. Mom and Dad rushed out in two cars, and Mom found him howling on the shoulder of a country road. When she got out of the car, he ran to her, and never left her side for the rest of his life. In his later years, the cortisone shots that helped with itchy skin also deprived him of the use of his hind legs, but that never stopped him; he ran just as fast on two legs, and lifted himself up our stairs (though we had to carry him down). He also adored Missy. A favorite memory of mine is watching him gently licking her ears while she lay in the sun, eyes closed.

[Photos: a collage of Missy and Colonel in my bedroom, ca. 1972; and Colonel on Mom's lap, shortly after the rescue that made her lifelong object of his adoration. Missy, lying in the sun, is just visible behind Mom's chair.]




Missy, our Dalmatian.  In fifth grade, assigned to describe something, I wrote about Missy. I'm glad I did; each line recalls her more vividly than the photographs do:

She takes her chewed up bone in her paws and holds it up to her mouth like a baby with a bottle. She rolls on her back and deliberately drops it and stretches her neck back and looks at it, expecting somebody to take it and throw it for her to chase. If nobody does, she grunts, "Mmmmm!" and grabs the bone, shaking her head back and forth, growling like a mad dog.

No matter how she chews, her eyes invite you to come and take the bone away. When you do before she can get away with it ... it's a tug of war, which she usually loses. Then she jumps up at you, barking, until you throw it.

Sometimes she takes it in her mouth and throws it herself and chases it. She prances with front feet up in the air, then the hind legs up. Then it starts all over again.

Gabby, a toy poodle, didn't belong with little children. I never think of her without regret, although I believe she learned to trust me in her later years. Mom had been afraid of dogs before this tiny, dainty poodle cured her. After a few years, we decided that Gabby would be much happier with my Grandmother, and the joy was mutual; Grandmother's decline began when Gabby died. Once, I sat alone on Grandmother's sofa, while she spoke to my great - grandmother Mama Craig beside me. "I know Mama Craig died, but she's as real as you are, sitting there." I suggested that, so long as the dead were visiting her, she might ask Mama Craig to bring back Gabby; Grandmother laughed at that idea. A favorite memory is of Gabby's return home from her weekly shampoo and pedicure, ribboned and perfumed, toenails tapping the basement floor.

[Photo: Gabby, on the table at my Grandmother's patio, Cincinnati, ca. 1969]

Peggy was part Doberman. My dad remembered when a man stopped his car, said, "Kid, want a dog?" and shoved Peggy at him, driving off quickly. Mom was afraid of dogs, and so I believe Peggy stayed with Dad's parents after the marriage. Dad always remembered her fondly, and I believe he was thinking of Peggy when he convinced Mom to adopt Sassy in 2007.

[Photos: My father Thomas W. Smoot at 12, with Peggy, in Cincinnati. The year would be 1945. Below: When his children had left the nest, he convinced my mother to adopt a show dog, Frosty, and her amiable offspring, whom Dad named "KC" for his company Kor - Chem Technology (KCT), where KC charmed Dad's business clients and competitors alike.]

Freedom is No Piece of Cake

July 4th was on Fr. Daron Vroon's mind Sunday when he set aside his prepared sermon to riff on some questions that arose in the adult Sunday school class.

What is "freedom?" Is it being able to get what we want? I think Fr. Daron's short answer would turn that around: It's being able to want what God wants us to want.. He was taking off from Galatians 5.1, 13-25, a text that tells us to be slaves to one another, not slaves to our passions.


So far, this wasn't so different from my own reading of this epistle. But then Fr. Daron offered a modern spin on an ancient way of looking at ourselves. Ancients thought of a human being comprised of spirit, mind, and body. In proper relationship, "Spirit" is the CEO who sets the goals, "Mind" is the COO who figures out how to achieve them, and the Body carries out the plan.

But, Fr. Daron continued, when we reverse that order, the Body sets the goals. He imagined coming home with a luscious chocolate cake. "I want it," says the Body, "I want it all." The Mind figures out how to conceal the cake until the kids are in bed so that the Body can eat the whole thing. The Spirit? "It's homeless," Fr. Daron concluded.

What would this scenario look like with the Spirit in charge? The Spirit says, "Glory be to God, for the gift of this beautiful cake. Let's allot portions to share with others."


Fr. Daron used the day's reading in Hebrew Scriptures to illustrate. He helped us to understand the story of Elijah's placing the mantle of prophet on the shoulders of Elisha (1 Kings 19.15 ff.), who asks Elijah permission to go kiss his father goodbye. Elijah walks away saying, "Go back again. What have I done for you?" Fr. Daron translated that as, "Never mind. I guess you're not willing to be chosen." In response, Elisha, choosing his own course, sacrifices all his twelve oxen, freely giving up his entire livelihood to God, and runs to catch up with Elijah. [Image: Elijah and Elisha, by Bloemart, 17th century]


Of course, Jesus is the perfect model of free obedience. I'm reminded of something we read in EFM, theologian Diogenes Allen's emphasis on freedom at the Creation, when the Creator, for love's sake, made us free, opening Himself to the rejection that the Cross represents.


The clergy help to choose the hymns, and this one, 706 for communion, encapsulated the sermon:

In your mercy, Lord you called me,
taught my sin - filled heart and mind,
else this world had still enthralled me,
and to glory kept me blind.

Lord, I did not freely choose you
till by grace you set me free;
for my heart would still refuse you
had your love not chosen me.

Now my heart sets none above you
for your grace alone I thirst,
knowing well, that, if I love you,
you, O Lord, have loved me first.

Words by Josiah Conder 1789 - 1855, alt. Charles Price, b. 1929

"Come From Away": Come Away Feeling Good

The creators of the Broadway musical Come From Away pack ninety minutes with dance and songs that blend one into another so fast that the audience doesn't always get time to applaud. The fast pace is an achievement, considering it's about being stuck in one place with nothing to do!

Come From Away concerns days following the terror attacks of 9/11/2001, when American air space was closed and 38 planes landed at the small airport in Gander, Newfoundland. Twelve actors portray both the travelers and the natives who host them during days of uncertain waiting. My friend Suzanne and I saw the touring company Saturday, June 29, in Atlanta's Fox Theatre, where the audience stood and cheered for the cast and the Celtic band that accompanies nearly every minute of the show.

[Photo by Matthew Murphy: The setting by Beowulf Borritt is a neutral space, trees suggesting the forested island, the slatted wall with scrim for projections and occasional openings of doors into rooms or the hatch to the hull of a plane, and chairs that suggest bars, offices, and seats on a plane.]

Creators Irene Sankoff and David Hein make each number a collage of their characters' perspectives on a theme. "Welcome to the Rock" gives us life in Newfoundland with pithy asides to introduce the mayor, the teacher, the ASPCA director, and others, going about their business before news breaks of the terror attacks in New York and Washington. Then, with a simple reconfiguration of chairs on stage and slight shifts in costume, those same actors become passengers, anxious when their planes are diverted to they - know - not - where for they - know - not - why. We become well - acquainted with some twenty endearing characters played by a mere twelve actors. For example, actor Nick Duckart gets some of the funniest lines as "Kevin J.," partner and "sexy-tary" to "Kevin T.," but then dons a prayercap to play Egyptian passenger "Ali," who gets our sympathy when he faces unfounded suspicion and even hostility everywhere he turns.


With so much fluidity in the action, Sankoff and Hein give us some places to rest in one spot, numbers that naturally stand out for that difference. There's one solo, "I am Here," sung by "Hannah" (Danielle Thomas), a mother unable to reach her son in New York during the week after the attack. The prayer of St. Francis (Lord, make me an instrument of your peace) sets the base line for an interweaving of Muslim and Orthodox "Prayers". When anxieties boil over in a song called "On the Edge," the natives host a party where they enact a local ritual to make Newfoundlanders from those who "come from away." (Drinking and kissing a fish are involved.) A pilot, "Beverley" (Becky Gulsvig) recounts how she realized her lifelong ambition to be captain of a plane, and her fear that the planes, parked in mud as a storm approaches, will never be able to leave the island.


Local radio host Lois Reitzes (NPR station WABE) interviewed actress Gulsvig along with the real - life pilot she portrays, Captain Beverley Bass. We learned that Sankoff and Hein introduced themselves to Bass at the ten - year reunion at Gander, Newfoundland, collecting memories of the ordeal from her and others. The creators scaffolded the show on a simple day - by - day account of what happened on the ground, and filled it out with the real - life participants' memories of personal anecdotes and reflections. Bass says she heard nothing more about a musical until she was invited to the premiere of the show nearly seven years later.


I'm reminded of a Broadway classic also constructed from numerous interviews, A Chorus Line. In a theatre piece built from so many strands, there won't be through - line with some big surprising climax, but there is the cumulative effect of strangers coming to love each other: the people of Newfoundland, the people who "came from away," and us.