Meeting again with the shipmates with whom I set sail as a youth
& more arts and culture news than is usual in the Picayune Sentinel
8-3-2023 (issue No. 99)
This week
My reflections on getting together with my college housemates
Whatever happened to that sports reporter on my high school newspaper?
My old man has still got it — Jens Zorn is generating amazingly beautiful, significant sculptures at age 92
Re:Tweets — Featuring the winner of the visual tweets poll and this week’s finalists
Tune of the Week — “Twilight is Stealing,” nominated by the Twilight Stealers
Errata — The long-overdue introduction of a corrections feature
I’m at my annual mini college-reunion on Cape Cod this week, so this issue will not be touching on the news of the week. I’ll begin with an excerpt the 2011 column I wrote when our reunion tradition began:
Gathering
Even before I reached the halfway buoy of life — roughly age 40, statistically speaking — I was fond of the apt but brutal nautical metaphor "headed back into port" to describe the declining phase of a person’s journey.
We set sail as youths. The seas are often rough and the course uncharted, but the horizon of possibility and wonder still recedes before us. If nothing else we have time.
Then at some point, usually well after it has become a reality, we realize we're on the homeward leg. Not that it's necessarily a clear, straight voyage without detours, adventures or choppy waters ahead, but that we sense the inevitable harbor in the distance and the melancholy urgency of our approach.
The metaphor came up last weekend when I got together with two shipmates out in the appropriately oceanic setting of Cape Cod.
In college, we'd lived on the same dorm hall and then in the same rental house. We figured the last time we were under one roof together was sometime in the late 1980s, before it was clear that our connection would survive the geographical and professional distances that had even then opened up among us.
Before, even, we knew why it mattered. Friends come and go, particularly when you're young and always finding yourself in new situations. At times it feels as though there's an endless supply of new people cycling in to replace those who are cycling out for one reason or another.
In fact, old friends can feel like — and here I beg your pardon for torturing this metaphor of mine — anchors. They've known you at your worst, your most confused, your least wholesome. And it's hard to reinvent yourself in the eyes of someone who's fished you out of a toilet stall after you've drunk yourself unconscious because your girlfriend dumped you. Hypothetically speaking, of course.
But those very memories, leaden as they are, make old friendships the easiest and most comforting of all.
What did we do on Cape Cod? Nothing, really. We'd planned to play golf but the weather was rotten, so we took long walks, ate long meals and yapped and yapped and yapped. From the minute I met one of the guys at the Boston airport Friday night for the drive to the other guy's house in West Falmouth, Mass., until I said "this was fun, let's do it again before so long" on Monday morning, we talked.
About everything and nothing. Our kids. Our wives. Our jobs. Politics. Sports. Books. Bad jokes. Old times. Encroaching ailments. The future.
It was during a walk along a beachfront road that I brought up the notion that now, entering our mid-50s, we're indisputably headed back to port. The shore's getting closer, but we don't know how close. We've made most of the big decisions we'll ever make, a startling realization once it hits you, but, with luck, the adventure is far from over.
And, with luck, we won't face it without our shipmates. They come into our lives through circumstance and whim. They're not obvious at first, the way sweethearts tend to be, nor are they always close in a literal sense.
But somehow they last. The best of them stick around longer than anyone but family to care about you, laugh with and at you, give you advice no one else can, and forgive you as necessary. It's not so much a reunion when you get together as a resumption.
The conversation never ends, it's merely interrupted until next time, when it will be even harder to pretend that there will always be a next time.
This year we are planning on reading aloud excerpts from our letters and journals from the old days. Hilarity and mortification will ensue.
Last week’s winning tweet
If the Barbie movie were anything like real life Barbie there would be a lot of decapitation scenes. — @BuckyIsotope
Anytime I need to leave my name for a server to yell out later when my order is ready I always say it’s “Marco.” — @wakeupangry
These two were in near dead heat in the voting. Both are quite worthy winners
Here are this week’s nominees, and here is the direct link to the new poll.
When local journalists clapped back
More than 50 years ago, scores of rank-and-file Chicago journalists defied tradition and openly challenged their own colleagues. After all the major papers endorsed Mayor Richard J. Daley for re-election over Richard Friedman, an independent Democrat challenging Daley as a Republican, the staffers published a rebuttal citing Daley’s “shameful” record.
I was unaware of this fascinating bit of Chicago history until writer Cate Plys filled me in on it. Her account — now being serially posted to her Roseland, Chicago: 1972 Substack — begins like this:
It’s 1971. As Mayor Daley finishes an unprecedented fourth term in office and campaigns for an unprecedented fifth, his political power appears—of course— unprecedented. Not to mention impregnable.
But 1971 Chicago newspaper reporters are ready for a fight. This is the forgotten story of how some reporters charged into political battle wielding their traditional 20th century weapon—the typewriter.
The war of written words broke out after years of tension—16 years to be precise, Mayor Daley’s first four terms in office. As you’ll see, we can consider the Great Reporter Rebellion as both a battle between two institutional actors—Mayor Daley versus reporters—and as a civil war between newspaper publishers and their staffs. So that’s reporters rebelling against the Boss, and their bosses. There were internal divisions among the reporters too, of course. And like so many interesting ethical questions, you can argue every way ‘til Sunday over who was right.
Plys, who was a staff writer for the Reader and op-ed columnist for the Sun-Times and Tribune, is an extremely thorough reporter and is providing all the context and background you’ll need to wrap your mind around this story.
It prompted me to regret that those of us in the Tribune newsroom didn’t get up on our hind legs in 2016 and disseminate a rebuttal to our editorial board’s endorsement of fringey libertarian Gary Johnson for president.
Michael J. Miles, Bach in saddle again
Friday, Chicago musician Michael J. Miles will release “American Bach Revisited,” a gorgeous album of J.S. Bach’s Cello Suites I and III, as well as Miles’ original composition “Chicago Suite,” all performed on the banjo (with cello accompaniment).
I asked Miles — who for many years was part of the “Songs of Good Cheer” ensemble at the Old Town School of Folk Music with me, Mary Schmich and others — a few questions via email. Here’s a lightly edited version of our exchange:
EZ: Tell me more about your inspiration to play Bach in the folk tradition.
MM: I’ve always been inspired by harmony. My first recording, that Pete Seeger embraced, was called “Counterpoint.” There I took traditional tunes — “Whiskey Before Breakfast,” “Little Sadie,” “Red Haired Boy” and others — and wrote a counterpoint harmony line.
A simple distinction of “counterpoint” harmony is that it has an independence from the melody. Harmony in folk music and popular music is most often parallel, meaning that when the melody goes up, the harmony goes up; melody goes down, harmony goes down. That can sound rich and beautiful — Beatles, Crosby Stills & Nash, Simon and Garfunkel and bluegrass harmonies are dominantly parallel.
Counterpoint is more of a written construct where, as a composer/arranger, it is something usually done on paper, not spontaneously. And the counterpoint line will have a melodic and rhythm shape of its own, independent of but in harmony with the melody. Bach was such a master of counterpoint that they reverse-engineered how he did what he did and came up with a set of rules called “strict counterpoint” that is taught in music schools today.
While I was drawn to folk music, I was simultaneously drawn to other music styles especially classical, and especially where classical and folk overlap. Bach lived from 1685-1750. Those dates and his lifetime mark the Baroque era of music. Prior to the Baroque era of music was the Renaissance. Music of the Renaissance could be described as “folky” as it is tuneful, hummable, memorable.
A good example that you may know of is Turlough O’Carolan, the blind Irish harpist and Antonio Vivaldi. O’Carolan was born 15 years and Vivaldi was born eight years before Bach. Vivaldi is considered “classical” because he wrote for and worked with orchestras. O’Carolan is considered folky because he played the harp as an itinerant soloist.
Harmonically, they are very similar as their biggest difference is context. Strip away the context of the orchestra and the Irish harp and put Vivaldi melodies alongside O’Carolan, and you find lots of similarity — both of which translate right to the banjo because they are diatonic, tuneful, memorable, etc.
So it is with Bach. Of course, he can be dense and impassioned and literally dizzying to hear, so much so that it can be off-putting. But he was born in the long shadow of the Renaissance and there are many of his works that include the tuneful and “folky” character of the Renaissance. The Cello Suites and the Violin Partitas include numerous dance movements: Allemande, Courante, Sarabande, Boureé, Minuet and Gigue. Each of these have a distinct meter and groove—considerably different but not too far away from fiddle tunes. It is understood that he wrote most of them in 1720, at age 35 in the town of Kothën. (I’m going to Kothën in October, with my banjo, where I’ll find where he lived and sit on his front step and play until somebody chases me away.) These are lively, tuneful, dense, complex with modulations and thrilling.
Playing Bach was appealing to me and addictive because I felt like I was gazing into the eyes of wonder. Very few banjo players had ever really taken him on in a serious way. Of those who tried, no one played entire suites of his work, and absolutely no one had ever done this in clawhammer style.
It wasn’t going to make the phone ring with gigs or fill concert halls, but in very short order, once I started, I didn’t really want to play anything else.
Add to that, while I was doing this, I was in a custody battle for my daughter Annie, which I won. You don’t want to know the truth-is-stranger-than-fiction details, but I mention it because my outside world, at the time, was tangled with challenging wealthy evil, the legal system and the unlimited strata of bad behavior. Toe-to-toe as needed. But then I’d come home and close the door and be face-to-face with Bach and what I was experiencing as the most magnificent music on earth. And it was just me and him. The yin and twang, I mean yang, of the banjo.
What made it musically possible to deliver Bach were the techniques and modifications I used on the Counterpoint record to deliver those literally “timeless” tunes. Bach’s works were incomparably denser and more complex, harder to memorize and unforgiving at times, but basic clawhammer technique along with time and patience could deliver the goods.
EZ: I don't know “American Bach.” How does this CD compare, and why was there a 26-year gap between CDs?
MM: “American Bach” came out in 1997, seven years after “Counterpoint.” It featured Cello Suites I and III, along with an original work of mine called, “Suite for the Americas.” Howard Reich picked up on it and wrote an article about the recording that went out on the AP wire. “Miles has taken on some of the most profound and dramatic music ever written and succeeded,” said Howard. Lucky me.
Add to that, Janos Starker, who you’ve probably never heard of — most people haven’t. He was Hungarian (1924-2013) and one of the greatest cellists of all time who served as professor emeritus at Indiana University. If Yo-Yo Ma wanted lessons, Starker would be the one. Starker was my role model for the Cello suites. There are many recordings, but Starker was the one for me — I listened to him a thousand times. In 1997, my daughter Annie started at Indiana University, and I decided to find Starker and give him a copy of the American Bach CD.
I didn’t know at the time that he was notoriously grumpy and had little interest in the Cello Suites being played on other instruments. They’d been arranged for marimba and saxophone, etc. He deplored it all. Unknowingly, I knocked on his door and gave him a copy of my CD along with a little note I’d written on Motel 6 stationery. And to my utter delight, he sent me an email a few days later with all these kind words, “Myfirst reaction was a smile and then amazement.” And when I told Howard about Starker, Howard called him up, and he said more nice things.
Starker recorded the Cello Suites five times. Yo-Yo Ma has done them three times and has often referred to them as his personal sanctuary. My earlier experiences with Bach were somewhat sanctuary-like, and then during the pandemic when the world shut down, I returned to the sanctuary of the Cello Suites with 25 years of life as a working musician providing a deeper perspective. The famous cellist, Mstislav Rostropovich, did not record the Cello suites until he was 65 years old. When asked why he waited so long, he replied, “Because I have been practicing!” So for me, 26 years later, the splendor of the Suites has only grown.
What’s different about this recording is that I’m using steel vs. nylon strings on the banjo. And there’s an original bassline, composed by Margaret James, a remarkable genius who I hired to teach piano at the Old Town School. The original recording featured Al Ehrich playing Margaret’s bassline on double bass. This time around, cellist Jill Kaeding adapted Margaret’s bassline for cello. Jill spent nearly 15 years with Corky Siegel’s Chamber Blues, but has also played with the likes of Stevie Wonder and Ray Charles. This recording also features a new composition for me titled “Chicago Suite.” It’s a five-movement musical portrait of streets in Chicago that I have lived on or frequented, including Lower Wacker and The Alley.
EZ: Is there something to say about how you are rehabilitating the banjo by showing to a still skeptical public what it can do?
MM: The public remains skeptical, and there are substantive reasons for that. I don’t expect that to change. I do remember at age 25, I had been in a band where I played multiple instruments and could get around ok on all of them. When the band came to an end, I decided to drop the multi-instrumentalist notion and specialize in clawhammer banjo. I don’t know what on earth I was thinking! What a strategic plan for survival!
But eight CDs, a dozen books, a dozen original shows, international tours, and a list of organizations and awards in my rearview mirror, that strategy—very circuitous— actually worked. Here’s another quote, this one from Yo-Yo Ma, who plays all six Cello Suites from memory, which is like the weightlifting equivalent of picking up a house. When asked how he does what he does, he replies that he is fortunate to have these skills and “when I go out on stage, I have something to share, nothing to prove.”
I found those words incredibly inspiring. I don’t expect to change the skepticism of the public or the stereotypical behavior and repertoire that fuels it. I’m encouraged by the efforts of younger players who are helping to point to the origins of the banjo in Africa. Personally, I just have my own inner jukebox filled with 69 years of music from everywhere, and the good fortune to have opportunities to both create and to share it.
The shortcut even Waze doesn’t know
Headed north on the Dan Ryan Expressway through downtown as you approach the Jane Byrne Interchange, when the traffic is heavy on I-90/94, follow the “downtown exits” sign (51 A through D), even if you’re not going downtown.
Keep left once you are in those lanes. Pass up all the exits. In less than half a mile, the ramp will funnel you back onto the main road well ahead of the cars you were behind just a moment earlier. Yeah, the time saving is only about three minutes max, but the feeling of smugness is totally worth it.
Whatever happened to that sports reporter on my high school newspaper?
I came across this news clipping from my high school newspaper while doing archival searches at my parents' house last weekend. What struck me was not how lean I was in 1975 but the byline on this story: Gene Sperling, who gave up a promising career as a sports writer to become the director of the National Economic Council and assistant to the president for economic policy under Presidents Bill Clinton and Barack Obama. He's behind Bob Seger, Ken Burns and maybe Iggy Pop as the most famous graduates of Ann Arbor Pioneer.
My old man has still got it
At 92, my father, Jens, a retired professor of physics at the University of Michigan, is still turning out amazing and beautiful sculptures based on scientific achievements. Here he is with his latest work, built with his friend and former student David Crosby and temporarily installed in the Dennison Colloquium Room as it awaits a permanent home.
It honors the work of Elmer Imes, the first African American to earn a Ph.D. in physics in the 20th century. Here’s Dad’s explanation of the symbolism:
The individual molecules in dilute gas can rotate, and the speed of that rotation increases as the gas gets hot, but the rotation changes only in a stepwise manner: The molecule’s rotation is quantized. Measuring the size of these quantum steps reveals the geometry of the molecule and the masses of its constituent atoms.
The sculpture’s laminate structure and the advance of stepped arms allude to quantized rotation.
This research was first done in 1918 at the University of Michigan by Elmer Imes. Born in 1883, he graduated from Fisk University in Nashville in 1903 and taught in smaller schools for a decade. He returned briefly to Fisk before enrolling at Michigan in 1915 for graduate school in physics where he did this landmark infrared spectroscopy under the direction of Harrison Randall.
A duplicate will be installed at Fisk.
My dad’s work is amazing. Check it out here.
Re: Tweets
In Tuesday’s paid-subscriber editions, I present my favorite tweets that rely on visual humor. Subscribers vote for their favorite, and I post the winner here every Thursday.
I spaced out on this last week, so here is the winner from the July 25 poll.
Some readers wondered if this image had been digitally altered, and the answer seems to be no, but even though the label is real, it is intended as a joke from a clothing company now known as Marius Kids. See “Is the ‘Remove child before washing’ clothes label real?
Since it’s funny but not in the spirit of the visual tweets contest, I declare the second-place finisher to be the winner.
Here is this week’s winner:
The new nominees for Tweet of the Week:
Why do they call it "delivering" a baby? If I have to drive to the hospital and then take the baby home, it’s not delivery, it’s baby takeout. — @Writepop
Moments before the invention of bowtie pasta: Alright, let’s do a silly one. — @benedictsred
It's been six months since I joined the gym and no progress. I'm going there in person tomorrow to see what's really going on. — @_CakeBawse
If cats could text you back, they would not. — Unknown
I wish pilots would stop saying they’re going to “have me on the ground.” Are we landing or am I being ravished? — @bazecraze
Me: Did you ever imagine in your wildest dreams we'd still be married after 20 years? Wife: You don't appear in any of my wildest dreams. — @wildethingy
Just wanna let everyone here know that I love you, and I love this place, and you bring so much joy and substance to my existence. My life would be empty and meaningless without you. Donut Guy: You have 9. You need 3 more. — @kwkorpi
I fought the law* and the law* won. *Duvet cover. — @neenertothe3
Thank you for contacting the abyss. Your scream is very important to us. — @BerrymoreBlue
Sorry I didn’t get you an anniversary card, babe, but you opted in to paperless affection on our third date. — @FScottFitzJesse
Vote here and check the current results in the poll.
Summer bonus “dad jokes” Tweet of the Week poll for you to groan over
Arkansas is just Kansas for pirates. — @wakeupangry
What did one tectonic plate say when it bumped into another? Sorry! My Fault! — @dadgivesjokes
We had a pool growing up but I didn’t have any friends, so I spent my summers playing Marco Solo. — @wickedimproper
Did you hear orthodontists are about to go on strike? Brace yourselves. — @jtothet
I don't know who started the malicious rumor I'm actually a mole man but I'm going to keep digging. — @wildethingy
You can’t tell me there’s anything better than ear plugs, I simply will not hear it. — @SkinnerSteven
Putting an extra S on the end of a track and field event sometimes creates a new word. Discuss. — @OFalafel
Abundance: what a man with a manbun does when he hears music. — Unknown
I want to deal with some rumors that seem to be doing the rounds. I'm not being paid to promote German filled pastry on Twitter. It looks like some of my tweets may have been misconstrudeled. — @pauleggleston
I switched all the labels on my wife’s spice rack. I’m not in trouble yet, but the thyme is cumin. — @gran_jury
Vote here for the dad tweets of your choice.
For instructions and guidelines regarding the poll, click here.
Tune of the Week
Three good friends — Mitzi Lebensorger, Mary Tabatowski and Ellen Shepard — recently formed an acoustic trio called The Twilight Stealers that specializes in close harmonies and old songs (highlight video). Since they have a gig this Saturday at 7 p.m. at Fargo Venue, 641 E. Lincoln Highway in DeKalb, I asked them to nominate a song this week. Shepard responded for the group:
Mitzi and I were looking for songs to teach at our harmony workshops at the Celebrating Tradition music retreat (this year August 18-22 in Spring Green, Wisconsin). I pulled out the recording that had been my "gateway drug" into old-time music in the ‘90s: Jody Stecher and Kate Brislin's "Our Town" album, originally given to me on cassette by a friend. "Twilight is Stealing" is a deep cut that I'd forgotten about:
Mitzi and I started singing it and couldn't stop. Later that year, when we formed a new band with mandolin wizard Mary Tabatowski, we named it for the song. "Twilight is Stealing" is everything we love about old-time songs: tight vocal harmonies, haunting lyrics, floaty and sensitive instrumentals, and a great origin story.
Twilight is stealing, over the sea, Shadows are falling, dark on the lea, Borne on the night wind, voices of yore, Come from the far-off shore. Far away, beyond the starry sky, Where the love-light never, never dies Gleameth a mansion filled with delight, Sweet happy home so bright.
Consult the complete Tune of the Week archive!
Errata
When I become aware of errors in the Picayune Sentinel, I quickly correct them in the online version, but since many of you read just the email version, which I can’t correct after the fact, I will use this space periodically to alert you to meaningful mistakes I’ve made. (Not typos, in other words.)
In the June 20 issue, I noted that a billion people have already died over the course of human history. I was off by a wee bit. Demographers estimate that a little more than 100 billion people have died.
In the July 25 issue, I dropped a decimal when discounting the value of national polls when looking at political sentiments in swing states. The corrected sentence reads; “Wisconsin, for example, has about 1.8 percent of the population of the U.S., so a random poll of 1,000 Americans will have about 18 Wisconsin residents, a sample size that Survey Monkey says will yield a 23% margin of error.
In the same issue last week, I inserted what, luckily, turned out to be a minor mistake. The percentage of suicides that involve the use of firearms was 55% in 2021 — 26,328 out of 48,183 — not 56%, which was, coincidentally, very close to the 56% of all gun deaths that were by suicide.
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"My dad’s work is amazing." -- Eric Zorn
I can't agree. It is truly amazing, perhaps!
Thanks for the "Twilight." Lifts and warms like a hymn.