137. Multnomah Falls

            During this COVID19 quarantine things everywhere are pretty much shut down and because of that feeling of being stuck, trapped even, I like to dream of traveling. I love water so waterfalls are a wonderful place to be to experience calm. It’s kind of ironic to think that the turbulence and violence of water falling over rocks brings calm to me, but it does. Part of it is the soft spray it creates, the constant rainbows of hope, the constant motion, and the steady rushing sound that contrasts to my own stillness as I observe and listen.

            Right now I’m envisioning Multnomah Falls in Oregon and the Columbia Gorge. While it’s certainly a tourist trap because of its proximity to Portland (just before the gorge opens up to the Willamette Valley if you’re going west on the Columbia River or driving west on I-84), it is also a space of outdoor adventure, albeit crowded. Right now I imagine it to be much less crowded, if not completely closed. I don’t even know the name of the stream that serves as a tributary for the mighty Columbia, I simply know it crashes down from the southern Cascade wall of the gorge. There is an iconic bridge that crosses that stream a few paces up the hill from where you park. It’s a foot bridge that is easily seen from the parking lot or freeway and you almost never pass by without seeing someone standing on that bridge looking up at the falls, usually getting misted with a fine spray from the crashing waters.

            This waterfall is surrounded by lush green, temperate rain forest. That green is probably part of why I so long to see it now because I know by the typical climate of this time of year in that part of the country that it would be lush and blossoming. While I typically wish to go there at a time when there are few, if any, people, right now I want to go there when it is so crowded that you have to drive around the parking lot a few times just to find parking. I want to be surrounded by people in such a beautiful place and I want all them to be happy, smiling without masks, commenting on aspects of the hike up the falls, oblivious to any overriding disease that is killing people throughout the world. In fact, I want to hear several languages spoken happily. And no, I am not a lover of crowds, especially crowds in such a place of beauty that they could possibly destroy, but right now I am in love with the idea of crowds, crowds that can gather safely, crowds that can enjoy the natural world together, crowds that are oblivious to danger, and crowds that are happy to be together.

            So today in my mental time away I am going to pack my bags and take that eight-hour drive to Multnomah Falls in my time of meditation. I am going to stop for a greasy hamburger at a crowded truck stop somewhere on I-84 and I am going to be content. I know I can’t do it today in reality, but I do treasure that waterfall for its natural beauty. And, probably for the first time ever, I treasure it for its teeming crowds of tourists just arrived from the busy hub of Portland. Today I am thankful for Multnomah Falls.

136. Our Song

            While there are all varieties of music and here in America we enjoy them all, the best thing about music in America is just the enjoyment. We pick artists to idolize and buy their albums and concert tickets but the truly best American music is that which comes from the heart. It is that music which brings us together. I have never been more aware of that then since we have gone into quarantine for COVID19.

            As a kid I would listen to my grandpa play the fiddle or mandolin and teach me new songs, songs that I now know are ancient from across the shores passed down through the centuries. So many of those songs I now teach the lyrics to my students in the forms of ballads from the borderlands or spirituals from the plantations. And there are the hymns that I learned in church or heard played by my aunt at the piano.

            So many melodies haunt our existence in plaintive prayers sung in cathedral choirs or played on bagpipes in the Green Mountains above a misty hayfield. And we always add melodies and songs to our canon. Lately I’ve been hearing songs sung from balconies in the city or, the other day, my friend and his wife played the school fight song from the back of their pick up while their son drove them through town at the head of a Light Up the Night parade to honor our students who are now prevented from participating in school events.

            And now, in our time of isolation, many of our most revered and famous artists are performing concerts from their living rooms, kitchens, bathrooms or front yards for all of us. They are using their cell phones to record or their cameras from studios—all depending on what they have. These plaintive cries, these melodious prayers, are part of our existence and a beauty incomprehensible except in their offering. We all have it within us, within our souls, within our lungs, the very breath of our existence. I am so thankful for the songs, the music we all have to offer, no matter how strong or weak our voice, it is there within us and now is when we must make our song heard. Now is the time to sing, to let your voice be heard, to praise the creator, to lament your sorrows, to sing your joy, to let your fellow people know you are here and alive.

135. Rock and Roll

            One type of American music that I really enjoy and that sustains me in this time of quarantine is Rock and Roll. The rhythm of a good drum beat, the strum of a guitar and a gravelly voice taking me away from whatever state I am in is downright celebratory. In times like these when we’re all cloistered in our homes, getting edgy with one another and just wanting to go out to see our friends, it can’t hurt to jam out to some Buddy Holly, Elvis Presley or Joan Jett and just let go with your voice, no matter how off key you may be. I like that old time Rock and Roll.

            Rock is also a symbol of rebellion. What better time to rebel? While it’s not actually possible to chase away the virus by singing and beating on drums or just listening to Rock on the stereo, it is a way to say we are here, we are going to make it, and we will survive. That is the most important thing we can do right now in our isolation. We have to stay strong and sometimes belting out or jamming to an angry Rock song might just be the way to do it. Even if it’s only in your ear buds, music is an emotional release, an emotional declaration, and an attestation to our very existence. So why not do just that with that old time Rock and Roll?

            While I certainly think of Rock music as American, I can’t deny that some of my favorite Rock and Roll artists are not necessarily American. I love the Beatles. I love plenty of American bands as well. Right now, I have Bob Seeger tunes going through my head. And since I’m writing this, like a radio dial in my head, I hear Bob Dylan.

            Just take a few minutes everyday to skip the soothing yoga type chants and belt out some plaintive rhythmic wails. It’s all right to rage against the machine every once in awhile and admit that you like that good old-fashioned American Art form of Rock and Roll. And if it makes you feel even better just imagine your parents telling you to turn that crap down, or better yet, turn it off. Then just crank the volume a little more and scream “Today’s music ain’t got the same soul. I like that old time Rock and Roll.”

134. American Jazz

            I have always loved music. I like to hear it, I like to play it, and I like to sing it. The only instrument I can competently play is the Baritone (aka Euphonium). I started playing the trumpet when I was in sixth grade but by junior high my band teacher thought I should move to the Baritone. I don’t know if that’s because he thought my mouth was better fit for the larger mouthpiece or if it was because he needed some middle brass players in the band. Either way I’ve been playing the Baritone off and on ever since seventh grade which was 45 years ago. I also learned the basics of piano but as far as playing that instrument? Well, let’s put it this way…I am nowhere near competent.

            Usually, when you play in a school band, you play a lot of concert music or pep band. I always enjoyed pep band because we were playing old fashioned Souza type marches or pop music reconfigured for band instruments. But to listen to band music, well, that was never really my thing. But to hear a jazz band marching down the streets of New Orleans? That is pure magic. By playing the Baritone I fell in love with jazz and jazz is a truly American art form. But I still play mostly concert music on my Baritone because that’s the kind of band I’m in. While there is a certain disappointment for me in that, I have learned an appreciation for jazz and when I sing in the shower I’m more likely than not going to sing an old jazz tune as I “Fly me to the moon” with that “Old Black Magic.”

            I love the crooners like Frank Sinatra and Dean Martin and the dames like Ella Fitzgerald and Billie Holliday. So in these cooped up days of Covid-19 quarantine I’ve been tuning in to “KJEM the Jazz Gem of the Palouse” or a little Diana Krall and Michael Bublé (who are both British Columbians and from my back yard, albeit not American) who spent some time at the Lionel Hampton Jazz Festival in Moscow, Idaho in their younger years. Because of where I live I’ve also met and been entertained by some of the greatest American Jazz artists. I love that jazz has such a high place in American culture and I love its many varied forms from New York, Chicago Blues, New Orleans, Kansas City, and, yep, Moscow, Idaho. Get out those old jazz records and have a listen.

Poetry of Quarantined Mind

Thou runaway, thou coward, art thou fled?

            I am feared in field and town.

            On the ground.

            Thus to make poor females mad.

Where art thou now?

            And here will rest me. [lies down] Come, thou gentle day.

            I can no further crawl, no further go;

            Steal me awhile from mine own company. [sleeps]

[Squeezing the juice on Lysander’s eyes]

And sleep, that sometimes shuts up sorrow’s eye,

Going for a break now but I’ll be back later.

Goblin, lead them up and down.

We need some color, I need some color.

Three ballet dancers, 1879.

Many years ago I found in a charity shop a book with paintings by Frederick Cayley Robinson    

     (1862-1927)

I was in need of a short local walk down to the lake to catch fresh air and enjoy the view.

That’s the way the world goes round.

Morning break in the garden.

I cycled to Mum’s to fill the bird feeder.

I looked through the French windows to where she sits,

but she wasn’t moving,

the paper scattered around her.

“Mom!” I said, knocking on the window, “Mom!”

           

            And she opened her eyes and mouthed

            “fooled you.”

133. American Architecture

            We’re a blended country of a vast array of ethnicities and races and all of those groupings brought with them ways to build. American architecture is all over the place in styles but there are certain aspects that you know as distinctly American. The iconic skyscrapers of Manhattan from the Empire State building to the Chrysler building might come to mind as distinctly American, as would the beautiful span of Brooklyn Bridge.

            We also have the old traditional clapboard structures of New England that have found their way across the country in boxy structures with clean crisp siding often painted white. The log cabin is also a structure that seems iconically American with tales that lead right up to the grandeur of President Lincoln. Both clapboard and log cabin are found out here in Idaho and the Northwest and the West but we have our own distinct architectures. If you cross the paths of the vast western rivers you will see some amazing bridges like Perrine Bridge over the Snake River Canyon in southern Idaho, or the Moyie River Canyon Bridge in the Panhandle of Idaho, or the bridge over Deception Pass in Washington, or the Golden Gate Bridge over San Francisco Bay in California, or... You’ll also see the dams of the Federal Works Progress Administration such as Nevada/Arizona’s Hoover Dam on the Colorado and Grand Coulee Dam on the Columbia.

            I know we’re all stuck at home now for health reasons and a quarantine that hangs over all of us with a seemingly unendurable weight, but now that we can’t really get out much except in our own little areas we need to look at the distinctions of our own little neighborhoods. Do you have a ranch house? Maybe you live in a cookie cutter neighborhood where all the homes are split level or neo-Victorian? Maybe your cookie cutter neighborhood, like mine, is over a hundred years old so that new additions have been added, porches filled in, or other little quirks have happened to steal the cookie cutter aspect and the homes have been given a new distinction? Take a walk in your neighborhood and look at the buildings and the diversity that we Americans bring to our architecture in spite of ourselves.

            Now is the time to take stock in what we have and to appreciate it. Use your exercise time to see things like you’ve never seen them before. Of course, one of those things is quite likely the American architecture of your home.