The world celebrates Ludwig von Beethoven today, 250 years from the likely date of his birth in 1770. Much will be written about him today, his larger than life genius, passion, ambition, angst and his unknown “Immortal Beloved.”
Life is often filled with ironies and Beethoven’s certainly qualified. For one so tuned to sound to turn deaf, ranks among fate’s harshest cruelties. He said he noticed the loss beginning in his late 20s, which is now speculated to have been due to otosclerosis, a softening of bones in the inner ear. By 1812, he was deaf to all but the lowest tones and to sharp, loud sounds.
At some point in the same frame of time, Beethoven met Therese Malfatti, whom some speculate to have been his Immortal Beloved,” though she married another, becoming a baroness. We do know that a particular piece by Beethoven, inscribed “Fur Elise on April 27 (1810),” was found in her papers upon her death, long after his passing. There are other stories, based on speculation, as to the purpose of this bagatelle, but I prefer the one below, which is my way to honor him today, in what music there may be in prose.
For Therese
“Blindness separates us from things; deafness separates us from people.”
Helen Keller
Well into Fur Elise there is a grace note, during the second playing of the theme and before the bridge, that you barely hear and that almost seems a mistake, except it is there again in the second verse, and one last time as the piece begins to close. Two octaves and change above middle C, that faint E belongs in its A minor key, but seems – if you hear it at all – an afterthought, a garnish left upon a plate.
The story is told that Beethoven wrote this bagatelle planning to play it that very night for a young Therese Malfatti and then to propose, but – perhaps besotted with more than love – he ended up doing neither. I doubt that, by the time Beethoven wrote the piece, he could still hear a note quite that high, as nearly deaf as he had grown.
Fur Elise was found, upon her death, in Therese’s papers – a love note with one note she alone could hear.
Emily Dickinson came into this world on December 12, in 1830 – 190 years ago today. She was born, lived and died in Amherst, Massachusetts. She never married and spent much of her adult life in an upstairs bedroom in the house where she was raised. She took to wearing white – though not in this perhaps early photo, was rarely seen outside of her family, and was known by others through letters, if at all.
In a time when soaring, formal poetry was as celebrated as hip-hop is today, she quietly penned short, simple poems about nature, love and occasionally death. Other than a few that were published or that she shared with literary critic, Thomas Wentworth Higginson, most of her poetry – nearly 1800 works – got no further than a drawer in her desk, though Dickinson’s Irish maid and friend, Margaret Maher, eventually stored them for her in a trunk.
Emily Dickinson asked Maher to destroy her poems after her death, but she shared them with Emily’s sister Lavinia instead. In time, Higginson and Mabel Loomis Todd edited and published them. Their edits removed references to Emily’s sister-in-law Susan Huntington Gilbert, a relationship some speculate about. To students of poetry, the more telling edits were removal of the many end line dashes found in her original penned pages. It was not until 1955 that her complete works were published in their original form – with her unique punctuation.
During her life, only 10 of Emily Dickinson’s poems and a single letter were published. She was an enigma then, known locally as an eccentric fascinated with horticulture. Her simple, unique and breathless insights were silently held within a desk.
This little poem – and all the dashes I’ve come to use as I write – are for her.
From time to time stars align in the truest sense and this happens to be one such time. Jupiter and Saturn, technically planets if you insist, will conjoin in the eastern evening sky this month, reaching their closest on December 21. This degree of connection has not been seen since the Dark Ages’ year of 1226.
A similar conjunction occurred in 7 B.C.E., and has been thought by some to be the Biblical star in the east referenced in Matthew. It’s timing, though, doesn’t quite align with the best dating for the birth of Jesus. Still, the timing of this celestial event so near to our Christmas strikes the imagination with wonder and hope, particularly in a year as fraught with plague and loss as this one.
While pondering these thoughts, a little poem came to me that I’d like to share with anyone who stumbles along here.
Four hundred years ago today, democracy was introduced to this continent with the signing of the Mayflower Compact by its passengers, or at least 41 of its men; but then democracy, like nature it seems, is always evolving in order to survive.
Having been blown off course from their intended Virginia, the Puritans had reached Cape Cod in what became Massachusetts, well outside the chartered colony they meant to join. Some of the non-Puritans aboard asserted that they were thus not bound by their charter, which prompted the Puritans to establish their own government, at least until things could be sorted out with England and their financiers.
As Nathaniel Philbrick wrote in his recent book on the Mayflower, “Just as a spiritual covenant had marked the beginning of their congregation in Leiden, a civil covenant would provide the basis for a secular government in America.” Although we treat the covenant as historic and with respect, it was short, simple and born of necessity. It declared their common agreement to establish liberty under laws, with all (in the narrower sense of the times) having the right to participate in establishing them.
The wording of the Compact consists largely of what we now deem flowery precatory language and relies on the implied good faith of all to serve the common good by the signers and those to be governed by it:
IN THE NAME OF GOD, AMEN. We, whose names are underwritten, the Loyal Subjects of our dread Sovereign Lord King James, by the Grace of God, of Great Britain, France, and Ireland, King, Defender of the Faith, &c. Having undertaken for the Glory of God, and Advancement of the Christian Faith, and the Honour of our King and Country, a Voyage to plant the first Colony in the northern Parts of Virginia; Do by these Presents, solemnly and mutually, in the Presence of God and one another, covenant and combine ourselves together into a civil Body Politick, for our better Ordering and Preservation, and Furtherance of the Ends aforesaid: And by Virtue hereof do enact, constitute, and frame, such just and equal Laws, Ordinances, Acts, Constitutions, and Officers, from time to time, as shall be thought most meet and convenient for the general Good of the Colony; unto which we promise all due Submission and Obedience. IN WITNESS whereof we have hereunto subscribed our names at Cape-Cod the eleventh of November, in the Reign of our Sovereign Lord King James, of England, France, and Ireland, the eighteenth, and of Scotland the fifty-fourth, Anno Domini; 1620
The Compact remained in effect until 1691, when Plymouth merged with the Massachusetts Bay Colony, but it survives today as a symbol of our continuing commitment to a self-government for the common good.
Democracies must evolve in the face of new challenges and in recognition of failings, of which we have had many. A war over the civil and moral wrong of slavery tested our resolve. The commitment to the system and process is what holds us together still after 400 years.
Some today seem to question that compact once more, including one misguided leader and others dependent on his whimsied graces. The fact that the Puritans felt a need for a written document implies that they may have had similar dissenters among them. What has made us great though has been 400 years of the common belief that we are better as one working together.
A look back for perspective seems more timely than ever. We need also to look forward, as we face challenges far greater than those few who were hoping to survive the coming winter on one cold November day in 1620.
Ours is a big country and the right to differ peacefully, to learn from that diversity and to grow stronger from it has, or had, long defined us. It is one thing to have and to share points of view. It has been another to demonize those we disagree with. My hope is that we will regain that spirit as we begin a new era of leadership.
Elections should be about choices over priorities and those we select to pursue those goals. Someone’s candidate necessarily wins, but if we are true to what this country stands for, no one loses.
This may sound unrelated, but bear with me a moment. When Pandora, the Greek’s Eve, opened what Erasmus mistakenly translated as her box (pithos actually means jar) all the evils that afflict us still escaped, but one item remained, elpis in the Greek. It is an ambiguous term, but we translate is as hope. Nietzsche and the Existentialists have questioned whether hope was a gift from the gods or a curse, though to Dostoyevsky it was essential for life. Still, hope for better tomorrows is as much a defining trait of this country as any one word can encompass. I woke this morning with that hope once again.
In Pandora’s story, she buried her box or jar with hope still inside. The ancients never said who, but someone later unearthed and released hope for mankind. During the darkness of recent times, I published a poem that reflected on the glimmer of hope I still felt. Today I thought I would share that thought with you.
Today’s news is bloody with black ink covering tax chicanery (as if anyone is surprised) and tectonic changes at the Supreme Court (you never really know, but people can surprise you in the end, or at least we must hope).
Not to diminish the gravity of such things, but in other, more appealing news, the “official” baseball season has ended. Truncated of necessity to 60 games, it was too short to devotees but less mind-numbing to the casual fan than the annual siege of Troy usually endured, if not enjoyed.
Tampa, Minnesota and Oakland each took their Division in the AL, with the despised Yankees and now Astros remaining alive among the Wild Card teams. Atlanta, Chicago and LA stand atop the NL with a host still hanging on and in. With the world and baseball somehow surviving these times precariously to date, the playoffs will have plenty of drama this season, and we must all hope that the game holds it together long enough to make it to the Arlington, Texas bubble for the World Series.
To the keepers of baseball history this day is notable as a red letter day for a few reasons, two sad and one unequalled. On this day in 1920, eight Black Sox players were indicted for throwing the 1919 World Series, a story too sacrilegious for true fans to comprehend. In 1930, Lou Gehrig’s 885 errorless game streak ended, since surpassed by some stellar fielders, but still among Gehrig’s many achievements.
Arguably the second greatest baseball achievement took place today, when Ted Williams ended the 1941 season with a 406 batting average, never since accomplished and unlikely, in the modern era of relief pitchers, ever to be outdone. He was a proud man, too proud to be loved by the fans, but the results of his work ethic gave him every reason to be. He could have sat out the double-header on that last day of the season with a .3995 batting average, which would have rounded up to .400. In the first game, he went 4 for 5, upping his average to .404. He played the second as well and went 2 for 3, for his .406 mark.
Jackie Robinson and Roberto Clemente were sports heroes, whose deeds made them true heroes and there are others who have earned that title. There is a fellow named Fauci, who will be a footnote in baseball history for an opening pitch as bad as the worst from Nuke LaLoosh, but he defines what a hero is for me, and his season belongs in the Hall of Fame.
There are two words of hope worth hearing in this year of so little, “Play Ball.”
In a reversal of the infamous Lassie trope, an 18 year old boy discovered the now famous Lascaux cave paintings when his dog fell into a cave eighty years ago yesterday near Montignac, France. The proper term today is actually “rediscovered,” which recognizes that many Western European discoveries are of things taken for granted by those from an area not then appreciated by the rest of the world.
Cave paintings, we have learned, existed around the world and have been dated as tens of thousands of years old. Some are “primitive” and others deemed artistic to modern tastes. I find it interesting that we find such artists’ talent, insight and self-awareness surprising today, as if we deem only our modern minds capable of such lasting forms of communication and the “discovery” of their creations so shocking.
The humans who painted these works of art, whatever historical species we ascribe to the persons, were apparently capable of expressing thought and communication in ways as complex and meaningful as we do today. They didn’t speak our languages, but it is fair to conclude that they could communicate in their ways much as we do today with our Tik Tok and other “advanced” media. How advanced can we actually be if the most commonly used languages today have only two characters: 1 and 0?
Looking at these and other “prehistoric” paintings makes me wonder if other species, perhaps dolphin, whales, elephants, horses have some form of sentience and self-awareness hidden from us largely because we don’t have a way to communicate across the species divide. They probably would warn us of our self-destructiveness, as if we don’t have the sense to know ourselves, which perhaps we don’t.
As it is, my dog has come to remind me it is time for her breakfast, which must have the perfect proportion of leftovers and dog food to meet her exacting standards. Perhaps I’ll ask her what she thinks.
Today marks the 100th Anniversary of the 19th Amendment to the Constitution, granting the universal right to vote for women throughout the US. The Seneca Falls Convention of women (Frederick Douglas attended one day, as may have some other men) is credited with the beginning of the movement, though voting was not its primary purpose.
The Reconstruction Amendments, which in addition to abolishing slavery gave the right to vote to Black men at least in theory, promoted a resurgence among many women to advocate for the right to vote. Women had gained the right to vote in a number of states admitted to the Union, which also served to highlight the lack of the right in most states.
The story of the 19th Amendment is well documented in Wikipedia, and also in a very nice editorial and article in the New York Times. My grandmother, who was born in 1899, turned 21 in 1920 and gained the right to vote 100 years ago. She was a tall, strong woman from Texas who first homesteaded in California’s Central Valley, where she taught in a one-room schoolhouse. She had a college degree in a time when that was rare, even for men. The thought that she grew up not believing she would be able to vote is as abhorrent to me as is the efforts still made today to prevent minorities from voting.
The Times added an interesting article today, the day the 19th Amendment was certified and became official. Politics being the scummy thing it too often is, the article covers some of the underhanded steps taken to thwart final approval of the women’s right to vote.
I’ve pondered this topic and the biases behind it in the weeks leading up to this anniversary. That topic and a biblical story came together in my mind and prompted this poem that seems fitting in a way to share.
Nameless
Perhaps it was best not to have a name
other than “the wife of Shem”
given all we of the last and first again
of women have endured
but I do have a story for you
that may bring a knowing smile but which
you must keep among we of the red tent
I do admit the old man was wise –
in his six-hundred year-old way –
to heed his God but as men often do
he would not stop for directions
when we mentioned that
an old and small man’s cubit
might make for a crowded home
That he built that house of his
shaped as a ship of sorts
seemed eccentric it’s true
but it kept him busy and
mostly out of the vineyard
though the neighbors were sure
he’d been into the goatskins again
And not to seem ungrateful
but any woman would know
that only one window and door
was no way to build a home that
would reek of pitch and gophers’ wood
and so we humored him for his sons –
whose names you do know
The rains the old man promised
did come though softly at first
but shelter of any kind was welcome
so I demurely held my tongue
as we women were taught to do
when he decided he should
bring the flocks in as well
But things turned for the worse
when he felt pity in the gathering storm
on lions and tigers and bears
and all manner of creeping things
though the birds I’ll say were a nice touch
but for all of our sake if not for God’s
it was I who said no to the lizard giants
Now my daughter’s daughter’s daughters
you are blessed in your way not to know
how God-awfully long it rained
or to remember the cries of those without
who the old man piously claimed
his God had deemed wicked and corrupt
though one may wonder – if but to herself
In the course of time some man will surely write
of this tale as an epic of a great man and his God
at the end of one world and the beginning of another
but know this from one whose name time will soon forget
there was more to this story we women must pass on
to our daughters and on to theirs ever and anon
and if there is a lesson at all in this it is
There have always been and will ever be
some good and far too many evil among men
there has always been a rainbow above
for all who had insight simply to see
and much more for we who look with open eyes
discern with wisdom and sense with open hearts
though we will soon be forgotten
We will forever abide and raise sons in eternal hope
they may someday learn all we know so true and well
I read this week that half of the US population is now under forty. Having long passed that age, it is tempting to say to the new majority in mock flippancy that the world is your problem now. Of course, the truth is that it will take all of us to try and set things right, and we have to believe that is possible. Still, with so much devastation and proudly intentional denial in the air, it is increasingly hard to keep life in perspective, or to retain hope for the future.
So when a kindness occurs, as it did to me this week, it stands out. I received a request from a website to publish a poem of mine containing a few lessons I’ve learned in life. Reading it again after the passage of time, its message offers some hope for these times.
I might have shared it here, but the website, https://www.familyfriendpoems.com, contains much more worth your visit. After you have looked around the site, you can find Life Lines there. Making your own list of lessons may be a good way to start healing our world.
John Lewis died yesterday at the age of 80 after several months of treatment for pancreatic cancer. He was as great man unlike most any other, at least in our time, and not just because he championed using nonviolence as a force to cause change.
As the media will remind today, John Lewis was a member of Martin Luther King’s inner circle. His skull was cracked by police in Selma at the Edmund Pettus Bridge in 1965. He quietly continued the “fight” for racial equality after King’s death and was ultimately elected to represent a portion of the Atlanta area in Congress in 1986. He represented me and did so with patience, dignity and the honor he richly deserved.
I didn’t know Mr. Lewis, but I voted for him and happened to see him once on a flight from Washington to Atlanta. Unlike some other politicians, he flew coach, and I noticed from my seat how quietly respectful he was of the crew. I had a brief urge to speak to him and thank him for his life of service, but resisted out of respect for his privacy.
John Lewis lived as a symbol of the Civil Rights Movement and as a reminder that even now there is much work to be done. He taught others in Congress from across the country about things they only saw in the history books that were honest enough to include the ugliness of the opposition to equal rights for blacks. He took them to Selma and walked with them across that bridge, not to lecture but to shared talk about the experience. If you want to learn more, there is a documentary about him, John Lewis: Good Trouble currently on Prime Video.
The thing that impressed me most about John Lewis over the years is how rarely he used the word “I”. He referenced “Martin” and sometimes said “we”, but he seemed genuinely humble in the way of one who lives and leads by example. Perhaps I should say lived and led, but his memory and that example remains. In these sometimes brutal days of open backlash by some, we need that and him as much as ever.
Monuments to flawed and even terrible people are in the news presently, as we rightfully reassess history and reconsider values we have taken for granted. I think the conversation and process is a healthy one, even if it can be painful. In that way, it is somewhat like 1965 again. We need John Lewis now. It may be time to raise a monument to him, though I believe he’d want it to live in our hearts.
I will never forget and forever thank him. The tribute Joe Biden offered today rings true, “We are made in the image of God, and then there is John Lewis.”
