A Lesson in Humility

Robert Heilman

Starbucks and public libraries have become offices and workspaces for the free-wheeling, untethered GenTech demographic – students of all levels, flextime workers, freelancers and other self-employed. I never gave serious thought to a full-blown retirement, but three years ago when I left the world of the regular paycheck I started looking for a work environment where I could feel comfortable and productive as I started the next phase of my work life. In that process I tried various coffee shops, libraries, public spaces, and and my own home as offices but I disliked the choking air, obligation to buy, and smelly clothes that came with Starbucks, the library spaces that never felt comfortable or private enough, and the distractions of working at home.

Last week I tried a new “office” at Folio, Seattle’s start up non-profit whose avowed purpose is to serve as “a gathering place for books and the people who love them.” It sounds pretentious, but it’s actually a warm, welcoming, and uncrowded place. Among other benefits it offers members a lending library, reading room, workspace and a congenial staff – all for $125 a year. I wrote about it a couple of months ago when it was just an idea, but it officially opened on January 20th and I began using it last Friday. I’ve only tried it once, but Folio seems to meet all of my workspace needs.

Folio

What could be better than a quiet space surrounded by books and comfortable places to read them? I’ve mentioned before how I love bookstores and can’t walk by a used or bargain book counter without seeing something that feeds my curiosity. At Folio, near the reception desk there are two tall bookcases; free books in one and $2 books in the other. Both are overstock from collections donated to Folio. Friday, I discovered the Robert Heilman book of letters (above) in the $2 bookcase and bought the 900-page volume without even looking inside the cover. Dr. Heilman was the Chairman of the English Department at the University of Washington from 1948 – 1975. I remember him with great respect; as the Chairman when I was an undergraduate and, coincidentally, as the father of my friend Pete Heilman.

The Heilmans were not close friends of my family, but one of my favorite personal stories from those college days occurred when Pete asked if I would like to have dinner at his parent’s home. They were planning to entertain Theodore Roethke, his wife Beatrice, and Roethke’s publisher at Rinehart. It was a big league invitation and heady company for a 19 year-old English major. I was nervous and excited at the same time.

The evening began with small talk in the Heilman’s kitchen, including a story of how Thomas Wolfe, a physical giant, who as he was writing You Can’t Go Home Again used the refrigerator in another Heilman home as his desk, and wrote on it standing up while keeping up his side of an ongoing conversation. My eyes and ears were popping. Famous literary names were dropping everywhere.

When dinner was ready we moved to the dining room. Pete and I hardly spoke. He was probably used to it, but I was awestruck. Roethke was already a Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award winning poet. Five years later James Dickey described him as “the finest poet now writing in English,” and added, “I say this with a certain fierceness knowing that I have to put him up against Eliot, Pound, Graves and a good many others of high rank.” Pete’s father, in turn, was a nationally recognized Shakespearean scholar, and his mother was an English teacher at St. Nicholas School. The publisher from Rinehart was an urbane New Yorker with a Yale pedigree, and I sincerely hoped none of them would ask me a question.

During dinner someone made a comment that provoked a lot of laughter, including mine. Everyone laughed except Roethke who quizically said, “I don’t understand the allusion.” I cringed. Roethke had a history of mental illness, had been in and out of several institutions, and though an excellent teacher was a little scary and unpredictable in class. I didn’t understand the allusion either but was embarrassed to admit it and feared that by his question my ignorance would be revealed. It wasn’t. In fact, nobody noticed me at all. Roethke’s confusion was quickly addressed and the whole exchange took less than a minute, but it got my attention and stuck with me. The smartest man in the room was not afraid to admit he didn’t understand something. It was a first hand lesson in honesty and humility.

This is the US Postal stamp of Roethke in its poet series, and below it my favorite of his poems:

Roethke

      The Waking

I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.

I feel my fate in what I cannot fear.

I learn by going where I have to go.

 

We think by feeling. What is there to know?

I hear my being dance from ear to ear.

I wake to sleep but take my waking slow.

 

Of those so close beside me, which are you?

God bless the Ground! I shall walk slowly there,

And learn by going where I have to go.

 

Light takes the Tree; but who can tell us how?

The lowly worm climbs up a winding stair;

I wake to sleep but take my waking slow.

 

Great Nature has another thing to do

To you and me; so take the lively air,

And, lovely learn by going where to go.

 

The shaking keeps me steady. I should know.

What falls away is always. And is near.

I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.

I learn by going where I have to go.

The Heilman book is fascinating. Younger folks might not appreciate it and think it dated, but the correspondence includes serious discussions with many of the literary giants of the 20th Century – Saul Bellow, Bernard Malamud, Charles Johnson, Robert Penn Warren, Malcolm Cowley, William Carlos Williams, Roethke and many others. There are in depth letters that discuss the House Un-American Activities Committee’s threat to freedom of speech and the anti-Communist purges of the 1950’s as well as lighter ones in which Dr. Heilman complains to Robert Penn Warren about the chaos and mess his grandchildren create when they come to visit.

I don’t plan to read the Heilman letters cover to cover, but I do plan to keep the book on the coffee table for a while. It’s great reading in short spurts. Open it to almost any page and it reminds me that before email, Facebook and Twitter there was another form of written communication – serious, thoughtful, engaging, slowly written, thought provoking conversation on paper between two people with ideas to exchange.

This is a picture of Parrington Hall on the University of Washington campus where Dr. Heilman, Theodore Roethke, David Wagoner, Charles Johnson, Angelo Pelligrini and other’s shared their love of literature with those of us lucky enough to have them as teachers and mentors.

Parrington Hall

Rinse and Repeat…

Manon Lescaut

When the days get shorter and the weather drives us indoors, many of us feel a corresponding pull to the personal interior as well. Productivity increases and it’s somehow easier to sit down and attack that stack of bills or start the book that’s been sitting on the bedside table all summer. It’s also the beginning of theater season as local companies try to lure the audience back inside. When the skies are dark and the windows are streaked with rain it’s easier to get lost in a novel or let the characters on stage transport us to a different place.

Except for “Summer Theater” most live theater companies plan a schedule that starts in the fall and ends in the spring. Seattle has a particularly active theater community, 26 companies at last count, and I rely on live performances as a major component of my Surviving Seattle strategy.

Though I’ve always enjoyed live theater it wasn’t until 10 years ago that I started paying closer attention to musical theater. Until then I thought of it as a kind of second tier entertainment – not current, not classic, just entertaining – but M is a big fan and knows a lot about it. She refers to it as America’s opera and that perspective has helped me see it with different eyes too. It’s also interesting to me that this 10 year period corresponds to Peter Gelb’s innovative Met Opera in HD initiative in which live performances of the Metropolitan Opera are broadcast to theaters around the world. Mr. Gelb has made it easy for us to see and hear the world’s greatest artists perform in an up close and personal relationship with the audience.

My guitar teacher, George, has a favorite phrase – Rinse and Repeat – when the chorus of a song comes around for the second or third time. He means play it again the same way. He’s pointing out that the chord progressions are the same and though there’s room for some innovation the musical line is a repeat. Rinse and Repeat

Last week I looked at upcoming productions for Seattle’s musical theater season, and here’s what I found: Matilda, Amadeus, How To Succeed in Business Without Really Trying, A Night with Janis Joplin, Paint Your Wagon, The Assassins, Kinky Boots, and A Gentleman’s Guide to Love and Murder. What’s the significance that five of the eight are revivals? It sounds a lot like the theatrical version of Rinse and repeat.

Over the years it’s become apparent that revivals are the bread and butter of performing companies. It’s always been true of ballet and opera, but more than ever it’s true of American musical theater. The stories are familiar. Audiences  pretty much know what they are getting and the box office knows it can count on a certain level of revenue. The traditional repertoire is rinsed and repeated countless times every year, but opera and musical theater directors have recently turned to re-crafting their traditional material to reflect the times.

These are not your mother’s revivals, stale reproductions of the old repertoire. The stories are restaged and retold in ways that engage today’s audiences. Last year the Met set its version of Rigoletto in Las Vegas with the Count and his friends as a Rat Pack-like ensemble, and on March 5th Puccini’s Manon Lescaut will be set in Nazi occupied Paris in the 1940’s rather than the original 18th Century.

Artistic directors everywhere are seeing the substance and value of older work and on the lookout for ways to present it in new and different ways. Last week we saw a brilliant production of Amadeus in a small venue directed by the astonishingly talented Shana Bestock of Seattle Public Theater. Amadeus, Peter Schaffer’s fictionalized story about Mozart’s rivalry with Antonio Salieri, was first performed in 1979 and later made into a film by Milos Forman. The revival at The Bathhouse took a fresh look at a modern classic and downsized it to its 150-seat home.

Bathhouse Theater

Speaking of updated revivals, last night M and I saw a 5th Avenue production of the 1961 musical How To Succeed in Business Without Really Trying. I’m not a theater critic but I thought the producers did a credible job with material that at times seemed dated. This is a period piece. Like “mid-century” furniture that has enjoyed a recent renaissance of interest though most of us who were there in the 50’s and 60’s couldn’t wait to get rid of it, How to Succeed relies on the energy of the cast to keep it fresh. In that regard this cast delivered a polished performance and the Piet Mondrian inspired sets were perfect reflections of the art currency of the 1950’s.

How to Succeed

Nevertheless, as I watched the play proceed, the success of Mad Men was ever present in my consciousness. I was disappointed that as the lead character ascended to the position of Sr. Vice President for Advertising, the producers didn’t inject some tongue in cheek references to Robert Morse, the lead character in the original  and 50 years later the dotty senior partner in Mad Men. There were spots in the dialogue where a reference to Morse, Don Draper, Jon Hamm, or Christina Hendricks would have provided a few contemporary notes to freshen it for today’s audience. All in all, the evening was entertaining and the second act better than the first, and the audience stayed in their seats to the end.

Live theater is a tough business. Arts funding follows economic cycles and relies more on loyal philanthropic individuals and entities than ticket sales, but filling the theaters is what drives the philanthropy. Revivals play a big part in keeping a company viable, but they need to be freshened to keep things interesting. What Bartlett Sher has done in the last five years with Tony Award winning revivals of South Pacific, The King and I, and Fiddler on the Roof shows that creativity extends beyond the original production of these classic musicals. It’s a tribute to the Seattle arts community that it has been a leader along with New York in maintaining the breadth and diversity of its live theater.

If you’re in Seattle this month you can see How to Succeed at the 5th Avenue through February 21st, and wherever you are on March 5th you can catch the very updated, modernized version of Puccini’s Manon Lescaut at a Met Opera Live in HD performance in a theater somewhere near you. (Check it out at https://www.metopera.org/Season/In-Cinemas/Theater-Finder )

Enjoy! There is nothing like live theater!

 

You Can’t Beat Haydn…

There was an art gallery exhibition and reception years ago in Sun Valley, and the featured artist was my former wife Abby Grosvenor. At the time of the opening I was recovering from a neuromuscular illness and only able to sit on the sidelines while the gallery goers milled around looking at the art. In retrospect it was an excellent way to observe the art, the atmosphere, and the people attending.

IMG_3426

Lunar Cycle (1986)

Because of my limited mobility I was given a chair and seated next to the chamber music trio playing at the event. The women of the trio were very friendly and between numbers we chatted briefly. After a particularly beautiful piece I remarked on how much I liked it. Without dropping a quarter note the violinist assertively told me, “You can’t beat Haydn.” She was right and every time I hear Haydn I remember her statement and the evening.

Yesterday I was reminded of both Haydn and her remark as I was trying to teach myself James Taylor’s Handy Man on the guitar. I’d say James deserves the same compliment the violinist gave Haydn. I never tire of James or his music, and though I’m not a serious musician I’d argue that both Haydn and James are masters at making  the complex sound simple. I can’t speak directly to the complexity of the Haydn compositions, but I’m sure the structure is more complicated than the simple melodic line many of the trios and quartets deliver.

That musical epiphany came when I finally started taking guitar lessons and trying to duplicate what I heard from performers I admire. For 50 years I struggled to teach myself, and though the effort wasn’t very successful I did get to the point where the pleasure of playing overcame the pain of learning. I like to tell kids who are learning a game or an instrument that if they stick with it for awhile they will arrive at the tipping point where the pleasure derived is greater than the frustration of non-achievement. It’s been true for me in tennis and writing as well as the guitar. Ironically, at 78 I’ve started taking lessons in all three disciplines now. Better late…

As they say in the mutual fund prospectuses, “Past performance is not a guarantee of future results.” As far as past performance goes my own prospectus is thin; I was OK at the guitar, a little above average at tennis, and incomplete as a writer. I wasn’t as good as I wanted to be in any of the three. I hope the lessons I’m taking now, which I enjoy but dreaded as a child, will improve future performance.

James Taylor

As a lifelong consumer of folk, folk-rock, and original singer-songwriter music I didn’t grasp how complex some of it is in composition and execution. For instance, in Taylor’s song Your Smiling Face there are 6 chord changes in one 8 bar measure. My fingers just can’t change that fast, but in countless live performances I’ve watched James move fluidly and pick each note in a seemingly effortless display of dexterity. Like Roger Federer’s tennis, what seems effortless is the product of great talent and countless hours of repetition and practice. I’ll never get there, but Roger and James are inspirations. I simplify the Taylor songs (and Federer strokes) to learn them, and when I get them right it’s enormously satisfying. It’s a lesson in incremental progress.

I’ve also discovered that others of my favorite singer-songwriters share the same musicality and dexterity. There’s an old axiom in country music that you can play any country song if you can play 3 chords in the key of G. I call bullshit. Willie Nelson’s songs and guitar picking are every bit as complex as James Taylor’s or Haydn’s. And, so are the Beatles’.

Malcolm Gladwell writes that it takes roughly 10,000 hours of practice to achieve mastery in a field and cites the Beatles as an example. In the early 1960’s the Beatles went to Hamburg to play and work on their music. By 1964 when they burst on to the international music scene they had played over 1200 concerts in Hamburg. Practice makes perfect – if you add in creative genius and digital dexterity. There is no way I can coax my fingers into some of the chord configurations that are standard in the Beatles catalog, but I’m still working on it.

I heard James Taylor’s Sweet Baby James for the first time in 1970. Abby and I were living in Europe and two American girls we met in Italy played the album for us. I still enjoy it and each time  it’s as if it were new to my ears. Genius plus dexterity plus practice equals incremental progress. Haydn, James, Willie, and the Beatles – complexity delivered simply.

Porto Ercole

Porto Ercole, Italy where I first heard James Taylor.

You can’t beat Haydn… or James.

Hang Around Long Enough and You Get It

Free Stuff

Over the weekend I was riding a chairlift at Whistler with a cute blonde dressed entirely in pink. Even her skis – pink polka dots on a white background – were fashion forward. The potential for a relationship was sealed when we both got knocked down thanks to an inattentive lift operator as we were loading. After we got going again I asked her name.

“Chloe, but my friends call me Clo-Clo.”

“What’s yours?

“I’m Jack.”

“How long have you been skiing?”

“This is my 67th year. How about you?”

“Wow,” she said. I’m 6 but I started when I was 2.”

“Wow, back at you. Do you ski a lot?”

“Yes. I live in Deep Cove and I ski every weekend. Sometimes 2, sometimes 3, and sometimes even 4 days.”

At the top of the Solarcoaster lift Chloe waved and went right. I waved and went left. “Bye, Chloe.” “Bye,” she chirped as she adjusted her goggles and started down.”

Those of you who have followed me for a while know that I’m a little edgy when it comes to attitudes about age (http://www.jackbernardstravels.com/im-a-little-edgy). I don’t know how Chloe feels about it but I don’t like to be judged by my age. I hate “seniors” stereotyping, but lately I’ve been focusing on the positive. It turns out there are some real perks that come to men and women of a certain age. I’m not talking about Social Security or Medicare although it’s always good to have income, and “free” health care is better than playing Russian roulette with your bank account.

No, I’m talking fun perks – not AARP discounts or Senior Day at the supermarket, not discounted movie tickets or all you can eat at the Royal Fork buffet. I’m talking about the good stuff – like free (or almost free) skiing. It’s a perk for the ages… so to speak.

Skiing for free isn’t new at all; Chloe’s age group (1 to 6) has always had the perk and when I moved to Sun Valley in 1973 anyone over 65 qualified for it. I think Chloe and her sister, age 2, are likely to hang on but as the skiing population aged the 65 perk disappeared. It’s still around in various iterations and locations but it’s hard to find.

Four years ago, M and I began our annual winter odyssey and hit the road in search of snow – clean, fresh, white, dry, Champagne powder. Washington State is not the place to find it so we headed north and east. Whistler was our starting point and from there we worked our way east to Kelowna, Penticton, Rossland and Nelson. We didn’t make it as far as Revelstoke or Fernie but they’re on the list and justly famous for the white and dry. Instead, we dropped down to Schweitzer Basin in Idaho and on to Big Mountain in Montana. All of these resorts offer huge discounts for older skiers.

Years ago I tried heli-skiing in the Monashees and more recently Cat-skiing in the Selkirks. Lots of vertical with both conveyances, but I love the Cat. It’s warm and cozy instead of heli-cramped and heli-noisy. Both have become too rich for my wallet in recent years, but I will say, if you love powder skiing as I do and you get a chance to do it by Sno-Cat don’t miss it. The late Allen Drury who, with his wife Brenda, started Selkirk Wilderness Skiing in 1975 wrote the book on the experience. It’s a real treat. There is really nothing like it – tree skiing, glade skiing, big open bowls and steep couloir drops followed by good food and drink in a log cabin lodge. Terrific.

Big Mountain

These ghost trees are on the slope at Big Mountain in Whitefish, Montana. I took the picture from near the top on a 10” powder day in 2014. I was there for a week in 2013 and another in 2014. No charge. 70 and older ski for free and it’s world class powder skiing. Two years from now Alta will be free too. Not bad, eh?

As a travel friendly aside, if you follow the lure of free skiing to Whitefish you should stay at the Good Medicine Lodge run by our innkeeper friends, Woody and Betsy Cox. They managed to escape from New England in 1993 and never looked back. Good Medicine isn’t free like the skiing but it delivers good food, great value, and a cozy rustic atmosphere. Across the road is McGarry’s Roadhouse, an upscale establishment run by Sandy and Steve Nogal, formerly of the famous Inn at Langley on Whidbey Island near Seattle. It’s where I learned to love the brussel sprout. My mother is cheering from above as I write this. She wouldn’t believe it? Try them. You’ll convert.

Whistler Cross

Last night I returned to Seattle after three sensational powder days at Blackcomb (Whistler) with a couple of friends. This picture was taken at the top of the 7th Heaven lift. What a place. When they opened 7th Heaven at 9:30 yesterday there was nearly a foot of untracked powder.

Unlike Big Mountain, Whistler isn’t free for older skiers but it feels like it. It offers discounts for skiers 65 and over, but BC and Washington residents get special treatment. If we buy early in the year we can score an amazing deal. I discovered the perk two years ago when the resort offered me a season pass for less than $200 US. Even if I don’t ski it pencils out over a couple of years. Last year was a terrible snow year and I didn’t use it but this is a great one and with the Canadian dollar now worth about 65 cents it’s almost like getting paid to ski. This year’s pass cost $182 and the season runs into May. It’s hard to beat – unless you live close to Big Mountain.

Season Pass

Clo-Clo is still on a free ride but she’s running out of time. I’m sure she’ll still be shredding the mountain next year when it will cost her $39 a day. I do hope to run into her the next time I’m at Whistler. She’s a charmer. The season is off to a great start so it might just happen. If it does I’m looking forward to another almost free powder day.

Free Stuff Rocks

Winter Survival: Then and Now

Winter Survival Skiing

How do you feel about winter? For people who like the change of seasons it’s a turnaround. With passage of the winter solstice comes the advent of longer days and the promise of spring. For skiers winter is prime time –  a short window that opens in December with Champagne powder and closes in April with spring slush. For bears it’s hibernation time. These days I’m closer to the bears than the seasonal change folks.

When I lived in Sun Valley and later in Salt Lake there was a delicate balance at play. It was cold but when it snowed I had easy access to the world’s best skiing. Wake up. Look out the window. Check the temp. Check for fresh snow and go. When there wasn’t fresh powder I could sip hot buttered rum and read by the fire. It’s all about finding that sweet spot, the balance in life.

For the last few years I’ve lived further from good skiing and bear-like hibernation is more my style. I wish I could be more like the bear – burn off some fat while I wait for the spring run-off. It seems to work the other way around for me. My body senses the cold and adds the fat for insulation. No luck in the hibernation strategy.

If you haven’t guessed by now, I hate to be cold. When I think of being cold I think of the two weeks I spent at a place with the unlikely name of Pickle Meadows. There are no pickles in Pickle Meadows. I don’t know the origin of the name but the location near Bridgeport, CA is the site of the Marine Corps Winter Survival and Escape and Evasion School. In 1961 I spent two weeks there. Jesus, it was cold – January in the high Sierra with a few feet of snow and the temperature close to zero. Something of a rude transition from Laguna Beach where I was living at the time.

Winter Survival

The Marine Corps thought winter survival camp would toughen us up and give us a taste of what it would be like if we got shot down over hostile mountain territory. They were working off the experience of airmen in Korea. They didn’t know that the next war would be fought in the steamy jungles of SE Asia. That’s military planning for you.

Nevertheless, there we were; Pickle Meadows in winter. In the truest sense it wasn’t life or death hardship. We knew it had an end date, but let me tell you three days in drifting snow and subzero temperatures on the eastern slopes of the Sierra with only a hunting knife to find food is not the California vacation I was looking forward to.

I was teamed up with two other pilots and we played the game by the rules. Our three-man team was dropped off in a remote area in three feet of snow and told to evade the “Aggressor” team while making our way back to base camp with just a compass and a topo map. If the Aggressors caught us we would be taken to their POW camp for incarceration, interrogation, and other humiliations. Not a happy scenario. This was a realistic exercise and we were appropriately apprehensive.

Winter Survival 2

As we made our way stealthily along it seemed like a cool (no pun intended) game. We followed rabbit tracks hoping for a kill, but rabbits are faster and smarter than Marines. After a night huddled together under a tarp in the snow with no food the game turned into what it really was, a survival exercise. On day two we spotted a porcupine nibbling at new shoots at the top of a Ponderosa pine. “C’mon Marines, let’s get that fucker.” Hoop and holler. We lashed one of our K-bar hunting knives to a long branch and drew straws for who would climb the tree for the kill.

My wingman, Pete Kruger, drew the short straw and we hoisted him up to a branch where he could start the climb. It went well until he got within striking distance – directly under porky. It looked like a done deal until porky got stabbed in the ass, and let go of the trunk. As he fell, Pete whose reflexes were also good let go, and we watched the two of them bounce through the branches until they came to rest about the same distance from each other as when they were at the tippy-top of said tree.

After a little more sparring Pete impaled porky and the two of them fell to the snowy ground. If you are ever confronted with a winter survival situation, don’t go for porky. We almost lost Pete in the hunt and the cost benefit of the effort was low on the benefit side. As instructed in the classroom, we boiled the bejeezus out of porky to purge the pine resin from his system, and after he was thoroughly cooked we scrapped the resinous scum off the top of the tin can pot and chopped him into three pieces. When all that was done our unanimous assessment was that porky has no nutritional value, the texture of a squash ball, and the taste of pure pine pitch. Not good.

The end of the Pickle Meadows survival exercise is an all you can eat steak and eggs breakfast but that didn’t come to pass until after another harrowing 24 hours. We should have known the game would end badly. It did. We evaded the Aggressor force, which probably pissed them off, but as we were nearing camp after three days of evasion we were “captured” and spent the next 24 hours in the POW compound where we were alternatively stuffed into wooden boxes smaller than we were, hammered with loud cacophonous music, blinded by bright lights, splashed with icy water from the snow melt barrel, and “interrogated” by bullying, good guy/bad guy teams. It was a taste of what capture might be like and trust me you don’t want any part of it. I have the greatest respect for guys like John McCain. We have radically different politics but he is a god in the survival pantheon. Pickle Meadows was no Hanoi Hilton.

So, the long story is all about how much I hate the cold. Winter has become an endurance contest for me with a few bright spots interspersed. I’ve got a bad case of SAD (Sunlight Affective Disorder) and love the sun so much I’ve had 5 melanomas removed to prove it. I understand the snowbird thing – retirees heading south to Southern California or Arizona – but I’m holding out for that perfect ski day.  Tomorrow, two friends and I are headed for Whistler. The forecast is good – temp about 32F with snow flurries. It takes me back to 1985 and the picture that opens this blog. Lynn Campion took the photo on Lower Christmas in Sun Valley. Big fun.