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Text of the page (random words):
and haven t achieved the resonance i want in my voice i tell myself judy it s a reminder emulate a performance that always seemed heartfelt and honest one of garland s most memorable performances comes toward the end of the 1950 film summer stock it s a fantastic peppy number and garland looks like a million dollars she wears a fedora angled over her face a short black suit that shows off her remarkable legs and high heels that step all over the male chorus around her in the rest of the film she has been slightly plump and has worn remarkably dowdy dresses suddenly in one number she transforms from plain jane to femme fatale and therein lies the rub apparently get happy was shot weeks after the rest of summer stock in the intervening time garland followed a lifelong pattern and crash dieted aided by the pills metro goldwyn mayer had been feeding her since putting her under contract in 1935 it s hard to enjoy that wonderful performance and not acknowledge that her appearance reflects the emotional fragility and dependence on drugs that eventually killed her in fact it s hard to appreciate her entire career and all of classic hollywood without being aware of the ways in which the studios exploited workers like garland hollywood was called the dream factory a factory that makes dreams is still a factory still i choose to follow judy garland s daughters in celebrating their mother s resilience humor and willingness to invite the world to share her emotions and musical gifts i ll smile as i sing get happy on friday night even as my heart breaks a little for a woman who should have lived longer to hear me read this essay on our local public radio station click here 3 comments posted in history music tagged judy garland judy garland centennial singing hard times come again no more sep 1 laughing with jerry after our concert lin manuel miranda recently said we re all like tinker bell in the play peter pan we need applause to live the creator and star of hamilton was talking about broadway performers i perform off off off off off feel free to add additional off s broadway in rural western massachusetts yet i know exactly what he meant i recently gave my first vocal concert in more than a year and a half pianist jerry noble and i rounded out the summer season for our local chamber music series mohawk trail concerts we weren t certain going in whether it would take place inside or outside the 1845 federated church in charlemont fortunately jerry and i were able to perform indoors i have a strong voice but trucks and motorcycles drive by the church i m not sure i m loud enough to compete the way things are going a few weeks later we might have had to move the event outside still for one magical hour and a half we enjoyed the church s excellent acoustics and a feeling of community the audience was masked and jerry and i positioned ourselves 12 feet from the closest listeners our program consisted of music we had hoped to perform throughout the lockdown but could only practice in solitude in our homes it alternated between peppy comic songs and slow numbers the evening was anchored by stephen foster s hard times come again no more foster wrote the song in 1854 he was having personal and career problems his home city of pittsburgh suffered the double blows of a recession and a cholera epidemic looming over all this was the unresolved issue of slavery which would plunge the nation into civil war a few years later it was in short a time not unlike recent months foster s lyrics urged americans to pay attention to the woes around them the audience responded to our show with laughter tears and joy one listener later wrote to me when you started off with hard times come again no more i thought i had died and gone to heaven it was so beautiful and so went the rest of the concert i m good but i m not that good i think this woman and the other audience members were desperate for live music as were jerry and i i asked those gathered to hum along through their masks during the last song over the rainbow they did so quietly so quietly that i m not sure i could actually hear them i could feel them however the room reverberated with what musical theater icon audra mcdonald calls the holy communion between the audience and the artist that feeling was almost better than applause although happily we had plenty of applause as well and like lin manuel miranda and tinker bell we came to life many days have you lingered around my cabin door oh hard times come again no more to hear a version of this essay on our local public radio station please click here 4 comments posted in career changes and challenges creativity music tagged audra mcdonald covid 19 jerry noble lin manuel miranda mohawk trail concerts pandemic music tinky weisblat farewell covid hair may 12 in many ways the pandemic has been character building for me as it has for many others despite losing income i have been more determined than usual to give to my local food pantry i have reached out to older friends relatives and neighbors sharing food offering to run errands or just acting as a sounding board in december i sang christmas carols by telephone knowing that carolers wouldn t be able to make their usual rounds and i have done my best to support those who lost friends and family members to covid 19 i m looking forward to doing great things as we all emerge we hope from quarantine i will hug people i will feed them in person i will perform again i have been asked to sing an outdoor concert this summer i will finish my current book i m also looking forward to showing off something a little less grand i recently went to the hairdresser and got rid of my covid hair over the past months my hair had become shaggier and shaggier and grayer and grayer only so much of the gray could be hidden by hats i have always detested and feared gray hair i inherited mine from my father whose coiffure looked like nothing so much as a pad of steel wool in his later years i remember the exact moment at which i first noticed silver threads among the brown on my head i was in my mid 20s and i was driving along a highway in tennessee where i lived at the time i caught a glimpse of gray in the rear view mirror i was so shocked that i almost ran my car off the road i called my mother and told her what had happened i should have known better my mother had little sympathy for vanity and her own hair didn t start to show any gray until she was around 70 so my pragmatic parent asked is the car all right i was appalled your daughter is on her way to an early death and you ask about an inanimate object i responded i began dying my hair at home after what i call the unfortunate incident the chemicals in an old package of dye exploded terrifying me and forcing me to scrub the bathroom for days i outsourced my coloring to my hairdresser hana it was she who restored my brown color last week i can t describe my joy at looking in the mirror and seeing my true self once more i know i should feel petty hair color isn t an earth shattering matter instead i feel like a million bucks now i just have to get rid of the covid weight 4 comments posted in life changes physical and mental challenges stress tagged covid 19 gray hair grey hair small town democracy in action nov 6 my commentary editor at new england public media suggested i write about my experience working at the election this past tuesday in my tiny hamlet of hawley massachusetts here s what i came up with if you d like to listen instead of reading my report it s a fun listen i promise visit this link on tuesday i worked the afternoon and evening shift from 2 p m until 10 45 when all of the votes had been counted and recounted and checked once more i don t actually love tabulating the votes i do love seeing other townspeople especially during this pandemic year when we don t get to meet often and i enjoy knowing that i m helping democracy function hawley cast 231 votes a record in this town of 330 people 82 percent of the electorate turned out or voted early by mail or in person six people worked our shift the town clerk her election supervisor and four people manning the registration and voting tables my job was simple turn the crank in our ballot box when someone placed a ballot in the slot around 5 30 the supervisor took over my post briefly while i zipped home to heat up quiche for everyone my dog and cat were thrilled by this assignment most of the day was quiet in between clumps of voters we processed the early and mail in votes more than half of the total we came across one ballot that represented the fear of many in our country it came from a dead person margaret eggert passed away in her sleep a couple of weeks ago but not before sending in her ballot town clerk pam shrimpton explained that according to the state we could still honor margaret s electoral wishes the rest of the time was spent sharing news of our neighbors crocheting and contemplating the election we discussed the pros and cons of the electoral college most of us agreed that it seemed out of whack but as residents of a small town in a big state we could see its virtues our oldest poll worker nonagenarian elvira scott met one of her neighbors for the first time when he voted that evening when i was little we knew everybody she mused despite the sadness in her voice i was heartened there were few voters no one knew and the day gave townspeople a chance to greet each other support the historical society through its bake sale and come together with a joint purpose i wish we could replicate this experience on a national level well maybe not the bake sale i don t think i could make enough oatmeal cookies 1 comment posted in small town life tagged 2020 election hawley massachusetts working election polls a little fruitcake dec 4 i making fruitcake with my mother a few years back here are two versions of my meditation on fruitcake something my mother made yearly and i still make yes i know not everyone is fond of fruitcake i don t eat it often myself but i have relatives and friends who rely on getting it every christmas and it has special meaning and memories for me below you ll see the version that appeared in my local newspaper the greenfield recorder today i also recorded a slightly different and shorter audio version recently for my local public radio station you may hear that at https www nepr net post fruitcake does anyone it does it matter they were both written and in the case of the radio version read with heart happy holidays i wish you fun times in the kitchen and elsewhere fruitcake weather fruitcake is often the subject of jokes i have been known to sing the novelty song grandma s killer fruitcake at this time of year myself nevertheless in my family baking fruitcake is a sacred and fun yearly ritual that connects me to my late mother jan and to her late mother clara it s as much about that chain of bakers as it is about the sweet fruity concoction it produces i m sure i m not the only fruitcake baker to have fallen in love with truman capote s story from 1956 a christmas memory this reminiscence sketches the loving relationship in the 1930s between capote as a child and his cousin sook faulk mentally and emotionally the 60 odd year old woman was as the author recalls still a child the two are allies and best friends misfits in a home of adults who are nameless in the tale and seem to care little for the odd couple in their midst the highlight of each year for young truman and his cousin friend comes in the late fall the two break into their piggy banks shop for ingredients and bake 30 fruitcakes the fruitcakes make their way out into the larger world presented to people who seem interesting or significant to the bakers these recipients range from an itinerant knife grinder to president franklin roosevelt the story is written in the present tense giving the reader a sense of being a part of the bakers world and their fruitcake creation it s always the same capote writes a morning arrives in late november and my friend as though officially inaugurating the christmas time of year that exhilarates her imagination and fuels the blazes of her heart announces it s fruitcake weather fetch our buggy help me find my hat i love the insight this story shows into the ways in which cooking and food can bind us to other people and to our recollections of those people the truman capote who is narrating is two decades and more than a thousand miles from his cousin s memory toward the end of the story he explains that not long after the christmas he recalls in minute detail he was sent away to school she died before he could see her again nevertheless by telling the tale of their baking adventures their marshaling of resources the creation of their shopping list their daunting encounter with the bootlegger who supplies the whiskey that preserves the cakes he brings both his younger self and his beloved cousin back to life i ve participated in a fair number of theatrical productions the only time i ever had to wear waterproof mascara on a stage was when i played the part of the older cousin in readings of a christmas memory i couldn t make it to the tale s end without crying i still can t in the story capote and his cousin keep scrapbooks of the thank you notes they receive from the scattered recipients of their cakes notes that give them a feeling of connection to eventful worlds beyond the kitchen with its view of a sky that stops cooking gives me that feeling of connection to others every day but most of all when it s fruitcake weather my precise grandmother and my lively mother made fruitcake every year of their lives when i make it i am once more surrounded by the warmth love and laughter that filled their kitchens when i share it as a gift i also share their legacy leave a comment posted in cooking family and friends holidays tagged a christmas memory christmas stories clara hallett fruitcake jan weisblat truman capote father s day and a russian lullaby jun 14 with father s day approaching i can t help thinking and writing about my late father abe weisblat i paid tribute to him this morning on our local public radio station you can listen to that brief broadcast here or read a slightly expanded version of my thoughts below my smart funny father would have turned 100 this year he has been dead for 20 years and sometimes i almost forget what it was like to be around him then a sight or a taste or a sound brings him back in full force improbably one of these triggers is herring he and my mother were often separated by their work my father wasn t much of a cook when he was on his own his customary evening meal was a martini with stuffed olives and a jar of pickled herring accompanied by matzo or crackers he found this a perfectly balanced meal pointing out that it provided protein the herring fruit the olives and a vegetable the pimientos in the olives he was proud to note that if he ate the cracke...