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Beate Sirota Gordon, an Exemplary Life

For more than five years, from 1992-97, I worked for Kodansha America, the U.S. division of what was then the largest Japanese publisher, and for the last few years of my tenure was Editor-in-Chief of KA, as we called it. We had a sister company, based in Tokyo, Kodansha International, known as KI. KA published an excellent general list, with a minor emphasis on books about Japan and Asia, while KI published almost exclusively on Japanese and Asian subjects. Among KI’s books was The Only Woman in the Room, Beate Sirota Gordon’s memoir chronicling how she came to play a central role in drafting the sections of Japan’s postwar constitution on the rights of women. As the above referenced obituary in the NY Times makes clear, Ms. Gordon led a remarkable and exemplary life, and her book is also very good.

First Visual Pun of 2013

Turning on the TV to see what college football bowl games are on, I noticed something funny on the set, a Twitter hashtag–#caponebowl. Hmm, I thought what is this–the Capone Bowl? A showdown between groups of mobsters for domination of the latest collegiate rankings? Oh, on second thought I guess these photos tell the straight story. Did no one promoting this bowl game think of the (for them) unwelcome association between mobsters and bankers?

Happy New Year

Here’s to a good 2013. Let’s be safe, strong and support each other. It’d be great if folks could be decent to each other, even kind, solicitous, and reciprocal. Or if all that’s too much, let’s just leave other alone. As an accompaniment to my New Year’s message, here’s an image of “The Circus,” A. Logan (1874) is from the splendid exhibit about circus art that my wife and I viewed on my birthday a few months ago, on September 22. You can see more art like this in the post, Life is a Carnival The title of that post is an homage to the song of the same name by The Band from their album “Cahoots.”

More Coverage of Friday’s #IdleNoMore Rally

Subscribers of this blog who read my report yesterday, Spirited NYC Demonstration Supporting First Nations Rights & #IdleNoMore, will also be interested in indie journalist @Stopmotionsolo’s comprehensive report on the demo, with good pictures and video, including a brief interview he did with me. Viewing that footage, I realize now how cold I had become after hours outside, as my speaking on camera seems to have been slurred by my cold lips.

The response to my post since I put it up last night has been extraordinary, with tons of retweets on Twitter and shares via the Internet. Thanks for reading and sharing my report, and the new one from Stopmotionsolo, who tweets here and livestreams here.

Here’s a favorite picture of mine from yesterday and the handbill that organizers handed out:

#FridayReads, Dec. 28–“My Friend Dahmer” & “The Fifth Woman,” a Wallander Mystery by Henning Mankell

#FridayReads, Dec. 28–My Friend Dahmer, a graphic art memoir by Derf Backderf. A powerful book of comic art filled with distressing and dramatic aspects of Jeffrey Dahmer’s adolescence in a suburb near Akron, Ohio, where the future serial killer went to high school with the author. Published by the estimable Abrams Comic Art imprint.

Just finishing the pulsating police procedural The Fifth Woman, a Wallander novel by the Swedish mystery master Henning Mankell. This is the fifth of Mankell’s books I’ve read in the past couple months, and I’ve found each one more compelling and engrossing than the last. As in all the Wallander books, the diabolical plot is gripping, but it is the humanity of the police officers that pulls the reader through the yarn.

Spirited NYC Demonstration Supporting First Nations Rights & #IdleNoMore

Saturday Morning Update: Below I’d written about indie journalist Matt H., of Stopmotionsolo who was livestreamning yesterday’s #idleNoMoreRally. Here’s his comprehensive report on the demo, with good pictures and video, including a brief interview he did with me. Viewing that footage, which can be viewed via this link, I realize now how cold I had become after hours outside, as my speaking on camera seems to have been slurred by my cold lips.

A hunger strike in Canada by First Nations leader Chief Theresa Spence in Attawapiskat, a scandalously impoverished native village in far northern Ontario began 18 days ago, but the issues of indigenous peoples’ rights and environmental justice that it’s stirring up are now spreading throughout the continent, and across the continental border, into New York City where I live. This afternoon I participated in a rally organized by native Americans of NY State in support of and in solidarity with Chief Spence. As shown in the photos below, they brought placards proclaiming their support for her, and for her opposition to the onerous new Canadian law, Bill C-45. It was promoted by the government of Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper and passed by the Canadian senate on December 14. A few days earlier Chief Spence began her hunger strike and asked Harper to meet with her and other First Nations leaders before the law is implemented. She is determined to explain her objections to the law and talk with him directly about the issues currently facing her people and many native groups. He has refused thus far and his government ministers have mostly been trying to ignore her. The rising crescendo of vigorous protests all across Canada, and in NYC today, are being mounted daily to show Harper he cannot hide from this selfless leader. Here is an up-to-the-moment report on Day 18 of her hunger strike at a link from CTV.

For about an hour in today’s freezing temperatures amid bright cold sunshine the spirited crowd of well over 100 people chanted, struck drums, sang, and danced in a circle around the central fountain in the center of Washington Square Park in Greenwich Village. During the rally I met a young journalist who was livestreaming the event. He interviewed me briefly, giving me the chance to tell him how the opposition to Bill C-45 had been building in Canada for months, and that it has now found a powerful catalyst in Chief Spence and her hunger strike. This indie journalist goes by the handle Mr Solo; streams at www.stopmotionsolo.tv; and tweets at @Stopmotionsolo. He gave his audience my name and that of this blog, so I hope that his viewers will find this post through the Internet and social networking. I also made audio and video of the demo, and will try to get some of that up as soon as I’m able.

I hope you can catch the spirit of the event from my pictures and a scan of the flyer handed out during the rally. To amplify all this, if you’re on Twitter please note that the hashtag #IdleNoMore has been trending all over North America this week, so please use it if you tweet on this topic. I also met Kevin Tarrant, Deputy Director of American Indian Community House in NYC. I told him that I thought he and his group  had done a great job of representing the issues from Canada, right down to the copy on their signs, not typical in a demonstration crossing borders like this one. He explained that they had read carefully on the Idle No More website and taken their cues from it. But of course, Kevin and his group really have no border separating them from Chief Spence, with whom they share bond and blood. He was pleased when I told him and a few of his fellow drummers and chanters that word of the rally was already traveling across the continent as I’d tweeted during the demo to an activist friend in Vancouver, British Columbia, Cameron Bode, known on Twitter as @vanboders. Here are Idle No More’s social addresses and connections:

Web: idlenomore1blogspot.com    Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/IdleNoMoreCommunity?fref=ts  Twitter: https://twitter.com/IdleNoMore


Click through to see all pictures.

Readings From Rust Belt Chic, Jan. 3, at Public Assembly in Williamsburg, Brooklyn

 

Happy to share the above tweet, and expand upon it. Next Thursday, January 3, 2013, at Public Assembly, 70 North 6th Street, Brooklyn, near the Bedford Street station stop of the ‘L’ train in Williamsburg, a posse of Clevelanders, some transplanted to NYC, and others just visiting, will read from Rust Belt Chic: The Cleveland Anthology. I will be presenting my contribution to the book, “Remembering Mr. Stress, Live at the Euclid Tavern,” a personal essay on a venerable bluesman I followed avidly the years I lived in Cleveland. I hope to see you there!

Our Holiday Soundtrack–Ralph Vaughan Williams and Bob Dylan with Friends

Last night in my household we listened to music from several old LPs featuring folk songs, folk themes, and original music for chamber groups and orchestra by Ralph Vaughan Williams (1872-1958), the English composer whose work I’ve listened to since I was a student at Franconia College, a student at Franconia College, when a professor there, Bill Congdon, turned me on to his music. Appropriate to the season, we heard RVW’s arrangements of “Wassail Song,” and similar songs. Not carols, exactly, but old folk songs of the season. I’m Jewish and so don’t observe Christmas, but I do love this music without reservations. RVW was part of a worldwide interest in folk idioms that also engaged many of his musical forebears and contemporaries in other countries–like Smetana and Dvorak in Hungary and Czechoslovakia; Sibelius in Finland; and Aaron Copland in the States. Like Alan Lomax in the U.S. in later decades, RVW took early recording equipment in to the field and had nonprofessional musicians sing and play songs for him, also making notes of what he was told. It should be said, that Vaughan Williams didn’t just take folk themes and rework them–he was also a bold, original composer with an edge, exhibited in such works as his modernist Fourth and Sixth symphonies.

Famously, RWV arranged and reworked “Greensleeves,” as a song, and as a suite for orchestra, and many lesser known songs with names like “The Captain’s Apprentice,” “The Lark in the Morning,” “Bushes and Briars, and “The Unquiet Grave.” His output was vast and in the years when vinyl was still the dominant music medium I bought a lot of it. When I visited London for the first time, in 1980, I bought secondhand albums, releases that were never even brought out in the U.S., such as EMI’s boxed set of his nine symphonies and other orchestral music, conducted by Sir Adrian Boult. The album covers still bear the name of the dealer where I found them, Harold Moores Records. The records I bought there all evidently came from a public or college library, because inside I found little index cards, which had noted each time a patron or student had checked out the item. On “English Folk Songs, Arranged by Ralph Vaughan Williams, with the Purcell Singers conducted by Imogen Holst” a tiny, spidery hand had recorded each of the 13 times the album  was requested and played between 1963-78.  A scant 13 plays in 15 years? The album was in great shape when I brought it back home, and still is. Checking the Internet, I see that Harold Moores Records is still in business on Great Marlborough Street in London.

This afternoon, we made a change of pace and have been listening to a magnificent live album, “Bob Dylan–The 30th Anniversary Concert Celebration,” the Madison Square tribute concert staged in 1992 to commemorate Dylan’s first recordings. This is a 3-LP six-sided banquet that features guest performances of 28 Dylan songs by–brace yourself, in order–John Mellencamp; Stevie Wonder; Eddie Vedder; Lou Reed; Tracy Chapman; Johnny Cash & June Carter Cash; Willie Nelson; Kris Kristofferson; Johnny Winter; Ron Wood; Richie Havens; the Clancy Brothers with Tommy Makem; Mary Chapin-Carpenter, Rosanne Cash, and Shawn Colvin; Neil Young; Chrissie Hynde; Eric Clapton; the O’Jays; The Band; George Harrison; Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers; and Roger McGuinn. The house band was Booker T & the MGs, while Al Kooper makes a key appearance on Mellencamp’s rendition of “Like a Rolling Stone.” Toward the end, Dylan steps on stage at the Garden to play 4 songs, “It’s Alright Ma (I’m Only Bleeding),” “Girl of the North Country,” and “My Back Pages and “Knockin’ On Heaven’s Door,” with McGuinn, Harrison, Clapton, Petty, and Neil. I bought my copy about 15 years ago, again secondhand, and it still sounds great, as day has slipped on toward night.