Jesus, My Father, the CIA and Me by Ian Morgan Cron

I am slowly getting used to reading books on my Kindle.  And I have to admit that I'm kind of liking the Kindle Daily Deal promotions.  For $1.99, you can download a book after peeking into its innards to see if it grabs you.  A bit surprisingly, I seem to be drawn to the genre of memoirs.  When I was telling my sister this, she asked me what the difference is between an autobiography and a memoir.  I couldn't answer her question then, but I can now.  (The internet is a wonderful thing.)  Both are written by the subject of the book, but a memoir covers a shorter period of time or a more specific aspect of a person's life than an autobiography does.   Memoirs also tend to be more personal than autobiographies, and it is expected that some liberties will be taken since the story is based on the writer's memories (although not as many liberties as James Frey took in "A Million Little Pieces").  Cron addresses this issue head on in the first chapter of his book, quoting John Irving as having said, "...please understand that (to any writer with a good imagination) all memoirs are false...we can always imagine a better detail than the one we can remember."  And so Cron tells us that his memoir "dances on the hyphen between memoir and autobiographical fiction."   He admits that, "In places I have conflated stories.  I have compressed timelines...I changed the names of people who did not sign up to be in my book.  (For example, my childhood dog's real name was Tigger, but I changed it to Waldo.  He was very private.)"   Ultimately, Cron says that this book is "a record of my life as I remember it--but more importantly, as I felt it."

Cron's discovery of the picture that serves as the cover of the book provided the impetus for him to write this story which, at its core, is his attempt to make some sense of his relationship with his father. He says that it was as if "The boy [in the picture] was calling me to join him on a voyage through the harrowing straits of memory. He was gambling that if we survived the passage, we might discover an ocean where the past would become the wind at our back rather than a driving gale to the nose of our boat."   And so the story begins.

As seems to be the case with most memoirists, Cron had a complicated childhood.  When Ian was quite young, the family lived in London, where his father worked both as the head of Screen Gems, the UK and European television subsidiary of Columbia Pictures, and as an important CIA operative.  Celebrities graced their home, and his father played golf with the likes of President Ford.  He only "remembers" this time, though, from family stories.  Ian's reality was growing up in Greenwich, Connecticut living in quiet fear of his frequently unemployed alcoholic father.  Ian talks about having to tiptoe through the house after school, trying not to make any noise that would disturb his dad.  "When we committed the crime of making noise while playing a game or laughing too loud, he wouldn't yell; instead, he would bellow from the living room.  He roared against our childhoods....We were living in an Edward Albee play for the hearing impaired."    Ian tried to get his father's attention in all the usual ways, from going the bad boy route to being a star pupil.  Throughout this time, Ian grappled with his faith, which sometimes provided a touchstone but more frequently served as a source of great confusion and frustration.

I certainly understand if this doesn't sound like a book that you want to run out and buy (or download, as the case may be).  All you have to do is raise the specter of religion, and I'm generally out the door.  There are two things, however, about Cron's writing that made me keep reading.  First, he is quite funny, and he often uses cultural references to illustrate his memories.  Take, for instance, his reminiscences about Catholic school during the Cold War era.   He sets the scene of his classroom, which was decorated in a manner intended to instill the fear of God in the students.  "Every morning we came into our classroom...and looked up to see something like a montage out of a Hieronymous Bosch painting:  people melting in hell, infants floating in the ether...and an all-loving Jesus who looked  more like Justin Bieber than Yasser Arafat."  This was a time when fears of Communism were rife, and Sister Margaret, Ian's teacher, "warned [her students] that the communists were going to land on the shore of Greenwich's beaches and storm our school.  It didn't occur to us to ask Sister Margaret why the Russians would consider seventeen Catholic second graders high-value targets."

Second, Cron has a great vocabulary.  This wasn't always a plus for Ian.  But by the seventh grade, he discovered that if he "titrated [his] overdeveloped vocabulary with just the right amount of sarcasm, my peers thought it funny, not to mention impressive."   I have to admit to resorting to my Kindle's dictionary functionality on a couple of occasions when I wanted to confirm that my contextual understanding of a word was more or less correct.  This included checking the definition of "titrate", which I still don't really understand, but it has something to do with chemistry and the proper mix of components in a solution. I enjoyed his use of words, both as a reader and as a teacher who's working with students to develop their reading skills.

Ultimately, I wish the book had been a bit heavier on the CIA and a bit lighter on Jesus, but it's Cron's story to tell.  "Jesus, My Father, the CIA, and Me" is a quick read, with lots of humor.  And it made me grateful for the "normal" childhood that I had (although there is that story about St. John's Catholic School, Sister Anelda and "60 Minutes" that I'll have to share with you another time).  

Gatorama Drama

Like any new mother, I've spent some time wondering what Alice the Alligator will be like when she grows up. (If you haven't read my prior post, you are probably thinking (i) that I have gone totally insane and/or (ii) that a lot has happened to me since you last checked in.  While that might be true, this post will make a bit more sense if you've read my prior post, "Are You My Mother???")

Luckily, I was able to view alligators at all ages of life at Gatorama, and I was even able to hold this three year old.  (You can't see this but its mouth is taped shut with duct tape.  I think they call child services if you actually do that to your child.)   This wasn't part of the program when Dorrit visited last year, and she declined the opportunity to expand on her gator experience.  I will admit that I was somewhat nervous about holding this guy, but I figured in for a penny, in for a pound. And I had to think that if this was dangerous in any way, it wouldn't be part of the program.  It's not as if they were offering you the opportunity to feed the full-grown gators and crocs.  Now THAT would have been scary!   Did I mention that Gatorama's slogan is "Fast Hand or No Hands"???

We learned during out visit that there are a couple of easy ways to visually distinguish an alligator from a crocodile.  First, crocodiles have narrow snouts while the snouts on alligators are rounded.  Second, when an alligator's mouth is closed, you can only see its top teeth.  Crocs are a bit more ferocious looking, with both their top and their bottom teeth visible at all times.  We also found out that crocs have a gland that enables them to filter salt water; alligators can tolerate salt water, but they are more likely to be found in fresh water habitats.   And if you're wondering how gators/crocs can work up the propulsion to jump this far out of the water, it's a combination of the power of their tails and the power they get from the sun.

While gators and crocs are the main attraction at Gatorama, we did have the chance to view some other wildlife.   They have a panther and some raccoons and some parrots and some peacocks.  We fell in love with the incredibly adorable kinkajous (also known as honey bears).   Kinkajous are often mistaken for ferrets or monkeys, but are unrelated to either of these animals.  Kinkajous are naturally nocturnal animals, which is one reason you might not have seen one before.  Gatorama has trained them to be awake during daylight hours (and I suspect the M&Ms, raisins and other treats that the visitors give them is a pretty good incentive to give up their nocturnal habits).  They are really sweet and playful and use their tail as a fifth limb when climbing (hence the resemblance to monkeys).

Now that I've had a bit of distance from my Gatorama experience, I realize that there are tons of questions that I failed to ask.  What happens to all those adorable little gators when they've grown up?  (I actually know from the website that that this is a "working" farm, and the gators are harvested for their skins and their meat.  There are gator recipes online if you're feeling adventurous, and you can buy gator meat in the Gatorama gift shop.  I'd like to talk to them about the business, though.)   How do they determine the gender of the gator once they've grown up?   Can they distinguish one gator from another?  Where do the other animals come from that round out the Gatorama experience?   I'm not too worried about not asking these questions on this visit, though, since I know that I will be returning to Gatorama next year for another hatching.   That was one experience that deserves to be relived.

If you're interested in exploring Gatorama, go to http://www.gatorama.com/default.asp.  It's a quick hour's drive from Punta Gorda.   This year's hatching festival ends on August 27th, but there's always next year.  Maybe I'll see you there!

Are You My Mother????

Vicki and Dorrit

I do not consider myself an envious person, but around this time last year, Dorrit sent me an email with a picture of her holding a little baby alligator and a note that said something like, "This was so much fun.  Sorry you missed it!"   I was so jealous.  And so I marked my calendar back in January to make sure I didn't miss Gatorama's Hatching Festival this year.   It was definitely one of the coolest things I've ever done.

Allen doing his demo

We saw lots of interesting things at  Gatorama, but I'll cut to the chase in this post and tell you about the hatching experience.  Allen Register (who owns Gatorama with his wife Patty) told the group a bit about the events leading up to our big day as hatchers.  Back in April, Allen went out to survey the gators and heard a bunch of growling coming from the big boys.  This was a sure sign that love was in the air.  Sure enough, come June, there were a lot of nests hidden on the banks of the property with eggs to be collected.  Allen and son Ben would head out to the high grass with a gator stick, a nesting tray, and a sharpie.  When they found a nest, one person would fend off the mama gator by nudging the stick into her snout while the other person would mark the eggs with the sharpie.  The marking is a crucial step in the process because the baby gator is attached to the top of the egg, and if its membrane is torn away in the move to the incubator, you lose the baby.  Once all the eggs have been marked, they are carefully moved to the nesting tray and taken back to the incubator, where they live for approximately 65 days in an environment that is temperature and humidity controlled (at 90 degrees and 100% humidity!)  Allen and his team collected 3232 eggs this year and, as he said, "That's a lot of mamas to fight off!"   With that backdrop, Allen did a demonstration hatching, showing us a couple of "money shots" not to be missed.  Then we were up! 

Alice the Alligator makes her debut

I gently shoved an eight year old visiting from the UK out of the way so that I could be the first hatcher.  (I have been waiting a whole year for this experience after all; he probably just found out about it a week ago.)  After I had donned my gloves, Ben put an egg in my hand. As I held the egg, I could feel the baby moving inside.  It was a very strange sensation.  Ben told me that the movement was caused by the baby chirping for its mother.  A few seconds later, the little rascal stuck his/her head out of the shell.  (The gender of an alligator is not determined until it is about two years old.  Don't ask me.  I'm just reporting.)   Ben asked me if I wanted to name the baby and, unable to immediately come up with a gender-neutral name, I went for alliteration--"my" baby would be called Alice the Alligator. 

Vicki with Eli and me with Alice

Vicki was up next, and I watched her go through the process as I was oohing and aahing over little Alice.  In order to not let the baby get away from you, you have to hold the gator around the scruff of its neck with your thumb and forefinger.  (I feel quite certain that I almost strangled Alice to death in the first minute of her life in the outside world between my excitement and--to be honest--the tiniest bit of fear.)    Vicki was much calmer than I was, but then again she has been through actual childbirth so this was not as big a deal as it was for me.  Vicki named her little guy Eli after her new grandson.

Baby gators don't have much of a learning curve.  They come out of their shells ready to hit the water and go.  So once we were ready to give our little ones up, we put them with the others in a little swimming tub.  (In case you're wondering, their eggs/umbilical cords stay attached to them for a couple of hours.)   They quickly settled into their new environment, and I'm embarrassed to say that I was not able to tell Alice from the other babies notwithstanding that their markings all differ slightly.  My job done, I proudly collected my certificate designating me an honorary hornback (a type of gator) and headed to the cafe for a bite of lunch.  I had a hot dog instead of the gator gumbo; the gumbo just seemed a little bit too close to home after the birthing experience.

Next up:  Gatorama's other offerings

Democracy in Action, Part 2

The crescent moon was hanging high in the sky as I made my way into the Event Center last Tuesday to work my first election.  Even though it was still an hour until sunrise, the polling center was buzzing with activity and excitement.  You could immediately differentiate the experienced workers from the newbies.  The experienced hands were checking the machines to make sure everything was powered up and working properly while the newbies just tried to stay out of the way and get the lay of the land.

My designated job was to distribute ballots, and I randomly picked the table for Precinct 4 and put my things down.  (The Event Center is the voting location for Precincts 3, 4, 19, and 28.   I am not sure which precinct the Event Center itself is in, but the other precincts are contiguous, which is a requirement in order for their residents to vote at that location.)    Lindsey was my tablemate, and I feel like I lucked out to end up with someone so interesting to spend the long day with.

 A few minutes before 7:00, we all raised our right hands and the Oath of Office was administered.   At 7:00 on the dot, it was announced that the polling place was officially open for business.  As a ballot distributor, my job was simple.  When a voter approached our table, we would determine if he needed a Republican, Democratic, or No Party Affiliation ballot.  Once we identified the correct ballot,  one of us would tear the numbered ballot stub off the bottom of the ballot and staple it to the voter pass while the other would give the voter the ballot in a manila folder masquerading as a privacy sleeve and directions on the voting process.  (If ballot distribution were an Olympic event, Lindsey and I surely would have qualified for a gold medal for the speed and efficiency of our process.)

As the day progressed, it became evident that Precinct 28 was the largest (and perhaps most civic minded) of the precincts whose residents were voting at our location.  We had been instructed to turn in our ballot stubs/voter passes once a bundle of 25 had accumulated to make the reconciliation process easier at the end of the day.  The workers covering Precinct 28 casually walked over time and time again during the day to the turn in their bundles as the rest of us watched with envy.  A bit of an informal competition developed among the three other precincts to be the first to generate a bundle.  As voters were checked in, we could hear the workers registering the voters instruct them as to which table they should proceed to.  When Precinct 4 was indicated, we would cheer and eagerly welcome them to our table.  I know this sounds strange and perhaps a bit inappropriate given the seriousness of exercising your right to vote, but there was really good energy in the room, and people seemed to enjoy being greeted in a spirited fashion.  (Sadly, poll worker enthusiasm doesn't translate into high voter turn out.  We were the last table to turn in a bundle and actually had only 38 voters from our precinct all day.)

Lindsey and I also worked on our Vanna White imitations throughout the day.  The way the room was set up, people saw our table first when they crossed the threshold and instinctively headed our way, bypassing the registration desk to their right.  When we saw a voter making this mistake, we would direct them to the check-in spot with a smooth wave of our arms.  (You have to amuse yourself somehow when you're there for 12+ hours!)

As the clock ticked towards 7:00, I watched with as much anticipation as if I were waiting for midnight on New Year's Eve.  Voter turn-out had stalled as a weather pattern made its way through around 6:30.  I had made my way through all my Diet Cokes and other provisions for the day (which I had brought in a roller cooler--I felt a bit like I was going on a camping trip when I headed out that morning).  And frankly I was ready to get home and relax.  When it was announced that the polls were officially closed, the workers all cheered and clapped.

All kidding aside, working at the polls was a very positive and educational experience.  Some small issues did arise during the course of the day--such as voters whose addresses had changed, couples conferring during the voting process, and one voter who didn't have a photo ID--but the clerk handled these situations calmly and professionally.  At the end of the day, after breaking down the equipment and working with the clerk on her reconciliation process, we made our way out into the night.   I realized on my way home that working the election had given me a sense of pride and a feeling of ownership of our democratic system that I'd never felt before.   My father was the Assistant Supervisor of Elections in Bay County for many years, and I also now have a better understanding of what his job was all about and how good he must have felt at the end of a successful election cycle.   I'm looking forward to working again in November, when I expect the voter turn-out to be a wee bit higher.  Make sure that you get out there and vote!     

Gold by Chris Cleave

Little Bee by Chris Cleave is one of my favorite books of all time.  So when I was able to pick up a copy of his latest book Gold at the Book Expo, I was thrilled.  Then I read Bruce Barcott's review of the book in the New York Times.  "Gold is so unlike Cleave's earlier work that it doesn't seem implausible to imagine a mate down at the pub challenging him to write a book without any of the qualities that so delighted readers of Incendiary and Little Bee:  vibrant first-person narrators, snap-snap dialogue, complex cultural-political themes, brisk scenes, and deeply engaging characters."    Nonetheless, I decided to give Gold a try, and it was hard to put it down until I had turned the last page.  I seem to have read an entirely different book than the one Mr. Barcott (whoever he is) read, and I could not recommend it more highly.

Gold tells the story of the friendship and rivalry of two women who are Olympic track cyclists, Kate and Zoe, and the people important to them both--their coach Tom and Kate's husband and daughter, Jack and Sophie.  The story shifts between the past and the present as we learn a bit about the arduous lives of Olympic level athletes.  Kate and Zoe's lives have been interwoven (often uncomfortably) since they met at age 19 at a try-out for the Elite Prospects Programme run by British Cycling.  From the beginning, you know that Kate and Zoe approach life differently from one another, but my favorite passage highlighting their disparate personalities appears towards the end of the book when the two women's bikes are being set up for a race.  "In the way the machines were set up, you could feel something of the riders...Kate's machine was painted simple white, with a passport-sized image of Sophie's face smiling up from the top tube under the clear lacquer of the finish.  The bars were wrapped with a light pink bar tape that was springy and warm to the touch.  Zoe's bike was unpainted, so that the functional lay-up of the dark carbon fiber was visible under the matte varnish.  Her bars had a black rubberized grip on the drops.  On each side of the seat tube, visible from whichever side her opponent lined up beside her on the start line, was written UNDEFEATED in large gold letters...While Kate's bike was designed to make her feel at home in the cockpit, Zoe's was calculated to intimidate."

Zoe lives for racing.  "The thought of stepping up into the full roar of the crowd..seemed simple and natural and good.  It was ordinary days now that frightened her--the endless Tuesday mornings and Wednesday afternoons of real life, the days you had to steer through without the benefit of handlebars...As soon as she got off her bike, her heart was expected to perform all these baffling secondary functions--like loving someone and feeling something and belonging somewhere--when all she'd ever trained it to do was pump blood."   As you might guess, Zoe is struggling to find herself off the track, which is the one place where she finds respite from a haunting memory.

Kate has a full life outside of cycling with her Olympic cyclist husband and her young daughter who is fighting leukemia.  In the opening chapter of the book, Kate watches her husband and Zoe compete in the Olympics in Athens on TV as she takes care of Sophie, who was too frail to make the trip to the Games.  "...Zoe was now sitting on a twelve-thousand-dollar American prototype race bike...while she herself was sitting on a Klippan sofa from Ikea... Kate was well aware that there were victories to which such a seat could be ridden, but they were small and domesticated triumphs, measured in infants weaned and potty-training campaigns prosecuted to dryness."   Kate's life is all about balance, both on and off the track.

Cleave doesn't give short shrift to the character development of the book's supporting actors.  Sophie, at age eight, is struggling with a recurrence of her leukemia and shows a wisdom beyond her years.  When returning home from an outing with her parents, she has a short conversation with a neighbor kid.  "That half minute of talking with Ruby had wiped her out.  It was good, though.  Mom had seen it.  Dad had seen it.  That counted for an hour when they wouldn't worry.  After that she knew she would start to see the lines creeping back into their faces, and hear the sharp edge coming into their voices...[that] meant that they were scared for her all over again, and she would have to do one of the things that made them forget it for another hour."

We see Jack more as a father rather than a cyclist.  He is sweet and tender with Sophie, telling her that she has to be defiant as well as strong in fighting her cancer.  "What's the difference?"  Sophie asks.  "Defiant, Sophie Argall, is if you ever find yourself in front of a firing squad, you say no to the offer of a blindfold..so you can keep looking for a way to escape, right till the last second."

And Tom, Kate and Zoe's coach for 15+ years, is a wonderful father figure for both of the women.  He lost his bid for an Olympic bronze in the '68 Olympics by one-tenth of one second, and "Forty four years later he still noticed the sharp passage of every tenth part of every second.  The inflections of time were the teeth of a saw, bisecting him.  This was not how other people experienced time.  They noticed its teeth indistinctly in a blur of motion and were amazed to wake up one day and find themselves cut in half by it, like the assistants of a negligent magician.  But Tom knew how the cut was made."   He understands, though, that there is life both between and beyond the competitions, and he helps the women, particularly Zoe, navigate its path.

As you can probably tell by the number of quotes from the book that I've included, I nearly ran through my inventory of flags highlighting the passages that I wanted to remember.  Cleave is a compelling writer who has a gift with words.  I hope that other Chris Cleave fans aren't dissuaded from reading Gold due to Mr. Barcott's review.  They would miss a book worthy of a gold medal of its own.

Rochester Wrap-Up

Maggie and Nanette along the
Erie Canal bike path

After spending a week in Rochester and its environs, I am a convert.  Don't get me wrong-you still won't catch me there in the dark of winter.  But it is a beautiful area with a great variety of activities to enjoy.  On my last day there, Maggie and I got out on a bike ride along the Erie Canal.   Rochester became America's first "boom town" as a result of the reduced costs of transporting the product of its flour mills by water rather than over land.  The Canal runs 363 miles from Albany to Buffalo, and I am told that there is a bike path along most of the route.  We settled for a 15 mile ride on a beautiful 70-ish degree morning that actually felt like fall.

Maggie and Paula post-performance

One evening we caught a Paula Poundstone comedy show at a local venue.   I was familiar with Paula's name but didn't know much about her.  Suffice it to say that my face hurt by the end of the evening from laughing so much.  She has one of those quick minds that can make anything seem funny, and her conversations with audience members were truly hilarious.   Given that she was able to make us laugh about the water testing done by an environmental engineer, you can only imagine the tears that were streaming down our faces when she talked with a couple of guys who met at a gay campground that was a Christian campground in its former life.  One of the routines Paula is known for involves pop-tarts, and Maggie made her own contribution to the evening by leaving a box of the treats for Paula during the intermission.  This led to some musings about how the instructions on the boxes have changed over the years, although the suggestion to remove the pop-tarts from their envelope before eating has been a constant.   I am looking forward to hearing more from Paula on "Wait Wait...Don't Tell Me," NPR's weekly quiz program about current events.  

Maggie and I also found time to catch a performance of Fingers and Toes at the Finger Lakes Musical Theater Festival in nearby Auburn, New York.   This is the Festival's inaugural season, and if Fingers and Toes is any indication of the caliber of show that they put on, it will be the first of many.   The time is 1939 and two long time friends--a pianist (Fingers) and a tap dancer (Toes)--have an opportunity to audition their new show for a Broadway producer in two weeks.  The problem is that they haven't written it yet.  With the number "Anyone Can Write a Song," I was in for the ride.  There of course has to be a girl, and after a funny scene auditioning actresses, they find Molly Malloy, a girl from the Mid-West who wants to give it one more try before packing her bags and heading home.  The music was great, the tap dancing was phenomenal, and the plot actually worked.  I wish that I were a theater impresario and could bring this show to our area because I know that it would be a hit--and I'd love to see it again!

It was a really fun week, and Maggie and I are already compiling our list of things to do on my next visit as her husband Charlie airs out the guest suite to get rid of the vaguely fishy smell.  This trip capped off my summer travels, so I'm back to exploring the offerings in Southwest Florida.  Stay tuned for my reports!

Rochester's Got Art

Milton Avery's
Haircut by the Sea

After driving around Rochester and gawking at all of the gorgeous mansions, it shouldn't have come as a surprise that Rochester has a great art museum.   Sure, the Memorial Art Gallery (MAG) doesn't rival the Met in square footage, but it has incredible scope for a museum of its size.   The artists whose paintings are on display run the gamut.  There's Monet and Degas and Renoir and Cezanne.   There's Whistler and Matisse and Milton Avery and Winslow Homer.  There's a funky two-sided painting by Georgia O'Keefe, Jawbone and Fungus, that hangs in a space where viewers can see both paintings.  There's Claes Oldenburg's Baked Potato with Butter (baked potatoes apparently being one of Oldenburg's "go to" objects for both sculptures and prints) and Stuart Davis' Garage with Gas Lights.  

Maggie with Wendell Castle's
Last Judgment 

The MAG also has a great sculpture collection (and an outdoor sculpture garden in the works).  There are a couple of rooms devoted to Oceanic, African, and Native American art that had some masks from Papua New Guinea that I was drooling over.  You can see a bronco buster by Frederick Remington, a dancer by Degas, and a bronze of Harriet Tubman (with faces of slaves on her skirt) by Alison Saar.  My favorite sculptures, though, were the pieces that can double as furniture that were made by Wendell Castle.  Castle's works are interspersed throughout the MAG, and one of my favorites was his Last Judgment (and not only because it was a great photo opp).   You can't see it in this photo but there's a door in the sculpture that opens to provide some handy storage space (pun intended).

Devorah Sparber's
After Grant Wood
(American Gothic)

When we decided to visit the MAG, Maggie said there was one piece I would get a big kick out of.  I entered each room with great curiosity, but also with a bit of apprehension that I wouldn't see the connection when we got to the big reveal.  We eventually came to a room where there was a sculpture (for lack of a better word) made of spools of thread.  We picked up an acrylic viewing sphere and when we looked through it, the work became Grant Wood's American Gothic.  It was quite crazy and very reminiscent of Salvador Dali's Mediterranean Sea Which at Twenty Meters becomes a Painting of Abraham Lincoln that Maggie and I saw at the Dali Museum in St. Pete.  Whew!  I got it!  Sparber's upside-down spool sculptures explore the connection between art, technology, and human biology, with each spool of thread intended to be a pixel.  The concept is similar to pointillism as well, with the image forming as you back away from the painting.   Either way, it was very cool, and an unusual use of 4392 spools of thread!   (If you're interested in learning a bit more about Sparber's art, go to http://www.designboom.com/weblog/cat/10/view/18131/devorah-sperber-american-gothic-thread-works.html).

Our visit was capped off with a concert on the only full-size antique Baroque Italian organ in North America.  The organ was built in 1770,  is 22' tall and three feet deep, and has 600 pipes.  It is truly a piece of art, and was about to be sold to be used as furniture in some Italian's modest palazzo when it was rescued by Gerald Woehl, a German organ builder and instrument restorer.  The organ is now owned by the Eastman School of Music, which has lent the organ to the MAG.  Each Sunday afternoon an Eastman student plays a short concert.  If you're interested in hearing what the organ sounds like, check out this link.  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e5htqfVFFiE   We were also treated to a peek into the bellows room to see where the power comes from that fuels the music.  If school were in session, a second Eastman student would have been working the bellows during the concert (which consists of stepping on a large lever that inflates the bellows, expelling air that then feeds into the pipes).  For our concert, an electric fan did the work.

What started out as a quick trip to the MAG to break up a rainy afternoon turned into a really fun outing.  That's the way it often goes if you let yourself be open to opportunities--and the lead of an expert tour guide!  It makes me all the more eager to continue my explorations of Southwest Florida so that I'll have fresh and fun things to share with my visitors.

Seward House Historic Museum

Touring historic homes is not really my thing for a bunch of reasons.   First, I'm not exactly what you'd call a history buff.  Second, looking at fine china and ridiculously ornate furniture just doesn't do it for me.  Third, these houses often smell funny (even more so on a hot summer day when you are herded into a smallish room with lots of other sweaty tourists).   But Maggie and I found ourselves just down the road from the Seward House Historic Museum after our tour of the Harriet Tubman House and figured what the heck.  It turned out to be quite an interesting stop.

As people who remember their Civil War era history know, William Henry Seward was a pretty interesting guy.  He was a vocal abolitionist who ran against Lincoln for the Republican nomination for the presidency.  In 1858 he made his famous "irrepressible conflict" speech in which he predicted the Civil War.  (Seward viewed the political and economic systems of the free labor North and the slaveholding South as fundamentally incompatible and believed that a war was inevitable in order to determine which system would prevail.)  Many historians believe that Seward would have received the nomination had he been a bit less outspoken in his views.  (Perhaps Romney is a history student and this is why he doesn't appear to have formulated many opinions on the issues that would face him as president.  But I digress.)   Seward settled instead for a place on Lincoln's cabinet as Secretary of State.   While in Washington, Seward continued to work as an abolitionist, and his wife Frances opened their home as a stop on the Underground Railroad.

Rendering of the assassination attempt
from the National Police Gazette (April 22, 1865)

The most interesting--and surprising to both Maggie and me--part of the tour was learning that there was an assassination plot to take out Seward and VP Johnson the night that Lincoln was killed.  Seward was supposed to be at Ford's Theater that night with Lincoln but had been in a carriage accident earlier in the week and was laid up in bed with some broken bones.  There was a knock on the front door, and Frederick (one of Seward's sons) found a man with a parcel who said that he had medicine that had to be personally delivered to Seward.  When Frederick resisted letting Lewis Powell (the messenger/would-be assassin) upstairs, Powell pulled a gun and attempted to shoot him.  The gun misfired, so Powell turned it into a club and beat Frederick to the ground.  Seward was being tended to upstairs by his daughter Anna and Sergeant Robinson, a bodyguard.  When Anna opened the door to find out what was going on, Powell spotted her and ran up the stairs, now wielding a knife.  He rushed into the room, stabbed Robinson and ran to the bed where he stabbed Seward several times around the face and neck.   Seward's other son Augustus was also in the house and responded to Anna's cries for help.  Powell fled the room believing that he had accomplished his mission.  Powell was captured the next day.  Seward and all of the others recovered from their injuries.

Whew!  This sounds like it could be a movie.   When we called Maggie's sister to confirm that we weren't just sleeping through our history classes, Maria spewed out the information about the assassination plot.  We momentarily felt a bit stupid until Maria told us that she had just watched "The Conspirator," a 2011 Robert Redford film about the Lincoln assassination and the later trial featuring James McAvoy, Robin Penn Wright, Tom Wilkinson, and Kevin Kline.  Something to add to my Netflix queue!

Seward's home is filled with the inevitable china that was used for state dinners and gifts that he received during his diplomatic journeys (the bear umbrella stand was my favorite).  What was really fun, though, was the foyer filled with 132 photographs of people he'd met along the way that he particularly admired.  The pictures are numbered and are kept in the same (seemingly random) spots where they were hanging when he died.   The portrait of Lincoln is number 66.  The portrait of Seward himself is number 66 1/2 (both because he thought he should have been president and because he and Lincoln turned into good friends).  There were portraits of the Queen of England and the King of Siam and other dignitaries from around the world.  He reluctantly included a portrait of abolitionist John Brown of Harpers' Ferry fame following his death.  (Seward didn't approve of Brown's methods but felt that he deserved some acknowledgment for his work post mortem.)

All in all, the afternoon was an exciting adventure in history and a look at the ways that people worked to make our country great.  (Imagine me waving a flag at this point.)   The exhibit about the Underground Railroad in the Seward House included a placard about what you can do to help make a difference.  The answer is simple:  get out and vote.  

Harriet Tubman: The Moses of Her People

I'm visiting my friend and bridge partner Maggie in Rochester (where it will be 95 degrees today--so much for getting away to a cooler climate), and we spent a day in nearby Auburn, New York on the way to play  in a bridge tournament.  What, you might ask, is in Auburn, New York?  As it turns out, quite a bit!  Our first stop was the Harriet Tubman House.  I knew Tubman's name as a former slave who worked in the abolitionist movement.  I did not, however, know much about her life.  We came away in awe of the bravery, strength, and selflessness of this woman.

Harriet was one of nine children born into slavery on the Eastern Maryland shore.  When Harriet was a small child, the family was separated as Harriet, her mother and some of the other children were sold to one plantation owner while her father and older brothers were sold to another.   Harriet was able to see her father periodically, however, and he taught her about the Maryland landscape and waterways and how to navigate using the stars.  These skills would prove crucial when she later made her escape to freedom.

When Harriet's owner died, she realized that it was only a matter of time before the widow would sell the members of her family to different households, and that it was time for her--and her family--to try to escape.  Harriet was the first to make her getaway, slipping away from her work in an abolitionist's wagon along the Freedom Trail.  (During the Civil War, the Freedom Trail became known as the Underground Railroad.)  When Harriet crossed the Maryland border, she reportedly said, "...I looked at my hands to see if I was the same person.  There was such a glory over everything.  The sun came like gold through the trees and over the fields, and I felt like I was in Heaven."   Harriet found herself in Philadelphia, and as soon as she was settled, she went back to Maryland to bring some members of her family and other slaves to freedom.  She helped her niece and her children flee from the auction block after an abolitionist posed as their purchaser.  (The slave owner did not get paid.)   Harriet's endeavors were at no small risk, as the Fugitive Slave Act required the return of slaves to their owners.  Often, slave owners sweetened the pot with the offer a reward.  Eventually, Tubman made 13 trips to help other slaves find their way to freedom, guiding many of the slaves all the way to St. Catherines, Canada, where the Fugitive Slave Act had no force.   (Auburn, New York, was a progressive bi-racial community that was one of the stops on the way to Canada, and this is where Harriet settled with her family.)

This was not the end of Harriet's service to others and her country, though.  During the Civil War, she served as a cook, a nurse, a spy, and a scout.  Sadly, her efforts were not always recognized or appreciated.  At the end of the War, Harriet found herself in the South and booked a train passage back home.  The conductor tried to force Harriet into a smoking compartment (which was apparently the more appropriate place for African Americans.)  Harriet resisted, explaining her service to the government.   Ultimately, the conductor and two other white passengers physically removed her from her seat and threw her into the smoking car, breaking one of her arms in the process.   (Some would say she was lucky just to end up with a broken arm, as a mob mentality broke out, with many of the passengers yelling at the conductor to just throw her off the train.)

In 1869, Sarah Bradford wrote an authorized biography of Harriet's life entitled Harriet:  The Moses of Her People.  The sale of the book raised $1200 for Harriet, which she used to purchase a large piece of property in Auburn from William Henry Seward (who you'll hear more about in another post).  Harriet lived on the property with her family and built a Home for the Aged.  She used this home as her base as she later traveled the lecture circuit in support of the suffragist movement.  Harriet continued her work for the rights of all people until she died at the age of 91.   She was truly an extraordinary woman.