A Saturday Morning Life Changer

I could be dramatic, and tell you that it saved my life.

Or, I could be factual and say that it saved my life. Why? Because I struggled for most of my teenage years with a chronic depression that flared into the acute; during those periods, I would walk the streets thinking of suicide. Then I would go home and practice the cello, often preparing for the next rehearsal of the Wisconsin Youth Symphony Orchestra (WYSO).

Obviously, I never committed suicide, nor am I sure of how close I really came. Nor was it just the cello, or WYSO, that kept me alive—but it was a huge part of it. I was tall and lanky, struggling not to admit that I was gay, and not fitting into any discernable clique in high school. So when I played, those three hours on Saturday morning, it was both the chance to escape and to be a part of something larger. 

Here, taken from the official website is the history:

Founded by Dr. Marvin Rabin in 1966, the Wisconsin Youth Symphony Orchestras (WYSO) has grown from one single orchestra into a comprehensive program that includes three full orchestras, a string orchestra, chamber music program and a full array of ensemble programs.  Today, WYSO, under the direction of James Smith is recognized as one of the finest youth orchestra programs in the country.

Right—that might be the official history, but who knows the unofficial history? My recollection—quite possibly incorrect—was that Dr. Marvin Rabin was invited to found the orchestra by Professor Richard Wolf. But what prompted Rabin to accept? He had created at least two other youth orchestras—why go to Wisconsin?

But there he was—variously mercurial, raging, loving, cajoling, demanding—charging down the halls of the Humanities Building shortly before nine every Saturday morning, assembling the troops, shouting for Sharon Levanthal to stand up and get Emily Auerbach to give us an A. Then, it was on to rehearse music that, as I now think about it, was of surprisingly high quality, nor was it simple. In my day, it was Shostakovich Fifth, Dvorak’s New World, and Rimsky-Korsakov’s Russian Easter Overture.

It was a small operation, in those days—yes, there was a manager, a former nun named MaryJo Biechler. There was an office, about the size of a bathroom today. Oh, and the phone—but unless I’m wrong, that was it.

There were supporters, who contributed time and energy, often in substantial amounts, and they were often as high-powered as the music, or the idea behind the orchestra. Here’s a list of the life trustees:

Marian Bolz

Shirley Inhorn

Stanley Inhorn

Richard W. Wolf

Marion Bolz? She was the daughter of a woman named Eugenie Mayer Bolz, and that “Mayer” is there for a reason: She was—I think—the granddaughter of Oscar Mayer. Yes, that Oscar Meyer.

The Inhorns? I now realize that he was the director of the Wisconsin State Laboratory of Hygiene—but that was incidental: They were both big champions of music, and Mrs. Inhorn, as I remember, decided in middle age to take up the marimba. And Richard Wolf was a big music educator, and director of the Summer Music Clinic, which was the first of its kind in the nation, as is still going strong.

They would say that who they were wasn’t the point, it was about the kids; here I cannot speak—again!—with any certainty. But I strongly suspect that the WYSO kids went on to do surprisingly diverse things, and do them very well. The Sharan Levanthal who provoked the tweet from Emily Auerbach? Well, Sharan went on to teach at the Boston Conservatory; Emily became a professor of English at UW-Madison, and created the Odyssey Program.

Two of 6,000 people who have been in WYSO, all of whom have stories of their own. What do we have in common? Well, brain functioning, for one thing, since it’s been established that musicians’ brains—time to be smug, here—are both different and in some ways better than non-musicians’ brains. Discipline, of course, since how many hours of practice did you have to put in, to get into and stay in the orchestra? Then there’s the teamwork involved, as well as the magic of being one of 100 plus people all doing the same and beautiful thing.

But there’s more than that: This morning on my walk, what did I listen to? A piece by Hans Gál, about whom I knew nothing until I heard a CD conducted by Kenneth Woods, himself a WYSO alumnus. Confession—I wasn’t wild about it, and so I skipped to a later track, and heard a Schumann Symphony.

Music, in short, is woven into the cloth of my life—as important (nearly) as my husband and (certainly) my friends, books, and writing. Would I have that intensity of feeling for music without WYSO? I suspect not.

There was something else as well: In 1974, I won the concerto competition, and performed twice the famous—and to me ersatz—Boccherini Cello Concerto. OK—I hated it then, I hate it now, but remember that gawky kid I was telling you about? He got an ovation, and it meant a lot.

Curiously, the most memorable thing about WYSO was not a concert or rehearsal, but rather the drive my father made to get me to a rehearsal. Why? Because it was sub-zero, it was snowing hard, and we were the only ones on the road. It was, in fact, a blizzard, but was the rehearsal cancelled? Of course not.

So it was important to him, as it was to so many parents, this opportunity to do something with music, this lifeline that he must have sense was connecting his son. And it was important to my mother, too, who up until the last days of her life wrote out a check to the organization.

And now, in less than a month’s time, the orchestra will have a fundraiser, Art of Note, with the aim of raising $50,000 for scholarships and operational costs; in addition, they will be auctioning some wonderful, whimsical violins. Take a look:

(Rich Readers out there—I want the third one….)

I appeal to rich readers since, well, I am not. I will give some money, but I’ll do a bit more: Each day I will venture into the café where I write, and where there is a small performance area. So I’ll take the cello in, sit down, put a couple of dollars in to prime the hat, and then play Bach solo suites for an hour. I do this anyway, and donate the money to four wonderful organizations that could use some help. Then, I’ll do a formal recital of the first three suites as a fundraiser a week before the official fundraiser in Madison. That will give me time to upload a video clip to a YouTube page I’ve created.

I’m in Puerto Rico, but where has life taken all of us? I know a couple of WYSO alums are in Europe; I suspect we are everywhere, and some of us, certainly, are still playing.

Anybody want to join me?       

Religion or Scam?

Two scenarios: A man knocks on the door of an old lady’s house, and offers to repave her driveway. Instead, he puts on cheap coat of paint, and walks off with two thousand dollars.

That, we all agree, is fraud, and the state has the legitimate interest and obligation to interfere.

Second scenario: A man invites an old lady into his church, which is an old movie theater, tells her that God wants her to be rich, and that God will reward her if she gives “until it hurts,” because that’s the way God will listen.

And what’s this? Well, if I told you, you wouldn’t believe me, so here’s Wikipedia:

Prosperity theology (sometimes referred to as the prosperity gospel, the health and wealth gospel, or the gospel of success)^[A] is a Christian religious doctrine that financial blessing is the will of God for Christians, and that faith, positive speech, and donations to Christian ministries will increase one's material wealth.

Well, I can tell you all about this because I spent most of the weekend wrapping my head around a Brazilian Church—now the largest in the country—which has spread to over 200 other countries and has an annual income of 735 million bucks.

The church, La Iglesia Universal del Reino de Cristo or The Universal Church of the Kingdom of God, was founded in 1977 by “Bishop” Edir Macedo; today, there are eight million followers in Brazil alone and there are 4700 “temples” across the world. Want a more concrete example? In Uganda—always an interesting place for gay people—the church started in 1996, and now has nine “temples.” Here’s one of them:

OK—they’re Pentecostal, they practice “Prosperity Theology,” and they believe in exorcising demons, though when pressed they say that it is all just theater—nothing serious. What else about them?

Well, they seem to get into trouble pretty much everywhere they go: money laundering, failure to register ministers, buying oils and other materials at local supermarkets and reselling them at higher prices as products from Israel, and thus miraculous. In the United States, the treasurer for the church, Regina da Silva, was convicted of obtaining 22 million dollars in fraudulent mortgages that benefitted the church. Two Brazilians, Marcelo Marini Bismarck and Cristina Rodríguez, allegedly shipped 420 million dollars over a six-year period from 1995-2001.  In addition, The Guardian had this to say in 2011:

Three leading members of one of Brazil's most powerful churches have been accused of laundering millions in church donations and using worshippers' money for personal gain.

The charges, unveiled on Monday by São Paulo's public prosecutor, relate to 404m reals (£150m) allegedly obtained from mostly impoverished churchgoers by leaders at Brazil's Universal Church of the Kingdom of God.

The church, as you can imagine, has critics: Here’s one quote from the New York Post:

“There is nothing we can do legally,” said Heather Browne, state’s attorney spokeswoman. “There’s a problem here – but we cannot legally sue.” Victoria and Jesus Lorenzo of Houston left the church after giving $60,000. They lost their office-cleaning business and went bankrupt.

“They left us in the street,” said Victoria Lorenzo. “It got to the point that we had to give them all our money – literally they were asking members in the church to empty their pocketbooks on the altar.”

All of this would be bad enough, but check out this picture, taken from a blog post titled “Un ejército Cristiano para exterminar a los gays” or “A Christian Army to Exterminate Gays.”

…or especially this:

Then there’s this:

Who are all these people? According to the church, they are young men—called the Gladiadores del Altar and part of the Fuerza Joven Universal—who have had problems, turned to Christ, and are preparing to be pastors. But a gay legislator, Jean Wyllys, in Brazil caused a flurry of activity in the Spanish social networks by asking the following:

Ahora están formando un ejército, ¿cuándo nos daremos cuenta del monstruo que emerge de la laguna? ¿Cuando comiencen a ejecutar a los que llaman infieles? ¿Cuando empiecen a empujar a los homosexuales desde las torres, como el ISIS? No porque tenga la palabra cristiano deja de ser más peligroso este tipo de fundamentalismo”.

(“Now they’re forming an army: When will we see that monster emerge from the lagoon? When they start executing the infidels? When they start pushing the homosexuals from the towers, as did ISIS? No, because the word “Christian” lets that form of fundamentalism be more dangerous.”)

Wyllys also notes that under Brazilian law, paramilitary organizations are illegal. The church claims that that’s rubbish, and points out that the Boy Scouts and the Legionaries of Christ have similar traits. And listening to the clip below, the message is rather innocuous, unless the bit about going into hell each day to cleanse the sinner struck a nerve or two.

And watching the second clip, in which the founder of the church is directing another minister to perform an “exorcism” of a young gay man—well, wait, if the state of California can make conversion therapy illegal, what’s the deal here?

But poking around, I realized that there’s more, since I went into the Departamento de Estado, which registers churches as well as corporations, and guess what? The Catholic Church is there, as is the—arguably—most famous of the gay churches, the Metropolitan Community Church, which here in Puerto Rico is called Iglesia de la Comunidad Cristo Sanador. But what happens when you type in this? Take a look:

Or what about the name that the church also goes by: Pare de Sufrir?

In fact, Pare de Sufrir was quite familiar to me, since I rode the bus every day past the movie theater which had been abandoned all those years and then had become…you can guess.

“Hey,” said Lady, the owner of the café where I write, “you should register yourself and become the legal owner of those names. Then you could turn around and sue them!“

“Get a gun,” said my New-York city lawyer / brother, when I explained this brilliant scheme. So then I wondered, were these guys registered in New York?   

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                    

So I thought about it—should this old atheist finally come to Jesus, and become the minister of the Universal Church of the Kingdom of God? I actually started the process of inscription, when it occurred to me: Do I want to be affiliated with, or the legal head of such a gang of gangsters? Somehow, I didn’t hit that “submit” button.

I never had much truck with churches, since the church I grew up in was solidly middle class, and didn’t have too many problems to deal with. It was a different age, and of course the problems were there: The drunkenness, the wife-beating, physical abuse. But if any of those were being addressed—and I doubt it—I didn’t see it.

But once I was playing a Christmas service in Cristo Sanador, and couldn’t help but notice that a woman was sobbing all the way through it. People would come, put their arm around the woman, hold her hand. Then they drifted of; another one came.

“Her family kicked her out, saying she was possessed with demons, and they didn’t want ever to see her again. So this Christmas, at least, we’re pretty much all she has….”

That’s what Pablo, my friend and then minister of the church, had to say. So I may start a church, the Universal Church of the Kingdom of God Reformed. But there’s one thing I do know…

…there won’t be a place for Bishop Macedo and his fellow bastards in it!

  

Puttering Into Paternity

It was a day when I decided to put myself on the Platte River, since did I want to be in Tunisia, where nineteen people wanting to get into a museum were slain? At least, it was nineteen people ten minutes ago, but when I decided to spend the morning on the North Platte, it was only nine. So who knows how many it will be by the end of the day?

“You have to choose your reality,” I told Montalvo, my 22-year old son, since that’s something he should probably know, and something he wasn’t at the moment practicing: He was upset about a painting he had done that had once graced the Poet’s Passage, and has since been banished to the storeroom.

“It’s totally ruined my day,” he told me, and I tell him, “careful, don’t give anything or anybody the power to ruin your day…”

This I know, but do I practice it? Of course not, since I was currently myself moping, even after having taken my morning walk, the midpoint of which was this:

Right—now we know we’re not in Kansas, anymore. And that made me remember the Platte River, so I told Montalvo, “hey, wanna go to Nebraska?”

“Where’s that, in Alaska?”

That’s the melancholy thing about Montalvo: He’s a sharp kid, but the base is lacking. So I show him the clip below about the Sandhill Cranes in Nebraska, and that leads to the second clip, about the International Crane Foundation, since it’s quite astounding: The population of whooping cranes was down to 22 in the 50s, and now it’s up to around 400 or so. So it’s great news, right?

Well, wait—all it would take would be one major hurricane to hit the Texas coast, and the experts think that two thirds of the population would be gone. Nor is that the only threat.

Because it’s nice to see the second clip, and watch the crazy ornithologists imprinting the chicks with crane puppets, all so that, after six months or so, a pilot can board the light aircraft plane made to resemble a Frankenstein-Whooping Crane. The plane leaves every morning from one of over thirty stops along the way from Wisconsin to Texas, and the birds, each morning are checking out the territory, memorizing the place so that they can return the next fall. Unbelievably, they do it.

“I love fuckin’ birds, man,” said Montalvo, and that’s true, since who else would bother to take Neruda—a completely annoying Green Dominican parrot—out of his cage, and do this?

  

That’s one of the things I love about him.

So I go on to tell him, as important as it is to imprint birds and teach them to migrate, it’s just as important to have a place for the birds to migrate to, and that’s a problem, since populations are expanding and everybody wants to have a green lawn or a swimming pool or just to drink water, which is, you have to admit, quite justifiable. So the wetlands are being progressively destroyed, or if they’re not, then the are getting less fresh water, and becoming more saline. And that’s tough luck for the cranes.

“It’s always mankind,” snorted Montalvo, since he values animals several levels higher than man. But then I point out: If we have these birds today, it’s only because two guys, in 1971, decided to start the International Crane Foundation, in Baraboo, Wisconsin. That’s where the whoopers, having been hatched in Patuxent Research Refuge, are raised and imprinted.

“Hey, you ever been there?”

I told him yes, and that it was an almost heart-stopping experience, to see all of the world’s cranes in one place; in fact, it’s the only place in the world where you can see all of the world’s cranes in one place.

“Damn….”

He’s young, he’s hurting, and all because he is crosswise of Lady, the owner of the café and the banisher of the painting, and so we go on to have the talk that we haven’t had.

“There’s an apology that I make about four times a year, and it runs like this:

I don’t what I did to contribute to this situation, but I’m really sorry for what I did, and please forgive me.

He hates this, of course, since why does Lady always have to win?

“If you spoke to Lady, she would tell you that everyone else always wins: She never does.”

So then I go on to tell him about my mother, and how at five or six days before she died, she called her sister, and apologized.

“What did the sister do?”

Which story to tell? My mother’s version, of her hearing her mother call her up, announce that the sister had thrown her mother out of the house, and she was ill and had no place to go, and could she come to Wisconsin to die? Or my aunt’s version, which had been that she had put up with Mother for years, and that wasn’t easy, since Mother had insisted on giving valuable advice on childrearing to my aunt, and is that ever welcome?

Another thing I like about my son: He tells me, “why did your grandmother even ask? Christ, why didn’t she just call your mother and tell her, I’m on a plane? Meet me at the airport!”

OK—back up, get back on the right road….

“Have you ever been in the middle of two friends having a fight? And you get both sides of the story? How many times has one person been completely right, and the other person completely wrong.”

I’m figuring it out, now. Because silence means, well, this:

We talk, and get to the question: How important is being right? Because what if you, Montalvo, are completely right, and you shut Lady out of your life, and the years go by and the ice gets thicker and colder, and the snows pile up, and the glacier moves inexorably away? How important would it be, to be right?

More downloading.

“She saved my life, you know,” he told me, “if it hadn’t been for her, I’d be in jail or shooting up drugs, or some crazy ass thing.”

“The Poet’s Passage means a lot to a lot of people,” I told him. “And does she know that she saved your life?”

“I told her,” he exploded.

I debated: Should I tell him that some things need to be said again?

I was silent.

Ah, but was I right?   

  

 

An Afternoon at the Opera

“What I want to know is why all these damn women get their fucking way at the end of the opera? I mean, I’m starting to notice it now: They always get the guy they want. And in this case, it wasn’t even really a guy!”

It had been an afternoon where reality—never in abundance at the opera—had been completely shredded, and though the music was great, the plot? Well, even Joyce DiDonato admitted it: It was more than a little off.

What there was of it, which wasn’t much. Here’s what we had to work with, or endure, as Montalvo might have said, since we had taken him to go hear Joyce DiDonato sail her way through Rossini’s deservedly obscure opera La Donna del Lago: Elena (DiDonato) is the daughter of Douglas, the deposed king of Scotland. So Elena meets somebody-or-other who is pretending to be a lost hunter but is actually the new and deposing king. Then Elena takes the lost hunter / real king to her humble but love-filled home, where she gives him wine and guess what? He falls in love with her, which is a problem because she is in love with a man who is played by a mezzo soprano who is pretending to be a man—all the while hitting those brilliant high Cs, which might, had this not been opera, be a clue: A kilt does not a man make. Anyway, the second problem is that Elena’s father is dead set: She’s gonna marry Rodrigo-or-somebody, and that makes sense because the guy is rousing up the troops to go fight the usurping king. So he gets bounty, in the form of Elena, see?

However abhorrent, it was the only thing that made sense in the opera. Nor did it help that the usurping king was Juan Diego Flores, and here, to brighten your Monday morning, is the goods:

Right—and put this guy in a king’s costume, and he becomes mouth-wateringly sexy. So the mezzo-soprano who had conquered Elena’s heart? Well, it must have taken 100 or so spinning wheels most of the winter over there in foggy and peat-smoky Scotland just to provide enough fabric to cover the poor mezzo, and however wonderful she was vocally, well, she made Eleanor Roosevelt look sexy.

“So why the fuck was she wantin’ to get it on with that,” Montalvo was wanting to know at the bus stop, and I have to remind him: This is opera, where a heroine quite naturally can ignore a sex god and go off with a cow impersonating the male sex.

“So what would you have done,” I tell him, “if you were writing this libretto?”

Montalvo is just minted 22, so he has the answer: “I woulda killed everyone of those guys, starting with that bitch Elena.”

Match in the rum factory, “How dare you call Joyce DiDonato a bitch?”

“I’m not calling her a bitch, just that Elena chick. And she’s a complete cock tease, too.”

OK—even I wondered, as I watched the darling Elena innocently invite the dashing Juan Diego Flores to repose in her humble abode…well, was that quite wise? But parenthood brings the need to champion innocence, so I tell him, my young son, “Surely you don’t believe that dear Elena will be ravished and tarnished by the first king masquerading as a lost hunter she encounters in the Scottish woods!”

His look could have started a forest fire….

Then we go on to discuss the ending, which did nothing to get the derailing train back on track. Because the usurping king wins the battle, and thus Douglas is vanquished again, and decides to go offer his life if the others will be spared.

“What the fuh? He’s gonna offer his life? The king fucking owns him! The king won! The king shoulda offed his head then and there, along with that other Niggah, who that bitch Elena got killed. But no, Elena sails in and tells the king to spare her father AND allow her to marry the fat cow, and so what does the king have to do? Look, any real guy would tell her, “listen bitch, you’re spoils of war, you know that? And your father and betrothed? Toast, baby!”

Right—Montalvo grew up in a slightly less refined neighborhood than either of the kings involved. That doesn’t mean, however, that his view of reality isn’t a bit more likely.

In fact, Montalvo’s reality was already significantly absent, since we had watched most of the crowd disembark from subtle black cars driven by chauffeurs: I suspected they were chauffeurs because how many white ladies over the age of 75 have black guys in their thirties as husbands / lovers? So we had taken the bus, which was fairly non-conventional, but Montalvo? Well, he arrived carrying his conveyance into the opera, since where could he park a skateboard?

“This is going to require massive amounts of Coke and popcorn,” I told him, since we had arrived at intermission, and after one and a half hours, what had happened? Not much, except for endless arias about the Highlanders’ love of Scotland, and the eternal love of the new king alias lost hunter for Elena. You try to make an hour and half out of that!

So we munched through the second and final act, and even though I told him, “WAIT! There’s more!” it was clear: What else could happen after the King had pardoned the life of Elena’s father and blessed the union of Elena and the mezzo? Presumably, in an act of complete self-immolation, the king could give up his first-born son to be raised in the simple and humble abode of Elena and the mezzo, and would return to gaze upon his son secretly and anguishedly, as he herded the goats and scratched his open, pus-oozing sores.

“It’s over,” cried Montalvo in a voice every bit as loud as Juan Diego Flores’ voice, and what else did he do? Right—I should have known that he was saving that last round of popcorn for the finale, and if it had only been us, showered as he heaved the contents of the bag heavenward? That would have been OK, but remember that crowd I was telling you about? The kind that get driven to the opera, and the kind who find it quite amazing that that little girl would want money for their sushi and bottle of wine, since at home, well, the girl gives them that for free. So it’s always a little problem at the theater since really, it takes these lovely and elegant ladies about ten minutes to grasp the situation, and then they have to peer into their purses, and locate what they dimly remember to be money, and then isolate it, peer at it again, smile sweetly at the girl, re-examine the money, inquire as to the price again, smile sweetly, turn to look and see if anyone in line is seeing this degrading spectacle, kiss two or three friends or acquaintances or just anybody who is obviously the same social status as they, recall that a transaction is taking place, smile again at the girl, hand the money—didn’t think we’d get there, did you?—to the girl, move away, spill some popcorn, be recalled by the girl, proffering money in return, look at the change uncomprehendingly, be explained that the popcorn and soda was $5:99 and the change is $14.01, since the elegant lady had presented a twenty—“that should do it, don’t you think?”—to the girl, never imagining that she might actually make change, since the girl at home never does, so why should this one?

Right—that was the woman, or her better-heeled sister, whom my young son had chosen to popcorn-shower / blitz at the end of three hours of simpering Elena!

“You can NEVER do that again,” I hissed, from underneath my seat, and who knew that a 6’3” guy could cower under a movie seat? Wonderful, what man is capable of, in times of danger or terror.

Well, I’m happy to say that the lady acted considerably better than anyone in my neighborhood or—especially—Montalvo’s, and more since the popcorn landed on what was the cotton-candy equivalent of hair: Heated and spun and twisted and colored into something so unnatural, and yet so lethal, since it had stopped being soft as hair but instead become a kind of razor-sharp helmet, which could have slashed us mercilessly had she charged. But she stalked away—the popcorn glistening like artificial pearls on her hair; she looked improbably like Elizabeth I as she stormed out of the theater.

So we deconstructed what little there was of the opera at the bus stop, and then the bus came, picked us up. Montalvo tails us, making faces at us through the window as he glides gracefully on his skateboard. And that’s when I realize that the social conservatives were absolutely right about the need for a two-parent environment for raising children, since how else could I have said had it not been for Mr. Fernández, my co-parent in crime?

“Your side of the family,” I tell Mr. Fernández, and we both gasp as Montalvo expertly shoots past a car intent on slaughtering him and sails over a pothole that would qualify, after the next heavy rain, for the sixth Great Lake. So we gasp, and clutch our lace handkerchiefs to our breasts, and Montalvo--operaed and Rossinied but still intact—sails into the distance.

          

   
Right--check out the king, and tell me he's not dreamy….