Tax 'Em

He was in a lot of pain, he was suffering posttraumatic stress disorder, he was with a minor celebrity—Chris Kyle, a navy SEAL who was an expert marksman: Kyle had killed 160 Iraqis and then came home to write a bestseller about it. Oh, and also to champion the cause of returning veterans, and, Sunday, reach out to one of them, Eddie Ray Routh. So what did Eddie Ray—the man in pain, the guy suffering PTSD—do? He killed Kyle and another guy.

It’s a story that breaks the heart. Routh spent four years in the Marines, though the story in CNN says it’s “unclear” whether he saw combat. But do you get PTSD if you’re cleaning latrines in a base in Austria? Never heard of that….

Kyle was an outspoken opponent of gun control, says the story, and had set up a security company, Craft International, which had the motto, “Despite what your momma told you, violence does solve problems.”

Maybe so. It’s an irony that I am so ardently for gun control, because well, take a look at the following chart….

OK—cancel that. After thirty minutes of fruitless searching, I realize that I hadn’t saved it, and could no longer remember where I had found it. So here’s what it looked like: all fifty states ranked in order by red versus blue and incidence of gun mortality. And no surprise, virtually all the red states were at the top of the list. Meaning, as an ardently blue guy, that I should just stand by and let everyone down there in the red states kill each other. Problema—Resuelto! as our old governor used to say. Problem—Fixed!

Well, it’s tempting to say, “live by the gun, die by the gun.” Except that Kyle leaves behind a couple of kids. Oh, and speaking of kids—the little-five year old who was abducted by the crazy guy in the tornado shelter is free. Crazy guy is dead; the kid is seemingly OK.

Or maybe not. You know, there are a couple of points here.

Let me tell you about one of the most enchanting moments I’ve ever spent in an art museum. It was in the seventies, I was in the Art Institute of Chicago, in a room filled with Monet haystacks. That’s nice, you think, but what’s the point?

I was completely alone. There was no guard, no security, no Plexiglas—nothing between me and those gorgeous canvasses.

Those days are gone, but that’s not my point. Here it is: the billions of dollars we now spend searching for fluids of more than three ounces in my luggage or protecting art from maniacs or—for that matter—dealing with a lunatic for six days who has abducted a five year old kid…that money? It’s wasted.

It doesn’t add anything to our economy, not in real, substantial terms. Teaching a kid to read adds some value—he will possibly go on and discover the cure for cancer. Putting an armed guard in a school is a waste of resources. I’ve lived in a time when the only people in school were the kids, the teachers, principal and a nurse.

Second point?

I got laid off a year and a half ago. It produced a number of effects, not the least of which was insomnia. So what did I do, at 3AM when I woke up?

Have a drink!

Had to get back to sleep, right? There’s only one problem. If you do that, you are potentially drinking for two-thirds of the day, since of course you will wait until five to declare the sun over the yardarm. So when I strolled into my shrink’s office at 8AM for that first visit he smelled alcohol on my breath.

So I learned that, and a lot of other stuff. But getting laid off is less stressful than having your husband or father die. It’s less stressful than having a crazy guy abduct you or your son. There’s huge pain here, which is either going to go on and cause more pain, or going to take a lot of time and money to clean up.

And who should bear the cost?

You know my answer. We took on cigarettes, and made Big Tobacco pay (partially) the bill. I’m mixed on that—at least in theory people should be able to quit. There is some element of choice, and therefore personal responsibility here. But sitting in a movie theater, or a kindergarten classroom, or strolling through a mall?

There are 300 million guns in the United States. And each one should be registered, and their owners pay a fearsome tax annually for the damage they are capable of doing.

Claude Monet, Haystacks (Effect of Snow and Sun), 1891, oil on canvas, 25 3/4" x 36 1/4". (Metropolitan Museum of  Art, New York).

Knew I had it somewhere....

A Voice That Cryeth?

Is everybody crazy?

There is a retired guy in Midland, Alabama, who has killed a school bus driver, abducted a kid, and held him hostage for over six days. The community is outraged, in pain, holding vigils. Law enforcement people apparently can’t go in because the guy is heavily armed. However, they are in contact with the abductor, who has agreed to provide coloring books and medication for the child, who has Asperger’s Syndrome. For these actions, the sheriff—as you can see in the clip below—took the liberty of thanking the abductor for caring for the kid.

I’m having a disconnect, here.

Well, how about yesterday’s news? A navy seal, a guy who killed 150 people in Iraq, came home, wrote a bestselling book about it, and is shot on a shooting range. Another guy was shot as well, and the killer took off in Kyle’s car (he being the seal), went to his sister’s house, confessed and then went home. The sister called the cops, who apprehended the killer some hours later.

You’ll have guessed my reaction. Simply put, if a gun cannot protect a navy seal who is an expert sniper from what I presume is a surprise attack, well…what’s the point of having a gun? Actually, it gets a bit worse. Who knows which of the two people was the first to be dispatched, but presumably there had to be at least a second when the second victim could have turned, drew a weapon, shot the assailant.

Unless you’re trained to respond instantly and reactively, your reaction to a sudden and shocking violent act is stupor. You’re stunned. You stand there with your mouth open looking down at your slain friend and you don’t do the obvious thing. Which is, of course, to take the assailant out before he takes you out.

Right, so we’ve got an insane guy in Alabama with an Asperger’s child in a heavily armed tornado shelter. (This, by the way, seems like the least pleasant way for anyone to spend six days—it may tell you how crazy the guy is….) We’ve got a sniper who couldn’t defend himself.

And we’ve got a whole bunch of nuts who believe that the government is out to get them, and their only defense is to have as many guns as possible. And the quote the second amendment, which runs as follows:

The right of the People to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.[97]

OK, Educated Reader, I know you caught it. Here’s the complete version:

A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the People to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.[97]

It was probably those famously radical Madison Public Schools in the dangerous days of the late fifties and early sixties that put the idea in my mind: the second amendment was not about telling people it was just fine to have semi-automatic weapons, it was about ensuring that the citizens could grab their muskets and fight in a well regulated militia. Short form: individuals don’t have a right to bear arms—the state does.

Well, was I busy daydreaming of boys in high school? Was that the class I skipped, in order to play chamber music with a friend? It was forty years ago, after all.

What I didn’t know, until I tracked it down just now, is that the US Supreme Court only decided that the second amendment protected an individual’s right to bear arms in 2008. Yup—that’s four and a half years ago. And as you can imagine, it was a five / four decision—with all the justices that you’d expect piling up to protect this “right.” And here, of course, is the voice of reason, John Paul Stevens:

In a dissenting opinion, Justice John Paul Stevens stated that the court's judgment was "a strained and unpersuasive reading" which overturned longstanding precedent, and that the court had "bestowed a dramatic upheaval in the law".[49] Stevens also stated that the amendment was notable for the "omission of any statement of purpose related to the right to use firearms for hunting or personal self-defense" which was present in the Declarations of Rights of Pennsylvania and Vermont.[49]

So now we’re stuck. It’s a curious thing, how people who have a visceral, knee-jerk hatred paranoia of the federal government have no trouble jumping on the bandwagon and rushing off to Washington when it fits their purpose. And of course it’s no surprise that of the 47 amicus curiae briefs, most of congress, John McCain, and—no surprise here—Dick Cheney came out swinging for this “right.” Obama did not, nor, interestingly, did the United States Department of Justice.

All of us are busy placating. “No,” we tell the gun crazies, “we’re not after all your guns—just the semiautomatics and the assault weapons, and please—couldn’t you go along with background checks at gun shows?” Obama claims that he shoots skeet at Camp David, and then has to release a picture of him with—literally—a smoking gun to prove it. Hasn’t he learned? Half of the population “knows” only two things about him: that he wasn’t born in the state of Hawaii and that he’s a Muslim.

In fairness, interpreting the United States Constitution is nothing you do on a Saturday afternoon while drinking beer with the boys. I’m just as glad not to have to do it. How does free speech as comprehended by the founders apply to something like the Internet? Don’t have a clue. But I do have a thought about the guns that individuals have a “right” to own. Sure! Let’s be a strict literalist here. Of course you can have a gun.

A musket!

A Sacred Non-Believer

Right—let me at least acknowledge the news, so that you know that I, son and brother of newspapermen, have done my job. One person is dead in Ankara, Turkey, in a terrorist suicide attempt. Protesters in Egypt have attacked the presidential palace. US army suicides are at a record high, and so, by the way, is the Dow Jones Industrial Average, at least since 2007.

And I could tell you, since I was compelled to watch it, that Muslim fundamentalists are attempting to enforce Sharia law in parts of London. Actually, it’s happening all over Europe, in neighborhoods that are heavily Muslim.

Here’s the question—does any of this make you feel better?

If the answer is no, then you really should check out the clip below. First of all for the quality of the performance—these are some skilled guys, in particular the first cellist, who looks like he’s only recently been toilet trained. But wow, what a musician!

Then there’s the piece itself, which is some of the most gentle, tranquil music Brahms ever composed. And it’s one of those pieces that you know but somehow never hear. Then, of course, you do, and you immediately say, “I’m gonna listen to that much more often!” It’s that old friend that you really love but somehow never see….

Brahms is one of those guys you love or hate—and several of my friends, including Mr. Fernández, are in the hate camp. “There’s something he does in every composition where the violins are screeching or maybe it’s the harmonic progression but it just drives me nuts,” he reports.

I, on the other hand, absolutely love the music. Nor am I alone—Brahms was popular in his own lifetime, and died a wealthy man, though he was born in poverty. What sort of poverty? Well, his father had to play piano in dance halls, according to Wikipedia.

Which may be employing euphemisms; I always heard that it was brothels. Brahms himself acknowledged that he had a little difficulty with women, perhaps because of his father’s professional activity, perhaps because his mother was seventeen years older than his father.

Then there’s the other theory—Clara Schumann. It’s undeniable that they were devoted to each other, and Brahms spent the two years following Robert Schumann’s death bucking up Clara. He moved into an apartment in her house, and gave up pretty much everything—concerts and composition. So, our inquisitive modern mind wants to know—were they an item?

Gentle reader—there are some places you don’t go.

Or rather can’t, since both Brahms and Clara burnt their letters.

Nor was that the only thing destroyed—there’s the twenty string quartets that Brahms decided weren’t up to snuff. Legend has it that he ripped up a number of attempts at symphonies, too—he had the weight of Beethoven’s Ninth always on his back.

He was rich, but he lived simply. He took long walks, carrying candy for the children, but was grumpy at times to his friends. A story often told about the E Minor cello sonata has the cellist screaming, “I can’t HEAR myself!” Brahms, thundering away at the piano, shouts back, “you’re lucky!”

He writes a requiem that is among the most moving works of sacred music, but doesn’t, apparently, believe. It worries Dvorak, who writes in a letter, "Such a man, such a fine soul—and he believes in nothing! He believes in nothing!"  

There’s a school of belief that says that the real essence of Brahms are the little works, the small works—not the symphonies. Hearing the sextet below, I begin to think that may be right.

Navigation by Burger Kings

Nobody who knows him would ever employ the word “conventional” in describing Mr. Fernández. We could start with the mustache, of which only Salvador Dalí’s was more extreme. Then there are the muttonchops, which make him look like a great-uncle out of Galsworthy. He also, once a decade, does something completely crazy—the most notable of which, in the nineties, was to join Amway.

“Get ready,” he informed me solemnly, “in just a few months, we're gonna have masses of merchandise in this place.” This was right after he had listened to a motivational tape—the message of which was believe, visualize, SEE the success and...bam! You’re rich.

Well, he has just embarked on a course of a zillion chiropractic treatments—the purpose of which is unknown to anyone but Mr. Fernández and (one hopes) the chiropractor. There are now little blue foam devices all over the house. There are special vitamins in large containers marked “Maximized Living,” as well as Daily Detox pills that apparently need to live in the refrigerator.

Even more extreme is the diet. No alcohol, no gluten, no pork, no rice, no…it goes on endlessly and gets added to daily. Of course he cannot have lactose—what, MILK!—horrors! So yesterday I was busy tracking down almond milk, unsweetened, because sugar, or god forbid high-fructose syrup, is absolutely, completely, totally and thoroughly bad and banned.

And guess what?

His health has absolutely dive-bombed!

I am writing this after eating pizza and drinking generous amounts of wine last night. I visit the doctor, nowadays, only when the blood pressure pills run out and CVS declines to give me a refill. Mr. Fernández, however, has been sicker than a wet kitten for the last several days—the ENT guy told him yesterday that his sinuses were completely filled with…right, you don’t want to know. As proof of this, every five minutes or so, Mr. Fernández issues a foundation-shaking sneeze, almost but not quite blowing his mustache off….

I know about this because in the days when I was waiting for the axe at Wal-Mart I practically lived in my doctor’s waiting room. I was there so often that, in the last year, I helped put up the Christmas tree (at 6-foot three, I always have to put up the angel….) AND take it down three months later. That’s what stress does to you.

So I wasn’t surprised when Mr. Fernández told me, yesterday, that there was a problem. Actually, I wasn’t surprised because there is ALWAYS a problem, and guess who gets to fix it?

“So where is it?”

I needed to know where the doctor’s office was because I had to go and pick up another prescription because the prescription the doctor had written did not please the exacting eye of CVS. The doctor had prescribed just a touch of codeine, and that requires a physical address, not the post office box that the doctor had supplied.

“It’s on this little street behind Pavía Hospital that everyone calls Calle Asia but now it’s named after somebody or other….”

This did not sound promising.

“OK, so how do I get there?”

This is, in fact, the operative question in Puerto Rico. Let me explain—absolutely nobody operates on the address system. That, of course, seriously challenged me when I first arrived on the island. I remember it vividly—calling a government agency.

“Do you speak English,” I began. I was a monoglot (well, computer, polyglot exists!) at the time.

“MIRTA! MIRTA! UN GRINGO!!!!” She had not bothered to move the phone from her face.

Right—so it took 10 minutes to find someone who spoke English. Not well, but enough, and hey—how much Spanish could I speak at the time?

“Where are you located,” I asked.

“Stop 17 and a half.”

There was, it seems, a trolley thirty or forty years ago that went down the main drag of town. It had stops, or paradas, which absolutely everybody knew about and by which everybody navigated (though the trolley was long gone) so the world was perfect, see? Oh, and no—they had no idea about what street number they were at.

So we went around and around, and finally Mirta went off to get directions on how to orient a clueless gringo to the parada system.

Fortunately, she had the answer!

“Just go to stop 18 and walk half a stop down!”

There was a particular and minor torture about those days when the linear and logical gringo mind was exploring the depths of Latin exuberance and zest. I give you an example I am living right now: a group of schoolchildren are screaming under my balcony. In fact, they have been directed to scream by their teacher, who is beaming happily at them and smoking a cigarette.

“Aren’t teachers supposed to shut kids up?” I would ask Mr. Fernández at the end of the day.

You may ask—what about the rest of the island? Are they navigating under the parada system too?

Nope—Burger Kings.

Look, there are no street signs because we all—except you—know where exactly everything is and anyway if we had them the hurricane would just blow them away and anyway you shouldn’t rely on signs because the point is to go and talk to people and get the straight story and pass the time of day and have Fulana de Tal call you mi amor and kiss you after a pleasant 15 minutes of chatting about health problems and crooked politicians. That’s how you get to places!

So here’s how it plays: “Ay m’ijo, you go down three streets and turn left at the Burger King and then go for a little while to the Church’s Chicken and then you’ll see a big blue store—The Gatsby—and then turn right at the McDonalds.”

At this point they will note your glazed eyes, so what will the do?

Hop in their car and take you there!

Well, by a miracle I found the place, this morning. The first secretary didn’t know what I was talking about but the second did. I prepared to wait but unbelievably the doctor was there, a patient was just leaving, the secretary snagged him. Five minutes later, the prescription was filled out and in my pocket and CVS has grudgingly and administratively-correctly given me Mr. Fernández’s narcotics.

Thanks for asking—he’s already sounding better.

Notes From a Timid Man

There is, apparently, a misconception going on about me, if I read the reviews correctly of the people who have read Iguanas. “Moving and brave,” says one reviewer; “a story of great love and courage,” says another.

Wrong.

That was desperation, those months in spring of 2010, when I / we figured out what we were going to do with “old Mother,” as Franny deprecatingly called herself. And it was easy to be courageous around her—if she could do it, how could I not? And no, writing the book was also not brave—it was just a purging, in a way.

“Courage is knowing what to do in a dangerous situation,” Harry once told me—and he should know. He’s a philosopher; he’s told me a million times what the Platonic forms are (even now, I’ve only a muddled idea); this definition was some Ancient Greek’s, perhaps Plato himself.

OK—so let me tell you how dangerous the situation is.

Three weeks ago, a couple hundred thousand drunks decided to invade my neighborhood in order to progress to greater levels of inebriety, hear noise and make still more, as well as to expel body fluids in forbidden places. They called this Las Fiestas de la Calle San Sebastián.

And one of the body fluids was blood. Yes, a man bumped into another man, an argument ensued, and the bumper ended up shot, with two different guns, and left dead on the pavement. The killer(s) logically left the scene, the mood of the crowd became a bit dampened, people whipped out their cell phones and took pictures to tweet and facebook. What didn’t they do?

Talk to the cops.

Yes, the “festival” was weeks ago, and no—nobody’s been arrested. People are afraid of retaliation.

Not convinced?

OK—there is a lovely town in the southwest of Puerto Rico. It’s historic; both Raf and I think it’s the second oldest town on the island. And the people there are gentle, sweet. Once, when Raf and I were looking at (and exclaiming over) a wonderful old house, the owner hailed us, brought us in, gave us a tour, and then made us coffee.

Welcome to San Germán!

Where there was a little basketball game that turned bad. Very bad. One player fouled another player, a discussion ensued, and the guy who had been fouled walked to his car, opened it, took out his gun, and killed the guy who had fouled.

Guys? A little tip, here. It’s a game, got it? Not something to shed blood for.

But there’s a lot of blood shed around here. Consider this…

About one in thirty murders in the United States occur in Puerto Rico. Compared to California—which has 11% of the population—we have about half as many murders. But our population is 1.19% of the US population.

Or this. New York City has three times the population of Puerto Rico and half the number of murders.

“So I can read those names, right?”

I was busy seeking free legal advice from my brother—hey, didn’t I nurse Franny all those weeks? I think of it often: my finest hour as a nurse, though the patient did die…. 

“Just a sec, I gotta take this call,” he said.

I felt a bit bad for him. He had been on a conference call earlier; he keeps getting interrupted by affairs oddly more important that mine; he has not so much taken a vacation as moved his practice to Mexico, which is where I have tracked him down.

“Everybody thinks I’m crazy, but I’d think strongly about it.”

In legal terms, that means “no.”

I’ve told him the plan. Thirty thousand people die of gun shot wounds every year. I want to wake up every morning, take a público (the minivan that gets the un-carred around the island—eventually) to a different town, set up my video camera on the tripod, sit in the plaza and read 100 names. This I will do for three hundred days. And around about the time Christmas is running in, I’ll be done. Hopefully, people will come by, ask questions, tell their stories. Lots of material for the blog, and I can also stick the footage on YouTube, where it will instantly turn viral—who can resist a mad gringo running around Puerto Rico reading thirty thousand names! Wow!

I was, of course, filled with excitement—as fervid as I was when I announced the plan to the CEO of Wal-Mart Puerto Rico to get the annual bonus. Just build an extra supercenter and Sam’s club, and don’t tell Bentonville. See? Thinking outside and OF the box!

My question to Johnny—who was probably salivating for a golf course—was whether I could use the names of actual victims that I had found on a website. The names had been submitted by the mourning families—to me it was public record, or implied consent, or something, but what do I know? This is why I have a lawyer brother—though he may not see it quite that way….

Well, Johnny had a reaction essentially similar to the CEO’s.

“You know, it’s possible that one member of the family put the name of the victim on the site and it was really another member of the family who shot the victim by accident and that guy is a member of the NRA so he goes running to them and they file a lawsuit and they’ve got bigger pockets than you, pal!”

Right, it’s also possible that the pope is conducting satanic masses in the basement of St. Paul’s Basilica.

Well, we agreed—if I use those names, I’ll first put all my money (about 300 bucks) in a Swiss numbered account.

“You know, I just can’t stand bullies and bastards getting away with it,” I said.

You know of whom I was speaking….

“I have only a voice,” I thought today, on the trot. And then wondered—where’s that from? Feels like a poem or something. Well I googled it, and couldn’t find it. But I did find a little gem, with which I leave you.  
  

Making Amends

By Allison Grayhurst

The night is caught

like a mouse’s tail caught

between a cat’s shining teeth.

  Once I believed in recognition

and the glory of making a name.

Now it’s only time before me,

and the ashes of my loved one.

  The world and its shallow passions

is not a place to put my hopes in,

is only the grand flame of ‘me’

and my short span.

  Loving a child is what matters.

No words, no pat-on-the-back,

no cry out for justice or the soft sniffles

of fickle brilliance.

  Soon I will join a tree or even a flower.

The sloping roof with the snow on top -

that is stillness.

  The wind pushes its way under my door

like a maddened bird.

I have no ambitions. I have only a voice

that must continue its singing.

Copyright © 2002 by Allison Grayhurst

(Poem reproduced here with written consent from the author.)

Two Women and a Masterpiece

Well, it was a lesson in comeuppance. I prided myself on being musically literate, well-heard or well-listened, or whatever the musical equivalent of well-read is. But there is a problem with being a musician: you have to learn how to play the instrument. That means that you sit in tiny little rooms with terrible acoustics and try to hear yourself since, of course, there is a tuba player on your left and, inevitably, a trumpeter on your right.

That gives you an excellent excuse to do what you really want to do, which is put the cello down and go hang out and listen to another cellist who somehow has managed to get not just the adjoining practice rooms free but also an entire AISLE empty. So you hang and listen to him or her.

“Wow, that sounds GREAT!” you exclaim completely falsely when he or she comes out, ostensibly to go to the bathroom but really to drive you away. That’s OK, because now you can go hang out with your friends and say snakes and toads (sapos y serpientes—a good Puerto Rican expression) with your pals.

“Yup, the Dvorak…”

“What, she can barely play The Swan!”

“Heard it!”

Multiply this by four years and you have—if lucky—a Bachelor’s in Music, affectionately called a BM. If you have spent enough time in the practice rooms, you may be able to make a career as a musician. If you have spent enough time in the halls, you’ll also have learned a valuable skill. Scratch that word “valuable” and replace with “essential.” Because with the curious exception of those at the absolute top, the average musician is backbiting, hypocritical, insecure, and frequently backstabbing. And cellists, I’m sorry to say, are the worst.

Now then, you’re in an orchestra. That means you are likely to play perhaps fifty odd pieces over and over again for the next forty years. Yes, I exaggerate, but not by much. And you may never listen to any other music again.

OK, look, maybe it’s different now. But it was very uncommon thirty years ago to meet a string player who had listened to Dichterliebe (my red squiggling friend, there ARE some things you don’t know), perhaps the most famous of Robert Schumann’s song cycles.

So I was quite smug, since I thought that having heard a lot of Schumann, I could comfortably be sure there were no surprises. Which is to say, I could ignore the rest of his life’s work. So I was surprised to discover, yesterday, that there was a piano quintet that is well…

…major.

Actually, more than major. It’s at the pinnacle, it’s sitting up there on Mt. Olympus with the gods, and of course EVERYBODY knows it but Marc.

It was written in 1843 in Schumann’s chamber music year (well, I did know about that, though I learned of it only recently), and was first performed, as you would expect, by Clara Schumann, the preeminent pianist of her day.

Although it may not have been she, it might have been Felix Mendelssohn, whom Schumann idolized. Clara was sick for either the first or second performance, so Mendelssohn sight-read for the event.

“Only a man can play this piano part,” said Schumann of the piano quintet opus 44. But the legend is that he said it in a moment of jealousy. She was the hot item; he was on occasion asked if he could play the piano too. (Answer, by the way, is yes—but by no means as well as she….)

She was one tough lady. Her father was very strict, and she was programmed from childhood on to be a concert pianist. She bumps into Robert Schumann as a teenager, and he is smitten. They marry, against her father’s wishes. Robert, of course, goes nuts, and spends the last two years of his life in the madhouse. That might be enough hardship for the average Jane, but the gods apparently seemed to think she needed more. Wikipedia time!

Her family life was punctuated by tragedy. Four of her eight children and her husband died before she did, and her husband and one of her sons ended their lives in insane asylums. Her first son Emil died in 1847, aged only one. Her husband Robert had a mental collapse, attempted suicide in 1854, and was committed to an insane asylum for the last two years of his life. In 1872 her daughter Julie died, leaving two small children. In 1879, her son Felix, aged 25, died. Her son Ludwig suffered from mental illness, like his father, and, in her words, had to be "buried alive" in an institution. Her son Ferdinand died at the age of 43 and she was required to raise his children. She herself became deaf in later life and she often needed a wheelchair.

“Punctuated by tragedy?” How about “saturated?”

Well, she was the breadwinner all her life since Robert was, in his words, “always living in the realm of the imagination.” An excellent place to be, except a dinner time….

And however caring she could be, she spoke quite frankly. She is “hostile”—in Wikipedia’s words—to Liszt. She is “scathing” on Wagner. She calls Bruckner’s Seventh Symphony “horrible.”

It was the custom of the time for pianist to include one or two of their one compositions—she does that, but gives up composition in midlife. But she does more—instead of the showy pieces common in recitals of the time, she treats her audience seriously, giving them the real stuff.

OK—let’s do a better job here. These are the composers she played early in her career: Kalkbrenner, Henselt, Thalberg, Herz, Pixis, Czerny. And here are the guys she played later: Chopin, Mendelssohn, Scarlatti, Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert, and—duh—Robert Schumann.

Oh, and by the way, she teaches for many years at the conservatory. Here’s our friend again:

In 1878 she was appointed teacher of the piano at the Hoch Conservatory in Frankfurt am Main, a post she held until 1892, and in which she contributed greatly to the improvement of modern piano playing technique.

Just reading about her makes me yearn for a nap.

Fitting, then, that the pianist in the clip below is a woman at the top of her game. One hopes that Clara—her work done at last, the money brought in, the household organized, the students taught and the concerts played—is sitting, doing nothing, hearing without the need of playing, seeing another woman as able as she playing her husband’s great music.

Her husband, “who is always living in the realm of imagination.”

The Dying of the Light

Here’s the good news first: not having to do much of anything (one thinks of work), I have plenty of time to learn about wonderful, fascinating places.

And the bad news?

They’re usually being bombed, looted, and destroyed.

And so it is, apparently, with Timbuktu, which I have invoked a gazillion times without being sure if it really existed.

Well, it’s cultural snobbery, I guess, that’s afflicted me all these years, because the city has an old and illustrious heritage. It was founded in the twelfth century, at the crossroads of several African trading routes. Here’s Wikipedia on the subject.

In its Golden Age, the town's numerous Islamic scholars and extensive trading network made possible an important book trade: together with the campuses of the Sankore Madrasah, an Islamic university, this established Timbuktu as a scholarly centre in Africa. Several notable historic writers, such as Shabeni and Leo Africanus, have described Timbuktu. These stories fueled speculation in Europe, where the city's reputation shifted from being extremely rich to being mysterious. This reputation overshadows the town itself in modern times, to the point where it is best known in Western culture as an expression for a distant or outlandish place.

All of this was taking place well before it got into Columbus’s head to check out whether he could get to the Orient by boat.

In fact, in almost exactly the same year that Columbus set sail, Leo Africanus was being expelled from Spain.

It was a disaster for Spain, the Reconquista—it robbed the country of a significant part of its cultural and intellectual life. Think of the Jews who fled Germany in the years before and during Hitler, and then got together to make that little bomb we dropped on Nagasaki….

And Leo Africanus must have been a character. He was born El Hasan ben Muhammed el-Wazzan-ez-Zayyat (don’t blame me if this isn’t right—I copy / pasted from Wikipedia) in Grenada and then, in 1485, gets kicked out of the country. Right, so he goes to Africa, studies, and then accompanies his uncle on diplomatic missions in Northern Africa. Then—here comes the fun part—he gets captured by pirates who decide to present him as an brilliant slave to Pope Leo X.

Speculation break—did the pirates reveal their professional activities to the pope? I can imagine it: a group of pirates wandering into the Vatican, turning a corner, and discovering the pope deep in prayer in the quiet gardens of his palace. “Yo, pope, wanna take a little look-see at this slave we captured,” one of the pirates calls. Head jerks up, “hey, bring him on,” shouts back the pope….

All right, historical fiction may not be my strongest point. Leo talks to the slave, decides to free him, baptizes him as Johannis Leo de Medici (sorry, it may be my cultural bias, but I think it’s a step up from El Hasan ben Muhammed el-Wazzan-ez-Zayyat….) and commissions him, shrewdly, to write an account of his travels in Africa.

Isabel, dear? That’s what you should have done with all those guys….

(Sorry, can’t help it—one wonders how Johannis felt about being baptized. Did he welcome it? Did he have any say in it? Does being captured by pirates lead to a sort of philosophical equanimity about such life events? One imagines him shrugging and saying, “oh well, what the hell…”)

Shrewd because for the next several centuries, all that anyone knew about Northern Africa came from Leo Africanus. Who had been, by the way, to Timbuktu at its heyday, and described it thus:

The rich king of Tombuto hath many plates and sceptres of gold, some whereof weigh 1300 pounds. ... He hath always 3000 horsemen ... (and) a great store of doctors, judges, priests, and other learned men, that are bountifully maintained at the king's cost and charges.   

Sounds like a place you’d want to be, hunh? Here’s more….

The inhabitants are very rich, especially the strangers who have settled in the country.  But salt is in very short supply because it is carried here from Tegaza, some 500 miles from Timbuktu. I happened to be in this city at a time when a load of salt sold for eighty ducats. The king has a rich treasure of coins and gold ingots.

Well, forget the salt, it was—more speculation—those gold ingots that grabbed the attention of the Western World. The city was closed to non-Muslims, and there’s certainly nothing like gold and mystery to whet the imagination. So finally, in 1824, the Société de Géographie puts up a 10,000 franc prize for the first non-Muslim to enter the city. Four years later, the reward is claimed by René Caillié, who enters the city alone and disguised as a Muslim.

Time passes, Timbuktu is no longer rich, no longer influential. North Africa falls under French rule in the Scramble for Africa (and yes, that’s an historical event—the big boys of Europe having decided that it was better to get together, drink some port, smoke cigars and decide among them how to slash up a continent—rather than waste their sons’ blood fighting wars about it. This is civilization, see?). Eventually, Timbuktu became part of Mali. And that was one of the beacons of democracy in African.

One of the tragic things about a civilization is the speed at which “is one of the beacons of democracy” can become “was one of the beacons of democracy.” Timbuktu has or had things like this:

It’s the Djinguereber Mosque, built in 1327. Or how about these?

It’s one of a famous set of tombs that the fundamentalist Islamists who overtook the city months ago decided was idolatrous. And you know what happens when those guys get that idea in their heads? Remember the Buddhas? Well, here the tomb is today….

Oh, and all that learning, all that intellectual activity? Those documents that one scholar had compared to the Dead Sea Scrolls? Those documents, some of which had not been examined or even catalogued, much less photographed?

Might be there, might not. On their way out, just before fleeing the city, the militants set fire to the library. Even now, the damage is unclear. But we may never know what we lost.

It’s a story of fanaticism, hatred, stony refusal to come anywhere near reason. Only Pope Leo gets it. Once, the Islamic world was the center for learning and culture. Once, Spain had a Golden Era. Once, Timbuktu was a city of riches and scholarship.

Dylan Thomas had it right: rage, rage against the dying of the light.