Seemingly The Shortest Chapter

Thirty-six chapters into the “American Pageant” the AP American history text I’ve been using to teach my daughters our country’s history.  We have arrived with today's lesson at my conscious memory, in the 1970s.  I note that it is seemingly the shortest chapter in the text.  Nixon in China.  Nixon under investigation.  I related the story to my daughters of the impeachment trials when my father had me watch Nixon resign.  I was eight years old and his detestation was visceral.  “That man is a crook!  He deserves to go to jail.”  And I remember the Republican convention two years later visiting my best friend at the time, Ralph’s house and his Italian American family were very disappointed to see the nomination go to Ford over Reagan while back at home, my parents regarded Reagan as an aberration. 

I certainly remember Carter and the Peace Accords and the long lines for gas and the oft repeated chant of the Iranian students:  "Marg bar Āmrikā” (Death to America).  Our class isn’t focused on cultural expressions per se.  Generally I think of the decade as absolutely phenomenal for music.  A time I would gladly revisit if only to see all those remarkable acts.  But politically, Nixon’s decline, Ford’s faltering and Carter’s noble but ill coordinated effort to lead from a place of humanity and dignity that only yielded us Reagan was a narrative of one and then another compromise which was difficult present as anything other than a painful transition.

William Grant Still, (1895 – 1978) was an American composer of African descent whom I learned about for the first time today.  Born in Mississippi, grew up Little Rock, Arkansas, one presumes Bill Clinton has an opinion, he became associated with the Harlem Renaissance and was known as the ‘Dean of African American composers. ‘ I have his Afro American Symphony on just now.  Majestic, proud, unmistakably buoyant.  Recommended.  Written in the 1930s it was immensely popular for the next two decades.  Would that I could say that his name came up at a soiree hosted by an early-post-modern ethnomusicologist, composer friend of mine.  Rather, he was simply the next name on the Wiki list of “Chronological list of American classical composers” which I’ve been making my way through.   

I’ve come off a three-day fast today and where the last few times I did that I binged shopped I consciously tried to use whatever was in the fridge today.  A simple stir-fry with the chopped pork up there.  Broccoli with garlic.  A stir-fried rice from what was left in the pan with leeks and ginger.  My eating pattern is quite disrupted with fasting and I forget what we have.   Today at least it felt right to forgo the ritual splurge and make do with what was here.

Friday, 5/22/20