Another loss.

kingmisha at 2009-09-18 06:13 (UTC) (Link)

I've been away for some time at my cottage throughout August, and around town in Peterborough since I got back. I didn't miss blogging because I was painting a lot at the cottage (eight landscapes) and did a new sculpture once I got back. I keep adding to the mourning series instead of moving to another theme.

It seems so imperative to me to get this series out of my system particularly in view of recent events. Mary Travers of 'Peter Paul and Mary' was a woman I respected a lot. She applied her considerable talent to causes that mattered to me too. I did sometimes feel the group was a little light but that was the reason they transcended the folk music world into the popular market. They brought the messages of peace, hope, and racial tolerance to a much wider audience.

I particularly respected their unwavering opposition to the Vietnam War. Mary was also a strong feminist and performed without a hint of sex kitten about her. She was tall, angular and direct in appearance and performance. She was not severe though, often seeming quite gentle and funny.

I was a documentary film maker in the seventies, and involved with a variety of political, left-leaning groups concerned with freeing Civil Rights leaders like Angela Davis and Huey Newton, to ending the Vietnam tragedy, to affirmative action for women. It was a very intense and stimulating time when we believed we could change the world. In retrospect I believe we were the catalyst for change. Social upheaval contributed to the end to the Vietnam War and certainly hastened anti-segregation legislation. Artists like Pete Seeger, Joan Baez, Harry Belafonte, Miriam Makebe, Odette, Aretha Franklin, James Brown, Woody and Arlo Guthrie, Bob Dylan, and Peter, Paul and Mary helped wake people up and inspired us to keep the faith.

I was often invited to parties where I met like minded activists and sympathisers. I would host dinners at my place as well where everyone who came contributed funds to some cause like supporting Mc Govern for President or freeing Angela Davis. Meeting Mary Travers at some of these fundraisers would not raise a second thought. It was normal. We were the movers and shakers in the art world of that period.

Another Loss from Livejournal (Kingmisha)

I met Mary Travers in NY when we both were working on the same feminist committee for International Woman's Year. We were at a fund-raising house party on 5th Avenue hosted by some really wealthy women. We were both hiding in the coat room from too many intense women in one place. We talked for quite a while. She was quite shy, soft spoken, very striking and tall.
Another one of those encounters where we promise to keep in touch but then we never do. She used her talent to help others.

Thank you Mary.

Cottage in the rain.

I've been off line for a while at the cottage. It rained for the full week with Maya having one swim and me wimping out in the shower. If this had been 15 years ago, the only bathing option was the lake and we were much hardier for it. I miss those roughing it days because I was fit enough to enjoy the experience. That all changed with the stroke.

The stroke robbed me of my coordination, balance, strength and self confidence. Now I trip over uneven ground, I need a ladder to get out of the water, I can't get in and out of the canoe easily, but I can paint, take photos and walk. I still swim well and the added body fat has improved my already formidable floating ability. It's true, I float like an air mattress without needing an air mattress. It's quite remarkable really.

Maya and I took our three cats (the cousins) to the cottage together. It was their first cottage experience and to say they enjoyed it, is putting it mildly. They had a party after their initial nervousness passed. Inside and out the kitty train was always in motion. Mousing involved Willy catching the mouse and carrying it in his mouth round and round the house, followed by Twee and Choco bringing up the rear with a perplexed expression on his face - huh "what's going on. I better run to catch up". Then there were the many nights of passionate sex for Willy. The object of his affection was big fluffy Twee who was not impressed. All the cats are neutered but they do still have erotic moments usually with fluffy sweaters, towels, cushions and to Willy Twee is the best cushion ever. As mentioned above, Twee was not impressed. Outside, Choco came into his own. Normally he's a follower and timid, but outside he assumed an adventurous and brave personality. Willy was much less crazy than I had expected and actually stayed close to home.

Maya worked on her dissertation, I read and puttered as always. Many good games of scrabble were enjoyed on the rainy evenings - many rainy evenings. I was attacked by chiggers who stealthily bit me without my noticing until the bites started to itch. I got to enjoy yet another novel experience up there. Each year something happens that leaves me asking "what the...?"

Nevertheless we had fun together and it was worth it. We have so little time to be together these days. Next week I'm going back alone with Willy for the rest of August. Let's hope I'll see some sun. So I'll be off line again. See you in September.

Snippet Song Book

In an earlier post I talked about my grandmother's really "old" oldies that became snippets of songs in my memory. So that the snippets continue to be sung I bequeath to Maya and Tracy the following lyrics. I can't write the tunes, alas.

1. Always In the Way

Please mister take me in your car
I want to see Mama.
They say she is in heaven,
is that very, very far?

My new Mama is very cross and
she does frown and say - you're always in the way.
My old Mama would never say, your always in the was.

Please mister take me in your car
I want to see Mama.
They say she is in heaven,
is it very, very far?


2. Dinner for One

Dinner for one please James.
Madam will not be dining.
Yes, you may bring the wine in.
Dinner for one please James.


3. Rubber Dolly

My mother told me
that she would buy me
a rubber dolly, if I were good.

But when I told her
I'd love a soldier,
She wouldn't buy me that rubber dolly.

4. My Bonnie

My Bonnie lies over the ocean.
My Bonnie lies over the sea.
My Bonnie lies over the ocean,
Oh bring back my Bonnie to me.

Bring back, bring back,
oh bring back my Bonnie to me, to me.
Bring back my Bonnie to me.

5. A Bicycle Built for Two

Daisy, Daisy give me your answer do.
I'm half crazy over the love of you.

It won't be a stylish marriage.
I can't afford a carriage.

But you'll look sweet upon the seat
Of a bicycle built for two.

6. Katie

K-k-k Katie, you know I love you.
You're the only g-g-g- girl that I adore.

When the m-m-m moon shines over the cowshed,
I'll be waiting at the k-k-k-kitchen door.

7. A Bird in a Gilded Cage (I had forgotten these snippets, but thanks to Nora Kerr here it is).

(Arthur J. Lamb and Harry Von Tilzer)

The ballroom was filled with fashion's throng,
It shone with a thousand lights;
And there was a woman who passed along,
The fairest of all the sights.
A girl to her lover then softly sighed,
"There's riches at her command."
"But she married for wealth, not for love," he cried!
"Though she lives in a mansion grand."

cho: "She's only a bird in a gilded cage,
    A beautiful sight to see.
    You may think she's happy and free from care,
    She's not, though she seems to be.
    'Tis sad when you think of her wasted life
    For youth cannot mate with age;
    And her beauty was sold for an old man's gold,
    She's a bird in a gilded cage."

I stood in a churchyard just at eve,
When sunset adorned the west;
And looked at the people who'd come to grieve
For loved ones now laid at rcst.
A tall marble monument marked the grave
Of one who'd been fashion's queen;
And I thought, "She is happier here at rest,
Than to have people say when seen: "

RC

Add to Grandma's repertoire, the songs of Vera Lynn and some hymns like The Old Rugged Cross, and you get a good picture of my beloved grandma singing away as she did her chores followed around the house by her adoring grandchild.

How could anyone have been so lucky to have had not one, but two really interesting and loving grandmothers.

Dark side/bright side -

There was a dark side to all this familial bliss. My grandfather had a cruel streak that he would unleash on the unsuspecting and the innocent, like using a six year old to mock her own father's language or rounding up the grand kids to witness him brutally beating a porcupine to death. We were appalled and fascinated by the execution. What had the poor porcupine done? It wandered into the woodshed. It is a wood eating mammal a little larger than a raccoon. It's a non-aggressive, slow moving vegetarian that defends itself with raised, sharp quills that puncture skin, but not an axe.

Grandpa seemed to enjoy killing things, because I also remember that he tormented and finally killed a large milk snake - a truly beautiful creature. The way Grandpa carried on, the snake was putting everyone in serious danger. Milk snakes are harmless and are a danger to frogs and mice only. Even when I was little, I would think what had the victimized creature done to deserve so much wrath? I never dared ask out loud though. We kids, organized a nice funeral service for the deceased snake, with Hildie (Hildebrand) Guerrin, the only Catholic among us, conducting a solemn mass.

I was seven and learning how to swim. It was slow going because I preferred playing in the water to practicing swim strokes. A deal was struck, if I learned to swim by August, Mom would take me to see the movie "The Yearling". I really got serious about my swimming then because I badly wanted to see that movie. It was about a boy who raised a faun from the wild. Oh bliss - I wanted to hand raise a deer and dreamed about it all the time. I was making progress at the Dog-paddle when Grandpa decided to accelerate the learning. He threw me off the dock and then held me underwater to show me I could survive. I bobbed up to the surface in terror, when he did it again. My grandmother was furious. I remember her calling "leave the child alone" and "you're scaring her". I don't remember what my mother was doing but he did stop "toughening me up". Swimming practice ended abruptly and I didn't learn to swim till the following summer.
I didn't see "The Yearling" in August either. I did learn that life isn't fair.

My mother's kid brother Ken was my hero. He was in his early twenties, drove a coupe with a rumble seat and paddled a canoe. He worked days in Ottawa as an architectural draftsman in his brother Watson's firm. He drove home to the lake in the evenings and would take the canoe out for a paddle after supper. I admired everything he did and wanted to be just like him. Ken knew a whole lot about wildlife and birds. He would paddle into the back bays to observe and photograph the swamp life behind Davie's Island.

I desperately wanted to go with him so I helped him load the canoe, hold the bow and never never begged him. I was smart enough to know that a nuisance is not taken anywhere. Sometimes on weekends, he would look at my eager face and say "you can come if you sit still and be quiet". Oh bliss I was going on his adventure. Ken never knew until years later, what a positive influence he had on my life. Every iota of information he passed on I absorbed like a sponge and I became a naturalist like him. We talk now and compare our observations. We support the same organizations and read the same conservation literature. Had he not been kind enough to share his observations and explain what he saw, my interests today might have been very different. His respect for and enjoyment of nature has been handed down through me to Maya.

Ma this is my lake...

Can you imagine a grown woman pretending she didn't smoke because her father didn't approve of women smoking? Why would a mother become more severe with her child in the presence of her father? For that matter, why would my mother persist in bringing her family into the bosom of her family to be trivialized by her father?

I spent each summer with my mother at the family cottage on Meech Lake. Don't get me wrong, I adored the place and had an amazing time but my mom must have been under constant stress, trying to keep me out of Grandpa's way. I was happy to be invisible, it meant I could play for hours in the vast expanses of outdoor adventure. My grandmother really was the centre of life in every way. Weekends my cousins Janice and Julie would arrive and each summer Janice came to stay for a week or two to play with me. It was a charmed life for a kid in the days when we were sent out to play with little supervision. That's how we learned what we could do and what the world was about. We were given ground rules and heaven help us if we broke them. Janice, who was partially blind with an over protective mother, remembers her weeks at the cottage with me, as the happiest times in her childhood. She was free to learn her own limits as she discovered untold strengths.

Grandma was an amazing cook who baked and cooked on a wood stove with a warming oven and towel drying rack over the stove. The meals that came out of that kitchen were unforgettably wonderful. There was no fridge at that time, just an ice box. Once a week we went in the old sedan to buy blocks of ice. I loved to go because the ice house had a sawdust floor and was so cool on a hot day. Grocery shopping in the Old Chelsea General Store was always concluded with a double dip ice cream cone - the best ice cream ever. On the return trip to the cottage, when we rounded the bend a got our first glimpse of the lake, Grandma would slap Mom's knee and say "Ma this is my lake". I still get shivers when I remember it. We loved Meech Lake that much.

Many mornings Mom and I would go berry picking to supply the fruit for delicious pies. I always had a small turnover of my own which Grandma made from the leftover pastry and fruit. There is nothing so comforting as walking into a house filled with the aromas of freshly baked pies, six at a time, cooling on the shelf above the stove. Lunches would just appear on the big family table in the screened veranda. Dinners were always warm and tasty, but breakfast was my most memorable meal. It never occurred to me then that my dear Grandma worked like a lumber camp cook and considered it normal. We all thought it was normal.

My dad would arrive for his two week vacation and help do the major construction projects my grandfather saved for his arrival. My father was a "good worker" so he played a big role in constructing a new dock, repairing the boathouse, stacking wood etc. Apparently the Balharrie sons were too fragile to help their father. Ken lived at home but had a lung problem. Watson was up with his family every weekend but suffered from asthma so couldn't do heavy labour. Hence, by default, my father was the heavy lifter on all major projects. He paid for my summer vacations with sweat, but I believe he enjoyed having a role to play.

His secondary role was to play straight man to my grandpa's comedian. Each breakfast, went like this, Grandpa would ask me "how do you say orange juice (or whatever) in Dutch?" I would translate and Dad would unwittingly collude by repeating it. Then Grandpa would laugh heartily at our funny language. It didn't take this six year old long to understand that Dutch was a dumb language and English was better. Harmless fun? Not really, not for my father, but nobody realized it except my grandmother who would attempt to change the subject. Bless her, it never worked.

Recollecting these memories now, I see why my mother kept taking us back despite her father's controlling antics. The pull of life at the cottage was too important after years of war and deprivation. She took the brunt of his negativity, but she was home and wanted us to share it with her. It was a trade off she was prepared to make. In the end, I'm truly grateful she did.

Allie and Black Beauty

Grandpa Jimmy was a patriarch in the true sense. He ruled the family with a resolute and unwavering authority. His sons were important to him but his daughter, not so much. Women were useful to his comfort and well being but didn't count. It was his misfortune to have only granddaughters - six in total. Not one of us could carry on the Balharrie name, so we were of little value. He was a Mason and truth be known, also a closet Orangeman. I learned many lessons from him such as the perfideousness of Catholicism, and Jews were not to be trusted. People of colour were never discussed because they didn't exist in his world. Where my grandmother was compassionate, he was hard. Where she was flexible, Grandpa was unbending and where Grandma had an open mind, his was closed. But his values ruled.

I was afraid of him. So was everyone else in the family. Still, I have fond recollections of him telling me stories. Every morning after breakfast we would retire to the sun room where he smoked and told me a long continuous saga about Black beauty and cousin Allie. Alie was a mentally unbalanced relative who wore a Coca Cola carton as a hat in real life but led the life of Don Quixote with his trusty horse Black Beauty in the story. Each day there was another chapter. Needless to say, mornings with Grandpa were exciting. This lasted the six months I lived in that house. Once we moved out it was over and I never recaptured that intimacy with him again.

I was for that brief time, the child of his daughter whom he thought had died in the war. We returned and his relief translated into tenderness for a little while. After that, I was tolerated but never accepted. I was a foriegner, the child of a foreigner who his daughter had regrettably married. Watson was his favourite and he showed it. My mother felt it so acutely that she was always striving for his approval. She was a grown woman ever anxious and always disappointed. He went to his grave withholding his approval. Once he was gone, my mother relaxed.

Winky #2 - The Balharries

Let me preface this entry by saying that none of the following comes from my own experience. I didn't know the Ottawa relatives until I was brought into their orbit on an airplane at age six. I don't remember the names of the relatives nor do I remember their children. I was a foreigner in that family. I never stopped feeling foreign in their midst. I did have a sense of belonging with my grandmother, whose love embraced me. My Uncle Ken filled me with awe and wonder. He took time to show me the natural world and he was young enough to be approachable.

Winky#2 Was a beautiful grey, Persian tabby cat that my grandma adopted to take my mind off the Winky we left in Holland. Since we were living in Ottawa at my grandparents house after our arrival, Winky #2 was moved in as a kitten. He immediately adored Grandma and ignored me. He became her cat. Though cute, he certainly couldn't replace my Dutch Winky. It was not difficult to leave him behind when my parents moved me to Montreal six months later. The KLM office was operational and my father found us an apartment that had an outside back staircase that I recall liking.

We were not supposed to have pets, but we were soon adopted by a stray, jet black tom we named Ebony. At first he slept in a nice house on the back balcony that my dad made. He came into the house to eat. Eventually, he came in to rest from his tom cat adventures. Ebony had a home and I was happy.

So let me set the stage for my Canadian life, with an introduction to my mother's family - the Balharries. Her grandparents came over from Scotland with three sons and a daughter. They started a modest bakery and shop in Ottawa and as their children grew old enough, they all helped in the business. My mom's father was James (Jimmy) and he was the delivery and counter man. He set out daily with horse and wagon to deliver bread, pies and baked goods to the many households on his route. He had a jovial demeanor and was well liked by his customers.

One customer in particular liked him a lot. She caught his eye, because she was an elegant dark haired beauty who was the daughter of a genteel English widow, poor but with "pretensions" (his words, not mine). Florence Gilchrist had a musical education and was quite well known throughout the Ottawa Valley as a Church soloist. She made a modest wage as a guest soloist, performing in different churches. She was blessed with a rich clear soprano voice and a very poised delivery.

The voice I remember, was no longer so rich and clear. She was much older by the time I entered her life, but she still carried a tune well and loved to sing and play the piano. She had a vast repertoire of really "old" oldies that I would learn to sing with her, like: "Bird in a Gilded Cage", "Dinner for One", "Rubber Dolly", "Always in the Way" and an assortment of popular hymns. To this day I can sing "Jerusalem", "Onward Christian Soldiers", "The Old Rugged Cross" and the"23rd Psalm". Alas, I can only remember snippets of her popular classics which Maya and her friend Tracy fondly called my snippet collection. They made frequent requests to hear my snippets when they were kids. So Grandma remains in the old songs.

My grandfather married my grandmother (even though her family was penniless) and they started a family. The first born was Watson, the wunderkind architect. Next came Florence, nurse and my mother, and "surprise" thirteen years later Ken was born. He had a twin, but his sister Claire didn't survive. He was and continues to be an award winning nature photographer.

Over the years, the family bakeshop had grown into a very large bakery business with many drivers and routes all over Ottawa. By the time I came into their lives, the Balharrie Bakery was a a household word in Ottawa, a huge success as were the Balharrie heirs. My grandfather's older brother Jack was elected Mayor of Ottawa, his sister Jessy married very well and my grandfather and his brother Dave ran the family business. The Balharrie men were Masons and community leaders. Being canny Scots, they were very thrifty and became wealthy. When his father died, Grandpa decided to sell his share in the family business and become a mortgage lender. This permitted him to be home most days to survey his domain and oversee my grandmother.

She, the happy church soloist had abandoned her career because her husband believed her place was in the home. Traveling around the countryside singing in Churches and meeting heaven knows who, was an unnecessary frivolity. So she retired from the sacred music scene, raised her family and modestly remained in the background except during the years my Great Uncle Jack became Mayor in the late thirties. His own wife was homely and painfully shy, so my grandmother was deputized as the official hostess for the Mayor. She loved people and had the style and poise that made her a natural hostess. Even my grandfather had to agree to let her assume the first lady role. So Grandma did get to spend a few years in the limelight, "putting on airs" as my grandpa described it. That was the last opportunity she got to put on airs because she was grounded for good after that. Her hostess skills were directed inward toward family only.