Le Porc-épic et Le Papillon

It has been most difficult to get back into blogging since my nasty cold went away. So while I try to get back in the groove, here is a small story I wrote for my French homework. —David

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Le Porc-épic et Le Papillon

Un jour, dans le forêt à côté de Paris, Pierre le Porc-épic s'est perdu.

La mere de Pierre l'a cherché.
Pas de Pierre!

Elle l'a cherché chez eux.
Pas de Pierre!

Elle l'a cherché sous les arbres de pamplemousse.
Pas de Pierre!

Mais finalement, elle à trouvé Pierre.
Il était dans le jardin.

"Salut, Maman," dit Pierre.

"Pierre," dit Maman, "Je me suis inquiété pour toi!"

"Oh, Maman—je suis ici! Je bâtis quelque chose!"

Pierre a bâti un sac. Le sac est brun et le sac est construit de papier kraft et colle. Il y a beaucoup des petites gateaus dans le sac aussi.

"Quest ce que tu fais, Pierre?" dit Maman.

"Oh, Maman, je bâti un cocon!"

La Mere n'a pas compris. "Un cocon," dit elle, "Pourquoi?"

"Maman, mon amie, Charlotte la Chenille, a bâti un cocon aussi. Et elle s'est endormais dedans le cocon. Quand elle s'est leveé elle etait un papillon! Je voudrais être un papillon aussi. Et j'ai bâti un cocon pour moi! Maman, je voudrais m'envoler!"

"Oh, mon pauvre petit Pierre, tu n'es pas une chenille. Nous sommes des porc-épics," dit Maman. "Et les porc-épics ne s'envolent pas. Nous préférons jetter nos épines et mangeons les pamplemousses. Vive la difference, Pierre, vive la difference"

"Oh, Maman, je t'adore! Je sais que je suis un porc-épic! Mais si j'étais serais un papillon je volerais à travers la forêt!"

FIN

When you talk about this blog later, and you will, be kind.

Copyright © 2007 D. H. Maxine

GRAMMY AWARDS and Me

Over the river, and through the woods ...
... to the GRAMMY AWARDS we go!

When I was a kid, I often fantasized about being famous and winning awards. I do not mean the spelling bee, either! I was certain one-day I'd have an Oscar, a Tony Award, or an Emmy Award. As I got a little older, PERHAPS I even fantasized about winning a Pulitzer or Nobel Prize! Yet I never even remotely imagined I would be nominated for a GRAMMY AWARD. Well, fate showed me.

But wait, there's a little back-story to fill in …

As some of you know, I have loved L. Frank Baum's Oz books since I was in the Second Grade. I've worked in and love musical theatre, and I have a passion for old recordings, really old recordings from the early 1900s. All of these various interests coalesced in the late 1990s when I started doing research on the long-forgotten 1903 Broadway musical version of The Wizard of Oz.

The Wizard of Oz is one of the best-loved fairy tales and one of the best-loved films of all time. Yet few people know that the Scarecrow and Tin Woodman attained fame in a hit Broadway musical in 1903. The show was legendary for its success and its impact on American culture. It made Oz, Dorothy Gale, the Scarecrow, and the Tin Woodman household names.

The show opened on Broadway at the Majestic Theater in New York on January 21, 1903. The show toured, came back to New York, toured, and returned to New York again many times until finally disbanding around 1911. Stock and amateur companies continued to present it into the 1930s when it was overshadowed by the classic MGM film of The Wizard of Oz starring Judy Garland which featured a new score.

To cut a long story short, I began a project to collect all of the old recordings I could find from the show: 78s, wax cylinders, piano rolls, music-box discs, as well as photos, newspaper clippings, etc. In 2003 (a hundred years after the show originally opened!) I produced a 2 CD set of said recordings with two picture-filled booklets.

Me and my 1906 Edison Home Phonograph.

I was very proud of my work on the project. A theater friend of mine in New York said, "You must make sure this CD is submitted to the GRAMMY Awards." I thought, "Yah, right…" But then another friend in New York said the same thing. And then my boyfriend started in on me! So I finally broke down and made sure the CD was submitted for consideration.

A month or so goes by, the GRAMMY nominations come out, and lo and behold:

Nominated for "Best Historical Album"
Vintage Recordings from the 1903 Broadway Musical
THE WIZARD OF OZ
Producer: David Maxine

I don't remember literally "pinching myself" but it was definitely one of those moments. So what happens when you're nominated for a GRAMMY Award? Well, you start getting mail from the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences, friends start congratulating you. And eventually you get to go to the GRAMMY Awards!

So I bought a tux. My BF rented a tux. And off we went. The night before the Awards were handed out there was a "Nominees" reception where we were given delightful things to eat and drink. They also presented the nominees with their GRAMMY Medallions! All of the nominees get them! It is a brass medal on a blue silk ribbon. It's very spiffy. They also take our "Official" GRAMMY portrait.

My CD and my GRAMMY Medallion!

The bulk of the awards are given out in a "pre-telecast" ceremony. There are about 125 GRAMMYs given each year; and only about a dozen are presented on the air. My boyfriend's parents came down for the awards, too. Mom-in-Law was kind of excited to see several members of Chanticleer a few seats away.

Well, my category finally came up and alas my GRAMMY went to "Martin Scorsese's THE BLUES" which I suspected it would. After my loss at the pre-show we headed over to the Staples Center in Los Angeles to attend the telecast part of the GRAMMYs. After the telecast we went to the big GRAMMY part at the Beverly-Wilshire Hotel, ate lots, drank lots, picked up our "goody-bags" and it was over.

Me in my Tux at the GRAMMY telecast.

I really do wish I'd won. I REALLY want one of those little phonograph-shaped awards! Maybe next time. And in closing I offer a shameless bit of self-promotion. Should you be interested in purchasing the CD set, it is available from Amazon.com or directly from the Hungry Tiger Press website.

Click here to take a look at the CD
and listen to sound clips!

Thanks for reading,
David

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Ever wonder who actually votes on these award shows? Well, one of them is now me! As a nominee, I was offered membership in the Academy. Now I get to vote for the GRAMMYs each winter!

When you talk about this blog late, and you will, be kind.

Copyright 2006, 2007 by D. H. Maxine.

RING around the Russians

DIE WALKURE - Act III

STUPENDOUS BUT STUPID

Well, I'm back from the end of the world, and my fifth live RING cycle was a mixed bag. No production of Richard Wagner's fifteen-hour-long epic DER RING DES NIBELUNGEN is ever perfect. But alas, the highs and lows of the inane and confusing production-concept somewhat marred the often spectacular music.

Conductor Valery Gergiev and the Kirov Orchestra produced a RING of unusual beauty. The orchestra was perhaps the clearest and most transparent version of the RING I have ever heard. Gergiev had the ability to make Wagner's massive orchestra often sound like chamber music. This is meant as a compliment. One could hear each orchestral voice blending into a Wagnerian tapestry with each individual thread of orchestral color, intermingling to make a lovely sound-picture.

I did find Gergiev's conducting of RHEINGOLD to be a little lifeless and the horns had a rough time. A friend at the opera suspected it was the dry California air taking its toll on the Russian horn players. But the horns solved their problems sometime during DIE WALKURE and Gergiev came to life for the final three operas.

SIEGFRIED - Act III
Siegfried meets the Wanderer

The singing in RHEINGOLD was solid. There were no weak links; but most of the cast didn't bowl me over, although the Alberic of Edem Umerov and the Mime of Nikolai Gassiev deserve special mention. The Erda had a thick Russian accent. I do not speak German, but even I could hear it. Her RHEINGOLD aria began as something like, "Vikeeee, Votann, Vikeeee!" In WALKURE, Placido Domingo joined the all-Russian cast to sing Siegmund. He was astounding with beautiful tone, a strong ringing voice. Hard to believe he is sixty-five. The WALKURE's Fricka (Larissa Diadkova) was lovely and empathetic and made one almost side with her against Wotan sung by Mikhail Kit. Oddly though, Fricka left the stage before singing her final lines to Brunnhilde in Act II. The super-title came up, but Fricka was long gone. As might be expected the Kirov choral work was spectacular. The Valkyries sang with a clarity I have never heard before, as did the Gibichung Vassals in GOTTERDAMMERUNG.

But the star of the Kirov RING was the Brunnhilde of Olga Sergeyeva. She has a lovely voice (with a trill no less!) and she had no trouble cutting through the Wagnerian orchestra. Her "Battle Cry" was perhaps her weakest moment, but from there on she took command and sang a spectacular WALKURE Act III, a luscious and orgasmic final duet in SIEGFRIED, and the best GOTTERDAMMERUNG Brunnhilde I've ever heard, capped by an "Immolation Scene" that burnt the house down. If her voice weren't enough, La Sergeyeva is a Wagnerian triple-threat. In addition to her voice, she is lovely, appears to be young, and has a stunning figure. And she can act! Thus Sergeyeva's triple-threat status makes her the finest Brunnhilde singing today, IMHO.

We got two different Siegfrieds; one each for SIEGFRIED and GOTTERDAMMERUNG. The SIEGFRIED Siegfried was Leonid Zakhozhaev. He was spectacular. He was thin, youthful, sexy, and could easily pass for twenty onstage. So he certainly looked like Siegfried. So what is our surprise when he opens his mouth and even sounds like Siegfried! He has a bright ringing voice that sounds more like a strong lyric than the more normal helden tenor. But after examining the program to see who our boy was, it turns out he also sings Faust in FAUST and Hoffman in TALES OF HOFFMAN. He has a very beautiful instrument. I hope he takes care of it. That said, it was simply glorious to see SIEGFRIED with a Siegfried and Brunnhilde that looked the parts and sang the bejeezus out of it!

For GOTTERDAMMERUNG we got a new Siegfried named Viktor Lutsyuk. His voice is a bit bigger than Zakhohaev's; but he hasn't quite as lovely a tone. Gunther (Andrey Spehov) had a strong, powerful voice, but oddly, Hagen (Mikhail Petrenko) was vocally disappointing. One would think that the Kirov would have little trouble coming up with a black-toned, big-voiced Russian bass. But Petrenko's Hagen was often swamped by the orchestra and just didn't seem to have enough power. However, this was the most fascinating and creepiest Hagen I've ever seen. Petrenko played Hagen as a weak, lurking, manipulative eunuch. He was as a spider waiting for its prey. And his appearance was something like Clive Barker's "Pinhead" wearing a strapless brown evening gown! Creepy as hell! I wish he'd had the volume to pull off his "Hi Ho! Hi Ho!" number.

GOTTERDAMMERUNG - Act II
Creepy bare-chested Hagen is on the upper level.

BRING IN DA FUNK

But alas, for all of Gergiev's understanding of the music, I found it shocking how un-theatrical and idiotic much of his staging was and how arbitrarily the set and lighting were used. I should add that while I love the naturalistic RING cycles at the MET and Seattle, I have no problem with unusual takes and production concepts. But they have to make sense! I don't particularly like Chereau's RING a lot, but it is intelligent and carefully thought out. The Gergiev/Tsypin RING is just sloppy.

The "Production Concept" is credited to Gergiev and Set Designer George Tsypin. The sculptural set consisted of four immense figures (about twenty-four feet high) and a couple dozen little fetish figures (about three feet high) that looked kind of like Jawas or Ewoks from STAR WARS. The big ones seemed to be part mummy, part horse, part fossil, part primordial performance art. All of the figures had different-colored lights within them. And the little Ewok fetishes had light-up faces. All of this was rearranged, act by act, to change the stage picture. Sometimes the figures floated horizontally. Sometimes they stood with flames on their back. Sometimes they seemed to be dead on the ground. In Act II of GOTTERDAMMERUNG they played Chess! In the final moments of the RING as the world is burning down, and the Rhine is overflowing its banks, the biggies collapsed and the little Ewoks were sitting on their backs. Is this the death of the gods? The death of the past? It was just about the only use of the set that seemed to make sense.

Much of the lighting was incredibly beautiful. The colors were the most intense I have ever seen on stage. But it often felt like we were at a lighting rehrearsal. Lights flashed on and off, cues were anticipated i.e. in WALKURE, the fire lights and fire projection started before Wotan called for Loge. Lights would shift to a new cue for a moment and then jump back for seemingly no reason. Very odd.

There seemed to be no intent in the least to advance the story, clarify the complex plot, or do much other than make beautiful stage pictures. And they did make some beautiful imagery! But it had nothing to do with the RING, the story, or anything else. Who are the mummified giants supposed to be? Are they the gods? Why are there four of them? Why do they have horse heads some of the time? Why do they have NO heads some of the time? Sometimes their heads light up for no apparent reason at all. Why are they sometimes lying dead on the floor? Why do they double as Fafner the dragon? Why do they play a jumbo-sized game of Chess in Act II of GOTTERDAMMERUNG? It was simply jarring to be watching the opera and the giant-heads light up for a couple seconds and then go off, then they light up again and go off. It did not seem to be related to the libretto, to the leit motifs, or to anything other than Gergiev/Tsypin trying to upstage Wagner, or else an intoxicated light-board operator was having WAY too much fun.

The scenery, costumes, and lighting seemed to be at odds much of the time and created a visual dissonance that often left the audience slack-jawed. The Gibichungs wore primitive Russian tribal-wear. Fine! It worked on the set quite well, though seeing Hagen in an ancient Russian get-up that resembled a strapless evening gown was a little jarring.

Alas, the looks of the gods and magical-elements were all over the place. The Rhine Daughters wore silver evening gowns. Fricka and Freia wore modern-looking dresses well-suited for wearing to the Academy Awards. Loge, Donner and Froh wore decorated caftans ala the MET's current RING; Fasolt and Fafner looked like giant boulder-beings about fifteen feet tall; and all of the Nibelung dwarves looked like refugees from Arthur Rackham. Poor Erda wore some arcane headdress that was literally ten feet wide; and the Norns wore more primordial crap. Siegfried had a rather sexy pair of red trousers with a revealing tunic which showed off his FABULOUS biceps! Brunnhilde wore a black-leather-like evening gown, split up the front, revealing her trouser-covered legs and knee-high boots - a rather sexy dominatrix look.

But into this muddle of fashion, Gergiev/Tsypin introduced a dancing chorus that appeared in each act of each opera. They played the "fire," wearing black spandex jumpsuits with light-up flame hair (we took to calling them the matchstick girls), but they also played Hunding's hunting dogs. Or were they his kinsmen? It was hard to tell.

SIEGFRIED - Act I
Siegfried is being spun around the stage by the mystery chorus after forging Nothung

The mystery chorus all ran on stage and struck a pose in the final bars of the SIEGFRIED love duet (my guess is they were playing Siegfried's cum). And the weirdest bit of all was when two of the little farts appeared at the beginning of the GOTTERDAMMERUNG "Vengeance Trio" dressed in bright red with white chickens tied to their belts!!!

As opera comedienne Anna Russell often said about the RING, "I'm not making this up, you know!"

So we are sitting there in the audience, drinking in the "Vengeance Trio," when these two little chicken-chokers show up. Well, they stand around for a while and then Brunnhilde goes up to them and procures something from each which she places in a bowl. Chicken blood? Gizzards? Gergiev's brain? Brunnhilde takes the bowl of chicken parts downstage and spills it onto a little table and her bowl starts to smoke. By this time I assume she's enacting an ancient Russian fortune-telling rite using giblets. The beautifully sung "Vengeance Trio" continues, though now our two little chicken-chokers have climbed up onto the upper platform and are doing Martha Graham, while down below Gunther, Hagen, and Brunnhilde plot Siegfried's death. It is unfathomable to me how Gergiev can not understand that he is upstaging one of the great moments of one of the greatest operas in the world with utter nonsense.

More choice bits of foolishness:

In WALKURE Act III we got fourteen Valkyries instead of the usual nine. The extras were just there to move the set but it made hash of Wagner's symbolism and the story.

In GOTTERDAMMERUNG Act III the Rhine Daughters come in carrying a fifteen foot long yellow neon "lance." They spin it and tease Siegfried with it. Then he takes it and sits by it at the edge of the stage. My best guess was that it was a ray of sunshine.

In RHEINGOLD the Tarnhelm was a wire-thing that looked like a Chinese "coolie" hat made out of a Slinky. In SIEGFRIED it seemed to be invisible, and in GOTTERDAMMERUNG it looked like a birdcage with tassels! Why make the story more complicated than it already is?

The actual "gold" in RHEINGOLD was a big fillagree ball about ten feet in diameter. Kind of pretty, but it seemed idiotic at the end of the opera when there was no gold to pile up, and they put Freia inside it.

The Wood Bird was sung by a singer on stage instead of off in the wings or in the pit. Now this is not a terrible choice in itself, but Gergiev dressed her in a heavy white gown with clanky beads and ruffles and frou-frou falling from her sleeves and overlong skirts. She looked much more like Miss Havisham than a Wood Bird! Gergiev also wanted her to sing her lines from the top of one of the giants (in this act it was lying prone on the stage). So Miss Havisham flutters out from the wings, hoists up her heavy skirts to climb the stairs to the top of the giant, sings her lines waving her arms up and down, and goes back down, exiting into the wings. This is clunky enough to do once, but Gergiev had her enter and leave for EACH of her little bird-songs!

SIEGFRIED - Act II
Siegfried and Miss Havisham (the Wood Bird)

Okay, enough bitching about the production. It was a marvelous RING musically and it was often visually beautiful. I heard and saw the most luscious Brunnhilde and Siegfried of my RING career. I met new friends and visited with old ones. The Rhine Daughters have their gold back, and I can wait expectantly for RING number six. I wonder if that's why they call it the RING cycle …

David

When you talk about this blog later, and you will - be kind.

Copyright 2006 D. H. Maxine.

Daddy Dearest

I do not know how it happens that we learn to protect our selves from pain, and loss, and doubt. We freeze at a certain age and never really grow beyond it. We freeze at the moment of pain, unable to move, for fear of dislodging the knife in our soul, the thorn in our spirit.

I have mixed feelings about my dad. I remember him as a great dad, who worshipped me as a little boy. He was incredibly smart. He could explain anything to me. He could make the most wonderful things. He painted, sculpted, wrote, built his own stereo system. He built a black-and-white television! He knitted me booties! But he didn't know how to be a father to an adolescent boy.

Why do we feel such an intense desire to grow up when we are children and such an intense desire to return to childhood when we are grown? My life froze in the spring of 1976 when I was thirteen and my father was fifty-seven.

In 1975 and 1976 my dad was trying to get a veteran's disability pension. He had been in a M.A.S.H. unit in World War II and was involved in most of the big battles of Europe. He had been drafted and was over there for almost four years. He was traumatized by those years. He also had some nerve damage in one hand from a bad cut he got during the war. So now, thirty years later, he went out to the Veteran's Hospital and was supposed to check in to the Neurology Ward for tests. Yet for some reason never explained to me he was admitted to the Psych Ward. He proceeded to have a mid-life crisis and a nervous breakdown.

Dad was hospitalized in the Psych Ward for many weeks in the spring of 1976. He talked to his therapists, took tests, made little things out of clay. My mom, sister, and I went out to visit him daily. But he seemed to be able to take very little of us. He came home in early May for about a week. But on one Sunday, Mother's Day as it turned out, he ate a piece of my mom's Mother's Day candy, grabbed his side and passed out. He was taken back to the VA where we were told he had to have his gall bladder removed.

About two weeks after the surgery he was still in the hospital. We went out to visit him He seemed like a stranger. It was like he saw me, little David, as a thing to be conquered. Was my dawning adolescence a reminder to him of his getting older? Had his time in the Psych Ward aroused memories of his own abuse as a child? As we were getting in the car to go home I said or did something, I don't recall what. But Dad got a look in his eye and yelled, "You God-damn little ass-hole! You're not gonna do that to me! You're a little boy and you're not gonna forget it." He then jumped into the car and started slapping me across the face, his knees in my chest. I screamed and fought back, mostly just trying to push him out of the car. Mom was yelling, "Watch out for Dad's stitches!" fearing Dad would spill his guts in more ways than one. Mom got the now hyperventilating Dad off of me, out of the car, and into the hospital. I was in panicked hysteria in the back seat wanting an explanation for why I'd been hit for the first time in my then thirteen years of life.

When Dad came home about a week later nothing was the same and nothing ever would be again. It seemed like everything I did resulted in another beating. He said I was incorrigible. He said I was not going to make myself the man of the family. He acted like he was jealous of my relationship with my Mom. And as she would try to protect me from his violence, it seemed to irritate him even more.

A typical scenario would run thus: David doesn't finish his dinner. Dad says, "Eat your damn food!" David replies, "I don't have to eat it!" Dad, bellows: "Why you ungrateful little bastard, quit trying to one-up-me! You are NOT going to drive me out of this house! I'll put you in a boy's home before I let you ruin my marriage!" By this point I'd try to get up and run away; he'd chase me around the house, and he'd eventually tackle me. He'd straddle my chest, pinning my arms at my sides and he'd slap my face back and forth asking if I was ready to behave. Finally I'd give in. But as soon as I was loose I was filled with such anger that I'd yell something horrid like, "I wish you were dead you crazy old man!" And the chase would begin again.

I only wanted to grow up and run away. Or did I only want to be six years old again.

Once he broke my wrist. I was told to lie at the Emergency Room and say I'd stumbled on the driveway. Being a good son, I did. As I remember it the chasings, beatings, and captures occurred almost daily for about a year.

There is so much more to this story! How Dad fell in love with his therapist from the VA (who was also a practicing sex therapist on the side.) How I was threatened with being "committed" when I was the only sane person in the crazy family. How Dad introduced his therapist-darling to the family. My sister and I could tell she was the "other woman" Mom didn't catch-on. The therapist-darling wormed her way into the family, bringing her two little girls over to swim in our pool, play in our yard. Dad loved those little girls. He beat me up. My dad finally decided he wanted a divorce; which Mom reluctantly gave him. Before my parents divorced they tried a few months of couple's therapy. Their "marriage-counselor" was none other than the "other woman" herself, therapist-darling!

All right, dear readers, you can close your mouths now.

The divorce occurred fourteen months after I was first "punished." After we moved out Dad never struck me again. The year of terror passed, the beatings ceased, and the scars grew deep. Dad came over for dinner many nights a week; and we talked every day. Dad introduced us to his new friends as his "Ex-Family" an unusual appellation to say the least. But Dad was pretty-much back.

There is always balance, a love and a hate. I remember as a boy climbing into my father's lap, smelling his T-shirt, rubbing my face into the man-smelling cotton. His hands rough, his whiskers a torture of pinpricks. His breath smelling of cherry Kool-Aid and cigarettes. I knew I was loved. But the same smells and textures and memories are also tied to my Dad sitting on me, straddling my chest, my arms pinned to my sides. He slaps may face, my head is banged against the hard linoleum of the family room floor.

If we turn off our lives to dull the pain of tragedy, we sacrifice the present, the now, the living. And it is only with time that we begin to heal, to learn to feel again, to accept, and to love the past with all its delights, with all its blemishes, and all its horrors.

David

When you talk about this blog later, and you will - be kind.

Copyright 2007 D. H. Maxine.

A Component of Love Called Melancholy

September 29th, would have been my Dad's 88th birthday if he were still alive. I take this opportunity to share a few short pieces he wrote about his life. These several memories were written in the early 1980s.

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A Component of Love Called Melancholy
by Bill Maxine
September 29, 1919 - February 21, 1993

When one examines one's life to see if it has a special meaning it makes one wonder and reflect and not be too sure of where to look. Like a skein of tangled yarn one pulls on certain threads and finds the skein tightening up, and another strand releases, and so on and on.

How I was made and formed causes me to think symbolically of my time: the first summer after World War I - September 29, 1919. I believe I was a promise that was hard to keep. Maintaining my integrity was struggle enough. I never felt threatened from within; and the schools never succeeded in turning me inside out.

My first trauma I do not remember. But I was told I went into very severe convulsions at the attempt to circumcise me. It was my first protest, and I succeeded. But in stopping the knife, it left me with a stammer I carried until I felt sexual love. I mention this so you will have a person in mind as I try to remember experiences just about everyone had.

My father's father was French and in Paris he carried coal up six flight of stairs. This must have been a miserable back-breaking job carrying the black stuff from under to six floors up where it provided light and heat. And in some way he sought a promise and came to America where he found other French in Greenbay, Wisconsin. He found himself surplus and moved to Jamestown, North Dakota where he must have disappeared into the puree of this great melting pot. I marvel at how little I know of my past. My father I remember as a great story teller. Like so many it was all within the American tradition of anecdotes, to tell stories to give themselves a sense of place, jokes on those less fortunate or stupid, and a secret envy of the rich and successful.

Mrs. Johnson - The First Grade

It is hard to transpose feelings back to an earlier time without adding wisdom or reflection to a moment vividly recalled. I was six. Though I don't remember feeling six. Our school was a block away from home - Roosevelt Elementary. I don't think in all my life I ever though about it beyond the typical. It was named after a President, some prehistory institutionalized into a building. I wonder if it was for his cure of TB in western North Dakota or his exploits in Cuba that my school was bestowed with his name. Roosevelt died the year I was born.

In my First Grade room the desks were aligned in rows like tombstones or soldiers. Cast iron sides with oak seats and a liftable writing surface. No soft maple or open seating. That came after me.

We were all directed toward the front facing the teacher whose desk was all wood. I wish I would have been aware of it then but school seems to be only a lesson in pointing at letters and learning to count. Mrs. Johnson seems to have taken a findness for me or my vulnerability by bringing me to the front of the class, and setting me on her lap, and having me count the buttons on her bodice.

How I Remember Those Smells

It was in the Fourth Grade when I noticed Jean Hendrickson. Before this time girls were just other inhabitants of the school yard. She seemed so pretty, just like a princess to me. One time I got close to her and I smelled something akin to musk; which was such a contrast to my grubby hands that had the smell of fingers that scratched and wiped my behind or relieved me in the school urinal, this with left-over lunch smells and school ink from leaky pens.

One day, with great courage and my new ink-o-graph pen that wrote with gren ink, I wrote a love note to her confessing my feelings. I delivered iyt in a terrible way, but the only way that was safe to my fearful heart. I folded it carefully and ran up to her in great speed and said, "Here, half-wit!" and ran off to another part of the school yard where boys played and girls were scarce. Now I stood exposed to her and what she might do.

My God, with her Fourth Grade maturity she could laugh at me or tease me or ignore me. However the next day the verdict came. She walked up to me and gave me a note in green ink. She wrote saying she liked me and would be my friend. Now my anxiety was more than I could handle. So I broke off the relationship of 48 hours and I kept the note and treasured it very much. I don't think I ever spoke to her again. I just went back to be with other boys with smelly hands and the familiar things i could cope with. Sadly I think what might have been and reflect, when it comes to feelings of mine, I haven't made much progress.

Eddie's Drawer

When one gets older and wisdom sets in, it fills one with an inner security and another emotion, a component of love called melancholy.

My big brother Eddie's drawer in the dining room buffet, was something of envy to me, a point of passage, a place to keep secret things. Eddie's drawer was full of multi-purpose jack-knives, agate marbles, press clippings of his local heroics as a boy scout, cigarette lighters, and an extra pair of real horse-hide shoelaces, his Boy Scout manual and extra Merit Badges yet to be sewn on.

I thought perhaps that someday I too would have my own drawer. That never happened. My private drawer had to be in my bedroom, hardly a place of public or family envy. For my sister and me, our family consisted of two big brothers and a mother and father - we were sort od "add-ons" that kept the family poor. At any rate my sister Mugs, and I, needed a great deal of love and attention. So according to that great natural law, we received less.

Sod Buster

Solitary sinnuous struggle
Penetrating virgin prairie
From downside up
From the dark place
Stirring solitary sinuous
Seed root forever perennial
Thrust up into entangled crust
Shoving stirring solitary
Filaments, capilaries, tuberale
The entangled way of sod
A history of nourishment
Spearing shoviong stirring
Through the crust
Spring saffron
A Crocus
A toast
Bottoms Up
A Crocus is

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When you talk about this blog later, and you will - be kind.

Stories and Poem written by Willis Henry Maxine. Copyright 2007 D. H. Maxine.

That Seventies School

I hated sixth grade. And I hated my teacher, Mr. Reinecke, at Aztec Elementary School in Albuquerque, New Mexico.

He was a crappy teacher but sixth grade was expecially bad becasue I was tormented to two bullies in my class. No one but me seemed to object. The dreaded twosome of Shane and Mike did all of the usual things bullies do: they punched me in the arm, gave me noogies, gave me "Indian burns." They called me the usual epithets like pussy, and freak, and fag; the latter altered into a nickname riffing on my last name: "Fagzine." Now this was all in the first half of the year; it got much worse.

The terror twins eventually started bringing pen-knives to school. These knives were little more than toys. But it hurt if you got jabbed and they were kind of threatening to twelve-year-old me. The last couple months of school were abysmal. Shane and Mike thought up a new game. Lots of kids were wearing "waffle-stomper" boots, which had thick rubber souls. Well, Shane and Mike (their initials are S & M; I never thought of that before!) started sticking broken razor blades in the tips of their boots and kicking me, which tore up both my jeans and my legs.

The teachers and principal were no help at all. They suggested boxing lessons! Or maybe a "playdate" so we'd all become friends (otherwise know as drown David in the pool day!) I was getting a little psychologically messed up. I was scared to go to school. I started getting a little obsessive/compulsive, too. I suspect I was trying to gain control of a world I felt was totally out of control.

Oh, you may have wondered where my parents were through all of the above. My Dad was a pacifist who felt victimized all his life and I think he just kind of withdrew from it all. Mom would yell at the teacher and Principal; the teachers would go look for the knives or blades; S&M would look innocent and show their empty pockets. Major dysfunction.

What to do! If Elementary School was this bad; I could just imagine Junior High! Well, Mom started looking for a new school. My Mom at this time had recently completed her doctorate and had accepted a political appointment as the "Executive Director of the Governor's Commission on the Status of Women" for the state of New Mexico. But she remembered that while she had been a TA one of her students was helping to start an "Alternative Education" school. Mom looked them up.

That next fall I was enrolled for seventh grade at The Twelve Gates Free School. What was this private academy for alternative youth like, you ask? Have you even seen AUNTIE MAME? It truly was the spitting image of the school that Mame enrolled little Patrick Dennis in. It was GREAT!

Twelve Gates was modeled on A. S. Neill's Summerhill School in England, and Orson Bean's Fifteenth Street School in New York City. The guiding principle of the school was "freedom and equality" between teachers and students. The school was run democratically by both students and faculty (two Lesbians and a straight woman.) You could take classes or not. You could sign out and go on a self-field trip. It may sound like anarchy; but to me it was heaven! I was even on the school's Board of Directors! After a year of stifling abuse in sixth grade - I was at last in heaven!

I took a year of Japanese. We had extra-curricular tea ceremonies, and cooked Japanese dinners at a teacher's home. Instead of a boring "civics" course we older students got together and assembled a petition to stop this thing called "Senate Bill One" and another to try and stop production of the B-1 Bomber. We then went out to Malls and the University campus and collected signatures and mailed in the petitions. I learned to use a camera and darkroom. We took a field trip to meet singer Alberta Hunter.

We sat around and read what we liked. There were tens of thousands of books at the school. One of our teachers read us certain parts of RUBYFRUIT JUNGLE aloud. Now THAT'S an education.

I learned to play the guitar (sort of). One kid who was about my age was a bit of a capitalist and he decided to start a school store. He bought food at the supermarket and sold it to hungry students with a big mark-up in price. I felt ripped off. So I formed the Twelve Gates Student Food Co-op. And brought back my own supply of groceries which students could buy at approximate cost after paying a nominal "membership" fee. This twelve-year-old's trade war only lasted for a few weeks --but what a way to learn economics, improve one's math skills, and deal with internal school politics!

In the spring we went on a school trip to Mexico. We drove several hundred miles into Mexico to a place called Bahia de Kino (Kino Bay). The bay was gorgeous. Out in the water a Bali-Hai-like island called Tiburon, rose from the blue horizon. But lack of organization on a school trip can be a big and dangerous mess (see my previously posted story Stingray.)

Sadly, the school and my life would soon implode. The adults in the school began to squabble; and so did my parents. That Mother's Day my Dad had a nervous breakdown--and this would lead to my parents divorce later that year.

Why do we feel such an intense desire to grow up when we are children and such an intense desire to return to childhood when we are grown? Life froze in the late spring of 1976 when I was thirteen and my father was fifty-seven. Just as I was reaching out to become a man my father decided he wanted to be a boy. And THAT will be another chapter entirely.

David

When you talk about this blog later, and you will - be kind.

Copyright 2006 D. H. Maxine.

Dr. Zaius in Oz or; Leggo my MEGO!

I've been thinking a lot about play - or more specifically, how I played as a kid. I am trying to remember how it worked, how I did it, what it felt like.

All of my favorite toys were puppets, stuffed animals, and the like. I also loved movies and had a strong passion for PLANET OF THE APES. I devoured the movies, watched the prime-time TV series, and the animated Saturday morning cartoon. I even tracked down the Pierre Boulle novel - which I also loved. I found it especially sexy somehow that Boulle's astronaut was completely naked as Zira took him for walks around the city.

I also loved L. Frank Baum's Oz books. My Second Grade teacher, Mrs. Strong, at Monte Vista Elementary School, in Albuquerque, read them to us a chapter to two a day after lunch. I also discovered the MGM movie, which I came to love as well. So one can hardly overestimate my childhood joy at discovering MEGO (a toy company) was producing 8-inch action-figures of PLANET OF THE APES characters, followed a bit later by WIZARD OF OZ characters, among many others including another childhood obsession, STAR TREK.

But back to play. I would ask my sister something like, "Do you wanna play Oz? or Apes?" And she pretty much always did. We would then go to my room and prepare the universe. We had a couple dark furniture throws and these would be tossed over carefully arranged pillows, cushions, piles of clothes to create mountain ranges and valleys as wide as the bedroom - a terrain for the play to occur within. We would then set up the Emerald City or Ape City in our room-scape and the play would begin.

But I dont remember how we did it! We devised such elaborate plots and story lines! They often continued from day to day, too. But there was no discussion that I recall about how to do it, no set rules for who "operated" which characters. It was a seamless flow of interaction between the two of us: handing off characters, improvising dialogue, manipulating plot, creating back-story with no effort whatsoever. But I don't remember how we did it! We were just so in synch - everything worked. And we both fell into a hypnotic state where the room would fall away, our hands hopping the characters across the bedspread would vanish, and we did little more than channel Zira, Cornelius, and Dorothy Gale! Yes we mixed the worlds up quite often.

It worked REALLY well, too! Sometime apes would go to Oz; and sometimes Oz characters would go to the Planet of the Apes. If you think Dr. Zaius (the ornery orangutan) freaked out when he saw a talking human you should have seen how apoplectic he got over talking lions, Tin Men, and little girls with dogs!

Sometimes Zaius went to Oz! At least once the Wicked Witch captured him and thought he was her runaway flying monkey. She could NOT understand what happened to his wings. "Curses! It's that Dorothy Gale's doing!" But then again sometimes Captain Kirk and Mr. Spock would beam in at just the right moment and then all hell would break loose! The Wicked Witch would over hear Kirk talk about dancing Orion slave girls (who are green!) and the Witch would decide she could trap Kirk and Spock by stripping and dancing for them! You may recall that the Wicked Witch is green, too.

I do not know if other MEGO-loving kids did this cross-pollination thing. Sometimes I would buy duplicate characters to make them into additional characters. I "aged" a Cornelius with white paint and miniature glasses to make someone I names Dr. Barlow. We turned an extra Glinda the Good into Laverne DeFazio to play with my sisters Fonzie figure. A few characters I just made from scratch - a Patchwork Girl and a Sawhorse come to mind. Some ideas we never quite pulled off probably due to lack of money. Grandma and Grampa Walton would have made a wonderful Aunt Em and Uncle Henry but I guess i just didn't feel like spending $15 to get two sort of boring characters.

But is was so magical, so addicting! This hypnotic-state of play occurred whenever my sister and I played with our anthropomorphic toys: puppets, stuffed animals, etc. Once on a car trip I told her that there was a miniature universe in my pants-pocket. I pulled out bits of lint and stuff from my pocket and introduced them as animals, live stock, etc. I made a tiny little woman out of a scrap of Kleenex, too. But I swear we could see "pocket-world!"

And that's what I miss! I miss my imagination being that powerful. I think I still have a strong ability for fantasy and imagination and daydreaming - but I can't quite make the real world disappear anymore - at least not with pocket lint!

David

When you talk about this blog later, and you will - be kind.

Copyright 2006 D. H. Maxine.