Simple Gifts - Part IV

This final gift I've left to unwrap until Christmas Eve is from R. O. Blechman himself.

In his distinctive style that is well known from The New Yorker,  Esquire, Punch, commercials and books he puts a sardonic, modern twist on the journey to Bethlehem.   Would this be the way it would really be for a man and his pregnant wife seeking a place to lay their heads in our modern world? 

As I said at the beginning of this series of posts I'm at a loss to understand why this gentle little special has not reappeared more often.  But perhaps it is better not to wonder but to simply repeat what Coleen Dewhurst says:

The failure to recognize a gift when it is offered to us shows us something within ourselves.  Let us leave that something open.  Let's us make room at the inn.

Thanking you for sharing this time with me and wishing you a Christmas of simple gifts richly bestowed and warmly received.

December 24 -  1955: NORAD Tracks Santa for the first time in what will become an annual Christmas Eve tradition.

Simple Gifts - Part III

The next two gifts are again studies in contrast from the early years of the 20th century.

The Great 1914-1919 War was to define the century and the aftermath resounds to this day.  One of the events of the first year of that conflict, never mentioned in the history books when I was in school, was what became known as the Christmas Truce of 1914.  It is only in recent years that it has become an iconic moment in that war to end wars.  The first time I heard about it was in Joan Littlewood's Oh What A Lovely War when it was staged in Toronto in the 1960s.  Her musical entertainment was based on a radio series by Charles Chilton which was the catalyst for a more critical view of that monumental waste of a generation - a bitter lesson in hindsight at its finest.

Now that spontaneous fraternization of the two sides along the front on December 24-26, 2014 has been marked in stories, songs, a movie, an opera and just this year a highly controversial ad campaign in Great Britain.

James McMullen illustrated this first hand account, from a letter to his mother by Captain Sir Edward Hulse, of one of the remarkable truce in his signature "high focus" style.

Equally recognizable is the style of Fontaine Fox in this tribute to his Toonerville Folks - a regular feature in the Funnies from 1908 until 1955.   Toonerville was the quintessential American hinterland between the urban and the rural that existed until urban sprawl became the norm.    Fox captured the everyday adventures of Skipper and his Trolly that met all the trains with an loving if slightly satirical eye.  And in this little vignette he captures the hustle and bustle of the seasons perfectly.

A left click on the Gift Tag will open the last gift:

December 19 - 1924: The last Rolls-Royce Silver Ghost is sold in London, England.

Simple Gifts - Part II

Though they could not be more different the next two gifts that R.O. Blechman offers us share a common theme:  memory.  One is written looking at the past, the other writing of the present before it becomes the past.  One is born out of a life of poverty, the other of privilege.  Both are rich in language and perhaps richer in a sense of family - again in two very different ways.

In the wake of an attempt to turn the book into a play that put it, briefly, back in the spotlight I recently reread Moss Hart's Act One. When it was first published in 1959 I found the story of his early life in the tenements of New York difficult and unsettling reading and put the book aside unfinished.  Fifty-odd years later I still found the story of his early years unsettling but myself better equipped to understand it.  His writing is witty and, if at times slightly romantic, unsentimental.   I only wish he had lived to give us Act Two and Three.

This segment, narrated by José Ferrar, mixes archival photographs of New York of the time (1910s) with still shots of the characters that make up Hart's family.  An ingenuous way to present this gift of memory.

Christmas could not have been more different than as recorded by the eleven year old Teddy Roosevelt in 1869.  I particularly enjoyed that very matter-of-fact last sentence. Illustrator Chas. B. Slackman and actor Dean Wareham take us into the pages of the young man's personal diary for another snapshot in time.

A left click on the Gift Tag will open the next gifts:

December 13 -1974:  Malta becomes a republic within the Commonwealth of Nations.

Simple Gifts - Part I

This time of year those of my visitors who own televisions are not doubt inundated by seasonal specials - Rudolph, Frost, Peanuts et al.  It seems the same things turn up every year.  But there were some wonderful Christmas specials out there that made one or two appearances and then disappeared from sight.  Two years ago I mentioned A Child's Christmas in Wales but I also remember A Gift of Love, a gentle, touching TV movie with Angela Lansbury, Lee Remick and the much under-appreciated Polly Holliday,  PeeWee Herman's Christmas Special (the Christmas special to out special any special) and Simple Gifts, Six Episodes for Christmas.

Created for PBS in 1977, Simple Gifts was produced by illustrator, cartoonist and graphic novelist R. O. Blechman.  The premise was a simple one: actress Colleen Dewhurst offered us six "gifts" in the form of spoken word, music and animation vignettes with the hope that we would open our hearts and receive them in the spirit they were being given.

As well as contributing a segment himself, Blechman called on fellow artists Maurice Sendak, James McMullan, Seymour Chwast, and Charles B. Slackman to create graphics  to match words by writers as varied as Sendak, Virginia Woolf, a young Teddy Roosevelt, Moss Hart and Sir Edward Hulse.  The stories were voiced by Hermione Gingold, José Ferrar, Paul Dooley; amongst the musicians was the familiar name of Willian Bolcom.

Fortunately a broadcast by PBS Cleveland has been preserved and posted on YouTube by David Hansen - a big thank you to David for giving us this gift. And in the spirit of the piece I'd like to share that gift with you over the next few days.


The style of Maurice Sendak is unmistakable in the Prologue that introduces the episodes. 

During what is referred to as the "Little Ice Age" winters in England reached the coldest in the country's recorded history and the Thames River froze over 26 times between 1408 and 1814.  Though it was known that Queen Elizabeth enjoyed target shooting on the frozen river in 1564 and other sports were played on it's ice bound surface, the first Frost Fair was held in 1608.  In Orlando Virginia Woolf sets the episode of the young nobleman and his Russian Princess during this great event.  In adapting it for Simple Gifts Chwast and Blechman change the period and soften some of the social aspects of Woolf's tale - said to be based on the love life of her own lover Vita Sackville-West.
 

It's a remarkable series of short films and I'm at a loss as to why it hasn't become a holiday tradition. Well perhaps by posting them here I can start one.

A left click on the Gift Tag will open the next gifts:

December 10 - 1884: Mark Twain's Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is published.

With Thanks

The idea that Thanksgiving is an American invention has always puzzled me. Perhaps as a holiday - i.e. a day away from work - it is very American but as an actual celebration it is as old as man's first harvest.  When I was growing up the holiday was more of a religious nature based on the observance as set out in the Book of Common Prayer.  Very English and being that our neighbourhood was semi-rural often of a communal nature.

Every culture has its rites, rituals and celebrations of the time of gathering and the First NationsI people in North America were no different with dances and feasts to celebrate the successful bounty of crops.  But Thanksgiving celebrations were not always about the harvest - often they honoured the end of a war, the return to health of an important worthy or the safe deliverance of a community from peril.  Indeed the first record of an non-aboriginal "thanksgiving" in Canada was a service of thanks given when Martin Frobisher reached Baffin Island in 1578.  It has been a bad crossing and one of his small fleet had been lost.

The French explorers and settlers often celebrated special days of feasting to celebrate their safe arrival in a new land, and of course nothing would do but that L'Ordre de Bon Temps be created to oversee the festivities and entertainments.  When France ceded the territory to Britain at the end of the Seven Year's War the nature of the irregular celebrations of Thanksgiving took on the less gourmand tone of the Church of England.  With the influx of United Empire Loyalists many customs and practices of the American Thanksgiving came into the feast day but celebrations were still of an ad hoc nature not an annual event.

With the celebration in 1879 it became a yearly holiday but in those days, like our American cousins, it was a Thursday in November.  And though the theme was often one of thanks for the harvest just as often it was to give thanks on the anniversary of a special event.  After the horror of World War One it was combined with Armistice Day as a day to be thankful for the sacrifices of those who died so that the bounty of the earth could be enjoyed.  In 1931 they became separate holidays - November 11 as Remembrance Day - and normally the second Monday in October as a day of Thanksgiving.  It was not until 1957 that the day was officially set. 

The Shakers have always fascinated me and though the foundation of their faith was Church of England they were a people much persecuted both in England and in their new home in the United States.  However their legacy has been far reaching in so many areas and their music was one of the many "gifts" that they gave the world.  The most famous of their many hymns is one of Thanksgiving - Simple Gifts celebrates exactly that the simple gifts for which we should all be thankful.

'Tis the gift to be simple, 'tis the gift to be free
'Tis the gift to come down where we ought to be,
And when we find ourselves in the place just right,

'Twill be in the valley of love and delight.

When true simplicity is gain'd,

To bow and to bend we shan't be asham'd,

To turn, turn will be our delight,

Till by turning, turning we come 'round right.

Elder Joseph Brackett

1848 - Alfred Community, Maine

As with most of us I often forget the many things and more especially the many people that I have reason to give thanks for at this time of my life.  So I will simply give thanks for being given my own "valley of love and delight."


09 ottobre/October - Giorno del Ringraziamento