fifty shades of gray

No.  I am not sinking to the level of writing about the pedestrian novel and movie that is now turning some women in Britain into ale glass hooligans.  The whole phenomenon is little more than the Deep Throat of the 20-teens.

Nor will this essay be about Oregon's new governor with her self-description of bisexuality.  "I have a foot in both camps."  And, apparently, a third foot firmly lodged in her mouth.

Those topics are far too easy targets.  Not to mention they are tiresome.

The title stems from a far different source.  As I was driving to and from Portland yesterday morning, the weather in the northern Willamette Valley took a noticeable turn from its partly cloudiness.  A series of gray clouds crunched together like a weather traffic jam over the Cascade range.

Normally that would mean snow in the Cascades -- and my thoughts turned to getting back to Bend before I ended up snowbound on this side of the range.  (If you want to edit out the drama queen portions of that sentence, it means I might see a few flakes in the air on my drive to Bend.)

But I decided to stay in Salem to attend a movie I have wanted to see since I heard it came out.  Into the Woods.

Anyone who has visited Mexpatriate even occasionally will know that I am a big fan of Stephen Sondheim's work.  Into the Woods is not one of my favorites, but I am still fond of it.

Re-working stage plays for movies is a tricky business.  They cannot be transferred in whole because the conventions of live performances and movies are not compatible.  I give you as examples the film versions of A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum and A little Night Music. 

Both were pleasant stage plays.  They were disasters on the screen.

The big exception is Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street.  Tim Burton performed a miracle in finding the core of the play and then building Sondheim's music around it.

I am pleased to report that Into the Woods works.  The book centers on the Cinderella story, but builds on it with some familiar fairy tales (little red riding hood, Jack and the beanstalk) and an original piece that seems familiar (the baker and his wife).

Parading the Jungian archetypes against obvious sets works on stage, and the audience can indulge the conceit that what we are seeing is a psychological drama transpiring in one -- or several -- heads.  That device does not work as well on film.

Rob Marshall managed to do it, though.  The world outside the woods is filmed naturally -- making some of the singing seem a bit too precious.  But, when the characters enter the woods (of their minds), they walk through a proscenium arch that would made F.W. Murnau proud.

Because I know the score and book from the play so well, I constantly had to fight not to compare the movie with the stage play.  And I only partially succeeded.  The movie cuts several songs that did not propel the story.  Most of the decisions were wise.

But several cuts left the second half of the film bereft of its existential message.  The catharsis that the baker experiences in "No More" is central to the show's theme.  Without it, the conversation he has with Jack about punishment ("It's not that simple") seems ungrounded.  As does Little Red Riding Hood's concern that her mother and grandmother would be disappointed in her for murdering a giant ("But a giant’s a person. Aren’t we to show forgiveness?").

The strength of fairy tales is in their morals.  And that was the greatest strength of the stage play -- even when Sondheim opened himself to charges of moral relativism with lines like: "Witches can be right, Giants can be good./  You decide what's, right you decide what's good."  (Even though I would argue that a moral absolutist still relies on a moral agent to choose wisely.)

So, after all the academic mumbo jumbo, did I like the movie?  Yup.  And I would recommend it.

If you know the play, leave most of that knowledge at home.  If you think you would be offended that the "magic bean" theme (that tied the piece together musically) has gone missing, you should not see the movie.

Because it does have shades of gray, it is a great piece for viewers who like to take out their adult sophistication for a little exercise.  With today's lot of American films, it tends to get a little flabby.
 

once upon a time

If you sit next to me on an airplane, be prepared for a full Steve experience.  Discovering the deepest secrets of my fellow passengers is one of my hobbies.

Several years ago, I sat next to an older woman on a flight back to Manzanillo.  She had lived most of her life in the San Jose area of California, and loved to travel.  Somehow, our conversation turned to post cards.  We both detested the custom.  But she told me something that has stuck with me ever since.

Whenever she heads off on one of her world trips, she buys souvenirs for her nieces.  Not t-shirts or spoons or tea towels.  She will pick out knickknacks here and there.  A stone ring.  A feather boa.  A piece of amethyst.

When she returns to San Jose, she boxes up the pieces and mails them them to her nieces with instructions to compose a play using each of the collected pieces.  She was quite honest in assessing the project as a mixed success.  Some of the plays are rather blasé and pedestrian.  But some are quite creative.

She reminded me of my mother and grandmother.  They started reading to me when I was very young.  As a result, I have both a love for reading -- and for writing.

That is why I am off to see my grand-nephew Colin today.  And I will not go empty-handed.  You may have already guessed that the box and contents at the top of this essay are about to become his.

Everything is from Mexico.  The wooden box.  The turkey vulture feather.  The raw topaz.  The green obsidian.  The black obsidian.  I thank my mother for the addition of the pirate swag bags.

Inside the box are instructions written on parchment.  And here it is.

As the great conqueror Hernán Cortés lay dying on his bed in Castilleja de la Cuesta, Castille, his former companion La Malincha quietly entered his room.  He had last seen her over 20 years prior.

Back then during the height of the Conquest, they were inseparable.  She was his interpreter and his advisor.  Without her. Nueva España would not be part of the Spanish Empire.

In her hands, La Malincha carried a wooden box.  Not the type of ornate boxes in which Cortés stored the deeds to his Mexican estates.  It was a plain wooden box.

She placed it next to his bed, and told Cortés: “ Ah, mi terron de azucar.  We have come to the end of our journey together.  Before you precede me on your greatest adventure, I have one last thing to share with you.

“This box is not yours.  It includes the mysteries of Mexico – secrets you were never allowed to possess in this life.  One day the box will be delivered into the hands of a young boy.  If he can, he will solve the puzzle that is my land.

“The box will leave with me, and I will never see you again.  But the mystery of Mexico will continue.”

With that, she left the room.  The box was then lost to time.

Until today.  It now comes to you.

Inside you will find five simple treasures.  Alone each means little.  Together, they tell a tale.

And it is your tale to tell.  If you choose to solve the mystery, you must first identify each individual element, and then combine them in a story, a song, a poem, or a play, that you will share with your parents.

Keep the dream alive.

No matter what he chooses to do with the box and its contents, I hope he will remember it as a gift of opportunity -- to share the joy I once had learning to be creative on the knees of my mother and grandmother.

storm warning

I hate driving on snow and ice.

I told you that on Tuesday.  But I wanted to remind you.  After all, you are busy people.

Yesterday I set out on my drive to Salem to complete the second most important part of my visit north -- signing tax documents in my capacity as the trustee for a family trust.  I hope this is the last year I need to make the trip.  Even though I suspect next year will be a repeat of the same drill.

When I left Bend, the weather forecast was for a sunny trip across the Cascades.  Of course, forecasts in mountain ranges are notoriously wrong.  And when I saw the clouds moving in over the Three Sisters (the same clouds you are looking at), I thought I had been euchred.

I had just finished reading Erik Larson's Isaac's Storm.  Larson almost always writes accounts of disasters that make you feel you were -- and wish that you weren't.  In this case, it was a tale of how the newly-founded U.S. Weather Bureau completely missed forcasting the Galveston hurricane of 1900 -- resulting in a stunning loss of life.

But I was wrong.  Completely wrong.  The weathermen were correct.

Other than those clouds, the skies on the trip over were as blue as the skies of Seattle promised in that Bobby Sherman song.  I couldn't have asked for better weather.

This is what I saw at the 4000 foot summit near the Hoodoo ski facility.

It may as well be May in the Cascades.  Usually, there are several feet of snow piled along the highway.  The road should look like a luge run.  Instead, it feels like a Sunday drive in the country.

And that is bad.  Despite Oregon's rap for being a rainy state, it is still a Western state.  That means summer droughts.  Droughts that are usually relieved by melting snow packs. 

But, if there is no snow pack, there is nothing to melt.  It is the equivalent of a farmer eating his seed corn.  Or a soldier firing his last bullet.

At least, I did not have to contend with snow and ice.

I suspect Darrel will not be so lucky.  When I headed west, he headed east.  And the forecasts in his hand were far more unnerving than mine.  If you have been listening to the news this week, you know what he is facing once he gets to the east slope of the Rockies.

For sheer thrills, I wish I had joined him.  But I would not have been much help as a relief driver.  That ice and snow thing again.

I wish him well.  Christie and he need to move to Mexico before these winters capture us forever.

escape from bend

The Shiftless Escape is making a guest appearance on Mexpatriate.

When I arrived in Bend last week, my brother asked me if I was ready for another road trip.  There is only one answer to a question like that.  Yes!  Even though I had just finished one of the best road trips of my life -- with Dan and Patty.

Darrel's step-daughter lives in Virginia, where her husband is in the military.  Her car, as Darrel puts it, is on its last tire.  Coincidentally, her birthday is at the end of this month.

After Darrel put a bushel full of dollars in countering the Escape's deferred maintenance, it is running like a first-line used car.  And it will make a perfectly utilitarian birthday gift for his step-daughter.

But you have already seen the problem, haven't you?  The Escape is in Bend.  His step-daughter is in Virginia.  A lot of country separates those two points.  Almost all of the country.  (Here is a bit of trivia.  The distance between Bend and Virginia is almost exactly the distance between Melaque and Bend -- the last road trip starring the Shiftless Escape.)

Darrel had planned on making the trip starting this Thursday.  That is where I came into the picture.  If I had my Red China visa in hand and had signed the trust tax documents, I could accompany him on this race across the country -- and still be back in Barra de Navidad on 25 February as I had planned.  And it looked as if the conditions precedent were on a timely track.

Then, the weather decided to play a wild card.  If you have been watching the news, the eastern half of The States are covered with ice and snow.  And it is not getting any better.

Now, I have no concern about being in a vehicle on snow and ice -- just as long as the vehicle is being driven by a competent snow and ice driver.  That is not me.  I like my driving conditions to be spring-fresh.  So, my presence on the trip would not rise above color commentary.

Darrel is currently readjusting his plans to steer through as much favorable weather as possible.  He will be joined on the trip by one of his friends who was with us on our Baja 1000 adventure a year ago.  (sea to shining sea)

I have mixed feelings.  I will not miss the opportunity to be in a vehicle driving hours on end at 15 MPH over icy roads.  But I will miss spending time on the road with my brother.

He needs to get down Mexico way -- where driving is a sport never impeded by snow. 

bending the signs

Margaret Mead visited my college campus in the mid-1970s.  I can still see her slowly making her way across the quad looking like a Tolkien wizard.  Becaped.  Rustic walking stick.  She was everything an anthropologist -- or fiction writer -- should be.

I often feel as if I am Mead (absent the eccentric accessories) when I head out on my shooting expeditions to uncover the heart of mini-cultures through their public signs.

Take Bend.  If you think of it as one of Oregon's old cowboy towns, you would be half-right.  It is also half-yuppie.  Mainly Californian yuppie.  Giving the town a rather bipolar social and political personality.

It is the type of town where half of the population can support gassing Canadian geese that foul the footpaths, and the other half of the population will show up to have a candle vigil for "the surviving geese companions and families."  (what's good for the goose)

That is why the sign at the top of this post is not surprising.  Oregon was a pioneer in legalizing medical marijuana.  Last November, the state joined Washington and Colorado in legalizing recreational marijuana.  The county where Bend is located voted in favor of both initiatives.
 
Bend is filled with medical marijuana retail shops.  What they are waiting for is 1 July 2015 when the floodgates of legal pot open.

Make what you will of this combination.  (I love the speakeasy-esque last line.)

But Bend is not only about recreational drugs.  It is a place that loves its animals.

I initially mis-understood this sign.  The cart is sitting in the parking lot of a restaurant (in a "no parking" zone).

On first glance, I thought it was advertised containers to can cats.  Instead, it combines two Oregon -- bottle deposits and content pets.

In the restaurant, we ran into a bit of old Bend.

The slogan ("9-1-1 takes too long.  I re-load faster") was on the back of a hoodie worn by a young man.  Perhaps, in his twenties.

He was there having breakfast with his wife and their four children.  It was perhaps one of the most wholesome families I have seen in some time.  There are true advantages in the freedom of the west.

Bend is surrounded by ranch country.  When I saw this sign, I automatically thought the elementary school conducted a regular hay class, but it was cancelled.  And that someone could not spell -- or ran out of the letter "s."

Until I saw the other side of the sign.

I should have recognized it was in Spanish.  But I have been away from Mexico for too long.  Except in Taco Bell where I embarrassingly slip into Spanish with ease.

Or how about this license plate that puts the "vanity" into vanity plate?

It should be mine.

But this is undoubtedly my favorite.  It pretty much tells us which political strain predominates in Bend.  At least, amongst the elite.

I fully understand the anti-smoking crusade.  I am not a fan of having smoke blown in my face.  I will leave my libertarian comments concerning the impact of regulating the behavior of a free people for another day.

But take another look at the sign.  The last word in the blue portion.

"Campus?"  I know the word has become trendy.  Like "iconoclastic."  And both are recurringly misused.

"Campus" refers to the grounds and buildings of a university or college.  In this case, the whole city is referred to as a campus.

And what does that make the citizens on this campus?  The students?  With the politicians and the bureaucrats playing the role of "faculty and administration?"

That is hardly a great model for a republic.  What is wrong with "Tobacco-Free City?" 

But, there I go again, decking myself out in cape and walking stick.  Margaret Mead would be shaking her maned head.

If I recall correctly, getting away from soapboxes (and the need of having them) is one reason I moved to Mexico.

auditioning for our gang

My tribe is small.

Dad was an only child.  That made his side of the family a rather short branch.  But not a barren one. 

There was a passel of great-aunts and uncles.  And a few cousins near my age.  For whatever reason, they seemed a bit distant.  At least, in consanguinity.

My mother came from a moderate-sized family.  Three older siblings -- one brother and two sisters.  The Munro kids.  (My mother's name is Marilyn.  You can do the math on that one.)

My uncle Wayne never married.  You met him in let my people know.  If you click on the link, that is him on the far right.

Over the years, you have met most of the rest of the cast.  My mother's two sisters are Naomi and Berneice. 

Naomi has two sons: Dennis (who I accompanied on our southern European cruise last May) and Gary. 

Berneice has three children: Marsha, Dan (who I joined on our trip through Mexico last month), and Robin.

That means Darrel and I have five first cousins.  If the Mexican citizenship folks discover my deficiency, I will undoubtedly be asked to leave the country.

When we lived in the mountains of southern Oregon, we saw Marsha and Dan often.  (Robin is several years younger.)  They lived in the big town of Myrtle Point -- what we called "down below."  I would say that they lived just down the "holler" from us, but we were mountain people, not hillbillies.

We did not see Dennis and Gary much back then.  They lived in exotic places like Hawaii, Long Beach, and Seattle because their father was in the Coast Guard.  When he retired, they settled in Portland.  My parents had moved to Portland a decade earlier.

For a brief period, Dan, Dennis, and I attended college together.  About a year, I think.  We then went our separate ways seeing one another only occasionally.

I am not certain when this photograph of the three of us was taken.  Or where.  Or during what.

We appear to be at a restaurant or a hotel conference room.  What is obvious is that I have slapped a supercilious smirk on my face.  Over the years, it is a simple task to identify me in photographs.

Dan brought both of these photographs along on our trip as family tribute.  I am glad that someone has kept these little gems.

Marsha was in Bend this past week.  It is the first opportunity, in a very long time, I have had to sit and reminisce with her about our several battles and far more numerous good times over our lifetime.

I suppose it is a sure sign of aging when we start looking back over our lives -- when we try to put the prospective into context with the retrospective.  Sometimes, it is hard to tell one from the other.

One theme that has come up recurringly over the past ten months of conversations with Darrel, Dennis, Dan, and Marsha is the concept of regret.  I have none.  Maybe it is why Edith Piaf's "Non, je ne regrette rien" has long been one of my favorites.*

Regrets are a waste of time.  The past cannot be changed.  The future cannot be predicted.  All we have is this moment.

And that is never a thing to regret.


* -- For those of you with a good memory, you may recall my rather strange memories involving Edith Piaf and my Great-aunt Bessie (my best girl).



 

staging the day

Valentine's Day is one of those holidays that is far more hype than hip.  Almost entirely a creation of Hallmark.

That may be because I have not celebrated the day with anyone for so long I can no longer see the borders of Curmudgeonland.  But I am aware which side of the line I live on.

That is until yesterday.  I celebrated the day with my mother and brother.

We did not go out to a fancy restaurant.  Instead, we dug into plates of one of my favorite meals -- shepherd's pie.  Well, it was really cottage pie because we used beef, rather than lamb.  But this is Valentine's Day where I will even cut myself a bit of slack.  Probably, just enough to hang myself.

Because she is the grande dame of the family, Mom received a large vase filled with yellow roses.  And, yes, I know the color is supposed to be red.  But we Cottons tend to be a little perverse in beating tradition to death with a different drummer.

And the entertainment?  An evening of chamber music in Bend's restored Tower theater.

It was a rather short program -- with the contrived conceit of presenting music for lovers.  The group was the Crown City String Quartet.  A southern California quartet with roots in the Pacific Northwest.

I would hate to put together a program of chamber music designed to fill a theater with paying customers.  Especially, on a holiday based far more for its fluff rather than its substance.

The group succeeded with its limited target.  None of the pieces required much work from untutored ears.  But the pieces were good choices.  All of them readily recognizable and accessible.

During the summer of 2013, I told you in old times there are not forgotten, I had been re-considering Aaron Copland's three categories of how we listen to music:

• the sensuous plane -- our emotional response to music where we let it wash over us (often while we are engaged in other pursuits; the way everyone experiences music at a rather basic level)
• the expressive plane -- where we try to determine what the composer's music means
• the sheerly musical plane -- where we listen to the music as an abstract art form; or, in Copland's words: "the notes themselves and of their manipulation"

I suspect most people who attend concerts these days fall into the first category.  And that is fine with me.  I would rather have people listening on that level than not listening at all.  Without those listeners, live music would be as dead as Moussorgsky.

Anyone who has a nodding reference with chamber music will recognize the three pieces the group performed last night.

The first was Hugo Wolf's Italian Serenade.  I suppose the piece was on the program because of the adjective.  After all, if you buy into profiling, you know Italians are romantic.

It turns out Wolf added the "Italian" modifier after the work was completed.  It is about as Italian as Queen Elizabeth is English.

But it is a perfect piece for string players to show their chops.  Its lilting pace gives each performer a shot of presto-digitation and some rather snappy bowing.

The second piece is also a regular: Mozart's String Quartet No. 19 in C Major.  It is one of six string quartets composed in honor of Haydn.

But that is not what makes it such an interesting concert piece.  Its nickname is "Dissonance," and it is well-named.  The cello's opening C is met with a series of dissonant chords from the viola and two violins in the first 21 bars that set the theme for the rest of the work.

Some "experts" of the early 19th century were so unnerved by the dissonance that they concluded Mozart had made transcription errors.  Their solution?  Fix the errors.  These people still walk amongst us as politicians and regulators.

The group did a great job of adding new life to this warhorse.  Rather than try to move across the dissonance quickly, they reveled in it.  To ears accustomed to Schönberg, the tonal battle seems mild.  I can only imagine how it sounded to 18th century ears.

To our ears, it was joy.

The final piece was a perfect choice for Valentine's Day.  When Alexander Borodin wrote String Quartet No.2, I am certain he had no idea he was providing raw material for 1950s Broadway.

What he did produce was a brilliant piece of lyricism and contrapuntal structure.  But, I will admit, as hard as I tried, it was next to impossible to keep the score of Kismet from intruding.  The theme lifted by Wright and Forrest as "Baubles, Bangles, and Beads" underlies the Scherzo.  And the main theme from the Nocturne comes to us as "And This is My Beloved."

Neither tune, of course, has retained the magnificent variation of texture and chordal construction as the original.  And, even though hearing the show tunes felt as comfortable as slipping on a set of ragged underwear, what we heard was something far more challenging and beautiful.

Did I leave the theater feeling as if I had been pushed to learn something new about the abstract nature of music?  Probably not.  It was not a level three listening experience.

But it was a great night to celebrate Valentine's Day with my two closest relatives.  And that is good enough for me.

I hope your day was every bit as pleasant.