Monthly Archives: September 2013

Marian McPartland, 1918-2013

07 Saturday Sep 2013

Posted by in Jazz, Those we remember

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I discovered last night that pianist Marian McPartland died in  August. Modern audiences will most remember McPartland for her NPR show Piano Jazz, which began broadcasting in 1978 and ran until she was well into her nineties. There was a reason why musicians loved sharing a stage and microphone with Marian; she knew everyone in the jazz world for three quarters of a century and was encyclopedia of knowledge. If you watch her scenes from the 1994 documentary A Great Day in Harlem, about the 1958 Art Kane photograph of the same name, you will see that.

One misconception of her, probably stemming from her intelligence and British accent, is that she was proper and genteel. In reality, Marian was tough as they came and could hold her own in a jazz world much different than the one we know today. It was less institutionalized, a world of dive night clubs, alcoholics, and late hours. People were tougher back in those days, less likely to speak in euphemism. They had, after all, lived through the Depression and the Second World War. Marian was unafraid to call something what it was. If feelings were hurt in the process, so be it.

The best known story of Marian McPartland is an exchange she had with Duke Ellington. Asked his thoughts after a performance, the Duke replied that “You play so many notes.” Initially she took this as a compliment to her technical prowess. Upon later reflection she realized it was an admonishment to curb her excesses. In music, as in life itself, it is what we leave out that often says the most. Thankfully for the rest of us Marian took Ellington’s advice to heart. Here is the proof.

Travelistas

06 Friday Sep 2013

Posted by in National Park Service

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The New York Times has an interesting piece about African American attendance at National Park sites. We have long known that black attendance at Civil War-related sites is considerably less than other ethnic groups. This is not surprising given the emphasis on the Lost Cause narrative that has held sway at Civil War parks since their creation starting in the 1890s. Recent shifts in Interpretation have caused an uptick in the stats, but I doubt seriously that African Americans will ever visit Gettysburg, Antietam, or elsewhere in significant numbers. Still, the problem of African American attendance at National Park sites runs deeper than that: numbers at nature parks such as Yellowstone and the Grand Canyon are lower–much lower–as well. Ranger Shelton Johnson of Yosemite addressed this very issue in the interview he did here at the Strawfoot this past March.  I urge you to read it if you have not already done so. I did not know until reading the New York Times piece that there is a growing movement afoot to attract minorities, especially young minorities, to our country’s natural and scenic wonders. I spent the past half hour checking out some of the websites these travelers have created and was impressed. As Ranger Johnson pointed out in the documentary The Way Home , this is the next chapter in the Civil Rights Movement. It could be the next chapter for the National Parks as well.

Aboard the Yankee

04 Wednesday Sep 2013

Posted by in Ellis Island, Guest Posts, New York City

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Earlier in the week I received an email from reader and fellow blogger Billie Elias. Billie blogs at All in Your Family, which I encourage you to check out. She wrote to tell me that she had recently toured the Yankee, the Ellis Island ferry recently repurposed as a cultural institution, and was wondering if she could comment on my recent post. Because comments had closed, I suggested something better: how about writing a guest spot at the Strawfoot. Graciously, she accepted. Here is her report:

The first time I saw a MacKenzie-Childs piece of pottery was at my mother-in-law’s house. She had several pieces arranged in a group…one was a large pitcher that had stripes, checkerboard and flowers…a melange of varied patterns, all obviously hand-painted. How rustic, I thought…not really my taste.

Ceramic pot

Then one day while strolling up Madison Avenue, I noticed a most unusual shoppe. It had an old-world feel to the outside, with striped awnings that reminded me of jesters costumes. Upon entering, you knew you were in a most unusual space. Everything was cramped and cozy, and there was a large chicken wire cage with live birds inside. Nooks and crannies were everywhere.  A narrow staircase carried you up to another level of retail, and yet another even more quaint stair took you to the teensie top, where there was a wall covered with rooms of a doll house, a la Windsor Castle. There was a tea room up there, too. Every square inch was covered by a tile or a tassel or a cushion or plates or some other creation of a magical couple named Victoria and Richard MacKenzie-Childs.

mackenziechilds2

It’s a style that can really grow on you, especially as the style evolved over the years to include lots of black and white stripes. (Black and White are my personal signature colors, especially as my hair has gone from jet black to salt and pepper).

What a surprise I had when a friend from Amsterdam told me she was going to interview the owner of a bed and breakfast situated on an old ferry boat docked on the Hudson River (since relocated to Red Hook in Brooklyn). I pride myself on being a New Yorker who has her finger on the pulse of cool stuff like this, so I was stunned that I didn’t know such a thing existed. My Google search netted the fact that MacKenzie-Childs were the brain-“childs” behind this. I begged to go along for the ride and she relented. That is how I came to meet the colorful and unusual Victoria.

Billie (right) aboard the Yankee

Billie (right) aboard the Yankee

Being welcomed into the parlor, we were regaled by stories of how the Yankee had ferried immigrants from their ships to Ellis Island and later served in WWI and WWII. Today she is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.  The couple is deeply committed to her preservation (not only of the ship, but of everything they touch…talk about reducing one’s footprint!). There’s a chicken coop with live chickens whose eggs are eaten by visitors and residents of the vessel, mounds of old steamer trunks and luggage repurposed for storage, and MacKenzie-Childs accoutrements and eye-candy everywhere the eye can see.

(images/Billie Elias)

Embracing complexity

03 Tuesday Sep 2013

Posted by in Ellis Island, Genealogy

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Immigrants passing through Galveston's immigration depot might be held for further examination at the quarantine facility.

Immigrants passing through Galveston’s immigration depot might be held for further examination at the quarantine facility.

Once when I was a kid my grandfather on my mother’s side was telling me about his parents, both of whom were born in Italy and moved to the United States separately before meeting, marrying, and putting the family on the path that led to me. Despite my greatest efforts to corroborate this piece of family history, all my searching over the years has so far proved fruitless. I began having even greater doubts when I began as a volunteer at Ellis Island National Monument. Folks would come in and state confidently that “My great grandmother came through here in 1867,” or whatever version of their family story passed down to them. The trouble is, Ellis Island did not become an immigration station until 1892. And, even if one’s relatives did come to America between 1892-1924, there is still a good chance they passed through one of the many other immigration stations across the United States. Baltimore, Savannah, New Orleans, or in my great grandparents’ case Boston, are just a few of the other port cities through which the huddled masses were arriving in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. I suppose people think “Ellis Island” because a) it was the largest and, b) it is now–quite properly–integral to our national story.

This came back to me a week or so ago when I forwarded this piece to some colleagues at work. It is about the 10,000 Jews who passed through Galveston Texas from 1907-1917 and eventually settled in the Lone Star State. Indeed many thousands from Eastern Europe had come before them. A spectacular exhibit on Galveston as an immigration station toured the country a few years ago, and made a stop at Ellis Island itself. Stories like this are important reminders that much of what we think we know is, at best, incomplete. Think “Immigrants, 1907” and the narrative shorthand in your head thinks “Lower East Side, tenements, crowded streets.” That is certainly part of the story, but as always the full story is more complicated and interesting. It is a scary proposition. Who wants to think that what they believe might be wrong? I know that fighting such simplifications is something a struggle with every day in my own writing and research. I saw Ellis Island visitors struggling with the same issue when processing that maybe their own history was not so simple. So what is one to do? There is not much to do but accept this and embrace complexity whatever the consequences.

(image/Library of Congress)