The Joys of Museums

 

DUKES FANS:  

People who regularly read these missives know that I am a museum person. Art museums, history museums, cultural museums, special interest museums-I simply love museums. They are a big part of my life and have been since I was first exposed to them on school trips in elementary school. I love Philadelphia’s collection of museums, and I thoroughly enjoy them. I am a member of The Philadelphia Art Museum, The Woodmere, The Afro-American Museum, The Barnes, The Colored Girls Museum in Philadelphia’s Germantown section, and The University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology. I also occasionally visit the Museum of the American Revolution, The Insectarium, and other Philly museums. Museums are among the great attractions of cities to me, and Philly has plenty of them.  

Whenever I travel, I also go to museums. Sometimes it is to see a special exhibit, as when I went to the New Museum in NYC a few weeks ago to see the Faith Ringgold retrospective. But I often go just to see what may be there. I am in the area for a while, I have time, there is a museum or two, so I go. I have been to “grand’ museums such as the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Guggenheim in New York City, and I have been to “little” museums such as The Frontenac County School Museum in Kingston, Ontario and The Civilian Conservation Corps Museum in New York State’s Gilbert Lake State Park. I have been to wonderful conceptual museums such as The Museum of American Visionary Art in Baltimore, MD., and I have been to many of the Smithsonian Museums in Washington, DC. and MD. These have always been particularly joyous and mind-expanding happenings. I am thinking about these places now because I think it is time for me to do one of my favorite museum journeys again. It is time for me to head due South. 

One of the rituals my late wife and I had was our Baltimore and DC weekend jaunts. At least twice a year for about 20 years we would head south on a Friday morning and spend that day in Baltimore, visiting at least one of the many museums that call Baltimore home. We have visited the Reginald Lewis Museum that examines Black history and culture in MD, the Great Blacks in Wax Museum that is a wax museum dedicated to black history, The Walters Art Museum, one of the nation's biggest and most varied free admission art museums, and especially The Museum of American Visionary Art, an amazing museum dedicated to outsider art and conceptual installations. We would then eat at one of our favorite Baltimore restaurants and stay at a hotel in the BWI airport complex. We would rise early Saturday, have a good breakfast, and then head on to DC where we would regularly visit one of the many Smithsonian museums and maybe go to Kenilworth Gardens. Then we would have a great dinner at one of the amazing restaurants on Connecticut Street in Adams Morgan, and then head back to the hotel at BWI. Sunday was breakfast and back to Philly after a joyous and  wonderful weekend. 

I am ready to do that again, or at least some of it, and I think I will do it in August. It may just be a day trip to Baltimore or DC; I don’t know if I am up for whole weekend just yet. But it will be good to be in those cities again and visiting those museums. They have always provided surprising and amazing times. Yes, I will take appropriate pandemic precautions-masking, washing hands, and distance wherever possible. Most importantly, I will once again enjoy that magical sense of transport to another place that these museums so often provide. I have visited some of them online during the pandemic shutdown, and it has been OK. Now it is time to see them in person. To be there and be surrounded by that sense of wonder and surprise. Ahhhh...It is time. Cities and museums; perfect together. 

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Some of the lesser-known places mentioned above: 

The Colored Girls Museum 

https://www.Thecoloredgirlsmuseum.com  

Kenilworth Gardens 

https://www.nps.gov/keaq  

Frontenac County School Museum 

https://www.kingstonmuseums.ca/site/frontenac-county-schools-museum  

The American Visionary Arts Museum https://www.avam.org  

The Woodmere Museum

Woodmere Art Museum

 

SILENCE AND LISTENING

 DUKES FANS:  

   “Silence is the sleep that nourishes wisdom" Francis Bacon  

       “The color of the mountains is Buddha's body; the sound of running water is his great speech".  Dogen  

I cannot remember exactly how long I have been sending out these newsletters and missives to Dukes Fans. Something tells me that I started this around 2008, but that could well be just my faulty memory. I like doing them; I like the sense of connection with Dukes fans, and I like looking at how and where my thoughts and sense of connections to the world around are at certain times. Usually writing these is fairly straightforward, if not always easy. I get an idea, think about it, string a couple of sentences together, and then I am off, tracking my thoughts and sharing them with you. There are times, however, when nothing seems to be working. The brain is too tired, too overloaded or too crazed to allow me to develop a solid t rain of thought which I can ride somewhere. I get stuck.  

At those times I often go back to the trove of things I have written before, looking for ideas and inspiration. I generally look for something around similar dates from years ago, as many of my missives deal with things that are calendar related, celestial, or theme related. That is what happened today, and I looked back at things written at the end of June or early in July. I am so glad I did that. I came across a newsletter I had sent out in 2013 that had to do with connections and links that turned me on to something I had not known about, got connected to, and then in the craziness of the last few years, unfortunately fell away from. I am happy to be aware of it again. And It all started with connections; connections ignited by a conversation with my late wife, Penny:   

    “This all came to me after a conversation with my wife, Penny. She mentioned a piece she had heard on Natural Public Radio about the wildlife sounds at a National Park-I think it was Olympia National Park. I love things that talk about sounds and silence-I am a musician, after all, and I love walking in the woods and listening to nature. So I attempted to find the story. I couldn't find it, but I stumbled onto something called "Eavesdropping On America's National Parks"-an entire project by the National Park Service devoted to collecting sounds from the parks. I spent time listening to and reading about that, which led me to the National Park's "Natural Sound and Night Skies" Program, which led me to a whole page and video on the sound project, which led to teacher resources on working with kids and sounds, which led to reading about the crisis faced by bats, which led to the discovery of something called, "World Listening Day." That is correct-a day in which people all over the world are asked to pause and to spend serious time listening to what is around them. That sounded great and blew me away. It is a profoundly simple but wonderful idea. July 18 is World Listening Day, and I think I will find a way to get involved.   

 
  So those connections- that way the mind can work on its own to find patterns and forge links-is still a part of how I try to approach life. And it takes me to new places, new thoughts, new discoveries, and new awareness’s that I had only scarcely imagined. Sometimes the most amazing trips we take are the ones we take internally, without even going anywhere.  They can truly be both fascinating and enlightening!”  

  
 (The web links for the pages on Sounds in the National Parks and World Listening Day-  
       http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=4810692  
     https://www.nps.gov/subjects/sound/index.htm   
  https://nationaltoday.com/world-listening-day/  

The Importance of The Route 23

 

DUKES FANS  

“Clang, clang, clang went the trolley...” 

My Long Love Affair with Route 23 

I am Philly born, Philly bred, and I love this city. Yes, it has its problems, as does every city and most places in the country. But I love the many neighborhoods of this city, its history and culture, and  the logical and clear way much of the city is laid out. It is easy to navigate, and that is a very good thing in a place with so many people. Public transit is a key to any city’s economic and social success, and Philly has had a good transit system for some time. It has been the key to my getting around and enjoying this place, and I am very grateful for it. I still depend on this system for much of my daily and regular activities. Several times a week I make use of the regional rail lines near me-The Chestnut Hill West and The Chestnut Hill East-to go into town. I also make use of the Route H bus a couple of times a week. And just about every day of every week I spend some time on the Route 23 bus. Going to the pharmacy, going up to Chesnut Hill for coffee or a meal, going to Germantown to the Regional Library, going grocery shopping; just about every day that route gets me somewhere I need to be or connects with some way of getting me to where I need to go. My life would be very different without the 23, and it has been that way for over 50 years. 

I went to a local public elementary school-I could walk the 6 blocks to and from Dunlap Elementary School easily. But I went to Masterman Junior High and Central High School, and attending those schools meant I had to become familiar with Philly’s public transit. I used the subway, the busses, the trolleys, and the elevated in junior high school, and I became rather adept at figuring out how to get to where I wanted to go. But it was high school that really increased my use and reliance on public transit and especially the 23. Central had students from all over the city. A lot of my friends lived in Mt. Airy, Germantown, Chestnut Hill, Center City, and Lower South Philly.  The 23 connected all of those parts of the city, and it also linked up with a number of bus routes, subway stops, and the Market Steet elevated. So I learned to use it to travel much of the city. After I left high school and started playing music, the 23 became an essential part of my music life. The Philadelphia folk and coffeehouse scene had exploded, the 23 helped me get to and experience a lot of it. I could get to the weekend coffeehouse on the 2nd floor of Diane Bryman's rug shop in Chestnut Hill, and I could travel to World Control Studios and Hecate Circle in Germantown. As it ran all night and travelled from Chestnut Hill to South Philly, I could take it from one spot in Chestnut Hill or Mt Airy or South Street, and hook up with buses that could take me back to my parents’ home in West Philly. After I moved out of my parent's home, it allowed me to get to and from my various apartments in West Philly, South Philly, or Center City. It was my reliable transport just about wherever I needed to go. 

The 23 was a long route. Traveling over 13 1/2 miles, it was once the longest streetcar route in the world. Being such a long route, it went through many of Philadelphia’s neighborhoods. So when I taught high school classes in urban studies, I made the 23 an important part of the curriculum. In the first week of the class, we would ride the 23 for at least half of its route. I would have the students count the number and types of churches, bars, hair salons, playgrounds, and schools we passed. They would also count the abandoned factories and shops we passed as a way of beginning to understand how cities grow and change economically. They would also write down each time they thought we were entering a different neighborhood and what indicated that to them. That long ride would form the backdrop for the first two weeks of the course, and it influenced just about everything else we did. 

I am thinking about all of this because while waiting at the 23-bus stop outside Lovett Library, I saw an announcement of something called “Along the 23.” Along the 23 is a collaborative art project that seeks to present and explore scenes from various people, activities, places, and neighborhoods along route 23. A lot has changed since I started riding the route; it is now a bus route, and its length has been shortened by about 1/3. But it is still the most used and the most diverse SEPTA route, and this arts program is designed to explore just that. Watching the various dance videos and seeing the artwork and photographs that are a part of the project made me remember all of the discoveries and realizations about my city that that route has allowed me to see and experience for over a half century. It connected me once again with important parts of my past and helped me consciously appreciate the role that something as ordinary as a public transit route has had and can still have on a person's life. The link to the “Along the 23 Project” is below. I hope you get to visit the project and think about the role transit and other seemingly ordinary things have had on your own life. For the ordinary is often what makes the extraordinary possible. At least that is how it has been with me and the 23. Enjoy  

https://www.alongthe23.com/the-art  

Make Music Philly  

 Organized by the Make Music Alliance and Make Music Philly, Make Music Philly is a city-wide event that recognizes the solstice, and celebrates humanity and our unique ability to make music in many different forms and styles. It is an interactive event; you participate in it and don’t just view it. Check out the website (http://www.makemusicphilly.org/ ) There you can find listings of events to attend and participate in, whether it is singing with a barbershop quartet, being part of a drum circle, exploring a particular culture’s national music, or more. Check it out-get active and celebrate one of humankind's longest and most ancient traditions by making music, Philly, on the day of the solstice. 

Music in The Out of Doors

 

DUKES FANS:  

THE JOYS OF MUSIC OUTSIDE 

   (I am still thinking about, reading about, listening to music from, and reveling in the memories of my time at the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival. It was an absolutely wonderful weekend, and I am still aglow from it. In addition to the sheer power and beauty of the music I heard that weekend, I am also thinking about how good it felt to be outside in a group and at a real live in-person music festival. I had almost forgotten what that feels like. The Dukes did do the Chestnut Hill Fall for the Arts Fest last year, and that was wonderful. But this was the first Jazz and Heritage Fest in two years, and the collective joy of everyone in that huge crowd at finally being back at the Fest was palpable. To me, one of the true joys of late May into the summer has always been playing and hearing music outside in a festival format; it has been that way for me for years. So I went back and found a piece I had written several years ago about my love for the power of music played and enjoyed outside. Jazz Fest brought that back to me in a big way, so I updated the piece. ) 

  If you look at the schedules of many bands and groups of just about any genre for the next three months, you will see that there is a return to the days of summer concerts in local parks, festivals, and street and block parties. The Dukes will be playing The Narberth Arts and Music Festival on June 12 and The Falls Township and Kahn Park Summer Series on August 14th and 17th respectively. The Two Johns will be at Le Fete de La Musique on June 21st in West Chester. These are all outdoor gigs, and I love playing these gigs. One joy is that  the crowds and venues are bigger; more folks, generally means a good and excited audience. But I also love them because they put me back in touch with the types of gigs that first awakened me to the joy and power of playing music. As a young teen, watching the way live music outdoors could bring a crowd of people together produced a feeling of awe that has never quite gone away. And each summer I get a chance to re-live that. 

   I started playing in the late 1960’s, and those were the days of the “Be-Ins"-outdoor festivals of music, politics, and good spirited nuttiness that were held at Belmont Plateau in Fairmount Park and in Powelton Village. There amidst the pot smoke, Frisbee throwing, and political organizing I heard Tracy Nelson’s Mother Earth and The Electric Flag and even played at a couple of them with Sweet Stavin’ Chain. It was all exhilarating. The joy and power of a group of people outdoors listening and dancing to the same music made quite an impression. I also attended several Philadelphia Folk Festivals, the longest continuously running outdoor music festival in the United States.  I went to my first one in 1966, and I got to see John Hurt, Tom Rush, Buddy Guy and Jr Wells, and more. I was amazed at how they could get hundreds of people-all ages and types of people- singing along, dancing, swaying back and forth in rhythm, and feeling like we were all one. There was a sense of joy and freedom and togetherness in those gatherings that I still cherish. 

   Then in 1969 I had one of the defining experiences of my musical life. I hitchhiked with a friend from Philadelphia all the way to Michigan for the first Ann Arbor Blues and Jazz Festival. While other friends of were making plans to go to some place a few weeks later called Woodstock, Bill and I made our way over the course of two days to Ann Arbor. There I had the amazing experience of seeing Muddy Waters, Howling Wolf, Roosevelt Sykes, Son House, Magic Sam, Yank Rachel, James Cotton, Buddy Guy, Sleepy John Estes, T-Bone Walker, Mississippi Fred Mc Dowell, Big Mama Thornton, Jonny Shines, Charlie Musselwhite, Lightnin’ Hopkins, and more all over the course of one weekend with thousands of people. All in one weekend! Wow!  I was hooked on festivals and outdoor music from then on. 

   As I have aged and been playing for a while, I am, of course, aware of some of the difficulties of outdoor music. Guitars can have a harder time staying in tune, sound systems can be difficult, and every now and then crowds can  become unruly. Despite those things, I still love outdoor music events. I love looking out and seeing people spontaneously dancing and swaying together, just as they did at those folk festivals and Be-ins I attended so long ago. I love it when a whole group of people starts singing along and clapping together. And I especially love watching kids getting into it as they realize that music is something that real live human beings do-that it is made by folks who sweat, make mistakes, laugh, and can see and wave at them. I like to connect, if only for a moment, with young kids when playing these events; to smile at them and do some dance steps with them. Because for that moment nothing else in the world maters except the music and that shared feeling. That moment and that excitement. And just like that, I am a teenager again, feeling the pure joy and wonder of music outdoors with hundreds of people. It still feels great.    

So I hope you get to a lot of festivals and concerts in the great outdoors this summer and get to experience some of what I got to experience in New Orleans two weeks ago. Regardless of where and with whom, being at such events can be magical and transformative. I urge you to get out the house, away from the MP3 player and/or the stereo and the binge TV watching, and go catch some real live music. You and your spirit will definitely be glad you did.  
 

(Here is a link to a recording of the historic first Ann Arbor Blues Festival in 1969:  

https://www.thirdmanrecords.com/news/ann-arbor-blues-festival-1969-deluxe-edition-details/

The Beauty of The Mundane

 

 DUKES FANS:  

One of the things I love about walking around the city is that I can see many things that I would not notice were I in a car or on a bus. I can see neat little alleys, unique plant boxes, interesting doors, window displays, etc . These are often enjoyable things that bring a smile to my face or make me think. I also get to notice bumper stickers on cars, and I have seen some that have stayed with me for a while: “Love Your Neighbor: No Exceptions;” “Support Bacteria; They’re The Only Culture Some Folks Have;” “In Individuals Insanity is Rare. In parties, nations, and epochs, it is the rule.” “Live Widely, Laugh Often, and Love Deeply.” Some are cute, some are funny, and some are inspirational. They can set me off in a direction I was unaware of until coming across them. A few days ago, I saw one that especially intrigued me: “Celebrate mundanity, and the mysterious delight embedded in the banal-Visit The Museum of Everyday Life.” 

This was something right up my alley. As a young kid growing up and now as senior citizen, I was and still am curious about ordinary things and their origins. I am not mechanically minded-I could never invent or design something mechanical to solve a problem. That was my brother. He was the one who built model planes and cars, studied how to repair cars and appliances, and who subsequently had an absolutely amazing 40 year + career as an electrical engineer, both with the School District of Philadelphia and in running his own business. But I have always been interested in how things work; seeing machines and devices and structures do the things they do mystifies and amazes me. To me, infrastructure is what allows societies and cultures to function as they do, and that infrastructure is mostly composed of things we rarely think about or marvel at. But soenone designed them, and these are the keys that make the lives we live possible. They are “the banal”-we don’t notice them unless they break down or are not working. Then they get noticed. So that bumper sticker caught my attention big time. 

Two of my favorite books are by Henry Petroski: The Pencil, and The Evolution of Ordinary Things. Yes; Petroski wrote a 400+ page book on that piece of wood and graphite. In doing so, he examined and asked and answered some incredible questions. How did the pencil start wars, and how did it help change European history?? Why did the American Society of Civil Engineers call the #2 pencil with an eraser attached the most important and most wonderfully designed item of the 20th century? Why was the donation of pencils so important to the recovery of European nations after WWI? It was a fascinating and revelatory book. 

In his second book Petroski examined some other important mechanical inventions and developments in ways that I had not thought about before: Where did the fork come from? Who do some forks have two tines, and others four? How do bridges stay up? Where did velcro come from? Petroski, a professor of engineering, looks at these things as elements of design and invention, but also as facets of cultural beliefs and values. It gave me a new, wider way to look at technological change and development. I believe that cultures and civilizations depend on infrastructure, and one part of infrastructure is often those things that we don’t pay attention to that often influence the way we live the most. So that bumper sticker was calling to a real important part of me, and I had to check out the website of The Museum of Everyday Things.  

I love museums, all types of museums. Yes, I love great and grand art museums and historical museums and science museums. But I also love the small and quirky specialty museum. One of the pleasures of the many trips and travels Penny and I did was discovering new museums: The American Visionary Art Museum and The Great Blacks in Wax museums in Baltimore; the various Smithsonian museums in DC; the small little Civilian Conservation Museum outside of Great Falls, NY; The Colored Girls Museum in Philadelphia; the Harriet Tubman Museum in Cape May, NJ, and many, many others. The Museum of Everyday Life is one of those smaller, specialty museums that I have come to especially love. It is in a barn-like building in Glover, VT and it is a self-service museum; apparently one can enter when it is open, browse the museum, and then leave, remembering to turn out the lights. I viewed the web version of some past exhibits, one on the match and one on knots. The one on the match looked at the history of the match, and I learned some things about how unsafe matches once were, how Britain was nearly paralyzed by a strike of the girls who made the matches, how the Diamond Match Company discovered a way to make matches that were safe, and then shared that process with other companies rather than filing for an exclusive patent. That was a lot about that one little piece of everyday life.  

The website also has performance spots tied to some of the exhibits, philosophical essays on some of the items on display, and links to some past exhibits, although not each page was working when I first clicked on it. I will visit it more over the next few days, and hopefully all the pages will be up and working. 

The Museum of Everyday Life is a delightful place to check out via the web, and I hope to be able to visit it in person some time when I am up in Vt.  And it reminded me that I had not visited some of my favorite museums on the web in quite some time. Those are trips I will be happily taking over the next few weeks, for museums almost always have things to teach me, show me, and introduce me to. Those can be joyous trips, indeed. 

The Museum of Everyday Life 

https://museumofeverydaylife.org 

The American Visionary Art Musuem 

https://www.avam.org