I ain't white enough!

I've been reading a few editorials lately about the Washington Redskins quarterback Robert Griffin III who was so infamously disparaged by an ESPN commentator for not being "black enough."  This has caused a great deal of soul-searching on my part.  I love pad Thai, tamales, and vindaloo.  I appropriately listen to music by dead white guys (Bach, Beethoven, and John Lennon), but I also enjoy classical Persian music and Ravi Shankar.  And let's not forget Michael Jackson!  I grew up with that boy.  "Thriller" is in my soul.  I drive a VW and wouldn't be caught dead behind the wheel of a Ford pick-up.  I have shot a gun, but it was 30 years ago and was my grandfather's World War II rifle, which, my husband informed me, doesn't count.  All of this has brought a great cloud of confusion upon my mind.  Am I white enough?

I quickly checked my skin.  It's pretty pale, not white, exactly, more of a pinky-buff.  Does that mean I check the "Pinky-buff Caucasian" box on the next survey I fill out?  And what is a Caucasian, anyway?  The term was derived from the people of the southern Caucasus mountains.  An "enlightened" German anthropologist decided 200 years ago that the southern Caucasus region was the likely birthplace of the "white" race.  My genealogical research goes back a long way, and I've yet to discover anyone in my lineage from that part of the world.  But there's no"Pinky-buff Anglo Saxon with Norman and Roman roots" option on all those questionnaires.  What's a concerned member of the human race to do?  What shall we call ourselves?

Nothing.  I vote we call ourselves nothing.  Except for people, of course, or humans, Americans (or any other nationality) would be OK, or how about this, brothers and sisters?  Such divisions as African-American, Asian-American, white, can only...divide.  That is their purpose.  I have an adorable 7 year old piano student who had an assignment in her lesson book to color the drawing of a hand.  Finger one was red, finger two was blue, etc.  When she was done she said, "I want to color the palm," and she took a brown crayon from the box.  I was surprised and asked, "Why did you choose a brown crayon?"  She replied, "Miss Charis, my hand is brown."  I looked and saw, as if for the first time, her Puerto Rican brown hand.  I said, "Oh my goodness, so it is!"  And we both laughed.  It had simply never occurred to me to see her as anything than a sweet girl that I enjoy teaching.

When my oldest daughter was four years old, she had a friend over to play.  They began coloring some pictures.  My daughter began to enthusiastically color a person blue.  The friend, a very blond, very blue-eyed, very pale skinned, Campbell Soup Kid, all-American prototype said, "What are you doing?  People can't be blue. You're supposed to leave the skin white."  My daughter put down her crayon, looked the budding Barbie doll dead in the eye and said, "You're wrong.  People can be any color."  She then returned to her bit of blue humanity.

You go, girl!


Here is my newest composition, "I Ain't White Enough, How About You?"  Enjoy!

The Tale of Two Igors

Igor and I have had a love-hate relationship.  It began when I was 12.  My parents brought him home, unannounced, and I was pleasantly surprised.  He was beautiful back in the day, old even then, but shiny and clean, and a vast improvement over his predecessor, a beautifully carved, sagging upright from 1904.  I loved him then.  Igor is my piano.

Igor is a 5 foot baby grand piano that I named for one of my favorite composers, Igor Stravinsky.  Why Stravinsky, you ask?  (or perhaps you didn't ask, but I will still answer) Stravinsky is a complex, daring, adventurous composer full of mercurial moods and mischief.  I knew, even as an adolescent, that my piano and I were about to launch on some great adventures to the nooks and crannies of the musical world and Stravinsky was an appropriate role model.

My first introduction to the music of Stravinsky was at the age of 14 through the most unlikely of pieces for a modern music neophyte.  My older brother played a recording of "Petrushka" for me.  It is a magnificent ballet composed by Stravinsky in 1910-1911 for the famous Ballets Russes in Paris.  It has passion, unrequited love, jealousy, murder, you name it.  If you can feel it, it's in this ballet.  I was immediately enchanted.  I couldn't stop listening to it's evocative blend of Russian folk melodies and contemporary harmonies and rhythms.  I scrounged a copy of the score and banged it out on my piano as best I could, taking yet another fantastic sonic tour with Igor (and Igor!).

But now, decades later, I have been on one too many trips with my piano.  Igor is worn out and I have hated him.  He is badly marred, with "Kimmy" and "Love" scratched on the side by my then 5 year old daughter.  I thought it was time to get rid of him and replace him with a much younger, more attractive model.  Then I discovered through the Antique Piano Shop that Igor has worth.  He was made in the 1920's by Schroeder and Son, an American company that made outstanding quality pianos then went out of business in 1930 due to the Great Depression.  His case is Honduran mahogany and his soundboard spruce. Igor needs restoration.  Once the work is done, he will be a valuable and exquisite little piano.  Who knew?

So I wonder, what else in our lives appears to be worn out, old, in need of replacement, and yet in reality would be of great worth with a little restoration?  I have a few suggestions.

The Constitution of the United States of America - There are a few voices claiming it's time to scrap this document due to its antiquated irrelevance.  I disagree.  Let's dust it off, polish it up, and understand it instead.

Families - They may seem obsolete, but it's still the best place to raise a kid.  And don't trade in that worn out spouse!  Polish him/her up with words of kindness and affirmation.

Moral Values - How about bringing honesty, decency, courtesy, modesty, respect, and circumspect behavior back into fashion?

Friendships - We all have friends we thought we'd write off due to misunderstandings or hurt feelings.  Let's put away our pride and love them instead.  Everyone has value.

I'm sure with a little contemplation each of us will be able to identify things in our lives that deserve a second chance, that are really of great worth.  And this includes ourselves!

Igor the piano

Igor the composer

The Nutcracker Trap

It's that time of year.  That time when satiated, bloated, and over-indulged we collapse in a surfeit of too many good things and vow to ourselves never to do it again.  I myself am suffering from a profligacy of Nutcrackers.  One too many Sugar Plum Fairies have danced in my head.  Too many Mirlitons have mirtiled.  Tchaikovsky's famous Nutcracker Suite is everywhere, the grocery store, the radio, the commercials on TV. You cannot escape.  Resistance is futile.  And so I succumbed to the triviality of it all and fell into my annual sappy music coma.

Years ago in college I played oboe in the school orchestra.  Every Christmas for four years we would drag out the Nutcracker Suite, rehearse ad naseum, and then perform it multiple times for the many Christmas concerts given on campus.  By the time we put it back in the dusty folders, I could hardly stand to look at the title.  Part of this, of course, was due to the lack of imagination in the oboe part.  All instrumentalists, whether they admit it or not, are to some degree biased by the quality of their individual part in any given piece, and Mr. Tchaikovsky didn't do much for the oboe section.  Other than a brief solo for English Horn in the Arabian Dance, we got nothin'.  So I enjoyed bad-mouthing Tchaikovsky, ruining his reputation, and forgetting him until the next year.

My last year of college I was asked to play in the pit orchestra for a production of the full ballet.  It sounded like sonic torture, but the money was good, so I accepted the gig and showed up at the first rehearsal, ready to dis the man.  The conductor raised his baton, and we began.  We played, and we played, and soon I was astounded at the beauty of the music.  Tchaikovsky left all the good parts in the ballet.  How many have ever heard the Snow Fairy music?  Or the Act 1 pas de deux?  "Peter Illych," I inwardly groaned, "What were you thinking?  The breadth, the depth of emotion, the angst, the fire and ice, it's all here, in the ballet.  Why isn't it in the Suite?"  Well, as I am not a medium, Peter Illych did not answer, but the fact remains that the dances in the Nutcracker Suite are not the best of the ballet.  Perhaps he was thinking of what would be an easy "sell," of what would appeal to the lowest common denominator.  We'll never know.

But I started to wonder how often do I do the same?  Do I always present the very best I have to offer, or do I sometimes go for the easy path, particularly if I think no one will care or notice.  It's so easy, when given any kind of assignment, to say, "Oh, this is good enough" when I should really say, "This is my very best."  What if every congressman always gave his very best?  Would we have had a "fiscal cliff?"  Even more ominous, what if Island Records demanded the very best of it's recording artists?  Would we have Justin Bieber?  At the start of a new year, I challenge us all to avoid the Nutcracker Trap and never settle for "good enough."  There's plenty of mediocrity in the world.  Put out the very best, always, every time.  Let's see what difference it can make.

                 My favorite version of the Nutcracker Suite with Les Brown and his Band of Renown.