My Country ‘tis…
There’s been a lot of talk lately about competing visions of America, conversations that were in my mind on a recent walk around the Albany Park neighborhood in Chicago, one of the most culturally diverse in the city. Here’s a sample of what I saw. Descriptions below.
1: Celestina, an African immigrant, tends her plot at the Global Garden Refugee Training Farm in the Albany Park neighborhood.
2: Global Garden at the height of the season. Photo by Paul Bick.
3: Paleteria Reina de Sabores. Street carts for a wholesaler of Mexican popsicles. One of the managers told me the season is still going strong in late October because of the warm weather.
4: “Cambodian Color,” a 2017 mural by Brandin Hurley and Shayne Renee Taylor. Sponsored in part by the Cambodian Association of Illinois.
5: Aden Live Poultry. Serves many of the neighborhood’s immigrant communities and anyone who wants the freshest poultry imaginable. Halal Zabitha. Poultry is slaughtered and processed while you wait.
6: “Emerging Buddha” from "10,000 Ripples,” a piece by Indira Johnson In the Ronan Park sculpture garden. In the words of the artist, “It invokes the image of an emerging Buddha as a universal icon of peace and spirituality inviting people to think about how they can find peace in their own lives and their communities."
7: The Cambodian Association of Illinois. Zoom in to see the exquisite relief work in the facade.
8: Ravenswood Manor Park, a small pocket park where neighbors added a touch of personal beauty.
9: It is Chicago, after all.
10: Holy Nativity Romanian Orthodox Church. As I walked around the grounds in the early morning, a priest in a down jacket and full-length cassock stood saying the rosary in the parking lot.
11. Tibetan prayer flags hang outside the restaurant, Himalayan Sherpa Kitchen, right next to Chicago Phở (specializing in the Vietnamese noodle soup), on the part of Lawrence Avenue named Honorary Seoul Drive.
12. "Overseer" in the Ronan Park Sculpture Garden. From the artist, Dora Natella: “Standing atop a large tree trunk, a metaphor for tradition and strength, she seems to be ascending into the sky through a gesture of rebirth and transformation."
I, Wonder
Stevie Wonder in Detroit. Photograph by David Rodriguez Munoz of the Detroit Free Press.
Stevie Wonder came to Milwaukee last week and showcased the power of popular song. His October 24th show at the Fiserv Forum was a feast of greatest hits arranged for a crack 31-piece ensemble (a dozen strings, 5 horns, 5 backup singers and the usual rhythm and percussion). Billed—somewhat awkwardly—as a night to “Sing Your Song! As We Fix Our Nation's Broken Heart,” there was no room for cynicism or snark once the music began. As soon as the band kicked in to the familiar reggae-ish riff of “Master Blaster,” the arena was on its feet and moving.
Wonder’s voice has deepened over the years. Certainly since the days of Little Stevie Wonder and even since his best known recordings of the ‘70s and ‘80s. Today it sounds even more powerful, urgent and expressive, a joyful noise for less-than-joyful times.
The audience itself was a joy to watch: a crowd of many races and ages, some decked out in evening finery and others in well-worn t-shirts. It was a heart-lifting scene set to the heart-filling message of “Love’s in Need of Love Today,” a nearly fifty-year-old call to stop the “hate going’ ‘round/breaking many hearts.”
Wuthering Delights
Kaylene Howard and Allie Babich in Renaissance Theaterworks’ The Moors.
“Anything is possible, here,” a sunny, spinster (Allie Babich) reassures a slightly befuddled rookie governess (Kaylene Howard). Indeed it is. In Jen Silverman’s The Moors, very English women speak in very American accents, a mastiff (Reese Madigan) and a moor-hen (Marti Gobel) have intimate conversations about the meaning of life and love, and …. well, let’s not spoil all the surprises. (Sarah Sokolovic and Emily Vitrano round out the fine cast).
A well-blended cocktail of the Brontë sisters, Daphne du Maurier, and Henry James’s Turn of the Screw—with an Edgar Allen Poe garnish—The Moors is full of savvy tweaks to 19th-century conventions. The madwoman in the attic turns out to be a not-so-mad man, the passionate letters between a country gentleman and a prospective governess are not quite what they seem, and the young charge of the governess is nowhere to be found.
Renaissance Theaterworks’ stellar production, directed by Suzanne Fete, basks in the story’s oddities while plumbing its very serious ideas: the lust for power and the power of love/lust as it teeters and tips into domination. The eccentric comedy eventually teeters into Grand Guignol violence that is both startling and inevitable.
The Moors plays at Milwaukee’s Next Act Theatre through November 10th.
Cesaria
Cesaria Evora.
Melancholy, loss and longing. It’s all in Cesaria Evora’s songs, even in the very sound of her voice. She sings in the Cape Verde language of her native country, which is infused with the soft sounds of Portuguese, the tongue of her country’s colonizers. She died in 2011. For those of you who don’t know her, here’s a taste—one of my favorites, “Cize,” a love song that doesn’t hold back. (Click on the link to listen.)
Cize
A ray of light, settled on your face
It lit the path, the path of my destiny
Me, I've known happiness
Oh God, what absolute truth
That eye of yours, of light like silver
Your little face, is like that of a saint to me
Oh Cize, you that are the light of my life
I want to die if you reject me, dear
I sleep at night, I dream of my love
A happy dream, seems like reality to me
I asked God, for you to come and be mine
Without your love, I don't have happiness
Try to Praise the Mutilated World
Adam Zagajewski, 1945-2021
A challenging poem for challenging times.
Try to praise the mutilated world.
Remember June's long days,
and wild strawberries, drops of rosé wine.
The nettles that methodically overgrow
the abandoned homesteads of exiles.
You must praise the mutilated world.
You watched the stylish yachts and ships;
one of them had a long trip ahead of it,
while salty oblivion awaited others.
You've seen the refugees going nowhere,
you've heard the executioners sing joyfully.
You should praise the mutilated world.
Remember the moments when we were together
in a white room and the curtain fluttered.
Return in thought to the concert where music flared.
You gathered acorns in the park in autumn
and leaves eddied over the earth's scars.
Praise the mutilated world
and the gray feather a thrush lost,
and the gentle light that strays and vanishes
and returns.
--Adam Zagajewski, 2002
Translated By Clare Cavanagh
Have a good, safe and peaceful week.