Zara Bode’s Little Big Band

Zara Bode is Stefan Amidon's wife and mother of Desmond and Vera. She is a fine singer and has a band which has a repertoire of "big band" songs from the early-mid-20th century, but only 7 people, and thus is only a little "big band." But those 7 people are all fantastic musicians and can really put out the sound. The seven are: Guitar: Alton Lathrop; Bass: Ty Gibbons; Percussion: Stefan Amidon; vocals: Zara Bode; Clarinet: Anna Patton; Saxaphone: Ron Kelly; Trumpet: Don Anderson. We went to the BMC Sat. eve for a concert, and it was great! They had gone through the vast big band repertoire and pulled out sort of spooky songs to make a Hallowe'en-themed concert, and it was fun. They even came out for the first song in ghost costumes! We heard a lot of songs we had never heard before.

The ZBLBB dressed as ghosts.

Alton, guitar, Ty, Bass; Stefan, percussion.

Zara, vocals; Anna, clarinet; Ron, sax; Don, trumpet.

The ZBLBB. ***************** Today is Hallowe'en. Not sure if we'll have trick or treaters or not; we have some candy, just in case. For us, a quiet day at home. Tomorrow I have a physical therapy appointment - it may be my last in this series. We are reading Toni Morrison's Song of Solomon for our Swarthmore Class - partly reading, partly listening to it's being read onAudible by the author. That is very satisfying. It has been very dry and the spring is on the low side. So we are being careful about water usage and hoping we will not have to turin off the pump. I don't think we are up for hauling water!

The last ten days

Ten days since the Underground Railroad OLLI presentation! There is another OLLI today, but we are not going. It's on "spooky Vermont places" - could be interesting but not high on our "must do" list. The big feature of these last ten days, I would say, has been the fall foliage and weather. It has been a beautiful fall - sunny, mild and colorful. I have not been out there getting fall foliage shots, but I did these very representative ones behind the Guilford Church

At River Singers, we had John Harrison as a guest leader. John comes down from Plainfield, VT, where he used to lead his own Gospel Choir. He taught us 3 songs from that repertoire. He is a character, but is a good teacher and fun to work with.

John Harrison.
Sunday, we sang in the choir at Dummerston and after church we went across the road to see the "mummers" - a local group of Morris Dancers who at this time of year go around to various towns and put on a mummers play - a mock "death and resurrection" play. very humorous and sometimes downright silly. We know several them well - e.g., Fred Breunig, Arthur Davis, and Paul Eric. Here are some scenes:

The Underground Railroad

Yesterday, we went to our second OLLI session in Springfield, VT - the topic was the Underground Railroad before the Civil War in Vermont. The presenter was Michelle Arnosky Sherburne, who is what I guess you could call an amateur historian - she does not have a PhD in history or an academic appointment, but she does have a passionate interest in the topic and has devoted 20 years or more to researching it and has self-published several books. She is most interested in finding people of that era who were involved in the U.R., and actual, still standing homes, barns, etc. where freedom-seeeking slaves were actually housed in Vermont. There is discussion among historians about how "cloak-and-dagger" the U.R. was in Vermont. Some think that while it is true that escaped slaves did travel through Vermont on their way to Canada, they did not have to be very worried about being caught because slave-catchers didn't usually come this far north. Ms. Sherburne thinks that might have been true to some extent early on, but after l850, the new federal law - the Fugitive Slave Act - upped the ante considerably, and agents did come into Vermont and people assisting escaped slaves were at risk of arrest. She focused her presentation on 4 "hubs" of the U.R. in Vermont: Springfield, Thetford, Burlington and Ferrisburg. She has identified several persons, and located some houses. She had a slide show, but we were in the back of the hall and couldn't see the screen very well. But we could hear just fine, and it was interesting, though it was not crisply organized. But there is a lot of information online, and my interest was certainly aroused. One item I was particularly interested in: a local Vermont minister, the Rev. Joshua Young (First Congregational Church (Unitarian), Burlington, VT), a "Garrisonian abolitionist" very much involved in the U.R., got wind of a funeral service that was to be held for abolitionist John Brown, executed for his role in the Harper's Ferry Raid. The funeral and burial were being held at John Brown's farm in North Elba, New York, just 60 miles or so west of Burlington. Young was the only ordained minister attending the funeral and was asked to preside, which he did. When he returned to his church in Burlington, he was viciously attacked by members of the congregation and forced to resign because of this involvement with John Brown. I wrote fairly extensively about John Brown in this blog back in July, 2010 (see the post titled "Weathersfield Congregational Church Service) when I was seeing some connections between John Brown's struggle against the evil of slavery and the contemporary struggle against fossil fuels and global warming, triggered by the Deepwater Horizon Oil Gusher which released an estimated 134,000,000 gallons of oil into the waters of the Gulf of Mexico over a 3-month period, April-July 2010. All of this still has a lot of resonance today in the current election season (Trump intends to undo all restraints on oil production if he wins).

Michelle A. Sherburne, lecturer.

Company Galore

This past weekend we were visited by four people: two women friends of Ellen's from Salem, Oregon, and two men friends of mine from California (and Maine). None of them actually spent a night here at the house, but Ellen's friends, Bonnie and Shelby, spent part of Friday, Saturday, Sunday and Monday here, and my friends, Phil and his son, Tom, my godson, met me for breakfast at the Guilford Country Store Sunday morning at 8:30a.m., and after breakfast we went to church at the Guilford Community Church (which is about a 100 yards from the store), and they left early to go to Logan airport in Boston for Tom's flight home to California. Phil returned to his summer home in Maine and will fly to Claremont, CA next week. Bonnie and Shelby flew home to Oregon yesterday. Bonnie and her husband, Roger (who died a year ago yesterday), became Ellen's friends when she lived in Salem and her then husband, John Peel, was on the faculty of Willamette University, where Roger taught art history. For a while, Ellen worked with Bonnie at The Arbor Cafe, which Bonnie co-owned, in Salem. Bonnie is also an artist. We have visited them frequently in Oregon since I came into Ellen's life, and we have had many wonderful times together. Ellen started sending Bonnie a post card every day some years ago, and came to call it her "snail blog." She has now sent Bonnie over 5000 post cards! Shelby, who is a VP for Development at Willamette, and whom Ellen had not met before this visit, heard about the "snail blog," saw the boxes of cards at Bonnie's house, was entranced, and wanted to meet Ellen. She wants to put on an exhibition of the snail blog in Salem! So she came out with Bonnie, and recorded an interview with Ellen talking about the whole project. That interview will provide a sound track for a video that will accompany the exhibit. Eliza and Robin came over on Friday to meet Bonnie and Shelby. Saturday, Ellen and I had supper with them at Burdick's Restaurant, in Walpole, NH, Sunday they went to church with us, and Monday Shelby made her recording. There was a lot of visiting at our house along the way. A very special visit. When we went to Burdick's, I had a big bowl of mussels, as did Shelby. I ate them all, by golly. While I was eating, Bonnie made a sketch of me on the brown paper used to protect the table cloth, tore it off and gave it to me. My time with Phil and Tom was much shorter, but still special. Tom is ratcheting up his involvement with music and is preparing both a concert and a CD (or whatever substitutes for a CD these days). He is a singer-songwriter and accompanies himself on the guitar. 26 years ago, he accompanied me when I sang at his sister, Susanna's wedding in London. In talking with Phil, I mentioned John Cobb, whom I had learned about from Shelby - a faculty member at Claremont School of Theology whom Shelby came to know when CST (a Methodist school) was considering merging with Willamette (also a Methodist school). Turned out Phil knew John Cobb because he is a resident of Pilgrim Place, the retirement community where Phil lives in Claremont. And while I had never heard of John Cobb, a bit of research revealed that he and I shared a teacher at U of Chicago Divinity School: Bernard Loomer, who taught my Constructive Theology course. John Cobb (like Loomer) is a "Process Theologian" and has written extensively on process theology and the ecological crisis in ways that seem similar to my son John's work on "Contemplative Ecology." So ... lots of resonances in these visits!

Bonnie and Shelby

Bonnie, Shelby and Ellen.

Robin and Eliza.

Bonnie and Shelby at Burdick's.

Bonnie's sketch of me she made at Burdick's.

My bowl of mussells.