The architecture of time

It is no secret that ceremony and ritual are deeply fascinating and meaningful to me, which is an odd thing to say for someone who is…well, not an atheist, but not not an atheist; agnostic doesn’t really quite describe me, either, because my not knowing is a kind of belief of its own, a revelling in the mysteries that are greater than me, the structures unseen that leave their cryptic marks.  It’s a something--an emotion, an intuition—based on what I can I observe through my five senses. (Five. That number. Again.)  I look for patterns, for cycles, for what repeats and resonates, for what forms the cellars and walls and windows and decoration of time itself.  To me, a ceremony or a ritual acknowledges this architecture, sometimes simply admiring what has been built before, sometimes building new rooms or knocking down walls or adding a storey. Sometimes there is a façade that seems familiar but the inside has been gutted and all has been made shiny or new. Sometimes we simply walk among the ruins and imagine the buildings that were once there and try to reconstruct them.

If time is a dimension, like the singularity, breadth, and depth, a fourth axis that we can depict only in its reflection, then the events of the past exist somewhen, and have a continuing reality. Just because we are in the attic does not mean the basement ceases to exist.  But we also perceive time as a repeating cycle, where we visit the buildings that those who went before built.  Sometimes we remember and build new structures in their image.  Sometimes we can only see the ruins, or the faintest outlines, because we lack the senses to fully perceive what is past (and, it should be said, the future, because if the past is a reality, so, then, is the future, even if we cannot touch it.) Sometimes words, or music, or items wrought in gold or clay or iron, or bedecked in pigments, come to us over the days, years, centuries, millennia. Sometimes all that remains is puzzled in the bands of rocks or tree-stumps, and sometimes all that comes to us is light itself, spattered about the sky.  

This time of year the cycles sing to me. For 27 years now, the rhythm of the summer has pulsed towards Pennsic, much as our medieval forebears in England moved towards the Feast of the Assumption and the times of the harvest fast approached. I have attended all but two of those years, and the ritual seems to have changed little, even though of course it has, slowly and imperceptibly.  Faces once young now become lined with care, and new faces appear. The dates have moved earlier; has Pennsic not always started in July?  The camps of my youth have vanished, replaced by camps that have always been there (until they will not). The streets rearrange themselves incrementally, but to back away is to see only permanence. That fort has always been there, has it not? (I once put pen to paper and wrote of its construction. This is just history now.) Once, just once, there were fireworks. 

Others look on this place and write truths. They are not my truths, but they are true.

Once, in the marketplace, I came across an apparition—a band of Janissaries, marching in double turns, with drums and horns and cymbals—and I saw it only once, almost believed it had been a dream. But it was not, and this year, I will march with the Janissaries, and history will be recreated, although I will not perceive it ever again in the same way.  Last year, I stood at the top of the field, paused, checking to left and right where two others, in tabards of their kingdoms, stood in wait, and then the three of us stepped forward, leading three kingdoms onto the field in long columns, and I spoke the words to herald in my King and Queen. I was the Voice of the Crown.  This year, my only oath is to my people, my voice only for them, the tabard laid aside until my labours are complete.

One last time, the nineteenth time, I will labour as the sun sinks to record words—my own, and others’-- that will be read and perhaps forgotten, but then, perhaps, not. I will send the words across the years.  The fort has always been there, has it not? We were fifteen thousand once, if only in theory.

Each year, I look around, know that this could always—always be the last year.  What will it be like, should I return, the next time?  The future is out there, unknown as of yet, but inevitable, unstoppable. We cannot freeze the moment a little bit longer, but the snippets of a tune on the wind, the smell of fresh woodsmoke, the snap of a banner—I have been here before. The architecture of time is all around me, and words and music, sight and sound, adorn its walls.  It is part of me, and I of it.  The cycle continues.

Queen and University, 11:45 am, July 3, 2018

I have stood at this intersection for 28 years now. The water, cool, shallow in its aqua pool, plays across from me, although I do not hear its gurgle over headphones and traffic, but it is there, as it has always been in summer, the years of construction notwithstanding. To my south, the Four Seasons Centre. No longer new, not yet old. The other three corners, as they have been for many years. The CN Tower looms behind the Shangri-La. Once that air was vacant, not so long ago.

Change boils you slowly, like the proverbial frog, until you look around and realize that the new has pushed up through the old like weeds through a crumbling sidewalk. The city is like the facade of an old Art Deco building slapped onto a new one. You recognize the landmarks, here, here, over there, but the fabric is subtly altering and morphing. Already, sleazy Yonge Street has vanished, replaced with glass and cleaned brick facades.  Artsy Queen West has moved further west and upscale. Where there is an old building, there is a developer with a plan for a condo.

I have stood at this intersection for 28 years now, headphones injecting music directly into my brain. WiFi earbuds and an iPhone now, earphones teathered to an Aiwa Walkman knockoff then. Shostakovich now. New Order then.. I arrived in Toronto in August of 1990 and stood here. Explored, over the next couple of months the vintage clothing stores just a block or two west, bought an old army tunic that smelled of stale Edwardian soldier sweat. (Vodka takes care of that, I have since learned). Combed through the shelves at Active Surplus, spent a minute or two with a book at Bakka, bought garnet jewellery at one of the patchouli-scented boutiques further towards Spadina.  I was 23 years old, a grad student, and had my artistic sensibilities and geeky style sense to feed.

And then I boarded the 501 streetcar, and went west to Parkdale, seedy Parkdale, to find the nirvana of fabric.  Joining the SCA, I had been told about this “Orange Bag Store.” Designer Fabric Outlet.  I had never seen such a place.  I knew almost nothing about fabric when I first passed through its double doors, other than what I liked, and what I liked on that day was black-shot green taffeta and some geometric trim, diamond patterned, in bright mosaic colours.  This, I thought, would make for good clothing for an Ostrogoth. I was wholly devoted to the Ostrogoths in those days, a Theoderic the Great fangirl, and joining the SCA was satisfying my desire to think of myself as one from time to time, to fill in the scant knowledge presented in chronicles and letters with ideas of what life must have been like for people living at that time.

Soon, though, I surmised that green synthetic taffeta wasn’t it. The clothing I made from that fabric was never worn, but instead entered legend (at least in my own mind) as the Ostrogothic prom dress. My second trip to the wondrous store resulted in purple rayon and marvelous wide trim, which I fashioned into what was meant to be 11th century Venetian clothing. If one disregarded the hooks and eyes up the back (after all, they didn’t have zippers—I was learning fast!) it would wasn’t half bad. It sits in my closet to this day.

There were many more trips over the years. Marvelous bullion trim formed the decorative piece for a Rus’ povonik. There were Bayeaux tapestry-style tapestry pieces, and gleaming silks and soft cashmere woolens of many colours. There were the bolts of $2.99 cotton that went into rapier loaner armour that was used for many years. There were Laurel wreath appliqués, and the inheritance fabric—$60 a yard red and gold brocaded silk, affordable to a grad student only because of a bequest from my husband’s aunt—another piece that still hangs in my closet and is worn from time to time. The store changed little, other than to expand slightly. Upholstery fabrics and trims on the main floor, fashion fabrics upstairs.

But the surrounding city changed. In my first decade in Toronto I barely noticed. It was still all newish to me. I don’t remember when the BCE Place was finished. I don’t remember when the Woolworth’s was torn down, although I do remember the parking lot that replaced it and the architectural hot mess that was built later. Then I moved away for a few years, and when I returned, fired by a burgeoning interest in architecture, I started to see the subtle alterations in the fabric of the city. The Bishop's Block, the oldest building in the city--once a hotel, now dirty, neglected, unloved--was subsumed into the facade of the Shangi-La, a five-star hotel. Queen West—at least the strip between Bay and Spadina—began to be populated not by quirky, funky, artsy stores, but by chains with pretensions of fashionable hipness. Sometime in the 2000s, someone built the first condo in the downtown core, and soon they began to spread like toadstools after a spring rain.  Neighbourhoods once populated by students living in decrepit, subdivided Victorians began to attract wealthier sorts, who would buy one of these old homes, shoo out the artisans and aging immigrants, and make them into showcases. The architecture maven in me rejoiced at the rebirth, but the human in me knew the cost to the neighbourhoods.

On the 501 streetcar, now the entire length of Queen, all the way out to Dufferin, became to be populated with the quirky shops that once lived east of Spadina. The marginal—the street kids, the punks, the junkies—suddenly gone. Probably not suddenly, but when I had returned, I lived not in the core of Toronto, but in the suburbs, and I no longer rode the 501 streetcar with any regularity. Life continued without my gaze. Increasingly, I bought my fabric elsewhere—online, at other stores closer to the core—easier to reach from my downtown office—or at the local Fabricland. I was changing, too, no longer the grad student with dreams of life as a professor at some small college, surrounded by eager students, immersed in history. History, my vocation, my calling, was no longer my profession, but I kept it in my life, my passion. Even that began to change, as my love of architecture first, then all things Art Deco led me into the 20th century, where I met up with my first historical love from over 40 years past—the Second World War. 

But still, when it was needed, the Orange Bag Store still retained its magic. Nowhere else could you get silk in any colour you liked--dozens just in shades of gold. Bolts of silk twill, with its liquid drape in deep shades of red and blue and black; and more recently, fine white linen at $9.99 and $10.99 a yard beckoned, attracting me repeatedly. Around the store, the boundary of hipness began to spread into Parkdale, yet the margins still held. You could still see the downtrodden, the strange-eyed men yelling at traffic, the litter of syringes in back alleys, but increasingly, the renovators in their BMWs gave them the nervous side-eye, not acknowledging that they themselves were, in actuality, the ones who were out of place. 

I have stood at this intersection for 28 years now, waiting for the 501 streetcar, and today I ride it to pay my final respects.  After 65 years, Designer Fabric Outlet will soon close, and the entire store is on sale. Soon, the stories of the pilgrimages to the legendary Orange Bag Store will pass into memory, and then fade. Something else will rise in its place in Parkdale, and the not-so-young will pass it and remember, and the young will not understand. Today, I will seek out the bolts of fabric by the door, in search of bargain linen.  I will once again climb the stairs to the second floor, run my hand over the silks in rainbow colours, rub wools between finger and thumb, marvel at the textile treasures in the locked cases.  I will wander through the trim department, remembering the geometric, mosaic-like trim found there almost 28 years ago and the other finds over the years since—have I truly been coming here well more than half my life?  I will buy wool crepe for a 1920s cocoon coat, the yardage and the cost pinned to the fabric as it always has been, and talk with the store’s owner on whether there might be more of the linen in the back. But what I am here for is not fabric, or trim, or buttons, or thread. It is to remember, to pay tribute to what, for a handful of remaining days, is still the shrine of pilgrimage I remember, the enabler of dreams realized, a sparkling ornament in the fabric of the Toronto I came to nearly three decades ago.

I stand at this intersection again, at 5:15 pm, a heavy orange bag in my right hand, a familiar feeling. The second movement of the Shostakovich 2nd piano concerto is in my ears—simple, expressive, notes cascading, glittering like so many jewels upon silk. Across from me, the water, cool in its shallow pool, catches the light, a shimmering aquamarine sheet, and I remember. And then I cross the street, turn north, and the moment passes.

Full Fathom Five

Full fathom five thy father lies;

Of his bones are coral made;

Those are pearls that were his eyes:

Nothing of him that doth fade

But doth suffer a sea-change

Into something rich and strange.

Sea-nymphs hourly ring his knell

Hark! Now I hear them – Ding-dong, bell.

— William Shakespeare, The Tempest, Act I, Sc. II

We have been planning a trip to Tobermory since...well, probably for at least 20 years.  In the 90s, when both of my husband's parents were still alive and relatively fit to travel, we talked about the four of us visiting. Dave had been once, around 1980, remembered the glass-bottomed boat tour to view some of the shipwrecks that dot the area. His parents had been avid rockhounds when he was a child, and the limestone and dolostone rocks of the Niagara Escarpment with their abundant fossils were a natural draw. 

But we had never made it, until this past weekend. 

Like many of our friends, we have been recently much more interested in our own country's abundant attractions, and in spending our vacation dollars in Canada. This year we decided against a long vacation, instead looking to do a few weekend trips. Tobermory was at the top of the list. 

We live not far from the cliffs of the Niagara Escarpment and the Bruce Trail, which we walk regularly during the warmer seasons (and even sometimes in the winter).  The Escarpment itself is over 400 million years old and reaches all the way from New York, up through Ontario, across Manitoulin Island, into Michigan's Upper Peninsula, and down into Wisconsin. When the sediment for these rocks was formed, the area was a shallow tropical sea, not unlike the Great Barrier Reef. As the sea dried, the sediments became concentrated, and limestone absorbed magnesium, turning into dolomitic limestone, or dolostone, which is harder than limestone.  Once the rocks were exposed many millions of years later, erosion began, eating away the limestone and leaving the dolostone, creating cliffs and waterfalls and caves. Along the Bruce Peninsula, these rocks form spectacular cliffs along the edge of Georgian Bay.  The entire Escarpment in Ontario is a UNESCO World Biosphere Reserve.

The weather forecast leading up to the weekend was gloomy, but other than a little bit of spit on Saturday, the showers kept well south of us during the hours we were out exploring, both Saturday and Sunday.  Our motel was a small, but fairly new and very nice Mom and Pop place (no chains in Tobermory) called the Escarpment Inn, which put us in walking distance of just about everything, from the boat launch to the small downtown area to the National Park visitors' centre. This was a good thing, as I realized late on Friday night after arriving that I had not brought a brush or comb, so after combing my hair with a fork that night, I was able to walk over to the supermarket and acquire means to un-muss my hair.

Tobermory does a decent job of not being overwhelmed by tacky touristy shops.  There are probably about a dozen shops clustered around Little Tub Harbour, including two very nice gallery-type places (one selling Brenda Roy's jewellery--I recognized the style immediately).  My one complaint is that there is a sameness to the restaurants--fish and chips and pub food, for the most part.  One of the two glass bottom boat companies runs out of this harbour, which is immediately adjacent to the ferry station.  We got to see the huge Chi-Cheemaun ferry boat arrive at one point;  it's absolutely massive.

The quote from Shakespeare above is the inspiration for the name of Fathom Five National Marine Park, which was the focus of our first day's excursion.  As I mentioned earlier, the Niagara escarpment goes all the way from New York State to Wisconsin.  At the tip of the Bruce Peninsula it disappears...underwater!   If you look at this map, you can clearly see the tightly bunched contour lines indicating a steep dropoff along the eastern side of the Bruce Peninsula and how they continue out along past Middle Island and Flowerpot Island. 

So the escarpment continues along underneath Georgian Bay and Lake Huron, islands jutting up here and there until cliffs once again rise up on the southwest side of Manitoulin. And that dropoff means that this area of Georgian Bay is deep - as deep as 540 feet, much more than five fathoms (which is 30 feet)!  Once, when the sea levels were lower, these rocks were exposed. Scientists have even uncovered evidence that there was a waterfall bigger than Niagara Falls that is now completely submerged.

There are quite a few shipwrecks in the area.  Two are at the very end of Big Tub Harbour, which means that they can be easily seen in the shallow water.  This was the first order of business when we boarded the Evolution on Saturday morning.  The glass bottomed boats pass right over the more intact of the two shipwrecks, the Sweepstakes, which is in about 20 feet of water.  This was a schooner built in Burlington, ON in 1867 which initially was wrecked near Big Cove Island in August 1885 and then was towed into Big Tub Harbour, where it sank in September of the same year.  The other ship, the City of Grand Rapids, is in water that ranges from three to nine fee deep; parts even occasionally project above the water.  This was a steamship that caught fire while docked;  it was towed out into the harbour and sank in 1907.   I had noticed before boarding how clear the water was.  This was especially apparent when the tour boat passed over the Sweepstakes.  Even the motion of the boat did not stir up silt in the water. 

Once we had viewed the wrecks, the tour boat left Big Tub Harbour and picked up speed to reach Flowerpot Island, before slowing to pass all the way around, allowing beautiful views of the lightstation and the two "flowerpots." Flowerpots are formed at the side of cliffs where softer limestone has eroded away, leaving pipes or sea stacks of the harder dolostone. 

We were dropped off at Beachy Cove so that we could hike out to see the flowerpots up close.  The forest along the shore is redolent of cedar and dotted with caves also formed from the same erosion process that forms the flowerpots. Where rocks were exposed, it was easy to see the shapes of their ancient origins as coral reefs. After viewing the flowerpots, we then hiked out to the lightstation and the lighthouse museum before returning to the dock for our trip back.  

One thing that stood out for me during this part of the trip was how well Parks Canada was managing a very sensitive, easily-overwhelmed ecosystem.  Visitors are very much limited in number and ability to access the park--and they seem to mostly respect what they have been given access to. I saw very little evidence of graffiti or other destructive practices (although I did notice one person smoking--and receiving dirty looks from multiple others--she didn't dare leave a butt behind!)

This was also very much apparent in our visit to Bruce Peninsula National Park. We had decided Saturday evening might be a nice time to hike out to see the Grotto, a sea cave along the rocky eastern cliffs.  Apparently, the Grotto is so popular that on weekends, you need to reserve a parking spot to see it, and Saturday evening they were sold out. However, it was a simple process to request a spot for Sunday morning, which we did. The hike out through the forest of cedars flanking lakes was relatively peaceful, on a wide, well-maintained path, and we even saw some of the park's famous orchids. Upon reaching the shores, the wide path disappeared and was replaced by rocks that required serious clambering skills.  And there were a lot of people there clambering. Or, in some cases, hogging the photo spots. A melange of different languages was in the air, and ages ranged from the barely mobile to the...well, barely mobile.   

But the stretch of coastline was spectacular, featuring towering cliffs and tumbled rocks everywhere, and the same crystalline, sparkling water we had seen earlier.  This is actually part of the Bruce Trail, and you could see the trademark white flashes marked on trees and rocks. The Grotto itself was as amazing as promised, although we didn't descend into it (a crowd of very loud teen girls was lingering there, and Dave had the wrong shoes, anyway).  Just a little north up the trail, however, the crowds thinned out and one could climb to the top of one of the taller cliff faces and see a beautiful view largely free of giggling teenagers or pushy middle-aged ladies in bucket caps.  There is a good stretch of the Bruce Trail that passes over this difficult rocky shoreline--so very different than the gentle trails close to my house.  I was glad it was not raining.

After we returned on Saturday, we paid a visit to the Fathom Five National Park Visitors' Centre, and ascended the viewing tower that rises 65 feet from the ground, past the tops of the trees.  Here you could truly see the outlines of the escarpment, as it ran up to Tobermory and then disappeared under water, the islands its only evidence.  You can also see the first white flash along the Bruce Trail, and view a very interesting museum including part of a recovered shipwreck and other artifacts from the area.  After seeing the two national parts on this particular trip, along with those we saw last year in Nova Scotia, I have a heightened respect for Parks Canada. We had been impressed by the US National Park system (and still are), but Canada can easily stand on its own for the strength of its national park system.

A few photos can be found on my Facebook page. 

Coda: On the way home, we were musing about the history of the Bruce Trail.  The group that built the trail was formed in 1960, construction started in 1962, and the trail officially opened in 1967. In five years, 850 km of main trail and about 400 km of side trails were constructed--all by volunteers working in local communities. About half of the trail is on public land.  The Bruce Trail Conservancy has been slowly working at acquiring those portions that are still in private hands.  The creation of the Bruce Trail - and its effect on conserving the Niagara Escarpment--led directly to the UNESCO World Biosphere Reserve designation in 1990.  Never doubt what can be accomplished by dedicated volunteers when inspired by a worthy goal.

Longhair

“I really don’t like most of that longhair music.  But I like that one.”

I was in the 8th grade or so when I got my first proper stereo.  Finally, I could move off of the tiny, tinny record player where I had first begun to nurture my love of music, checking out albums from the library before I decided whether to buy them.  And in those junior high days, what I checked out was almost exclusively classical music, growing out of the violin lessons I had been taking since the 4^th grade.

Mom didn’t quite get that kind of music.  The kind of records we owned were, apart from the Glenn Miller (which I always enjoyed), about as bland as Wonder Bread and as cheezy as Velveeta. Mom really liked Boots Randolph, of “Yakety Sax” fame (yes, that music from Benny Hill). The radio was usually tuned to one of Columbus’ “Beautiful Music” stations, a format that played what was essentially Muzak—“quiet, unobtrusive instrumental music.” 

I had no family background in classical music at all, something that in retrospect I really wish we had had. My parents tried their best, but they really did not have ties into the community that could have gotten me started early on private music lessons.  We didn’t go to concerts (of any kind).  My appreciation for classical music, like my appreciation for most of my other obsessions, was sparked first at school where I started my violin studies and through ballet lessons, and then became the focus of intense independent study. The first violin I owned (rather than rented) was a scratched-up ¾ size instrument that was found in a garage sale. When it came time to upgrade to a full-sized violin, we didn’t even go to the violin shop that all of the other kids went to—we went to a little, dusty hole in the wall owned by an elderly gentleman who had once, perhaps, been considered an expert.  But my parents did encourage me. We joined WOSU, the local classical music public radio station, mainly so I could get the schedule of what was going to be played when, and I would often wrench control of the downstairs radio away from the “Beautiful Music” station.  My mom put up with it, although if it was opera or anything from after about 1850, we’d find ourselves back listening to Mantovani.

When I got my stereo—actually, my parents’ old console stereo, tuner and record player (and 8 track tape player) all in one unit—I quickly developed a tendency to play my music loudly (a tendency I retain to this day, although I usually use headphones now).  I’d shut the door to my room, crank up the Beethoven or Mozart (or if I were feeling really radical, the Berlioz), and sometimes even dance around the room to it.   

My parents rarely commented.  Even later in my teens, when I began to intersperse the classical music with Rush or just listening to Q-FM (the local album-oriented rock station), they rarely took notice, despite the volume at which I played things.  Except for one particular piece.

One afternoon, I was up in my bedroom reading.  I’d put on the Beethoven 5^th piano concerto—the “Emperor.”  Part of the way through the second movement, I opened my bedroom door for some reason long forgotten—and realized my mom, in her room across the hall, was listening, intently.

She asked me what it was, and I told her.  I went back in my room but kept the door open so she could hear the rest.   At the end, she said the words at the top of this page.

It was that vespertine, serene second movement that had reeled her in.  The second movement of the “Emperor”, for those of you who have not been initiated into its mysteries, is a shimmering, evocative thing, one that has cast a long shadow of quiet perfection over just about every subsequent piano concerto’s slow movement.  It follows a first movement that is classic Beethoven “heroic period” in its maturity (the concerto falls between the Sixth and Seventh symphonies on the Beethoven timeline) and leads into one of the most joyful finales within any of Beethoven’s works.  It is in a completely different (and distant) key (B major—five sharps) than the first movement (which is in E flat major—three flats)   I call it “vespertine” not only because I love that word and have always wanted to use it, but also because the second movement to me evokes images of moonlight sparkling on water as the sky darkens through shades of pink and purple, of the calm and solitude of a pine forest at twilight.  It starts out with the muted orchestra suggesting the landscape, and then the piano enters with descending notes that lead into a simple melodic line in the middle-high registers of the keyboard, suggesting perhaps a lone figure in this beautiful setting, quiet, contemplative but filled with joy. At a certain point, it is as if that figure has decided to stand up, to walk towards some goal that only he or she can see in the distance, with wind instruments accompanying like trees being passed in the forest.  And at a certain point, a clearing is reached, and tentatively, the lone figure reaches out, as if to say….”I think this is how it should go?  Maybe like this?”  And then it IS how things should go, and we are into the jubilant third movement, in dancelike 6/8 time.

Beethoven likely originally intended to perform the work himself, but the deafness he had been struggling with for years prevented this.  As the liner notes for my CD of the work say, “the power of the work is formidable and the range of emotions encompassed the widest of any Beethoven concerto. This was the work that inspired the romantic virtuoso concerto of the nineteenth century because of the way the soloist is set up in opposition to the orchestra, rather than being a partner in a complementary relationship.”  Importance aside, it is by far my favourite piano concerto, not least because it was one of the few classical pieces I felt like my mom really loved as well.

In the last decade of my mom’s life, when I was living far from her in Canada, she asked me about "that music" (she never did really learn what it was called), and I gave her a CD so she could enjoy it herself.  That was one of only a handful of times I bought her music.  By that time, I think she already sensed her memory was not what it should be, and she was grasping to retain a connection to things which brought her pleasure.  I know she associated the piece with me, and I hope that when she played it, it awakened good memories of her geeky young classical music-loving daughter and how she liked to blast Beethoven in the same way most teens blasted heavy metal or Madonna.   

I put so much of my classical music past aside over the past couple of decades, occasionally returning to a Beethoven symphony, Handel’s Messiah (and attending the singalong), or the Berlioz Requiem. Last month, seeing a performance of the Shostakovich 5^th symphony, I remembered, and when I saw a chance to see the Emperor performed by soloist Yefim Bronfman and the TSO, I jumped.  Tonight, I look forward to finding myself in that forest by the side of the water at twilight, the stars twinkling in the sky reminding me of my mom and what we shared.

Chastising the Third Reich: The Dambusters Raid

Today is the 75^th anniversary of the Dambusters raid, where a squadron of 19 Lancasters flew a dangerous and daring mission to destroy hydroelectric dams in the Ruhr Valley.  They successfully breached one of the main targets, the Möhne dam, as well as a secondary target, the Eder dam. They also damaged (but did not breach) the Sorpe dam.  Operation Chastise, as it was known, was deemed a success—although the damage only disrupted German industry in the Ruhr for a few months until the dams were repaired, the morale boost to England from what the raid was able to accomplish was significant.

The raid happened in the pivotal year of 1943.  Going into that year, Allied victory was by no means assured, although there were certainly promising signs in Europe. Germany ended 1942 encircled and starving at Stalingrad; within a little over a month they would be defeated in a battle that in the final accounting resulted in nearly 2 million casualties, 1.1 million of them on the Soviet side.  Henceforth, the Axis in Europe would slowly be pushed back.   In May of that year, just a few days before the Dambusters raid, the Allies achieved victory in North Africa. Italy was pushed out of the war by the end of the year.

Some of the most horrific events of the war took place in 1943.  This was the year of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising.  Today is also the 75^th anniversary of its tragic end, in which the ghetto was utterly destroyed and all its inhabitants either killed or sent to the camps.

So the morale victory of the raid came at a key point in the war.  However, the casualties from the raid were high—8 of the 19 Lancasters were lost, with 53 of 130 crew killed and 3 taken prisoner—which may account for why a followup raid was not attempted.

To me, what stands out about the raid is how quickly the technology was developed and tested. The initial paper proposing a “bouncing bomb” was published by civilian Wallis Barnes in April, 1942.  The idea was to skip the bomb over the water, much as one skips a stone, to avoid torpedo nets and other barriers.  When the bomb hit the dam structure, it would sink and then explode, much like a depth charge.  By July of that year, it was successfully proven that a dam could be breached with a depth charge, when a disused dam in Wales was successfully destroyed as a test. This left significant details to be worked out, such as the shape of the bomb, its size, its shape, and how it would be delivered.  

By November 1942, it was decided to develop a larger and smaller version of the bomb for various purposes. A cylindrical shape was selected rather than the initial round shape.  Another addition made was backspin, which helped the bomb to bounce and stabilized its flight.  Finally, the weight and physical size of the bomb was dictated by the size of the Lancaster bomber itself, the largest bomber then available. 

The planners realized that there was a tight timeline to adhere to.  The raid could take place no later than about mid-May, as the dam reservoirs were at their peak after winter meltoff at that point and the destruction of the dam would result in the biggest impact. Testing of unfilled versions of the Upkeep bomb began in December and lasted through April; engineers continued to tweak the design and to work to determine how it would be dropped. They finally determined that the Lancaster had to be precisely 60 feet above the water and at a speed of 232 mph.  To do this, a pair of spotlights were mounted on the Lancaster, and the point at which the two beams converged marked 60 feet. 

Both the backspin and the size and shape of the bomb would also dictate changes on the Lancasters.  The bomb bay doors had to be removed and a bracket installed to hold the massive bomb sideways underneath the plane. The upper gun turret was removed so that the hydraulic system could be used to drive a belt to start the bomb spinning about ten minutes before it was due to be dropped. 

The main other issue was aiming.  A handmade y-shaped device that allowed the bomb aimer to line up the prongs with the towers of the dam was the “official” solution, but other solutions involving marks on windows and string would also be used.

The Lancasters themselves were supplied in March, and the squadron assembled under Guy Gibson in the same month to begin practicing. Gibson, who would win the Victoria Cross for his actions after his bombing run to distract flak away from the planes following him, was at 24 was a veteran of over 170 bombing runs, a stat that nearly boggles the mind today—we often forget how young soldiers were during WWII.  They had about six weeks to train, without a clear indication of what their precise mission would be, using untried technology. To reach Germany, the squadron had to fly as low as possible (so low that more than one plane was lost to electrical wires and towers) before their bombing runs.

It’s pretty astounding what was accomplished.

Of course, it’s me, so there have to be ruins.  Here is a link to a photo of the Möhne dam after the bombing:   https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Chastise#/media/File:Mohne_Dam_Breached.jpg Here is a similar photo of the Eder dam:   https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edersee_Dam#/media/File:Bundesarchiv_Bild_183-C0212-0043-012,_Edertalsperre,_Zerst%C3%B6rung.jpg

I was of course curious as to whether there were any lasting traces to be seen at the dams, where emergency repairs were completed by September of 1943.   For the most part, if the photos are to be trusted, the answer is no.   I did find a really interesting article from the Guardian about 15 years ago describing a visit to the dams as they are today. https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2003/may/06/artsfeatures

Finally, as some may know, the 1955 film Dambusters was a huge influence on the original Star Wars movie’s climactic Death Star destruction sequence, from the special effects photography and cinematography (Gilbert Taylor performed the former for Dambusters and the latter for A New Hope).   Here’s an article and a video to check out:   https://www.starwars.com/news/the-cinema-behind-star-wars-the-dam-busters

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lNdb03Hw18M

****

--As I am finishing up and posting this article, I’m following the Telegraph’s real-time account of the raid.  The last update was at 11 pm local time, when the first planes were lost.  

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2018/05/16/dambusters-raid-famous-world-war-two-attack-unfolded/

The First Saturday in May

In the early days of May, a young girl's thoughts turn to thoughts of horses.  In my own case, these were no dreams of prancing pretty ponies, but thoroughbreds, thundering down the homestretch at Churchill Downs. 

Only two of my grandparents lived into my own lifetime, and one of them died when I was only four or five, so to me, Granny--my mother's mother--was special.  I only had her in my life until I was 11 years old.  I remember her for two things:  The first was passing on to me her love for crafts, as she taught me how to embroider and crochet. The second was an annual ritual. We'd gather at her trailer the first Saturday in May and watch the Kentucky Derby with her. It was in 1977 that I particularly started to pay attention--the year Seattle Slew won.  I began to learn about the Triple Crown races as Seattle Slew went on to win the Preakness and the Belmont, becoming the second Triple Crown winner of the decade.  The first had, of course, been the great Secretariat, who I had the vaguest of memories of from when he had won the Derby.

The next year, 1978, was special.  That year, two horses, Affirmed and Alydar, battled in all three Triple Crown races.  Alydar had been the favourite going into each series, but Affirmed had won the Derby.  I was definitely Team Affirmed.  He was a beautiful chestnut horse, less obviously powerful than Alydar, and was ridden by the young superstar jockey Steve Cauthen.  It was perhaps the single time I routed for anything involving the colour pink, the colour of the racing silks of Harbor View Farm.

But I did not watch the Derby at Granny's trailer. We had lost her on April 5, just about a month before, after a visit to the hospital for gallbladder surgery had turned into something more.  I don't really remember quite what it was--some sort of fistula.  I only vaguely remember the funeral. It didn't quite seem real. I'm not sure whether that played into an obsession that would last two years in its most intense phase, but looking back, I am sure it did.

Affirmed and Alydar continued their legendary battle in the Preakness and the Belmont. In the Preakness, Affirmed beat Alydar by a neck.  In the Belmont, the grueling mile and a half race that had broken all but the best Triple Crown contenders, Affirmed and Alydar raced neck and neck for half the race, with their final mile the fastest in Belmont history.  I could barely stand to watch, but I was glued to the TV as they battled down the home stretch.  Alydar at one point nosed ahead, but Cauthen switched his whip hand and Affirmed surged back, winning the race by a nose. 

There would not be another Triple Crown winner until 2015.

I carried a good luck charm of a photo of Affirmed from Sports Illustrated mounted on a square of wood for years afterward.  It's here in front of me on the desk as I type this.  I had a stuffed horse that looked like him.  He was my celebrity crush, and I eagerly followed the rest of his racing career. I plastered the walls and doors of my bedroom with covers and stories from Sports Illustrated about his races.  But he was joined by the great Secretariat, after reading William Nack's book Big Red of Meadow Stable: Secretariat, the Making of a Champion.  Many girls go through a horsey phase, but mine was, I think, odd--because I identified so strongly with the horses, to the point of thinking of myself as one.  It was probably no great coincidence that the year of my greatest obsession was in the seventh grade, where I had extensive problems with relating to actual people.  I was certainly a weird kid;  this was not the age of My Little Pony, where cartoon horses are clearly meant to stand in for girls. 

The following year summer, my family vacationed in Kentucky.  We visited Churchill Downs and the Kentucky Horse Park. And somehow--I am still not sure how he did this--my Dad arranged a visit to Calumet Farms, where Secretariat was standing at stud. He was--and still is--the biggest celebrity I ever met, and I got to see him have a shoe changed and to feed him a carrot.  Other greats of racing--particularly the storied Northern Dancer--were also at the farm.  My dad could schmooze anyone, but I am still astounded that he just managed to phone them up and arrange a visit.

Even as my obsession gradually subsided, I still watched the Derby every year, and each time a horse also won the Preakness, I followed eagerly to see if we would see another Triple Crown winner.  (This happened thirteen times until American Pharoah finally won in 2015.)  Yesterday, far away from a TV, I watched my iPhone and refreshed it for updates until I saw that Justified--the horse I had picked--had won the race.  (I only found out later that he wore a red saddle cloth and a star on his jockey's racing silks).  It's a hard habit to break, and I have no intention of doing so.

But horse racing itself is a vastly different landscape than it was during the '70s.  Pimlico the track where the Preakness is held, has been barely able to stay open.  Horses and jockeys are no longer celebrities in the United States to the extent they once were--so much of the serious money has gone abroad to the Arab world, where horse racing is still the sport of kings.  In recent years, movies about Seabiscuit and Secretariat have captured a little of the flavour of that earlier era, where racetracks were one of the few places where ordinary people could legally gamble. These days, casinos are everywhere, and tracks often have to add slots or gaming tables to remain afloat.  And the issues with horse racing that have always been present in its lower ranks, of horses being mistreated, or sold to slaughterhouses when they fail to perform, have not gotten any better.

But I still cannot resist the lure of Derby Day, of seeing such delicate power, such strong beauty, in motion, coming around that final turn.  There is nothing quite like it, and the memories it arouses are strong for me, as I picture myself sprawled in front of that black-and-white TV at my grandmother's place.  And each year, on this day, the day after the Derby, I revel in the possibilities ahead--another Triple Crown, perhaps?  

We shall see.   

The Paradox of May 4

May the 4th be with you!

It is, but in a different way than I suspect it is for most people my age.  I was ten years old when Star Wars was released, and it was, without a doubt, the iconic movie of my childhood. I had the action figures, played "Death Star" behind the couch, wore a Star Wars t-shirt in my fifth grade class photo.  But the whole "May the 4th" thing is fairly recent, and the date still means something very different to me.

It was around the same time, maybe a little earlier, that I learned that the words "Kent State" were a bad thing.  Always attuned to current events, I remember reading about a controversy, reported in the Columbus Dispatch, about building a new gym at the college on land scarred by gunfire less than a decade before. Photos were produced of trees and sculptures still pockmarked from being hit, and a story told of students cut down in a riot.  And in my household, it was definitely a riot, with thousands of students said to be involved, and Gov. Rhodes definitely in the right for calling out the National Guard to stop it.  The Democrat John Gilligan, who was elected in the fall of 1970 (after Rhodes did not run after a failed bid to win the Republican nomination for US Senate) was reviled in no uncertain words, and it was only right that Rhodes had returned to his erstwhile throne, where he would serve two more terms.

Those hippies and longhairs had deserved it. They had rioted, and the Guardsmen had defended themselves, from bricks and bags of sh*t and maybe even a sniper.  Certainly, it was an incident marked with deep shame for Kent State, which clearly wanted to erase all memory of the event.

In Ohio, when you said "Kent State", you were met with a knowing look that said "that's something we don't talk about here."

By the time I was in my teens, the tumultuous times of the 60s were history.  Looking around, I saw preppies and then, later, the Dynasty look, with its huge shoulder pads and big hair.  I didn't seen hippies or Communists or Black Panthers--I saw what were beginning to be called yuppies.  Reagan was President, and students didn't demonstrate anymore, at least not in white suburbs like mine. We might join hands and sing "We are the world," and the more progressive among us might write letters for Amnesty International about political prisoners in faraway countries.  We worried about the Soviets nuking us. Really worried about that--I remember viewing a TV movie, "The Day After", which was about the aftermath of a nuclear attack.  I even took a course at Ohio State on nuclear ethics--discussing the principles of Mutual Assured Destruction.  Vietnam was over, but just beginning to be scrutinized in movies such as "Platoon."  Rambo--the angry or scarred Vietnam veteran who was now spoiling for revenge--was now iconic, and the Vietnam war memorial in Washington was new--a deep gash in the earth filled with black granite. The scars had not really healed, as much as we tried to think they had.  It had really only been a decade or less since the fall of Saigon, but it felt to me like ancient history--like WWII, or Korea, or the other wars I couldn't really remember.

I read James Michener's book, Kent State: What Happened and Why, during this period.  I had picked it up in a church garage sale, wanting to know more about this event I knew about mostly from the secretive murmurs and the CSN&Y song.  Like that song, the book was written in the immediate aftermath of the shootings and released in early 1971.  It was later criticized for its willingness to buy into theories of conspiracies by radical activists to provoke the violence, but in retrospect, for its day, it was remarkably even-handed and detailed.  It's also an interesting snapshot of the world as it was in 1970, in the waning days of the massive upheavals that had marked the 60s, before, as Howard Means, author of a more recent work on the shootings, 67 Shots, America lost her innocence and learned that guns might contain live rounds. (White America, Means is clear to state.  Black Americans already knew their government might shoot them, and apparently avoided the demonstrations at Kent State "like the plague.")

Forty-eight years on, what I was struck most by, in re-reading these books and some of the other articles available on the shootings, was two things.  First, the polarization:  The United States was a deeply divided nation in 1970--over Vietnam, civil rights, and its role in the world.  For someone who came of age after this period, our more recent polarization can feel like a new thing.  It is not.  Other problems distracted US society for awhile--fuel shortages, hostages, Russians--but those wounds never healed, and the fundamental questions were never answered. Nixon resigned before he could be impeached, and too quickly the Watergate years were swept under the rug as an ugly aberration, with Nixon the boogeyman for what was clearly a deep culture of corruption.

The second observation is that the spread of disinformation in the wake of these kinds of events is often cast as a new thing, with every conspiracy theory getting its own blog on the Internet, victims being blamed, and trolls and bots looking to sow dissension.  It is not.  The rumours that spread in the wake of Kent State were lacking only the rapid means of distribution we have now.   With a state of emergency declared,  Kent had been more or less occupied during the crisis by over 1500 Guardsmen, most of whom were not on campus, but in the surrounding town. Gov. Rhodes never declared martial law, but there seems to have been a widespread assumption that he had.  The town already had a contentious relationship with the university, and suddenly having such a large force occupying such a small town convinced many that the situation on campus was far worse than it was.

   As a result, the students were vilified with a large brush.  "They should have shot more," was a common reaction.  Kent was actually a fairly conservative  rural commuter school, and it's thought that fewer than 100 students were part of the core group involved in the demonstration that led to the shooting. There were probably 2000-3000 students in the area, but many were bystanders and others seem to have gotten swept up in the demonstration as "something fun to do."  None have ever been shown to have been armed. No one was expecting to be shot-- tear gas and maybe blanks, yes, but there was a widespread belief that the guns the National Guardsmen carried were not loaded.

Of the dead, two of the students killed had been involved in the demonstration, one had been an observer, and one was killed from 130 yards away as she walked to class.  All four were equally vilified.  Stories circulated that the victims were unwashed and riddled with venereal diseases, and the grief-stricken families received hate mail accusing their children of being Communists and stating that it was a good thing that they had been killed.  At the same time, in an accusation that will sound very familiar,  "outside agitators" who were said to have been "bused in" were claimed to have provoked the confrontation.

This reaction was by no means confined to the rumour mill.  One of the earliest stories on the shooting claimed that two Guardsmen had been killed in "a violent campus battle" involving 3000 students. Local radio had inflamed the situation during the crisis and was no better in the days following.  There was little compassion to be seen in the aftermath of the tragedy as students tried to evacuate their shattered college--townspeople refused to serve them or sell them gasoline (in the belief it might be used to make a bomb).  Initial reports, as we know, are key to defining beliefs about news narratives, and can override more nuanced accounts that appear later.  My own parents believed that Kent State had been a massive, violent armed riot.

And the lack of action to hold anyone accountable in the wake of the shootings will also sound familiar. The Scranton Commission, called to investigate the shootings, did not assign guilt or innocence, but condemned both protesters and the Guard. Twenty-four students and one faculty member were rounded up after the shootings and charged with a variety of offenses, but charges were dropped against most with four being convicted of minor offenses, primarily on technicalities. Eight Guardsmen were indicted on civil rights charges for their role, but claimed self-defense and the case was dropped  A civil suit brought by the families of the victims was eventually settled out of court.  but As Means states, "When it comes to official culpability for the shootings themselves, not a single person involved has ever been convicted of so much as a misdemeanor or even tried solely on the merits of the case as opposed to its technicalities. The dead, their survivors, the wounded, the shooters, their commanding officers, a host of peripheral players--they all hover still in a kind of legal limbo.  That's what makes Kent State so hard to let go."

Tin soldiers and Nixon coming
We're finally on our own
This summer I hear the drumming
Four dead in Ohio

Gotta get down to it
Soldiers are cutting us down
Should have been done long ago
What if you knew her
And found her dead on the ground
How can you run when you know?

 -----Neil Young, 1970