WORDS STILL TO BE READ

The McCullers home, South Broadway, South Nyack, N.Y. /gunther photo

June 14, 2021

By Arthur H. Gunther III

thecolumnrule.com

ahgunther@yahoo.com

In a coincidence, if there is such, recently I walked past the late writer Carson McCullers’ Broadway house in South Nyack, N.Y., went home, and on TV was the film of her 1940 first novel, “The Heart is a Lonely Hunter.” Now I know there is no such thing as an accident of talent. Nor of heartbreak and suffering that bring us explanation and beg our understanding. Nor of soulful givers to humanity.

     The Southern-based novel, set in real time, sweats with what the Civil War did not end and which the nation must still face or perish, in every corner of America.

     Carson McCullers walked Broadway in the village described in her sentence: “I was always homesick for a place I had never seen.” She wrote two last novels and the short-story collection “The Ballad of the Sad Cafe” there. Her passing in 1967 at 50, after strokes and other affliction, did not quiet a voice the vowels and consonants of which today would have us look at ourselves as the nation sits at precipice, democracy pushed to the edge.      

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SOME OLD WAYS …

June 7, 2021

 

By Arthur H. Gunther III

thecolumnrule.com

ahgunther@yahoo.com

Envelopes — legal sized or not — may be an anachronism in the digital world, in this morphing time of Tweets, Facebook posts and cell phone text shorthand, but using them can prompt memories that probably will not happen if you hit the smartphone in 20 years.

For example, I cannot fold a letter, a piece of paper, to place in a legal-sized envelope without recalling a near magical trick by someone I was in touch with years ago. She was one of the responsible “Distributive Education” students when high schools once actually had Business Departments and prepared legions of secretaries, bookkeepers and office managers for commercial work. (Imagine that most useful approach to post-high school life?)

Part of the course of instruction was to write various types of business letters, and I am certain that went just fine, for this classmate was quite good at whatever she turned her hand to. But she offered an added twist, one which I cannot duplicate no matter how many times I try.

Magically, as noted, the lady could fold a letter, a single or multi-layered effort, exactly along two lines so that the top and bottom of the paper(s) met exactly. Then it could be put in the envelope, as neatly presented as was the final, flawless typing, with proper grammar and spelling. It was all part of the package, this precision.

On letters to be put in envelopes, once writing them was a social grace, a courting effort, a vacation must, a keep-in-touch activity that linked people across town, the nation, the world. Can you imagine the emotions at play if we could read any sampling? Actually, we have, when PBS or someone finds letters sent home from soldiers in the Civil War, or Woodrow Wilson’s love notes (he was quite a writer) or various other missives from the famous, from ordinary people.

No one is saving the Tweets, though.

The writer is a retired newspaperman. This essay is modified from an earlier version.

                                    -30-

IF THEY COULD SPEAK …

 

By Arthur H. Gunther III

thecolumnrule.com

ahgunther@hotmail.com

No Memorial Day, USA or elsewhere, is without heartfelt words and tribute, parades, wreaths, re-mourning. What is missing are the voices of the fallen. Would that we could hear them. What would they say?

“Mom, I was as scared as you, but I could not show that with you there. So I never really said ‘goodbye’. …”

“Dad, you told me about your ‘war stories,’ and I figured we’d swap them when I came back. …”

“Mary (any sweetheart’s name), I was crying inside when you were showing tears, and we both felt that we had been pulled from our door to the future so that I could enter another, for a time. …”

“Mr. Gram (any teacher’s name), I know you expected me to be the same distracted fellow day-dreaming in the back row, but I was really awake that final day, and I remembered you telling me to pay attention. It helped my pals in the squad, the ones who survived. …”

“Mayor Jones (any public official), there are speeches every Memorial Day, and parades and gun salutes and tears and then the barbecues, fireworks, leisure. Understand that all this is fine with me. I’d be there, too, if I could. But also believe that the man who fell next to me, the ‘enemy,’  isn’t one for me any longer, and he has mourners, too. …”

“I read the ‘Red Badge of Courage’ in Miss Rouy’s literature course and could not understand then the fine line between courage, the chance of it, the millisecond for choice, and the instant when cowardice could win. I thought it was black and white but now understand it is not really so, that military training and society’s expectation may of necessity set it up as clear choice, but in the moment of decision, there is fear, opportunity and the possibility of both heroism and cowardice. There is much more humanity to it. …”

“It is for humanity that I am ‘gone,’ the hope of it anyway. I am not truly ‘gone,’ of course, since I have not died in vain. The sacrifices of any of us, dead or living, are for betterment, for that continual ‘thirst’ for the world’s possibilities. Otherwise, why did you all lose me? …”

The writer is a retired newspaperman.

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DID THE REALIST ARTIST EDWARD HOPPER PAINT HIS TRUE LOVE?

 

May 24, 2021

By Arthur H. Gunther III

thecolumnrule.com
ahgunther@hotmail.com

NYACK, N.Y. — In the birthplace village of Edward Hopper, the famed American realist artist (1882-1967), it is a simple thing to note the early morning Hudson River light that he bottled and used in all the paintings of his long career. That was his gift, and it is has been shared with generations, especially in his present, continuing renaissance in America, Europe, elsewhere. Yet we humans, and Hopper was that, too, also have the most ordinary of moments, no matter the ability. Some even suffer in the ordinary for the ability.

When the artist was studying in France and also living in Nyack and in the lower New York City neighborhood where he would spend most of his life, he received short letters — almost conversational tidbits — from a friend, Alta Hilsdale, whom he seems to have loved in the way that you do just once in life. But the emotion was unrequited, and reading the Hilsdale letters, 1904-1914, is a sad experience. It is a classic relationship in which expectations are not shared and are in fact so different that you wonder how it could have lasted a decade.

But it is also a known tale, and that is why romance novels are written in hoped-for explanation. But Hopper did not write, not often anyway (unfortunately, we don’t have his letters to Alta). Nor did he speak much. He painted. That was his language, his expression.

Now, writer Beth Thompson Colleary offers Hopper fans, and actually anyone who explores human interaction, a chance to look into Hopper’s art and mind in her Hilsdale letters collection, “My Dear Mr. Hopper” (Yale University Press). The book is scholarly in that it presents primary source material, allowing the reader to enter the Hopper-Hilsdale relationship. Perhaps the last two letters between artist and the one loved are the most compelling and revealing. The first, Sept. 18, 1914, just two paragraphs long, informs Hopper: “I suppose I shall have to begin to tell some of my friends that I am to be married soon to Mr. Bleecker … We are to live in Brooklyn, at 42 Sidney Place … and if you should care to come over, I would be glad to see you. Always your friend, Alta Hilsdale.”

Imagine, after 10 years of “relationship,” such a short and explosive letter. Hopper may have assumed a developing romance when he should not have done so, but, still, the letter is way too cold. The second letter, written from Brooklyn on Oct. 14, is a bit longer though still short. More a note than a letter. It begins, “I cannot tell you how sorry I am to have made you unhappy.” And it ends with, “I thank you with all my heart for all you have done for me and offered me, and beg you to forgive me for causing you unhappiness. Most sincerely, Alta Hilsdale Bleecker.” That last letter is probably her most emotional one in all the 10 years. (The assumption is Hopper wrote back between Sept. 18 and when she penned the letter on Oct. 14.)

Who knows how the artist handled this loss. He married painter Josephine Nivision 10 years later, and that less-than-romantic union obviously informed his art, since he became most productive and, finally, sellable, with sacrificing cheerleader Jo at his side. And, surely, Alta is in the artistic effort, even if a painful memory.

This brings me to the point of my essay. Hopper appears to have painted just one work set in Brooklyn, where Alta moved in early marriage. Most of his works are about Manhattan or Cape Cod, Maine and Vermont, with some western U.S. scenes. “Room in Brooklyn” (1932) is quite an emotional piece, as Hopper’s paintings are, but this one is very different. Almost all Hopper women are voluptuous or at least sensual, many nude or nearly so. The woman in Brooklyn is fully clothed in a modest dress, sitting in a rocking chair and looking out the window while also apparently reading. We do not see her face, but the brown hair is set in the exact style Alta wore in an early 1900’s portrait of her, perhaps by Hopper. The Brooklyn room is sparse, with an unset table behind the woman. The view is toward what some Hopper scholars see as Hopper himself, that long row of brick tenements, such as in “Early Sunday Morning.” (It is repeated in many paintings.) On the floor near the woman is a shaft of light, the traditional Hopper pointer, as if he were a teacher revealing knowledge.

Is “Room in Brooklyn” a look at Alta 18 years after her last letter? Is she alone for a reason? Is she looking at Edward or the memory of him? Is she re-reading his letter? Is she clothed as the virgin he remembers, or as a woman not fulfilled? Who knows? Hopper is a mystery that even he spent a lifetime exploring.

The writer is a retired newspaperman who can be reached at ahgunther@hotmail.com This essay is based on an earlier version.

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‘SANCTUARY’

gunther photo

May 17, 2021

By Arthur H. Gunther III

thecolumnrule.com

ahgunther@hotmail.com

In the virus time many have found the slower pace and solitude that eluded them in the ordinary hustle-bustle of making a living, holding things together, joining the masses on the ever-more-crowded commuter highway. Not exactly lemmings to the sea, but a march nonetheless.

The synonym for such is “progress,” which means two steps and one step back. There are sacrifices.

In this pandemic, in the stay-at-home months, sitting at computer and Zooming our work hours sitting in casual dress, children “going to class” in the same manner, there also have been the many minutes, then hours where individuals found sanctuary, even that small corner of the attic or basement where we could escape the others, who also wanted to escape us. Close living can be too close.

If we have been lucky, there have been rooms dedicated to sanctuary, maybe a small at-home library where our friends can be books or magazines or newspapers or iPads or laptops. Or nothing but a soft light, a comfortable chair and absolute quiet. Time to think, time not to think at all.

Many lessons will be noted, hopefully taken, in this time of virus: vastly better preparation for the next health crisis; new ways of educating, including virtual; more at-home office work rather than hustling off daily to cubicles; the need to slow down to save the soul.

History moves in dynamics — war, depression, plague. The horrors of all that also bring chances to have those times not happen again. That would be the real “progress.”

Perhaps in those quiet moments in our individual sanctuaries of the virus time, the seeds of that commonsense have sprouted. Solitude (not loneliness) can also be progress.

The writer is a retired newspaperman. 

                       -30-

A NEWSPAPERMAN

May 10, 2021

By Arthur H. Gunther III

thecolumnrule.com

ahgunther@yahoo.com

     Royal Clinton Taplin or RCT, as this longtime newspaperman was either admiringly or derisively called by reader, public official and wrong-doer, has hit the last keys on -30-, the traditional end for a story, joining the irreverent ones in whatever heaven, hell or purgatory awaits those who try to offer the who, what, when, where, how and why of things.

     RCT, my colleague and friend, was a reporter for the former Rockland Journal-News in Nyack, N.Y., and then for The Record in Hackensack, N.J. He never wore socks, but his shoes were worn from his old-style beat reporting as he hit the bricks, particularly on investigative pieces. 

     Taplin was used to seeing his name in print — bylines mean you make deadline, you file your story, take the photograph, do the graphics. You get credit, you earn your keep in the daily rush. Now do it again, from scratch. RCT did that even when not paid for his time.

     A newspaper woman or man, a staff photographer, a graphics designer, are only as good as the last effort, and most times, even if the individual does a boffo job — finds wrongdoing, gets the man-bites-dog story, describes humanity at its worse, then its best, he or she gets no time to eat the celebratory cake. You never find the cherry on top because there is always more news out there. The city editor bellows out another gig for you; it is really “Front Page” out there.

     Thank god. People thirst for information; it has been ever so. The public wants gossip; seeks facts; salivates over tabloid-like pieces on crime, murder and mayhem; cries reading human-interest pieces; and, unfortunately, can cozy up to so-called “fake news,” which means slanting, deliberately misleading, skewing the facts, even inventing facts, all for an agenda.

     Today, it is more difficult than ever to work for a newspaper, because there are so few, because staff has been reduced 80 percent, because hedge-hunter investors buy newspapers to kill them, to sell off assets, kicking free speech and democracy’s foundation in the ass.

      All this means society fumbles in the dark; local government isn’t watched; big government tries to manage coverage, as in embedding journalists in wartime.

     Readers always want to shoot the messenger; time forever they have claimed that you “cannot believe what you read in the newspaper.” And, yes, responsible publishers and editors would agree — always take things with a grain of salt; question, write letters to the paper; but, for god’s sake, engage. Stories must be reported if society is to have a chance to be free and stay that way.

    Royal Clinton Taplin, as irreverent as can be, a true Damon Runyon character out of Hollywood casting, knew that. 

     The writer is a retired newspaperman.

                       -30-

‘ART EVERYWHERE’

May 3, 2021

By Arthur H. Gunther III

thecolumnrule.com

ahgunther@yahoo.com

 

      When you go to an art museum, the standard pose of course has you pondering in front of a particular work, perhaps stepping back, putting one hand under chin, tilting head, moving forward, all in a studious attempt to “get” the painting, photograph, sculpture, woodcut, print, collage, whatever. Some of us do this studiously, some in affectation, some because we are simply joining the crowd. Others don’t have any pose and are just tagging along, with a spouse or friend, even under mild protest.

       The point, whether there is a workable pose or not, is that what is in the eye of the beholder is central to the art experience. The person who just tags along but who might take a glance up at, say, Edward Hopper’s “Nighthawks,” the well-known film-noir painting of a night diner scene in 1940 lower Manhattan, might in that instant understand more about the work than the fellow who has stood before this wide horizontal piece 20 times with hand under chin.

      There is a dialogue going on between artist and viewer, and the language and its comprehension come from that simple but deep-in-subtlety well of “going beyond” understanding that Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote about. In “Nighthawks,” the viewer “transcends” any actual experience in a diner to understand beyond.

      Hopper, the famed American realist painter, uses the bright inside light of the corner diner to contrast with night darkness. The light reveals the faces of the four figures – the counterman, the couple (perhaps Edward and his wife, artist Jo Nivison) and a man opposite. This light is transcendental – beyond ordinary perception – a realism that we normally do not notice. Hopper’s paintings are infused with that light. Even the shadows are functions of it, as are the people.

       That’s my take on “Nighthawks” and on Hopper, a painter well received in his time but much more so in his revival, which began two decades or so ago. This is the artist most often characterized as the “lonely painter,” whose urban oils are painted with figures who do not look at one another, who instead seem in isolated thought or which have no people in them at all. His Cape Cod summer works – oils and watercolors – are brighter than the city ones, yet are as transcendental in the use of light, a metaphor for revelation and understanding. But you, the viewer, the self-reliant as Hopper would have you be, has to do the work. He will not instruct you.

     I do see not loneliness in “Nighthawks” but urban alienation, which is the cityite’s cautious way of bonding. Three people sit on diner stools, two may be strangers to the third; they each need some degree of company (because they are human) but cannot speak to one another readily, as is the urbanite’s apprehensive, even suspicious way, so they sit in silence, not looking at one another but surely knowing another human being is next to them. That is not loneliness but the gothamite’s survival, his self-reliance.

     So, “Nighthawks” becomes Emerson-like, taking the viewer, whether he has the standard pose or not, to the inner, spiritual and/or mental essence of us living creatures. There is also, like Emerson, utter simplicity, so reduced, but yet saying so much. The individual exists even in the big city and the broad summer experience. There is the dignity of each of us, going beyond ordinary description.

      There is art everywhere – in old architecture, in sunlight rooms, in a pre-war diner – and to me that is what Hopper is all about. The art museum pose, certainly useful, isn’t necessary to understand that.

     The writer is a retired newspaperman. 

                                           -30-

HOPE

The Königsee in Bavaria was crystal clear when I took this photograph, free of many of the ravages of climate change, fed by the waters of the Bavarian and Austrian Alps, as nature intended. May the rest of the earth have that good fortune as well.

The Germans are quite strict on protecting natural waterways. No motorboats. No invasive human activity that would pollute the water. The goal is to pay forward nature’s beauty for the next generations.

This was the intention, too, of the Native Americans and of other cultures, who, of course, have always fought against the ravages of “progress.” Necessary for human advancement and betterment, progress can also be fueled by greed and profit and abandoned by  commonsense planning. — Art Gunther

–30–

THE CORNER SPIN

April 19, 2021

By Arthur H. Gunther

thecolumnrule.com

ahgunther@hotmail.com

The half pirouette that the young woman made as she stood on a street corner mimicked a movement many of us have performed, waiting for a school bus, another ride, a friend. It is akin to looking at our watch, staring at our shoes, whistling in the wind.

It is life itself, one of those awfully small but reaffirming heartbeats that keep the current moving through the routine of a day. A pirouette, like looking at your shoes, happens only in the ordinary, not when you are climbing one day’s mountain or descending another’s steep hill. Your pulse is normal, your expectations routine, you know you are breathing, and you expect to continue.

A pirouette – spinning a bit on one foot – is perhaps a subconscious test that you are still here, not that you are worried you are not, but simply a check of the status quo, like a watchman pausing at stations on his tour. The key goes in, it is turned, and life for the watchman is as ordinary as it is supposed to be. No surprise.

I was driving in a small town when I saw the woman do her half-pirouette, spinning on one leg, not in a staged ballet style or serious affectation, but in passing time. I saw her only for an instant, but you could read a life in that time.

She seemed happy, content, life humming along, and whoever, whatever was next in her day was more than acceptable. It, he, or she would be the next watch station, and the lady with the pirouette had the key. She could safely lift one foot off the ground and spin, for there was more than enough trust for that.

We all have our scary days – going to the dentist or the doctor, taking a school exam, facing the boss, getting older – and there are no half-pirouettes on those days. For most of us, thankfully, life does not consist of scary moments, and the motor runs without misfiring. It is in such security that we can lift one foot off this mortal coil and know we will not come crashing down.

I knew that the lady I saw in this small town – and she could have been in a big city or in a rural cornfield – was having a good day.

 

The writer is a retired newspaperman. This essay is adapted from an earlier version.

 

–30–

THE YELLOW SLICKER

April,12, 2021

By Arthur H. Gunther III

thecolumnrule.com

ahgunther@yahoo.com

     There are memory moments for every grade in life, whether that is literally first grade, or making the grade or existing on any level for a particular time. The moments become part of language unique to the individual, and you can go back and use the words again when you must, for whatever reason. They are anchors set to mooring in each of our foundations.

     I actually have such a memory moment from first grade, which was in the still-existing Sloatsburg, N.Y., elementary school. Perhaps the school was encouraging wee young ones to be responsible by giving us hall lockers, extras that you don’t usually get until middle school, if not high school. But there they were, a long line in the hallway. No locks, of course, because most first graders, at least in my time, at least me anyway, would not have fathomed a combination lock, and any key would have to be kept on a lanyard around our necks.

     Each morning, we would, as instructed, find our locker by number, itself a learning exercise, and then hang up our coats and put our bag lunches inside. No books, no homework then. We might have a pencil or two.

     To this day I associate my first-grade locker with a shiny yellow raincoat that my parents bought my brother and me. Inside was fabric that had traffic stoplights on it, and I can recall staring at those momentarily as I quickly hung up the slicker and hustled off to class.

     Don’t recall too much else about that first grade, except the paintings we did with the palms of our hands and the planter on the windowsill that looked like a head and was filled with dirt and grass seed that sprouted green hair. 

     My parents soon moved us to another school district that did not have lockers for first graders, just the usual cloakroom in the back of the classroom. So where I hung my yellow raincoat with its amazing fabric I do not know. Perhaps I left it in the Sloatsburg locker. Maybe it is still there.

      But I took the memory moment with me, and I’ve used it to pull me back to shore when that has been needed. There was a sort of security in that locker, a place of my own, where I stashed my coat with stoplights on the way toward growing up.

     The writer is a retired newspaperman.

                       –30–