Sausage Making

The fat lady hasn’t sung yet on the gay marriage vote in Britain, but Her Majesty’s Government has done itself proud to bring the issue to this stage.  Just hours ago, in the House of Commons, 400 members of parliament voted in favor of same-sex marriage, and only 175 MPs voted against.  That is a huge margin.

Opponents are making much of the fact that Prime Minister Cameron’s Conservative Party is badly split, and more conservatives are against change, surprise, surprise, than for it.   That is to say, more than half of the 303 conservatives either voted against it, abstained, or took that delightfully British option of voting for it and against it at the same time. 

Cameron’s neck is on the line.  He’s clearly hoping the support of the majority of Brits, who favor same-sex marriage 55 to 36, will matter more in the long run than those 176 of no, who me?, or yes-and-no votes.

We still have to wait and see what the Lords and Ladies of Britain’s Upper House will have to say.  One hopes now that the Dowager Countess Violet has accepted the marriage of Lady Sybill to the chauffeur, she might persuade her peers that worse things can happen to the institution than to allow others who love each other to do the same.

That debate should be even more interesting.  One blogger predicts they will be persuaded by the large victory in the House of Commons and not want to look like a bunch of “dotty hereditaries wanting to hang and flog the life out of the nation.”  One must not forget, however, how many fine bishops sit in the House of Lords.  They too, even though they are unelected, have a voice. 

What a marvelous age we live in.  I untangle the dogs’ legs, get up from my nap, and tune in to the news online to discover that not only do Britain and France seem to be making rapid progress toward full marriage equality, leaving us colonials in the dust once more, but you can actually watch more than four hours of the actual debate and avoid the laundry entirely for yet another day.  

If you’ve never heard them go at it in the British Parliament, have a look.  There is no better entertainment than this cacaphonous circus making history and alternating between shouts of disapproval and “giving way to the Right Honourable Member” who then gets up and explains why everything just said is balderdash. 

We are in medias res, as I said.  But as I sat there listening to all the MPs go at it, I marvelled at how many were women, at how many different regional accents there were, at how different the whole thing looked since I sat in on a parliamentary debate in 1961 and heard an MP address all of six other male members present, three of whom were asleep, and urge Britain to have their kids start school a little earlier.  Or later.  Can’t remember which, now.

There’s excitement in the air.  A sense that things are moving, that things are getting better.

Hope that’s the case.  In any case, though, have a peek at the debate.  Contrary to what you’ve heard, it can be really good for the democratic soul to see how the sausage is made.

The flag over Parliament picture is from the Huffington Post two hours ago.   They have a fine article on the topic.

Songs my mother taught me

The highlight of my day comes when my partner and I light the candles and sit down to dinner each night.  I try to keep the dogs away from the table.  He sneaks one of them up to sit behind him, as if I couldn’t see her behind his back on the chair, and we talk about his day making labels for food products and my day at the computer obsessing over the latest Republican outrage or example of democratic cowardice.

We talk from time to time of moving into the 21^st century and getting some proper music playing devices, but he and I both, frankly, are still happy with our CD collection.  There is always music at dinner.   He usually selects the music.  I put my foot down on Yoko Ono, but go along with Japanese female singers of the 1930s.  Opera usually works.  So do French chansons or Portuguese fado.

But last night he put on Yoshikazu Mera’s CD, Romance.  I didn’t pay any attention because we immediately started talking about the macaroni and cheese he put on the table piping hot from the oven.

We got into an argument.  Well, not really an argument, because I didn’t really have anything to say as he went on about how awful American food could be.  “Look at this thing you call ‘macaroni and cheese,’ for example,” he says. 

It was an exquisite moment of disconnect.  We were on different wave lengths.  He was in one of his Japanese cultural nationalist modes – Why is it the Japanese can take a dish like this and know instinctively to use high grade cheeses and high quality pasta and combine chicken and prawns and make a lovely meal when Americans think they can actually eat the mess they make with melted Kraft cheese on overcooked macaroni!?

The reason I didn’t engage was that I was in another world.  This lovely countertenor voice was singing one of the most haunting pieces of music ever written, Dvorak’s “Songs My Mother Taught Me.”

The first time I heard it I remember being stopped dead in my tracks by the melancholy.  Was there ever a better illustration of how music can say more than words can?

“It’s not macaroni and cheese, anyway,” Taku was saying.  “It’s “Chicken and Prawn Gratin with noodles.”

Whatever it was, it was a moment of delicious absurdity.  Cheesy noodles.  Cheesy lyrics.

Here’s the original Czech version by Czech poet Adolph Heyduk which Yoshikazu was singing:

Když mne stará matka zpívat, zpívat učívala,
podivno, že často, často slzívala.
A ted' také pláčem snědé líce mučím,
když cigánské děti hrát a zpívat učím!

Which translates:

When my old mother taught me to sing,
it’s strange that often, often she cried.
And now I also torment my swarthy face by weeping
when I teach gypsy children to play and to sing!

Heyduk also wrote a German version without the gypsies:

Als die alte Mutter mich noch lehrte singen,
tränen in den Wimpern gar so oft ihr hingen.
Jetzt, wo ich die Kleinen selber üb im Sange,
rieselt's in den Bart oft, rieselt's oft von der braunen Wange.

Which translates:

When my old mother still taught me to sing

tears often hung on her lashes

Now, when I make the children practice their songs

tears trickle down into my beard, often trickle down from my brown cheeks.

And here’s the English version you see most of the time:

Songs my mother taught me, In the days long vanished;
Seldom from her eyelids were the teardrops banished.
Now I teach my children, each melodious measure.
Oft the tears are flowing, oft they flow from my memory's treasure.

I can’t judge the Czech, although I love the image of “torturing my swarthy cheeks with tears.”  The German version sounds better to me in English translation, while the English version has some awfully inappropriate word choices apparently selected not for image but for rhymability: vanished-banished and measure-treasure.

So apologies to those of you who think this quatrain is good poetry.

I think all you need to hear is the title, and let the music take you from there.

See?

Not cheesy at all.

Yoshikazu Mera singing Songs My Mother Taught Me:

Fritz Kreisler playing Songs My Mother Taught Me:

And Itzhak Perlman, also on violin, with a Marilyn Monroe bonus, if you still want the cheese (and I don't mean Marilyn).

Or, even better, Yo Yo Ma on the cello,

Paul Robeson's beautiful deep baritone version.

Type in Songs my mother taught me on YouTube and you'll see this could go on almost forever.

It's noon, I've been at it since 8 a.m., and I'm only scratching the surface of this obsession.

picture credit

Yair Lapid

Terribly interesting man in the news these days – Yair Lapid, the politician who surprised everybody in the recent Israeli elections by coming in a very healthy second in Parliament with 19 seats, instead of the anticipated 13 or 14 as polls suggested. Netanyahu will now have to work with him and his newly founded party, Yesh Atid (There is a Future).

I went looking to see what I could find out about this man just as a friend in New York sent a link to a speech Lapid gave to a group of Haredi (ultra-orthodox) law students which I found riveting and want to recommend, if only to watch a Barack Obama kind of pull-'em-together centrist at work, with considerably more charisma.  He speaks in Hebrew, but his text is excellently subtitled.

I then found another video of Lapid addressing a conference of American rabbis in Atlanta in May of last year.  That one turned out to be equally interesting at getting the measure of the man.    (The introduction is in Hebrew.  Lapid speaks in English and begins his talk at minute 4:55.)

I’m not making any political endorsement.   I have no place in Israeli domestic politics.  I simply find this a fascinating man to listen to.   I have linked you to the few pieces of information I have on the man.  I know, because he says in the Atlanta talk, that he is a centrist, not a leftie, not a socialist.   Actually,  one columnist from Haaretz, Israel’s well-known liberal newspaper, has called him “the candidate of ‘capital’.” 

He is a secular Jew with Hungarian roots.  A handsome man.   Former boxer.  Former actor.  Would appear to have a beautiful Hebrew – not that I’m a judge, but I think you’ll reach the same conclusion, somehow.  And he’s powerfully articulate in English, as well.  Probably has something to do with the fact he was a talk show host at one point, although that says nothing about cause and effect.

He’s clearly very smart.  Very funny.  And very much the man to pull the country back toward the left – remember, the center is left of where Israel is now.  Listening to him makes me think more than anything else of an old-fashioned Rockefeller Republican trying to pull the party away from Tea Party influence. 

One thing he and Netanyahu agree on is that the time has come for the Haredim to start sharing the load.  Outsiders may not be aware that the men study the Torah full time (or want to) and don’t work.   That means they are supported by mainstream Israelis.  They also don’t do military duty.  Lapid’s address to the law students in the first video will put that in perspective.

Maybe not your cup of tea, I understand.  And I’m ready to hear that I am in no position to endorse or criticize this man, with my knowledge that is all of maybe twenty-four hours old.  But my guess is he’s going to figure large in Israel’s future, and there’s no time like the present to get to know more about him.  And it doesn’t really matter where you start, so why not start here.

photo credit