Maundy Thursday: Ruminations in a plague year

St. Thomas Church (Episcopal), Fifth Avneue, New York City

I haven't been to a Maundy Thursday service for a while. I considered finding one to go to this year; the virus put paid to that.

I might possibly have gone to one at St. John's in the Village, the Episcopal Church I belonged to when I lived in Baltimore. But I don't recall going to one. And I would recall. Because the drama of a well-done Maundy Thursday service can keep your soul going for a year, at least.

I do recall many Maundy Thursday services at St. Thomas, Fifth Avenue, NYC, in the years I lived in Manhattan.

Like the end of the rumble scene in the original Broadway production of West Side Story--which I saw when I was nine years old--the lighting of the St. Thomas Maundy Thursday service lingers in my mind, so close to the surface that I can summon it in a flash.

I can summon it in any season. I can summon it in any location. I can summon it when I am happy, when I'm scared, when I'm in limbo. Like now. The limbo of a modern day plague, not sending us to church to get closer to our god, but locking us into our homes to avoid a pestilence. I know the science is the modern way, and must be for now, but I wonder where the soul is. Still, that's not quite what this is about. Or maybe it is. You be the judge.

St. Thomas is an inordinately beautiful church, which, of course, enhances any experience of it. While I was a member, the rector was the Rev. John GB Andrew MBE DD, a man who demanded the best from everyone from altar guild ladies (I was one, reportedly the youngest he had ever invited to labor with that essential crew) to curates and right up to the members of the only residential Boy's Choir in the United States.

Father Andrew himself celebrated the Maundy Thursday evening service.  As usual at the highest of the high church rituals, there was the full Boy's Choir supported by the professional Men's Choir. There were additional celebrants; it took a lot of priests to accommodate the eucharist for what was, almost without fail, a packed church.  

Fr. Andrew died in 1996, after retiring for a second time from the church he served after St. Thomas. His death was  another one of those rents in the universe--or at least, in my life in the universe--that can never be rewoven.

A father like no other

Fr. Andrew and I had a stormy relationship, both of us strong-willed. He was more conservative than I, and did not--until he changed his mind--believe in ordaining women, and I did. But for reasons I will never understand, he consistently involved me in the life of the church, first with the altar guild, later as a delegate to an ecumenical meeting for NYC, and later still as a leader of a group especially for women, involving drinkies, dinner and a speaker. He supported me when I invited a financial analyst to speak during Lent, going so far as to send a "dear dummy" sort of letter to a visiting priest from Flyover Country who objected to that program. Fr. Andrew wrote to him, so nicely, that it was incumbent upon Anglicans to support themselves and family and friends, and, if possible charities--and that took money. So we all had to learn how to make and manage it for that purpose. So be quiet.

I left the church for a while. Don't ask why; I probably can't articulate it myself. But I often flee when things get too close, too cosy, too essential. Then a college student I had hired for the summer to help us renovate a house we had bought in the Hudson Highlands demanded to be taken to St. Thomas. Apparently, I never stopped talking about it. Probably because I never stopped missing it. (That feeling remains to this day.)

My husband had a trip to Oregon coming up and had to fly out of JFK at dark-thirty on a Sunday morning. "Oh, good," Margaret said. "So I'll go with you and we can have breakfast and then go to church at St. Thomas."

Drat. Foiled. Had to do it. Damn, wouldn't you know? John Andrew was the celebrant that day at the 11 a.m. service. And drat, didn't Margaret insist we had to go to coffee hour in the parish house? Sigh. In for a penny....

And so there we stood, mingling, with me introducing Margaret to the friends I'd left behind, sort of. (I still saw them, just not in church.) And then...yes, it was inevitable. Fr. Andrew came up behind me, put a hand on my shoulder. I turned around and he hugged me and said,  "I've been praying for this."

How could I fail to respond? I didn't fail. I returned to St. Thomas, my spiritual home then, now and always (although St. John's in the Village, Baltimore, is a close runner up.)

Is a low church as good as a high church?

I have been empty in Cornwall, bereft of a good high church in the land that invented the Anglican Church, the home of the Archbishop of Canterbury. I have searched. But they are afraid of incense, afraid of failing to attract Protestants while simultaneously failing those of us who love the beauty of the liturgy, music and elegance of the high church. I could go Anglo-Catholic...but that's not me, either. I am, top to bottom, a high-church Anglican.

This year, any church I might have gone to is empty, shuttered by a plague.

St. Thomas tackles the plague

This year my once and always church, blessed St. Thomas, Fifth Avenue, NYC,  is also empty. Only the celebrants and recorded organ music were there on Maundy Thursday, filming the service to post on the church website because of the virus. I suppose one could connect this with the plague years...but back then, people would have gone to church, thinking that doing so might prevent their getting the huge purple buboes that, most of the time, meant death. Once they had acquired the disease, they generally quarantined themselves. And mostly died. (The Black Death lasted in Europe, on and off, from 1346 to1353.)

Today New York City is quarantined, and is suffering from more deaths from coronavirus than they needed to because President Trump failed to act. Mayor Bill deBlasio and NY governor Cuomo have acted. But still, so harmful is the virus that St. Thomas Church, a beacon to Anglicans in the heart of Manhattan, is dark to preserve its congregation.

On Maundy Thursday 2020, arguably the most solemn day of the ligturgical year, St. Thomas was dark, except for pools of light on the celebrant. Ordinarily, the nave would be filled with light until the very end, allowing the congregation to read the Prayer Book and use the hymnal to sing the abundant hymns always included at St. Thomas, as many as the liturgy allows.

But even filmed--even minus a congregation whose rustling of hymnals is a substrate to any service--it is dramatic. There is the sudden plunge into darkness, followed immediately by the sounds of  the celebrant scrubbing the stone altar with water and palm leaves in the dark.

In an ordinary year, there is a moment...a long moment...during which the congregation, of one accord, remains very still. The lights come up gradually, just enough for people to see their way out. There is no voluntary, the organ music ordinarily played as the congregation exits.

The drama of the moment is missing from the video. It is not missing from my heart and soul. It is there, it has to be there. The human soul must surely be more than this virus, this locking away of the infirm, the rounding up of the rest, the hiatus in the education of children. The deaths of the healers. It MUST be more than that.

If this virus does nothing for us but convince us that human life is precious, but all the life around us that we are missing as we huddle indoors is just as precious, maybe it will have done its job.  Maybe we will be able to take the time--and pains--to worship, whether at a St. Thomas, a rural chapel, a woodland, a beach or wherever one finds the numinous.

Without the numinous, human life is tedious.  As tedious, to some of us, as being locked down to avoid a plague.

I think, after this is through, I shall have to find a successor to St. Thomas. If I find it, then leave it, then return...well, it's what I've always done. Possibly my search for the numinous is so intense that I simply step away for a while at times.

But 14 years is too damn long.

Copyright 2020, Laura Harrison McBride

Handria, Then and Now

Art Car--what a thing to do to a Porsche! (Wikipedia)

I can't honestly say I've ever had or ever wanted an art car. I've had bangers, that's for sure. And some really swell cars, like the huge silver Mercedes I leased to get me through the social/business barrier in Palm Beach County when I lived there. "You are what you drive" is the local motto. If you want to do good business, you'll shell out for a swell car.

So I did. Truth be told, I loved that car. But it was the 1980s, and repairs on it came in only three prices: $300, $500 and $700. The first was for windshield wiper blade replacements.

Anyway, years went by and I ended up in Baltimore. I was writing books and needed some information about the Irish Potato Famine, otherwise known--in my house anyway--as the British Genocide Exercise in Ireland. Online, I found a man named Conrad Bladey, owner of Hutman Productions, publisher of books and other fancy stuff.

If there is anything about the Genocide he doesn't know, it probably is hidden somewhere deep in the British annals of their perfidy at some swell university or other.

Anyway, Conrad and I got along famously during our phone discussions; he had kindly offered to let me pick his prodigious brain extensively for my book. After I finished the book, I invited him and his wife to dinner. I also invited my friend Noeleen, a bona fide Irishwoman from Swords, the place outside Dublin where Brian Boru is said to have died.

Excuse me, please, but I must do a bit of scene setting now. Noeleen has a wicked sense of humor; of course she does, she's Irish. We were once waiting for our table at the Baltimore Museum of Art's restaurant when a lady came in for drinks for a party on the terrace. It was a wedding shower, and all the attendees were wearing funny hats and had things attached to their clothing with clothes pins, or pegs as they say in the UK. The lady who came in for the drinks had a TON of clothespins on her. Noeleen said, "They must have hung her out to dry." Yeah. So you see....

Anyway, I guess I knew, when Conrad and I were nattering about the Famine, that Conrad also created art cars, but having never really seen one--as far as I could recall--it didn't scare me. 

It should have.

More scene-setting. I lived in a large apartment complex on the edge of an Orthodox Jewish neighborhood. While most of the buildings fronted on Western Run, a small stream flowing through the north side of Baltimore, my building was the only one that fronted on a street of single-family homes, virtually all of them lived in by lovely, quiet, respectful Orthodox Jewish families with tons of kids.

It was a Friday night that we were having dinner with the Bladeys. Had I remembered what Friday meant in my neighborhood, I'd have planned it for ANY OTHER night. Not that the families walking by to shul--synagogue--for Friday services were a problem.

Conrad's CAR was the problem. 

Noeleen and I were looking out my huge front windows (damn, I LOVED that apartment) across my big front balcony (seated 8 for dinner comfortably) and remarked on the wonderful behavior of all the children going by, and how quiet they were.

And then the Bladeys arrived, in an art car called Handria. Why that name? Because it had plastic mannequin hands stuck all over it. And hanging out the rear driver's side window was not only a hand, but a whole forearm, poised there forever. Obviously, the car was only useful in the summer.


Attached to the forearm was an upper arm, a neck, a head and, descending, a pair of huge naked boobs.

Holy shit! Noeleen and I were dying, really, part laughter, part horror. All those nice, conservative Orthodox families, and I had to prove that I was one of the great unwashed! It was embarrassing.

But the dinner went off well. Conrad Bladey is a great raconteur, for one thing. And after a few snorts...well...you get the picture.

Still, if I ever meet art car artists again, I'm going to request photos before I invite them to dinner, unless they promise to take the bus.

On a calmer note, Handria was simply the nascent form of a "handy" car Bladey worked on for years, until it finally won the big prize in Baltimore for art cars. Here is its final incarnation, known as The Epicentral Temple of the Helping Hand.

I guess I should be thankful the car was parked in my quiet neighborhood when it was still a baby.





Copyright 2020 by Laura Harrison McBride

When is an artist not an artist?

I have loved art since I was a small child. I drew all the time, mainly horses and evening gowns, but even that predicted the path of my adult life. The first half of it was spent frequently wearing evening gowns as I went to charity balls; the second half of it was spent riding, showing and training horses and riders.

And now, in whatever is left of that life, the art part seems to be rising. To be fair, I did study art during the evening gowns phase of my adulthood, but never did much with it until recently.

And when I did, I got a shock. 

But to set the scene....

When I finally got over my terror of drawing in a group situation, and decided to study art, I wanted to properly learn my craft.  So, in the 1980s, I took anatomy and drawing classes with Robert Beverly Hale, arguably the best drawing teacher in the United States in the 20th century. Subsequently, I was invited to become a member of the Art Students League of New York, where I had studied with him; my rising to membership in that venerable body was accomplished by both study and election by other members so that they could be sure, I suppose, that one wouldn't embarrass the League by being a crappy artist. I'm still quite proud of that achievement. Although, like any artist, I'm never, ever sure the latest work isn't, in fact, crappy. Even when it is praised. Such is the temperament of an artist and perfectionist.

But despite being a perfectionist, I cannot--no really cannot--do "imitation of life" drawings and paintings, such as this one:

Unarguably, this picture could easily be a black and white photograph, but it isn't. It is a pencil drawing. It is quite astonishing in its realism, in its perfection of proportions. One might think there would be very few people who could produce work like that...and yet, the internet and the pages of art magazines for amateurs and professionals alike are littered with them. So many incredibly talented people with the time to spend both learning such perfection of craft and producing dozens of time-consuming, detailed works! It boggles the mind.

Or not.

It was only a few years ago that I learned about the camera obscura, a device known to Johannes Vermeer (see his famous painting The Girl with the Pearl Earring, 1665, below), and via which he produced the most stunningly accurate oil paintings of the Dutch Golden Age. 

The Girl with the Pearl Earring, Johannes Vermeer, 1665

I thought it was cheating, while admitting his paintings are stunning. But so what? Wait a couple hundred years, and voila! the Eastman Kodak Brownie camera, affordable for almost anyone, could produce similar works in a flash. But no one considered the products of the little brown boxes to be high art.

None of this really bothered me, though, until I began reading the magazine and sales circulars from the Society of All Artists (SAA) a few years ago, when I was ramping up my art production with intent to sell. The pages of both are filled with cunning devices--camera obscuras to be sure (so anyone with oil paints might conceivably be the next Vermeer), tracing paper, fixative to make tracing paper stick to photos one might want to copy...I mean might want to paint.

Yes, you see where it is. The Art Students League's intention is to serve and produce artists. Not copyists. League graduates are not expected to produce exact copies of a subject; they are expected to draw it, paint it, imbue it with some character of both the thing/person and the artist. In short, make ART, not a copy. It is no wonder I had never heard of the handy image transfer devices; the only one League students were exposed to was their own eyes and hands.

I have a problem with copying masquerading as art, with people who are using mainly mechanical means to produce what they are calling original art and I call cheap copies. But yet, they get consistent oohs and aahs when their works appear in print or on websites.  Quite disheartening. Indeed, you might as well cheer for the Xerox copier that probably fostered this unseemly confiscation of mechanical devices to the service of what was once a noble calling, if not very remunerative most of the time: producing art. (Analogy: If a musician turned on the CD player and then faked blowing the notes on his oboe, is that art?)

I've been chewing on this for a few years now, and the past couple of years also on the demand that artists posting their work--THEIR WORK, by their own hands--on social media provide not only information about the medium, but give credit if they used a reference photo they didn't shoot with their own hands. Why? It's not like they were going to pass off someone else's work as their own; it is art. Isn't it?

I have concluded that they are not, in fact, making original art, but copying an artwork made by another artist (or photographer, mainly) line for line, colour for colour, shape for shape. And, in many cases, the "art" could indeed be passed off as the photograph that was copied, which would be, in fact, illegal.

If they did that, passed off copies derived by mainly mechanical means, as their own work...what then? It is copyright infringement at its heart, its foundation. And they might rightly be sued.

Is art via mechanical means worthy of being called art? Are those who produce and sell worthy of being called artists? 

Or have they simply become human Xerox machines?

Copyright Laura Harrison McBride, 2020

Panettone--Breakfast of movie stars!

December 21, 2019

We've had a large panettone, still in its box*, on our kitchen counter for about two weeks now. It won't be opened until after Christmas, not for any reason except that we went a bit nutty on Christmas goodies to eat this year, and simply haven't got there yet. And we won't, until after two days of traveling to see friends and two days of feasting with them.

Panettone is not something I grew up with. In fact, I had only seen it in bread cookbooks until a day about 15 years ago in Baltimore. I had a friend who lived in Charles Village, a part of Baltimore tucked in behind the Johns Hopkins campus and the rougher parts of downtown, to be very unfocused about it. It was close to Roland Park, too, a fairly upscale neighborhood. Itself? Well, Charles Village has much to recommend it including a stock of lovely brick and stone Victorian and Edwardian houses. My friend lived in one with her two sons and her husband, who is an Italian doctor who is generous in treating her horse-riding buddies, most of whom are usually broke. At the time, I was among those.

Anyway, she and I and her mother and her two sons went out for lunch to Rocco's Capriccio, a well-thought-of Italian restaurant in Baltimore's Little Italy. Rocco was a friend of her husband, who had helped him get started in business.

It was a great lunch. We three ladies sat at one table and the two boys at another one where they happily talked about whatever it is a 13- and 15-year-old talk about over pizza. We adults, naturally, had some more complex dishes and wine. Of course.

I'd like to tell you about Rocco's menu, but I can't. It turns out that it closed in 2013, after a time, apparently, of sliding downward on the culinary “must visit” list, having been, for a long time, the recipient of five stars on the social media opinion pages.

As we left, Rocco greeted us, and gave my friend, her mother and me each a box containing a small panettone.

I didn't open the box right away. I was fairly broke at the time and thought it would be a nice thing with coffee as I banged the keys after Christmas to sell enough writing to keep from starving in the spring. But then I did.

What a treat! It was a lovely yeast bread, sprinkled with lemon and orange peel and vanilla. I ate as much of it as I could before it went stale. When it did, I made it into French toast, buttered and sprinkled with icing sugar and fresh lemon juice.

I've always loved Rocco for that gift, not that I knew him well as my friend did. But he gave me something just as precious on an evening a year or two later. By that time, I was dating the man who is now my husband. He worked in Frederick, MD, lived near Westminster, MD, and drove the hour+ to see me a few nights each week. One Friday in the fall, we decided to go to Rocco's. I dressed as I usually did for that sort of romantic but laid-back evening: black silky dress trousers, a white semi-sheer shirt, and dangly earrings. I had had my hair styled that day, though, and it looked quite extravagant. So I applied some red lipstick to complement the hair. And then I flung a dark red pashmina around my shoulders in case of a chill later.

Simon was dressed as always for work: khaki trousers, white dress shirt and dark blue double-breasted blazer.

When we walked in the door to Rocco's, Rocco himself was standing at the end of the bar. He greeted me warmly, remembering me from visits with my friend over the previous year or so, and said, “You look like a movie star.”

Well, that was good for my ego.

Then he looked at Simon, who is 6'2” and not scrawny, and said, “And you...you look like a bouncer.”

A masterful verbal assessment, fully accurate, but not one most people would blurt out.

And Rocco wasn't even a New Yorker!

*This year's panettone is genuine Italian, ordered via an Italian imported foods company in the UK.

 Copyright 2019, Laura Harrison McBride Please feel free to quote up to 25 words without asking; beyond that, please email me for permission via this site. Thank you.

A New York Story in camera

New York Coffee Shop Suite, c. Laura Harrison McBride

The noise of the street is left behind. The taxis honking, the delivery vans being robbed of their clinking, squeaking hand trucks' siren songs. The sounds from the pavement—stiletto heels clicking, people laughing, babies crying, the odd shout of a person signaling to a friend he noticed far ahead—all are shut off with the suddenness of a thunder clap when the second of the air-lock doors closes behind you.

The odors greet you. No exhaust fumes here, no sewer pong. No brazier smoke, in winter, from the hot-chestnut vendor's pushcarts.

Well, OK. That last odor is delightful, and lasts all too short a time, only while the Great Christmas Tree is up in Rockefeller Plaza which has, probably more than Santa walking into sponsor Macy's department store at the end of the Thanksgiving Day parade, signalled the season of joy.

Once those doors have closed, and until another seeker of warmth, light and sustenance opens them to enter, there is peace and the welcome beauty of a traditional Manhattan coffee shop. Not, mind, a coffee shop in the Starbucks mode. No. These predate designer coffee. Here, it comes in white porcelain cups rimmed with a strip of green, burgundy or blue, a stainless steel spoon perched on the saucer. (Remember saucers?) A Manhattan coffee shop opens early to serve breakfast to the hordes emerging from the subways, clambering off the bus, or hoofing it from their home to their office or shop. At 7-ish, it finds financial types there, stoking up on caffeine and calories before a hard day of mind-reading to see where the dollar, the pound, the yen will go today, and how many they can load into their own pockets.

Then relative quiet until ten or so, when office workers begin to arrive. Those who go to work early—few in Manhattan—will have been at their tasks since 8, so they are the first second wave. Then between 10:|30 and 11, the 9 a.m.-ers arrive. That's when I went, and even then, it was early for me. As a freelancer, I didn't really get started until 9:30. But the attractions of the coffee shop were such that I was willing to leave my tasks on many days, even if it meant a delayed lunch or dinner. Or none at all.

The smell of coffee, the rattle of the porcelain dishes and clank of stainless steel cutlery, the squeak of a counter stool as its occupant get s up to return to work, the soft clank of the coins she leaves as a tip. All this, and so much more, attracted me. I happily walked the two short blocks and four long ones to get there, in any weather.

“What will you have?” Betty asked each day. Had asked 100 times, probably, before that coffee shop became one of my spiritual homes. Just because I would beard any miscreant in search of journalistic fodder for my job didn't mean I would easily join in the slipstream of casual friendships that develop at a lunch counter in Manhattan. But I did, finally, with Betty as the acolyte who introduced me to the high altar of casual community.

And I loved it. All of it. The spotless counter. The spotless mirror behind it. Betty's spotless uniform, and, eventually, the perfectly filled cup of coffee that arrived before she even asked me what I wanted. She knew her customers; she knew I wanted the coffee long before she knew I wanted the connection. Before I did.

Winter in Central Park, NYC, copyright 2019, Laura Harrison McBride

As for sustenance, sometimes I wanted an English muffin, toasted and dripping with butter. Sometimes it was a slice of something sweet and delicious from the gleaming glass pie safe at the end of the counter. A slice of fat, dense, strawberry jam-topped New York cheesecake. A slice of lemon meringue pie, furnished with 2 or more inches of lightly browned meringue above the perfectly sweet-tart filling and crumbly crust. Or maybe a slice of spicy sweet potato pie topped with a huge dollop of whipped cream.

As a New Yorker would say, what's not to like? If you couldn't find comfort—warmth, food and camaraderie—in the interior of a Manhattan coffee shop, the only answer must be that your soul dried up and disappeared a long, long time ago and is past resurrecting.

I miss the gleaming silvery coffee urns, drained by hyper New Yorkers so fast that you'd never get burnt, too-long-heated coffee. Always fragrant, never fouled by neglect, like the bulbous glass pots that deliver undrinkable brown muck 'out of town.' The tall fresh OJ press, pressing hundreds of oranges into vitamin cocktails for sun- and air-starved New Yorkers. The scent of frying bacon all day long. The sweet greasy smell of that coffee shop favorite lunch, a grilled cheese on white with or without tomato. (If you order it with tomato, be warned; let it cool a bit because the thinly sliced fresh tomatoes in the middle will be way hotter than the cheese, and will burn your tongue. A mystery of science.)

About 10:30, the air-lock doors would get a workout, from the staff of the publishing house across the street. This was my favorite time; the conversation was always good, once I loosened up enough to join in, and witty. Memorable. Like the tales about Amelia Persky. But they are a story in themselves, and so shall wait a while, to be offered up to the gods of my cultural baptism with a few other notables of various stripes.

The loss of this milieu from my life is poignant and somewhat sad, possibly. But the wealth of having had it so long in my life is stronger still, a touchstone for my soul when I find myself in lands less vibrant, company less alive and interested. The memories are greater than any sadness. The memories are comforting, as the visits to Burger Heaven were all those years ago. They will live in me forever, and I bless them.

Copyright 2019, Laura Harrison McBride

Christmas at the Pub with Dad, oil painting by Laura Harrison McBride

The love of pets is important to mankind, I think. This man, at a pub in Gwithian, Cornwall, a couple of years ago, clearly thinks so. When he visits the pub, he arrives at off hours so there won't be a crowd and he can let his two Jack Russells sit at the bar with him, on their own paw-print stool covers to protect the pub's upholstery. It was kind of him to let me take their picture so I could paint it, even though I will never sell it. I would sell giclee prints. Maybe I should sell them in support of a local animal rescue organization; yes, I think I will. But the original stays with me; as the former director of the Boca Raton (US) Humane Society, I understand that to many people, pets are their best friend and sometimes even their family.

Yesterday, on an international FB art page, a man with considerable technical talent posted two of his pet portraits. They were very good. But then he insulted every pet-lover on the planet by saying he didn't do them anymore because it was stupid to spend time/money on pets in preference to portraits of people, family and friends and, one must assume, "important people."

Important people. What does that even mean?

Have you ever seen a homeless person and his or her pet on the street? I have. There were three homeless men in Limoux, France, the year we lived in nearby Quillan, who were accompanied by their dogs. The shop owners allowed them the use of their entries to shelter in and, I hope, also gave them food. They were not run off, as they would be in the UK.

There was one homeless man who sat on the curb in outside our local Carrefour supermarket, seeking donations. Needless to say, he always got one from me, and the dog got a box of kibble as well. AND I saw several other shoppers do the same. 

That so-called artist who dismissed people's love of their pets and wish to memorialise them and see them in paint? He maybe a technician, but he's no artist.

Copyright 2019 by Laura Harrison McBride

Art food

 

New York Diner Suite; Actually pencil drawing from about 1985, but I didn't have a crumpet drawing....so close enough.

I have just finished a crumpet, crunchy outside and soft inside, butter dripping from all its little holes. The model for the American "English muffin," crumpets are the ultimate comfort food to me. Today, I needed comfort food.

Why? Well, because, assuming I might have 15 more years of active working life, I need to get a move on and frankly, the pains that have dogged my life for three years were particularly gruesome this morning. A morning Simon had to take my head shot for my Irish passport renewal. A morning when I had to package two Giclee prints to send, one to Canada and one to the US. A morning after I signed up for a very expensive website on GoDaddy. It's probably the 10th art website I've had...but it is going to be the one that finally pushes me to sell my artwork as avidly as I sold my writing.

Yeah, yeah, yeah that little voice in my head is saying. And with some reason to be believed.

Profession 1: Writing

When I decided it would be better for me to be a journalist than to teach English Lit., my desire to spend my life in a classroom being on a par with my desire to break out in permanent itchy scabs, I switched departments, went to work on a Masters in Journalism, took the core courses I thought I needed, and got out of there when my major professor told me to. She knew I didn't WANT to teach, not even journalism, so I didn't need a master's degree, never mind a doctorate; I wanted to go to NYC--home--and write. So I did. 
 

One of my riding teachers, Peter Krukoski, used a commissioned painting I did in the 90s of one of his students as teh cover for the year's show program. I'm quite proud of that!

Profession 2: Showing horses and teaching riding

The day I decided I wanted to learn to ride and jump horses, I signed up for weekly lessons. A month later it was two lessons a week. Then three. Then I went to "horse college"--literally--and within five years or so, having trained my own horse, won ribbons, etc., I was teaching the sport. (Apparently, teaching horsemanship is OK with my personality, and god knows it is more interesting than being cooped up indoors with reluctant students. People who take riding lessons are avid, the opposite of reluctant.)

So why did I abandon the pursuit between the journalism I studied in my 20s, the riding in my 40s? Why did the study of my 30s--art--get no respect? After all, I chose a very find professional school, the Art Students League of NY, with its great teachers: Robert Beverly Hale (anatomy and drawing), Tom Fogarty (oil painting), Gregory d'Alessio (watercolours), all passed on now. And I was elected to membership in due course, a sign that one is at least a competent artist.

It might be about caring. Too much, perhaps. I care, wildly, about journalism. I am appalled at the level to which it has sunk the past two decades and the past two years...well, just don't get me started. And horses. I love horses, but I also love the sport of hunter-jumper riding, both athletic and artistic inherently.

Profession 3: Artist

But perhaps I really do care too much. I knew from the start that I was a good journalist; same with riding. But art? Well, I shied away from even studying it for YEARS when an early teacher looked at me cross-eyed. Later--years of no art later--Mr. Hale, on assessing my portfolio, said only, "These are very delicate." I took that to mean they sucked. BUT...and considering the times I had flown that coop before...I persisted. And then there was Tom Fogarty.

I had not yet bought the kit for oil painting by the first day of class, so I took my newsprint pad and Conte crayons and did a portrait of the model as a study for an eventual painting. As he passed through the room, Mr. Fogarty pulled up a stool near mine, looked at my work in progress, and said, "I really admire that."

The drawing Tom Fogarty liked, the drawing that convinced me I was an OK artist.

It was enough. I decided that if Tom Fogarty liked my work, then it would be good enough. So I continued.

But it was fits and starts. I'd work at art for a while, and sell a few things while writing and/or showing horses and teaching. I'm good at trompe l'oeil, and several of my commissions have been for that. But I've sold oil paintings and watercolours, too. Just not consistently and not with any forethought. Because then I'd have to produce....and I'd have to sell. As with my freelance writing work. 

And that scares the crap out of me. Selling writing was easy. Art? Not so much.  I think.  Maybe I'm wrong....

But I'm in now for more than a penny and more than a pound, so needs must. Or maybe I'm just reluctant because I know it will be my last professional pursuit during this term at the Earth School. If I don't start, I can't finish, right? And then I'll be immortal.

I guess I'll just have to risk it, and take up the challenge.

Shit.

Copyright 2019 by Laura Harrison McBride

Little Altars All the Time

I am, when not lamenting the sad loss of the Church of England to the Eurosceptic luddite crowd*, also a believer in Religious Science.(One can believe in Religious Science AND ALSO keep one's other religion, if one has one.) Religious Science is also called New Thought; basically, it was the spiritual playground of, among other great thinkers, Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau, beloved mainstream poets of yore. The precepts of Religious Science were codified in the 20th century by a man named Ernest Holmes, who wrote the book Science of Mind about how to actually do the metaphysics described by Emerson and Thoreau.

It works. I know it works, because my friend Deb, a Religious Science minister, did magical affirmative prayers for me about 15 years ago. Aside from that, I've lived by it for about 35 years now, and find that it fills me spiritually and also has practical dimensions. In short, affirmative prayer actually works. You don't need a minister to do affirmative prayer, and I did it alone for decades. But the more thought energy going outward in affirmation, the better.

Still, despite dabbling in New Thought all this time, and having several friends, in fact, who are Religious Science ministers, I have never set up a home altar.

Why would you, you might well ask. Religious Science doesn't demand veneration in, say, the Roman Catholic Church sense. It is mostly based on affirmative prayer. And affirmative prayer needs no incense nor coins into the little box in front of the candle stand. Just belief, mental energy.

Answer: Because this--

Little Altars for cosmic energy

When you contemplate in front of an altar, you can shift your energy more easily because it creates a space for it in your home and your life. 

Let's say you're upset about a political situation. You can chew it over until your mental gullet hurts, or you can sit in front of a seasonal altar and bring yourself back to...yourself.  Your real self, the one that loves and laughs, not the one that obsesses and despairs. 

My friend Deb sets up seasonal altars in her home, which are both fun to do (she's an artist as well, and her mantra has something to do with art supplies) and a place to shift her mental direction when the world overwhelms. 

Basics of affirmative prayer for change

Anyone can set up and use little altars because energy really is not earthbound like your body and can travel out from you to anywhere. By using spiritual energy that YOU create, you can change your world...and maybe ours, so be careful and loving when you do it, please. Rules of thumb: 

• When using your energy for yourself, end with "this (your desire) or better." Always let the energy deliver more than you want!
• When using energy for others (but please ask permission first as spiritual energy is potent) or for the world at large, always stick to "best possible result for all concerned." You might THINK you know what's best for everyone, but clearly, you don't, or you'd be king or queen of the Earth by now, right? But you can certainly deliver useful open-ended energy to the earth and its inhabitants.

Now you know that spiritual demand is fulfilled from inside yourself, let's tackle the fun part, the altar.

Art supplies=spiritual exercise

Here are some photos from Deb's recent Spring/Easter altar.

Deb's kitchen altar, using kitcheny things--a pitcher, a greetings card, an egg, and a wreath. Wreaths are not just for Christmas; they are a universal spiritual symbol of wholeness and completion.

Deb reuses her basic pine-cone wreath for each season or holiday. This one, for spring/Easter 2019, featured Peeps.

 

 

 

 

 

 

As I mentioned, I have never set up an altar. The closest I have come is getting a house for Bridget. Bridget is a little pewter sculpture of a fairy that I bought at the shop at Medieval Times in Maryland about a dozen years ago. I had no intention of having a household goddess, but my stepdaughter said one day that our huge corkscrew willow tree looked like a magic tree. There was a lovely knee in which I often set a pot of flowers; it occurred to me that I could also set a household goddess there. We bought her a little "house"--really an outdoor lantern--and there she lived until we moved to the UK; she came with us, of course.

Bridget in her house with sea stones around her and a sea glass necklace, all appropriate since she watches over our house in Cornwall.
The photo at the top was Bridget's first house in our corkscrew willow tree.

 

 

 

Bridget is, I guess, a household god, what the Romans called lares and penates. We don't contemplate in front of her, though we might. But we do ensure that, every season, she receives a number of gifts appropriate to the season. For spring/Easter, she usually gets a lovely flower, but it might also be a chocolate bunny. This year she got a little mechanical bunny.

Although Bridget has done a superb job of sanctifying our house whether in the US, the UK or France, it would be unfair to load her with every random worry that crosses my mind. So I think it's time; I'll have to find an altar space and begin to use it. 

Maybe it will even work to decrease the rains brought by St. Swithin each July 15 for 40 days, IF it is raining on July 15. Since that's the UK's rainy season, it usually is raining. Bummer. Summer screwed! This year, I think I shall set up an altar to summer, contemplate sun and see if I can mitigate the Swithin downpours. 

Couldn't hurt.

 Copyright 2019, Laura Harrison McBride





* Justin Welby, Archbishop of Canterbury and head of the Church of England, recently said that he wished the UK would leave the European Union, a move that will increase poverty across the nation, endanger peace in Northern Ireland, prevent the UK from accessing universities abroad for its students (and vice versa) and send many immigrants who do not meet stringent criteria back to the war-torn nations they were trying to escape. The concept of Brexit is selfish and hostile at its core, and is no concept for a high-ranking churchman of any religion to hold.

Torapuk, another name for Brexit

Actor/artist Jim Carrey's Trump-trolling works

Being in the resistance is an art. All those innocent British and French young people who were trained to work under Nazi noses, blowing up bridges, funneling troop movement information to the Allies--they were heroes, and they got a paycheck. Sometimes they got death, either heroically in action or horribly at the hands of the SS.

But it was an art, and they had to be good at it to get the reward; life.

Other forms of resistance to evil have been around both before and after WWII. Indeed, at this moment, the US and the UK--two nations that fought side by side against the Nazis, and won--are engaged in a very similar resistance operation, although the field of engagement is far different.

Back then, it was the fields of France, mainly.

Now, it is cyberspace and the few print media left (which are mainly fascist) and the big pots of money to buy advertising to promote falsehoods; i.e., 350 million quid a week for the National Health Service (NHS) in the UK or Make America Great Again (MAGA) by putting little brown children in cages in the US.

So, reluctantly, I have become an active member of the resistance.  I live in the UK now, having found the US too vicious for me a dozen years ago and having also moved to the UK as soon after that as I could;  I am mostly concerned with derailing the fascist-inspired, Putin-supported, self-harming so-called Brexit.

Brexit, shorthand for Britain exiting from EU membership, ought to be replaced by a more accurate term: Torapuk, short for Tories Raping the UK--for their own further enrichment, of course. (Pronounced Tor-ah-puke.)

They've been doing it since they were elected and had to share the spotlight with second-place LibDems. Cunning and evil, they managed to blame their depredations of the population on the LibDems, convincing the voters that the LibDems are somehow to blame for the continuing austerity in the UK. 

Austerity? In what was the fifth richest world nation? Stupid, huh? Stupid it was for us to allow them to get away with it. What they meant was they had to outsource government functions (health care, public utilities, work-readiness assessments, various hospital functions) so they could reap dividends from the companies contracted to replace the government departments and in which they had a financial interest. Not so unlike Donald Trump selling off America for his own empty--recall, he has NEVER had a successful business until now, American Trumpism Inc.--pockets.

Brexit is beautiful in that regard. The Tories--with their flunkies the Brexiters and DUP, Democratic Unionist Party of Northern Ireland, which still thinks this is 1840 or so and they are the true rulers of Ireland--convinced a great many UK voters that the European Union (EU) was responsible for their descending incomes, difficulties with health care, inadequate schooling...despite the fact that, in truly impoverished places like Cornwall, only EU grants had kept the wolf from the door for decades. 

At one point, some witless fool had scribbled Brexit memes all over a sign giving the enormous amount of funding for the industrial estate it stood in front of, an industrial estate that provides jobs that Cornwall would not otherwise have had. And believe me, a county that is torn between second-homers using services and not paying taxes for them (second homes are exempt from most taxation) and a dying fishing industry (what have you done for it, Sheryll Murray, the fisherman's false friend?) needs all the help it can get.

And yet, it voted to leave the EU, to regain sovereignty (huh? did the Queen retire without heirs? I didn't know....) and so they wouldn't have to spend a few cents per person on EU dues in return for many times that amount in infrastructure investment in Cornwall by the EU. For god's sake, people, your sickening, stodgy if historic pasty--a food made to carry down into the tin mines of yore--would not have achieved world heritage status without the EU. Does that make a difference? Of course it does; visitors actually pay for the tasteless, greasy, doughy things because of that, increasing Cornish income by a bit. 

So, Torapuke is ridiculous, and yet, it lives on and on, like the last mosquito of summer, apparently immune to sprays and swatters and your imprecations for the fucking insect to get the hell out of your house and leave you in peace.

And so, I have become a member of the Resistance. I don't think I'll get shot, despite my using Twitter to tell fascist oligarch wanker Jacob Rees-Mogg how despicable he is several times a week, or positing that Tyrant Tess, the Perfidious Prime Minister has dementia.

I'm not quite sure how to use visual art for protest, despite being, by now, an old hand at verbal protest. I also make donations to protest organizations. But art...

Jim Carrey, whom I don't like as an actor but do like as an artist, has found a way. Maybe I'll emulate him. Maybe my planned series of animals in hats will actually turn out to be politicians as the animals they resemble. Many cartoonists have portrayed May as a rather weedy and sickly vulture, and that's right on target. But few have done Boris Johnson (pig? easy) or Michael Gove (help me out here; he's too wimpy for any sort of animal....)  

Well, that's the gist of it.  I have to turn my drawing as well as my writing to this project. Not what I had in mind for my last couple of decades on earth. Sigh. But then, we don't always choose our path; sometimes, it chooses us.

Copyright 2019, Laura Harrison McBride

Tea and books: Indian mysteries

 

I'm very fond of this cover; it reminds me of bedspreads my university roommate and I bought from an import store when we were students; my roomie was the daughter of an artist and a librarian...very hip.

Many years ago, I discovered, in a now-closed and long-gone Manhattan bookstore on Columbus Circle, the H.R.F. Keating novels about Inspector Ghote of Mumbai (then still called Bombay by westerners). I loved the stories about the gentle policeman and his somewhat less gentle wife. A brain-trust Ghote was not, and the novels themselves were not particularly redolent of what we seem to view as Indian atmosphere, but the stories were good. Long after reading the whole series, I discovered that Keating had never set foot in India.

I'm a big fan of cozy mysteries, and the Ghote (pronounced go-tay, not goat) fit the bill. But I had found nothing since then until a couple of years ago, when I found the books about Vish Puri, a Delhi private detective, by Tarquin Hall. I read one--devoured it, really. Then the next, and the next and the next. Alas, some time has passed and I have seen no announcements of a new Puri tale. A shame. The portly detective and his intelligent wife and somewhat less attractive mother-in-law, are also dandy books for a break from life. And god knows, with Brexit and Trump, most of us Anglos and Anglo wannabes need that.

But I also found, a while ago, the books by Vaseem Khan about Inspector Chopra and his magical baby elephant, Ganesha. I am awaiting the release of the fifth book on August 8, 2019. August 8 is a propitious day; it is the birthday of both my late maternal grandparents. My grandmother was a great reader of both classic and contemporary mainstream literature; she introduced me to Daphne du Maurier when I was about 12.

My grandfather read at least one hard-boiled detective novel EVERY NIGHT while watching TV--and he knew everything that was happening on the TV, too. He was an accountant and chemist and he always double-tasked, except when the Friday Night Fights were on. Then he just watched, but mainly, I think, because I perched on the arm of his chair while he instructed me in the difference between boxing and pummeling. He rarely read during weekend baseball, although if he picked up a book, we knew the game was lousy.


Last night, I was rooting around the Kindle store for something light to read. I'd begun a nouveau Campion novel, and it is pretty good; Mike Ripley does almost as good a job as the originator, Margery Allingham. But something was not quite right. Maybe reading about Britain in the 1970s--when Albert Campion had become an old man and was not the charming creature Peter Davison played in the series set in the 1930s and filmed in the 1970s--is not doing it for me in this age of Brexit, the ludicrous attempt to return to an earlier, and much less prosperous, time.

I came across Trouble in Nuala by Harriet Steel. It is the first in five (so far) books about Inspector DeSilva of the Sri Lankan police, although, as the books are set in the mid-1930s, it was the Ceylon police force. Steel, like H.R.F. Keating, has apparently not set foot anywhere near the Indian subcontinent or its close neighbors, being from London, Wiltshire and Surrey in that order. 

But her touch is sure.  I didn't begin the book until this afternoon, when I got into bed to restore myself with fiction, as I had some overworked muscles and there is no sun outside. 

DeSilva is a lovely Ceylonese gentleman, married to an Englishwoman who had gone to Ceylon as a governess. As they were both unmarried and in their forties when they met, there was no early-20th century problem about racial intermarriage as there would be no children. So, as Steel says, they were free to do as they liked, ending up with the courteous but deeply loving kind of marriage one wants in a cozy mystery.


Apparently, Steel's book is restoring me. I got out of bed, thinking that perhaps my legs wouldn't hurt so much if I did something artsy, instead of politics-oriented. Plus, my husband had set up my new computer desk and installed my new keyboard, so perhaps writing would not be so physically uncomfortable. And I had begun to think about dinner, which has suddenly become not plain roast chicken breasts and petit pois, but curry-honey baked chicken and petit pois with sauteed mushrooms, lightly browned coconut flakes and yogurt. To be followed by roti with fresh pears. OK, that's a lie, just to continue the subcontinental theme. It will be crepes with pears and clotted cream.

If you are a cozy mystery fan, and like a touch of the exotic, I'd recommend any of these series--the old and somewhat stilted (by comparison) Ghote books, the Vish Puri adventures, the very charming and utterly humane Chopra/Baby Ganesha mysteries, or the slightly off-the-beaten-subcontinental-track DeSilva series.

Frankly, I hope the Puri, Chopra/Ganesha and DeSilva series live long and prosper, with many, many offspring, as befits a family in the area of the Indian subcontinent. I'm greedy for interesting, charming light and cozy mysteries, and it doesn't get much better than this group.

It might be spring

It might be spring

by Laura Harrison McBride

We had no lilacs at our city house in France--so I painted some on the security gate on our front window.

A funny winter, this last. Hardly

any cold weather. What there

was seemed colder than usual.

Still, the camellias began to bloom

in January. The white one I see

driving home from Waitrose

flowered at the appointed time. But

the snowdrops were late. The

lipstick-coloured camellias—the

Kiss Me Corals and Strike Me Pinks--

have only been out a week or so. No

matter; they are dropping dead heads

as usual, littering the ground below

with mushy brown dying flowers. They're

a mess, camellias are, after they bloom.

I don't like them.

I like neater plants—for instance, lilacs,

whose blossoms just get dry if they are

left unpicked. Not in this house, of course.

I pick all the lilacs. I would pick every lilac

there was, if I could. I'd bury my nose

in an armful of lilacs, the old lavender

kind—no use for white or deep purple

or red-purple because they smell funny,

not like lilacs.

I live here for the lilacs. After a nomad's

life for sixty years, I've got three planted,

an old traditional, a miniature Syrian

(dark purple, sigh) and a topiary old purple

lilac in a tub on the deck. I wonder if any

will give me armloads of blooms before

I die. It takes a while for a bush to reach

armload status, and—after eight years

since the first was planted—we are not there yet.

They say people live until a special event

happens in their lives, one they've waited for.

A wedding, a birth, a commemoration.
Something. For me, it will be lilacs, tons

of lilacs on a bush as big and giving as the one

in my grandmother's backyard 70 years ago,

hard against the back fence, competing

for space with an old-fashioned climbing

rose bush, and farther off, a Rose of

Sharon. I hated the Rose of Sharon. It

drew bees, and did nothing at all

of any use. I liked the roses.

But the lilacs. Last year, when we were in

France in the spring and away from my lilacs,

I made Simon climb down into a gully off a road

we often traveled and pick me the last two

blossoms on an abandoned bush. He didn't

want to; he felt it was stealing. I argued, told

him if anyone cared for the bush gone rogue,

they'd have come to pick the blossoms before

they mainly died. In the end, I prevailed.

But it wasn't pretty.

That's how much I love lilacs.

Copyright 2019, Laura Harrison McBride

Suffer the children

 

Children survivors of Auschwitz

Suffer the children

I'm hearing the screaming this morning. The

screams of Jamal Kashoggi as he was

hacked apart for telling the truth, and

wanting to marry his beloved lady.

I'm hearing the silent screams of the children

in the “showers” of Auschwitz as the

Third Reich ended innocent lives of Jews,

gypsies, Catholics, the disabled.

I'm hearing the impassioned wails of mothers

separated from their children, sent back to

South America without the young they bore

and nurtured and tried to bring to a promised land....

The land has lost its promise.

It survived its massacre of the Algonquin,

the Sioux, and all the other unique people

and cultures of North America.

It survived its enslavement of bewildered

souls transported forcibly from Africa, where

they had ruled the hostile jungles, but could not

overcome the more hostile—and well-armed--

Confederate slavers.

It struggles, now, to survive a platoon of

cockamamie self-styled pastors whose

similarity to their own saviour is as close as

is mine and yours to a rabid dog.

It struggles to survive an educational system

rendered impotent so George Bush's wastrel

brother could sell computers and standardized

tests.

It struggles to survive a health-care system in which

only the wealthy survive, thus ensuring that the next

generation will be saddled with too many useless, lazy

supernumerary trust-fund people for even the brawniest

economy to support. Unless, of course, the brawny workers

die out, leaving the helpless wealthy to carry on, which

equals the end of America.

It struggles with memory loss. Some don't even know

what the Holocaust was. Some forget that Russia has never

been anyone's friend, never. Not in all of recorded history.

And not now.

The population struggles to remember that they, too, can die

hungry and alone, unwanted and terrified. Indeed,

they don't understand that that end is more likely than

dying a self-made millionaire, a celebrity, or even

a Kardashian. Which is their dream, supported by

a culture that knows it is not possible, not for 99.999999%

of them, but profits on promoting the falsehood.

They don't struggle with uncertainty. Having to weigh

the relative merits of various courses of action is beyond

their pay grade. They lack the education to do it. Their

spiritual leaders are the cockamamie clergy, insisting

that Jesus would consign black or brown or yellow

people to earthly perdition despite abundant evidence

to the contrary in their own holy books. They do not

struggle with uncertainty; they are sure that black is white

and good is bad and they will arm themselves to the

teeth to make the rest of us believe it. They bear the

mark of Satan, all right, but also the vacant face of

the stupid person.

“Suffer the little children to come unto me”

does not mean, as one of the hollow clergy said recently,

excusing the Border Patrol, to make children suffer.

Suffer, there, means to allow. But...they are uneducated,

the clergy and their followers. And so, the words

of a man of peace are used as an excuse for acts so vile

that I cannot even list them without first taking strong drink.

I would scream. I do scream. My body, racked with pain

these two years since the UK referendum and Trump,

vibrates to the discordant notes—although discordant sounds

not strong enough—of the misery of two peoples, the British

and the American. There is no consensus on what is causing

my pain, but I know. It is the spectre of evil, settling on us

like a poison-laden mist. When it lifts, the physical pain will, too.

I wish I could pray.

Maybe they—we—deserve this misery, the misery that

has tripled homelessness, made prescriptions for anti-depressants

skyrocket. We spent out attention elsewhere

when the robbers were filling their satchels with our culture,

and enticing our politicians to join in the robbery. We spent our

attention elsewhere when the disaffected claimed all

politicians are the same, all clergy fools. There are some of

each, but we consigned all of them to the trash heap, bidden by

people too lazy to think, to discern, to decide, to act when

action was demanded.

It is our own fault, the vile situation in two nations. We

failed to notice the Russian runt as he weaved in and

out among honest, decent leaders. (Don't go there. Clinton

was a man, not a demon. Blair was a middle ground between

cockamamie socialism and the Tories, and not faultless.

In short, a man.) We must learn to accept partially flawed

leaders lest we get totally flawed ones, evil ones like Trump

and May.

Are you perfect? But are you good? Do you try? Are you kind?

There, then. How can we expect more in our leaders. Goodness,

energy, humanity. I'd settle for that.

I will settle for that and celebrate it if the US and the UK survive.

I give it no more than 50/50 odds. And I'm still hearing the screaming.

Stained glass: Alfred Handel, d. 1946[1], photo: Toby Hudson [CC BY-SA 3.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)]

 

 

C. 2018, Laura Harrison McBride