Art Road Trip: Bennington Vermont II

BENNINGTON/NORTH BENNINGTON OUTDOOR SCULPTURE SHOW

Bennington and North Bennington, Vermont

Through November 7, 2021.

 

Summer and Fall are seasons to be outside. If you’re in southern Vermont any time before November 7, swing by the Bennington Art Museum and partake of its 28 outdoor sculptures and then make your way to North Bennington to see 40 more. (You can easily find its grand old rail station, where you can park, and where you can view most of the village’s works on display. (The bulk of them are across the street in a field beside the Post Office.)

 

You probably won’t know most of the artists’ names and that’s part of the fun. It means that you can take in each work without preconceptions. There is often a tendency to “collect” viewings of famous artists, by which I mean we’ve “seen” works by folks such as Louise Bourgeois, Judy Chicago, Jeff Koons, Henry Moore, Picasso, Henry Moore, or Auguste Rodin when all we’ve really done is a quick walk-by. Those artists we don’t know invite us to stop, look deeper, and make up our minds what we think of the work.

 

 

The Bennington works are occasionally political–Matthew Perry’s “Waiting (for Trayvon Martin) or Jose Crillo’s “Lonesome George” * for example–but most of it is ironic or/and whimsical. But enough words from me. Below are some pictures that should entice you to put Vermont on your journey itinerary. 

 

 

 

 

 

Rob Weir

 

*Lonesome George was a Galapagos tortoise who died at the age of 102 and is thought to be the last of his particular species.

 

Small Towns: North Bennington, Vermont

 

 

 

I have no idea how many times I’ve been to Bennington, Vermont, but until recently I hadn’t been to North Bennington since the early 1980s. I visited again about a month ago to see an outdoor sculpture show shared with Bennington. If you like small towns, North Bennington is a good one.

 

It’s indeed a wee place–just 1,697 residents. The village is best known as the home of Bennington College, an institution slowly recovering from a nasty labor crisis, a boycott, and a brief loss of accreditation. In 1994, Bennington College abruptly dismissed 27 faculty members and instantly gained the informal nickname of “Scab College.” It was quite a shock for what was once one of the most prestigious (and expensive) higher ed institutions in America. The fallout was so severe that it nearly went under. In 2000, the college was forced to pay a sizable settlement to the wronged faculty members, though somehow the controversial president was retained. (I guess being an administrator means never having to say you’re sorry!).

 

 

 

These days Bennington College is better known for running the Robert Frost homestead in Shaftsbury, about 5 minutes from the grounds officially, though the driveway onto its grounds is one of the longest I’ve ever seen. It’s a tidy campus, but nothing all that special, so a quick drive through is all you’ll need. After that, I recommend that you head to The Roasted Bean, a really nice coffee shop with great baked goods. Assuming we ever get back to “normal,” there’s also a nice restaurant in the building for nighttime meals called Pangaea. The complex is on Main Street across from the library and a handsome fountain and on the intersection that takes you to the Park-McCollough House.

 

 

 

The Park-McCullough is a grand old Second Empire style Victorian 35-room mansion. It was built for Trenor [sic] Park in 1864. Park made his fortune as an overseer for the mining interests of John C. Frémont, the controversial California politician who came within a whisker of becoming elected president in 1856. Imagine how history would have changed had he, not Abraham Lincoln four years later, been elected the first Republican president. (In my view, Frémont was an unstable egoist. He would have been preferable to the deplorable James Buchanan, but he was certainly no Lincoln.)

 

 

 

As for the house, it’s lovely. The McCullough part of the hyphen came the way most do among wealthy families. That is, a Park daughter married into the rich McCullough clan, specifically John G. McCullough, who was a Vermont governor between 1902-04. Prior to that, he was a Philadelphia lawyer and a California politician. Even if you don’t wish to partake of an indoor tour, the grounds are sylvan and inviting. The house itself is on the National Register of Historic Places.

 

North Bennington has a surprising number of industries for a small town. Gun drills, clothes hangers, and snowshoes (Dion) are made there. That’s largely because of dams and swift flowing water in parts of the Walloomsac River. You can walk a block up from The Roasted Bean and see it tumbling over a spillway with a scenic pond behind it. As you’re driving out of the village back to Bennington, there are several covered bridges favored by shutterbugs.  

 

 

 

North Bennington’s crown jewel, though, is its 1880 railroad station. It’s also a Second Empire building and if you need a visible representation of how railroads used to rule the transportation roost, this is it. The village doesn’t currently have passenger service, though negotiations are underway to create an Amtrak link to Albany, New York. If that happens, though, the 1880 station probably won’t be used; it has been repurposed as both village offices and a community center. 

 

 

Even if you only spend a few hours in the region, you’ll be glad you did. Unlike Bennington, its namesake neighbor, there is a paucity of chain franchises. This gives North Bennington “charm,” one of the things people from away come to New England to see.

 

Rob Weir  

CODA the Most Moving Film of the Summer

 

CODA (2021)

Directed by Sian Heder

Pathé, Vendôme, Apple + TV, 111 minutes, PG-13 (language, adult situations)

In English and sign language

★★★★

   

 

At last! A feel-good summer movie that’s not a cartoon, action film, or comedy for those with the IQ of a seven-year-old. CODA is predictable and tries to make you reach for the tissue box, but its heart is in the right place. It has already won four awards at Sundance and is sure to carry off a few more prizes. That’s because it is well-acted throughout and Emilia Jones, its main character, is so good she turns heads.

 

If you wonder about the French production companies and why it features an Irish actor (Ferdia Walsh-Peelo), a Mexican principal (Eugenio Derbez), and a Canadian (Amy Forsyth), it’s because the film is a remake of La Famille Bélier, a 2014 French release. Two writers from that film cowrote the latest production, which had a Covid-related online release that did so well in Europe that Apple TV + purchased North American distribution rights. It’s about Ruby Rossi (Jones), a reclusive 17-year-old high school senior who loves to sing, but has deaf parents. CODA–all uppercase–stands for Child Of Deaf Adults. Being a CODA is tougher than you might imagine. My first professional job out of college was as a juvenile probation officer. One of my most challenging clients was a CODA who was the ears and voice for his parents. He acted out in part because of the frustration involved in not being allowed to have a conventional childhood.

 

CODA is set in Gloucester, Massachusetts. Frank (Troy Kotsur) and Jackie Rossi (Marlee Matlin), their deaf son Leo (Daniel Durant), and his hearing younger sister Ruby are a fishing family. Ruby’s daily routine involves waking up at 3 am, tossing on her clothes, waking the rest of her family, and making her way to the pre-dawn pier with her dad and brother to cruise miles out to sea. On good days she returns home in time to get ready for school; on the bad ones, she pedals her bike like mad and hits the high school halls smelling of the catch. Needless to say, she’s not popular–more like the butt of jokes and mean-spirited ridicule. Her only real friend is Gertie (Forsyth), who is a bit slutty and thinks Leo is hot. Ruby’s life takes an unexpected turn when she impulsively signs up for Chorus when seeking a gut course to fill out her senior schedule. She’s petrified of her peers, but music teacher Bernardo Villalobos (Derbez) knows talent when he hears it. Derbez plays a stock character: cranky tough love teacher who tells Ruby and a talented peer, Miles (Walsh-Peelo) either to excel or stop wasting his time. It’s not that he doesn’t care about Ruby’s challenges, rather he thinks she can get a scholarship to Boston’s Berklee College of Music if she drives herself to the max. Ruby is like the kid I used to supervise; she hasn’t had the luxury of being a child or an adolescent.

 

Try going your own way when you are the ears for your entire family, and a close one at that. Frank and Ruby are nuts about each other, though they are not exactly versed in social etiquette, and Leo is salt of the earth. CODA also tackles the challenges of making a living from the sea in an age of overfishing, regulation, rip-off vendors, and fishing families forced to compete against each other. Try arguing with a vendor if you can’t hear. Leo can at least read lips, but he still can’t communicate with anyone who doesn’t know ASL (American Sign Language).  Can anything possibly go right for the Rossis? Will Ruby and Miles be able to pull off the duet Villalobos wants them to rehearse? Will Gloucester’s blue-collar seafaring community ever embrace the Rossi family? Does Ruby get her shot at Berklee?

 

Curmudgeons have criticized CODA for being paint-by-the-numbers. Okay, it is! It’s also deeply satisfying, sharply written, funny, and doles out melodrama in small enough doses that we don’t gag. As most know, Marlee Matlin is indeed deaf. She threatened to quit the production unless other deaf actors were cast, which led to Kotsur and Durant coming aboard. All three are wonderful, with Kotsur and Matlin very endearing together. The film, though, is stolen by Emilia Jones, hitherto known for the Netflix series Locke and Key. Not for long. She not only acts, she puts in the work to shine. She spent eight months while on the TV series taking voice lessons and learning ASL and she’s bloody good at both.

 

Yeah, yeah, the film’s a remake with a change of location and echoes of other CODA movies, plus doses of Fame and Once goes to high school. It’s also a terrific ensemble film and so inspiring you can reach for that tissue box without shame.

 

Rob Weir       

Music Round Up: Vanessa Peters, Modeste Hugues, Mags McCarthy, Lia Sampai and More

 

Vanesa Peters

Modern Age

★★★★

 

Ahh! A full-throated, toss-the-head-back and let-‘er-rip female vocalist. Vanessa Peters has won praise before on this blog for her Foxhole Prayers release, and Modern Age is another winner. This Covid-delayed release–she and husband/bandmate Rip Rowan were in Italy when things shut down–was worth the wait. Maybe the final track “Still GotTime” says it all: Well, get a hold of yourself/’Cause the world isn’t ending yet. Modern Age is a high-octane release. Peters opens big with the title track, a memory song and a lamentation on current values–As soon as it’s made, it gets thrown away–and a call to get back to things that matter. Peters occasionally lets the production get the better of her–there’s too much going on in “Make up My Mind”–but she has the capacity to smash through any mix when she puts her mind to it. For instance, she punches through the thump, thump percussion of “Crazymaker” and orchestrates the mix on “Never Really Gone.” There’s a Patty Griffin vibe to “The Weight of This” and a soulful-without-being-soul feel to “Valley of the Ashes.” I really liked this record, though it could use more change of pace such as we hear in “The Band Played On,” but the energy… the voice…

 

Sakili

Creole Sounds from the Indian Ocean

★

 

 

 

I’ve always enjoyed hearing Cajun and Creole music live because of its rumbustious ardor and its invitation to bust loose. It is, however, a difficult genre to capture on recordings. When we listen, we hear sloppiness. I was curious to see what Sakili would bring to the table. The trio is from Rodrigues Island, a speck that’s part of Mauritius, which lies 350 miles to the west. Their Creole Sounds from the Indian Ocean is aptly named in that they speak a pidgin French/English blend and draw upon various musical styles: polkas, waltzes, two-steps, mazurkas, East African traditions…. They are not, however, for all tastes. Two tracks will allow you to decide what you think. “Mové piti” is a simple tune with hand drum, box guitar, and accordion, the latter driving the melody. It evinces a beach party more than a studio production. Also try “Flanbwayan Laval” from the linked live show in Brussels. You can see the vibe they’re after, but the vocals are occasionally sour and the composition more jam than polish. I’m sorry to say that Sakili quickly lost my interest. 

 

Modeste Hugues and Kilema

Green World: Songs from Madagascar

★★★ ½ 

 

 

 

I couldn’t help but compare the previous release to this one. The title is meant to be taken literally. These two gentlemen hail from the big East African island of Madagascar. Large is no protection against climate change, the subject of many of their songs. It might be a good thing if you don’t speak Malagasy or hear the French buried in the instrumentation, as the sunny nature of the melodies is a respite from the seriousness of their themes. “Ala mainstro” is a blend of soft lead vocals from Hugues with contrasting the sharper toned but precisely fingered zither from Kilema. The combination produces a swaying, hypnotic sensation. The instrumentation in “Tambanivolo” has a rain-like quality and the groove so smooth that it’s easy to lose yourself in it and fail to notice that Hugues and his guitar lie in wait and unleash short, subtle runs and barres that texture the piece. “Holy hiroro” is an instrumental with a resonant and redundant opening, but the composition commands careful listening as it gets richer in small steps. “Kaseseky” is another in the same vein. The only downside is that this recording can sound like much of a muchness if swallowed whole. But there is no denying the duo’s skill and professionalism.

 

 

Short Cuts:

 

Mags McCarthy is Irish and plays the fiddle, but she made the leap from Cork to Nashville, where she is trying to gain traction as a country performer. If verve alone can do the job, hers is a name to watch. Her video for “Bump” won’t win any PC awards, but is has so much high octane that it threatens to combust. There’s also just enough Celtic flair to it to make it unique in a town of sound-alikes. Ditto her cover of Dolly Parton’s “Light of aClear Blue Morning.” The cow milking in this video is no gimmick; she grew extracting fluids from bovines. If you still doubt the power of her voice, “Strong Enough” ought to convince you. We still have Dolly, though, so one hopes McCarthy will be comfortable being Mags instead.

 

It’s late summer, but if you like pensive music, check out Baluji Shrivastav and his Voice of Flowers: Spring Ragas from India. This 70-year-old Indian/British musician has been an exemplar of musical distinction for so long that he was awarded an MBE (Most Excellent Order of the British Empire). If you’re not familiar with ragas, they are a classical Indian form that is formal in structure but allow for improvisation. Such pieces take their time to take shape and are not for the impatient. Shrivastav is a master of sitar, dilruba (a bowed sitar), surbahar (bass sitar), and various percussion instruments. Try tracks such as “Raga Shuddha Vasant (Ecstasy of Spring)” or “Celebration” and see where they take you. He often put me in mind of the late Ravi Shankar.

 

If you like glorious female voices, you’ll love Barcelona’s Lia Sampai. Her recent EP Amagatalls de Ilum translates “Light Hiding Places” and comes from “La Nina,” a song she penned with musical partner Adrià Pagès (guitar). It is a fragile, sometimes sad, ditty about a girl hiding in the light and longing to break free. It is a metaphor for becoming a woman and ends on a happy note. Try also the joyful “LaCaixeta” in which we hear Sampai’s bell-like vocals, percussive thumps from Pagès that give way to skillful melody lines on Spanish guitar, and (eventually) a circle of hand clapping to accompany Sampai’s dramatic and intimate vocals. Hers is a clear, powerful voice that will stay with you long after the last note fades. 

 

 Rob Weir

WÖR: Artist of the Month August 2021

 

WÖR

About Towers

Naxos

 

Let’s travel to Belgium for our artist of the month. WÖR–I think it’s Flemish for “word,” but you try finding a Flemish-to-English dictionary–is a quintet that does retro music. Its new release About Towers is subtitled “New Energy for Old Belgian Music.” By that they mean, really old; an earlier album was titled Back to the 1780s. They are so retro that even though some of their music sounds faintly Celtic or even ambient in a New Age sort of way, all 14 tracks on About Towers have been arranged for chamber music and one tracked it titled “Aria.” The closest analogous band in recent memory that pops to mind is the now-defunct French ensemble Malicorne, which was anchored by Gabriel Yacoub and recorded on Elektra, which was gobbled up in 2004 .  

 

WÖR is an all-instrumental outfit that amplifies instruments that don’t conventionally go together: banjo, nylon-string guitar, accordion, fiddle, Flemish bagpipes, musette, and baritone and soprano saxophones. Electrification allows softer instruments to compete with the brass, but it also allows WÖR to bend pitches. For instance, on “Beyaert.” Pietererjan Van Kerckhoven’s pipes evoke a hurdy gurdy and Breton music, though neither is the case. In another what-are-we-really-hearing scenario, banjo and guitar notes sound like gentle rain on “Ketting,” but the soprano sax like a recorder. The piece is a chamber music/court dance mashup until Fabio Di Meo comes in with robust baritone sax and Joroen Goegebuer lets loose with some unrestrained fiddling. Yet the same piece is like numerous WÖR compositions in that it takes us from pastoral to lively and back to pastoral. Whenever WÖR need to anchor compositions in ways that many bands do with bass or percussion, they turn to the baritone sax or amped foot stomps.

 

“Climate March” is indeed a march, but a layered one. It’s not really a suite, but its structure suggests one. Another in a similar vein is “Jolies Filles,” which is drifting in a good way. As I type this, summer is winding down a bit but “Jolies Filles” put me in mind of celebrating the lightness of spring. It’s like the flip side of “Ketting” in that it unfolds slowly, gathers pace, tamps down the tempo, then builds it up again. Another I really liked is the soothing “Cecilia.” Jonas Scheys’ banjo rings like a bell and Bert Ruymbeek’s accordion sprays are as sweet as those from the musette. (The musette is not blown like many bagpipes and this makes it more akin to an oboe than to, say, the Highland bagpipes.)

 

Towers is a breath of fresh air at a time in which too many bands sound alike or draw from the same bag of tricks. At present there are a limited number of audio/video clips from the new album, but if you’d like to get a sense of what WÖR sounds like live, try “Marcel” from the 2016 Shetland Folk Festival, a live performance of “VB7ibis,” or a clip from Folk at the Froize. These three sets are not on “Towers” and have more stage energy, but they give an idea of the styles and compositional twists from this talented Belgian band.   

 

Rob Weir

Interior Chinatown Brilliant and Moving

 

INTERIOR CHINATOWN (2020)

By Charles Yu

Pantheon Books, 271 pages.

★★★★★

 

 

Charles Yu won the National Book Award for Interior Chinatown, an honor well deserved. This book is many things: a tragedy, a black comedy, a love story, a script, a family saga, a character study, an extended metaphor, and an imaginative work that blurs fiction and reality. Somewhat controversially, it’s also a backdoor poke at the Black Lives Matter movement in that it communicates complaints from yellow, red, brown, working class, and female Americans collectively crying out, “What about us?”

 

Lest you think the last remark insensitive, consider Yu’s novelistic device. He follows the trials, temporary triumphs, and return to travail of Willis Wu, a Chinese-American actor who eventually lands bit roles and a short-lived part in a TV series titled Black and White. It’s one of those ubiquitous shows/movies/plays in which a white and black character are thrown together, crack denigrating jokes, and eventually discover their common humanity. Think as you wish about the premises of such productions; Yu’s goal is to remind us that Asians are often dumped into stereotypical baskets. His character grew up in San Francisco’s Chinatown and both of his parents were also actors. Willis details the kind of roles they performed, a veritable stock character sampler whose labels say it all: Generic Asian Man, Pretty Oriental Flower, Background Oriental Man, Young Dragon Lady, Waiter, Old Asian Woman, Wizened Chinese Man, Kung Fu Master…. The last of these, in Wu’s mind, is the ultimate status, a shorthand for saying the character is respected and feared. He longs to become “Kung Fu Guy.”

 

The author trades in stereotypes for the purpose of shedding light on them. Yu divides his novel into seven “acts,” as much of the book is written as if it were script material from Black and White, a show in which those of other hues are either invisible or exist only to accentuate the show’s title—as if America is biracial rather than multiracial. It’s all very confusing for Willis, who only knows he’s “yellow” when someone points it out to him. It becomes even more baffling when his actress girlfriend (and later, wife) Karen Lee gets the same treatment, though she is staggeringly beautiful and appears ethnically ambiguous. It’s not a reveal to say that all of this serves to undermine the most enduring Asian stereotype, the “model minority.” It would be difficult to be a harder worker than Willis, but worldly success is another matter.

 

As in many novels, Yu gives us a multivalent title. That is, his “interior” Chinatown can be understood as a geographical location, a set of historical circumstances, a locus of memory, mental baggage, and a ball and chain he can’t loosen. It’s no wonder that Willis has a love/hate relationship with Chinatown. It’s a place where his ethnicity is accepted, but if he accepts it in return, he can’t be fully “American.” Imagine the burden and imagine again the toll it could exact.

 

Actually, you don’t have to; Yu’s tale will spell it out for you. He’ll even offer some easy-to-digest sociological theory to add depth. Yu peppers his work with quotes from Erving Goffman (1922-82), a symbolic interactionist scholar who studied rituals, social dramaturgy, and signs long before they became fashionable. Goffman’s appearance signals (if I might!) that among the things that dazzled the National Book Award committee is that Yu’s book doesn’t fit snuggly into conventional fiction pigeonholes. As noted above, some of it is written as script material from Black and White, but it’s also peppered with quotes, court case material, and invented-but-rings-true dialogue. Overall, it reads as a template for what stream of consciousness writing ought to be rather than the incomprehensible mess it too often is.

 

Apply any descriptor you wish. Interior Chinatown is an important book, a beautifully written one, an emotional experience, and an unforgettable journey.

 

Rob Weir

 

 

Klara and the Sun: Another Brilliant Ishiguro Novel

KLARA AND THE SUN (2021)

By Kazuo Ishiguro

Random House/Penguin, 307 pages

★★★★★

 

 

 

There are reasons why Japanese-born British author Kazuo Ishiguro has won most of the major awards a novelist can, including the Whitbread, the Arthur C. Clarke, the Man Booker, and a Nobel. He manages to be an amazing stylist without being pretentious, and he never repeats himself thematically. Consider just a few of his subjects: the Sino-Japanese War (When We Were Orphans), the British aristocracy (Remains of the Day), and a dystopian in which children are raised to become organ donors (Never Let Me Go).

 

In Klara and the Sun, Ishiguro turns to what we construe to be the very near future. AI (Artificial Intelligence) has reached advanced levels, and genetic engineering has become commonplace. The titular character is an AF (Artificial Friend), which are all the rage as companions for children bred for superior intellect. Klara has not yet found a home because she’s an older model. There’s something about her, though, that attracts the eye of young Josie, who doesn’t have many friends other than Rick, who has never been “lifted” and comes from a difficult family situation. In addition, Josie’s sister, Sal, is deceased. Chrissie, Josie’s ambitious mother, wants her daughter to get one of the sleek new B3 models, but Josie insists on buying Klara.

 

For an android like Klara, the Sun is godlike, as it replenishes her batteries. She’s a bundle of wires and programming capable of high-level thinking, but Klara is essentially a child, as she knows little of the world except what she observed through the store display window. You will be charmed by Klara, how she learns, what she “feels,” and her skewed look at the world–phones are “oblongs,” for example, and she misreads illogical social situations. Among Klara’s impressions is that the “Cootings Machine”–the name on a piece of construction equipment–is evil and environmentally destructive.

 

Klara is an excellent AF to Josie, who is often ill, perhaps as Chrissie fears, mortally so. We also learn that Chrissie’s ex-husband, Paul, has concerns about how his daughters have been raised. He comes off as a cross between a hippie, a survivalist, and a Luddite, but maybe he’s not a naïf. He is particularly concerned when Chrissie begins taking Josie to a painter named Calpaldi, who also did Sal’s portrait before she died. Is more than painting taking place inside his studio?

 

Klara and the Sun is a fascinating exploration of “humanity.” The novel reminded me of a Star Trek Next Generation episode titled “The Measure of a Man” in which scientist Bruce Maddox wishes to disassemble Data to see if he can be replicated. After all, Data is just a “machine.” Is Klara just a “’bot?” How do we measure humanity? Klara learns, is self-aware, and her programmed emotions are often superior to those fired by biological receptors and neurons. What about GMOs like Josie? Does live birth make her more human than a manufactured sentient being? Once DNA is altered, is a biological child still fully human? Who cares more for Josie: her status-obsessed mother, or a robot who implores the Sun to heal Josie and engages in an unusual escapade she thinks will help? When Calpaldi opines that, “there’s nothing so unique” about humans that “our modern tools can’t excavate, copy, and transfer,” is he offering a dose of harsh truth, or setting the stage for the end of the Anthropocene?

 

What a book! Even if you think you don’t like science fiction, Ishiguro will take you on an intellectual journey that raises many questions and trusts readers to answer them. Many years ago, novelist Philip K. Dick queried whether androids had souls in the ways humans conceptualized them. If consciousness is a measure, Ishiguro suggests that placing robots in the service of a biological species might be a form of enslavement. Is it okay to discard/dismantle a robot whose neural networks continue to function? In our time, much has been about climate change, plague, and war. Maybe this is our version of Data’s dilemma and Calpaldi’s assertion.

 

As only the most confident writers can do, Ishiguro prefers open-ended possibilities to dogmatism. If, however, we believe what AI boosters say, the conundrums Ishiguro posits are ones that will soon jump from the pages of science fiction and into the realms of ethics and politics– two “human” pursuits that historically have not been good friends, AF or biological.

 

Rob Weir