Southern Bookman

Farewell, Terry Massar, champion for Buckhead children

Terry didn't look well the last time I saw him a couple of months ago.

He sat at his desk at Peachtree Presbyterian Church as usual. After we traded stories about our common a-fib affliction, Terry told me he was undergoing chemotherapy for cancer.

The longtime director of the youth sports program at Peachtree Presbyterian, Terry Massar recently lost his battle. He passed away at age 74, surrounded by his loving family, according to his Atlanta Journal-Constitution obituary.

Generations of Atlanta children learned lessons of teamwork and sportsmanship playing in Terry's youth leagues. Terry was a smiling presence on wintertime Saturdays as girls and boys teams from elementary age to high school played simultaneous games on the church's two courts. Electric scoreboards and refs in zebra shirts calling fouls added to the excitement as dads, moms and siblings cheered from the gym's stands.

Each of my children played on PPC teams, from early childhood through middle school. I also know Terry's son, Todd, who helped coach my daughter's soccer team at North Atlanta High, and coached the boys' team there.

After my children had grown, I saw Terry often when I went to work out at Peachtree Presbyterian Church's gym. I always stopped by Terry's desk near the church's entrance to chat. One frequent topic was college sports; Terry loved his Georgia Tech Yellow Jackets.

Terry took pride in being a native Atlantan, increasingly rare in a city of transplants. He grew up near Georgia Tech in the Home Park neighborhood, developed in 1901 for Atlantic Steel workers. He was a championship golfer for the Fighting Irish of Home Park's O'Keefe High, one of Atlanta's long vanished neighborhood schools. Terry later played for Tech, and captained Georgia State's golf team. Terry also played for awhile on the PGA tour, according to his obituary.

Several Saturdays earlier this year, I witnessed the basketball league's pleasant confusion, unchanged from when my kids played at the church decades before. The youngsters arrived and departed in their multicolored PPC uniforms, shepherded by beaming parents and grandparents, some of whom had probably played there themselves.

Terry built a program of continuity, one of the enduring Buckhead rituals of childhood and family. Whenever I see a youngster dribbling or making a bucket at a PPC game, I'll imagine Terry smiling.

 

 

 

Sargent's "Portrait of Madame X" enhances poignant "This Is Us" episode

My heart melted when John Singer Sargent's "Portrait of Madame X" appeared on Tuesday night's "This Is Us."

Sargent's alluring 1884 portrait was revealed as the painting Rebecca Pearson had longed to see since she first viewed it at New York City's Metropolitan Museum as a little girl. The episode details Rebecca's thwarted attempts to see the painting during later trips to New York City with her Pearson family.

In one of the show's dazzling twists, we discover that the little Rebecca was mesmerized by a woman looking at the painting for hours as much as the artwork itself. The woman in firs and a pillbox hat epitomizes New York City glamour in the early 1960s.

The show ends with the now aging Rebecca seeing the painting at last. Suffering from the early stages of Alzheimer's, she stares at the work, seeking to recapture her early revelation of feminine glamour and sophistication. Sargent's "Portrait of Madame X" reflects that vision of beauty.

Unfolding like a series of New Yorker short stories, the episode examines aging, family love and conflict, the appeal of art, mental illness and the shadow of death. The recent storylines about Kevin's relationship with Rebecca have raised the show's already excellent writing to an even higher level.

New York City's romance and elegance glow during the episode. it's a valentine to the city and its hallmarks, from the subway to its hotels, parks, museums and restaurants. Even the city's street-food stands have symbolic resonance.

The "This Is Us" episode was the latest moment in the cultural spotlight for Sargent. His portrait, "Dr. Pozzi at Home" adorns the cover of Julian Barnes' recently published "The Man in the Red Coat," a biography of Dr. Samuel de Pozzi, a leading physician during Paris' "Belle Epoque" era from the late 19th century until the start of World War I.

A member of the sophisticated upper classes captured in Proust's novels, Pozzi was an obstetrician known for his medical innovations. He also gained a reputation as a sexual pirate from his many affairs with women, including the actress Sarah Bernhardt.

Sargent was also a member of Paris' dazzling high society. His "Portrait of Madame X," showing the young wife Virginie Amelie Avegno Gautreau, caused a scandal with its revealing dress and her voluptuous figure, a shock even for sophisticated Paris. The artist was forced to move to London, where he was a close friend of Henry James and Oscar Wilde.

I fell in love with Sargent's work when I saw his beautiful portrait of "Lady Agnew of Lochnar" at the Frick Museum in New York City several years ago. The painting's sumptuous colors made me want to look at it for hours, like the lady in "This Is Us."

Later, I was amazed at viewing Sargent's World War I battlefield drawings in an exhibit at Nashville's Frist Museum. The drawings capture the brutal reality of battle as well as Goya's "Disasters of War." Moving away from the vivid colors of Sargent's portraits, the World War I pieces have a somber tone that reveals the horror of soldiers' life in the trenches.

Sargent's reputation declined with the advent of modernism and abstract painting. In recent years, appreciation of his work has grown. He's a master whose haunting portraits capture the fragility of human life, ravaged by time.

David Talbot finds hope in stroke recovery

San Francisco writer David Talbot's recovery from the stroke he suffered in 2017 led to spiritual rebirth and renewed political activism.

Talbot's "Between Heaven and Hell" recounts his experience as a stroke survivor, from agonizing days in the hospital to coping with physical difficulties when he arrived home.

The author of the San Francisco history "Season of the Witch" and founder of the Salon news site says his recovery heightened his appreciation of life and tolerance for others.

Rooted in Facebook posts, the book remains lighthearted in recounting his challenges. Humor and appreciation for care-givers and family members are dominant themes.

Not free from baby-boomer self-absorption, the book highlights small triumphs and gratitude for daily blessings. The pleasures of food, music and literature lessen his struggles.

As his healing progresses, Talbot renews his commitment to political activism, expressing hope that citizen involvement can bring progressive change. While touching upon the Trump administration's assaults on the Constitution, Talbot focuses on his beloved San Francisco's increasing economic disparities and loss of bohemian spirit.

Biographical vignettes include a brief overview of his founding of Salon, his struggles with Hollywood producing films from his books and details about his family. He looks back on the up and down career of his father, character actor Lyle Talbot, and his late marriage to Talbot's mother, the singer and actress Paula Epple.

Talbot's wife, Camille Peri, gives unwavering, heroic support. His siblings, New Yorker writer Margaret Talbot, documentary producer Stephen Talbot and doctor Cynthia Talbot, also step up. Talbot's also buoyed by fatherhood, expressing pride at the critical acclaim his son, Joe, receives for his film, "The Last Black Man in San Francisco."

Talbot holds on to his optimism in a closing chapter about he and his family fleeing San Francisco when wildfires make the city's air hazardous. They stay in a cramped hotel in Carmel, Calif., joining others enjoying the beach despite the apocalyptic threat. Talbot extols the resilience of the human spirit rather than succumbing to pessimism.

Their return to San Francisco gives hope that the city and its people will build a bright new future.

 

 

Happy Thanksgiving

It's time to give thanks for our blessings.

This year has dealt me highs and lows. Here are a few snapshots from my 2019 album.

Eight days in the hospital. I'm thankful for the doctors and nurses who helped me feel better again.

A trip to New York City to see Jeff Daniels' masterful performance as Atticus Finch in Aaron Sorkin's theater adaptation of Harper Lee's "To Kill a Mockingbird."

The Miro show at the MOMA, before the museum closed to receive a new look. Miro's stance against Fascism in the 1930s gives us courage to resist Trump and the GOP's assaults on truth and human dignity. I was overwhelmed by Picasso's "Guernica" when I first visited MOMA nearly 50 years ago. I'm looking forward to visiting yet another new MOMA.

Trips to Portugal and Amelia Island, Fla., two places where rivers join the Atlantic Ocean. Both are threatened by rising sea levels and the crush of tourism. Like distant cousins, they are battling to preserve their proud cultures.

The Braves' rush to the pennant. Joe Burrow and the Tigers. Anne-Marie and I getting together with our children Sara, Luke and Ruthie in Nashville, Tenn. Learning to play Joni Mitchell's "Both Sides Now" on the piano.

We'll soon turn the calendar to another year, which looms as one of history's crossroads. The personal decisions of millions will determine whether the nation follows the course of freedom or an American totalitarianism.

No matter what happens, truth and beauty eventually will prevail.

 

Farewell, Ernest Gaines

Many writers look back from exile at their origins. Ernest Gaines was different. To tell the stories of the illiterate, impoverished black people he knew growing up in rural Pointe Coupee Parish, he had to return to his native Louisiana.

Gaines, who gained international recognition for his books about his small plot of earth, died in his sleep Tuesday at his childhood home. The revered Louisiana author was 86.

As a child,  he worked in the fields among people a few generations removed from slavery. From his meager schooling, he'd learned to read and write, and composed letters for his co-workers and family members.

Along with many other blacks fleeing the South's racial violence, he moved to California as a young man. For the first time, he found himself free to read in a public library, and discovered Turgenev and other 19th century Russian novelists.

Loving the bohemian life of San Francisco, he graduated from San Francisco State, then received a prestigious Stegner fellowship to study writing at Stanford. The voices he knew in childhood remained with him.

Struggling in California to finish a book based on the strict, wheelchair-confined aunt who raised him, Gaines returned to Louisiana at the height of the civil rights movement. Back in Louisiana, he gained a clear vision of the plantation life he knew growing up and quickly finished "The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman," his breakthrough novel.

Tracing how history echoed in a life of quiet dignity, the book gave the world one of its most enduring characters, a woman raised in slavery who lived to 101 and saw the changes of the 1960s. Cecily Tyson gave a memorable performance as Miss Jane Pittman in a TV movie that won nine Emmy Awards.

Gaines further drew upon his memories of the black community in "A Gathering of Old Men," "A Lesson Before Dying" and other lauded books. He received a MacArthur "genius grant," and traveled the world. He always returned to his childhood home close to a body of water known as False River that had once been part of the Mississippi.

A genial, warm-hearted man who spoke with Louisiana's French-inflected cadences, Gaines revealed how the love of family and community overcame bitterness.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Boo! Halloween begins holiday rush

Halloween decorations in my neighbors' yards signal the rush to the holidays is on.

On my daily walks, I'm amused by gray tombstones, skeletons, even one of a dog, witches and pneumatic ghosts and goblins. Death seems so jolly this time of year.

Halloween used to not be so big, but now it's almost like Christmas. When the trick or treating's over, the holiday season crashes upon us.

Christmas carols play in stores beginning in October. On my walk last night, I saw what suspiciously looked like holiday lights.

Thanksgiving is a quick speed bump before the Christmas season hits full gear. October to year's end rushes by so fast.

I'd like for it to slow down. But the world won't stop for me.

Thinking about climate change at a luxury beach resort

I tried to enjoy our visit to a resort on the Atlantic Ocean last weekend.

Before our trip through Georgia to north Florida, a U.N. report said that the world's oceans are endangered by climate change. The oceans have exhausted their capacity to absorb carbon. As the oceans warm, acidity rises, threatening sealife. Melting ice will raise sea levels, eventually flooding the luxury condos and hotels at places like Amelia Island, where we stayed.

Witnessing the Atlantic's majesty gives the illusion that the ocean is invulnerable to human activity. But Islands of plastic foul the Pacific. The Atlantic is warming. Coral reefs and fish are dying.. Already, cities like Miami experience regular flooding. Unable to break my habit of reading a newspaper, I saw something about right whales dying after hurling themselves onto dry land.

Like the other guests, we enjoyed the ocean, the swimming pools, the restaurants, the luxury shops. We walked along the golf course, which requires gallons of water to stay green.

On a cruise to Cumberland Island, we saw dolphins, a shark, ospreys and other birds, and Cumberland's feral horses. The tour guide said wild shrimp flourish. Long polluted, the Amelia River is now clean, and oyster beds have returned.  Nature seemed fine.

Looking at the waves crash against the beach, I couldn't stop thinking about that U.N. report.  The ocean, from where human life emerged, is in serious trouble.

We kept seeing small children, newborn babies and pregnant women. Congratulating a mother with a 4-week-old infant, I realized that the child likely wil live until 2100. If the world doesn't act soon to stop climate change, the baby during her life will experience a far more desolate world than ours.

I did well enjoying the luxury surroundings until I saw sprinklers spraying an abandoned tennis court, which received more water than the surrounding shrubbery. Gallons of water wasted.

Before heading home, we filled up with gasoline. As we reached Atlanta, the gas tank was almost empty. Along with the others hurtling down the highway, we had sent emissions into the atmosphere. A radio talk show said that a country plans zero carbon emissions by 2050. I said to myself, "2050? We don't have that much time."

The 90-degree days march into October.

 

 

Museums, music venues mark the places where Carter Family, Jimmie Rodgers stamped country music

A.P., Sara and Maybelle Carter traveled in a primitive automobile over treacherous mountain roads to reach a recording session in Bristol, Tenn., in August 1927.

The group later called "The Carter Family" overcame flat tires and mechanical problems to make it to Bristol from their rural home in southwest Virginia's Appalachian Mountains. The young Maybelle, Sara's cousin and A.P.'s sister-in law, was eight months pregnant. Later, the shy young mountain girl would gain fame as "Mother Maybelle," the queen of country music.

Nowadays, the trip is much easier, as recounted in an article in Sunday's New York Times Travel section. Bristol, and the neighboring  East Tennessee tri-city towns of Johnson City and Kingsport, have built museums, music venues and tourist attractions to mark the 1927 sessions, known as "the big bang of country music," although country hits had been recorded previously in Atlanta and elsewhere.

The birth of country music route extends into Bristol, Va., just across the state line from its Tennessee twin city, and farther into the Virginia Mountains, where the "Carter Fold" presents musical performances at the Carter home.  Now crowds flock to the isolated mountain valleys where the music was born.

RCA Victor scout Ralph Peer, who had captured Fiddlin' John Carson in Atlanta four years before, recorded several mountain artists during the 1927 Bristol sessions. But the Carter Family and Jimmie Rodgers made the foundational recordings of country music, setting a course for popular song as well.

Rodgers,  formerly a railroad brakeman in Mississsippi, ventured beyond the primitive string-based sound with the bluesy, jazzy "T for Texas," or "Blue Yodel." The record about love gone wrong and rambling across the country reflected an urban sensibility that would make Rodgers the first big crssover country star.

Sometimes discounted as a musician in comparison with black blues pioneers like Robert Johnson and Blind Lemon Jefferson, Rodgers in his brief career cut short by tuberculosis towers over country and popular music.

He's not a guitar virtuoso like Johnson, but his chord progressions influenced later bluegrass and country guitarists. While his yodels now sound old-fashioned, he wrote memorable lyrics that tell stories of cinematic documentary authenticity. He also was a jazz pioneer, recording with Louis Armstrong and other black musicians, and expressing the dislocations of American urbanization in songs like "Miss the Mississippi and You." The theme of country people finding alienation after moving to the city would be common in country music, and American literature.

But to me the Carter Family recordings are truly miraculous, unworldly music that brings something new into the world. AP Carter, who had gatheerd most of the group's songs at rural gatherings, often giving himself songwriting credit, was a conventional singer at best. His braying, nearly off-key voice, overwhelm some of the songs. But his strong voice chimes with Sara's on the memorable "Will You Miss Me When I'm Gone."

But his wife, Sara, was a rare, mesmerizing talent. Her mountain pronunciations, otherworldly high notes, and haunting vocal shadings, display the virtuosity of a natural genius. She was a uncommon singer who understood her gift without need of instruction. A groundbreaking artist, she brought to American music a wildness, a sense of adventure, an experimental newness. Like Bessie Smith and Billie Holiday, she changed the course of American music.

And she was not the only native genius on the recordings. Maybelle Carter's guitar playing, partially learned from a black man named Lesley Riddle, set the templet for all future guitar gods. Maybelle's combination of rhythm and lead playing still echoes in Nashville recordings. She's up there with Louis Armstrong and Johnson as early 20th century musical innovators.

Peer himself had misgivings when the bedraggled Carters rolled in from the Virginia hollers.

"They wander in," Peer told Lillian Borgeson during a series of interviews in 1959. "He's dressed in overalls and the women are country women from way back there. They looked like hillbillies. But as soon as I heard Sara's voice, that was it. I knew it was going to be wonderful."^[

 

Musician Doug Kershaw's "The Ragin' Cajun" a story of redemption

Louisiana performer Doug Kershaw's "The Ragin' Cajun" finds joy and redemption in a rough life of setbacks and self-destruction.

To be published in October by Mercer University Press, "The Ragin' Cajun" tells the common musician's story of numbing performances, drug addiction, poor life choices and unscrupulous managers and record producers.

The book stands apart from other rock memoirs in the literary quality of its revelations about Cajun culture.

Along with the Cajuns' well-noted joy, humor and musical talent, the book discloses the culture's violence, depression and propensity for addiction.

Sadly, it also details how cultural repression and existence on the edges of American life led to deep feelings of inferiority. In recent years, Cajun music, literature and cuisine have found long-overdue recognition.

Written with the novelist Cathie Pelletier, the book brings light to a little known and vanished way of life. Kershaw spent his first years on a houseboat on Louisiana's Mermentau River, where his Cajun family eked out a primitive swamp existence before World War II.

His father, Daddy Jack, precariously supported the family as a fisherman and trapper while his mother, Mama Rita was mired in punishing work. Their life seems medieval in its lack of modern comforts.

Unlike the happy portrait in Kershaw's signature song "Louisiana Man," his father was a violent drunk who frequently beat his mother and threatened the rest of the family. In a gruesome and gripping account, Kershaw tells how his father killed himself with a shotgun.

Despite Daddy Jack's violence, Kershaw remembers him fondly as a hard-working, resourceful man who generally treated him with kindness. Father Jack also gave his son the gift of music. And, the inspiration for "Louisiana Man," one of the best songs of the rock era:

"He's got fishing lines strung across the Louisiana river,
got to catch a big fish for us to eat.
Setting traps in the swamps catching anything he can,
he gotta make a livin', he's a Louisiana man,
Gotta make a livin',  he's a Louisiana man."

The book's Dickensien story gains narrative power when Mama Rita moves the family to the small town of Lake Arthur. There, Kershaw, who began playing a fiddle fashioned from a cigar box, launches his musical career playing "Jole Blon" and other Cajun favorites outside a cafe.

The strength and perseverance of Mama Rita were a constant rock for Kershaw until her death. The book relates how she gained her own slice of fame from Kershaw's career.

Kershaw and his brothers Pee-Wee and Rusty begin playing in the rough Cajun clubs in Jennings, La. Eventually, Kershaw and his brother Rusty find regional success on radio and early TV. Beset by unscrupulous managers, the Kershaws make their first recordings and land regular engagements at clubs along the Highway 90 strip around Lake Charles near the Texas border.

Now performing as a duo, Rusty and Doug record a couple of hits and land a spot on the most famous country show, the Grand Ole Opry in Nashville, Tenn. The book gives recognition to the group as rock pioneers. Fusing traditional Cajun music with country and the blues, Rusty and Doug helped create rockabilly, the driving force of early rock.

After Rusty decides to leave the duo, Doug Kershaw continues as solo performer and songwriter in Nashville, hanging around with other future stars like Kris Kristofferson and Roger Miller. As with other musicians rising to fame, Kershaw gets hooked on drugs, in his case alcohol, amphetamines and eventually cocaine. Apparently he avoided heroin, which has wrecked so many musicians' lives.

Battling his addictions, poor business decisions and disastrous first two marriages, Kershaw perseveres and achieves success, thanks to an appearance along with Bob Dylan on Johnny Cash's national TV show. From there, Kershaw's fame grows as a frequent performer on TV, in Las Vegas, and in international concerts. He also records several hits.

But his personal life collapses. As financial worries mount, his addictions worsen. Later sections of the book grow less appealing. Brutally honest, Kershaw gives an unpleasant self-portrait of an unreliable, abusive personality. He explodes at band members and gains a bad reputation for showing up late for performances. His volatile behavior led to the hackneyed nickname echoed in the book's title.

Redemption comes with his marriage to his third wife, Pam. Despite starting a family with Pam, Kershaw continues his destructive behavior until Pam insists that he change his ways. With that dose of tough love, Kershaw at last finds tranquillity.

Assisted by his co-author Pelletier, the 83-year-old Kershaw tells his story in a frank, sometimes vulgar voice. His accounts of seeking to overcome addictions can be grueling, but he remains engaging even at the worst moments.

His earthy humor and folksy anecdotes reflect the Cajun joie de vivre that enabled them to overcome poverty and persecution. The book displays the story-telling power of "Louisiana Man."

The Mercer University Press deserves praise for publishing "Ragin' Cajun," which belongs among lauded recent memoirs by Bruce Springsteen, Keith Richards, Bob Dylan and Neil Young. Along with giving an in-depth look at the music business, Kershaw and Pelletier illuminate a forgotten segment of Cajun culture.

The book provides a valuable discography, including recordings Kershaw made with his brother Rusty, who died in 2001. Kershaw's extensive recordings, including those of traditional Cajun songs, warrant in-depth exploration.

With his Cajun novelty numbers and crowd-pleasing antics, Kershaw has been discounted as merely a niche musician. A dynamic performer, stylish songwriter, distinctive singer and accomplished fiddle player, Kershaw stands with the recently deceased Dr. John, Allen Toussaint and Fats Domino in the top tier of Louisiana musicians.

And, as this book richly illustrates, among the state's best storytellers.

 

Headed home to Louisiana

I'm on my way to Louisiana to attend the funeral for my aunt, who died this week at age 99, my family's last member of the generation that lived through the Depression and won World War II.

Once again, I'll go through Montgomery, Ala., with its fraught history, and on south close to Harper Lee's Monroeville. At Mobile, home of Hank Aaron and Willie Mays, I'll turn west and head across coastal Mississippi, skirting hurricane-haunted Gulfport and Biloxi. Then, the long final miles from Slidell to Baton Rouge.

In my hometown, I'll stay near the Mississippi River at the historic hotel that served as Huey Long's legislative headquarters. First Presbyterian, the church where I grew up and where we'll say farewell to Aunt Nell, is close by.

Back to Baton Rouge, where the past remains present in my mind.