Eugene O’Neill National Historic Site, Danville, CA

The Good Life

A little while ago, in my post on Edgar Allan Poe, I talked about a creative genius whose life would suffer through poverty and hardship and end in tragedy and mystery.

Today, I’m posting about another great literary figure whose life progressed quite differently: Nobel- and Pulitzer-prize winning playright, Eugene O’Neill.

I am, admittedly, not “well read”. I’ve only read one or two of the classics, and only because certain college courses demanded it. I also don’t attend a lot of theater, although I will attend plays by Shakespeare whenever our local playhouses present one. So I really don’t know that much about O’Neill or his plays, other than a forced reading of “The Hairy Ape” for that three-credit “art domain” course at the state university. But there is no denying the man is one of the giants in American literature, having penned renowned plays such as “Morning Becomes Electra” and “The Iceman Cometh”.

When you visit his home in the hills of Contra Costa County, California, it becomes abundantly clear that he, unlike Poe, enjoyed the fruits of his labors. It’s a beautiful Spanish Colonial house, set on a wonderfully landscaped lot, overlooking the valley below, and backed by the rocky, wooded hills of the Las Trampas Regional Wilderness. It’s a truly elegant setting, fit for a man clearly loved for his dramatic creations. The only tragedy here is his wife, Carlotta, was extremely light-sensitive and kept the windows covered by thick wood blinds and shades. Such tremendous views wasted, although I don’t fault her. I suffer slightly from light sensitivity, I can empathize with her dilemma.

I’m not quite sure what else to say about Eugene O’Neill, except for this: I never begrudge artists, whether authors or playwrights or actors or musicians, from living well off their talents. Artists are special, and art advances us as a species like nothing else can. Art is more influential than technology or governance or business or medicine in that regard. Art is the gateway to the spirit of mankind, and it is that spirit that advances us.

I know this sounds trite and packaged. Aren’t we all supposed to say “art is the gateway to the spirit of mankind” or some such crud? Sounds like it’s right from the mouth of a guest star on Oprah. But I’m convinced it’s true. There’s something personal and unique about an encounter with art. You see it, or read it, or listen to it, or watch it, and your initial reaction is unique to you and you alone. Art tends to cut through all those social filters that muddy up our society and sends a message straight to the individual (instead of the huddled masses).

Now, that message might be: “Hi. I’m really, really ugly. Please take note.” And that’s fine, because the next guy, totally independently, can receive a message: “Hi. I’m you. You really need to take a hard look at this, and change your life before it’s too late,” and that can be a really powerful message.

Famous and beloved artists tend to touch more people, send out those messages that give them hope, or give them insight, or give them motivation to change. Technology can’t do that, it only provides a vehicle to get things done. Politicians can’t do that, all they can do is further enslave us into dependency on government. Theocrats can’t do that, all they can do is entrap us deeper into the constraints of dogma. Only artists can do that. Or maybe a real, good friend.

Folks like O’Neill, Bob Dylan, George Carlin, Steven Spielberg, Robert Plant, Stephen King, and a host of others, all manage to reach out and touch lots and lots of people, and I have no problem when these folks living well. In fact, I hope they do so.

Now Brittany Spears, well, that’s an entirely different topic …

On a side note, I do want to mention one key difference between Poe’s and O’Neill’s NPS sites. In my prior post, I remarked how the Poe site’s neighbors seemed to like having Poe in the neighborhood. They do readings for local kids, and no one has ever defaced that wonderful mural of the author, even though it doesn’t seem like a pleasant neighborhood. It’s sad to say so, but it certainly appears that O’Neill’s neighbors aren’t particularly interested in having his site in their neighborhood. It’s a very upscale, expensive neighborhood, and you have to be bused in from a commuter parking lot (no tourist cars are allowed), and there doesn’t seem to be the connection between the neighborhood and the site or the man. In all fairness, the winding roads and limited parking are not conducive to lots of tourists, but you definitely get the feeling folks int he area don’t care too much for having a National Park unit in their vicinity. It’s sad, and in my view, it doesn’t speak well to their character.

I hope someone from the area can post here contradicting me. It was just an observation, drawn from a particular moment in time and seen through my jaded eyes. Hopefully reality is different. If you have direct experience with this site and its neighborhoods, and you think I’m full of crap, please post & tell me (just keep it civil ).

[Photos on this post are mine and copyrighted thusly. See other photos of Eugene O'Neill's home on my Photobucket page.]

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Links:

Eugene O’Neill National Historic Site

Eugene O’Neill Archives

Google map to E.O. NHS

Happy Independence Day!

A Difficult Birth

I watched HBO’s excellent mini-series “John Adams”, about the famed patriot and second President of the United States. As I posted waaaaay back in December of ‘07, John Adams is my favorite Founding Father, and I think HBO did him justice, flaws and all. Beyond a fairly accurate portrayal of Adams himself (although I do think HBO downplayed the staunch religious beliefs shared by John and his cousin, Samuel Adams), the mini-series gave a very accurate portrayal of the nation’s gritty past.

There’s this great mythology around the birth of this nation. We have this image, inspired by John Trumbull’s famous painting, of nattily-attired statesmen, gathered in a great hall, proudly proclaiming our independence for all the world to hear. Unfortunately, that image is not at all accurate. I won’t go into all the factual details here, sites like Americanrevolution.org describe them well enough. I do want to go into what our vaunted image, and even a nitpicking of the facts, does not convey, and that is how risky and dangerous, and messy and complicated, the birth of this nation really was.

This was such a dangerous endeavor that the members of the Continental Congress were rarely, if ever, all present at the same time. They would appear in shifts, as it were, with individual representatives of a colony present but almost never a full quorum of a delegation. Some of the notables, like the Adams cousins and William Ellery of Rhode Island, had open warrants for their arrest by the British colonial government long before the 2nd Continental Congress convened, and would certainly have been hanged if they were caught travelling to Philadelphia. Almost the entire New York delegation would be missing at times, most of those delegates lost home or property, and the wife of one (Francis Lewis) was captured and held prisoner by the Brits for many months during the Revolutionary War. This type of personal danger is almost never conveyed in American mythology.

There were also health and transportation problems. Yellow fever was not uncommon in Philadelphia in those years, and travel was risky. British blockades and privateers made sea travel dangerous, forcing travel over land. It took weeks if not months to ride the roads to Philadelphia, and in some circles families would weep from grief if loved ones had to travel, it was so dangerous. Remember this was the early days of America, cities were small and far apart, and there were great tracts of land void of civilization and comfort. It wasn’t the highly developed contryside that marked Europe in the 18th century, this was something far wilder. Getting all these great men to Philadelphia to draft the Declaration, create and fund a Continental Army, and plead for help from France and Spain was not an easy affair.

After the Revolution, things were still sloppy and complicated. There’s a sordid mess surrounding the crafting of the Constitution itself. Yes, it’s a beloved document and has served us well, but in reality, it was a contentious and difficult document to craft. The nation first had to go through the sloppy failure of the Articles of Confederation, a configuration so weak it nearly allowed the 13 states to break apart or, even worse, rejoin Great Britain. It was not easy to keep the Union together, and in the end, the only way to guarantee continued independence as well as undivided strength was by guaranteeing the continued enslavement of an entire race of man for decades thereafter.

People shouldn’t forget that our founding fathers enabled that greatest of travesties, but in a way, these men were forced to do so in order to avoid becoming servants again, through dissolution of the Union and potential reconquering by Britain.  I’m sure that last sentence can be debated: what if our founders banned slavery in 1787? Would we have been split into two, or perhaps more, nations? And would that have been a bad thing? It’s an interesting debate, but the fact still stands: slavery stood for 89 years after the Declaration of Independence  was first read to an assemblage in Philadelphia. All men created equal? Hardly, it would appear.

In my opinion, it’s vitally important for all Americans to understand that we are a flawed nation. We had a difficult birth and a flawed childhood and, to this very day, we struggle and wrestle and fight with our greater ideals and our conscience. We’ve fought unjust wars, we mistreated our own citizenry, we’ve “prospered” ourselves into great poverty, and we’ve poisoned our waters and air and land. But we’ve also had successes: we freed Europe from the ravages of war, our scientists have stopped polio and invented transistors, we’ve created unique and beloved forms of art and music, and we’ve been an example to the world in terms of freedom and liberty. Best of all, we’ve managed to survive and thrive in spite of our great mistakes and failures.

Success and failure, failure and success. Hmmm, sounds like we’re human. And part and parcel of being human is being flawed. It can be said that the greatness of a person can be judged by how well that person responds to his or her own failure. We all make mistakes, and we all have to learn from them and overcome them. This is true for people and true for nations. Those who think they themselves, or the United States of America itself, are incapable of making mistakes and deserve continuous adulation are not only inaccurate but incredibly arrogant.

It has always been my view that arrogance is the worst human characteristic. Arrogance, that belief that you can do no wrong and can make no mistake, is that characteristic that prevents you from ever learning anything. And the inability to learn guarantees an inability to succeed and thrive. It’s a flaw that guarantees stagnation and eventual irrelevance. Individuals should strive to never be arrogant in anything, even those things in which you are an expert. Nations should also strive to never be arrogant, even in areas in which that nation has succeeded in the past.

If I could ask all Americans to do anything for this country, I would ask them to be honest with our country’s flaws and failures, and strive to continuously improve the health, welfare, and integrity of this nation and all of its citizens. Only through understanding of our flaws can we ever improve our lot in life.

I hope everyone had a happy, fun-filled Independence Day weekend, and I wish nothing more than a just and prosperous future for the United States of America on this, the 233rd anniversary of it’s birth.

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I know I haven’t been posting regularly as of late. There have been a few real-life issues keeping my muse at bay, or perhaps in full retreat. Regular postings of my National Park trips will resume shortly, I promise.

Recommendation: Rock & Roll Hall of Fame and Museum, Cleveland, Ohio

I just came back from my spring National Parks trip. With all the economic uncertainty, plus my need to pay off credit card debt (like the rest of America), I kept it small. Drove through upstate New York, then Ohio, across West Virginia, then home via Maryland. Hit eight more, albeit small, sites on the list, bringing the total to 185.  Still not quite halfway there.

During this trip, I also visited my two all-time favorite museums: the amazing National Museum of the U.S. Air Force in Dayton, Ohio (about which I’ll post at a later time) ; and the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame and Museum in Cleveland, Ohio.

The poor Rock Hall doesn’t get a lot of respect. Some think it’s self-serving to a lot of rich, arrogant, rock egos. Others think it’s unfathomable that you could put the energy and rebelliousness of rock music into something as stuffy as a museum. Still others can’t get over the fact that non-rockers like the Bee Gees or Madonna have been inducted, while their favorite act (KISS or Journey or Emerson, Lake and Palmer or whoever) still aren’t in there.

I love the place, absolutely love it, loved it from the beginning. I was there during the opening, 8-hour concert on Labor Day weekend in 1995, where I saw everyone from Chuck Berry to Johnny Cash to Dr. John to Aretha Franklin to Iggy Pop. That was a fantastic experience. The next day I saw James Brown sauntering through the crowd, surrounded by some of the biggest, scariest bodyguards imaginable, on his way into the Rock Hall. I’ve been back several times since, and love it more and more every time I go. For me, it goes beyond being a fan of rock music. My love of rock & roll dovetails nicely into my love of American history.

Most countries or cultures are defined by their art. For the Greeks, it’s architecture and epic tales. The Italians have religious iconography and works by Michaelangelo and Leonardo da Vinci. The French have Impressionism, the Germans and Slavs people have composers such as Beethoven, Tchaikovzky and Mozart. Africa, China, Japan, Polynesia, even the Native American tribes have unique art tied directly to their culture and their history. America has its own unique art form, developed straight from our culture and history: Rock & Roll.

Rock & roll is uniquely American because of it’s “origin story”. Rock’s primary grandfather was The Blues. Political correctness aside, The Blues was the black man’s music. It’s basically a lament about hard times and suffering set to a quick-paced but rough tempo. The Blues was fostered in a segregated South and derives directly from music sung by plantation slaves. This is Part I of why Rock is uniquely American, it’s the only positive thing to ever come out of our slaveholding past. Without the caustic cauldron of atrocity known as antebellum slavery, and the emotional agony of Jim Crow, the genetic material of The Blues would not have been created. No Blues, no Rock.

Another grandparent of Rock & Roll was Folk music (and its close cousins called Country and Bluegrass). All three of these forms sprouted out of the barrenness of the Depression. Yes, the Depression affected lots of countries, not just the USA, but there was something special about America’s experience that led to the birth of these three forms of music. Maybe it was the rural nature of Depression-era America, maybe it was the unique experience of the Dust Bowl, maybe it was the influence of our unique take on the religious revival. Whatever it was, folk, country & bluegrass evolved as uniquely American styles.

Then there’s Jazz. Jazz, in my view, represents the independent American mentality applied to music. People wanted to play what they wanted to play, and wanted to hear what they wanted to hear. It’s improv, blending, mixing things up, and doing what you want. It’s throwing away musical convention, just like we threw away monarchial convention. We tossed out the King and made our own government, then we tossed out musical conformity and made our own Jazz. It’s the Declaration of Indepence set to music.

All of rock’s “early influences” were masters of these forms of music: Robert Johnson, Leadbelly, Woody Guthrie, Hank Williams, Bill Monroe, Louis Jordan, Elmore James. But it took something else, something more. It took the lightning strike known as Capitalism to give Rock & Roll life. It took people like Alan Freed and Ahmet Erteghun and Jerry Wexler to realize that money could be made, people who had the savvy to prop up firebrands like Elvis Presley and Jerry Lee Lewis and make all this roughshod music palatable to the young masses and their disposable income. Only in America could art be turned into something so immensely popular, and therefore immensely profitable.

Rock has then been changed and modified and altered by so much more since then: the injustice of the Vietnam War draft, the poverty of inner cities, the rebellion of angsty white suburbanite teens, plus America’s penchant to abuse mind-altering substances …. All of these things are, again, uniquely attributable to the U.S. and the unique mix (or train wreck, if you prefer) of our culture.

Now I know some (er, most?) will shout back “but what about the Beatles or the Stones or Led Zepplin, asswipe? These are Brits who revolutionized rock!”. Well, yes, that’s true. But all of these bands will tell you themselves that they got into rock because of Muddy Waters, or Bo Diddly, or Buddy Holly. Besides, just as the U.S. is a nation of immigrants, so too is rock a music of immigrants. Artists from all over the world have morphed and shaped rock to suit their needs, and have influenced other artists in return. It’s a great melting pot of music styles and cultures.

I highly recommend going to the Rock Hall. It does a great job showing the continuing evolution of a great, rebellious art form, a form of music whose greatest contribution is giving convention the big middle finger.

[Only the picture of the Rock Hall is mine. The others are from allmusic.com, a great web site for music research. Copyrights apply in some cases, this is a not-for-profit blog so I think it's OK here. I'm sure lawyers will call if it ain't .]

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Links:

Rock & Roll Hall of Fame and Museum

allmusic.com

Looking for college credits?

Google map to RRHOFM

Eleanor Roosevelt National Historic Site, Hyde Park, New York

America’s Queen Mum

I have a really weak system for selecting blog topics. When I started America In Context, I didn’t have a plan. I just started alphabetically, a pretty lame way of doing it if I do say so myself. It’s actually not that bad of a system, surprisingly I don’t repeat myself too often. One day it’s a natural preservation post, then something historical, then something cultural. Things stay fairly well mixed up. I suspect it’ll break down soon when I get to all the “Fort Something-or-Other” sites, but for now, it’s fine.

Actually, in the case of this week’s post, it’s better than fine. It seems fitting that my post on Dwight Eisenhower, Supreme Allied Commander in Europe during World War II, be immediately followed by a post on Eleanor Roosevelt, who could, perhaps, be called Supreme Commander of the U.S. Home Front. Having these posts bookend Memorial Day is fitting as well.

I titled this post “America’s Queen Mum” for a reason. Eleanor Roosevelt, like Britain’s Queen Elizabeth (the current Queen Elizabeth’s mother, who passed away in 2002) was a beloved figure during terribly troubled times. Throughout the Depression and then the War, both women were strong role models for their beleaguered citizenry. These ladies did what leaders are supposed to do: walk amongst the people. With regular public addresses, newspaper articles, and visits to various cities and towns, they were inspirations to the people when they needed it most. Cowards sit in their undisclosed locations or corner offices or posh resorts when the shit hits the fan. Leaders stand in front and take the full spray. OK, I think that’s the most repulsive sentence I think I ever typed, but it makes the point….

Personally, I think the concept of “first lady” is anachronistic and inappropriate for a democratic nation. They are nothing more than the wife of a president, yet they are treated as cultural icons or, even worse, like royalty. I find all the current fawning over Michele Obama to be ludicrous. “Ooh look, she doesn’t have flabby arms!” Big damned deal. To this day, people still adore Jackie O. for no reason other than her fashion sense. The First Lady institution is not much more than a baseless cult of personality. First Ladies also have a penchant to support their pet causes, sitting in weak public service announcements nestled between the latest Ron Popeil Crap-O-Matic infomercial and some MTV “I Wanna Be a Teenage Hooker” reality show on late-night television. I’m so glad a First Lady sponsors literacy while her husband guts the public school system and his party disparages educated people as “liberal intelligentsia”.

When it comes to Eleanor Roosevelt, however, I change my view. She was truly a great lady. Not only did she speak to the people during hard times as I noted earlier, but she was also directly involved in many great causes, from civil rights for African-Americans to equality for women to the spread of democracy across post-WWII Europe to the formation of the United Nations. She was also a shrewd political operator, directly sponsoring campaigns of those who supported her progressive agenda. Regardless of whether or not you support progressive causes, you have to admire her determination and activism in the causes she supported. She was no mere figurehead but an actual mover and a shaker and an inspiration for millions.

She has her own spot in the National Park Service for a good reason. Of all the First Ladies in our history, she truly stands out as an individual, separate from her husband, for her impact on the country (and the world).

[Once again, I didn't own a digital camera when I visited Eleanor Roosevelt's NPS site. Pics are public domain, taken from Wikipedia or the National Park Service.]

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Links:

Eleanor Roosevelt National Historic Site

Wikipedia’s Eleanor Roosevelt Media Gallery

Eleanor Roosevelt Center at Val-Kill

Google map to ER NHS