Memory

Tucked in a large zippered portfolio that was given to me by a pretty and wealthy girl when I was in college — but that’s a different memory, let’s not get diverted by other memories quite yet….

In that large zippered portfolio, I have a poster that a friend gave me in high school. “BANANA MAN” says the poster in large, cheerful letters. Above that is a cartoon portrait of a caped superhero, arms crossed, big goofy grin over his big goofy chin, a bulbous nose, stern eyes gazing out from behind a bright yellow mask loosely tied behind his head, all under a mop of unruly black hair. The poster is a lithograph drawn and printed by the guy who gave it to me, and there’s his signature in the bottom right corner: Karl E. Friberg.

Karl was a year ahead of me in high school, about the only student from art class I hung out with outside of class. Karl was always drawing Banana Man cartoons, some of which ran in the high school newspaper, and I admired and copied his drawing style to the best of my ability. We had a free period together at some point, and I remember watching him bring out the “Banana Box,” a slim box filled with an unruly collection of drawing implements: pencils, pens, erasers, a ruler, felt-tip markers. As soon as I saw it I started assembling my own portable box of drawing implements.

“I’m going to make a lithograph of Banana Man,” Karl announced one day. He was taking an industrial arts class in printing. “I’m making Banana Man T-shirts.” Wow! What could be better than a Banana Man T-shirt! A few days later, Karl appeared with an armful of T-shirts, shouted, “Laundry!” and tossed me a Banana Man T-shirt. God knows what happened to that T-shirt, but he also gave me the Banana Man poster which is still in my portfolio….

Banana Man by Karl E. Friberg

Karl graduated from high school a few months later, and I completely lost touch with him. Did he go on to a career in commercial art as he dreamed of doing? Does he still draw Banana Man? After he graduated, I inherited his place as the cartoonist in the high school newspaper, and I drew a humorous melodrama called “Rabbit Man,” the main character of which was a shorter, dumpier, stupider version of Banana Man. I never was as good a cartoonist as Karl had been.

It’s worth mentioning that Karl Friberg’s Banana Man predates the British cartoon character Bananaman by four or five years.

Shoulda had a notebook with me

Over the past week, I’ve had more than the usual number of pastoral visits and conversations. I spent half an hour sitting with a dead woman, waiting for her family to arrive. I sat beside the hospital bed of someone who is in the midst of serious health crisis. I talked with someone who is under stress and having problems with his/her spouse. I listened to someone tell me about the illness of a grandchild’s parent. And quite a few more besides.

My older sister is a non-fiction writer, and professor of writing at Indiana University East. Recently she told the students in one of her writing classes that they should always keep a notebook on hand, “a little book you jot things down in when they occur to you… because everything must be turned into writing. Everything.” I used to keep such a notebook, but I don’t any longer. The change came when I started working as a minister. The spoken word demands a different kind of thought process than does the written word — it is less precise, it requires more repetition, it is more formulaic, it is inherently improvisational (even if you speak from a text as I do), and it is rooted in memory not in written notes. Because of this, most preachers are not particularly good writers of prose, although some preachers wind up being pretty good poets.

Oh, and something else happened to me this week. I was driving somewhere with a member of our church, and a small silver sports car pulled right out in front of me without even looking and I jammed on the brakes hit the horn swerved missed the idiot by about two feet and shouted through the windshield at the other driver (who didn’t even look until the last minute!), What the $%&#, buddy!?! Yep, I dropped a big loud f-bomb right where a church member could hear it (fortunately he’s the son of a preacher and so has no illusions about the ministry). If ever there was an incident worth recording in the notebook I do not carry, that was it.

Winter?

Yesterday, it felt like winter. The temperature was down in the teens, there was a biting wind, snow on the ground, early sunset.

Today, it no longer feels like winter. The temperature got up over fifty, fitful breezes barely ruffled the water of the harbor, the snow disappeared. The only thing to keep me from thinking that it was springtime was the early sunset.

This appears to be the new pattern for winter here — wild variations in weather, springlike days mixed in with bitter winter days. Global climate change is an ongoing process, so we will have to see how this new pattern will evolve and change.

To robe or not to robe

This afternoon, I went up to an ordination in Canton (congratulations, Rev. Megan Lynes!), at which Carl Scovel preached the ordination sermon. I always enjoy hearing Carl Scovel preach, even when I find myself in complete disagreement with him — he’s that good a preacher.

And this afternoon, I found myself in complete disagreement with one thing Carl Scovel said in his sermon. He said that in the New England church tradition, a pulpit robe is the outward mark of an ordained minister. Well, that may be true for some New England ministers, but it is not true of all New England ministers — it is certainly not true of me. I think there’s a case to be made for ordained ministers not wearing any distinguishing clothing at all. In brief, my arguments against robes for ministers run roughly as follows: (1) robes are expensive, like $500 and up, and I’ve got better things to spend my money on; (2) the typical pulpit robe dates back 500 years to John Calvin, which by now, for us, is merely an arbitrary date — why not go further back and wear an alb, or come forward a few hundred years and wear a business suit?; (3) robes are, well, idolatrous — they’re the sartorial equivalent of graven images; (4) to paraphrase Henry Thoreau, any job that requires you to buy a new set of clothes is a job you should be wary of; (5) I spent too much time with the Quakers, really started to believe in the plain-dress-living-simply thang, and robes are definitely not plain dress; (6) um, hate to admit this, but pulpit robes look silly.

Now I admit that I do own a robe. I bought it used, at the used robe place in the basement of Sheehan’s in downtown Boston, and it cost sixty buck ten years ago (they told me they got it from a monk who had died). It’s an alb, which dates back two thousand years, cause if I’m gonna be even vaguely in the Christian tradition I might as well take the historical re-enactment thing all the way back to Jesus’s time; and if I think of it as historical re-enactment, then it’s not idolatrous. Besides, I never wear the thing except when once in a while for the occasional wedding.

That’s my take on ministers’ robes. Now excuse me while I duck behind this stone parapet while other ministers, the ones who like robes, throw things at me. Or, more likely, leave strongly-worded comments below….

Elliot Carter centennial

Randy reminds me that this is the year of the Elliot Carter centennial. Randy went to one of the concerts at Symphony Hall in Boston this week, and wound up witting behind Gunther Schuller (who told Randy about playing Harry Partch’s big marimba, but that’s another story). Anyway, if you’re like me and can’t make it to one of the concerts, there’s still the Elliot Carter centennial Web site.

Folkish songs for Christmas

A bunch of us from the Folk Choir of First Unitarian in New Bedford will be singing Christmas carols and other seasonal songs (along with some other people) in downtown New Bedford tomorrow evening as part of the city’s annual Holiday Stroll. I put together some Christmas/solstice songs which meet the following criteria: (1) playable by folk instruments like guitar, soprano recorder, mandolin; (2) words which won’t stick in the throats of Unitarian Universalists (in several cases, words are taken from the 1937 Unitarian Universalist hymnal, Hymns of the Spirit); (3) guitar chords that actually work (we have actually played through all these songs); (4) songs pitched for medium-to-low voices (too many Christmas songs are pitched for sopranos and high tenors). We’re not going to be singing all of these, but I thought others might be interested in this collection.

Now up on my main Web site here: Folkish songs for Christmas.

Songs/carols include the following: Continue reading →

Two conversations

Today I happened to run into someone who is in the helping professions, and our conversation quickly turned to the state of the economy. “It’s getting bad,” he said, “and it’s going to get worse.” We both admitted that we’re feeling the pressures in our jobs — it feels like there’s an increased demand for everyone in the helping professions, while at the same time given the economic situation we’re all worried about funding cuts (not so much cuts in our salaries, but cuts in programs we manage or depend on).

Almost immediately after that conversation, I happened to be talking to someone else who said she has noticed that people are becoming less polite and less courteous. It feels, she said, as if people are a little on edge. Or maybe, I said, as if they’re angry. Yes, angry, she said. This economic mess we’re in is enough to make anyone angry.

Just because I’ve had these two conversations doesn’t mean my feelings have a firm basis in reality. So tell me what you think: Is the economic situation getting to people? Are you noticing a diminishment in politeness? If you’re in the helping professions, are you feeling a little more stressed than usual?

Miracle birth of Confucius

Below you’ll find the miraculous birth story of Confucius, abridged from the version told by Sophia Fahs in her book From Long Ago and Many Lands (Boston: Beacon, 1948), pp. 193-197.

I changed some minor aspects of Fahs’s story. For example, Fahs calls Confucius’ mother the “wife” of Kung, his father — but it’s pretty clear that this young woman was a concubine at best, certainly not a wife of Kung, so I do not use the word wife. Also, I’m not very happy with this story because I don’t think Fahs used the best sources — some day I hope to do some more research and come up with a more accurate telling of the myths surrounding Confucius’s birth. But in the mean time, here’s a story that’s a little long but suitable for use in UU worship services… Continue reading →