A Memoir of Sounds

I wish to hear the silence of the night,  for the silence is something positive and to be heard.  --Thoreau

I sometimes wish I had an album of sounds, from childhood through the present, in all of the places I've lived. Turn the page, hear a different one. Sounds are harder to recall than visual images, yet hear them again, and a memory jumps into place. Favored ones, pleasant ones, tend to float to the top of the memory pile; my survival instincts push others, such as the sound of quarreling relatives, to the bottom. Others, mercifully,  get filtered out as noise: screeching tires, yapping small dogs, yesterday's buzzing mosquito. This blog entry is a journey through sound memories, enhanced through technology. Of course, music is a soundtrack for life as well, but that’s a subject for a another day.

The first sound I heard--and you heard--when we were tucked into our mothers' wombs was a heartbeat. You can hear it again today, courtesy of this Youtube recording of womb sounds. Listen for a few minutes, as I did today. Designed to calm sleepless babies, they’re still comforting for adults, aren't they? Looking for something more complex, we have all sorts of other sound comforts in adult life, also thanks to YouTube. I loved this one: what’s more conducive to sleep than soft rain falling on leaves?

One of my aural memories of Hammond, Indiana, the town where I lived from age 6 to 15, was a train horn. Hammond had a lot of train tracks, and legend had it that more women gave birth unexpectedly at train crossings than in any other town. I remember the train sounds at night, a kind of sweet melancholy. Here's one 41-second train horn recording I found--just like what I remember and hear sometimes in Denver now too.  Also recalled from childhood summers: the “hiss of summer lawns”—to borrow the title of a Joni Mitchell album, the whirr of a push lawn mower, the barely audible broadcast of a baseball game on a transistor radio, passing trucks on a nearby highway, the bells of ice cream vendors riding bicycles.

After moving to Chicago with my family as a teen, graduating from high school and moving on to college, I often heard the city’s iconic elevated trains. No doubt I also heard them during my first 5 years of childhood in that city. Perhaps I heard the sounds of “the el” in the womb, along with Mom’s heartbeat. Chicago trains helped me realize how the brain filters out repetitive sounds, noticing them only in the absence. Low-cost apartments, where I usually lived, were often near the el, so my brain did a lot of filtering. Here's one of the el in the snow. Another Chicago sound memory: waves lapping on the shore of Lake Michigan. Mundelein College, where I spent 4 years, was located right next to the lake on the city’s North Side.

I missed the trains and the lake when I moved to Denver in 1976. Sometimes at night I could hear freight trains passing, but for the most part, I don’t connect Denver with trains. Lake Michigan sounds were replaced by those of rushing mountain rivers, as moving to Colorado introduced me to my first real non-urban soundscapes. Encountering mountain wilderness on camping trips taught me to listen to natural music: the wind blowing through Ponderosa pine, the distant howl of coyotes, the crunch of heavy boots on gravel.

The sounds of urban Japan entered my life in 1990 when I moved to Machida City in the greater Tokyo area. During those first months, on some mornings, I thought I heard the strangest sing-song phrase coming from trucks passing by my apartment building; could it be a Buddhist chant? Eventually, I learned that those trucks were selling laundry poles! Listen to the last few seconds of this 30-second link to hear the laundry pole “chant”.  A pleasant sound, unlike the ubiquitous loudspeakers on campaign trucks during election season. Those were only a periodic annoyance, fortunately.  Years later, living in my own place a train stop away, I awoke to frogs nearby, exactly where I was never sure, and the muffled sounds of the Odakyu Line train. Japanese trains do not run at night, a boon for sleepers, if not party-goers. Miss the last train, and you stay out until they start again at 5 a.m. in the morning--unless you splurge on a taxi. Nights were relatively quiet except for occasional bozozoku, young men who were or fancied themselves members of motorcycle gangs, racing down the Tsurukawa Kaido a block away. Their unmuffled motors were almost impossible to filter out. As summer progressed, the cicada chorus grew louder, and its vibrations made the air hum. Last year I was Skyping with my Japanese sister, Junko, and I could the cicadas in the background as we talked. I was surprised at how homesick for Japan they made me feel. Here's the sound of autumn crickets.

Now I live in Denver most of the year, and my brain continues to filter sound, pleasant from unpleasant. Every time I hear a loud leaf blower—which always seems to accomplish very little actually—I miss the soft swish of the bamboo brooms that staffers used on the Tamagawa campus to rake fallen leaves. My apartment is on busy Grant Street, near downtown and the State Capitol building, and if I had no sight, I could clearly tell the time of day from the first pre-rush-hour traffic sounds to the constant stream at its height. Annoying sounds include shouts of inebriated nightclub-goers when the bars close at 2 a.m., but not long after that, a silence ensues, punctuated by an occasional siren.

In Florissant, where I spend a good bit of the summer, sounds have a different rhythm and I take notice of different things. Windows open, I hear the buzz/chirp of the hummingbirds at my two feeders from early morning to sunset. Nearly all were on their way south by Labor Day, and when I came back in September from a short trip to Chicago, the silence of their absence was deafening.  Occasional sounds from the summer that has just passed: tires crunching the gravel of Ranger Station Road, a distant generator, Linda’s dogs, Hop and Belle, barking at something. Very occasional sounds: target practice gun shots (a former neighbor’s grandsons visiting the now-mostly-vacant family cabin), a passing herd of cows, a couple of braying burros announcing the arrival of the herd for a day or two of grazing. Owned by a somewhat neglectful neighboring rancher, they used to visit the land periodically but haven’t been around all summer this year. We've had good rainfall this year, so the grass is probably tasty enough in their home pastures.

By sundown, the land descends into true silence. Sometimes I hear the sound of rain or distant coyotes. Otherwise, my ears seem to ring, seeking some auditory vibration. I have electricity and access to technology; I could watch a DVD or listen to music, but I generally don’t. I enjoy the quiet—for awhile. Nights are generally much cooler than the days here, and by the middle of the night the house begins to make sounds. I often wake with a start when I hear a small noise: Was that a mouse or just a creak? A nighttime visitor (that elusive badger who’s been digging holes outside)? My hearing is acute, so acute, too acute. Like Thoreau, I want the positive sounds of silence, yet too often I just wish the sounds of morning would arrive and calm my beating heart.

*Photo from npr.org

Farewell to summer through the senses

I’ve been working at the cabin all day, getting ready to close it over the next two weeks, and making my farewells to summer here at Littlehorse.  How to talk about farewells? Maybe through the experiences filtered through senses over the course of the day: evening silence, the color gold, the taste and smell of harvest veggies, the touch of a paintbrush from a postponed summer task, a yoga sequence.

I always feel a little out of sorts at transition times, trying to fight a sense of loss and the anxiety that comes with it. I go through this every year when I get ready to go back to the city. Anxiety be damned--I want to focus instead on gratitude for the chance to spend so much of my summer here as well as the anticipation of returning to Denver friends and activities.

So as the day winds to an end, I decide to take a long walk.  The evening is so very quiet, and the silence reminds me of what’s missing after summer ends: bird cries and the buzz of hummingbirds, thunder from a late afternoon summer storm, the occasional RV bumping over the gravel road on its way to 11-Mile Reservoir.  The strong afternoon winds have stopped and the air is absolutely still. I hear my footsteps crunch on gravel as I climb up into the trees across the road. Two birds call to each other. As the light fades, I hear coyotes howl in the distance. I start to breathe more deeply. There are no human sounds, and as my anxiety lessens, I’m grateful for that.

Gold--the color of Colorado in autumn. The aspen trees have been turning gold this week, and I can see the change daily. Peak colors will come in another week or so. This background of this selfie, taken last Saturday, gives you an idea.

Then there’s the gold I see almost every evening and morning at sunrise and sunset. This sunset photo, taken a few days ago, features the reds that are more common as fall approaches. No gold tonight, though. The sky was a study in various shades of blue, matching my mood.

I spent the afternoon cooking, steaming broccoli and sweet potatoes, and putting together a pasta salad featuring the cherry tomatoes from plants which *finally* started producing in mid-August. They grew in Linda’s small greenhouse, which I happily share every summer for the pleasure of picking fresh lettuce, scallions greens and herbs all summer. Any fruiting plant—peppers, squash, tomatoes—requires patience. Such is the nature of gardening at nearly 9000 feet. Just as it’s time to pick our reward, well, it’s time to say goodbye to the season. The tomatoes were worth waiting for, however; tasty in the salad but best picked right from the vine. Here’s a photo from Aug. 18 of one day's pickings.

Mornings are the best time for outside chores. The wind is usually calm and my energy is high. This morning I stained the cabin stairs, front and back, and the deck railings. The high altitude sun is merciless on wood, and a touch-up was overdue. Generally I dislike painting/staining—the smell of the chemicals and messiness of it all, so I had put off the job all summer. Today I got it done—testament to the value of deadlines. Final cabin closing day is close and I knew I wasn't likely to get better weather. Surprisingly, the work was pleasant: the dry bleached wood soaked up the stain, and I liked the feel of gliding the brush back and forth.

Perhaps the most delightful sensory experience of late summer came last Saturday when I visited Karen Anderson’s beautiful home and gardens here in Florissant. Karen and yoga teacher Debbie Winking invited me to a yoga day outdoors, along with several other friends and yoga practitioners. I wrote about Karen’s gardens and summer yoga events in this blog last year. (Click here for that entry.) We started with greetings and coffee in Karen’s kitchen. From this photo you can see the visual treat she has every day when she does dishes and looks out at the soft colors outside the window. The inside view gives you a glimpse of the spirit of her home and gardens.

Later we moved outdoors on that sunny and temperate day, and did yoga amid the trees (How perfect for the tree pose!). There was mat work too, and we all found places where we could stretch out and gaze at the gardens and the sky. Here was my spot.

Then came a tasty potluck lunch and time for a circle to close the day. We each drew a word from a bag of small folded papers and reflected on its meaning. I drew the word “solace". I have a Catholic background, and it immediately evoked a mental picture of the Virgin Mary: a tender touch, a soft word, loving gaze. The image/idea of solace has returned to me during the past week. It’s something we give others when a heart is hurting or fearful or just unsettled. And solace, I thought as I walked this evening, is something we can give ourselves. One of the yoga sequences we did involved turning to each of four directions, squatting, scooping energy from the earth and raising our arms to the sky. Each direction represented a quality: acceptance (north), gratitude (east), letting go (south), and trust (west). The elements of solace perhaps? I started today with this activity and plan to do so again tomorrow.

My Chicago: 2016

I've been coming to Chicago every year since I moved from the city in 1976, and each year I see it a little differently. Chicago changes, of course, and my visits are always bounded in time and space. I'm writing this a week after my return to Colorado, when it's especially sweet to remember the highlights of this year's visit.

For the last 20-plus years I've stayed with my sister Joan and brother-in-law Jim in downtown Chicago, within sight of Lake Michigan, just across the street from the city's showpiece, Millennium Park. Every year I'm blown away by this view from the 20th floor and can never resist taking the same photo. Here's the 2016 version of Chicago's most popular park, once an old railroad yard, with Michigan Avenue in the background.

Highlights of my annual trips are long talks with Joan and Jim and other family and friends, but visits are also sure to include art exhibits, a movie or play, walks along Lake Michigan or the Chicago River, strolling along Michigan Avenue, a stop-in at the gorgeously-restored Chicago Cultural Center. This year was no exception. Recently the river walk was expanded to LaSalle Street. Joan, Jim and I took a stroll there one evening after seeing The Music of Strangers: Yo-Yo Ma and the Silk Road Ensemble  at the Siskel Center.

The top highlight of this year's visit was the wedding of my niece (okay, great-niece or as I prefer, great! niece), Laura Orozco and John Gelb. They got married Sept. 5 at a wedding hall near suburban Palatine. Joan, Jim and I hopped the train from downtown Chicago and arrived for a beautiful late afternoon ceremony. I think this photo captures something special about this relationship and the love Laura and John share.

Of course, weddings are a chance to see and celebrate with other family members. Here's a photo  of members of the Orozco family.

From left is Olivia Laura's sister, and her son, Jarod; Carmela and Sofia, daughters of Laura's brother Paul (on the right); in the center are Mary and Raul, their parents. Mary is the youngest daughter of the late Bernice Parliman, my sister on our father's side. Other Orozco family members traveled all the way from Mexico and Canada for the wedding.

After the ceremony we all trooped downstairs for dinner and dancing. A mariachi band started the entertainment, followed by a deejay, who managed to play tunes which got just about everyone on the dance floor.

The next day, Joan, Jim and I returned to Chicago, where I continued to enjoy time in Chicago. One cause for celebration was the winning record of The Chicago Cubs. The team has a strong shot at the World Series this year--and if they make it and win, it will be the first time since 1908. When I arrived in town the "magic number", printed on the top of the Chicago Sun Times, was 18--the number of wins needed to clinch the Central Division championship of the National Baseball League. The number dropped every day of my visit, and the clinch game came a few days after I left town. Is baseball identity programmed in early childhood? I'm still a Chicagoan as far as baseball is concerned (though my first love in those early days was the White Sox). Never could quite get into the Denver Rockies. Here are the three of us, showing our pleasure and good spirits.

My visits to Chicago usually include reunions with friends and other relatives as well. This year I spent an afternoon with two college friends, Eibhlin Glennon and Diane Culhane at Diane's new home in Arlington Heights. Diane, her husband Paul, and dog Regan moved there in May and it was good to see them settled into their new digs. Here we are, the three of us, Mundelein College class of 1968. (From left, Eibhlin, me, Diane)

I missed seeing others I usually visit when I'm in town: Peggy Shinner and Ann Tyler, old friends who were in New Mexico at the time, as well as my cousin Joanne and her husband Jack, who was recovering from heart surgery. Hopefully, those reunions will happen next year, when fates willing, I'll return again.

No Chicago visit would be complete without mentioning the Chicago I didn't see--the South and West Sides where most of gang violence occurs. 2016 has been a terrible year for gang-related homicide in this city, with a murder rate surpassing New York City and Los Angeles combined. There have been clamors for more police protection, and Mayor Rahm responded. I still wonder to what extent there's progress on any of the root causes--racism, despair, a broken criminal justice system, for example. Here was the front page of the Sun Times one morning.

It's so easy when you visit Chicago--or anywhere, for that matter--to think of the proverbial blind men and the elephant; each touches a different part and declares that's what an elephant is. And so I touched a few parts of this city, but at least I think I'm well aware of the partiality of my view.

Other impressions/memories from my one-week stay: checking Facebook to follow Laura and John's honeymoon in Italy, the strains of a jazz performance during the annual Jazz Festival at Millennium Park, a 1930s painting retrospective at the Art Institute of Chicago, an excellent play about the slipperiness of art authentication (Bakersfield Mist at TimeLine Theater), a morning stroll through Lincoln Park and breakfast with running friends of Joan and Jim's, a solitary stroll along the lakefront, the groundbreaking for a new skyscraper called Vista, which will be built over the next four years across the park from my sister and brother-in-law's balcony;  buying tea at David's wonderful new shop around the corner.... Then, all too soon, time to pack, get on the Orange Line, and head for Midway Airport. Farewell....until next year.

Chicago memories: from library to cultural center

The central public library in downtown Chicago was intimidating to my 15-year-old eyes when I first saw it: huge rooms, echoes of footsteps on winding stairways, long wooden tables, hushed voices, and something called a card catalog. The latter probably evokes pity in anyone coming of age of the Google era.  What was a card catalog? We needed it when we did a term paper: find your topic, find the wooden drawer with the relevant letter of the alphabet, thumb through the index cards, and then track down a title of two. No relevant cards? Well, then, best to change my topic. I remember requesting a periodical by writing it's name and date on a small slip of paper and giving it to a librarian. As for architectural grandeur--Did decades of grime cover the beauty of this 19th century building or was I just oblivious?

I used to go to the library some Saturday mornings in the early 60s after my family moved back to Chicago from Hammond, Indiana. I took the bus from our Northwest Side neighborhood, transferring to the elevated train at Addison. Twenty minutes later I'd be at Michigan and Randolph, trudging up the stairs to one of the upper floors.  Today, so many years after high school, I don't remember any of the topics I researched, and I have no samples of my high school writings.  I do remember being groped by a boy one day, and after that, I didn't go very much anymore.

Then I graduated from high school and went to college. Not needing the city library, I relied instead on the basement library at Mundelein College, the women's college where I spent the next four years. I didn't think of the central library much until the early 70s when I learned that a group of Chicago's well-heeled and civic-minded citizens had organized to restore this 19th century architectural masterpiece to its former beauty and to turn it into a cultural center for the city. The Chicago Cultural Center opened in 1977, and since then it's become a larger part of my Chicago experience than the library ever was.

Reminders of the building's past are enshrined forever, though, and I seem to notice a different one each time I visit. There are some beautiful photos at Wikimedia online. Click here for more. I took these last week when I was in Chicago. Evidence of the center's past life as a library remain.

Stained glass remains one of my favorite features of this magnificent 4-story structure, an art form that always conveys reverence to me, no doubt from long association with churches. Long may it last, a reminder that the best of our cultural legacies deserve just that.

The central public library was not the only inhabitant back in 1892 when the building was designed. The land was donated by the post-Civil War Grand Army of the Republic, which has an interesting history--one I just learned from Wikipedia. (How, oh how, did I ever write school reports without Wikipedia?) The GAR used it as a meeting hall in those days. Today you can see the names of major Civil War battles engraved above the doorways, and here is one of them. Like the stained glass domes, this doorway and others like it remind us that to walk through a door is....Something.

A major tourist attraction, The Chicago Cultural Center is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. The beautiful stained glass, marble and tile work designed by the 19th century architects are carefully maintained. It's the place to go for concerts, art exhibits, information on all sorts of happenings in town. I make sure to go every year when I visit Chicago, an easy stop on my itinerary, as my sister and brother-in-law live just a few blocks away. On the day I visited, there was a noontime classical concert. Impatient to be outside on that morning, I sat on a marble bench on the first floor and listened to part of Jean-Philippe Rameau's Selections from Suite for Keyboard in E Minor.

There was a quilting exhibit in the 4th floor gallery, which I also visited. Quilts, all by African-American artists, were on loan from a branch library. The styles were distinctly different from quilts I've seen elsewhere.

Here's an example of Marie "Big Mama" Roseman's work, discovered in the 1980s in an antique shop. Curator's notes say that the landscapes we see in a "delightfully idiosyncratic" pattern are very different from the geometric or abstract patterns we're used to seeing.

Arbie Williams (b. in 1916 in Texas) did Overalls in 1991. It's a "Britches" quilt, made from worn-out pants.

I left the Cultural Center, strolled down Michigan Avenue on that beautiful late summer day, and thought about libraries. Chicago has had a new central library since 1991 when the 10-story Harold Washington Library, named after the former mayor who fought for it, opened on South State Street. Like the urban library I enjoy in Denver, it is as much community center as reference archive. It's a multimedia center, offering author readings, computer and other classes, story hours, literary services, and resources for the differently abled--among other things. No doubt there's someone to talk to for patrons who are groped or have another bad experience there. I had left Chicago by the time the
library opened, but I visited once and was impressed. No stained glass, but it has a way with light in a postmodern setting. This is the Winter Garden on the 9th floor. (Photo from Wikipedia)

On days when it seems like so many things have gotten worse since I became an adult half a century ago, I think about the evolution of the public library and how that has grown ever so much better.

Lunchtime in downtown Chicago

Visiting Chicago often puts me in a rather historical mood, sometimes a very nostalgic mood. But nostalgia wasn't really the right word today because it implies a sense of longing or at least very fond remembrance of a certain place or event. I didn't feel that way this hot and humid morning as I set out for State Street to do an errand at Macy's, once known as the upscale Marshall Field & Company department store. I was feeling more like a cultural explorer, not longing to relieve an experience, but rather to see how things might be different.

Department stores have passed their heyday--that I knew--and I wondered what I might find there. A teenager when my family moved back to Chicago, I was excited then to learn that I could visit Field's on my own. It seemed like a kind of shopper's Disneyland, with special chocolates made on site (Frango mints) and beautiful packaging on anything you bought. I don't think I bought much in those early days, however, as I didn't have any money to speak of--and I was not brought up among "ladies who lunched" from plates and tea cups on white tablecloths. This was the era of the "tea room", an innovation Field's added to early 20th century department store culture. Apparently, according to Wikipedia, it was unladylike for ladies to eat in public in the late 19th century--a problem for tired shoppers. One day a young clerk shared her chicken pot pie lunch with a customer, and the idea of selling lunch or tea in a posh atmosphere was born.

Though I dressed casually most of the time, like all 60s teens, I absorbed the idea that going to Field's was something you dressed up for--an outing, not an errand. No doubt I got this from my Aunt Steph, who cut a fine figure in heels and a good dress, which I'm sure she wore on all downtown excursions, day or eve. Did I ever have an elegant lunch in the tearoom at Field's? I'm not sure. My memories of the place center on the huge multi-story Christmas tree placed in the atrium every holiday season and the animated window displays that brought thousands downtown in frigid December temperatures. Somewhere I have a picture of myself, dressed in my best coat, walking down State Street with an old boyfriend, having just admired the displays.

I wondered what the tearoom would look like today, so many years later. Field's is now Macy's, and the tearoom is called the Walnut Room, aiming its publicity at theater goers looking for dinner after the show. You can still get chicken pot pie and expect to pay a tab ranging from $11 to $30. It has a lunch service, though, and on this Tuesday morning, around 11:30, I decided to take the elevator to the 7th floor to see what might be happening in the Walnut Room. Here's what I saw:

Wanting to avoid crowds? This clearly is the place to go. Things were no busier at the food court at the other end of the floor. There were a number of food choices here, but perhaps it was still too early or people didn't know it was here or didn't want to take time to wait for the elevator or take the squeaky escalator to the 7th floor.

I didn't stay to see if things picked up later during lunch time. With another errand to do down the street, I took the elevator down and headed toward Wabash Street. Feeling hungry,  I stopped at the Protein Bar near Madison and Wabash. It was doing a booming business. Here's the view from outdoors.

I went in and ordered a spinach parmesan and pesto bowl, after checking the menu on the wall,  which told me the nutritional content and ingredients. I paid $7, and lunch was in my hands just 10 minutes later. Self-service on drinks and plastic ware, plain tables, no tablecloths. Some customers sat at small tables lining busy Wabash Street and others, at tables or a counter facing the street. Some were alone or with their phones, others with friends. Lunch lasted as long as their lunch breaks allowed. Somewhat less than an hour for most it seemed, myself included. I enjoyed this tasty lunch and went on my way. I was tempted to stop in at The Goddess and the Baker next door, with a table of croissants in easy view and a line stretching to the door. An employee moved down the line taking orders, and I resolutely moved on.

Both Field's and the Protein Bar seemed to typify so many of the changes that have happened in the way we eat, from the service to the setting to the food itself. Perhaps more people eat out as well. Were the workers at Field's back in the 60s munching their homemade sandwiches in the employee cafeteria while shoppers filled the Tea Room? Of course, the Walnut Room and the Protein Bar are not the only two ways of eating in Chicago.  I passed many food trucks, and outdoor restaurant patios, and the wonderful Toni's pastry shop on Washington (my destination). I wondered if we could generalize that our food choices have greatly expanded while the lunch hour has gone the way of Field's animated Christmas display.