Growing Up in Working Class Youngstown — Volney Rogers

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When I was growing up, Volney Rogers was the other junior high school on the West Side. We were rivals in junior high football, soon to be classmates at Chaney High School, into which both schools fed.  I may have been dimly aware that there was a real Volney Rogers and that he had something to do with Mill Creek Park, but other than that, I was clueless. That’s too bad, because learning more about Volney Rogers would have taught me a good bit both about responsible citizenship and Mill Creek Park.

Do you know that very likely there would not have been a Mill Creek Park were it not for the efforts of Volney Rogers? The rock in places like Bears Den might have been dug out and used for construction. The trees that line Mill Creek gorge might have gone to sawmills and been used up in home construction. There would have been no Lakes Glacier, Cohasset, or Newport. Pioneer Pavilion would not have been preserved. There would likely be no Lanterman Falls and Old Mill. Mill Creek might have been either an industrial stream or possibly dammed for a reservoir. The trails, the picnic areas, the scenic views–none of it may have existed were it not for the vision and industry of Rogers.

Volney Rogers was a lawyer, along with his brother Disney, with offices in downtown Youngstown. In 1890, he explored Mill Creek Gorge on horseback and determined to preserve it, even as stone quarries and sawmills were beginning to strip the gorge of its rugged beauty. He secured rights to large tracts of land from over 90 owners, helped write and pass “The Township Park Improvement Law” that created the park district, and turned over the land he had acquired in 1891, creating Mill Creek Park. He worked with his brother Bruce, and noted landscape architect, Charles Eliot (who had worked with Frederick Law Olmsted, a notable architect of the urban parks in major cities throughout the U.S.). During a recession in 1893, the park offered a source of work for men who laid out trails, restored Pioneer Pavilion, and built the dam for Lake Cohasset. Lake Glacier’s dam was also completed during Rogers life, being built in 1906.

Rogers was a lawyer who understood the implications of land use, sewage disposal, and the environmental implications of poor infrastructure decisions. Vindicator articles on August 9 and August 10, 2015 chronicle his fight against big steel to avoid running sewer lines for storm sewer run-offs into Mill Creek. He took the fight all the way to the Ohio Supreme Court, losing in the end, and losing with it his health. He left Youngstown shortly after, broken-hearted, and died in 1919. In 2015, Mill Creek’s lakes were closed for all purposes because of high e. coli levels, a result of the very problems Rogers foresaw.

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Volney Rogers Monument, an early postcard.

In 1920, a bronze statue of Rogers was erected near the main entrance to the park on Memorial Hill Drive, just off of Glenwood Avenue, a monument which remains. So often, we build monuments to great people but forget what they really did and what we could learn from them. Rogers fight with big steel is one more example repeated so often in Youngstown history of sacrificing the long term good of the city to a powerful interest. More positively, Rogers is an outstanding example of the kind of civic leader every city needs in every generation if it is to be a great place. He devoted his time, energies, his own money, and ultimately his health to leave Youngstown a beautiful place. Who are the civic leaders in Youngstown today who will follow his lead and set aside self-interest and self-aggrandizement to leave Youngstown a better place in the twenty-first century?

What We Could Be Talking About

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Photo: U.S. Dept of State, Public Domain
Photo: By Michael Vadon – →This file has been extracted from another file: Donald Trump August 19, 2015.jpg, CC BY-SA 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=42609338

I wonder if you have noticed in this presidential election that most of what we hear about is his affairs and character, her emails and character, and what we most have to fear about the other. The truth is that all of this is unsettling and it makes me wonder what it says of us and our processes that after millions of dollars, primaries in most of our states, and lots of candidates and campaigning, this is the best we can come up with. But what has also disturbed me is that it has been very hard to get to substantive conversations about many important questions. At times one or the other candidate has tried, only to see the conversation be deflected back to emails and sex and outrageous statements.

Meanwhile our attention has been diverted from things like:

  • The genocide occurring in Aleppo–one of our third party candidates didn’t even know what Aleppo was!
  • Our burgeoning national debt, approaching $20 trillion, or over $61,000 per citizen. Mom and pop have been spending big time on the credit card and the kids will be paying the bill.
  • Our opiate epidemic that may well affect over 2 million people in this country and that contributes to much of the crime and gun violence in our cities. Various substance abuse problems also contribute to unemployment or under-employment of many who might otherwise contribute to our workforce and economy.
  • Deepening fault lines across race, ethnicity and gender. So much of our politics seems to pander only to particular groups in our country rather than serving all those who are or hope to be “citizens.” Our politics accentuate these divisions rather than uniting us in common aspirations across them.
  • The impacts of rising temperatures, cataclysmic weather events, and rising sea levels both on this country and others, particularly on the poor of the world in coastal regions and drought regions. We can debate whether humans have caused this or long term trends. But there are monumental changes occurring right now that mean this is not “business as usual.”

And these are just a few examples…

It also strikes me that there are a variety of local and regional issues that deserve greater attention. My city’s voters are being asked to approve a nearly $1 billion package of bond issues for various infrastructure and civic improvements. We’ve heard quite little about how these monies will be used, and how equitably they will be distributed through our community and how those decisions will be made. We are voting on local, appellate, and state supreme court judges. Most of us don’t appreciate the importance of their work until you sit on a jury. We vote on state and federal representatives. At a state level, these people exercise oversight over various state services, our universities and public education at every level, and state resources, among other things.

Emails and scandals are easy and ready diversions from these issues that take time and thought but profoundly shape our lives. It would seem that a responsible media would stop the feeding frenzy and focus on these questions. It seems that responsible candidates would declare a moratorium on “trash talk” and at least for the last weeks of the campaign, address matters of substance. And it seems that responsible citizenship requires that we not settle for the low level of discourse and substance we’ve seen but call for substantive discussions of the things that are really shaping our nation and world.

And maybe if we did this, we wouldn’t be saying, “is this the best we can come up with?”

How To Be A Bookseller, Inspired by Bernard Black

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Lawrence Hammar, owner of Blue Jacket Books, who epitomizes a great bookseller–nothing like those in this post!

Bookriot posted a hilarious post based on the British series Black Books, on “How to Be a Customer in a Book Shop, According to Bernard Black.” It’s a hoot and you really should take a look at it. I thought, in the same vein, I would post a few tips on How to Be a Bookseller, inspired by Black, and some of the more nefarious booksellers I’ve experienced over the years.

  1. Never acknowledge customers. It only encourages them. They’ll talk to you. They will ask you about books. Listening to the latest NPR podcast is infinitely more important.
  2. Make things hard to find. Don’t label sections. Pile unstocked books in front of shelves so it is difficult to get to them.
  3. Never. Clean. Anything. The book can’t possibly be worth anything if it doesn’t have a fine patina of dust and grime on it. You want your customers to walk out looking like they’ve been in a coal mine. After all, how else will they get their friends to believe they had just come from an antiquarian bookstore?
  4. Persuade all your customers that they really need to buy books from that collection of obscure, mildewed books that you purchased too quickly. Everyone needs a copy of the antebellum best selling Social Etiquette for the Plantation, after all.
  5. Give outrageously high prices to books that have been sitting on your shelves for years and aren’t really worth it. Don’t negotiate. You don’t really want to part with them, do you?
  6. Stay blithely uninformed about what you have on your shelves. After all, you’d really rather be at the beach…or golf course…or pub. How dare customers expect that you’ve read or are actually interested in any of this stuff?

Sorry, I don’t have any videos to go along with these. And the truth is, most of the booksellers I’ve know are not like this at all. They love books, build relationships with their customers, and make their shops places you want to spend time in. They are good hosts who love introducing customers to their books, helping them make new friends, as it were. They turn soulless transactions into rich interactions. Thank goodness they don’t take their inspiration from Bernard Black!

Review: You Are What You Love

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You Are What You Love, James K. A. Smith. Grand Rapids: Brazos Press, 2016.

Summary: Smith contends that our hearts and the ways we live our lives are shaped by what we love and worship, and that “liturgies” historically have shaped the loves of our hearts and the ways of our lives.

So often, in Christian circles, it is thought that if we can instruct Christians in right doctrine and help them apply this rightly in their lives, they will live Christianly. James K. A. Smith would not deny the importance of right doctrine but would argue that it is the shaping of our hearts, our loves, desires, and what we worship, that is crucial in translating right belief into our practices. Several years ago, Smith framed out in great depth this argument in Desiring the Kingdom (reviewed here). Many have asked for a more distilled version of this material, which he provides in this new work.

Smith begins by observing that we are not simply thinking things but rather people shaped by the habits of our hearts. Re-shaping our lives means recognizing the existing habits of the heart, often more culturally than convictionally-shaped, and re-orienting our hearts by re-orienting the focus of our worship. He believes this fundamentally happens through “liturgies” that re-shape the loves of our heart along the lines of loving the Triune God and loving our neighbors.

The problem he sees in much of contemporary church practice is its thin, expressive form. In an effort to turn away from liturgical formalism, it has rejected the proper uses of liturgy. Instead, he would contend as follows:

     “If worship is formative, not merely expressive, then we need to be conscious and intentional about the form of worship that is forming us. This has one more important implication: When you unhook worship from mere expression, it also completely retools your understanding of repetition. If you think of worship as a bottom-up, expressive endeavor, repetition will seem insincere and inauthentic. But when you see worship as an invitation to a top-down encounter in which God is refashioning your deepest habits, then repetition looks very different: it’s how God rehabituates us. In a formational paradigm, repetition isn’t insincere, because you are not showing, you’re submitting. This is crucial because there is no formation without repetition. Virtue formation takes practice, and there is no practice that isn’t repetitive. We willingly embrace repetition as good in all kinds of other sectors of life–to hone our golf swing, our piano prowess, and our mathematical abilities, for example. If the sovereign Lord has created us as creatures of habit, why should we think repetition is inimical to our spiritual growth” (p. 80).

Smith then explores how Christian worship is meant to “re-story” our lives in a narrative arc of gathering, listening, communing, and sending. In the final three chapters he writes about liturgies at home and at work, and most tellingly, of the shaping of the hearts of our young. He decries the “next big thing” of much of youth ministry and contends for communal practices of eating, praying, singing, thinking and reading together across generations in both families and educational settings.

Even this distillation of Smith’s work is worth savoring and reading slowly. It is an important work for any charged with leading the formational and liturgical life of churches, as it is for those engaged in the formational work of education, and those who care about the translation of Christian believe into Christian practice in the workplace. It recognizes that we are far more shaped by our heart-habits, whether it is praying the hours, or regularly checking our phones, than simply by what we formally believe. Far too often we are those, who, like the author, read Wendell Berry and Michael Pollan’s challenges to healthier agriculture and eating while sitting in a fast-food restaurant. Just as weight loss programs help us develop better liturgies toward food, Smith contends that the work of the church is to lead us in liturgies that shape our hearts around our beliefs in ways that God works to transform our lives.

I’ll leave you with three questions this provokes for me:

  1. If an outsider were to observe the lives of our congregation or group for a week, what would they conclude we love?
  2. What “liturgies” inside or outside our community seem most formative in shaping these “habits of heart?”
  3. What “liturgies” might we embrace to begin to be formed along the lines of what we believe?

_______________________________

Disclosure of Material Connection: I received this book free from the publisher . I was not required to write a positive review. The opinions I have expressed are my own.

Review: Which Side Are You On

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Which Side Are You On?, Elaine Harger. Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2016.

Summary: An account of seven debates in the American Library Association Council over matters of social responsibility and how this body exerts its influence in broader social debates.

Most of us have the impressions of libraries as sedate places with librarians who are helpful, interested in serving the reading and information needs of patrons, and knowledgeable about the resources they have at hand. The most political act of most librarians seems to be supporting “Banned Books Months,” featuring attempts to remove books from circulation that patrons or others may deem objectionable.

This last is actually the tip of the iceberg according to Elaine Harger, who has served as a Councilor-at-Large within the American Library Association (ALA) and on the Social Responsibilities Round Table. In this book, she recounts what appear to have been lively and contested debates around seven issues that suggest a far from sedate, sometimes contentious, and sometimes very politically motivated association. In the course of these debates she explores some challenging issues such as the conflicts between intellectual freedom, censorship, and social justice; the tension between patron privacy and protection from surveillance and national security; relating to corporate partners whose products or views conflict with the social consciousness of librarians; and even the difference between stated views around climate change and climate unfriendly practices.

The first debate concerns the re-issuance of a 1975 film called The Speaker concerning the controversial race and gene theory ideas of William Shockley. Originally an ALA expose’, over the years it was deemed moral offensive to minority communities and its reissuance and presence on YouTube raised the ire of many, while receiving calls of intellectual freedom from others.

The second concerns the banning of anti-apartheid books in South Africa and how the ALA along with other library groups would advocate against this practice and boycott South African vendors. The third confronts a somewhat similar issue in Israeli and Occupied Territories and the censorship of materials deemed a threat to the State of Israel. Here interests favoring Israel and those opposing censorship clashed seriously.

The fourth and fifth debates concerned corporate partners. In the fourth, the concern was the sponsorship of McDonald’s of children’s reading programs, with its corporate logos prominent on all the materials. Can an organization concerned with the deleterious effects of the fast food sold on the McDonald’s menu work with such a corporate partner. This is even more tendentious with the Boy Scouts, an organization who had long worked in promoting reading with Scouts but whose positions around excluding homosexual boys and adult leaders from participation made it unsupportable.

The sixth discussion turns on privacy concerns, particularly in the face of Edward Snowden’s release through Wikileaks of massive amounts of documentation showing the extent of government electronic surveillance intrusion into all of our lives. For librarians concerned with patron privacy (that their searches, borrowed materials records, and other electronic activity with the library remain private), this was an issue that struck close to home. Yet a resolution to not only decry this intrusion upon Fourth Amendment rights but also to support whistleblowers like Snowden, although passed, was pulled for a tamer substitute because of pressures from the ALA’s Washington office.

The final debate, more a personal cry of the heart of the author concerns the gap between statements of concern around climate change and activities from cross-country travel to uses of resources and energy that conflict with the avowed seriousness of concern for climate change. One of the most interesting parts of this chapter was the author’s personal testimony and example that including resigning her Councilor position and restricting her airline travel because of her concerns.

The chapters give detailed accounts of these debates including transcripts of some discussions and various parliamentary maneuvers. I suspect that this may be of greatest interest to “library insiders” but I found several things fascinating:

  1. I’m glad librarians are concerned and speaking out about Fourth Amendment intrusions upon privacy. I wonder if librarians might also exercise a greater role in educating patrons on how to protect personal information from identity theft and from parties that might use personal information in other ways to their disadvantage.
  2. It is intriguing that librarians, as curators of information, may privilege certain forms of information to the exclusion of others. Even if there is intellectual freedom, if socially unacceptable views are not accessible, this can amount to a subtle form of censorship. In particular, many of our current social debates are framed in a very binary fashion, in which a person who does not fully embrace the socially privileged view is pigeonholed with the benighted “others”. Thoughtful dissenters from social orthodoxy are easily lumped in with outright bigots. My question is, will librarians allow a civil and pluralistic public square of ideas, even conflicting ideas, to flourish?
  3. It was striking to me that this association is hardly immune to political pressures from right or left. Its effectiveness would seem to rest in its skill to adequately represent its constituents, be transparent in its processes, and courageous when it takes positions and encounters opposition.
  4. The author’s final chapter underscores a great challenge any of us working in the knowledge world face. We can talk a better game than we live. Praxis is just as important as the positions we take.

I do think the title of this work is interesting. “Which side are you on?” conjures up a vision of those who are right, those who are wrong. Yet one wonders if it is really that simple in the library or the real world. It also suggests a form of conflict resolution with winners and losers. As I mention above, we love to create binaries, excluding the possibilities of third options, which may be possible at least in some cases. There certainly are some evils simply to be resisted, but not all things are like that in society. Often, better resolutions come as we understand situations better and also have a better sense of the range of options available. Librarians, it seems to me have a unique access to such information, that suggests the potential that they may contribute uniquely and significantly to conflict resolution where there are people of good will.

“Which side are you on?” may accurately reflect the social responsibility debates of the last twenty-five years in library circles. Who will be the people in the library world and elsewhere who frame a different “come together” conversation? I hope I will see that book someday.

_______________________________

Disclosure of Material Connection: I received this book free from the publisher via LibraryThing. I was not required to write a positive review. The opinions I have expressed are my own.

Review: Thumbprint in the Clay

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Thumbprint in the Clay, Luci Shaw. Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 2016.

Summary: A series of reflections, including some of the author’s poetry, on the “marks of the Maker” evident both in creation and in our lives.

True confessions. My wife is not a fan of most Christian writing. She finds much of it tedious, repetitive, and stylistically poor. And so when this book came in a shipment of books, I passed it along to her, being familiar with some of Shaw’s other work. This book passed “the wife test”! Not only did she read it through, but she kept talking about different ideas, and wanted me to read it so we could talk about it together. And we did. This does not happen often.

The basic idea of the book is a series of reflections considering the “marks of the Maker” that we see both in the creation around us and in the unfolding of our lives and relationships, marks of beauty, order, and grace that reveal something of the Maker’s character. She introduces this by speaking of a collection of mugs and other pottery around her home and how they are reflections of the artists who made each piece:

Each piece, whether it’s a mug, a mixing bowl, a milk pitcher, a vase, a turkey platter, a serving dish, is the result of combining earth and human eye and muscle with individual design, skill and intense heat. Some of these treasures are hand built, some shaped on the potter’s wheel, many bearing the thumbprint signatures of the potters themselves or their names or logos scrawled on the mug handle or the bowl base. Having that personal identifying mark makes a piece of pottery memorable to me. It’s as if the maker is proclaiming his unique identity, saying, “Don’t forget! I impressed this mark in the clay before firing to let you know it is authentically my artifact, and it will always be personal, from me to you.”

The book reflects her wide travels from her home in the Pacific Northwest on Bellingham Bay to cathedrals in New York City to the desert landscape of the American Southwest. She sees these marks in both the beauty and majesty of nature and in the great works of human artistry. There is a physicality about this book that ranges from pottery to mountains and the love of physical books, to the capabilities and frailties of the author’s body. At one point, she recounts a revelatory conversati0n with Fr. Richard Rohr, who says, “I could sit for hours and simply contemplate that tree. Those leaves. Even that one leaf in particular.” I found this resonating with my own experiences of spending a couple hours looking at and sketching a single flowering Columbine plant.

The book traces an arc moving from physical creation to our lives, which also bear unique and distinctive marks of the Maker’s work, marks that point to his forming and molding, sometimes through pain and suffering, that make us both unique creations and reflections of the Creator. Perhaps one of the most moving chapters was toward the end as she recounts the powerful impact of Clyde Kilby, Wheaton professor and C. S. Lewis scholar in recognizing, encouraging, and defending her emerging calling as a writer against her father’s aspirations for her of mission service. At one point he told her father, “Dr. Deck, excuse me, but I believe that is your vision not your daughter’s.”

The writing moves in a bit of a “stream of consciousness” mode around the chapter themes, with some of the author’s poetry interspersed. These are reflections, not an exposition. They allow us to walk alongside a deeply spiritual, keenly observant, long time spiritual pilgrim, and wise woman. At first I thought that this might be a good book for older fellow pilgrims that might give words to their journey, and indeed, this is so. But I also think that for younger pilgrims, particularly those of an artistic bent, this could be a great book for seeing what the life of faith looks like after a lifetime, what a life is like that has been “imprinted” by this way of seeing over sixty, seventy years or more. For all of us, it can be more helpful in opening us up to seeing the ways the great Artist has left “thumbprints” all over that reveal the wonders of the Artist, as well as what the Artist has made.

Growing Up in Working Class Youngstown — Spinning Bowl Salads

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2oth Century Restaurant, photo courtesy of Morris Levy, used with permission.

One of my favorite college memories was a small group of friends that would gather for dinner at the end of each quarter at Youngstown State. We would meet up at the 20th Century Restaurant, with its art deco architecture, and usually several of us would end up sharing one of their legendary Spinning Bowl Salads. The 20th Century was located on Belmont Ave, at the “Belmont Point” where Belmont and Wirt Street merged.

The Spinning Bowl Salad was a trademark of the 20th Century Restaurant from its beginnings in 1941. The restaurant was opened by Harry and Faye Malkoff, who ran several other restaurants in the area including one of our favorites, the Golden Drumstick, located on the South side. Faye Malkoff was apparently a culinary genius. In Classic Restaurants of Youngstown, her son says that she based the recipe on one used at Lawry’s Steakhouse in Los Angeles, adding her own unique touches (p. 112). I’m inclined to believe this version of the history, although there is an alternate claiming it was picked up from the Blackhawk Steak House in Chicago. A Baltimore Sun article from May 10, 2000 makes this connection and provides a recipe that sounds like the salad I remember.

The big deal with the Spinning Bowl Salad was that it was made at your table, the bowl literally being spun as the salad was tossed and the special blue cheese-based and crumbled egg dressing was added. It was a show as well as a feast–we’d often share one, along with other entrees.

The restaurant had a diverse menu and it was all good–everything from steaks and spare ribs to deli sandwiches and pasta. Living on a college student budget a plate of spaghetti, a share of a Spinning Bowl and one of their famous chocolate creme pies or New York Cheesecakes would leave you pretty satisfied.

By the time I started going there to eat in the early ’70s, ownership had passed to Joseph and Morris Levy, along with brothers Marvin and Jacob Newman (Classic Restaurants, p. 112). I regret that I never visited during the heyday of the Malkoff’s ownership, but it sounds like the Levy’s kept the wait staff who had worked for the Malkoff’s along with a chef trained by Faye. I spoke to Morris Levy who gave me permission to use the picture in this article. I joked with him that as sometimes boisterous college students he probably had to shush us. He said most likely he would have joined in with the fun. At any rate, we always found the 20th Century a great place for good food and celebration.

During this time, much of the business growth on the North side had moved north of Gypsy Lane into Liberty Township. The area of Belmont on which the restaurant was located began to decline and customers felt increasingly unsafe visiting the restaurant. Ultimately, it was closed in the late 1980’s and is no more.

Still, as restaurants go, a forty-five year plus run is pretty amazing when so many start ups last only a few years. It was a great place for first dates, anniversaries, celebrations, or a place for a good lunch if you worked downtown or on the North side. It combined a unique atmosphere with great, distinctive menu items. And for most of us, what we will remember most is those awesome Spinning Bowl Salads.

I hope you will add your memories of the 20th Century to this post.

[After sending a copy of this post to Morris Levy, he sent me this recipe for the Spinning Bowl Salad.]

           SPINNING BOWL SALAD

Dressing: 50% Miracle Whip,  50% KRAFT Zesty Italian. Whip until smooth.

Croutons: Use day old white sandwich bread cut into
squares.  Bake lightly on both sides,  sprinkle with powdered garlic/
liquid butter mix, then  bake somemore.

Hard boiled egg: grated. Crumbled blue cheese

Head lettuce chopped coarsely, optional a tad of escarole

Enjoy,  Morris ‘Blondie’ Levy

[Want to read more of “Growing Up in Working Class Youngstown?” Click “On Youngstown” here or on the menu to see over a hundred other posts!]

Review: In Search of Moral Knowledge

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In Search of Moral Knowledge, R. Scott Smith. Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 2014.

Summary: Surveying the history of ethical thought, it argues for the possibility of universal moral knowledge contrary to contemporary theories consigning moral propositions to the realm of subjective, relative values.

Instinctively, we know that some things are just right, and some wrong. Cold-blooded murder, rape, child abuse, and genocide are just wrong. Sacrificial love of a parent for a child, or a spouse, impartial standards of justice, and marital faithfulness are just right. Yet moral theory since Kant considers moral statements to simply be assertions of value or sentiment, as opposed to statements of fact. Moral knowledge is not possible in the same sense as scientific knowledge.

R. Scott Smith believes in the possibility of religiously based moral knowledge that may afford universal moral knowledge. But before making his case he surveys the history of ethical thought on these questions. First of all, he considers classical and early Christian ethical theories, including that of great thinkers from Augustine through Aquinas that rooted ethics in the transcendent. Following the Enlightenment and the focus on human reason, Smith traces the rise of naturalism, and the fact-value dichotomy, modern moral theories of John Rawls’ political liberalism and Christine Korsgaard’s constructivism. He turns to post modern theorists and the efforts of Christian ethicists, Alasdair McIntyre and Stanley Hauerwas.

In the final part of this work, Smith outlines his own argument for religiously based moral knowledge, rooted in the case for the existence of the Christian God, basing this in the cumulative case for God’s existence and thus the basis for universal moral knowledge in the transcendent. The veracity of historical evidences for Christian revelation justify this as a source for moral knowledge.

I think this work offers a great survey of ethical thought that makes it a valuable text for a course in ethics in a Christian college or seminary context, or a valuable “alongside” reading for the student in a similar course in a secular context. It is thorough, extensive and carefully argued. It also reveals the conundrum of modern ethical thought in making assertions about morality absent any basis for arguing for moral facts.

Given the thoroughness of the survey, the author’s statement of his own theory of universal moral knowledge seemed quite brief. He does deal with some objections, but I would have liked to seen a fuller defense of the premises of his argument, particularly because the title adverts to “overcoming the fact-value dichotomy.” Adding the word “toward” would probably be more accurate. This, however, is valuable in itself as a critical survey of moral thought that may be adequate for the needs of many and lay the groundwork for further reading of more extensive treatments in other works.

Bob on Books Offline For a While

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I’ve been posting consistently six times a week for the past few years. I’m going to have to take some time offline to deal with a health issue. Hope to be back in a week or so! But there are lots of reviews, and other posts on reading, life, Youngstown, and more that you can check out–over 1000 in all! Thanks for following so faithfully!

Review: Handel: The Man & His Music

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Handel: The Man & His Music, Jonathan Keates. New York: Random House, 2009.

Summary: A biography of George Frideric Handel, tracing his life through his music, from his training in Halle, his time in Italy, and his long career in England, following George I’s ascent to the English throne, through the formation of three opera companies, and the composition of the oratorios for which he is most famous.

For most of us, when you mention Handel, we think primarily of his most famous works: The Royal Fireworks Music,The Water Music,  Judas Maccabeus, The Concerti Grossi, and most of all Messiah. For a long time these were about the only works of Handel in my music collection. In recent years, I’ve discovered that Handel composed numerous other operas and oratorios on biblical and classical themes. But until I read this book, I had no idea of how much music Handel composed, particularly in the genre of opera.

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The Queens Theatre in the Haymarket in London where many of Handel’s operas were first performed, by William Capon

Keates biography really is just as much musicography as it is biography. Part of the reason is that Handel, apart from his music, lived a very private life, never marrying. We do learn about his family including his physician father. We learn about his training in Halle, his time in Italy learning from Corelli and Scarlatti, and most fatefully, how he became kapellmeister to the Elector of Hanover in 1710, and moved to London in 1712 when the Elector ascended to the English throne as George I. Handel never depended exclusively on the Royal Family for patronage, enjoying the patronage of other wealthy houses. He also helped launch, over the years, three opera companies. When, in the 1730’s interest in his operas waned, he began writing oratorios, leading to Samson, Alexander Balus, and above all, Messiah and Judas Maccabeus. We learn of Handel’s temporary paralysis (perhaps from stroke?) and the eventual loss of his sight, the use of the proceeds of Messiah performances for the Foundling Hospital, and his passing in 1757.

What we learn most from Keates is about the music itself–the libretti and the librettists Handel worked with, the scenes and movements, music drawn from earlier work and the performers who first performed these works. We are introduced to ‘il Senesino,’ Handel’s star castrato (a role likely not to be filled in this way in our more humane age) and Susannah Cibber, who sang “He was despised” in Messiah. She did not have a great voice but was unmatched in her expressiveness, as an actor. We also trace the career of Handel, the music impresario, and the struggles hardly unique to his age to make musical performances and companies financially viable, as well as profitable to himself. He was perhaps more successful than most, due particularly to his oratorios, leaving an estate of 20,000 pounds, distributing bequests to a number of causes and friends.

Some might consider his account of the works and their first performances too much. But for the musicophile who wants to discover Handel’s lesser known works, many of which have been recorded in the last thirty years, the book makes a great adjunct to the discovery of these works. One of the indexes Keates includes is one by category and alphabet to all the works referenced in his book, with page numbers. I would also have appreciated a chronological listing, and perhaps a discography of recordings of these works.

After a period when Handel’s reputation was in eclipse, he once again has grown in regard. Keates work instructs us on many of the lesser known aspects of his life and work, and the prolific body of work that remains for many of us to discover.