Letter from a town of 50

Letter from a Town of 50 ~ No.15

10/24/2020

October?

Has anybody here seen October? It seems to have gotten lost along the way! December showed up in its place with temps plunging to -15F (-26C) as I write. First snow storm was on the 17th and another just blew through. If you don't believe me, behold my porch, birdfeeder and stairs. But don't worry: Howie Fly has just been by to shovel me out!

Winter may be associated with things going stiff and dormant, but not so in Ovando. In fact just when I thought October was off the calendar, I got our Town Crier’s news. (Kathy Schoendoerfer) Terry Sheppard got creative and thought up the perfect thing. Thanks Terry!

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Time for some frivolous fun!
Because isn't it about time to have some?
and we can keep it all friendly with distancing and masks.

Help us close out 2020 with more fun than a human should be allowed to have!

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So Ovando is alive and well and, after Thanksgiving, the community will gather to decorate the town and put up the lights. We look great in winter! Come see us.

The Alpine Artisans Tour fortunately came in the thin sliver of autumnal October that I mentioned last time. It was not just at the Brand Bar Museum in Ovando but a tour that stretched across the valley. A reminder that the arts are also alive and well, in spite of the pandemic.

8 stops along the tour

#1: Handmade in Seeley Lake
#2: Grizzly Claw Trading Co
#3: Gallery 83 in Seeley Lake
#4: Willow Creek Studio
#5: Swanwoods with Martha and Jerry Swanson off Woodworth Road
#6: Brand Bar Museum downtown Ovando with
- Artoutwest - with Diane Whitehead
- Cabin Fever Originals - wit Angela Williams
#7: Lincoln Art Haus Co-op
#8: Blackfoot Pathways in Lincoln

Arts staying alive during the pandemic is a serious challenge worldwide. We have seen orchestras offer remarkable concerts, zooming from their living rooms, but these don't keep the rent or the salaries or production costs paid; the same problems facing small businesses everywhere. One resourceful solution was found by the Atlanta Opera company. They have a beautiful performing arts center for their productions but not a Covid-safe place. What is a premier company like this to do?

Atlanta Performing Arts Center

The answer they came up with is "a tent series with of-the-moment staging." The setting was perfect for a performance of the opera, Pagliacchi, about a clown and his troupe.

The feat of our Capt. Tom Moore, who at age 99 walked one-hundred laps across his back yard with his walker to raise money (40 million pounds!) for first-responders, continues to ripple out in its effect. He received 125,000 cards for his 100th birthday. ("Now children, I know you are bored, but why don't you make a card for that nice man.") Presumably 98 year-old Zinaida Korneva of St. Petersburg has knit him his socks, while she recounts war stories on YouTube to raise money for the health workers.

Well Tom's record has been topped. Tired of being stuck inside during the shut-down, 104-year old Ruth Saunders, from Newbury in Berkshire, said to her son in North Wales, “I’m fed up with this, do you think it would be all right if I went out and had a little walk?” "Certainly," he said. "You can do a little more each day." So she took hold of her walker and set out. No doubt inspired by her countryman Sir Tom, and urged on by her daughter to go for the marathon distance of 26.2 miles, she and her walker have done 130 laps around her house to raise money for the Thames Valley Air Ambulance. Ah the choices we can make and feats we humans are capable of if we put our mind to it. Bravo Ruth! Click to read more and see the video.

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If you look up in the sky at Mars, now visible in the east to southeastern sky at evening, you can imagine that somewhere in the space between us, a triangular rock roughly the size of the empire state building is orbiting the sun every 1.2 years. That is Comet Bennu, named by a 9-year-old boy for an ancient Egyptian avian deity, in keeping with its visiting spacecraft, Osiris Rex. Scientists speculate that carbon-rich Bennu might have seeded Earth with the building blocks for life. It is remarkable that a small spacecraft launched in 2016 to do reconnaissance of Bennu was able to make a momentary touch-down to take a sample of dirt and rock to bring back to Earth. The work has been described as a labor of love for researchers around the globe who invested years of their lives into the historic mission. “Transcendental,” Dante Lauretta, the principal investigator of the mission, said moments later. “I mean, I can’t believe we actually pulled this off.” So don’t get the mistaken impression that the world has shrunk to ballot boxes and campaign ads. There is still a lot of exciting stuff going on even 200,000,000 miles away.

But plenty of great feats and labors of love go on closer to home. Consider this Chinese couple and the hours-upon-hair-raising-hours they spent in perfecting this acrobatic dance for World's Got Talent. And pity their poor son, standing backstage, holding his breath.

As Covid continues to constrain us, you may find yourself stuck at home again with your mask in the laundry and nothing to do. The idea of standing on point on your partner's head, or being the head that is stood upon, may not appeal, but there is still a form of dancing that you might find simple, relaxing and amusing. I thank Bonnie Spence for this, imported from someone in Sao Paulo, Brazil. Try finger dancing! Or just watch this one and tap your own to the rhythm. It's fun! Watch dancing fingers .

Then there is the world of nature around us to bring us joy with its beauty and endless inspiration for artists. Peggy Fly sent on this lovely piece on Birds in Art. You can feel the love, attention and patience that goes into the pains-taking rendering of each feather and feature. This is exquisite and not to be missed.

From the two-footed to the four-footed, this is for my friend Ari Dickinson. Meet Nora, the polar bear, in "Nora's Second Chance."

"Animal communication - Understanding how animals think and feel" is a beautiful documentary, filmed in France, that explores the question of emotion in animals through an animal communicator who picks up images from their minds and claims to understand them. Whether you believe her or not, you will love the landscape, the people and the animals. If you are an animal lover, and have communicated with one of your own, don't miss it.

Now relationships with four-footed creatures like dogs, cats and horses may not be so unusual. But kinship with invertebrates (i.e. without a spinal column), particularly a marine invertebrate? How likely is that? I have been following Octopus studies and clever creatures like Athena, a lab octopus featured in Sy Montgomery's book The Soul of an Octopus introduced to me by Anthony Hawkesworth. What a lot we have to learn about our fellow creatures! I waited eagerly for the forthcoming documentary on Netflix by a brilliant South African film-maker, Craig Foster. "My Octopus Teacher," the moving story of his relationship with an octopus in the wild, did not disappoint. The underwater photography is stunning. Here is the trailer.

Now a bit of humor from the TV archives. This one's for Rose Tyson: Sid Caesar as the Professor of Archaeology.

I end with an ode to the October that isn't, yet may still be remembered in memory and looked forward to in hope. Warm, yellow October with coronavirus gone. Here is a peaceful version of the Robert Frost poem "The Road Not Taken."

Please take care and be well.

Sheri Ritchlin

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Letter from a Town of 50 ~ No.14

10/9/2020

4 Comments

Autumn Yellow

Summer has come and gone, the nights are longer and there is a chill in the air. The yellowing larch trees carry the distinct message of autumn in Montana. Our artists will be gathering tomorrow to share their work at the Brand Bar Museum. I'm sorry that I discovered too late that the format I created for the artists in my last Letter on the computer didn't survive on smart phones, so the images of artists' work floated off on their own. To remedy that, I spent a day learning new tricks to make it work. Please see the new version here by scrolling down to the artists on that page. I am grateful to the Ovando folks who gave me names of other favorite artists, which I have added there: LaVonne Jorgenson's pottery and Andrea Morgan's Rooster Arts.

For the Equinox, I listened to Paul Winter’s Autumn Equinox concert from his barn in Northwestern Connecticut. Traditionally, these seasonal concerts would be held at dawn in the Cathedral of St. John the Divine in New York City, the largest Gothic Cathedral in the world. Located in Harlem, the building of the Cathedral was begun in 1892 and is still under construction! Master Stonemasons from England trained young apprentices from Harlem to work on the project. My brother Christopher introduced me to this magnificent place many years ago on a visit to NYC. My sister Robin and her family actually showed up at dawn one year to take in the Paul Winter event there in person.

Due to Covid, these concerts are now performed live in Paul Winter’s barn in Northwest Connecticut and available on YouTube. We can attend at any time of day, sans the grand cathedral of course, but here in Montana nature offers cathedrals of its own.

The biggest end-of-summer event in the valley was the 56th Annual Helmville Rodeo, known as “the biggest little rodeo in Montana.” Helmville is our nearby sister town and Ovando families often stretch across both. The town empties out for that event, though less so this summer with many Covid-risk people staying behind. Howie Fly took dozens of excellent photos of the event back in the 1960s, when he was also a participant! We worked together to put them into a video last year and he has given me permission to share it. It’s a fun video with music and the photos capture the skill and daring of the bull and bronc riders. I've uploaded it to YouTube so you can watch it here.

Here is a bit of stray news that you may have missed.

I learned a new word from this article, although I don’t plan on abseiling any time soon. As an English Lit major, I particularly appreciated that the taste in books in the world of organized crime is obviously rising. You can read more here: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-54209366

As the pandemic drags into its eighth month, people are zooming all over the place. Pricey conferences and concerts have gone virtual and many are free, as well as no room-and-board costs since they come to your living room and you can scrounge your own fridge while watching.

I always appreciate the double-hatted medical professionals who find time to serenade us. The National Virtual Medical Orchestra is an ensemble made up of 50 doctors, nurses, first responders, and medical students from medical orchestras across the country formed in May by John Masko. Some of the orchestra’s musicians are helping to lead the response to the coronavirus, while others have had their specialties virtually shut down by the pandemic.
Here they perform Puccini's Nessun Dorma.

History may not record this ground-roots flowering of talent around the world from living room to living room, but we can let them live on in our own hearts and memories. It is the hidden gold of the pandemic.

Meantime, those irrepressible Cubans are at it again! Making happy music together from different locations in the streets of Havana and around the world. Here they give us a lift with a lively rendition of Guantanamera.

I heard that the annual rummage sale in Downtown Ovando was a success. It reminded me of an afternoon decades ago when my friend Barbara Cross and I decided to go through our boxes stored in their garage in Julian, California. Nobody likes this job so we thought it would be more cheerful if we did it together. We’d open a box each and hold the things up and one would say to the other, “You know, I really like that” or “I really could use one of those!” and at the end of the day there were about the same number of boxes but we had just exchanged everything! A memorable event. A favorite Carol Burnett sketch captures this rummaging perfectly. Here she is with Betty White.

I couldn’t resist making this a double feature with another timely, short sketch that pairs Carol Burnett and Imogene Coca—two great comedians of their day—in “The Candidates Wives.”

My offering of youthful talent comes this week from two Chinese children, ages 10 and 7. They wowed their Talent Show audience with this performance of "You Raise Me up."

Now to all creatures great and small. Capt. Tom Moore, recently knighted, is followed here by an unlikely recipient of another honor, the PDSA Gold Medal, that goes to….are you ready for this?...Mahawa, the hero rat, for his life-saving work in Cambodia detecting landmines. He won’t be knighted by Queen Elizabeth but his work is much appreciated in that country. Since World War II, this organization has honored the contribution of animals, even to this lowly but heroic rodent. Meet Magawa, the HeroRat.

From creatures small to creatures great, you may remember the orca whale mother who mourned her dead calf by carrying it on her nose for 17 days, a thousand miles. The happy news is that she gave birth to a new calf a month ago and it is still alive and well and lively, swimming in the Salish Sea. As a vanishing species, the news was greeted with great celebration by the Canadian researchers who have followed this dwindling group of orcas.

That’s not the only good whale news! A blue whale was sighted off Australia for possibly the third time in 100 years. They are the largest animal on earth, ever! Larger even than the dinosaurs, which keeps them far out to sea where there is ocean space for them to move in. This one is estimated at 82 feet long. A beautiful sight.

If you look up at the evening sky in the southeast, you will see reddish Mars, at the closest it will be until 2035. Bright Jupiter and nearby Saturn shine in the south to southwest during dusk and early evening. They will be in conjunction throughout the Fall. Exactly between them, invisibly, is Pluto.

Blazing in the eastern pre-dawn sky is Venus, just below majestic Leo the Lion. To the upper right of Venus, you can see Leo's brightest star, Regulus.

In 1603, an out of work actor named Thomas Dekker published a pamphlet with a peculiar name: "The Wonderfull Yeare." It was peculiar because it recounted the death of Queen Elizabeth and the second arrival of the plague in London, after its first devastations in 1592. All less than wonderful surely. William Shakespeare lost three siblings to the plague as well as nieces, nephews and fellow actors. But worst of all, he and his wife Anne lost their son Hamnet. This fact is rarely mentioned, but the depth of his suffering in that plague may have led to the power of plays written during and after that time. Once the Globe Theatre reopened, some of Shakespeare's greatest tragedies were performed: “Othello” in 1605, “King Lear” in 1606, “Macbeth” in 1606, and “Anthony and Cleopatra” in 1607.

Fittingly, the Blackfriars Playhouse in Staunton, Virginia opens with great care in the midst of the current pandemic to perform "Othello" to an appreciative audience of starved theatre-goers. Here is a glimpse of the project.

For Jazz lovers, I return you to Peter Sprague and his musicians for a concert devoted to the music of the Beatles. I've discovered that the link changes after the live concert so you may have missed the last one with Pat Metheny. It's a treat to get these concerts for free from top rate musicians and get to see a recording studio close up. Now you can play it in the background while you do chores or relax. Hope the link works this time.

In closing, I take you back to a special encore to Paul Winter's Autumn Equinox concert, which leaves us with images of his two horses, Nicky and Lucky. It is beautiful to see creatures running wild and free in this constrained and congested year of 2020. Hope for the future! It is short:

Please take care and be well!

Sheri Ritchlin

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Letter from a Town of 50 ~ No.13

8/31/2020

5 Comments

There's life in the old town yet!

August 31, 2020

Here was a cheerful message from our Town Crier, Kathy Schoendorfer, that arrived in mid-August of this Pandemic Summer:

And come they did! A reminder that Cabin Fever isn't terminal.

First an update: Our 99 year old friend Capt. Tom Moore (he is 100 now) was indeed knighted by the Queen for raising 38 million pounds for health workers by walking 100 laps in his small backyard. He had expressed the hope that she wouldn’t be too heavy with the sword on his aged shoulders, but she also has age in her 90-some-year-old shoulders so she pulled it off with royal aplomb. Congratulations Sir Tom!

For many people in other parts of the US and the world (this letter has reached Argentina, Israel, Korea, Taiwan, China, India, Italy, Germany, France, Ireland, Switzerland and Finland among other places. Welcome!), Montana is a Far Off Place. But apparently it wasn’t always that way. It was a go-to place for dinosaurs some hundred million years ago. North America's first identified dinosaur remains were found in Montana in 1854, near Judith Landing in the Missouri River Breaks National Monument.

The only human remains from the prehistoric Clovis Culture, over 12,000 years old, were found in 1968 on the Anzick Ranch in the Shields River Valley, 175 miles from Ovando. DNA revealed that his family were the ancestors of 80% of all native groups in North and South America. The remains of another child were later found nearby from the same period. At the time, the Anzick Boy was the oldest human found in North America, but the remains of a people from 13,000 years ago have since been found in Idaho. Not so far away.

In the photo below, Sarah Anzick and her family are about to rebury the remains of the Clovis children. Around them are members of tribes from Washington, Oregon and Montana.

Now Montana has a new claim to an ancient past and this was a surprise out of left field! Not old bones but Dusty Crawford from the Blackfeet Reservation who fulfilled his Uncle’s dying wish that he get a DNA test. CRI genetics traced his line back 55 generations with a 99 percent accuracy rate. Very rare because the ancestry often is clouded that far back. It was, they told him, like finding Bigfoot, it was so unlikely.

It has long been assumed that all Native Americans originally crossed a land bridge that existed in the past between Siberia and Alaska. But Crawford's DNA story suggests his ancestors came from the Pacific, possibly from Polynesia, traveled to the coast of South America and then traveled north. In technical language, he's part of MtDNA Haplogroup B2, which has a low frequency in Alaska and Canada and originated in Arizona about 17,000 years ago!

I have been following the career of the young Russian piano prodigy Elisey Mysin, whom I introduced to you a few letters ago. At the time of that performance, his feet didn’t reach the pedals, but here is a current update. His feet DO reach the pedals as he plays a Mozart piece for 4 hands with young Ivan Bessonov. You will see that he is still, well… a little boy, whose playing is extraordinary, not to mention the acrobatics. Do watch!

We have seen musical performances go virtual with technical feats but I want to show you what the Radius Gallery in Missoula has done to offer a virtual experience of art. It takes a while to get the hang of it, but you can move through the gallery at your own speed and click on works to move them closer into view. You can even go up the stairs to take in the exhibit on the second floor as if you were there! Enjoy their current exhibit of the Peace of Wild Things. I thank my friend Martha Swanson for introducing me, in person, to this fine gallery. Click on the link below.
https://www.radiusgallery.com/virtual-tour-july-31-2020/

Speaking of art, Ovando has a surprising number of talented artists. Here is just a partial list with links to websites that will give you an even better idea. Some of their work appears at the Blackfoot Store, like Brady Stone's metal art, and the Blackfoot Angler. In some cases, if the time is right, you can visit their studios. Call first to be sure.

Diane Whitehead - oils
https://www.dianewhitehead.com/

Dona and Gary Aitken - Discoveries in Wood
http://discoveriesinwood.com/

Martha and Jerry Swanson
  Swanwood Handcrafted bowls in fine woods
  http://swanwoods.com/

Jan Farrar - Middle Earth Pottery
https://ovandomontana.net/middle_earth_pottery.html

Jan Farrar - Mountainside Beadworks
https://ovandomontana.net/mountainside_beadworks.html

Tim Swanberg - Custom Cabinetry
https://ovandomontana.net/tim_swanberg.html

Angela Bennett watercolors
hlm5804@blackfoot.net

Cabin Fever Originals - Jewelry by Angela Williams
https://app.mt.gov/madeinmontana/Business/Details/9966

Andrea Morgan, Rooster Arts
https://www.etsy.com/shop/BlueRoosterArts

LaVonne Jorgenson Pottery
406-793-5719.

Those following these letters will know that I am always looking for some of the myriad examples of human resourcefulness, humor and imagination in the time of COVID. From Clara Igonda in Pasadena comes yet another scene that brings a smile: This one from Barcelona.

A World-Class Opera House in Spain Reopened With a Concert for Thousands of Potted Plants
2,292 plants were on hand to watch UceLi Quartet perform Puccini's "Cristantemi."

Or there is the boy who used his unique talent of solving the Rubik's cube in record time while on a pogo stick (I kid you not) to raise money for people suffering from COVID.

Now here's something to make you tap your feet in a happy way. You can do it at home in any room without a rug (kitchen, bathroom, basement?) or just sit and watch these people do the work for you.

This made me think of the terrific dancers I grew up with from Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers to Judy Garland, Shirley Temple and Gene Kelly. It was the heydey of American music and dance films. I found a medley of dances from that era to music NOT from that time, but it works.

In August, a double miracle: National Zoo's Great Panda Mei Xiang finally gave birth--a much celebrated event for this endangered species and especially for this 22 year-old Panda. The second miracle is that nature would have such an enormous mother give birth to such a tiny creature. The babe is the size of a hairless mouse and Mama is challenged to get hold of it safely. The tiny thing seems to be all lungs, so what you can't see you can certainly hear.

If you have teenage children you are trying to teach at home or just want something to share together as a family or enjoy alone, I highly recommend the splendid offerings of literature and drama provided at Intelligence Squared. This one is for lovers of Shakespeare and Milton-- especially for Becca Cross, who has played Cordelia in a production of King Lear, and JJ Wilson, retired professor of English at Sonoma State University. Well-known actors deliver snippets from each author with extraordinary and moving skill at their craft, bringing the works stirringly alive. If you like this format, they also do Dickens and Tolstoy, Jane Austen and Emily Bronte among others. Very rich stuff indeed. I highly recommend it.

I end on a peaceful, wordless note with another great creature of the deep, the giant manta ray. It is in gentle interaction with a human diver, freeing it from the tangle of a fishing line while also giving us breath-taking pictures of this strange and silent underwater world.

Be well,
Sheri Ritchlin

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Letter from a Town of 50 ~ No.12

7/31/2020

1 Comment

The Great Bicycle Race That Isn't

July 31, 2020

The other day, I happened to be walking past the teepee near the entrance to the town when I came upon this sign. (The Stray Bullet was "currently closed" only because it was late in the day.)

My heart lifted with excitement: THE CYCLISTS ARE BACK!!! The Tour Divide Race is on! This is one of the great events of the year when cyclists from around the world pass through Ovando on one of the most challenging races in the world, from Banff, Canada to Antelope Springs, New Mexico near the Mexican border—2,745 miles or 4,418 kilometers over rugged, beautiful country, across the longest dirt touring route in the world. They come through our little town from places like Australia, Belgium, Canada, France, Germany, Ireland, Israel, Italy, the Netherlands, New Zealand, South Africa, Sweden, Switzerland and the UK as well as towns and cities across the US. Several have said that Ovando is their favorite stopping place. The whole town receives them with a warm welcome and follows the race online. Conversations in the store are around how close a racer is and when they will arrive. Some are rooting for a favorite rider from a previous race. But the official greeter, the sign-maker, the Welcome Wagoneer, is Kathy Schoendoerfer—co-owner of the Blackfoot Angler and Town Crier. If you come visit, she has stories to tell! (I have written about it with Kathy’s photos here ).

You can get a first-hand view of this amazing event in Lael Wilcox’s video of her 2019 race, “I Just Want To Ride.”

Sadly, I found out at the store that the Tour Divide Race has been cancelled. But there are still cyclists who come through and they are warmly welcomed, as you can see from the sign!

We’ve had a face-lift on this side of town with a new paint job to our building. We look spiffy and ready for the world. It’s a lift too to see the open door of the Stray Bullet Café for breakfast and traffic through the Angler. I also appreciate the gentle reminders of coronavirus precautions.

The Tour Divide is not the only Great Bicycle Race that Isn’t! If you can believe it, the Tour de France has gone virtual. Another testimony to human ingenuity and tech talents. In this short video, you will see the actual riders at home, riding their hearts out on stationery bikes, their speeds recorded via the virtual site. It’s amazing to watch, though it certainly doesn’t take the place of the real McCoy. But a lot of real McCoys have fallen by the wayside in these months. Here are high-lights, but you should check in on one of the online races. Awesome!

Now here is something to make you smile. Once again it comes from the streets of Havana where, in spite of sometimes difficult conditions, joy is never in short supply. This flash mob plays Rondo alla Mambo, which combines the music of Mozart and Cuban Mambo.

In another short video, Sarah Willis tells us a bit more about how this event came about! (Click on the link.)

After the 3 year-old Danish dancing marvel I shared in the last Letter, I have another Super Toddler who will surprise you. The ability of a 3 year old to entertain, adult-like, by dancing, may be outdone by the sight of adults behaving like children. Either way, this Chinese version of the ever-popular “Got Talent” genre is worth the watch.

Here are Chinese dancers in a more serious and traditional form of dance that is truly extraordinary, made more so by the fact that the dancers are all deaf and the musicians are all visually impaired. This is the Dance of the Thousand-Hand Boddhisattva. The disabilities of the performers underline the dance as a further expression of the Goddess of Mercy.

“Guanyin made an oath to worry about all living things
until they are free from problems and suffering.
At this point, the goddess tried to help ordinary people
and noticed how her hands began to be torn apart.
Amitabha helped her and gave her thousands of hands.”

The next piece I want to share is another remarkable example of a disability—in this case blindness and autism--transformed into the offering of a spiritual gift by a ten-year old boy. I think you will be moved by it and the hope it provides for overcoming hardship. Meet the inspiring Christopher Duffley.

Goodness shows up in unexpected places, on land and sea. I thank my friend Wayne Tyson for sharing a video of the rescue of a humpbacked whale by a small fishing boat crew. Keep in mind that a humpback whale can grow to 60 feet long, and weigh up to 40 tons. A mere shrug of a flipper (up to 16 feet long) could have upended the fragile craft, which makes their courage even greater and the whale’s appreciation of them even more obvious.

Now, in honor of that majestic creature of the sea, I share one of my favorite pieces with you. Turn up your best speakers or don your finest earphones to listen to the song of the humpback whale as recorded in the depths by Roger Payne and “sung with” by the incomparable Paul Winter Consort in his composition Whale Lullaby, from the album Callings. Dedicated to the memory of my friend, and the whales’ friend, Jim Meadows, with thanks to Craig Wilson who introduced me to this album so many years ago.

On the lighter side… Growing up in the 1950s, we never missed watching Sid Caesar, Imogene Coca and Carl Reiner skits on the Show of Shows. Carl Reiner just passed away, so if you weren’t familiar with him, you will see him in this skit as the Health Food Restaurant Waiter. Considering that health food restaurants were virtually nonexistent in the 50s, the piece is ahead of its time!

Fast forward to the 70s. I was part of the Earth Song Bookstore-Ocean Song Gallery family in Del Mar, California. It was the Happening Place back then and our Halloween Parties were open to the whole town and so well-attended that the Fire Department eventually shut them down. Music was provided by Peter Sprague’s Dance of the Universe band made up of talented young musicians from Torrey Pines High School. Peter went on to become one of our finest jazz musicians, playing with Chick Corea, Pat Metheny, Ravi Shankar and other celebrated musicians, gaining a worldwide reputation for his compositions and recordings.

Put your earphones back on! I have a real treat for you, to end this letter on a mellow note. Unable to perform his live concerts, Peter decided to do virtual concerts from his recording studio, Spragueland, in Encinitas, California. In addition to great music, you get to see behind the scenes of a professional recording studio. I’m astonished by the quantity of wires and levers that surround them! Not only is Peter a superb composer-guitarist, but a technical wizard as well. Many great albums have come out of Spragueland over the years.

It is a full concert, but you can pause between numbers or just take in the first one. That was my intention but I got lured into listening to the last note. You get a front row seat for some jazz greats. Enjoy!

This is for my young friend and budding musician Max Del Monte, and my seasoned jazz-lover Kathleen Chambers.

On that note, I wish you good health and happy days.

Stay safe!
Sheri Ritchlin

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Letter from a Town of 50 ~ No.11

7/3/2020

1 Comment

Hope and Restoration

The town is coming awake after the long winter’s sleep and it is green green green with summer rains. The Ovando Inn has visitors and—apart from these days of rain—the fisher folk are enjoying the lure of the Blackfoot River. Kathy and Travis are busy in the Blackfoot Angler. We now have a beautiful new town website, upgraded from our old beautiful town website. If you would like to take a peek at what goes on in this town of 50 and the Greater Metropolitan Area that surrounds it, (i.e. mountains, valleys, creeks, ranches and the million acre Bob Marshall Wilderness), here it is: ovandomontana.net

There are three businesses below me: On the left is Kathy and Travis’s realm, the Blackfoot Angler. In the center is Colleen’s Stray Bullet Café and on the right is the Blackfoot Challenge. Above them is my Hermitage with the great view you see at the top of the letter, taken from my desk.

Here is a description of “the Challenge” in its own words:

OUR STORY begins in the early 1970s, when landowners along the Blackfoot River recognized the need to build partnerships with public agencies in order to address natural resource threats facing the watershed. By focusing their early efforts where they agreed, these partners realized they could accomplish much more by working together. These early conversations paved the way for what would become public stream access and walk-in hunting on private lands in Montana.

Today the Blackfoot Challenge is active on many fronts, including the Blackfoot Community Conservation Area (BCCA), an innovative effort involving community ownership and cooperative ecosystem management across 41,000 acres of public and private land formerly owned by Plum Creek Timber Company that encompasses an important transition zone between wilderness, national forest, and productive private valley bottoms, with lush riparian and wetland areas and important wildlife habitat.

Among its projects is a program with Fish and Wildlife to bring back the Trumpeter Swans that became so endeared to many of us as children through E.B. White's The Trumpet of the Swan. I think this is as good a story for adults as E.B. White’s was for children! Here is a heart-warming real-life scene that takes place right here in Ovando.

The Blackfoot Challenge’s Adopt-a-Swan Project is not only a restoration program, but also a hands-on education program. School children from as far away as Bonner, near Missoula, get to be present for the release of the swans and then to follow them through a tracking program.

You can see how far this project ripples out in this request to sponsor a swan.

Hello,
My family lives in the Woodworth area during the summer,
and the rest of the year we live in Quito, Ecuador.
I teach 4th grade at Academia Cotopaxi, and every year
we read The Trumpet of the Swan, by E.B. White. Our class
would like to sponsor a swan.

Please let me know how to help.

Thanks and regards,
Jody Chritton

I have mentioned before that the education of Ovando’s children is a community project in which Ovando School children can take advantage of rich local resources. Below, an Ovando School group prepares to release their swan.

As the return of the Trumpeter Swans offer hope for our local wildlife, thanks to the dedicated efforts of folks near and far, here is another moving story of literally rising up from the ashes. Notre Dame Cathedral endured a shocking destruction from a fire which erupted in April 2019.

An entire world looked on aghast as this lovely, iconic structure which had graced the Paris skyline since the 13th century, erupted in flames. How on earth do you begin to resurrect it? Once again, human ingenuity and dedication comes to the fore, applying 21st century technologies to 13th century craftsmanship. Have a look!

Here is one visionary view of how the renewed structure might be designed, blending elements of both its past and its present. Human imagination is an amazing thing.

Much closer to home was the devastating fire in Paradise, California in November 2018, which reduced the town to ashes in a matter of hours and took the lives of 85 people. Academy award-winning director Ron Howard teamed up with National Geographic to produce the documentary Rebuilding Paradise, which will be released at the end of this month. For every ticket sold, $1 will go to charities supporting the town of Paradise, California. Said Howard:

“Now more than ever, we need to remember that when people come together for the greater good we can make a positive change on our shared future. The passion and commitment of the people of Paradise, to one another and to rebuilding their community, is a reminder of the strength and resilience of the human spirit.”

These comebacks are cheering as the hard times continue and there is still no sign of let-up. As always, the international language of hope is music and people continue to join together across continents to comfort, console and express gratitude to first responders. (I include Fred and Leigh Ann at the Blackfoot Store among those). Here is the One Voice Children’s choir, “always looking for opportunities to share hope through music.”

From Quimper, France: Isaac and Nora, the 12 and 9 year-old you met in a previous letter, joined another sibling pair in Mexico to make amazing harmonies across thousands of miles with the Garcia sisters, and all from their respective homes. Isaac and Nora's father, from South Korea, introduces their song in Spanish. This is a very multi-lingual multi-instrumental family. Their mother is filming them.

Here is another cross-continent collaboration. In this global choral and orchestral performance, "people from 5 continents, professional or amateur musicians and singers, join together to sing and play Amazing Grace to give hope to those who despair, console those who mourn, and encourage those who are on the frontline!"

From the realm of classical music comes this extraordinary moment between two world-famous orchestra conductors—Zubin Mehta and Seiji Ozawa. Ozawa has been afflicted with Alzheimer’s Disease. Here his friend Zubin Mehta draws him into a performance with his orchestra and the deep reservoir of musicality within Ozawa comes alive. It’s an amazing and lovely thing to watch.

Now to another international language that just rises up, untutored, in the human. At least that is the case with two-year-old William Stokkebroe of Denmark. You are going to love him! I wish he could do a reprise right here in Trixi’s Antler Saloon.

If William demonstrates that you are never too young to take to the boards, here is a couple who prove that you are never too old! Honestly, I was gasping for breath just watching them!

To catch your breath, here is a reprise of Yoga with Man’s (and Woman’s) Best Friend, which you’ve got to love. Honestly!

I close the theme of hope out with this short animation narrated by Jane Goodall.
Gracias a mi Comadre en Mexico.

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Please stay well and enjoy your summer.

Sheri Ritchlin

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Letter from a Town of 50 ~ No.10

5/30/2020

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Ovando, Montana in the Blackfoot Valley where "a river runs through it."

Call it Sprummer

May 31, 2020

Shortly after Memorial Day weekend, the leaves and blossoms seemed to spring forth overnight! Crab apple, choke cherry and off my deck, apple blossoms.

A bit late for Spring, too early for Summer, so I call it Sprummer—an in-between-season that is most welcome whenever it arrives, especially in the times of Covid-19. Montanans are cautiously taking up their lives in what could still not be called “normal.” The big question mark is whether the summer tourists will do the same. Tourism is Montana’s biggest industry. Last year about 12.6 million nonresidents visited Montana and spent around $3.6 billion. Considering that the population of Montana is about 1.6 million, the tourists out-numbered us 12 to 1. We look forward to their coming and hope they are as cautious as we have been. They come from all over the country and the world.

A sight out my window yesterday was iconic of the return of Work and Play. Of course, the ranchers have never stopped working.

I mentioned before that there were several Spring Events that did not happen this year. In addition to the School Graduations, we missed the Ovando Spring Clean-up Day. Every April, folks gather to clean up the town for Spring and tidy us up for the summer visitors. That includes putting up the teepee and cleaning out the hoosegow. Here is Kathy our Town Crier’s announcement from a previous year to show you what we missed. I suspect that the chores will get done, but it won’t be the same.

I recently heard from my friends Rorry and Jay, who got stranded at their condo in St. Martin. Saint Martin is part of the Leeward Islands in the Caribbean Sea. It comprises 2 separate countries, divided between its northern French side, called Saint-Martin, and its southern Dutch side, Sint Maarten.

That may sound idyllic, but it isn’t when you can’t go out to the beaches and restaurants. The first cases appeared on St. Martin in the beginning of March and by March 24, a very strict lock-down had been ordered, closing markets and restaurants and all other nonessential activities. All gatherings were forbidden and the presence of gendarmes was much in evidence.

Jay recently wrote that it is just beginning to open up. I loved this note:

However, in week 2 of deconfinement, as nonessential businesses opened, we noticed groups of well-built young men on the beach wearing green tee shirts and short tight white shorts that were even tighter when they came out of the water. They were a pretty rowdy crew when on the beach and were not quite French. Turns out they were the Foreign Legion, helping out with Operation Resilience, the French military operation aiding St. Martin during the pandemic. Although not Lawrence of Arabia, It did give a rather exotic little twist to our confinement.

My “previous life” was in Del Mar, California where I spent many years, off and on, working at Earth Song Books and Ocean Song Gallery. Earth Song was owned by Anne Mery, after the retirement of Jim Meadows—the original owner. She just sent word of her latest enterprise: Eceltic Books—“a curated collection of books and treasures tailored to the needs of your event, conference, pop-up or personal library – informed by 30 years of bookstore ownership.” https://bookshop.org/shop/ecelticbooks

This is a new direction in bookselling meant to give a lift to independent bookstores by offering online ordering with direct connections to local bookstores under the umbrella of Bookshop. It is as easy as ordering from Amazon, but 75% of the profits go to “stores, publications, authors and others who make up the thriving, inspirational culture around books!” Here is their description:

Welcome to Bookshop!
Bookshop is an online bookstore with a mission to financially support local, independent bookstores. We believe that bookstores are essential to a healthy culture. They’re also anchors for our downtowns and communities. As more and more people buy their books online, we wanted to create an easy convenient way for you to get your books and support bookstores at the same time.
We hope that Bookshop can help strengthen the fragile ecosystem and margins around bookselling and keep local bookstores an integral part of our culture and communities.
Bookshop is a B-Corp - a corporation dedicated to the public good.

Check out Anne Mery's curated collection at Eceltic Books. Full disclosure: She carries my book too.

In many ways, this worldwide Covid-19 pause is a germination period for many new directions. The one that stands out for us is the hundreds, probably thousands, of living room musicians who perform the feat of playing collectively with others scattered around the world. While it is not entirely new, it has caught on in a big way among professionals and nonprofessionals alike, and it relieves some of the frustration of concert-goers marooned in their own living rooms.

Music is an act of love that conveys what words can't. That is what is brought home to me as I watch the various musical offerings during this pandemic. So many of these musicians, performing from their own homes, radiate the love of what they are doing and what they are doing it for. I will carry their voices and faces, in those huge mosaics, forever.

Here is a performance of the Napa Valley Festival Orchestra—always a favorite summer event—performed remotely. The downside is the lack of physical presence, the upside is that the audiences expand appreciably in quantity and in distance. Even pastors of churches have commented that their congregations have grown now that people can participate from home. Upsides-Downsides.

This is what people have seen in other years.
This is what all of us can see today virtually as Festival Napa Valley’s Remote Ensemble performs “Va, pensiero,” from the opera Nabucco by Giuseppe Verdi. It is "dedicated to all essential workers whose heroic efforts safeguard the health and safety of our communities. The Ensemble consists of 126 past and present Festival Napa Valley musicians, all of whom recorded their parts from home while following our virtual conductor, Zach Salsburg-Frank."

The Brooklyn College Choir had been preparing for performances with the New York Philharmonic when the pandemic struck. Pianist Harrison Sheckler conceived the idea of a virtual performance of “You’ll never walk alone” from the musical Carousel as an antidote to the loneliness of isolation. “Hopefully, the words, ‘you'll never walk alone,’ along with the visual of 300 people from 15 different countries joining together offers the audience some comfort and peace during this time.”

As we have our Memorial Day in May, Australians and New Zealanders have their ANZAC Day in April. Having watched the Amazon Prime series Gallipoli—not an easy watch—I was overwhelmed by the degree of suffering of so many ANZAC (Australian and New Zealand Army Corps) troops for what was a largely unsuccessful campaign. In 1915, they were part of an Allied expedition that set out to capture the Gallipoli Peninsula of Turkey. The objective was to capture Constantinople, the capital of the Ottoman Empire. The campaign dragged on for eight months and ended in a stalemate, taking a huge toll on the Allied forces with 56,000 deaths, including 8,709 from Australia and 2,721 from New Zealand.

Australians and New Zealanders made April 25th the day on which they remembered the sacrifice of those who had died in the war. Like our own Memorial Day, ANZAC Day now honors those who have fallen in all of the wars. Covid-19 prevented the usual celebrations, but it did not prevent this moving outpouring of remembrance in a virtual performance of "Waltzing Matilda."

That we have come a long way since that time is clear from the impassioned voices of young people of the new generation in this virtual performance of "We Are the World."

While in Mexico City, my Comadre Yolanda introduced me to a new dimension in the experience of art: “Van Gogh Alive” is a remarkable immersion experience in the life and work of Vincent Van Gogh. It is impossible to describe or recreate but this video gives an idea (though parts of the original have been speeded up here with dizzying effect).

Van Gogh also comes alive in an innovative way in Loving Vincent, the first full length painted animation film and another intimate encounter with the painter’s life. It was a remarkable undertaking and that process is the subject of Loving Vincent: The Making Of.

Now meet Isaac and Nora, two talented siblings from Quimper, France (originally from Seoul, South Korea) singing a Cuban song “Veinte Años,” accompanied by their father on the guitar.

Isaac (11 years old) plays trumpet and drums, Nora (8 years old) sings, plays accordion and ukulele, while their father Nicolas accompanies them on guitar, Uncle Thomas on accordion, Romain on the tuba, and many musician friends.

Here, the person who is filming them is their mother, Catherine. I'm in love with this little girl, and you will be too. The song means "Twenty Years" and I can only imagine where she will be in twenty years. I hope it is a good place.

Isaac and Nora sing "Veinte Años"

From the very young musicians to a very old one with a heart-warming story that is the subject of an Oscar-winning documentary, The Woman in Room 6. Here is a short introduction to Alice Herz-Sommer, who at 109 was described as the world’s oldest pianist and a tribute to the power of music to bring joy into a life even in difficult times.

Now something for those at home with humans' Best Friend, facing the dilemma of exercising during the time of pandemic--for Self and Friend. You will enjoy seeing a solution to the problem in the next video, although you may not feel up to duplicating the experience. In that case, enjoy it with your Friend from the couch. You gotta love ‘em, right? Oh yes!

Here is the peaceful end note. This time it is Mary Oliver's "Wild Geese."

Please stay well and love what you love!

Sheri Ritchlin

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Letter from a Town of 50 ~ No.9

5/24/2020

1 Comment

An Unusual Spring

May 23, 2020

It’s not exactly Spring here yet. It is 38 degrees as I write this at 7:30 a.m. on a Memorial Day Weekend. But lovely daffodils have bloomed in front of Kathy and Travis’s fly shop and that is all the proof I need. One timid goldfinch has come to my feeder and that brief blaze of yellow lights up the gray morning. Most of all, Spring is announced by the sound of lawn mowers and the smell of fresh cut grass.

Conspicuous in their absence are Spring events in the town. Especially the Ovando School Graduation. We have good reasons to be proud of our Ovando School, which this year is 7 students, K through 8, with four part-time pre-K kids. This is not a one-room school but a two-room school for Upper Grades, taught by Leigh Ann Valiton and Lower grades, by Andrea Tougas.

Leigh Ann has put her creative imprint on the school since 1993, when she began there as a teacher’s aide and then after a break to get her college degree, returned as a full time teacher to shape the school’s unique program, adding to her own teaching with outside specialists in art, science, music and drama classes. I have seen a very shy little girl who never spoke a word as a young child become the star of one of Leigh Ann’s memorable school productions!

Sadly missed will be the May Day Tea. In one that I attended, after the children had served tea and cookies to audience members seated at tables, they presented—in art, essays and dances from around the world—the fruits of their studies that year. It was amazing! Every child in the school participates with lively enthusiasm. They taught themselves the dances watching videos. Physical education classes are covered in winter by cross-country skiing trips once a week and the children raise money in the community by selling candy or other items to fund a trip to places like Washington DC. She makes every child blossom. Added to this, as in all things, is substantial support from the community. Here is a 2014 “Place-Based Fun and Learning" event taking full advantage of the town’s rich resources, human and natural!

During the pandemic, Leigh Ann has continued her classes online, including one-on- one sessions with the students. “We are actually ahead!” she says.

The Ovando School Graduating class of 2020 is Aiden, whom I met at the Blackfoot Store when he first arrived with his family. He was shy in the beginning but ended up starring, with his sister Emma, in two Christmas Plays! There would also be a ceremonial graduation for Silas, the graduating Kindergarten class. At the end of April, Leigh Ann sent out this message.

Hello Ovando Community,
            As you know, we have had to endure some tough times as of late. Hopefully we are getting closer to what we knew as normal soon. However, I do not believe schools will resume for the remainder of the year causing the students to miss some of the most memorable events of the year. A couple of those events are 8th grade Graduation and Kindergarten Graduation, both big crossroads in a child’s life.
          This year Aiden McNally is our only 8th grade graduate, he will be going to Drummond High School next year. He is an excellent student and an enthusiastic athlete, in fact he played in the All-Star Basketball game earlier this year. He will also miss the track meet in Deer Lodge, a very important county wide competition. Also, Silas Hessler is our only Kindergarten graduate. He is a delightful, eager student as well as a budding sports star.
         Every year I have several people ask who the graduates are and when graduation will happen. We have such a wonderful community as they like to see them though to the next level of their education. Due to the Coronavirus, we will not be able to have a graduation for either student. If you would like to send them a card or gift, I know they would be greatly appreciative.
          Neither student asked for this, in fact they have just come to the conclusion that there would be no ceremony and that was that. We all have to sacrifice important events due to the Covid-19 shelter in place mandate, but if we could still make the graduation special for these guys, I know they would be surprised and grateful.

Sincerely
Leigh Ann Valiton

I have no doubt their post office boxes will be full.

An update: Our friend 99 year old Capt. Tom Moore, who walked 100 miles in his backyard to raise money for first responders, (and who won the heart of Zinaida Korneva of St. Petersburg and is now presumably wearing the socks she knitted for him), has been knighted by the queen! “Don’t be too heavy with the sword” he said, since knighting involves the laying of a royal sword on the right shoulder. But the queen is herself over 90 so will likely be mindful of that.

If I ever worried that robots or AI would replace us or that virtual reality and the tide of media—social and antisocial—would shape us into their image, those fears have been banished during this pandemic. I am daily astonished and moved by the endless originality and outpouring of gratitude and caring by individual people. I have fallen in love with us! The real people of planet Earth. Here are just some of the multitude of expressions that have been captured. (For which I give great thanks and credit to our technological achievements.)

From India comes a most amazing Flower Drawing video for making Thankyou posters for community first responders: Thank you Poster tutorial.

An artist in California wanted to send flowers to sick people and did this through painting dozens of flowers: Flowers for the Sick.

And the music! My Comadre sent this from Mexico City, again an offering from Spain, which was so hard hit by the coronavirus. Que vuelva, literally translated “that it returns,” reflects the yearning for things that are missing during the quarantine. The artists are Juan Valderrama in collaboration with Mariam Cantero and the proceeds go to the Food Bank. It was released during the height of the pandemic when no openings were in sight. First the lyrics, so you can follow--

Bring back the kisses, the laughter and voices!
The cheers for the goals
Bring back hugs, applauses, oles;
bring back the children to school
Bring back the movies and popcorn and theaters;
the music and live concerts
Bring back the joy, wave the sadness away.

Sing! Don’t cry!
Let the bad things blow away in sighs..
It’s not worth it to be bitter.
Life is filled with little things
that give it meaning!

Bring back the warmth and people in the street
Toasts in the sun, blown kisses
Bring back good news and waking up with the feel of your touch
Bring back laughter, everyday life; the routine and
Fixing the world in the corner bar.

Sing! Don’t cry!
Let the bad things blow away in sighs..
It’s not worth it to be bitter.
Life is filled with little things that give it meaning!

(Thanks to Yolanda Hay in Mexico City for her translation)

From Cuba, by way of Martha Slattery in North Carolina, comes an international musical collaboration guaranteed to cheer the most downcast quarantiner. The music of Cuba has its very special flavor that is picked up by musicians in Los Angeles, Mali, and Japan. I love the instruments but I also love the people in the backgrounds going about their daily lives. It’s all great fun and great music. Some of you will recognize music of the Buena Vista Social Club.

When I was a child in Rochester, NY—with winters almost as long as Montana’s—a Dutch couple lived on the corner of our street and every spring we would wait anxiously for the first sign of crocuses pushing up through the snow. They were planted to spell the word S P R I N G and the message was greeted with joy. This year, another Dutchman has offered a virtual Spring in The Most Beautiful Flower Garden In The World Has No Visitors For The First Time In 71 Years And I Got To Capture It

This is the first of the 31 photos.

There would be no flowers without the pollinators, so here is an encore by the film-maker of Gratitude, from my previous Letter, Louie Schwartzberg. The time-lapse photography is remarkable and has his special eye for the wonders of nature. You can find more of his work in his series on Netflix - "Moving Art."

Now meet two of my favorite characters: Surya (the orangutan) and Roscoe (the hound). I never watch this video without smiling affectionately at both. Not only humans are full of the unexpected!

A bit of humor from another favorite short but delightful video. I have heard it said that English is one of the most difficult languages to learn, and also to pronounce.

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I always like to leave on a peaceful note, so here is The Inner History of the Day, a poem by Irish poet John O’Donohue.

Please stay well!

Sheri Ritchlin

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Letter from a Town of 50 ~ No.8

5/10/2020

2 Comments

Tentative Openings

We have had such cold weather, (it is 44 degrees right now), that the leaves are appearing only tentatively on the trees. You will see below that Iris the Osprey is laying her first eggs in Missoula. And our own businesses are also opening slowly in the face of Covid-19.

____________________________________________________________________________________

From Russia with love--

Do you remember that plucky gentleman, Tom Moore? The 99 year old who walked 100 miles in his garden and stole the hearts of thousands of admirers in quarantine? Well one of those is a 97-year-old Russian World War II veteran who has taken inspiration from his record-breaking charity efforts, to raise $27,500 for the families of doctors who died of COVID-19. Unable to do laps in the garden, she is recounting her war stories on YouTube. Here is a message from Zinaida Korneva of St. Petersburg to Tom Moore in which she promises to knit him a pair of socks to keep him warm.

While we are in Russia, I would like to introduce you to another musical prodigy I am following. He is not the grandchild of a famous conductor or opera singer, but he has the same remarkable talent that has won the hearts of Russians everywhere! (And mine too.) Here is Elisey Mysin at age 5, in the Russian version of America's Got Talent.

Not all piano prodigies are human. An example is Tucker, whose ardor for piano--and voice--is no less than Elisay's!

Speaking of non-humans, there is one group for which the coronavirus has been a boon, not a curse. Give a thought to the many creatures in zoos who are suddenly free of crowds of gawkers. The places are quiet now with only natural sounds surrounding them through their days. The perfect thing, it seems, for love to blossom. Consider these pandas in Hong Kong.

And how things have changed in this zoo in Portland, Oregon, where you can now run with flamingos, take your porcupine for a stroll or your penguins to visit the seal exhibit like any good paying customer. I am especially fond of the swimming bear.

In the parking lot of Hellgate High School in Missoula, Iris the Osprey has returned to the nest. Yesterday she laid a second egg, after a raven stole her first one. Unfortunately, she has a deadbeat Dad this year who isn’t helping at all. Whether she can raise a chick as a single mother, we will see. I watched with delight as she raised a handsome young’un last year. This year's moment is captured by the Cornell webcam. You can check out the live cam at any time here.

I have noted before the amazing creativity, fun and generosity that has been unleashed in the confinement of COVID. Martha Slattery brought this to my attention: the Silly Walk Zones people have created in the US and now around the world.

To appreciate the origin of this, I will first share this classic skit by John Cleese of Monty Python and Fawlty Towers fame, which inspired it..

A couple in Grosse Pointe, Michigan picked up on this idea, followed by folks in San Luis Obispo, then around the world! They have gained hundreds of followers on Instagram and visitors to their sidewalk!

I will end on a peaceful note for chaotic times. This one comes in the spirit of Native American tradition, created by and with the music of Gary Malkin and narration by Jyoti. I hope it soothes frayed indoor nerves! And that Spring is truly coming our way in all its fullness.

Please stay well,

Sheri Ritchlin

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Letter from a Town of 50 ~ No.7

4/27/2020

4 Comments

We're here!

April 27, 2020

The other day—it was a gray chilly Spring evening—the long quiet of quarantined Ovando was suddenly broken by the blare of horns honking triumphantly. I leapt to the window and there indeed was a parade of cars and pick-ups circling the small square below my window. The message was so clear: We’re here! Ovando is here, alive and well! It really made me smile. It was so, well, Ovando. A little while later I went out for a walk as dusk was falling and I saw Fred across the street ready to leave from the store. His wife Leigh Ann was in the car and I was delighted to see her and catch up a bit from 6 feet away! Yes, they had been in the “parade” and yes, the message was the one I had received: “Ovando is here, alive and well.”

Here they come!!

It began with an invitation from
Angela Williams on Facebook,
“Everyone welcome.
Let’s all get out and show our community support in these trying times."

Load up in your favorite hot wheels
and join us!!
Meet at Trixis parking lot,
cruise the metropolis of Ovando,
then highway to Helmville
and cruise that metropolis!

“There were about 50 cars,” Leigh Ann said.

Angela has been one of the people in town busily
making face masks for any who want them.
Bravo! Angela, and all of the dragsters who lifted spirits in two metropolitan areas!

_______________________________________________

Christmas Eve, 1968. As one of the most turbulent, tragic years in American history drew to a close, millions around the world were watching and listening as the Apollo 8 astronauts - Frank Borman, Jim Lovell and Bill Anders - became the first humans to orbit another world. --NASA

The “turbulent and tragic year” saw the assassinations of Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert Kennedy, as well as some of the worst massacres of the Vietnam War, which would take the lives of an estimated 2,000,000 to 3,000,000 people; 58,000 American lives. Sadly, wars were not new on our planet but something else was. In Earth’s 4 billion year history, no one had ever seen the Earth. The Apollo 8 astronauts Frank Borman, Bill Anders and Jim Lovell were the first.

ANDERS: There was essentially zero interest in images of Earth from Space. Nobody told me to take a picture of the Earth. We all knew ABOUT the Earth. They wanted photographs of something that was unusual. Close-ups of the far-side of the Moon.

LOVELL: Space is black. Ink black. The Moon is all shades of gray.

BORMAN: The moon is a vast, lonely, forbidding type of existence or expanse of nothing. No matter how closely you looked, it was crater upon crater. After about an hour, I’m thinking it’s kind of boring.

We’d spent all these revolutions looking at the Moon, then as we come around this uninviting place we look up and there’s the Earth. It was small enough you could cover it with your thumb nail and everything we held dear—our families, our country, everything we held dear was back on that blue planet. …How in the world could this little ball exist in this vast universe of nothing?

ANDERS: We were all awestruck by the beauty of the Earth against the blackness of Space. “Wow! Isn’t that pretty? Hand me a roll of color quick. Oh man, that’s a beautiful shot,” I said.

BORMAN: I believe all 3 of us had an emotional reaction to seeing the Earth. The dearest things in life were back on the Earth. My family, my wife… And when we landed, there it was. My wife, my family, my co-workers clapping and cheering. The most emotional part of the flight for me was the homecoming.

ANDERS: When people had time to contemplate all that and really let it sink in, that’s what really made the Earth rise picture one that was considered such a valuable picture for the 20th century.

LOWELL: It makes me feel a little bit disappointed that we did something that ended up showing the Earth and its people exactly how we existed, where we are; that...we are all astronauts and whether we liked it or not, that we were in a spacecraft having to work closely together to accomplish the mission; down here we seem to not be able to do that.

BORMAN: I think it gave a lot of people hope and transcended national boundaries. Of course things got back to normal rapidly but at least for an instant in the history I believe that people looked upon themselves as citizens of the Earth.

Our present time has things in common with that extraordinary moment in 1968. The challenge of it, yes. We are now coming up on the same numbers we saw in the Vietnam War: 3,000,000 deaths from the coronavirus and approaching 56,000 deaths in the United States. In the future, people will ask us, "Wasn’t it a frightening time?" But I’m with Borman, Anders and Lovell: The most indelible memory I will carry from this time is the beauty, spirit, imagination, kindness and resourcefulness of human beings! The sound of horns honking cheerily in the village street! How we have come together to meet the crisis and the kindness of strangers to one another across the globe.

As Frank Borman said, Of course things got back to normal rapidly but at least for an instant in the history I believe that people looked upon themselves as citizens of the Earth. In 1968, they didn’t have the internet, social media and zoom! We have discovered that without leaving our living rooms we can still join people across the world.

The perfect antidote to endless photographs of the cold gray craters of the Moon and an expression of what the three astronauts experienced when they reached home, is this lovely short piece by artistic photographer Louie Schwartzberg and Br. David Stendl-Rast. It is a reminder of the awesome beauty or our place.

Now here is another human wonder. Imagine an 11 year old girl with the voice of an opera singer. Not to be missed is this extraordinary performance by Pavarotti’s grand-daughter, Maria Cristina, performing with an orchestra. You will be stunned!

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I will end with a little humor from the Carol Burnett Show: the talented Tim Conway as an old-fashioned newscaster sitting before his microphone. It’s a classic!

Laugh, love and be well!
Sheri

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Letter from a Town of 50 ~ No.6

4/19/2020

4 Comments

Celebrations

I’ve had several projects going and couldn’t attend to my Letter writing. But I continue to be so moved by human gestures of all kinds among the community of world-wide coronavirus shut-ins! My current favorite is the 99-year-old UK World War II veteran, Capt. Tom Moore, who set himself a goal to raise money for Britain’s underfunded National Health Service during the deadly Covid-19 outbreak. He set up a fundraising page and decided to walk the 82-foot length of his garden back and forth 100 times, using his walker for support.

As he crossed the finish line six days after his effort began, “balloons could be seen in the distance, and soldiers from the Yorkshire Regiment formed a guard of honor and saluted him. Strained health-care workers thanked him across the country….The donations have not stopped. As of Friday morning, Moore had raised $23 million for Britain’s health-care system as workers risked their lives to save others.” If you would like to see that moment (along with two and a half million others who watched), here it is.

At the other end of the spectrum from Capt. Moore’s humble walk in his garden is the world-wide event featuring 100 of the best-known musical artists: One World: Together At Home, organized in part by Lady Gaga and hosted, in the TV version, by Jimmy Fallon, Jimmy Kimmel and Stephen Colbert on all three major networks. It was dedicated to health workers and other people on the front line from food deliverers to mail workers, to scientists working around the clock on a vaccine, including scenes of them at work around the globe. Lang Lang, the Rolling Stones, Paul McCartney and dozens of musicians and celebrities joined in expressions of gratitude in this 8-hour marathon, first on the web and then as a two-hour television special carried on all the networks in prime time. It raised $127,000,000 for local and international aid organizations. It was also, I thought, a rare celebration of our common humanity, as if something inside of us was just waiting to burst forth into this spontaneous generosity, creativity and gratitude that normal life seems to inhibit. You can tune in to bits of this full version, the two hour TV show or watch the finale here, with Lang Lang, Celine Dionne, Lady Gaga, Andre Bocelli and John Legend. Once again, it is the wonder of technology that makes possible this performance by artists in distant locations.

Living-room concerts continue to be shared virtually and I have also enjoyed the widespread camaraderie (and humor!) of art lovers worldwide! My friend Clara Igonda in Pasadena shared an invitation from the Getty Museum.

Here are some of their offerings!

You can see more entries or enter yourself on the Getty Twitter Site.

From Spain comes the spunk and humor of La Mare in RESISTIRÉ (versión cuarentena), "I Will Endure, (quarantine version)" sent to me by my Comadre in Mexico City. You don’t need to understand Spanish to appreciate this spoof on the efforts to survive “sheltering in place,” as she walks the dog so much the dog refuses to go out and she gets to the end of her recipe book with nothing new to cook. She washes her curtains, her sofa pillows. She studies new languages, new dances, and has group chats on zoom. It will definitely lift your spirits just to watch her recreating scenes that are all too familiar to us in ways that make us smile.

Easter in our town was not the usual Spring celebration. Here is the tree in the center of town. I found myself singing “O Easter Tree, O Easter Tree, how snowy are Thy branches.”

Being shut off from friends and family, without traditional church services, may have been the greatest hardship of all for many people. Most virtually attended online services but for Christians that meant the absence of communion. It was also Passover and traditionally families would gather for their Seder meal. This family proved that in the right spirit, it can be done: Together at a distance for Passover.

Never again in our lifetimes (we hope and pray) will we ever see St. Peter’s square in Rome on Easter nearly empty.

On most Easter Sundays

Easter 2020 during coronavirus

Services were still performed and broadcast from an empty St. Peter's Basilica. In some places, outdoor services were performed and people attended in their cars.

The Stray Bullet Cafe is still making take-and-bake casseroles and Trixi's Antler Saloon is offering take-out pizzas for the weekends. Fred has kindly appeared on my porch with groceries. Howie is making up spray sanitizers and Peggy has been making masks.

I had a new bird at my feeder! One I never knew existed: A Hepburn's finch, also called grey-crowned rosy finch. A handsome bird and I am ever-so-happy to see it.

Overhead, Venus continues to shine brightly in the west as the Evening Star and below to the left is the bright star, Aldebaran, in the horn of Taurus. Arcturus is the brightest star in the east in the evening, with bright Spica shining to the lower right.

I will close with the peacefulness and patience of nature, AND of nature photographers. This was sent to me by friends in New York, created in neighboring Pennsylvania.

Be well,
Sheri

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