Giving voice to those whose voices were suppressed

My Sunday movie was The Holdovers. It was a big deal when it was released last Christmas season. Yes, it is nominally a Christmas movie, in that the action does take place over the last couple weeks of December and there is a Christmas dinner. But it really isn’t about Christmas. The time is 1970. Mr. Hunham teaches Ancient Civilizations at a residential boys school in New England. Yeah, a place where rich people send their young sons. These are boys who expect to go to an Ivy League school. If their grades are high enough. Curmudgeonly describes Hunham quite well. He is told he must supervise the boys who can’t go home during the two week Christmas break. The only other people on campus will be Mary, the chief cook and Danny, the janitor. Yeah, white people are addressed by their last names, black people by their first names. This adventure begins with five boys, three who are high school juniors or seniors and two who are freshmen. After a few days one of the fathers relents, taking his son and three other boys away in a helicopter for a ski trip. That leave the professor in charge of senior Angus Tully, one of the more irritating students. But if Tully is kicked out his next stop is a military school and from there service in Vietnam. The movie is essentially Hunham and Tully learning to see and appreciate each other as real people. Mary, who lost a son in Vietnam the year before, offers a tempering voice to Hunham’s worst instincts, saying he shouldn’t treat the boy that way. There is time spent on campus and a “field trip” to Boston where there is a discussion about the school’s honor code and when it is appropriate to not quite tell the truth. The movie got four Oscar nominations, including for Paul Giamatti, who played Hunham. It also got an Oscar win for best supporting actress for Da’Vine Joy Randolph, who played Mary. There were also many other wins and nominations at various other award events and film festivals. I enjoyed this one quite a bit. I much appreciated the ending. I finished the book Symphony of Secrets by Brendan Slocumb. A mystery novel about music? I’m there! The book begins, “Sixteen hours before his death, Frederic Delaney...” The mystery of why composer Frederic Delaney died lasts only a couple chapters. He latest work was savaged by the critics and he committed suicide. In the 1920s Delaney wrote five operas (so a symphony of secrets doesn’t fit) based on the five rings of the Olympic flag that was introduced in 1920. These five Ring operas rivaled the four Ring operas of Wagner, telling one large story covering the lands represented by each ring. Yellow, Green, Blue, and Black were produced to wide acclaim. Red was produced a dozen years later and its dismal reception led Delaney to kill himself. In the modern era the Delaney Foundation, run by the composer’s grandniece and -nephew, do a lot to bring music to disadvantaged children. One of them was Bern Hendricks, a black man. After getting a doctorate Bern was involved in research into those operas and into Delaney’s many songs. Bern loves Delaney’s music. So when a version of the Red opera is found, much better than the one staged and savaged in 1936, Bern is asked to create the definitive performance edition of this found score. The handwritten score, similar to the original handwritten scores to the songs, has many Delaney Doodles on the pages. Bern enlists the help of old friend Eboni, a black woman, who is a computer security expert. She has a strong distrust of white people, especially white people in power positions, such as the board of the Delaney Foundation. Her distrust is justified when the Foundation stonewalls requests to see the original score, not just scans of the pages. When they do see the originals they see “JoR” in the corner. They figure out this stands for Josephine Reed, a black woman. Who is she? What does she have to do with Delaney’s music? Where did she go and did she have any descendants? Eboni suggests Josephine had carried Fred’s child. What happened to the original score of Red? Why was the shoddy version created in 1936? Why is the good version appearing only now? All that by itself would be a pretty good mystery. The book then alternates between Delaney’s time and the present as we see the growing working relationship between Frederic and Josephine alternating with Bern and Eboni working to figure out the clues. Spoiler alert: That basic mystery is explained about a third of the way through the story – Fred worked as a song plugger for Tin Pan Alley and was a terrible composer. Josephine was what today we would call neurodivergent with synesthesia. She would soak up music at various clubs and created songs she wanted to hear – songs that Fred would write down and sell under his own name, though he did give her good food, clothing, housing, and generous spending money. He justified his theft by saying songs by a black woman would not sell. All those doodles were her way of notating the sounds and music around her to avoid being overwhelmed by them. The rest of the novel is how Bern and Eboni make sure a black woman gets the credit when faced with a white power structure that will put up a nasty fight to maintain the reputation of a white man on which their power depends. I enjoyed this one very much. The author says the story is about giving voice to those whose voices were suppressed, always a good thing. Don’t be put off by the musical underpinnings. Knowing music is not necessary to understand and enjoy the story. This is Banned Books Week, a time to talk about the books that were banned in the previous year and why they are being banned. The week is sponsored by the American Library Association and the Office for Intellectual Freedom. As has been the case for many years, all of the ten most banned books in 2023 are “claimed to be sexually explicit” and six of the ten are about LGBTQIA+ characters. Should we rejoice that only one book in the ten appears to be about race? Mark Kreidler, in an article for Capital & Main posted on Daily Kos wrote about a program that takes basic income payments to a new level. The program is LIFT. Their headquarters are in Washington DC and has programs in Chicago, New York, and Los Angeles. A basic income program gives poor people money every month for a set time, perhaps two years. The money has no constraints. It is enough to that the recipients can stop focusing on just money and can think about the next steps to get themselves out of poverty. LIFT is a bit different. It has had to narrow its clients to parents with young children. The money isn’t as much. It offers extensive counseling and mentoring. What are your goals? How do you intend to achieve them? For many people in poverty these aren’t things they haven’t been able to think much about, so answering them can take time. One big item of news this week is that Tupperware, the iconic plastic container company, filed for bankruptcy. I remember using Tupperware when I was a child and probably have a few Tupperware products in my cupboards. Their distribution network was Tupperware parties, in which the sales person described the various products in a relaxed setting. Scott Detrow of NPR talked to one of the top sellers of the 2010s, Oscar Quintero. He did his selling while in drag, as Kay Sedia. That allowed him to turn his demonstrations into a comedy routine with a few off-color jokes. And he made pretty good money, quite good for growing up in poverty. But it was hard to do a Tupperware party during the pandemic. Business hasn’t recovered. In the comments of a pundit roundup on Kos is a cartoon by Bramhall appropriate to this story. A mother comes home from work and her daughter asks, “What were Tupperware parties?” Mom replies, “Before they went bankrupt, Tupperware used housewives as a distribution system.” The daughter asks, “What were housewives?” A bit below that is a cartoon posted by Michael Thomas. The creator is not mentioned. A man sits at his desk with an open laptop and says:

Honey, come look! I’ve found some information all the world’s top scientists and doctors missed.