Sunset, Monday, 30 November 2009

William Theodore Van Doren. Stony Point, Albemarle County, Va. Oil on paper, 16 x 20.

Rain at sunset. The month of November can be seen in a calendar array here.

Last night I was reacquainted, via radio, with Tommy James and the Shondells’ “Sweet Cherry Wine,” which came out in 1969, a top 10 hit wedged between two of their monsters, “Crimson and Clover” (#1) and “Crystal Blue Persuasion” (#2). 

As great as his records were, I don’t think of Tommy James as the kind of artist who was ever ahead of his time or who would lead his audience in a new direction, except maybe in the area of guitar and vocal effects. Despite the trippy lyrics, in terms of depth or heft, he was closer to, say, Lou Christie than Leonard Cohen. But to me this just makes some of the things he said in his songs that much more interesting – because he wasn’t saying anything amazing or surprising, he was saying what ‘everybody’ (of a certain generation) ‘knew’ to be the case. And it struck me as a little sad to think how mistaken Tommy, and we, may have been.

About a specific issue like Vietnam he was completely right:

Oh yeah, yesterday my friends were marching out to war
Oh yeah, listen now we ain’t a-marching anymore
No we ain’t gonna fight, only God has the right
To decide who’s to live and die

About the underlying situation, I realize of course it’s hardly news to say that people in the Sixties were ... uh ... a tad overoptimistic.

Watch the mountain turn to dust and blow away
Oh Lord, you know there’s got to be a better way
And the old masquerade is a no-soul parade
Marchin’ through the ruins of time

(Having listened again to the song after going to five different lyrics sites, it really is ‘blow’ away, not ‘glow’ away as every site has it; I assumed it was a ‘no-show’ parade, but the sites are all correct with ‘no-soul’.)

In any event, it may not be just children of the Sixties – I think Americans in general are naive about power, and tend to assume, for example, that when a new party gains the presidency, the locus of power changes as well. But to touch only briefly on a huge subject, the international network that supported BCCI and Iran-Contra in the 1980s didn’t decide to fold up and go bye-bye just because Bill Clinton was in the White House. Add neoconservatives and the old masquerade’s new again.

I love the song, but the ruins of time may be holding up awfully well.

Sunset, Sunday, 29 November 2009

William Theodore Van Doren. Stony Point, Albemarle County, Va. Oil on paper, 16 x 20.

The New York Times today has a story and slide show on a project of the photographer Adam Stoltman. Stoltman has been photographing the same view from his Chelsea apartment window almost every day for three years – basically, his vantage point has a clear shot at the Empire State Building, which he’s recorded in all lights and all kinds of weather. Stoltman says the view has “almost an infinite capacity for visual wonder.”

From the perspective of my somewhat similar undertaking, I would suggest that the wonder literally is infinite, and much more than visual.

Sunset, Saturday, 28 November 2009

William Theodore Van Doren. Stony Point, Albemarle County, Va. Oil on paper, 16 x 20.

Clear, with color and light draining, air turning chilly. If we manage to get a frost tonight, I’m pretty sure it will be only the second of the year in this locale, which seems remarkable. Maybe after all this time, with a little more frost, and if the deer, the bears and the wind have left me any, I can be persuaded to try, again, one of our persimmons – the native Virginia kind.

Sunset, Friday, 27 November 2009

William Theodore Van Doren. Stony Point, Albemarle County, Va. Oil on paper, 16 x 20.

Went from here to downtown Staunton, Virginia – the most beautiful urban space in this region (followed by Lynchburg and Culpeper ... according to no less an authority than myself) – and the Blackfriars Playhouse to see the American Shakespeare Center performance of Henry IV, Part I. Then to Mockingbird – “Artisan Fare & Roots Music” – open only five weeks and a nice place to talk after the show. Not quite as many followers of Falstaff. 

Sunset, Thanksgiving, 26 November 2009

William Theodore Van Doren. Stony Point, Albemarle County, Va. Oil on paper, 16 x 20.

At sunset a few drops of rain began falling on my brother Steve’s face as he napped in the hammock, in two blankets.

Inside, my sister Emily, here from Indiana, told everyone about 350.org.

We called our brother Mike, camping with his family and his father-in-law in Seminole Canyon, in Texas, and left him a raucous Thanksgiving voicemail.

Laura called her sister Mary Scott, who was in Lynchburg, Virginia, with the rest of their family.

My niece Jody missed her fiance, Jason.

My niece Ashley and her husband, Erik, were texting with their friend Dan, anchor on a local newscast, while he was trying to cope with a program cut ever shorter by the Cowboys-Raiders game.

Sandy, my sister-in-law, had just come through a grueling several weeks of medical tests, results of which she and Steve got just yesterday. Thanksgiving was thanksgiving. Sandy did an impersonation of the turkey that gets saved by the White House.

Sunset, Wednesday, 25 November 2009

William Theodore Van Doren. Stony Point, Albemarle County, Va. Oil on paper, 16 x 20.

This view is turned a little bit south from the usual perspective ... for those who know the area, looking more or less toward Charlottesville Airport from a mile east of 29.

Now ... in my sincerely misguided effort to be all things to all people, and in the belief that almost everyone who’s on the web at this moment is desperately seeking Thanksgiving dinner advice, I offer a little something culinary to go with the sunset.

After years, many years, of following the family habit of simply serving whole roasted yams, I switched last year to Roasted Yam Puree With Brown Butter, a recipe from the November 2004 issue of Bon Appétit. It was a hit, but probably only because I remembered that Patrick O’Connell, of The Inn at Little Washington (Washington, Virginia), had a Brown Butter recipe (the brown butter directions for the Bon Appétit yams seemed dangerously general and vague). I got O’Connell’s brown butter from The Inn at Little Washington Cookbook, but you can find it here. I think it’s critical to the success of the yams.

For what it’s worth, I’ve been roasting something like 7 or 8 pounds of yams and using more than a cup of butter. This year (I finished them just now, before sunset) I roasted garnet yams a good 90 minutes instead of an hour – a long, emphatic roasting for a sweeter, almost caramelized flavor, which then makes the puree more complex when combined with brown butter.

Happy Thanksgiving and good night!