Thursday, October 26, 2023

 Hi,

My name is Phil Skiff and Don Skiff was my dad. He passed away peacefully on October 7th, surrounded by his family. He was 94 years young. To say he will be missed is, well, an understatement. You can view his obituary here: Don Skiff.

We decided to leave his blog up for the time being as many have valued it.

His numerous books will also stay available on amazon for anyone who's interested.

Don's Books

We won't be able to respond to comments but feel free to post your thoughts. He'd like that.

Wednesday, May 12, 2021

Hallelujah

“Oh, I love that song!” she exclaimed. “It’s so spiritual.”

They lay together, sharing a pillow, soaking in the afterglow of slow, gentle lovemaking that capped the evening of a second date. Nondescript instrumental music played in the other room, and only when she mentioned it did he recognize the tune.

He was vaguely disappointed. Nothing wrong, actually, just that earlier that evening he had been really high on her. When they had met in the faculty lounge a week ago, she had struck him as sensitive and deep. They had talked for a long time about how feelings dominate our decisions, even those that seem completely rational at the moment. “I know,” she had said, “that I’m a wuss. I let my feelings keep me from doing what I know I should do.”

It had amused him at the time. She had such a sunny manner about her, without seeming frivolous. Her admission made him protest. “I doubt that. Maybe you’re just more conscious of the things you don’t have the nerve to take on.”

They had dinner together last weekend, and became more comfortable with each other after a couple of drinks, but agreed that sex on a first date would be rushing things too much. Tonight he felt ready, and when he suggested they go to his apartment after dinner, she readily agreed.

He’d heard the Leonard Cohen song, Hallelujah, so many times sung by vocalists who seemed to have no idea what the lyrics were saying that he got to tuning it out when another version was played. “Great tune,” he said, “but I wouldn’t call the song ‘spiritual’. Some vocalists leave out the meaningful verses.”

She chuckled, and looked over at him. “I admit I don’t understand some of the lyrics.”

“Have you heard Jeff Buckley’s version?”

She frowned. “I don’t know. I don’t think so.”

“’It’s a cold and broken Hallelujah,’” he quoted.

“But it doesn’t sound ‘cold and broken,’ when they sing it.”

“C’mon,” he said, getting out of bed and heading for the living room.

Joining him as he rummaged through the songs on his computer, she laughed. “Here we are, naked and unashamed, playing music.” She wrapped a light throw from the sofa around her and sat down to watch him.

“Here’s Jeff Buckley on YouTube,” he said, plugging the computer into the TV. “The video seemed harsh to me the first time I watched it, but it fits the mood of the piece. Listen to the words.”

He began the video. After a guitar intro, Jeff Buckley began:

I heard there was a secret chord
That David played and it pleased the Lord
But you don't really care for music, do you?
Well it goes like this the fourth, the fifth
The minor fall and the major lift
The baffled king composing Hallelujah

Hallelujah, Hallelujah, Hallelujah, Hallelujah

Well your faith was strong but you needed proof
You saw her bathing on the roof
Her beauty and the moonlight overthrew you
She tied you to her kitchen chair
She broke your throne and she cut your hair
And from your lips, she drew the Hallelujah

Hallelujah, Hallelujah, Hallelujah, Hallelujah

Baby, I've been here before
I've seen this room and I've walked this floor
You know, I used to live alone before I knew you
And I've seen your flag on the marble arch
And Love is not a victory march
It's a cold and it's a broken Hallelujah

Hallelujah, Hallelujah, Hallelujah, Hallelujah

Well, there was a time when you let me know
What's really going on below
But now you never show that to me, do you?
But remember, when I moved in you
And the holy dove was moving too
And every breath, we drew was Hallelujah

Hallelujah, Hallelujah, Hallelujah, Hallelujah

Maybe there's a God above
But, all I've ever learned from love
Was how to shoot somebody who outdrew you
And it's not a cry that you hear at night
It's not somebody who's seen the light
It's a cold and it's a broken Hallelujah

Hallelujah, Hallelujah, Hallelujah, Hallelujah

As he switched the video off, he turned to look at her. Tears were streaming down her cheeks. “It’s so sad!” she said softly. “He sounds so hurt.”

He put his arms around her and held her for a long time, thinking that perhaps he had misjudged her after all.

. . .

The first time I really listened to the song “Hallelujah” after hearing it on the air—I don’t know how many times—was k.d. Lang ‘s version sung at the Vancouver Olympics, a track that iTunes sent me gratis a few years ago. That got me curious, partly because of what seemed quite odd lyrics and partly because the melody caught me—and still does. I googled the lyrics, and then explored the original by Leonard Cohen, and listened to what some reviewers considered the best covers (including Willie Nelson). Since then, I’ve listened more or less carefully to hundreds of versions.

 My reactions to those versions have been mixed. First, Cohen’s early versions (his lyrics changed over time) were not “religious” as most of the other singers have suggested. His was a lament addressed to a lover, and the biblical references, to King David, especially with Bathsheba, and other ancient situations, were all about personal relationships. The interjection “Hallelujah” was pure irony. The version I like the most (because Cohen mumbles and I can’t understand all he sings) is by Jeff Buckley, who makes the most of the irony and the lamentation. Unfortunately, the only video of Buckley singing it is visually unappealing. Nearly all of the other singers I’ve heard leave out the sexual verses altogether, which negates the irony and turns it into a curious kind of hymn. The ancient references don’t carry any meaning except that they come from the Bible—so they (and the song itself) must be religious.

 The song is a little like “The Rose” with a melody that is heartfelt and easy to sing, like most hymns. The lyrics of The Rose, however, are suggestive of hope, even if the botany described leaves something to be desired. Both songs have a great appeal these days. Personally, I’d be happy to not hear either one for a long time. My first reaction to hearing another one is “Oh, no, not that again!” But my ear goes right to it, the way it does to the final aria by Madame Butterfly. (At least that’s usually sung in Italian, so I don’t have to understand the words.) I’m pretty romantic in my tastes.

A lot of young singers choose “Hallelujah” to show their skills, and I guess I’ll tolerate them. Still, every time I hear the song I’m disappointed. I miss the original meaning of the song. While I wouldn’t want to hear it, as it was written by Cohen, so many times (his lyrics are not exactly uplifting), they have meaning—which the popular covers do not.

With completely new lyrics, it could be a popular and moving hymn. Or translated into Italian. I’m sure that many of the lyrics of famous Puccini arias would grate just as much on modern ears translated literally from Italian.

Might even elicit a “cold and broken ‘Hallelujah’.”


Saturday, January 30, 2021

Kirsten's Mother

 The shriek of the table saw filled the room as it came up to speed, and no doubt filled the house as well and perhaps the nearby neighborhood. She pushed the block of wood into the blade.

Usually, she would have used a stick to push it, but it was only this once… Something caught, and for a moment she didn’t even feel it. But the blood from her finger sprayed her face, and she couldn’t see through one lens of her glasses.

Instantly, she knew what she had done—ignored the universal safety precaution: ALWAYS use a pusher with a power saw. She half heard something hit the floor, and bent over to see the block of wood lying next to one of her fingers.

Rita was a retired nurse. She knew immediately what had to be done. Grabbing a handkerchief from her pocket, she wound it tightly around the stump of her finger, then switched off the saw, picked up the severed finger and went into the kitchen. Taking a tray of ice cubes from the freezer, she filled a small bowl with ice and laid the finger in among the ice.

Then she sat down, suddenly feeling faint. “Oh, damn!” she said aloud.

As soon as the lightheadedness eased, she went quickly into the front hall, put on a jacket and grabbed her keys from the stand by the door. The cold air felt good on her face as she ran to her car, spilling a few ice cubes but not the finger from the bowl.

The hospital was only a few blocks away. She managed to drive with one hand, keeping the injured one held close to her breast. At the emergency entrance, she picked up the bowl of ice, left the car where she had stopped, and staggered through the doors, feeling faint again. A nurse saw her and the bandaged hand, and quickly came to her. Rita handed her the bowl. “My finger is in there,” she said.

Somebody pushed a wheelchair against the back of her legs. She sat down heavily. As she was wheeled through the doors into the emergency room proper, blackness carried her away.

Sometime later, Rita woke to find herself lying on a gurney, surrounded by curtains. Her hand was heavily bandaged and supported by a small pillow next to her.

A doctor came through the curtain. “Ah,” he said, “you’re awake.”

Her bandaged hand ached. “Pretty dumb, huh?” she said, attempting a grin.

“You were smart to keep it on ice and get here so quickly. We got it sown back on, and if we’re lucky it will survive. You came in by yourself?”

She sighed. “I live alone. I knew I had to get here right away.”

“They tell me you didn’t pass out until they had you in the wheelchair. Not many people could have done that.” He grinned. “What did you cut it off with?”

“Table saw. I should have known better. I DID know better.”

“You were cutting something and the finger got in the way?”

“Dumb.”

“Well, I guess you did all the right things afterward. A lot of fingers end up getting tossed in the garbage.”

He promised to return, and swept out through the curtain.

Rita sighed. She had been using that saw for years, building things like birdhouses and shelving for her house. She loved working with wood, loved the smell and the feeling of accomplishment. Her husband had died a number of years before, and all of her children had moved away. Working in her shop in the garage, and listening to music in the evenings kept her occupied. When the weather let her, she dug in her garden and watched the birds flying over the lake.

Life was okay. Rita wasn’t sentimental. She hated the feeling that her life wouldn’t last a lot longer, but she didn’t dwell on it. Kirsten, her eldest, lived somewhere Back East with a man. The boys—hard to realize they were all men—lived somewhere in the vicinity, all still single and getting in trouble with the law now and then. She was content to live alone. Her hearing was getting bad, though, probably from the noise of the table saw. She knew that she should be using protectors, but she kept forgetting to buy them. She found that she could hear her music better through headphones.

Later that day they let her go home. She had called her middle son to come and get her, since she couldn’t drive with the sedative the hospital had given her. “Mom, what were you thinking?” he asked, glancing at her in the car.

“Wasn’t thinking,” she muttered. “And get that grin off your face!”

Instantly sober, he said, “You’re going to need help until that heals. Let’s see if Tom can come over and stay with you. He owes you.”

“Talk about it later. I can manage.”

Her hand was beginning to throb.

Saturday, January 2, 2021

"Here Comes the Sun"

This essay was published in a small community newsletter about February 1.

The sun is, indeed, coming back, and the days are getting longer. Remember that song by George Harrison?

“Little darling, it's been a long cold lonely winter,
Little darling, it feels like years since it's been here,
Here comes the sun, here comes the sun,
And I say it's all right…”

After a long and lonely covid year, winter just seemed to clinch the mood. (Some of us, of course, managed to go south and escape at least the worst of the cold and darkness, even if not the horror of covid.)

But spring is coming. And the light. And the vaccine.

A little detail: It was darkest back in December, when the sun rose at about 8:00 AM and set at about 5:00 PM. The difference between sunrise and sunset was only 9 hours. Now, in February, we’re getting almost an hour more daylight, most of it in the afternoon. The sun rises ten minutes earlier and sets forty minutes later.

And that rate of change is getting faster. Around March 20 near the spring equinox, the sun will rise at 7:35 AM and set at 7:48 PM; the difference between them is 12 hours and 13 minutes. Every week, we are getting almost 20 more minutes of daylight. In June when the summer solstice occurs, the difference between sunrise and sunset will give us 15 hours and 18 minutes of sunlight, plus the daylight before sunrise and after sunset.

Notice that I say “about” a lot here. That’s because the times I got from timeanddate.com may differ a little from what we actually observe here in Centennial Farm. That’s also because we can’t see the actual horizon at either sunrise or sunset; they take place behind hills and trees and other obstructions. Because we are about 42 degrees north of the equator, we get our sunrise and sunset on a path that changes IN ANGLE from season to season. (If you’re keen on geometry, you can figure that out for yourself.)

It took me several years to get my head around the idea that sunrise and sunset don’t follow the same paths from season to season. And at the summer solstice, the earliest sunrise doesn’t occur on the same date as the latest sunset. Similarly, at winter solstice the latest sunrise doesn’t occur on the same date as the earliest sunset. The solstices are based on the average length of days. You’ve probably noticed that the solstices don’t even fall on the same calendar days every year. The earth wobbles a bit on its axis.

We think of the rotation of the earth and its revolution around the sun as fixed and as certain as anything in life. Well, it seems, not quite.

If we can adjust to these variations, we ought to be able to adjust to the vagaries of whether a vaccine will definitely prevent us from getting the virus, just as we accept that on next Thursday the sky MIGHT be sunny or cloudy, or that rain is MERELY FORECAST to begin tomorrow at 5:00 PM. When we will be able to safely gather with other people without masks or social distancing is only LIKELY at some particular date in the future.  We have to live with those uncertainties.

Here comes the sun,” may involve some of that same uncertainty about when, even as we can be sure IT WILL COME. I still remember that old song from World War II, “When the lights come on again, all over the world,” and how I yearned for someone to assure me, “when.” Whether the outlook at any moment was good or not so good, I learned that I could not predict the date that peace would arrive. But I had faith that it would, indeed, come.

George Harrison first recorded “Here Comes the Sun” in the summer of 1969—another time when most of us were wishing for the end of a war. “Little darling, it's been a long cold lonely winter,” was as much about hope for all of us as it was about the seasons.

We might dig out that old recording and listen to it one more time.

Saturday, October 10, 2020

An Orchestra of Hands

 On YouTube, watching Ana Vidovic play classical guitar, I am struck by how her hands manipulate the strings seemingly independently of one another, with different kinds of finger motions—ten of them, each moving in its own way at the same time. (Well, actually nine fingers, since her left thumb is behind the neck of the instrument supporting it.)

It reminds me of watching the members of an orchestra playing a complex piece, directed, of course, by one person. Each player seems to be independent of the others, playing a different tune in different time, only occasionally glancing at the conductor. I’ve marveled for many years at how a hundred people could play music so incredibly synchronized with each other to create sublime sounds. I’m sure that it takes practice, more and more practice for each player, both individually and ensemble.

The same requirement holds for a guitar player who strives for perfection. Practice. Of course skill and talent are also required. Skill comes with practice, but talent seems to lie in a separate realm, not explainable even by the musician herself, a mysterious quality that only some people possess in differing degrees. What intrigues me is how individual fingers learn their timing, pressure, even vibrato so that these things become automatic and unconscious.

Watching Ana Vidovic’s left hand during a complicated passage is astounding. At the same time, of course, her right hand is actually strumming or plucking the different strings—the fingers of the left hand determining the length of each string and therefore the pitch of the tone produced. Harmony is produced by multiple strings plucked at the same time, each one set to its own pitch by the position of a fingertip pressing a particular fret.

I get the same feeling watching young Alexander Malofeev on the piano play Rachmaninoff: a human cannot possibly, I think, pay attention to all ten fingers, at some places in those concerti.

With practice, playing a guitar or piano, or any instrument for that matter, involves a lot of muscle memory—just as does riding a bicycle or driving a car—actions that become almost automatic, without conscious thought. Benjamin Zander, a British conductor, gave a TED Talk in 2008 in which he spoke of teaching young piano students and noticing that in the beginning they tended to nod on each note (“impulses”), but then as they progressed they tended to nod less frequently—on phrases, then on bars, and so on, with the intervening notes relegated to less conscious, perhaps muscle, memory.

Watching Ana Vidovic play her guitar makes this process evident. Listening to an orchestra and paying attention to separate instruments reveals the same phenomenon. Our bodies perform countless actions almost without us noticing. Our conscious minds, our awareness moment to moment, are but a fragment of what we do, whether we are skilled musicians or ordinary people doing ordinary things.

I’m coming to appreciate how miraculous this body of mine really is, without micro-managing. Even at my advanced age, I notice many actions that take place without my awareness.

Perhaps “my awareness” is given more importance than it deserves. Most of the activity in my body is beyond my control. My heart, for example, at its nominal rate of sixty-five beats per minute, goes through its cycle about ninety-three thousand times in a day. I can’t remember the last time I was even aware of its activity. Millions of microbes living in my gut process the food I eat every day, without my conscious help.

The activities I carry out with conscious intention may seem the most important in my life, but all the rest of the supporting functions actually make those activities possible. Were I to become proficient in playing the guitar or the piano, a huge number of separate and combined functions would come into play.

Those invisible functions enable me to live. I have no idea what neurological functions enable me to even wonder about them all.

Performing Western classical music, at least, requires a high degree of manual dexterity, as well as sensitivity to the emotional subtleties we call “artistry.” We can only be grateful that there are people who are willing to put in the time, effort and skill to bring to the rest of us one of the highest realms of human accomplishment.

Saturday, August 8, 2020

I Am So Lucky To Be White

 I became conscious of my height about the time it peaked in my late teens. When I joined the Coast Guard at seventeen I felt, as did most of my company, innocent and confused by the demands of the institution. We struggled together to conform to the expectations of our trainers and officers. But when they lined us up to drill on the marching field, they arranged us by height, and most of the time I led my column. I didn’t ask why, but privately I felt somehow better than the others.

After boot camp, I was sent to a training school in Connecticut to learn about engines, my chosen field. I learned along with my classmates all the details of internal combustion engines; how to tear them down and put them together again. We compiled our new knowledge into notebooks, ostensibly for future reference in the field. Due primarily to the schools I had attended up to that point, I had a verbal advantage over many of my classmates. On the basis of my test scores and the elaborate notebook I had prepared, I ended the course at the head of my class. Privately, I felt better than them.

During my high school years, the United States was at war, and we were deluged by propaganda to keep us focused on winning the war. (It wasn’t called propaganda, a term that was used by our leaders to describe the efforts of the enemy countries to influence their citizens in their own agendas.) A large proportion of our propaganda stressed that we were better than them, more powerful and more moral in character. Along with everybody I knew, I felt lucky to be an American. We were better than them.

Recently, a lot has been written about racism in our country. I’ve counted myself “liberal” and morally superior to the white supremacists and alt-right nationalists that have attracted so much attention. I’ve sympathized with “Black Lives Matter” protests, and with most of the identity politics that have been written about and circulated in social media. I’ve taken the time to seriously consider the ramifications of Black reparations proposals by such writers as Ta-Nehisi Coates and James Baldwin. While I almost never encounter Black people in my daily life, I have felt confident that my viewpoints and even my actions are blameless regarding race.

It was only while reading Robin Diangelo’s White Fragility that I began to recognize my “whiteness” and my participation, however unconscious, in the systemic racism in Western culture. I may have condemned for many years the colonialism by European countries, and sometimes even the colonialism inherent in the United States relationships with places such as the Philippines and Puerto Rico. I may have cheered hearing the recent news of a possible new cure for sickle cell anemia because it could relieve a lot of mostly Black people of horrible suffering. My ego is rewarded by occasional thoughts that I’m on “the right side” of current controversies. I’m better than them.

In the middle of last night it occurred to me: I’m so lucky to be white. Like being tall, it’s not because of anything I’ve done, but it brings me advantages and prestige. I don’t have to face some of the things that non-whites encounter every day. I don’t have to live with the daily fear that Nina Simone spoke of in a recent documentary. When I am stopped by the police for a minor traffic violation, I can be polite and expect them to be polite. I don’t have to be afraid of being beaten or shot. I can rent a car or buy a home or walk through a neighborhood without being watched through closed window drapes.

I need to pay more attention to the plights of others not so lucky, and do what I can to nudge the system in the right direction. It isn’t easy because most of it is invisible to me. It’s just the way the world works—for a white man.

I need to remember more often how lucky I am. I need to become more aware of my part in the injustices of the world.

Tuesday, July 28, 2020

Face Down

I turned my face to the side to see a pair of legs appear in the middle of the street. I let my head rest on the edge of the curb, watching blood drip over the edge into the gutter.

“Oh, my word,” someone said, “call nine one one.”

Judith had a hand on my arm and she was crying. “Oh, Don! Oh, God!”

I could remember tripping, my left shoe getting caught between my right shoe and the curbing as it swung forward, and in the next instant my face smashing into the curb. I didn’t remember falling.

Judith tugged on my arm. “Can you sit up?”

“No,” I answered, “I want to stay here for a minute.”

“Okay. Let me have your glasses.” Then she said she was going to get something for the blood. I could see that a small crowd had gathered in the street, everybody talking. One pair of legs ended in bare feet, with bright red toenails. With some effort I turned my head enough to see people’s faces, some I recognized as our neighbors. Blood continued to drip profusely into the gutter.

We had begun a morning walk with a bright sun and a mild breeze. Judith loves to get out on mornings like that for a walk around the neighborhood. The temperature was about seventy degrees, and I had breathed deeply as we started out. We were about a block from home when I tripped.

It happened so fast! One instant we were walking, and then the next instant I was on the pavement, my face feeling the rough concrete and pebbles.

Soon Judith returned, breathing hard from running. She handed me a small towel , and I held it against my face. I heard someone say, “Here they come.”

I looked back up the street to see two men approaching, carrying heavy bags over their shoulders. I wondered where they came from. Close to me, they began asking me questions. “Did you faint?” I said no. “Any difficulty moving your feet or your hands?” No. “Can you sit up?”

Still holding the towel to my dripping nose, I struggled to sit up on the curb. Somebody gave me a hand, and in a moment I was upright. One of the men opened his bag, took out a blood pressure monitor, and wrapped the cuff around my arm. “That hurt?” No. “Do you know your normal blood pressure?” About one fifty.

When he finished, he said, “One fifty two over ninety.” We agreed that that was good, and he removed the cuff. I showed him my finger, which I had noticed was badly torn open somehow. He wrapped a Band-Aid around it. “Have somebody look at that. It’ll probably need some stitches.”

I looked around at the people nearby, nodding when they spoke to me, but my mind was still foggy. I heard somebody say that the ambulance was on its way, and somebody else say it wasn’t necessary. I think that was Judith. “I’ll take him to the urgent care,” she said. “I’ll get the car.”

The emergency crew waited for her to drive up to us, then one of them took my arm as I struggled to stand. I felt someone else grasp my other arm, and they supported me while I made my way to Judith’s car. One opened the door for me. “Thank you,” I said.

“No problem,” he replied. I thought of all the times I had seen the EMT trucks in our community. Ours is a co-op with 350 residence units, all of which are owned by people over 50 years of age. Emergencies are more common than in most neighborhoods.

The crowd was still standing there as we drove away, passing the big fire truck that was parked a couple of doors down, its engine idling loudly. I hadn’t seen the truck arrive.

I was feeling pampered. My forehead and nose ached, and I was still dripping blood into the towel. Judith handed me a face mask. “I remembered our masks, at least,” she said. We’d been walking without covid masks, as we usually do since there are seldom very many people out on the streets.

“I can’t put it on this way,” I said, with the mask in one hand and still holding the towel to my face with the other.

When we pulled up at the urgent care office, it was closed. “It’s Saturday morning,” she said. “Why are they closed? The sign says they should be open.”

We sat there for a moment, and then I remembered that there was another urgent care facility a few blocks away. When we got there, it was also closed. “Because of covid,” a sign said. Judith took out her phone and Googled for other nearby facilities. Finding one in Brighton, about twenty minutes away, she called them and found that they were open.

Inside, there was one other patient in the waiting room, but when they saw me they immediately escorted me to a treatment room, where they directed me to sit on an examining table. The bleeding had all but stopped.

A doctor came in and began inspecting my face. “Are you on a blood thinner?” No.

He gently mopped my abrasions with alcohol-soaked gauze, then with a glue dispenser touched several places on my face and glued together the torn finger. He said he needed to sew up my lip, and brought a kit over to me. “Lie down,” he said.

Other than a sharp poke with a thin lidocaine needle, the procedure was painless. He took only a single stitch with a very fine suture. “In a week, have your primary care doctor remove the stitch, or come back here and we’ll do it,” he said. “You can take Tylenol or something similar if you need it.”

Turning to the door, he said “You’re all set. Wait here for the nurse.”

The nurse came in and took my blood pressure. “One thirty-four over eighty,” she said. “That’s better than you got from the EMT, isn’t it?” She gave me a sheet of paper with details of the visit, and escorted me to the exit. “Your wife is waiting in the car,” she said. “I hope you have a better day from here on.” She smiled and held the door for me.

I put on a mask and went out to the car.

Later, Judith took a photograph of my face to show me the extent of my purple “raccoon eyes.” My forehead, nose and upper lip were badly swollen.

“But my glasses were not even broken,” I remarked. Indeed, they didn’t even show a scratch.

My face after two days