Monthly Archives: May 2009

A UU sculptor

James C. Toatley (1941-1986) was a sculptor who lived and worked in New Bedford. Toatley had a number of exhibitions and commissions in his short career. The MBTA commissioned a work by Toatley, and his sculpture “Faces in a Crowd” is on display at the Jackson Square Station on the Orange Line in Boston. His sculpture has been exhibited at the New Bedford Art Museum, the Museum of the National Center of Afro-American Artists, and the Boston Museum of Fine Arts. (1) The latter exhibit, a group show, was covered by the New York Times, and the Times writer called a sculpture by Toatley “the star of the show”:

“Have you seen ‘Lucy?’” one visitor asked her companion. “Lucy” (1976) is James Toatley’s 191/2 inch bronze sculpture that is endearing enough to make it the star of the show. Here is a robust woman, with no attempt by the artist to disguise her flaws, leaning over an imaginary fence as if carrying on an amiable chat with a neighbor. Her warmth and humanity jump out at the viewer. (2)

Toatley is best known for his sculpture of Lewis Temple, the inventor of the toggle harpoon, a life-size sculpture which presently stands on the lawn of the downtown branch of the New Bedford Public Library. In the sculpture, Lewis Temple is bending forward slightly and looking at a harpoon that he has obviously just been working on; his expression is intent, and quietly triumphant. In this sculpture, Toatley captures a moment of creative success. Toatley also acknowledges the class and race of his subject: Temple wears a working-man’s apron, and he is clearly African American. Thus, the sculpture is more than a simple monument to an African American inventor; it also shows us that genius and inspiration are not restricted by the boundaries of race and class.

Early in his career, Toatley worked as a toy designer for Hasbro toy company of Pawtucket, Rhode Island. (3) He taught sculpture at the University of Massachusetts at Dartmouth, and was the only Black professor in the College of Visual and Performing Arts at the time. The affirmative action officer of the university at that time felt that Toatley was denied tenure due to racial prejudice, and fought the denial of tenure all the way to the university’s board, but was unsuccessful. (4) Toatley married Linda White, they had two children, Peter and Jameliah. He was a member of First Unitarian Church. He died at age 44 in 1986, just before he completed the Lewis Temple monument, and just as he was creating some of his best work.

Notes:

1. African American Visual Artists Database, “Toatley, James C.,” http://aavad.com/artistbibliog.cfm?id=2283, accessed 17 May 2009.
2. Allan R. Gold, “Boston Curator Defends Black Artists’ Exhibition, New York Times, Tuesday, 26 January 1988, p. C16.
3. Robert C. Hayden, African Americans and Cape Verdean Americans in New Bedford, Boston: Select Publications, 1993.
4. John E. Bush, letter to New Bedford Standard-Times, 4 August 1998.

Yet another Universalist: Charles Bierstadt, photographer

The Universalist Charles Bierstadt was a photographer best known for his stereoscopic views of the American landscape. He was also the brother of the famous painter, Albert Bierstadt.

Charles was born in Prussia in 1819. His parents emigrated to New Bedford in 1831, bringing their three sons with them. Charles was apprenticed to a cabinetmaker when he was fifteen; the apprenticeship lasted six years. He and his brother Edward began experimenting with photography during the 1850s. (1)

Charles and Edward had a woodworking shop together at 147 North Water St., where they specialized in “plain and fancy turning and sawing.” (2) Their shop burned in 1859. At about the same time, Albert Beirstadt, their brother, who had already established himself as an artist, returned from a trip to the Rocky Mountains, where he had, among other things, taken landscape photographs. Albert helped Charles and Edward to establish “Bierstadt Brothers Photographic Gallery.” In 1860, Albert took Charles and Edward on a trip to the White Mountains in New Hampshire, where they took landscape photographs which they later printed and sold. (3)

By 1863, Charles had relocated to Niagra Falls, where he remained in business for many years. A contemporary account said of his Niagra Falls business: “He is an expert in stereoscopic views and has in connection with his manufactory a large bazaar where his views and many relics and curios are displayed to advantage.” (4) Over the years, he undertook a number of extended trips to take photographs, including to Colorado, Yosemite in California, and Yellowstone in Wyoming. His wife Lucy C. Bierstadt filed successfully for separation from Charles in 1898. (5)

Charles Bierstadt became a member of the Universalist Church (but not the Universalist Society) in 1858. He was removed from membership in 1867 because he had permanently left New Bedford. (6) He died in Niagra Falls, New York, in 1903.

Works by Bierstadt in the Smithsonian American Art Museum.

Notes:

1. Landmarks of Niagra County, ed. William Pool, Syracuse, New York: D. Mason & Co., 1897, p. 24.
2. 1859 New Bedford Directory.
3. Pioneer Photographers of the Far West: A Biographical Dictionary, 1840-1865, by Peter E. Palmquist and Thomas R. Kailbourn, Palo Alto: Stanford University Press, 2000, p. 110.
4. Pool, p. 24.
5. Reports of Cases Heard and Determined in the Appellate Division of the Supreme Court of the State of New York, 1898, v. 29, pp. 210ff.
6. Record book of the Universalist Church, bMS 214/1 (2), in the Andover Harvard Theological Library. Oddly, Charles signed the church roll with a pencil rather than a pen, the only person ever to do so.

The race for UUA president

Here’s a conversation that I have had several times (in slightly different forms) in the past few weeks:

“So, who are you supporting for the next UUA [Unitarian Universalist Association] president?” someone says to me.

“Well,” I say, “I’m not supporting either one, but I think I know who I’ll vote for.”

“I feel the same way,” says the other person. “I can’t say I’m supporting anyone….”

“So who are you going to vote for?” I say.

“I’m going to vote for Laurel Hallman,” says the other person, “not because I think she’s any better than Peter Morales — i don’t think that — but because I think it’s time for a woman to be UUA president.”

“I’m going to vote for Peter Morales,” I say, “not because I think he’s any better than Laurel Hallman — he’s not — but because I think it’s time for a UUA president who is not the choice of the UUA power elite.”

We sit in silence for a moment or two.

I break the silence: “It really is past time for a woman.”

The other person says almost simultaneously: “We really do need someone who is not part of the UUA power elite.”

Then we both agree that both candidates are perfectly capable, that neither one of them would actually change things much, that we both might change our minds before the election, and that neither one of us actually supports either candidate.

———

I have also had the following conversation a few times in the past few weeks.

“So, who are you supporting for the next UUA president?” someone says to me.

“Well,” I say, “I’m not supporting either one, but I think I know who I’ll vote for.”

“Well, I don’t really want to make this public, but I know who I’m supporting,” says the other person.

“So who are you supporting?” I ask.

“I’m supporting Peter Morales,” says the other person, “but I don’t want to go public with my support because Peter has pretty much promised me that he will implement my [insert innovative growth program here]. So I don’t want to come out as supporting him, because if Laurel Hallman gets elected, if it doesn’t come out who I vote for then maybe she will consider my [insert innovative growth program here].”

We sit in silence for a while.

“Too bad it has come to this,” I say.

“Yeah, it’s all about politics and who you know and who you support,” says the other person.

———

There’s an old saying that goes something like this: if the head of a nail sticks up, it will get noticed and hammered down; so don’t be like the head of a nail, don’t do anything to get noticed. It feels to me as though supporting one or the other of the UUA presidential candidates in this election is a good way to get hammered down. I’m not blaming the candidates, but their supporters are so rabid, and they are so insistent on asking you to support one or the other. And after the election I do have the feeling that those who support the winner will be blessed with smiles and maybe favors, while those who support the loser will be cast out away from the denominational center into the wilderness. This is what happened in the last UUA presidential election; why would it not happen once again?

Therefore, I want to avoid UUA presidential politics like the plague. I want to go off and serve in a nice local congregation, and do good things there and in the surrounding community, and nurture my own spiritual life, and spend time with my partner Carol, and enjoy life. Call me chicken, but I support neither UUA presidential candidate — listen carefully — neither one of them.

Update: Responding to a comment below, I’m adding a disclaimer: I don’t think either Peter Morales or Laurel Hallman has a vengeful bone in their bodies — but I know from experience that the system is vengeful, and has a long memory, and does not value those who speak out on the “wrong” side of an issue in denominational politics.

Spring watch

Housework cried out for my attention yesterday morning, and then I drove off to officiate at a wedding in Rhode Island in the afternoon, so I had no time to get outdoors. Fortunately the wedding was at a conference center out in the middle of the woods. It was a two and a half mile drive from the highway along increasingly narrow and winding roads. I kept the car windows down, and listened:
…teakettleteakettleteakettle, that’s a Carolina Wren…
…a little piece of a song, Baltimore Oriole…
…chipchipchipchipchip, Chipping Sparrow….

Then I arrived at the conference center. The wedding was to be outdoors, overlooking a small pond. We did the rehearsal. The wedding got delayed for an hour. It looked like there might be a thundershower at any moment so I didn’t dare go for a walk. I stood on the porch and watched the edge of the pond:
…tiny bird, black with a flash of red: American Restart….
…slightly larger bird on a twig, every few seconds flies out to snag insects: Eastern Kingbird…
…something small and brown, without binoculars there’s no telling….
For those minutes, I was totally focused on birds.

It didn’t rain. At last the wedding started. When you officiate at weddings, you’re presiding over twenty minutes that are very important minutes to at least two people, so I become very focused on the ceremony. And at this wedding, there was another Unitarian Universalist minister in attendance, someone whom I respect and who has very high standards, which increased the intensity of my focus even more. Yet I couldn’t quite turn off my earlier focus on birds. During the prayer I heard a buzzy pee-a-wee pee-a-wee, and I thought: Eastern Wood Peewee. It wasn’t a distraction, I was just doubly focused.

In the middle of the vows, off in the distance, some flute-like notes; was that a Wood Thrush? (the song of a Wood Thrush is one of those few sounds that truly thrill me to my marrow). “Please repeat after me….” It was a Wood Thrush. A little thrill passed down my spine, and the superstitious side of me thought: This must be a good omen; this marriage is going to be blessed. No focus on my part, no professional critique by another minister, no amount of preparation, will ever equal the importance of the glorious song of one small drab brown bird.

Defending religious freedom

Writing on the “On Faith” blog of the Washington Post, Georgetown University professor of government Michael Kessler asserts that the Supreme Court is losing a “big defender of religious freedom” with the impending retirement of David Souter:

Souter may be best known for his razor-sharp majority opinion in the Ten Commandments case McCreary County v. ACLU, 545 U.S. 844 (2005). McCreary County had posted the Ten Commandments, first on its own, then in two subsequent displays with other historical documents, meant to soften the religious intent of the display…. The record was fairly clear that the legislation requiring the displays was originally intended to promote a sectarian endorsement of the Ten Commandments….

Souter’s opinion, besides cutting to the heart of the endorsement problem, argued persuasively on historical grounds that the twin prongs of the First Amendment’s religion clauses — establishment and free exercise — were intended to protect individual religious freedom: “The Framers and the citizens of their time intended not only to protect the integrity of individual conscience in religious matters, but to guard against the civic divisiveness that follows when the Government weighs in on one side of religious debate; nothing does a better job of roiling society.”

Against Justice Scalia’s dissenting view that government could… endorse basic tenets of monotheism, Souter argued that the Founders practiced and required neutrality. Without official neutrality on matters of doctrine, the government becomes embroiled in sectarian disputes, choosing some sectarian positions over others: “We are centuries away from the St. Bartholomew’s Day massacre and the treatment of heretics in early Massachusetts, but the divisiveness of religion in current public life is inescapable. This is no time to deny the prudence of understanding the Establishment Clause to require the Government to stay neutral on religious belief, which is reserved for the conscience of the individual.”

It’s worth reading the whole post. And it’s worth reflecting on how Republicans like Souter who live in New England are very different from the Republican “base” in other parts of the country: good solid fiscal conservatives with a strong libertarian streak when it comes to social issues. If you went into most Unitarian churches in New England even forrty years ago, chances are the great majority of the churchgoers would have been Republicans.

Maine did the right thing

Maine’s governor, John Baldacci, did the right thing today and signed a bill legalizing same-sex marriage in Maine. Like many others, I do hope that Barack Obama was listening when Baldacci said: “In the past, I opposed gay marriage while supporting the idea of civil unions. I have come to believe that this is a question of fairness and of equal protection under the law, and that a civil union is not equal to civil marriage.”

This makes five states that now have legal same-sex marriage. There are something like twenty-five states that have outlawed same-sex marriage. However, since younger voters increasingly favor legalizing same-sex marriage, I hope it’s just a matter of time before most of those twenty-five states do the right thing, and alter their laws to allow same-sex marriage.

Spring watch

Suddenly the trees are turning green. It started last week when the branches of the honey locusts that grow along our street began to look faintly green. Today, that faint green has become small leaves, and when the sun came out today for an hour or so, the honey locusts cast fairly good shade. The maples are a few days behind the honey locusts: I’m just beginning to be able to distinguish small leaves on their branches. Where there are trees here in the downtown, the faint green is softening a little of the harshness of the city.

But spring has its unpleasant moments too. The tree pollen has been bad this year, and with all the rain we’ve been having there is lots of mold, so my allergies are acting up and slowing me down.

Then there are the Herring Gulls nesting on the rooftops near us: they stay up late at night, and get up long before daybreak, and squabble and fight with other gulls, and make all manner of weird and unpleasant sounds. Right now, I can hear a gull outside the skylight moaning and crying and chattering, and he has been doing this for an hour now. Now I wish I hadn’t stopped to notice his noises, because I realize that I had effectively blocked him out of my consciousness before, and I have no desire to be aware of him now. Let me concentrate for a moment… there, he’s gone. What gull? I don’t hear any gulls.

In memory: John King

I just learned that John King, arguably the only classical musician to perform at a virtuoso level on the ‘ukulele, died April 27. His sensibility and technique was that of a classical guitarist, but he also took advantage of some of the unique characteristics of the ‘ukulele: e.g., he played using the Baroque-era campanela style of guitar playing, which requires the re-entrant tuning of the ‘ukulele; he made the short sustain of the ‘ukulele’s individual notes help increase clarity of individual notes while allowing resonant response of open strings to come through; etc.

King may be best known for his adaptations of Bach to the ‘ukulele. But I have been most moved by his arrangements of classical Hawai’ian music. The shimmering, bell-like sounds of King’s playing match the melodies of composers like Miriam Likelike, William Pitt Leleihhoku, Lydia Lili’uokalani, and David Kalakaua. King’s performances sound small and intimate, like the instrument he played, yet they are also informed by King’s distinct musical sensibility. As a fitting way to remember King, here he is in a YouTube performance of Ka Ipo Lei Manu, a song composed by Julia Kapiolani:



Obituary in the San Francisco Chronicle. King’s Web site.

Not this year

A couple of Devoted Readers have asked if the Herring Gulls are nesting on our rooftop again this year (some past posts on this topic are here, here, and here).

The answer is that no, the gulls are not nesting on our roof this year. The old nest that had been there for three years, re-used every year, is now completely gone, washed away by some of the heavy rain storms we had in late winter and early spring. There are gulls nesting on nearby rooftops, but not on our roof.