According to the explanatory notes at the current Rembrandt exhibition that I saw today at the National Gallery of Canada, the art market in the 17th century Netherlands was "funded by colonialism and global trade." The Dutch landed in New Amsterdam (New York, as it became) and the Haudenosaunee people signed a treaty with them, hoping for peace and cooperation. They made symbolic wampum belts, the two parallel rows of beads symbolizing a Dutch ship and a native canoe moving side by side down the "River of Life". One such beaded belt is on display in the first gallery of the exhibition, alongside Rembrandt's early sketches. To me, the deliberate juxtaposition of an Indigenous art form and the Old Masters of Europe smacks of political correctness and condescension, but I tried to keep an open mind. The intention is to make us see Rembrandt's creations from a "new perspective". There were also allusions to the slave trade of those days.
Some of Rembrandt's portrait subjects in 17th century Amsterdam certainly flaunted their wealth and status, achieved at the cost of various kinds of exploitation. Only the wealthiest could afford to have their full length portraits done. I do see the point about their beaver fur hats. Beavers were pretty much wiped out in Europe by that time, so north American beaver pelts were valuable to those who wanted fur-trimmed hats; Dutch traders negotiated with the Mohawks to acquire them.
Go to the exhibition, though, and the images that will linger in your mind are not the beads and furs, but the faces Rembrandt sketched, etched or painted: his self-portraits, of course, but also the faces of men and women whose expressive eyes still seem alive, or of groups of people in the streets, such as a destitute family being helped by a kind, elderly man in his doorway, and the faces in imaginary sketches of biblical scenes. Even the expression on the face of the angel who stops Abraham from murdering his son Isaac, about to slit his throat like a sacrificial lamb, is showing human emotion. (Rembrandt did an oil painting of this subject as well as the sketch, with the figures in a different configuration.)
Portraits of Saskia, Rembrandt's wife, of Hendrickje his mistress and of his daughter-in-law, Titus' wife, all executed with great intensity, are included in the show, as well as a few less beautiful female faces (he painted the truth as he saw it, was not inclined to flattery) and there's a self-confident lady in a red dress and pearls with deep, dark eyes, reminiscent of the Jewish Bride. The red paint, known as Dutch scarlet, came from the addition of crushed cochineal insects from the desserts of Mexico.
Chris and I had a most satisfying music lesson this afternoon. We have one of those most Tuesday afternoons, when Gavan meets us at 5 p.m. online to check on our progress learning various songs, usually by Franz Schubert, and gives us advice on how to improve. With a microphone plugged into the computer, Chris does the voice part and I accompany him at the keyboard.
It was 2002 when we started taking these duets seriously. Chris had just turned down a job offer in California and was wanting something to substitute for the challenge he had missed, so he told me he was going to start learning Schubert's famous Winterreise song cycle and taking voice lessons. Jack Cook was his first singing teacher, who died in 2013. As for the piano parts, I had a big uphill struggle ahead of me! 19 years later, here we still are, still working on Winterreise and other Lieder from the repertoire.
Wanderers Nachtlied 1
Der du von dem Himmel bist,
Alles Leid und Schmerzen stillest,
Den, der doppelt elend ist,
Doppelt mit Erquickung füllst;
Ach, ich bin des Treibens müde!
Was soll all der Schmerz und Lust?
Süßer Friede,
Komm, ach komm in meine Brust!
Anyway, this afternoon we concentrated on two short songs, the Wanderers Nachtlied 1 and Wanderers Nachtlied 2, as they are called: Wanderer's Night Songs. They are settings of two poems by Goethe, both about peacefulness at the day's end: he had scribbled the second poem onto the wooden wall of a gamekeeper's cabin as a young man in 1780 and returned there as an old man in 1831, without long to live, to see if his words were still decipherable. They were. It is said that Goethe burst into tears when he rediscovered his graffiti; this may or may not be a romantic fiction. This poem does have a valedictory tone to it.
Wanderers Nachtlied 2
Über allen Gipfeln ist Ruh
In allen Wipfeln
Spürest du Kaum einen Hauch;
Die Vögelein schweigen im Walde.
Warte nur, balde
Ruhest du auch.
Schubert set both songs to music in the 1820s. The first one is only 11 bars long, the second 14 bars long, but the subtlety in their melodic expression and harmony is phenomenal, Schubert's modulations being a sort of tribute to the words.
Chris and I assumed these short songs would be easy to master. Quite the contrary!
As a performer, you have to understand which notes / syllables / chords to emphasize, and how to do that. Over-emphasizing is not good at all. It's not obvious for a teacher how to give instructions in how to change the mood of a song from phrase to phrase. Gavan says things like, "This section has to start gently, tenderly, with more warmth ..." but what does that mean exactly? Some students may not understand what he's talking about, although I think Chris and I usually do. The singer also has to know where to snatch a breath or refrain from breathing; the pianist must learn where to make the left hand more predominant and which chords to tone down in the right hand, or where to bring out the melody line, and both performers have to know when to hold back and slow down slightly, where to pause, crescendo or decrescendo ... There's no end to what needs thought and experimentation while preparing to perform songs like these. But an audience must experience the performance as a spontaneous one.
Here's an old recording of Fischer-Diskau singing the second song:
During today's lesson Gavan gave us, as he often does, an analysis of the harmonic progression in both the melody and its accompaniment. An unexpected sliding from major to minor and back again is characteristic of Schubert and we're beginning to think that his favourite chord may have been the diminished seventh. I wondered whether Wagner (creator of the "Tristan Chord"!) was familiar with Schubert's compositions, but Gavan thought probably not. Wagner would have preferred a more bombastic sound, he thought, such as a Beethoven symphony.
Yesterday we drove to Almonte on the Mississippi, in Lanark County. "Mishi zibi" are the Indigenous words for "big river". In the nineteenth century Almonte, rather surprisingly named in honour of a Mexican general, was a woollen mill with surrounding houses and public buildings for its mainly Scottish settlers; its townhall and post office, still there, and quite imposing. Chamber concerts sometimes take place in the town hall. We parked our Bolt opposite the town hall, crossed the road and walked down Mill Street to the next bridge. On the other bank — part of Mississippi Mills rather than Almonte — at the offices of the hydro electricity station are public EV charging stations which we checked out but didn't need, because the drive wasn't far enough for our range to be of concern.
The riverside at Almonte has recently acquired pretty walkways through gardens, with a fountain in an inlet that was dedicated to the memory of a local man (a retired teacher, town councillor and scouts leader) who was shot. His widow can see the fountain from her home with waterlilies blooming in the river, where there's a series of rocky falls. Nearby is a pub, the Barley Mow, with attractive-looking patios on two levels, decorated with colourful hanging baskets and tubs of parsley, so we decided it was time for a rather early lunch, and sat there to eat it.
Coming home it was my turn to steer, so we drove along the back roads, not the highway, past the home of friends who live on Old Carp Road and the QNX offices where Chris has not been at work since March 2020.
Anna Kiesenhofer is a mathematics lecturer at the "Eidgenössischen Technischen Hochschule" (technical college) in Lausanne. She studied maths und physics as an undergraduate in Vienna, did her Master's Degree in Cambridge and gained a PhD in Barcelona, her special subject being partial differential equations. She has published a paper entitled "Noncommutative integrable systems on b-symplectic manifolds" and one last year on "A $b$-symplectic slice theorem" (sic). Yesterday we saw her on TV, winning a gold medal in the women's road cycling race, in the Olympic Games! She collapsed after crossing the finish line in an agony of leg-cramps but was composed again and calmly euphoric when receiving her medal on the podium. Her unexpected win had startled the other contestants.
An article in an Austrian journal comments
Sowohl Mathematik als auch Radsport erfordern einen ähnlichen Charakter – man muss sich auf eine Sache konzentrieren können, braucht viel Willenskraft.
In translation, mathematics and cycling demand similar qualities – the ability to concentrate and determination.
There's no stopping these determined women!
I'm going to use the article about her as reading material for my German conversation group when we resume our get-togethers in September.
The big-screen TV on which we watched the race was on the Earl of Sussex pub's patio on Sussex Drive. We'd met Barbara outside the National Gallery by arrangement on Sunday evening because we hadn't seen her for a while and had then crossed the road for a beer with her. While we were drinking and talking a thundercloud rolled in and would have soaked us to the skin, if there hadn't been a substantial awning to shelter under. The broadcast from Tokyo distracted us while we waited for the storm to pass.
The weather on Friday was fine but hazy because of the smoke lingering over Ontario from forest fires hundreds of mile northwest of Ottawa. The good thing about this was that the 'inversion' as seen in my photo of the Ottawa River as we turned over the YOW-VOR made for a smooth ride, a bonus at this time of year.
Chris did a straight-in approach to Runway 19 at Kingston and when we landed, swallows darting all around us over the field, we saw from the instruments that it had taken us just a minute over one hour to fly there. The FBO was open but quiet, the tables in the lounge spread out for the sake of social distancing, with just one chair per table. We walked across the grass to the lakeside to eat our packed lunch at the picnic table there, with little waves breaking on the shore.
Our picnic eaten, we set off down the road to the entrance of the Point Lemoine conservation area, so that we could walk on the paths through the fields (Monarch butterflies on the milkweed preserved for them) and the woodland. Raspberries for the picking there, but not many left. We sat on a bench by the water and enjoyed our surroundings.
The flight home was smooth again and event-free, which is good, with up to 30 knots of tailwind at times, the only "bumps" detected being during the last few minutes as we descended into the Rockcliffe circuit, caused by thermal turbulence or perhaps a rising crosswind from the south. The flight had been six minutes faster than our outbound one.
It was a beautiful day along the Ottawa River on Friday. If you drive west along the parkway you can pull into the parking lot above Westboro Beach where on that day the Ottawa Riverkeeper team was organizing a shoreline clean-up; they had made an appeal for volunteers to come along and help. More than twenty people showed up, including Beth, who's in my Environment Action group. We had to register online beforehand and sign a waiver. The City of Ottawa had provided a shelter, water bottles, grabber sticks, buckets and black rubbish bags for us to use.
At first sight the beach and its surroundings looked thoroughly clean. The sand of the beach had been mechanically swept, thus burying all the likely litter. We didn't think we'd have much to do. But as we searched we found more and more detritus, mostly in the form of cigarette butts and small pieces of broken glass beer bottles. Why on earth do people throw bottles so that they break? We could understand people throwing cigarette butts into the grass and pebbles. Many people think that the butts are bio-degradable, but they are not; they contain toxic chemicals and microplastics that do not disintegrate and that seriously harm the wildlife in and around the river. Chris and I found bits of fishing tackle lying around too: a lure tangled in a tree, even.
A couple of young boys were hunting for litter with their mum, in our vicinity; they kept at it for over an hour and helped with the counting and weighing of the bags at the end of the exercise. Apparently we picked up more than 100 kg of stuff that shouldn't have been there. The Ottawa Riverkeeper rep who led the event was someone I know, Alejandro. I'd met him on a one-to-one Zoom call while I was arranging for his boss to give a presentation to our Environment Action group last November, at a time when he was also studying in the UK, in Oxford. I admired the way he talked to the children at the clean-up, keeping them motivated.
After the work we lingered for lunch burgers at the beach café and Beth joined us for that meal. I'd love to have gone swimming at this designated swimming beach but the water was contaminated by sewage run-off after the torrential storms of the previous days, so swimming was not recommended on that day; what a pity.
CFUW members, representatives of Canadian Woman for Women in Afghanistan, scholars and human rights advocates met the Ambassador to Canada from Afghanistan, to hear about the worsening situation in his country. I was asked to take notes.
Since the withdrawal of military support from the USA and its allies, the Taliban has been waging a massive campaign of terror. On taking control of rural districts, the Taliban imposes severe restrictions on girls’ and women’s access to education and health services. Brutal punishments are meted out by arbitrary courts under the terrorists’ distorted interpretation of Sharia Law. Farmers’ harvests and homes are burned and villages forcibly evacuated, depriving people of food and shelter. It is estimated that 13 million people have thus become Internally Displaced Persons with no access to basic services. Schools, hospitals and administrative buildings have been destroyed, as well as roads, bridges, even gardens. Thousands of the Afghan Security Forces (the ANDSF) have been killed or injured.
What is particularly disturbing is the coordinated engagement of foreign terrorist groups such as al-Qaeda. Training camps in Pakistan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan mobilize thousands of fighters for the Taliban; their gains are publicly celebrated in parts of those countries. It is time to apply the mechanisms of international law, said His Excellency, the Ambassador. By means of sanctions, Afghanistan’s neighbouring countries must be persuaded to desist from this support; otherwise peace will be impossible.
In the peace talks sporadically taking place in Doha (capital of Qatar), the Taliban delegation shows a disquieting lack of commitment, relentlessly pursuing its vision of a restored "Islamic Emirate". The Afghan government on the other hand hopes for a new chapter of international partnership, with a common narrative to counter the threat to regional and international security and stability.
Painful though the news is, the Ambassador urged us to counter the narrative of doom with optimistic statements. In recent days, more than 20 Taliban-controlled districts have been recaptured. It is unlikely the Taliban could capture cities like Kabul, now that Afghan citizens are voluntarily fighting alongside the ANDSF. Schools and universities in government-controlled areas are reopening after the COVID lockdowns.
Many of the "University Women Helping Afghan Women" from our Club have been following Afghanistan's progress and contributing to scholarships for Afghan girls for a decade. The growing number of prominent, courageous and capable women in Afghanistan is a positive sign. The Ambassador expressed deep gratitude for our sustained support.
Eva was born in Germany in 1932 and died on New Year’s Day in Ottawa this year. Last weekend, the Coptic Orthodox Church of Ottawa to which she belonged, St Mark and St Mary of Egypt, held a postponed celebration of her life, which the priest described as “a song of love.”
Eva grew up in Ottawa, her family moving here from Germany when she was a baby. As a young graduate, she began a teaching career, but her desire for adventure induced her to apply for a post at the Canadian Embassy in Beirut, where she lived and worked for ten years. Her official obituary says, "Her tact and bravery served her well in dangerous times during the Lebanese Civil War." She also worked in Cyprus, Singapore and Egypt, interviewing applicants for permanent residence in Canada. Her kindness to refugees was exemplary.
After retirement, as a member of the Diplomatic Hospitality group I belong to, she would always make friends with the diplomats we invited to our events.
Eva, 2nd from right, with foreign diplomats' wives: my photo
Although Eva had no children of her own, she was loved by all the generations of her extended family. She was an affectionate pet-owner too. She enjoyed hiking, cross-country skiing, swimming, gardening, acting, and hosting dinners; she sang in a Greek choir. She liked the German carols regularly sung by my Konversationsgruppe before Christmas.
During the last few years of her life Eva lost her ability to speak, but even then, so the carers at her nursing home affectionately reported, her face would light up when seeing, hearing or thinking of the people who were important to her. By suffering gracefully, as someone at the memorial said, she was an inspiration.
The religious part of the memorial ceremony was an unusual experience for me. Icons hung around us and the urn containing Eva's ashes stood on an altar at the front draped in ceremonial cloths. For all of the prayers and Bible readings the people present in the pews were asked to stand, not being told to sit down again until the end. The priest and his assistant (robed like the clerics on this page) intoned both prayers and readings partly in a speaking voice and partly in a rapid Byzantine chant that was not unlike orthodox Jewish chanting, although they did not sway their bodies while doing so; they swung censors that diffused incense so that the front of the church became smoky. The congregation could follow the words of the prayers because they were projected onto a screen; some of these words were new to me. I didn't think it right to take notes but I memorized and looked up Pantocrator and hegumens when I got home. "Pantocrator" means "Almighty" — referring to Christ — and "hegumens" are the leaders of orthodox monasteries.
The end is in sight for the COVID pandemic, in Ottawa at least. Numbers of those afflicted are dropping rapidly and there were only two new cases reported here today, neither serious enough for intensive care. I had my second vaccination this evening, at the vast Nepean Sportsplex, SPLEX for short, so I noticed on the signs when we got there. Chris decided to drive me there; I ate a packed supper in the car.
The process is worth mentioning for its efficiency, numerous people being employed to guide you first into the correct parking area, then to the entrance you need, then to the series of registration booths, then to your shot-administrator's table, then to your recovery chair (in case you collapse from the shock of the needle or react to the chemicals in the injection) where you have to sit for 15 minutes under discreet surveillance, then to the exit booth, then to the way out. Polite, welcoming faces at every stage. Chris had done all of this last Friday morning. His arm swelled round the injection spot and ached the following day, but since then he has felt no discomfort. Excellent.
Nine days after my first vaccination, mid-April, I had an itchy, lumpy rash, and the top of my arm reddened and (painlessly) puffed up. I mentioned this to the nurse-with-the-needle this evening and she said that a case of COVID Arm after nine days was a relatively rare phenomenon, a delayed immune response, so she went away for a moment to check that it would be OK to administer my second shot; apparently I should be able to tolerate it. I hope so, although it's possible I'll experience another reaction, perhaps more pronounced. It was also possible that the "Prolia" (bone density medication) I was given at the end of last month might have compromised my body's response to this latest injection, but only if I had allowed fewer than four days between the shots. A eight-day gap is fine, so I'm assured.
Our friends, too, are all boasting of their double shots when they get them, in a celebratory mood. The next steps and dates of the "Roll Out" will be announced soon. The hairdressers are back in business.
Two days later, July 8th
For the record, my reaction to the second vaccination was more pronounced. I lost two days there, mostly horizontal and sleeping because it felt like the flu. Headache, affected arm aching if I moved it, numb with cold, teeth chattering, then heating up all over, no energy, no appetite. I resorted to paracetamol, let Chris see to the shopping, meals and answering the phone. But we both think that I'm recovering now. "It's good to see you smiling again," he says.
Some of the people we know are beginning to travel again; now that the double vaccinations against COVID are taking effect (or so we hope) the Government of Canada has decreed that we are safe to relax a little. The closer we get to recovering our freedom, the more frustrating confinement seems to be. A friend of mine and her husband, keen travellers in normal times, now fully vaccinated, were lucky enough to celebrate their wedding anniversary on a commercial flight yesterday.
Chris has now had his second shot and mine is due the day after tomorrow. Then we're supposed to wait a couple of weeks before we can claim to be thoroughly protected. We're starting to plan a flying trip down the south shore of the St. Lawrence, via Trois-Rivières or Montmagny, to the Rimouski-Mont Joli area that we love, aka the Bas-St-Laurent, for the beginning of August. The tourist accommodations have put their prices up since we were there last, but because we haven't spent any travelling money since Feb. 2020, I don't mind that. Chris is keen to take to the air and "go somewhere," finally, but if that isn't going to work we could alternatively do this trip in our new car, which would save us from having to rent a vehicle at the destination.
Meanwhile I find myself looking forward (oh dear!) to attending a delayed "celebration of life" ceremony next weekend for a former member of my German group who died a few months ago, simply because it will mean meeting some people there whom I haven't seen for a while. Last week Karen and I met for a lunch out, in the open air, which was the first visit she had made to a restaurant for a year and a half.
Our daughter has booked herself to a short stay in an hotel on the seafront in Brighton this month, just for the sake of a self-indulgent treat. Our son and family, with their group of friends, would have made an expedition to Lightning Ridge in New S. Wales, an unusual holiday destination, had they not been confronted with a stay-at-home order at the last moment.
