“I find it wholesome to be alone the greater part of the time. To be in company, even with the best, is soon wearisome and dissipating. I love to be alone. I never found the companion that was so companionable as solitude.”
from Walden by Henry David Thoreau
The pot is boiling. It has taken 20 minutes to bring water to a bubbling roll
so that I can hard-boil my egg. At last the low-heat hotplate finally does its job. The thunderstorm completely soaked me to the bone during my dash from the Helene-Lange Gymnasium back to the flat to pick up my math book. Now, I have to let the storm pass before returning to class, so why not eat something while I wait? Everything is wet and water is pooling around me on the floor. I have stringy hair and am hungry but will soon have, for the first meal of the day, a hard boiled egg and a crust from the last of the bread we bought last week. I am missing math until I can hop on my black bike and zoom back to class.
Mach dich, mein Herze, rein
“Music can create these beautiful moments out of nothing. We can be sitting here and play a phrase and suddenly there’s beauty. Anyone who relates to music knows that feeling of being touched by a piece so deeply—and God, that’s such a privilege.”
from Piano Lessons: Music, Love & True Adventures by Noah Adams
Consider a time when I am (a young) 15 and living in Hamburg, Germany with my humble and brilliant sister, eleven years my elder. She has earned—and I mean won through lonely, hard work—the Deutscher Academischer Austausch Dienst (the DAAD—the “German” Marshall Scholarship)—for an academic year of study of Bach with an eminent German organist. She loves Baroque organs. Incredibly, Rose has asked our parents if I could drop out of school for a year (between 8th and 9th grades) and travel with her to Europe and—the incredible part—they have said yes. We are living alone in a German flat in the University District. It’s a gray, cold and uncomforting winter day in post-war (still) Hamburg, and I climb on the U-bahn train at the Dammtor station, ready to disembark downtown 14 minutes later within sight of St. Jakobi. My trusty black pea coat, black pants, grey scarf, wool beret and backpack suggest German university student. I am actually an intellectual, artistic and spiritual toddler in sore need of a bigger picture. And I am getting it.
from Piano Lessons: Music, Love & True Adventures by Noah Adams
Consider a time when I am (a young) 15 and living in Hamburg, Germany with my humble and brilliant sister, eleven years my elder. She has earned—and I mean won through lonely, hard work—the Deutscher Academischer Austausch Dienst (the DAAD—the “German” Marshall Scholarship)—for an academic year of study of Bach with an eminent German organist. She loves Baroque organs. Incredibly, Rose has asked our parents if I could drop out of school for a year (between 8th and 9th grades) and travel with her to Europe and—the incredible part—they have said yes. We are living alone in a German flat in the University District. It’s a gray, cold and uncomforting winter day in post-war (still) Hamburg, and I climb on the U-bahn train at the Dammtor station, ready to disembark downtown 14 minutes later within sight of St. Jakobi. My trusty black pea coat, black pants, grey scarf, wool beret and backpack suggest German university student. I am actually an intellectual, artistic and spiritual toddler in sore need of a bigger picture. And I am getting it.
Watching Frogner
It’s 2:37 and I’ve been on the field longer than usual since we began earlier. Mr. Panufnik started the class with a strict “Play Ball” right after the tardy bell. I love baseball so I don’t care but the infield is weary. A jay in the conifers at the edge of the track jeers at the current batter. Frogner swings crookedly at a painfully easy pitch. He misses. Strike one. I sigh heavily at this kid’s ineptness. What intramural team rejected him? I stoop to tighten my right shoelace and notice that one of the cleats is bent and muddied then peer to the left and dash off. It takes two kicks against the spectator’s bench at the perimeter of the right field to loosen caked-on mud. Mr. Panufnik yells at me to get back on the field and I hustle into position.
Thrashing
“For many years they [the Schultz family] had one of the big threshing machines in the area. Paul, covered with grease, ran the huge Case engine, and Carl operated the 26” White separator. It took eight hard working men and teams, and a couple of spike pitchers, to feed the brute. Many a neighbor’s field was cleaned in jig time” (James 483).
“The thrashing machine, or, in modern spelling, threshing machine (or simply thresher), was a machine first invented by Scottish mechanical engineer Andrew Meikle for use in agriculture. It was invented (c.1784) for the separation of grain from stalks and husks. For thousands of years, grain was separated by hand with flails, and was very laborious and time consuming. Mechanization of this process took much of the drudgery out of farm labour” (“Threshing Machine”).
“Thrash out or over: to talk over thoroughly and vigorously in order to reach a decision, conclusion, or understanding; discuss exhaustively” (“Thrash”).
I’m looking at a black and white vintage photograph which hangs in the hall outside my piano room. Pulling twenty horses in four rows (two rows of four and two rows of six), a large mechanical contraption with a rolling scythe to the right lumbers into the modest ascent, about one hundred years ago, of a wheat field. I am struck by the juxtaposition of the threshing machine with rows of dignified and muscular work-horses. Caught in this rare photograph is the “brute”—the thresher—an industrial revolution invention which somewhat freed my grandpa and his fellow threshers from back breaking labor. Also captured is the resigned and powerful presence of the horses. This image suggests to me an age that is long ago. Amazingly, though, I am uncommonly and intimately connected to it, because the Schultz family in rural Alberta (and their army of threshers) are my grandfather’s neighbors who lived one homestead over on the vast prairie.
“The thrashing machine, or, in modern spelling, threshing machine (or simply thresher), was a machine first invented by Scottish mechanical engineer Andrew Meikle for use in agriculture. It was invented (c.1784) for the separation of grain from stalks and husks. For thousands of years, grain was separated by hand with flails, and was very laborious and time consuming. Mechanization of this process took much of the drudgery out of farm labour” (“Threshing Machine”).
“Thrash out or over: to talk over thoroughly and vigorously in order to reach a decision, conclusion, or understanding; discuss exhaustively” (“Thrash”).
I’m looking at a black and white vintage photograph which hangs in the hall outside my piano room. Pulling twenty horses in four rows (two rows of four and two rows of six), a large mechanical contraption with a rolling scythe to the right lumbers into the modest ascent, about one hundred years ago, of a wheat field. I am struck by the juxtaposition of the threshing machine with rows of dignified and muscular work-horses. Caught in this rare photograph is the “brute”—the thresher—an industrial revolution invention which somewhat freed my grandpa and his fellow threshers from back breaking labor. Also captured is the resigned and powerful presence of the horses. This image suggests to me an age that is long ago. Amazingly, though, I am uncommonly and intimately connected to it, because the Schultz family in rural Alberta (and their army of threshers) are my grandfather’s neighbors who lived one homestead over on the vast prairie.
The Past as Present
We rise in our yellow hotel room. It’s early June and we see sunlight streaming through thick muslin curtains covering sweet bay windows which peer down upon a dusty, untidy, cracked cobblestone alley. Stray cats scatter themselves along the way. Directly beyond this rustic outlook, peeking out from surrounding buildings, lies a river flowing placidly eastward on this soon-to-be-hot day. Spokes of emerging canals (dingy until the daily deluge at 4:00 sharp) meander towards the river under multiple bridges, all connecting dull streets. Clearly—and I mean this literally because I am wearing my new glasses which for once I haven’t forgotten to bring with me—the day seems primed for Rosie and me to explore this ancient city. We are in Prague.
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