Author: JWF

A SONG FOR THAT TIME AND OURS

Peter, Paul and Mary

It is not an understatement to say again that we live in interesting times.  We are about a week away from having the first convicted felon in the White House as president.  Much of the Los Angeles area is being decimated by catastrophic wildfires, and thousands of folks have evacuated from homes that may no longer exist.  Meanwhile, the Midwest and the East have been buffeted by snow and ice and a blast of arctic air reaching into the South.   Even snowfall south of the Mason-Dixon Line!

Peter Yarrow, tenor in the folk trio, Peter, Paul and Mary, died this week at 86.  The group had many hits during the 1960’s and 70’s including Leaving on a Jet Plane and Puff the Magic Dragon, and I was a big fan. Probably their most memorable song and the one that resonates still is the lovely and haunting Blowin’ in the Wind.”  It was composed and recorded by Bob Dylan, but the trio’s recording quickly surpassed his in sales.  You can watch Peter, Paul & Mary sing “Blowin’ in the Wind” in this video from 1963.  Note the words and how the quest for freedom and justice for all remains a work in progress. 

In an interview from two years ago, Peter Yarrow relates that Harry Belafonte invited them to sing at the 1963 March on Washington where Martin Luther King delivered his “I Have a Dream” speech.  Yarrow eloquently expresses what their intent was in singing “Blowin’ in the Wind.”  It was not to entertain but to share something about the times they were living in—before the Civil Rights movement really took hold and before the anti-war (Vietnam War) movement.  R.I.P. Peter Yarrow. (Thanks to Dan Rather for providing the YouTube links in his weekly e-mail letter.)

RECENT READING

Parallel Lives

I Heard Her Call My Name: A Memoir of Transition by Lucy Sante

Author and Bard College professor Lucy Sante outwardly lived her life for 66 years as Luc Sante.  Inwardly, she led a parallel life as a woman.  When she saw herself pictured as she might look as a woman, she took the plunge and began revealing her “true” female identity to close friends and colleagues. 

Her memoir, I Heard Her Call My Name, is on several best books of the year lists.  Beautifully written, it is both sensitive and direct.  Sante doesn’t stint on the details and experiences of her teens and and through her 20’s.  She consciously performed and presented herself as male, married twice, and partook of drugs and alcohol while exploring and enjoying the bohemian music and arts scene in New York.  When she did transition, she was deeply committed in a long-term relationship with her female partner Eva.  She freely shares her fears and doubts along the way, while at the same time acknowledging how very right this transition was.

Although some readers will be unfamiliar with her literary and other references, her work is a compelling and revealing addition to the literature about gender transitions.  (~JWFarrington)

18^th Century Midwife Extraordinaire

The Frozen River by Ariel Lawhon

Martha Ballard was a dedicated midwife living in Hallowell, Maine in the late 18^th century.  She would not be known to us today were it not for the handwritten diary she kept.  She made almost daily entries about the weather, where she went, and the babies she was called out to deliver at any hour of the day or night.  As a midwife, she was one of the few, if not the only, woman who could be called on in court to testify to the details of an unmarried woman’s pregnancy and childbirth.  Scholar Laurel Thatcher Ulrich wrote a Pulitzer Prize winning biography of Martha called A Midwife’s Tale.  (I own that work but have not yet read it.)

This novel, Frozen River, is an intimate depiction of a marriage, of childbirth with all its attendant messiness, and of daily family life in wintry Maine when the Kennebec River is iced over.  It is also a murder mystery.  Rebecca Foster claims two men raped her.  When one of the supposed perpetrators is found dead in unusual circumstances, there are numerous court cases, and Martha Ballard and her diary play a role.  

When Ariel Lawhon learned about Martha Ballard, she was motivated to write this novel.  It is one of the best historical fiction works I’ve ever read.  As Lawhon makes clear in her Author’s Note, the events in the novel are inspired by rather than based on Ballard’s life.  She adjusted some dates, invented some situations, and presented Martha as what she thought she would be like as a person.  

I found it totally absorbing and an engaging multi-layered story about the role of women, seeking justice, and New England’s early court system.  Highly recommended!  (~JWFarrington)

READING: WHAT’S NEXT

These titles are on my list waiting to be read.  Watch for comments on them in future blog posts.

The Outcast Dead by Elly Griffiths (Book 6 in the crime series featuring English archaeologist Ruth Galloway)

Grief is for People by Sloane Crosley (a memoir about a close friend’s suicide)

The Wildes by Louis Bayard (historical novel about the family of Oscar Wilde)

Note: Header photo of winter in Wake County, early Jan. 2025, from wral.com.