Barbra Streisand Timeless Evergreen
Thanks again to PBS and Binghamton’s WSKG for broadcasting a repeat of the Barbra Streisand Las Vegas Millennium concert. The concert was called “Timeless.”
The concert began with a backdrop of a huge clock. In front of the clock was a tap dancer doing a dance number which was very captivating. Then we are brought back to December 29, 1955, and a girl playing the role of a young Barbra. The girl was a very good singer and appeared throughout the concert, singing duets with Barbra. A magnificent addition.
When in college, I dated the woman whom I eventually married. The two of us would share vinyl record albums. She said she dated me “because I had a stereo.” We shared this as humor. She and I both liked classical recordings. I had a decent collection of such albums, but she inspired me to purchase Tchaikovsky’s “Serenade for Strings” and many Brahms albums, among others. She also enjoyed Jim Croce, Billy Joel, Chicago, and Bette Midler. But it was various Barbra Streisand albums which we purchased. We enjoyed Barbra Streisand’s Christmas albums and her version of the singing of “The Lord’s Prayer.” But my girlfriend / ex-wife’s favorite was the song, “Evergreen.” She chose “Evergreen” to be sung at our wedding by our friend, Anna May Kuntzleman. So, the song, “Evergreen” has a place in my heart, even though we are now divorced after all the years in raising a family.
Highlighted lyrics of “Evergreen.”
Love, soft as an easy chair
Love, fresh as the morning air
One love that is shared by two
I have found with you
Like a rose under the April snow
I was always certain love would grow
Love ageless and evergreen
Seldom seen by two
We attempted to live up to the lyrics of “Evergreen.” We evidently once had the love hoped for in that song or else we never would have married. So, perhaps we should have sung another song Streisand sang in this Timeless concert. “Send in the Clowns.”
Interesting that the commentary during the break time of the concert mentioned that Barbra Streisand was hailed as the best female singer of the 20th Century. Frank Sinatra is hailed as the best male singer of the 20th Century. Sinatra, too, sang “Send in the Clowns.” Is there a message there? Silly me. After our divorce, I sang, solo and in concert, “Send in the Clowns.” I have yet to sing “Evergreen.”
My memory brings me back to a concert in the Syracuse, New York, area where my wife sang Bette Midler’s “The Rose,” as a duet. Both Midler and Streisand believe in inclusiveness for LGBT+. The lyrics from “The Rose” still inspire me and make me wonder. The last verse:
When the night has been too lonely
And the road has been too long
And you think that love is only
For the lucky and the strong
Just remember in the winter
Far beneath the bitter snows
Lies the seed that with the sun’s love
In the spring becomes the rose
Then I am brought back to a memory of singing with several gay guys in high school (one who later died of AIDS), a four-part male arrangement of “People.” The idea of love then is like a rose, but the love is the need for people – “people who need people” – people of any kind.
Finally, Streisand ends with the singing of “Auld Lang Syne.” Timeless, yes, as we remember the memories of the past and hope for the future. The dancer at the beginning is “Brother Time” and he appears at the end as the new year was celebrated.
Barbra Streisand’s concert was a wonderful statement about “timeless.” Makes me also think about the person I know who attended school with Barbra Streisand at Erasmus Hall High School in Brooklyn. A person who recalls singing in the high school choir when Streisand was in the choir.
I could have been viewing a rerun of Murder, She Wrote. Even Angela Lansbury (who appeared in Sondheim musicals) would have suggested viewing this Streisand “Timeless” concert. Funny how “Timeless” means so many events and people are intertwined in our lives.
This concert was one of “timeless memory” for me. Memories of the way we were. Thank you Barbra Streisand. Thank you PBS and WSKG for making this available to viewers. We need you in our lives.
Tioga Herald 
Steppin Out
On Create TV (PBS Binghamton broadcast channel 46, WSKG), there is a program about travel around the world. The purpose of the program is to learn about how people live in various places foreign to us and what other cultures are about. It is titled Steppin Out. The host is a Cuban-American guy who grew up in Miami named Joseph Rosendo. We can learn quite a bit.
Rosendo ends every show with the following quote from Mark Twain: “Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness.”
I am now Steppin Out. The topic is white folk here refusing to become familiar with black folk.
Sadly, I think this Twain quote needs to be repeated over and over again for white folk here in Tioga County. The following is the reason why I say this.
Too many times, I have heard some put down black folk in a derogatory manner. They call black folk in a derogatory manner, “Nigger.” Whether it is local black folk or President Barack Obama, the derogatory addressing of black folk has been used in Upstate New York and by more Upstate New York people in Florida than white folk from other areas (like Ohio or Boston), we have heard such lousy words. Even a good friend from Crane School of Music, a Phi Mu Alpha Sinfonia fraternity brother, who grew up in the Seneca Lake region, used such language, to my great surprise and resulting disgust. I guess I was foolish to ever ignore whether he would have done that in college.
It goes further than just a derogatory word. How about a statement degrading the practice of having Black History Month each February? (Sometimes in the same sentence, to degrade having Women’s History Month each March). One of my replies to such statements is to consider the number of times each year we celebrate White History Month each year? The summer Friday night NV Depot concerts. White culture history on display. White music played and rarely any black culture music from Michael Jackson, Stevie Wonder, Duke Ellington, Count Basey, Ella Fitzgerald, Sarah Vaughan, Little Richard, Chuck Berry. We hear white country music and other genres of white music. I don’t say this to complain about the choices. I say this to challenge anyone who puts down the February Black History Month Celebration, for it was at such celebrations at the college where I was professor and helped schedule lifelong learning events, where we heard the Billy Holiday song about “fruit hanging from trees” and learned about Jim Crow lynching which hung the “fruit,” or innocent black folk, from trees in Dixie. Even at such a Friday night concert, we departed when there was a song about “white” Dixie and the Dixiecrats and the crowd stood. We only stand for the unity represented by the “Star Spangled Banner,” as much as we don’t like “bombs bursting in air…” We also stand for the “Pledge of Allegiance” where we repeat words like “for liberty and justice FOR ALL…” This is not an opinion, it is the correct ATTITUDE. It is not politics. It is the correct ATTITUDE.
Our Newark Valley Historical Society does a wonderful job in promoting history of this valley in Tioga County of Upstate New York. It maintains the Bement-Billings Farmstead. Who were the owners of the 19th Century Farmstead? They certainly were not black folk. So each year, we have the Apple Fest. We celebrate white culture and its history every year, whether at the Apple Fest in October or all year long when the museum and grounds are open to the public.
Even Johnny Appleseed (real name John Chapman, 1774-1845) was a white man.
I find it disgusting for those who portray “victimhood” upon white people as a result of “Black History Month.”
As for the history part, should we shut up about a WHITE ancestor to Ezra Cornell (and my own white ancestor), Thomas Cornell, Jr., when he was WRONGLY executed in Rhode Island in the late 1600s? Yet, a lousy evil man we call DeSatan of Florida tries to stop the history of black folk who have faced the same thing. Shall we re-write the Cornwell / Cornell history? Go to hell if you think we should because such people I only hope they rot in hell and their hatred goes with them.
Sadly, the white people’s area up here in the valley of Tioga County, NY, has some really lousy looking homes which are kept in bad shape. Why? It is a lousy solution to just tear them down. Europe has buildings dated centuries before the buildings here, but are still able to keep them in decent shape and looking good. What is done here? Nothing as they sit there in a dilapidated and disgusting shape. Are white people not proud enough to make things look better? They were when I grew up here in the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s. What has happened?
In comparison, I recall a white supremacist driving a shuttle to the airport in Florida. We drove through a very attractive looking neighborhood. The shuttle driver began to explain how the neighborhood was a neighborhood of black people. He comments “how lousy the neighborhood looks.” I spoke up and explained how I fail to see how lousy it looks because the houses are well kept, the lawns looked so very good, and the entire area was very attractive.
As I think about that dumb lainbrained shuttle driver and his comments, I think about white neighborhoods here in the valley of Tioga County and how lousy and disgusting the buildings and lawns look. I can also compare the village of this valley which had a business district destroyed by fire in 1981 and how it looks so lousy in this “white” area with everything empty and nothing re-built. Even fires in places like Toronto when it contained a much smaller population were re-built. But not in this “white” community here where it looks dismal compared to the neighborhood of black folk a white supremacist shuttle driver made noises of complaints.
For those who know how to do Steppin Out, such hatred of other cultures is an attitude, not politics, opinions or anything else. And I might add that I would wager that Joseph Rosendo (host of Steppin Out) would be opposed to the Man-baby’s use of troops in Cuba.
Mark Twain, who lived some of his life in Elmira, NY, said: “Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness.” War, weapons of mass destruction, and troops are fatal to innocent people and children. Mark Twain is to be respected, with his moral and ethical attitude.
Category:
African-Americans, Commentary, history, Peace & Justice, racism, Southern Tier (New York State), Upstate New York, white supremacy
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