Garden update

Good news and bad news about the 2015 garden on July 1.

Good news:  raspberries! 

This year, the bugs have not eaten the berries, and they're doing well despite the not-optimal location behind the garage.  Every time I stop back there, I can pick a handful or so.

Other good news: Eli's pumpkin! 

Its huge leaves and ever-growing vine are a wonder to see!  Just male flowers so far. Not sure what will cause it to start producing female flowers.  Perhaps less rain? 

Speaking of rain, the humid weather has caused stupendous tomato growth. Despite constant pruning, the 4 plants--1 grape tomato, 1 Celebrity, and 1 President--are as tall as I am. That's 5'3".

Plenty of little green tomatoes waiting to ripen.  These are on the grape tomato plant.

But bad news: all the rain has also caused the usual tomato fungus to spread very quickly. 

Many of the lower leaves are dying. Not sure if these plants will live long enough for the fruits to ripen. I spray them with copper soap spray because I can't bear to use anything stronger. I think it's supposed to be dry the rest of this week, so maybe that will slow the spread of the fungus.

Meanwhile: good news:  basil is doing great.

Some of these plants (I have about 7-8 plants) are knee-high. Others a bit smaller.  Probably we'll have our first pesto dinner in mid-July, with plenty of pesto in August and September.

Zinnias and blue salvia are doing fine: I'll post photos when they start blooming.

Challenging a Geek

Apparently, Robbie's work study job at Luther College (he works at the IT Help Desk) involves a lot of tinkering with electronics.

"When I'm not taking things apart, I get antsy," he told me this weekend. 

That was right before he started taking Bruce's malfunctioning tape deck apart.

I'm glad he likes his work study job, but I was a little worried about whether he was getting challenged enough at college when he told me about his computer science class this term. It's a required class, and one in which he's learning a new language, C++ (a funny name for a language). 

Apparently, it goes so slowly that he has his computer open, and is teaching himself a completely different computer language DURING CLASS, and he's still able to "answer more questions than anyone else." 

Hmm.

OK, that part about doing something else during a class really bugged me, but mostly because I teach.  I mean, at least he's pushing himself to learn new things when he's bored.

Still, I started wondering, as I have before, if maybe I should have pushed him to apply to places like ISU or UI or CWRU or MIT, where he would be in bigger Comp Sci departments with graduate programs and probably more classes. Programs where he might have been challenged more.

Hard to believe I started thinking that: I'm a big proponent of liberal arts colleges, with their close-knit communities of learners and the connections that they forge--between different disciplines, between students and teachers.  But I was worried about my comp sci geek child--I want him to be challenged and have opportunities to develop his skills.

Later, though, he told me more about what he's up to at Luther, and my faith was restored. 

He loves his math class, one called Chaotic and Dynamical Systems.  Is that even math?  Anyway, he told me "It's the math class that I've always wanted to take!"  Right now, they (the class is just 6 or so kids) are learning all about the Mandelbrot set, which he thinks is about the coolest thing ever.  I guess it's a type of equation that creates images like this.

Apparently, the math teacher is taking them to a math conference this coming weekend to attend sessions and meet the guy who wrote the book.  Robbie is beside himself with happiness about that.

A couple of weeks after that trip, he'll be going to a computer programming contest, too--the students who work with him at the IT Help Desk recruited him. He'll be able to use the computer language he learned in high school, Java. 

And!  They're starting a new Robotics club at Luther, and guess who is one of four students who will be getting it started?  Yup, my tinkering computer geek boy:  "We'll be building a quad copter," he says.

So OK.  This is exactly why I wanted him to go to a place like Luther: so he could have these kinds of special opportunities to pursue his passions and get challenged.  So what if his comp sci class is way too easy for him.  That's just this term.  "I can't wait until I get into the upper-level CS classes," he told me. 

He also said, when attempting to unlock the car door from inside the house:  "The screen on the window must have enough metal in it to create a Faraday shield."

That's my geeky boy.

Autumn ride

I skipped my usual Wednesday lap swim time and went for a bike ride instead. After two days of constant rain, the weather was bright and sunny--if cool.  I went over to the bike trail near Cedar Lake--it's a ride I used to do frequently.  I hoped to see the fall flower bloom.

Cedar Lake used to be called Cedar Slough, so I think it used to be a large wetland. It's in an industrial area, and the water hasn't always been very pristine. Still, I think the city would like to improve the area. The bike trail was one improvement.

It goes by some railroad tracks . . . .

Sadly, I was too late to see the fall flowers that grow along the trail: goldenrod, asters, thistle, tickseed.  But it was still an interesting ride.

There were lots of wooly bears--I saw 11 before I stopped counting!

They all seemed to be in a hurry to get somewhere. And for those of you who look to those caterpillars for winter weather predictions, the brown and black segments were all about equal, whatever that means.

Though I'd missed fall flowers, there were lots of ex-flowers--and they had their own beauty, I think.

These are  burdock pods, waiting to go home with some kid on their socks or mittens.

 Queen Anne's lace skeletons by the lake.

 Petal-less tickseed or rudbeckia remnants--just the centers are left.

Thistle down is all that's left of these thistles.

One remaining evening primrose is ready to unfurl.

And fall colors were nice--like these blood-red sumacs. I thought they were almost Draculanian.

Look at these nice colors!  Yes, that's poison ivy and sumac, right next to each other.

OK, it wasn't exactly what I'd hoped to see, and I am sorry to have missed the fall bloom.  But it was also kind of cool to find surprising and beautiful sights in mid-October.

Hindu Dance in Iowa

Those who had her as a teacher will not be surprised that this frightening personage is none other than Miss Julia Bennett. Maybe in their minds, she always looked like this: frightening and formidable!

In this photo, she is in full costume as Raksha, the evil sorcerer in the Dieman-Bennett Dance Studio production of the Hindu Swan Lake.

Maybe you didn't know there was such a thing as a Hindu Swan Lake. But there is!  Or was: choreographed by American ethnic dancer and choreographer La Meri, it was danced many times by Dieman-Bennett dancers here in Cedar Rapids--and at such important dance venues as Jacob's Pillow and the Edinburgh Festival.

Swan Lake is the story of a princess turned into a swan by an evil sorcerer's curse. It's a very well-known ballet, with music by Tchaikovsky, a quartet of cygnets, and an evil twin to the princess, who does 28 (32? or more?) fouettés en tournant. 

The Hindu version that La Meri created uses the same Tchaikovsky music, but Hindu choreography. I've seen excerpts from a PBS documentary. It is a remarkable work, blending the familiar music we all know with the gestural, beautiful moves and gorgeous costumes of Hindu dance.

La Meri gave Miss Dieman and Miss Bennett the rights to perform her choreography--this must have thrilled them, as both loved Hindu dance. Miss Dieman had learned it from La Meri herself when she studied and danced with the famous choreographer in New York City (she was a Hindu cygnet). But it was a lot of work.  Miss Bennett writes in her notebook that it took two years to prepare the dancers to perform it.

Here is Miss Dieman with sari and drums in a picture from the same era, maybe rehearsing the dancers. 

La Meri came back to perform the role of the princess and Miss Bennett was the sorcerer at the Cedar Rapids debut on June 11, 1964 at Sinclair Auditorium on the Coe College campus.  

"Madame Le Meri complimented me and said I was the strongest Raksha she had ever danced with," says Miss Bennett in her notebooks.

Miss Dieman and Miss Bennett continued to teach Hindu dance classes along with classical ballet. It surprised their dance colleagues from different parts of the world that excellent instruction in Hindu dance could be found in Cedar Rapids, Iowa of all places. But they took it all in stride.  For them, Cedar Rapids was the perfect location for the flowering of the arts of East and West.

The May Fete--a dance tradition

I'm not sure if Miss Dieman is in this particular photo, but she was in the group of college women that did these dances.

The (rather blurry--sorry!) photo is from a copy of the Coe College yearbook documenting the 1923-24 school year. Miss Dieman was a junior, and she was part of the Campus Fete, also known as the May Fete.

Each year, a May Queen was chosen from the student body, and a celebration--with costumed dances on the lawn of the campus--was held in her honor.  This wasn't just at Coe. May Fetes seemed to be a tradition all around the country. Just with a quick Google search, I found May Fete photos from U of Illinois, Carleton College, Pomona, and my alma mater The College of Wooster.

The dances in these celebrations arose from a turn-of-the century trend toward encouraging women to exercise. No more fainting Victorian maidens!  But acceptable exercise was limited: one 1900 editorial from a badminton magazine said this:

“. . . unlimited indulgence in violent, outdoor sports--cricket, bicycling, beagling, otter-hunting, paper-chasing, and--most odious of all games for women--hockey, cannot but have an unwomanly effect on a young girl’s mind no less than her appearance . . . Let young girls ride, skate, dance, and play lawn tennis and other games in moderation, but let them leave field sports to those for whom they were intended--men.”

Luckily, dance made the list of "appropriate" activities. 

The newly (and partially)-liberated young women were trained in several popular movement styles. One had been pioneered by Francois Delsarte, and was named for him. It taught combinations of movements to express emotions. "The object of art is to crystallize emotion into thought and give it form," said Delsarte.

Delsarte movement instruction was quite elaborate. Students learned a vocabulary of gestures.  Here are a few from a book called Delsarte System of Expression:

Description of action:  head level between shoulders, inclined neither to right nor left, up nor down.

Signification:  Calm repose or indifference

Description of action:  Head leans toward object, but must not be raised, depressed, or rotated.  

Signification:  Trust, tenderness, sympathy, affection, esteem from the soul.
 

Description of action:  head thrown back, midway between the shoulders

Signification: exaltation, explosion from self as a center, a lifting to the universal.

When I look at these May Fete photos, I wonder if the dancers were influenced by Delsarte.

Today we may not be very impressed by these dancers' costumes, but imagine: the women in these photos were usually trussed up in corsets, stockings, and skirts every day. It must have been incredibly freeing to dance barefoot on the lawn.

I've noticed that most of the women in the pictures have bobbed hair.  No more heavy buns and elaborate hairstyles.

May Fete dancers probably also took some cues from other dance and movement pioneers of the era, like Eugene Jacques Dalcroze.  Dalcroze gave his name to a school of movement that sought to teach rhythm and musical expression through movement. Miss Dieman spent two summers studying the Dalcroze methods in New York City after she graduated from Coe.

The lightly-clad figures in these photos also make me think of Isadora Duncan, who pioneered her own form of dance based on natural movements. One of the May Fetes that Miss Dieman participated in had a Greek theme, like many of Duncan's dances.

I am sure that these experiences with dance on the soft green lawns of a college campus influenced Miss Dieman to continue on with dance, and to bring dance to the lives of others.

Grandmothers in Dance

If you're from Cedar Rapids, my current hometown, you probably know these two women.  They are Julia Bennett (left) and Edna Dieman (right), the founders of a long-running dance studio here in Cedar Rapids.

Miss Dieman and Miss Bennett are my grandmothers in dance.

I don't know if "grandmothers in dance" is actually a thing, but it means this: they were the teachers of my ballet teacher, Suki Morrisey. (Yes, at age 52, I take ballet classes, twice a week, with other ladies . . . of a certain age. I am grateful for the opportunity.)

Suki, who was the Sugar Plum Fairy for many Nutcracker performances of the Dieman-Bennett Dance studio, sprinkles our "Adult Intermediate" ballet classes with anecdotes about Miss Dieman and Miss Bennett, who were apparently formidable teachers--full of passion and high expectations for all their many, many students (they taught here for 40 years). I love hearing these stories.

We often heard about "Miss Bennett's notebooks," which were, according to Suki, a set of large blue three-ring binders that Miss Bennett had filled with typewritten stories and remembrances of her life: her memoir. Suki hoped that the stories in those notebooks would live on, somehow, after Miss Dieman and Miss Bennett had passed away.

At some point, it dawned on me. I am a writer: maybe I can help share the story of my dance grandmothers . . .

I talked my ideas over with a friend, choreographer and dance instructor Carol Maxwell-Rezabek--could we somehow bring Miss Dieman and Miss Bennett's words, ideas, and dances to life for a contemporary audience?  We decided to try.

This summer, we began our work, learning about Miss Dieman and Miss Bennett by going through their papers, memoirs, diaries, VHS tapes, newspaper clippings, photographs, and Miss Bennett's Notebooks--housed at the Iowa Women's Archives. You can't imagine how delightful this work was. Or maybe you can.

This fall, I hope to interview with people who knew Miss Dieman and Miss Bennett--former students, collaborators, people involved in the arts in Cedar Rapids--to get more perspective on their work.

Our goal? Carol and I hope to create a multi-media presentation that shares images, words, music, and dance by and about Miss Dieman and Miss Bennett.

I'm not sure how long it will take us to create this presentation. In the meantime, I thought I'd share some images I've discovered and reflections on what I'm learning about Miss Dieman and Miss Bennett.

One of the images I discovered was this one. Don't they look elegant?  they look like they are wearing some kind of ethnic clothing--kimonos or, more likely, something from India.

The photo appeared in the Gazette, the local paper in Cedar Rapids, in March of 1951, just before Miss Dieman and Miss Bennett performed for the first time in Cedar Rapids as guest artists of the Beethoven Club.  They called the program their "triumvirate performance," as it blended 1. singing, 2. dancing, and 3. piano music.  Miss Bennett sang--songs from Schumann's Dichterliebe Song Cycle--Miss Dieman danced (while Miss Bennett sang Schumann, and to music of India and Spain) and Alma Turachek, professor of music at Coe College played piano.

The article notes that this was not the first performance. The program's debuted January 7, 1951--in New York City.

Miss Dieman and Miss Bennett met in New York City in 1945. Miss Dieman was there studying ethnic dance and working for the Center for Ethnologic Dance. Miss Bennett had just arrived from India, where she had grown up and where her British parents still lived, hoping to make a start as a professional singer. Apparently Miss Bennett had very little money, but she did have authentic Indian saris, which Miss Dieman bought.

"It was there, at the ethnological Dance Center, that I met Edna Dieman, Director of the Center," writes Miss Bennett in her Notebooks. "It was her birthday and I remember it well.  Her eyes were like stars and looked through me like laser beams.  It was a meeting that would change my life."

Miss Bennett's notebooks are deliciously dramatic.

This photo is a visual record of the importance of that meeting. In 1950, the two women came to Cedar Rapids--Miss Dieman's hometown--to teach a summer dance class. They ended up moving here. They started their dance studio in a small room at the YWCA, teaching ballet.

They were always multi-faceted artists. They didn't just teach ballet--they taught Spanish dance, Hindu dance, and Baroque dance, too.  There were yoga classes, and classes for adult students, like the one I'm taking now. Miss Bennett continued performing as a singer, and the Dieman-Bennett Dance Studio was known for its extensive collaborations with other arts organizations in town.

This is just the first photo that documents their impact on Cedar Rapids.  It's a hint of things to come.

As Gazette Arts writer Dee Ann Rexroat wrote in 1990, "Miss Dieman and Miss Bennett.  The names are synonymous with dance and the arts in Cedar Rapids."

Over the next week or so, before things get too busy at Coe, I'll use this blog to share a few more of what I've discovered about my influential grandmothers in dance.

Mitzi Mittens, beloved pet, dies at 14

Mitzi Mittens, beloved pusset of the Nesmith family, died on Friday in Cedar Rapids.  She was almost 14.

Mitzi had lived with lymph cancer for the past year, and had done remarkably well on a regimen of steroids and vitamins, continuing her daily schedule of patrolling the back yard, sitting on laps, and keeping the family company. She was taken acutely ill on Friday morning, and passed later that day.

Adopted by the family when she was a small kitten, Mitzi had an endearing personality that combined curiosity with restraint. Everyone loved her nose stripe and chin dot, like an exclamation point on her face.

She loved to nap with the boys, Robbie and Eli, and enjoyed following family members around the house. She had very good manners, and was very polite when asking for a taste of someone's ice cream. She knew her name and came when called.

Not much of a hunter, she could be trusted to stay in the yard and not harm small critters living there except for the occasional butterfly. She enjoyed rolling in garlic mustard and mint plants while outside.


One of her favorite pastimes was to join the family as they played board games, first walking over the board and pieces, and then sitting with her back to everyone. She was a good kitty, and the family often told her so.  They will miss her very much.

The funeral will be held on Sunday or Monday, depending on the weather.  No flowers; please send memorial donations to the Cedar Valley Humane Society.