Amazing Grace & the Queen of Soul

April 25, 2019. Today I saw the newly released film of two 1972 consecutive night performances featuring the Queen of Soul - the one & only Aretha Franklin. The two sets were intended for an album and television special that became - 47 years later - this film.
Thanks and credit are apparently due for famous film director Spike Lee for producing or post-producing, curating (as peeps say today), and retrieving this filmed, recorded Holy Grail of Gospel & Soul Music, spiffing it up, and showcasing these two rare performances. One of my favorite features was the collage of everyday Christian folk of Los Angeles back about... FORTY-SEVEN YEARS AGO. (I, at the time, was a skinny, long-haired, eighteen year old college sophomore.)
Kudos and thanks must go to the tireless efforts of so many people to resurrect the various pieces and splices of film from that long-ago two-night event and rendering a soul-stirring, uplifting portrait of an artist at her commercial zenith offering sacred songs to the Creator. Seeing a very young Aretha, Reverend James Franklin, and director of the never-released TV special Sydney Pollack gave me jolts of joy.
I returned to Sacramento's historic Tower Theater last Thursday to view this remarkable film for the second time in five days. And, I hope to see it tomorrow with a buddy for the third time. (With matinee and Senior discount tickets set at 7 bucks for this unique film and in an Art Deco theater setting is, for me, mind-blowing at its head-exploding best.
The lovely, iconic Miss Aretha Franklin, dressed the first night in an all-white, floor-length Caftan (Kaftan?) and the second evening in a coral and white paisley. She strode down the middle aisle of a rather small Los Angeles church for her combination recording session / live worship performance featuring all Gospel or Christian music. Joining and supporting the Queen were the Reverend James Cleveland - a lifelong friend and renowned choirmaster - and the Southern California Community Choir, comprised of forty gifted, well-trained singers. Reverend Cleveland played most of the piano pieces and sang along with Ms. Franklin on at least tune.
On the second night, there were two or more celebrity sightings (Mick Jagger and Charlie Watts of the Rolling Stones, perhaps musician Billy Preston, music producer Jerry Wexler, and I believe the Reverend Jesse Jackson.
The setting is such a delight because 1972 was a formative time for me. And within three years my life would not only be formed but TRANSFORMED into a new life, new identity, and a new eternity. But that, my friends, is a possible topic for a future blog. But, in the meantime - "back at the church" - Ms. Aretha shone, soared, belted, and caressed the lyrics on every song or hymn.
Seated next to Aretha's daddy, the Reverend Franklin, was gospel music legend Clara Ward. Both the good reverend and the lady of sacred music were visibly affected (blessed and/or blissed?) by thej 32-year-old Aretha's performance.
I look forward to viewing the film a third time tomorrow and plan on buying or downloading it when it goes to video (or whatever the post-90's terminology is).
I wholeheartedly (an adverb I used perhaps too often when recommending students for college, but here applies even more); I wholeheartedly recommend, suggest, support, and give my loftiest rating of an A+ for this once-in-a-lifetime film that captures Aretha at her zenith in terms of skill and popularity, recording what I believe became a double-record album that they may have become her biggest-selling album. Which says a WHOLE LOT about Aretha's focus (Christ), willingness to record traditionally poor-selling music, put her special, unique touch and flair to it, and kick totally booty. Please, DO YOURSELF A FAVOR, and run & see it before it's pulled from distribution. Peace and blessings in Him, PR

Rowlee's 3Rs : Bob Dylan According to Peter Max

Rowlee's 3Rs : Bob Dylan According to Peter Max: When I was about fifteen years old, my older sister gave me the poster from her Bob Dylan's Greatest Hits Album, Pt. I. As soon as I ...

Life - Its Ups & Downs

Dualism is not just a word, but a concept (actually, a handful of concepts with a common root meaning.) I remember reading the word in some of the philosophical and religious books during my college years. I often heard the word spoken by my stepbrother - an avid student of all religions and schools of thought, but - even by his own admission - a believer of none.
So, from hearing my brother's use of the word in question, I had a modicum of an idea what dualism could be, but since I was too lazy to research the word any further these past fifty years, I had little clue what dualism is all about.
After extensive researching the topic for the past five or six minutes, I've learned that dualism can mean the opposition of two forces in the universe - sometimes both physical, other times both spiritual, and quite often the physical versus the spiritual. One meaning I gleaned from my exhausting Google trek is that dualism can be defined as the conflict of two opposing supreme forces responsible for the creation of the universe.
My dear Blogees: I am in no way a theologian, but I do know that this world, galaxy, and cosmos were created by The Good Force; and I am well aware of the existence of The Bad Force as well, but that is where I jump off the bus. In other words, I cannot accept that an evil force created this world, which is a conundrum on two fronts. Number-one: God is NOT capable of creating evil. He can do anything, anything at all, except evil. See, since God is perfect, he must be (and, of course, is) perfectly good. And perfect good cannot and will not create bad of any size, shape, or color. And my second conundrum: There is only one Creator.
But then it occurs to me that the brightest angel - reportedly named "The Morning Star" - long ago left Heaven and took one-third of all celestial beings with him. And the Word has it that the two forces - The Lord and Satan - will have a final battle someday, after which the latter will be banished by the Former to a place of unending torment and suffering (referred to in the Book as "the lake of fire").
So, friends, dualism must start with the spiritual because it is the Spiritual that created the Physical. And in religious realms, the physical is always in conflict with the spiritual. The duality with a capital D that is at work here in this physical realm called the World is age-old and will continue until that final battle between the Devil and the Messiah. Until that day occurs (and it surely will), the physical world will continue to be at odds with the spiritual. It might be interesting to note that the latter can understand the former but the former will never understand the realm of the spirit. The physical can't because it's incapable - as a finite, temporary, and temporal entity - to understand or even imagine that which is infinite, permanent, beyond the dimensions of space & time.
So, yes, I'll admit other schools of thought or religions have similar concepts about dualism to that of The Word's, but none even approaches being close. Why? Because He known as 'I AM' will always create something greater than man can, which is why all but one of the religions on Earth fall short of the story of Christ's. They all fall short, simply because they're not infinite, timeless, and perfect.
I realize I've jumped into the most profound aspect of dualism so it seems silly to backtrack and speak of the more mundane dualisms in the world, but I have no choice. Unless I want to leave my lazy, comfortable, less-than-stellar way of doing things, which - at the moment - I'm choosing not to do. So, without any further ado, it's time for that medium that expresses great truths and profound philosophy - cartoons.
That's right - cartoons. Everyone pretty much understands them, so we will visit the animated, prehistoric little town of Bedrock in order to pursue this concept known as dualism - two opposing forces fighting for predominance in any realm - including inside the heart and mind of Bedrock's most famous resident - Fred Flintstone.
Although "The Flintstones" only existed in original form for the 1960-1961 prime-time season, its lessons of dualism exist 59 years later. When I taught high school literature just a few years ago to conclude my career as an educator, I used an episode of the show to illustrate the dualism of man. Remember the episode when Fred is confronted by miniature versions of himself atop his shoulders, one dressed in white, wearing wings, and a halo and the other clad in red, having horns on his head, and brandishing a pitchfork? The angel, naturally, represented the good in man while the devil the evil nature of humanity. The two try their darnedest to persuade Fred to do their bidding, and I'm not sure but I believe Hanna and Barbera had good triumph over evil. Some folks, after reflection, may say this cartoon example is neither too broad nor too unrealistic when relating to the lot of humanity. All of us are bombarded constantly by good and bad, the World and Heaven, pride and humility, time and timelessness, greed and altruism, nature and nurture, and the nearly infinite number of finite dualisms that face off, with each of us humans as their battlegrounds.
Yes, we embody a most curious metaphor that doesn't sound poetic when spoken, but each one of us can be thought of as "an individual Armageddon." Each of us experiences first-hand the battle between good and bad being waged on and in us. And who or what can we blame this constant conflagration of contention? Blame it all on dualism. Yep, dualism. But, someday that will end, for the good. I hope and pray we make the right choice... for eternity. Class dismissed.      

Rowlee's Ramblings and... more!

Living in a hotel for the past 163 days has been both challenging and fun. We were displaced because of a 50-cent plastic fixture in a toilet that chose to bust while we were two thousand or more miles away selecting a home for, hopefully, the rest of our years together as a couple. So, "the best laid plans of mice and men," according to the wag / poet Robert Burns, is a fitting motif for our last five months.
I don't know if it was supposed to happen, but it did, so therefore - yes - it was supposed to happen. Unless we'd had the wisdom to replace it with a better fixture, which our plumber had recommended. (However, to Linda's and my credit, our plumber ALWAYS recommended we part with more of our money every time they'd paid us biannual visits to "check" our heating and plumbing systems and what not. (By the way, for the sake of full disclosure, I - Patrick Rowlee - being of semi-sound mind do hereby claim [not swear] that in my 65-and-counting years of breathing and writing, I have NEVER utilized the oft-forgotten countryism known as "what-not." So, rest assured, it won't become a regular or even irregular habit, so help me Universe (because I won't swear to Him; I did enough of that before I got hip to Him being omniscient and omnipresent and everlasting since always).
So, this is my first-ever blog in which I haven't selected a topic, but took the easy road in calling it my "ramblings."
What are ramblings anyway? "Ramblings" is a word regularly applying to someone's speech or writing that appears to be willy-nilly in manner with no beginning, middle, or end. In other, plainer words, it goes nowhere and does nothing but meander. Rambling is what we school kids used to call what our teachers did when lecturing us spirited children at the end of a long week in public school, with the theme being how we could and should and ultimately would behave like responsible, courteous, and thoughtful or mindful human beings who would mature into solid, God-loving citizens of the US of A. These educators rolled their proverbial educational dice and hoped at least some of their passes of the ivories would reveal aggregates of sevens or elevens.
In short, these hard-working, dedicated, but slightly daunted public educators hoped against hope that we would finally begin to "get it," e.g. understand how the world of life really operated or spun incessantly while tilted at a very specific angle (26 degrees? I have no real clue, but that sounds possible, so let's go with that figure). But remember to please not forgive me for my ramblings because I neither expect nor want you to - forgive me, that is. Rambling, remember, is what I do best.
(And no, not like Steve Martin's hilarious bit being a "ramblin' kind of guy." Or, similar to Marshall Tucker's infectious, adorable, but venal ditty "Ramblin' on my Mind.")
And speaking of rambling, I only had disdain for a small handful of automobiles as a kid, but at the very top of the list of yecchy car makes was the Rambler, formerly Nash Rambler, future American Motors and eventually extinct. My other least favorite car brands were probably the undistinguished Nash; the Art-Deco, but still ugly-as-heck Edsel (named after Henry Ford's daughter or son, I forget whom); the Studebaker; and lastly the earliest Toyotas on American soil. But! I must admit / confess the Rambler sat perched atop of the whole heap of - well, heaps - of autos.
And lastly or thereabouts, was the infamous Midnight Rambler. No, not the fictitious Rolling Stones' killer / fiend on the loose, but the shows that the Band used to be part of when they played sleazy dives and sad taverns across Canada and America in the early Sixties.
So, the Midnight Rambler - according to the Band's drummer, vocalist, and baddest-ass member, Levon Helm - was (by way of my liberal paraphrase) something that happened at the ends of many a show on the drunkest night of the week:
We'd play these down-and-out joints that on weeknights might have four patrons and a fight would break out. But on Saturday nights, right around midnight, the jokes started getting a little sleazier, the songs start gettin' a bit racier, and the women began to REALLY dance. Yeah,  Midnight Ramblers were what we lived for..." )
Okay, my Blogees, in the spirit of full disclosure, that last sentence I concocted out of whole cloth. (Albeit cheesy, tacky, garish cloth...
And what not.)
Sincerely and otherwise,
Patrick R. Rowlee - (my middle initial stands for........................... you guessed it: Rambler

Bob Dylan According to Peter Max

When I was about fifteen years old, my older sister gave me the poster from her Bob Dylan's Greatest Hits Album, Pt. I.
As soon as I pulled it from the blue cardboard cover and unfolded the Peter Max Op Art poster, I pinned it to my bedroom wall, where it remained until I left home for my sophomore year in college at age eighteen.
Someone (no doubt, my mother) neatly folded it and placed it in a box that sat in our family's garage for many years. Then, fifteen years ago, I rediscovered it while unpacking some family mementos. A flood of so many memories and feelings rushed into my consciousness that I decided to resurrect the poster to its former glory.
Because it was more than three decades old then, the folds were indelibly deep, so deep it seemed likely that if I attempted to pin the thing up again, it would separate into eight squares and therefore be nearly impossible to restore. So, my wife Linda advised me to have it mounted on foam board in order to preserve it, which I did.
Around this time I returned to the classroom as an English teacher and decided to post Mr. Dylan's psychedelic image on one of my classroom walls. The four-foot-long, three-foot-wide beauty was assigned the top center of my back wall where only I could see it on a moment-to-moment basis. The thought of America's greatest modern poet looming above my freshmen, juniors, and creative writers as they toiled on their essays, reports, and poems seemed so natural to me that it remained there for my final ten years as a public school educator.
Today, whenever I spy this poster on my garage wall, I'm catapulted back to my high school years, more specifically the bedroom where I spent many evening hours my last two years of high school and freshman year of college. I remember Bobby D watching over my first girlfriend and I while we navigated the baseball diamond of teenage sex, including my first trip to home plate.
It's incredible how many stories, images, and sensations race into my mind whenever I simply give it a glimpse while entering or exiting my garage. So, in the interest of time management, I almost always avert my eyes when it appears in my field of vision.
This fifty-year-old artifact from my past is an icon, a symbol, and a metaphor for those growing years. It is composed of equal parts brightly colored details and blank whiteness. The fun times, of course, are represented by the former; and the lean times, especially in terms of friendship and romance, are represented by the white hair. Bobby's black physique and face stand for the mystery and confusion I experienced the years between my fifteenth and eighteenth birthdays. Puberty, hormones, my first hangover, sexual forays both at the local drive-in theater and my own cocoon of a bedroom, graduation from high school, registering for this country's last draft, and my subsequent move hundreds of miles away for my second year of college are only some of the landmark rites of passage I experienced while Mr. Dylan reigned in my open-beam room with the six-feet-tall panes of glass comprising the top half of the exterior wall.
The Bob Dylan poster has witnessed many people and events in its lifetime, yet stays as stoic and statue-stiff as ever. What he lacks in human personality, he makes up for in blasting me back to my past each time I gaze upon his Medusa-like locks, hook nose, and black-as-Johnny Cash's-clothes body. This is the only inanimate object I have ever thought to thank, but I know he already knows my gratitude and that realization makes me smile.

Forty Years Together (Mostly)

So, today (12/2/2018) marks the fortieth anniversary of the Saturday night I met my wife. Only a string of odd happenings I like to call little miracles could've caused us to meet, all of which were orchestrated by God. You'll see what I mean when I've finished (or at least I hope so).
About eight o'clock on that long ago Saturday night (December 2, 1978) I was settled into the comfy, probably orange, recliner in our family's all-wood-and-glass den as snug-as-a-bug-in-a-rug, to watch my beloved UCLA Bruins play some poor opponent in a game of round ball when my mother Margaret arrived home with her new boyfriend, some guy named Frank. (I think I'd only met the man once or twice prior.) Regardless, Mom began telling me all about their dinner at the Holiday Inn in great detail and went on and on and perhaps one or two more "ons" on about who was there - none of whom measured up in my mind or interest calculator with my Bruins. When Ma reached so far or leaned so low as to tell me some girl I hadn't spoken with since the fourth grade was at the "H.I.," I informed her I wasn't interested in meeting ANYONE at the Holiday Inn, much less some girl-now woman I'd spoken with last on the playground of Sage School in Palmdale.
To which she replied, "Look, I don't care WHERE you go, just go. Frank and I want to be alone."
So, within moments, I was dressed in who-know-what headed to God-only-knew-where so F & M could be alone without Yours Truly to chaperone. And, since the night before I'd sworn off going out to "meat markets" anymore, I had no clue where to go to kill a few hours before the love couple's alone time would expire. And, friends, since I had no imagination about where to go in Palmdale on a Saturday night in 1978, I went  to the ONLY place in town with live music; well, outside of the redneck country bars where I would've blended in like oil blends with H2O. That place, of course, was the Holiday Inn.
Not only was it an unprecedented occasion for my mother to kick me out of our house, it was also the first and last time I remember entering a bar establishment by myself. But... I soon had plenty of company, including my late brother Keith, his former band mate Tommy, and Tommy's mother along with one instrumental person. No, it wasn't the girl from fifteen years before who'd spoken to me once on the blacktop playground at recess. It was Ken, a man also by himself who decided to buy me a beer after I seated myself beside him. My brother actually gave up his seat for me and left for some unknown reason. Perhaps the Lord urged him to, but I'll never know.
So, Ken proceeds to leave my side to go dance with some chick. I probably spent the time conversing with Keith's band mate and his mother. About twenty minutes later, Ken returns. As he seats himself, I spy the woman with whom he'd been dancing - a beautiful blonde lady dressed much nicer than any of the Palmdalites in attendance. She returned to her seat across the way on this horseshoe-shaped bar, which allowed me a perfect obstacle-free view of her. Boy, was she pretty. I could spend the next several paragraphs describing her beauty and sexiness, but I'll leave that for tonight when I tell her in private.
After, oh maybe twenty more minutes, Ken says to me, "Well, shall I dance with her again or would you like to?"
I isolated that sentence in its own paragraph for a reason. Ken's statement was a TOTALLY unprecedented moment in the history of guys in bars. No guy, I can declare without doubt, had EVER turned to another guy and suggested that that other guy dance with a woman with whom he'd already danced. Guys make their mark on something they want and don't go back on it, ever. But, Ken was different. In fact, I'm not sure he was a man. Angel is the word that springs to mind immediately, but perhaps I'll never find out.
You'll love how I responded. "You don't mind, Ken?"
"Nah," was his response. "Go for it."
So, I did. I got up, thanked him, and wound my way around the curved bar in a counter-clockwise direction while the next song kicked in from the band in the corner. I leaned over her just enough for her to hear me, and guess what? The beautiful blonde accepted!
She followed me out to the area between the band and a glass window. I remember not knowing what to do but dance, so I did exactly that. And, since this was during the zenith of disco music's meteoric rise, the music didn't stop for probably forty minutes - one song blended into the next which segued into a third tune and so on and so forth. We didn't get to chat, but I felt so natural in her presence that I followed her back to her seat and proceeded to shoot the breeze with her for what I thought was a few minutes. The man seated next to her must've gotten tired of his close-up view of my rear parts because he stood and said, "Here, you can have my seat."
So, I sat and talked with this beauty from L.A. who was originally from the Hoosier State. We chatted about basketball, particularly John Wooden who hailed from her same little town of Centerton, before discussing auto racing, which was why she'd come to our little, backwater, forsaken desert town for one night. She, her best friend, and two underage women (Linda's sister and her friend) had traveled in two cars to see a male friend of theirs race the next day at Willow Springs Raceway, out in Rosamond. At any rate, I felt extremely grateful and fortunate that this angel with the spun gold head of hair, impeccable clothes, and sexy, sultry voice was even speaking to me, much less listening to my every word. Suddenly, without warning, the bartender yelled, "Last call!"
"What?!" I thought. "Why, it can't be past eleven-thirty." I checked my watch and saw it was 1:40 p.m. Amazing.
We decided that breakfast sounded good, so we rode together in Linda's bright yellow Fiat X19 to get breakfast. Not across the street at the only place open at the time for breakfast, Denny's by the 14 Freeway, but to a town twenty miles away down Hwy. 138, Pearblossom, that had a 24-hour truck stop cafe.
(To be continued on my next blog.)