The Last of the Heath Hens

Guest Blogger Dept.: It’s refreshing to learn that, along with all of his other passions, Robert Benchley nurtured an environmental awareness, as his report on the Heath Hen reminds us.

                                                                                      

WELL, THE HEATH HEN has gone! We might as well face it. The sole surviving specimen of Tympanudius cupido, which has been hopping and flitting about the island of Martha’s Vineyard for the past few years under the fascinated gaze of the ornithologists, has disappeared, and, it is feared, has died without issue. It was not enough that the world should be tottering, its reason going, its standards gone. The Heath Hen must be taken from us.

Robert Benchley
Drawing by Gluyas Williams

We knew that it would have to happen some time, but it is hard to believe that there will never be another Heath Hen. We didn’t mind so much when we were told that the Great Auk was extinct, or the Labrador Duck, or the Passenger Pigeon. Even the news about the Eskimo Curlews (although there is hope that there are still a few Eskimo Curlews left who are just playing possum or sulking) didn’t give us that sinking feeling that we experienced when we heard about the Heath Hen. No more Heath Hens – ever! Thank God, John James Audubon did not live to hear that gloomy pronouncement. (He missed it by just three-quarters of a century.)

It seems only yesterday that I saw the Heath Hen at Martha’s Vineyard. She looked as well then as she ever did, but she never was what you would call a robust bird. They did not keep her captive. She was too proud a spirit for that. 

The Old Song and Dance

From the Vault of the Distant Muses Dept.: Alongside the restaurant review I posted last week was a handful of other pieces of mine that appeared in Metroland in 1987. I chose three of them to illustrate the variety of goings-on in the Albany, NY, area back then. The Boys Choir of Harlem ceased operations in 2007, as Wikipedia is happy to inform you. Pianist Pola Baytelman continues to perform and record, and although Alvin Ailey died two years after my piece appeared (my writing had nothing to do with it), the dance company he founded continues to thrive.

                                                                                                 

YOU GO BACK TO 1968 to find the beginnings of the Boys Choir of Harlem, when Dr. Walter J. Turnbull and Ruth Nixon started a small choir in the basement of Ephesus Church in the well-known Manhattan district. Then the church burned down the following year.

The Boys Choir of Harlem

They moved to a local community center and had to endure a lack of heat in the winter. And their travels continued: in 1975 they were at the Church of the Intercession; in 1984 they got their first real home, an entire floor in what was P.S. 68, giving them classrooms, office space -- and proper performance areas.

An independent day school for girls was founded there in 1979; next year a similar co-ed program will be started.

But that’s hardly all that’s been happening with this active group. A year ago this month they performed on a TV special with Harry Belafonte. In June, Dr. Turnbull was given the Presidential Volunteer Action Award at the White House.

Newbie at the Hot Pot

From the Food Vault Dept.: Below is a review I wrote in early 1987, when I was about six years old. At least, that’s how it looks to me as I read it today. I’d been reviewing restaurants for only a few months, which was only about a year into my tenure of writing professionally about anything. I was (and am) a self-taught writer, and figured that my few years cooking professionally qualified me for the food-review gig. But Japanese food was new to me. Sushi was new to me (as you’ll see). And the phenomenon of shabu-shabu, also known as steamboat and hot pot, was completely new. I’ve had wonderful meals of it since, and even bought my own pot to offer it as at-home dinner treats. Sugi is long gone, and the space it occupied has gone through many incarnations over the years, including Charlie’s Corner, State Street Station, and Gar-Bo’s. 

                                                                                                   

“Is this your first time to order shabu shabu?” the waitress asked. Yes, I told her. “Oh, okay. Many people who are not used to shabu shabu don’t like beef in seafood broth.”

Shabu shabu

You can’t intimidate me that way. Not even in a Japanese restaurant. Octopus, for example, looks disgusting on a plate. But sit me down beside someone who says “yuck” and you can bet I’ll be smacking my lips over the cephalopod.

The place: Sugi, a busy little restaurant the Schenectady side of the intersection of Route 7 and State Street. The time: A recent Saturday, early evening.

Dining rooms don't get much less assuming. This is your basic paneling-with-drop-ceiling joint, but dressed with charming Japanese screens and fans to mask the plainness.

And there's a sushi bar at the far end of the room to capture the eye, with a handful of chairs for the dedicated eaters of the raw fish delicacies.

Taking It on the Chen

From the Classical Vault Dept.: Fifteen years ago, violinist Ray Chen performed in Schenectay, yet another example of a rising star being snagged for a local performance early enough in that career ascendancy to make such a booking possible. I thought we could have made him feel more welcome.

                                                                                      

Ray Chen

WHERE’S YOUR BACKBONE, PEOPLE? I’m talking to you, the audience at Ray Chen’s dazzling recital last week. The violinist finished with a Wieniawski finger-buster that spewed wicked spiccato, left-hand pizzicato, harmonics true and false and other virtuoso hallmarks, a spectacular finish to an astounding program. You leapt to your feet, applauding madly, and Chen and pianist Andrew Tyson returned and bowed and returned and bowed again.

Then Chen pulled a fast one: He played a slow one, “Melodie” by Gluck, a Fritz Kreisler arrangement of a flute tune from “Orfeo ed Euridice.” It’s a beautiful display of violin tone and interpretive gentleness, but, as an encore, it does more than that. It calms the audience, robbing them of the furor that the finger-buster provoked. 

And you applauded, albeit in a more restrained manner, and even before they were offstage after their second set of bows that time, you packed up your hands and toddled home.

Enriching the Hall

From the Comedy Vault Dept.: Back in my reviewing heyday, I presented myself as someone able to write knowledgably about many different disciplines, usually the snooty ones, but I enjoyed forays into realms like comedy, popular song, and even offbeat subjects like ice skating. Here’s a look at Rich Hall’s stop in Schenectady in 1990. Hall dipped into the SNL universe for a season and since has been busy writing plays (at his ranch in Montana) and living and working in London.

                                                                                  

RICH HALL'S APPEARANCE at Proctor’s Theatre Thursday night was presented in the guise of comedy, and it’s true that he worked a lot of delightfully-entertaining bits into his set. But he’s really, down deep, a humorist, following a tradition too few comics know about these days.

I haven’t seen him on television and was worried that I wouldn’t be able to share in the instant recognition factor – and that there’d be inside jokes I wouldn’t get.

It wasn’t like that at all. Hall works the audience with easily-recognizable situations – like so many others, he has his own dog and cat routine – but he’s also got a fascination with language that leads him into a territory of free-association once the province only of people like George Carlin.

Like Carlin, Hall explores the sound and sense of words. They differ markedly in matter, however. Carlin shocks by going for the jugular of taboos and chills the audience into laughing at itself. Hall’s is a warmer approach, making friends with the crowd and inviting them into the banter.