CNotes

C is for Cookie

CTW/Jim Henson Prod/The Kobal Collection

Happy Birthday, Sesame Street!!  Sunny days, sleepin' the clouds away. Still considered an experiment by its producers, I am the generation that grew up with Sesame Street. I'll be 39 this month (yes, say, it like the Count, "Thirty-NINE!") so Sesame Street is but a year older than me. I don't remember time without Sesame Street.  I might have loved Electric Company more, but I did enjoy Sesame Street.

Who's your favorite Sesame Street character? There's a poll open on NPR until Thursday evening - I voted for Oscar the Grouch (now, just called Oscar.) It was a tough decision between Grover & Oscar. (Maybe someone should write The Tao of Big Bird, or something along those lines.)In that blog post, you can also listen to today's tribute to birthday #40 for Sesame Street - a great story and a good reminder of how the show has changed over the years.

Last week, NPR show Fresh Air re-broadcast a wonderful interview with Jeff Moss, Sesame Street's first head writer.  It was an enlightening look at the development of a show that has taught 2 generations of kids so many important life lessons, practical & conceptual:

• Counting (I DO love the count)
• Understanding people with disabilities
• Racial issues - how we are each the same at heart
• Not everyone is the same and celebrating our differences

I don't have kids, so I don't watch Sesame Street too much these days. I understand it's a bit different and here are a few things I find disturbing:

• Bert & Ernie are claymation this season - WHAT????? - How does one sing Rubber Ducky if made out of clay? Won't Bert melt?
• There's more than one Snuffleupagus?
• Cookie Monster actually has a song called "Cookies are a Sometimes Food" ... well, maybe for you & me, but NOT for someone named COOKIE MONSTER for goodness' sake.

I wonder, does Sesame Street still teach these valuable lessons, or ones like them that are more relevant to early 21st century childhood than late 20th century? Thanks, Jim Henson, for the Muppets that became such a wonderful part of our lives. 

Commute

So, normally I listen to NPR's Morning Edition on the way to work and All Things Consideredon the way home. I stay up on current events - listen to balanced news coverage and get the quirky lifestyle stories only NPR offers.

This means, however, that I don't listen to a lot of music in the car.  So, post concert on Sunday, I'm fixated on The End, the Black Eyed Peas current CD.  And, I walked into work with a little more pep in my step after a little "Boom Boom Pow" and "Meet Me Halfway".  We'll see if U2 helps me wind down. I've always been this way ... I get fixated on a song/album/artist and play it to death.  iTunes is good for me that way - I usually keep my music at work on shuffle, so I'll hear something not on my current fixation.

As a teenager, I had a subscription to Rolling Stone and was very into music - preferably punk & new wave. I LOVED the Sex Pistols & the Clash, the Police, Duran Duran, Modern English, etc. Oh, I'd listen to other stuff, too, but that was the music I loved. Had the poster of Sting from Dune hanging on my wall - girls, you know the one. Since then, my interest in music has waxed and waned.

It seems like the Hub & I go to more concerts now than we used to - and, I'm glad. There's a real energy in hearing old & new songs live. Sometimes at U2 on Sunday I'd close my eyes, forget the spectacle for a few minutes and just listen.

Concerts

Last night the U2 360-degree tour came to Norman, Okla. GREAT SHOW. Period. The Black Eyed Peas opened up for them - I love the Peas. Love them. And, they sounded really good live.  I didn't realize how much each member of the band carried each song.  They played for about an  hour ... opened with Let's Get it Started and closed with I've Got a Feeling.

Fergie was great - sounded fantastic.  Surprisingly, the Hub & I heard live versions of My Humps twice this weekend. First was the Dan Band spoof (which was good) and second was the real version last night. Where is the Love?  is probably my all-time fave song of theirs and they performed it beautifully to 50K-plus people. (ask me later about the bimbos in the bathroom line who didn't know who the Peas were ... seriously.)

I've had an interesting & varied concert life since about the 8th grade. Seminal year for me & live music.  My parents flew me to Tallahassee to see the Beach Boys; my mom drove Gigi Hemela, Heidi Smith, a couple of other girls and me to Lakeland to see Duran Duran (for which we got in trouble for not leaving the concert at the appointed time); and, the Clash at the Jai Alai Fronton in Fern Park. (I'm pretty sure my parents had never heard of the Clash, otherwise I wouldn't have been allowed to go. My friend Amy Fawcett won tickets from a radio station b/c her uncle did the makeup or costume design for Star Wars). But, back to last night ...

It was a beautiful night for an outdoor show. Clean, crisp fall air. The set looked like a spaceship with open views to the whole stage.  The staged worked fine for the Peas, but a little before 9P when David Bowie's Major Tom began, the entire set came to life. The first few songs were from the latest CD - No Line on the Horizon ... Breathe, Get On Your Boots & Magnificent. Then, straight back 15+ years to Mysterious Ways.U2 bounced back between classics & new and made it work in ways that other bands can't.

Bono brought his commitment to eradicating poverty and injustice across the world to Norman. I'm willing to bet that a good portion of the people in the stadium had no idea who Aung San Suu Kyi is and that she's been under house arrest in her native Burma (Myanmar) since 1990. One of the most moving parts of the show is Walk On dedicated to Suu Kyi - concertgoers don masks of Suu Kyi and walk on the stage, filling the 360 circle around the band. 

My personal favorite U2 song, Sunday Bloody Sunday, was sung against the backdrop of images of election protests in Iran.  The song that many of us remember from the video of the concert at Red Rocks, with its roots in the violence of Ireland still holds true to today as peoples across the world use religion as a weapon to oppress and marginalize fellow human beings. I have seen this song performed one other time - at the Clinton Presidential Library opening - an acoustic set by Bono & the Edge. Both times it has been moving & amazing.

The first encore brought Desmond Tutu to the screen talking about people being ONE to fight injustice. And, that we are all the people who stand up against injustice when we see it - be it apartheid, slavery or another form of oppression.  Then, out comes the band to One leading into Amazing Grace and to Where the Streets Have No Name. The second encore ended with With or Without You (which was my 1988 prom theme, I think.)

19 songs - almost 2 straight hours and I could have listened to more.

Collecting

I just learned last night about one of the country's most amazing gifts of art that is really a gift to all people in the U.S.  Have you heard of the Vogels?

Dorothy & Herbert Vogel lived in New York. Both born in the in the first half of the 20th century (before WWII), they dedicated their married life to collecting contemporary art. What's so unusual about that?  The Vogels weren't wealthy by any standard of measurement. He was a lifelong civil servant with the postal service and she was a reference librarian at the Brooklyn library. They lived in a one-bedroom apartment and used only one salary for living expenses and spent the other salary building one of this country's most influential contemporary art collections.

They desired to gift their collection to the National Gallery of Art. The challenge? The National Gallery couldn't accept the entire collection - it's too vast.  So, beginning in 1992, the Vogels began to gift and loan key pieces of the collection to the National Gallery. That takes care of about 1,000 pieces. What about the rest? You see, the Vogels cotinued to collect.  So, together with the National Gallery, they developed The Dorothy & Herbert Vogel Collection: Fifty Works for Fifty States.  50 works from the Vogel collection would be gifted to a cultural institution in each of the 50 US states.

A documentary has been made about them and their collection. Check your local PBS listings to find Herb & Dorothy on your dial.

This gift is available for ALL OF US to share. In Oklahoma, the Vogel Collection is at the Oklahoma City Musuem of Art. Where is the Vogel Collection in your state?

The Vogels make you think about how you spend your money. What's important to you? As they say in the documentary, "You don't have to be a Rockefeller to collect art."