Janet and Blake Vanderhoof, Photo by Lora Schraft, Gilroy Dispatch, permission to use granted by the Gilroy Dispatch

In his 1918 painting Interior with a Violin (Room at Hôtel Beau-Rivage), Matisse captured light by painting in black. The black works in the painting, doesn’t jump out at us, because in the composition Matisse created a harmony and balance through simplified forms. In other words, the viewer experiences light as a subtle, indirect force that is delicately balanced within the scene.

Look closely at the paintings by Janet Vanderhoof and one experiences light in the contrast of bright colors, particularly red. Light radiates thinly through her cityscapes. Allow your eyes to linger and you discover how the light shifts, moving among the pedestrians in a crosswalk, reflecting and refracting through the streets of Chinatown, or is held in the petals of flowers.

Twitter Followers, oil on linen by Janet Vanderhoof

In Janet’s paintings, as in Matisse’s and Edward Hopper’s work, there is an absence of unnecessary elements. The viewer’s eyes are free to roam. As the eyes travel over the canvas, a careful viewer will experience how the bright colors create a dichotomy that animates the scene. In part, this animation comes from the physical movements of the people in the environment of the cityscapes. As in Hopper’s works, there is a psychological tension that animates Janet’s paintings of people going about the routines of daily life. That tension is rooted in their solitariness, the divides of self-constructed barriers that separate people. Look carefully at the figures held in suspended animation moving through the crosswalk in “Twitter Followers”. They are closed off from one another even as they share a common path. There is another element weaving through Janet’s paintings as subtle as the light she captures. This is her faith. Examine closely her painting “The Empty Chair, for example. There is a sense of community, participation in, if not a common meal, a communion of sorts. Her faith is also articulated by the warmth of the colors she has elected to work with.

Whether we are looking at a cityscape or a landscape, Janet’s paintings invite the viewer to compose stories with her. It is the story that interests her. Those stories are as essential as the aesthetic construction in her paintings. They are as essential as the movement of light.

Q: There is an interesting story that you have told about how your father met your mother in France. Would you mind repeating that here?

A: At a very young age I always had a story to tell that I would repeat as if it was a script in a movie. This story started before I was born and included this event of how my father met my mother. It always delighted me to tell others. I found it so romantic and wonderful. My father was in the Army and had been stationed in Italy during WWII. Prior to his return to the US, he furloughed in Paris. My father was immediately attracted to my mother when she exited the Metro in front of the Opera in Paris. Although, he tried to get her attention and desired to have a cup of coffee with her, she was not amused. Even after being rejected he followed her to her apartment as she refused to communicate with him. Since she only spoke French and my father only spoke a few words of the language, this was easily done. On returning home, she closed the door behind him only to find him waiting, as she left her apartment with her sister. Luckily, my aunt instantly liked my father and talked my mother into letting him go to the café with them. One thing led to another and my mother ended up falling in love with my father and three months later they were married in Paris. My father had to return home without her, while my mother took the next government ship with other War Brides to meet him. She left her family in France and became a US citizen. I loved this story; it reminds me of a movie. I believed everyone should have a story and I was fortunate to have this one. I would wonder what the chances were that my father wouldn’t have met my mother and I wouldn’t have been born. It taught me there is a certain amount of fate in life, a predetermined destiny.

Empty Chair, oll on vellum by Janet Vanderhoof

Q: Because your father was in the military, you moved around a great deal. How did those years influence you creatively? Were either of your parents artistically inclined?

A I was born in Frankfurt, Germany, where my father had been stationed for a year. We returned to Fort Monmouth, New Jersey to live until I was three. The next move I believe made an impact on my creativity. We had moved to Adak, Alaska to live for the next two years. My father was in the Army Signal Corp. I believe he was stationed there to listen to the Russian airwaves. Adak is an island on the furthest end of the Aleutian Islands. I remember my father meeting us as we got off the battleship, seeing large chunks of ice floating in the water and my father in a fur-trimmed parka, ready to take us to our Quonset hut in his jeep. As you can see I have strong visual memories and again I found it very romantic. For the next two years I was totally immersed in nature. It is there where I feel my love of nature is found in my current paintings as well as the love of open space although they had no trees. Upon my return to California, I remember falling in love with trees, especially the oaks and eucalyptus and my desire to paint them.

I do believe that I had a lot of life experiences that were very visual and not common to most children at this young age. It made me worldly and enhanced my visual life and tastes.

My mother’s brother was an artist and my sister as well is talented in drawing skills. As for my mother, she was able to sew or knit anything and my father loved photography. I would watch my father develop photos in his makeshift studio in the kitchen. He had quite an eye.

Q: Your father passed away when you were nine years old. That is a difficult age to lose a parent. How do you think that changed you and affected your role as both a parent and your pursuit of a career as an artist?

A: Yes, it was very difficult. In 1960 my father had just come back from Vietnam. He had been stationed in Saigon to set up communications for the upcoming war. I had been without him for a year. I could see that being in Vietnam had changed him. Even at a young age I could sense the stress and pain that occurred from being there. It ended up being too much for his heart. Three months after his return he died of a massive heart attack at 40 years old. I had the shock of seeing my father die. Prior to my father dying I felt very secure and confident. After I felt like the rug had been pulled from underneath me. Everything I knew to be as true was no longer true. I was forced to be an adult at nine years old. I became a problem solver, independent and resourceful, since my mother had to go back to work and I was left alone most of the time to take care of myself. I was taught to become a survivor like my mother and my choices of my career and desires were always based on being able to take care of myself as well as provide for myself, thus art took a back burner. It was only later after I had my children that I was able to pursue art. As far as how it affected my parenting, I made sure I was always there for my children. I believe parenting is so important and that your children should be well provided for emotionally, physically and mentally. It was paramount that my children discover their own dreams and to know that they can do anything they put their minds to.

Q: Based on your experience, what advice do you have for those who find themselves deterred from their desire to be creatively expressive because of family or other difficult circumstances?

A: I wish I had used my creative expression to heal after my father died. Even if you are not using this creative expression as a career, it needs to be expressed. In fact, I realize that not expressing it can cause all sorts of problems physically or emotionally. If you have the gift it needs to be shared. By not expressing this gift, you will continue to find frustration. It currently has helped me through very difficult times.

Q: Your mother’s experience during the Second World War was, to use your words, “survival orientated.” How has that influenced your art in terms of expressing yourself and marketing your work?

A: Now there is a positive and a negative to being survival oriented. The negative is that I may take fewer risks with my art. I push myself to take chances and explore different avenues instead of taking the safe route with my creativity, which isn’t always easy. I know that it can be my downfall. The positive side is I am goal oriented in productivity and focused on marketing my art. I treat creating art as a business, not a hobby. I avoid the stereotypical view of the “starving artist”; I have been taught the practicality of money.

Q: What brought you to art? To put this in another way, who or what inspired you to express yourself creatively?

A: My sister would always draw; her art resembled Matisse and Picasso’s style. I found it fascinating and inspired me to draw, as well. She is quite talented. At school, drawing and art always came naturally to me. I do remember most of my peers felt I was an artist before I did. They would often nominate me to do the murals for the prom and school events.

Q: Though you refer to your work as “Modern Impressionism,” Fauvism is your primary influence. Among this group, whom Louis Vauxcelles referred to as the Fauves (“wild beasts”), we find Henri Matisse, André Derain, Maurice de Vlaminck, Kees van Dongen. Their use of color is bold and dramatic. There is an expressive value to their strokes. Was it their high keyed colors and the quality of their brush strokes, besides the scenes they captured, or something more that attracted you to their work? Do you recall your first visit to a museum or art gallery?

A: I was certainly attracted to their use of color, since color is my first love. But I was also attracted to the emotions created by using the color expressionistically. I never felt a need to use local color in my paintings. The Fauves reinforced this belief of painting how the object made you feel, not what it actually was. I admired the Fauves strong sense of design and powerful compositions of which I always strive for.

The most memorable and exciting visit to an art museum was at the Galerie nationale du Jeu de Paume in Paris. I was in my early twenties. The museum housed important Impressionist works now housed in the Musee d’Orsay. The art spoke to me and immediately satisfied my sensibilities of taste in art, which now carries over into my work today.

Gauguin In Hanalei, acrylic on canvas by Janet Vanderhoof

Q: You were also influenced by the School of Color and Light and the German Expressionists. Do you recall the first time you saw the work that came out of these schools and your response to paintings by these artists?

A: I was first attracted to the mud heads inspired by Hawthorne’s teachings. He would send his group of students to the beach and have them paint a figure backlit. They were only allowed to use a large trowel to create the painting, forcing them to be loose. I loved the raw large shapes using the correct color to represent the exact value. Their choice of color was based on the relationships created from one color next to each other, creating the key and atmosphere of the day. I had taken some plein air classes with Camille Przewodek. Although, I do not prefer plein air painting, practicing this method has helped me create light and atmosphere in my studio paintings.

I first remember seeing the German Expressionists, The Blue Rider group, in books I found at the library when I started on my journey to become an artist. Their paintings had a tendency to be moody and somber. Also, their use of color was symbolic, each color representing a mood or instrument. I loved their spontaneity with the desire to express how they feel being their main focus.

Q: You have written, “Learning the rules of good composition is important, but in the end you must make a decision for yourself.” Who were the art teachers that influenced your creative development?

A: I had no interest in taking the academic route to studying art, although I read many books on my own about the artists I love. I already had a degree in Speech Pathology. My desire was to learn from the best and actively be learning the craft. In the beginning I did attend a local junior college, taking all their classes available, except sculpture. It was a great way to study the basics of color, design, drawing and painting. At the same time I was also taking private lessons for two years with Diane Wallace, who is local to the area. She is an excellent teacher in regards to color and composition. I then studied painting and life drawing with George de Groat in Carmel, California for two years. George taught me more about the body in one lesson than I could learn in two years at college.

Color became very important to me and I wanted to enhance this aspect of my work. Mike Linstrom was pivotal in my increased knowledge of color, and color composition. Since I also love to paint bright colors, he also taught me the importance of neutrals. Mike also introduced me to Camille Przewodek who was from the School of Color and Light. In addition, I have taken workshops with Charles Movalli, Charles Sovek and many others. I had some wonderful teachers of which I highly regard and welcome their influences.

Q: On your website you have a quote from the caricaturist Al Hirshfield. “Artists are just children who refuse to put down their crayons.” In your art, what is the role of a “childlike” openness to life, a willingness to explore and be imaginative?

A: I have never wanted to draw or paint realistically. Might as well take a photo. I am always open to creating in new ways and looking at things differently. I will continue to explore and discover new ways of expressing myself. I always allow a certain amount of play in my creating that is restrained with knowledge and the ability to make rules that are broken work.

No One’s Home, acrylic on canvas by Janet Vanderhoof

Q: Your paintings reveal a diversity of interests and topics. It is as if you are taking those who view your art on an emotional life journey. Most artists limit the scope of subjects and interest. You give yourself wide latitude. To what do you attribute this diversity?

A: From day one I told myself that in order for me to grow, I must learn how to use a variety of pallets and subject matter. I tend to do a series when painting, focusing on one subject. In doing that I have grown in many ways. Submersing myself in a variety of subjects and color has enabled me to be a better artist. I guess I want to be able to paint anything and not be limited by lack of knowledge.

Q: You have written, “I have painted many series from horses, flowers, people, still life, etc., but I do believe that I will always be known for my color.” Experimentation is an essential aspect of discovery. Having fallen in love with color before kindergarten, when your mother gave you a box of crayons, you have said that color is “the emotional force behind all my paintings.” How did that gift of crayons shape your sensibility of and to color, shape, line and contrast? How important does experimentation with color remain to your creative process?

A: Color is the emotional life force in my painting. Frankly, as I have said before, if I didn’t have color, I would have no need to be an artist. Color is like music; it involves an endless amount of notes that can be arranged in a limitless amount of ways. I explore a variety of pallets with my sole intention to wow the viewer. I love hearing I have never seen these colors together before. Colors have personalities like humans, and I am fascinated by these relationships created in an environment. I remember this exploration first started with a box of 64 color Crayola crayons, which included colors such as magenta, apricot, burnt sienna. It was the beginning of my ability to mix and match colors that had similar names to some of the paint colors used today. Crayola was the only brand I would use. Even then I was concerned with the quality of my materials.

Q: In Jacques Rivière’s essay, Present Tendencies in Painting, he observed that the cubists’ painters were asking questions about what must be put in place of lighting and perspective. When you are painting, do you find yourself thinking along those lines, say of “renouncing light” or even adding light to capture the essence and permanence of the person or object you are painting?

A: Yes, sometimes I use light as a light source and others times I use light as a compositional component. In the end what is always more important to me is the composition and the impact the light creates. You can always make up a reason why the light is a certain way.

Q: Faith and spirituality are important aspects of your life. In one of your essays you stated, “Remember what are your intentions? Is it to be right or righteous or is it to have love as the outcome? Let that be your barometer. Is your intention of love? Is it selfish or selfless? When you hear yourself say, what about me, you miss the mark.” How do these questions guide your creative expression as a painter, a poet and a writer? Is painting a form of spiritual exercise for you? Can it be compared to Saint Ignatius or other spiritual meditative exercises?

A: Faith and spirituality are very important to me. In fact, it was my spiritual journey that began my quest to become an artist. I always begin my paintings with an inspiration and I do believe they come from a higher place. There are moments when I create that feels as if I am channeling an energy that is beyond my own. I become the watcher. I totally lose myself. I lose the concept of time. I find myself in another dimension that allows for all possibilities. This happens at times when I am open to the spirit and less attached to the outcome as well as relinquishing control. I find myself in that space of receiving and co-creating. This doesn’t happen every time, but ideally this is the most desirable. I hope the viewer can feel this intention and also find it very healing when viewing my art.

Q: How has having a child with Down syndrome influenced your creativity?

A: In imperfection there can be so much beauty. Blake has allowed me to be imperfect and be all right with it. He has made me realize there is no such thing as perfection and gives me permission to be fearless when creating. After having Blake I realized that I needed to follow my dreams and not be afraid to do so. I needed this courage, especially since I started to become an artist at such a late age.

Q: There is a great deal of psychology in Edward Hopper’s work, just as there is in your own. And like Hopper, you seem disinterested in the symbolic effects, expressing what you perceive in a direct and uncomplicated manner. You keep the loneliness and isolation, the absence of communication and communion, the psychological tension right on the surface of your work just as Hopper did. In other words, there is an absence of symbolism, but a wealth of meaning. The difference between your work and Hopper’s is that in your work there is a possibility for that isolation to be broken, more of a sense of a communal experience. There is an introspective element to your work, but there is an extrovert’s hope rooted in your faith. And your faith is finding expression in the colors you use that express warmth. Would you agree with this assessment? Are you challenging the viewer’s perception of her or himself in the environment you paint?

A: Yes, there is a “possibility for that isolation to be broken”. I am always looking for hope in the painting as well as compassion. My colors also express that hope through their brightness. I take great care when developing the composition. I do like to eliminate anything that is frivolous or doesn’t lend to the composition. By doing this I feel my work is honest and upfront. Hopefully, I challenge the viewer to see beauty in unlikely subject matter and by simplifying my work it forces them to connect to the subject. There is nothing better than to have the viewer step into the painting, not in a realistic way but a psychological way, whether it brings up a memory or an awareness. The less elements to distract the viewer the better, plus I believe it gives the painting a more dramatic impact.

Q: Your painting “The Empty Chair” seems to invoke Hopper’s 1942 painting “Nighthawks.” Unlike Hopper, your cityscapes often raise a sense, if not the possibility of community and human interaction, rather than isolation. There is also a sense of movement rather than inertia. In part this sense of connectedness between people is due to your use of color, which tends to be vibrant. How much of an influence was Hopper on your development?

A: Well I do feel in most of my cityscapes there is always a sense of being alone in a crowd. So often in real life, we can be ignored and unseen no matter what we are doing. I am also interested in the story of each individual I paint and how they juxtapose each other in a crowd. Questions such as “What are they thinking?” “Where are they going?” or “What is their story?” come to mind when I am painting. Just as characters in a book are written and come to life, I feel my characters also have a life of their own. My trees in my landscapes are like people as well with their own stories to tell. I have been told often that my work resembles Hopper’s. I love his work, but never intended my work to be like his. I guess we are kindred spirits.

Not Kiki’s Market, acrylic on canvas by Janet Vanderhoof

Q: In your painting “It’s Not Kiki’s Market, II” there is a lot of color and contrast that captures shopping in Chinatown. In “Twitter Followers,” the movement is stiff, the subjects are marching, they seem almost unconscious to their environment. They move in solitary absorption. When you create these paintings, how immersed do you allow your senses to be to enter into a scene prior to and during the painting process? Are you emotionally responding to the nature of the moment?

A: I don’t separate myself from the person. I am a very empathetic person in nature. I become one with the people I paint as well as I want to hear what they have to say, even when most people wouldn’t listen. And it is for that reason I paint the common person. Emotion is an integral part of my paintings. I always respond emotionally to the painting as I paint in reaction to the subject, action and most of all color.

Q:: What is your preferred method of working; plein air or in the studio working from either photographs or sketches you have made of scenes for a possible painting?

A: I’m a studio painter. I do not enjoy painting plein air. I do enjoy manipulating the scene from photographs that I take. I do take the photographs with the intention of a certain subject or composition. I take many photos and combine and subtract from the photos as well as change the color pallet and lighting. The photograph is the jump off point but it isn’t copied. Usually the process starts in my mind of which I tend to paint the painting in my mind many times before I start. I have to build up the feeling and the intention first. It’s as if I am practicing choreography for a musical. Then when I am ready, the energy explodes and flies on the canvas. Then the painting tells me what it wants to be.

Q: What is the purpose of art?

A: For me the purpose of art is to express beauty, to heal, to take the viewer on a journey of exploration and discovery and to experience the sublime.

Q: It seems that today, with the proliferation of B.F.A. and M.F.A. programs that the emphasis falls on learning techniques of art; reducing art to a commodity, rather than a deeper expression of one’s own voice in interpreting the world around us. Picasso has observed that “The purpose of art is washing the dust of daily life off our souls.” If you were afforded the opportunity to address a convention of artist students, their families, what would you say to them?

A: Well I do believe you hit on something when mentioning expressing your own voice. In an ideal world it is desirable to explore your own voice. I would say that don’t let the academic aspect of the craft influence you to the point where your paintings don’t become identifiable as your own. You can be influenced, but as soon as your paintings become a replica of someone else’s you have lost the point of creating. Just as you are an original so is your ability to have a voice that is unique to all other artists. It is only in that uniqueness that you will truly discover the ultimate in creating. Our job is to be the poet, the preacher, to enhance the vibration of the world by our creations.

Image Credits

Twitter Followers, Empty Chair,  Gauguin In Hanalei © Janet Vanderhoof – All Rights Reserved
Janet and Blake Vanderhoof, Photo by Lora Schraft, Gilroy Dispatch, permission to use granted by the Gilroy Dispatch

See more of Janet Vanderhoof’s art at her website janetvanderhoof.com

Palin was in Toronto to receive the Royal Canadian Geographical Society’s (RCGS) Gold Medal for promoting geographic literacy. One of my roles was to take jet-lagged, but ever good-natured Michael to his many scheduled television and newspaper interviews throughout Thursday and Friday. Sought after by major media outlets we could have easily doubled the number of interviews without any effort were it not for required downtime, the RCGS awards ceremony, a major RCGS reception with over 700 attendees and a RCGS donor’s luncheon, along with a private visit to the Art Gallery of Ontario.

Michael Palin giving his RCGS Gold Medal acceptance speech
at the Royal Conservatory of Music, University of Toronto.

Over those two days I was deeply touched by how many people approached Michael to express the positive impact his comedy had had on their lives. Others were impacted by his travel and geography documentaries and books mentioning the “Palin effect” that inspired them to travel to, and learn more about, the geographical areas he had featured.

The pace of the two-day, whirlwind visit was brutal. So it came as a surprise when Michael invited Andre Prefontaine, a RCGS colleague of mine, and me for dinner that Thursday night. I was beat after the day’s activities and could only imagine how tired Michael must have been. Since we were all staying at the Fairmont Royal York Hotel we decided to have a late night dinner at its EPIC Lounge.

Preferring craft beer over wine I quickly intervened when the waiter came to our table to ask for our drinks order and convinced my two dining companions to try locally crafted beer from the micro breweries in Toronto’s downtown core. With the arrival of our main meal we ordered two bottles of Ontario and British Columbian wines and settled in for a long, enjoyable evening of relaxed conversation.

Michael signing copies of his new book Brazil after the RCGS Gold Medal award ceremony.

While attending school in England the first country that Michael learned about was Canada. “Canada is a great country for geography,” said Michael. “Winter figures very large in the Canadian mentality. Enduring long winters seems to give Canadians a sense of humour to endure it.

“In fact the first overseas sale of Monty Python was to the CBC (Canadian Broadcasting Corporation),” said Michael with a smile. “They only aired it for a few weeks before pulling it off the air and Canadians came out in the streets during January and demanded that Monty Python be brought back and it was. Monty Python owes a lot to Canadians. I think that Monty Python is to Canada what Jerry Lewis is to France.”

Eventually the conversation led to 1966 and the BBC’s Frost Report, where Michael met the other members of what would become Monty Python. The Frost Report is similar to today’s Daily Show as it took current issues and would tell them through comedy.

Always interested in geography and historic settings Michael and Director Terry Gilliam had to convince John Cleese and Eric Idle to film Monty Python and the Holy Grail outside London away from stage sets. They wanted the movie filmed at a Heritage Trust castle in Scotland. A couple of weeks before filming was to start the Trust changed its position. Scrambling to find another Scottish castle they came across Doune Castle which at the time was privately owned. Today Doune Castle draws large numbers of tourists who come to visit the castle where Monty Python and the Holy Grail was filmed.

Andre and I were fascinated by what provided the inspiration for the humour that is uniquely Monty Python, Michael reflected and said,” the guys in Monty Python were all from smaller communities outside London and came from middle class backgrounds. We all went to university and had varied academic backgrounds in law, medicine, history, English and other subjects. We weren’t part of the London’s stodgy ruling classes and our humour took on accepted norms as to what humour should be.”

“We all wrote our own sketches in separate offices and would get together weekly to bring forward our ideas. The best sketches were ranked and we would then figure out how to string them together using Terry Gilliam’s animation and filmed inserts”

As with everything else in life, timing is everything. “Up until the Beatles American culture dominated Britain,” Michael said. “But with the Beatles leading the British musical invasion of the US it opened up America to British culture, but it wasn’t until 1973 that Monty Python was accepted by the Americans”. That said, Canadians embraced Monty Python much earlier, with or without the Beatles and Americans, to us Lumber Jacks Monty Python is okay and will always be our Jerry Lewis.

For a listing of Michael Palin’s travel and geography documentaries and books,
visit Palin’s Travels.

Photo Credits

All Photos By Royal Canadian Geographical Society – All Rights Reserved

With Suman nearly 2 years old, Maya was due to give birth any day with their second child. Throughout her pregnancy Maya didn’t receive pre-natal care even though hospitals and clinics were within walking distance of the slum. Her second birthing experience was no less dramatic than Suman’s birth in Nepal. Home alone once again, she felt a sharp pain and realized quickly that the baby was getting close. She climbed down the rickety wooden ladder to the tap below and began washing her face and was about to call her husband. (During this part of our conversation Maya became very animated and laughed as she told the story). Still standing over the tap, she heard the small cry of a child and looked down. Without so much of a warning or much pain at all, the newest addition to her family was poking his head out of the bottom of her loose pants. She let out a small scream to alert her neighbours and sat below her tap with her newborn son wrapped in her clothing. (Maya laughed loudly as she explained the story and said she literally felt no pain when he was born.) Neighbours arrived and helped cut the cord, freeing her son. The birth of a son is a joyous occasion for most Indian/Nepalese families and they decided to name their new son Prem, which means “love.” Prem’s interesting birth experience may explain his fear of heights and swings.

Mumbai, the city of dreams, draws thousands of rural Nepali villagers every year to the already overcrowded streets with rumours of well paying jobs, hospitals and schools. These rumours travel on the backs of distant relatives and friends who send back stories of their success, whether true or not, luring families with bright hopes and dreams. Mumbai has an altogether different reality and the dreams are available for the relatively lucky ones. With a population of nearly 20 million people, over half of the city live in slum communities made up of rural villagers from India and Nepal.

Pramad and Maya soon realized that life in the big city was never going to be easy with two mouths to feed, rent and bills to pay. Tension grew in the small home spilling over into physical and emotional abuse, with the blows landing hard on a frightened Maya. As tensions grew, so did the violence in the home with the realization that Maya was pregnant once again. Suman and Prem were also very sick, weak from malnutrition, worms and overall bad health. Maya attempted to borrow money from neighbours but with no luck. The children were taken to small clinics, but when the prescriptions came Maya’s husband ripped them up because they didn’t have the money to fill them.

This first time I met Maya, she was five months pregnant with two very sick children in her arms. She barely looked me in the eyes as Ashley and I asked her questions about her children and their health. The next day we took Maya and her children to a hospital and found out just how sick they were. We also learned that Maya had ingested a small amount of poison in an attempt to abort her third child. The doctor prescribed supplements, de-worming medications and a new diet for the children that DWP supports financially. An ultra sound gave us the good news that Maya’s unborn baby appeared healthy. Maya was given a choice by the doctor to abort this 5 month old fetus and she quietly refused. Over the next few months, my mom, Ashley and I visited with the family daily and started to see signs of improvement in the children. Their eyes became less glazed over and even brimmed with excitement from time to time and we were excited to see them slightly rambunctious. Just under a year ago, Maya gave birth to the worlds most precious and beautiful baby girl. (Those of you who have had the opportunity to visit DWP here in Mumbai, can back me up on this.) Little Nandini was born in a hospital and is the first person in the family to have a birth record. The last year has seen tremendous change in the kids. Both Suman and Prem are now enrolled in our free Kindergarten School. Suman is attentive and eager to learn. Prem, although bright and energetic, is more interested in his toes, but he likes his uniform. The kids laugh easily, their good health allowing them excess energy to burn. All about mischief, they are adept at hiding, playing and initiating a chase. Suman is often seen lugging a smiling, teething, Nandini on her hip searching the laneway for someone to play with.

Photo Credits

All photos by Kane Ryan

Portrait of Prem

Nandini sharing her orange with Kane.

Prem standing outside the school.

So the artists get lumped together under the harsh light of celebrity with all the rest—the pretty faces that make box office millions, the sophomoric cretins, and the comic-book caricatures who become governors and even presidents. Perhaps it is time to shine a different-coloured light on those actors who time and again take on roles that test their skill and extend their range, who create, through thoughtful and thorough preparation and through courageous commitment, unique characters of great emotional and (sometimes intellectual) depth. Names like Philip Seymour Hoffman, the late Heath Ledger, Jessica Lange, and Cate Blanchett come to mind. But the epitome of such artistry is unquestionably Meryl Streep.

I have not seen every Streep movie and I am sure there are some I have seen and forgotten about, but in the thirty-year period from Sophie’s Choice to The Iron Lady I have experienced enough magnificent performances to convince me that she is the finest cinema actor in the English language. I love Katharine Hepburn and I believe that she was a wonderful actress, but when I see her in a film, I see Katharine Hepburn, no matter what role she is playing. The same can be said for Jack Nicholson and Julianne Moore. But when Streep plays Karen Blixen, I know I am watching the strong-willed Danish woman who seeks in Africa the life and the love she cannot have. When she plays Julia Child I see the woman who charmed millions of American television viewers with her loving but down-to-earth approach to French cooking. And in The Iron Lady there was hardly a scene in which I recognized Streep playing Margaret Thatcher; I saw only the Iron Lady herself.

In a June 4, 1989 review of the VHS release of A Cry in the Dark, New York Times critic Stephen Holden said of the actress, “Meryl Streep, unlike most film actresses, doesn’t bend her personality gently in the direction of a role. She invents her characters from scratch, creating an entirely different physical vocabulary for each part. One comes away from her performances with the sense of people who are much more than well-observed types. Each is a complex, quirky little universe.”

This “quirky little universe” that is a Streep character, with the accents, the facial expressions, the gestures that make the character both compelling and individual, is Streep’s trademark; it is what sets her apart from the crowd of good, even outstanding actors. In a television interview with Harry Smith after the release of One True Thing, Smith asked her: “Every time I see you on screen, whatever role it is you choose, the second I see you in it, you own it. Your voice is different, you physically may be different. How do you do that?” Streep replied, “Oh well,” and then in an Eastern European accent, “that’s acting.” And she laughed. “I mean it is. That’s what I like to do. That’s total immersion into possibility, a life I could imagine I lived, and that’s infinitely interesting to me.”

While Streep is invariably casual or offhand in remarks about her craft, perhaps disguising a reluctance to talk about this aspect of her work for fear of it being trivialized or misinterpreted by media that focus on the titillations of celebrity, there is no question that a great deal of hard work goes into the creation and the portrayal of each of her characters. She allegedly spent four and a half months studying Polish and German for her role in Sophie’s Choice. For Music of the Heart she practised the violin five or six hours a day for two months. One can only imagine the hours of reading, research, and rehearsal that went into her roles in Out of Africa, Julie and Julia, and The Iron Lady.

But there is something beyond great talent and diligence that informs the cinematic performances of Meryl Streep. A clue to the nature of this artistic alchemy may be found in the words of John Patrick Shanley, director and screenwriter of Doubt, in which Streep plays the fearsome but ultimately very human Sister Aloysius. In the director’s commentary on the DVD version of the movie Shanley describes the filming of the last scene, in which Sister Aloysius breaks down in front of the younger nun, Sister James.

“The amazing thing is that we did the first take in a wider shot and when we got to that point in the scene, Meryl completely broke down. I was very concerned because I knew I wasn’t going to want to be that wide…and I wondered if she could ever do it again. So I immediately abandoned that size and went into a close-up for the second take. Uh…she broke down again, and she broke down with an equal ferocity and genuineness over and over again, take after take, in different sizes, when the camera was on her and when it wasn’t. I remember Amy Adams [Sister James] walking away after this scene and just saying, ‘Meryl Streep. Wow! Now I know why she is Meryl Streep.’”

Streep herself, in a word of advice to younger actors, says that, “if you want [a career] that feeds your soul, I do think you have to go to the limit of experience.” In film after film we see her doing just that. And you only have to watch Sophie’s Choice or The Bridges of Madison County—I mean really watch—to understand that she takes us with her to the limit of experience and through that journey she feeds our soul.

Let us take a look at three Meryl Streep films, from three different decades, paying particular attention to the nuances of her performance in each, with the aim of perhaps teasing out a fuller understanding of the art of this great actor. The films are Sophie’s Choice (1982), The Bridges of Madison County (1995), and Doubt (2008).

Sophie’s Choice

In William Styron’s novel the least fully developed character is Sophie Zawistowski, the beautiful, troubled Polish refugee who lives in the Pink Palace, a Brooklyn rooming house. The narrator, called Stingo, a callow writer from the South who has come to New York to pen his first novel, is far more sharply delineated, as is Nathan Landau, Sophie’s lover, a fiercely intelligent, pathologically mercurial man who exercises a frightening degree of control the other two; both are also denizens of the Pink Palace.

I do think that, in a sense, Styron over-wrote the character of Sophie by providing in the novel such extensive detail of Auschwitz and of the horrors she experienced in the camp. The reader is overwhelmed by the author’s and Sophie’s recounting of the nightmare of Auschwitz-Birkenau and the soul-destroying guilt over the choice that she was forced to make when she arrived there on the train from Warsaw. It is as if all nuances of Sophie’s character have been scared away by the demons and the ghosts that followed her to America and are with her always. Moreover, she is utterly under the spell of Nathan’s powerful and dangerous personality. In the novel, then, it is Stingo who emerges, almost by default but also perhaps through the author’s unconscious choice, as the most interesting character.

In the film Streep gives us a Sophie who is still entirely defined by the searing tragedy she has endured, but with the mass of detail necessarily removed and our gaze fixed on the person of Sophie herself, her pain becomes a fully realized character of its own. And Streep mines every facet of this character, bringing out, sometimes in a dizzying succession of soft and loud notes, the guilt, the anger, the fear, the humiliation, the physical torment and deprivation brought upon her by the Nazi occupation of her homeland and by the eighteen months she spent as a prisoner in Auschwitz.

The opening sequences of scenes in the film, which take place in the Pink Palace and in the amusement park at Coney Island, are a breathtaking overture to Sophie’s and Nathan’s reckless race toward doom and a virtuosic display of Streep’s range and depth as an actor. One of these sequences will serve admirably as an example.

But first a note about accents. Streep’s skill in this area is such that following the inevitable few seconds of surprise when we first hear “Meryl Streep” speaking with a Polish accent, the accent merges with the character and Streep-with-an-accent disappears for the rest of the film. I have found this to be true with every character requiring an accent or a particular tone or timbre that she plays. Moreover, in Sophie’s Choice, in the scenes set in Auschwitz, she actually speaks flawless Polish and German.

The sequence takes place on Sunday morning in Sophie’s room at the Pink Palace. Stingo has been invited to breakfast after a disastrous first meeting with Nathan and Sophie the night before, in which Nathan raged at Sophie, insulted Stingo, and stormed out of the house. The couple has made up and apologies have been offered to Stingo. As Stingo comes into the room, Nathan and Sophie, dressed in outlandish clothing of the twenties, are frenetically dancing the Charleston to music playing on the phonograph. From her expression and the stiffness of her dancing, it is clear that she is not enjoying the dance but is going along with the impulsive Nathan.

In the subsequent scenes, Streep reveals to us, through facial expressions ranging from a varied assortment of smiles—forced, coquettish, self-deprecating, nostalgic, loving—to a sneer, to looks of haughtiness, irritation, hatred, and sadness, and through an entire lexicon of utterly unaffected gestures, a substantial chunk of the character of Sophie Zawistowski. She does this, in her broken English that is at once charming and heart-breaking, in less than eight minutes of screen time. What is more astonishing is that later on in the film, we discover that half of what she said in this sequence was a lie! It is simply impossible for me to imagine any other actress able to so completely inhabit the psyche of a woman from a radically different culture, era, and experience and with such a burden of pain and guilt.

It must be acknowledged here that Kevin Kline and Peter MacNicol are magnificent as Nathan and Stingo, respectively. Kline perfectly captures the schizophrenia that drives Nathan from one extreme of frenzied enthusiasm or rapturous adoration to the other of raging paranoia. MacNicol is equally compelling as the love-starved, idol-worshiping writer who is swept up in the tumultuous lives of the couple upstairs. But in the end it is Streep who holds us in her spell with a performance that must be rated as one of the finest in modern cinema.

It is possible to see on YouTube, the last recorded performance of Vladimir Horowitz playing the Concerto No. 3 in D Minor by Rachmaninoff, with Zubin Mehta and the New York Philharmonic Orchestra in 1978. The concerto is technically demanding for the pianist; it is, in fact, nothing less than the devil Himself. The piece is filled with pain and pathos and tragedy, expressed in a panoply of musical register. Evoked through the heart and mind and hands of a maestro like Horowitz, it is a work of exquisite sublimity. If the story of Sophie Zawistowski is the Third Concerto, Meryl Streep is indeed Vladimir Horowitz, calling upon her considerable range of technical resources and reaching into her very soul to deliver a performance whose success in moving us to our core merits nothing less than the thunderous ovation of the audience and the beautiful smile on the face of Zubin Mehta we see at the end of the Rachmaninoff.

The Bridges of Madison County

Here again, we observe a shift in emphasis between the book and the movie. Robert James Waller’s novel is as much about Robert Kincaid, a rugged loner who takes photographs for a living, as it is about Francesca Johnson, the middle-aged Italian émigré who is spiritually languishing on an Iowa farm. Thanks to a fine screenplay by Richard LaGravanese (Waller’s novel is mediocre at best) and to the acting of Meryl Streep, the film focuses, as it should, on Francesca; the conflict in the story is hers.

I have heard people say that they consider Streep’s performance in this film to be over the top; I do not find it so. Francesca Johnson is a subtler role for Streep (even the accent is subtler), one that she may not have been able to pull off in 1982 when she was thirty-three. The rural housewife’s pain is less intense, less raw than Sophie Zawistowski’s; it is mitigated by the quiet joys of a close-knit family, by the comforting simplicity of a country life. Francesca suffers from no great emotional or psychological affliction; her husband is not a dangerous paranoid schizophrenic and she does not live with the guilt of having had to select one of her children for death so that the other might live. Francesca suffers merely from a longing for what could have been, from the disappointment of dreams not realized; she listens to opera on the kitchen radio—when her children don’t change the station to rock and roll—instead of sitting in the audience at the Metropolitan in New York.

As I have stated elsewhere on this site, The Bridges of Madison County is a “small story.” There is no great war, no Holocaust looming darkly in the background. It is just a story of two lonely people whom cruel destiny brings together and whom duty, convention, and a different kind of love quickly tear apart leaving only the searing memory and the artefacts of four days of bliss. Much of the story unfolds in a farmhouse kitchen—no romantic landscapes, no lavish hotels, no stirring violins—so it is up to Streep to keep us interested.

A word about Clint Eastwood: fine director, wooden actor; he has the range of a party favour. In this film, his rugged looks suit the role of the National Geographic photographer perfectly, but he is simply incapable of revealing the nuances of Waller’s sensitive, mystical, talented loner. For this reason, Streep’s job is even more challenging as she must compensate for the unfortunate distraction.

In a single scene, almost entirely through gesture and facial expression, Streep tells us the story of Francesca’s life on the farm and gives us a clue to the nature of the agonizing dilemma she will soon face. It is dinnertime at the Johnsons: Francesca is putting the meal on the table as the radio plays opera; it must be a piece she likes because she has just turned up the volume. She calls the children and her husband (in that order) and each of them allows the screen door to slam as they come in and sit at the table, jarring her nerves; she looks up in resigned exasperation as her daughter changes the radio station. There is no dinner conversation and Francesca is bored to the point that she has no interest in eating the meal she has prepared; yet she looks at her silent and insensitive family with the eyes of love, a faint smile gracing her lips, then disappearing, then appearing again and finally dissolving as she absently pulls at a strand of hair and looks into the distance.

The early scenes with Eastwood/Kincaid are masterful. At first Francesca is intrigued by his un-Iowan spontaneity; he has actually been to Bari, her home town in Italy (“You just got off the train because it looked pretty?”). And she is physically attracted to him; she watches him with a kind of growing erotic interest as he preps his shoot of Roseman Bridge. The dialogue is terse; all is told through expression and subtle shifts in posture. And there is a tension between attraction and circumspection which Streep expresses through brusqueness and avoidance of direct looks until Francesca and Robert are actually sitting across from each other at the Johnsons’ kitchen table. When she finally begins to let herself go with him, we are allowed to see the years of frustration and loneliness rise to the surface along with the joy of being near a man who thinks deeply, takes risks, and expresses himself with wit and articulation.

As the emotional intensity quickly builds, Streep does not just move forward with the passion of the affair; she brings along all of the baggage—the disappointment, the spiritual inertia, the traditional beliefs about family—that has been accumulated by Francesca over a lifetime and invites us to peek into that baggage in order to better understand the terrible dilemma she faces. As Oprah Winfrey would say: “Layers!”

Doubt

At the beginning of the film we see Sister Aloysius at morning Mass. As the priest, Father Flynn (Philip Seymour Hoffman), is giving his sermon, she is walking down the side aisle of the church, quietly but deliberately smacking and barking at inattentive students from St. Nicholas School. Later, as students line up outside the school in preparation to begin their day, Sister Aloysius is watching from a window above, and when a boy touches the young nun, Sister James, who is in charge of the line-up, we suddenly hear, “Boy! William London! Come up here.” And there is silence on the ground as all young eyes turn upward. After Sister has dragged William off to her lair, Father Flynn, who has been mingling with the students, says to the young nun, “The dragon is hungry.” Sister James smiles in spite of herself.

Sister Aloysius is a scary creature, and it is easy for those of us who remember such creatures from our elementary school days—the movie is set in 1964—to project those memories on to Sister Aloysius. For she is stern, strict, eternally vigilant, intolerant, and sometimes even mean, and the students are afraid of her. Sister Aloysius is a far different role for Streep from Sophie Zawistowski and Francesca Johnson—the actress is now 59, after all—but again she fully inhabits the character and fully humanizes her. The angst is still there but it is now cleverly hidden behind a no-nonsense façade.

Screenwriter-director Shanley has a more positive view of Sister Aloysius than we the viewers might have. He believes that she is “a real defender of good against evil, and she knows which is which.” And he calls her stance Victorian in that she believes there is a clear line between the two. Aloysius also reflects some of Shanley’s own views about education, that the nun “represents a major strand of what I believe about what is good in education, and the separation between adults and children: that in fact some of things that were encouraged in terms of education in the Church in the early sixties, which were “Be friends with the kid,” sort of blurred the line between adulthood and childhood and had people who had been very proscribed—these priests and these nuns—cross a certain invisible line and put them in territory that they didn’t completely understand. And I think some of these priests got in big trouble because of that.”

Thus Shanley makes Sister Aloysius a considerably more nuanced character than the viewer might at first see. She was once married (her husband died in the war); she possesses a wry sense of humour; she has accepted a black boy into her school and is concerned for his welfare; she cares for the older and frailer nuns at St. Nicholas, protecting them from the cold calculation of the male-dominated clerical culture. Streep brings out these nuances brilliantly in her portrayal of the nun. Throughout the film she dangles before us this human side of Sister Aloysius as a counterpoint to her natural dislike and her general suspicion of Father Flynn and ultimately her unshakable certainty of his guilt and her determination to destroy him even in the absence of clear proof. What she is doing is clearly monstrous but we cannot possibly hate her for it; this is where the magic of Streep’s art lies.

In the final scene (in which Streep/Sister Aloysius breaks down so convincingly), Sister James has returned to St. Nicholas from visiting her ill brother to find Father Flynn gone from the parish. Sister Aloysius coldly and causally explains how she effected his removal, even lying to achieve her aim. John Patrick Shanley: “It’s interesting how, even leading up to such a great breakdown, she can be this casual, so relaxed, showing no evidence of where she’s about to go, almost jovial. She’s seconds way from it. I really don’t know how she did it. She’s a natural wonder; it’s like watching the Aurora Borealis.”

Meryl Streep is indeed a natural wonder. But all prodigies risk squandering their gift if they do not recognize that the gift is merely a lump of clay, albeit magic clay, whose properties must be carefully studied in order to fathom its potential, then the clay meticulously and painstakingly shaped and reshaped, again and again, out of an acute awareness of the momentary but divine connection between the clay and the artist. The process has nothing to do with celebrity, it has nothing to do with awards, it has nothing to do with contracts and money. It has everything to do with preparation, commitment, courage—and love.

Just ask the Aurora Borealis.

Photo Credits

Sophie’s Choice Poster, from Wikipedia

Main Gate Auschwitz II, by Sue Bowen

covered bridge, by jon.hayes

Farmhouse, by Lydiat

At ISS, Maybin had been flying by the seat of his pants, observing the needs, degree of ability, and personal circumstances of each student in order to design and implement the curriculum materials necessary to get the job done. In such a context, a textbook was simply not an option. At Mitsui he began to refine his teaching approach by delving into theoretical works and consulting with other professionals in the field. The lessons he learned from Frau N and from his experience at ISS never left him, however; in fact, these principles formed the core of his pedagogical approach.

Application of these principles—and an unending process of trial and error—through thirty-five years of language teaching and study led to the creation of a unique instructional program designed to provide students with the language skills necessary to function at a basic level in the target language within a very short time.

The system, called ABLE, for Action-based Language Empowerment, is made up of two major components. The first is 10-12 hours of classroom instruction delivered by a native speaker of the target language, usually with little or no teaching experience. Lessons are focused on students acquiring the communication skills needed to survive in the country in which the language is spoken, so there are no grammar explanations. On the last day of instruction, the students head to the airport and fly to the country in which the target language is spoken. There they are required to independently complete a variety of tasks in their new language; these tasks may include asking for directions, ordering in a restaurant, and buying items in a department store. This is the second component of the program.

Paul Batten, an associate professor of education at Kagawa University on the island of Shikoku, attended one ABLE course as an observer. He recalls drinking tea with Maybin in Bangkok “as we watched his students in pairs go to the ticket lady and buy their return tickets to Ubon Ratchathani. They did it by using the skills they had learnt in his classes—key wording, asking for repetition, checking, eliciting, as well as the core of survival Thai they had got from the ABLE classes.”

By the time ABLE was fully developed and its effectiveness proven in numerous trials, Maybin was already thinking about how to create an online version of the system. But the technology necessary to program the unique features of the ABLE curriculum did not yet exist. And there were other obstacles: the significant investment in time and money needed to develop what has now become Sulantra as well as Maybin’s own lack of appropriate technical and business expertise kept the project on the shelf for several years.

But the same patient determination that over the years has characterized Maybin’s other projects, large and small, has guided Sulantra into reality. Thousands of travel miles and thousands of hours of planning, recording, programming, and debugging, not to mention the financial resources of Maybin, Tsuji, and the other business partners, have resulted in a one-of-a-kind language training site. Sulantra embodies Maybin’s ability to connect with people and build long-term relationships based on honesty and trust; his years of experience as language teacher, linguistic researcher, and language learner; and his passion for making a second or third language accessible to anyone regardless of their economic, geographic, or social condition.

For Maybin, “Sulantra is just the latest phase of this ‘language-soaked’ life.” Whether the project succeeds wildly or falls flat on its face, he is convinced that he will remain both a language teacher and a language learner until the day he dies. One also suspects that whatever the outcome for Sulantra, the next call to adventure will be embraced with a “Oui” that is as enthusiastic as the response of an intrepid teenager to a similar call in Quebec forty years ago.

“This Language-Soaked Life” Part One 

“This Language-Soaked Life” Part Two 

“This Language-Soaked Life” Part Three 

Check out Don Maybin’s blog, “Fool for Language” 

Photo courtesy Emma Bardizbanian

“For a few brief hours every Friday morning before going to the shipyard, I escaped into a fantasy world filled with kimono, traditional gardens, and incense plumes floating up into the air. My first teacher, Takahashi-sensei, was in her 90s and smoked a kiseru (think hash pipe with long bamboo stem and small, hot metal bowl), which she would rap me on the hand with if I made a mistake. In my third year, she passed away and her daughter-in-law took over. A gentler soul, Inoue-sensei was much more tolerant of banter during our sessions and I was soon getting language training in the form of local gossip and newsworthy items as interpreted by my gray-haired female tea(m)mates.”

Studying tea ceremony involves mastering a number of collateral skills, such as wearing a kimono in the proper manner, arranging flowers, identifying different types of pottery, choosing the appropriate hanging scroll for the season, and “opening sliding doors elegantly.” After eight years of such comprehensive study, Maybin emerged with a beginner license to teach sado. In the process, he went from sounding, in Japanese, like “a shipyard welder aspiring to join the yakuza” to possessing “the speech and mannerisms of a 65-year-old obaasan, my peer group in the tea room.”

In the late 1970s, the discipline of teaching of English as a foreign language (TEFL) was in its nascent stages; very few, if any, foreigners teaching in Japan possessed formal qualification in English-language instruction. Many had no language-teaching experience and more than a few were not even interested in becoming effective classroom instructors. While he was not formally qualified, Don Maybin was one of the rare language instructors who did bring both language-teaching experience and a passion for teaching to the job.

In 1983 he left Mitsui and went to England for six months to obtain professional certification in teaching English as a foreign language; he returned in 1986 to complete his Master’s degree in applied linguistics. For the next twenty-five years, he held a series of academic and managerial positions in English-language training in Japan. In the process he developed an innovative approach to teaching language. He subsequently published a number of articles and academic papers and presented at several conferences throughout the world on the topic of this unique language-training approach.

The constant and predominating passion of Maybin’s years in Japan has been language. In fact, the passion goes back even further—all the way to the dream of a child in rural Alberta to get out and explore the world, and the encouragement of a mother who had longed to learn a foreign language herself.

“My mother was keen that I should excel at French. Due to financial constraints, her own formal academic education had more or less ended in her early teens, after which she had taken various part-time jobs to help her family. One of these jobs was playing the piano at a ballet school. (She had limited formal training, but could play by ear.) The ballet instructor was ‘Miss Belanger’, a woman from Quebec. My mother adored her and dreamed of learning French, but it wasn’t in the cards. So she transferred the dream to me, her oldest son.

“Where other parents were telling their children that learning French was pointless, my mother sat me down with a dog-eared atlas and started pointing out the various places I could visit if I spoke ‘Miss Belanger’s language’. Frankly, my mother never was that good at geography. She could have been pointing at China or Sri Lanka for all I knew. But I was convinced that a little French would take me a long way and walked into my first French class ready to tackle all things français so as to see the world. This would be my ticket out!”

Despite the motivation provided by his mother, Maybin’s first experience in formal French instruction, in junior high school, was less than inspiring. The instructor, an English-literature major resentful at being required to teach a language class, made the whole experience miserable by abusing students “who made any effort to speak en français, ridiculing their pronunciation and rolling his eyes at grammatical mistakes. Every student attempt was potential fodder for a cruel joke and by the end of the first lesson I was convinced that the coming year would be hell. It was.”

Coerced that same year into studying German with his best friend, who was of German extraction, Maybin soon recognized the profound difference a teacher can make to the experience of learning language. The “instructor,” an East German woman, was actually the home economics teacher at the school; she “offered free German lessons in the early morning while she prepared dishes that she would teach later in the day in her ‘official’ Home Ec classes.

“‘Frau N’ was an absolutely amazing woman. Every morning, she would greet each of us by name as we entered her cooking lab, making everyone feel like she was thrilled that we had shown up at all! She scattered German magazines about the room, which we were encouraged to browse through and ask about. She entertained us with stories of her escape from East Germany while in an opera company, giving the details in a mixture of English and Deutsch. By the end of the term we were able to sing classical German lieder, which I remember to this day. Best of all, we got to taste the dishes that she prepared for her cooking classes, often served with hot chocolate topped mit Schlag – ‘with whipped cream’ – a term I shall never forget.”

This Language-Soaked Life: Part 1

This Language-Soaked Life: Part 2

Check out Don Maybin’s blog, Fool for Language.

Photo courtesy Don Maybin

At 19 he spent six months in Malaysia, where he lived for a time in an Iban longhouse in Borneo, sleeping under a basket of human skulls; spent a weekend at the mountaintop palace of the Sultan of Kedah; endured buffalo leeches crawling up his legs in a rice paddy in Trengganu; and learned to communicate in Bahasa-Indonesia, the principal language of the Malaysian peninsula. By the time he returned to Canada he was seriously infected with wanderlust, and re-adjusting to Canadian life proved to be a significant challenge.

Following a stint at Carleton University in Ottawa, during which he became English tutor to practically the entire extended family of the Malaysian Deputy High Commissioner, Maybin enrolled in Asian Studies at the University of British Columbia as the first student to major in Southeast Asian Studies. The experience was less than satisfying from an academic perspective as there was no real Southeast Asian program in the department at that time and he was compelled to study Chinese and Japanese.

So when he was invited to Los Angeles in 1978 for an interview with the Mitsui Corporation for a job teaching English to employees in their shipbuilding operations at Tamano, a company town on the Inland Sea of Japan, the wanderlust was easily reignited. Maybin was ready once again with an enthusiastically positive response to what mythologist Joseph Campbell has termed “the call to adventure.”

But life in Tamano turned out to be somewhat of a mixed blessing.

Raised in rural Alberta and then in Nanaimo on Vancouver Island, Maybin recognizes that he was lucky to have started his tenure in Japan in a rural locale, in a town “backed by mountains and facing the sea.” If he had landed in an urban setting such as Tokyo, “riding trains surrounded by concrete, cacophony, and the shadows cast by tall, gray buildings,” he would not have stayed in Japan for more than a couple of years.

In his second year in Tamano he moved from “the tool shed” that had been left to him by his American predecessor at Mitsui into “an ancient house with bamboo slats in the windows and a wood-heated bath.” Over several months he completely renovated this house, even redoing the mud plaster walls. “When they came to visit, my Mitsui students inevitably shook their heads and declared that I was ‘living in a museum’, but for me it was a dream as I banged my head on the low ceiling beams and had my ass frozen off by the wind blowing in through cracks around doorways and window frames in the winter months.”

In addition to the remodelling project, Maybin also took up Japanese cooking, attending classes given by the wife of a colleague in the back of the sweet shop she owned. Consigned to mincing onions for the first three months, the intrepid Canadian was grateful for the opportunity to eat wonderful home-cooked Japanese meals as well as to learn “a lot of language as everyone discussed the current local issues while we ate. I was picking up tons of vocabulary and got to recycle the topics at work on Monday.”

But there was definitely a downside to being a foreigner in rural Japan. Maybin’s teaching load at Mitsui quickly increased as his work ethic proved to be accommodatingly Japanese. The Canadian expat grew frustrated when he saw that the time required to prepare for and teach classes to as many as 300 students a week would preclude the possibility of his ever learning Japanese. For a “language junkie” and avid student of other cultures, this was an unacceptable state of affairs. In this case, the old habit of saying “Yes” had become a bit of a liability.

There was also the inevitable homesickness, keenly felt as the first year came to a close.

By his second year in Japan the bloom was fully off the rose. “I think most gaijin [foreigners] become jaded in their second year here. The novelty is wearing off and every time someone compliments your Japanese skills, you want to scream, ‘I sound like a goddamn 5-year-old!’ This was certainly the case with me.” But circumstance, a certain doggedness, and most of all, a passion to truly connect with the culture of Japan trumped all disillusionment.

The homesickness was cured when Maybin returned to Canada for six months, graciously given leave by Mitsui to deal with a family crisis. The crisis turned out to be the hopelessly dysfunctional relationship of his parents. “The home I was sick for had imploded. Six months of suffering in Canada, and I knew that no matter how bad things got in Japan, the chances of surviving were much better in Okayama [the prefecture in which Tamano is located] than on Vancouver Island, so I returned.”

The frustration with work was resolved in an equally dramatic fashion. “The day my department head came and suggested that I move my morning classes earlier and my evening classes later so that I could accommodate yet another group of employees was the day I finally broke. I announced that, after three years and a constantly growing number of students, I was not going to renew my contract.” With a great deal of polite persuasion on the part of the Japanese bosses and much “pissy whining” by Maybin, an agreement was reached whereby the Canadian teacher could work three (exhaustingly long) days a week at the company and spend the rest of his time learning Japanese “properly.”

You can read Don Maybin’s blog, “Fool for Language.“

Photo by sporkist. Creative Commons: Some Rights Reserved

As the plan comes to life in the classroom, it is clear that there is nothing typical about Professor Maybin’s approach to language instruction. At one moment the ever-smiling 57-year-old is circulating among students who are sitting or standing at tables or moving about the room. The students are yelling, gesticulating, rudely interrupting each other or their “professor” (whom they are encouraged to call “Don,” a very un-Japanese practice) to get information—all in broken English, which the instructor does not necessarily correct. A little later, in another activity, groups of students are standing around tables nervously but excitedly watching their teacher, who is holding up a picture. The students are straining to comprehend as he asks a complex question—which actually calls for a simple answer—based on the picture. Before long, astonished and relieved looks appear on the faces of one group as the student with the lowest level of English ability answers the question and the entire group gets to sit down.

Maybin’s English class is radically different from the typical language lesson in Japan, where students listen quietly to lectures on the finer points of English grammar (often delivered in Japanese) or memorize isolated words and phrases from a textbook, all in traditional classroom arrangement. The Canadian expat’s classes are noisy, boisterous, and informal. The noise level is so high, in fact, that, mindful of complaints he received in previous teaching positions, he has requested and been assigned a classroom on the top floor of an isolated, nearly sound proof building.

John Maher, an American colleague of Maybin’s at a Tokyo-area junior college in the 1990s, remembers: “Once an older Japanese professor complained to Don about his students. The professor was using the ‘talk-and-chalk system’—where the instructor lectures and writes on the board while the students sit quietly and take notes—but Don’s students were using the control sentences he had taught them (‘What does that mean?’ ‘Could you repeat that please?’ etc.) in order to better understand the lecture. The professor felt that they were being rude!”

What may appear to the uninitiated visitor as cacophonous chaos in Maybin’s university classroom is actually a highly structured and effective series of strictly timed activities designed to maximize language acquisition and communicative ability. The activities have evolved and been perfected over Maybin’s thirty-five years of teaching English. His unorthodox pedagogical style, his love of teaching and of students, and the sheer fun and excitement of his lessons, not to mention the fact that students actually learn to use English for communication, make his classes among the most popular on campus. Achieving such popularity is a remarkable feat given that Shonan is a technical university full of geeks whose interest in language learning is practically nil.

NOON: Maybin has just made the 35-minute walk from the university to the offices of Sulantra, the company which manages and markets the unique online language training program he created and developed with the assistance of several partners. After a quick lunch prepared by Sulantra’s Sichuanese systems engineer (the partners and staff are a multinational, multicultural group), Maybin spends the rest of the day at Sulantra, dealing with the endless stream of tasks and mini-crises that characterize a fledgling organization attempting to make itself known to the world: making plans for the next overseas junket, wrestling with Paypal transactions that won’t go through, replying to user feedback, meeting with staff to plan and troubleshoot. At 8:00 PM he packs up and heads for the station for the long train ride home.

And there is nothing typical about the Maybin-Tsuji home nestled in the lovely forested hills above the resort town of Atami, an hour’s ride on the shinkansen—the “bullet train”—from central Tokyo. Besides the collection of stray cats and dogs adopted by Maybin and Yoshiharu Tsuji, his partner of twenty years, there is usually at least one house guest—more often several guests—from other parts of Japan, or from locations as varied as Australia, Mexico, Bulgaria, Canada, and Turkey. Members of Maybin and Tsuji’s loosely connected international community of friends, or friends of friends, are all welcome and all are treated like family.

Twice a year the couple hosts a dinner in their home for an eclectic group of 30 or so friends. Despite their insanely busy schedule, Maybin and Tsuji manage to find time to shop, clean, and cook for days beforehand, and when the guests arrive, there is invariably a chorus of oohs and ahs over the international spectrum of dishes that has been laid out. At one such party last year, “the dessert course alone had ten items, including homemade Christmas pudding, pears poached in red wine, mincemeat squares topped with ice cream, and trifle made from scratch.” As the party always goes late into the night, several people usually manage to miss the last train home and end up crashing at the Maybin-Tsujis. It is not unusual for a collective breakfast-making party to erupt when everyone gets up the next day.

The fact is that little of Don Maybin’s 33-year residence in Japan has been typical of the foreigner’s experience in that country; the man himself is, after all, far from ordinary. The key to his unique personality and to the richness of his experience in his adopted country can perhaps be found in a decision he made at the age of sixteen while on a language exchange program in Montreal. As he was expected to participate fully in the life of his host family and as the family spoke virtually no English, the peripatetic youngster decided that “the best strategy for me was to say ‘Oui!’—‘Yes!’—to everything the family suggested:

‘Would you like more (incomprehensible word)?’
‘Oui!’
‘How about if we (incomprehensible phrase)?’
‘Oui!’”

It seems that Maybin has been saying “Oui!” to just about every linguistic and cultural experience since that long-ago ten-day stay in Quebec.

Photos courtesy of Sulantra

Check out Don Maybin’s blog, “Fool for Language,”

Far to the north, in the land of Blackstock, lives Father Goose. He dwells in a quaint underground house in the side of a hill at the edge of a deep dark forest full of wild creatures. The wood is forbidden to most men.

Father Goose passes his days flying with his feathery friends: the whooping cranes, the geese and other assorted birds who grew up in his house and think of him as their “mom”. In the fall, when the desire to return to their southerly winter homes prevails he takes wing and shows them the way.

Front door of "Father Goose's" eco-friendly underground home.

While it may sound like the start of a fanciful fairytale, in fact Father Goose is real and his name is a Bill Lishman. Residing in the town of Blackstock, Ontario about two hours north of Toronto, his super-energy efficient home consists of buried stainless steel domes and his property is perched on the edge of the Osler estatte. The estate, which belongs to the descendants of famed Canadian physician, Sir William Osler, comprises 250 hectares of land where an active wildlife population thrives. The estate is forbidden to hunters and developers, though Bill is quite welcome to fly his ultralight aircraft overhead.

Bill Lishman and George Burden in front of one of Bill's ultralights.

This all may be sounding a bit familiar to those who recall the Hollywood movie , tFly Away Home that recounts Bill’s adventures leading a flock of geese south to Virginia with his ultralight aircraft. The movie itself was based on Bill’s book Father Goose. In 1999, Operation Migration began its yearly program of leading baby whooping cranes to reestablish populations in parts of the United States where they are now extinct.

The program is possible due to the principle of imprinting, which causes baby birds to think whatever they see at the beginning of their lives is their mother. While this is in most cases a momma bird, the babies don’t care if their momma happens to be an ultralight plane and its pilot!

Bill is also a talented artist as witnessed by the sometimes whimsical and sometimes dramatic colourful metal sculptures dotting the grounds of his home. He also keeps active, promoting Air First Aid, his program designed to use ultralights to provide medical and food aid to disaster areas in a precise and focused way by ferrying in dozens of specially equipped ultralights in cargo planes along with aid supplies.

With my friends Joe, Diane and Amanda, I had the pleasure of enjoying Bill’s hospitality for an afternoon. His underground dwelling remained delightfully cool despite the hot Ontario summer day and reminded me of a cross between a hobbit’s house and Luke Skywalker’s childhood home.

Author George Burden in front of Bill Lishman's home.

We sipped homemade white wine while he regaled us with stories of his adventures and he autographed a copy of his book for my daughter. So you see that I have written proof that Father Goose actually exist and can fimly state that is alive and well and living in Canada.

Visit William Lishman’s Web Site

Photo Credits

All Photos © Amanda Sutherland. All Rights Reserved.

Beaming, Russel Crosby unlocks the guitar case on the floor by his couch. “Let me show you this one.” He pulls out a small, eight-string tenor guitar he’s just built. The lines and finish are crisp. The curly maple wood grain on the sides glows with some inner light like an abstract hologram. Even before he touches the strings, I’m ready to be impressed.

And I am. Playing finger-style rather than strumming, Russel gets the sound box to resonate with rich, sweet tones. As he plays, I look around the sparsely furnished room. Four finished guitars hang from pegs on the wall behind him, their exotic finished woods gleaming in the light from the window. Beneath them, another three rest on guitar stands. Each has taken Russel 70 to 100 hours to build.

After about half a minute, Russel stops abruptly, and says, “I have no natural talent at all,” and sets the guitar aside. I ask him what he means. “The more guitar players I meet, the more I know I can’t play.” He shuffles through some pages of music strewn across his coffee table. “I can sit down and learn a piece of music, but if I leave it alone for a while, I have to learn it all over again.”

Guitar maker Russel Crosby playing tenor guitar

Russel never aspired to performing. For one thing, he’d die of stage freight if he ever played in public. Russel lives alone. “There wasn’t really a design,” he says of his 30-year-old house. “I just kind of built it.” Russel’s shop is a few steps from his front door. His is the last house down a winding driveway in near Lockeport on Nova Scotia’s South Shore. His brother Donnie – a fine finish carpenter and a keyboard player – lives in the house up the lane.

He built his first guitar for himself. “It made me happy at the time,” he says. “It sounded better than anything out of a store.” Then he built a second one to improve on the first. “It’s a constant battle,” he says. “I’ve built over a hundred now and I still haven’t built the perfect guitar. I never will, but I’m striving to make each one better than the last.”

A Crosby guitar being made.

Russel’s curiosity, intelligence and quiet drive to perfection have led him in some interesting directions. For 20 years, he was an award winning bird carver. For many years, he made his living as a carpenter, highly respected locally both for his construction skills and his finish work. He’s one of those people who would excel at anything that catches his interest.

Since 1996, guitars have captured Russel’s imagination. For the past three years, he’s worked at building them full time. “People have stopped calling me about carpentry,” he says. But he’s not had an easy time of it. He’s had to cash in RSPs and draw on his line of credit to make ends meet while building up his stock, his business and his reputation. He now has a web site, takes his own promotional photographs and does what he can from his house in the woods to get the word out.

He doesn’t sell through music stores because of the mark up. A lot of people just seek him out at home. It’s a lucky guitar player who does. As if he were a fine tailor, Russel fits the guitar to the needs of the player. “A lot of it’s just talking to your musicians. Not all of them know what they want. Sometimes I have to steer them.”

Rosette in Crosby guitar.

Russel’s are gorgeously handcrafted instruments. Several different woods go into each guitar. The top is almost always a softwood, usually spruce. “Different spruces have different sounds,” Russel explains. “Engelmann spruce is suited to finger style guitars because it’s more responsive. It takes less effort to get sound out of it.” It’s not suited to what Russel calls the heavy attack style of some strummers. “Sitka spruce is for guitars that are going to be more flat picked. You can play it hard and the sound doesn’t break up as much.”

The back and sides are made of hardwood. Russel uses a lot of curly maple and curly walnut, but many of the woods are exotic like African Bubinga and East Indian Rosewood. “You buy them as two book match halves,” Russel explains. He gets them from a supplier in California. He makes most of the necks from mahogany. The rosette around the sound hole at the centre of the guitar body is often Cocobolo wood and abalone shell. “It’s a nice contrast, the reddish brown with the dark stripes in it and the abalone.”

Every sound box resonates at a certain frequency depending on the size and shape. Generally, the bigger the box, the lower the frequency. Russel explains that the larger guitars called dreadnoughts with larger bodies and wide waists are favoured by the flat pickers like bluegrass musicians looking for that big, thumping bass sound.

Russel builds a lot of dreadnought-style guitars. As with many other guitar types, the dreadnought came from the famous Martin company. Because the dreadnought body was deeper and larger than most guitars made at the time of its creation – 1916 – it was named for a type of super battleship, the best known of which was the HMS Dreadnought. Russel gives the Dreadnought his own twist like the cutaway at the top of the body “to leave room for those who like to play up the neck.”

Russel’s fine craftsmanship, his attention to detail and his ability to suit the guitar to the player is gaining him a reputation. “People are recommending me,” he says. A representative from a retail musical instrument chain recently told Russel about a customer who complained about a brand name guitar he’d recently purchased on line. The rep suggested he return the guitar for a refund and go find a Crosby instead. This is the kind of slow, word-of-mouth promotion that will give Crosby Guitars the wide spread reputation it deserves.