Mezuzzah blues

On the 13th of April 2008 I entered my seventh decade here on earth. To commemorate my 21,000 plus days of breathing, eating, laughing, crying, and dealing with all matters earthly, I and eighty-five friends spent the day eating, singing, and having a joyous and mirthful time.
That evening as I laid my contented head on my pillow, I noticed a small blue box with a little yellow bow sitting on my night table. During the party one of my friends went into my house and left me a gift. How kind, I thought. Though I had told everyone no presents, I did feel excited at the sight of one by my bed. I opened the box, and inside was the most lovely and ornate mezuzah I had ever seen.
An Israeli woman named Ester Shahaf created it. Ms. Shahaf fabricated the mezuzzah using a combination of silver, pewter, and Swarovski crystals, a very special type of crystal created by a Swiss engineer in the latter part of the nineteenth century. I had never owned a religious item so ornate and looked forward to mounting it upon my door. Little did I realize that this four-inch tall object of Judaica would soon lead me into a spiritual crisis.
The next morning as I read the instructions for mounting my gift, I realized how little I knew about the entire concept of a mezuzzah and thought what a lapsed Jew I have become.
Mezuzzah means “doorpost,” and, yes, while it is decorative and ornate, it’s not as important as the rolled-up parchment scroll that rests inside. The scroll contains passages from Deuteronomy 6:4–9 and 11:13–21. The scroll is to be prepared by a scribe writing in Hebrew with a special quill pen. At the end of the instructions, right after the part about inviting a rabbi to participate in the ceremony, in four-point type were the words parchment not included. On the very bottom of the instruction sheet was a web address and the scroll part number.
Being the great grandson of the famous Polish Tsitsis mogul Rabbi Joseph Kanet and the product at least 3,000 years of Judaism, I decided not to rock the spiritual boat, and I soon found myself going online to purchase part #9064 from www.jewishsource.com
I punched in the part number. I learned that for $26 plus shipping I could purchase what was described as follows:

Standard Kosher Hand-Written Mezuzzah Scroll. Executed in Jerusalem by a traditional scribe. 

Will fit any mezuzzah case in our collection.

Underneath this description I read that for $9 more I could receive a mezuzzah scroll that was scanned by a computer to ensure the consumer that the scroll was error free. You would think that a talented and trained scribe writing the same verses from Deuteronomy over and over again would not need his worked checked by a computer. Though my knowledge of the old religion is fading somewhat, I can say with absolute certainty that there is no mention in the Bible of any of the great patriarchs owning a scanner.
I felt myself falling ever so quickly into a spiritual abyss. I opened my Bible (actually my neighbor’s Bible) to the passages from Deuteronomy that were to rest inside my beautiful new mezuzzah. Chapter 6 verses 4–9 were a bit stern but acceptable. They were about loving Yahweh with all your heart and then writing the words from Deuteronomy

…on the doorposts of your house and on your gates.

It was chapter 6 verses 13–21 where things really got rough, especially verse 15:

For the LORD thy God is a jealous God among you lest the anger of the LORD thy God be kindled against you, and destroy you from off the face of the earth.

Was this the message I wanted to place inside my beautiful work of art handcrafted by Ester Shahaf? Why couldn’t there be a more optimistic message such as

May a song be on your lips and love in your heart

As you enter and leave my home.

Please sit a while, have a cup of tea.

It’s not easy being a Jew. Two thousand years of persecution mixed with a monotheistic sky God with insecurity issues is not by any means a recipe for inner peace.
God needs a hug, or perhaps a week at Esalen writing poetry, bathing in the tubs, and at least two massages a day.
Or better yet an evening with Pema Chödrön in a rustic eighth-century monastery situated on a high peak somewhere in Tibet where the only sounds he can hear are the wind, the chanting of the monks, and the bells of the yaks.
What if Yahweh and I could go to couples counseling to try and talk things out? I’d probably make the mistake of saying something like, “God should be a little more compassionate and forgiving.”
To which the therapist would say, “Neal, remember the ‘I’ message here. Now I want you to turn your chair toward God and use the ‘I’ message, not the finger-pointing ‘you’ message.”
I’d face my creator and say, “I am very uncomfortable with a deity who is vengeful, jealous, and destructive. Things like turning women into pillars of salt, killing the first born, and condemning poor Eve for thinking are hardly what one would call the acts of a peaceful and loving God.”
The therapist would turn toward the almighty and ask, “How do you feel about what Neal just said?”
“Well,” the Lord would reply while fondling his beard, “Neal is made in my own image, so he’s stuck with me. However, the good book has shown that I am willing to deal, to compromise—that’s what the essence of a covenant is—and I’d be ready to deal with Neal as long as he promises to keep the faith.”
It’s true, I thought, Yahweh has made deals with Abraham, Jacob, and Moses, so why not with me? He hasn’t been all bad—he gave Noah a rainbow sign and he delivered my ancestors from bondage.
There were other factors as well. If you count that squirrel I shot for no reason when I was sixteen, I am 0 for 10 on God’s commandments. I’m also getting on in age, and what if, just what if there really is this edgy, omnipotent, bearded deity calling the shots both here on earth and all over the universe?
Since I couldn’t prove he doesn’t exist, I decided to offer the creator of the universe a deal. I would put the prescribed verses from Deuteronomy in my mezuzzah, but he would look the other way while I created a bootleg scroll. Or simply put, I would keep his commandments, but I refused to pay retail for them. I raised my head and looked to the heavens for an answer. I saw two doves flying through my garden; truly this was a sign from on high that the Lord and Neal were now in business together.
With one hand one my mezuzzah and the other on my mouse, I googled the digital universe for mezuzzah scrolls. I found a nice six-by-eight-inch 72 dpi jpeg and brought it into Photoshop. Using a trick a graphic artist taught me I made it into a three-by-three-inch 300 dpi tiff, truly a miracle! I then sampled the blue of the flag of Israel and used it as a light tint backup color.
You will not find such a colorful scroll on www.jewishsource.com. This so-called “source for everything Jewish” is located in Niles, Illinois. Anyone familiar with Lenny Bruce’s theory on Judaism will know that if you live in Niles, Illinois, you’re simply not Jewish.
I printed my creation out with my HP LaserJet 2430dtn on a very biblical looking piece of parchment paper, and it was good.
I will soon mount it on my office door, where all who visit Gourd Music can enjoy the art of Ester Shahaf. And when I’m on my phone wheeling and dealing in the music business, I can look at my beautiful gift and realize that like all the great patriarchs before me, I, too, have made a covenant with the Great I Am.

Jackie Mitchell

On April 2nd. 1931 a 17-year old girl took the mound for the double A professional minor league team the Chattanooga Lookouts. This was only the second time in the history of professional baseball that a woman came this close to pitching in the major leagues.
Virne Beatrice “Jackie Mitchell” was born in Memphis Tennessee sometime between the sinking of the Titanic and the outbreak of World War I. Jackie’s dad loved baseball and he had aspirations for his daughter to be the first women to make it the majors. Mr. Mitchell’s neighbor was Dazzy Vance a future hall of fame pitcher with the Brooklyn Dodgers. Dazzy taught Jackie his famous drop pitch and the art of focusing and control on the mound.
Both Dazzy and her dad constantly worked with her and by the age of seven Jackie had already mastered the drop pitch and became a childhood star in the sand lot league in and around Memphis. Jackie also excelled at basketball, tennis, running, shooting and boxing.
At sixteen she played for a professional women’s team in Chattanooga and at seventeen signed a contract with the Chattanooga Lookouts a double A affiliate of the Cincinnati Reds. Jackie had many offers from professional women’s teams but turned them down to play in the men’s league with the hope of going on to triple A and then on to “the show” as those in the minor leagues called it.
In March of that year The Chattanooga News wrote:

She uses an odd, side-armed delivery, and puts both speed and curve on the ball. Her greatest asset, however, is control. She can place the ball where she pleases, and her knack at guessing the weakness of a batter is uncanny.... She doesn't hope to enter the big show this season, but she believes that with careful training she may soon be the first woman to pitch in the big leagues.

Each year as the New York Yankees would break from spring training they would venture up to Chattanooga on their way to New York to play the lookouts in an exhibition game. The 1931 Yankees were a powerhouse club that featured Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig, Dixie Walker, Red Ruffing and Tony Lazzeri.
A capacity crowd of over 4000 filled Lookout Stadium to cheer on their local heroes and pray for a miracle. Seventeen-year-old Jackie Mitchell was brought in early in the game to face Babe Ruth with runners on the corners. Jackie struck out Ruth on four pitches and then struck out Lou Gehrig on three quick drop pitches.
Jackie became an overnight hero as word quickly spread around baseball that a teenage girl had struck out two of baseballs greatest icons. 

This news did not please the current commissioner of baseball Kenesaw Mountain Landis. Landis was a former federal judge who ruled with absolute power and was dubbed “the baseball tyrant” by many of the sports journalists. He was the man who banned “shoeless Joe Jackson” for life following the 1919 Black Sox scandal. When Landis heard of Mitchell’s performance he cancelled Jackie’s contract on the grounds that baseball was “too strenuous for women.” He then went on to ban all women from the sport, a ban that was not lifted until 1992.
Jackie was out of a job but wanted to keep playing ball and soon hooked up with The Israelite House of David. The Israelite House of David was a religious commune that was founded by Benjamin Purnell and his wife Mary in Benton Harbor, Michigan around the year1902. It was their belief that by gathering all the twelve lost tribes of Israel together it would hasten the return of the messiah. To be a member of the commune one must refrain from sex, haircuts, shaving, and the eating of meat.
To support his spiritual undertaking Mr. Purnell operated an amusement park, a zoo, bowling alleys, sponsored a traveling jazz band and at least three baseball teams. By 1915 he had a number teams on the road barnstorming away and playing against other semi-pro teams, minor league teams and various clubs in the Negro Leagues. Legendary pitcher Satchel Paige referred to the Israelite House of David team as “the Jesus boys.” Baseball became so popular with the House of David commune that they needed to enlist players outside of their organization and in 1932 signed the lefty female phenom Jackie Mitchell.
Jackie toured with the bearded boys for five years. On September 12th. 1933 she started an exhibition game against the St. Louis Cardinals where she was the winning pitcher. The next morning a sports writer for a local St. Louis paper wrote:

Benton Harbor's nomadic House of David ball team, beards, girl pitcher and all, came, saw and conquered the Cardinals, 8 to 6, last night at Sportsman's Park.

It was while touring with The House of David that Jackie became  friends with olympic champion Babe Didrikson.

Though Jackie did have her moments of glory, life on the road for a female pitcher in the mid 1930’s was no easy chore. Being a woman in baseball left her as a target for endless degrading jokes and she choose to retire in 1936 at the age of twenty-three. She returned to Chattanooga and worked for her father in the optometry business and latter married. She passed away in 1987 at the age of seventy-three.

Shortly after her death many critics dismissed the fact that she struck out Ruth and Gehrig at the age of seventeen. Some baseball aficionados claim that it was a stunt set up by Joe Engel the president and owner of the Chattanooga Lookouts. According to Jackie Mitchell’s biographer Jean L.S. Patrick there is film footage that clearly shows that both Ruth and Gehrig were fooled by her drop pitch. Also Ruth was quoted in a local paper shortly after the game as saying:

"I don't know what's going to happen if they begin to let women in baseball. Of course, they will never make good. Why? Because they are too delicate. It would kill them to play ball every day."

Baseball Hall of Fame researcher Amanda Pinney has studied the incident and has repeatedly said that the strikeouts were real. Ruth and Gehrig had every intention of hitting the ball. Eddie Lazzeri the Yankee second baseman who was on deck while Gehrig went down swinging confirms Pinney’s conclusions.
The kindest notice I found in the press about Jackie was from the New York Times dated April 4th. 1931:

Cynics may contend that on the diamond as elsewhere it is place aux dames. Perhaps Miss Jackie hasn't quite enough on the ball yet to bewilder Ruth and Gehrig in a serious game. But there are no such sluggers in the Southern Association, and she may win laurels this season, which cannot be ascribed to mere gallantry. The prospect grows gloomier for misogynists.

There will always be a controversy surrounding the events of April 2nd 1931. However Virne Beatrice “Jackie Mitchell” has earned her place in the great book of baseball lore as “the girl who struck out Babe Ruth.”

Jackie Mitchell with Babe Ruthe & Lou Gehrig - Chattanooga, Tennessee April 1931.

The Ghost of Gight

It’s truly an exercise in the thrift, trying to explain a song in eighty words or less as I often  do when creating liner notes for recordings. For within a song there are many songs and a multitude of different stories. Say a the main focus of the piece is Highway 101 and your enjoying the ride as you speed down the road. However, if you wish there are always many side roads one can take. All of which exists in a song, especially the older ballads. 

A very timely quote about songs and ballads is from folklorist Frank Harte:

All songs are living ghosts

And longing for a living voice

For example track #13 on Celtic harper Kim Robertson's recording Highland Heart which is actually about a ghost titled: The Ghosts of Gight. 

Here’s the whole story in 83 words:
Gight Castle (near Fyvie above the river Ythan) was home to the Gordon’s for many hundreds of years. It was built by William Gordon around 1479 and eventually sold in 1787 to clear the gambling debts of one Mad Jack Byron whose son was the famous poet Lord Byron. The ghosts’ legend concerns a piper who was sent to investigate an underground passage and never returned. Though it is said that the sound of his pipes can still be heard at the castle.
That’s it, four hundred years of a Scottish family and their castle is now compressed into less then 90 words.

 As I would hate to short change the Gordon’s and their estate here is (as that obnoxious man on the radio says) the rest of the story:              

In or around 1787 Catherine Gordon (the daughter of the 12th Laird of the Gordon’s of Gight sold her families estate to pay off a gambling debt accrued by her husband “Mad Jack” Byron. “Mad Jack” was anything but a loving husband as he pilfered money from his wife so that he may run around Paris, drank, gamble and visit numerous houses of sin. He died before his son was three. Mad Jacks father “Foulweather Jack” was an officer in the royal navy with a reputation for attracting storms and his brother known as “the “Wicked Lord Byron” was a suspect for not one but two murders. As well as being members of the Gordon Clan they were also direct descendants of King Edward III of England (1312-1377).              

William Gordon constructed Gight Castle around 1479 as a home for many of the Gordon clan. The castle sits along the Ythan River just east of the town of Fivie. For the two centuries that the Gordon’s owned their castle they were plagued by mysterious circumstances some of which lead to the demise of a number of the occupants of the said estate. All of the various tragedies were prophesized by one Thomas of Ercildore who lived near the Eildon Hills sometime around the 13th century. His story goes something like this: 

One day a wizard named Michael Scott instructed three imps (who were known to the Scots as little mischievous devils or sprites) to split one hill into three. Out of the split hills came a Fairy Queen who abducted Thomas for seven years. There have been many verses written about this abduction, here be a few:

 And see not ye that bonny road, that winds about the fernie brae?

That is the road to fair Elfland,where thou and I this night maun gae.

"But, Thomas, ye maun hold your tongue, whatever ye may hear or see,

For, if you speak word in Elflyn land, ye'll neer get back to your ain countrie.                

After his seven years in fairyland Thomas returns with the gift of both poetry and prophecy. He used these gifts to his advantage as he would create poems to illustrate his predictions and soon he became known as Thomas the Rhymer. In a very real sense he was the first Scottish rapper and the only one known to have the gift of prophesy.              

He is credited with predicting the death of King Alexander III in 1286, the defeat of King James IV at the Battle of Flodden in 1513 and the Union of the Crowns of Scotland and England in 1603. Thomas soon gained the reputation as sort of a Nostradamus of Scotland. He became so popular that the Jacobites consulted his predictions before their uprisings of 1715 and 1745. For the Gordon clan he wrote theses prophecies: 

‘When the heron leaves the tree, 

The Laird o’ Gight shall landless be.’ 

When the Gordon’s first owned Gight Castle there were Herons living in a large tree by the castle. Around 1735 the herons flew away and in three years the estate was sold to the Earl of Aberdeen.                              

His next poem for the Gordon’s:

‘‘At Gight three men by sudden death shall dee,

And after that the land shall lie in lea.’

 In 1791  Lord Haddo fell from his horse on the Green of Gight. A few years latter a servant on the estate met a similar death while working on the farm. In this century a worker was crushed to death while working on a wall. The castle is now in ruins with only a small guesthouse standing on the estate and of course the ghost of a piper who disappeared while working underneath the castle. 

Catherine Gordon emerged from the ruins of Gight and moved to London. Shortly after relocating, her son Lord Byron is born (1888). Byron is born with a clubfoot an issue that some say was one of the causes of his erratic and sometime violent behavior.               

At the age of ten Byron inherited the titles and the estates of his great-uncle “The Wicked Lord Byron”. Byron then attends many prestigious schools (including Harrow and Trinity College) where he begins his career as a writer of prose and poetry. At the same time he is indulging himself in what some have called “an abyss of sensuality."
One of his lovers Lady Caroline Lamb described him as “mad, bad and dangerous to know."              

In 1814 Byron became obsessed Anne Isabella and pursues her for a year. She is gifted in math and science Byron refers to her as the “princess of parallelograms”. In 1815 she agrees to marry him and in December of that year she gives birth to Byron’s only legitimate child a daughter whom they name Ada who would latter be credited as the first person to write a computer program.              

Byron’s moods soon sink and his behavior turns violent. Fearing for her and her daughter’s safety Anne Isabella off to her parent’s estate. A year latter they were divorced and Lord Byron soon leaves the country. He then travels though central Europe with his personal physician Dr. John Plidori and in 1816 they decide to rent Villa Diadati an elaborate estate constructed on the shores of Lake Geneva Switzerland.              

Meanwhile Clara Mary Jane Clairmont one of Bryon’s many lovers is relentlessly pursuing him. Claire was an aspiring writer and had an affair with Byron (as many women and men did) shortly before he left England. She constantly wrote to Byron for career advice in publishing but her desire was to always be Bryon’s lover as she had been at seventeen when they first met in London.
Clara is so obsessed with him that she persuades her eighteen-year-old half sister Mary Wollenstonecraft Goodwin and her lover, poet Percy Bliss Shelley follow him to his estate in Switzerland. Realizing that Claire is pregnant with his child Byron allows them to stay and soon forms a close friendship with Shelley and his young lover Mary. They swim in the Lake Geneva, inspire each other to write and indulge themselves with Laudanum, the additive opium beverage that became the drug of choice during the Romantic and Victorian era.               

It then rains for a week straight and Bryon suggests they read a book of German ghosts stories published in Leipzig in 1811 titled “Fantasmagoriana” compiled by German author Fredrich August Schultz originally titled Gespensterbuch. After reading a number of the stories Byron then challenges his guests to create their own personal tale of horror.               

Dr. Poldori based his character on Byron and called his work “Lord Ruthven” which was about an aristocratic vampire who bites into the necks of members of the establishment for sustenance. The novel is released in 1819 as “The Vampyre and for many years it is attributed to Byron. It is the first work in print to take the folklore of the vampire and place it in a contemporary setting. Shortly after being adopted for the stage in the 1820’s many authors including Poe, Dumas and Tolstoy wrote similar works, which of course culminated at the end of the century with Irish author Bram Stoker’s Dracula.               

Mary Wollenstonecraft who in a year would become Mary Shelley wrote a novel about the dangers of the industrial revolution titled “The Modern Promethus” after the character in Ovid’s Metamorphoses who created a man “in godlike” image from clay. She worked on this idea for the next two years and released it under the name of Frankenstein.

The mysteries that followed the Gordon’s for two centuries, the untimely deaths, the rhyming prophet Thomas of Ercildore, and the missing piper who became the Ghost of Gight have now manifested themselves in the birth of the gothic novel.


Lord George Gordon Byron (1788-1824)