Nova Scotia Connections: A Day in the Life of Great Village: The Post Office and its Postmaster

Angus Johnson is the postmaster in the village. He has been sorting and stamping the King’s mail at the old stand for decades. He took over his duties way back in 1889, helping out now and then as a mail carrier. He’s done the delivery down the shore to Five Islands.

You see, the mail still arrives in Great Village from all directions by coach. Mail from Europe reaches Halifax by steamer and is put on the Maritime bound for Montreal. Mail from all points West travels to Nova Scotia by the Canadian Pacific train. These far away letters and packages reach Londonderry Station and are picked up by Albion Kent, who brings them the nearly four miles to the Village. Mr. Kent is one of the most obliging mail carriers in the county. His father, Daniel, did this route for years before him. The brightly painted two-horse wagon is called the “Ferry.” Mr. Kent will always take passengers for a small fee, 254 a head.

Even mail from Truro makes the trip by team. Though soon, people think, automobiles will replace the trusty horses. After all, Dr. T.R. Johnson has already traded his famous Lord Wallace for a Model T. Mr. Kent, too, bought an automobile a few years ago, but he has not yet turned over his run to it. He says his horses are still more trustworthy, especially in winter.

The post office is a busy place, with mail arriving several times a day; the big deliveries being with the 10:00 a.m. and 4:00 p.m. Halifax bound-trains. Mr. Johnson says that he makes up and opens 22 mails a day. Little wonder, he says, the keys to the mailbags wear out; though he’s had the same keys now for ten years.

Lots of other business is conducted at the post office, money orders being the biggest item. There is also a telegraph service, a telephone and a highly efficient Express Office. All the modern conveniences. Mr. Johnson is also agent for the Nova Scotia Home Underwriters’ Agency. And nearly every week someone stops by to engage his services as an auctioneer. He’s one of the most popular in the area. Mr. Johnson is also a truly civic-minded fellow, active in the Presbyterian church and a long-standing member of the I.O.O.F. He’s always willing to help out with fund-raisers, and finds place in the post office for the notices, posters and fliers announcing the many suppers, concerts, lectures and musicales, which take place not only in the village but all along the shore.

For all the hurry and bustle, it is one of the best kept offices in the Dominion. Now, during war time, mail service is even more important with so many folks waiting for word from the boys training at Aldershot and Valcartier, or those already in England and France. The newspapers also arrive at the office bringing the latest reports on the distant campaigns.

Great Village has had a “way” or post office since the early 1870s. The current building was built in 1903 by Mr. W.E. Adams of Mount Pleasant. It also houses the Savings Bank, though there is talk that the Royal Bank is going to open up a branch here in the Village sometime soon.(1)

The post office is Mr. Johnson’s home away from home. Even his six daughters have regularly helped out, especially Kate; and she’s just as good as her father with all the tasks.

The post office is a gathering place in the village. In the evenings the lads who are not yet old enough to enlist collect here to talk about the day’s events and watch the activity at the Elmonte House across the road. The merchants and farmers stop by after their days’ labours to see what the coaches have brought. Everyone stops to chat with Mr. Johnson, who always has the latest news of the comings and goings. Villagers trust Mr. Johnson to take good care of the precious cargoes entrusted to him, which have journeyed from far and near, bringing news of births, deaths, marriages, and of the war. He is one of the most respected and beloved gentlemen in the community.(2) Though he is 64 years old, Mr. Johnson is hale and hearty, and intends to stay on as postmaster for some years yet, and Villagers are glad about it.(3)

Yesterday was an especially busy day at the post office, because it was the centre for information about the provincial election results. There were even more people around than usual because of the excitement of voting. Several of the lads had motored into Truro late in the afternoon and stayed around the Daily News offices until the polls closed, and came hurrying back around 10:00 p.m. with the news of the Grit victory ─ though the Tories held the day in Colchester.

The excitement of election day over, this morning is still a busy one for Mr. Johnson. The morning’s outgoing mail is heavy with letters and packages for the lads in training and overseas. Mr. Kent is in early to load up the Ferry and be off to Londonderry Station. However, Mr. Johnson is going about his work with more solemnity than is usual for his genial manner. When he opens up the office for business (after the sorting and loading of the Ferry is completed), he looks up at the sound of a wagon coming over the bridge, not unusual in itself. It’s Will Bulmer and his daughters Gertie and Grace. He thinks to himself, “Ah, it’s today she’s going.” As the wagon passes by Mr. Johnson nods quietly to Will. He knows how he would feel if one of his dear daughters was not well. Poor Will and Lizzie. Poor Gertie. He’s known her since she was a wee bairn.

Mr. Johnson wonders how Gertie’s dear little girl will feel, her mother going off like this today. He knows Will and Lizzie are devoted to the child, proud as punch about their bright granddaughter, and will do all they can to comfort her. She is so young that perhaps she doesn’t really understand all that is happening, but with six girls of his own, he well knows how smart little ones really are. Surely, Gertie will get the help she needs and be home soon. Mr. Johnson always smiles when he sees little Elizabeth marching proudly behind the cow when they pass by his house on Scrabble Hill – though that isn’t often because most days he’s at the post office early and leaves late. She is an independent little girl. Mr. Johnson sighs as he watches the wagon trundle off. Every family in the village has trials and troubles these days with the war and so many boys off fighting in the trenches in France, and some of them already never to return. But he knows the hard time Gertie has had since her own Will died five years ago.

When he returns from the Station, Will stops in for the mail and Mr. Johnson chats with him, tries to cheer him up talking about the lively election.

Notes

1. A branch of the Royal Bank opened in Great Village in 1919. The building which housed the bank still stands in the Village, near the Presbyterian church.

2. So beloved was Angus Johnson that in 1930 one of his old friends, Mrs. Peter Hall, composed a poetic tribute to him á la Robert Burns, and in 1933 he was honoured by a large gathering in the Presbyterian church:

God'’ blessing on ye Pastie man,
Ah Angus ye’er a prince o'man
To sort like you─
A bonnier lad I dinna ken.
God bless ye mon.
...
Ah, Angus, Ye’er a lad o’pairts
Master o’ a’ the winsome airts.
Ye’er deeds by a’ ye’er ain desairts
Will live for aye.
The benediction o’ oor hairts
Ye hae the day.

3. Obituary (Truro Daily News) ─ Angus Johnson died July 12, 1935, in Great Village. Born in River John in 1852, he lived for the last 61 years in Great Village. Mr. Johnson was a public-spirited man, keenly interested in the welfare of the community, and for 34 years he was postmaster there. He is survived by his wife, Mary MacLeod, daughter of the late Robert MacLeod, and by four daughters, Miss Florence of Toronto; Mrs. Neil MacLeod of Cochrane, Ont.; Mrs. James E. Dykens of Upper Economy, and Mrs. Donald Patriquin of Great Village; also by four sisters and one brother. He was predeceased by two daughters. The service at the house was conducted by Thomas Lamot, student minister of the Presbyterian Church, assisted by Rev. Mr. Kirker of the United Church. At the grave the service was in charge of the I.O.O.F. lodge, of which Mr. Johnson was a member for over half a century.


View of Great Village. Angus Johnson's post office is tucked among the buildings on the left; Hustler Hill and the road to Londonderry Station on the right.

Nova Scotia Connections: A Day in the Life of Great Village, 21 June 1916: Introduction

Great Village seen from the top of St. James United Church

Elizabeth Bishop’s memoir “In the Village” is both deeply personal and transcendently universal, an expression of private, intimate experience and an evocation of the joy and pain that resonates for all of us. It stands alone, ultimately, a self-contained world, drawing a moment in time in astonishing, beautiful detail.

As a poet, I am content to leave it be. As a biographer and historian, however, my curiosity gets the better of me and I want to know more about the foundation, the sources, of this masterpiece. After all, Bishop said of it that it was plain facts, that it actually happened, that all she did was compress time a little. I am compelled to dig deeper not to detract from its sublime wholeness, but to link it more fully to its origins, to understand more broadly what the world was like at that moment in time and what caused the events to happen and allowed Bishop to write about them so movingly.

“In the Village” is, in the end, about the child Bishop was in 1916, when the events happened (even if it is the adult remembering that child and re-imagining, re-creating, re-envisioning her).The other person, though, who was central to the experience and who remained a force in Bishop’s life, was her mother. Bishop searched her whole life for the sources about her mother (within herself and in the world) – her mother always remained a part of Bishop’s life.

I have spent a great deal of time thinking about Bishop and her mother and what Great Village was like for them in the mid-1910s. My thinking led me to an idea of re-imagining “A Day in the Life of Great Village” – a day of great significance to both Bishop and her mother: the day Gertrude Bulmer Bishop went to the Nova Scotia Hospital. We do not know the precise day she boarded the train at Londonderry Station (or, perhaps in Truro) and went to Dartmouth, but we know it was late June. I imagine it was 21 June 1916 (the summer solstice), a date probably very close based on evidence found in documents connected to Gertrude’s hospitalization.

Many years ago, having pondered this day for some time, I decided to write a series of vignettes about Great Village, “A Day in the Life” – set on that day – to create a sort of narrative describing the people who lived “in the village,” and the activities that would have been happening in the community. I did nothing with these vignettes, so I have decided to dust them off and post them on the blog. My aim is to post one a week, for the next several months. Slowly, “A Day in the Life of Great Village” will appear and gradually the story of that day will unfold. Stay tuned!

First Encounter XXXVII: A Poem by Anne Shifrer

Elizabeth Bishop Scholars Tour Great Village

Bleeding heart, buttercups, and big red-orange poppies
with black, hirsute centers. Sylvia Plath would see them
as hairy tarantulas sizzling on hell flames,
so would Jonathan Edwards. What would you see,

Elizabeth? — something more subtle, the forget-me-nots
tucked in a corner like tiny blue buttons on baby clothes?
wild roses lapping the breeze or the lupins, tangled
in weeds but still standing tall? We all speak your language

so, of course, we say to each other, “lupins like apostles,”
one of your images that startles because you so rarely
permit yourself such grandiloquence. And we all see it,

the strange aptness — yes, lupins line the village roadways,
tall, prophetic silences like the pencil-thin apostles on Chartres,
especially at evening, gathering crystals from the fog.

“Apostles?” You were so much more the stoneworker
Ghiselbrutus – folk-artist donkeys chiseled
in small unexpected places on the cathedral.

Your village is much the same, Elizabeth, it lasted
longer than you hoped, well past your abidance.
But much has softened, the steeple which held
your mother’s scream now has iron curlicues
that look like cartoon-eyes of an owl or the spectacles
of Groucho Marx. It’s no longer sharpened
by irredeemable pain. All of that is dead now.

Our reluctant tour guide, the shy, brilliant fellow
from Britain leads us around quite aimlessly, wondering aloud
what we would like to see. Everything is, as you might expect,
connected only by “and” and “and,” and, just as you said,

nothing coheres. Your animals do not arrive to gather this family
of word-buffs into holiness. But we are, somehow, a family,
an odd dysfunctional one, as we amble along quoting your poems
at salient moments and laughing, as we walk around and around
trying to make our stumbling your whole biography.

Sometimes, I think that each of us is crying somewhere
inside — for you, Elizabeth — for all the ways
in which you couldn’t connect, for all the ways
in which happiness failed you, crying for you,
with you, because look how your world is still here.

Anne Shifrer has taught and written about Elizabeth Bishop’s poetry for more than twenty years. She is currently compiling an anthology of poems about Elizabeth Bishop. If you know of such poems in print or have poems of your own, she would be interested in knowing about them. Contact Anne at Anne.Shifrer@usu.edu. {Ed. Note: we will post more about this anthology project as it evolves – stay tuned!)

Elizabeth Bishop Centenary Arts Festival Banners for Sale

During the Elizabeth Bishop Centenary Arts Festival in August 2011, the Elizabeth Bishop Society of Nova Scotia created wonderful banners which were installed along Highway 2 (from Masstown through Great Village to Five Islands). On the banners was painter Joy Laking’s “Starry Night in Great Village” – a vibrant and celebratory evocation of Elizabeth Bishop’s childhood home. The banners weathered the summer and early autumn quite well and the EBSNS has decided to sell them, a little fund-raiser for the Elizabeth Bishop Centenary Writing Competition book (containing all the winning entries). For more information, contact EBSNS board member Laurie Gunn at laurieegunn@ns.sympatico.ca . The banners are wonderful souvenirs of the lively and memorable arts festival held in Great Village. You can also order banners from the Elizabeth Bishop Society of Nova Scotia website and pay online.

First Encounter XXXVI -- Moya Pacey visits Great Village

Elizabeth Bishop crossed borders and hemispheres as I have done to travel to Great Village in Nova Scotia from Australia via Europe and Newfoundland to attend the Elizabeth Bishop Centenary Festival and read my short memoir : “My baby brother is born tonight.” It won First prize in the Open Section of the Elizabeth Bishop Centenary Writing Competition. I can hardly believe I am here in Bishop’s childhood home and tonight, I am alone in the house sitting at the desk reading a manuscript of Bishop’s that Sandra Barry has left with me. The house quietly settles as I listen to a concert from Montreal on the radio. I feel perfectly at home–as if I’ve entered an EB bubble…

The number on the white wooden front door of the Bishop House in Great Village, Nova Scotia is 8740 and there is a capital B wrought into the metal plate fixed to it securely. The house is a surprise. From the road it looks small but inside it opens out and becomes a home not a museum. Bishop’s life and works are everywhere including quirky personal items: a blue coffee pot resting on the old stove, a pair of hickory across-country skis leaning up against the wall of the utility area, a purple drinking glass from Brazil, ornate and heavy, and a red calico fancy shoe bag that Bishop brought from the US across the border into Canada, on one of her frequent visits to her Aunt Grace in Great Village. It contained a piece of raw beef, bleeding blood into the heavy red cloth, for Aunt Grace to cook for their supper.

Art works and photographs crowd the walls including one of Elizabeth aged about four or five-years old smiling out at me. She has a pudding bowl haircut and wears a sailor suit with the tie knotted awkwardly around her neck, but in her Vassar portrait nearby, her smile is less forthcoming and her tie is carefully knotted. Great Village was the centre of Bishop’s childhood universe potent with memories. In her Vassar Year Book she gives Great Village Nova Scotia as her home. “Home made home made aren’t we all” is inscribed on her memorial tablet at St James church.

On my first night, rain falls on the house, but for the rest of my stay it is warm and steamy. I choose to sleep in Bishop’s bedroom, at the front of the house, (how could I not?). It is a child’s room with a single bed pushed up close under the slanting blue wall. Linoleum covers the floor, and there’s a cotton quilt with carefully patched eight-pointed stars all askew like the room itself. Bishop remembered it tilting. Above the bed there’s a small skylight window fixed shut, (once it was kept open by blunt-ended scissors). I catch glimpses of the starry night sky outside and on the night before I leave the Milky Way and the Plough are so close they seem to be in the room with me.

Across the road from the house is “The Esso Station” (now Wilson’s) but no, “dirty dog, quite comfy lying on the wicker sofa,” lies there now. The antique shop next door to the house was once the L.C. Layton Store. Meredith Layton tells me that her family remember going to help Gertrude Bishop on the day she had her final breakdown, after which she was taken to Mount Hope (the Nova Scotia Hospital) in Dartmouth, and Bishop never saw her mother again.

Upstairs from the window of the “Elsie Baker Reading Room,” a blue fish chair waits along with a tin basin, ‘shiny like the moon’ for a writer to sit and look out of the window that frames St James Presbyterian, now United Church, with its distinctive witch’s black hat spire. Here the Festival events are presented during the three days of non-stop activities which include historical tours, author readings and interviews, writing workshops, and concerts, and lots more.

“Speak to everyone you meet,” Bishop’s maternal grandfather instructed her. It is advice the Festival and I take to heart. And it is this generous hospitality and the good manners and huge commitment from the Bishop community that brings Great Village to life for me. That, and the encounters, chance meetings, and the many conversations I have over the days, I spend there. Encounters, such as the one with Bev the Great Village postmistress who introduces me to Stirling Dick a 92 year-old WW2 veteran, who tells me: he’s looking for a wife and doesn’t know who Elizabeth Bishop is or was and asks me, “Why all the fuss?” I meet sisters Jane and Esther at Anne Simpson’s poetry workshop held at a nineteenth-century, elegant, square, yellow house facing the Bay of Fundy. Afterwards, I am invited to share Jane’s birthday picnic with them in the grounds of St James church and I eat Willy Krauch’s smoked salmon for the first time. It’s famous and I am told that Pavarotti asked for it as payment when he sang at the Dalhousie Arts Centre in Halifax. I meet another local, Maxine Ryan, on a buggy ride around the village and she invites me to her home and gives me dinner and I see my first-ever humming bird in her garden. I meet Carmel Cummings, the Irish poet from Kilkenny, who’s staying at the eerily Gothic mansion, The Blaikie House, up the road. Laurie Gunn’s husband speaks so eloquently and movingly on the theme of “Home” at The Old Time Sunday Church Service that I find myself teary (and not alone either) because I’m kept busy dispensing tissues to my companions in the pew with me. Afterwards, at the blueberry tea, Barb and Sandy who seem to be everywhere during the Festival helping out, are beaming in their blueberry hats and their hunt for the elusive “blueberry grunt” recommended to me as “a must have treat” by the ladies from Truro at my table, is hilarious.

When it’s time to leave Great Village, I feel as if I don’t want to cross the iron bridge that “trembles” over the Great Village River where the water runs fast and brown. I am reminded that Bishop didn’t want to either on her way to the post office carrying a brown paper parcel, packed by Gammie with treats for her mother addressed to: “Gertrude Bishop at the Hope Sanatorium in Dartmouth.” But I must return home and leave the EB bubble and all those who were there inside it with me. Sandra Barry, the most generous of hostesses and a wonderful ambassador for the Elizabeth Bishop House and Great Village, Suzie le Blanc whose singing of Bishop’s poems set to music was sublime, Don McKay’s reading of Bishop’s “Sandpiper” at the house, Rosaria who came and spoke quietly to me about poetry on the back porch of the Bishop House are just a few of my many memorable encounters.

As Sandra drives me out of Great Village, I catch a glimpse of Aunt Grace’s house where Bishop caught the bus to New Brunswick – the journey which became after thirty-one years the poem, “The Moose.” She turns the car towards Halifax and leaves Great Village resting on the Bay of Fundy where the “Atlantic drains/rapidly backwards and downwards.” I’ve witnessed its fifty-three feet tides bigger than a four-storey building and its destructive carving through forests, “See those fir trees are not long for this world.” On the beach, Sandra points out a sandpiper looking like a grey stone. Others rise so fast I miss them. I see: “millions of grains… quartz grains, rose and amethyst”– and Sandra finds and gives me two blue stones. As I write, they are sitting on my desk at home in Australia, next to the pen holder complete with “moony Eskimos” stencilled on its surface. These are keepsakes redolent with the memories of my first encounter with the Elizabeth Bishop House in Great Village, Nova Scotia and with the Elizabeth Bishop Centenary Festival but so potent is my first encounter that I do not need these objects to enter once more into that EB bubble. I have only to open Bishop’s poems and prose to cross over and enter: “I recognise the place, I know it…”

{Ed. Note: It was a great pleasure to meet Moya. We could not have had a better winner in the Adult/Open Category of the Writing Competition. She entered into the Arts Festival with gusto and spirit, and became part of the village instantly. We hope she will be able to cross hemispheres and visit us again. Click here to read some of her poems. The Elizabeth Bishop Society of Nova Scotia will be publishing all the winners of the Writing Competition, so you will be able to read Moya's wonderful memoir story eventually -- we will post a notice when that book is published. It looks like that will happen in 2013.}

Moya and Sandra at the Elizabeth Bishop House, August 2011. Photo by Carmel Cummins

All Good Things Must Come to an End...

... and so today's "Today in Bishop" is the last one of the centenary year and, for the time being, the last one. My thanks first of all to my co-hosts, Sandra Barry and Suzie LeBlanc, who have headed the effort of so many, many people throughout Nova Scotia to make EB100 such an enormous success, and then to you, our faithful readers, for all your interest, encouragement, and support.

Finally, I am grateful for Elizabeth Bishop and for her work, which has given me so much to ponder for so many years. Here, in parting, is EB's translation of a poem by Octavio Paz. -- JB

January 1

The year's doors open
like those of language,
toward the unknown.
Last night you told me:
tomorrow
we shall have to think up signs,
sketch a landscape, fabricate a plan
on the double page
of day and paper.
Tomorrow, we shall have to invent,
once more,
the reality of this world.

I opened my eyes late.
For a second of a second
I felt what the Aztec felt,
on the crest of the promontory,
lying in wait
for time's uncertain return
through cracks in the horizon.

But no, the year had returned.
It filled all the room
and my look almost touched it.
Time, with no help from us,
had placed
in exactly the same order as yesterday
houses in the empty street,
snow on the houses,
silence on the snow.

You were beside me,
still asleep.
The day had invented you
but you hadn't yet accepted
being invented by the day.
--Nor possibly my being invented, either.
You were in another day.
You were beside me
and I saw you, like the snow,
asleep among appearances.
Time, with no help from us,
invents houses, streets, trees
and sleeping women.

When you open your eyes
we'll walk, once more,
among the hours and their inventions.
We'll walk among appearances
and bear witness to time and its conjugations.
Perhaps we'll open the day's doors.
And then we shall enter the unknown.

Cambridge, Mass.,
1 January 1975

A Christmas Present from Japan

Christmas Eve brought me in the post a beautiful gift from Elizabeth Bishop's devoted translator into Japanese, Michiru Oguchi: an album of photographs she made during her visit to Nova Scotia for the University of King's College conference "It Must Be Nova Scotia: Negotiating Place in the Writings of Elizabeth Bishop." I'd like to share it now with you.

[To enlarge the pictures, first click on the image; when the slideshow version appears right click on that image and select "view image"; then click on the resulting image to obtain the enlargement. -- JB]

EB100 comes to a close

As 2011 winds down, it “behooves” us (as Elizabeth Bishop might say) to acknowledge the wonder and delight of the Elizabeth Bishop Centenary celebrations held not only in Great Village, Halifax and many other Nova Scotia communities; but also in Worcester, Boston, New York City, Ouro Prêto, and many other far flung places. The tributes to Elizabeth Bishop have spanned art forms and have involved an astonishingly wide range of artists from many disciplines. One of the things this comprehensiveness shows is Elizabeth Bishop’s significance. The degree of lively, imaginative creativity bespeaks an influence which proves Bishop’s life and art are generative forces. Do we not believe that when her bicentenary rolls around, people will still be reading “In the Village” or “The Moose”? Surely, it is not saying too much to suppose it will be the case. Not only have many artists paid tribute to Elizabeth Bishop, the many events that have taken place drew good audiences throughout the year. In Nova Scotia, the extensive media coverage EB100 received has, we feel, brought her name to many more people than had previously been aware of her, and introduced many to her art for the first time.


Elizabeth Bishop Centenary exhibit, Truro Library, Truro, N.S.
Photo courtesy of Linda Shears

Though we have not yet decided just how we are going to proceed with this blog, it will stay active. We have so much backlog of material (video, text, photographs, etc.) to post – but with life being as busy as it is, this work will take time. We hope you will continue to visit the blog as 2012 rolls along, as the years to come will bring more EB activities to announce and feature.


Starry Night in Great Village by Joy Laking

The main reason for this little note is to extend heartfelt thanks to John Barnstead, without whom this blog would not have existed and been as lively and important as it is. John is the heart of this effort – his “Today in Bishop” and “Today’s Video” have been an extremely popular part of the blog. The amount of work it has taken for him to sustain these delightful elements cannot really be described. The EB100 YouTube Channel is also an important feature of this site. I, for one, am immensely grateful to John for his devotion to the blog – because of his dedication and effort, this site is now a must see for anyone interested in Elizabeth Bishop. Thank you, John.

As I mentioned, we will be shifting things a bit as 2012 rolls along, but we will continue to post information and material, which we trust will be both relevant and pleasant. Stay tuned. Happy New Year.


Elizabeth Bishop Centenary Arts Festival banner in front of St. James United Church, Great Village, Nova Scotia.
Photo by Laurie Gunn

Three White Leopards report on the Tibor de Nagy EB Exhibit

http://ladyofsilences.blogspot.com/2011/12/elizabeth-bishop-artist-and-curator.html

Our New York Correspondent Writes --

“Elizabeth Bishop: Objects and Apparitions” is on view at Tibor de Nagy Gallery, 724 Fifth Avenue, from December 8 through January 21. The exhibition will be celebrated with a reading by poets Mark Strand, Tina Chang, Hallie Hobson, and Susan Wheeler at the gallery on December 13 at 6:00 p.m.; for further information visit tibordenagy.com.

"Sandpiper" -- Pink Dog Productions

CASTING CALL

Dear Elizabeth Bishop Enthusiasts:

Magpie Productions is casting this Tues Nov. 29th in Halifax and possibly one other date later for a 5-7 year old girl to play the precocious and very aware poet, Elizabeth Bishop, when she's almost 5 years old. I'm sending along a pic in case you might have any leads. We're shooting Jan 14-15 in Great Village for a day and a half. It's a paid gig -- $225.00.

Do you know anyone? Do you know anyone who would know someone? We would be very happy if you could forward contact info of any parent who may have a daughter who might be interested.

We're doing an adaptation of one of Elizabeth Bishop's poems. We're also looking for the girl's mother, Gertrude, (mid-thirties, dark hair). That's a smaller role but also paid.

If you know please forward any information to our producer Walter Forsyth who is arranging the casting sessions.

walterforsyth@gmail.com


my best,

John


John Scott
Associate Professor, Ithaca College
magpieproductions.com
magpieproductions@gmail.com

Click the poster for further information.

Monday Wonder Question VII: Bishop and Mather?

The past week or so I have been reading The Oxford Handbook of THE ELEGY, a substantial collection of survey articles edited by Karen Weisman. In it, in his essay "The American Puritan Elegy" Jeffrey Hammond quotes from Cotton Mather's "Memoirs of the Life and Worth: Lamentations for the Death, and Loss of the every way admirable Mr. URIAN OAKES," who writes:

Well! Reader! Wipe thine Eyes! & see the Man
( Almost too small a word!) which Cambridge can
Say, I have lost!

This has brought to mind the following passage from Bishop's "Poem":

Our visions coincided - "visions" is
too serious a word - our looks, two looks:
art "copying from life" and life itself,
life and the memory of it so compressed
they've turned into each other. Which is which?

Bishop's poem, too, is a kind of elegy -- but an elegy in anticipation: Mather's Oakes has been felled; Bishop's elms are yet to be dismantled. Both Bishop and Mather place themselves within double lines of succession as elegists. And perhaps it is not a mistake to hear in EB's self-exhortation (Write it!) in another elegiac poem, "One Art", a distant echo of Mather's plea to Harvard (Own it!) in his praise of Oakes.

Bishop's acquaintance with Mather went back as early as her senior year at the Walnut Hill School, when she wrote an essay about him entitled "Assisted by the Holy Author." The occasional undoing of Mather (if not phrase by phrase, then by the occasional polemic rewriting of a significant phrase: "too small" ==> "too serious"; "Own it" ==> "Write it") might seem an amusing pastime to the poet who as a saucy student had written of one of his more exhaustive projects "So the Church History was conceived, written, and published with God assisting (sometimes reluctantly) at every step of the way. And indeed, why should He not? He was figured as a character, as the most important character playing the largest role, on every page of the book; as Mather pointed out to Him discreetly, it was to His advantage to see the Book through the press. If the Lord is going to motivate the events of History, He must somehow lighten the burdens of the Historian. And by recording the latter we can get perhaps as much insight into the ideas of Mather and his God as by studying the CHURCH HISTORY itself."

In Memoriam: Phyllis Sutherland (1926-2011)

She said that one of her earliest memories (and she was a very little girl, two or three years old) was seeing Elizabeth Bishop doing cartwheels in the driveway at Elmcroft, in Great Village, N.S. The teenage Elizabeth was visiting her beloved aunt, Grace Bulmer Bowers (Phyllis’s mother). Much later, in the 1970s, when Phyllis was a mother herself and living near Tatamagouche, N.S., Elizabeth visited regularly, flying or driving up from Boston. Phyllis’s children have their own early memories of “cousin Elizabeth” – David, for example, remembers Elizabeth bringing him the gift of a “Grateful Dead” album, a rock band he had never heard of – he still has the album.

These stories are the intimate and quotidian memories of family, seemingly incidental, but actually deeply bonding. Phyllis told me these and many other stories during the long friendship we shared. I will be forever grateful to her for this gift of a glimpse into the private realm of her family.

Phyllis would have loved everything about the Elizabeth Bishop Centenary celebrations in Nova Scotia – she would have been at every event, if it had been possible. But it wasn’t possible. Her illness confined her to a nursing home and slowly took away her capacity to engage with now. Above her bed hung the famous portrait of Elizabeth Bishop taken near the house at Samambaia in Brazil, in the mid-1950s. Elizabeth had sent a print of it to Aunt Grace, signed with love. This photograph hung in Phyllis’s home – it was there when I meet Phyllis in 1991.

Phyllis died on 19 October 2011. Elizabeth once wrote that numbers were mysterious. It seems significant to me that her death happened the year Elizabeth would have been 100 if she were alive. It seems significant that it happened in the same month when Bishop herself died (6 October 1979) and ten days before “Sonnet” was published in The New Yorker (29 October 1979 – thanks to John for finding out this small but important fact).

Phyllis’s sons David and Wallace asked me to speak at her service, which took place on 23 October in Tatamagouche (coincidentally, the minister who officiated knew my maternal grandmother, who was also born in 1911). I was deeply honoured to share some of my memories about Phyllis. It is those words I want to share here:


Phyllis and her mother Grace, circa 1940. Courtesy of Acadia University Archives

I met Phyllis – and Miriam – in the fall of 1991. I intended the visit to be brief, simply to introduce myself and tell her about the work I was doing on Elizabeth Bishop. I had no idea that she had already been visited by a number of American Bishop scholars, about whom she had a wide range of opinions. I arrived around 10:00 a.m. She welcomed me warmly. Later I learned this was not only her habitual way of being with all visitors to her home, but also because I was the first Nova Scotian to come asking about cousin Elizabeth. She invited me in and almost immediately began to show me items of the family archive she had in her possession. Six hours later, I was still there – talking, talking, talking, and looking at things.

It was Elizabeth Bishop who brought us together – and the depth of my gratitude to Phyllis for the gift of her memories, knowledge, and perspective about the Bulmers and Bishop is beyond words. But even more than this connection, which became a bond between us (and we certainly had many interesting moments in those early days of the Elizabeth Bishop Society) – even more than this bond, what I am most grateful for is my friendship with Phyllis – and Miriam; knowing them changed my life in lastingly good ways. That first visit turned into hundreds of others stretching for twenty years.

Phyllis immediately began to introduce me to the family – everyone was so welcoming to this stranger who was being nosy about their famous relative. Phyllis also began to take me around to places that were important to the family. Many times over the years, Phyllis, Miriam and I drove around Colchester and Cumberland Counties – Phyllis enjoyed driving – and she told me countless stories. There is no better way to understand the complex truths about life and death than through memories and stories, through sharing memories and stories. In the twenty years since we first met, my friendship with Phyllis has given me some wonderful and cherished stories that I have shared.

One of our first outings took us to Spencer’s Point, near Great Village (where the family had a cottage long ago). It was a November day, a wild wind was pushing the heavy clouds and churning up the Bay. I remember that we stood on top of the cliff looking at the waves and had to shout to be heard. It was beautiful and unsettling to be so exposed to the elements.

I wrote a poem that I titled “Spencer’s Point,” which I dedicated and gave to Phyllis. She said she liked it – and I believed her because she was perfectly capable of saying she didn’t. Being a reader of Bishop’s sometimes enigmatic poems, Phyllis was more than able to grasp my effort to express the beauty and danger of the elemental scene we shared that day. The poem now has become elegiac for me, speaking about the ephemeral nature of the body and the eternal nature of the spirit. I want to conclude by reading it (it is quite short). It has an epigraph that I took from The History of Great Village, a wonderful little book that Phyllis and I talked about many times. The epigraph is from the section about Spencer’s Point.

*****

Spencer’s Point

“White Light visible eleven miles.”

for Phyllis Sutherland

The Bay is red as blood.
Tide swollen with rain and shoved
by a rampant southerly, peculiar
to November, strips the cliffs of flesh.
Centuries have witnessed such feasts.
Huddled on the brink of dissolution
ancient apple trees adhere to the soil
littering shivered grass
with spoiled harvests.
I stand for a moment in the blast
and erode irrevocably,
blinking past my own blistering tears.
Suddenly, remembering bones,
I pull back from this instant
resisting return.
The Light is gone.
Ships that fed the shore
and fed the sea no longer guided by the need
to see, no longer needed.
The farms disappeared as the high tides
washed the earth
into the Bay, widen-
ing the Bay, narrowing the farms.
The keeper is gone.
All that remains is the undertow,
waves seasoning the wounded stone.

Canadian Listeners Please Take Note: 2 p.m. this Sunday, October 30, 2011 --

Our CBC correspondent writes:

"On CBC Radio 2, October 30th, it's a special eight-hour broadcast marking 75 years of public broadcasting in Canada. From 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. (9:30 to 5:30 in Newfoundland and Labrador) Canada in Concert, with host Bill Richardson, celebrates CBC's remarkable legacy of sharing Canada's greatest classical musicians with listeners from coast to coast. This musical marathon, the result of an intense collaboration between CBC Radio 2 and Radio Canada's Espace musique, offers an eight-hour festival of live performance recorded in eight Canadian centres.

"The programming features internationally renowned Canadian ensembles and soloists. We have singers galore - from Quebec City, Bernard Labadie leads Les Violons du Roy in a concert featuring the outstanding soprano Karina Gauvin; from Toronto, it's the Canadian Opera Company Orchestra some of the countries biggest vocal stars including soprano Isabel Bayrakdarian and tenor Ben Heppner; from Halifax, soprano Suzie Leblanc joins the Tempest Baroque Ensemble for a program recalling the poetry of Elizabeth Bishop, and from Vancouver, some of the country's best choral ensembles celebrate CBC's 75th with an engaging program focusing on the work of Canadian composers.

"We'll mark the opening of the new Maison symphonique in Montreal with a smashing performance of Beethoven's Symphony no. 9 with Kent Nagano leading the Montreal Symphony Orchestra. From Ottawa, we have an intimate recital with two Canadian classical superstars - violinist James Ehnes and the brilliant 16 year-old pianist Jan Lisiecki. From Winnipeg, it's highlights of the 2011 Winnipeg New Music Festival.

"CBC has nurtured the careers of hundreds of artists across the complete musical spectrum. On Oct. 30th, Canada's biggest classical stars come together to say 'many happy returns.'"

Schedule:

9:00 Vancouver - Vancouver Sings, a choral spectacular

10:00 Quebec City - Karina Gauvin/Les Violons du Roy

11:00 - Banff - Quartets Plus - past winners of the Banff International String Quartet Competition

12:00 Toronto - Prima Donna - Canada's finest singers with the Canadian Opera Company Orchestra

13:00 - James Ehnes, violin, and Jan Lisiecki, piano - Ottawa Chamber Music Festival

14:00 - Halifax - soprano Suzie Leblanc, violinist David Greenberg and the Tempest Baroque Ensemble - A celebration of the Elizabeth Bishop Centenary

15:00 - Winnipeg - Highlights from the 2011 Winnipeg New Music Festival

16:00 - Montreal - Beethoven's 9th Symphony from the grand opening of Maison symphonique

Green Notebook Entry: October 29, 2008

“Only dimly did I hear the pupils’ re-sigh-tations of capital cities and islands and bays,” Harold Cooke, a student at the Great Village School, is reading aloud from “Primer Class” as we slip into a high-backed pew at what is now St. James United Church, caddy corner from Elizabeth Bishop’s childhood home. The front has been painted fairly recently, but the sides are peeling, and perhaps a visit from the steeplejack would not be amiss. Funds are needed, too, for the next panels in the Great Village Pergola Heritage Project, and we are here to help raise them, as part of the “Word in the Village” celebration held the last weekend in September. “I must go into the classroom now and join in the usual morning” – a pause as Harold catches his breath –“ songs.” A paragraph or so later we are descending the steps past the village children’s prize-winning haikus and cinquains about manners, stories of their own first days at school, and a framed photo of one of Uncle – no, Great Uncle George’s paintings. We’re going to the church hall, where a lovely corn-chowder-with-or-without-onion lunch, with biscuits and homemade strawberry jam, will be provided at a small charge for the benefit of the Great Village Community Association.

Afterwards, summoned by the tolling of the recast and rehung church bell, we return to the sanctuary to listen to “In the Village”. The walls of the sanctuary are painted in trompe-l’oeil stone blocks with somewhat disproportionately diminutive keystones over the arches. The central arch bears the motto “Worship the Lord in the beauty of holiness,” with the word ‘the’ carefully centered at its apex. It has no keystone. Today Bishop’s portrait as a child has been blown up and placed over the left-hand slotted board that in the old days would have borne two figures: the amount of last week’s collection and that of a year ago. Balancing it on the other side of the arch is the hymn-board: nos. 506 (“Take My Life and Let It Be”) and 544 (“In Gratitude and Humble Trust”).

Sandra Barry, tutelary spirit for matters Bishop in Great Village, begins by reading lines from “One Art”, to prepare us for the unfortunate, unavoidable last-minute absence of CBC Radio One Mainstreet’s Carmen Klassen. There will be six readers, she tells us, and we shall proceed without intermission “right straight through”, as Bishop did the National Geographic of February 1918 (a copy of which, found in a second-hand shop in Evansville, Indiana, and purchased for a song, is kept now in the drawer of the desk in the library of her childhood home, caddy-corner across the road).

The reading begins. At once we are more aware than ever before of the music of Bishop’s prose: “Swiss skies – horizon – rims of eyes” as Anne Simpson reads. The story doesn’t suffer from disruption when the voices change, as we feared it might, -- whether from Lisa Lindo’s beautiful contralto to Alexander MacLeod’s deep baritone, or from Brian Bartlett’s New Brunswick twang to Susan Crowe’s lovely vowels and consonants, so familiar from her songs. A deepening, echoing silence fills the church as Susan reads from her thick edition with its two dangling book marks. The light from the green lamp on the pulpit catches the interlocking rings of her earrings, so that they flash figure-eights as her head moves. Clang. Slp. Tears come to our eyes (I asked afterwards – I wasn’t the only one) when we reach the sentence It sounds like a bell buoy out at sea.

The reading stops. There is silence, and then there is long applause. Later there will be an old-fashioned ham and baked bean supper that has to be moved (on next to no notice) to the Legion Hall because so many more than expected will be there. We make our way down the aisle. At the back there are portraits of all the ministers since Saint James was founded and Presbyterian – an early one is just a blank frame, since no picture could be located, but Dr. Gillespie is there, round-faced, and somehow slightly sanctimonious or sinister without his black straw sailor. “That was good, eh?” says a woman in a lime green jacket with its collar upturned. We head outside.

"into that world inverted / where left is always right"

http://www.gocomics.com/getfuzzy/2011/10/25/

REMINDER for our Massachusetts Readers

Monday, October 24 - Tom Travisano

Editor of Words In Air: The Complete Correspondence

between Elizabeth Bishop and Robert Lowell

As part of the Elizabeth Bishop Centenary Thomas Travisano will read at Fitchburg State University (Miller Oval, Miller Hall, Highland Avenue, Fitchburg) on Monday, October 24th. The reading will take place between 3:30 and 4:30 p.m. The author of the first book-length study of Elizabeth Bishop's poetry, he is also the president of the U.S. Elizabeth Bishop Society.