Classic rock in Nashville, Tennessee

Recently I read an article on the brain that stated that to keep the brain sharp one needs, apart from good nutrition and physical exercises, to learn new things and have a variety of experiences. This will help the aging brain's neuroplasticity. Neuroplasticity is the brain's ability to change and adapt. Experiences change a brain's physical structure and keep it young. In the last three weeks I certainly had a variety of experiences. The day after arriving in Georgia I went to the Marietta chalk festival, see my last post here. Then at the end of my two-week stay there I traveled north to visit apple orchards. The next day I walked up trails in a remote state park in the North Georgia Mountains, followed the next day by a visit to the largest and most prosperous plantation and historic home of Chief Vann, the 1790s Cherokee Indian leader and wealthy businessman. Upon my return to Nashville my son-in-law called me and invited me to join him and his visiting cousins to attend the Nashville Symphony on Thursday November 9th. His cousins, from Goa, India, enjoy music and this was a different type of concert. It was to be the rock band the Jefferson Starship accompanied by the Nashville Symphony Orchestra.

Of course, I was ready to go. The Jefferson Starship is an offshoot of the original Jefferson Airplane group formed in San Francisco in 1965. The Jefferson Airplane became a pioneering "psychedelic" rock band and was the first to be known internationally. My late husband and I attended their concerts in San Francisco and the Bay Area. I just looked in a bag I brought back from my garage in Georgia and found several posters from that time, including the August 1966 concert at the Fillmore Auditorium which we attended. The Jefferson Airplane also headlined the Monterey Pop Festival in June 1967, which we also attended. They headlined other famous concerts, such as the Woodstock Music and Art Fair and the Altamont Free Concert of 1969. Two of their songs "Somebody to Love" and "White Rabbit" are among the 500 Greatest Songs of all time, and were played on Friday.

One of the Jefferson Airplane's musicians was Paul Kantner, who when he split from the group in the 1970s founded the Jefferson Starship band. Their catalog included their own songs as well as rock classics. Grace Slick, the Jefferson Airplane's lead singer, joined the Jefferson Starship and kept singing her well known tunes such as Somebody to Love, as well as White Rabbit, which she had written. Kantner died in 2016, age 74. Grace Slick was inducted in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1996, wrote a book and retired from her musical career. Now 84 years old she lives in California and paints. In the pictures below she is to the right of Janis Joplin, in the 1960's, and now in her Malibu studio.

Below, some of her paintings.

The Jefferson Starship keeps touring the US and internationally (they were in Japan last January.) They had 15 energized performances scheduled for 2023 and one of them is this weekend with the Nashville Symphony at the Schermerhorn Center, shown below. We had seats on the balcony on the left.

First we parked the car near the symphony hall then walked a couple of blocks to the Assembly Food Hall for dinner. While going there we went down Broadway. It is Nashville's famous street packed with many places to drink and listen to live music. It was raining but there still were many people queuing to enter all the bars and honky tonks pumping their music out into the street. They had the walls and windows open so the music was quite loud. The bands and singers could be seen on stages and people dancing on the floor. All types of music could be heard: classic country, rockabilly (southern style rock,) blues, guitar, karaoke, old time music, bluegrass, etc. These places are open every day from 10 am to 3 am and there is no cover charge to enter them. Even being Thursday night with rain, they were packed. Below is Broadway at night and on a weekend.

Many musicians and singers live in Nashville and the surrounding areas. I hear it is not uncommon to see famous country stars come into a club and stage an impromptu performance. Tourists come here from the US and overseas. Nashville also has a reputation as being a top destination for bachelorette and bachelor parties. They come from all over the country and ride in open air buses down Broadway, wearing cowboy's hats and boots, drinking and carrying on loudly. They ride in "transportainment" vehicles, some can pedal while drinking. These vehicles can be buses, tractors, trucks with hot tubs and so on. Click on collage to enlarge. Photos below courtesy the Honky-Tonk Express.

Being a rainy Thursday night in November, I only saw about 3 of those party vehicles - they come mostly in spring and summer weekends. We reached the Assembly Food Hall and took the escalator upstairs. This is a European style multi-level culinary and entertainment place. It is large, about 100,000 square feet with 30+ eateries and bars, three live performance stages and a sky deck with views of Broadway. We decided to eat Vietnamese food. It was very tasty as each restaurant has been hand-picked for its high quality food.

Then it was time to go to the concert. The Jefferson Starship band consists of co-founding member David Freiberg (rhythm guitar/vocals) who also co-founded Quicksilver Messenger Service (another San Francisco band from 1965) - David is 85 years old. Another classic member is Donny Baldwin on drums, 72, then Chris Smith on keyboard with bass, Jude Gold the lead guitar, and singer Cathy Richardson. In the photo below, Donny Baldwin is on the right, Cathy Richardson with Jude Gold on top of collage and below, David Freiberg on left next to Chris Smith and Jude Gold.

In January 2020 I had been to this Schermerhorn Symphony Center to see "Salute to Vienna," a New Year Viennese Style celebration - see my post here. My daughter had come with me then, but this time she is attending a medical conference in Miami Beach, Florida, and had to miss this performance. The design of this concert hall provides vivid acoustical clarity. During the year a broad range of classical, pop, jazz, and family concerts are offered here. The sound was truly very clear.

Being on the balcony we could see both the symphony musicians and the Jefferson Starship group quite well. I tried to take some photos with my cell phone. They are not very good but they give an idea of the show.

Cathy Richardson has great vocal abilities and delivers vigorous harmonies. David at 85 has retained his sensational vocals. This band does not sound like a "senior" band, that's for sure. Photo below courtesy Stefan Nilsson.

David Freiberg is not the only star performing in his 80s. Many artists of that age have also kept their energy and vocal strength, such as Paul McCartney of the Beatles, at 81, Mick Jagger of the Rolling Stones, at 80 and Ringo Starr who is still touring at 83. Their sound is still fresh and relevant. Below on right Mick Jagger, and Ringo, David on left and Paul.

Jefferson Starship performed for about 45 minutes with sets from the Jefferson Airplane, Jefferson Starship classics and their newer songs. Then there was a 15 minute break followed by another 45 minutes of music. I wish I could have a video sample of this performance but I found a short on YouTube of Jude Gold playing Empryonic Journey. He is truly a super guitar player. This had been a terrific show with excellent music from the 60s, 70, 80s to the present, as they are still evolving. Their music was full of rhythm, energy and joy. It was a thrill to listen to them and a lot of fun.

Another day in the mountains...

The weekend before I visited the Hamilton Rhododendron Gardens in Hiawassee, GA. (see my previous post here ) was the beginning of their weekend festivals. There were some vendors' tents but they were closed, apart from one that was partly opened. You could see the rustic wood pieces for sale. Before I left the gardens I checked to see if someone was in this tent, but there was no one, although I was able to get a business card of the wood craftsman. In 2019 a large hackberry tree in front of my house in Nashville was struck by lightning and had to be cut down. A piece of the tree was given to me and it fit on top of a plant stand I had. So I was interested in a little table I had seen under the tent in the garden as a match for my plant stand.

Upon return to the lodge I called the wood artisan and left a message. He called me back and told me he had some pieces for sale in his house and only lived about 6 miles away in Young Harris, GA. We agreed that I would go there the next morning early, before 9 am as I had to meet a friend in Hiawassee at 10:30 am. He gave me his address and said I could find it easily with my GPS. I got up at 6 am the next morning to pack and have a quick breakfast. I was able to take a photo of the sunrise over the lake as pictured in my header photo. I checked Google Maps and saw his house in the middle of woods on a hill. Below is a map of the aread where I was. It is located in the Southern Appalachian Mountains on the border of Georgia and North Carolina. (Click on collage to enlarge.)

I placed the address in my car GPS and drove away. Upon reaching Young Harris my GPS told me to turn right on GA State Route 66, then left, then a bit later right, then further on left, then right again, then left and then it said "You have reached your destination." I was on a hill with no houses anywhere near. I called him and he told me two roads had the same name and I was on the wrong one. My GPS was useless then and I could not remember all the turns. After a while I tried to call him again but I was on a tiny road on a hill and there was no cellular signal. I kept driving but the road was twisting up the mountain. I was totally lost.

I had seen a house on the side, among the trees, and started going back toward their driveway to ask for directions. Then I remembered that I was in the US, and asking directions can be dangerous. The red marker on the map below shows where his house was and the black cross near the North Carolina border, in the mountains, was where I went.

I gingerly turned around (as by then the road was one lane) and after twists and turns somehow got back on the main road where my cell phone worked again and he came and met me. I did find a small table at his house and bought it. Then I had to find my way back to the main road again... not easy. This little trip should have taken me 45 minutes but ended taking almost 2 hours (I was lost for a long time...) Luckily I made it back to Hiawassee by 10:30 am to meet my Swiss friend. Then after a nice visit with a strong cup of coffee and a tasty piece of almond cake I drove down the road again toward Bavarian-style Helen, Georgia. It was a lovely morning and the route around the mountains is scenic but I had forgotten that it is steep hill mountain driving on a winding road with blind curves. Although I am used to these mountain roads if I don't use the interstate highways between Tennessee and Georgia, but I had to keep my eyes on the road and not the blubbling stream along the highway.

Arriving in Helen, I stopped at the Betty's Country Store. The first time my husband and I drove to Hiawassee we stopped at Betty's Country Store to buy a snack for our baby daughters. That was back in 1975. The store had opened in 1973 and was quite small, selling mostly fruits, vegetables and snacks. Now it had expanded quite a lot, like a large supermarket, with meat, beer and wines, etc., and eating areas outdoors.

I drove about 1.5 miles down to the village of Sautee-Nacoochee and stopped at the Nora Mill Granary Grist Mill and Country Store (one of the southeast's last working grist mill.) A small dam on the Chattahoochee River was built there in 1824, and later, in 1876, a grist mill was established selling grits, flours and cornmeal. The mill is four stories tall and has 1,500 pound French Burr Mill stones, a 100-foot wooden raceway and a water turbine. A gold prospector, John Martin, built the mill in 1876. In 1901 it was purchased by Dr. Lamartine G. Hardman who named the mill after his sister Nora.

Now the mill has been run by four generation of the Fain family. They still use the original stones to make flours, grits, cornmeal, etc. They sell other products like jams, salsa, hot sauces, syrups, local honeys and pre-packaged products such as pioneer's porridge, pancake and waffle mixes, biscuit and bread mixes amd more. The old-fashioned country store attached to the mill is quaint and it is fun to walk around and look at everything for sale, which I did and took numerous photos.

An assortment of kitchen items were also for sale such as cast iron cookware, cookbooks, wooden mixing bowls and trays, old-fashioned candles and other attractive kitchen gifts.

I walked out to the breezeway and porch that overlooks the Chattahoochee River. Large trout could be seen gathering at the foot of the dam.

It was a warm and sunny day. Watching the trout from the deck and listening to the bubbling river below was vey relaxing after all the mountain driving.

Back inside I took more photos of interesting old items on the walls.

There was also information on how the mill operates. It uses turbines rather than the water wheels used by most mills of that time. It gives an idea on how flour was produced in the past, and how this mill has kept producing stone-ground grains for almost 150 years. The mill is listed in the National Register of Historic Places.

Before I left I purchased a few items, some requested by my daughters, and a few for me, as shown below. I make my own jams but I bought a couple that were a mixture, to taste and see if I'd like to try making them - T.O.E jam (tangering, orange, elderberry) and Five Pepper Strawberry jelly (strawberry, green bell pepper, jalapeno pepper, Thai pepper, cayenne pepper, habanero pepper.) For the people who cannot drive to the North Georgia Mountains to buy their products Nora Mill has an online store, click here for it. Once you click on the online store link you will see all the different items for sale, and they ship.

Then it was time to hit the road again. I could have driven down the highway to Atlanta but that would have meant crossing the city during rush hour... Instead I cut across the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains to Talking Rock, GA. to join highway I-575 down to my area, close to Kennesaw Mountain. It was a small two lane road from Nacoochee to Talking Rock with many curves, but there was hardly any traffic, and it was scenic.

I arrived home at 5:30 pm, quite tired and hungry as I had had no lunch. I unloaded the car and noticed that my newly purchased table (made of maple) was a lot smoother and shinier than the piece of hackberry wood I had placed on top of my plant stand. Later, I called the wood artisan to ask him what I should do. He suggested that I bring my piece of wood back to him and he would work on it. Well, now, will I dare go back and get lost in the mountains once more? I told him I may come back in a couple of months...

There was no fresh food in the house and I did not feel like eating a frozen dinner, so I drove to the local diner. They serve fresh meals with large portions. I usually can bring food home for a couple more meals. I had a meat, two vegetables and a side of coleslaw salad. Then the server came and asked what dessert I had selected. I told him I was full and ate only a third of my meal. He said he would bring me a take-out box and asked again what dessert I wanted. I repeated I desired no dessert to which he replied "you have to select a dessert." I asked him why? He said "because someone has paid for your meal and dessert is included." I asked him who had paid and he said he was not at liberty to tell me. So I selected a piece of strawberry cake to take home. When he brought it to me he said "a funny thing happened - someone else wanted to pay for your meal and I said 'too late, her meal is already paid for'. I was astounded and asked him if this occurred often in his restaurant. He told me he had been working there for a long while and he could think of no other time this took place for one of his customers. I was speechless.

What a day it had been - getting lost on primitive roads in the North Georgia Mountains after sunrise, and being afraid to ask for directions, then having two different patrons wishing to buy my dinner at sunset. How about that! Certainly a day to remember.

Recollection: My mother during WW2, part 1

My younger daughter asked me to return to writing blog posts about my early recollections of Paris and my family. My mother's birthday was in May, French Mother's Day is the last Sunday in May or May 30,2021, so I'll write a very old memory about my mother during the war years. In 2009 I wrote a post about my mother's childhood "Mother's Birthday" you can read it here. It was followed in 2010 with a post about her youth and work in Paris and on the French Riviera "Mother's Youth and the House of Worth" you can read it here. For many years I gave my mother a hydrangea plant for Mother's Day; this is why I show some here.

As time passes, our memories fade and the visual information on them becomes vague. But some memories seem etched in the mind for ever. There are different types of memory: short term memory, sensory memory, long term memory that includes explicit memory, semantic memory and episodic memory. Episodic memories are generally about specific moments in one's life, with sensations and emotions associated with the event. Subsets of these are autobiographical memories including "flashbulb" memories which are highy detailed vivid "snapshot" of an exceptional and often emotional circumstance. The story I'm going to relate belongs to this type of memory as I was just past 4 years old but I still remember it. I don't have many photos of that period, of course, but I have photos showing me at the time.

One thing I remember about that time is the sound of the sirens urging us to go down to underground shelters as bombers were in the area. Some afternoons we would also go to public garden squares where my mom would sew and I would play. Once in a great while we would take a bus around Paris - I liked to stand in the very back of the bus in the open air.

From the bus I could see the rare cars (as gasoline was unavailable to private people,) bicycles, bike-taxis or tandem taxis as well as horse carriages. (Click on collage to enlarge.)

Mother must have left me with a neighbor when she went food shopping as I don't remember going with her then. Queues were long.

The Germans occupied Paris from June 1940 through August 1944 and seized about 80 percent of the French food production. There were acute food shortage and malnutrition amongst children, the elderly and in large cities where people could not maintain a vegetable garden. (Only 3/4 pound of meat with bones a week per family, if you could find it.) French food rationing was more stringent than that of any other occupied country in Western Europe. Ration books were issued for everything: food, clothes, coal, etc. until 1949. I don't remember eating much as food access was not normalized until the early 1950s.

Farmers raised rabbits to sell to city folks as they reproduced quickly. Some city people even raised rabbits on their balconies or cellars. My mother had been a "première d’atelier" or head seamstress in high fashion houses in Paris. She presided over the "atelier" (workshop) overseeing up to 30 seamstress and apprentices. She was the right-hand of the designer and had to be able to translate the designs into the right fabric, cut, etc. She could work with furs as well. She had a friend, Sarah, who worked in a fur shop, not far from our apartment. We would stop there often and my mother would make rabbit vests or other small garments that she would barter with farmers for one egg a week for me. I remember the little shop well; it was about 1/2 mile down the street Rue de Rochechouard. Several years ago while in Paris I tried to find where the fur shop used to be, but it was no longer there. I think it was located in Rue Lamartine. Below are maps of Paris arrondissements or quarters. We lived at the top of the 9th, below the Sacré-Cœur Basilica, that is located at the top of Butte Montmartre, the highest point in Paris. Below, on the top right is shown in blue the 1/2 mile walking trip from our apartment to where my mother's friend worked, a 10 minute walk.

My mother's friend wore a yellow star on her coat. At the time, I did not know why. Later, of course, I read about it. In May 1942, on the advice of Nazi propagandist Joseph Goebbels, Adolf Hitler ordered all Jews in occupied Paris to wear this yellow ID badge on the left side of their coats. Two months later, on July 16-17 1942, the Nazis had the French Police make mass arrest of 13,000 foreign Jewish families in Paris and suburbs. This was called "La Rafle du Vel d'Hiv" an abbreviation of the Rafle du Vélodrome d'Hiver. The victims were sent to Auschwitz concentration camp. (In 2017, French President Emmanuel Macron apologized and admitted the responsibility of the French State in this raid.) (Photos courtesy French Wikipedia.)

I don't have photos of the various capes, hats, jackets, vests and manchons (hand warmer) my mother made with the rabbit fur, but years later she made a white rabbit cape for my eldest daughter, shown below. I also found examples of rabbit vests as she used to sew (she made one for my late husband to wear outdoors.)

My memories of that time are rather vague, but I was 4 years old at the time. However, the following event I remember well. We had walked to Sarah's shop and my mother was upset. I remember she was arguing with Sarah - I don't remember the words, but Sarah kept saying no and my mother yes. Then Sarah took her coat (with the yellow star) and my mother threw it away. Then I remember trying to keep up with them as they walked up the street toward our apartment. My legs were not very long as seen in the photo below, in a dress my mother had made for me.

We proceeded to walk up to our apartment, which was on the 6th floor (without an elevator.) Then I played while Sarah and my mother went up the 7th floor where my father had his jewelry workshop (he was an artisan jeweler, diamond dealer.) I am not sure how long Sarah stayed there - days? weeks? Later I remember going up when Sarah had left. There was a small bed on the side and heavy navy blue blankets on the window to keep the lights out. In old Paris buildings the seventh floor used to have single rooms for the maids, with one or two toilets in the hall. Mother would be careful to make sure no one was around when she took food up to Sarah. In the collage below you see the entrance to the Cité on top left, next to our building, below on the left with window ajar is where my father's workshop was, then the main courtyard. We kept this apartment until the mid 1970s.

Several days later, or a couple of weeks, I am not sure, there was a loud knock on our front door. My mother opened the door and was pushed forcefully out of the way by two or three scary looking tall men. I remember they were loud with mean voices. Then my father arrived and they pushed him against the wall. They were looking for gold they said (I was told later) because my father was a jeweler. My father, an Armenian, had his business name changed at the time - he had the 3 last letters taken off, ian, that showed his Armenian name; he was stateless then. The Nazis sent many "stateless" people to concentration camps, too - they wore blue ID badges. Anyway, I remember that I wanted those men to stay away from my mum and dad and kept telling the men "I know something... Where someone is hiding..." Later my mother told me she had been petrified that they would listen to me and find Sarah upstairs. But I was annoying them and one of them walked on my feet with his heavy boots and I howled and kept howling. The men shouted at my mum to keep me quiet then they took my father away. It turns out that they were the Gestapo. My father returned a couple days later and went to bed for a while to recoup.

For those who may not know, the Gestapo, abbreviation for Geheime Staatspolizei (German: "Secret State Police",) in partnership with the Sicherheitsdienst(SD "Security Service") were responsible for rounding up the Jews throughout Europe for deportation to the extermination camps. I don't remember what they looked like but I do remember the boots that were so loud on our hardwood floor, and so painful on my feet. I think that for several days afterwards my mother had to carry me down the six flights of stairs and then down to the cellar during air raids. This is my "snapshot" memory - I'll never forget these loathsome men. Then I don't know what happened to Sarah. I think my mother's cousin worked with or had a friend in the French Resistance who had told him about the roundup of Jews in our Paris quarter. He also was able to get Sarah out of Paris and to a safe location or overseas. Both my parents never talked about it. But my father had our front door secured after that. The outside view looked the same but the inside was in metal. It was an armored door with a bar (in case the Gestapo would come back.) I found a couple of pictures that give example of the outside and inside door - our door was a double door.

All this happened a long time ago. The Nazis are gone (well, maybe not everywhere, as seen in the white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, by supporters of Donald Trump.) Germany has given reparation to the Jews and the Jews have moved to Israel. Although, there again, the citizens of Israel of nowadays are not the old citizens of after the war. I have been reading articles by the late Maurice Rajsfus (1928-2020.) He was a writer, journalist and militant. He wrote numerous essays on the Jewish genocide in France, the police and politics. His parents were Jews from Poland who had moved to Paris in the 1920s. His parents were rounded up in the Vel d'Hiv rafle of 1942 and sent to Auschwitz. His elder sister and he survived as they were born in France. 75% of French Jews survived to the end of the war (many were hidden like Sarah) in contrast with countries like Poland and the Netherlands where a lot more perished. It is said that the French Police collaborated with the enemy and denounced foreign Jews to save French Jews, but I don't absolve the French Police anyway - they were not innocent. (Below, Paris under German occupation - 1939-1944.)

Maurice Rajsfus wrote several books and I'll look for them when I go to Paris, in particular the book he wrote when he returned from a trip to Israel. I'd like to read what his feelings, as a Holocaust survivor, are about current Israel. I did read a remark he made, in French, and I'll translate: "...Israel is not my problem. It was a country like any other, to visit perhaps, if the opportunity arose. Once there, I modified this assessment ... I have always distanced myself from this state - since 1948... The world looks at Israel, judges its actions, admires or condemns them. As far as I am concerned, I refuse to bear part of the burden of this Jewish country which subjects the Palestinians to conditions of oppression that some of its citizens experienced in the past, elsewhere. I don't want anyone to think I am an accomplice - to any degree - of those who consider it normal to make the Palestinians pay for the crimes commited by the Nazis."

After my mother died in 2002 I found out that she had saved more Jewish people, when I was a baby. This will be for the part 2 of this post... more to come...

"Peace has no borders." - Yitzhak Rabin, Prime Minister of Israel (1922-1995)