Plastiline

One evening, idling through the local newspaper, an item about adult extension classes caught my attention. A sculpting class at the nearby school was offered. I put the paper down, had a coffee, picked up the paper again, folded it so the article was up, put it on the dining room table, finished my coffee, and finally read the day, time, and room number.

I'd sculpted something once. At Cal State, in an education class, I'd had to make something in clay. I'd rolled some clay into a ball, slammed it on the table so it couldn't roll around, and punched holes in it with a pencil. I'd named it “Pencil Holder.”  The instructor had said, “Well, it's different.”

In my typical, dilatory manner, I kept passing the newspaper clipping on the table. Reading the piece one more time, I noted that the class time was Thursday evenings. 

 

Several people were at the classroom door when I arrived. Most of them were women in their fifties or so, all matronly. I had no idea what a sculptor was supposed to look like; but these people seemed to know the teacher and found him attractive.  I thought – Frenchman, no, not named Nishan Something. Greek?  Tall and suave, anyway.

The several women were all affable, dressed to accommodate smeary stuff. I felt quite clever, having come in jeans. One asked if I was aware that our instructor was the "great" Nishan. I said no, and let it go at that.  “We're so lucky!” the woman added.

           

I smiled. Anyone in this southern California middle class community named “Nishan” and teaching sculpture to middle aged housewives (and me) probably had a wild hairdo, an undecipherable accent, and a long mustache. I began to wonder what other “interests” had been in that newspaper article.

Right on schedule, the classroom door was unlocked by a small, slender man of retirement age clad in a gray coverall. He had neither mustache nor beard.  The cluster of several middle aged women and one male trailed into the room after him, chose work benches, and picked up a sheet from the bench. The sheet was a list of required materials, which I pocketed then waited for the introductory remarks. 

There were none.  A woman asked him a question I did not hear.  His response was, “Yes.”

           

Another woman asked him how much clay she should buy.  He said, “Ten pounds.” He passed around a registration sheet and then said, “A model will come next Thursday.  Thank you.”  He smiled and left.  The intro night was over.

At home I almost tossed out the info sheet; but, holding it above the waste basket, my eye caught an odd word: plastiline.  What did that have to do with sculpting, whatever it was?  I put the sheet back in my pocket.

Plastiline, it turned out, is what is used instead of real clay.  It's dust free, doesn't crumble, lasts indefinitely, and washes off the hands easily.  WOW!  Suddenly, I knew I was returning to the class.  Worst case would be, if I quit the class, I could give this plastiline whatever to another student.

The next Thursday the other pre-sculptors welcomed me, obviously somewhat surprised that I'd returned. One said, “I think you'll like him after all. He's famous, you know.”

No, I didn't.  But then the number of sculptors I was familiar with totaled two: one Frenchman and one Italian.  This Nishan was neither. But I was here with ten pounds of plastiline, the few required tools, and a woman was sitting on a high stool in the center of the room.

The rest of the class was punching plastiline.  If they were, I figured I should, too. Nishan walked very slowly around behind the dozen sculpting people.  When he got to me, he peered over my shoulder, then spoke.

           

“Bad light,” he whispered. He pointed to another part of the room. I moved. He smiled.  That was the sum of the instruction I got for a month.  He must have exhausted his vocabulary.

 

Then, as I poked and rubbed at the blob I was trying to make into a facsimile of the model, he leaned over my shoulder and said softly, “Looks like a man.” He was right, and I already knew it. I turned toward him. He added, almost in a whisper, “All week look at women.” His face lit up in a huge grin. “She'll be beautiful next week,” he murmured.

I don't know what I'd been doing wrong, but the next Thursday the model had undergone a subtle transformation. And I fell in love with plastiline. It let me change anything and everything.  I could see this thing on my table morph into the model. The others in the class began passing behind me, pausing to look.

Finally, the model's time was used up.  We were all done, or nearly so.  When the model came over, she gazed at her facsimile for a long moment.  Then she smiled and said, “Thank you.”  My semester was made.

In the entire semester this Nishan hadn't spoken ten words to me, or fifty to the class. But, when, one day in Paris, I stood before Rodin's “The Kiss,” I understood.

Nishan Toor (1880 – 1966)   http://nishantoor.com/

http://www.sullivangoss.com/nishan_toor/

Promises

Promises should be kept.  I know that and try to keep them, but not always successfully. I wish I could make up for some.

  

In the heart of Seville is a pedestrian square with no special appearance.  It must have a name, but city maps don't show one.  Weekdays it is the most ordinary of semi-business centers.   Nondescript offices surround a plain, undecorated area. A church dominates the north facade.  No benches, no flowered islands, no monument, not even signs or billboards.

One expects, in Spain, never to be out of sight of a floral bed, or decoration, but here is none.  Without the church, this square would be the dullest spot in Seville.

Except on Sunday.

Sunday is for “La Sevillana.” For an hour or two any person or family can reach back four centuries, for free, into the pinnacle of Spain's most romantic period.

It isn't advertised.  No billboards, nothing in the papers, on radio or T.V.  The only setup is that the church clears its staircase and front deck.  This is for the convenience of free bands that alternate during that day. Bands arrange with somebody to show up on some schedule. They must make agreements with some authority some place, because they never play anything but “Sevillana” period pieces that include Flamenco and other three-century-old folkdance pieces.

The square has few, but essential, qualities for “La Sevillana.” They are (1) Size: There is space for hundreds of participants; (2) Protection:  Buildings surround the square, blocking any severe wind; (3) Flat:  It is slightly tilted, but the pavement block surface is smooth.  (4) No stands or benches.  If you enter the square, you are in the midst of the dancers.

Spaniards do almost nothing without sprays of flowers distributed everywhere, on their persons, decorating everything they can reach.  But this square is as plain as cold soup ---  until Sunday. Then it is not the square, but people who turn it into something wonderful.

My first visit began in a desultory manner.  Somebody had told me that a Yankee should not miss “La Sevillana.” I wasn't told what it was, just to be at the square shortly before church let out. When I arrived, all there was to observe were a few people assembling folding chairs on the church veranda.  No signs, no bunting, nothing.

Well, not quite nothing.  Several college age persons were placing some coats in a sort of circle here and there.  A Franco guard leaned sleepily against a street sign.  A priest peered out through  a window. After a time, a few musicians went up the church stairway that faced the square.  The musicians, of disparate ages and garb, some about twenty, some clearly pushing retirement, carried instruments up the stairs.  They warmed up a little; but there was still nothing dramatic. What conversation I could decipher was trivial.

Then a fellow with rather wild hair raised his hands high, held them up for a moment.  Something was about to begin.

I heard a sort of “Ahhh,” behind me.  I turned around. Somehow, silently, the square had filled.  At least a thousand people, folks of every age and description, had melted into the square prepared to dance.  Clusters of teenagers, clusters of adults, all mixed with the very old and very young, had laid out markers with their coats, jackets, handbags, radios, even occasional hats. No one invaded a single claim.  Some people had brought folding chairs; but those turned out to be for older, non dancers.

Some dancers were paired, but most had arrived singly for the dance, pairing up with whomever was hand, and generally re-pairing later. They would find a partner, young or old, decked out or not.  The dance was why they had come.

The largest circles maxed at twelve persons.   Four was the minimum.  Many wore period costumes, but that was obviously optional. Nearly every girl below high school age, though, was elegantly decked out, mostly in the ubiquitous “fandango” style with the great comb that stacks hair high. Costumes overall varied from Twentieth Century to Medieval.

Nearly every adult knew the steps of every tune. I created the "nearly."  As dancers pirouetted in the flowing circles, there was an obvious rule -- you smiled your best smile at every eye you caught.  Since that meant me, too, I quickly felt very Carlovian Spanish.

              

Circles swelled and shrank, as a couple drifted from one circle to another.  (But not me, of course.  They knew not to invite me).  I got big smiles, though, of sympathy mostly.

              

This being Spain, when I held my hands out, palms up, they laughed.  A few volunteered to show me at least some basic steps.  One woman peeled off her elbow length gloves, grabbed my wrists, and towed me into her circle and through some maneuvers that had to have been from the Sevillana years. She didn't mind that I remained a half beat behind each maneuver. The rest of our circle cheered. 

There were no breaks in the music.  How the second band arrived, I didn't see.  I only realized that there were two when a fellow from the first band came down the church steps to join a young woman in a larger circle.

I'd been happily clicking away with my camera for some time when I felt a tug at my elbow.  Turning, there was a nicely dressed man in a Nineteenth Century style dinner suit, a “gentleman,” smiling and pointing to my camera.

“Por favor?” he asked in a soft voice.  He pointed to the girl beside him, whom he had been lovingly teaching.

The girl, at most ten, obviously his granddaughter, as pretty as a ten year old could be, was also delighted that her grandfather would want their picture taken together with her in her  beautiful period costume.

I had them stand together.  They beamed. I shot twice.  He wrote out his address, which I slipped into my camera case.

Sadly, my travels after Seville, to Portugal, more Spain, France, Holland, and London, required much handling of the camera case.  Somewhere, the gentleman's address slipped out.

That charming gentleman has long since departed, and his grandchild is almost surely, now, a grandmother.  I hope they didn't really mind that I did not keep my promise.

Clatsop

It would be lots easier for kids if primary and elementary teachers realized NOT that kids don't know anything, but that kids know tons of stuff that's mostly wrong.




When my teacher introduced Lewis and Clark in my sixth grade, I already “knew” everything necessary about Indians. They could look like trees and be invisible. They must live with eagles so they could wear colored feathers.  They wore moccasins with beads imported from China. When I asked my teacher how Indians got birch bark for their canoes when there were hardly any trees on the prairie, she told me to sit down. 

One kid in my class kept confusing Sacajawea with Pocahantas, which made me feel better about being told to sit down. Today, I am most astonished that the Lewis and Clark Expedition (Corps of Discovery) is assigned so far down the list of amazing American achievements. 

Having driven the entire route of the Expedition from St. Joseph, Missouri, to Fort Clatsop, Oregon, it is mind boggling that 35 men who didn't know what they were getting into, how long their journey would take, or if they could even put up with each other -- and knew less about Indians than I did as a kid -- not only pulled it off, but every single member of the expedition returned in one piece.  (Special biographies today note that some members of the expedition suffered desperately afterward. But that was afterward.) 

People really should know that the Mandan Indians, who helped the Corps of Discovery, affected our history far more than did John Wayne. The expedition spent the first winter along the banks of the upper Missouri River in the territory of the Mandan Indians. When the Corps of Discovery entered their world in October 1804, the Mandans informed the men of the best routes to The Great Divide, supplied them with food throughout the winter, invited them on a buffalo hunt, warned them of the Blackfeet, and accepted the expedition’s doodads in payment.  The party knew where to go, what to avoid, and how to manage the seasons.

Fort Clatsop, at the end of the Lewis and Clark Expedition, is among historic sites too little appreciated. It should be on a par with Gettysburg and way above the Alamo. You probably won't visit it, but you should.  One doesn't pause at Clatsop en route to Mt. Rainier and St. Helens, etc.  You have to elect to go there.  It's tucked against the south shore of the Colombia River just before that great river flows into the Pacific. It is in dense woods at the south edge of the world's greatest temperate rain forest. The river is so wide there that you cannot see the far shore. 
Getting to Clatsop, you won't pass huge signs saying “Gas: Next Exit.” It's lonely. In fact, your first impression will be that you probably lost your way. 

Approaching the site, you might think "What's the big deal?"  A shabby log cabin, an axe shaped canoe, all in a quiet created by dense greenery and an occasional bird.  Also, perpetually soggy footing.   

Supply room

When you realize that, on the north (Washington) shore were hundreds of very unfriendly Indians whose only experience with white people had been being cheated and bullied by John Jacob Astor's merchant ships, it is understandable that these Lewis and Clark men, with a few muzzle loaders, barely able to feed on deer and fish, should select a camp spot well out of view from river travelers.

Dugout Canoe

The Clatsop Indians aided the Corps both in preparing for and dealing with the Northwest winter. They informed Lewis and Clark that there was a good amount of elk on the south side of the Columbia, information that influenced the Corps to build Fort Clatsop where they did. When the expedition’s food supplies were running low, the Clatsops informed the Corps that a whale had washed ashore some miles to the south.

The structure of the fort is quite typical of the thousands of prairie homes built during the next thirty years by Midwest pioneers. It isn't Versailles. However, as Dr. Leakey explained about the fossilized cranium of Zinjanthropus:  the wonder isn't that it's not pretty, but that thirty-five men, a girl, and her baby got there.
 
The number of non-Indians who knew anything about the huge region that later became more than half of this country, or even knew their ways through the Louisiana Purchase, was maybe twelve, and they were just about all Canadians. The survival of the Corps of Discovery expedition was a miracle. 

At Fort Clatsop, the “office,” constructed by axe, reveals the professional skills that the men had developed with a tool never designed for carpentry. How much can anyone do with axes and some nearby gunk? 

Live demonstrations at the Fort

In recent years during the tourist season, Fort Clatsop National Historical Park offers live demonstrations of how the men coped with the forest primeval.  The cabin that served as an office has been authentically reproduced according to Lewis' records. There are also demonstrations of how the men used their smooth bore muzzle loaders, and how logs were shaped into canoes. (Rifling did not come into use until around 1812.) This visit will probably inspire you to take a river cruise that includes the Snake River and to see how Lewis and Clark worked their way from the Clark River through the white rapids, via the Snake, to the Columbia.  My impulse on leaving Clatsop was, and continues to be, to retrace the route up the Missouri, along the Yellowstone, the Madison, across The Great Divide, and to marvel again how superbly the best in human character was carried out through two years. Also, how remarkably loyal the crew was. 

P.S.     A huge rock in the center of the Columbia River is named for Sacajawea's boy, Jean Baptiste Charbonneau.  He seems to have had 35 uncles. 

PLAYLAND

For decades "Playland at the Beach" was a major feature attached to the Pacific (west) edge of San Francisco's Golden Gate Park.  Locals called it "The Concessions."  I grew up during its midlife -- its hey day.  Playland began its gentle drift into oblivion, a descent triggered by the Great Depression, the movie industry, and the automobile.  At 17 cents a gallon, driving south on the Peninsula, or north through Marin County, or east to Moraga had more allure than the chill winds of the sea.  I recall that, in school, our latitudes were designated “the prevailing westerlies.”  Since our teacher did not define “prevailing” for us, I thought it meant “incessant.”  I was right, and they were always cold.

The two great bridges made Playland's corny carnie even duller. As competition increased,  Playland's management quit bothering to keep the grounds clean enough. However, a concession manager lived next door to us and peeled off free passes like confetti.  So I went with friends fairly often across the Park to the pike.  Free was free.

The tickets didn't pay for hot dogs, cotton candy, chocolate bars, and other stuff that teenagers gobble up, of course.  Perhaps my neighbor's generosity was not without wisdom.  And high school kids have friends.

One time, Alex, his girl friend, her friend, and I decided to roller skate from Market and Powell Streets past North Beach, west by Fisherman's Wharf, to Sutro Heights, on  to the Seal Rocks, and  to Playland for food.  It wasn't as daunting as it may sound, as San Francisco isn't very big.  But Alex's mother did say, "You're nuts." Alex's mother was a savvy woman.

We checked our skates, shoes, and wore comfortable clothing.  We were nuts, but not totally stupid.

                

As we left Alex's for a downtown trolley, his mother said again, "You're nuts."  My mother would have said the same, if we'd left from my house.  The girls' mothers, too.

One of the few flat places in San Francisco is the cable car turn table at Market and Powell where we began our little excursion.  No wonder the city's street cars go through tunnels.  We were about to get plenty of exercise.

Chinatown

The start was uneventful.  We worked through China Town, Little Italy, Girardelli Square, and, after a malt shop pause on Clement Street, we reached Sutro Heights promontory, the start of a slalom decent past the Seal Rocks and San Francisco's famous Cliff House.

Cliff House with Seal Rocks

We had agreed to pause at "The Rocks" and watch the surf there smash upward several stories, slopping sea water into the natural basins that, in turn, drained into the five swimming pools inside the Baths.  We had agreed to start down the steep grade but pause halfway by the Cliff House.

The slope began gently enough.  Alex and Shirley coasted very slowly; but my partner seemed unable to check her speed. All I could do was catch up.

We shot past the Cliff House entrance as people standing there gaped.  I concentrated on keeping my partner upright. At least there was a long, level pedestrian pavement at the base of the curve, a half mile parallel to the beach.  We could probably coast to Playland.

I yelled through the whistling wind.  She nodded and smiled.  Our survival appeared hopeful.  Well, except for the broad grating at the base.  We'd have to clear it.

Again, my partner nodded.  Her fingers squeezed my arm HARD. “JUMP!” I yelled.  Her grip hurt. We left the pavement together. Amazingly, we came down on the skates with a modicum of grace, and coasted on...into a sand drift.

How I got my feet out in front I don't know.  They just  were.  Still squeezing the blood out of my arm, most of her was almost level, like a racing dive.  I grabbed at her  jacket.  And it held.  It held, and as we slowed, she began to straighten up.  At last we stood facing each other, and she began to laugh.

“Do it again?” she giggled.

“Not until Sutro's is levelled,” I responded.

Alec's girl friend checked us both over.  “Mom told us we were nuts,” he said.

My partner said, “We're not telling your mother... nobody.  I may never marry.  I might be tempted to tell my grandchildren.  If I don't have any, they won't know.”

Actually, I may have to do that downhill run again.  The Sutro Baths are gone.