Tom Lehrer

 

Tom Lehrer in 1983

The trigger for this particular blog was the fact that I bought a copy of The Guardian on Wednesday 22 May [I allow one actual newspaper a week, max. More would mean I did nothing else but read newspapers which is not a shameful occupation; people from my generation gratefully acknowledge newspapers as the primary news source for the discerning.] In the paper was a double spread on Tom Lehrer about whom I haven’t thought for years. It was enough to send me to my relatively sparse remaining CD collection to dig out my one and only Tom Lehrer CD. [probably the '65 edition.] Of course, when I played it, I was incredulous that so much time had passed since it was last heard by me. It remains as sublime as ever and I’m ashamed to have forgotten to play it, though Tom would understand that Life got in the way.

Francis Beckett

Tom in his fifties

The Guardian article is by Francis Beckett, a long-time Lehrer worshipper, who, following Lehrer’s statement in 2020 that he had placed all that he had written in the public domain, generously making his lyrics and sheet music available for anyone to perform or use without paying royalties, decided he could then afford to write a show he had long had in mind, about Lehrer. The Fringe Theatre, Upstairs at the Gatehouse in Highgate, agreed to stage his eventual production called Tom Lehrer is Teaching Math and Doesn’t Want To Talk To You. This is now scheduled to run from May 28 to June 9 and my big current regret is that I am not up to journeying to Highgate to see it!!

And why this hero worship? Lehrer, born into a wealthy New York Jewish family in 1928, was a child maths prodigy who entered Harvard at 15 in 1943, took a first class maths degree at 18 and acquired a Masters a year later. After graduation in 1946, he worked at Los Alamos Scientific Laboratory before becoming a Maths Professor at M.I.T. apparently without effort but his talent, his “prodigious talent” as described by Beckett, has been for composing bitingly caustic, musical social comment and criticism. But his work is also wonderfully funny too with magical, stunningly harsh, but light-heartedly irreverent turns of phrase and comment. The music is jaunty, catchy, memorable and induces a novice’s desire to ape the Master or, at least, applaud or echo. Frankly, Lehrer is for the satire-obsessive set to music.

Fortuitous photograph of squirrel and pigeon
in the Abbey Gardens

Almost always, as I walk through the Abbey Gardens early each morning, there are dozens of pigeons busily pecking and snuffling in the grass, I always happily greet them and their companion squirrels but I always silently sing remembered remnants of Lehrer’s Poisoning Pigeons In The Park as I smile benignly at the birds. I love the familiarity of the song, and, it must be said, pigeons; but I cannot resist Lehrer’s subversive lyrics.

“Spring is here, spring is here
Life is skittles and life is beer
I think the loveliest time of the year
Is the spring, I do, don't you? Course you do
But there's one thing that makes spring complete for me
And makes every Sunday a treat for me

All the world seems in tune on a spring afternoon  /When we're poisoning pigeons in the park

Tom Lehrer singing 
Pigeons in the Park

Every Sunday you'll see my sweetheart and me
As we poison the pigeons in the park

When they see us coming
The birdies all try and hide
But they still go for peanuts
When coated with cyanide

The sun's shining bright
Everything seems all right
When we're poisoning pigeons in the park

We've gained notoriety /In the Audobon Society

With our games.

They call it impiety
And lack of propriety
And quite a variety of unpleasant names

In middle and old age

But it's not against any religion

To want to dispose of a pigeon.

So if Sunday you're free
Why don't you come with me
And we'll poison the pigeons in the park
And maybe we'll do in a squirrel or two
While we're poisoning pigeons in the park
We'll murder them amid laughter and merriment/Except for the few we take home to experiment

                                                     My pulse will be quickenin'
                                                     With each drop of strychnine
                                                     We feed to a pigeon
                                                     It just takes a smidgin
                                                    To poison a pigeon in the park.”

Lehrer wrote and performed in the 1950s and 1960s but he suddenly gave it up in 1960 with a brief reprieve in 1965 when he re-emerged to write new songs for the American version of the British satirical show, That Was The Week (Year)That Was. A second CD resulted containing many new, even more hilariously naughty and overtly political songs, making fun of the Catholic Church in ragtime for instance: The Vatican Rag: “Then the guy who’s got religion’ll/ Tell you if your sins original.” Plus three songs condemning nuclear weapons. He expressed his horror that Hitler’s chief rocket scientist was then working for the Americans: “When the rockets go up who cares where they come down/ ‘That’s not my department,’ says Wernher von Braun.”

At the height of his fame, in September 1967, he was made
honorary student in the Copenhagen Student Union

And then, Lehrer-silence, at  the height of his fame and, short of 40 years in age, as he spent the rest of a long life [96 in April 2024] mostly as an unknown maths lecturer, living in self-chosen obscurity with the maths courses he taught at a modest university level rather than at High Honours; he called it, “Maths for tenors” He also added, at the university of Santa Cruz where he remained from 1972 for almost 30 years, a course on the history of the American musical, one of his passions.

Francis Beckett who wrote the Guardian article suggests:

“… Tom Lehrer is a prodigiously talented man who has no interest at all in money for its own sake, or in money to wield power. He wants enough to be comfortable and to do the few things he wants to do, and he has that.”

I think that my favourite comment by Lehrer [from perhaps thousands] is:

“Political satire became obsolete when Henry Kissinger was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.”

[N.B. Kissinger spied for the F.B.I. as a student, on fellow students, in search of 'communists', and later, masterminded the carpet-bombing of Cambodia during the Vietnam War] 

Although, temptingly, there is also:

"If, after hearing my songs, just one human being is inspired to say something nasty to a friend, perhaps to strike a loved one, it will all have been worthwhile.”

Plus, of course, there is "My songs spread slowly, like herpes."

When George W. Bush was President, Lehrer admitted, "I don't want to satirise George Bush, I want to vaporise him."

The Boy Scout Movement in Australia had him barred from entry in the Fifties. In 1958, five years after the release of his first C.D. it was released in the U.K. and the BBC promptly banned ten of the twelve songs on it.

All of Lehrer's work [he wrote  only 37 songs] can be accessed
free of charge on
tomlehrersongs.com

 

                                                              tomlehrersongs.com.

Lieux de memoire.

Lavenham 

  

Upper Bridge Street, Wye, Kent

This morning, [21/05] to a superb U3A talk called Boom and Bust in Mediaeval Lavenham by Jane
Gosling. I was particularly impressed by the quality and variety of the speaker’s photos of the many mediaeval buildings in the large village. Several featured various Crown Posts in different houses and suddenly, seeing them, I was taken back to my own much-loved old house in Wye, in Kent. I had left in early 2015 after over thirty years in the timber-framed semi-detached late fifteenth century house on one of the main streets in the village. I could barely afford to buy it originally but felt it to be historically, a dream house for me, with its beams, inglenook, Crown Posts et al. Despite strenuous modernisation, much of the original remained to be treasured and enjoyed over the years and it became one of a very small number of homes in my life which I have totally loved. Eventually, when I was eighty, I accepted that it was becoming a little too hard to care for it and I could see that, quite soon, it would become an increasing burden.

Crown: upper part of an arch
Post: upright support

Happily for me, this realisation gradually happened and coincided with a sudden impulse to live in Bruges which I had visited, and admired, every year for over twenty years and the excitement of making that adventure happen, quite took the edge off bidding farewell to my much-loved old house. Almost painlessly, I left, to remember it so fondly, but this morning’s photos of Crown Posts in the Lavenham lecture, called up the strongest desire to picture dear old No 1 and the Crown Post to which I awoke every morning for so long! It evoked a sudden, almost visceral, longing, not to return, but to savour the memory and the reflections and reminiscences it called up.

Now, all of this Crown Post remembering calls to mind the concept of “home” which has a strong connection to the image of “house.” When I think of my childhood home, I remember the house which was familiar and always there but which I don’t particularly remember admiring in any aesthetic sense, [it was just ‘there’] though I did love the garden; the “side-piece” adjoining the long garden which wasn’t ours, though we girls colonised it with our miniature patches of gardens; and the front lawn with the large Buddleia tree and its myriad summer butterflies where we so enjoyed our joint July birthday parties at the long, borrowed table. All of that was loved but the most important feature about a home is the person, or people, who make it home plus

Part of my childhood home minus front lawn. 2017.

the feelings associated with that person, and by extension, that home. And that, for my sisters and me, was our mother. One safely protective, always loving, adult was enough to make our home which

embraced us, and remains still, part of my precious internal landscape of memory.

Similarly recalled with strong feelings of attachment and love is the large house and garden where my children grew up; a happy, busy, spacious home with a garden garlanded with many trees and shrubs, ivy-covered old stone walls, a large pond [or little lake] with a stream, lawns and a Victorian greenhouse beloved by only me, I think! For a time we had a small boat made and loaned by a friend and for more years than I can remember, the daring swoop over the pond of an aerial ride, made by my husband to the astonished delight of the children, and much admired by young visitors too.

Waingroves Hall, Derbys.
Georgian-built, late 1700s, probably constructed around
the original Jacobean Clayton House; Victorian entrance porch
added c 1880/90.


Readers should find:
Geneology Blog: Robyn and the Genies
Waingroves Hall, Derbys.
Monday 26 October 2015 entry.
where an embarrassment of riches awaits.

Woensdagmarkt 9, Brugge
My apartment was on the top (floor 3rd)  behind the seven windows
with an eighth around the right-hand corner.
The terrace was hidden behind the top left corner of the building.
I meant never to leave, till old age intervened!

A Little World Apart

Recent arrival; cosmos

The arrival of Spring has brightened my terrace beyond imagining. For a season much-anticipated, Spring still manages to surprise. My roof-top garden is treasured both for its aesthetic value but also because it gives me, in a small second floor apartment, an ‘outside’ where blackbirds and pigeons occasionally visit, where fresh air feeds the lungs; where I can sit or work or linger to savour the views, perhaps the part of the cathedral tower which is visible or a peep at the next-door terrace to check on their display! It is, in fact, the very heaven to settle in a not-too-comfortable chair, embalmed by cushions, to enjoy my evening Duvel while I read or think. There is always a calm beauty about the terrace but at this time of year, there is extra delight in the increasingly rampant foliage which seems to have doubled in size and variety on certain plants while unremembered little blooms shyly decorate emerging shrubs. Somehow, to wander my tiny ‘estate’ provides both a daily reunion with the plants and the views, and a simultaneous celebration of their beauty. And the world beyond seems refreshingly further away; somehow, below me!

My sister and I playing Mah Jong on
the Bruges terrace in 2018.
She is very appropriately attired.

When I lived in Kent, my small courtyard garden which contained both a small proper garden and a brick courtyard filled with pots of shrubs and young trees, was much loved. I said Goodbye, I thought, to all things earthy when I left, but then I found a wonderful rented flat in Bruges where I moved to live. It was large, central, with great views and, amazingly, had a large terrace which overlooked the nearby convent garden as well as the mediaeval square in front of the building. There began my education in terrace gardening which is similar, though slightly different, from proper gardening!! When eventually garlanded with flowers and foliage, it became a favourite space to entertain visiting friends and family as well as a perfect bower for solitary pursuits. Even doing my Dutch homework was almost tolerable out there!

It did not occur to me that I could find a small apartment with a terrace, in Bury St Edmunds, when increasing age made it sensible to leave Beloved Brugge. But thanks to family living locally, I had no need to look far and I speedily ‘discovered’ my present home with the long roof-top terrace described above AND the tiny terrace off the kitchen accessed via the small glass folding wall.

The Bury terrace with much-travelled
charming statue.

Entrance view of the roof terrace ....

A most decorative standard laurel,
complete with curly stem,
on the tiny kitchen terrace.

... and the far [street] end of the roof terrace.

Adolescent Anxiety

 

As a nonagenarian, my own adolescence is far away; the adolescence of my children [all now in their sixties] seems pretty distant; that of my grandchildren, is much closer but was not closely observed by me as I have lived a distance away from them, though I did hear the occasional tantrum and witness dramatic despair which soon seemed to pass. SO I haven't observed familial teenage sadness myself but I seem to constantly read about it or hear of it on the radio. And we do know that adolescence is a huge transitional period for children when emotions are in a semi-permanent state of flux. But it seems there is an epidemic now, according, at least, to journalists of negative mental health outcomes. And I am stunned to read current statistics which show, for instance, that in 2023, the numbers of children and young people referred to mental health services reached a record high. NHS England record a shocking 20.8% of women aged 17-19 with an eating disorder while rates of hospital admission for girls and young women for self harm, have risen dramatically. [Adolescent boys’ numbers have risen slightly less dramatically.]

And then there is loneliness. Historically, people’s social networks shrink with age. Mine certainly have, in common with the majority of those in their eighties but, abnormally, the number of children reporting feelings of loneliness at school have more than doubled between 2012 and 2018, while Britons between 16 and 29 are more than twice as likely to report feeling lonely ‘often’ or ‘always’ as those above 70. Real and continuing loneliness can obviously be a worrying prelude to depression, mental health problems and the possibility of suicide. Unbearable thought! Is it chiefly that adolescent despair is talked about more in public and in print than in former times? Certainly public discussions about emotional states and problems ARE more common [I tend to think of it as the Americanisation of the public debate; some would say “the normalisation” of the concept.]

Looking back historically, the much stronger belief in society, in God and Church and religion may well have been a strong indicator of societal belonging as well as providing the expectation that Divine help was reliably near. Modern society is highly
individualised and atomised now, and religion much less widely followed, especially in Britain, than formerly. The wider consideration of other contributors to loneliness gives us poverty and economic insecurity; zero hour contracts; short term as opposed to one year plus, or permanent, jobs; the disappearance of youth clubs and community youth outreach; libraries and municipal swimming pools. Life in a deeply unequal world beset by austerity, has consequences particularly for the vulnerable.

Ian Russell: campaigner.

Which is where, no doubt, social media make an entrance. Teens spend several hours a day on their smartphones, often communicating with friends; their I-phones are their dearest possessions providing instant connection to TikTok et al. But the providers of the online world do not have the positive social connection of their users as their main raison d’etre; they are there to beat competitors and make money. And what can, and often does, happen is that social media use can isolate people from the flesh-and-blood community around them; can lead individuals to unhealthy places [witness the utter sadness of Molly Russell helped to commit suicide at 14 after viewing thousands of posts promoting suicide and self-harm]; can encourage anti-social behaviour by providing a willing audience for self-hype and undisciplined abuse directed at others. 

Molly Russell’s father, Ian, has become a campaigner for internet safety, calling for tech firms to be held legally responsible for exposing children to harmful content. And the Online Safety Bill of October 2023, establishes that social media companies have a statuary duty to ban illegal content aimed at children. These are hopeful signs of wider protective action afoot.

Gaza Revisited.

 

Conflict

I have recently tidied up both my filing system and various individual files. In doing so, I have come across a most interesting newspaper clipping dated 16/08/2014. It IS interesting but in fact, it is also riveting. I have obviously saved it because of its powerful testimony at the time but now, a decade later, it resonates with an uncanny eloquence given the present war between Hamas and Israel in Gaza. It is written by the following people:

Jewish women and children arriving in Auschwitz 1943

Hajo Meyer, survivor of Auschwitz; The Netherlands.

Henri Wajnblum, survivor and son of an Auschwitz victim from Lodz, Poland. Belgium.

Norbert Hirschhorn, refugee of Nazi genocide and grandson of three people who died in France during WW2, and whose mother died in Auschwitz. London.

Suzanne Weiss, survivor after hiding in France; whose mother died in Auschwitz. Canada.

Felicia and Moshe Langer, survivors from Germany. Moshe survived five concentration camps. Other family members were exterminated there. Germany.

Michael Rice, child survivor, son and grandson of survivors. United States.

Plus 30 Jewish survivors of the Nazi genocide and 260 children, grandchildren, great grandchildren and other relatives of survivors. [Full list at: ijsn.net/gaza/survivors-and-descendants-letter/]

Stutthof  Concentration Camp, near Gdansk, Poland
Post war, 1945.

The 2014 letter reads:

As Jewish survivors and descendants of survivors and victims of Nazi genocide, we unequivocally condemn the massacre of Palestinians in Gaza and the ongoing occupation and colonisation of historic Palestine. We further condemn the United States for providing Israel with the funding to carry out the attack, and western states more generally for using their diplomatic muscle to protect Israel from condemnation. Genocide begins with the silence of the world.

Women and children walk towards the gas chambers,
Auschwitz 1943.

We are alarmed by the racist dehumanisation of Palestinians in Israeli society which has reached fever pitch. Politicians and pundits of the Times of Israel and the Jerusalem Post have called openly for genocide of Palestinians, and right wing Israelis are adopting neo-Nazi insignia. Furthermore, we are disgusted and outraged by Elie Wiesel’s abuse of our history in these pages [Advertisement, August 11; Report, August 11] to promote blatant falsehoods used to justify the unjustifiable. Nothing can justify bombing U.N. shelters, homes, hospitals, universities. Nothing can justify depriving people of electricity and water.

We must raise our collective voices and use our collective power to bring about an end to all forms of racism. We call for an immediate end to the blockade of Gaza. We call for the full economic, cultural and academic boycott of Israel. “Never again,” must mean “Never again for anyone.”

Israeli/Gaza conflict 2014.

From Al Jazeera
"Criticism of the Israeli war and occupation is 
not anti-Semitism."