N. Scott Momaday, The Bear -- A Review of Beauty

N. Scott Momaday: Words from a Bear

Sometimes something absolutely beautiful comes on TV when you most need to see it. Last night PBS's American Masters series was N. Scott Momaday: Words From a Bear. You can stream it online at https://www.pbs.org/video/n-scott-momaday-word-from-a-bear-odljy7/. If you do, please watch it on the largest screen you have available. The views of Scott's world are the American West and his imagination. 

Momaday is Kiowa. He was born in Oklahoma's red earth country and raised in the red rock canyons of Arizona and the Jemez Pueblo in mesa country of New Mexico.  Momaday grew up immersed in his father’s Kiowa traditions and those of the Navajo, Apache, and Pueblo. His was a world of vast spaces and timelessness.

PBS describes Scott as a "Pulitzer Prize-winning author and poet, best known for House Made of Dawn and a formative voice of the Native American Renaissance in art and literature." (You can read my review of the book at https://bit.ly/37kI3UM.)

House Made of Dawn was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for fiction fifty years ago and I had the great good fortune of meeting him almost that long ago.

I was a single mom working full time and taking night classes at Central State University in Edmond, Oklahoma. I took two and, some semesters, three classes to meet a degree requirement. But always one night a week I spent a bit of time outside my daily pressure cooker life -- in Dr. Norman Russell's poetry class. He very kindly arranged for me to continue taking his class after I took it that first semester, changing its title and number to side-step academia's practical order.

In his class we talked poetry. We read poetry. We shared the poetry we had written during the week. We discussed and argued, though always civilly, what made poetry speak to us. Rhymed, free verse, traditional, experimental. How to say what we meant to say. Which words were strong enough to touch our reader, strong enough to touch the universe. The universe both inside and outside of ourselves.

Dr. Russell was an eminent scientist in the world of botany. His day job was teaching science classes to college students. Don't get me wrong. He enjoyed teaching. He loved botany. And he loved our night class of would-be poets. We were not all working toward a degree. We were a mix of generations and professions and life experiences and goals.

He was a Native American, a Cherokee. And, most-importantly to me, Dr. Russell was a poet. A kind and generous poet. Red Shuttleworth (a much awarded Western Poet in his own right) said of Dr. Russell in a 2011 tribute, "Norman H. Russell bushwhacked a trail for many Native American poets.  He was the first Indian to publish poetry widely."

Sometimes Dr. Russell had a poet friend come and read to us. One of those poet friends was N. Scott Momaday. I doubt Momaday remembers me at all, but I remember him. I remember him as a big guy with a wonderful reading voice. I don't think I realized that he was famous. That wasn't important anyway. I just liked that he talked poetry to us as one of us.

Now I'm really glad he was famous, because that got us this beautiful film, N. Scott Momaday: Words From a Bear. This film gives us Momaday's world in his own voice. 

Again, here's the link https://www.pbs.org/video/n-scott-momaday-word-from-a-bear-odljy7/ 

Enjoy.

Janis: Little Girl Blue

Janis: Little Girl Blue, Official Trailer

Instead of a still pic of Janis, I'm putting up the Official Trailer. Give it a watch. I think you'll enjoy it.  For Janis, you need sound and color and motion. The Amy Berg documentary has it all and more.

I heard about Janis: Little Girl Blue on NPR December 1. I wanted to see it, but where was it showing? It supposedly aired on PBS's American Masters on November 25 which should mean that I could stream it on my TV at home. Easy-peasy, no driving. Wear what I'm wearing. Have a nice whatever I want to eat and drink. Sounded lovely. But it was not meant to be. Janis: Little Girl Blue doesn't show up on PBS's American Experience website.

Surely it'd be showing somewhere in Denver. Yup. December 4, 7:30, The Sie FilmCenter. Of which I'd never heard. Located on East Colfax which was somewhere downtown.

The Sie FilmCenter is separated from The Tattered Cover by a sort of alleyway re-purposed for outdoor dining. I've been to the bookstore several times, but had never noticed the theater. You get me near a bookstore or library and I can't see anything else.

Colfax is Denver's primary east/west surface street. I knew how to get there. Except, it was December 4, the first of two holiday Parade of Lights. The parade would cross Colfax west of the theater -- that was between me and my destination. An alternative route would be necessary.

No problem. I'd just go the way I go to the Denver Museum of Nature and Science, my favorite place in Colorado. Cut north to Colfax and voila, I'm there.

Thank goodness, my daughter was with me, navigating. Who'd a thought the traffic would be so bad?! Guess it was Friday night in the big town with a parade that traditionally brought people into downtown by the hundreds, maybe thousands, from what I was seeing. And, like me, those folks weren't used to driving downtown in the dark with roads closed for a parade.

We got to the theater in plenty of time, took the elevated down from the parking garage to a subterranean theater lobby complete with bar and snack bar. And me, I thought I was so grown up at my regular movie theater where I can get a nice cappuccino and popcorn. Here I could get a nice margarita and popcorn.

We got to the window and Janis was sold out. BUT, we could take a number and see if anyone who'd bought a ticket online then cancelled or whatever, didn't show up, in which case we could buy those tickets, but we'd probably have to sit in the front row and may not be able to sit together. They'd let us know in about ten minutes.

I'd just driven through that traffic. The parade hadn't started yet and getting home would still be through that mess. The next showings of Janis: Little Girl Blue were sold out. My bad attitude was ignited and I wasn't about to come back downtown again anytime soon.

It worked out that we got two seats together and the front row seats have high backs so it was surprisingly comfortable to lean back and watch the show. And with the audience all behind me, it was as if they didn't exist. It was just Grace and I, our entire field of vision filled with the sights and sounds of my youth.

The documentary is very well-done. Lots of footage of Janis performing. It's matter-of-fact about the difficulties of being Janis Joplin, but not dreary. She did everything, be happy or be sad, full-tilt, just like she performed. And the film shows that.

Janis also has snippets from her letters to her family and interviews with her brother and sister that were enlightening and comforting. You get the idea that her family loved her and cared about her, kinda like the rest of us.

Janis: Little Girl Blue with its sights and sounds from an intense and turbulent time in our nation and lives brings back Janis's own passionate exhibition of that longing and laughter.

It was more than worth driving home in Downtown Denver traffic. All the lights and noise and people on the street just extended the experience.

P.S. I misread when Janis: Little Girl Blue will air on PBS's American Masters. It's next year some time. So we can all watch it again without the traffic.

P.P.S. Still glad I got to see it on the big screen.