Letter to a Korean Schoolgirl

The following was published some years ago in the Battle Creek Enquirer, before I started my regular posting of Linda Jo Scott's columns.

Back in the mid seventies I spent a year teaching English at a university in Seoul, Korea. I fondly remember the beautiful countryside and the high level of creativity evident in the art and architecture. But most of all, I remember the warmth of the Korean people. My colleagues invited our family into their homes; my students were very respectful and eager to  learn, and my neighbors generously helped me with shopping and cooking.

I wrote the following open letter to a particular young girl whom I observed during one of my many bus rides around Seoul. I don’t remember her name and perhaps never saw her more than once, but my letter to her appeared as one of my many columns in "The Korea Times.”

My dear young lady,

I just watched you give up your seat to an old woman with a bundle of cabbages in her hand, and I want to convey to you my admiration for this simple gesture.

I want to tell you that I think you are beautiful in your simple, long, gray school uniform, with your straight-cropped hair, your dark stockings, and your modest expression.

Your refusal to wear makeup or curl your hair--even on a Sunday afternoon--is admirable. You accept your role as a schoolgirl with such grace and simplicity, hoping, no doubt, that someday you will emerge from this somber cocoon into a beautiful and desirable woman. But not yet.

You were born some eight or nine years after your fathers and uncles fought together with some of my older friends for your freedom. And yet you are not naive. You have lived all of your life knowing that your freedom is precious, knowing that your people have been oppressed for most of their existence and will continue to live in danger. Saddest of all, your people seem always to have been the victims, never the aggressors.

Korea is like a young school girl, attacked time and again by hungry, possessive men, and yet she retains her purity and dignity.

Perhaps some of your own family are unknown to you because they live

in North Korea. Perhaps you will never know them.

You know that your city could be bombed anytime by the people of the north, and you know, also, that your own family might well not escape south of the Han River, for there are so many people, so few bridges. And, sad to say, there would be so little time.

And yet, my dear, you have such a calm about you. I feel as though I have seen you on a hundred streets of Seoul with your school chums, often walking arm in arm or hand in hand, with a serenity far beyond your years. I have never seen you girls put on airs; I have never even seen you laugh loudly.

Even now if I smile at you, you will only return a slight acknowledgment. I cannot speak your language, and so I must write to you in my own tongue, expressing the warm feeling that I, as an older sister from the West, have for you.

May you never lose your innate respect for those older than you. May

you someday become a wise mother who will pass on these values to her

children. And may your children grow and blossom in freedom.

Warmest greetings, Linda

I can only hope that this girl--now a woman of close to 60 years old, probably a mother and perhaps even a grandmother--is having a good life.

Albert Schweitzer Lived an Extraordinary Life

I still remember when Albert Schweitzer made his only trip to America. It was in 1949, back when I was just 9½ years old, and my mother and grandmother went to hear him speak in Chicago. They didn’t take me along because they thought I was too young. I’ve always regretted their not taking me, for I’ve admired Schweitzer tremendously all of my life and wish I had had that only chance to see him and hear him speak.

I’ve never heard of anyone as accomplished in as many different fields as he was, and I’ve also never known of anyone as generous and devoted to others.

It certainly helped his positive outlook that Schweitzer grew up in a loving family. His father was a Lutheran minister, and Schweitzer said often that his father was his best friend. In addition, his whole family was musical, and Schweitzer, who played piano and organ wonderfully, could easily have had a fine career as a musician.

He also studied philosophy and theology in both undergraduate and graduate school, and could have been a highly successful professor or minister as well. Then, at age 30, he decided to go to medical school for six more years, for though he continued to play music and to be fascinated by philosophy and theology, he had decided to devote himself instead to becoming a missionary doctor.

He eventually married a woman named Helene Bresslau who was an anaesthetist for surgical operations. Her family had been Jewish, but her father had his children baptized in 1866 at least partly because of anti-Semitism in Berlin. Schweitzer first met her in 1898, but they didn’t marry until 1912. A year later they went to Lambaréné, in Africa and set up the beginnings of their hospital. Sad to say, they soon had to go back to an internment camp in France during World War I because they were German.

Unfortunately Helene wasn’t able to stay in Africa as long as Albert because of her serious problems with tuberculosis. All the same, they were a happy, loving couple and had one child, Rhena, who was born in 1919. She became an American humanitarian activist, the director of the hospital her father founded in Africa and a key organizer of the fellowship that bears his name. Despite her health problems, Helene was always loving and helpful. In 1937, for example, she came to New York alone to tell Americans about her husband and to raise money for his work.

During his 50 years in Africa, Schweitzer often had more than 5,000 patients per year, at his hospital, including many with leprosy. He also allowed their families to stay at the hospital and eat with the patients. Many of those people in return worked in the hospital garden and helped Schweitzer share the vegetables not only with people but with cats, dogs, birds, fish, and other animals. They also helped with creating new buildings, especially after Schweitzer was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1953, including its monetary bonus.

I decided to write this column after watching two excellent films online about Schweitzer. The first one, which is called “Albert Schweitzer: Documentary,” is an hour and 20 minutes long and took six years to create, while Schweitzer was still alive. The second one, “My Life is My Argument,” is shorter but newer and also excellent. You can find them both simply by going to “Albert Schweitzer Youtube.”

I strongly recommend that your watch both films not only for information but for inspiration.

It's time to drink in the wonders of tea

I have been drinking a lot of tea ever since I was a young child, back in the mid 40s. My dear grandmother was a constant tea drinker, and I guess I started drinking it mainly because I wanted to be just like her.

For me tea is a perfect drink. It helps me become awake in the morning; it has no calories, and therefore it doesn’t put on weight, and it makes me remember my wonderful grandmother. Unfortunately, I have to drink mostly decaf tea these days after breakfast, so as not to interrupt my sleep. Decaf is delicious, too, however, and it doesn’t taste too much different from real tea.

I just read a really good book on the subject, “The Chinese Art of Tea,” by John Blofeld, a British writer who has spent much of his life in Asia. He lived from 1913 to 1987, drank a lot of tea for over 50 years and felt strongly that it kept him healthy and happy.

Blofeld quoted an Asian emperor who said that tea “induces lightness of spirit, clarity of mind and freedom from all sense of constriction, whether mental or physical; and it promotes such serenity that mundane cares fall away so that whatever is strident or exacerbating in daily life can be put out of mind for a while.”

Or as Chinese poet Lu T’ung, who lived from 775 to 835 A.D. put it, “I care not a jot for immortal life, but only for the taste of tea.”  As a part of his poem, “The Song of Tea,” Lu T’ung wrote,

“The first bowl sleekly moistened throat and lips;

The second banished all my loneliness;

The third expelled the dullness from my mind,

Shaping inspiration gained from all the books I’ve read.

The fourth brought forth light perspiration

Dispersing a lifetime’s troubles through my pores,

The fifth bowl cleansed ev’ry atom of my being

The sixth has made me kin to the Immortals.

This seventh is the utmost I can drink--

A light breeze issues from my armpits.”

Blofeld himself certainly agreed, saying “a whole range of leisure involving ears, eyes, nose, palate and mood can be enjoyed by two or three people who have come together to make and drink fine tea.”

Tea is a very old drink, Blofeld explains, first enjoyed, according to tradition, in approximately 2700 B.C.in China, in the time of Emperor Shen Nung. Tea eventually got to Japan in the 600s but not to Europe until the 1600s. As tea moved around the world people often changed its taste. Though the Chinese and Japanese generally left it plain, the Russians and people in central Asia added lemon and sugar and even sometimes jam to their tea, and many Muslims added mint. Some cold countries even added Vodka or rum.

Besides simply drinking tea, Blofeld also explained that rinsing your hair with tea can make it soft and glossy, and rinsing your face with tea can help get rid of pimples and minor skin rash. If you keep tea leaves in your mouth for a short time, you can get rid of the smell of garlic, onions and alcohol and even ease toothaches. Also, if your eyes are tired, you can help them by bathing them in a weak bit of green tea.

I feel that Blofeld is right in emphasizing the power and joy of drinking tea, and I hope it will give me many more years to drink it with my friends and my sweetheart.

Depression Didn't Stop These Great Composers

Two of my favorite more recent musical composers are Edward Elgar, an Englishman of the late 19th century, and Samuel Barber, an American of the 20th century.

Elgar was an English Roman Catholic, a denomination that was not readily accepted in England in those days, and also he was pretty much self-trained. For both of these reasons it was hard for him to make a name for himself in the world of British music.His wife, Caroline Alice Roberts, helped him with lyrics and acted as his secretary and agent, and he composed one of my two favorites, “Salut d’Amour,” for her when they were engaged, in 1888. In turn she offered him a poem called “The Wind at Dawn,” which he soon set to music.

I have played “Salut d’Amour” many times on my violin, and I love to hear it played by others, either just with a piano or with a symphony orchestra. It somehow conveys the warmest and deepest emotions of love. My other favorite of his, “Nimrod Variation,” is the 9th of his famous 14 “Enigma Variations.” First performed in the summer of 1899, it is also extremely emotional in the best sense.

Elgar was definitely a “people person” who had one of his real friends in mind for each of the variations. Nevertheless, he apparently did suffer at least infrequently from deep depression, vowing sometimes, when it happened, that he would stop composing music altogether. On one of those sad occasions shortly before he composed “Enigma Variations,” Elgar’s friend, Augustus J. Jaeger, tried to comfort him by singing part of the second movement of Beethoven’s “Pathetique” for him. Apparently it worked, for Elgar later said that when he composed his wonderful “Nimrod Variation,” he used the “Pathetique” as an indirect source, though he called it “only a hint, not a quotation.”

Our Battle Creek Symphony played “Enigma Variations” back in the 80s under Bill Stein’s conducting, and then again in the 90s, under the baton of Matthew Hazelwood. Matthew was generally a conductor who knew which music needed to be worked on and which music would pretty much play itself. When it came to practicing the Elgar, however, he kept making us go back over “Nimrod” repeatedly, simply, we figured, because he loved it so much.

The other more modern composer whom I admire greatly was an American named Samuel Barber, who lived from 1910 to 1981. His “Adagio for Strings,” second movement, which he composed at the age of 26, is another favorite of mine. It is an extremely sad kind of piece which has been played for such somber, international events as the funerals of Franklin D. Roosevelt, Albert Einstein, Princess Grace of Monaco and Mary Travers of Peter Paul and Mary, as well as having been played by the London Symphony Orchestra at the Royal Albert Hall in London just after September 11, 2001. It also was used at the end of that deeply emotional film “The Elephant Man” and throughout “Platoon,” one of the saddest films ever made.

It’s interesting that Barber, like Elgar, had times of depression and also became an alcoholic. But like Elgar, he composed truly passionate magnificent music which I love to play.

I hope you will listen to these three works on YouTube:
“Salut d’Amour” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SXLOF-z5Zlk
“Nimrod” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hEl4WrfX8lg
“Adagio” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WcPR95QfPeM