Not sure how old she was here: perhaps in her 40s?
Self’s desktop this month is Dearest Mum, wearing traditional Filipino formal attire (the scoop back, the butterfly sleeves) at her beloved piano.
Her name was NENA DEL ROSARIO. A graduate of Curtis Music Institute in Philadelphia (which she entered at 11), she won the New York Times International Piano Competition at 14, played twice at Carnegie Hall, passed away 4 June 2021. Long, hard fight: she got covid in Manila in March.
A friend brought these from her garden when she heard about Dearest Mum.
I’m also posting for Cee Neuner’s Flower of the Day (FOTD) Challenge.
Three years after her first appearance in Carnegie Hall, Dearest Mum played there again, for the New York Philharmonic’s Young People’s Concert, Main Hall, 5 January 1952. She was just 16.
She is beautiful in that photograph where they are dancing in a roomful of other couples. She has a beauty mole penciled on her cheek, slightly to the right of her lip. Her eyebrows are two perfect arches, her hair a dark beehive. I think there are dots on her dress. Where is this photograph? I would very much like to have it.
The above, Dearest Mum, when she was a young Filipina pianist in New York City, 1950s.
Stay safe, dear blog readers. Stay safe.
She is beautiful in that photograph where they are dancing in a
Self is in the issue of Jellyfish Review curated by Grace Loh Prasad: SIGN. The pieces are so delicious and fun. All are really different, showing what self has always known: FLASH RULES. Grace’s opening essay is kick-ass.
(BTW: Seventeen Syllables will be reading at San Francisco LITCRAWL, 19 October, 6:30 – 7:30, at FELLOW, 820 Valencia Street, on the theme: Strangers and Ghosts! These readings are always SRO. Be sure and COME EARLY!!!)
Another story, Tu-an Ju (dystopian science fiction), just came out in Vice-Versa, the University of Hawai’i at Manoa’s e-zine. The theme for the issue was Otherworld/Underworld, a theme self felt could have been tailor-made just for her. Thank you to Pat Matsueda, Lillian Howan and Angela Nishimoto for putting this issue together.
And vol. 3 of msaligned is coming soon! Thanks again to Lillian Howan for soliciting a piece specifically for this volume, and Pat Matsueda for editing the series.
He swans into town, proud and unyielding, and makes mincemeat of Anne Elliott’s heart. While he is surrounded by eligible young ladies, Anne is called upon to play the music for the dancing, “though her eyes would sometimes fill with tears as she sat at the instrument . . .” Poor Anne!
Persuasion, pp. 69 – 70:
It was a merry, joyous party, and no one seemed in higher spirits than Captain Wentworth. She felt that he had every thing to elevate him, which general attention and deference, and especially the attention of all the young women could do.
Self’s mother attended Curtis as an 11-year-old who had never, ever left the Philippines before.
So when she reads the below passage in My Antonia, she is practically in tears:
They found he had absolute pitch, and a remarkable memory. As a very young child he could repeat, after a fashion, any composition that was played for him. No matter how many wrong notes he struck, he never lost the intention of a passage, he brought the substance of it across by irregular and astonishing means. He wore his teachers out. He could never learn like other people, never acquired any finish.
Very interesting challenge from The Daily Post this week!
SCALE
Photography ” . . . is all about perspective, where and how you place other objects in the frame . . . ” — Erica V., The Daily Post
Here are some examples of SCALE: (1) at the Louvre, in front of the Mona Lisa (2) in Bath’s Royal Crescent, the entrance to Royal Crescent # 1 and (3) in New York’s Russian Tea Room, next to Carnegie Hall. Self’s first trip to New York City was with Dearest Mum, who once played at Carnegie Hall. This September, she took Dearest Mum, who’s now past 80, for lunch at the Russian Tea Room. We had the best time.
The Louvre, May 2017
Royal Crescent No. 1 (Royal Crescent Museum), Bath
The Russian Tea Room, 57th St., New York City (Next to Carnegie Hall): Dearest Mum took self here, her first time in New York City, decades ago. The place hasn’t changed a bit.
