Page 4 — THE BERLIN DAILY SUN, Friday, April 13, 2012
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Become a Papertown Patron and give back to Berlin on Fri. May 4 To the editor: This is a letter for all the people who once lived Berlin, who grew up in Berlin and now live somewhere else. This a letter for people who are reading this in PDF form online because they want to know who won the broomball tournament and what is going on with the old JC Penney block. This is a letter for people who, no matter where they live now, still care about Berlin. Those of you who live in Berlin are constantly supporting local events, fundraisers and charities. These are all worthwhile but the community is relatively small and the demands are high. We are hosting a special event to reach people who grew up in Berlin but now live elsewhere to meet, connect, and support the Kiwanis Club of Berlin Scholarship fund. As you travel around the state, it is impossible not to meet someone who grew up in Berlin and most have fond memories especially of their friends and family from the area. This sense of a shared background and heritage connect us with ties that last a lifetime. Inspired by the “Berlin Santa” and the Craig and Linda Labnon Rydin scholarship, and other recent kind gestures by Berlin alums, we created the Berlin Natives Fundraiser. The goal of this event is for many people to join together, as a team, giving just a small amount, to make a big difference. The event, which seeks to
bring together Berlin Natives of all ages who now live outside of Berlin, will be held Friday May 4, at Fratello’s Restaurant in Manchester, NH. The event will feature a keynote address by Dennis “Red” Gendron, Berlin born and raised, assistant men’s hockey coach at Yale University entitled “Start with Why.” There will also be musical entertainment by Berlin’s own “LogJam.” The cost is $40 per person, which includes dinner. There will be a cash bar. If you cannot attend the event, donations are welcomed. Most importantly, the dinner will raise funds for the Kiwanis Scholarship enables area students to attend college, broaden their horizons and reach their personal goals. Past scholarship winners have gone on to earn PhDs in analytical chemistry, become physician’s assistants, teachers, financial advisers, and Black Hawk helicopter pilots. These students may or may not come back to Berlin. That is the point, we do not yet know what they will do and how they contribute and give back to Berlin, the state, country, or the world. This gives them an opportunity to let us find out. Let me end with my personal why. Growing up in Berlin, I was always encouraged to do my best and I also knew that I could become what I wanted to be on my own terms—starting a girls hockey team with friends, becoming an artist, writ see PATRON page 5
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Rose Dodge, Managing Editor Rita Dube, Office Manager Theresa Johnson, Advertising Sales Representative Barbara Tetreault, Reporter Melissa Grima Reporter Jean LeBlanc, Sports John Walsh, Contributor “Seeking the truth and printing it” Mark Guerringue, Publisher Adam Hirshan, Editor THE BERLIN DAILY SUN is published Tuesday through Friday by Country News Club, Inc. Dave Danforth, Mark Guerringue, Adam Hirshan, Founders Offices and mailing address: 164 Main Street, Berlin, NH 03570 E-Mail: bds@berlindailysun.com Tel.: (603) 752-5858 FAX: (1-866) 475-4429 CIRCULATION: 8,925 distributed FREE throughout the Berlin-Gorham area. For delivery call 752-1005
By Ithaca Bound
Moments
What are the moments you remember? If I were to ask you about a moment - or two, or three, or more moments – in your life that you remember, that you cannot ever forget, that are so indelibly etched in your memory that all the winds and waters of time will never be able to wear away, what would immediately come to mind? This past Monday, April 9, was my 77th birthday. I spent much of the day reflecting on such moments in my life. To my great surprise and delight, there were many such moments to remember, far more than had been expected. (Try it for yourself. You, too, may be very surprised and delighted.) I will by-pass the obvious ones: the night I first asked my future wife out for a date, our marriage, the birth of our two sons. I wrote about the incident with our older son by the lake in West Brookfield, Massachusetts, in last week’s column. For this column of moments to remember, I turn to an idea suggested by a favorite author. He wrote: “If your life were made into a movie, and that movie had an appropriate sound track, and I bought a CD of that music, what kind of music would it be? What mood would it leave me in when I played it? What would I recognize? Could I dance to it?” A most interesting challenge, don’t you think? Well, I’ll give it a try. My CD would begin with a young boy’s soprano voice singing into a microphone in a radio studio in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. His elementary school music teacher had somehow managed to have his class perform a program of music over one of the radio stations there, and he had been selected to be the soloist on a song called “Little Mohee.” It was around the same period of time that the boy soloist became “Al Jolson, Jr.” The film biography of Jolson’s life had just been released, and the young boy had been deeply influenced by the famed entertainer’s style. He had gone the whole nine yards, buying black wig, blackface makeup, and white gloves, and trying to make his still changing voice sound as much like Jolson’s as possible. It was during this time that he received one of the best pieces of advice that he would ever receive. His church put on an old-fashioned minstrel show as a fund-raiser, and, of course, “Al Jolson, Jr.” made an appearance, singing “Rock-a-bye Your Baby.” At the end of one of the performances, someone from the audience came up to that boy – me – and said,
“You know, Dick, you do a terrific Jolson, but I kept wanting to hear Dick Conway sing.” I stopped being “Jolson,Jr.” soon after, and concentrated on being me.
Shortly after high school, I would be given a confirming piece of advice by my voice teacher, McClurg Miller. The MGM production of “Showboat” had recently been released. One of the show’s highlights was the singing of “Old Man River,” by baritone William Warfield. I had been deeply affected by the song and Warfield’s singing of it. When he came to Pittsburgh to do a solo recital, my teacher encouraged me to go to hear him. Warfield’s concert was one of the defining moments of my life. His rich voice filled the auditorium with such glorious sound that I knew immediately that this was what great singing was all about. This was vocal artistry at its best. I remember going back to Mr. Miller and saying to him, “I want to learn to sing like William Warfield.” “No, he replied gently, “you don’t want to sing like Bill Warfield. You want to sing like Dick Conway. But you do want to sing with the artistry of a Bill Warfield.” “Old Man River” would be on that CD. An aria from Felix Mendelssohn’s highly dramatic oratorio “Elijah” would be on that CD also. My senior year in college, I was chosen to sing the role of the title character in our college choir’s performance of Mendelssohn’s masterful musical interpretation of that challenging moment of confrontation with the followers of Baal for the famed prophet of the Old Testament. An aria from J. S. Bach’s solo cantata “Ich habe genug (It is enough)” also would be on that CD. The cantata was the centerpiece of my senior recital. Its second aria, “Schlummert ein (Slumber on),” is one of the most beautiful melodies ever written by the hand of man. I have had the opportunity to sing it many times since. I could think of no more appropriate piece of music to be played at my death than that gentle expression of blessed rest and peace. I am running out of space for this week’s article, and there is yet more music to put on my CD. You’ll just have to read next Friday’s column to find out what else made the final cut. (Ithaca Bound is the pen name of Dick Conway. His e-mail address is: ithacabound35@gmail.com.)
By Thomas Friedman The New York Times
I’m Not Mitt Romney
Last week Politico reported that, ever since announcing his re-election bid, President Obama’s campaign has been struggling to find a slogan to sum up his reason for running. He’s cycled through “Winning the Future,” “We Can’t Wait,” “An America Built to Last,” “A Fair Shot.” Bruce Newman, Bill Clinton’s message adviser,
was quoted as saying of Obama: “He’s all over the place.” So far, the most accurate slogan for Obama’s campaign would have to be: “I’m not Mitt Romney.” And when you consider that Romney — a former liberal Republican governor — has spent the whole campaign see ROMNEY page 5