Tag: Nashville

Near Miss

Near Miss

Some years ago, Cappi Quigley fetched me at the Nashville Airport to spend Thanksgiving weekend with her daughters and their families. She wore black to offset one of her imaginative, color-drenched, wow necklaces.

“Before we go to the house, we must stop at an art gallery downtown,” she said.

That was Cappi. She loved sharing our mutual folk art obsession. 

Cappi was visiting me in Chicago when feminist artist Niki de Saint Phalle’s whimsical, large-scale kaleidoscope animals, monsters, and figures were exhibited outside the Garfield Park Conservatory. She made her way to the west side on her own to see “the Niki.” And then couldn’t wait to take me there on the green line. 

Cappi Quigley, 2011, at Queen Califia’s Magical Circle, Escondido, CA

We had similar tastes in most everything. Whenever I visited her in California, we ate from the ripened fields around San Luis Obispo. On one visit, we dined for a week on nothing but fresh-picked strawberries and avocadoes.

Cappi hurried me through the large, tantalizing rooms at the Nashville Arts Company to the attached warehouse in the back. The floor and walls were full of metal sculptures of every size and dimension. Each one painted in rainbow colors. There were playful metal masks with flowers springing off their hats, some waving flags, some with large eyeglasses, and some holding birds. One wall was filled with life-size avant-garde metal guitars. On the floor, an arrangement of Picasso-type chairs sat around a mesmerizing metal table. 

The Arts Company in Nashville represented Brother Mel Meyer, a Marionist monk from St. Louis. Some of each of his creations were on display: metal sculptures, watercolors, stained glass, acrylic on canvas, handmade paper, and textiles. I cherish my Brother Mel metal wall sculpture of a woman with big red glasses, which I bought on the spot. Cappi and I bonded anew over our love and awe for Brother Mel. She subsequently visited his gallery and workshop in St. Louis. Brother Mel was well represented in her Central Coast home.

Brother Mel Meyer, St. Louis 20th Century

We got on the road in a state of hyperconsciousness. Tennessee red maples and golden ginkgoes illumined our spirits. Fireplace pine spritzed the air. Aware of the weekend schedule, we quickened our pace down West End Avenue. Out of nowhere and without warning, an ancient oak tree silently uprooted, toppled over, and bounced down, laying itself out across the road in front of us. The front of the car rested in leafy branches. 

I’m not sure how many times we screamed, ‘Oh my god,’ or when we stopped shaking. Without words, we exchanged seats. I backed up, turned around, and drove home. Throughout the weekend, we failed to get an attentive audience for the story of our near miss. Only Cappi and I could know we’d been spirited into a new dimension of living.

Niki de Saint Phalle died in 2002, around the time Cappi and I swooned over her work. We mourned for Brother Mel Meyer in 2013. Cappi Quigley joined them in September 2023. They all left us their own technicolor visions of Paradise.

How lucky we are.

2016: Rachel Jackson and Hillary Clinton – Slander Will Wound but Will Not Dishonor

2016: Rachel Jackson and Hillary Clinton – Slander Will Wound but Will Not Dishonor

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Oh, my dear Rachel Jackson — 188 years after the brutal campaign between your husband Andrew and John Quincy Adams, the citizens fear the republic will not survive the brutal campaign of 2016 for the 45th President of the United States.

The two candidates are Republican Donald Trump, a known philanderer, tax cheat and a liar; and Hillary Clinton, the first woman nominated by the Democratic Party, the same party formed by your husband in 1824.

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2016 voters mistrust Hillary Clinton. Statisticians show she distorts the truth 28% of the time, compared to Trump’s lying 70% of the time. However, the public fixates on Republican propaganda that pounces on her daily for mishandling classified material when she was Secretary of State. Yes, Rachel, we have had three women Secretaries of State since women won the right to vote in 1919.

This lack of voter confidence is not the hallmark of the 2016 campaign, however.

Throughout his campaign, Trump has proclaimed Hillary and other women incompetent, liars, corrupt, pigs, fat and flawed. Trump runs beauty pageants and builds hotels. He’s been plagued by women publicly accusing him of unlawful touching. He calls them liars and shifts the conversation to stories of our 42nd President’s sex scandals. Our 42nd President, Bill Clinton, is Hillary’s husband. Trump excoriates Hillary for enabling her husband’s extramarital affairs, then he turns around and calls for Hillary’s aide de camp to be dismissed because the aide’s husband exposed himself to a series of women. Trump says the aide’s marriage to a “major sleaze” makes her a security risk.

America in 2016 is collectively depressed by the deluge of vulgarity. Voters clamor for more issues yet soak up the scurrilous, all the while exclaiming the United States will never regain her honor.

You know how this feels, my dear Rachel. The Hermitage, your beloved Nashville plantation, restored for visitors, serves up details of your death. When you married Andrew Jackson, your violently jealous first husband published a news article that you were never divorced, knowing that he lied to you about filing your divorce papers. He accused you of adultery and bigamy. Your new husband Andrew, a lawyer, rectified the situation and you remarried him legally. All this humiliation was heaped upon you before you were twenty-three years old.

Andrew Jackson fought wars and politicked around the country for the next forty years leaving you at home to manage the 1000-acre family farm. Your work kept you from the day-long carriage ride to town until the day you had to shop for your Inaugural Ball gown. It was only then, in your Nashville hotel lobby, after Andrew Jackson won the election, that you came across a campaign pamphlet accusing Andrew of adultery and running off with you, another man’s wife.  And you accused of bigamy.

Weakened by stress, depression and shame, you returned to the Hermitage and died, buried in your Inaugural ball gown. Our 7th President began his term in profound grief without you at his side.

thWell, Rachel, I want you to know the government peacefully transferred power from John Quincy Adams to Andrew Jackson and Old Hickory scripted your tombstone, “A being so gentle and so virtuous – slander might wound but could not dishonor.”

On the eve of the election, our country’s history is small comfort to the downtrodden, but they will soon hope again because slander might wound the United States but it will not dishonor her.