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About Medford mail tribune. (Medford, Or.) 1909-1989 | View Entire Issue (April 8, 1963)
? The Boom in Culture MEDFOHD MAIL TRIBUNE, MEDFOHD, OREGON MOXDAV, PRIL I, 163 Americans No Long Appreciation of Arts er Cultural Morons; Claimed in Infancy k '--SBpHSB ... r-v E 9 .... t,i 'B b'H ftv v .VUK VAbb CULTURAL GROWTH In the above photo the stage is set tor the inaugural concert of Lincoln Center's new Philharmonic Haii in New York, in large and small cities throughout the United States las! year, more persons listen ed to concerts than attended major and minor league baseball games. (UPI) Editor's Note: The United States has shaken off its in feriority complex concerning the arts, and a boom in cul ture is under way in big towns and small. This is the word of the experts in a series of five; dispatches by Harry Ferguson,; UPI national reporter. By HARRY FERGUSON Washington -t'PI - There are 1.252 symphony orchestras in the United States, and last year more persons listened to concerts than attended all the baseball games played in the major and minor leagues. That is the favorite statistic and statement of persons who proclaim America lias come of age in the arts and is enjoy ing a boom in culture that is only in its infancy. The figures bear them out: The number of books published in this coun try in 1962 exceeded by 3.000 those ot the previous year; little theaters have become al most as common as the county court house; Americans now buy almost ji600 million worth of musical instruments and sheet music a year. Sociologists use the phrase "cultural explosion" to de scribe wltat is happening, but actually it was more gradual than violent. Most experts think Americans, who heard themselves denounced for years as cultural morons, now have shaken off their inferior ity complex. Take a Beating In the process they took a bad beating. H. L. Mencken made a reputation and consid erable money by clouting Americans on the head once a month with a magazine AUTOMATIC Transmissions Exclusively Minor or Major Repairs Factory Units in Stock 100o Financing MEDFORD TRANSMISSION REBUIIDER5 1910 Tafcle Rock Rd. 773-774S Fas! Efficient Service Aero. , From Big Y Market called Tiie American Mercury "The general average of intel ligence, of knowledge, of com petence, of self respect. . . is so low (hat any man who knows his trade, does not fear ghosts and has read 50 good books stands out as brilliantly as a wart on the head." Europeans jeered at the American savages when Hen ry James, one of this nation s best novelists, decided his na tive climate was unsuitable to creative effort and went to London and took out British citizenship. British authors were held in such high esteem by the brow-beaten Ameri cans that Charles Dickens made a killing on a lecture tour here and went home to tell jokes about the people who paid to hear him. Oscar Wilde, landing in New York to reap some lec ture money from the yokels, was asked by the customs in spector if he had anything to declare. "Nothing but my genius." Wilde replied and Americans accepted without question his own estimate of himself. They spent their money freely to hear him talk while lite poetry of Walt Whitman and the novels of James Fenimore Cooper went largely unread and almost un sold. Become Discouraged Over the years American workers in the arts became discouraged and a belief grew up that they would be better off if they acted like foreign ers. Miss Lucy Hickenlooper. a talented pianist in Texas, was going nowhere with her career, but when she changed her name to Olga Samaroff things picked up immediately. Ernest Hemingway decided he could write better in Paris and Havana than he could on American soil. In the twenties young writers (locked to Paris to sit at the feci of Miss Ger trude Stein, who had shaken the dust of Pennsylvania from her shoes but still want ed Americans to buy her books and acknowledge that she was saying something pro found when she wrote "A rose is a rose is a rose." and "Pi geons on the grass, alas. The cultural inferiority complex of Americans be came more traumatic when they received a one-two punch in 1920 and 1922 from Sinclair Lewis with his novels "Main Street" and "Babbitt " One of them depicted the WORDS itai fOllFIIRT He maketh the storm a calm, so tliat the waves thereof are still. PSALM 107:29 PERL , FUNERAL HOME' iff-o CORNER SIXTH AND OAkDALE .ggfj Spacious Parking Lot it I ill 11 ' SI e promptly re pond to all colt, tluv or night. MEMBER BY INVITATION CLhr $vfcr ot Jhe olbtn Rule e4nMcrtuduHMsL olffiliation of LkpcnJaMi rJunauL 'Vucchrj American small town as a t cultural wasteland where the inhabitants talked about noth-J tng except crops and the weather. "Babbitt" was an indictment of the American business man as a dull fel-1 low who did not lung but! chase money and boost his home town. Things Change The big depression ol 1029 changed things, and the cir culation o Menchken's mag azine fell sharply. Americans were at grips with problems larger than small town culture and home j town boosting. John Stem beck'l novel "The Grapes of , Wrath" the story of an Ok-j 1 8 noma family driven from their farm by dust storms caught the mood of the day. Most sociologists think! World War 11 was the turn ing point for the American patient and his inferiority complex. U.S. soldiers discov ered that people in Europe were not pre-occupied with culture, but with the problem of daily existence. Millions of Englishmen have never been to Stratford-On-Avon and never will go. Frenchmen do not spend all day in side walk cafes arguing about poe try; Italians do not devote ail their time to strolling the streets singing operatic arias. A post-war do-it-yourself craze developed, and Ameri cans discovered it do not have to be limited to using wood working tools. You could put on plays, organize, orchestras, paint pictures, play the violin and have fun without jour neying to the Broadway the ater, the Louvre or the Metro poll tan Opera House. Radio and television began to bring culture into your I living room. The phonograph j was developed to the point where even the most carping , critic could hear faithful re- j productions of famous orches tra playing good music. The heroine of Sinclair Lewis "Main Street" was named Carol Kennieott and ; in 1912 she married and mov-i ed to Gopher Prairie, Minn, j In revolt against the dullness of her iife, she exclaimed to j a school teacher friend; "it's i a relief to have somebody I to talk something besides crops. Let's make Gopher Prairie rock to its founda- Uons. Lets have aflernuon lea instead of afternoon cof fee." Today Carol would turn the television dial and drink her tea as she listened to the Festival of Performing Arlj, Next: The decline of Holly- wood movies. Small Worlds Around Us By LYNN M. W ATKINS Register and Tfibaiie Syndicate, 1963) Worm-Shell Eligible for Top to the highest order of living beings, for a srouP oi worm- j shells attempts to gather close with their fellows and become Spot in Category of Curious It's only natural that m family of living creatures! mtmhorino manv thousands of I sDccies there should be some i an inextricable mass. The that are oddballs, some that group becomes about thej depart ro far from the con-1 worst mess that could be im- ventional as to be actually ridiculous. Such a one is the "worm shell." This character, a true mollusk related to the oyster xruui) and the whelk, departs widely from the conventional design of other molluslcs. It is eligi- agincd. Each !)s Own Each worm-shell of the which may number several hundred Individuals, follows its own twisted way o! shell Building, ihe group ble for number one place in ! becomes so entangled every the category of the curious. Hatched from a tiny egg in a warm sea, the little worm- shell builds about itself mdlviuuai m the group lose its identity. It is impossible to tell where one mollusk caves off and another begins shell in the shape of a spiral. 1 he snarl is as badly tangled Dunns infancy it seems trail aa the bark-lash of a fisii line. organized and perfectly ad- lit couldn't JC likened to a pile I justed to ils shallow water en- ' jackslraws. for they arc all vironment. with each whorl ' straight pieces, while no two, rcEiilar and neallv coiled .Na-1 worm-shells are twisted the'l tun- seems to he (inins the i same way, or assumes the right thine for tins little crea- same shape lure, starting it out in life in i Thc tangle may grow until an orderly manner. Then for thc "lass is as large as a half some obscure reason cverv. 1 bushel basket, thousands of 1 lung gets fouled up; the coiU i the mollusk shells hopelessly j lose their sense of direction: intertwisted together in the whorls become widely , complicated imbroglio; a pan separated and go oif in odd demonium of twirted forms. ways. Hopelessly Neurotic Now having apparently de cided to be highly unusual, it each shell holding an elongat ed living mollusk Thc peculiar color of the individual worm-shell twists and turns, soirals off'dar't tan or yellowish color. in unexpected directions. The , looking for all thc world like little mollusk itself is tcrriblv ' petniieci angleworm. laKen elongated and hopelessly ncu-' a" together in the mass of in rotte. It becomes a mixed-up dividual, the net work re mollusk; it just keeps on sembles a great gob of earth building its limestone home, worms, supposedly frightened in a twisting manner, until It ' in, a jumble of confusion by is 10 or 12 inches long. It be-! some age-old upheaval of the comes a crazy looking object ' ea"n or me sea omtom ami The amazed human who Petrified by time and pressure walks along an ocean beach lnl a tangled skein of twist may find one of these worm-' ea limestone tubes. ' shells and notice its striking similarity to a petrified angic j worm, even to the color and i shape. The worm-shell is unique among all the mollusks in the ': unusuainess of its shape, li I gets together with others of ! its kind and intertwines itself j with them, until they become a hopeless jumble of twisted ' shapes, too. : Ceramic tile is manufactur 1 ed both by pressed dust and plastic extrusion methods. Helps You Overcome FALSE TEETH Looseness and Worry No Ion r tt nnoyed ot feet ul-t- it iisfjii-BflrSi r!V,&rt fcr-!l)E,5 on "Misery loves COmDanv' jour eutes hoid mem Crmer m the anrt this annarrntlv annlip; mnn nsjortbi Atows tmbsr ano ims apparenuv applies yfcacfit mf2ms br knM pittas 0t I 4 HOMOGENIZED MILK RIVERSIDE GRADE A HALF GALLON 2:89c DREWS 2Va TINS ICE CREAM DUTCH QUEEN HALF GALLON 69' PORK m BEANS MAISON ROYAL PURE BLACK PEPPER WESTERN CHEF SALAD OIL DELIGHT TALL TIN DOG FOOD WHITE SPRAY TUNA Chunk Style Sia fin 5 99 4-oz. 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