Blessed are the ungifted. Everything’s a gift.

The music of Bach is not something that, say, Barry Manilow could have achieved if he simply put in more hours. You can gather tinder all day and stack it like an expert, but without a spark, there will be no flame.

I used to fret over this problem a lot as a child. I obsessed over a book of saints, where the common thread seemed to be that these people had been different from the very beginning. Tiny Ludwiga could lisp the Pater Noster long before she even learned to say her own name; pious Edelbert would toddle away from his nurse every chance he got, only to be found once again sound asleep under his favourite spot, the tabernacle in the village church.

“How the heck can I compete with that?” I used to think.

Read the rest of my latest for The Catholic Weekly.

IVF jewelry and the scandal of sentimentality

Last week, pop science entertainer Bill Nye set off a wave of righteous indignation by asking, “Should we have policies that penalize people for having extra kids in the developed world?”

The only response is, of course: What the hell do you mean, ‘extra?'” What is an extra child? Who is disposable and extraneous, and who gets to decide? Are you “extra,” Bill Nye? Am I?

Last night, I saw for myself what an extra child looks like. An Australian company called Baby Bee Hummingbirds will take your extra, unused IVF embryos, preserve and cremate them, and then encase them in resin as “keepsake jewelry.”

The founder asks, “What a better way to celebrate your most treasured gift, your child, than through jewellery?”

Well, you could let him live, I suppose. You could allow him the basic dignity of spending time in the womb of his mother, to live or not, to grow or not, but at least to have a chance. You could celebrate the life of your child by giving him some small gift of warmth and softness, however brief, rather than letting him travel in an insulated pouch from lab to lab, frozen and sterile from beginning to end. You could conceive a child so as to give him life, and you could rise like a human should above the blind proliferation of biology.

I have not experienced the anguish of infertility. I can easily imagine how the ancient, unquenchable desire for a child would drive a couple to consider IVF. Who would fault a loving couple for wanting a child?

I can imagine, if I had no guidance, seeing IVF as a way of simply bowing to the inevitable awkwardness of life. We’d rather do things the natural way, but sometimes nature fails us. If science offers us a workaround, and we end up in a place of love, what does it matter? I can imagine thinking this. It is natural to want children.

And it is natural to want our children to remain with us even if we can’t hold their plump, warm baby bodies in our arms. We want something we can touch. I can imagine this: Knowing, no matter who thinks they’re just “extras,” that these embryos are more than just specimens. I can imagine wanting to keep them safe, or something like it.

And so the mother does the thing that makes the most sense to a pagan, when nature fails her: She bows to artifice, and finds a way to bring her children with her, clumsily, sentimentally, but grasping at something that seems true: We are made to be with the ones we love. We are supposed to be able to give them life, and to keep them safe.

She knows they are her children. But does she know what children are?

In order to turn embryos into jewelry, one must believe that all children, and all people, can be made safe. One must believe there is such a thing as safety in this world.

“It’s about the everlasting tangible keepsake of a loved one that you can have forever,” says the founder of the jewelry company.

But mothers, and fathers, and you barren ones, listen to me. You cannot have any loved one forever. Don’t you know that they all go? Don’t you know this?

Sometimes it happens before we even knew they existed; sometimes it happens when they are old and feeble, frightened and crying for death. But they all go. No one is safe. No one can be preserved. Why are you lying about it? Haven’t you been through enough springs to know that winter always comes? Haven’t we been through this? No one is with us always, until the end of time.

Anyway, hardly anyone.

Imagine, a body encased in glass, made portable, made consumable. But not jewelry. Instead, a sunburst, a fountain of life, a wellspring, the maker of worlds somehow contained, first in His mother’s womb, and now on our altars, through springs and winters and then through springs again.

The body inside is a willing victim. Not preserved in death, but alive forever, immortal. Here is the difference between the scandal of the Incarnation and the scandal of sentimentality. The Incarnation invites us to accept forgiveness, bought for us through His death. Sentimentality puts our sin always before us, but tells us we can be comforted through everlasting death.

I do understand. We want the body. We grieve when the beloved one is lost to us, even if, like the parents who make “extra” embryos, it’s entirely our fault that our children are cold and dead. We want to heal our grief, to control it, to contain it.

That is not how sin is healed. That is not how death is conquered. Healing comes when we send our dead to be with Him, not preserved forever in death, but to be restored forever in His life.

I commend all the dead, all my beloved ones who are passing away like the grass: Go and be with Him. You don’t need to stay here with us, to comfort me in my weakness. Go and be with Him.

***
Embryos image by ZEISS microscopy via Flickr (Creative Commons)
Monstrance image by Aleteia image department via Flickr (Creative Commons)

 

How to motivate Ben Carson

Because I’m basically a giver, I have a few ideas for Ben Carson. Specifically, I have some ideas for how to motivate him so he doesn’t remain entrenched forever in his current unsustainable, dependent lifestyle.

Carson is, of course, the kindly-faced sock puppet who boasted zero experience in public housing or government and was therefore appointed head of HUD. He is now on a fact-finding tour of government-subsidized housing to make sure it’s sufficiently horrible.

The theory, popular among folks who mistake luck, wealth, and support for personal virtue, is that, just as people catch pre-existing conditions because they didn’t take their vitamins and wear a scarf when they went out, the main reason people are poor because being poor is just so dang comfy. If we make poverty less fun, then poor people will get their act together and stop being poor.

Like so many brilliant ideas, Carson’s theory is both simple and universal. So let’s go ahead and apply it to him.

As head of HUD, his income comes directly from taxpayers; his comprehensive health insurance (which covers pre-existing conditions) is heavily subsidized by taxpayers; and he spends his days in government-sponsored housing. Does he even take the subway to work? Nope. Someone drives him around, and it’s all on your dime.

He’s a leech, pure and simple. This is a life devoid of dignity and integrity. But does he show any signs of wanting to better himself? No, he does not.

Why? Because he’s too damn comfortable. How are we ever going to get this fellow up, self-sufficient, and independent if we allow his daily life to be so cushy? Here are my compassionate recommendations for Dr. Carson:

He gets three paper clips per annum. Need more than three paper clips? Should have planned ahead. Nothing like running out of paper clips to drive home the hard lesson that paper clips aren’t free, and when they’re gone, they’re gone. If he’s really desperate to hold papers together and has already burned through the allowance that an agency who knows nothing about his daily life has decided is sensible, he can put on his thinking cap and fashion some kind of substitute out of, say, bootstraps. People in desperate situations have no end of bootstraps, and just about any problem can be solved by giving them a good yank.

No chairs. When we sit, it trains our gluteal muscles to become accustomed to rest, rather constantly tensed and engaged in work. As a doctor, Carson can surely confirm that you do more, live better, and can even be excused for existing as long as you are never at rest and feel constant stress and tension at all times. All the better if we can erect some kind of treadmill to his workspace, so he can grind grain or something as he works. Give a little back.

Walls and floors of his workspace should be concrete and colorless. If he starts to feel like he owns the place, by putting up photos of his family or choosing the color of the drapes, he’s going to start to feel like he belongs there, and he doesn’t. It’s temporary, and the sensation of security is the enemy of humanity. The best way to think clearly and make good decisions for the future is to have constant reminders that your very existence must be accounted for, and that everything that makes it possible for you to live could be yanked out from under you at any time.

Perhaps we could hire someone to follow him around chanting, “Shame, shame, shame, shame, shame” in his ear and to sigh disgustedly every time he cashes his government-issued paycheck. Hasn’t done anything to be ashamed of? So what? My sister’s husband’s aunt’s friend used to work at the white house, and there was this other guy in HUD who gamed the system left and right, and we can’t take the chance of that happening again. Fraud is rampant in the system, so it’s essential for anyone who cashes a government check to be made to feel bad, all the time. This is empowering and encouraging and extremely compassionate.

You think this is silly. You think that Carson is a man who has worked hard his whole life, has accomplished more than the ordinary man, and who is doing an important job — one which will be made more difficult if every aspect of his life is made unpleasant and difficult. He doesn’t deserve to be treated like scum. That’s inhumane, not to mention counter productive.

Well, you just described the typical poor person. You just described veteran. An elderly person. A refugee. A disabled person. A homeless person. A person whose life is already so severely proscribed that already nothing comes easy, nothing is by choice, nothing is certain, nothing is soft.

These are the people who live in government-subsidized housing. If their lives were easy, they wouldn’t be there. If their lives get uglier, harder, and less comfortable, as Carson apparently wants them to be, they’ll still be there. They’re there because they have nowhere else to go. And yet the crowds cheer as here comes a man in a tailored suit, stepping out of his limo and nodding in approval because the homeless men have no TV in the warehouse that shelters them at night.

Shame, pain, discomfort, inconvenience, and ugliness will not end poverty. Despair is not a motivator. Misery is not an engine for enterprise. I do not know how to solve the problem of generational poverty, but I do know that poverty is already ugly enough, and deliberately making it uglier will encourage fraud, not upward mobility.

Policies that deliberately employ shame and deprivation are not for the benefit of the poor. They are for the benefit of the well-off who despise the poor.

In the past, Carson has cast doubt on the relatively new policy of offering housing to low-income people even if they are not clean and sober. He believes that the morally corrupt should be excluded from government assistance.

In March of 2016, Carson candidly explained to NewsMax  that he didn’t want to endorse Trump, but Trump offered him a job.

It is a federal crime to exchange support of a candidate for appointment to a public or private position.

What was the phrase? “Drain the swamp?” Maybe we could, if the swamp were a little less comfortable for nakedly opportunistic careerists like Carson.

***
Image of Ben Carson by Gage Skidmore via Flickr (Creative Commons)

Old movie review: ATTACK THE BLOCK is perfect

Here’s my review of Attack the Block, a sci-fi thriller from 2011, from the producers of Shaun of the Dead. The review is from 2013. I apologize for re-running two posts in a row. It’s been a difficult couple of days, and I would appreciate prayers if you’ve got ’em! Thanks. 

Here’s the set-up:  a gang of no-good inner city kids terrorizes the neighborhood, mugging a young woman at knifepoint.  But before they’re through with her, something streaks down from space and crashes into a car.  They don’t quite know what it is, but it’s aggressive, and they kill it.  Full of swagger and machismo, they drag the corpse of whatever-it-is to the most secure place they know:  the apartment of a local drug dealer.  They think all they need to do is figure out the best way to cash in on their luck and success. But things are about to get more complicated.

Here’s the trailer:

As British filmmakers seem more free to do, they cast actors who look like real people.  If this had been an American film, the teenage girls lounging in their bedroom would have all been professionally made up and dressed like models.  But in this movie, some of the girls knew what to do with their hair, and some of them didn’t — just like real girls.  Ditto for the apartment interiors:  none of them looked like stage sets with a few messy areas thrown in stimulate gritty realism.  They just looked like actual crummy apartments.

And ditto for the characters themselves.  There was a refreshing lack of stock characters.  In an American movie, you could have pegged, within five minutes, which characters were going to live and which would die.  You would be able to tell that the privileged, white, pothead poseur with the fabulous head of hair was going to get it, because he deserves it, because he’s driving his daddy’s fancy car and so on.  But — spoiler — all that happens in this movie is he gets hit in the nose with a baseball bat because he’s not paying attention, and it’s kind of funny.

In the course of the film, the ringleader, Moses, undergoes a small but pivotal transformation:  he discovers how to channel his natural toughness and charisma from something desperate into something valuable.  He begins with a stunted moral code — that we’re responsible for ourselves and for the people on our block, and that’s it — and emerges as a true hero . . . or at least as a young man who has the makings of a real man.

Moses and his followers aren’t presented as rough diamonds or noble savages whose morals poignantly and ironically transcend that of the bourgeois upright citizen (although I was afraid that that’s where the movie was headed).  They really are bad kids doing bad things — some of them with no parents to guide them, but some of them just looking for a thrill.  At the same time, their little gang (with its armory of fireworks and cavalry of mopeds) really does have a moral code.  For comparison, we see what true evil does look like, when the drug dealer, High Hat, commands his second to head unarmed into peril. Moses’ friends, on the other hand, are constantly on the phone with each other (with the pathetic detail that they’re constantly fretting about how many minutes or texts they have left), and they never doubt for a minute that they will come to each others’ rescue.

At one point, when it seems like things couldn’t get any worse, Moses admits of the dark suspicion that the aliens invading the block are just another plague inflicted on them by the authorities to keep the black man down — just like drug addiction and AIDS.  Everyone stews with this for a moment.  And then they all laugh, just because it just sounds kind of stupid.  And yet later, when the true heroes of the day are being carted off to jail, someone remarks something like, “Aw, you guys are always arresting the wrong people!”  And yup, it’s true.  There’s no grand, cohesive injustice against the poor and downtrodden; but they do get downtrodden — just like life.  The film deftly avoids Being About Something, which makes it all the more compelling when it is true to life.

Is Attack the Block free from formula?  Not at all.  It’s a pretty standard issue sci-fi action thriller flick.  And yet it does something brilliant:  all of the characters have clearly been raised on standard issue sci fi action thriller flicks and video games.  That is part of the subtext, such as it is, of this movie:  these are kids who have been raised by TV, and don’t even realize that there’s more to life than the thrills and platitudes they’ve seen.   They are clearly imitating what they’ve seen a thousand times on screen.   And yet their behavior completely appropriate, because they really are being chased by horrible, ravenous aliens down dark streets and smoky hallways!  This layer of removal, as the kids imitate fiction, makes it possible for the filmmakers to deliver thrills and chills, without sacrificing any of the realism that makes you care about the characters.

All around, Attack the Block is an entertaining, solid, nicely crafted little movie that gave me something to think about, without getting all thinky about it.

This movie is not meant for kids.  It uses profanity freely (although that becomes something of an inside joke later in the script), it’s intense and scary, it has a few quick scenes of gross-out gore, and it shows lots of people doing drugs.  But if you are an older teen or an adult who can tell the difference between a movie that shows certain behaviors and a movie that condones and promotes certain behaviors, then you might really enjoy Attack the Block.  (There is no sexual content to this film, unless it slipped by me somewhere in the heavy accents.  They do take some getting used to!)

 

Real suffering isn’t photogenic

In The Lego Movie, the prophetic minifig Vitruvius spurs the hero on to greatness by feeding him a cliched line about being special. “I know it sounds like a cat poster,” Vitruvius admits, “But it’s true!”

Lately, I’m rediscovering the truth of a cat-posterish idea myself: change hurts. We all know this is true, yes? We’re all familiar with a whole panoply of phrases that express this idea linking progress and suffering: “No pain, no gain;” “You have to break some eggs to make an omelet;” “No guts, no glory;” “No cross, no crown,” and so on.

But the problem with living with a world in love with cat poster ideas is that it’s easy to click “like” or “up” or “favorite,” but somewhat harder to be the actual cat.

When we’re the cat — when we’re the one actually living through the suffering or pain, and enduring our circumstances beyond the quick freeze frame that captures our predicament — we often end up feeling dismayed, discouraged, even betrayed when we find ourselves genuinely suffering, and it genuinely hurts. We think we are prepared for the idea that change and progress only come through struggle and sweat, but maybe subconsciously we expect that struggle to look — well, photogenic.

There are many popular styles of romanticized pain: the gritty warrior with corded neck muscles squinting toward the coming battle; the elegantly wilting emo chick collapsing in a puddle of rosewater and mascara; the sepia-tinted mother with her chin held high against the world as her shabby chic children cling to her capable thighs; the robed faithful servant on his knees in anguish, just as muscular and splendid as the angel who comes to comfort him; the sleek long-distance runner powering through the rain, baring his perfect white teeth and lovin’ that burn.

These are all half truths about suffering and growth, pain and progress. Here’s the actual truth:  growth and change usually cause suffering, and suffering is ugly. Really ugly, not poster ugly.

If someone you love actually betrays you, your tears aren’t going to wend their way down your cheek like so many liquid crystals; you’re going to cry until your skin is blotchy, your nose runs, your teeth ache, and your sinuses fill up with snot. Being a soldier is, from what I hear, less often about guts and glory, and more about boredom, rashes, diarrhea, and fear. The true action of change is less like sprouting glorious wings and more like dissolving into horrible, stinky soup. Just ask any former caterpillar.

So, what’s the solution? Well, first of all, if what I’ve said above isn’t true for you, then carry on! If you truly gain inspiration and strength and encouragement from a poster or a meme, then that is great. If it works, it works. Sometimes an attractive image is what helps us to embrace necessary change instead of shrinking away from it.  Sometimes picturing ourselves as warriors instead of victims really does give us that extra oomph we need to push forward instead of giving up.

But if you find yourself suffering real pain, pain that just plain hurts instead of “hurts so good,” then don’t add to that pain because you feel like you’re somehow doing it wrong. You’re not a poster, you’re a person; and true suffering isn’t photogenic. So if you find yourself suffering and you feel stupid, or ugly, or confused, or exhausted, then realize that this is what true suffering looks like. Change hurts, and it’s not supposed to look nice. That’s what makes it painful! Don’t make yourself even more miserable than you have to be by expecting to be gorgeous in your misery. That’s a subtle and insidious temptation to despair.

Yes, some suffering is unavoidable. Yes, it’s usually necessary for growth and change. Yes, we are often at our best when we choose to be strong in the face of suffering. Yes, it’s often worthwhile, and there is often glory and joy on the other side.

But no, it’s not going to look good when you’re in the thick of it.

 This essay originally ran in the National Catholic Register in 2014.
Image: Samantha Jade Royds via Flickr (Creative Commons)

What’s for supper? Vol. 79: Asparagus me, Domine

Can’t remember the last time I’ve been so glad to see a week be done. Here’s what we had:

SATURDAY
Sausage, fried eggs, and muenster cheese on bagels

I will never complain when there are sandwiches for supper.

***

SUNDAY
Lamb lo mein with spaetzle; rice; pot stickers; rice

Probably the weirdest meal of the week. We had a nice meaty bone left over from last week’s lamb feast, so I cut the meat into bits and added it to this simple lo mein recipe from Damn Delicious.  I made it even simpler by just chucking in a couple of bags of frozen stir fry vegetables, rather than using fresh. Then I made it weirder by using a few bags of spaetzle for the noodles. The result was a multi-ethnicish meal that soared to the level of Not Bad At All.

No one in my family has actually tasted lo mein before, so they were the right audience, I guess.

The potstickers were frozen from Hannaford. Kind of a pain for frozen food – you have to brown them in oil and then steam them – but they were tasty. One kid ate just the wrapper, and left behind little bundles of steamed cabbage and chicken, which I of course ate also.

You are thinking, “Why did she also make rice, with all that other stuff?” The answer is that at least three of my kids are currently following a strict Rice and Tears diet.

***

MONDAY
Tacos

On Monday, I looked at my driving schedule for the week and let out a weak whimper. Seriously considering buying each kid a moped and just letting them get where they need to be on their own. I’ll take out a credit card in the choir director’s name. Add an entire extra concert with rehearsals every night for two weeks right when all the other teachers are realizing we need to squeeze in all those field trips and special projects and fundraisers, will you? EAT MOPED DEBT AND DIE.

Oh, so we had tacos. It turns out cumin can be fairly overwhelming if you angrily shake in half the jar, but you can disguise it with extra salt.

***

TUESDAY
Pizza

Nothing to report. Luckily, I have two pepperoni distribution specialists living in my very house.

***

WEDNESDAY
Steak tips with mushrooms on noodles; rolls; roast asparagus

This is a slow cooker meal from Damn Delicious, and chuck roast is still on sale! The sauce never thickened up as much as it was supposed to, even with extra cornstarch, but the flavor was, in fact, damn delicious.

I mixed up the asparagus with a little olive oil, spread it on a pan, and slid it right under a hot broiler, then sprinkled it with lemon juice when it was done. Did you know you are supposed to eat asparagus with your fingers? Do you know it’s hard, but not impossible, to drive while licking your plate?

***

THURSDAY
Korean beef bowl, rice, roast sesame broccoli 

Still a great meal, still easy. In the morning, I cooked up the meat and then transferred it to the slow cooker; I set up the rice in the Instant Pot (affiliate link!) (the 1:1 formula works fine); and prepped the broccoli. So when I tore into the kitchen that afternoon knowing half of us had to be out the door again in 25 minutes, we still had a swell meal.

Have I mentioned how I love roasting vegetables? I drizzled the broccoli with sesame oil, spread it in a single layer, sprinkled it with sesame seeds, and slid it right under the broiler until the edges got a little blackened. So many veggies taste good this way.

***

FRIDAY
Tuna noodle

And tears, no doubt.

What about Lucia?

Why isn’t Lucia being canonised along with her cousins?

The cute answer is: Our Lady is to blame.

Read the rest of my latest at The Catholic Weekly.

Image: Fatima children with Rosaries via Wikimedia Commons

Juicero delenda est

Friends, it has come to my attention that you have no idea what to do with your money.

First, you went and spent $400 on something they openly and deliberately called a “Juicero.” I know that names aren’t everything, and we shouldn’t judge a book by its cover. Heck, I can remember when Gee, Your Hair Smells Terrific was a product that normal people bought without shame. But when it’s a high end item that was in development for ten years, with millions of dollars in investment, for which they almost certainly employed a team of marketing and creative types to . . . you know, I once met a sedevacantist priest named Father Pulvermacher. I think that would have been a better name than “Juicero.” So that’s the first thing.

Second, I gather that the Juicero, or The Pulvermacher, if you will, is some kind of counter-top device that allows you to ingest the juice of fruits and vegetables in your very home, if you can imagine such a thing.

Previously, when we were hoping to have the liquid aspect of plant products find its way into our mouths, we would be all, “Oh! Ah! Here is an apple, and here is my mouth, but I simply cannot work through the logistics! Help me, Gwyneth Paltrow! You’re our only hope.”

But Gwyneth can’t always pencil you in, so maybe you would go ahead and, in a juice-deprived panic, buy some kind of peasant-style juicer, like at Target or something, which inevitably results in what La Goopessa terms a “nightmare of clean-up.”

Now, when I say “nightmare of clean-up,” I’m usually thinking more in terms of shopping for a new couch slipcover while muttering, “And that’s why we don’t keep prunes in this house.” But I think Gwyneth meant that Pilar, who is in charge of the west end of the kitchen, is a little put out over all the little bits that can’t go in the dishwasher.

So anyway, this Juicero solves all of your problems that you are pretending you have by delivering some kind of loathsome pouches of chopped-up fruits and vegetables. They are organic, non-GMO, non-pasteurized, and still lightly dewed with the sweat of Pilar’s nephew, who is nine and someday hopes to find out what those strawberries he picks for eleven hours actually taste like.

You ask your Juicero to open wide (it only speaks Esperanto at present, but the next gen will be more flexible) and drop the bag in and then you use the pinky finger of your left hand to touch the air next to a button, or something, and then guess what?

Juice comes out.

I know.

Truly, this is a century of marvels. The Juicero contains four hundred custom parts, a scanner, and a microprocessor, and it is, of course, also wifi enabled. It is very, very important to have very local fruit brought directly to your home so that you can then leave that home and remotely command it to make local juice, so when you get home . . .

No, Pilar’s face doesn’t just look like that. She really does hate you.

And think, you’ve only spent $400 on this astonishing machine, plus let’s say $7 on a single-serving produce pack called “Root Renewal+” which “may help keep inflammation at bay.”

Now, when I want to keep inflammation at bay, I put my feet up on a laundry basket while I drink my bottom shelf g-and-flat-t with the restorative juice of a quarter of a lime, if they had any at Aldi. If I still feel puffy after this rigorous treatment, I dash off an angry email to that bastard Fr. Pulvermacher. Lay off the Jews, man. And down goes the inflammation! Or it may. The FDA has not evaluated this statement.

So a few of the guys who didn’t know about my regimen were pretty happy with their Juiceros . . . until they discovered that you could actually skip the Juicero part. You could just go ahead and squeeze the pouches with your very own paddy paws, and juice would come out of them. And you really didn’t need to buy a machine at all, because you already have a machine, called a “hand.”

And this aggression will not stand, man.

What the next step is, I do not know. Probably a march on Washington. Those seem popular. And when you get home, you can very easily make yourself some nice, refreshing juice.

Or, you know what? You’ve been marching all day. Get Pilar to do it.

***
Image: Baldassare Franceschini [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

When Ella Fitzgerald had no one to watch over her

Ella Fitzgerald’s voice means warmth, joy, careless brilliance, strength wrapped in velvet. But her early life was cold, rough, harsh.

It’s Ella Fitzgerald’s 100th birthday today, and on NPR’s Morning Edition, Susan Stamberg reports that Fitzgerald, born poor, was orphaned at 15. Her surviving stepfather was hard on her, and she lived for a time with an aunt, but then started skipping school, eventually living on the streets.

“She was on the streets of Harlem dancing for tips” [Smithsonian Curator of American Music John] Hasse says.

She earned more pennies as a lookout for cops outside a brothel. At one point, she was arrested for truancy and sent to a reform school, where she was regularly beaten. So she ran away — this awkward, gawky girl with skinny legs and old, cast-off boots — with no money, living on the streets and sleeping where she could.

Around this time, Fitzgerald used to say, she first began to sing on stage. She was 17, and found herself terrified in front of a brutal audience at Amatuer Night at the Apollo. She had been planning to dance, but her legs shook too badly; so instead, she sang. And everyone loved it, so she kept on singing. At least that’s the way she tells it.

Who can describe her voice? Instead of talking about it, let’s listen. The velvety ballads are my favorites. Here’s one of the greatest:

Oh, how I need. What a miracle of vocal engineering that she goes all high and hoarse without losing an ounce of power. Happy birthday, you beautiful woman. Someone I’d really like to know.

Image: Ella in 1940, photo by Carl Van Vechten [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons