Butterfly

After two choruses from Verdi operas, I put in two of my mother's favorite songs from when she was a teenager in Italy, then one my father used to play as he stood by the jukebox.

This marks a transition from her family of origin to marrying an American GI and the father of her children.

I'm not saying she wouldn't have liked Puccini or Madame Butterfly anyway, but I know she felt like Butterfly in a way that she never felt like Aida or Fenena.

I am not sure when that started. I was only nine the first time he cheated, plus there was a time before I was born when he he had feelings for someone else... it put a great strain on the marriage.

Did she feel like Butterfly as soon as she married an American soldier and enthusiastically embraced all things American? (Watching a performance as an adult, that perspective broke my heart.) Or did that feeling happen later, after the soldier proved faithless?

I don't know.

What I do know, though, is that she did not become Butterfly, at least not the opera version.

In the opera, Pinkerton's new wife comes for his son with Butterfly, because Pinkerton is too cowardly to face Butterfly himself. Taking the blade with which her father killed himself -- on which it is written "Those who cannot live with honor can die with honor -- she takes her own life, having already surrendered it to her husband.

That was not my mother. 

She was hurt, a lot. If her children had been taken, I don't know what would have happened, but she had her children and she loved and worked and thrived for them.

That thriving becomes a larger pattern of her life, and there will be another post for that.

I am getting more to the point where I will be able to write an obituary. 

For now, I should say that there was another version for Butterfly as well.

The opera was based on a short story by John Luther Long.

It is mostly the same, but after agreeing to give up the child and starting to kill herself, Butterfly is interrupted by her maid, Suzuki, who pinches the child to make him cry.

Butterfly stops, and her child crawls into her lap. Suzuki dresses the wound, and when Kate Pinkerton arrives the next day, the house is empty.

Okay, the odds of a classical opera ending that way were always pretty low. You either tend to have a majorly happy, triumphal ending, or a tragedy with at least the soprano dead, the tenor and the baritone as well. 

Fortunately, life is seldom operatic in its scope; small victories and joys can get us through.

If those small joys happen because someone is looking out for you, good! We should be looking out for each other.  

Related posts: 

https://preparedspork.blogspot.com/2024/08/my-mother-my-talk.html 

https://sporkful.blogspot.com/2025/08/1960-1958-july-daily-songs.html 

Fly, my thoughts (Va pensiero)

January 3rd through 8th songs were a mix of classical opera and contemporary hits from around the time my parents met.

For as long as I can remember, my mother's favorite operas were Aida, Madame Butterfly, and Nabucco.

Two of those are much more famous than the other. I was able to take her to see both Aida and Madame Butterfly; I found a DVD recording of Nabucco for her. It was performed at L'Arena in Verona, where we had been together, so that was pretty cool, but it just doesn't get performed much now.

Madame Butterfly is by Giacomo Puccini and I think there are some things that are different about her love for that, so that will be a separate post.

Aida and Nabucco are both by Giuseppe Verdi. I think a lot of my mother's love for opera came from her father, and that is especially true for Nabucco, with its chorus, "Va Pensiero."

She always told me it was important to him because it was an anthem for Italians when they were under Austrian rule. As I was thinking about songs that were important to her, I started to wonder more about that. 

I was pretty sure it wasn't all of Italy, but maybe just the North. A little research indicated that it had to have been the kingdom of Lombardy-Venetia, which existed from 1815 to 1866, when they were finally able to join with the rest of Italy, after first being ceded to France. (Italian unification was a lengthy and somewhat complicated process). 

We are from the Veneto, so this is the area. 

My grandparents were old, but not old enough to have been under Austrian rule.

Grandfather's father, Pietro, would have been 14 when they regained their independence. However, his father Domenico was five when the kingdom was created. Domenico died when Pietro was only 10. I don't know if he died in the fighting, but I can believe that there were some strong emotions tied into that song from an opera introduced in 1842 (just over one hundred years before my mother was born).

Shortly before its composition, Verdi had lost his wife and children to illnesses. He swore he would never compose again. The director of La Scala made him take the libretto, written by Temistocle Solera. Originally resisting looking, Verdi opened it to "Va Pensiero" based on the 137th Psalm.

The music came back to him, and he wrote again. 

Perhaps Solera should get more credit. In opera the libretto is often considered unimportant. As it was, Solera had already written one opera with Verdi before Nabucco and wrote three more in the next few years after. Still, the song is mostly associated with Verdi; onlookers in Milan began singing it spontaneously at his funeral procession and Toscanini conducted a version at Verdi's re-internment.

There was a powerful love for that song, and it is a powerful story of recovery from loss. I still don't know that I would have blogged about it if not for two other things that came up in my research. 

One is that various scholars dispute that Verdi meant for the song to be about independence. 

By all accounts, he was a very private man; there is not a proclamation of his determination. He was nonetheless associated with the move for independence and unification (The Risorgimento). The next opera that Verdi and Solera did together is also considered to have patriotic themes. 

Probably a coincidence. 

In addition, reading about Lombardy-Venetia, I found this:

"Austrian General Karl von Schonhals wrote in his memoires that the Austrian administration enjoyed the support of the rural population and the middle class educated at the universities of Pavia and Padua, who were able to pursue careers in the administration."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kingdom_of_Lombardy%E2%80%93Venetia 

His explanation is that the nobles mistrusted the Austrians because they got positions through their nobility rather than their education, so it was the nobles who were into independence, not the common people.

Okay, as far as I can tell, Garibaldi was not aristocratic, but born to a merchant family and had some education. That should make him exactly the pro-Austrian type, yet somehow he became the key leader in the Risorgimento. He did at times work with monarchists, and certainly a movement can become more popular after it succeeds... but I think von Schonhals is projecting there.

As the granddaughter of a railroad man who was the son of a farmer, we say that song was about independence and yearning for freedom. 

That may not even matter that much, except that people lying about the motivations and the beliefs of those who oppose them, always having a way to justify themselves, feels relevant right now.

"If you are silent about your pain, they'll kill you and say you enjoyed it." -- Zora Neale Hurston

I would be reluctant to use a quote that serious if not for the murder of Renee Good.

Of course, this administration lies more about how you deserved the killing than that you enjoyed it, but they lie a lot.

They also say history is written by the victors, so maybe it doesn't matter what an Austrian general thought after they lost the territory. Maybe the reason the Italians remember it differently is because they finally did become free.

It feels important to express ourselves now. Speak, write, yes, complain, but do not leave the lies unanswered. 

That can have an effect generations later. 

Musically all about my mother... and my father... and me

If it looks like I am obsessing over this pending death, that may be true.

Some of it is figuring out how to handle things combined with my tendency toward rumination.

I don't know that I have actually written this before, but concerns I used to have about my mother's death were that it would happen during a #365FeministSelfie year; when things are hard I don't love capturing that on film. 

We made it into the new year.

In addition, I have worried about it interrupting a specific sequence in the daily songs. At one time I had thought of about seven songs that were important to her, and that I would play those, no matter what, giving a one-week break whenever it happened. 

That could actually work better now as I have seen and accepted sequences getting disrupted a lot this year. However, feeling like this is going to be the month and thinking about music more for a variety of reasons, that is January's theme. If it happens this month, we are already here.

(Then I think February will be all really emotional, grieving songs, so again, we will already be there.)

These are the favorite songs that would have been there for that week, as well as enough others to equal thirty-one days, and to give some overview of her life. 

It is a way of celebrating her, and grieving her, but also a way of noticing things and putting them into perspective.

I hope that will help me with some of the other things I am trying to figure out. 

I do still intend to write about the full list as a media post after the month is done, but some things are bringing up many thoughts. They can have their own posts. At this point, I do not intend to write about any of the songs before they have actually been the song of the day.

So, am I just going to wallow in grief for the rest of the month?

I don't think so. I hope not.

Besides, some of them may take unexpected directions, like tomorrow's intended post.

I promise, I am still thinking about politics. That could come up tomorrow. There will also be things relating to hope and human relations and living a good life.

I am not feeling my most calm and collected. 

For songs that don't require a long post, I started with "New Year's Day" by Reggie and the Full Effect, and then January 2nd was "The '59 Sound" by The Gaslight Anthem.

The first one was not just for the day, though that was convenient. I had used it exactly one year before.

It is from the album 41, inspired by a year where James Dewees lost his mother, his mother-in-law, and his marriage. There were a lot of hospital rooms and a lot of pain.

Hearing it, it sounded like my future. Not the same timeline or circumstances, but some very similar emotions. The enormity of the loss and the insufficient comfort of "she feels no pain" hit really hard. 

Maybe next year I won't need that song so much anymore.

"The '59 Sound" is a pretty great song in general, but also wonders "which song they're gonna play when we go" and "Did you hear your favorite song one last time?"

I have played and sung favorite songs for her, and sometimes that is what breaks through the most. That is part of needing to go over them again. 

Childrens books for Hispanic Heritage Month (especially for October)

There is a confluence of different things here. 

One factor is that while I was reading various picture books for Halloween, I ran into several that were Spanish language or by Hispanic authors.

Please remember that Hispanic Heritage Month runs from September 15th through October 15th, so the last half of it is very much Halloween-adjacent.

In addition, what I am working on now for that reading is going through all of the winners of the Américas award, the Pura Belpré awards and the Tomás Rivera awards. 

There is a fair amount of overlap, but that's a lot of books. It's a good idea to get them out of the way, and more than half of them are ghostly.

Not ghostly:

The Night of Las Posadas by Tomie dePaola

DePaola comes up with a lot of holiday stuff, generally retelling legends and folklore. I generally find that I like other versions of the same story better.

My Name Is Celia: The Life Of Celia Cruz / Me Llamo Celia: La Vida de Celia Cruz by Monica Brown and Rafael López

Solid introduction to Cruz with a lot of energy in the art.
 
Bravo, Chico Canta! Bravo by Pat Mora, Libby Martinez, and Amelia Lau Carlling

Pretty fun, but I thought it was a little too wordy.

Ghostly

The House, The Ghost, and Me/La casa, la fantasma, y yo by Tessa B.H. Ruiz and Eliza Morena

Better illustrated than written, as there was a kind of weird rhythm to the story.     

El susto de los fantasmas by Alma Flor Ada and Vivi Escrivá

I am pretty fond of Alma Flor Ada. This is a cute story with a twist. 

Cheech and the Spooky Ghost Bus by Cheech Marin and Orlando L. Ramirez

This is probably my favorite. I am not even sure it is the best, but c'mon! It's Cheech! 

La Llorona Can't Scare Me/La Llorona no me asunta by Xavier Garza 

Once again there is a connection between ghosts and luchadores that I don't quite understand, but this is probably a good book for bedtime rituals and fear of the dark.

Prietita and the Ghost Woman by Gloria Anzaldúa and Maya Christina González

Okay, if Cheech's book is not my favorite, then it is this one. You have a great author/illustrator combination in a story that reclaims La Llorona and is essentially a coming of age story. Excellent work. 

Related posts:

https://sporkful.blogspot.com/2025/12/ghostly-childrens-picture-books.html  

https://sporkful.blogspot.com/2025/10/spotlight-on-jose-carlos-andres.html 

https://sporkful.blogspot.com/2024/12/cuentos-hispanic-heritage-month.html 

https://sporkful.blogspot.com/2018/07/childrens-books-pura-belpre-award.html 

Dialectics

I'm afraid that I am going to be more annoying this year.

That's not a resolution, just a prediction. 

Annoying people is one of the things I am really insecure about, but if it feels like the right thing to do...

Over the last month I have contradicted two friends' posts. One was about Artificial Intelligence and one was repeating leftist talking points, focusing on Democrats as Republicans destroy the country. 

My feelings on those topics are no secret, but generally I share my opinions through my own posts -- whether a blog post or a status update -- and let other people say whatever they want.

That is starting to feel insufficient.

Let me get back to dialectics.

I believe I have also previously expressed that I tend to find philosophy very annoying, but I sometimes find it useful. 

Dialectics have been following me around over the past year, coming up in The Next American Revolution: Sustainable Activism for the Twenty-First Century by Grace Lee Boggs, which I finished in July, and in The Myth of Closure: Ambiguous Loss in a Time of Pandemic and Change by Pauline Boss, which I finished for the second time through last month.

They stuck in my head more for two reasons. One was that I have a friend who is into Hegelian dialectics so when it comes up in a book, I think of her and let her know. (To be fair, as Boss uses the term it is really more classical and Fichte rather than Hegel. See, I annoy myself with that, but clarity and correctness is important to me.)

In addition, in Boggs' work there is a mention of a mentor who "excommunicated" a few of the group as they adapted their philosophy. The name sounded familiar, and yes, I had read C.L.R. James' The Black Jacobins back in 2016. 

Although at the time that was all I knew of him, I remember feeling like it was out of date. It was written almost sixty years before I read it, so that wasn't necessarily all James' fault, but it seemed believable that he might fight change and evolution.

What I see now -- especially via Facebook, but not exclusively -- is that there are strong tides of influence that are often poorly understood. They stay powerful because of ubiquity or propaganda or comfort and habit, where people really need to update and adapt but aren't doing it. 

My posting on my own feels insufficient; I know the algorithm isn't on my side.

It looks like that is going to lead to me being more confrontational. I hope I do it in a thoughtful and considerate way, but no one really enjoys receiving contradiction. (Some people love giving it, but I do not.)

If I am doing this because I am so sure that I know better... well, you can see why I an concerned that I am going to be more annoying.

But if it's important...
 

Related posts:

https://sporkful.blogspot.com/2025/06/rejecting-ai-as-much-as-possible.html  

https://sporkful.blogspot.com/2025/09/case-studies-possibly-most-relevant-one.html 

Just chewed up around the edges

My sisters have several friends in the process of losing parents. We know we are not the only ones.

I am going to sound a little mean about this one.

As much as I acknowledge that life is hard in general, some people do have it easier. One aspect of that may be not having to work.

I also acknowledge that a lot of jobs should have better leave policies and backups in place, especially for illness.

Regardless, if one particular person is a bit more self-absorbed, more demanding of support and sympathy, and also takes a lot of time off work and has more money in the family background... I suspect those things going together is not a coincidence.

Anyway, when asked how she was doing, she said that her therapist said she was "consumed with grief."

That sounds bad, but it is also a luxury and probably not really good for her.  

Yesterday I mentioned realizing that the cumulative grief that keeps welling up is probably a product of grief I have put to the side while doing other things. 

It's not that I never felt any of it, and it's not that there aren't some issues with putting it to the side... I don't think I have been as balanced as I should be.

That being said, I think it is good to have things to do.

It is possible that part of my current crying jags is that it is easier to lose concentration on schoolwork than on a job, though that's questionable too. 

I would say that my being in school instead of having a job is the reason why I am making the phone calls and things, but based on past history there is a good chance I'd have been the one doing a lot of that anyway. Is our family perfectly balanced? No. I am not sure if we are worse than other families, but no.

I still see some advantage to us in that we have to rally ourselves and keep going, over and over again.  

I like that about us, but I also see the downside. One point Pauline Boss made in The Myth of Closure is that we can't have resilience be the solution for social ills that we could prevent.

Children can be resilient, it is true, but that does not mean that experiencing hunger or homelessness is good for them, especially if we start looking at research into Adverse Childhood Experiences.

I am grateful to be in school right now, and that I have some control over my schedule. 

I am also grateful that I  have to report to my mentor weekly and to my Employment Department person every two weeks. That makes a difference.

I am grateful to have a sense of responsibility that was developed over the years and does relate at least partially to hardships. 

I am also fortunate to live with people who do have jobs; I would feel some shame if I wallowed too much. Also we have the same heartache going on and can commiserate about it.

Frankly, some extra money would solve a lot of our issues, and it would be great if that were an option. 

For now, we are getting by.

Related posts:

https://sporkful.blogspot.com/2015/03/is-that-what-was-happening.html  

https://sporkful.blogspot.com/2025/12/dealing-with-ambiguity.html 

Over the holiday break...

I haven't written one of these kinds of posts since December 18th.

There is a level on which I thought that was very sensible, because people are busy over the holidays.

I would be lying if I said school and grief weren't issues.

The grief is an important part of that.

I wrote various cards and letters, because the holidays are also a good time to connect. I even talked to some people. 

One thing that kept coming up is how the grief is overtaking me more now. 

In some ways this is practical. I am writing to funeral homes and updating the death list and messaging siblings and answering their questions. The sense of the impending loss is more present now.

In another way, I have been feeling like it shouldn't be this bad. We have been dealing with losing Mom for literally years. Since I am still quite sure that is going to be much worse when she actually does die, why does it also have to be worse now?

It hardly seems fair.

But many of these conversations and letters and thoughts have been with other people who have faced loss, including sometimes specifically with dementia.

It has been good to catch up, and has also shed some light.

Over the years I have felt grief, but I have also put a fair amount of it to the side because there were things I needed to do. 

Now a lot of the things I am doing are specifically about that. It's not really at the side, and there has been enough grief accumulated that it could be coming out for a while.

Also, one of the things I decided to do was that January would all be songs that related to my parents and this process. In the song selection I am deliberately listening to songs that bring strong emotions. That is self-inflicted.

But there is relief in it as well.

And I am going to need to draft an obituary. 

I do keep learning more. I am sure at some point there will be posts about what questions to ask and things to think about when a loved one is dying. I like being able to be helpful, and to take all of these thoughts and problems and put them into words.

I am okay and this is hard.

Those things are equally true.