WHITE BUFFALO CALF WOMAN

Delwin Fiddler's great grandfather was Hehakapa, Elk Head, the Keeper of the Sacred White Buffalo Calf Pipe. On Sunday, June 2, 2019, Delwin Fiddler - who has received the tradition through this ancestry - will present the story in a unique performance, combining song, dance, images and storytelling.  

This remarkable program will be on stage at the Cultural Center at the Opera House, 121 N Union Ave, Havre de Grace MD 21078 starting at 2 pm.  Tickets are available at OHHdG.org, or - if you are in town - at the Havre de Grace Visitor Center, or one hour prior on the day of performance at the Opera House box office.  

This is the legend of the White Buffalo Calf Woman:

To the Native Americans the birth of a white buffalo is a symbol of rebirth and world harmony.

One summer, long ago, the seven sacred council fires of the Lakota Oyate, the nation, came together and camped. Every day they sent scouts to look for game, but the scouts found nothing, and the people were starving.

Among the bands assembled were the Itazipcho, the Without-Bows, who had their own camp circle under their chief, Standing Hollow Horn. Early one morning the chief sent two of his young men to hunt for game. They searched everywhere but could find nothing. Seeing a high hill, they decided to climb it in order to look over the whole country. Halfway up, they saw something coming toward them from far off, but the figure was floating instead of walking. From this they knew that the person was wakan, holy.

At first they could make out only a small moving speck and had to squint to see that it was a human form. But as it came nearer, they realized that it was a beautiful young woman, more beautiful than any they had ever seen. She wore a wonderful white buckskin outfit, tanned until it shone a long way in the sun. It was embroidered with sacred and marvelous designs of porcupine quill, in radiant colors no ordinary woman could have made. This wakan stranger was Ptesan-Wi, White Buffalo Calf Woman. In her hands she carried a large bundle and a fan of sage leaves. She wore her hair loose except for a strand at the left side, which was tied up with buffalo fur. Her eyes shone dark and sparkling, with great power in them.

The two young men looked at her open-mouthed. One was overawed, but the other desired her and stretched his hand out to touch her. This woman was Lila wakan, very sacred, and could not be treated with disrespect. Lightning instantly struck the brash young man and burned him up, so that only a small heap of blackened bones was left.

To the other scout who had behaved rightly, the White Buffalo Calf Woman said: "Good things I am bringing, something holy to your nation. A message I carry for your people from the buffalo nation. Go back to the camp and tell the people to prepare for my arrival. Tell your chief to put up a medicine lodge with twenty-four poles. Let it be made holy for my coming."

This young hunter returned to the camp. He told the chief, and the people, what the sacred woman had commanded. So the people put up the big medicine tipi and waited. After four days they saw the White Buffalo Calf Woman approaching, carrying her bundle before her. Her wonderful white buckskin dress shone from afar. The chief, Standing Hollow Horn, invited her to enter the medicine lodge. She went in and circled the interior sunrise. The chief addressed her respectfully, saying: "Sister, we are glad you have come to instruct us."

She told him what she wanted done. In the center of the tipi they were to put up an owanka wakan, a sacred altar, made of red earth, with a buffalo skull and a three-stick rack for a holy thing she was bringing. They did what she directed, and she traced a design with her finger on the smoothed earth of the altar. She showed them how to do all this, then circled the lodge again sunwise. Halting before the chief, she now opened the bundle. The holy thing it contained was the chanunpa, the sacred pipe. She held it out to the people and let them look at it. She was grasping the stem with her right hand and the bowl with her left, and thus the pipe has been held ever since.

Again the chief spoke, saying: "Sister, we are glad. We have had no meat for some time. All we can give you is water." They dipped some wacanga, sweet grass, into a skin bag of water and gave it to her, and to this day the people dip sweet grass or an eagle wing in water and sprinkle it on a person to be purified.

The White Buffalo Calf Woman showed the people how to use the pipe. She filled it with chan-shasha, red willow-bark tobacco. She walked around the lodge four times after the manner of Anpetu-Wi, the great sun. This represented the circle without end, the sacred hoop, the road of life. The woman placed a dry buffalo chip on the fire and lit the pipe with it. This was peta-owihankeshni, the fire without end, the flame to be passed on from generation to generation.

She told them that the smoke rising from the bowl was Tunkashila's breath, the living breath of the great Grandfather Mystery.

The White Buffalo Calf Woman showed the people the right way to pray, the right words and the right gestures. She taught them how to sing the pipe-filling song and how to lift the pipe up to the sky, toward Grandfather, and down toward Grandmother Earth, to Unci, and then to the four directions of the universe.

"With this holy pipe," she said, "you will walk like a living prayer. With your feet resting upon the earth and the pipe stem reaching into the sky, your body forms a living bridge between the Sacred Beneath and the Sacred Above. Wakan Tanka smiles upon us, because now we are as one: earth, sky, all living things, the two-legged, the four-legged, the winged ones, the trees, the grasses.

Together with the people, they are all related, one family. The pipe holds them all together.

"Look at this bowl," said the White Buffalo Calf Woman. "Its stone represents the buffalo, but also the flesh and blood of the red man. The buffalo represents the universe and the four directions, because he stands on four legs, for the four ages of creation. The buffalo was put in the west by Wakan Tanka at the making of the world, to hold back the waters.

Every year he loses one hair, and in every one of the four ages he loses a leg. The sacred hoop will end when all the hair and legs of the great buffalo are gone, and the water comes back to cover Mother Earth.

The wooden stem of this chanunpa stands for all that grows on the Earth. Twelve feathers hanging from where the stem - the backbone - joins the bowl - the skull - are from Wanblee Galeshka, the spotted eagle, the very sacred bird who is the Great Spirit's messenger and the wisest of all flying ones.

You are joined to all things of the universe, for they all cry out to Tunkashila. Look at the bowl: engraved in it are seven circles of various sizes. They stand for the seven sacred ceremonies you will practice with this pipe, and for the Oceti Shakowin, the seven sacred campfires of our Lakota nation."

The White Buffalo Calf Woman then spoke to the women, telling them that it was the work of their hands and the fruit of their bodies which kept the people alive. "You are from Mother Earth," she told them. "What you are doing is as great as what the warriors do."

And therefore the sacred pipe is also something that binds men and women together in a circle of love. It is the one holy object in the making of which both men and women have a hand.

The men carve the bowl and make the stem; the women decorate it with bands of colored porcupine quills. When a man takes a wife, they both hold the pipe at the same time and red trade cloth is wound around their hands, thus tying them together for life.

The White Buffalo Calf Woman also talked to the children, because they have an understanding beyond their years. She told them that what their fathers and mothers did was for them, that their parents could remember being little once, and that they, the children, would grow up to have little ones of their own.

She told them: "You are the coming generation, that's why you are the most important and precious ones. Some day you will hold this pipe and smoke it. Some day you will pray with it."

She spoke once more to all the people: "The pipe is alive; it is a red being showing you a red life and a red road. And this is the first ceremony for which you will use the pipe. You will use it to keep the soul of a dead person, because through it you can talk to Wakan Tanka, the Great Mysterious. The day a human dies is always a sacred day. The day when the soul is released to the Great Spirit is another."

She spoke one last time to Standing Hollow Horn, the chief, saying, "Remember: this pipe is very sacred. Respect it and it will take you to the end of the road. The four ages of creation are in me. I will come to see you in every generation cycle. I shall come back to you."

The sacred woman then took leave of the people, saying: "Toksha ake wacinyanktin ktelo -- I shall see you again."

The people saw her walking off in the same direction from which she had come, outlined against the red ball of the setting sun. As she went, she stopped and rolled over four times. The first time, she turned into a black buffalo; the second into a brown one; the third into a red one; and finally, the fourth time she rolled over, she turned into a white buffalo calf. A white buffalo is the most sacred living thing you could ever encounter.

The White Buffalo Calf Woman disappeared over the horizon. As soon as she had vanished, buffalo in great herds appeared, allowing themselves to be killed so that the people might survive. And from that day on, our relations, the buffalo, furnished the people with everything they need -- meat for their food, skins for their clothes and tipis, and bones for their many tools.

---

WIZARDRY

For more than five years I’ve been working on and off on an essay I call The World of Tomorrow.  It’s about how movies that project the future influence the way we think about the future.  The essay gets its title from a film made in 1984 by Lance Bird and Tom Johnson, which focuses on the New York World’s Fair of 1939-40.

Recently I’ve been thinking more about that film than about my essay.  The filmmakers take 1939 as a watershed moment and they use images and history of the World’s Fair to disclose both the wonder and the fakery that go into our hopes and dreams of the future.  The film is narrated by Jason Robards Jr in the voice of an adult looking back to the experience of the Fair in his childhood.  He remembers 1939 as the year the “world went from black and white to color.”

This idea references the actual transition from black and white to Technicolor that took place in 1939 in the movie The Wizard of Oz.  Clips from that film appear in The World of Tomorrow and through this connection I am led to some subtle messages, intended or otherwise, that inform The Wizard of Oz.  In The Wizard the ”real world” is portrayed in black and white, and the Kansas of the film is gray and full of foreboding, eventually swept by a powerful tornado. The protagonist, Dorothy (a child/teen/young adult) encounters several characters who will appear in a transformed state when the tornado carries her off to the land of Oz. 

Oz glows in Technicolor, and Dorothy lands in Munchkinland, a community of little people.  In that day ordinary folks were referred to as “the average Joe” or “the little guy”.  Maybe this notion implies more symbolism than the filmmakers – or L. Frank Baum, author of the book The Wonderful Wizard of Oz – intended; but both the book and film have been subjected to ”interpretation” many times, and so I think I’m entitled to a go.  So I see Munchkinland as the Oz equivalent of “the Heartland” where ordinary folks live. A different kind of life exists far away, up the yellow brick road, in the great and wonderful Emerald City where the wonderful Wizard resides.  Is it really a stretch to see this as the urban centers from which “progress” and “sophistication” emanate?  The visual impression of the Emerald City is of a modernist version of a storybook kingdom, splendid and exuding wealth and largesse.

There is this storyline of obstacles and challenges that Dorothy, and the friends she makes during her journey to see the Wizard which is also rich with metaphor, but I focus on journey’s end, when Dorothy is rebuffed by the Wizard and fears she will never be able to return home.  Her little dog Toto pulls back a curtain that reveals the Wizard to be a humbug, and the dazzling image of the Wizard is nothing more than fakery, evidently designed to inspire awe and fear in all who approach him.  The “wisdom” of the Wizard consists of bestowing courage, intelligence and compassion with tawdry substitutes. Is there an analogue here to the current state of our culture?  

All of this comes to mind because we celebrate this year another anniversary for The Wizard of Oz. For an innocent child in 1939, the world transitioned from black and white to color.  But in 1939 the world was actually about to descend into a darkness imposed by fascist states.  So, when we celebrate the 80^thanniversary of The Wizard of Oz we need also to remember that it’s the 80^thanniversary of the German army crossing the Polish border, precipitating World War 2.

Who could have known then what the world we live in now would look like?  Some visions from the World’s Fair took hold, and we can see their fruits in today’s world.  Other aspects of the current age were totally beyond the imagination of the creators of “The World of Tomorrow”.  The people of 1939 may have supposed that they had already achieved all the social justice possible and therefore the lingering injustice might not have entered their thoughts.  But surely nobody envisioned the current environmental crisis, nor the obstinate reliance on the man behind the curtain and his chicanery.

Since it’s an anniversary year, there will be many revivals of The Wizard of Oz this year.  It will be re-released to theatres, probably a new Blu-ray version will be made available, 

Turner Movie Classics will likely make a fuss.  It’s been around a long time, but most people today have only seen it on television.

Here in Havre de Grace where I live, we will be showing the film in March as part of our children’s series at the Cultural Center at the Opera House.  The movie retains its charm and beauty and is worth seeing again, especially on the big screen.  If you decide to watch it again, look to see if what I have written here makes any sense to you.

Meanwhile, the Technicolor world we live in is a manufactured illusion, and the manipulating Wizards just as phony as they ever were.  The world of tomorrow is – as it always has been – an unknown, but whatever it looks like, the steps we take today will shape it, whether or not we adhere to the yellow brick road. 

A MEMORY TRIGGER

Larry, a friend whom I’ve known for over 20 years, but whom I’ve seldom met face-to-face, recently tagged me in a post on Facebook.  It was a link to an obit in the New York Times for Carlos Sanchez, the longtime face of Juan Valdez, a fictional character who represented the Coffee Growers of Colombia on television.  The Juan Valdez campaign began in the early 60s, and there are few TV watchers who haven’t seen a Colombian coffee commercial at one time or another.

The advertising campaign was quite successful.  For quite a while in the 60s and 70s coffee roasters proudly boasted Colombian content in their blends, and numerous 100% Colombian brands were launched.  There are still many coffee drinkers who look for Colombian, which has somehow developed a reputation for luxury. Good Colombian coffee, properly roasted and brewed is very smooth with a fine, delicate flavor.  Nowadays, it is not so much in favor.  The dark, “robust” flavor of Starbucks has ascended in popularity (I find that most Starbucks blends have a vaguely burnt flavor), and the slightly milder flavor of Dunkin Donuts has also captured a part of the always-changing market for coffee.

The Juan Valdez campaign was the product of Doyle, Dane, Bernbach, an advertising agency that “revolutionized” the business in the j50s and 60s by creating unusual ads, noted for the creativity of their approach and eye-catching captivating graphic elements.

My friend Larry probably posted the obit for Carlos Sanchez and tagged me because he knew that I worked on the Colombian coffee commercials in the early 60s.  I guess he didn’t know that my work came before Carlos Sanchez became Juan Valdez.  I worked on a series of commercials 1960-1962 when an actor named Jose Duval occupied the role of Juan Valdez. I never met Jose, although I stared at his face every day for nearly three years.

Doyle, Dane, Bernbach had designed a project for the Coffee Growers of Colombia that they called “Nine Spots”.  It was to be a series of commercials with interconnecting themes all based on the growing, picking and sorting of the coffee beans.  Ross Lowell, who has since become a world-renowned cinematographer and inventor, already had a reputation as a first-class location cameraman.  He was hired to shoot the footage that would be used in the spots.  He, Jose Duval, and a small crew went to Colombia for six weeks and – for a proposed nine minutes of television – filmed miles of Eastmancolor negative.  Color film had only recently come into use for TV. Most broadcast TV was still B & W at the time, and the creation of commercials for color TV was a relatively recent phenomenon.

Looking back, I still find it hard to believe that Ross Lowell filmed most of the material hand-held in the Colombian mountains.  35mm movie cameras were clumsy enough, but Lowell was able, incredibly, to pan and tilt as smoothly as on a tripod.  There were a few interiors lit so naturally by this young master that they appeared to have been shot in available light.  Some of the most memorable footage was produced for a spot called “Rain”, which was designed to highlight the nourishing rainfall that helps produce the remarkable coffee beans.  Beautiful as it was, the DDB producer feared that the rainy day would not reproduce well on TV, and that the drab, muted look of heavy rain would be too gloomy on the home screen. The spot was never completed for release.

My friend Leon, who was then a freelance film editor, got the editing contract from Rene Oulmann, an independent producer who had contracted for the work with Doyle Dane. I was unemployed, having quit my job at Arts, Inc. over differences with my boss, Basil Vlavianos, when I ran across Leon in Times Square.  We hadn’t seen each other since we both dropped out of City College six years prior, but we reconnected immediately, and Leon offered me a job as his assistant on the Juan Valdez project.  The editing process was planned for nine weeks, but it continued for more than two years.  Eventually I took over the editing work when Leon moved on to a major New York film production house.

Not long after we started logging the material for the spots we learned that the crew had been sent to Colombia for six weeks out of season!  They had to create berry-bearing coffee trees out of loose branches which they collected here and there.  Some of the spots featured other members of Juan Valdez’s family.  Locals were hired to fill these roles, and because no prior casting had been done, duplicate footage was shot for many of the scenes so that the art director could later select which ones would work.

In one spot – “Sorting” – the family was seen sorting the beans (so that only the best beans would be marketed under the Colombian coffee label) in an overhead shot.  There were two “grandmas”.  The art director preferred the older, grayer grandma, but in the overhead close-up you could see the age spots that mottled her skin. Worried about the blotchy appearance, he actually asked us if the spots could be painted out. He evidently didn’t know the difference between still and motion photography – but he was clearly ahead of his time, since such doctoring of images fits into today’s digital toolbox.

The voiceover sessions introduced me to Norman Rose, one of the top off-camera voices of the day.  I have never encountered a voice before or since so simultaneously warm and authoritative.  He needed no rehearsal time, and could read off a script in exactly 58 seconds (standard TV commercials ran for a minute at that time), and do it again if needed.  Although he worked for decades voicing commercials and movies, even appearing in a few films, he is best remembered to this day for his voiceover creation of Juan Valdez.

You might ask how the editing of nine one-minute commercials could occupy more than two years of work.  Actually, all the spots had babies:  30-second versions, 20-second versions, 10-second versions, versions with different "tag" endings advertising specific brands that marketed 100% Colombian coffee.

And then there was the challenge of creating spots for foreign markets.  The Swedes wanted a 1:45 version to play in "Husmorsfilm", a kind of infomercial program run in the movie theatres during the afternoon for "housewives".  German TV ran film on TV at 25 frames per second, rather than the common theatrical 24 fps used on American TV.  I had to add material to each commercial so that they would run in the prescribed time.

I have no idea if anybody would find these reminiscences interesting, or why they might be, but it turns out that a single Facebook tag, actually unrelated to anything in my life, brought on such a flood of memory that I could not turn away; and, as you see, I somehow felt compelled to try writing it down.

Like many people in my generation, I often look at the obituaries, which increasingly carry news of the passing of people known to us, either personally, or because in some way they contributed to our experience of the times. The past is no more real than the future, just a construct that we attempt to build out of our experiences, but the weight of memory is undeniable.  Day to day memory shapes our perceptions, and when the memory is no longer recent it seems to take on a life of its own.

After all these years I remain amazed at how a single trigger can jump me out of the observed present into a daydream I call “back then”.

MY CONVERSATION WITH BILL MURRAY

Well, I couldn’t resist giving it a try.  Bill Murray famously has no agent and no listed phone number, but legend has it that he has an 800 number which he never answers, and only occasionally checks for messages.  It’s said he missed out on several plum roles in movies because of this, checking his messages way too late to respond to an offer.  It’s not easy finding this number either, but I decided to undertake the search. I had it in mind I’d invite him to come to Havre de Grace to say hello to one of the audiences at the Bill Murray Film Festival that we’ve organized for this coming February.  

Bill Murray’s 800 number is very elusive if you try finding it on the Internet. A buddy of mine in the film industry said he could find the number, and one day he called me up and said “Here’s the number!”  

You’d think I would call immediately, but even though I knew I would only be leaving a message, I got all choked up.  The idea is, say something that will get him to call you back. What could I say?  “I’m a fan of yours and I’ve organized a small Bill Murray Film Festival in a small town in Maryland?”  I figured if I could entice him some way to call me back I could invite him to come for the Festival.  After racking my brain for a few days for an imaginative hook, I finally came up with the obvious solution.  Just tell him straight out why you called.  So I left this simple and bland message:  “Hello, Mr. Murray, I’m calling to invite you to a special event at the Opera House in wonderful Havre de Grace.  Please call me back so I can give you the details.“  And then I waited.  Would it surprise you to learn that I got a return call the very next day?  

“Hello.  This is Bill Murray calling for Jack Hirschfeld.”  I confess I was blown away.  

“Yes, Mr. Murray, I’m Jack.”  

“Call me Bill.  I have three brothers and all four of us are in show business.  ‘Mr. Murray’ is our dad.” 

“Well, Bill,” I said, “I guess you’re calling me back because you’re curious about our Bill Murray Film Festival here in Havre de Grace.”

“Yeah.  Tell me more. What, when and where.”

“Our city has renovated an old opera house, which dates back to the middle of the 19^thcentury, into an up-to-date performance venue where we feature plays, music, dance and film. I’m involved in the scheduling of the movies. When we agreed last year to show Groundhog Day on Groundhog Day, I came up with the idea of having a small Bill Murray Film Festival.  So, we’re going to be running four of your films in succession in early February.”

“I’m honored.” Long pause.  I thought he’d hung up.  “I’m really honored.  What movies are you showing?”  He sounded really sincere to me.

“Well, Groundhog Day of course, followed by Caddyshack, Lost in Translation, and Moonrise Kingdom.”

“That’s an interesting list.  How’d you come to pick those?” he asked.

“I thought we’d run a contest, where people could send in their favorites and tell us in 25 words or less why it’s their favorite.  I slapped a flyer together announcing the contest in local social media, but we only got a few responses.  So I figured I’d have to pick them myself.  Not an easy task, since you’ve been in almost 90 movies.

After talking it over with some folks. I created a matrix in my head of four kinds of Bill Murray movies --- the early comedies, the “serious” movies where you take on a dramatic role, the Wes Anderson movies, and pictures where you only have a secondary role.  That last category went off my list in a hurry, because we’re only showing four films total.”

“I see.” Bill said.  “Even so, how come those titles?”

“Well, I picked Caddyshack because for all its crudity, it was a breakthrough movie, and you shared the screen with a bunch of very funny guys.  A bit risky, but I thought I’d take a chance… Also, in some ways it falls into my discarded fourth category.”

“Makes sense.  I probably would have picked something else… but go on…”

“For the serious film I had a tougher choice to make.  Personally, I’m a big fan of The Razor’s Edge, but I’ve discovered over the years that my high opinion of that film is not as widely shared as it ought to be.  I considered Broken Flowers, but in the end it was a toss-up between St. Vincent and Lost in Translation.  Lost in Translation seemed like a good bet.

Picking a Wes Anderson movie was really hard, but it wouldn’t be a Bill Murray Festival without one.  Rushmore came first to mind – such an underappreciated film – but I thought Moonrise Kingdom was a perfect fit for the screening date, which happens to be a new moon and the first moon of the Chinese New Year.  What do you think?”

Again there was a long pause; I thought Bill had hung up on me. But then there came a kind of squawking sound, followed by something that sounded like a chicken cackling.  Then some more silence, and then Bill said, “Nice flicks. Sorry I can’t be there, but have a good time anyway.” Click.

You might ask why I don’t publish Bill Murray’s 800 number.  Ask away.  The truth is, I never got hold of that number.  And my conversation with Bill Murray?  Well, that didn’t actually happen either. It was really just a daydream.

But if you got this far, you’ve got to be interested in Bill Murray and his movies.  The contest is still open – it runs until Saturday, January 26.  Just finish this sentence in 25 words or less:  “My favorite Bill Murray movie is _____ because…” and send it via email to artsalive@hdgartscollective.org.  Three levels of prizes:  Different quantities of free admissions to the Bill Murray Film Festival.

For tickets, go to OHHdG.org, or at the HdG Visitor Center, or at the Arts Emporium on Washington St in downtown Havre de Grace.