A hymn

to beauty

The Saturday afternoon TV program of Lawrence Welk and his musicians is always a pleasure to watch.

On Dec. 27, the chorus – lady singers all dressed in long white gowns, the men in white suits – gave a lovely rendition of “America the Beautiful,” which my generation still sings with pleasure.

The song’s author, Katharine Lee Bates (1859-1929), was born in Falmouth, Mass., graduated from Wellesley College in 1880, and was later head of the English department at Wellesley.

It was while visiting in Colorado, and viewing the countryside from the beautiful summit of Pikes Peak, that she was inspired to write a national hymn that would describe the majesty and vastness of our great land. That poem stayed in her notebook for some time, until she came upon it again in 1899, and sent it to a publisher in Boston. A revised version was printed in the Boston Evening Transcript in 1904. Four years later, further revisions were made, and produced the hymn as it is known today.

Several tunes were tried with the text over the years. The music by Samuel Ward (1847-1903), “The Materna,” meaning mother, is the “America the Beautiful” version which we all sing.

The first verse is: “O beautiful for spacious skies, for amber waves of grain, for purple mountain majesties, above the fruited plain; America, America, God shed His grace on thee, and crown thy good with brotherhood, from sea to shining sea.”

I was very pleased to have printed copies of the lives of Julia Ward Howe (“Battle Hymn of the Republic”), Katharine Lee Bates, and George Bennard (“The Old Rugged Cross”) sent to us by Westbrook’s Jim Cote, who had copied them from the book “Hymn Stories,” published by Kregel.

Korea scenes

I had been anxious to see the November 2008 issue of the Smithsonian magazine, as in that issue was a long article about our good friend John Rich of Cape Elizabeth, with photographs, in color, which he took when he was a reporter during the Korean War. He took about 1,000 pictures of wartime Korea with a Nikon camera with Kodachrome film.

The photos in the magazine included those of young boys on a Seoul street in 1951, of marines outside Pusan, of heavily damaged Seoul, of prisoners of war on Geoje Island, of British gunners preparing to fire on occupied Seoul, of women pounding laundry in a river, of Korean children at play, and many others.

The article, written by Abigail Tucker, says that Rich had no idea that anything would come of them; he said that the pictures were meant to be souvenirs, nothing more.

John was fluent in Japanese, after a World War II stint as an interpreter with the Marines. During the Korean War, he was a foreign correspondent for the International News Service.

He recently rediscovered his slides, showed them to a neighbor, a photographer and Korean War buff who “almost toppled over” when viewing them. Rich told the Smithsonian a few of them were printed in the Portland Press Herald, and in a South Korean paper after Rich visited the country in the late 1990s, and they were featured this past summer in “The Korean War in Living Color,” a display at the Korean Embassy in Washington, D.C.

This article in the Smithsonian will surely make these photos widely known, too.

John is now looking for a publisher who will print a book featuring this outstanding and unique collection. Photographers covering the war used only black and white film. Rich’s pictures, in color, are rare.

I asked Pat Larrabee, the former children’s librarian at Westbrook’s Walker Memorial Library who is now librarian at the Maine Charitable Mechanic Association, for help in locating a copy of the November Smithsonian. She said that either the Walker or the Warren library in Westbrook would have a copy. I called the Walker library and, yes, they have the Smithsonian there, and they copied the whole article for me.

John Rich later covered many countries as a television reporter for NBC. You will find out many of his accomplishments in this article. He is now 91, and still keeping busy. We’re all proud of him.

Square dessert

Today’s recipe is from “Good Grange Cooking,” from the Maine State Grange. It was submitted by Pauline Spencer of the White Rock Grange.

(Like) Reese’s Peanut Butter Squares

2 cups crushed graham crackers

2 sticks melted butter

2 cups (one 18 oz. jar) peanut butter

1 lb. confectioner’s sugar

Mix together all ingredients; press into 9-by-13-inch pan. Melt 12 ounces of chocolate chips in A?1?4 cup butter; spread over top. Refrigerate.