#BarbraStreisand – Sittin' Ugly Sistahs

Since the publication of Barbra Streisand’s autobiography My Name Is Barbra, the internet is blessed with endless Barbra content. For me “Happy Days Are Here Again” because I cannot get enough of Barbra Streisand!

When I saw Funny Girl in 1968, she grabbed my heart and mind with her talent and gave me more inspiration and joy than my thirteen-year-old soul could imagine. I saw her debut film twenty-four times over three weeks. (I got to see movies for free because Grandma owned the theaters in Eunice, Louisiana).

Back then my two younger sisters and I adored musicals, reenacting our favorite scenes in the big living room as Momma’s hi-fi in the den sent the songs into a round ceiling speaker. We’d take turns being Fanny Brice as we danced around chairs and twirled on the carpet to “I’m the Greatest Star” or used our fire place’s white brick hearth to represent the tugboat in “Don’t Rain on My Parade.” The “Sadie, Sadie” song challenged nine-year-old Kelly when she had the Omar Sharif part and tried to carry “Barbra” over an imaginary threshold. But we all excelled at mimicking Barbra’s facial expressions and her expressive arm movements. We’d copy the movie’s blocking and enter the Funny Girl world.

As a teen, I wrote fan letters on lined school paper filling pages about her singing and acting skills. I explained how her talent inspired me to be braver and not let my mild cerebral palsy stop me from trying to swim, play tennis, or audition for the chorus in The Eunice Players Theater’s version of Oklahoma. Yet I didn’t aspire to be a singer since my own mother had once told me “You couldn’t carry a tune in a bucket.” I didn’t dream of being in movies either. I wanted to be Barbra’s friend and have her over for gumbo.

After I received form letters from her fan mail coordinator, Larry Marcus, I started addressing my letters to him. I’d write nonsense like “How can someone I adore and think so much about not even know I exist?” Every song she sang told a story that she acted out with her unique phrasing, whispering, begging, accusing, demanding, and using vocal calisthenics that took us on journeys that had us smiling, laughing, and crying (sometimes all in one song). Thank God I was a fanatical fan before the Internet because I would have become a teenaged recluse who lived online and listened to Barbra’s albums instead of hanging out with friends of my own.

Through Funny Girl, Hello Dolly, and On a Clear Day You Can See Forever Gayle, Kelly, and I shared our Streisand obsession. Without a record store in town, we’d take turns ordering her albums from KEUN, our local radio station. We co-owned The Barbra Streisand Album, The Second Album, The Third Album, and the Funny Girl movie soundtrack. However in 1970 when the Stoney End album was released, my younger sisters cared more about James Taylor and Carol King. As their music tastes matured, they gave me all their Barbra albums. I bragged, “I’ll never stop loving Barbra Streisand!” and Kelly flipped back her long, straight brown hair while Gayle shrugged her shoulders and followed her little sister into their shared bedroom.

So I’d retreat into my own room where Barbra’s movie posters and lobby cards covered my walls and ceiling. And I’d put the Color Me Barbra album on my portable record player and plug in my headphones and let my idol belt out emotions my teenaged soul understood. I especially connected to “Where Am I Going?”:
“Where am I going? Why do I care?
No matter where I run, I meet myself there.
Looking inside me, what do I see?
Anger and hope and doubt.
What am I all about?
And where am I going?”
I told myself to be stronger and braver about my cerebral palsy. I still hid my crooked left arm in long sleeves and cursed my limping left leg. But Barbra at age 19 got a record deal with Columbia and landed a starring roll in a major Broadway show without changing her name, her nose, or her personality. Her belief in her talents and her fearlessness propelled her to success. She was my role model.

In college I took a library course that taught us how to do research. Our teacher had us create an annotated bibliography on a topic we liked: “Choose a topic you love so much you don’t get bored researching.” So I pulled heavy boxes of old periodicals from bookshelves and scanned microfiche to learn more about Barbra Streisand. I never approached another college course with such enthusiasm! That project increased my adoration as I learned about Barbra’s going to NYC alone at 17 to take acting classes and to attend auditions during the day while singing at small nightclubs in the evenings. I also connected with her passion for food and her tenacity.

These days as I delve into the 966 pages of My Name Is Barbra for the second time (I first read the autobiography; now I’m listening to my idol read the book), I re-listen to each album or rewatch a t.v. special or movie of hers to discover the creative details I missed before. Her strumming, humming “Evergreen” to Kris Kristofferson in A Star Is Born (a scene edited out of the original version) is one of the movie’s very best moments. In Yentl, I hadn’t followed the cinematic motif of Yentl crossing water, and I marveled at the glorious use of natural and staged lightning during the song “There Are Moments.” Her attention to detail as a director and her collaboration with cast and crew seemed magical. I’m “geeking out” as people used to say.

Please don’t judge my Streisand obsession. Don’t Rain on my Parade!

When a person enjoys something that gives her true joy and hope, why not allow her that inspiration? Many years ago a close friend started hating on Barbra. “Her voice is too nasal.” He knew I loved, loved Barbra Streisand. Why diss something your friend loves?

We like what we like. When one’s fanaticism hurts no one, let that parade march down the street with pride. That goes for food preferences and sports fandom as well as entertainers. Someone’s favorite team is someone else’s “What an embarrassment!” Just like one person craves seafood gumbo and another says shrimp makes them gag. Viva la difference! Let each of us adore the people, places, and things we want to. Barbra will always be “the greatest star” to me, and I hope those who disagree can keep their negativity to themselves. Let me experience a joy that shines on my soul and turns any day into a Mardi Gras parade. I smile all over every time Barbra sings, acts, writes, directs, or creates her next masterpiece. Merci beaucoup, Barbra Streisand!

I Kill Plants
by Ginger Keller Gannaway

Bless me, Mother Nature, for I have sinned.

I kill plants.

No matter the species, I can strangle any root system or poison any shoot system in the modern botanical nomenclature.

I do enjoy plants, especially herbs like mint and basil and flowers such as magnolias and azaleas. I have tried for decades to keep small cacti and large-leafed friends alive, yet like a demented serial killer I can destroy what I admire.

Relatives and friends have tried over the years to break the curse of my plant murders. Just last year Cousin Claudia, who can work magic in any yard with her easy-going optimism, gave me a “condo warming” gift: an air plant. “You can’t kill it,” she said as she set it atop my great-grandma’s pie safe where it gasped its final breath thirteen days later.

I have a knack for overwatering or under-watering green things. In 2018 when we planned to sell our house, I needed indoor and outdoor plants to help give our place a welcoming vibe, so my Master Gardener friend Cynthia showed up to help. She is a modern day Artemis who is in tune with nature’s trees and flowers as well as the woodland creatures. She chose hearty plants from Home Depot for us and wrote detailed directions for their care before she left me alone with the blooming babies. Cynthia also got me a teen-aged ficus for staging the place for prospective buyers. She decluttered our home and had chrysanthemum “pops of color” for the front yard. My place was as neat and clean as a young private awaiting her first morning inspection from a hard-nosed drill sergeant.

Thankfully, our house sold in less than a week, and Cynthia swooped in to rescue the nervous yet brave plants from my clutches because she’s known me for many years and has witnessed my starving, drowning, or burning of healthy plants. Even if she believes the deaths were caused by neglect and not premeditated crimes, I wonder if she’d let me off with involuntary manslaughter if she were a juror at my trial for killing more plants than a low-grade natural disaster. Against her better judgement, Cynthia entrusted me with the ficus after she ran out of room in her Nissan Cube when she packed up the staging plants to offer them a safer home .

That spunky ficus managed to stay alive for eighteen months. When this year’s February snow surprised Texas, I brought the plant inside, hoping it had more life to live. Yet in days its leaves developed black spots as it shriveled in the corner of our guest bedroom/office and bid adieu to the cold, cruel world. I soon discovered I had horribly over-watered it when after the snow had melted, I hauled it outside and heard water sloshing around in the heavy planter it was set inside.

I used to feel guilty about dismembering, suffocating, maiming, and torturing innocent plants that came under my care. So many people love digging in the dirt, planting seeds, and tending their flowers and vegetables so that they later enjoy the beauty and bounty of their gardens.

In 1970 my favorite movie was Barbra Streisand’s On a Clear Day You Can See Forever. Her Daisy Gamble character coaxed flowers from the soil by singing to them. The movie’s opening begins with “Hey, buds below! Up is where to grow!” as Barbra sings, skips, and swirls around an expansive rose garden while hundreds of flowers bloom with the help of the camera’s time-lapse magic. I loved that song (“Hurry, It’s Lovely Up Here”) almost as much as I loved the 66 groovy outfits that costume designer Cecil Beacon had Barbra changing into during the movie. Her flowered babydoll p.j.s matched her flowered sheets which matched the flowered wallpaper of her bedroom!

“Hurry, It’s Lovely Up Here” from On a Clear Day You Can See Forever

I digress.

Drowning or starving plants is not the worst confession I could make. It’s not like I throw every curse word I have ever heard at my cat when she meows incessantly at three a.m. for food. Or I fear newborn babies because they look like fragile, unpredictable aliens. I’m not a monster!

And to be honest, I have not killed every plant I have ever owned. I still have a weak ivy Cynthia left behind when she staged my house. A perky good luck bamboo from Crystal lives on my kitchen window sill. Crystal follows the law of averages rule when it comes to plants. She once told me, “I plant so many plants, trees, and vegetables, something is bound to survive!”

Crystal’s Law of Averages Yard (and Ripley)

So my murder rate is close to 87% if I consider all the plants I have ever known.

Does a lawn count? The front yard of the home we sold had more St. Augustine grass than bald, brown patches two years ago. Also, the backyard had winter rye grass whose soft green blades stayed alive long enough for us to close the deal on the house. However, my son Evan was responsible for readying the backyard and planting those grass seeds. He even called to remind me to water the yard regularly until the tiny green shoots poked out of the dirt as if Barbra Streisand’s voice beckoned them to a world of promise.