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VA LOAN INFORMATION and VETERANS' MORTGAGES  KATRINA & THE LOST CITY OF NEW ORLEANS by Rod Amis
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Los Angeles, CA, USA - AUTHOR'S INTRODUCTION: In the largest sense, this book is about the relationships that women artists have with their families and their creativity.
In particular it is about a relationship that developed in the early 1930s between a middle-aged writer, Willa Cather, and a ten-year-old girl, my mother, the prodigy pianist Yaltah Menuhin. Yaltah was the youngest sister of violinist Yehudi Menuhin and pianist Hephzibah Menuhin. It was the opinion of important musical observers, right from the beginning, that she may have been the most musically talented of the three Menuhin children.
When Yaltah died, several obituaries noted this fact. As the Guardian (UK) put it,?
"Rudolf Serkin, who taught both sisters the piano, thought Yaltah the more talented. But, in temperament, she was less robust than Hephzibah, who fought more successfully against their parents' reluctance that either should have a musical career, and who was so close to Yehudi that Yaltah was made to feel an awkward third."The obituaries noted that Yehudi had stated that Yaltah was the most talented of the three. He told me that as well, and I don't think he was saying it gratuitously. He kept repeating that Yaltah was not up to the rigors of touring. There was enough truth in his statement to accept it at face value. But I thought my mother's fragility was a bit overstated.My mother found her stride in pursuing her music near the end of her life -- when her brother and husbands were no longer on the scene.
This tale will not be a story full of lurid details of a scandalous illicit romance, especially since speculation about Cather's se xual orientation has become virtually institutionalized among some academics. It is, however, the story of how an older woman provided the younger woman with a role model.
Lionel Rolfe Willa was unique for her era. In the early 20th century, women were not welcome into the arts or the sciences or even the professions. Yet Cather attended the University of Nebraska, quickly became a leading newspaper writer and essayist, and then editor of a famed national magazine, and finally the author of? arguably some of the best American short stories and novels.
As a youngster, people sensed that Willa was destined to be something special. She had wanted to become a doctor, and not only worked as a doctor's assistant, but took to calling herself "Doctor" and wearing a man's suit. But she ended up as a writer when the local newspaper published an essay she had written. She was struck by the sight of her name in print -- and that, she later admitted, is why she pursued a writing career. Not surprisingly, most of her literary protagonists were strong women.
At one point the very young Willa Cather wrote for a newspaper because her father, a banker, repossessed one, and turned it over to his daughter.
Yaltah, on the other hand, was beaten down as a young girl, abused by her parents and even her brother and sister. Willa, without directly urging Yaltah to rebel against her family, gave her the strength and backbone to become her own person.
Perhaps the most important lesson Cather taught Yaltah was to be her own woman, and her own artist. She provided the counterbalance to Yaltah's mother, Marutha, who only allowed Yaltah and her sister, Hephzibah, to study the piano because it was a good tool for attracting a husband.
Cather's second lesson was to teach Yaltah a sense of place, that sense which pervaded everything Willa wrote.
My mother, more so than others, required a safe haven. She had grown up in Northern California, and Europe -- Paris, Berlin, London. She then lived nearly two decades with my father in Los Angeles, a city she hated. She did not achieve some peace until she returned to spend the last four decades of her life in London.
All those years she wandered before coming to her final home in London were motivated by that need for a sense of place that Cather had instilled.
Willa's novels are always about that sense of place, from My Antonia to O'Pioneers to Death Comes for the Archbishop. Place is everything in Willa's writings.
To Cather, people were products of the land. Cather saw Nebraska transformed from harsh plains to rich farmland. She showed how the men and women who conquered the land were molded by the process.
Yaltah learned that lesson by osmosis, by spending a lot of time with Cather and by reading and re-reading her books over different periods of her life -- always returning to the lessons Willa had to teach whenever she felt adrift.
When she felt the most at sea Yaltah would begin reading Willa's books, or if she really felt a need of being close to her, she would take them out and read them again. Even after Cather was long dead, Yaltah could turn to her mentor on the printed page.
The next several issues of G21 will carry excerpts from Lionel Rolfe's The Uncommon Friendship of Yaltah Menuhin & Willa Cather. The book is available from amazon.com, barnes and noble and american legends.com.
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