arts

Calling all creative writers and artists! The deadline for submitting materials for the next issue of the Lincoln Chipmunk is Friday, September 9. Click here for details on how to submit, and call editor Alice Waugh if you have any questions. We look forward to helping you share your creative work.

The latest issue of the Lincoln Chipmunk, the quarterly arts e-zine companion to the Lincoln Squirrel, has just been published. See what your friends and neighbors have created, and start working on your own submissions — the next deadline is May 20, 2022. Questions? Call editor Alice Waugh at 617-710-5542 or email lincolnsquirelnews@gmail.com. 

chipmunk.lincolnsquirrel.com

The latest issue of the Lincoln Chipmunk, the quarterly arts e-zine companion to the Squirrel, has just been published. See what your friends and neighbors have created, and start working on your own submissions — the next deadline is February 19, 2022. Questions? Call editor Alice Waugh at 617-710-5542 or email lincolnsquirelnews@gmail.com. 

chipmunk.lincolnsquirrel.com

By Maureen Belt

Composer, humanitarian, and children’s author Ruth Mendelson has come to believe that when something unfortunate happens to you, it’s not a bad thing — it’s just the universe’s way of getting you on the right track. 

For example, as a bass guitar student at Berklee College of Music in the 1980s, she suffered what she thought was a dream-crushing wrist injury. “I didn’t think I was ever going to be able to play an instrument again,” recalled Mendelson, an Illinois native who now calls Lincoln home.

Unable to consider a life that did not include musical creation, Mendelson scrambled for options that didn’t require two fully functioning wrists. She didn’t have to look far — she discovered that Berklee had a degree program for film scoring, a profession she had never considered and knew nearly nothing about. She took a chance and changed majors. 

“The sky opened up and I came across this universe of spheres that I had never explored before,” Mendelson recalled during a recent interview with the Lincoln Squirrel.

Mendelson enrolled and excelled, and after graduating, she became the first woman in Berklee’s history to teach in the Film Scoring department. More than 20 years later, she’s still at it. This unplanned trajectory took her around the world scoring award-winning films for HBO, Discovery, Disney, Animal Planet, the Smithsonian, and PBS, among others. Her list of accomplishments is long and includes an Emmy nomination and being named a New York Times Critics’ Pick.

Meanwhile, Mendelson’s wrist healed just fine and she’s been playing five-string bass for the One Human Family gospel choir for decades… which led to another unexpected opportunity brought on by so-called “unfortunate” events. She traveled with the choir to Geneva to perform for the opening of the United Nations’ International Peace Summit in 2002 — but her excitement about the prospect of performing on the world stage was replaced with shock when she realized that her bass had been left behind in London, “and I was playing the next day.”

She stayed at the airport for hours filling out paperwork, then caught a later shuttle to her hotel. It was aboard this ride that she chatted with her seat mate, an assistant to world-renowned primatologist Dame Jane Goodall who was speaking at the summit. Mendelson later said she didn’t realize her delayed bass arrival was simply the universe working its magic.

Her bass arrived the next day, but the electricity went out during sound check. But the show went on — power was restored as Mendelson’s group performed. Having skipped the sound check, she played with her eyes shut. Somehow her amplifier got turned around and rolled in front of her. Mendelson tried to nonchalantly kick it back into position. Watching this sideshow, Goodall smiled and asked her assistant the name of the musician who was awkwardly dancing with her amplifier. 

Later that day, Mendelson saw Goodall descending a flight of stairs and introduced herself. Goodall asked Mendelson to carry her purse. The connection was immediate, and the two proceeded to walk arm-in-arm to a workshop Goodall was hosting. “In that moment she went from the iconic Dr. Jane Goodall to a dear old friend,” she said, adding it was like the two had known each other forever. 

Since that fateful event, the duo has been collaborating on a variety of humanitarian projects such as the nonprofit Eagle Vision Initiative they founded to empower people (especially children) through the arts. Mendelson also updated the audio on the audiobook version of Goodall’s groundbreaking work, My Life with the Chimpanzees.

Most recently Goodall volunteered to write the foreword to Mendelson’s debut novel, The Water Tree Way (ThoughtOVac Press, 2020). Though classified by Amazon.com as children’s literature, the book has received rave reviews from readers as old as 92, and it’s a hit with 30-year-olds in France — which she knows because readers are sharing their feedback.

The story follows 10-year-old Jai (pronounced Jay) on a fantastical and often humorous adventure in a land of anthropomorphic trees, insects, birds, and celestial bodies, with notes of John Bunyan, Lewis Carroll, L. Frank Baum, and Joseph Campbell. Mendelson describes her work as “a gift from the universe that I was asked to steward.”

Like many of the works by the aforementioned authors, The Water Tree Way shares timeless life lessons. Jai, who is based largely on Mendelson herself, learns about risk taking, love, loss, helping others, forgiveness, acceptance, the perils of revenge, failure, and finding strength after a fall. She doesn’t shy away from heavy topics but brilliantly reshapes them with positive, child-friendly imagery. For example, Jai encounters rainbow-colored skies and flowers in the chapter on war and destruction. Much of this section is based on a previous project where Mendelson interviewed children before the second Iraq War. 

“I was shocked by how they were affected by even the talk of violence,” she said. 

Children will experience horrible events, but Mendelson’s work provides the tools to work through them. 

“We have to be equipped to deal with hardships,” she said. “If you’re going to succeed, you have to understand it requires failure. We have this glam version of success, but it’s completely false.”

The last few paragraphs of The Water Tree Way leave open the possibility of a sequel, but Mendelson isn’t sure yet if one is forthcoming. However, a Hollywood executive producer has already expressed interest in creating a film version.

While flattered, Mendelson will proceed carefully. “I have to be very discerning with this, because with this book, the most important part of it is its heart and soul and spirit and that has to be 100 percent retained,” she said.

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Lincoln resident Ruth Mendelson’s debut novel The Water Tree Way is classified as a children’s work, but all ages can benefit from its life lessons. Here are a few inspiring lines drawn from the book (compiled by Maureen Belt):

• Everyone has a song inside of them. A song that is magnificent and unique.
• To react in anger only makes things worse.
• To lose a good idea is one thing, but to lose sight of who you truly are is far worse.
• You are beautiful and necessary and the world would never be the same without you.
• Never return a mistake with a mistake.
• We all fall sometimes. And sometimes, we simply need a jump start to get back up.
• It never occurred to her that a present could be something you can’t see or touch.
• The entire day went by with no victory in sight but she refused to give in to disappointment. 
• All things move by a power greater than themselves — even humans who don’t think so. 
• You must first accept that some of your thinking has been wrong before you can change it.
• You always have what you need. Don’t worry.
• Really, how horribly dull — to try a couple of puny times and just give up.
• The drum is calling you.
• You can’t expect to understand everything all at once. 
• They would often say that courage is one of the greatest things to celebrate.
• The main thing to remember is that it’s very important to ask for help when you need it. Don’t think that you have to figure it all out alone. 
• All things that are free do things spontaneously, without explanation and without warning. And, being free, they bring beauty wherever they go.