Roger O Green

Blood. Gross.

Allow gay men to donate blood.

The next time I donate blood, which is scheduled to be the end of August, it will be the 144th time. I will get my 18-gallon pin. Let me explain how I got there.

Time #1 – I was working at IBM, after high school, and before I went to college. It was an OK, not a great job. When management said I could take off to donate for an hour to donate blood AND GET PAID my normal wage, that was enough.
I donated a handful of times in college.
But I didn’t get regular, like five or six times a year regular, until the 1980s. I’d go to the well-named Clara Barton Drive, off Hackett Blvd in Albany, on my way to work.
When I started working downtown, I switched to the location in the Empire State Plaza, again giving on the way to work, or occasionally at lunchtime.
since I’ve started working at Corporate (frickin’) Woods, I’ve still donated at ESP or on Everett Road, but it just takes longer.

There have been very few times I was unable to give. Once or twice because I was a little anemic by Red Cross standards. Ate a lot of spinach and I was fine. I got some sun rash from being in Barbados in May 1999 and had to wait a month. But the longest time off was for 13 months in 2002-2003, when I had a series of rabies shots and had to wait a year.

I should note that it’s not all altruism. I’m convinced that there are real health benefits for the donor.

One of the things in the Red Cross mantra is that only about five percent of the eligible donors actually give. One suggestion I’ve made in this blog before, though I now see it was nearly five years ago.

It is this: allow gay men to donate blood. The question I have to answer for every donation is if I have ever had sex, even once with another male since 1977. If the answer had been yes, I would have been disqualified. Since I last mentioned this topic, I have donated an average of 5.6 times per year. I’m told that I may have saved the lives of three or four dozen people since then.

It seems the argument against gay males donating is that they may have a communicable disease. I find the assumption quite absurd, discriminatory, and worse, not in the best interest of the American Red Cross. Of course one doesn’t want someone with HIV AIDS, any more than one would want someone with hepatitis, active cancer, or a bleeding disease. But that is screened in the questions, and double-checked in the lab. Still makes no sense to me.

Barack Obama is 50

“Yeah. Yeah. The decision was made.
“I made the decision Thursday night, informed my team Friday morning, and then we flew off to look at the tornado damage. To go to Cape Canaveral, to make a speech, a commencement speech.”

I suppose it’s true of a lot of Americans: Barack Obama is the first President to be born after I was. And by a lot, over eight years. He’s had some successes, and he’s surely had his failures. But today I’ll focus on the positive aspects. (The negative will come soon enough.)

First, I thought he was working very hard on trying to come to grips with the financial crisis, even before he was inaugurated, and I admired that. (The guy who was ostensibly still in charge kept a low profile, for sure.)

One can argue about the speed of progress regarding gay rights, but the end of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell would NOT have taken place in a John McCain administration. This administration has done more for gay rights than any other.

The overhaul of financial regulations, consumer protection, and health care, while fraught with disappointments along the way, is arguably better than it was.

But I thought his most significant period was the days leading up to the killing of Osama bin Laden. Not so much the action itself as much as his clear ability to multitask.

From his interview on CBS News’ 60 Minutes:
“Yeah. Yeah. The decision was made.
“I made the decision Thursday night, informed my team Friday morning, and then we flew off to look at the tornado damage. To go to Cape Canaveral, to make a speech, a commencement speech. And then we had the White House Correspondents’ Dinner on Saturday night. So this was in the back of my mind all weekend.” watch Obama’s part of the dinner from about 24:30.

So he had some successes…

Happy birthday, Mr. President.

I’m Walkin’ This Way

Run-D.M.C.’s Walk This Way was a gateway to an explosion of commercial success…for Aerosmith.

The Boston-based group Aerosmith had a hit with the song Walk This Way in the winter of 1976-1977 getting to #10 on the charts.

Then the rap trio from Queens, NYC, Run-D.M.C., covered Walk This Way, significantly including Aerosmith’s Steve Tyler on vocals and Joe Perry on guitar. That version got to #4 in 1986 on the pop charts and #8 on the black charts.

What I loved about the latter version is probably anathema to librarian types. I HATE categories in music. I find it at least as divisive as I find it informative. It seems to create the mindset of “I don’t like THAT kind of music,” when I believe there is a basic commonality of music that defies boundaries.

After the latter version hit, Run-D.M.C. continued to have success on the black or R&B charts and even had some minor hits on the pop charts.

After having only two Top 20 hits, the other being the longer version of Dream On (#6 in 1976), and not even a Top 100 on the US pop charts since 1979’s “Remember (Walking in the Sand)” which only got to #67, Aerosmith exploded commercially in the late 1980s, including “Dude (Looks Like a Lady)” (#14 in 1987); “Angel” (#3 in 1988), “Rag Doll” (#17 in 1988); “Love in an Elevator” (#5 in 1989), “Janie’s Got a Gun” (#4 in 1989); then more hits into the 1990s.
***
Incidentally, the name of the charts of music generally associated with African-Americans has changed several times, from rhythm & blues (or R&B) to soul to black, back to R&B to R&B/hip-hop. At least they stopped using the term “race records” back in the 1940s.

C is for Covering Cohen

“I trusted Leonard more than anyone I had known…at times, more than myself.”

According to Wikipedia, Canadian poet-singer-songwriter Leonard Cohen, a 2008 inductee into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, has had over 2,000 renditions of his songs recorded. Indeed, there have whole albums of Cohen covers, some by various artists, but some by a single performer.

It has been stated by some that folk singer Judy Collins “discovered” Leonard Cohen because she was the first major artist to cover his tunes, starting with her sixth Elektra album, 1967’s In My Life, with Suzanne and Dress Rehearsal Rag.

She, however, would hastily disagree. On the liner notes of her tribute album to him, 2004’s Democracy Now, she writes: “what is more true is that he discovered me, and in that first year after our meeting, he told me I should be writing songs.” Subsequently, she did. They displayed a creative synergy, with her pushing him to perform, initially, at a WBAI (NYC) public radio fundraiser, quite literally. In return, she said, “I trusted Leonard more than anyone I had known…at times, more than myself.”

All these songs were sung by Judy Collins on Democracy Now:

Suzanne – Leonard Cohen and Judy Collins

Hey, That’s No Way To Say Goodbye – Roberta Flack

Sisters Of Mercy – Linda Ronstadt and Emmylou Harris

Bird On A Wire – Johnny Cash

Story of Isaac – Suzanne Vega

Most of the songs on Democracy Now were previously recorded by Judy, but there were three songs newly recorded by her, all written by Cohen, except the Song of Bernadette, co-written with William Elliot and Jennifer Warnes.

Song of Bernadette – Aaron Neville and Linda Ronstadt

And speaking of Warnes, who was a backup singer for Leonard Cohen in the 1970s, she also did a tribute album called Famous Blue Raincoat back in 1986, reissued with additional songs in 2007. Among the tunes, Song of Bernadette, Bird on the Wire, and

First We Take Manhattan – Leonard Cohen and Jennifer Warnes

Famous Blue Raincoat – here sung by Joan Baez

Of course, no Leonard Cohen discussion would be complete without the oft-covered Hallelujah. I opted for the version by fellow Canadian k.d. lang, which she initially recorded for an album of tunes by Canadian songwriters, 2004’s Hymns of the 49th Parallel, and performed at the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver, BC, CANADA.

ABC Wednesday – Round 9

Christmas in July, self-generated

Generally, I’m just not that acquisitive. But I admit that getting stuff in the mail gave me almost as much of a rush as seeing the actual items themselves.

There was a period in late May and early June when I was really able to crank out blog posts. The mind was really engaged. There was a point that I actually was ahead 30 posts. Which was, I suppose, a good thing. Because when it started getting hot, my blogging started to cool off. I might write 2 posts in 10 days. So I would be down to 22 posts.

Now, I suppose I should explain that they were not the next 30 days out. They were for whatever special day struck my fancy. So I have written, weeks ago, posts for September 2 and 25, November 17, for example. But not necessarily for three days hence.

I think I hit a patch of melancholia. I can usually tell because I often buy stuff. For instance, Mile High Comics had this 60% off sale, which I used to purchase some Marvel Masterworks, about $300 of books for only $120, with free shipping.

My buddy Alan was having an eBay sale, and I bid on two books, one of which I got, a bio of Krazy Kat creator George Herriman. (On the other, an autobiography of Joe Simon, someone outbid me at 1:39 pm and the bidding closed at 1:40.)

I decided to buy more music on Amazon and ordered $25 worth for free shipping. I was surprised and pleased to discover that I had some Amazon points somehow, so that the purchase, of Outkast, Neil Young, and Sam Moore (of Sam & Dave) was free.

Oh, and I received my Top Pop Singles book I had ordered a few months earlier.

Generally, I’m just not that acquisitive. But I admit that getting stuff in the mail gave me almost as much of a rush as seeing the actual items themselves. It was peculiar.

Now I’ll spend time reading/listening to these items, which I hope will tide me over until the ACTUAL Christmas.