Author: Roger

I'm a librarian. I hear music, even when it's not being played. I used to work at a comic book store, and it still informs my life. I won once on JEOPARDY! - ditto.

Mr. Peca

“Mr. Peca told us we were the smartest class he ever had. We, of course, believed him; dare I say we still do, in itself another of his legacies.”

My sixth-grade teacher, Mr. Paul Peca, died earlier this month at the age of only 73. You can read the obit here for as long as those Legacy pieces remain online. “Paul was a dedicated teacher for 35 years. 32 years in the Johnson City School District. He made a difference in many children’s lives.” I definitely believe that.

My friend Carol, not to be confused with my wife Carol, wrote in the guest book: “I also had Mr. Peca in 6th grade at Daniel S. Dickinson in Binghamton. He encouraged us to create our own in-house newsletter – he was interested in what we were thinking, and what we had to say. Very inspiring.

He told us we were the smartest class he ever had. We, of course, believed him (dare I say we still do, in itself another of his legacies – although you’ll notice by the venue we were one of his first classes…). What a wonderful, meaningful life. Much too short, but all of us, his students, were blessed to have been taught by him. With sympathy to the family.” We must have been one of his first classes, but hardly the last one to care deeply for the man.

All that Carol wrote is true. I also have more specific memories of that class than just about any other. How we had debates about the efficacy of dropping A-bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki (he was in favor, or at least took that position, most of us weren’t), how we had a mock Presidential election (LBJ won 13-3, he favored AuH2O). He was always provocative, innovative, and intelligent.

The year after we were in his class, at least a half dozen of us walked to his house, just to visit him. He lived up near the airport, so we ended up walking at least 16 miles; I literally wore out a pair of shoes on that trip.

Paul Peca was the best teacher I ever had, at any level.

Father’s Day 2011

I appreciate the fact that the Daughter makes me something each of the last couple years.


The interesting thing about my mother’s internment this year is that it became the first time that my daughter had had the opportunity to see where my father was buried. She has seen pictures of him, and she talks about him fairly regularly, surprising considering the fact that she never in person. Somehow, it seems as though he became a bit more real to her. And this made me happy.

I also appreciate the fact that the Daughter makes me something each of the last couple of years, and takes pride in creating it. Maybe it’ll be a craft or a drawing – she’s actually a quite talented artist – but it comes from her own initiation. That makes me happy too.


***
From the Census Bureau:
The idea of Father’s Day was conceived slightly more than a century ago by Sonora Dodd of Spokane, Wash., while she listened to a Mother’s Day sermon in 1909. Dodd wanted a special day to honor her father, William Smart, a widowed Civil War veteran who was left to raise his six children on a farm.
A day in June was chosen for the first Father’s Day celebration, 101 years ago, June 19, 1910, proclaimed by Spokane’s mayor because it was the month of Smart’s birth. The first presidential proclamation honoring fathers was issued in 1966 when President Lyndon Johnson designated the third Sunday in June as Father’s Day. Father’s Day has been celebrated annually since 1972 when President Richard Nixon signed the public law that made it permanent.

Pictures c 2009 Alexandria Green-House

Macca is 69, and soon Brian will be

“Dennis is clapping like his life depended on it.”


Paul McCartney formerly of the Beatles turns 69 today. Brian Wilson, formerly of the Beach Boys, will be 69 on June 20. The southpaws, labelmates in the US on Capitol Records, inspired each other musically.

NEXT year, I’ll post my favorite songs by McCartney (solo/with Wings) and the Beach Boys. But these are the songs that have caught my attention recently:

Heather from McCartney’s Driving Rain album; I hadn’t listened to it very much, and the song is a new discovery. It’s about Paul’s daughter, BTW, not his now ex-wife.
You Won’t See Me, one of my favorite Macca Beatles songs.

And a couple of versions of the Beach Boys I Get Around. In the first one, as a commenter noted, “Dennis is clapping like his life depended on it.” It has some brief ads at the end. Here’s a clean version

What McCartney and Wilson songs, solo or in their groups, have struck your fancy lately?

The McCartney and McCartney II albums have been re-released, as a pair of double albums.

Paul McCartney Joined By Family, Celebrities At Linda McCartney Photo Launch this month.
***
Since it’s also Roger Ebert’s 69th birthday, here is his TED Talk: Remaking My Voice.

Si, My Credit Card; No, Not My Purchases

No, I did not make a $195 apparel purchase, or any of the half dozen other charges that day.


One more story from the work conference.

I checked in to the hotel on Sunday, May 22. Although the conference, which included food as well as the room, was paid for by my office, I was required to provide a credit card, in case I made incidental purchases, such as long-distance phone calls or pay-per-view movies. Oddly, only some of us were asked for our credit cards; it appears that it very much depended on who was at the front desk at checkout.

I checked out of the hotel on Wednesday, May 25, incidentally with no incidental expenses. I went home, and my wife had retrieved a message from the fraud alert unit of the credit card company which issued the aforementioned plastic.

Called right away, talked to some very nice young lady who asked about a series of online transactions, all on Tuesday, May 24. No, I did not make a $195 apparel purchase, or any of the half dozen other charges that day. Did I still have the credit card, or did I somehow lose it? Still in my possession.

They e-mailed a form that I was supposed to fill out, but the link did not work. So I called Thursday morning, and I was told that I would get the document by snail mail as well. In any case, I was not liable for the charges. They canceled my old card and issued me a newly numbered card.

The potentially scary thing is that my billing cycle ended on May 23, and all the purchases were on May 24. This means that, had they not sussed this out, I wouldn’t have noticed until a bunch of unrecognizable charges showed up on my bill at the end of JUNE. I’m having difficulty believing that was merely a coincidence.

Not quite sure how this fraud was perpetrated. One of my colleagues read in Consumer Reports about a device that can read your card while it’s in your pocket. Whatever the methodology of the perps – and this is something I seldom say – my credit card company, who incidentally appears in this list of companies in the customer service hall of shame, did well in protecting me in this case. Although, contrary to what I was told, I never got the statement in the mail, only the form to fill out stating that I did not make the charges. So I WILL have to wait until after late June to fully resolve the issue.

I am a little sad, though; that old card had a lot of repeating numbers, and I had actually committed it to memory…
***
Ah, Citi was hacked – in May! This explains everything.

 

Song: Passing Through

Pete Seeger learned ‘Passing Through’ and sang it throughout Henry Wallace’s 1948 presidential campaign.

I was listening to my favorite podcast not hosted by Arthur. It is a music podcast, which should be no surprise. The second tune in the set was a song called Passing Through. I went to the website to see to whom it was attributed as the original artist of the song, and it said, Leonard Cohen. I said to myself – I often talk to myself – “There is NO WAY that song was originally done by Leonard Cohen.”

My certitude came from the fact that my late father used to sing that song when he performed in my hometown of Binghamton back in the 1960s. While I didn’t know all of the specific origins, I did know that his song selection was established in the late 1950s and early 1960s from albums by people such as Woody Guthrie, Harry Belafonte, Odetta and Pete Seeger. Cohen came into prominence as a singer/songwriter later in the 1960s.

I thought maybe it was a song by Guthrie, whose Worried Man/Ain’t Gonna Be Treated This Way medley caught me unawares when I heard the musical Woody Guthrie’s American Song caught me unawares when I heard it at Capital Rep theater a couple of years after my father died.

But in fact, it was Seeger who initially popularized Passing Through. Reading this account about songwriter Dick Blakeslee: “In late 1947 or early 1948, he and Dick Crolley sent a home-cut disc of their compositions to People’s Songs in New York. Blakeslee’s ‘Passing Through’ was chosen for publication. Pete Seeger learned the song and sang it throughout Henry Wallace’s 1948 presidential campaign. Today, ‘Passing Through’ remains an enduring folk standard.” You can hear Cisco Houston’s early take and Leonard Cohen’s 1973 version of the song here.

My father did a wicked imitation of FDR as he spoke/sang “One world must come”, then sang “from World War II”. My sister Leslie and I would join my father on the chorus of Passing Through when we performed with him in the latter part of the 1960s. My father did not sing the added-on Lincoln verse.

Passing through, passing through,
Sometimes happy, sometimes blue.
Glad that I ran into you;
Tell the people that you saw me passing through.

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