Roger O Green

Underplayed Vinyl: Judy Collins

For my 16th birthday in March 1969, I received the album Who Knows Where the Time Goes from my friend Lois, who I had known since kindergarten. Even as she was giving the LP, she gave me this whopping caveat said, “I hope you like it. It’s kinda country.” Well, some of it was for certain, but it was far more eclectic than I was led to expect.
Hello Hooray – Starts off mysteriously softly, almost inaudibly, before breaking into a stirring rock tune, featuring Steve Stills on the guitar. Yes, this is the same song that Alice Cooper later covered.
Story of Isaac – A Leonard Cohen tune featuring only harpsichord and organ about the Biblical character who was to be sacrificed to God by his father Abraham. I found this song particularly moving and put it on a mixed CD at some point.
My Father – A rare composition by Judy; interesting how she placed the two songs about fathers and their children together. This is a lovely biographical song in waltz time.

Someday Soon – One of those “country” songs with the pedal steel guitar that has become a Collins trademark, written by Ian Tyson.

The title tune – Written by Sandy Denny, it is an equisite mournful anthem where the piano, guitar and bass set off Judy’s voice marvelously.

Poor Immigrant- A Bob Dylan tune, also with pedal steel and Dobro.
First Boy I Loved – A much-covered Robin Williamson song about the title character growing to “a grown-up male stranger.” Having loved and lost since then, it is far more powerful to me now. There was a version of this song (First Girl I Loved) done by Jackson Browne for a tribute to Elektra Records called Rubaiyat.
Bird on the Wire – Another “country” tune, another Leonard Cohen tune, probably my favorite of the “country” tunes, because guitarist James Burton sounded as though he were having so much fun.

Pretty Polly – A murder ballad that starts softly, builds to the death – “He stabbed her through the heart, and her heart blood did flow,” pulls back musically for the burial, then rocks out to the end with Burton and Stills sharing guitar licks. This song was shocking to me at the time and still affecting today.

This album has been on and off my desert albums list for decades.

July Collins, born May 1, 1939, turns 69 today. I saw her perform live but once, in the early 1980s, in Glens Falls, NY after winning tickets on a radio contest the very day of the concert.

Oh, what the heck: Since You Asked from Wildflowers:

And this more elementary song:

ROG

License Plate Tag

I’ve wanted to write about our vacation trip to Williamsburg, VA, but haven’t been able to carve out the time to do it justice. So I’ll just tell you about the state plates we saw. I was particularly curious this trip because I wondered wwhether the price of fuel would dampen the travelers.

We started in Albany on a Saturday, to NJ to south central PA, where we stopped overnight to see Carol’s brother, his wife and their daughter. Then the next day did the rest of the trip through MD to VA. Thursday, we returned to the brother-in-law’s abode, then back home.

On each leg of the trip (south and north), we managed to see all the states and places (like DC) from ME to FL, plus three Canadian provinces: Ontario, Quebec and Nova Scotia. We also spied, both ways, OH, MI, WI, KY, TN, AL, TX, OR, CA, and plates for US Government. We caught OK both ways, but they were trucks in both cases. We saw cars from AK (ALASKA!) and MN on the way down, and a truck from those states – and I mean one truck, with one plate on the cab and another on the trailer, on the return trip. There was a MS truck on the return trip.

But I was most excited to see, on the way down, a HI car! Someone transported a car from Hawai’i to, presumably, California, and has been driving around the country, I’d guess.

The states I didn’t see at all were primarily in the mountain region: WA, ID, MT, CO, WY, UT, AZ, NM, NV, ND, SD. I was surprised not to see Colorado, which I usually catch every trip, and slightly surprised not to see the southwest states. I’m now thinking that finding a Wyoming plate on an East Coast trip is the gold standard.

I must say that it’s getting harder to identify some plates when you’re going 55 or 65 MPH. There are so many variations. The site here addresses some of them.

A standard Maryland plate looks like this:

But I saw this plate

and initially thought it was from AZ or NM.

Likewise, the PA plate:

This variation I’d recognize:

This variation, not so much:

Anyway, the first day back to work, in downtown Albany, what do I see? Something I didn’t see in almost 1300 miles of traveling: a Colorado license plate.

ROG

Perspectives

Item: I stopped at the nearby Price Chopper grocery store on the way home Friday night to pick up a handful of items, including a dozen apples. The apples were in the plastic bag I got from the produce section, and I was using the “ring-it-up-yourself” section of the checkout counter. Just after I had rung up the apples, the bag broke, with the apples scattering. Some young woman behind me kindly helped me pick them up, saying, “Don’t worry, I’m clean.”
Her perspective: She was either kidding OR she was assuring me that she didn’t have some skin-borne disease.
My perspective: Assuming she wasn’t kidding, and she didn’t appear to be, just what diseases was she talking about? I wasn’t worried about her, since she had self-certified her cleanliness, but should I be worried about others? I do wash the fruit in case there are pesticides or the like, but is that enough? As Paul Simon said, “Paranoia strikes deep in the heartland.”

Item: On Saturday, Carol went to a retreat, so I took Lydia to the state museum. On the fourth floor was a carousel, which we rode twice. There’s also, of all things, a Subway sandwich stand. We got a “meal deal” which we split, that included a couple cookies. I asked, “Is there any peanut butter…” The sales clerk said, “I’m sorry we don’t carry any.”
Her perspective: She thinks I’m disappointed that there are no peanut butter cookies.
My perspective: I wanted to make sure that there weren’t any peanut butter cookies because Lydia is allergic to peanut butter.

Item: Drivers are driving less on the Thruway, the Interstate system that runs from New York City to Kingston to Albany (I-87) then Albany to Utica to Syracuse to Rochester to Buffalo (I-90).
My perspective: Ah, less wear and tear on the roads. Good for them.
The Thruway Authority’s perspective: we’d better raise the rates 5% in January 2009, and another 5% in 2010. And while we’re at it, we’ll lower the E-Z Pass discount from 10% to 5% starting in June 2008.
The governor’s, the legislature’s and the public’s perspective: Outrage.

Item: John McCain goes to Selma, Alabama where on March 7, 1965, peaceful civil rights demonstrators were attacked by state and local lawmen.
McCain’s stated perspective: “I’m aware of the fact that there will be many people who will not vote for me. But I’m going to be the president of all the people and I will work for all of the people and I will listen to all of the people, whether they decide to vote for me or not.”
My perspective: I remember Selma ’65 quite well, since it occurred on my 12th birthday. As the Democrats continue to fight, my sense that McCain will win the general election, no matter who the Democratic nominee is, grows stronger by the day.
ROG

File Under Blackmail Pictures

Every year, I go to Free Comic Book Day, and every year, I get assaulted by some superfolks. This year, FCBD is this Saturday, May 3rd. Hope I survive.

BTW, to prepare for FCBD, I went to this show this past weekend and saw my old compatriots Rocco Nigro, Bill Anderson and John Hebert. AND I finally ran into ADD; he DOES exist! He’s written a nice account of our meeting here.
And I even won a drawing for a copy of Iron Man #97, “The Return of the Guardsman”. Almost certainly, I owned this comic book once upon a time – all those Marvels with the 30-cent cover price I would have been buying perforce – but without looking inside, I just don’t remember The Guardsman at all.
ROG

Getting Wright the Second Time

I had thought that I had set up a recording of Bill Moyers’ Journal Friday night. The Reverend Jeremiah Wright was Bill’s guest. Then at 9:30 pm, I noticed that the recording light on the DVR wasn’t on, and soon I figured out why; the local PBS station, WMHT, was having its @#$%^&* fundraising auction! Fortunately, I could find the remaining part of the program on a secondary WMHT channel on cable.

I found Jeremiah Wright to be far more thoughtful and less vitriolic than the snippets would suggest. In fact, of those snippets, Reverend Wright said, “When something is taken like a sound bite for a political purpose and put constantly over and over again, looped in the face of the public, that’s not a failure to communicate. Those who are doing that are communicating exactly what they wanna do, which is to paint me as some sort of fanatic…”

I was intrigued to find that Reverend Wright’s “infamous” sermon of September 16, 2001 was based on Psalm 137. You may know the first six verses of that psalm from the reggae song “By the Rivers of Babylon”. But I recall a former pastor of mine, last time this scripture came up in the lectionary, talk about what a difficult scripture it was to preach on:

1 By the rivers of Babylon we sat and wept
when we remembered Zion.

2 There on the poplars
we hung our harps,

3 for there our captors asked us for songs,
our tormentors demanded songs of joy;
they said, “Sing us one of the songs of Zion!”

4 How can we sing the songs of the LORD
while in a foreign land?

5 If I forget you, O Jerusalem,
may my right hand forget its skill .

6 May my tongue cling to the roof of my mouth
if I do not remember you,
if I do not consider Jerusalem
my highest joy.

7 Remember, O LORD, what the Edomites did
on the day Jerusalem fell.
“Tear it down,” they cried,
“tear it down to its foundations!”

8 O Daughter of Babylon, doomed to destruction,
happy is he who repays you
for what you have done to us-

9 he who seizes your infants
and dashes them against the rocks.

I hope you take the time to watch the video and/or read the transcript of Bill Moyers’ interview of Jeremiah Wright, rather than have the soundbites dictate your opinion of him.

ROG

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