Roger O Green

1951 music: Giants win the pennant

two by Tony Bennett

In 1951, the New York Yankees won the third of five World Series in a row, why so many people hated the Bronx Bombers.

Yet the thing I remember most from that baseball season, which even predates me being born, was Bobby Thompson’s home run, which meant that New York “Giants win the pennant!” I still hear the call in my mind’s ear. The Giants were in second place in the National League, 13 games behind the Brooklyn Dodgers. But the teams ended up tied at the end of the regular season, requiring a three-game playoff.

As for the music of 1951, I’m quite familiar with most of these songs and performers. These songs all hit #1.

Songs

Cry – Johnnie Ray and The Four Lads, eleven weeks at #1, gold record (Okeh). I know Johnnie Ray mostly from the reference in Come On Eileen by Dexys Midnight Runners. “Poor old Johnnie Ray. Sounded sad upon the radio. Moved a million hearts in mono.”

Because of You – Tony Bennett, ten weeks at #1, gold record (Columbia). Despite his Alzheimer’s, he has a new album with Lady Gaga.

How High the Moon – Les Paul and Mary Ford, nine weeks at #1, gold record (Capitol). What to consider when buying a Les Paul guitar.

(It’s No) Sin – Eddy Howard, eight weeks at #1, gold record (Mercury). I was unfamiliar with this bandleader and vocalist.
If – Perry Como, eight weeks at #1 (RCA Victor). Yes, I did watch his variety show for a time.
Come On-a My House – Rosemary Clooney, eight weeks at #1, gold record (Columbia). Much more than George’s aunt.

Cold, Cold Heart – Tony Bennett, six weeks at #1, gold record (Columbia). Yes, the Hank Williams song.

Too Young – Nat “King” Cole, five weeks at #1, gold record (Capitol). When I was a kid playing Beatles albums, the inner sleeve always featured several albums by Nat Cole. So I’ve long known that he was on the same label as the Beach Boys and Peter and Gordon, as well as Nancy Wilson and Al Martino.

Be My Love – Mario Lanza, gold record (RCA Victor). Possibly THE most familiar song for me on this list, on the radio a lot when I was a little kid. But I experienced a mondegreen re the last word in the first line. I thought it was “end this yearney”, with him mispronouncing “journey.” But the last word is actually “yearning.”

Kennedy Center Honors on TV June 6!

Dick, Minori, Joan, Garth, Debbie

Usually, the Kennedy Center Honors take place in early December. They are then edited and broadcast between Christmas and New Year’s Eve. It’s one of our family traditions.

But because of COVID, the ceremonies were postponed, and I lost track of the event. My wife said she recorded CBS This Morning this past week because Dick Van Dyke was on. Even though I knew Dick was one of the honorees, since I didn’t watch the news segment, I didn’t make the connection.

It wasn’t until I saw this interview of DVD by Al Roker that I decided to see, “When is the KCH airing anyway?”

It’s June 6, 8 pm EDT on CBS! Per the New York Times: “The ceremony, usually held and televised in December, was moved to May, and split over several days. Then the organizers and producers began stitching together a mixture of recorded at-home tributes and in-person performances across the center…

“If the Kennedy Center Honors had to be stripped of much of its glamour this month to accommodate rapidly changing coronavirus health guidelines, the subdued ceremony offered a chance for the honorees to help usher in the reopening of the nation’s cultural institutions after a grueling year for the arts.”

The honorees

Debbie Allen: I first knew her from the TV musical-drama Fame (1982-1987). She played dance teacher Lydia Grant – great first name, that – and choreographed much of the program.

She produced more than half of the episodes for The Cosby Show spinoff A Different World (1988-1993).

Since 2011, I’ve watched her in her recurring role as Dr. Catherine Avery on Grey’s Anatomy, for which she is also an executive producer/director.

Joan Baez: Someone who was a HUGE part of my growing up, as I noted here when she turned 70. She was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2017. The website notes: “Joan Baez breathed new life into folk music in the 1960s, powering rock music’s turn toward social and political consciousness.

“Baez’s unwavering dedication to activism shows that volume isn’t the only way to be loud—and totally rock and roll.” As Joan said in December 2016: “As part of the folk music boom, which contributed to and influenced the rock revolution of the sixties, I am proud that some of the songs I sang made their way into the rock lexicon.”

Garth Brooks: He is a MASSIVELY successful artist, ostensibly country but with crossover appeal. He has nine albums that have sold over 10 million copies each. “According to the RIAA, he is the best-selling solo albums artist in the United States with 156 million domestic units sold, ahead of Elvis Presley, and is second only to the Beatles in total album sales overall.”

He was inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame in 2011, and the Country Music Hall of Fame the following year. Out of curiosity, I bought a box set of a half dozen of his studios; it was under $25. While I didn’t love them all, there were some solid songs I enjoyed.

Not a fiddle

Midori: Sometimes, there’s a KCH awardee I know much less well than the others. In this case, it’s this concert violinist. From her website: “Midori is a visionary artist, activist, and educator who explores and builds connections between music and the human experience and breaks with traditional boundaries which makes her one of the most outstanding violinists of our time.

“As a leading concert violinist for over 35 years, Midori regularly transfixes audiences around the world, bringing together graceful precision and intimate expression.”

Dick Van Dyke: Him I know about. I’ve written about his seminal TV show, which I own on DVD, so I know more than bupkis about the series.

I never saw Mary Poppins until late 2011.

He appeared in the late Carl Reiner’s documentary If You’re Not In the Obit, Eat Breakfast in 2019.

I had forgotten this about the early career of Walter Cronkite: he had a “tenure as a morning show newsreader having dialogues with a lion puppet and Dick Van Dyke.”

Ambivert, or an approximation thereof

secrets

When I’ve said to people that I am an introvert, some people laugh. “You’re so friendly,” or some such.

So I’ve decided to try on the term ambivert. It showed up on my radar recently via one of those Word A Day emails I get. “MEANING: noun: One having the characteristics of both an extrovert and an introvert. NOTES: An ambivert is one who can be an extrovert or an introvert depending on the situation.”

Maybe that’s correct. The MacMillan Dictionary notes: “The word ambivert was created by American social scientist Kimball Young in 1927.” Ah, the year my mom was born.

Ambiverts often:

• Enjoy social settings but also crave time alone.I NEED time alone. But I do all right in social settings.

• Have a good sense of when to trust others and when to hold back. I tend to be in the “hold back” category unless I trust the people.

• Feel comfortable almost anywhere, whether in a loud restaurant with a large group of friends or home alone reading a book. Well, maybe with a small group of friends, pre-pandemic. And almost never in a loud setting. Even in my twenties, I found the cacophony of a large group impossible to hold a decent conversation in. I’ll take a book or magazine.

Give me a break!

• Feel an urge to take breaks from social activities. THAT is undeniably true. But currently, I crave it. A lot, actually.

• Have excellent communication skills and are good listeners. I communicate OK. But, even going back to high school, I was a very good listener. It was almost an odd Father Confessor thing, except I didn’t get into the absolution aspect. I know LOTS of secrets people have been willing to share with me over the years.

• Have difficulty making decisions. Not really. Certainly not now. I get a menu, eyeball it, and make a decision quickly. My wife once bought me a winter coat for Christmas. The first coat I put on that was warm enough and looked good, I picked; ten minutes. My wife said, “Don’t you want to try on some others?” No, thanks.

• Work well alone or in groups. I do work well alone. Whether I work well in groups depends on the functionality, or dysfunction, of the collective.

• Get along with lots of different kinds of people. I actually believe this true. One of my blogger friends is a self-described conservative Republican but we can count on each other in difficult times.
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• Make good entrepreneurs. In the latter stages of my time there, I was really good at facilitating the running of an extant operation, FantaCo. This allowed the owner, Tom, to deal with the “big picture” issues. Having worked as a librarian helping small businesses for over a quarter-century, I know what steps to take, and likely, how to operate it. What I lack is, as Bush 41 put it, the “vision thing,” some product or service I’d be so personally invested in that I’d want to hang out my shingle.

So maybe I’m an introvert-leaning ambivert.

Doctor Jill Biden turns 70

Doctor of Education (Ed.D.) in 2007

I noted before the 2020 election that Jill Biden would hit the big 7-0 this year. Frankly, I wasn’t sure there was enough I wanted to say about her. Others helped.

First, there was that op-ed piece in the Wall Street Journal suggesting that she “should think about dropping the honorific” of Doctor, since she is not a medical doctor. The guy suggested that her using the title “feels fraudulent, even comic.”

“In 2007, she received a Doctor of Education (Ed.D.) in educational leadership from the University of Delaware.” Lots of non-physicians use the title. I don’t if it’s snobbishness or sexism.

Here’s something clearly sexist. The hypocrisy of the invented scandal of Jill Biden’s fishnets. The horror! The number of articles on this non-issue, sometimes dragging Melania into the discussion for reasons that bore me, is quite staggering.

Eldest child

Jill Biden is fairly normal, in a good way. Here’s the White House bio. “Jill Tracy Jacobs Biden was born on June 3, 1951, in Hammonton, New Jersey, to Bonny Jean Godfrey Jacobs and Donald Carl Jacobs. The oldest of five daughters, she grew up in Willow Grove, Pennsylvania, just outside of Philadelphia. She graduated from Upper Moreland High School in 1969, then graduated from the University of Delaware with a bachelor’s degree in English in 1975.” She has taught at various institutions.

Jill had married Bill Stevenson, a former college football player, in February 1970; she had a turbulent divorce from him in May 1975.

In March 1975, she met Joe Biden, widowed US Senator with two young boys, Beau and Hunter. They married on June 17, 1977, at the Chapel at the United Nations in New York City. Joe and Jill’s daughter Ashley Blazer was born on June 8, 1981.

“As Second Lady, Dr. Biden focused on advocating for community colleges, military families, and the education of women and girls around the world. As First Lady, Dr. Biden continues her work for education, military families, and fighting cancer. The professor of writing at Northern Virginia Community College is pushing for free access to community college and training.

Joe and Jill Biden released their taxes! You can do that? They earned just over $600,000 in 2020. Their effective federal income tax rate of 25.9 percent after donating about 5 percent of their income to charity, paying about $157,000. For 2019, the Bidens had an adjusted gross income of $985,000 and paid federal income taxes of nearly $288,000.

Check out the page on Politico about her. And Jill Biden’s Elegant Influence: Balancing Style, Grace, and Education (2025).

Binghamton to Albany via Detroit?

Half a day.

I have the need to travel from Binghamton to Albany, both in New York State. It’ll be sometime later this year, via some sort of transit. This is a distance of 141 miles or 227 km, traveling northeast.

Back in the last century, and even the early part of this one, one could take the bus from Binghamton, through Oneonta to Schenectady and Albany, primarily Route 7 and later I-88.

The last time I needed to make the trip from my hometown to my current residence, perhaps in 2018, was on a work trip. I had to take the bus from Binghamton to Syracuse, due north, then take another bus east to the state capital. This involved leaving the Parlor City about 3:30 a.m. and then having a 2-hour layover.

But last I checked, to make the very same trip now, I would have to leave at 2:15 am and arrive in Syracuse at 3:30 am. Then I’d have to wait eight hours to take the only eastbound bus at 11:40 am, getting into Albany at 2:45 pm. Twelve hours on the road.

What about the plane?

The cheapest flight was $397, and it involved spending 7 hours and 20 minutes in Detroit, MI. The shortest, and at $892, the most expensive, involved only three hours in Detroit. The other choices involved going through both Detroit and Chicago, IL. The trips would take as “little” as 7.5 hours and as much as twice that.

Unfortunately, there is no train service at all from Binghamton, which is a shame. Currently, no train service exists on Sunday from Syracuse to Albany. Now, the latter is likely to change – or so I hope – as more people are traveling. But I like to make plans ahead of time.

The great thing about some travel these days is that some carriers are much more willing to be flexible about ticketing. The Trailways bus folks, e.g. are willing to provide refunds in case of death of an immediate family member, illness, jury duty, or military service.