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.

The Lydster: more empathetic

I think that she will be a good citizen.

There was a Washington Post article in April 2017, The simple idea to make kids more empathetic? Get them reading the news. It’s about a specific program sythesizing the news.

One of the things I tried to protect the Daughter from was the news. I thought I was watching it when she was busy doing other things. But at some point, when she was eight or nine, I noticed she was picking up on stories. Moreover, she was aware of them at a level that I knew that her classmates were not. And that is still true.

I must admit this is a curse she has inherited from from her father, who was reading op/ed columns in the local paper at 9 or 10. William F. Buckley and Jack Anderson and the like was on my reading diet.

Following the news, she became more aware of the candidates for President – she hated Chris Christie, loved Bernie Sanders – and more of them than 90% of American adults.

I tried very hard not to inculcate her with my pain about race in America. Yet the evidence in the news, with only some minor clarification from me, really informed her, such as when she saw unarmed black men getting shot. I really didn’t want her to have to know about this, but it’s out there.

She has participated in walks to fight hunger. She has contributed money to help shelter animals. She really does have a good heart, which would probably embarrass her, but so be it.

I think that she will be a good citizen. She’ll follow the issues and she’ll always vote. At this point, I can’t see her ever running for office – at some level, she is very shy – but i can imagine her working behind the scenes for a candidate she supports. And perhaps she’ll surprise me.

Another singing Les Green – who knew?

Mr. Green, in his feeling for style and in the vocal equipment he has to achieve the sounds he wants, is a major league talent


My sisters and I are on this Binghamton-specific group on Facebook. This woman that I do not know, in response to my sister posting a photo of our father, asked, “Is that Les Green the musician? If it is he worked with us at Hillside Garden Center at holidays.” This was possible; he had a lot of jobs, including working at Costas Flower Shop.

Then a guy we don’t know mentioned, “Must have been a popular man at the time. He was all over the news in the 1960’s.” He pointed me to http://www.fultonhistory.com/, which I had come across before.

But when I typed in “LES GREEN”, I discovered something interesting; there was another singing Les Green.

Avon NY Herald News 1979-1980
“LES GREEN, a tenor soloist, formerly from Syracuse, now from Charlotte, North Carolina, will present a Concert of Sacred Songs at Avon Wesleyan Church, Wednesday, October 31, at 7:30 p.m. Les originally moved from upstate New York to add his clear, high tenor voice to the professional quartet “The Envoys.” Together with “The Envoys” Les has appeared on talk shows such as the “PTL Club” and the “700 Club.” He has also shared the concert stage with names like the Blackwood Brothers, Inspirations, Imperials, Andrea Crouch. Everyone is cordially invited.”

So ANOTHER guy named Les Green, from upstate New York, was a singer, and they BOTH moved to Charlotte, NC? Were they aware of each other? My father took a while to do public singing, outside of the church, when he moved south, so possibly not.

The story with the pic above, from October 1960, began:
“Binghamton’s Les Green qualifies as a rarity among folk singers on several counts. He “doesn’t play the guitar,” by his own account. He doesn’t like Calypso music. He prefers working school and social club dates to night club engagements. He likes to talk about folk songs almost more than he likes to sing them.”

This IS largely true. He never learned the “correct” way to play the guitar, but he was effective using it, nonetheless. He hated nightclubs and bars, and anywhere there was drinking because he wanted to be a storyteller, spin his tales to enhance the singing of the songs, providing context.

“Mr. Green, a 6 foot, 2-inch man of 33, sang in light, sweet head tones, breaking up the tempo to emphasize the storyline of his songs. He also interrupted his singing to talk some of the lines. The guitar was well in the background, marking the rhythms and occasionally spraying chords. The children were invited to join in the singing, and they did.”

He was big on audience participation, whether entertaining children or adults.

This story is also about Dad:
Binghamton NY Press Grayscale 1962
…May 1, 1962 Folk Songs With Feeling Les Green Scores On Melodic Road. Les Green, traveled high, wide and handsome last night…

It’s easier to read than for me to capture electronically, but here are some excerpts:.

“For two hours and more… Added to this, he has a baritone voice powerful enough to line out ‘The Road to Mandalay,’ if he wanted to, which he doesn’t. Mr. Green has perfect control over this voice, the ability to slide without erring in pitch, the gift of spinning thin head tones, the sadness and worry, and hope… Most of the songs are not too well known, songs like “Passing Through,” “Midnight Special,” “Two Brothers” and “Michael.”

“Last night the turnout was not large, which dampened somewhat Mr. Green’s habit of bringing the audience into it to sing some of the choruses with him. The concert, for the benefit of the Women’s Club of Trinity AME Zion Church, will be repeated tonight, at 8 o’clock. Mr. Green, in his feeling for style and in the vocal equipment he has to achieve the sounds he wants, is a major league talent in a field that often seems to be dominated by adenoidal or asthmatic types content with making quaint sounds in the name of folk art.”

He was REALLY good at what he did.

Dad would have been 91 tomorrow.

L is for me doing the laundry

If the washer is on the left and the dryer is right in countries that read left to right, is different in countries where one reads right to left?

During my wife’s recuperation from foot surgery this summer, I had done the vast majority of the laundry. She sorts, I take them down to the basement to wash, I put them in the dryer, and then haul them up so she can fold them.

What I hate is going down the basement stairs. Like many houses of its vintage, nearly a century, the steps are high and the space going down is narrow. It gives me a case of vertigo. Usually, I just toss the basket from the landing to the basement floor, then gather up the clothes. Going up is MUCH easier.

Being unmarried for many years, I got to the point where I didn’t have to wash the clothes for three weeks. That’s because I had at least a couple dozen shirts and sets of undergarments, an amount my wife thought was crazy when we got married. Conversely, I think she has far too few.

Hey, who had a San Diego Padres tee for her school’s sports day? It wasn’t her. I have T-shirts from several movies, from the Coverville music podcast, and from various other occasions, to wear, depending on my mood. Only this year did I buy some solid color (not white) tees.

So I don’t mind running the machines, but doing it every other day or more is boring. In the past, I had gotten used to schlepping clothes to the laundromat. I ran into my friend Alberta recently, and she told me her washing machine died. But instead of buying a new one, she opted to relish the quietude of reading while the laundromat machines chugged along.

This is certainly true of me: it’s difficult to traverse the “mental load” part of household maintenance and the importance of figuring out how to share it.

On Facebook recently, someone said if the washer is on the left and the dryer is right in countries that read left to right, is different in countries where one reads right to left? But almost no one – not us – have a washer on the left. I wish it were so.

For ABC Wednesday

Music Throwback: We Are the World

I didn’t buy the single which was #1 for four weeks on the pop charts and two weeks on the soul charts.

This being the birthdays of both Ray Charles (b. 1930) and Bruce Springsteen (b. 1949), the song We Are the World came to mind. Both singers had significant solos on the track.

Let’s back up. Back in 1983-1985, there was a terrible famine in Ethiopia. In reaction to the television reports, Bob Geldof (Boomtown Rats) and Midge Ure (Ultravox, Thin Lizzy) wrote Do They Know It’s Christmas? in 1984. “It was first recorded in a single day on 25 November 1984 by Band Aid, a supergroup put together by Geldof and Ure and consisting mainly of the biggest British and Irish musical acts at the time.” It was re-recorded three times: in 1989, 2004, and 2014 for various charities.

American singer Harry Belafonte thought that if a bunch of Brits could do this, what could Americans do? Initially thinking of a benefit concert, Belafonte was convinced by “Ken Kragen, who managed an impressive roster of talent, that they could raise more money and make a bigger impact with an original song; Belafonte agreed…”

From Rolling Stone: “‘Check your egos at the door’ read the sign on the front door of A&M Studios in Los Angeles on the night of January 28th, 1985. Producer Quincy Jones had placed it there because dozens of the nation’s biggest singers were walking through that door, and he had exactly one night to cut a record that would save lives by raising money to help alleviate a famine in Ethiopia.

“The result, USA for Africa’s We Are the World, was released… on March 7th, 1985, written by Michael Jackson and Lionel Richie. By all accounts, some people, especially the rockers, didn’t particularly like the song. But it was Springsteen who refused to undermine the process and kept that faction in check.

Here are the lyrics, with indicators of the soloists.

The success of the Band Aid and USA for Africa singles led to benefit concerts such as Live Aid, also in 1985 and the various Farm Aid concerts.

I didn’t buy the single which was #1 for four weeks on the pop charts and two weeks on the soul charts (and #76 on the country charts) and sold four million copies in the US alone. I bought the album, which also sold well, but was lightly regarded.
Listen to:

Do They Know It’s Christmas (1984) here or here

We Are the World here or here (long version)

Queen at Live Aid here

We are the World (2010), for Haiti here

The making of We Are the World here

The subconscious mind of Ask Roger Anything

I need you now to reach into your personal inner sanctums to Ask Roger Anything

Here the blogger writes obliquely around what actually happened. The blogger was given some information about himself. He thought some of it was valid, some not, but since he thought it didn’t really matter in the grander scheme of things, he was willing to let it go.

But the funny thing thing is that, in the middle of the night, a couple days later, the blogger’s subconscious recognized that a good portion of the information was BS and needed a response. And in due course, he wrote one.

That ever happen to you?

And the response was about 2000 words in the blogger’s head, but he wrote fewer than 1000. He couldn’t sleep through the night until he had finished it.

I guess you gotta listen to your subconscious.

So I need you now to reach into your personal inner sanctums to Ask Roger Anything. And you may ask truly anything. I promise to respond, generally within a month.

Now I always say that I will answer your questions to the best of my ability, which ebbs and flows. But maybe you’ll hit on something my subconscious wants to unleash, for good or ill. Who knows unless you ask? Obfuscation on my part, while always an option, hasn’t been all that necessary.

You can leave your questions below or on Facebook or Twitter; for the latter, my name is ersie. Always look for the duck. If you prefer to remain anonymous, that’s fine, but you need to SAY so; you should e-mail me at rogerogreen (AT) gmail (DOT) com, or send me an IM on FB and note that you want to remain unmentioned; otherwise, I’ll assume you want to be cited.

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