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.

Crimes and Misdemeanors QUESTIONS


It’s the dog days of summer when “nothing” happens, except that, of course, it does. In addition to this month being the 40th anniversary of Woodstock, it is the 40th anniversary of the Tate-LaBianca murders by the Charles Manson “family” and the 35th anniversary of the resignation of Richard Nixon. So please answer one or more of these questions.

1. Susan Atkins is “gravely ill with a brain tumor”. Her release would save the cash-strapped state of California thousands of dollars per year. Should she be released? Should Leslie Van Houten be released? Filmmaker John Waters, who has befriended her, says yes: “Leslie has taken responsibility, and she has followed the rules — the rules that they have told her to follow to get parole. … She’s the poster girl for the California prison system.”
In Atkins’ case, I just don’t know enough to say. Is she penitent? But in Van Houten’s case, I agree with Waters: “I do believe in rehabilitation.”

2. When Richard Nixon resigned, it was with such mixed emotions. On one hand, I was glad he was gone. On the other hand, I wanted him to suffer more for his “high crimes and misdemeanors” as “unindicted co-conspirator” in the Watergate mess. I’m STILL not convinced that Gerald Ford should have pardoned him a month later, certainly not without some responsibility taken by Nixon; I suppose I was looking for some sort of contrition over what he put the country through.
But what say you?

3. There were 104 names on this list of baseball players who, in 2003, tested positive for some sort of controlled substance. The list was supposed to be confidential, as the official MLB ban on these products didn’t take hold until 2004. Yet the names drip out: Bonds. Sosa. A-Rod. Ramirez. Big Papi. All the players of that period, including the ones not guilty of anything, are tainted by suspicion. Should the list be released? Should the Players’ Association agree to such a thing? I think the constant drip…drip…drip of names is so harmful that I hope the association agrees to the release. Your thoughts?
***
Oh that’s a LIFE magazine pic of Paul and Paul. My father had some Les Paul/Mary Ford singles, as I recall.

ROG

ROG

Going to Woodstock


When I was 16 in the summer of 1969, I asked my parents, probably my father, whether I could go to this concert in the Liberty/Monticello area, a direct bus ride from Binghamton on Route 17. It featured Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin and a whole bunch of other people. He said no, and that was pretty much it. I was OK with that until it became “Woodstock”; then it ticked me off a little. If I were a little older, like Walter Cronkite’s daughter Kathy, I would have just gone on my own.

So, when the Woodstock movie came out in the spring of 1970, a bunch of my friends and I rushed to see it. Using more current lingo, we were gobsmacked. It was so wonderful, so fascinating that we sat through a second showing of the film right after seeing the first (for the same admission price, BTW, something that just doesn’t happen now). I have this specific recollection during the second viewing of watching the projection light colors changing; Sly & the Family Stone was bathed in purple, as I recall. And no, I wasn’t stoned, I was just enraptured.

Of course, I bought the soundtrack – a TRIPLE album! – and listened to it incessantly, so much so that pieces of dialogue (Arlo Guthrie’s “The New York State Thruway is CLOSED, man!”; the passing of the “kosher bacon”) bubble up in my mind unbidden from time to time. Woodstock, the movie and album, is where I really discovered Santana and Richie Havens; discovered in new context (John Sebastian, formerly Lovin’ Spoonful; Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young, from their respective groups); and got to hear live some of my favorites (the Who, Sly & the Family Stone).

I was nostalgic enough that, five years ago, my wife, infant daughter and I went to the New York State Museum to see Spirit of the Woodstock Generation: The Photographs of Elliott Landy.

Yet, right now I have no need, no desire to go out and get some expanded version of the movie or the soundtrack – not that, if given them, I wouldn’t watch and listen – because I don’t need to try to experience what I missed. I think the reason I actively avoided going to those concerts called “Woodstock” in 1994 and 1999 was that they seemed like desperate calculations to try to recapture a magic that just defies re-creation. If I go to the http://www.bethelwoodscenter.org/ Woodstock museum in Bethel, it will be as a matter of curiosity rather than wish fulfillment.

CBS had a piece this past week on the large festivals trying to recreate the Woodstock vibe, and maybe they can. But my favorite recent story is that the couple on the album cover above are still together, married two years after the festival and community minded.

ROG

ROG

Some Meta Blog Stuff

I have a confession to make: I don’t write this blog.

It writes itself.

By that, I mean that I experience what I experience, and then I start typing. I have a vague notion of what I want to say, where I want to go, but as often as not, something I write surprises me. “I didn’t know I was going to write THAT; hmm, that’s interesting.”

But lately, there have been a half dozen different topics that have just refused to write themselves. I shan’t name them, lest they develop a sense of self-importance: “Ha, we’ve shown him!” Eventually, they’ll see the light of day. Or not.

Meanwhile, Vincent Wright of MyLinkingPowerForum.com notes that:

“We all use search engines.

“Most of us use Google most.

“However, suppose you got search results but, didn’t know whether the BEST results for you came from Google, Yahoo, or Bing?

BlindSearch.Fejus.com does that for us.”

He typed in his Linkedin, Twitter, and Facebook ID, got the results, and was “surprised that the results I preferred were NOT from Google!”

I used my name in various combinations (RogerGreen, RogerOwenGreen, with and without spaces), and the results I preferred were in fact from Google. However, when I used one of my pseudonymous tags, as I do writing LOCs on some blogs such as Salon, the Yahoo! results are more to my liking.

The obvious point is that I ought to be using a consistent name across the Intersnet. Will I go make the change to do that? Maybe. Possibly? Eh, who am I kidding? Probably not. For while I often read those Search Engine Optimization articles, and I think many of them make perfect sense, there’s only so many hours in the day. I can write or I can optimize; writing is usually fun, the above notwithstanding. SEO is work, and given the limited time resource between fun and work, I choose fun.

Now if I develop swine flu and am confined to my house, then maybe.
***
If I were writing this blog, I might note the passing of Eunice Kennedy Shriver and desribe her as essentially the creator of the Special Olympics. But since it’s writing itself, it wants you to know that Ms. Shriver’s efforts inspired a series of great Christmas music. I bought the first album back in 1987 because I was a sucker for a good cause. But I listened to it every season because it’s good. The 1992 follow-up (the green cover) is pretty fine as well. Subsequent collections fall short but include some gems as well.

ROG

ROG

D is for the Doraville Schoolhouse


There was a one-room schoolhouse in a tiny hamlet called Doraville, NY. It was so small that, growing up in Binghamton, perhaps 26 miles (42 km) away, I had never heard of it until considerably later. But it holds a special place in the hearts of my in-laws.

Two of my mother-in-law’s older siblings actually attended the school before it closed down during a school consolidation c. 1940. But then a kitchen was added on, and the building was used for years as community center for meetings, suppers and the like. As it was a very short walk from the former school to my mother-in-law’s parents’ house, it became the location for the Olin Thanksgiving for many years, into the 1970s.

At some point, the powers that be decided to tear it down so that some utility lines could be built, or some such. However, members of the community objected. They raised the requisite money to move the building from its original location to a spot in Harpursville, some 3.5 miles (5.6 km) away.

It wasn’t just money that was needed; it was manual labor to cut the building in half, horizontally near the roof line, schlep it to the new location then put it back together. It’s likely that the plans wouldn’t have succeeded at all had the state not coincidentally built a new bridge; the old bridge might not have borne the weight. (The photos pictured tell the story of the move.)

Once moved, there was an effort to try to replicate the school as it once was. Under the leadership of my wife’s uncle Don Olin, this was accomplished.

The doorway in this picture led to the kitchen that had been added in the 1940s.


So when the Olins had their family reunion in July 2009, they held it at the Harpursville Veterans of Foreign Wars hall, maybe 1 km (1100 yards or so) away, the family made sure the school was open for their perusal. The pictures here were taken by this blogger at that occasion with a disposable camera.

Unfortunately, Don Olin died last November. The restoration of the Doraville Schoolhouse is a lasting memorial to him. Here’s more about Don.

And more on the Doraville Schoolhouse.

No, the outhouse, just behind the school, is no longer in use.

ROG

ROG

MOVIE REVIEW: Julie & Julia

My goodness; Carol and Roger not only went to the movies, but saw a film playing in its first weekend! We got a babysitter and went to see the only film playing at the Spectrum in Albany, our favorite movie theater, we could agree on. (To be fair, Carol’s already seen a couple of them.) Actually had to briefly stand in line.

Julie & Julia is writer/director/co-producer Nora Ephron’s clever intertwining of two true stories: the coming of age of Julia Child, a bored American housewife in Paris after World War II, with Julie Powell, a frustrated would-be writer who works in a New York City agency to help those affected by the events of September 11, 2001. Julie worships Julia, the cookbook author who made French cooking accessible to Americans, and starts a blog to track her Child-like efforts/obsession.

The strength, and perhaps the weakness, of this movie is that Julia Child is played by the incomparable Meryl Streep, who quickly disappears into this role. Entertainment Weekly already says this year’s Oscar is Streep’s to lose; I haven’t seen that many other movies in 2009, but this is a bravado performance, steeled by great support from Stanley Tucci as her husband. Tucci, BTW, appears in the possibly greatest foodie movie of all time, Big Night; Tucci and Ephron are foodies in real life. I also enjoyed the brief turn by Jane Lynch.

So the more modern story suffers by comparison because it features Amy Adams, who costarred with Streep in Doubt, but shares no real scenes here. Adams is a fine actress, but her somewhat whiny story and the attendant acting by her, Chris Messina as her husband, and others, were not as interesting, or nearly as funny.

I should note, however, that the more historical tale had some built-in advantages. When Paul Child suggests to Julia that she could be on television, she laughs. The audience laughs too, in part because they know that Julia eventually DOES appear on the small screen.

Some critics suggested they had difficulty keeping track of which time period the story was in; my wife and I had no such difficulty. Others wished that it was more about Julia and less about Julie, if at all; the reality that with a mere history of Child, the viewer would miss some insights about Julia that Julie exposes to us.

So, I recommend the film. If I did stars, it’d be 3 out of 4; grade would be B+.
***
A 10-minute Streep interview. Interesting how an agent provocateur’s comments and response to same took over. He said – I assume it’s a he, “There’s a reason why old fart and over the hill actresses aren’t in great demand–because no one wants to see them! Let’s compare: Meryl Streep vs. Angelina Jollie? Not Meryl! Or, how about Meryl Streep vs. Scarlett Johanson? Not Meryl here either! One more shot: how about Meryl Streep vs. Megan Fox?” Evidently talking about something other than acting. Even Megan Fox, in the EW cover story, noted that her acting skills are nascent.
***
Carol and I once saw Stanley Tucci at Capital Rep theater in Albany several years ago. Can’t remember what we saw, but I was close enough to say to him, if I had had the nerve, “Loved you in Murder One and Big Night.” But I didn’t; so it goes.

ROG

ROG
Ramblin' with Roger
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