Roger O Green

Sweet Hitchhiker

Something Jacquandor cited reminded me of this: my primary form of transportation during my college days in New Paltz in the Mid-Hudson Valley of NYS was hitchhiking. I lived in Binghamton in the Southern Tier of NYS my first year in college, 150 miles and at least three highways away (Route 17, and then there were options). Even when I moved to New Paltz, there were friends to visit back in my hometown.

The easiest hitch I ever had involved me trying to get from New Paltz to Binghamton. Somehow, I found a large metal orange and white sign, perhaps cast off from a gas station. It said 17. I put it out on the outskirts of town and got picked up by a guy from the CIA who dropped me off at the Binghamton exit maybe a half mile from my grandmother’s house. Oh, the CIA is the Culinary Institute of America.

I lived briefly in Kingston, maybe a dozen miles away from New Paltz, and hitched back and forth on Route 32 as well.

But my regular hitch in my freshman year was with my buddy Jay Rose. It was exceedingly easy to thumb a ride to New York City; just stand at the Thruway entrance. What was more difficult was hitching back to New Paltz. I discovered that the best way was to take the subway #4 line as far north as possible, take a commuter bus as far north as it would go on 90 cents, and THEN start seeking rides.

For four months in 1977, I lived in Charlotte, NC, a place that I did not much enjoy. It had lousy mass transit and I was broke. Ultimately, I hitched out of Charlotte to Binghamton; it took about 24 hours. Hitching in the South in 1977 might not have been the wisest move, but it was an incident-free trip, though I was stuck outside of Harrisburg, PA seemingly forever.

I stopped hitching in 1979, not out of any sense of real danger, but because it just took too long. A 150-mile trip from Binghamton to Schenectady took over six hours on old Route 7, pre I-88.

The trip I remember best I did with my friend Alice. Friends of ours were in a terrible car accident; a couple died and the rest were in a hospital in Hornell, NY, pretty much in the middle of the state. We got through Binghamton OK, but had slow going past there. Then one guy finally picked us up. He wanted to save our souls, and surely our souls needed saving, for we appeared to be a mixed race couple, and miscegenation was a sin according to his interpretation of the Word. (His basis for this theory was the OT prohibition against Jews intermarrying, I’m guessing.) However, he was otherwise harmless and let us out when he got to where he was going.

Alice and I never did get to Hornell, since this involved traveling on a rural road, Route 34, and we may not have met the appropriate demographic profile to get picked up. Instead, we went back to New Paltz, in record time, considering it was the middle of the night by then.

We always wondered what that guy would have said if he had found out that Alice was a lesbian.
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In honor of John Fogerty’s birthday late last month, Sweet Hitchhiker – Creedence Clearwater Revival

ROG

The Sotomayor QUESTION

Patrick J. Buchanan called Sonia Sotomayor a “Quota Queen for the Court.” Newt Gingrich called her a racist, then backed off; of course, Newt also said, “No group has benefited more from impartial justice than the less fortunate.”

Her controversial quote: “I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn’t lived that life.”

My initial reaction was well, a non-reaction. I knew what she meant. When people who are the “other” in this society succeed, they’ve often learned to navigate both the majority culture as well as their own. For instance, I know there are things that I don’t have to endure because I’m a male. I don’t always know what they are, but I surely know they exist.

Lanny J. Davis in the Washington Times makes the case that in the “3,000 decisions in which Judge Sotomayor participated and the more than 400 opinions that she signed during her 12 years on the appeals court…in case-after-case, she has voted based on applying the law to the facts — even where the result is contrary to the expected ‘liberal’ ideological position…” He says further, “As to Judge Sotomayor’s statement…: The obvious answer is to view the statement in the broader context of what she meant — similar to what Judge Samuel A. Alito said during his confirmation hearings, i.e., that his background coming from an immigrant family would inevitably be ‘taken into account’ as he made his judicial decisions.”

So her “controversial” remark bothered me not at all. The use of the word “better” will be written off as a gaffe, which, politically, it was. She appears to be well-qualified and I imagine she’ll be confirmed.

But that’s what I think. What says you?

ROG

Local News

There’s a story in the local newspaper about how a Minnesota man who allegedly embezzled $1.38M attended Schenectady (NY) County Community College. It’s always interesting to see how much coverage an item will receive, and part of it is the ability to find the local angle, if any. Most recently, we’ve had the alleged Craiglist killer who attended UAlbany; so instead of the national stories, we get our local “insight.”

Visiting Arthur at AmeriNZ a couple months ago, he noted some North Carolina Republican speaking against the Hate Crimes Prevention Act of 2009, calling Matthew Shepard’s murder “a hoax”. One commenter said: “Sadly I’m not seeing much coverage of [Virginia] Foxx’s incredible comments in the mainstream media,” but another noted:” “Foxx’s comments are all over the television and radio news, Internet, newspapers, etc. here in NC.” Thus her banality was only newsworthy instate rather than nationally.

Yet the story of the mother kicking her kids out of the car in Westchester County, NY, a story that once upon a time might have been in the local police blotter, stirred up an international debate.

One of the things I’m reminded of every Thanksgiving is that the amount of news that gets reported and printed is only a fraction of the news available. Why Thanksgiving? It’s because our local paper is so thick with stories – to balance the ads sold – that simply would not get reported on any other weekday.

So what’s news? Depends on the purveyor of same. I knew this intellectually, but it’s always nice to confirm.
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If David Carradine’s death at age 72 is really a suicide, then I’m truly shocked. A month or two ago, he was profiled on “CBS Sunday Morning” along with Bruce Dern and Rip Torn for a movie they’d made together. The basic point of the story is how full of life the three veteran actors still were. There was zero indication Carradine was anything but happy with where he was in this world.
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I saw Koko Taylor perform on the Empire State Plaza in Albany sometime in the late 1990s or early 2000s. She was on the north end of the plaza near the state capitol, and she was very close to the audience. Anyone out there know the year? It was NOT the 2007 show that got driven indoors.

She only had one “hit”, the Top 60 “Wang Dang Doodle” in 1966, but she was a blues force, and I’m sorry that she died at age 80.

ROG

Cinderella, Barbara Seagull and a Mama

Once upon a time, I wrote about my celebrity crushes that I had before I was 18. My buddy Greg, being the irascible sort, criticized me for being some sort of age fascist. It wasn’t that; it was that there were just so many of them that I was mildly embarrassed to go further.

Worse, I left off at least three:
Lesley Ann Warren – star of a production on CBS of Rogers and Hammerstein’s Cinderella in 1965, which would have made me 12. I’m pretty sure it was repeated at least once and that I watched it each time. It’s the earliest item that shows up on her IMDB TV or movie resume when she was 19.

I must say, though, that she was no Barbara Bain (and Leonard Nimoy no Martin Landau) when there were cast changes on the CBS television show Mission: Impossible in 1969 and 1970. Nevertheless, I watched.

Still, I have a soft spot for her Cinderella version, having purchased the soundtrack only in the last couple years, even though her predecessor, Julie Andrews and her successor, Brandy, are both more professional singers.
Here’s a segment of the program; Lesley’s entrance in this scene is at about 2:30, and she sings “In My Own Little Corner” – I do love that song – at about 4:30.

The first time I knew saw Barbara Hershey was in a disturbing little 1969 movie called Last Summer, also starring Richard Thomas, Bruce Davison and the Oscar-nominated Catherine Burns; haven’t seen it since. Leonard Maltin gave it three and a half stars; Roger Ebert gave it four stars. An event on the set was so traumatizing to Barbara, that for a time, she changed her name to Barbara Seagull. Just yesterday, I discovered it on YouTube, but haven’t watched. The compiler called Last Summer “a small twisted film…not easy to find. It’s quite sexual and very controversial for its time.”
Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4
Part 5
Part 6
Part 7
Part 8
Part 9
Part 10
Part 11
Subsequently, I saw her in The Right Stuff (1983), The Natural (1984), Hoosiers (1986), Lantana (2001) and most notably in Hannah and Her Sisters (1986- very fond) and Beaches (1988 – treacle). Oddly, I didn’t see her in The Last Temptation of Christ (1988) as Mary Magdalene, and I don’t remember why, since the controversy made me want to watch it all the more. She’s also known as a partner of Lost’s Naveen Andrews, who’s two decades her junior, which is cool.

Above: 30 seconds from 1968’s With Six You Get Eggroll, which I must have seen on TV

From the outset, I was a huge Mamas and the Papas fan. I loved the tight harmonies especially, and bought all their albums, starting with the first one; still have most of them on vinyl. While John Phillips was the primary writer of the group, Michelle Phillips (nee Gilliam) has co-writer credits on songs such as California Dreamin’ and Creeque Alley. Most of the lead vocals fell to Denny Doherty or Cass Elliot, but every once in a while Michele got a bit to show her ethereal pipes, such as on Dedicated to the One I Love or the beginning of Got A Feeling.

Michele’s personal life, it became clear, was a mess. She was married to John but sleeping with Denny. She was friends with some of the victims of the Charles Manson murders. She was once married to Dennis Hopper for eight days.

But in that American second act tradition, she began to act in movies and on TV. Her IMDB record shows her on multiple episodes of Love Boat, Fantasy Island, and Hotel before her six-year stint on Knots Landing. I don’t recall seeing any of them.

She sings from time to time, including at tributes to her musical colleagues. Cass died in 1974, John in 2001, and Denny in 2007, making Michelle the sole survivor of the group. I believe today is her 65th birthday (I’ve seen references to both 6/4/44 and 4/6/44.)

T is for Tang Museum

When my wife and I took a mini-vacation to Saratoga Springs, NY in late April, we went to the Frances Young Tang Teaching Museum and Art Gallery at Skidmore College.

On the second floor, we came across Tim Rollins and K.O.S.: A History. This is a “major survey exhibition” that “examines the unique collaboration between Rollins, an artist, activist, and educator, and the Kids of Survival (K.O.S.), a group of artists originally made up of Rollins’s special education students from Intermediate School 52 in the South Bronx.”

The gallery presented “over twenty-five years of work collaboratively produced by Rollins and his students from the Bronx and from workshops conducted nationally and internationally. Based on literary texts, musical scores, and other printed matter, these works comprise one of the most celebrated and controversial art projects of the past quarter century.”

The piece above was inspired by the Red Badge of Courage by Stephen Crane. The markings are wounds, but not always wounds in the pejorative sense. Alice in Wonderland (after Lewis Carroll) looked as though it were all white, but one could see Alice in silhouette. The Scarlet Letter (after Nathaniel Hawthorne) showed a series of bold versions of the letter A. Animal Farm (after George Orwell) used the tradition of making animals out of then-current political leaders.

But each canvas is the most interesting aspect of this process. They are made from the actual pages from the books, glued together but painted over. Yet one can still see the book text to greater or lesser degree.

How do I explain this? The pages are far more impressive in person than any visual I can show you. Our appreciation of the works was greatly enhanced by a docent who not only knew the history of each piece, but knew some of the young men, many of whom became successful in their lives.

Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl (after Harriet Jacobs) was designed to represent the size of the room the slave girl hid in while seeing the world. There are a series of ribbons in front of the canvas, representing each student’s color of freedom. The ribbons don’t stop at the bottom of the canvas, but run free to the floor.

X-Men (after Marvel Comics) is a run of 1968 episodes of the comic book by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby, totally unaltered beyond being placed as the canvas.

The Adventures of Pinocchio (after Carlo Collodi) was a variation on the theme. There were a series of logs, with eyes affixed, representing the person inside these pieces of wood. We were told that this book cover provided K.O.S. with a modicum of fame but no royalties.

The most poignant piece for me was Invisible Man (after Ralph Ellison). One of the Kids of Survival did not survive. He was killed along with four or five others, just being in the wrong place at the wrong time. The Daily News (New York City tabloid) headline read VICTIM… The pages of IM were whitewashed, with only the letters IM appearing in the Daily News font. But you’ll notice that while on the top of the page, the words of the book cannot be seen, by the bottom of the page, they are readable. The slain young man is not invisible after all.

We wanted to buy the catalogue but it was not yet prepared as of our visit. The website says: “Tang Curator Ian Berry will serve as curator and editor of the project. The catalogue will be co-published with MIT Press and will include extensive new photographs of Rollins/K.O.S. work; exhaustive biographic information for Rollins and all K.O.S. members, and their first fully researched bibliography and exhibition history. Berry will provide a wide-ranging overview interview with Rollins, and a number of essays will be commissioned… A selection of writings by Martin Luther King—a key source for Rollins as he formed his early practice – will also be included.”

We did buy the now decade-old video from the Tang store and found it extremely moving. One of the aspects of the process that it touched on was Rollins’ use of the classic literature – read “primarily written by white people” ; other pieces that have been done included A Midsummer Night’s Dream (after William Shakespeare), Diary of a Young Girl (after Anne Frank), The Creation (after Franz Joseph Haydn), The War of the Worlds (after H.G. Wells). The critics asked: “How are black and Latino kids supposed to relate to these stories?” But relate to it they do; such is the power of this collaboration of literature and art. Also, many black writers WERE ultimately used.

Tim Rollins and K.O.S.: A History runs from February 28, 2009 through August 23, 2009; see it if you can.

I wish I had written it down, but the elevator music was labeled, with the musician and composer listed, as though it were part of the art experience, which I guess it was.

The program on the first floor was Oliver Herring: Me Us Them, a “fifteen-year survey …including sculpture, performance, photography and video.” One of his pieces appeared to be a menage a quatre. But it wasn’t sensual; it was, after all silvery Mylar. My favorite piece actually was a Mylar bed with a coat on it. I was not allowed to photograph it, but art critic David Brickman found a shot of it here; it’s even more impressive when seen from the mezzanine. Overall, I think David enjoyed the Herring show more than I did.

It runs from January 31, 2009 through June 14, 2009.

I couldn’t take shots inside, but I COULD take the external photos.
ROG