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.

Rex, you got some ‘splainin’ to do

I have mentioned Chuck Miller’s departure from the Times Union community blogs, as a result of an April Fools joke, and him starting his own blog. He was doing fine, with over 700 subscribers in the first four days, far better than he fared on the Times Union platform. But then:

Last night, I received my Times Union archive of blog posts from the past eight and a half years of blogging for them. I thought everything would be fine, I simply would upload my files and combine old blog posts with new.

Unfortunately, the second I did this…

My chuckthewriterblog.wordpress.com site went crash. Locked me out for violations of terms of service.

Bottom line: chuckthewriterblog.com is currently populating, and will be up soon. But as I know from recent personal experience, it is NOT instantaneous.

What I DIDN’T get into before was the harrumphing of the Times Union. As quoted by a non-TU blogger named Sylvia:

“A community blog hosted by timesunion.com falsely reported Saturday morning that Kellyanne Conway, a senior advisor to President Trump, would be the commencement speaker at the University at Albany. As soon as we were alerted to the post, we removed it from our site and suspended the blog. We apologize to anybody who was misled by this post, which was not written by a Times Union staff member. Even on April Fools’ Day, there’s no place for fake news under the Times Union banner.”

TU editor Rex Smith, who I’ve met IRL, and even sang with once, noted on Twitter: “Not funny. The Times Union regrets this violation of the the principle of accurate reporting. This is not TU content.”

And the WAMC Roundtable on 3 April was likewise SHOCKED. The “bogus link” they referenced was Chuck’s senior year on the local TV quiz show for high schoolers, which he’d written about ad nauseum.

Yes, I am humming, “It’s a scandal, it’s a outrage.”

Yet it was only a year earlier that Chuck had written on his TU blog, “Uber reaches agreement to come to Albany!” which made the Washington Post’s April Fools’ Day pranks: 2016’s comprehensive, updating (and upsetting) list. The TU seemed to enjoy hitting on the zeitgeist.

If memory serves, Chuck did NOT slap an April Fools label on that 2016 post the first day, though the next day he did, to avoid the story staying on the Internet under false pretenses. This was fine then for the TU, and one would have expected it would have been fine this year, instead of suspension and blocking him from his site.

Meanwhile, there is another TU community blogger who wrote in March, apparently in all seriousness, that the White House has been closed to visitors since 9/11 until 2017. I won’t link to her because she’s guano crazy. But Heather Fazio mentions her.

Since he’s done a joke blog EVERY YEAR for 8 YEARS, I’ve been forced to conclude that there is something else at play here with Chuck Miller’s suspension. I have to think he got under the TU’s skin once too often. He often advocated for more recognition for the community bloggers, including appearances in the paper, which went away and then came back, as a direct result of his nagging. Early in my tenure as a TU blogger, the TU ponied up for pizza for its unpaid community writers, but no more.

Perhaps the tipping point was him pointing out some oblivious remarks, such as he did on Thursday.

In her blog last Monday, TU staff blogger Kristi Gustafson Barlette wrote a piece about certain thoughts in the Capital District, a “When I think of…” recap…

The part that irked me? This portion.

“When I think of great blogging, I think of Amanda Talar (who is coming back to the east coast). I also think of Matt Baumgartner and really, really miss his blogging.”

Wow. When Kristi Gustafson Barlette thinks of “great blogging,” she references two people who haven’t blogged for the TU in YEARS. Not taking anything away from those bloggers – they have written amazing posts in the past – but it totally ignores the fantastic writing and observations of the Times Union’s current bloggers and raconteurs and observers and writers. Whether you agree or disagree with their topics and thoughts, they at least deserve your attention and consideration.

Maybe if Kristi Gustafson Barlette took a few moments and actually read these blogs, she might indeed find some new favorites. Some new “great blogging” examples.

I wonder if THAT was the last straw for the TU, with his ANNUAL joke – and I will say, Kellyanne, by definition is NOT funny – was just the excuse they were looking for. Or the TU can explain that how it punishes an obvious attempt at humor and tolerating this 4/1 piece while supporting actual fake news on its community pages. If SHE writes fiction, why blast Chuck?

See, here’s the thing: this story isn’t really about Chuck anymore. It’s about a BS response from the TU to him which affects the integrity of the TU organization. The thought that, as an unpaid community blogger, if the TU doesn’t like what you write, you can get kabonged without even so much as an appeal process, in direct contrast to what we were originally told. It’s also saying that the TU accept racist, xenophobic, untrue and vacuous stuff under their banner, but only selectively.

What’s the real story? See the posts by Judd Krasher, Fran Rossi Szpylczyn, Heather Fazio, and Aaron Bush.

Martin Luther King: Millions in his firing squad

“Every two-bit politician or incompetent editorial writer found in him, not themselves, the cause of our racial problems.”

Mike Royko was a columnist for the Chicago Daily News, and later, the Chicago Sun-Times, and the Chicago Tribune. His column was syndicated, for I remember reading him, even as a child.

His 1997 obit in the New York Times – he died at age 64 of an aneurysm – called the 1972 Pulitzer Prize winner the “Voice of the Working Class.”

“In his column of Sept. 23, 1981, Mr. Royko sought to explain President Ronald Reagan’s policies of ‘hacking away’ at Federal programs for the poor ‘while spending more and more on the military.’ ‘Contrary to popular belief,’ Mr. Royko wrote, ‘it’s much wiser to take money from the poor than the rich.'”

He published “Millions in his firing squad,” this column of April 5, 1968, the day after the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Read the whole thing here.

It’s useful because it speaks to today’s conservatives who seek to co-opt Dr. King’s message:
***
Millions in his firing squad

FBI agents are looking for the man who pulled the trigger and surely they will find him.

But it doesn’t matter if they do or they don’t. They can’t catch everybody, and Martin Luther King was executed by a firing squad that numbered in the millions.

They took part, from all over the country, pouring words of hate into the ear of the assassin.

The man with the gun did what he was told. Millions of bigots, subtle and obvious, put it in his hand and assured him he was doing the right thing.

It would be easy to point at the Southern redneck and say he did it. But what of the Northern disk-jockey-turned-commentator, with his slippery words of hate every morning?

What about the Northern mayor who steps all over every poverty program advancement, thinking only of political expediency, until riots fester, whites react with more hate and the gap between the races grows bigger?

Toss in the congressman with the stupid arguments against busing. And the pathetic women who turn out with eggs in their hands to throw at children…

They all took their place in King’s firing squad.

And behind them were the subtle ones, those who never say anything bad but just nod when the bigot throws out his strong opinions.

He is actually the worst, the nodder is, because sometimes he believes differently but he says nothing. He doesn’t want to cause trouble. For Pete’s sake, don’t cause trouble!

So when his brother-in-law or his card-playing buddy from across the alley spews out the racial filth, he nods…

The bullet that hit King came from all directions. Every two-bit politician or incompetent editorial writer found in him, not themselves, the cause of our racial problems.

It was almost ludicrous. The man came on the American scene preaching nonviolence from the first day he sat at the wrong end of a bus. He preached it in the North and was hit with rocks. He talked it the day he was murdered.

Hypocrites all over this country would kneel every Sunday morning and mouth messages to Jesus Christ. Then they would come out and tell each other, after reading the papers, that somebody should string up King, who was living Christianity like few Americans ever have.

Maybe it was the simplicity of his goal that confused people or the way he dramatized it.

He wanted only that black Americans have their constitutional rights, that they get an equal shot at this country’s benefits, the same thing we give to the last guy who jumped off the boat.

So we killed him…

Last Sunday night the President said he was quitting after this term. He said this country is so filled with hate it might help if he got out. Four days later we killed a Nobel Peace Prize winner.

We have pointed a gun at our own head and we are squeezing the trigger. And nobody we elect is going to help us. It is our head and our finger.

M is for Mill Valley, California

The song spent only a couple weeks on the lower rungs of the Billboard pop charts, peaking at #90 in 1970.

Me writing about Mill Valley is the fault of Mexican food and a famous director.

For dinner during the last week in December 2016, my bride made tacos. We hadn’t had them, either at home or in a restaurant, in months. And I – as is my wont – started singing The Taco Man, actually The Candy Man, but with a word change. You may know the 1972 hit by Sammy Davis Jr. That made her think of I’d Like To Teach the World to Sing by the New Seekers from that same year.

She also recalled a song called Mill Valley. I know LOTS of songs from the late 1960s and early 1970s, but I didn’t know this one. She even knew the lyrics!

I’m gonna talk about a place
That’s got a hold on me,
Mill Valley
A little place where life
Feels very fine and free,
Mill Valley
Where people aren’t afraid to smile
And stop and talk with you awhile,
And you can be as friendly
As you want to be.
Mill Valley!

As it turns out, a teacher named Rita Abrams wrote the song and recorded with children at the school where she was teaching, released under the name Miss Abrams and the Strawberry Point Third Grade Class. The song spent only a couple weeks on the lower rungs of the Billboard pop charts, peaking at #90 in 1970.

But it must have done better with those easy-listening stations that weren’t playing Mama Told Me Not To Come by Three Dog Night or Ball of Confusion by the Temptations, because it’s been referred to as a radio staple.

There were stories in Newsweek, Life Magazine and Rolling Stone. “Annie Liebovitz stood on top of the piano to take our picture,” the educator recalled. An album, which referred to the students as 4th graders, which they were by then, was released.

Ironically, there were 2014 stories suggesting the teacher-turned-songwriter could no longer afford to live in her Mill Valley condo because of rising real estate costs.

Rita Abrams and her class had a 45th reunion in 2015.

And the director who made the video? An obscure young director named Francis Ford Coppola, who, two years later, would be directing the film that would win the Oscar for Best Movie, The Godfather.

ABC Wednesday – Round 20

It’s Miller time! Chuck is moving on…

One of the great tradeoffs of being an unpaid TU blogger, we were told, is that there would be no editorial interference unless it would fail to meet basic standards – no obscenity, no libel.

Chuck Miller, who had blogged at the Times Union newspaper site EVERY DAY for the past 8.5 years, is moving on to a new blogging venue, Chuck the Writer. NOBODY has been a more reliable blogger, cheerleader for the community bloggers, or more active social director than Chuck.

He initiated several TU community blogger gatherings. His most outstanding contribution, though, has been Best of our TU Independent Bloggers: Ten for Thursday. Sometimes it was 12 or 20 posts – Chuck isn’t that good at math – but I always found pages I had not previously seen that were of interest.

He’s written about his photography, being a trivia maven, obscure musical tracks, the Notorious KGB, and some big life issues, among many other topics.

There were a number of issues that went into the decision to change venues, including the editing of some of his posts in the past few weeks. One of the great tradeoffs of being an unpaid TU blogger, we were told when we were recruited by Mike Huber, the former TU blog herder of cats, is that there would be no editorial interference unless it would fail to meet basic standards – no obscenity, no libel. Chuck found a clever way to work around the former with a humorous grawlix-type graphic.

For his April Fools Day post, he wrote that one Kellyanne Conway would be speaking at commencement at UAlbany, clearly as fictitious as his Collarworld columns. He has written absurdist posts on the 1st of April before without incident. The new piece, though, was not only removed, but Chuck was locked out of his own blog. I’m sure that, if he had been asked, he would have altered or removed the “offending” item.

This became what I call a Popeye moment; “That’s all I can stands, ’cause I can’t stands no more.” So he walked away. It’s not as though he can be fired; as a local band once sang, “You can’t fire me, I QUIT!”

Coincidentally, the TU portal has fallen into disrepair over the past few months. There are bloggers that haven’t posted in almost a year

If I were of the mind to, I’d tell the powers that be at the Times Union that they were CRAZY to suspend Chuck – or whatever it is they call it – over the type of post he had written EVERY YEAR on this date. He has created more visibility for the TU community bloggers than any half dozen bloggers combined.

So I’m going to go follow Mr. Miller over at Chuck the Writer, because the platform is not the thing, it’s the writing.

Emmylou Harris turns 70

No other mainstream star established a similarly large body of work as consistently iconoclastic, eclectic, or daring;

When a friend of mine, who was a big fan of Emmylou Harris, first heard the album Wrecking Ball in 1995, she complained that it wasn’t at all what she was expecting. She threatened to give it away, and I expressed my interest in taking it, but ultimately she held onto it.

I had quite a few Emmylou Harris LPs, and Wrecking Ball wasn’t what I expected either, but I meant that in a GOOD way. Read about the 2014 re-release.

The CMT page describes her well:
“Though other performers sold more records and earned greater fame, few had as profound an impact on contemporary music as Emmylou Harris. Blessed with a crystalline voice, a remarkable gift for phrasing, and a restless creative spirit, she traveled a singular artistic path, proudly carrying the torch of ‘cosmic American music’ passed down by her mentor, Gram Parsons. With the exception of only Neil Young — not surprisingly an occasional collaborator — no other mainstream star established a similarly large body of work as consistently iconoclastic, eclectic, or daring; even more than four decades into her career, Harris’ latter-day music remained as heartfelt, visionary, and vital as her earliest recordings.”

For her sheer range of work – from background singer, to solo artist, to duets with a range of artists including Mark Knopfler, to her best selling collaboration with Dolly Parton and Linda Ronstadt – her distinctive sound always enhances her many projects.

I expect Eddie at Renaissance Geek will feature Emmylou Harris today.

The links below are in roughly chronological order, from the most recent.

The Traveling Kind (with Rodney Crowell)

My Name Is Emmett Till

Amazing Grace/Nearer My God To Thee (with Ladysmith Black Mambazo)

Beachcombing (with Mark Knopfler)

Flesh and Blood (with Mary Chapin Carpenter and Sheryl Crow)

Didn’t Leave Nobody But The Baby (with Alison Krauss and Gillian Welch)

After the Goldrush (with Linda Ronstadt and Dolly Parton)

1917 (with Linda Ronstadt)

Orphan Girl

Where Will I Be

Wrecking Ball

Love Still Remains

Songs from the Trio album (with Dolly Parton and Linda Ronstadt)

Two More Bottles of Wine

Blue Kentucky Girl

Save the Last for Me

Together Again

Ramblin' with Roger
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