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.

H is for Hello

There are a LOT of songs that start with the word “hello.”

Hello. How are you today?

I’ve been musing a lot about the word hello. The history of the word can be seen read in Wikipedia; basically, a 19th-century creation that Thomas Edison suggested be used in answering the telephone, rather than Alexander Graham Bell’s idea of “ahoy.”

I’m no linguist, but it seems that lots of languages have had a variation of hello for a long time, while others have not. I found this site Say Hello to the World. Some have very similar words: Chinese – ni hao; Hebrew – shalom; Spanish: hola. Others tend to have words more appropriately described as “good day.”

In any case, I was looking for an excuse to list a bunch of songs starting with the word Hello. There are a LOT of them; this is only a sampling, including several that I put on a mixed CD.

The Beatles – Hello Little Girl;
Ricky Nelson – Hello Mary Lou ;
Allan Sherman – Hello Muddah Hello Faddah;
Louis Armstrong – Hello, Dolly!;
Frank Sinatra – Hello, Young Lovers;
Sopwith Camel – Hello, Hello;
Judy Collins – Hello, Hooray;
The Doors – Hello, I Love You;
Todd Rundgren – Hello It’s Me;
Eric Clapton – Hello Old Friend;
Bette Midler – Hello In There;
Oasis – Hello;
Harry Potter Book of Mormon Parody – HELLO;
The Beatles – Hello Goodbye

Someone’s list of Top 10: Songs with lyrics that begin with ‘Hello’, only some of which I used, since I wanted songs with TITLES that begin that way.

ABC Wednesday – Round 12

Tom Kha Yum: my favorite Thai soup combo

There’s this girl woman I’d known since before she was born. I met her mother when she was pregnant. After my daughter was born, though, we fell out of touch. She moved out of state about eight years ago.

Due to the magic that is Facebook, we reconnected. She’d come back to the area a short time ago. We e-mailed and phoned, then met for dinner at a Thai fusion restaurant in Albany called Kinnaree, which, as it turns out, subsequently received a rave review in Metroland, the local arts weekly newspaper.

First thing she does is order two different soups and two extra bowls; apparently, she orders this a LOT, since the waitress is totally familiar with the routine. Tom Kha is a “spicy hot soup… made with coconut milk, galangal, lemon grass, kaffir lime leaves, and chicken, and often contains straw, shiitake, or other mushrooms, as well as coriander leaves.” Tom Yum is a “basic broth is made of stock and fresh ingredients such as lemon grass, kaffir lime leaves, galangal, lime juice, fish sauce and crushed chili peppers.”

While each of these soups were quite fine, they were SO much more delicious mixed together. I’m a big fan of mixing other items. Orange juice is OK, I love cranberry juice, though it can be a bit tart; they are so much better together. I’ve already explained my obsession inclination to mix cereals.

Slightly off topic, there are ways to combine foods to create complete protein.

Van Cliburn, and the Temptations

I saw the Temptations perform live twice.

When I was growing up, pianist Van Cliburn was the most famous classical musician in the United States. He had an album sell a million copies, unheard of in the genre. It was a function, in part, of the fact that when he won a prestigious competition in the Soviet Union, he was considered a Cold Warrior.

The only problem, as Dustbury noted, is that Cliburn never saw himself that way; he just loved playing the music. Listen to the link Jaquandor provided, and read the sweet story, while you’re at it.
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I was a HUGE fan of the singing group The Temptations from roughly 1964 to 1984; I could even tell you roughly when members came and went. Damon Harris (upper right) came into the group in 1971 to be the high-range vocalist after Eddie Kendrick left for a solo career; he left in 1975, having sung on Papa Was a Rolling Stone. He was only 62 when he died, succumbing to prostate cancer, which, not incidentally, is what killed my father.

Richard Street (upper left), though, was an even more vital part of the Temps history. He was part of The Distants back in the late 1950s with future Temptations Otis Williams (the sole surviving original member of the Temps; lower left) and Melvin Franklin (lower middle). Paul Williams (no relation to Otis) started having problems with alcoholism and depression. “By 1969, Richard Street… was touring with the group as a backup replacement for [Paul] Williams. For most shows, save for his solo numbers, Williams would dance and lip-sync on stage to parts sung live by Street into an offstage mic behind a curtain. At other shows, and during most of the second half of 1970, Street substituted for Williams on stage.” When Paul Williams left the group, Street replaced him in 1971 and stayed until 1992.

I saw the Temptations perform live twice, c 1982 during the reunion tour when Kendrick and David Ruffin temporarily rejoined the group, which was one of the greatest concerts I’ve ever seen; and c 1984, on a double bill with the Four Tops, a lesser event because it was at a baseball field, Heritage Park just outside Albany. Of course, Street was a participant in both shows. In the former show, when four of the original Temps did some of their old hits, it was Street once again filling in for the late Paul Williams. BTW, that’s Dennis Edwards pictured in the lower right; he had replaced Ruffin, and is still alive.

Richard Street died at the age of 70.

Does Petula Clark know about Petula Lark? New album by the 80-year-old Clark, including a cover of her massive hit Downtown.

Ken Levine wrote about the 30th anniversary of the last episode of the TV show MASH. I was a huge fan of the show from about midway through the first season until partway through the eighth. I’ve long thought, though, that they should have quit when Radar left in the eighth year. That bloated 2.5-hour program, still the TV finale with the highest ratings, I pretty much hated. I think MAD magazine nailed it.
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The YouTube video for Tim O’Toole’s book The American Pope.

 

Looking forward to NEXT month

There were a lot of deaths in the families of people I know in the month of February.

It’s not the warmer weather that I’m longing for, it’s a bit of sanity. February was Black History Month and is always brutal for me at church. I try to fawn off responsibilities to others, but, like a boomerang, they keep coming back to me. Lining up speakers, getting approvals, making sure equipment is set up, putting information into the church bulletin, etc.

Sunday, February 24 was a prime example. Go to the 8:30 a.m. service to make sure the guest preacher has shown up. Afterward, accompany him to a place for him to rest until the 10:45 service. Make sure the 9:30 adult education speakers are there and make sure they are set. Make at least some of the choir rehearsal, which starts at 9:30, but my cloning ability is frayed. Sing in the choir at 10:45 service, and also do the presentation of the ceremonial kente cloth, and read prayers of the people.

Thank goodness my wife has taken responsibility for the luncheon. But then there’s the clean-up afterward.

I would have been happy to have gone home then, as I was exhausted. Unfortunately, the husband of one of the choir members had died that week, and choir people support their own. So we sang at the 3 p.m. service.

Not that it was a BAD day, mind you. I thought everything went well. The guest preacher was good, the adult ed presenters were well-received, and the dinner was fantastic. I thought the music was fine; in fact, if I’m doing this correctly, you should be able to hear I’ve Been in the Storm So Long [LISTEN]; yes, there’s a one-second recording glitch at the end.

There were a lot of deaths in the families of people I know in the month of February. Our choir’s soprano soloist lost her father; him, I hadn’t met, but the rest of the people I knew. The former treasurer of the Friends of the Albany Public Library, Peg, passed away. So did the wife of the former president of the Friends; Len and Naomi Tucker had been married for over 70 years and were such a sweet couple. My friend Broome’s dad Michael died; he was always an interesting and entertaining guy. Our former secretary at work had her mother die in the early morning, then had to bring her father to the hospital for treatment of his heart that same day.

March means working on an initiative my church is supporting with Giffen Elementary School in Albany; my wife is even more heavily involved than I. There’s a church musical, and I have a part in that, on March 17, which means some rehearsals as well. And of course, there’s Holy Week, which church musicians and singers think of as hell week. (Someone suggested that was a sacrilegious sentiment – well, when you think about the betrayal, whipping, and crucifixion stuff prior to Easter…)

So I’m looking forward, more than usual, to April, when our office has a presentation to prepare by the end of the month; a piece of cake.

Popes I have recalled

I worried about Benedict even before he took office, as his conservative rhetoric as cardinal preceded him

For a non-Catholic, I have an irrational interest in the papacy, especially the recent guys. When I was a kid, I always got my World Almanac and once a year, at least, looked at the lists of all of the popes, which included the antipopes, those popes opposed by some faction of the church. As you see from this list from the Catholic Encyclopedia, there were a lot of them, and they tended to be in chronological clusters.

Limiting the discussion to the popes in my lifetime:

Pius XII (1939-58) – I don’t remember him specifically – I was a child when he died – but I had heard for years he had done little or nothing concerning the Holocaust during World War II. Clearly, he said and did far too little, though what he DID say occasionally riled up both the Germans and Mussolini in Italy.

John XXIII (1958-63) – My favorite Pope. I’m shocked, looking back, how short his tenure was. As he was fairly advanced in age, he had the Second Vatican Council convened fairly early on, which “would make a new start toward achieving Christian unity by putting aside the hostilities of the past and acknowledging the Catholics’ share of responsibility for the scandal of a divided Christianity… He received Eastern Orthodox, Anglican, and Protestant religious leaders with extreme cordiality and made sure they were invited to send observers to the Vatican Council. He removed certain words offensive to Jews from the official liturgy of the church.”

Paul VI (1963-78) – If I were to make a comparison that American political science buffs might appreciate, Paul carried out many of John’s wishes in the same way Lyndon Johnson was able to fulfill John Kennedy’s civil rights agenda. “From the very outset of his years as pope, Paul VI gave clear evidence of the importance he attached to the study and the solution of social problems and to their impact on world peace… Such problems dominated his first encyclical letter…, and later became the insistent theme of his celebrated Populorum progressio (“Progress of the Peoples”), March 26, 1967. This encyclical was such a pointed plea for social justice that in some conservative circles the pope was accused of Marxism.”
The singer Donovan took an unkind swipe at this pope, Poke at the Pope [audio and lyrics].

John Paul I (1978). There was an 88-day New York City newspaper strike in 1978, which shut down the New York Times, the Daily News and the Post from mid-August through early November. It missed, among other things, the Yankees repeating as World Series champions, and the entire papacy of John Paul I. Of course, his short tenure has led to much speculation that he had been poisoned. He was the last Italian pope.

John Paul II (1978-2005) – Over time, I have developed real mixed feelings about him. On one hand, he worked toward bringing down Communism and made efforts towards Christian reconciliation with the Jews. Conversely, he was lousy on the sex abuse issue and is retrograde regarding the status of women. His comic book was quite popular.

Benedict XVI (2005—2013). I worried about him even before he took office, as his conservative rhetoric as cardinal preceded him. My concern proved to be warranted with regard to gays, e.g.

His greatest achievement, besides being the first pontiff on Twitter, and an appreciation of art, was becoming the first pope since the Gutenberg Bible was printed to resign in office, right after he received news of a warrant for his arrest. It already has made it into MAD magazine, and, of course, the Onion.

The first thing I wrote on Facebook after the surprising announcement was to suggest that the next guy will be from the Americas, Africa, or Asia. The cardinal from Ghana had spent time in the Albany area. But will the faithful accept a Hispanic, a black, or an Asian? I think we’re about to find out.

 

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