Ramblin' with Roger

Those wartime #1 hits of 1940

Glenn Miller The United States Census of 1940 determined the resident population of the United States to be 132,164,569, an increase of 7.3 percent over the 1930 population of 122,775,046 people.

Europe and Asia were embroiled in World War II by 1940. The United States was allegedly staying out of it. But as my daughter’s European history class reminded me, the US was providing significant military supplies and other assistance to the Allies by September 1940. The Germans had taken Paris and were bombing London.

“On September 2, 1940, President Roosevelt signed a ‘Destroyers for Bases’ agreement. Under the terms of the agreement, the United States gave the British more than 50 obsolete destroyers, in exchange for 99-year leases to territory in Newfoundland and the Caribbean, which would be used as U.S. air and naval bases.”

America needed music

In the Mood – Glenn Miller, 13 weeks at #1 and a gold record. It was re-released in 1943 and went to #20.
Frenesi – Artie Shaw, 13 weeks at #1. Both Woody Herman and Glenn Miller recorded the song in 1941 and got to #16.
I’ll Never Smile Again – Tommy Dorsey, featuring Frank Sinatra and the Pied Pipers, 12 weeks at #1. The Glenn Miller cover went to #16 in the same year.

Only Forever – Bing Crosby with John Scott Trotter and his orchestra, 9 weeks at #1. Tommy Dorsey’s version reached #7 the same year.
Tuxedo Junction – Glenn Miller and his orchestra, 9 weeks at #1 and a gold record
Scatter-Brain – Frankie Masters, 6 weeks at #1. Benny Goodman and Freddy Martin also recorded this.

The Woodpecker Song – Glenn Miller, featuring Marion Hutton, 5 weeks at #1. Andrews Sisters and Kate Smith were among the artists recording this. It’s based on Reginella Campagnola.
South of the Border (Down in Mexico Way) – Shep Fields, featuring Hal Derwin, 5 weeks at #1. Guy Lombardo and Frank Sinatra (#18 in 1953) had hits with this tune.
Sierra Sue – Bing Crosby, with John Scott Trotter and his orchestra, 4 weeks at #1

Make-Believe Island – Mitchell Ayres, featuring Mary Ann Mercer, 2 weeks at #1 . At least four other recordings charted that year.
Where Was I? – Charlie Barnet, featuring Mary Ann McCall, 2 weeks at #1
The Breeze and I – Jimmy Dorsey, featuring Bob Eberle, 1 week at #1. That year Jimmy Dorsey celebrated his ninth birthday. He was born on February 29, 1904. In 1954, Vic Damone got to #21 with the song.

There were relatively few major record labels in those days. Of the songs above, Shaw and Tommy Dorsey were on Victor, Crosby and Jimmy Dorsey were on Decca, and Masters was on Vocalion. The others were on Bluebird. Columbia was the only other label with songs that got into the Top 4.

Buying my first house, finally

“up, up, UP!”

house It wasn’t until May 8, 2000, that I purchased my first house. My now-wife had bought a two-family dwelling on Manning Blvd. in the early 1990s. When we got married in May 1999, I moved in with her. This was not a particularly good idea.

Even though I had gotten rid of a LOT of stuff, including a sofa I’d purchased only a couple years earlier, the first legitimate furniture I ever bought, the place was still crowded. My dresser was literally on top of hers. This was “inspired” by a fellow on an HGTV show that my wife and MIL were watching; unfortunately, I was also present. The guy said that, when you have limited space, you have to build “up, up, UP!”

I hated it. My sense of claustrophobia was high. More to the point, when I would discuss this with my bride, she’d say, “But I made room for your stuff.” And was the problem. She was making room from her stuff for my stuff.

To his credit, our former pastor had suggested early on that we needed to have a place of our own, where our stuff would reside. In the early fall, we saw a house we really liked. But my wife had returned to graduate school, and it was just too expensive for us.

Adorable

Then we found another place, on Kent Street, that we thought was charming. A lot of personal touches built by the late pater familias. But a look-see by a home inspector noted a bulge in a wall caused by water damage. He estimated that it would cost about a grand to fix. We asked the owner if she could knock $1000 off the price, or alternately, get the wall repaired first. neither were viable options for her, so we walked away. (You should always be willing to walk away.)

We looked at the previous house we had liked and noticed that the price had gone down about $6000. And we bought it. My wife could not make the closing because of grad school, so she granted me the power of attorney at the closing. We had scraped every dime we had to get the certified check we needed. But as the process went on, I was told that the amount of our down payment was $1800 short, a math error by our attorney.

I was nonplussed. It wasn’t as though we had any more cash. The papers were signed nevertheless. Somehow, and I no longer remember how, my wife and I finagled the rest of the down payment the next day. About a week later, after the semester ended, we hired movers, even though we were going only six blocks away. We had our home.

The obvious: CSNY, Madness.

Victory in Europe Day, 75 years on

solo pipers and town criers

When I thought to write about Victory in Europe Day, I did a Google search and found the Wikipedia and History.com sites.

Soon, I came to the Imperial War Museums, founded in 1917. It prides itself on being a “global authority on conflict and its impact on people’s lives. We collect objects and stories that give an insight into people’s experiences of war, preserve them for future generations, and bring them to today’s audiences in the most powerful way possible.”

The five museums are physically closed because of COVID-19. Yet there is much online about “the causes, course, and consequences of war, from the First World War through to present-day conflict.” About VE Day, it notes that while it was celebrated around the world, it was not the end of the war, which would take place four months later.

I searched within the site for the word “holocaust,” “IWM London [was] to significantly expand and update our Second World War and Holocaust Galleries, and create a learning suite across all three floors of the exhibition.” How that might be affected by a pandemic, I do not know. “Opening in 2021, this £30.5 million project will make us the first museum in the world to physically and intellectually present the Holocaust narrative within the context of the Second World War…

“Research led by University College London’s Centre for Holocaust Education” was conducted with over 9,500 secondary school students aged 11 to 18. [It] revealed that their knowledge and understanding of the Holocaust was often based on inaccuracies and misconceptions.” I can only imagine that lacking is greater among Americans in that age range and older.

All This and World War II

Another page I came across is World War II Database, started by a guy named C. Peter Chen back in 2004. He wanted to share his “notes on WW2 history with others with similar interest and to showcase the technical capabilities” of his software company. The site is massive. Check out the timeline for 1945, for example.

Chen’s caveat: “AlthoughI am proud of this continuously growing site, I do not recommend this site to be used for academic research.” It is nevertheless impressive.

There was to have been a Victory in Europe Day 75 celebration in the United Kingdom this weekend, which has been canceled. “However, we are still encouraging solo pipers and town criers to continue to mark the occasion from a safe and suitable location.” There is also a call to a moment of silence at 11 a.m. Friday, and a toast at 3 p.m. “from the safety of their own home by standing up and raise a glass of refreshment of their choice .”

Holes in the commercial TV schedule

cricket

How_to_Marry_a_Millionaire With all the cable and streaming services out there, I’m nevertheless still fascinated by the programming choices on the three commercial TV networks I grew up with, ABC, CBS, and NBC. Most recently I noticed that Raiders of the Lost Ark was one of five movies filling the CBS Sunday night lineup in the month of May 2020.

Once upon a time, showing movies on prime time commercial television was de rigeur. According to my TV bible, How To Marry a Millionaire, starring Marilyn Monroe, Lauren Bacall, and Betty Grable, was the first, airing on NBC on September 23, 1961. Gone With The Wind aired in two parts in early November 1976 and received at least a 47 rating/66 share of the market, comparable with Super Bowl broadcasts, percentage-wise.

Of course, the Wizard of Oz was shown on CBS for years. I watched it several times. But it wasn’t until I finally saw it in color in 1970 that I finally GOT it. The 1964 and 1965 airings were in the top 20 of the most viewed films on television. It’s why so much of the dialogue pops into my conversation: “What have you LEARNED, Dorothy?”

Now, I’m talking about theatrical releases. there were also a ton of made-for-TV movies, such as The Day After (1983), Helter Skelter (1976), and The Burning Bed (1984), all of which I watched at the time. There was also Little Ladies of the Night (1977), which I never even heard of, but was #2 on the list, at least as of 2009.

Play-by-play

The schedule for CBS seems to have been most impacted by the coronavirus because their schedule has been most dependent on sports. Instead of showing the March Madness of college basketball, they’ve shown reruns of previous games. The Masters golf tournament in April provides the opportunity to see last year’s final round AGAIN, but with Tiger Woods doing the commentary. Nah.

As John Green pointed out, a lot of the thrill of watching a sporting event is NOT knowing the outcome. Back in the day – i.e., last year – I would DVR the World Series games and watch them in the early morning, being sure not to look at my email, the Internet generally, or live TV.

John Green found himself watching the 2012 Italian rugby finals because who knows who won the 2012 Italian rugby finals? I’ll admit I viewed the bottom of the ninth inning of Game 6 of the 1986 World Series recently. Instead of that, maybe I should watch cricket, which I haven’t seen since my honeymoon in 1999. Or Australian rules football. Hey, they’re playing baseball in Taiwan; I’d watch that!

Anil Dash: 15 Years of Blogging post

Am I an artist?

I Know You Are — The Bad Chemicals, used by permission

About six years ago, my friend Dan sent me a link to 15 Lessons from 15 Years of Blogging by a guy named Anil Dash. Now that I’ve hit that milestone, I want to see if he was correct.

I Typos in posts don’t reveal themselves until you’ve published. “If you schedule a post to publish in the future, the typos will be revealed then. This is an absolute, inviolable rule of blogging.” Heck, yeah. It’ll be something that I KNOW how to spell. Of COURSE, I know the difference between two, to, and two. But my fingers, apparently, do not.

II Link to everything you create elsewhere on the web. That’s a good idea. I should do that, but I don’t. I’m counting on the Wayback Machine. Not incidentally, I became sad to note the disappearance of the Dustbury blog by Charles G. Hill. Fortunately, it is still archived.

III Always write with the idea that what you’re sharing will live for months and years and decades. Yes, I find that I get requests for information about my late friend Raoul Vezina years after I wrote about him.

IV Always write for the moment you’re in. That IS something I try to do.

Better luck next time

V The scroll is your friend. I love maybe half of what I write. But there’s tomorrow. If I labor over a piece too long, in general, the more paralyzed I am as a writer. I try not to do this.

VI Your blog can change your life in a month. People find me at this blog regularly, and they tell me things about my relatives and friends that I never knew before. It can be powerful stuff.

VII There is absolutely no pattern to which blog posts people will like. This is SO true. If you Google “Spaulding krullers” (a doughnut), guess what is #1? My 2014 post.

VIII The personal blog is an important, under-respected art form. I’m an artist! Someone said that to me at some point in the last couple of years. I poo-pooed it because I can’t draw a lick. But I do SOMETHING here. Some people think I’m a good writer. I cannot judge that, but I AM persistent, at least.

This post is a blogging sin

IX Meta-writing about a blog is generally super boring. “(That probably includes this post.)” I do tend to avoid them, unlike in my early blogging period when I’d note every lunaversary. This is true: “Certainly the world doesn’t need any more ‘sorry I haven’t written in a while’ posts.” Fortunately, I’ve never written one.

X The tools for blogging have been extraordinarily stagnant. I dunno. My WordPress plugins are always doing something, but they use terms I don’t understand. And the great innovation of the WordPress block editor escapes me. (And if you don’t understand that, well, neither do I.)

XI If your comments are full of @$$4013$, it’s your fault. On this blog, I’ve only regularly had one post that regularly generates the schmucks, and I’ve shut ’em down. (It was me writing a response post over three years ago, and the racists comments STILL show up, but I reject them.

XII The most meaningful feedback happens on a very slow timeframe. I’ve said it before: blogging is like slow cooking,

XIII It’s still early. If you have a voice, use it.

XIV Leave them wanting more. I never think, “I have to capture all my thoughts on this idea and write it about it definitively once and for all.” And I might change my mind. So, thanks, Anil Dash.