Ramblin' with Roger

Lenten reflections from the FOCUS churches of Albany, NY

Lent offers us a landscape that calls us to look at our lives from a different perspective, to perceive what is essential and what is unnecessary.

The Reverend Debra Jameson, Director of Community Ministry for the FOCUS Churches of Albany, writes:

The season of Lent beckons us to see what we are clinging to. These days draw us into a wilderness in which we can more readily see what we have shaped our daily lives around: habits, practices, possessions, commitments, conflicts, relationships—all the stuff that we give ourselves to in a way that sometimes becomes more instinctual than intentional.

The FOCUS Lenten reflections have been created by forty men and women from the community of partner congregations. I am always moved by the depths of these contributions.

Much as Jesus went into the desert to pray and fast for forty days, Lent offers us a landscape that calls us to look at our lives from a different perspective, to perceive what is essential and what is unnecessary.

Read the online FOCUS Lenten Reflections here.

The winter of my discontent

Friday the 13th, my lovely bride got up at 4 a.m. and drove me to the train station.

It’s cold, it’s snowy, but it’s also winter in upstate New York, so I’m not one to complain. (I save my vexation about the weather for the summer.)

So the stuff outside is not specifically bothering me, though if I were to, it would sound like The Grounds for Violence – Key of Bart. People who don’t shovel their walkways, ESPECIALLY at the corners, and make it difficult to walk; now THEY really bug me.

I did fall down outside recently, trudging through the white stuff, and had a difficult time getting up. You’d think the snow would be more forgiving, but I guess not when it’s 10F/-12C. Landing in it managed to bang up both shoulders, my left knee, and my right thigh; my back and ribs are hurting, too.

This is Black History Month and, at church, I’d somehow gotten myself involved with not only the adult education for February but most of January as well. The annual luncheon process became more complicated by ANOTHER event in February at church.

Because the calendar fell as it did, I was unable to go to the annual Midwinter’s gathering in my college town area, which I often find restorative, because it clashed with RESPONSIBILITIES at church; it’s only a problem when February 1 is on a Sunday.

The Daughter’s church musical is on March 1, which has meant attending extra rehearsals.

A big issue in my life is work, which has become stressful. We had had five librarians working on reference questions. One has been out on maternity from Thanksgiving, returning at the end of February. But another left to take another job at the end of January, and I will miss seeing her every day. Worse, there is no promise the position will be filled.

So for most of February, we’ve had three librarians, except on those days when one of us was out – at least twice because of the weather – and we had but two. Yet the workload did not ebb.

Surely, it’s THREE funerals in seven weeks that have worn on me. They were actually all very nice events in their own ways. I spoke at two of them.

I think that sense of loss has made the deaths of public figures, such as Bob Simon and Lesley Gore – my, I LOVED You Don’t Own Me – somehow more poignant.

Basically, it’s that I’m damn tired. The Tuesday before my cousin Robert’s funeral, a cousin called, waking me at 10:30 p.m. telling the funeral as on THAT Friday. I went back to sleep, but then woke up again at 1 a.m., trying to problem-solve how to get there by looking at Amtrak and Greyhound schedules. I never DID go back to sleep.

When I got home Wednesday evening, I was SO exhausted that I changed into my pajamas at 7 p.m. A half-hour later, the doorbell rang. One of my church buddies was there to pick me up to take me to a meeting, something I had asked him to do only two days earlier. I ran upstairs to get dressed and went out.

Friday the 13th, my lovely bride got up at 4 a.m. and drove me to the train station a half-hour later. Took the Amtrak to New York City, the subway to Queens, and then a bus to the funeral parlor. At the end of the day, got a train to Penn Station, then the Amtrak back to Albany (or rather Rensselaer, on the other side of the river), and waited for the CDTA bus; got home at 11:15 p.m.

It’s all made me rather impatient. After an Islamic center in Houston, TX was torched, some Facebook friend of mine, someone I knew in childhood, wrote: “May HaShem forgive me, but I don’t think it could happen to a more deserving group of individuals…Terrorists, whatever you choose to call them, but human they are NOT…!!!”

Someone unknown to me replied to her, “Such comments are disgusting and a real Chillul Hashem“. I just unfriended her, only the second time I’ve done that. Can’t be bothered with the debate.

Some of this will likely get better. The weather will break, a coworker will return, the play will be over. Now if I can be sure there won’t be any more funerals to attend anytime soon, I’d be a whole lot better.
***
“What Makes Us Happy?” (The Atlantic, June 2009).

Smokey Robinson is 75

Interesting that two of my top three Smokey Robinson songs have the word “tears” in the title.

Usually, when a musical artist reached the age of 70, I would indicate my favorite songs that they recorded. For some reason, though, five years ago, I listed some of my favorite songs WRITTEN by Smokey Robinson. And his legendary songwriting, and producing, are worthy of note, and absolutely VITAL to the success of Motown Records.

A bit of Motown trivia: I Heard It Through the Grapevine, written by Norman Whitfield and Barrett Strong, was first recorded by Smokey Robinson & the Miracles [LISTEN], but Berry Gordy rejected it, and Marvin Gaye’s version as well. He allowed Gladys Knight and the Pips to release it, and they had a #2 hit. Then, the other versions were released, with Marvin having a massive hit.

I haven’t heard it yet, but the artist released a new album, “Smokey & Friends” on August 19, 2014, on Verve Records, a duets collection “with Contemporary and Classic Artists such as Elton John, James Taylor, Mary J. Blige, Aloe Blacc, Jessie J, Miguel, CeeLo, Ledisi and more. It was his highest-charting album in 33 years.

The “problem” with putting together this list is that I’ve far too often heard many of the songs by another artist first, before Smokey and the Miracles, and that tends to be my association. For instance, I’ll Try Something New (# 11 on the rhythm and blues/soul chart – listed as RB, #39 on the pop charts in 1962) I associate as a song by the Supremes and the Temptations on their Join album. So I’m ranking these by my favorites, as performed by Smokey, usually with the Miracles. LISTEN to all.

15. Who’s Lovin’ You (B-side of Shop Around) – I associate this more with a preternaturally old preteen Michael Jackson singing this on the Jackson 5’s first album.

14. What’s So Good About Good-by (16rb, 35 in 1962). That’s the spelling of “goodbye” in the Billboard books.

13. Baby Baby Don’t Cry (3rb, 8 in 1969)

12. Being with You (1rb for 5 weeks, 2 in 1981). Solo Smokey.

11. Got A Job (1958) a pre-Motown song recorded by Berry Gordy, an answer song to Get A Job by the Silhouettes.

10. The Love I Saw in You Was Just a Mirage (10rb, 20 in 1967)

9. You’ve Really Got A Hold On Me (1rb, 8 in 1963). I associate this with the Beatles, specifically the Beatles’ 2nd Album on Capitol, or With the Beatles in the civilised world.

8. Special Occasion (4rb, 26 in 1968)

7. Mickey’s Monkey (3rb, 8 in 1963). Possibly my favorite hook, “Lum de lum de la ey” (or however you spell it) from Holland-Dozier-Holland.

6. Shop Around (1 rb for 8 weeks, 2 in 1961). This song always sounded like it was from the 1950s. It was the first big Motown hit.

5. Ooo Baby Baby (4rb, 16 in 1965)

4. Goin’ To A Go-Go (2rb, 11 in 1966)

3. The Tracks of My Tears (2rb, 16 in 1965). Interesting that two of my top three have the word “tears” in the title.

2. I Second That Emotion (1rb, 4 in 1968). As is true with many great pop lyrics, this came from a mistake, with Smokey and a friend at a department store. One person said something and the other meant to say, “I second the motion,” but misspoke. This song Smokey covered with the Manhattan Transfer on the Tonin’ album features other artists doing their own songs (Let’s Hang On with Frankie Valli of the 4 Seasons, Groovin’ with Felix Cavaliere of the Rascals, et al.)

1. Tears of a Clown (1rb for 3 weeks, 1 for 2 weeks). From Wikipedia:

Stevie Wonder and his producer Hank Cosby wrote the music for the song, and Cosby produced the instrumental track recording. Wonder brought the instrumental track to the 1966 Motown Christmas party because he could not come up with a lyric to fit the instrumental. Wonder wanted to see what Robinson could come up with for the track. Robinson, who remarked that the song’s distinctive calliope motif “sounded like a circus,” provided lyrics that reflected his vision. In the song, his character, sad because he does not have a woman who loves him, compares himself to the characters in the opera Pagliacci, comedians/clowns who hide their hurt and anger behind empty smiles.

I’m also rather fond of the English Beat cover [LISTEN].

Commenting on this blog

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News guys: Brian Williams, Jon Stewart, Bob Simon

Brian Williams on the moon with Neil Armstrong.

It was a Wednesday night. I was at our Dad’s group at church, and the pastor was reading this excerpt of the book Jesus for President, about, in retrospect, the obvious buildup to the Iraq war, featuring folks such as Paul Wolfowitz and Jeb Bush.

It reminded me of something CBS News correspondent Bob Simon had said in January 2003 on the Sunday Morning program. The exact words I don’t recall, but it was, in effect: The United States and its allies are now occupying Saddam Hussein’s Iraq, allowing the inspectors to look for those “weapons of mass destruction” we were supposedly so sure existed.

There was no reason to go to war; the status quo is the way we should pursue things. Of course, the US ignored his counsel, and we’re still dealing with the effects to this day (e.g., ISIL).

Bob Simon knew something of the region. “At the beginning of the Persian Gulf war in January 1991, he was captured with colleagues by Iraqi forces. The team spent 40 days in a prison of Iraqi despot Saddam Hussein. He was interrogated, beaten with canes and truncheons, and starved by his Iraqi captors. He would later recount his story in the book Forty Days.”

I got home that evening and discovered that Bob Simon was dead from a car crash. He was described as a “reporter’s reporter”, winner of 27 Emmys and four Peabody Awards, covering a wide range of topics from Vietnam to making instruments out of rubbish to how elephants communicate.

This news upset me far more than I would have anticipated.

Maybe Bob Simon was the kind of old school journalist/war reporter that Brian Williams, the suspended NBC News anchor, had hoped to be. Watch how his accounts of his time in Iraq had changed since 2003, which is a recurring pattern for him.

As bad as his six-month suspension, and loss of $5 million in salary, must be, what is worse is the public humiliation. He’s a Twitter hashtag, #BrianWilliamsMisremembers. Brian Williams on the moon with Neil Armstrong. Someone took the iconic picture of John Kennedy, Jr. saluting his father’s casket, and superimposed Brian Williams’ head, which, I admit, made me LOL.

The defense of Brian Williams seems to take two forms. One is that other news networks lie all the time. A quote attributed to Chris Rock read: “Fox News lies unapologetically for 20 straight years = #1 cable news network. Brian Williams embellishes one story = worldwide controversy.”

The other is that Cheney/Bush et al. lied about the reasons for going into the Iraq war, and Williams is the only one punished?

Frankly, I’m convinced that possible apology tour will not work, that his predilection for fibbing, which former anchor Tom Brokaw told him about, will do him in, even though he may well have begun to believe his own narrative, putting himself in the story, rather than a deliberate lie.

In the same news cycle, Jon Stewart announced he’d be leaving The Daily Show, Comedy Central’s faux news broadcast, which many critics think is far more substantial than the “regular” news.

As many are, I was saddened by the news; as a friend of mine said, Stewart had a way of expressing his own thoughts, but in a more coherent way. Here are some of his best bits.

Lots of speculation about who will replace Stewart. Some suggest Jon Oliver, former Daily Show contributor, who’s got a gig on HBO. Tina Fey or Amy Poehler both hosted the Weekend Update segment on Saturday night Live, are other names being bandied about.

Why not Brian Williams on The Daily Show? After all, he had wanted to be the Tonight Show host. Comedy Central might be a step down, but if Williams did some of the real news Stewart did, it just might raise Williams’ credibility to Jon Stewart level, which is quite high. Whereas he’ll be tainted for NBC, CBS, and ABC for a long time.
***
I’ve only recently read the columns of David Carr, “who wrote about media as it intersects with business, culture, and government in his Media Equation column for The New York Times.” He died at his office last week. He was only 58.