Tag: Les Green

The writing exercise, in which Dad’s paintings appear

Those particular creations represent a certain impermanence, not unlike life itself in general, and my father’s life, which ended August 10, 2000, in particular.

painting
Back in May, I participated in this ninety-minute writing class from a woman named Diane Cameron. Among many other things, she’s a freelance writer who appears in the local newspaper regularly.

The directive was to think of three doors that were important in your life. Then you write about one of them for four minutes. And by “writing,” this means not taking the pen off the paper, not editing, just letting the words take us where they would.

The first door was the outside door at 5 Gaines Street, Binghamton, NY, the house in which I lived for the first 18 years of my life. We lived in a two-family dwelling, so this was the door to the hallway. It was very thick, as I recall, painted white, with green trim.

Inside the first-floor dwelling was the living room, very tiny by today’s standards. The remarkable thing, though, was the fact that my father painted on the walls. I don’t mean he hung his paintings on the wall, but that he painted art directly ONTO the walls.

The picture above was located between two of the windows in the front of the house. I think it was a re-creation of some painting he had admired, though I couldn’t tell you what. It seems that the colors were muted oranges, and tans, and maybe greens.

On the opposite wall was a sharp contrast: a mountain scene, all blue and black and gray and white. Very forceful and bright, where other painting was subtle and subdued. (The woman was dad’s mother, Agatha, who lived upstairs with her husband, and would die less than two years after this photo was taken.)

The feeling I got from the writing exercise was of some significant sadness. Those pictures are long gone, like the solar system he painted on my ceiling, or the Felix the Cat he created for my sisters’ bedroom. Other paintings and drawings and writings he created live on. So those particular creations represent a certain impermanence, not unlike life itself in general, and his life, which ended August 10, 2000, in particular.

I had thought of those paintings many times before. But only after this writing exercise did they resonate so greatly. Thanks, Diane, I think.
grandma green_Mt pic

Father’s Day: faith

I’m not trying to raise a Mini-Me, but a thinking, separate person. And, increasingly, she is.

Lydia and Roger, 2010

One of the things I worried about when Lydia was born was whether I would be there when she grew up. After all, I was 51 when she was born, so I’ll be 70 when she’s 19.

What I had not seriously considered, beyond the normal concerns, is what if something happened to her. Her still mysterious illness in late February and much of March made me concerned because, as the doctors eliminated what it was NOT, I still did not know what it WAS.

It wasn’t until mid-May, though, that The Wife and I had a conversation with her about what she felt, I mean beyond the pain. She said that she figured that she’d eventually be OK because God had more plans for her.

This is interesting to me on a few levels. Certainly, we are raising her in the Christian tradition, but this specific narrative did not come from her mother or from me. I have been much more focused on the collective tradition of a Jesus for justice, and less on a God of healing, for while I have seen physical recoveries, I’ve also seen prayers answered in a way that was not what the people wanted.

Lydia and Roger, Niagara Falls, NY, 2011

This gets into the broader issues of parenting, teaching her stuff without saying, “Think as I think.” I work hard trying not to poison her with my… misgivings about United States’ oligarchies and residual racism and gun culture while letting her know, when appropriate, that it’s out there. I’m not trying to raise a Mini-Me, but a thinking, separate person. And, increasingly, she is.

She loves the overt signs of patriotism, flag-waving, and the like, while I’m less comfortable with it. But I can help her with the lyrics of The Star-Spangled Banner without sharing with her that fourth verse, which I know by heart and which REALLY makes me irritated.

I guess I’m doing OK as a dad.

Oh, and a variation on the usual: I wish my daughter had gotten a chance to know MY father. I have the sense that, had he been well enough, he would have visited often, as he had his other granddaughters.

That damn song about ancestors

My parents are gone and have joined my ancestors, and there is no one else in an earlier generation in my lineage.

Les.Trudy
Right after I got back to Albany, after my mother’s funeral in February 2011 in Charlotte, NC, I attended the church service of my current congregation. It was Black History Month, and I had helped organize the events but did not participate much in them. I’m standing in the congregation, rather than singing in the choir when we got to do Lift Every Voice and Sing.

I’m singing it, as I’ve done dozens of times in the past. We get to the lyrics:
Out from the gloomy past,
Till now we stand at last

And I start sobbing uncontrollably. Don’t know if anyone, except The Wife, noticed, but I was unable to sing anymore.

I’m reminded of this because it’s always the last song we perform at my church in Black History Month, and I am still unable to get through the song without crying at some point, and that had not been an issue before 2011. I think it’s that “adult orphan” thing, that my parents are gone and have joined my ancestors, that there is no one else in an earlier generation in my lineage – my parents were both only children – and somehow I’ve become the eldest member of my tiny little tribe on earth, the children and grandchildren of Les and Trudy Green, who were married March 12, 1950, in Binghamton, NY.

LISTEN to Lift Every Voice and Sing.

L is for Les, Leslie and Roger, the Green Family Singers

“We all have a knack for singing, and we do relatively little rehearsing… We’ve even sung songs spontaneously and they come out as if they’ve been practiced.”

My sister MARCIA found this and put it on Facebook:

It’s a promo sheet my father created for himself as a “singer of folk songs,” never as a “folk singer,” which was too limiting a term for him.

I’m particularly interested in the setlist, I’m guessing from the late 1950s. Some of the songs he was still singing a decade later, when my father, sister Leslie, and I sang together, while there are others (Twenty Souls) I don’t even recognize. I’m always fascinated to hear other people sing the songs he, or we, performed, such as Cindy (Johnny Cash and Joe Strummer), Sinnerman (some early incarnation of Three Dog Night), and Hole in the Bucket, which Leslie and I stole from Dad (Harry Belafonte).

I must say we were pretty darned good, but Dad had a natural excellence, not just in singing, but in introducing the songs, that was very appealing to audiences. From an interview from February 23, 1970, Binghamton Press: “I’ll never sing a folk song publicly without explaining the reason behind the song, whether it relates to history or folklore. And I also have to explain my feelings to an audience… [so that they can] understand the emotions behind a song.”

Leslie Green, Roger Green, Les Green

If memory serves – it often doesn’t – I started singing one or two songs with Dad on stage, definitely including the Car Song (“Daddy, won’t you take me for a ride in the car?”)

During the summer of 1966 or, more likely, 1967, the family, Dad noted, was “camping at one of the local sites. In the evening, we were sitting around the campfire and I brought out my guitar and Leslie hers. We started strumming and singing and harmonizing. Before we knew it, other families who were camping nearby wandered over. And before we knew it, everyone was joining in. The owners of the camping site booked us for the next summer.”

The story noted that Leslie and I had brought in some of the recent folk-rock songs into the repertoire. It also said that, during the interview, while Dad strummed his guitar, I pulled out a comb and a piece of paper and “began playing a blues melody,” with Leslie playing bongos.

As Dad explained: “We all have a knack for singing, and we do relatively little rehearsing… We’ve even sung songs spontaneously and they come out as if they’ve been practiced. And every time we do a song, we do it differently.”


ABC Wednesday – Round 13

Random Memory of My Father: Savannah, GA

I’m sure it didn’t hurt my father’s perception that we hung out with three of my female colleagues.

For my job, I used to go to the national conference of our association every year (far less so this century.) In the fall of 1998, the event was in Savannah, Georgia, this Atlantic coastal city that had a certain old-world charm. Among other things, it was a walkable locale with a sense of its history.

My father, who was living in Charlotte, NC at the time, decided to drive down and visit me. It was about 260 miles and 4.5 hours away, but when he suggested it, I was all for it. I had come down on a Saturday, and while there was a mixer on Sunday, the conference did not start in earnest until Monday; it was just cheaper at that time to fly down a day earlier, even considering the hotel costs.

Well, my father LOVED this place. He had never been there before but talked about wanting to relocate to the city. I’ll admit that I too was taken by the locale, whereas I found Atlanta, which I had visited three years earlier, sprawling and oppressive. I’m sure it didn’t hurt my father’s perception that we hung out with three of my female colleagues, one from my immediate office, plus Donna from Long Island, and Kellie from upstate, with whom he could playfully flirt.

The BIG THING in Savannah at that time was that Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil, the 1994 book by John Berendt, and the 1997 film, directed by Clint Eastwood, were set in the city. I had seen neither, though, oddly, I owned the movie soundtrack.

The five of us went to a bunch of historic houses, ate at a couple nice restaurants – it was probably the first time I had key lime pie – and generally had a great time. Then my dad and I just talked for an hour or more at the end of each of the two days he was there.

He left Monday morning. That period may have been the single best time I ever had with my father; within two years, he was dead. So I treasure that trip, and those people who hung out with him, even though I’ve totally lost track of Kellie.

Two songs about Savannah – Hard-Hearted Hannah – Ella Fitzgerald – for a time, I dubbed one of my friends as Hannah. Don’t know why; she wasn’t hard-hearted at all.
Jug Band Music – Lovin’ Spoonful

My father would have turned 87 tomorrow.

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