Tag: Leslie Green

Leslie went on the 2025 Dave Coz cruise

cousins

Leslie and Rebecca with the cruise director

My sister Leslie went on the 2025 Dave Coz cruise. Someone described it as a “24/7 daytime adventure from Amsterdam to Norway and finally Iceland. The sun never sets this time of year. Wow, what an excursion.” 

The website says, “Our guests are fully immersed with the energy and sounds of an array of all-star talent, guided tours, relaxation, and fine dining. ‘Seeing the world together through music’; that’s what the Dave Koz and Friends at Sea cruise is all about!” The 2026 tour of Brazil, Uruguay, and Argentina is already sold out, and a waitlist exists. 

Leslie has been on a few of these Koz tours, generally as the guest of Rebecca Jade, a ship performer and, not coincidentally, Leslie’s daughter. Based on her comments and those reposted by others, Leslie was particularly taken by Iceland. 

In 2018, Leslie dueted with Larry Graham of Sly and the Family Stone. She’s participated in some music competitions onboard and has done well, which is not a surprise, as she’s been singing virtually all her life. 

In anticipation of her birthday, I played a CD called Harbor City Heights Worship 2009 on which she appears. It’s not a fair representation of the range of her skills, and they misspell her first name as Lesley(!), but I can hear her vocals, usually in the harmonies. Anyway, I found it on YouTube. 

I have other recordings of hers, mostly her solos during her church’s Advent/Christmas Eve services. Alas, I’ve never come across any Green Family Singers recordings.   

Genealogy

In the past year, Leslie has spoken to two of our cousins, one each on our mother’s and father’s side, trying to fill the holes in the family tree. As I’ve noted, our lineage has peculiar mysteries, going back not that far.

Anyway,  happy birthday, Leslie! If you ever retire, you must transcribe all that family data!

Sing we all with one accord

A king is born, glad angels say

Roger singing
Roger singing, Trinity AME Zion Church, age 6

There’s a song from my childhood – my sister Leslie remembers it too – that I can’t seem to find on YouTube.

I think these are the words:

Now sing we all with one accord

on Christmas Day in the morning

The tidings of our glorious Lord

on Christmas Day in the morning

something something glad tidings bring

oh sing Noel in the morning

A king is born, glad angels say

oh sing Noel in the morning

Sing we all Noel.

The tune: Low means below middle C, the 2 or 3 is the number of beats. The lowercase b is a flat sign. 

low G   C2   G   F2    G   Eb2  D    C2

low Bb  low G2    C     C   D   lowBb   C3 C3

Leslie reminds me that it was done as a round.

No, it’s NOT this: Now We’ll Sing with One Accord

Or this: Now Let Us All with One Accord

Or this: Sing We Now Of Christmas

And definitely not this: I Saw Three Ships

I don’t specifically remember when we sang this. It was probably in high school, although it could have been in junior high. I’m hoping that one of my former Binghamtonian choristers can shed light on this question because it’s driving me freaking nuts. And I don’t mean chestnuts roasting on an open fire.

Meanwhile

I came across a few other tracks:

Gaudete – Steeleye Span. Last year I bought a box set of Steeleye Span 

Let All Mortal Flesh Keep Silence – PICARDY

E’en So, Lord Jesus, Quickly Come. My choir sings this Paul Manz piece almost every Advent. Unfortunately, I missed that particular Sunday, having seen Rebecca Jade with Dave Koz in New Haven the night before.    

Dad’s cousin Ruth

tracking Walkers

Here’s my dad’s cousin Ruth (R) with two of her children. My sister Leslie and  I saw her in October 2022 at the church we all grew up in, Trinity AME Zion in Binghamton, NY. She pointed out a room that used to be a Sunday school classroom where my paternal grandmother Agatha Green used to teach Sunday school to me and a bunch of other kids. It is now a room of noted members of the Trinity family, and she asked us for large photos of our parents for the wall, which we still need to get for her.

The most recent time I saw her was in August 2024, in Horseheads, NY, at the Elmira Jazz Festival. She and her two daughters went to see my niece  Leslie’s daughter Rebecca Jade in concert.

She told the story, which I had heard before, about how, after I was born, my father was at her house. He was furiously scribbling on a piece of paper, but she had no idea what the heck he was doing. He was trying to figure out my name, and he wanted to get it to spell out something with my initials and name. Hence, ROG = Roger Owen Green. So she witnessed my naming.

Walker clan

Les Green.tree sweaterIn July 2024,  sister Leslie was in Binghamton for her high school reunion. She went to see Cousin Ruth. Ruth gave her a whole bunch of information about the genealogy of the Walker clan. Ruth’s father was Earl; Earl was my paternal grandmother’s brother, so Ruth was my father’s first cousin. She was over a dozen years younger than him, so she didn’t know all the early stories about my father, but she knew him like a big brother.

She has kept track of the Walker genealogy, knowing all of Earl and Agatha’s siblings’ birth/death dates and those of some of their descendants. This will be very useful once I get a chance to work on it. She is my oldest living relative, so I’ve known her even longer than I’ve known Leslie.

I want to thank Ruth for the opportunity to delve into my father’s history. Had he been alive, my father would have been 98 tomorrow. He died in 2000, yet he remains a mystery in various strange and subtle ways.

Sister Leslie loves music

Happy birthday, Leslie!

No doubt: sister Leslie loves music.

I’ve known Leslie longer than almost anyone. Perhaps I met a cousin of my father in the couple of years I was alive before Leslie was born, but I have no specific recollection of that.

I grew up with Leslie. We went to the same elementary school with an ancient music book from which we sang. When I found a facsimile several years ago, I had to send her a copy.

I remember which LPs were hers and which were mine. She had, among others, Lady Soul – Aretha, Look at Us – Sonny and Cher, and Supremes A Go-Go. We, along with our little sister and a neighbor girl, would lipsynch to the songs of my Beatles VI album. Leslie was Paul because he was left-handed, like her, and cute. 

Of course, we attended the same church and sang in two different iterations of the junior choir. One was the MAZET singers, which our father directed.  MAZET is an anagram of the initials of Trinity African Methodist Episcopal Zion. Eventually, we both sang in the senior choir, though she was there longer than I did because I went away to college.

Trio

I’ve mentioned the Green Family Singers, which are comprised of Dad, Leslie, and me, in the past. She learned to play guitar functionally in about a month! Not incidentally, she now owns Dad’s steel-stringed Gibson guitar, but playing it is tough on her fingers.

Leslie and I sang in the Binghamton Central High School choir together for a year and a half. If we could find a soprano and tenor who knew the other parts, we could probably still sing some of that music from memory.

She was in a series of pop bands around Binghamton, the only one I remember being called Crystal Ship. Also, she attended what is now Binghamton University, where she participated in choirs. She was also in a few musicals in the community theater, including A Funny Thing Happened On The Way To The Forum and Hair; she kept her clothes on.

Her primary source of income was when she moved to Puerto Rico in the early 80s. I wish I had come down and seen her.

SoCal

When she moved to southern California,  she sang in church and community choirs. I have a couple of her church choir’s Christmas concerts, and she almost always has a solo. Occasionally, she’s even directed a couple of church choirs.

When she was on a tour ship with her daughter, the singer Rebecca Jade, in 2018, she got to duet with Larry Graham of Sly and the Family Stone. She participated in singing the Mozart Requiem at Carnegie Hall in 2022, which my daughter and I enjoyed seeing.

Leslie recently visited a music store going out of business and learned about a slim guitar from Canada with nylon strings called Godin. On her next visit, it was marked down, though still pricey. With the help of her favorite daughter, she bought it! Moreover, she’s enjoying relearning the tunes she used to play.

Leslie and I can have very arcane conversations about music on a Zoom call with our baby sister. “Do you remember how that chord structure worked?” Marcia’s eyes glaze over. When I wrote recently that I love to sing the bass harmony, even when I’m in the congregation, Leslie sent me a message saying, “Oh yeah, I totally sing alto in the congregation.” We have the same sort of sensibility.

This picture from the San Diego Master Chorale epitomizes her joy of music. So, happy birthday, Leslie. May music always be in your heart; I know that it will.

Reciprocity with sister Leslie

Another set of eyes

As I now think it about,  I developed an unstated reciprocity with sister Leslie in 2023. In recent years, she has had the opportunity to travel, primarily to Europe. She was able to give me some travel advice when we went to France.

Moreover, she sent me some documents, especially from Ireland, which may come in handy if I ever figure out who my great-grandmother Margaret/Marguerite Collins Williams’ parents were.

More recently, she has changed jobs. She still works for the same entity, but in a different department. Now she has interns, which she’s not used to having.

When I was working for the New York Small Business Development Center, we had several interns. Most of them in later years were NOT library students. But they were smart and eager and curious.

I found some long-term wishlist projects, such as adding more current statistics to our website. If I were immodest, I would say that I was rather good at finding them projects that were not just “make work” tasks.

Mystery shopping

However, my sister is too new to her department to have developed such projects. In this case, I recommended that she get her interns to “shop” her department.

The first thing I thought of was that her interns could look over their current website. They should try it on Google Chrome, Microsoft Edge, and Firefox.

Are there any broken links or pages that load slowly?
Are there any misspellings or instructions that are confusing?
Is the site compliant with Americans With Disabilities Act requirements?
Are there color combos that aren’t easy to read – yellow on white, purple on black, or too-fancy fonts that are difficult to read?

One intern has already discovered that the directions for people in the offices ordering an ergonomically-correct chair on their Intranet was unclear. People who are outside of a process can often discover things that those on the “inside” just can’t see.

Sister Leslie is… a year older today.
Ramblin' with Roger
Social media & sharing icons powered by UltimatelySocial