Month: April 2006

For the grossly impudent lie always leaves traces behind it, even after it has been nailed down, a fact which is known to all expert liars in this world and to all who conspire together in the art of lying. These people know only too well how to use falsehood for the basest purposes. …”

The time between leaving FantaCo and starting the new job was actually quite rewarding. My friend Nancy Sharlet was dying of cancer, and I got to spend a lot of time with her at the hospital, then when she went home, on the phone, before she died on January 1, 1989.

I started to work at an insurance company in February as a customer service representative. I won’t tell you which one, except that it has a primary color in its name.

The first weeks were OK. It was in a classroom setting, learning about medical prefixes and suffixes, as well as customer service decorum. And, when we finally hit the floor, it wasn’t so bad, at least initially.

Then things started to change. They had what I felt was an adequate software to process dental claims. Yet they changed it to something that I found totally incomprehensible, ordered because somebody’s brother-in-law (or the like) had designed it.

The middle management seemed to like to ride one particular person who was processing claims slower than the rest. I had befriended this woman, and I was not surprised that she left to work in the relative relaxation that was the Postal Service. So they needed someone new to ride, and that was me.

About this time came the great purge. They laid off a few middle managers, but all of the clerks, who were runners for the customer service reps. I was never so disappointed NOT to have been laid off in my life. They ought to have fired the regional manager, who was making $600,000 a year to make bad decisions such as the dental software and this one:

The company wanted to change over to a new medical billing system at the end of the year. A customer service representative could have told them that they ought to process the 1989 claims on the old system, giving people 30 days to get all of those in, then start processing the new (1990) claims on the new system. Instead, they stopped processing claims on the old system on Christmas Eve. The transition took six weeks, rather than the two we were told it would take. The customers wanted to know, not so much about the status of their 1990 claims, as much as their 1989 claims that would help them work on their taxes.

The first call someone makes on a specific claim is handled by the customer service rep. Subsequent calls were placed on the supervisor call queue. By the end of January, about half the calls were supervisor calls. People just wanted to know if we had RECEIVED their claims, but since there were 40,000 envelopes in the basement waiting for this new batch processing system, I couldn’t tell them. I was supposed to tell the customers NOT to refile, but got into trouble when I just couldn’t do that.

Finally, in the beginning of February, the new system went up. However, no information was transferred from the old system to the incompatible new system regarding whether any of the deductible had been met. New claims were processed, often stating that the charge was applied to the already-met deductible. Thus, a whole new flood of irate calls came pouring in.

During this period, I looked out the window one day and saw an ambulance at the building we were about to move into. Then another one. Then a couple more. Then a bus. It turned out something was wrong with the ventilation system in that building and 13 people were taken to the hospital. Fortunately only a couple people were admitted, and those only overnight, as I recall.

But as soon as we made the move to this new building, I gave notice. And, even though I didn’t have a job to go to, I left on March 1, 1990. March 1 was significant for two reasons:
1) it meant that my health insurance would last until the end of April (had I left a day earlier, it would have lapsed at the end of March), and
2) it meant that I would not be working there on my birthday (March 7)

There were 16 people in my training class. By the time I left, 13 months later, only three were still with the company. Coincidence? Sure.

This is NOT a list of my favorite songs, though I like many of them well enough. It IS a list of songs that, for a variety of reasons, resonate to a particular time, place and/or emotion over the years. – Roger Green, March 7, 2003

45 Men In A Telephone Booth (the Four Tophatters). I had intended to put this song first on the 2003 collection. I found it in a catalog of a Cadence Records collection, ordered it early in January, and waited. And waited. And waited. Finally out the disc together without it. The disc arrived in April 2003. One of my father’s favorite singles.

Sorry , I Ran All the Way Home (the Impalas) – my father had a bunch of 45s of story/songs I listened to as a kid: Middle of the House (Vaughan Monroe), I’m A Yogi, country songs such as Who Drank My Beer When I Was In the Rear (b-side- Nine Have Tried and Nine Have Died) and Bargain Days, Half Off. Only two others had I heard since: Beep Beep (the Playmates) and Bird Dog (Everly Brothers).

Cindy (Johnny Cash with Nick Cave) – my father learned to play guitar in 1959, and this song was in the repertoire. (Not this version, of course, which is from the posthumous Unearthed box set.)

Quintet – my mother took us to West Side Story, the first “grown up” movie I remember seeing. I didn’t know one could have several simultaneous melodies.

Roger Ramjet- Roger Green: easy name, eh? But, people always were putting an E at the end of Green. (And on our very short street, there WAS a Greene family.) My own grandfather spelled my name Rodger. And kids will always have their own nicknames for each other; some of mine were Mr. Green Jeans (from Captain Kangaroo) and later Mr. Rogers (from his Neighborhood.)

Drive My Car (Fab Four)- I was John (the smart one), sister Leslie was Paul (cute AND left-handed!), neighbor MJ was Ringo (she LOVED him), and sister Marcia was George (by default). We charged the neighbor kids two cents each to watch us lip sync to the Beatles VI LP. I read in some teen mag that Drive My Car was John Sebastian’s (Lovin’ Spoonful) fave song on Rubber Soul; EVERYBODY knew it was on Yesterday and Today. Turns out Sebastian was listening to the UK version (the Beatles’ preference). An early lesson in fact checking that serves a librarian well.

Take Me For A Little While (Vanilla Fudge) – carrying groceries for Mom. One afternoon, I was home listening to the album. Mom came home. I retrieved groceries, and found the stereo off. The crescendo made her think the record player was broken. Another time I carried groceries for her after work (at 2 a.m., 7/4/72), I discovered the shoulder I had injured the previous week in a car accident had more or less collapsed; six weeks of PT followed.

Feel Flows (Beach Boys)- freshman year in college, this guy named Richie and I would hang out, listening to the Band and Beatles, and hitchhike to NYC to concerts. I totally lost contact with him after that year.

Gone Away (Roberta Flack)- when romance went sour, I developed a quartet of songs to play: Sweet Bitter Love (QoS), this, My First Night Alone Without You (Jane Olivor), and Stay with Me (Lorraine Ellison). Sometimes added Remove This Doubt (Supremes).

Fantasy (Earth, Wind, and Fire) – Schenectady Arts Council received federal (CETA) money to have an arts enrichment program in the schools. I did the books, but the secretary and I would take off to OD Heck and sing for the patients. The choreographer needed a partner to help teach the elementary kids some dances, and I got sucker…, volunteered to do that.

Spider-Man- my first day of college, I met this weird Piscean named Mark. He was into comic books! I got sucked in, and particularly liked the webslinger. Later spent about a decade selling the four-color product.

It’s Love (the Young Rascals) – I bought the Groovin’ album on vinyl when it came out in 1966. It had the hits A Girl Like You, How Can I Be Sure, You Better Run, and the title tune. It also featured this song featuring jazz flutist Hubert Laws. When I got a stereo in the mid-1980s, instead of the boxy record player I had had for years, I was dismayed that the automatic return prevented me from playing this song to the end; it automatically rejected when it got too close to the center label. Ended up having to buy the CD, largely for this tune.

Naive Melody (Talking Heads) – the ’83 show was one of the best concerts I ever saw. This song is about rediscovery on the way to Cooperstown.

23rd Psalm (Bobby McFerrin) – Eric Strand came to town to be Trinity UMC’s choir director. He stayed in the apt. of my SO at the time and me. Eric & I saw BMcF on the Today show, and I was so taken by the performance that I bought about six copies of the album to give away. Later, Eric transcribed this song, and choir members Bob, Tim & I sang at church. Eric gave me the high part, which I did almost entirely in falsetto. Someone came up to another church member, expressing concern that a “gay guy” was singing in church.

Harvest Moon (Neil Young) – about lost love. Also, about the only Neil song my ex-office mate Mary could stand.

Lullabye (Billy Joel) – the SBDC state meeting in Binghamton had an a capella group perform this song. The melancholy of the song (and the back story) parallels my melancholy about the state of my old hometown.

Church (Lyle Lovett) – when four of us were in tight office quarters, with very distinct likes (and especially dislikes), Lyle passed muster with all of us. Closing act of a great Newport Folk Festival at SPAC.

JEOPARDY! – an NBC daytime game that I used to watch with my Aunt Deana. I was chastised for writing that; “You lied! You included it because you were ON it!” True, I was on it, but no lie, I DID watch it every noon with Deana.

Now That I Found You (Alison Krauss) – THIS is the way a cover version should be done, recognizable yet distinct from the original. One of my wife’s two favorite artists; oddly, both of them have last names beginning with KRA. We saw AK at the Palace in 2002. What I didn’t mention was that Carol and I went out from the fall of 1994 to the spring of 1996, and I spent much of the next couple years trying to woo her back.

At Last (Etta James) – one of five great songs on the Rain Man soundtrack. Oh yeah, Carol & I danced to it at our wedding. If it is cliche, I don’t care.

Baby Mine (Bonnie Raitt) – Well, nothing much has happened since the wedding. Oh, yeah, there IS that small person who’s been hanging around the last couple years.

But I axed this piece as too wordy and too talky:
Woody Guthrie – my father was a Singer of Folk Songs, and became rather well known in the Binghamton area as “The Lonesome and Lonely Traveller”. Eventually, Leslie and I began singing with him. This brace of songs I heard at the Cap Rep theater not long after he died were among his repertoire.

7 things to do before I die:

1. Visit every state in the United States
2. Write a book – a roman a clef about church choirs and congregants
3. Go to a World Series game
4. Go to England and bother Chris Black
5. Meet at least half dozen of the bloggers I read regularly
6. Go to Lydia’s high school graduation
7. Go to Lydia’s college graduation

7 things I cannot do:

1. Drive well
2. Keep my desk orderly for more than a day
3. Play a musical instrument, except a kazoo
4. Draw a straight line without a straight edge
5. Sleep 8 hours a night, unless I’m ill
6. Patiently stand in line, unless I have something to read
7. Zip up Lydia’s pink coat – that zipper has it in for me

7 things that I like about my county

1. The beautiful views from Thatcher Park
2. The quaintness of Rensselaerville
3. The vitality of Lark Street in Albany
4. The information at the New York State Museum
5. The non-mall character of Stuyvesant Plaza, especially the independent book store, The Book House
6. The kitsch of the Tulip Festival
7. The peculiarity of Albany politics

7 things I often say:

1. “That’s doable” Then I heard that Alexander Haig used to say it, and I stopped.
2. “Oy “
3. “I’m walking here!” Think Midnight Cowboy.
4. “I like THAT.”
5. “What’s your case number?” Work related.
6. “Where’s your nose, Lydia?” (or other body part)
7. “I’m going to go to bed early tonight.” (But I almost never do.)

7 books that I love re-reading:

1. The Good Book – Peter J. Gomes
2. Living in the Spirit- Henri J.M. Nouwen
3. The Gospel according to St. Luke- NRSV version of the Bible
The rest are books I reference a lot:
4. Top Pop Singles-Joel Whitburn
5. Top Pop Albums-Joel Whitburn
6. The Complete Directory to Prime Time Network and Cable TV Shows- Brooks and Marsh
7. The World Almanac

7 movies I watch over and over again (well, more than once):

1. Airplane!
2. Annie Hall
3. Dave
4. Groundhog Day
5. Midnight Cowboy
6. Le Roi de Coeur
7. The Shawshank Redemption

7 people to tag. (Oh, I’m not going to tag seven people:)

Still, I like Easter. The tulips we planted a couple of autumns ago are starting to come up. The bicycle is on the road. Easter is hope. If you’re not of the Christian tradition, there’s that link to spring:

East and Easter are related in that they have a common Indo-European root: aus- ‘to shine’. From this we get east ‘the direction of the sunrise’. Our word Easter comes from Old English eastre (there’s a macron over the first e), which, according to the Venerable Bede, derived from Eostre, the Teutonic goddess of the dawn. The Indo-European word *ausos- meant ‘dawn’ or ‘a goddess of the dawn’, and the names of the Greek and Roman dawn goddesses Eos and Aurora come from the same root.

But what does an Anglo-Saxon dawn goddess have to do with Easter? Eostre’s festival was celebrated at the vernal equinox, and the commemoration of Christ’s resurrection had to be a spring feast because of the connection with the Jewish Passover. The early Christian missionaries to Britain seem to have been practical folk and found it easier to attach the most important feast of the new religion to an already-existing spring festival. The rabbits and the eggs are, of course, also vestiges of the pagan celebration of spring and fertility. And the sunrise service on Easter morning? At pre-Christian spring festivals, there was dancing to greet the sunrise, and there is an old belief that the sun rising on Easter morning dances in the heavens. The custom of lighting the “new fire” at the Easter Even service also has its origin in pre-Christian Celtic customs.

In many European languages (the exception is German Oster), the name for Easter comes from Pesah, the Hebrew word for ‘Passover’: Greek pascha, Latin pascha, French Pâques, Italian Pasqua, and Dutch Pasen. From the Old English period until the 17th century, both Easter and Pasch (pronounced “pask”) were used interchangeably to mean ‘Passover’ and ‘Easter’. In the Peterborough Chronicle of 1122 we find: “On this geare waes se king Heanri on Christes maessen on Norhtwic, and on Paxhes he waes on Norhthamtune” (This year King Henry was in Norwich for Christmas and in Northampton for Easter). A 1563 homilist spoke of “Easter, a great, and solemne feast among the Jewes.” Easter eventually won out for the name of the Christian holiday, though “Paschal” (“PAS kul”) is still an adjective meaning ‘Easter’, as in “Paschal candle.” In Scotland and the North of England, children hunt for “Pasch eggs.”

In case you’re wondering about Easter’s status as a “movable feast” (meaning that its date is based on a lunar cycle), the Council of Nicaea in 325 decided that the festival would be celebrated on the first Sunday after the first full moon after the spring equinox. That didn’t settle the question by any means. The Roman and Celtic Churches argued for another 300 years before agreeing on a date. In the Eastern Orthodox Church, the date is also determined by the full moon, but Easter must come after Passover, which is why it usually falls on a different date than in the Western Church.

Easter is observed on a Sunday between March 22 and April 25. The commonly stated rule, that Easter Day is the first Sunday after the full moon that occurs next after the vernal equinox, is somewhat misleading because it is not a precise statement of the actual ecclesiastical rules.

The actual conditions to determine the date for Easter are:

Easter must be on a Sunday;
this Sunday must follow the 14th day of the paschal moon;
the paschal moon is that of which the 14th day (full moon) falls on or next follows the day of the vernal equinox; and
the equinox is fixed in the calendar as March 21.

In the Western World, Easter is celebrated on the first Sunday after the first full moon after the first day of spring—unless the date falls on the first day of the Jewish Passover festival. In which case, Easter is moved to the next Sunday.

Got that?
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Oestara Greetings! from friend Mark: