Month: May 2009

P is for Photography

And now for something completely indulgent. Hey, it’s a blog; by definition it’s indulgent.

One of my sister sent my five -year-old daughter two one-use cameras, and I had no idea what she was photographing. The only instruction I gave her was to use the flash when she was inside. This is what she came up with, and I didn’t alter them in any way:


These first three items I believe are gifts she received for her birthday.


The ballerina costume – on the floor?


Most of her plushes have very unimaginative names. This is Unoicorn; I blame the TV shows Little Bear and Franklin, where most of the characters have likewise boring nomenclatures.


No Imelda Marcos here.


Not only did she take the picture, she laid out the blanket and arranged the subjects.


Difficult to tell here, but the piece on the right is a piece of her artwork; the item on the left is 1000 years of British monarchies.


Do all only children refer to their stuffed creatures as their sisters?


Chomper


I’m assuming this is the ABC-TV program Dancing with the Stars. I don’t watch it; the child watches it with the wife.


Deerie. (Not to be confused with the late Blossom Dearie.)


There are a whole bunch of self-portraits. Lot of them are just strange mixes of colors. She also took some headless photos of her mother, and one of my back.


I took this one: the photographer.
***
Ringo Starr – Photograph, written by George Harrison and Ringo Starr.



ROG

ROG

Cinco de Mayo

A couple months back, Mr. Frog wrote: “St. Patrick’s Day used to be stupid and irritating to me. Then, 8 years ago, I moved to a college town. Now it’s a damn embarrassment to humankind.”

While I understand his sentiment, at least some people have a vague notion of this guy who drove out the rats, or something like that. Besides which, I’m Green 365, so it probably bothers me less.

Whereas Cinco de Mayo – recently, I saw a reference to a four-day weekend! – is an excuse to drink tequila and Kahlua, and Allah knows what else; the former seems also to be the holiday anthem.

And for what? Because most people, in an informal poll I did, think it must be Mexican Independence Day.

Nope. But it was a significant day in both Mexican and U.S. history.

Should I succumb and mix me a white Russian this evening and listen to some music?
or here.


ROG

ROG

Student Demonstration Time

When I first started this blog four yeas ago, someone asked me, some point after May 4, 2005, to write about Kent State. I’d written a paragraph about it, but I didn’t have more to say. But now I do, and it’s all about that maligned (by me, and others) Beach Boys song, Student Demonstration Time.

For it reminds me that ten days after that headline-grabbing Kent State, there was Jackson State, though it appears earlier in the Mike Love narrative.

The violence spread down South to where Jackson State brothers
Learned not to say nasty things about Southern policemen’s mothers
Nothing much was said about it and really next to nothing done
The pen is mightier than the sword, but no match for a gun.

I always hated the glib tone of the second line, but now that I think on it, the third line was profound in its accuracy. How many of you who remember Kent State also remember Jackson State? I’m guessing not many, but it’s not your fault.

America was stunned on May 4, 1970
When rally turned to riot up at Kent State University
They said the students scared the Guard
Though the troops were battle dressed
Four martyrs earned a new degree
The Bachelor of Bullets
I know we’re all fed up with useless wars and racial strife
But next time there’s a riot, well, you best stay out of sight

Well there’s a riot going on
There’s a riot going on
Well there’s a riot going on
Student demonstration time

I was in high school at the time, but both Kent State and Jackson State had a profound effect on me. Fear, yes, but also a sense of resolve to keep up the struggle against “useless wars and racial strife”. Yet this song, coming out a year after the events chronicled, totally undercuts it. Meh.

Student Demonstration Time

BTW, I found on the Internets lyrics to the song, but one source had replaced “The Bachelor of Bullets” with “badge of eternal rest”. Was that just misheard lyrics or something else?

ROG

ROG

Pete Seeger is 90


I’ve seen Pete Seeger sing about 32 times. This is no exaggeration; it may be an undercount. He would appear at various antiwar and anti-nuke campaigns in the mid-Hudson Valley of New York State. One of the first times I saw him was at a George McGovern rally in New Paltz, my college town, in 1972. Once, I went on the Clearwater, where he performed.

When a number of people protested the Springboks, the South African rugby team, playing in Albany, Pete was there singing in the rain. The one time I actually saw Pete in concert was April 4, 1982 at Page Hall in the downtown SUNY Albany campus.

But his impact on my life long preceded seeing him perform. My father owned his “We Shall Overcome” album; it was as pivotal in my appreciation of music as any Beatles or other pop album; my review of the expanded CD release is here My father was a singer of folk songs, performing regionally in the Binghamton, NY area, and he often sang songs that Pete, or friends of his such as Woody Guthrie, had popularized. And I saw him perform “Waist Deep in the Big Muddy” on the Smothers Brothers show in 1968, which helped crystallize my opposition to the Vietnam war.

I think Pete’s taken some unfair criticism. About Dylan going electric, Pete is quoted as saying, “There are reports of me being anti-him going electric at the ’65 Newport Folk festival, but that’s wrong. I was the MC that night. He was singing ‘Maggie’s Farm’ and you couldn’t understand a word because the mic was distorting his voice. I ran to the mixing desk and said, ‘Fix the sound, it’s terrible!’ The guy said ‘No, that’s how they want it.’ And I did say that if I had an axe I’d cut the cable! But I wanted to hear the words. I didn’t mind him going electric.”

And the late Phil Ochs castigated him, unfairly, in this couplet from Love Me, I’m a Liberal:
“I go to all the Pete Seeger concerts
He sure gets me singing those songs.”

I’m happy that Bruce Springsteen has spread the gospel of Seeger in a couple of his recent albums. In fact, the first time I heard Springsteen do Seeger was on the Where Have All The Flowers Gone compilation which came out in 1998 and I bouught 3 or 4 years later; recommended.

Some have suggested that Pete Seeger deserves the Nobel Peace Prize and I wouldn’t argue with them. I was thrilled to watch him at the pre-inaugural bash in DC.

A couple recent Pete Seeger collections I’ve seen, but have not yet purchased: American Favorite Ballads Volumes 1-5 [Box] [4/21/09] and Rainbow Race/ Now/ Young Vs. Old [4/21/09].

Happy birthday, Pete.

ROG

ROG

Blogiversary Numero Quatro

When I say that I have posted every day for four years, and I say, “I don’t believe it,” I’m not being rhetorical. Given the whimsical way I started this blog, AND my notorious lack of discipline, I figured it’d last a month or two, maybe until the JEOPARDY! saga was finished, or after I made some observations about the daughter until she hit those early milestones.

Yet here I am. I’ve really tried NOT to write more than once a day. I don’t have time. How did I do THIS year?
2008: May, September, November, December; 2009: January, February reached goal
2008: June, October; 2009: March one extra post
2008: July, August; 2009: April three extra posts
So that’s 374 posts in the past year, not to mention my other blogs here and here and here and my work blog here.

One of the things about blogging, of course, is that one doesn’t do it in isolation. I don’t think some people realizes that blogging is more than the writing. Near-twin Gordon talks about the 70/30 rule – I don’t know if it’s original with him, but it doesn’t matter – which is that 70% of the time you blog, but the other 30% of the time you spend reading and commenting on other blogs.

This has gotten more tricky this year by two factors:
1) my wife’s internship, which has made use of our single computer more difficult. Perfect example happened yesterday, when I got up at 4:35 a.m. to work on this post, but my wife ALSO got up at the same time to do school work until 5:55; given the fact that I have to wake the child at 6:30 and leave at 7…
2) my embrace of Twitter and, to a lesser extent, Facebook. I was reading the March 2009 Ladies Home Journal this week – it was left in the lunchroom – and someone wrote that Facebook is “a big time suck.”

That “other” time is important; it keeps me informed, even if it’s about weird stuff. But also one starts to actually care about those other people. When Tom the Dog tweets: “Today was a good day. Tomorrow will be better. I feel like I’ve turned a corner. About time.” a few days ago, I hope that means he’ll start blogging again. When Scott gets laid off from his job, I feel the need to commiserate. Yet I’ve met neither of them.

The great thing about this busyness is that I stopped worrying about the number of hits I get on a given day, or my Technorati score, or any of that. I AM happy that this blog is still in the top three or four when one Googles Roger Green.

This coming year, I’ve decided that I need to do a few specific things:
I’m going to continue to do ABC Wednesday because it forces me to stretch.
I need to do my long-promised list of Beatles songs in order of what I’d want on to hear on a desert island; some of the biggies will not fare well.
I need to continue my year-by-year analysis of Oscar-worthy movies so I can finally make my list of my favorite movies (though one on my list is certainly NOT Oscar-worthy).
And of course, my once-a-month Lydia piece.

I MAY miss a day or two. It’s much more likely given the fact that I’ll be away for a couple weeks this summer without computer access. Or maybe I’ll just post YouTube videos like Eddie does when he’s stressed. I will likely, in the words of Alan David Doane, reposition some stuff for sure.

Thank you all for coming by. Comments are always welcome.
ROG

ROG
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