July 2009 - Page 2 of 7 - Ramblin' with Roger

The Lydster, Part 64: A Fly Girl

Lydia flew for the first time in June, as she and I went to Charlotte, NC for my niece Alex’s high school graduation.

Last time I flew to Charlotte, there were reasonably-priced direct flights from Albany to Charlotte and back. But the last time was in November 2007, on Delta, and that was before the Delta-Northwest merger that stifled competition.

So this time, my options were c. $370 for a direct flight or $230 for one that would stop at JFK, Cincinnati or, heaven forbid, Detroit. (That was not a knock on Detroit or its airport, only the idea of traveling that far west before going south.) I’m talking $370 or $230 EACH.

We got to the Albany International Airport – it’s “international” because one can fly into Canada from here – in plenty of time, but I was we were at the wrong gate, and we had to rush through the airport as we heard our names announced on the loudspeaker.

All of these short flights had limited storage, so the small suitcase, which met the carry-on regulations, was nevertheless stowed under the plane; had I realized that, I would have packed differently.

I know that due to circumstances, smaller children ravel by air. But I’ve BEEN on those flights with screaming children on the flight and I didn’t want my child to be one of them. To that end, Lydia, a few days before, got her first pieces of chewing gum ever. She liked it – though she hasn’t asked for more since a couple days since the return trip.

One of the smart things I was able to do was book the same pair of seats for all four legs of the trip. It made MY comfort level much greater. As I suspected, she wanted, and got, the window seat each time.

All the takeoffs and landings were uneventful – that’s a good thing. I was particularly vigilant in making sure that she did not hear the news about the plane that had crashed between Brazil and France before her first flight. Indeed, the followup news about the crash near Buffalo, and our plane was more that size, also got quickly changed if she happened to be in the room; thee’s lots of news she hasn’t seen yet, but she will in due time.

There were no snacks on the ALB-JFK part of the trip. But there were a couple choices from JFK to CLT. One was a pair of cookies and the other was peanuts. When the flight attendant asked if we wanted anything, I asked to see the packaging so I could read the label. I noted that my daughter had a peanut allergy. Horrified, she asked if she should retrieve the half dozen rows of peanuts she had already dispensed. I assured her that Lydia’s allergy is not airborne but tied only to actual consumption.

Lydia was very well behaved throughout, although she was slightly annoyed at one point that I had to put her tray in the upright and locked position until she realized that EVERYONE had to. It wasn’t Daddy’s rule, it was the airline’s and thus less onerous. On a later flight, she heard a signal and she prematurely put up her tray until I advised her otherwise.

Getting to the Charlotte airport…that’s a story for another day, but it’s not Lydia-specific in any case.

I must say that I was a little bit worried about the trip, especially four takeoffs and landings, but that Lydia provided to be a very pleasant traveling companion.

ROG

Vacation QUESTION

One of the websites I visit regularly is Separated by a Common Language, where an American expat in the UK, Lynneguist, talks about British and American English. I’m quite fond of Briticisms generally. But one I’ve never embraced is the notion of “holiday” for vacation. Holiday (or bank holiday in other countries) to me refers to an event such as Labor Day or Christmas. Of course, one of Lynneguest’s readers finds “vacation” strange, “mainly because the word ‘vacate’ is normally only encountered in toilet cubicles and changing rooms.” Whereas for me, the root to vacate means, in the words of some rock band, “Turn off your mind and float downstream.”

The sermon at church last Sunday was about fast food and cell phones and Twitter, and how people seem to need to be connected all the time, including at the time they are supposed to be on holiday or vacation. Most of them are NOT heart surgeons awaiting a call to show up at the hospital to perform a transplant or some other life-or-death profession.

I know that when I’m away for several days, not having Internet connection makes me cranky after a couple days. Partly it’s because I’ll drown in e-mails if I don’t tend to them regularly. There are STILL e-mails I know I need to respond to from weeks ago that have been sucked into my LIFO (last in, first out) process. But except for calling the daughter, my last vacation with my wife was quite enjoyed, even though I only had about 15 minutes a day of Internet connectivity; it wasn’t a policy decision – the service kept cutting in and out.

So can you vacation/holiday? Do you recreate, or more specifically, re-create yourself? Or do you just keep working and connecting in different venues?

ROG

And Gordon

One of the very first albums I ever bought from the Capitol Record Club -11 albums for only one cent! (But read the fine print) was BIG HITS FROM ENGLAND AND USA: one side had two songs each from BEATLES, BEACH BOYS, and PETER & GORDON, the other side, 2 songs by NAT KING COLE and CILLA BLACK, plus “Tears and Roses” by AL MARTINO. I probably still have it upstairs in the attic.

The intriguing thing I discovered as I actually looked on the record’s label was that Lennon-McCartney were listed as composers not only of the Beatles’ songs, Can’t Buy Me Love and You Can’t Do That, but also of the songs of Peter & Gordon, A World Without Love and Nobody I Know. It took me a while to catch up on the Beatles’ trivia that Peter, the one with the glasses, was the brother of Paul’s girlfriend Jane Asher. Peter & Gordon recorded a number of Lennon/McCartney (really Macca) tunes such as I Don’t Want To See You Again and Women, attributed to Bernard Webb to see if the songs were moving because of the Beatles’ connection; based on its chart action, maybe they were.

Peter later became a prolific record producer for James Taylor and Linda Ronstadt, among others.

But what of Gordon Waller after the 1968 breakup? According to Gordon’s website, he also stayed busy in the music business, with an extensive, if not commercially successful discography.

He also had opportunities to sing with his old mate from time to time. Gordon Waller died of cardiac arrest on July 17 at the age of 64. Peter writes:

Gordon played such a significant role in my life that losing him is hard to comprehend – let alone to tolerate.

He was my best friend at school almost half a century ago. He was not only my musical partner but played a key role in my conversion from only a snooty jazz fan to a true rock and roll believer as well. Without Gordon I would never have begun my career in the music business in the first place. Our professional years together in the sixties constitute a major part of my life and I have always treasured them.

We remained good friends (unusual for a duo!) even while we were pursuing entirely separate professional paths and I was so delighted that after a hiatus of almost forty years we ended up singing and performing together again more recently for the sheer exhilarating fun of it. We had a terrific time doing so.

Gordon remains one of my very favourite singers of all time and I am still so proud of the work that we did together. I am just a harmony guy and Gordon was the heart and soul of our duo.

I shall miss him in so many different ways. The idea that I shall never get to sing those songs with him again, that I shall never again be able to get annoyed when he interrupts me on stage or to laugh at his unpredictable sense of humour or even to admire his newest model train or his latest gardening effort is an unthinkable change in my life with which I have not even begun to come to terms.

I’d read on one of the sites that the duo was originally billed as Gordon & Peter. It’s tougher when you’re after the ampersand.

World Without Love:

***
There was this old Shake ‘N Bake commercial – do they still make that stuff?– and this girl with a STRONG Southern accent says, “And I Haiped!” Which is supposed to be “helped”. Brian Ibbott’s recent Kinks Koverville, er Coverville was a topic I suggested in honor of Ray Davies’ 65th birthday last month. I also pointed out the Tom Jones version of Sunny afternoon, which he played to, so far, positive reaction, I’m surprised to note. ROG

The Middle Child

I was the eldest of the three Green children. Leslie was the middle child, and Marcia the “baby”. However, more than a few people who have assumed that SHE is the eldest because she’s much more outgoing, while I have always been bookish, keeping to a far fewer number of friends and associates than she has.

She really enjoyed being the only girl/the younger for the four years that she was, until she wasn’t. This led to all sorts of odd sisterly stuff that I tried to stay out of but would inevitably get sucked into. (One date in particular: March 12, 1995). I got along with both sisters most of the time, especially Leslie, with whom I sang with our father. Yet about once a year she’d goad me so much that I’d get really angry and some unfortunate outcome would take place. (When she was about 12, and I was 13, she and her friend Bonnie kept opening the bathroom door while I was sitting on the toilet – there was no lock – and I was trying to keep the door shut with my arm or leg; the end result was a broken bathroom mirror.)

I realized long ago that if I don’t have a strong opinion about something Leslie cares about, I tended to cede to her position. That was not the case, though, when she wanted to bury our father in a casket but the rest of us preferred cremation. The tension over that lasted a couple years.

Meanwhile, Leslie seems to have drawn closer to Marcia, as they both deal with my mother. (I do too, but Marcia lives with my Mom and Leslie is currently looking for a job, having been laid off after 18 years working for Long’s Drug Store after it got bought out by CVS.)

One of the good things about the last trip to Charlotte was, frankly, listening to Leslie kvetch about the CD that her church put out – she is on its music Praise and Worship team. Her name was misspelled as Lesley – thrice. I was going to plug the CD but can’t find the particulars. Did, though, find this YouTube video about the church.

Another highlight, oddly, came from watching TV. Lydia, my five-year-old, is watching Wonder Pets, which I admit to liking myself (Just saw “The Wonder Pets Save the Beetles”, which was full of Liverpudlian puns.) Turns out that Alex, Marcia’s 18-year-old, remembers Wonder Pets fondly. Then Rebecca, Leslie’s 30-year-old calls (or is called by her mother); come to find out, much to Leslie’s surprise and chagrin, that Rebecca and her husband Rico ALSO are big fans of Wonder Pets. Leslie watched and actually sussed out its charms.

So, it’s Leslie’s birthday, and even though she occasionally makes me crazy (and you don’t know the half of it), I still love her very much.
***
For all you folks in the San Diego area, here our the upcoming dates for Rebecca’s group, Siren’s Crush.
July 24th-Valley View Casino
July 31st-Valley View Casino
Aug 7th-Valley View Casino
Aug 8th-Viejas Dreamcatcher
Aug 21st-Viejas V-Lounge
Aug 28-Valley View Casino
Also, they have been asked to perform at a “VERY exciting event coming up on Sept 26th” in which they will be “opening up for Teena Marie, Lisa Lisa and some other favorite Old School artists for Magic 92.5 and Viejas Casino! This event is free and for the whole family!”
Click on this link for more information.

ROG

A is for Area Codes

Before I get into the meat of the second (and last) of these weekly checks of the prosaic, I did want to note how different area codes are from just about every other categorizing motif. In systems such as the Dewey Decimal or Library of Congress library catalog systems or the North American Industrial Classification System (NAICS) for businesses or last week’s adventure, ZIP Codes, like things tend to be close to each other numerically (or in the case of the LC, alphanumerically).

However, most area codes are intentionally diffused so that the user isn’t confused by a similar number in the same area. So, in upstate New York, for instance, 315 (Syracuse/Utica area) is adjacent to 585, 607 and 518.

When I was a kid, I could tell you just what a legitimate area code looked like. The first digit was 2 to 9 (but not 1), and the next two digits were either 01 to 09 or 12 to 19. This is a now-useless skill comparable to being able to figure out square root with pencil and paper (which I can, but not as quickly as one can just type in the number and a function key on a calculator).

These numbers were so allocated this way because of some sort of design limitation. However, when it became apparent that they would soon run out of phone numbers, because of increased use of cell phones plus blocks of numbers being sought by businesses, technological innovations made it possible to greatly expand the pool of area codes.

All of these machinations are controlled by NANPA: the North American Numbering Plan Administration. “This site provides information about the North American Numbering Plan (NANP) and its administration. The NANP is the numbering plan for the Public Switched Telephone Network for Canada, the US and its territories, and the Caribbean.”

I remember back in 1984 when New York City was split into two area codes, 212, the code since at least 1952, and 718. Manhattan got to keep 212, but the outer boroughs, Bronx, Brooklyn, Queens and Staten Island were burdened with 718, deemed as an “ugly” number by a NYC tabloid. Likewise, my old college town of New Paltz used to be in 914, along with the rest of the Mid-Hudson valley. Westchester County got to keep 914, but the rest of the area was switched to 845 in 2000. This list is now out of date, but shows the early changes.

As this source explains:

“Split” refers to a service area served by one area code being subdivided into two or more areas, with the original area code serving one of the subdivisions and new areacode(s) serving the other(s).

“Overlay” refers to a service area being served by two or more area codes simultaneously. usually i write “X overlaid on Y” to mean that X is a new areacode that will service an area that previously was serviced solely by Y.

The advantage of a split is that for intra-service area dialing, only 7 digits are required, but some existing users will be forced to change their web site, stationery, business cards, etc. In contrast, an overlay only affects new customers, so is less of a burden; however, neighbors may have to dial 11 digits to call each other.

It appears that the small hassle of dialing 11 digits, even within the same area code is far less burdensome than whole areas having to let friends and associates that they have a “new” number, as most of the recent changes seem to favor the overlay – my mom’s 704 overlaid with 980, or 917 overlaying all of New York City, ostensibly for cell phone service, but not so limited at this point.

There are still some area codes that will not be used, and it includes those ending in 11. That’s because the three digit numbers are otherwise allocated.
N11 CODE DESCRIPTION
211 Community Information and Referral Services
311 Non-Emergency Police and Other Governmental Services
411 Local Directory Assistance
511 Traffic and Transportation Information (US); Provision of Weather and Traveller Information Services (Canada)
611 Repair Service
711 Telecommunications Relay Service (TRS)
811 Access to One Call Services to Protect Pipeline and Utilities from Excavation Damage (US); Non-Urgent Health Teletriage Services (Canada)
911 Emergency

The Albany, NY area just got a 211 service in April 2009.

There are also a batch of area codes that are toll-free, though they may be limited by geography. 800 was the first, followed by 888, 877, and 866, with 855, 844, 833 and 822 held in abeyance.

ROG