May 2011 - Page 3 of 7 - Ramblin' with Roger

Unabomber Auction QUESTIONS

And what does one DO with a handwritten copy of the Unabomber manifesto?

As you may know, “Per a Court Order…, the government has been ordered to conduct a ‘well-publicized’ Internet sale of [Theodore John] Kaczynski’s seized property to be sold to the general public in the effort to pay off a $15 million restitution order to the victims and their families. Unlike other sales, neither the U.S. Marshals Service nor GSA will receive any revenue from this sale. Please click here [PDF] for more details about the auctions.” The auction run from May 18 through June 2.

Ted’s brother David, who famously turned in his brother to the authorities, and is now the head of New Yorkers for Alternatives to the Death Penalty (of which I have been a member), wrote a column in which he said:
Now, my brother lived in poverty. The value of his possessions derives almost entirely from public fascination with his crimes. They represent what is commonly called “murderabilia” – souvenirs culled from the careers of famous criminals.

In effect, our federal government is pandering to a sick market that treats high-profile killers like celebrities and rock stars. What is wrong with this picture?

The goal of the auction is entirely worthy. If there is no other way to compensate the victims of the Unabomber, then let the auction go forward. I will look away…and I hope it raises a ton of money.

But couldn’t we, to the extent we really care about victims, find a better way?

Meanwhile, “Theodore Kaczynski …imprisoned for life, said the Federal Bureau of Investigation wants his DNA to determine if he was responsible for the 1982 Tylenol poisonings…CNN says Kaczynski filed a handwritten motion in federal court to stop the online auction of the items authorities seized from his Montana cabin when they arrested him in 1996 in which he agrees to give the DNA sample if they stop the auction.” The so-called Unabomber’s lawyer believes the government wants his client’s DNA to rule him out as a suspect for a crime that has never been solved.

What do you think of the auction? Is it restitution for crimes, ghoulish “murderabilia”, perhaps both? And what would one DO with a handwritten copy of the Unabomber manifesto? An article in The Atlantic suggests that the auction is not doing so well thus far because there’s no mystery over whether Ted Kaczinski actually was the guilty party.

(Great Grand)Father

She saw him as this pillar of virtue, who crumbled as an icon for her.

There was a recent news story that reminded me of my family.

My dad’s maternal grandfather was a man everyone simply called Father. He wasn’t a Catholic priest, of course, but he was a deeply religious, pious man. I actually remember him; he died in the early 1960s when he was over 90. He was always decent to me, and my father adored him. But Father’s children clearly feared him. It was strange to me; he was a little old man, but my grandmother and her siblings, who were in their 50s and 60s were in terror of this diminutive fellow.

After he died, his house was cleaned out. And what do you suppose the relatives found? What they used to call “girlie magazines”. And booze. This was especially terrible for my mother, who had been married a dozen years or more to my Dad. She saw him as this pillar of virtue, who crumbled as an icon for her.

I’m not sure when I first heard this story – certainly not at the time – though I suspect I was a teenager. I DO know that my mother told of her disappointment of this man periodically for the next 40 years or more. I think this revelation really shook her sense of faith for a number of years.

Of course, the recent story that prompted this recollection was the stash of pornography found in the residence of Usama bin Laden. Or was it porn ‘stache? As more than one comic has remarked, USL’s off to meet his 72 vegans (David Letterman’s joke), or 72 Virginians, or 72 pick-your-word-starting-with-the-letter-V.

The Top 100 Canadian Albums

Blue, Joni Mitchell (1971) – Just about a perfect album. Even she admits, “there’s hardly a dishonest note in the vocals.”

One of my birthday presents was the book The Top 100 Canadian Albums by Bob Mersereau. He got about 600 Canadian musicians, broadcasters, retailers, roadies, instrument makers, festival operators and more to vote for their top 10 albums. In the intro to his revised edition, he notes the complaints. “Where was Anne Murray? The New Pornographers? Hank Snow?” There were also complaints about regional or language bias.

Mixed in with the stories were others compiling best-of lists, by geography (Manitoba, Quebec, e.g.), genre (blues), and other breakdowns. A guy named Terry O’Reilly even developed a list of Top Ten Funniest and Coolest Album Titles, some of which will be noted.

What I realized is that, not only did I own a fair number of these albums, many of them played a significant part of my life, often in a relationship with my significant other (S.O.) at the time.

1.Harvest, Neil Young (1972) -This was an album from my college days, but it’s not my favorite Neil album. I thought Alabama was too much like Southern Man from After the Gold Rush, and the strings on A Man Needs a Maid were pretentious. Neil’s own ambivalence about his commercial success with the album and the single from it, Heart of Gold, plays into my feelings as well. But there are some great songs here, most notably The Needle and the Damage Done.
2.Blue, Joni Mitchell (1971) – Just about a perfect album. Even she admits, “there’s hardly a dishonest note in the vocals.” From All I Want to A Case of You (covered by, among others, fellow Canadian Diana Krall), to the melancholy seasonal classic, River (covered much later by James Taylor, a one-time beau). I had a very good friend who has since died who knew lots about music and was a big Joni fan, yet she inexplicably failed to hear the Jingle Bells variation in this song; strange.
3.After the Gold Rush, Neil Young (1970) – Probably my favorite Neil album, though I, like the author, believes that Southern Man just doesn’t fit thematically. It had the Top 40 hit Only Love Can Break Your Heart. But my favorite is the minor hit When You Dance I Can Really Love, which I recall dancing to with my college S.O. in my dorm room. Another standout is Oh Lonesome Me; you can’t really appreciate the quality of the melancholy cover until you hear the jaunty Don Gibson original.
4.Music From Big Pink, The Band (1968) – I’m sure I didn’t hear this album until after hearing the Band’s eponymous second album. So this one always felt a little more raw, less polished. Still, it had great songs such as the Dylan-penned or co-penned Tears of Rage, This Wheel’s on Fire, and I Shall Be Released. Chest Fever, which I heard first covered by Three Dog Night, is also here. The best known song may be The Weight, which appears in the movie Easy Rider, but not on the soundtrack, for contractual reasons. My college S.O. lived in Bearsville for a time and took me by Big Pink at least once. #8 on the coolest title list.
5.Fully Completely, The Tragically Hip (1992)
6.Jagged Little Pill, Alanis Morissette (1995) – This was, in my mind, the breakup album for me and my S. O. at the time. Although Ironic bugged me, because it was mostly coincidental, not ironic, I listened to it quite a bit at the time.
7.The Band, The Band (1969) – Now this is my favorite The Band album, quite possibly top 20 island records. Turned onto this in high school by a friend I’ve known since kindergarten. Rag Mama Rag and Up on Cripple Creek were minor hits but The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down was probably best known, in part because of the Joan Baez cover. My favorite song though, is the last, King Harvest (Has Surely Come).
8.Funeral, Arcade Fire (2004) – hmm. This list was compiled before Neon Bible (2007), and Best Album Grammy winner The Suburbs (2010) were released; wonder where they would fare in a newer iteration of this list? BTW, I just ordered The Suburbs with a gift certificate I got for my birthday.
9.Moving Pictures, Rush (1981) – never owned any Rush. Yeah, I know it’s a sin. The only Geddy Lee I have is him singing “take off to the great white north” on a Bob & Doug McKenzie album.
10.American Woman, The Guess Who (1970)
11.Songs of Leonard Cohen, Leonard Cohen (1967) – Don’t own, but I do have a number of albums covering his songs, especially Judy Collins: Suzanne, Sisters of Mercy (also covered by the duet of Linda Ronstadt and Emmylou Harris), and my favorite Hey, That’s No Way to Say Goodbye (also covered by Roberta Flack).
12.Reckless, Bryan Adams (1984) – and no Bryan Adams in my collection
13.Five Days in July, Blue Rodeo (1993) – I do own an earlier Blue Rodeo album, but nothing from this list.
14.Twice Removed, Sloan (1994)
15.Up to Here, The Tragically Hip (1989)
16.Everybody Knows This is Nowhere, Neil Young with Crazy Horse (1969) – It has one of my favorite Neil songs ever, the handclap-driven Cinnamon Girl, which I played repeatedly in college, and those two nine-minute-plus songs, Down by the River and Cowgirl in the Sand.
17.2112, Rush (1976)
18.Court and Spark, Joni Mitchell (1974) – Commercially, the height of Joni’s popularity. She recorded this album with Tom Scott and the L.A. Express. In August of 1974, my college S.O., my friend Uthaclena and his S.O at the time drove from New Paltz to Saratoga to see Joni and the L.A. Express; let’s say that the trip was NOT a good time. After my S.O. and I broke up, the song Help Me helped doom a rebound relationship. And still, I love this album. From the plaintive Free Man in Paris to the rocker Raised on Robbery to the goofy Lambert, Hendricks & Ross tune Twisted, featuring Cheech & Chong.
19.Whale Music, Rheostatics (1992) – don’t know.
20.Acadie, Daniel Lanois (1989)> Now this is a fine album by a guy who’s been the producer for U2, Bob Dylan, Emmylou Harris (Wrecking Ball), and Peter Gabriel (So), among others. The songs are in both French and English, occasionally even on the same track. I’d say it was in the folk genre except that it would be far too limiting. My favorite song is The Maker. The last song, Amazing Grace, features vocals by Aaron Neville.
21.Day for Night, The Tragically Hip (1994)
22.Rust Never Sleeps, Neil Young & Crazy Horse (1979). For whatever reason, after the first four solo albums, I stopped buying Neil records – save for the greatest hits package, Decade. And while there are a number of good songs, notably Pocahontas, it’s the first and last related songs that sold me. #7 coolest title.
23.Gord’s Gold, Gordon Lightfoot (1975) – I’m sure I had had this Gordon album at some point, but apparently not anymore.
24.You Were Here, Sarah Harmer (2000)
25.Fumbling Towards Ecstasy, Sarah McLachlan (1993) – #3 on the coolest title list.
26.Road Apples, The Tragically Hip (1991) – every July 1, Canada Day, I play this album. Why this one? Because I so associate it with Canada, and other Canadians I’d play on their birthdays.
27.Gordon, Barenaked Ladies (1992) – I have the greatest hits, but not this collection.
28.You Forgot it in People, Broken Social Scene (2002)
29.I’m Your Man, Leonard Cohen (1988)
30.Tonight’s the Night, Neil Young (1975)
31.Decade, Neil Young (1977) – Initially, I wondered about this essentially greatest hits, which covers his Buffalo Springfield and CSNY periods, as well as the solo stuff. But it does have music that at that point had not been released on any album, or at all. Among my favorite songs are the last two, the previously unreleased Campaigner — “even Richard Nixon has got soul” and a previously unreleased version of Long May You Run, which namechecks the Beach Boys’ Caroline, No.
32.Miss America, Mary Margaret O’Hara (1988)
33.Surfacing, Sarah McLachlan (1997) – This is one of those album where I heard the airplay of the singles, notably Building a Mystery, liked it, bought it.
34.One Chord to Another, Sloan (1996)
35.Songs of Love and Hate, Leonard Cohen (1971)
36.Cyborgs Revisited, Simply Saucer (1989)
37.Ingenue, k.d. lang (1992) – This album was very important in the relationship between me and my S.O at the time. I knew k.d. lang from her days as a country artist, even had/have the LP Angel with a Lariat on vinyl. So I’m telling S.O about the new k.d. album, that she’s singing that song Constant Craving that seemed to be constantly on the radio. Something clicked, and suddenly, she bought and read about all things lang. The album also features Miss Chatelaine and my personal favorite, Season of Hollow Soul. Breaking up, the division of the lang music was one of the greatest points of dispute.
38.Melville, Rheostatics (1991)
39.Love Tara, Eric’s Trip (1993)
40.On the Beach, Neil Young (1974)

This is getting long; the other 60 next week.

Marcia’s birthday

I would like to state publicly how happy and proud we were that Marcia was around to take care of our mom

One of the things I guess I’ve decided to do – I didn’t think about it, it just evolved – is to note the birthdays of my sisters each year, not just on the ones divisible by 5 or 10. And no, it is not one of the “big” birthdays this year for any of us, actually.

Marcia, the “baby” sister, quite possibly had a tougher Mother’s Day than either Leslie or I did. After all, she lived with our mom for much of her life; first, my mom was taking care of her, then in the later years, her taking care of Mom. Whereas Leslie and I would visit Mom one to three times a year for a few days, Marcia would see her daily.

Leslie and I told her privately, but I would like to state publicly how happy and proud we were that Marcia was around to take care of our mom so well, with some help from her daughter Alex.

One of Marcia’s strongest attributes is that she seems to remember EVERYTHING. If you’re looking for someone to recall when we went on a particular family trip, Marcia is your woman.

So baby sister, remember that we love you.

R is for Real Rodin?

Meanwhile, the booklet and the film of his life that was shown, not to mention the irrefutable Rodin pieces that were shown, still made the visit worthwhile.

Back in the fall of 2005 at the Albany [NY] Institute of History and Art, my wife and I saw this lovely exhibit of the works of Auguste Rodin called Rodin: A Magnificent Obsession, which was billed as “a complete retrospective…

“The exhibition spans the length of Rodin’s career from his earliest bust of his father, Jean Baptiste Rodin, to his later studies of dancing figures. In addition to the bronzes, there are works on paper, photographs, portraits of the artist, and an educational model that demonstrates the complexities of the lost-wax casting process, Rodin’s favored method of sculptural reproduction.”

I remember seeing a version of piece called The Thinker. I’d viewed pictures of it many times, and it looked nice. But seeing it in person, I thought it was one of the most sensual items I had ever seen in my life!

As it turns out, though, there was some controversy over the show presented by the Iris & B. Gerald Cantor Foundation over an eight-year span. As noted in this lengthy and detailed blogpost, the exhibition “contains at best a half-a-dozen or so non-disclosed reproductions – with fifty-four of them being absolute outright fakes.

“An example of one of these non-disclosed fakes is the…Monumental Head of Balzac. In the Iris and B. Gerald Cantor Foundation’s 2001 Rodin A Magnificent Obsession catalogue, it is also listed as ‘cast 9/12 in 1980’ and ‘Signed and numbered A. Rodin.’ Since Auguste Rodin died in 1917, some sixty-three years earlier, how’d he do that?”

This was disappointing, of course, but it was so in retrospect, some three years after we saw the show. Meanwhile, the booklet and the film of his life that was shown, not to mention the irrefutable Rodin pieces that were shown, still made the visit worthwhile.

In any case, THE best webpage about Rodin that I’ve come across is this NotSorry.com page with LOTS of useful links.

ABC Wednesday – Round 8