June 2015 - Page 6 of 7 - Ramblin' with Roger

Music Throwback Saturday: Oh Happy Day

George Harrison said “Oh Happy Day” was a primary inspiration in the writing of his 1970 hit single “My Sweet Lord.”

The 8 April 1966 cover of TIME magazine asked the question, “Is God Dead?” John Lennon made a controversial statement about Beatles’ popularity in relationship to Jesus that same year.

So it was interesting to me that, in a period of songs of protest about war and the human condition, “Oh Happy Day” by the Edwin Hawkins Singers, a gospel group out of northern California, became an international hit in 1969, reaching No. 4 in the US, No. 2 in both the UK singles chart and Irish Singles Chart, and No. 1 on the German Singles Charts. The Grammy-winning song has since become a gospel music standard. The lead singer was Dorothy Combs Morrison.

I did not know this:

It began as a hymn written in the mid-18th century (“O happy day, that fixed my choice”) by English clergyman Philip Doddridge (based on Acts 8:35) set to an earlier melody (1704) by J. A. Freylinghausen. By the mid-19th century it had been given a new melody by Edward F. Rimbault, who also added a chorus, and was commonly used for baptismal or confirmation ceremonies in the UK and USA. The 20th century saw its adaptation from 3/4 to 4/4 time and this new arrangement by Hawkins, which contains only the repeated Rimbault refrain, with all of the original verses being omitted.

I did know that George Harrison had “stated the song was a primary inspiration in the writing of his 1970 international hit single My Sweet Lord.” [LISTEN] In fact, some musicologists believe the Harrison tune is more inspired structurally by the Hawkins tune than by the Chiffons’ song, “He’s So Fine” [LISTEN], over which Harrison had legal issues.

Dustbury’s write-up of the song.

LISTEN to Oh Happy Day – The Edwin Hawkins Singers
Oh Happy Day from Sister Act 2
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A music great died this week, Jean Ritchie. Read about her HERE.

Red Chuck Taylors (Five Photos, Five Stories #5)

When I was at the game show JEOPARDY! in 1998, I was wearing my red Chucks through the entire warmup.

I swore I told this story before, but I cannot find it.

For reasons that defy logical explanation, I have long had a grand affection for red Converse sneaker, the Chuck Taylor variety, preferably high tops. I have other colors, but I tend to favor the red ones.

Moreover, it’s the color that gets the most unsolicited, and usually positive, comments, usually along the lines of, “I wish I had the guts to wear them.”

Someone gave us a Christmas ornament some years back that looked like red Chucks.

When I was at the game show JEOPARDY! in 1998, I was wearing my red Chucks through the entire warm-up, then, got all tradition in changing into uncomfortable, relatively new shoes for the actual games. I was convinced that was a fatal error on my part. I might have fared better with the Chucks.

We bought our current house in May 2000, a week before our first wedding anniversary. I was in the backyard, removing some branches. Unfortunately, someone had thrown some used lumber in the pile, not immediately visible. I stepped on a nail, which went through my red Chucks.

I pulled the nail out, and hobbled what felt like an interminable distance to the front of the house, hopped up to the front porch, opened the front door, and yelled to my wife. She replied, “I’m upstairs!” I replied, “Come DOWN!”

She drove me to the urgent care place, 20 minutes before it closed. They numbed my foot, before removing little bits of my red Chuck Taylor sneakers from the hole in my foot.

I may have thrown them away after we got home.
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Note: I have been nominated by my buddy Lisa over at Peripheral Perceptions to participate in the Five Photos, Five Stories meme, which simply says I should post a photo each day for five consecutive days and attach a story to the photo. It can be fiction or non-fiction, a poem or a short paragraph and each day nominate another blogger for the challenge.

The problem is that almost all my posts are stories and have pictures. So I’m cheating and writing only one new post. And I’m nominating YOU!

Roger, not Roggie (Five Photos, Five Stories #4)

Roger is #558 on the Social Security list of boys’ name in 2013.

When Arthur explained why he’s Arthur, not Art, it reminded me about my aversion to the diminution of my own name, something I clearly inherited from my father.

As I’ve noted, when I was born, my father told his cousins that he was figured out my name, Roger Owen Green, making sure the initials, ROG – pronounced raj – could serve as my nickname. As far as I know, I was not named for anyone.

The name Roger doesn’t lend itself to the common nicknames. William can be Bill, Robert is Bob. Jacob, Michael, Daniel, Benjamin, Matthew, David, and Joseph, to note some boys’ names most popular in 2013, have common shortened forms, though I’m not aware of the same for Noah, Mason, Ethan, or Aiden, for instance.

Roger, BTW, is #584 on the Social Security list of boys’ names in 2014, down from #558 in 2013, and the new lowest ranking, below the #565 in 2012. It’s far from its best showing, #22 in 1945. On the other hand, Owen was up to #38 in both 2012 and 2013, and in 2014, it is up to #36, its highest ranking since the list began in 1880.

Dad was inclined to call me “sport,” which is also what he called his favorite cousin, Sheldon Walker, so that was OK. But that came only from him. Everyone else needed to call me Roger, or Rog. But DEFINITELY NOT Roggie. When some people tried it, especially one of my sisters, it used to make me very angry.

When I was in junior high school, a bunch of us would go by our middle names. I was Owen, Ray Lia was Albert. This guy Walter Sidorenko – not sure of the spelling – who we called Sid, tended to call me Owen Baby. It was oddly OK coming from him.

I was a janitor in Binghamton (NY) City Hall in the spring of 1975, when I dropped out of college, as I’ve mentioned. One of the other janitors -his name escapes me, so I’ll call him Jack – started calling me Flash. It was because I had an eight-hour day, and I got through my routine in about six and a half hours, whereas he and his co-worker Henry would milk their jobs to take the full eight hours by working more slowly. I’d spend the rest of the time, when there was no emergency, reading, or cleaning again the glass doors at the front entrance, which always had fingerprint marks.

Jack, I did not like. In part, it may have been, I must admit because he had two children by two women, neither of which he was married to, and was quite boastful about it. So when he, or Henry, following Jack’s lead, would call me Flash, I would act as though I did not hear them at all.

I DID have a library coworker, Anne, who called me Raji, in which the first syllable sounded like the first syllable in rajah, and somehow, she pulled that off.

But most can’t. So Roger or Rog are my preferences, thank you very much.

Why do people say Roger when they’re talking on their CBs — even though the person they’re talking to isn’t named Roger?

Note: I have been nominated by my buddy Lisa over at Peripheral Perceptions to participate in the Five Photos, Five Stories meme, which simply says I should post a photo each day for five consecutive days and attach a story to the photo. It can be fiction or non-fiction, a poem or a short paragraph and each day nominate another blogger for the challenge.

The problem is that almost all my posts are stories and have pictures. So I’m cheating and writing only one new post. And I’m nominating YOU!

“The Boy Jesus in the Temple” by Hofmann (Five Photos, Five Stories #3)

A young adolescent Jesus in white robes is shown at the center of a group of wizened, bearded old men who appear to be appraising him.

The family spent a few days at this inn on the Catskill Mountains during the school break after Easter. It was a nice place. There were several pictures, paintings of the scenery of the area, a still life or two, and the like.

But right outside our room was an outlier, a painting that looked terribly familiar, something like the one above. This intrigued me, for – and memory is a tricky thing – I believe my maternal grandmother had a reproduction of it in her house. Something quite memorable about that representation of Jesus.

Heinrich Hofmann’s religious works are filled with the deep faith that inspired his life and creativity. Painting subjects from literature and mythology, Hofmann (1824 – 1911) is most famous for his paintings of Christ’s life… Before painting any scene depicting Christ, Hofmann would intently study the Bible. He was adamant that anyone who was not moved to their innermost core while painting religious subjects was not capable of the task.

Thing is, I can’t remember if the picture in Grandma Williams’ house was in color, as painted, or black & white, like the one at the inn. Did it include the whole image, or cropped to highlight the Jesus character?

This painting of “The Boy Jesus in the Temple” was so noteworthy that it was photographed by one C.C. (Charles C.) Pierce (1861-1946)

Photograph of the painting…. A young adolescent in white robes is shown at the center of a group of wizened, bearded old men who appear to be appraising him.

In the left foreground, one is seated with at book, two other standing next to him making quizzical gestures. To the left, a fourth man holds his hand to his chin and a scroll on his hip. Farther back a fifth man without a beard can just barely be seen.

Other titles given for this painting are “Christ in the Temple” or “Jesus at Twelve”. The picture file card reads “The scripture passage for this subject is Luke 2:46-47”.

46 After three days they [Mary and Joseph] found him [Jesus] in the temple courts, sitting among the teachers, listening to them and asking them questions. 47 Everyone who heard him was amazed at his understanding and his answers.

Is this picture familiar to any of you, and, if so, in what version?
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Note: I have been nominated by my buddy Lisa over at Peripheral Perceptions to participate in the Five Photos, Five Stories meme, which simply says I should post a photo each day for five consecutive days and attach a story to the photo. It can be fiction or non-fiction, a poem or a short paragraph and each day nominate another blogger for the challenge.

The problem is that almost all my posts are stories and have pictures. So I’m cheating and writing only one new post. And I’m nominating YOU!

U for USA’s obsession with the car (Five Photos, Five Stories #2)

I’m reading my email one insomniac night when I see this Quora question: Why is jaywalking a crime in the US but not in the UK? One lengthy response from a guy named Tom Chambers:

Because jaywalking is a crime invented by the car industry in the early 20th century. It wasn’t the legislative response to an inevitable problem, but essentially a publicity campaign to increase car use in the US.

Prior to jaywalking becoming a popular term and crime, pedestrians were assumed to have the right to the road. If there was an accident, popular opinion and the media would be on the side of the pedestrian and assume the fault of the driver.

The motor industry recognised that this was an impediment to driving and set out to make the street a place for cars not people. They lobbied for various laws to prevent people from crossing other than at a designated point, but people were so against this that it failed to be effectively enforced.

What worked much better was public ridicule.

The American love affair with cars was no accident, confirmed Scientific American. “Schools helped train new generations of children to avoid the streets when the American Automobile Association (AAA) became the top supplier of safety curriculum for U.S. schools in the 1920s,” As a result, there is a deep-seated bias in transportation decision making that can be traced “all the way back to the dawn of the automotive era.”

But the deal wasn’t sealed until 1961, and one can blame, or credit, Groucho Marx:

It was on Sunday night [October 22] when NBC aired a program called “Merrily We Roll Along”—promoted as “the story of America’s love affair with the automobile.” During the show, host Groucho Marx introduced the “love affair” metaphor to millions of viewers, casting cars as “the new girl in town.” To make this love work, Marx explained, Americans were willing to overcome intrusive regulations, endure awful traffic jams, and if necessary, redesign entire cities.

“We don’t always know how to get along with her, but you certainly can’t get along without her,” said Marx. “And if that isn’t marriage, I don’t know what is.”

[The show] was less a story about America’s existing love affair with the car than the invention of that very idea. The show’s sponsor, DuPont, had an obvious interest: it owned 23 percent of General Motors at the time. [It was] a “masterstroke of public relations” manufactured by the car industry to counter the likes of… critics who, at the dawn of the interstate highway era, questioned the wisdom of dedicating every inch of urban street space to personal vehicles.

This perhaps explains why people choose cars, even when mass transit would serve them better. But the American love affair with the motor car may be running on empty, with “baby boomers… giving up the suburbs for communities with more travel choices, [and] younger adults… delaying getting a driver’s license and, when they do, they are not buying cars or using them as much. Instead, they are embracing new forms of ‘collaborative consumption’ – sharing vehicles through car-share and bike-share programmes.”

Personally, I think this is a terrific trend. Now if I can only walk across the street, or ride my bike without possibly getting killed…
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Note: I have been nominated by my buddy Lisa over at Peripheral Perceptions to participate in the Five Photos, Five Stories meme, which simply says I should post a photo each day for five consecutive days and attach a story to the photo. It can be fiction or non-fiction, a poem or a short paragraph and each day nominate another blogger for the challenge.

The problem is that almost all my posts are stories and have pictures. So I’m cheating and writing only one new post. And I’m nominating YOU!

ABC Wednesday – Round 16