Roger Green: a librarian's life, deconstructed.
This was inspired by this posting by Steve Gerber.
Please tell me:
1. What music do you play when you feel good, happy, or want to feel that way?
2. What music do you play when you’re down, melancholy, or want to feel that way?
3. What music do you play when you want to irritate your neighbor, your housemate or anyone within earshot?
In case you haven’t a clue what a Lefty Brown is.
NAME: Chris “Lefty” Brown
BLOG NAME: LeftyBrown’s Corner
NAME OF CD: Under Cover, Disc One
NUMBER OF CUTS: 19
RUNNING TIME: 76:05
COVER ART: Nicely typed
SONG LIST: His post of June 17
SUBSEQUENTLY REVIEWED BY: Gordon on October 6
GENERAL THOUGHTS: I love this album. I love the fact that the cover versions were intriguing. I love the fact that Chris does the linkages: cover of U2 to cover BY U2 to cover of U2, for example.
THINGS I PARTICULARLY LOVED: The fact that he listed the original artist. “One” by Warren Haynes (I was expecting JR Cash, who shows up later). The Duhks. FRED (yee-haw barbershop). The Stanford Marching Band!
ON THE OTHER HAND: What the heck is FRED? ‘splain, Lefty.
OFFICE FRIENDLY: Except for Rage Against the Machine
ONLY VAGUELY RELATED: When Otis Redding heard Aretha Franklin’s version of “Respect”, he reportedly said, “That girl stole that song from me.” Trent Reznor said the same thing about Johnny Cash re: Hurt. Well, not EXACTLY that, but: “…that song in particular came from a pretty private, personal place. So it seemed, well, like that’s my song… It was a big juxtaposition for me to hear it as someone else’s song now. It instantly became his song after that.”
I’ve been having this three-year dialogue with a newspaper writer of radio and television issues. Back in June 2002, he noted that the word “dramedy” first came into use in describing “Ally McBeal” in 1997 in the media. This set off an alarm in my brain, which happens every time I read something in the newspaper or see something on TV or hear something on the radio that I know to be incorrect. (So you can just imagine what happens when I hear deliberate lies, which is why I don’t often listen to talk radio, or Presidential press conferences.)
I went into the archives of HIS newspaper and found this headline:
NEW HALF-HOUR ‘DRAMEDIES’ SPELL PROMISE
09/18/1987
It cited Hooperman, The Days and Nights of Molly Dodd, and Slap Maxwell as dramedies.
He wrote back:
“You are the man.
The man with a lot of free time, but the man nonetheless.
I will remember this down the road. Thanks.”
(Actually, it didn’t take that long. I wouldn’t have looked it up had I not already pretty well known the outcome.)
So, I was actually mildly distressed when he made the SAME ERROR a couple weeks ago.
Naturally, as a librarian, an information specialist, I could not sit by idly.
“I bring this up YET AGAIN because you made mention in your column of ‘dramedy’ starting in 1997 with Ally Mac, which JUST AIN’T the case.”
Being the thorough sort, I even gave him a link to check out.
After he acknowledged his error, I wrote: “I won’t bug you again until the next time you mess up.” To which he said, “OK, I’ll hear from you tomorrow.”
Once something sees print, information is often taken as fact by somebody else. “The sun revolves around the earth.” “Cooperstown is the birthplace of baseball.” “There were WMDs in Iraq.” Read it, or hear it often enough, and people will actually start to believe it.
So all of you whose websites or blogs I’ve offered friendly corrections from time to time, please don’t take it the wrong way. It’s a librarian disease, and there is no cure, except accuracy.
Conversely, if I make an error in fact, I’d l’d like to know about it so I can fix it. Really. (If I make what you feel is an error in opinion, you can tell me about that too, but it may not, OK, probably won’t change anything.)
I wrote a little about my grandfather’s life a couple of weeks ago. Here’s something about his death. Most of this is from the recovered diaries. I was living in Albany by that time, while Pop was still in Binghamton.
Thursday 6/26/1980: My father [who was living in Charlotte, NC] called to tell me pop died. He sounded incredibly like a newscaster reporting it. Apparently, the landlord hadn’t seen Pop in a few days, so he got the police to get a search warrant. He was DOA at the hospital {I was first told.]
My real regret is that in my 5½ photo albums, I don’t have one picture of him. Pictures tell a kind of history, which is increasingly important to me.
Called Betty [family friend in Vestal, near Binghamton, with husband and five kids] and asked to crash at her place Saturday night. She had received a call from my father this a.m.
[My sister] Leslie is coming to the funeral [from California.] I haven’t been to [a funeral] in 10 years, and I haven’t been to one where I really cared about the person since 1966.
Saturday 6/28: Spent $15.50 for roundtrip ticket to Binghamton – outrageous! After talking with Betty on the phone, I went to the wake. Pop died Tuesday but wasn’t found until Thursday, necessitating a closed casket, a fact I was grateful for. Dad arranged a wreath around the picture of him on the wall, which says “The Pride of Bloomsburg, Pa.”, [his hometown.] Lots of flowers, particularly from WBNG-TV people [WNBF-TV changed its call letters], who were in abundance at the wake. [My sisters reminded me that one of the arrangements was a wreath in the shape of a horseshoe, probably arranged by my father, in recognition of his love for the ponies.] Also present were [list of many friends and relatives], all people I had not seen in a long time. One man was bawling his eyes out, an old bowling buddy of Pop’s…
After a discussion on the problems of Veterans Benefits for burial rights (he fought in WWI but kept no records), and playing with RJ [Becky, Leslie’s daughter], Mom & Dad took me down crowded downtown Binghamton. (BC Pops and fireworks.) [I always thought these, in some cosmic way, were for Pop. Why it was incumbent for US to prove my grandfather’s veteran’s status, instead of checking with the VA to confirm that status, is now lost on me.]
Sunday, 6/29: Mom & Dad called, asked me to seek out a trailer. After striking out with U-Haul, Betty contacted a Mobil station on Vestal Parkway, from which we got a truck. [We all eat at a diner.] Follow Dad to Binghamton, where we discover that the very items we got the truck for, a couple blond dressers and other various items, including his coins, are gone.
Dad was very angry, tho’ he tried hard not to show it, and Leslie called the police. The items were present Friday night. It was clear that it had to be a 2- (or more) person job…
Sorting thru his personal effects, looking for discharge papers. (The scent of the bedroom slowly made me ill.) I found obscure items like his failure to pay his 1957 state taxes and court appearances so attached; a letter that I wrote to him some years ago ripped in two (which was how I felt about it when I saw it); and various & sundry pictures, 2 of which I will [and I subsequently did] get made into prints…
At the funeral, I saw lots of Dad’s relatives… Pop’s brother and sister were there too. The service…was pleasantly brief.
[Subsequently, a couple of neighbors were arrested for the crime.]
Well, that’s pretty much all I wrote. I can’t believe I TOTALLY FORGOT about the robbery. Maybe, my mind decided to hold on to the GOOD things.
You’ll get over a relative getting married on a date that he or she knows is your birthday; I did. (And Happy Birthday, BTW.)