Tag: anniversary

Blogoversary Number Seven

I doubt I ever mentioned this here, but I loved Russell Baker.

I was reading the comments for Ken Levine’s sixth blogoversary about five months ago when I came across this:

“Russell Baker, in my opinion, the best columnist ever to adorn a newspaper, once said that he became a columnist with the thought that now he had the freedom to disgorge the contents of his brain. After three weeks of columns, he realized that he had already disgorged the entire contents of his brain.”

I doubt I ever mentioned this here, but I loved Russell Baker. I used to follow his column in the New York Times religiously. I’ve read at least three of his books; Growing Up, one of his autobiographies, was one of my favorite tomes for a long time. I still own it, so I probably should reread it, but probably won’t.

Anyway, I disgorged the contents of my brain six years and 49 weeks ago, and yet I’m STILL writing this blog. Some people just don’t know when to quit. As a buddy of mine, who’s been blogging about as long as I, but not quite as proficiently, stated recently, “Yeah, but you’re a tad, shall we say OCD on the whole blog thing, Rog.” Well, maybe. I’ve been known to be writing three weeks ahead, when the muse strikes, to make up for those weeks when I write almost nothing. At least I stopped multiple blog posts per day.

The one thing I did this year that made sense was to get this blog on Networked Blogs, which allows automatic tweets, and (I think) Facebook posts to be generated. I think social media is fine – just don’t sign me up for Farmville or the like, because I WILL block it – but I just don’t have the time to actively use them much. Writing the blog every day is a lot easier/more interesting to me than promoting it.

Happy blogoversary to moi.

And because I always need a song to celebrate just about everything, here is 7 and 7 Is by Love, featuring Arthur Lee.

Expect more navel-gazing throughout the month.

 

The teller of secrets

I muse how my life would have been if, instead of being the eldest child, I had had an older brother.

 

Today would have been my parents’ 62nd anniversary. But my dad died a few months after their 50th, in 2000. I always remember the date, though, because my mom always referred to me as an early anniversary present. I was born five days shy of their third wedding anniversary. Coincidentally, my eldest niece was born five days short of HER parents’ anniversary. Also, since my parents were married in 1950, it was always easy to calculate how long they had been hitched.

The odd thing about my parents. My father revealed almost nothing about his past. My mother, though, starting when I was nine or ten, would drop tidbits about her past, my parents’ joint history, and, more peculiarly, events from my father’s past at which she was not present, to my sisters and to me. So she told us stuff about him that he never told us about himself. Some were so spotty that it engendered more questions than answers. A few things fell into the category of “We REALLY did not need to know that.” Other bits were useful; WHY my father didn’t particularly like Christmas made a certain amount of sense.

One item she mentioned was that she had experienced a miscarriage in April 1951, in the second trimester of the pregnancy; it was a male. She was rather matter-of-fact about it in the telling, but she noted that my father was rather devastated by the situation. So when my mother got pregnant again, in 1952, she reported that he was a bit at arm’s length emotionally about it. It wasn’t until the baby arrived safely that he could even think about coming up with names.

This explains the frantic calculation of names he did on scraps of paper at his cousin Ruth’s house before he came up with Roger Owen Green, with the initials ROG. From time to time, I muse how my life would have been if, instead of being the eldest child, I had had an older brother.

The first anniversary of my mother’s death

I was there when Mom died shortly before 9 a.m.

I realized that, while my mother’s death naturally made me very sad, and especially that “adult orphan” thing weirded me out, there were some things that mitigated the pain somewhat.

To recap: my “baby” sister called me at work on Friday, January 28 to tell me our mother, Gertrude Elizabeth (Trudy) Green, had gone to the ER with a severe headache. It was latter determined that she had had a “brain bleed”; I don’t think I understood that terminology until I got down to the hospital. What Mom had was a stroke; there are two kinds, one which constricts the blood, and the other, less common, but more problematic, where there’s too much blood.

I figured that I needed to go down by train because flying was too expensive. I remember getting a “sick or bereavement rate” when I flew down to Charlotte, NC before my father died, but it was hardly helpful. Since I didn’t know when I’d return, taking the train to Charlotte seemed to be the best plan.

I was initially planning on leaving on Tuesday, but when I saw the forecast for a massive snowstorm, which did arrive, I knew I needed to leave on Monday. I called work on Monday morning from the train station to tell them I wouldn’t be in for several days.

Tuesday, my sisters and I spent the day in the hospital, and my sisters tell me that she was doing much better, giving a couple of one-word answers.

Wednesday morning, she had a Cheyne-Stokes breathing episode that sounded terribly distressing, but apparently was not, at least for her. I talked with my doctor about this last month when I was feeling unwell. She notes that hospice nurses are good at bringing comfort to the family, but that sometimes, hospital nurses forget that, when death is near, they still need to try to make the family feel OK. My doc theorized that perhaps they gave my mom a bit of morphine to control the sounds, for my benefit.

I was there when Mom died shortly before 9 a.m. I was told to call my sisters before I was told that fact; very odd. When my sisters arrived, they thought she was only sleeping before I had a chance to tell them otherwise.

I was having this electronic conversation with my blogger buddy Arthur recently about the euphemisms for death. He doesn’t much like them, and I’m inclined to agree. But, in my mom’s case, I understand why they say that someone “passed away.”

It so happened that I wrote a blog item that posted on Wednesday, though I had written it on Saturday, Take the Train to Charlotte. All the posts prior to 2:05 pm EST indicated hope for my mom’s recovery. But somewhere around 2:12, I started getting condolences. Denise, the ABC Wednesday diva, had IMed me at some point after we got home from the hospital around noon, to ask how my mom was doing, so of course, I told her. The outpouring of support I got from people I had never met was astonishing. Jaquandor and Arthur both wrote posts about my mom and me.

I was intrigued by one comment to a brief post I wrote the day after she died, describing my account as “dispassionate”. I suppose that was true; it was a coping mechanism.

So it was tough, but it was made palatable by folks from work and church, and by friends I’ve known in person, but also from a whole lot of people I have never met. My friends Jason and DeeDee placed a small obit in my mom’s hometown paper in Binghamton, NY, which was the first time some of her friends and relatives heard about her death. I read the comments from various posts I wrote during the month, and they make me (past and present tense) both weepy, but at the same time, comforted. The aforementioned Denise sent flowers to our house; it is amazing how well flowers from England held up.

Oh, some mundane stuff: got $561 from my mother’s Social Security in December, as did my sisters; not quite clear exactly why. That’ll help with paying off some of the debt I incurred for the funeral and Charlotte newspaper obit.

George Harrison: 10 Years Gone

George was executive producer of Monty Python’s Life of Brian, a film I just picked up on DVD.

 

Unless I am misremembering, the first TIME magazine cover after September 11, 2001, that was not about 9/11 or the subsequent war in Afghanistan was the one announcing the death of George Harrison. I was sad that George died, of course, but I knew he was sick and not likely to get better. The top cover was the US version; the bottom one, the UK take.

This is obvious, I imagine, but one deals differently when someone dies expectedly or unexpectedly, by disease or by murder. John Lennon’s death a couple of decades earlier was a jolt; George’s was just sad.

In fact, George’s passing made me melancholy the more I thought about his contribution to the world, especially around the time of what would have been his 59th birthday the following February. He was a Beatle, of course. But he also organized the first of those superstar extravaganzas, the Concert for Bangladesh. He put out some great music as a solo artist. And he was executive producer of a couple dozen movies, including Monty Python’s Life of Brian, a film I just picked up on DVD, I liked it so much.

There was a Martin Scorsese documentary about George this year, which I haven’t seen. Here are some photos from it, and a piece from the New York Times. Also, there was an article Living in the Material World – 5 Things I Learned About George Harrison from the Scorsese Documentary, four of which I actually knew.

Other recent articles about George:
Rolling Stone magazine AGAIN did one of those 100 greatest Beatles songs. George had two in the top 10.

George had an Indian soul, according to his wife

The unseen GH photo album

George Harrison exhibit at the GRAMMY Museum

Borders liquidators sell off George Harrison guitar

And, of course, some music:

A couple of songs where George namechecks the Beatles:
Living in the Material World – GH
When We Was Fab – GH

Two versions of the Wilbury Twist by the Traveling Wilburys
1990 version, with lots of then-current stars
2007 version, which dumps most of them

A cover version of one of George’s best songs as a Beatle:
While My Guitar Gently Weeps by Eric Clapton and Paul McCartney, both of whom played on the original.

100 years of Chevy: music

Here’s a couple versions of the famous See the USA in Your Chevrolet commercial.

Chevrolet, the car company, is 100 years old this month. In honor of that milestone, there’s a dedicated Chevy station on Pandora.com, with 100 songs mentioning the Chevy; they are listed below.

But two fairly obvious choices are left off:

409 by the Beach Boys and Little Red Corvette by Prince. Little Red Corvette [listen] might have been left off because the Purple One can be fussy when it comes to licensing. But the exclusion of 409 [listen] is surprising.

Here are a couple of versions of the famous See the USA in Your Chevrolet commercial:
Dinah Shore – 1952
Glee – Super Bowl 2011

Here’s that list on Pandora:

99 In The Shade, Bon Jovi
All The Best, John Prine
American Pie, Don McLean [here’s The Grand Rapids, Michigan LipDub version]
Amy’s Back In Austin, Little Texas
Ball And Chain, Social Distortion
Blitz, Audio Adrenaline
Blue (Da Ba Dee) (Remix), Eiffel 65
Blue Jeans, Silvertide
Captain Jack, Billy Joel
Chattahoochee, Alan Jackson
Chevrolet, ZZ Top
Chevy Van, Sammy Johns
Chrome, Trace Adkins
Contact, Citizen Cope
Crazy About Her, Rod Stewart
Crocodile Rock, Elton John
Dare To Be Stupid, “Weird Al” Yankovic
Don’t Forget To Remember Me, Carrie Underwood
Dr. Feelgood (Live), Motley Crue
Drive South, John Hiatt
El Camino, Ween
El Tejano, Cowboy Troy
Everytime It Rains, George Strait
Fall In Love, Kenny Chesney
Family Reserve, Lyle Lovett
Fightin’ Words, Trace Adkins
Girls With Guitars, Wynonna Judd
Go ‘Head, Mystikal
Go Lil’ Camaro Go, The Ramones
Going Back To Cali, LL Cool J
Here I Am, Lyle Lovett
Here’s To You, Rascal Flatts
How Bizarre, OMC
Hustlin’, Rick Ross
I Can Only Think Of One, Dierks Bentley
I Go Back, Kenny Chesney
I Got You, Dwight Yoakam
I Learned That From You, Sara Evans
I Won All The Battles, Tracy Lawrence
I’ll Be Your Johnny On The Spot, Ween
I’m Customized, The Cramps
I’m Just A Girl, Deana Carter
I’ve Got A Rock N’ Roll Heart, Eric Clapton
If I Stay, Tracy Byrd
Jesse Went To War, Marcy Playground
Joe Rey, Fountains of Wayne
Keeping The Faith, Billy Joel
Less Than Zero, Elvis Costello
Let You Go, The Clarks
Metropolis, Trace Adkins
Miss Popularity, Jordan Pruitt
Movin’ Out (Anthony’s Song), Billy Joel
Mud On The Tires, Brad Paisley
Natural Beauty, Neil Young
Neutron Dance, The Pointer Sisters [listen]
Night Moves, Bob Seger
One Bud Wiser, Gretchen Wilson
Paint The Town Redneck, J.M. Montgomery
Pickin’ Wildflowers, Keith Anderson
Picture Perfect, Nelly Furtado
Putting The Damage On, Tori Amos
Racing In The Street, Bruce Springsteen
Rapid Roy (The Stock Car Boy), Jim Croce
Real Gone, Sheryl Crow
Renegade, Tim McGraw
Repetition, David Bowie
Ridin’ In My Chevy, Snoop Dogg
Riding With Private Malone, David Ball
Right Time Of The Night, Jennifer Warnes
She’s In Love With The Boy, Trisha Yearwood
Small Town Girl, Kellie Pickler
Something On, The Tragically Hip
Song Of The South, Alabama
Still Love You, Rod Stewart
Superstar, Sheryl Crow
Suzy And Jeffrey, Blondie
Tannin Bed Song, Shawn Mullins
The Greeting Song, Red Hot Chili Peppers
Under Assistant West Coast Promotion Man, Rolling Stones
Three Marlenas, The Wallflowers
Thunder Road, Bruce Springsteen
Thundering Hearts, John Mellencamp
Tim McGraw, Taylor Swift
Twentieth Century Fox, 38 Special
Unappreciated, Cherish
Uneasy Rider, Charlie Daniels
Union Sundown, Bob Dylan
Water, The Who
West Texas Highway, Lyle Lovett
When I Think About Leaving, Kenny Chesney
When You Close Your Eyes, Night Ranger
Where Have All The Cowboys Gone?, Paula Cole [listen]
Why Do We Want What We Know We Can’t Have?, Reba McEntire
You Never Know Just How Good You’ve Got It, Tracy Byrd
You Win My Love, Shania Twain
Young Blood, Rickie Lee Jones

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