Jeffrey Catherine Jones

Jeff was in transition to becoming Catherine, and one could see the discomfort on some folks’ faces.


There was a period of about 20 years in my life when the comic art form was extremely important in my life. One of the most impressive people working was Jeff Jones. I think I met him only once, at the FantaCon comic convention in Albany in 1980.

But FantaCo, where I worked in the 1980s, published at least two of his stories, in the anthologies Gates of Eden and Deju Vu. The covers were done by Michael Kaluta and Bernie Wrightson, respectively, two of his colleagues in something called The Studio. And both titles, on a purely commercial level, were abject failures, though brilliant on an aesthetic one.

So I lost track of Jeffrey Jones by 1994. I didn’t know, for instance, that he was undergoing hormone therapy for gender reidentification. A friend of mine, who knew Jones, tells of being at a big comic convention. Jeff was in transition to becoming Catherine, and one could see the discomfort on some folks’ faces. One of the dealers asked my friend if he could talk to Jeff and kind of break the ice among the dealers/Jeff/the public, which he happily did. After a while, more people came over. He introduced Jeff to some of the dealers he knew, and Jeff ended up with a crowd. My friend wrote, “I will miss his work and such a nice person.”

Apparently, from the reports I’ve read, things got easier as she became more evident. I’m happy about that; I can only imagine how difficult that must have been. I met a guy at a conference, actually around the same time as the Jones transition, then a couple of years later, at the same event, he had become a she, and she told me at length how her colleagues were not exactly supportive, to say the least.

Tom Spurgeon of The Comics Reporter remembers Jones, who died this week at the age of 67. Interestingly, Spurgeon always uses “she”, which I suppose makes sense. (Beats writing he/she a lot.)

Sidney Lumet

Lumet “directed seventeen different actors in Oscar-nominated performances… Four of them won for those Lumet-supervised performances.”

There’s an IMDB filmography for film director Sidney Lumet, who died last week at the age of 86. I thought I’d note the movies I saw, or wish I had.

12 Angry Men (1957) – A great cast, led by Henry Fonda. I must have seen this on TV originally, but it was so impactful, the whole notion of whether things are the way we thought, in a great courtroom drama, that I’ve gotten it on DVD.

Serpico (1973) – Found this movie about the one honest cop riveting, intense and rather sad by its (appropriate) cynicism.

Dog Day Afternoon (1975) – I’ve meant to see this. Actually came across the first 10 minutes on YouTube fairly recently.

Network (1976) – By far, the best movie of 1976, Rocky’s Academy Award win notwithstanding. In fact, it’s #64 on AFI’s top 100 movies. Also, Evanier tells a great story about a screening he attended. I remember the Oscars for that year quite well, when Peter Finch’s widow picked up his well-deserved award for Best Actor.

The Wiz (1978) – Definitely did NOT view this in the theater, though I’ve seen scenes on TV.

The Verdict (1982)– I’ve been a sucker for both law dramas and movies about redemption. This movie starring Paul Newman, as a lush of a lawyer I recall really enjoying when I saw it in the theater, though I haven’t viewed it since.

I probably also ought to see Long Day’s Journey Into Night, Equus and Running on Empty.

Evanier notes that Lumet “directed seventeen different actors in Oscar-nominated performances: Katharine Hepburn, Rod Steiger, Al Pacino, Ingrid Bergman, Albert Finney, Chris Sarandon, Faye Dunaway, Peter Finch, Beatrice Straight, William Holden, Ned Beatty, Peter Firth, Richard Burton, Paul Newman, James Mason, Jane Fonda and River Phoenix. Four of them won for those Lumet-supervised performances. A pretty impressive record.” Kevin Marshall wrote a nice piece about Lumet.

17 November, 1927-2 February, 2011

Trudy is survived by her son, Roger Green (Carol) of Albany, NY; two daughters, Leslie Green of Lemon Grove, CA and Marcia Green of Charlotte, NC…


Writing an obituary is often a negotiated exercise when more than one person has to be satisfied with it. The one below I started writing. The mechanical stuff – who she’s survived by, e.g., – is easy, but I was having trouble with the middle section. So one sister wrote a bunch of stuff for that, then the other sister and I had to trim that down, not just for length (and thus cost), but because it was a bit disjointed. This is the Thursday night draft version, not yet approved by the first sister, but it’s close enough for the blog.

Incidentally, the website of the Charlotte Observer has annoying instructions for submitting an obit. It tells you to either call or e-mail for more information.

Interesting/strange thing about the photo to the left: my mom cut the neutral background out of the picture about two weeks before she died, and no one knows why, possibly not even her. It’s not as though there was someone else in the shot.

I suppose it is quite obvious, though probably inappropriate for me to say, that my mom was a real babe when she was younger.

CHARLOTTE – Gertrude Elizabeth (Trudy) Green, 83, of Charlotte, NC, passed away on Wednesday, February 2, 2011 in Charlotte, NC. Born in Binghamton, NY, she was the daughter of the late Clarence and Gertrude (Yates) Williams, and the widow of Leslie H. (Les) Green, who died in 2000. She was a member of C. N. Jenkins Presbyterian Church, having served as a Deacon for multiple terms and on various other church boards and committees.

Trudy graduated from Binghamton Central High School, and worked at a number of jobs dealing with finances, including at McLean’s department store, and Columbia Gas & Electric in Binghamton, and as a teller at First Union Bank, from which she retired. She also participated in several family-owned business ventures, including President’s Club and Avon.

She was a loving and supportive wife, mother, grandmother, and surrogate parent, who found joy in helping her family, her church, her community and others. She was a God-loving, long time member of Circle #3 group, where she was the Treasurer, Presbyterian Women, and various Bible studies.

Trudy was a very social person, caring and honest, with a beautiful smile. She loved cookbooks, calendars, clocks, boxes, and bags, and in later years, developed a love for word puzzles. She used to participate in bowling leagues and Bingo.

She is survived by her son, Roger Green (Carol) of Albany, NY; two daughters, Leslie Green of Lemon Grove, CA and Marcia Green of Charlotte, NC; three granddaughters, Rebecca (Rico) Curtis of San Diego, CA; Alexandria Green-House of Charlotte, NC; and Lydia Green of Albany, NY; and several cousins.

Funeral services will be held on Tuesday, February 8 at 2 pm at C.N. Jenkins Presbyterian Church, 1421 Statesville Ave, Charlotte, NC 28206. The family will receive friends at the church from 1 to 1:45 p.m.

Contributions in her memory may be made in lieu of flowers to University Adult Day Care, 1324 John Kirk Road, Charlotte, NC 28262, (704)510-0030.

The third pic shows my parents – damn, I’m an orphan – at my graduation from library school in 1992. The fourth is at my mother’s 80th birthday party in 2007.

Arthur of AmeriNZ, the guy from Auckland via Chicago who I’ve certainly mentioned in this blog, wrote a blog post about my mom and me. Best pair of sentences: “The largely artificial Internet life is all too often detached from real life, and we lose sight of the real-life humans we’re interacting with. Yet the Internet can also deliver connections we’d never have had otherwise.”

Amen.

A Peculiar Synchronicity

The funeral will probably be on Tuesday, to accommodate her out-of-town relatives, and the burial on Wednesday.

Well, if you read the latter comments to yesterday’s post, you know that my mom, Gertrude Elizabeth (Trudy) Green, died yesterday morning. She was 83, had suffered a massive stroke (9 cm, as opposed to the usual 2 to 3 cm) on Friday. And still I was surprised, and yet not.

Mom with Lydia

I’ll probably undoubtedly write more on this event over time, but I do want to make a couple of observations.

Thanks for the outpouring of kind words and thoughts and prayers that I have received.

Before each of my parents died, they each had a stroke, though my father’s was less severe. I was the last of the three Green children to arrive in Charlotte, and shortly after each of them saw me, they died. It was as though they were waiting on my arrival so that they could let go. there’s more than a little ambivalence in that.

I think this is interesting.  When my father died on August 10, 2000, my sisters were by his side. Marcia had stayed over the night before and Leslie had come to relieve her when he was getting ready to pass. My mother and I were stuck at the house until I found a neighbor to give us a ride, too late.

I had stayed in my mother’s room Monday night, and Tuesday morning, I was amazed how quickly she died, at 8:50 a.m. I called my sisters but she had already passed by that point.

We’re meeting with the mortician this morning, but
the funeral will probably be on Tuesday, to accommodate her out-of-town relatives, and the burial on Wednesday, next to my father, at the veteran’s cemetery 40 miles from here.
***
I’ll probably continue to blog about what I had planned for a few days. Tomorrow, the actual train ride down.

January Ramblin’

The Rev. Roger Green was a priest of the Church of England.

Finding a Religious Common Ground. A reminder that the religions that sometimes divide us have much history in common. (CBS Sunday Morning)


From the Wikipedia:
One relatively minor aspect of the [Green Hornet] character that tends to be given limited exposure in the actual productions is his blood relationship to the Lone Ranger, another character created by [Fran] Striker. The Lone Ranger’s nephew was Dan Reid. In the Green Hornet radio shows, the Hornet’s father was likewise named Dan Reid, making Britt Reid the Lone Ranger’s great-nephew.

On November 11, 1947, radio show episode “Too Hot to Handle”, Britt tells his father that he, Britt, is the Green Hornet. After Dan’s initial shock and anger, Dan refers to a vigilante “pioneer ancestor” of theirs that Dan himself had ridden alongside within Texas. As he expressed pride in and love for his son, the Lone Ranger theme briefly played in the background.
The Lone Ranger property was sold to another company in the 1950s, which resulted in a legal complication that precluded The Lone Ranger from being directly associated with the Green Hornet.

And here’s a joint chronology of the Lone Ranger and the Green Hornet.

The Lone Ranger intro
Fred Foy, the announcer of the Lone Ranger, who died in December 2010, recreating the intro
the last 3/4s of the William Tell Overture by Rossini, the final section of which is the Lone Ranger theme

All The World Is Waiting or should be. Interesting history in five minutes, of the best known female character in comics, Wonder Woman.

Who could play the Marvel Comics character, the Black Panther?

Sean Smith resigned as L.A. bureau chief of Entertainment weekly to join the Peace Corps, which he wrote about in this Newsweek article. My favorite paragraph:
“Writing about Hollywood is like being a reporter at Disneyland. At first, you can’t believe that you get to spend every day in The Happiest Place on Earth. Everyone wants to ask you about your work. You’re surrounded by princesses, and the sky sparkles with pixie dust. But as the years go on, you learn about the oily machinery that manufactures all that enchantment. You see what Cinderella’s really like when that glass slipper comes off. And then one day you notice that the magic is gone, and all you’re left with is a small, small world.”

Daniel Johnston’s “Infinite Comic Book of Musical Greatness”
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Google Alert finds

A Friend Like Charlie
Charlie Green is 14 (on Feb. 16) and his father, Roger Green, is 70. They are bound together more than just by blood. It’s music that also binds them.

Teaming up with CareerBuilder provides our national, regional, and local advertisers with access to job seekers in towns and cities where we’ve not traditionally been present,” said Roger Green, Managing Director, Newsquest Digital Media. “Plus it provides our audience with the greatest number of opportunities for jobs and careers.”

Roger Green made this Freedom of Information request to Devon County Council; definitely my kind of thing.

The Rev. Roger Green was the father of Timothy Green. Roger was born about 1611 in England and came to Virginia in 1635 on the ship Abraham at the age of 24 years. The Rev. Roger Green was a priest of the Church of England and was active in establishing the Church of England in Virginia and North Carolina.

Roger Green, age 80, of Huntington [Indiana], died at 9:05 p.m. Monday (January 25, 2010) at Oakbrook Village in Huntington.

Ramblin' with Roger
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