Oblada

I was at the McCartney concert on Tuesday night.  Donna had scored two tickets from a friend of hers who had mistakenly bought the tickets for a day when she would be out of town.  So there we were with about thirty thousand others in Fenway Park going back in time.

I rarely have gone to concerts since my college years.  When I have, it has been in small venues.   For birthday gifts I saw Joan Baez about twenty years ago, and Judy Collins about ten years later. Both were in spaces that held fewer than 500 people.  Friends invited us to hear the The Manhattan Project a short time before COVID and that too was in a small venue.

Watching McCartney in Fenway Park was something else entirely. Some observations

• We were seated in very good baseball seats. Behind home plate several rows up.  He was on a stage set deep into center field.  You could not see him. If you matched up the blown up image on the screen, and then glanced at the stage you could maybe make out which of the performers was McCartney, but otherwise it was like watching a movie of a performer.
• He's still got it.  The man will be 80 in nine days, and when he sang songs with which I'm familiar, he sounded to me like the same guy on the records.
• I had not been to Fenway Park since before COVID.  We drove in, parked near Northeastern, and walked to the venue. Since it had been a while I was not quite sure when we got to a particular junction which way to go.  Then I saw a cluster of gray and bald headed people ahead of us, and I knew we were on the right route.  
• We were seated next to people who had bought the tickets in part to celebrate the man's 80th birthday.  He was not an outlier.  Lots of folks collecting social security for years in the stands.  A majority.  There were some young 'uns, but the crowd acted like the Ed Sullivan audience in 1964--just sixty years later.
• I typically don't like to sing or hear others sing along with the crooner.  It did not bother me on Tuesday particularly when he sang Beatle songs.  And if it bothered me, it was tough luck because everyone was banging out the lyrics.  Some attendees were getting up and dancing spontaneously at some junctures.
• The place was jammed--any worries about COVID in that group were not apparent. We brought masks, but mine remained in my pocket. Donna wore hers but only for short intervals. Maybe there was one percent of the audience wearing them.
• The promoters told us that the show would start at 630. It really didn't. Some piped in music with pictures of the Beatles and McCartney were displayed for an hour.  When he came on at about 730, he did not stop for two hours, before we left, and from what I understand continued for about 40 minutes afterwards. The guy is pushing 80, looked on screen like he was fifty, and performed as if he had the energy of a young man.
• He gave a number of shout outs to George and John. And the crowd responded energetically to these references.
• The people to our left went to get food and drink before the show started. The guy came back with two cans of beer while his wife was buying food.  He leaned over to me, showed me the two cans of a nothing special beer, and said "Twenty Three bucks."
• McCartney said he knew that the audience wanted to hear Beatle songs but he interspersed some new ones and Wing numbers as well. They, the non Beatle songs, did not get the same kind of response.  Band on the Run and Live and Let Die were appreciated.  However, it was I've Just Seen a Face, Something, Obladi Oblada, Lady Madonna, and the other Beatle numbers that revved up the crowd the most.

Like the lyrics in the song: life goes on, la la how the life goes on.  He brought a lot of the past back for me.  The apt name of his concert tour is Get Back.  

Adjustable

If I were to leave Boston, one thing about the area I would miss is the number and diversity of libraries in the area.  I am a library person. Some people hang out in bars--and I do that occasionally.  But if I have a few hours, and nothing major on the agenda, I will pack up a briefcase or knapsack, and park myself in a library.  

The Minuteman library network in eastern Massachusetts is remarkable.  Boston, like most large cities, is surrounded by one suburb after another.  Each of these communities has its own library. The Minuteman Library Network consists of forty two libraries.  There are about ten of these in my orbit and each one has a distinctive feel.  Waltham, the closest to me,  attracts children who are mesmerized by the spacious kid's area. Weston, next closest, has a sitting room with puzzles that makes you feel like you're in a very rich person's den. Newton's has three floors of stacked shelves and nearly any dvd you seek to play.  I've been to more than a half dozen others in the network.

In addition, the Boston area is home to many university libraries.  There is a collective called the Boston Library Consortium and twenty two libraries are part of it.  If you work at, or are a student in, any one of the universities in the consortium, you can obtain a card and use any library in the consortium.  Harvard is, of course, too snooty to be a member.  However, Boston College, Brandeis, Northeastern, Boston University, Tufts, and Bentley University, are among the member institutions.

I live adjacent to Brandeis and have used their library several times. About two miles from where I live is Bentley University.  I had not gone to Bentley's library since the late 1980s, for no reason other than there were many other choices.  But sometime in mid May I went to it for the first time in decades. And it is there that, during my fourth visit earlier this week, that I saw something I had never seen in all my library jaunts. Very cool.

When I walked into Bentley's library that day in mid May, I was taken aback.  It had, of course, gone through renovations in the thirty plus years since my last visit.  What they'd done, however, was transformative: all modern furniture, big tables to settle in to spread out and write, walls of current periodicals, a museum exhibit, engaging resource center, and thematic displays of books here and there--Boston related; abolition related, whatever is current related.  They'd modernized the entire space.

On Monday the 6th, for about the fourth time since my first visit, I parked myself in what I have come to think of as my spot up on the third floor. I was researching something and read that the library had a book I wanted to review with an HD call number. I traveled to the second floor where the HD Reference section is, but the HD regular books were not in the vicinity. I asked the librarian and she told me that the regular HD books were on the first floor. "Just go down the stairs" she said, "and you will walk right into them."

That I did. I walked down the stairs and saw in front of me rows of shelved books with letter pairs on the wall of each row indicating which row had which books.  The rows, however, were all jammed together, as if someone was cleaning and needed to push the rows together to get to what needed vacuuming.  

I saw where my book would be, but the slimmest person could not get through the opening between the rows to look for it.  A stick of gum, could barely get through the gap.  It seemed odd to me that the rows would be so pushed together. What good are the books if you can't get to them?  I was about to go back and ask the librarian how/when the books could be accessed, when I noticed something at the end of each row. There was a tiny computer screen with an arrow attached.  I pressed the screen at the end of one row, and the row opened so that patrons, regardless of girth, could get through and scan for their books.  Just to make sure, I pressed the button on other rows, and they opened right up as well.

This seemed so cool to me. What a clever way to conserve space. 

Later I thought of the adjustable rows metaphorically.  What if we could depress a button when encountering some closed relationship and the previously blocked relationship could open up.  Having a year long feud with your sibling and can't get through to her-?-press a button and miraculously there is a way to get in there and work through it. Haven't spoken to your spouse about an issue because it tends to trigger an avalanche of accusations, press a button and you can ease right in there to talk without setting the world on fire.  Your erstwhile best friend was, somehow, offended by something you once did and has tightened up such that any greeting is met with a terse response. Just press the button, get right in there and hug letting tears of joy flow to your knees.  We'd be well served to consider the possibility that blocked relationships can be reopened with maybe even a tiny touch that, somehow, opens up people who naturally would love to embrace.

Tim

A smile and friendly behavior matters.

When I first saw the name above the photo in the obituary, I thought it might not be him. The picture did not look like him. But then I read through the notice and it was the Tim Donovan I knew.

I met Tim sometime after I was hired at Northeastern University in the early 80s.  I found him to be always welcoming, friendly, self-effacing, and apparently genuinely interested in how I was doing. We both liked basketball and he spoke to me about a faculty team he played on called the Wedding Knights. I did not play on that team, but I enjoyed hearing about their exploits.

Tim led workshops periodically for the university. I was fortunate to be invited on two occasions. One was held in Vermont, the other on Martha's Vineyard. Both programs were valuable. He had them well organized. The one in Vermont was held in the mid 80s, the one on the Vineyard that I attended was in the 90s.  These were two of the more beneficial retreat type experiences I have had in forty years working in higher education.  Beyond the academic take-aways, which were substantive and memorable, the workshops were enjoyable and helped foster social relationships that likely would not have been generated otherwise.  There are pressures whenever you coordinate such conferences. Tim was affable and welcoming throughout each.

Tim was an Associate Dean in the College of Arts and Sciences for many years. During at least one of those years, I was serving as an interim chairperson for my department and had to interact with the dean's office periodically. Subsequently, I too had a stint as an Associate Dean after Tim retired.  I realize now how stressful the job can be, yet I do not recall a single interaction with Tim when he was in the dean's office which was anything but pleasant and fair.

For a short time I was looking at a house in Tim's neck of the woods in Arlington. I called him to ask about the neighborhood, and then, as always, he was helpful and informative and self-effacing. I remember him telling me that there was a community board of some sort and he had been elected or selected as, what he called, a grand poo-bah spokesperson for the group. Not surprised that the committee elected him to be a spokesperson. Not surprised that he made light of the group's choosing him to be the representative.

A newcomer to any institution, as I was when I met Tim, can find comfort in a friendly face, an easy conversation, a welcoming smile. And it goes beyond the positive effects the behavior can have on any one person. It can affect an entire organization. Smiles and friendship and intelligence are seedlings for a culture that is conducive to productivity and joy.

I lost touch with Tim after he retired. Had not seen him for over a dozen years when I read the obituary in the newspaper and was saddened by it.

Tim brightened up the world of the people who had the good fortune to cross paths with him.