Think is My Favorite Aretha Franklin Hit

This was a hit back in 1968 and has always been my favorite from Aretha.  Thanks for all the wonderful music over the years.  RIP.

Comments about the Paley Center

Yesterday Karen and I visited the Paley Center and viewed a seminar from 1996 about the documentary maker Ken Burns.  It started out with highlights of some of Burns's works, including, among others: "Brooklyn Bridge" (1981), "Huey Long" (1985), "The Statue of Liberty" (1985), "The Congress" (1988), "The Civil War" (1990), and "Baseball" (1994).  Mr. Burns fielded questions from universities across the country about various aspects of making documentaries.  We also saw a "Midnight Special" hosted by Wolfman Jack from 1981 that featured performances by David Bowie and Paul Simon.

I have visited the Paley Center at least once a month since I retired and am impressed by their rich and unique collection.  I am disappointed when I see so few people in their library viewing programs.  Perhaps everyone is at home viewing Youtube and Amazon Prime.  I think the Paley Center needs to market themselves more aggressively to the public.

Bob Dylan Sings Don't Think Twice It's Alright in 2018

This concert performance of Don't Think Twice was posted on Youtube.  I don't know the exact concert venue.  It looks like Bob has colored his hair.  His voice seems shot, but I am glad that he is still performing at age 77.  There are concerts scheduled until 11/11/18, but presently nothing is planned for the NYC area.

Yankees 5 Texas Rangers 3 While Dodging the Rain

When you buy tickets for an outdoor event in advance, you never what the weather will be on that day.  I bought tickets for Yankees vs Rangers for August 11th months ago and found out this morning that the forecast would be for rain all day.  We usually leave for a 1 PM game at 11 AM to get to the game on time via subway.  At 11 AM I was still uncertain about going since I was afraid of having to sit through a long rain delay.  Some Yankee fans tweeted that the team wanted fans to come to the stadium to eat food while they wait for the game to start late if at all.

We decided to leave at 11:40 AM and arrived at our seats after the second inning.  Before we came Giancarlo Stanton hit his 29th home run as the Yankees lead 2-0 at the end of 2 innings.  Lance Lynn was solid in his second start for the Yankees but left after the 5th inning.  The Rangers tied the game in the 7th inning on a balk by Dellin Betances.  In the bottom of that inning, Miguel Andujar hit a 2-run homer to give the Yankees a 5-3.

It started to rain steadily in the 9th inning as Aroldis Chapman got into trouble by loading the bases with a walk, hit, and a hit batsman.  He struck out Jurickson Profar to get a shaky save.

Game recap

Using My Librarian Skills For Baseball Research

For most of my career, I was a reference librarian, but I did do some indexing of professional journal articles.  For a while, I indexed articles for inclusion into a database of published articles cover products of a pharmaceutical company.  For a short time, I worked for H.W. Wilson who published the Applied Science and Technology Index.

When I was at the annual meeting I found out about the Baseball Index Project. It was formed to locate, identify, evaluate, classify and describe the literature of the national pastime.  Right now I am indexing articles from the Games Project to be included into the database.  There are about 1000 articles that need to be indexed.

Reading Baseball Books for Pleasure at the NYPL Research Library

I decided to take a trip to Manhattan to look at a couple of baseball books at random at the Schwartzman Building of NYPL.  There seemed to be more tourists than users of the collection there.  The building is certainly a landmark which is of interest to visitors from all over the world.  When I went to the reading room, I observed that most of the patrons were using laptops and may not have been accessing the library's resources.

I looked at the following books:

Weeks, J. (2012). Cellar dwellers: The worst teams in baseball history. Lanham: Scarecrow Press, Inc.

The 1962 Mets were obviously listed

Kurkjian, T., & Major League Baseball Properties, Inc. (2006). Major League baseball hometown heroes: The most outstanding players in baseball history, club by club. New York, NY: Ballantine Books.

This was a coffee table book.

Bondy, F. (2014). WHO'S ON WORST?: The Lousiest Players, Biggest Cheaters, Saddest Goats and Other Antiheroes in Baseball History.

This included Anthony Young who lost 27 games in a row for the Mets in the early 1990s.

Remembering Charlotte Rae for Car 54 Where are You

It was announced today that actress Charlotte Rae passed away at age 92.  Although she is best known for her roles in "Facts of Life" and "Diff'rent Strokes", I remember her for playing Sylvia Schnauzer in "Car 54 Where are You?"  Sylvia was the wife of Patrolman Leo Schnauzer played by Al Lewis, best known for being Grandpa Munster.  Sylvia was a recurrent character in the series which was on the air from 1961-63.  She was very funny when she appeared.

Hank Garrett who played Officer Nicholson is now the only living member of the cast.