Willimantic, Now & Then
 
 
    This, to me, is what community is all about: Friends and neighbors looking out for one another. Sometimes we lend a hand when our friends suffer some mishap or misfortune; and at other times, we just see the chance to do a really special favor.
I love that Dave had the connections to make this happen. I love that Avery thought of it. I hope they enjoyed it. I suspect they did,
 
    I love Kate Wolf, and when we discovered Pandora, I selected music like Kate Wolf. The website lets you add other artists to the mix, combining the characteristics of several favorite artists. At some point – and this is what I really want to talk about – I found that Pandora.com was playing all the songs Tony and Kathleen used to sing!
    Now, the plot begins to thicken.
    The other night, my friends Dave and Avery were over to our house, hanging out. We got talking about music. Dave is a musician and music collector, and we were telling them about Pandora.com. I was naming some of the artists that played on “my” Kate Wolf plus, radio station. They included Stan Rogers and his brother Garnett Rogers, Tom Paxton, John Prine, Phil Ochs, and others.
 
By Mark Svetz
WILLIMANTIC –June 2009
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Community Connections
Bind Old friends and New
 
 
            I love the connections that get made in our community. This one started years ago, with Tony and Kathleen Clark singing a beautiful song, which I believe is called “Turning Toward the Morning.”
That song and many others were written and sung by Gordon Bok, a folk singer, songwriter from Camden, Maine. I learned many songs from Tony and Kathleen, including several by Gordon Bok: “Gentle Annie,” “Three Score and Ten,” “How Can I Keep From Singing?” and, of course, “Turning Toward the Morning.”
This song has a chorus that starts:
       “Oh, My Joanie Don’t you know,
The stars are swinging slow,
The seas are rolling easy as they did so long ago?
If I had a thing to give you,
I would tell you one more time
That the day is always turning toward the morning.”
       Now, my mother’s name is Joan, and Tony and I once showed up at her house during a misadventure years ago. It happened to be St. Patrick’s Day, which is a favorite holiday of my Mom’s, and a great excuse for two ne’er do wells to sing. Tony and I ended up singing that song for my Mom, sitting in a booth in a pub in Torrington.
    But this isn’t really about my mom, although she is on my mind, and that song, “Turning toward the Morning,” always makes me think of her.
This is sort of a complicated story, so I hope you will bear with me. I recently discovered Pandora.com, which is sort of an Internet radio station. It grew out of The Music Genome Project, which is a system of music analysis created in the last ten years.
 
          “Would Gordon Bok be in that mix?” Dave asked.
    “Yeah. There were some songs by Gordon Bok and Ann Muir!” I said.
    Dave asked another question about Gordon Bok and I sensed there was something going on. It turned out Dave, who makes musical instruments, had made a harp for Gordon’s wife, harpist Carol Rohl. Gordon, it turned out was coming to Willimantic in a few days to pick up his wife’s harp, which Dave had worked on.
    All of this – the music, Tony, Kathleen, my mother – has been on my mind in a kind of sweet, painful collection of memories. Dave and Avery connected them all with this offer to introduce Tony to Gordon Bok.
    The next day, I asked Tony if it had all worked out. His understated response told the story for me, along with the twinkle in his eye!
    “We had a nice visit,” Tony told me. “Dave stopped by with Gordon, we talked for a while. He’s really a nice man.”
    
    And as for me, well I just love having such wonderful friends around me. Even the ones who have left this world for some other, well they are still with me. And I am reminded that, indeed, “The world is always turning toward the morning!”    
 
Mark Svetz and Sarah Winter own Clothworks, a shop on Church Street in                         Downtown Willimantic, where they make and sell clothing and bags. You might hear Gordon Bok playing at the shop.
    That was one of those great “Small World Moments,” that I love so much. But the story doesn’t end there.
    The next day, Dave stopped by to tell me this great idea Avery had. He asked if I thought Tony would like to meet Gordon. I went down and asked Tony, and it turned out he really liked the idea.
    Now, this is all very emotional stuff for me, right now. Kathleen died a few years back and we all miss her something fierce. Tony is now fighting his own battle with cancer. And my mother died May 5. I had just found a tape I made for her some years back, from a tape Tony made for me that included several Gordon Bok songs.
According to the Music Genome Project website, it is “the most comprehensive music analysis ever undertaken.” In it, music-loving technologists set out to identify the essential characteristics – the genome – of music, as it were.
Joan Svetz looks back while listening to mark and tony
           Now, on the website called Pandora.com, I can choose to listen to music that matches the characteristics of my favorite artists.
Pilothouse, The Jacob Pike
siruaballi & linden
Wood carving by Gordon Bok
Gordon Bok photo by Janet Buck-Marusov