Random picture from the mountain that makes one yearn for the sanity of Father Nature this Spring.
As most of you know, I enjoy supporting my local public library by shopping at their internal bookstore for gently used books/cd's/dvd's at three times a month.* I find it's an economical way to pump up my respective collections of media.
*my public library has two book fairs for all of the donated media they receive year round and what doesn't sell there, goes into the bookstore. They also cull the collection and sell those items in the store too. All monies raised goes towards various programs that are not covered under their general budget.
For example, my haul for the past month featured music by: Tower of Power; EmmyLou Harris; Jethro Tull; Annie Lenox; G.E. Smith; Barenaked Ladies;18th century popular music; Chevelle and early 19th century folk/ballad music. Books include a bio of a seafaring Victorian lady and a look at the London underworld from pre-medieval days to the present (late 90's/early 2000's).
Today's post is about the creator of the early 19th century folk/ballad music. The official title of the c.d. is "The Battle of Plattsbugh: Music from the war of 1812", and the artist in question was Connecticut native Stan Ransom aka The Connecticut Peddler.
Now as I'm want to do whenever I come across an old (in this case 24 years) c.d. is to see what kind of current info I can find on the artist/musician in question. So I went to his website listed on the back to see what I can see. Found a lot of stuff that was grossly out of date: the website was last updated some 13 years (it had Adobe flash player, so yeah...) ago, a defunct like button to a FB page and the last release listed was maybe in the early 2000's.
So off we went to go a-Googlin', and while we had some initial success by finding a newspaper article from the 2010's about the gentleman in question, any further dive would require spending money on a subscription to a paper that I neither wanted nor had any compunction to read. So off we went a-Googlin', this time for an obit.
Now you may think that searching for an obit is a bit strange, but in the bio link on his apparently defunct website, he was born in 1928, so a good assumption on anyone's part would be that he is no longer residing among the living. Alas, I found some obits, but not for the gentleman in question. In fact, the last thing I found for the gentlemen was a LinkedIn entry from 2020 thanking everyone for their birthday wishes.
Ultimately, this is where we decided to end our research. If I want to search out for any of his remaining c.d.'s, I would probably have to try my luck on Ebay. It's a rare occurrence for me when my research doesn't pan out in any meaningful way. In fact, I think this is the only time I wound up shooting a total cap gun with my research, as every other time I've done similar media research, I've always had a conclusion, good or bad, that I could live with.
I always want to be successful whenever I perform a personal research project, and this one felt like a complete failure to launch for me.
So my question to you, my drive-by reader, is this: have you ever done a research project, personal or otherwise, that became a complete total bust/total zero when all was said and done?
I was here while awaiting an appointment and had to copy/save /paste my almost done comment when I had to go in. So never posted, until now:
ReplyDeleteReminds me of a 2 month search of facilities and phone calls when my oldest friend from my town was moved out of a local nursing home when it closed. They were supposed to notify me as the only one who could contact his son, who was still detained in corrections.
Online, and list after list, each had to be called and logged, some each separate floor, or different units.
My daughter put out a request on a nurse group from her work, if anyone knew where he was moved. Someone remembered him, and directed me to call a place I had already crossed off the long list of tried numbers. They had another unit for long term patients I was not told of when first calling.
So after 2 months of fails, a total stranger let me know he was moved to a place a few towns over .
Finally, I got a positive answer on a call, and found him there alive. I asked to speak to him, but was not allowed. He would have to call me, which for whatever reason, he chose not to. Maybe his hearing or speech were impaired, unknown, well he was over 80 and paralyzed.
I sent him some cards and hope he got them, but got back no acknowledgement.
But I contacted his son through fb messenger, and this past week he got to visit his dad before he passed away, taken off life support. So in that way, my search was a success, thanks to daughter's help.
I wish I had had a way to visit him alive, though visiting was not allowed for 2 years during Covid restrictions. I had found out in the Paper two weeks later that the place was closed down. Though, I guess he didn't want me to see him in his advanced poor state after years of paralysis.
His son never would have found him without my search.
Ev Jogns/SnaggleTooth
An excellent and caring friend you are to go those multiple extra miles for your friend and your friend's son. Glad things worked out for you in the end.
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