Tuesday, January 10, 2012

Good Guys

Yesterday I had a very pleasant phone conversation with a good guy. I met this fellow online through our mutual fandom for the Gibson Brothers bluegrass group. We had exchanged notes, read each others blogs and shared our enthusiasm for our favorite musical group. All of that led to a phone call which bodes well for a burgeoning friendship.

After the conversation ended I thought about how very fortunate I am in having friends, family and acquaintances who are good guys. It almost goes without saying that good guys can be girls. But it is better that I put that clarification on the page. If I started a “good guy list” of folks I know and have known on the next line of this essay I’d end up with several pages of names and probably still miss a few important people due to my aging memory.

Here’s my own personal definition of a good guy: a person who is kind, thinks of others before him(or her)self, strives to be positive, laughs easily, is humble, takes care of responsibilities, tries to lead a moral life and is thoughtfully aware of what is going on in the world.

You can see that it’s not easy being a good guy. But I’ve know an awful lot of them. When I start thinking about how messed up the world is, how much just plain badness exists, I think about some of the good guys on my list. Sometimes I’ll give one a call or send a note asking for a little advice or encouragement. In no time at all things look better and I’ve usually learned something useful in the process.

I won’t embarrass my new friend by putting his name here. Well, maybe I will later. But first let me tell you a little bit about him. He’s a fine musician, a writer and a pediatric physician. His work is mostly with children who are very, very ill and he provides what we now call palliative care and pain management. Those are medical words for one of the toughest jobs in health care. This fellow is a family man with a wife and a couple of youngsters. He has a passion for good bluegrass and old time music that he expresses with very good singing and picking. He plays this music in one of the most unlikely markets, New York City. But with his bandmate he spreads the joy of bluegrass all around those proverbial concrete canyons. In addition to all this my friend writes blogs about music with a positive and entertaining style. He’s knowledgeable about and invariably supportive of artists in the bluegrass field. So now I’ve decided to divulge his name because I think he deserves a little recognition and a wider audience. The good guy I’ve been talking about is John Saroyan of the Manhattan Valley Ramblers from, obviously, New York City. Check out his writing at jimsrootsandblues.com. That site also has the Manhattan Valley Ramblers performance dates on the calendar.

So my “good guy list” is a little longer now. It can never be too long, of course. Hope to see everyone on it someday soon. Now, have a fine day.