Thank you Roger

I've stewed over this all morning. The lack of coverage of Len Domler's death (see my blog, Len Domler, RIP).

I understand that folk music is small potatoes in a world consumed by The Sopranos, the Red Sox Nation, the gasoline tax, Paris Hilton's jailhouse stint, Lou Deluca's hit, and Lindsay Lohan's DUI, but so is jazz, opera, art, the stage and non-best-selling literature.

Just because the great big world is not paying attention, doesn't diminish its importance.

Len Domler was a cultural cornerstone in the Hartford area. Week after week, without pay, he helped bring interesting, underappreciated, world class music to Hartford. In fact, there are many musicians who passed through that the bigger world would recognize. Musical legends like Pete Seeger, Doc Watson and the Balfa Brothers.

And the local media has ignorned Len's passing. If this was New York City, you know there would have been a sweet elegaic essay in the New Yorker and The Times.

At least, Roger Catlin, who covered music for the Courant for years, has a very nice post on his blog. He went to shows at the Sounding Board. He understands what Len contributed.

Unfortunately when the current Courant music columnist can report the death of Ra Ra Riot and not that of Len Domler, then priorites are screwed up.

Hartford can build civic centers, marketplaces, blue black squares, but it's little cultural organizations, like the Sounding Board, which make Hartford a decent place to live. Long live the Sounding Board, and Len Domler's memory.

From the simple obituary in the Hartford Courant, calling hours are at: the Giulliano-Sagarino Funeral Home at Brooklawn, 511 Brook Street, Rocky Hill on Wednesday from 5-7 p.m. Funeral and burial will be at a later date. Gifts in his memory may be made to either The Sounding Board Coffeehouse, C/O Brent Hall, 460 Wallingford Road, Cheshire, CT, 06410 or to Middlesex Weiss Hospice Unit, Middlesex Hospital, Office of Philanthropy, 28 Crescent Street, Middletown, CT, 06457.