Ramblin' with Roger

Feeling patriotic

Fighting malaise

Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum

Leading into the semiquincentennial, I was feeling rather bearish on the anniversary. The organization designated to run the event had been supplanted by a partisan celebration more about one man than the country.

But that made me sad. So my wife and I finished watching The American Revolution. The approach in describing how black and indigenous people participated in and/or were affected by the war was far more nuanced than I’m used to. I started feeling patriotic.

So I decided to record the entirety of Disney Celebrates America, a “24-Hour Non-Stop Live Event.” YES, REALLY. Over the following week, I watched bits and pieces. Some of it was really cool.

Anchor David Muir reported from inside the Statue of Liberty, including the torch and crown.

“Nightline” celebrated 80 years of news storytelling at ABC News.

On “Good Morning America,” the co-anchors presented a deep dive into their own American journeys and how their families arrived in the United States.

Robin Roberts talked with the first confirmed living descendants of an enslaved individual who helped build the White House.

This Week” co-anchor Jonathan Karl reported atop Mount Rushmore.

Great stories about the Seven Natural Wonders of America and how they have shaped the people and culture of the country.

Other stuff was interesting, and if it wasn’t, that’s why I can fast forward.

On PBS, Carly Fiorina, new CEO of the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation and National Honorary Chair of VA250 spoke of telling the “whole story” of the Revolutionary days. Be still, my heart.

Booyah

I even liked all of the folks coming for the World Cup falling in love with Boston beer and ranch dressing. (The interference in the red card debacle was unfortunate, though.)

So now, I’m filled with patriotic vigor. But how do I square that with other things that PURPORT to be patriotic, but don’t seem to be for me?

The troglodyte Secretary of Defense continues to narrow opportunities for minorities and women. “For the first time in more than a decade, no active-duty female Navy officers are likely to be promoted to admiral this year.” Land of the free?

As Liz Dye noted, Todd Blanche is Roy Cohn … but worse. He’s worse because Cohn never held office, while Blanche is the acting Attorney General. If you mistook him for FOTUS’s personal lawyer, the confusion is understandable. I had to remember yet AGAIN that embracing the flag – literally, in the case of FOTUS – is not patriotism.

Andy Olivastro of the Heritage Foundation proclaimed, “Election interference remains a major threat to our nation’s survival,” and that FOTUS “was crystal clear in his speech. ” But what he actually said was bunk.

Document

I’m going to cherry-pick some lines of the “grievance” section of a familiar document. He has, among other things:

refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.

obstructed the Administration of Justice, by refusing his Assent to Laws for establishing Judiciary power.

erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harass our people, and eat out their substance.

affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil power.

combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended Legislation.

excited domestic insurrections amongst us.

So, in some ways, we’ve been here before. Optimistically, this means we can figure this out again. It may not mean going to war, but it will require patriotic zeal.

Sunday Stealing — Now We Know Our ABC’s

Utah

Welcome to Sunday Stealing. Here we will steal all types of questions from every corner of the blogosphere. Our promise to you is that we will work hard to find the most interesting and intelligent questions. Cheers to all of us thieves!

Princess Ladybug tells us, “Don’t mind the crown. I’m really the jester around here.” She’s the one who turned to her ABCs to give us this meme.

The Alphabet Meme: Now We Know Our ABC’s

Answer these questions with anything from a single word to a paragraph or two. It’s up to you.

A is for Age. 73. I can remember it because it’s tied to my birthday 7 <arch.

B is for your Booze of choice. Kahlúa, though I don’t drink it often.

C is for Career. Librarian, which I probably should have figured out bearlier than I did.

D is for your Dog’s name. Stealing this paragraph from a 2023 Sunday Stealing, which is efficient, ironic, or both. In my life, I had only one dog. He was named Lucky Stubbs. I believe he was an Alaskan husky we had when I was a tween. He would nip at me, but my parents, specifically my father, seemed unconcerned. That is, until he bit one, or maybe both, of the minister’s daughters. THEN they got rid of him, ostensibly to a farm in the area.

E is for Everyday Essentials. Leaving the home, the mantra is keys, wallet, phone.

F is for your Favorite Food. Lasagna

Games people play

G is for your favorite Game. There are LOTS of games, and they’ve changed a lot depending on who’s available to play. If I have to play alone, Spades, Pinochle, and Backgammon are on my phone. But it’s been Hearts, Scrabble, Trivial Pursuit… I can’t even keep track. Songs are both Games People Play, totally different pieces by Joe South and the Spinners.

H is for your Hometown. Binghamton, which I haven’t written about since Thursday.

I is for an Instrument you play. Kazoo. Or a comb with paper, which sounds like a kazoo.

J is for your favorite Jam or Jelly flavor. Strawberry, which, BTW, is also my favorite ice cream flavor. Song: Strawberry Letter #23 by the Brothers Johnson; I LOVE this song.

K is for Kids. One daughter, who I haven’t mentioned in this blog since last month.

L is for the Last show or movie you watched. It was CBS Saturday Morning from the previous week, not yesterday.

M is for your most prized possession. Perhaps it’s the series of books from Record Research compiled by the late Joel Whitburn about the pop charts. They bring me joy.

N is for the Name of your first crush. I’m not sure. Maybe Diane?

O is for what you observe from your window. The glare off the roof of our car.

P is for Phobias. Mild claustrophobia. I think I have had agoraphobia, and occasionally, it’s still lurking in certain situations.

All together now

Q is for your favorite Quote. From You Can Make It If You Try by Sly and the Family Stone. Push a little harderThink a little deeperDon’t let the plasticBring you down (Ask me tomorrow and I’ll give you a different answer.)

R is for Regret. I wish Frank Sinatra were right when he sang: “Regrets, I’ve had a few, but then again, too few to mention.” I have quite a few, but only one I feel like sharing.

S is for Sweets. Oatmeal raisin cookie

T is for the Time you wake up. Lately it’s been about 8:30 a.m., but it depends on schedules.

U is for Underwear. Yes. Oh, briefs, T-shirt.

V is for your favorite Vegetable. Spinach.

W is for your Worst habit. Overthinking.

X is for X-rays. Ah, the Utah story, which is certainly one of my regrets. The in my knee is ongoing.

Y is for your Yummiest recipe. Betty Crocker cookbook lasagna.

Z is for your Zodiac sign. Pisces. Somewhere in this house, I have an extensive reading on the locations of the moon and the planets that someone got for me. I found it fairly on point, considering I don’t put much stock in astrology.

I should go with the obvious. Jackson 5ive. I could sing the Jermaine parts in the day, but NEVER Michael’s.

Thank you for playing! Please come back next week.

Hot Country Singles of 1966

Eddy Arnold, Jim Reeves

The Hot Country Singles of 1966 include several familiar artists. But I don’t recognize most of the songs.

Almost Persuaded – David Houston (Epic), 9 weeks at #1; also #24 pop. I didn’t recognize the title, but I surely had heard that song before.

Waitin’ In Your Welfare Line – Buck Owens (Capitol), 7 weeks at #1; also #57 pop

There Goes My Everything – Jack Greene (Decca), 7 weeks at #1; #65 pop in 1967. Also familiar.

Giddyup Go – Red Sovine (Starday), 6 weeks at #1; also #82 pop

I Want To Go With You – Eddy Arnold (RCA Victor), 6 weeks at #1; also #1 AC for three weeks, #36 pop

Think of Me – Buck Owens (Capitol), 6 weeks at #1; also #74 pop

Distant Drums – Jim Reeves (RCA Victor), 4 weeks at #1; also #45 pop

Open Up Your Heart – Buck Owens (Capitol), 4 weeks at #1. Written by Owens.

Somebody Like Me -Eddy Arnold (RCA Victor), 4 weeks at #1; also #15 AC, #53 pop

Take Good Care Of Her – Sonny James (Capitol), 2 weeks at #1

Blue Side Of Lonesome – Jim Reeves (RCA Victor), 1 week at #1; also #15 AC, #59 pop

I Get The Fever – Bill Anderson (Decca), 1 week at #1

Only a dozen songs this go-round. The 1976 country charts have thrice as many songs, none of them #1 for more than three weeks.

The Mark Twain House – Hartford, CT

a/k/a Samuel Clemens

When we had to make a trip to Hartford, CT, my wife asked if we wanted to go to the Mark Twain House. I did not know there was a Twain house in Hartford, so naturally, I said yes.

From the website: “In 1873, Sam and Olivia Clemens engaged New York architect Edward Tuckerman Potter to design their Hartford Home… Their home measures 11,500 square feet and has 25 rooms distributed across three floors. It displayed the latest in modern innovations when it was built in 1874. The couple spent $40‚000 to $45‚000 building their new home‚ so once they moved in, they kept the interior simple. Mark Twain and his family enjoyed what the author would later call the happiest and most productive years of his life.”

Productive indeed, as this placard indicates, but also ultimately sad. I have to admit I haven’t read any of the major works written there, either Huck Finn or Tom Sawyer. I did see the 1949 movie adaptation of A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court years ago.

Coincidentally, though, a couple of weeks earlier, I saw Marcus Kwame Anderson do an illustrator talk at a Friends of the Albany Public Library, discussing his latest graphic novel, the Eisner-nominated Big Jim and the White Boy, scripted by David F. Walker. Marcus made the case for a class featuring Twain’s Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, James by Percival Everett (2024), and the Walker/Anderson work. My wife has read James, and I purchased Big Jim.

I am a Twain fan. Particularly, I was taken by him taking on the imperialist tendencies of Teddy Roosevelt. I wrote about The War Prayer about a decade ago, and I sweear I bought a Twain collection at the time, but I cannot locate it currently.

The tour

There were a couple different tours of the house. The one we went on was the Living History Tour, led by a costumed actor who played one of the actual maids, played by a wonderful young woman named Lauryn.

The construct was that she only “knew” what had taken place in 1882 or earlier. So when she was asked about his international travel, she noted that he would “like” to go abroad in the future.

The one challenge was that there were about 40 steps up, and another 40 down. They weren’t too bad except the spiral steps heading down near the end of the tour.

The museum

There were lots of quotes built into the building. The one I remember most is, “”Always do right; this will gratify some people and astonish the rest.” My wife used this in her high school yearbook, to the dismay of one of her teachers.

Other creatives, notably Lee Krassner, were also represented. Most of the rooms were named for corporate sponsors. But one was named after actor Hal Holbrook, who portrayed Mark Twain for longer than Samuel Clemens did, who I had watched embody Twain on TV.

At the end, we watched a 23-minute about Twain, a summary of the four-hour PBS piece by Ken Burns from 2001.

Recommended.

Is Binghamton the ‘weirdest’ town in Upstate NY?

Rumble Ponies

Visiting the Forgotten Stars page recently, I see HEY ROGER!!! The post, based on a YouTube video, asks, Is Binghamton the ‘weirdest’ town in Upstate NY? Kelly knows that I originally hail from Binghamton, so he’s going to let me weigh in.

Okay then.

Gab Small posted the piece on July 8, 2026, and had already gotten over 50,000 views in two days.

Let me get some minor stuff out of the way. While she refers to Binghamton proper, she really means the city metro. This doesn’t bother me much. She noted that the Whittman Dam is “normal.”

She’s right to appreciate the MLK Park promenade that runs along the Chenango, as well as the bridge near the confluence of it with the Susquehanna, a place I used to hang out as a teen. However, Chenango, one of two rivers that converge in Binghamton proper, is pronounced as though it started with Sh. NOT WEIRD.

The area having the largest Dick’s Sporting Goods in the world is NOT WEIRD, since, as she notes, the store opened in the area, and I had been there several times growing up, long before the expansion. A full-turf running track.is unusual, to be sure.

The Lost Dog Cafe, where I have I have eaten, is a nice place but NOT WEIRD.

A great sandwich

Gab says, “They are weirdly obsessed with a local sandwich called the spiedie.” It’s delicious when made correctly. I’ve had sandwiches that purported to be spiedies, but they didn’t do the marinade right (2019 NYS Fair in Syracuse; dreadful!). NOT WEIRD, though her have a vegetarian one, instead of chicken or lamb, is a little weird; I did not know that was a thing.

There are six carousels in Broome County, completely free to ride. NOT WEIRD. As a result of these, the minor league baseball team (Double A, Mets affiliate) is called the Rumble Ponies, which is SLIGHTLY WEIRD.

I’ll admit that I had never heard of Binghamton Jellystone Park, which is in Endicott. It is a themed campground based on Yogi Bear. But there are Jellystone Parks in about 30 states and four Canadian provinces. So can’t be that weird.

The stinky corpse flowers at Binghamton University. Okay, SOMEWHAT WEIRD.

TZ

Of course, Binghamton is weird because Rod Serling, the creator of The Twilight Zone, lived there. There is no doubt of that in my mind. The first time I saw the episode Mirror Image (Season 1, Episode 21), I KNEW that the bus station where a young woman was waiting had to be the Greyhound station downtown. And I was only six. The Monsters Are Due On Maple Street (Season 1, episode 22) featured streets similar to those near Rod’s home on the West Side of the city.

Serling’s inspiration for The After Hours (Season 1, episode 34), when a store mannequin came to life, was inspired by the old Fowler’s department store. I frequented the place as a child; it had the first escalator I can remember! I wish that Gab Small, when mentioning the current store, Boscov’s, had given a touch more history.

And of course, Walking Distance (Season 1, Episode 5) has an overworked New York executive inexplicably transported back to his idyllic 1934 hometown, coming face-to-face with his younger self. I didn’t know that at the time, as I was more prone to go to the carousel at Ross Park than Recreation Park, which was very close to Serling’s home when he grew up in the city. The statue of him is is in Rec Park.

(I suppose I should mention, yet again, that I sort of introduced Rod Serling in 1970.)