Ramblin' with Roger

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The Interpretive Center

I received the April 2025 monthly e-blast from the Underground Railroad Education Center in Albany, an entity I have supported financially. It was uncharacteristically dire. The message said, “Thank you for your support! Please share.” So I shared.

Donate to UREC now while you still can. Write to your Legislators

ITEM: The Museum Studies Teen Program is designed to prepare high school students to seek employment in the museum field. The Institute for Museum and Library Services (IMLS) funding, an open grant supporting Lacey Wilson’s Project Director position for the Museum Studies Teen Program, has been negatively impacted. On 3/31/25, IMLS was forced to place 85% of its staff on administrative leave and cancel all open grants.

(Not incidentally, the IMLS may be affecting the New York State Library, and museums and libraries across the United States.)

ITEM: UREC is in the process of building an Interpretive Center. However, funding from the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has been imperiled.

The NEH, which awarded the Interpretive Center a $250,000 grant, has been negatively impacted. NEH had 80% of its staff put on indefinite administrative leave, and all open grants were canceled.

The EPA, which awarded UREC $3.6 million toward the Interpretive Center as part of an 8-group collaborative that received an award of $20,000,000, has had its funds frozen.

Write!

Use this link – https://www.congressweb.com/aam/94 – to send your comments to your elected officials. The template letter provided at this link needs personalization. Here is a suggested text for your use – – – – –

The Underground Railroad Education Center receives funding from IMLS to support the planning and implementation of a Museum Studies Teen Program, which is designed to prepare high school students to seek employment in the museum field. This program introduces students to the vast array of job possibilities within the museum field and the value of museums to the health, well-being, and financial sustainability of our communities. As a workforce development program, it will support the development of “hard skills” relevant to specific jobs in the museum field and “soft skills” such as a strong work ethic and positive attitude, which are crucial for success in any workplace.

Likewise, the Underground Railroad Education Center has an open grant with NEH for $250,000 to support the building of a community center highlighting community history and culture. This center will provide jobs for community residents, transform educational experiences, and attract thousands of visitors. IMLS and the NEH must honor their commitments to support the life-changing educational programming offered by the Underground Railroad Education Center.

IMLS and the NEH must honor their commitments to support the Underground Railroad Education Center’s life-changing educational programming.

“Liberation Day” liberates $ from our wallets

extraordinary nonsense

FOTUS calls his ridiculous tariffs announcement “Liberation Day.” He said, “For decades, our country has been looted, pillaged, raped and plundered by nations near and far, both friend and foe alike. But it is not going to happen anymore.” Instead, he said, tariffs would create ‘the golden age of America.'”

Well, no. Is this plan an error of understanding how the imposed tariffs work or an intentional ploy to Make Americans Guaranteed Austere?

From that “failing” magazine, The Atlantic: “According to [FOTUS], April 2, 2025—the day he unveiled his executive order implementing global tariffs—will be remembered as a turning point in American history. He might be right. Unfortunately, April 2 is more likely to be remembered as a fiasco—alongside October 24, 1929 (the stock-market crash that kicked off the Great Depression), and September 15, 2008 (the collapse of Lehman Brothers)—than as the beginning of a new era of American prosperity.

“The stated rationale behind Trump’s new ‘reciprocal tariffs’ has a more coherent internal logic than Trump’s previous tariff maneuvers. (Stated, as we will see, is the key word.) The idea is that other countries have unfairly advantaged their own industries at the expense of America’s…

Reality

“When the new tariffs come into contact with external reality, they are likely to produce the exact opposite of the intended outcome. Most obviously, the tariffs don’t appear to be based on actual trade barriers, which undermines their entire justification.

“Contrary to White House messaging, the formula for determining the new rates turns out to have been based simply on the dollar value of goods the U.S. imports from a given country relative to how much it exports. The administration took the difference between the two numbers, divided it by each country’s total exports, then divided that total in half, and slapped an import tax on countries at that rate. The theoretically reciprocal tariffs are not, in fact, reciprocal.

Heather Cox Richardson confirms this. FOTUS “claims he is imposing ‘reciprocal tariffs’ and says they are about half of what other countries levy on U.S. goods. In fact, the numbers he is using for his claim that other countries are imposing high tariffs on U.S. goods are bonkers. Economist Paul Krugman points out that the European Union places tariffs of less than 3% on average on U.S. goods, while Trump maintained that its tariffs are 39%.

Voodoo economics

“Krugman said he had no idea where that number had come from, but financial journalist James Surowiecki figured out that the White House ‘just took our trade deficit with [each] country and divided it by the country’s exports to us.’ He called it ‘extraordinary nonsense‘ [and also “malignant stupidity.”]

Washington Post economic writer Catherine Rampell posted that she was reluctant to amplify Surowiecki’s theory that the tariff rates were based on such a ‘dumb calculation,’ but then the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative confirmed it.

“The result is that there is no clear or obvious path that countries could take to get those tariffs removed even if they wanted to. Countries can remove all of their trade restrictions and still run a trade surplus.”

So, it’s not just that tariffs aren’t generally a good idea except in specific situations. The rates of these tariffs are guaranteed to hurt Americans and US trading partners. Is this merely incompetence or planned domestic pain? And if the latter, to what end?

You can tell incompetent people calculated these because the tariffs harshly hit Antarctic Islands inhabited by zero humans but many penguins.

“Disconnected from reality”

Cory Doctorow has some interesting thoughts. He also links to Hamilton Nolan, who notes that the policies “are not good for business” but will “make America much, much poorer,” even the rich.

“Nolan concludes that Trump is ‘insane’ – that his actions are irrational, disconnected from reality, impossible to understand. For Nolan, the question isn’t ‘What is Trump trying to accomplish?’ It’s ‘how has this insane man managed to gain control of the government of the world’s richest and most powerful nation?’

“He’s got a hell of an answer, too:

That, my friends, is the unfortunate outcome of an economic system that has so profoundly failed to enforce economic equality, and a political system that so profoundly failed to protect its democracy from the influence of capital that it allowed itself to be totally captured by extreme lunatics backed by extreme wealth.

The Economist magazine says of these tariffs, “They will cause economic havoc and take America’s trade policies back to the 19th century.” This makes a certain FOTUSian sense in that he seems obsessed with William McKinley, President from 1897 to 1901. But it was a much smaller national and world economy.

The New York Sun: “After the Republican-controlled Senate voted to revoke President Trump’s tariffs on Canada, House Democrats will soon force their GOP colleagues to go on the record with respect to the new round of tariffs introduced Wednesday. The vote could be detrimental for vulnerable Republican lawmakers next year if the economic uncertainty over the tariffs does not cease.” This IS what the Democrats must do, and often.

Sunday Stealing — Manic Monday

Welcome to Sunday Stealing. Cheers to all of us thieves! This is from Manic Monday, stolen from a blog that, alas, is no more.

1) What’s the longest you’ve gone without sleep?

I believe it was my freshman year at college at New Paltz. Previously, I had always been good at math: arithmetic, algebra (97 on the final), geometry (86, only because I refused to memorize theorems), and trigonometry (98). But I never “got” calculus. I got a 73 on the 1st test, 56 on the second, and 37 on the third, and needed a decent score on the final. So I spent two days cramming and managed to get a 73 in the final, and I got a C for the course. I never took another math course. Moreover, I looked at the calculus book about two weeks later but understood nothing. (BTW, all those scores are the actual ones, which I inexplicably remember; I don’t know my scores in any other high school or college course.)

2) What was the highlight of your last week?

I visited my cardiologist – I have this congenital condition – and the news was good. We had a lovely banter back and forth. He was impressed that I knew the meaning of the word interrobang, which he used in a sentence. It’s probably because I wrote about it in this blog last year.

It’s all about me

3) You have to give a 10-minute speech to a group of high school students. What’s your topic?

My circuitous path to my career, starting at undergrad and then to grad school, dropping out, working in a comic book store, then going back to a different grad school and becoming a librarian.

4) What is the single best decision you’ve ever made in your life?

Going to library school. It fits the way my brain works. I was conversing with somebody at church recently, and they noted that I have a wealth of sometimes arcane information, such as the history of the Lincoln penny (1909). You can pull that off a bit better when you’re a librarian.

5) If you could ask a coworker, friend, or family member a question and be guaranteed an honest answer, who would you choose and what would you ask?

When I was in high school, sometimes I disappeared. I’d be at a party and feel overwhelmed and go home. Sometimes, I’d hide someplace. There was somebody I knew at the time and still know, and I wanted to see if they remembered this and, if so, if anyone missed me.

6) Do you cook for yourself when you’re home alone?

Goodness, no. When I’m by myself, I eat canned tuna, rotisserie chicken, leftover takeout, or cold cereal. I might fry a couple of eggs.

7) Do you most often access the internet from your computer, your phone, or your smart watch?

My computer. I was a late adapter using my phone, and I don’t even know where my smart watch is, although it’s probably in this office.

Text me if you must

8) Do you have more email addresses or phone numbers?

Far more e-mail addresses. It wasn’t until my most recent phone, which I think I’ve had for a couple of years, that I realized I could put the emails into the phone. I’m not a big texter; I text because it fits the needs of others. If I’m home and somebody texts me, there’s a less than 50% chance that I’ll know I’ve gotten the message, whereas I always hear the landline phone ring.

9) What’s the biggest source of anger in your life right now?

FOTUS, based on a variety of issues, but near the top is the fact that folks in my county have been apprehended without due process. The Rev. Dan Clark (he/him), Director of Organizing, Faith in Public Life, posted on Cesar Chavez Day, March 31, about Rubén Castilla Herrera, an activist inspired by Chavez. “All people impacted by injustice are human beings with innate dignity and the breath of the divine within them. But they are not a nameless mass, an anonymous crowd. Rubén taught me that they are personas… personas con nombres.” People… people with names.

10) Mondays make me feel _________________.

As though I’m going to get a lot done this week. Then Friday proves me a liar.

Prince

Bangles

Green Day

Requiems, I’ve sung quite a few

Lenny

I love requiems. And I’ve sung quite a few. I stumbled across How To Compose a Requiem. “At some point in their journey, nearly every single composer is possessed by the idea of I need to write a requiem, and it’s not hard to see why…

“The secret to composing a requiem-style theme is to make sure your music contains four specific attributes:

It should be written in a minor key
It should use a few well-placed sus chords
It should have a slow-moving melody
It should use either counterpoint or part-writing to create the accompaniment.

“Understanding how to implement these four elements will help you compose music that is filled with the characteristic drama, despair, and existentialism that has long been associated with Requiems.”

My favorite 90 seconds of a requiem might be the beginning of the Dies Irae, a theme repeated throughout the Verdi requiem. Here’s a weird story: I was supposed to sing the Verdi as part of a mass choir in the late 1980s. I was walking to the bus stop when I saw a young man, maybe a tween, get hit by a car. Remarkably, he was so long-legged that the manner he was hit made him roll over the hood, across the top of the vehicle, and over the trunk of the car. He landed on his feet seemingly unharmed! But I stayed there, made a report to the police, and I never got to do the singing.

The requiem piece I have sung most frequently is the English translation of the fourth movement of Brahms’s German Requiem, How Lovely Is Thy Dwelling Place. I have sung it at several funerals, most recently the one for Jim Kalas.

Fauré

“Gabriel Fauré composed his Requiem in D minor, Op. 48, between 1887 and 1890. The choral-orchestral setting of the shortened Catholic Mass for the Dead in Latin is the best-known of his large works. Its focus is on eternal rest and consolation.” I know I sang this in both 2000 and 2002, and perhaps later.

Versions by: Sinfonia Rotterdam/ Laurenscantorij/ Conrad van Alphen (2015). VOCES8: “with the English Chamber Orchestra, conducted by Barnaby Smith. The performance was filmed at Cadogan Hall, London in 2021 during the height of the pandemic, and this orchestration by Taylor Scott Davis was created especially for the concert.”

Rutter

“John Rutter‘s Requiem was completed in 1985. Five of its seven movements are based on text from the Latin Requiem Mass, while the second movement is a setting of “Out of the deep” (Psalm 130) and the sixth movement is an anthem, The Lord is my Shepherd (Psalm 23), which Rutter had earlier written.” Many years ago, I sang it in a choir and small orchestra, but it still sticks with me.

Out of the Deep, which features the cello, sounds like a blues. The Lord Is My Shepherd, which I’ve sung apart from the whole piece, would be a great funeral song.

Versions: Conducted by John Rutter – Florence Debut; UNT A Cappella Choir

Mozart

The Requiem Mass in D minor (K. 626) by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, c. 1791, is almost certainly the best-known. Its creation (and non-completion) was presented in the 1984 movie Amadeus.

It is clearly my favorite requiem. I have sung this in performance at least thrice. Once was in the spring of 1985, for which I had a now long-long cassette recording. Another time was sometime in the mid-1990s. The last time was on September 11, 2002, when my friends Tim and Gladys, and I joined the Albany Pro Musica performance to honor the first anniversary of 9/11.

Versions: Leonard Bernstein (1988, after Lenny’s intro); Philharmonie Salzburg · Elisabeth Fuchs

The first MLK assassination attempt

“He was just a sneeze away from death”

The first MLK assassination attempt I knew of came up in a discussion at the Albany Public Library in January 2025 about Salman Rushbie’s book Knife. As you may know, Rushdie was stabbed in 2022 at Chautauqua Institution in western New York State. It’s a place my wife and I visited two years later, with greater security measures. Rushdie dreamed of something untoward happening to him the night before.

Someone in the book talk audience recalled that Martin Luther King, Jr. had been stabbed. The person thought it took place between the time of March on Washington on August 28, 1963, and when MLK was shot, presumably by James Earl Ray, on April 4, 1968. But I was sure that was not accurate. I suggested it had to have been earlier because, after 1963, he was an internationally known entity. Sure enough, it was in 1958.

I was recounting this to someone else, adding, “It was noted at the time that if he had sneezed, he would have died.” He thought I was BSing him. Nope.

“On 20 September 1958, Izola Ware Curry, a 42-year-old mentally disturbed woman, stabbed Martin Luther King, Jr., while he signed copies of his book, Stride Toward Freedom, at Blumstein’s Department Store in Harlem, New York. Curry approached King with a seven-inch steel letter opener and drove the blade into the upper left side of his chest. King was rushed to Harlem Hospital, where he underwent more than two hours of surgery to repair the wound. Doctors operating on the 29-year-old civil rights leader said: “Had Dr. King sneezed or coughed, the weapon would have penetrated the aorta.… He was just a sneeze away from death” (Papers 4:499n).”

Moreover

Not only did I recall this, but I wrote about it in 2013. The day before he died in 1968, MLK gave the Mountaintop speech. I had forgotten that he mentioned the 1958 assassination attempt as a part of that talk.

“It came out in the New York Times the next morning that if I had merely sneezed, I would have died. Well, about four days later, they allowed me, after the operation, they allowed me to read some of the mail that came in, and I’ll never forget it. It said simply, Dear Dr. King, I am a ninth-grade student at the White Plains High School. She said, while it should not matter, I would like to mention that I am a white girl. I read in the paper of your misfortune and of your suffering. And I read that if you had sneezed, you would have died. And I’m simply writing you to say that I’m so happy that you didn’t sneeze.”

In 1970, I was with a school group that drove past the Lorraine Hotel, where MLK was killed two years earlier. “In 1991, the Lorraine Motel was converted into the National Civil Rights Museum.”

One of the extremely few things I agree about 47’s actions: He signed an executive order to release more JFK, RFK, and MLK assassination files.

Kareem Abdul-Jabbar said

In his Substack for this week, Kareem quotes MLK: “Human progress is neither automatic nor inevitable… Every step toward the goal of justice requires sacrifice, suffering, and struggle- the tireless exertions and passionate concern of dedicated individuals.”

He notes: “Man, Dr. King could be a real downer. I mean, he’s not wrong, but that quote challenges people to rise above obsessing over their daily lives of pursuing personal goals in careers and relationships to take on the additional burden of seeking justice. Who’s got the time for sacrifice? I’m okay with people who choose not to sacrifice; it’s people who brag about sacrifices that aren’t really sacrifices who bug me. It diminishes those who really do sacrifice for the greater good.”

He complains that athletes and reality show contestants misuse the word sacrifice, even his former self: He had said, “’I think that the good and the great are only separated by the willingness to sacrifice.’ I would modify that today to say, ‘The good and the great are only separated by the intensity of their dedication…’

“True sacrifice is when one chooses to give up something precious in order to do something that doesn’t directly benefit them but does directly benefit others. Sacrifice for the greater good has many levels: from sacrificing one’s life—like Dr. King, Gandhi, Malcolm X, and Jesus—to sacrificing free time to help those in need within their community. Parents sacrifice constantly for their children because they love them. If we can learn to extend that feeling of love to a larger ‘family’ of neighbors, towns, country, and the world, then we are sacrificing in service of a just humanity. …”