Ramblin' with Roger

January rambling: American Hegemony

Rebecca Jade sings the Beatles

Mark Carney Warns “American Hegemony” Is Destroying World Order in Candid Speech

World to exceed 1.5°C heating threshold by 2030

FBI puts the final nail in the coffin of free speech

Philadelphia is suing the regime over the decision to remove an exhibit at Independence National Historical Park depicting the factual history of slavery in the United States.

FOTUS’s second term delivers massive gains for billionaires as working Americans face cuts and rising costs

Study Reveals Who Is Paying 96% of Regime Tariffs

New CDC guidance could revive childhood meningococcal disease, a rare but deadly disease

Crime Trends in U.S. Cities: Year-End 2025 Update from the Council on Criminal Justice (CCJ)

The RootsTech 2026 schedule is live. The world’s largest family discovery event will be taking place March 5-7. Register to hear inspiring speakers, watch exciting keynotes, and get expert help discovering your family story.

The Dangerous Power of Predictive Markets

Also

The American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) Releases 2026 Child Vax Schedule, No Longer Endorses CDC’s Version

Dealing with a sudden death or loss

Bruce Bilson Obituary: Director on The Patty Duke Show, Get Smart, Hogan’s HeroesPlease Don’t Eat the Daisies, The Doris Day Show, The Odd Couple, Love, American Style, B.J. and the Bear, Barney Miller, The Fall Guy, Hotel, Dinosaurs, The Sentinel and Viper, among others

Forty years ago, they slipped the surly bond of earth

Baseball HALL OF FAME CLASS OF 2026: Center fielders Carlos Beltrán and Andruw Jones, and second baseman Jeff Kent.

The Trial of the Century: On the hundredth anniversary of Tennessee v. Scopes.

New York’s Grand Central Terminal Helped Provide the Blueprint for American Cities. It Happened by Accident

Element Ball: Letter Gothic

Now I Know: Why Does Toothpaste Make Orange Juice Taste So Awful? and Why Isn’t This Tennis Ball Bouncing? and The Meal That Makes You See Tiny People? and The Panhandle That Failed and Not The Frisco Kids and The $3 Grocery Bag That Became a Global Status Symbol and Every Rose Has Its … Jalen?

ICE

Video Contradicts DHS Claims About Killing of 37-year-old ICU nurse Alex Pretti in Minneapolis. Heather Cox Richardson: “Video from the scene shows Pretti directing traffic on a street out of an area with agents around, then trying to help another person get up after she had been pushed to the ground by the agents. The agents then surround Pretti and shoot pepper spray into his face, then pull him to the ground from behind and hit him as he appears to be trying to keep his head off the ground. An agent appears to take a gun out of Pretti’s waistband during the struggle, then turns and leaves with it. A shot then stops Pretti’s movements, appearing to kill him, before nine more shots ring out, apparently as agents continued to fire into his body.It looked like an execution.”

As William J. Barber and Jonathan Wilson-Hargrove noted: “Alex Pretti was killed by people who celebrated his death. They do not need better training. They demand a moral movement to disarm them and reconstruct democracy.”

Legal scholars and political scientists say the regime’s escalating ICE operation, National Guard brinkmanship, and Insurrection Act threats in Minnesota closely resemble conditions identified in civil war simulations, raising alarms about constitutional collapse and violent state-federal conflict. “We don’t need no stinkin’ warrants.”

A photo taken during a protest in south Minneapolis after federal agents killed Alex Pretti encapsulates a story unfolding on America’s streets.

Nurse Alex Pretti’s Death and the Symbolism of the Human Body

Fact Checks

“…when we are silent, we are still afraid. So it is better to speak.” — Audre Lorde

Legal Eagle: Unbelievable ICE Memo Just Leaked

Six steps for researching the corporate enablers of ICE

To Their Shock, Cubans in Florida Are Being Deported in Record Numbers

Why FOTUS Is Finally Waving A White Flag In Minnesota

Pete Buttigieg believes The Ground Is Shifting

Three songs:

Minnesota Anthem – Marc Skjervem

Streets of Minneapolis – Bruce Springsteen

ICE, F**K You – A Protest Song for Minneapolis – Scared Ketchup

All tyranny needs to gain a foothold is for people of good conscience to remain silent
— often attributed to Thomas Jefferson

MUSIC

Got To Get You Into My Life and Roll Over Beethoven -Peter Sprague, featuring Rebecca Jade from the All You Need is Love album, which you can buy individual tracks or the album here

For No One – MonaLisa Twins

Coverville 1564: The New Order Cover Story IV and 1565: The Flaming Lips Cover Story and 1566: The Bob Weir Tribute

From the CBS Sunday Morning archives: The Grateful Dead’s Bob Weir

K-Chuck Radio: A moment of Midnight Oil memory (Rob Hirst)

J. Eric Smith on Bob Weir and Rob Hirst

She’s Not Blind – Roberta Flack

It Ain’t Necessarily So – Ella Fitzgerald · Louis Armstrong

Piece of Denmark – Marsh Family parody of “Piece of My Heart” by Erma Franklin re Greenland/FOTUS

John Fogerty: Tiny Desk Concert 16 Jan 2026

Poseidon and Amphirite: An Ocean Fantasy by John Knowles Paine

I Zimbra – Talking Heads

Third movement from Bach’s Partita No. 3 for solo violin

More music

These Are The Days – the cast of All In The Family (1975)

Stand By Me – The Buzztones

Superman [1978] by John Williams, Opening Titles/Credits Sequence

50 Ways To Leave Your Lover– Postmodern Jukebox

Da Doo Ron Ron – the Crystals

Jeux d’eau by Maurice Ravel

The Man I’m Supposed To Be – Bill Callahan

Popular – Lemon Squeezy with a song from Wicked

Mercedes Benz – Mari Gazen (Janis Joplin cover)

De Do Do Do, De Da Da Da – The Police

I Just Might – Bruno Mars

That’s What Friends Are For by Dionne and Friends (Dionne Warwick, Elton John, Gladys Knight, and Stevie Wonder)

J. Eric Smith’s Genre Delve #9: Hip-Hop/Rap and #10: Reggae

McKinley Green, of his generation

The Les/Mac relationship was…complicated

A high school classmate forwarded me a Facebook post of a guy named Roy Sova:

“How the world has changed. Talking with a co-worker at WBNG-TV in Binghamton [NY], we got on the subject of McKinley Green, or ‘Mac,’ as everybody called him.” Channel 12 was WNBF-TV, the CBS affiliate, when I was growing up.

As my classmate well knew, Mac was my paternal grandfather. Well, technically, my step-grandfather. This is a fact my sisters and I learned pretty early on. I don’t recall HOW we were told, let alone WHY, but it was out there.

My father’s biological dad was the infamous Raymond Cone, who died in 1947, before I was born, and who I couldn’t name until 2019. Clarence Williams, my mom’s dad, was not in my life and seldom in my mother’s, though I attended his 1958 funeral; I was five.

So, Mac was my only REAL grandfather, taking me to Triplets minor league baseball games, especially when my father was working nights at IBM for about six years in the 1960s. Here’s something I wrote back in 2005.

An interesting perspective

Roy Sova posted: “Mac was in his mid-70s when I knew him, which would have been around the early 1970s. [That tracks; he was likely born in 1896.] He was the maintenance guy at the TV station, and although his eyesight was failing, he was on our bowling team. [And according to Roy, Mac was a better bowler than he was.] The TV station told him he had a job there as long as he wanted it.” [I had heard that elsewhere.]

“His father was born in Maryland in 1848 and had been a slave”. [This I cannot verify; I thought his father was born in 1862, though in Maryland, but maybe I discovered the wrong John Green.]

“Mac was very old school. He always called me Mr Sova. One day, I asked him to please call me Roy. He was about 50 years older than me. As he continued to call me Mr Sova, I again asked him to call me Roy, or I was going to start calling him Mr Green. I’ll never forget his response.

“This is paraphrased, but pretty much what he said. ‘If you call me Mr Green, it will hurt me. I was brought up to call my betters Mister.’ I never felt I was Mac’s better, and after that, barely his equal. But from that day forward, I was Mr. Sova, and he was Mac.” Roy notes that he was probably a news reporter and a weekend news anchor.

When I first read it, it weirded me out a bit. But it did track consistently with who Mac was.

An unexplored line

I never spent much time talking to Mac, whom we called Pop, about his birth family. I’d met his brothers a handful of times. My father’s relationship with Mac was… complicated. Still, Mac adopted (the term they used) him in September 1944, about 3 weeks before my dad turned 18. (Dad’s mom/Pop’s wife since 1931 was still his mom.)

Roy Sova: “Yes, your dad’s relationship with Mac was a little strained. Mac was content to live as in the past, your dad wanted change. I interviewed [Les] several times about his work with the Urban League. [Actually, the Interracial Center that eventually became the Urban League at 45 Carroll Street.] Mac was a great guy. Liked and respected by everyone at the radio and TV stations. “

I may talk with Roy Sova again — someone who knew Les and Mac separately, which is fascinating to me.

Movie review: Song Sung Blue

Neil Diamond tribute band

Apparently, many people thought the new movie Song Sung Blue was a biopic about the singer Neil Diamond. No. It’s a biopic of a Neil Diamond tribute band fronted by “Mike and Claire Sardina, a real-life couple that performed covers of Diamond classics in Wisconsin under their act ‘Lightning and Thunder.’ Directed by Craig Brewer, the movie dramatizes how the couple fell in love, became a hit in the Milwaukee area, survived a life-altering accident, and made a comeback.”

And that’s the arc of the new movie with the same title. Mike (Hugh Jackman) was a journeyman performer, covering a variety of artists before meeting Claire (Oscar-nominated Kate Hudson), who specialized in covering Patsy Cline. He tells her early that it was his birthday, but in a subsequent meeting, that it was his sobriety birthday.

At least in the movie, it was Claire who suggested to Mike that he specialize in being Neil. “It took a while to build a following. It’s true, as the movie shows, that the pair was booed out of a biker bar in Chicago. But after performing at the giant music festival Summerfest and the Wisconsin State Fair, their fan base grew. Singing “Forever in Blue Jeans” with Eddie Vedder in 1995 as the opening act for a Pearl Jam concert put them on the map.”

Credible

The movie chemistry between Jackman and Hudson was believable. They were on some show together (CBS Mornings?) Jackman was attached to the film first and was enthusiastic about Hudson after he saw an interview with Hudson about then-new music album.

There were some funny moments in the film. One involved Mike’s oblivousness about what Pearl Jam was. Another was when Mike and Claire tell Claire’s daughter Rachel (Ella Anderson) that she would be meeting Mike’s daughter Angelina (King Princess), who usually lives with her mother in Florida. “What’s this, a playdate?”Claire also has a young son Dana (Hudson Hensley), who was NOT one of those cloying movie kids.

Some of the reviews (78% on Rotten Tomatoes) complained that the film was “made with such falsely constructed schmaltz.” But I was more in this camp: “What the movie does well is some well-staged musical numbers. Hugh Jackman and Kate Hudson prove to be very capable singers in this movie. While the movie is a downer a lot of the time, the songs are uplifting for the most part.” And that middle act WAS a downer, though it reflected Mike and especially Claire’s, reality.

I like Neil Diamond well enough, especially his early stuff. (Alas, Thank The Lord For the Night Time didn’t make the cut, even when they had a choir on stage.)

My wife and I liked Song Sung Blue, as did 97% of the Rotten Tomatoes audience. We saw it on MLK Day at the Spectrum Theatre in Albany.

“The Librarians” FILM SCREENING

Big Jim and the White Boy

Purloined from the NYS Writers Institute email

“The Librarians” FILM SCREENING, 7 p.m., Friday, February 20, 2026

Page Hall – University at Albany Downtown Campus
135 Western Avenue, Albany, NY 12203 See map.

(United States, 2025, 92 minutes, color. Directed by Kim Snyder)

Here’s the official trailer.

Join us for a screening of this surprise hit documentary film, followed by a conversation and Q&A with a panel of local librarians, including:

Alicia Abdul of Albany High School
Roger Green of the Friends and Foundation of the Albany Public Library
Amanda Lowe of the University at Albany Libraries.

The film profiles librarians across America as they face and combat book-banning— defending intellectual freedom on democracy’s frontlines amid unprecedented censorship in Texas, Florida, and beyond. The film features librarians who have been fired for refusing to remove books from the shelves, or simply for questioning the directive to do so.

The New York Times said, “From its superb opening-credits sequence paying tribute to card catalogs of yore to its sharp selection of vintage clips and intimate reportage, ‘The Librarians’ is as well-crafted as it is profoundly alarming.”

Cosponsored by the Capital District Library Council (CDLC)

FFAPL

Speakers for the Friends and Foundation of the Albany Public Library, Tuesdays at 2 pm at the 161 Washington Avenue branch.

January 27 | Book Review | These Truths: A History of the United States by Jill Lepore. Reviewer: James Collins, PhD, Prof. emeritus, Anthropology Dept, Program in Linguistics & Cognitive Science, U. at Albany, SUNY.

February 3 | Book Review | The Trial, the 1925 German novel by Franz Kafka. Reviewer: Joshua Bovee, copy editor and local author.

February 10 | Book Review | An Afternoon with the “Slow Horses,” Mick Herron’s Spy Thriller series in Books and TV. Reviewer: John Rowen, former president, Friends of APL.

February 17 | Illustrator Talk | Marcus Kwame Anderson, Deputy Director, Underground Railroad Education Center, discusses his most recent graphic novel, written with David Walker, Big Jim and the White Boy: An American Classic Reimagined.

February 24 | Author Talk | Avery Irons, prize-winning author, now a local but born & raised in central Illinois, discusses & reads from her new book, Belonging to the Air.

First Pres, Albany

Beacon In The Park is a two-day arts celebration at First Presbyterian Church of Albany, featuring a juried art show, a Gershwin concert, docent-led tours, and a special lecture on Tiﬀanyʼs inﬂuence in the Capital Region.

Free and ticketed events welcome all ages.

Lydster: home for the holidays

“That’ll do, Pig. That’ll do.”

This past year, I particularly enjoyed the Daughter being home for the holiday. I attribute this to two primary factors. One was that she was away for an extended period last year, from early February to mid-June, while studying at the University of Cape Town in South Africa.

The other is that, in part because she had gone abroad, she had a different perspective. For instance, we were having a conversation about genericization, as one does. She noted that in South Africa, when one refers to toothpaste, they usually say Colgate. It’s like Americans say “Kleenex” for tissue paper, “Band-Aid” for bandages, or “Xerox” for a copier.

Famous quote

For some reason, my daughter said, “That’ll do, Pig. That’ll do.” I assumed she was referring to the 1995 movie Babe, spoken by taciturn farmer Farmer Hoggett (James Cromwell) after the title porcine does what it does.

But no! She was referring to dialogue in the animated series Gravity Falls (2012-2016) by Dipper (Jason Ritter) after the pig Waddles saves him from embarrassment.

Television/video

The Daughter has been a big fan of Crash Course, a YouTube series hosted by Hank and John Green. I recall she used several videos about the French Revolution when she was in high school. But she also checked out videos about geology.

She turned me onto Big History, which is “the history of everything. We’re going to start with the Big Bang, take you right through all of history (recorded and otherwise).”

On her own, she tends to watch some television which she knows I think are trash. And she doesn’t disagree, but she finds them sociologically interesting.

This fall, I was watching long enough that she asked me to guess the title. “TikTok Moms?” Based on the show’s history, it was not a bad guess. It was actually the Secret Lives of Mormon Wives. This got my wife to watch it briefly because two of the Wives were on Dancing With The Stars this season, which she watches devotedly.

Cooking

There is a lot more food in our refrigerator when the Daughter is home. Part of it has to do with her being a pescatarian, which means she makes her own meals a lot.

The other is that she likes to bake, usually with her good friend Kay. She wasn’t always great at cleaning up, as the cutting board above shows.

It was nice to have her home.