Ramblin' with Roger

9/11 plus 25

Day of Remembrance

It’s 9/11 plus 25 years, and my thoughts are all over the place. I recently received an email for a Day of Remembrance blood drive from the American Red Cross. “We invite you to honor the heroes and victims we lost with a simple act of kindness, a blood donation. Our community is strongest when we come together to support one another. The patients who receive your blood may never know your name, but they will always cherish your generosity.”

I’m always in favor of blood drives. Back in 2001, I had a donation scheduled for a couple of days after the awful event. The ARC called me NOT to donate because so many people were already doing something, such as donating blood, ostensibly to give to the survivors. Except that there were relatively few of them in NYC after the buildings collapsed; for instance, about 20 were pulled from the Twin Towers rubble. The Red Cross knew that I was a “regular” and that I would come back.

Forgetting?

2008: I wrote, Even three or four years after September 11, 2001, there was this public conversation that people were “forgetting” 9/11. Or more precisely, had “forgotten the lessons of 9/11.”

If you watched the second plane hit the World Trade Center, you didn’t forget 9/11. Seeing the two towers practically evaporate, you didn’t forget. Nearly three thousand sad stories, and actually, exponentially many more. The anniversary memories I am hearing now are poignant; one I heard recently involved a then two-year-old who doesn’t remember her mother except for a recording, for her mom was a first responder who was killed trying to save others.

My family and I went to the 9/11 Memorial in November 2013. “In honor of the 25th anniversary, 9/11 Memorial & Museum Chairman Mike Bloomberg will match every gift to The Never Forget Fund.”

As horrifically sad as the day was, there was a sense of community, collective grief, and, dare I say, camaraderie. People suddenly didn’t hate the elite New York City folks. Everything You NEED to Know About SNL Season 27 (2001-02) shows how the Saturday Night Live writers and actors pivoted in their approach to comedy.

My wife and I finally got to see Come From Away in 2025, and it is very much in the 9/12 spirit.

Forgotten?

But what were the “forgotten” lessons of 9/11? Newsweek has been running a series, The Road to 9/11, which requires a subscription. Here’s the intro – August 7, 2001: “The Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) published a secret report on ‘Iraq‘s Reemerging Nuclear Weapon Program,’ part of a raging debate within U.S. intelligence community agencies as to the state of Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction program. United Nations inspectors had been banned from inside the country since November 1998, leaving U.S. intelligence to largely speculate as to what was going on.”

September 1, 2001: In Afghanistan, the Northern Alliance detected a build-up of Taliban forces on September 1, evidently in preparation for an upcoming offensive. The intelligence portended something much larger, but at the time, the CIA failed to see the gathering pieces.

Iraq?

2011: I crashed Albany Pro Musica to sing the Mozart Requiem on a very windy 11 September 2002; that was the only day ever that I wore a tuxedo to work. Exactly two weeks later, I began my weekly vigil, with a number of people who had been there weeks and months before, in my opposition to the war in Iraq. What the heck did Iraq have to do with 9/11? Took a bit of grief over that. And it would have been one thing if it were only “regular people” who jumped all over France for failing to support the curiously illogical war in Iraq; it was the US Congress that opted for the jingoistic ‘freedom fries’. How embarrassing.

Indeed, we are still learning from the event. Just this week, from the NYT: After 9/11, Documents Suggest New Yorkers Were Misled About Air Quality. New York City officials are making public more than 170,000 pages of documents related to the air quality around the World Trade Center site in the months after the Sept. 11 attacks.

What lesson?

So if the “lesson” was that we should adopt the so-called USA PATRIOT ACT, or that a new and unwieldy Department of Homeland Security is necessary, or that Islamophobia is acceptable, then I feel we totally missed the point.

From journalist and former Carter White House speechwriter James Fallows, thoughts on the legacy of 9/11, 25 years after the terrorist attacks: 9/11 changed the U.S.; can we change back?

But if we’ve decided that we can – to quote the cliché – disagree without being disagreeable, and look out for each other, that’s the lesson I can get behind.

There was a U.S. mint in Charlotte, NC?

now TWO museums

In something called the Epoch Times, their Today in History for July 27 was “1844: A fire destroys the U.S. Mint in Charlotte, North Carolina. There was a U.S. mint in Charlotte, NC?

Wikipedia confirms that the Charlotte Mint was the first United States branch mint that specialized in gold coinage.” On March 3, 1835, the United States Congress approved legislation to establish several branch mints; the Mint Act of 1835 stated, “…one branch [to be established] at the town of Charlotte, in Mecklenburg County, in the state of North Carolina, for the coinage of gold only…And for the purpose of purchasing sites, erecting suitable buildings, and completing the necessary combinations of machinery…for the branch at Charlotte, fifty thousand dollars”

The Charlotte Mint operated after the 1844 hiatus on a more limited basis. But it suffered a more serious blow when “the discovery of massive gold deposits in California sent the local miners packing. They figured they could get rich quicker over there. A lot of the ‘49ers were formerly North Carolina miners!”

Niece Alex clued me in. North Carolina was technically the first gold rush (at least, according to her 8th grade social studies teacher) before California and was the leading gold producer.

Yup. Following the first documented discovery of gold in the United States, the country’s first gold mine was established in North Carolina at the Reed Gold Mine. Other gold was dug from up to 600 mines in Mecklenburg County, with the primary city source being the Rudisill Gold Mine near downtown.

Alex noted, “The Reed Family (we live near Reedy Creek) used a 17-pound nugget as a doorstop and eventually sold it for about three dollars!”

Segue

She noted, “It’s also my favorite Charlotte lore that allegedly there are gold stores still hidden underneath Uptown Charlotte (there’s gold in them thar foothills!”) The rebuilt version is now her favorite art museum.

“With two locations — Mint Museum Randolph in the heart of Eastover and Mint Museum Uptown at Levine Center for the Arts —the Mint boasts one of the largest collections in the Southeast and is committed to engaging and inspiring members of the global community.

Should Singers Pack It In?

Six Iconic Singers Who Should Call It a Day

Periodically, I see articles asking whether specific singers should pack it in, whether their vocal cords are too shot to keep performing in public. I’ve long been of the school that the market should decide whether the performer should hang it up.

It’s often difficult for players in many endeavors to know when to hang up the cleats. Willie Mays, the best baseball player in my lifetime, cringed as he noted he batted only .211 in 1973, his final season. (It’s not very good.)

I recall that Mick Jagger didn’t think he’d still be singing in his fifties. Yet, he’s still at it in his eighties, even though he was on more than one of those lists of “he should stop” more than a decade ago.

When Pete Seeger would perform in his later years, his voice was largely shot, but he could still play the banjo and tell stories; Pete was being inspirational Pete, whom I saw dozens of times and met once.

The 85-year-old Martha Reeves blamed her backup singers for her national anthem performance.

I saw a PBS event, America Made In Virginia: 250 Years Together on July 4. One of the performers was Judy Collins, whose voice I adore; I saw her live in 1980. In the presentation, she was a bit shaky early on, but she got better over time. Still, the 87-year-old is on her retirement tour

Several people had newsworthy physical ailments that have sidelined them for a time recently, such as Frankie Valli, Rod Stewart, and Barry Manilow.

Call it a day?

Rand Bishop’s piece on Medium recommends Six Iconic Singers Who Should Call It a Day and Pack It In. “The human voice is a machine. And machines break down.”

He praised the incomparable Tony Bennett, who still could produce at 95. I watched his special that featured Lady Gaga. He might not have remembered the performance the next day, but he delivered musically when it mattered.

Conversely, Stevie Nicks, Jon Bon Jovi, and Ann Wilson make the list of should-be retirees. I have no specific info on them. Neil Diamond is noted, but the very few times he’s performed in recent years, his fans don’t mind carrying the load.

This leaves two Pauls. Bishop notes, correctly, “McCartney’s guest appearance on a recent Saturday Night Live revealed severely compromised vocal chops.” He has put together a decent album recently, however. One commenter said that he hasn’t been any good in 30 years, which is nonsense. The show I saw in 2014 was great!

There goes Rhymin’ Simon

As for Simon, he was quite open about his hearing loss in this November 2024 interview. He’s been able to perform by changing mic placement and creating different arrangements for some songs. I watched a show from his A Quiet Celebration tour online, and it sounded much like his Stanford show in early June.

“Simon and company closed the second set with the always-fun ‘Me and Julio Down by the Schoolyard,’ with [Edie] Brickell reappearing to handle the famed whistle solo that her husband originally did on the 1972 studio recording. The whole crew then returned for a four-song encore — highlighted by the gorgeous take on Simon & Garfunkel’s “The Boxer” to close — before taking their bows in front of the highly appreciative audience.

“Yet, Simon still had one more in him and remained on the stage after the other musicians departed. What came next was the moment that everyone in attendance will likely remember for years to come as he glided into a precious, humbling and completely raw solo take on Simon and Garfunkel’s classic ‘The Sound of Silence.’

“It was one of those perfect concert moments, as Simon turned to the only song that could really bring this Quiet Celebration to a close in such a fitting and heartfelt manner.”

A buddy saw one of the two nights he was at Tanglewood in late June. This review was of the other night but is just as complimentary as my pal reported. Paul Simon needed a workaround and found it. Bravo for him; let him keep plucking away.

Movie review: The Odyssey

“faithful” to the source material?

My wife and I saw the film The Odyssey at the Spectrum 8 Theatre in Albany a couple of weekends ago, and I somehow neglected to write about it. Busyness has its costs.

I’ll admit to never having read the book/books; he also referenced Homer’s The Iliad and other period pieces. So I have no feeling about whether Christopher Nolan was “faithful” to the source material, though I find the debate endlessly fascinating. It’s a three-hour movie, not thirty.

The movie is vast and often impressive, especially visually. I thought the first palace-intrigue, extended scene dragged a bit, though the pacing improved after that.

The action scenes are memorable. Because of my lack of foreknowledge, the Cyclops, many of the storms, and the Circe’s magic narrative took me by surprise. What was particularly striking was the treatment of Circe’s magic; someone suggested correctly that it recalled “the unsettling body horror of David Cronenberg rather than traditional fantasy spectacle.”

Yet I thought the recapitulation of the Troy was what I found most unnerving. It was the point that Odysseus (Matt Damon) seemed to grasp the consequences of the “battle.”

A lot of the debate about the film centered on the religious content. A story from Religion Unplugged pondered, “No Divine Powers: Where Are All The Gods In Christopher Nolan’s ‘The Odyssey’?” Yet my wife and I spent the ride home very conscious of the film’s faith basis. “Many have noted that [Nolan] conflates aspects of Homer’s religion with Christianity and modernity.” This is a fair point.

Still, it rated a 93% (critics)/97% (fans) positive rating on Rotten Tomatoes. I didn’t love it, but I was glad to see it in the theater, at least until…

Technical difficulties

The real problem, though, was technical – not Nolan’s fault but the Spectrum’s. If you’ve ever played a DVD in a player and it momentarily sticks, you’ll get some idea. It happened a couple of times about 2/3s of the way through. But in the extended consequential fight scene, it happened frequently, not severe enough that we couldn’t make out the dialogue, but it was mightily distracting.

I mentioned this to the ticket seller after the film, and he said he’d let someone know. Meh.

I recently saw an interesting piece in the Boston Globe (behind a paywall): ‘The Odyssey’ and the death of the Hollywood epic. The year’s most celebrated film is destined to be forgotten. “From opening title card to closing credits, “The Odyssey” is a nearly three-hour barn burner, racing from event to event with whirlwind kinetic energy. Blink, and you’ll miss some roaring fire, raucous tempest, or piggy sorceress on the spinning carousel of adventure. Nolan’s film zooms along as though locked into a high-speed drag race with the ‘Fast and Furious’ franchise.

“That’s why it’s so forgettable.” This was not my experience, but time literally will tell.

Even before seeing the film, I enjoyed the story of thirteen-year-old Mason Cufari, from Rotterdam, Schenectady County, who played young Sinon.

Labor Day heroes who aren’t even working

climate.us

I’ve come to honor Labor Day heroes who aren’t even working for pay.

ITEM 1: Fired Federal Employees Are Bringing Climate Change Info Back to the People. Scientists are preserving vital climate-related information amid the regime’s attacks on climate science.

“Since June 23, a group of former employees of the communications branch of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) has been busily resurrecting one of the government’s premier educational websites on climate change.

“Climate.gov was started in the early 2010s by communicators with NOAA, and for more than a decade it consistently produced high-quality graphics and other charts documenting rising global temperatures, changing rain patterns, drought conditions, El Niño impacts, and other climate-related data….

“In February 2025, as the so-called ‘Department of Government Efficiency’ (DOGE) purges accelerated, most of the staff and contractors attached to the website were fired…

Let me interrupt this with something I did not fully know:

ITEM 2: DOGE officially shuts down on July 4, 2026!

“But the initiative did not come without a cost to taxpayers. In December 2025, the executive director of the environmental nonprofit group Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER) claimed the [regime] cost taxpayers an estimated $10 billion in 2025 through its deferred resignation program.

“Ironically, this unreasonably costly mass idling of civil servants was done in the name of ‘government efficiency.’

Back to our main story:

“A year after Climate.gov’s demise, [former employees] resurrected the vast majority of its materials…The new, privately run site is Climate.us, and it contains a wealth of sophisticated data sets and graphics on the world’s climate…”

Their work has inspired ex-government employees in several other agencies.

Former Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) communicators are… now looking to resurrect climate-related EPA pages that have been taken down; a group called the Public Environmental Data Partners is attempting to rescue specialist environmental monitoring tools — it has some information online, but not yet a fully interactive website. Another group, the Environmental Data and Governance Initiative, is working to save specialized environmental justice screening tools. As the [regime] deliberately shreds decades of climate-related research, ex-government employees are attempting to ride to the rescue by creating a sort of shadow information-dispersal system. The American Geophysical Union, which most U.S. Earth scientists are members of, has been instrumental in putting the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change back on track after the Trump administration pulled support for its annual reports….

Replacement

The Climate.us site now is seeing close to a million visitors a month, putting it up there with where the NOAA-run site was before its demise. Teachers use it frequently, as do an array of others simply trying to get an accurate read on what is happening to the climate.

As with the old government-run website, Climate.us has a network of scientific advisers around the country willing to lend their expertise to the project and to make sure that what the communications people write up is scientifically accurate.

Preserving “this vital climate-related information in an era of administration-enforced environmental ignorance has become a mission. ‘Climate information shouldn’t be available to the public just on a political basis or a whim.’ There ought to be a way to ‘promote public climate literacy and to equip people to turn knowledge into meaningful conversations and climate-conscious actions.'”

I shared this news with a former dedicated employee of one of the agencies mentioned, and they were thrilled and heartened that the work they had participated in could be preserved.

“SO glad to see this! It reminds me of how people hurriedly photocopied files that Anne Gorsuch wanted destroyed under ray-gun. I knew some of them.” Not incidentally, Anne Gorsuch was the mother of current SCOTUS justice Neil Gorsuch.

They mentioned the Wayback Machine; unfortunately, I have found that route to climate.gov unsuccessful.

These unpaid workers are heroes, in my book. So on Labor Day, let me salute those who are doing the work to undo ignorance.