Month: October 2009

Roger Finally Answers Your Question, Gordon


Gordon, the near twin, asks:

Here’s a question that might lead to some, well, potentially awkward and uncomfortable conversation:

With all of the “criticism” around President Obama winning the Peace Prize, how much of it do you feel is legitimate (i.e., it’s too soon to tell) and how much may be racially motivated.

Part of the reason why I ask is that several of my friends, after being moderate/liberal for years, are now suddenly becoming hard-core conservatives, and claiming that they “never trusted” Obama. Although the record’s still out for me, to be fair – he’s only been in office ten months, and he has some extremely formidable tasks ahead of him…

(I’m still annoyingly moderate, leaning towards liberal)

I’m willing to suggest that lots of people are legitimately in the “too soon to tell” camp, including myself. That said, I too have been fascinated about quickly people have turned with racial vitriol on Obama in general. I may have used the example of a close relative of my buddy Steve Bissette who had voted for Obama less than a year ago and now thinks that we need to “get the n****** out of there.”

I think that the black President may have more goodwill with, say blacks – polls suggest that – but perhaps less with others. I’m not saying he didn’t waste some of his political capital here and there, but that doesn’t explain the racial ugliness that seems to underlie much of it.

Part of it is the VRWC. Even if you’ve never watched Glenn Beck – I never have – one inevitably has heard that “Obama hates white people” on someone’s blog, and that he’s “playing the race card”, when most of the time, he studiously avoids even talking about it. (And when he does, you end up with a “beer summit.”) Add to that the birthers and the like, and suddenly a talk the POTUS wants to give to schoolkids is Communist socialist Nazi propaganda.

You know the old saying, “Where there’s smoke, there’s fire.” Surely SOME of it must be true, right, RIGHT? And if that guy with the funny name hates white people (like his mother and grandparents) and we don’t REALLY know anything about him (his TWO autobiographies notwithstanding), then maybe if one thinks he DOES hate white people, I can only imagine that they would not be so kindly disposed toward him.

Take the Chicago Olympics bid. You know I’m with you on not thinking a Chicago Olympics was such a swell idea for reasons you talked about. Still, I believe he HAD to go to Copenhagen to try. Imagine the narrative otherwise. Leaders from Brazil, Japan, and Spain go, but he doesn’t. The Games are awarded elsewhere. Obama is blamed; “If he had only gone to the IOC, the Olympics would have come to America. Obama must hate America.” It’s your basic damned if you do…scenario.

As for the Nobel Prize itself: if he were nominated two weeks after becoming President, he was in the running based on a then-pervasive sense that by electing – dare I say the cliche again? – a “historic” candidate for President, that his Nobel nomination and selection was based on a hope that the United States was taking an important step in becoming a post-racial society. Which it ain’t reached yet.

Now, you’ve gotten me to wondering: if Hillary Clinton, or for that matter, Bill Richardson, had been elected President, might one of them been nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize based on THAT historic breakthrough?
ROG

ROG

Climate Change

I agreed to do this bloggers unite to save the world thing today on climate change, but my heart’s not in it. I mean, there are still people who deny that we are slowly, or not so slowly killing ourselves and our planet. No wonder they called a movie about the topic The Age of Stupid.

President Obama gave a nice speech on climate change at the United Nations last month. Of course, Jon Stewart on the Daily Show rightly mocked the amount of fuel used by the leaders getting to New York City.

I WILL plug the 350 event on October 24. That day, in almost every country of the world, ordinary citizens will come together in a series of events and rallies and demonstrations and glorious public art projects, all designed to do one thing: make the most important number in the world the most well-known.
That number is 350, as in parts per million carbon dioxide. In the last two years, the scientific community has made very clear that it’s the maximum safe level for carbon in the atmosphere, at least if we want to have a planet “similar to the one on which civilization developed and to which life on earth is adapated.”

Perhaps huge participation numbers will light a fire under President Obama when he goes to Copenhagen in December for U.N.-sponsored climate talks.

Of course, we as individuals have to do more. I may use a reel mower, which I tend to arrogantly think of as a REAL mower. We compost. But surely our old house still needs more insulation. So it’s not just the leaders; it’s gotta be all of us as well.

I’ve mentioned this before, but someone should explain to me how cap and trade is NOT functionally like the (not so) old church tradition of selling indulgences, where the the “sinners” pay for redemption.

As the President said: “Unease is no excuse for inaction. And we must not allow the perfect to become the enemy of progress.”

ROG

ROG

M is for Mowing

I hate mowing the lawn.

This is not a matter of lack of energy, though it is a matter of time. Mostly, though, it’s a matter that I really like seeing the wildflowers growing in the back yard and really hate mowing them down. All things being equal, I’d rather hire a goat to keep the grass down.

Still I found some interesting narratives and statistics. I’ve discovered that the country’s great obsession with the lawn is fairly recent, though the lawn mower, has been around since the 1830s.

In the 1930s, U.S. lawn mower sales held at about 50,000 units annually. Following World War II and the American migration to suburbs, homeowners began to take a growing pride in tending their lawns, hedges, and gardens. During this same time, new grass seed varieties were also being developed, and the quest for the “perfect” lawn became a popular hobby and a point of pride.

I understand this abstractly, but basically the lawn obsession is totally foreign to me. The neighbors might care, however.

Reel mowers were the standard home lawn grooming device until the 1950s, when gas-powered rotary motors developed into more than a rough cutting tool. By the end of that decade, power mowers outsold reel mowers by a margin of 9 to 1. The rise in the popularity of power garden equipment was accompanied by a corresponding surge in lawn mower accidents—wounds from flying debris and toe and finger amputations. In the mid-1990s, design changes combined with news stories about equipment safety have raised public awareness.

I have a reel mower now. It uses no gas, no electricity, makes a minimal amount of noise. I will admit, however, that the overly rainy June and July made mowing difficult, not only because mowing wet grass is more difficult, but also because the rain made the grass grow faster.

One of my neighbors was considering buying a reel mower, but after this last summer is far less inclined.

In 1972, the federal Consumer Product Safety Act created a Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC); one of the initial concerns of that agency was power lawn mower accidents. At the time an estimated 77,000 people each year were injured by the whirling blades of this equipment. Following 10 years of CPSC data gathering and testimony from experts and consumers, the first safety requirements for power lawnmowers—the deadman control and blade housing and shield designs to prevent foot injuries—were adopted.

Something that operators of reel mowers have never had to concern them,selves with.

The Environmental Protection Agency continues to be a strong motivator when it comes to improving lawn and garden equipment. It has been the EPA’s position for some time that lawn mowers are significant polluters. A recent EPA-funded study compared gasoline mowers typically used across the country with cordless electric mowers. Gasoline-powered equipment emitted eight times more nitrogen oxides, 3,300 times more hydrocarbons, 5,000 times more carbon monoxide, and more than twice the carbon dioxide per hour of operation compared to the electric models.

The EPA study concluded that if just 20 percent of U.S. homeowners with gasoline mowers switched to cordless electric mowers, there would be annual emissions reductions of 10,800 tons of hydrocarbons, 340 tons of nitrogen oxides, 84,000 tons of carbon monoxide, and 70,000 tons of carbon dioxide.

And if they stuck with reel mowers, it’d be even better.

ROG

ROG

Oh, Yeah, Television. I Remember Television

The wife and daughter left to visit parents/grandparents Sunday afternoon until Monday afternoon. I had this impressive list of things to do. Not the least of which is to remove clothes from the armoire I have and put them in the new dresser I bought from my in-laws the day before. I always disliked the armoire I have currently. I didn’t ask for it, I didn’t buy it, and I felt it was imposed on me. But my clothes had to go SOMEWHERE when Lydia took over the room which had a massive closet where my clothes used to reside, especially for socks and underwear.

One time. one of my sisters rearranged my armoire, so that all of my T-shirts were in one large section. I realized early on that I HATED this. Moreover, my T-shirts hated it. I may have mentioned this before: Karen Sammler, a character on one of my favorite shows of all time, Once and Again, would organize her underwear and socks in such a way that they would each get used approximately the same number of times. In the armoire, the most recently-washed T-shirts tended to get washed, put away and be the only ones I could easily get to. I suppose I could have rearranged them back, but that wasn’t optimal either.

So when I put my T-shirts in the dresser drawer – ah! There were T-shirts in there I hadn’t even SEEN in two years. It takes SO little to make me, and the T-shirts, happy.

I should have emptied the rest of the armoire, but I discovered this device in my living room that discovered I could watch anytime I wanted, without negotiation, called the television. Since I was over two weeks behind on everything, save for The Office, I decided to actually watch some of the new and old shows I had recorded.

The Office (NBC): watched with the wife the Pam and Jim wedding show. My, Dwight seems even nastier this year than before, with real potential to create actual harm.

Modern Family (ABC): I’ve seen only seen the first episode and I failed to record the second. It didn’t really come together for me until the family actually came together at the end. Look forward to seeing again.

Glee (FOX): I missed that premiere episode in the spring. When my wife and I saw it rebroadcast this fall, we weren’t sure it was worth seeing again; it seemed a bit facile. But the second show sealed the deal. It featured my adoptee Victor Garber as the father of the lead character. Jane Lynch’s character seemed less shrill and more devious.

The Good Wife (CBS): I decided to watch this because it features actors from other shows I’ve watched. Not only Julianna Margulies from E/R, but also Josh Charles from Sports Night, Christine Baranski from Cybil (and a lot of other stuff). Also, Matt Czuchry, Rory Gilmore’s obnoxiously pompous boyfriend in Gilmore Girls, who plays the same pompous jerk here, and Chris Noth, doing some cross between his characters on Law & Order and Sex in the City. I thought the premise – woman stands by her man after sex scandal a la Silda Wall Spitzer with Eliot, then needs a job – was pretty thin, enough for a one-off movie but hardly a series. But after two episodes, I am looking forward to see what happens, how it plays. The secondary story about her home life (two kids and her mother-in-law) has potential.

Brothers and Sisters (ABC): The tease of the first episode suggested trouble for one of Nora’s (Sally Field) children, and intentionally make you think it’s one rather than another. I was irritated. But I’m two eps behind, so i haven’t seen the resolution.

Grey’s Anatomy (ABC): Yes, I’m still watching it. I thought the premiere was a rather good example of how people grieve, in this case, the death of George; it’s not all at once, and you can postpone the pain, but not really avoid it. the second show was about cutbacks and a whole other type of pain and grief. Izzy (Katherine Heigl) hasn’t irritated me as much as she has in previous seasons, but I’m not unhappy that the actress will be taking off time to make a movie.

But I also watched football. Not a whole game, mind you. Overtime of the Broncos over the Patriots; are the Broncos for real? Interesting how the Red Sox and the Patriots seem to be on the same arc – ultimate success to also-rans. I also watched a little baseball, primarily Game 3 of the Yankees over the Twins. Caught the baserunning blunder on the Twins’ part and homers by A-Rod and Posada. But I just couldn’t stay up another half inning to see if the Yankees would hold the lead. (They did.)

People often ask me if I saw “last night’s JEOPARDY!”; the answer, almost invariably, is “no”. So they often tell me what the Final JEOPARDY! answer is, testing me to see if I would have correctly gotten it, but almost always, some major element of the answer is missing.

Well, back to sharing the set with the wife and child; it was fun while it lasted.

ROG

ROG

Christopher Columbus

The wife gets up one morning last week and while taking her shower muses on the word colony. Since Christopher Columbus was also known as, among other things, Cristóbal Colón, she wondered if his name might be the root of the word.

Interesting premise, but apparently not so. According to the dictionary, the etymology of the word colony is from the Middle English colonie, from Middle French & Latin; Middle French, from Latin colonia, from colonus farmer, colonist, from colere to cultivate.
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Confidential to FGH: all meals in Columbus, OH are $14.92 or a multiple of same; it’s a municipal mandate. Also true in Columbia, SC.
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Went to the wedding of Susan Brynofson, a member of my church choir, and Robert Gierthy yesterday. Congratulations to them and their families.
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There’s a new 1.25 mile pedestrian walkway over the Hudson River between Highland and Poughkeepsie, near my old college town of New Paltz, the refurbishing of an old railroad bridge long abandoned. I need to walk this sometime.
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I had indicated my fear from making my first appearance on radio since I used to read news copy for my college radio station XX years ago. It’s now available for dissection. I’ll tell you what was very weird about it, which was told to me beforehand: I never talked with the host before or after the show. Also I really thought I finally was rolling when it ended. More info, including the links here.
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Free Gospel Concert: A Tribute to Mahalia Jackson today (Monday, October 12)
Huxley Theater, New York State Museum
A pre-concert movie at 3PM – Mahalia Jackson: the Power and the Glory
In concert: Sharon Fullard, Constance Graves, Marjorie Rush
Merline Smith – Concert Master
Visit Through the Eyes of Others on exhibition in West Gallery
ROG

ROG
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