August 2010 - Page 6 of 7 - Ramblin' with Roger

Hiroshima

Atomic Cafe, the 1982 documentary about the bombings as well as the subsequent Cold War propaganda, had a strong effect on me.

The best teacher I ever had was Paul Peca, my sixth-grade teacher. He encouraged us to think, create, and debate about things in the world. He was a staunch Republican, yet encouraged a mock election in class in which Lyndon Johnson beat Barry Goldwater for President, 13-3.

One of the issues we debated was whether the dropping of the atomic bomb on Hiroshima, Japan on August 6, 1945 and the Nagasaki bombing a couple of days later was justified. Mr. Peca said yes; it shortened the war. Most of us said no; it was brutalizing, with health effects far beyond the immediate event.

I haven’t really changed my position, and I suspect neither has Mr. Peca, who we loved so much that some of us walked 12 miles roundtrip one day to visit him the next year.

Here’s the complete video for Atomic Cafe, a 1982 documentary about the bombings as well as the subsequent Cold War propaganda, which had a strong effect on me. Or use the embedded video below. Here’s Vincent Canby’s review of the film in the New York Times.

Public Reading of John Hersey’s “Hiroshima”
Friday, August 6 at 12:30 pm
Location: John J. Bach Branch, Albany Public Library

30-Day Challenge: Day 15- Current Grades

I am really good at answering calls.

Well, I’m not in school, so you’d think that that’d be that. But as someone once said, “You misunderestimate me.”

One of the things I am required to do every year in my job, around this time, actually, is to do a self-evaluation. Most years, I hate the exercise, though a few times, I relished the opportunity to vent about something. Most recently, four or five years ago, I ranted about the “new” place and how much of a PITA it was. (And it was: it was a month before we were fully functional with consistent phone and Internet.)

Most of the time, though, I have to make up something that doesn’t sound as though I cut and pasted everything from the previous year’s narrative. (Not that I haven’t done this at all…)

So, let me try out the first draft here:

few get reference questions, I do reference questions. I’m not afraid of taking the sucky ones, the ones we all know there is no real answer, but we try to approximate one anyway. I get a lot of feedback from reference questions because I’m pretty thorough in explaining what I can and cannot provide. I think this begins in the reference interview. I recall at least one advisor at staff training noting that she liked to call me – specifically – to hash out the question in a comprehensible way. I know I do that well.

I like giving help to the interns and even the newbie, who used to be an intern.

The Census data, with the American Community Survey’s 1-year, 3-year, and (soon) 5-year releases, are getting more complicated; glad I’m going to those biannual Data Center meetings.

There have been weeks that have gone by that I was the ONLY person to post on our blog or our Twitter feed. What’s with THAT?

One of the things I do that is not in my job description is to answer the main phones. Since we went from two people up front answering them to just one, I probably respond to it about twice as often as I used to. I specifically requested (and got) a phone with the main lines on it so that I didn’t have to sprint over to get them.

Now, is it “my job” to answer the phone? At some level, no. On the other hand, we in the central office expect the folks in the field to answer their phones regularly; how can we do less?

And who are the people calling? Some of them are our potential customers, needing to be directed to a local center. But others are delivery people and visitors wanting to get buzzed into our offices; people from our field offices; SBDCs in other states; members of the state legislature and Congress, or generally their staffers; people who need to be directed to the Department of State’s Corporation section, among others.

Let me say, without false modesty, that I am really good at answering calls. A couple of times just in the past week, I was complimented by people on the phone who were 1) stunned that it was a real person on the other end and 2) pleased that I was able to give them definitive answers rather than push them off to someone else who may or may not be able to help. I swear, I think I’ve found a calling – no pun intended: after I retire some decade, I’d love to be a 211 operator.

Lessee, what else shall I write?

MOVIE REVIEW: Ramona and Beezus

pleasant, sincere, likable, wholesome

I knew it would happen eventually: I take the daughter to a movie that doesn’t scare her (cf. Princess and the Frog, Despicable Me) or totally bore me (Alvin and the Chipmunks 2).

Ramona and Beezus is a story based on Beverly Cleary’s apparently popular children’s book series, which I had never heard of; obviously, I live in a cultural desert. Ramona Quimby (Joey King) is a nine-year-old middle child, stuck between her beautiful high sister Beatrice, who baby Ramona had dubbed Beezus (Selena Gomez – Wizards of Waverly Place), and the new baby.

Ramona, her rambunctious, free-spirited imagination on high, doesn’t know how to draw inside the lines. This is alternately interesting and frustrating to Beezus and to the parents, Robert (John Corbett – everything from Northern Exposure to My Big Fat Greek Wedding to Sex and the City) and Dorothy (Bridget Moynahan – Six Degrees). Ramona does have an ally in her Aunt Bea (Ginnifer Goodwin – Ed, Big Love), who relates to being the younger sister. Bea is horrified to learn that Hobart (Josh Duhamel – Transformers) the boy who broke her heart in high school is back in town, and Bea and Ramona agree to keep Hobart at arm’s length.

Meanwhile, in school, Ramona cannot be bothered with traditional rules, such as spelling, much to the consternation of her teacher, Mrs. Meacham (Sandra Oh – Grey’s Anatomy, Sideways).

There’s a family crisis and Ramona is asked to step up, and she really tries, but her efforts go a bit haywire. In this context, I particularly enjoyed the evolving relationship between the two title characters, and between Ramona and her dad.

Describing more would fall into spoiler territory. Suffice to say, these are the words I would use to describe the film: pleasant, sincere, likable, wholesome. This sounds like being damned with faint praise, but it is not meant to be. I enjoyed it, and I don’t regret having seen it. Don’t necessarily need to see it again, but I’m not the target audience.

The movie received a 73% positive rating, as of this writing in Rotten Tomatoes. Here’s the official site for the film.

C is for Cosby

Bill Cosby saved the American situation comedy.

Bill Cosby is an iconic individual in my life. It started out with three albums that I listened to so often that I could cite dialogue as well as I could Beatles lyrics, which is to say, quite well.

The problem with describing comedy, though, is it involves context, character development and timing. As the cover of I Started Out as a Child (November 1964) notes, “Cut left at the black Chevy” (from Street Football) is not inherently funny, except as described by the Cos. The album also featured Oops!, a brief bit about the fallacy of the perfection about doctors; and The Lone Ranger, about the masked man and Tonto getting drunk, with the Ranger’s horse Silver telling him, “Get off my back!” But the album also deals with serious topics. Medic is about him being one; “zonked means dead”. And Rigor Mortis, about American funerals, along with my preternatural reading of The American Way of Death by Jessica Mitford, helped formulate my preference for cremation over the casket at an early age.

On Why Is There Air? (January 1965), in Driving in San Francisco, he discusses Lombard Street so accurately that it shows up in the Wikipedia description:
“They built a street up there called Lombard Street that goes straight down, and they’re not satisfied with you killing yourself that way—they put grooves and curves and everything in it, and they put flowers there where they’ve buried the people that have killed themselves. Lombard Street, wonderful street.” (audience reacts with knowing cheers and applause). So the one time I went to San Francisco, in 1988, you KNOW I had to go there.

That album, in $75 Car, has one of the few actual jokes. After Bill has hit a tree, he realizes he has a bunch of tickets in the glove compartment, “Which are like Savings Bonds; the longer you keep them, the greater they mature.”

But arguably the best, and in any case, my favorite album, is Wonderfulness (May 1966), with Tonsils (lies about “all the ice cream in the world”), The Playground (conspiracy by the adults to knock off all the kids), Go Karts (900 cop cars!), and the radio drama The Chicken Heart. This album is so good that when we were driving down to Charlotte, NC in April 2010 and I saw this on CD at a convenience store in Virginia for $5.99, I had to buy it and give it to my 19-year-old niece.

Other albums had great bits. 8:15 12:15 (1969) has a routine about not using the Lord’s name in vain; “I have a friend Rudy; he ain’t doin’ nothin’. Call on him,” which is why I say “Rudy dammit”. To the degree I am funny at all, it is with the situational humor, rather than jokes, a la Cosby.

At the same time as those early albums came out, indeed because of those albums, producer Sheldon Leonard teamed Cosby with Robert Culp in a show called I Spy (1965-1968). Not only was it the predecessor of the “buddy” cop shows and movies, I Spy was the first television show to feature a Black actor in a lead role. Bill Cosby won three consecutive Emmy Awards for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Drama Series in 1966, 1967 and 1968. Robert Culp was also nominated in the same category for all three seasons of I Spy. One can find old episodes of I Spy on Hulu, at least in the United States.

I watched Cos on The Bill Cosby Show, about a school teacher, then the kids’ show, Electric Company – an example here – even though I was in college.

Bill Cosby did films, worked on a cartoon series, and did Jell-O commercials – which he’ll be doing again in 2010. Cosby earned a Doctor of Education degree from the University of Massachusetts. “For his doctoral research, he wrote a dissertation entitled, “An Integration of the Visual Media Via ‘Fat Albert And The Cosby Kids’ Into the Elementary School Curriculum as a Teaching Aid and Vehicle to Achieve Increased Learning”.

Then he saved the American situation comedy with The Cosby Show. Don’t believe me? Check out Ken Levine, writer for the TV shows MAS*H and Cheers, among many others. The 1984-1992 show revived a moribund format in the U.S.

The program portrayed black American life as normal if, by “normal”, you mean having a doctor and a lawyer as the parents. It regularly displayed African-American art, music (especially jazz, a Cosby love), and culture as a normal part of everyday life. Here’s a piece of Night Time Is The Right Time.

I always loved the changing theme songs myself:

Season 1
Season 2
Season 3
Season 4
Season 5
Seasons 6 and 7
Season 8

He’s best known recently for his controversial call for black Americans to take more individual responsibility, for which some have castigated him for blaming the poor. His book Come On People: On the Path from Victims to Victors is a New York Times bestseller.

ABC Wednesday – Round 7

Many Odd Questions

I wish the government spent more on rail travel.

I decided to combine Part 1 and half of Part 2 of Sunday Stealing’s “Many Odd Questions,” which frankly I don’t find all that peculiar.

1. First thing you wash in the shower?
My hair, what’s left of it.

2. What color is your favorite hoodie?
Do I have a hoodie? If I do, gray.

3. Would you kiss the last person you kissed again?
Absolutely.

4. Do you plan outfits?
No, I just look in the closet. Exception: I’m going to a business meeting for which a suit is required.

5. How are you feeling RIGHT now?
Reasonably awake. Reasonably happy; but what IS happiness?

6. What’s the closest thing to you that’s red?
The box of Spoon-Sized Shredded Wheat.

7. Tell me about the last dream you remember having?
I had one featuring Hank Jansen, who used to work at FantaCo, but for the life of me, I have no idea what it was about. It felt positive, but that is it.

8. Did you meet anybody new today?
Well, there has been a whole bunch of new people on our floor in the past couple of weeks. I wouldn’t say I MET them as much as nod hello.

9. What are you craving right now?
A strawberry milkshake.

10. Do you floss?
Yes, but I didn’t until I was an adult. Totally missed that inservice on it as a kid.

11. What comes to mind when I say cabbage?
Corned beef. Or money.

12. Are you emotional?
On the inside.

13. Have you ever counted to 1,000?
No. I’m too ADHD for that.

14. Do you bite into your ice cream or just lick it?
Yes. Depending on the temperature. Soft ice cream I lick unless it’s going to fall off the cone.

15. Do you like your hair?
What hair?

16. Do you like yourself?
Well, I AM swell.

17. Would you go out to eat with George W. Bush?

Yes. Unfortunately, I would be disinclined to be my warm, polite self. And he still has Secret Service protection.

18. What are you listening to right now?
The Broadway cast album to West Side Story.

19. Are your parents strict?
My father was. My mother was a pushover.

20. Would you go sky diving?
No.

21. Do you like cottage cheese?
Well, no and yes. It’s rather bland, but it gioes so well with so many things, such as fruit.

22. Have you ever met a celebrity?
Yes. as mentioned here somewhere, Nelson Rockefeller, Rod Serling, Anita Baker, Randy Newman.

23. Do you rent movies often?
I have a Netflix account. Sometimes I can go months without actually watching one film, then I’ll do two per month. STILL have Hurt Locker.

24. Is there anything sparkly in the room you’re in?
This strange wizard hat I bought at a Medieval Faire last year.

25. How many countries have you visited?
Canada, Mexico (once), Barbados (once).

26. Have you made a prank phone call?
Not in decades.

27. Ever been on a train?
I LOVE the train. I wish the government spent more on rail travel. In the long run, it’d be financially and ecologically worthwhile.

28. Brown or white eggs?
Doesn’t matter. Whatever’s cheaper.

29. Do you have a cell phone?
Yes. Oh, there it is; I misplace it regularly.

30. Do you use ChapStick?
Rarely.

31. Do you own a gun?
No. If I did, I’d probably blow out the tires of the car of some schmuck who almost ran me over, they’d have an accident and die, and then I’d be in jail for manslaughter.

32. Can you use chopsticks?
Not very well.

33. Who are you going to be with tonight?
The wife and daughter.