March 2011 - Page 2 of 7 - Ramblin' with Roger

The Lydster, Part 84: Cousins

It’s Lydia’s 7th birthday today.

On her mother’s side, Lydia has three first cousins, 10-year-old twin girls, and a nine-and-half-year-old girl. But on my side, we gave my parents three granddaughters about a dozen years apart.

Rebecca, Leslie’s daughter, is 32 and lives in southern California with her husband Rico; she’s the one wearing the coat in the two pictures below. I can tell you that she has been a great, supportive cousin to Alexandria, Marcia’s daughter, who is 20 and lives with Marcia (and lived with my mother) in southern North Carolina. Likewise, Alex has been a wonderful cousin to Lydia.

But until recently, Rebecca and Lydia had never met, though Lydia had seen Rebecca and Rico on the TV show Wipeout back in September. So when Rebecca arrived in NC for my mother’s funeral, we made sure that the two of them had some quality time together.

Unsurprisingly, Rebecca was also a terrific cousin to Lydia, who was a bit in awe of her big cousin after her impressive, albeit second-place finish, on a very rigorous game show.

In fact, when we drove, in two cars, to Salisbury National Cemetery, some 40 miles each way to bury my mother, Rebecca rode with Carol and me, in the back seat with Lydia; they seemed to be entertaining each other thoroughly. I’m glad they got a chance to meet. I’m only sorry that it took so long, and the circumstances which finally brought them together.
***
Oh, yeah, it’s Lydia’s 7th birthday today. I had a meeting with her teacher earlier this month, and she said that Lydia is a bit of an old soul. The teacher might make what she called an ironic aside, and Lydia, as often as not, would “get” it and laugh when no one in the class did. She’s still rather shy around adults, but she does pay attention to what they say and do.

Lydia is also getting more clever. A couple of days before my birthday, my wife arranged for my OLD friend Uthaclena, his wife and his 16-year-old daughter to come up from the Mid-Hudson Valley as a surprise. Lydia knew about it and was very good about keeping it a secret. On that day, she also assisted me in moving furniture and got me a tweezer and a flashlight so I could remove a couple of slivers from my finger. So she’s also become quite helpful.

I love you, daughter o’ mine.

(First picture C 2011 Uthaclena; other pictures C 2011 Leslie Ellen Green – taken with her cellphone!)

Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire

“Unions are also the only large-scale movement left in America that persistently acts as a countervailing power against corporate power. They’re the only large-scale movement left that persistently acts in the economic interests of the middle class.”

On March 25, 1911, 146 young immigrant workers, mostly female, died in a tragic fire at the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory in New York’s Greenwich Village. Within 18 minutes, the fire spread to consume the building’s upper three stories. Firefighters who arrived at the scene were unable to rescue those workers trapped inside because the doors were locked and their ladders could not reach the factory floor. This tragedy galvanized a city and state to fight for labor reform and safety in the workplace.

And now a century later, it’s clear that organized labor is under attack. You may have seen the cookie joke. “You know: a CEO, a tea party member, and a union worker are all sitting at a table when a plate with a dozen cookies arrives. Before anyone else can make a move, the CEO reaches out to rake in eleven of the cookies. When the other two look at him in surprise, the CEO locks eyes with the tea party member. ‘You better watch him,’ the executive says with a nod toward the union worker. ‘He wants a piece of your cookie.'”

Just because I haven’t spoken much here about the attacks on labor, in the US and elsewhere, doesn’t mean that I’m not disturbed by the lies that have been thrown around in the debate.

In particular, I’ve been irritated over the trampling of school teachers, which, of course, hits home. Especially compared with the Wall Street folk who apparently are barely scraping by.

Check out the latest Productivity and Costs news release from the U.S. Department of Labor: productivity rose 2.6 percent in the nonfarm business sector in the fourth quarter of 2010; unit labor costs declined 0.6 percent (seasonally adjusted annual rates). Annual average productivity increased 3.9 percent from 2009 to 2010. Squeezing more with less, which may be good for the business bottom line, but not necessarily for the workers who buy the goods and services that are being produced.

Jaquandor quotes Kevin Drum: “Of course unions have pathologies. Every big human institution does. And anyone who thinks they’re on the wrong side of an issue should fight it out with them. But unions are also the only large-scale movement left in America that persistently acts as a countervailing power against corporate power. They’re the only large-scale movement left that persistently acts in the economic interests of the middle class.”

Another labor story is running through my mind: the “feel-good” story of 2010, the rescue of the 33 Chilean miners. But the 60 Minutes story about them in February 2011 shows that the men are still suffering from a sense of despair. There was supposed to have been emergency food made available, but it was a “pittance”; the men seriously considered suicide or cannibalism over starving to death. The disaster, like so many other mining crises, in the United States and elsewhere, was a function of management ineptitude or callous indifference.

Almost all labor unions evolved from greed or stupidity on the part of those in control. I recall that there was a massive snowstorm on a Saturday in March of 1993 in Albany, and the librarians tried in vain to get ahold of the director. Since the city had called a state of emergency – 26 inches would ultimately fall, making it the 2nd worst snowstorm in city history, after March 1888 – the folks made the decision to close the library. The autocratic director was furious, took some disciplinary actions against those who departed early. The unionization of the librarians stemmed from that event.

So, let not my lack of ranting confuse you; in most cases, I tend to side with the labor unions, even though, I should point out, I do not belong to one. Not every labor dispute is a matter of life and death; sometimes, it’s only a matter of worker dignity.

Beatles Island Songs, 33-24

Well, those Central girls knock me out,
They leave the North girls behind.
And Central girls make me sing and shout.
That Bulldog’s on my mi-mi-mi-mind.

JEOPARDY! answers (questions at the end)
MUSIC OF THE ’60s $100: In 1969 “Something” became the only No. 1 hit he composed for the Beatles
HILLS $400: The Beatles’ Rocky Raccoon was raised in them
SWEET 16 $400: Billboard numbers it as the Beatles’ 16th chart album; you can’t tell anything by its cover
MOVIE SONGS $100: In this 1968 Beatles title tune, “Every one of us has all we need, sky of blue and sea of green”
FINISH THE LINE $100: The Beatles: “Yesterday all my troubles seemed…”
FINISH THE LINE $600: The Beatles: “I think I’m gonna be sad…”
CHORUS LINES $800: The Beatles sang, “Hold me, love me, ain’t got nothin’ but love babe” this often

Video: Steve Martin talks in collaboration with Paul McCartney on ABC-TV’s The View: “I’ve got to tell you, having Paul McCartney sing a song that I wrote has to be one of the greatest thrills of his life,” Martin quipped.

Yoko Ono and Sean Lennon will do a Japan benefit concert in New York on March 27.
***
The rules of engagement

33 I’m Down, B-side of Help! single. My friend Fred Hembeck says that this is just McCartney’s remake of Long Tall Sally, and he may very well be right. What hooked me on this song is seeing the ABC-TV broadcast of the live performance of it at Shea Stadium in 1965. So much so that when the compilation album Rock and Roll came out in the early 1970s, I bought the album largely for this one song, which I had never owned. I didn’t buy Beatles 1962-1966 for From Me To You, e.g.
32 You’ve Got to Hide Your Love Away from Help! Lennon does Dylan; I love this song. And it would be disingenuous to suggest that I didn’t relate to the sentiments in the lyrics more than once.
31 Don’t Let Me Down, B-side of Get Back (UK), Hey Jude album (US). Lennon does one of the finest B-sides ever. Jaquandor describes it well.
30 Get Back, A-side of a single. Sweet Loretta! The driving beat of this song, along with the jaunty solo on the bridge, made me feel almost as though they were the happy-go-lucky moptops of a few years earlier.
29 I Am the Walrus from Magical Mystery Tour. My daughter claims this is Lennon song is her favorite Beatles recording. Really. I had this friend Ray in junior high who wondered whether “standing in the English rain” was a pun on “English reign”, i.e., a reference to the monarchy.
28 Getting Better from Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. I LOVE the STRUCTURE of this mostly McCartney song. It’s verse and chorus, but the chorus gets increasingly longer each time out. I thought it was incredibly clever writing, and still do. It’s also a song of redemption – “Man, I was mean, but I’m changing my scene.”
27 And I Love Her from A Hard Day’s Night (UK, US), Something New (US). McCartney apparently thought the “And” was important, and I agree. Lovely romanticism.
26 A Day in the Life from Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. What I love about this song, which often shows up near the top on the list of the greatest Beatles songs – and it may be – is it’s a real Lennon-McCartney song, even if it’s the different parts. The not-so-good thing is that it, and the album in general, spawned some wretched imitators. (Exhibit A: The totally out-of-context middle section of Susan by the Buckinghams).
25 Back in the U.S.S.R. from the white album. The first song on the album with fun lyrics and Beach Boys harmonies, written by McCartney. In high school, someone (it might have been me, now that I think on it) wrote:
Back in BCHS, Ain’t you a mess,
Back in BCH, back in BCH, back in BCHS.
Well, those Central girls knock me out,
They leave the North girls behind.
And Central girls make me sing and shout.
That Bulldog’s on my mi-mi-mi-mind.
[Binghamton North was our archrival, and the Bulldog was the school mascot/emblem.]
24 She Loves You, A-side of a single (UK), Beatles’ Second Album (US). No song epitomized Beatlemania like this one. Critics specifically mocked the “Yeah, yeah, yeah” from this Lennon-McCartney song, but of course, it was THE hook. Also, the third-person perspective was very clever.

JEOPARDY! questions
George Harrison
Black Hills – specifically, “somewhere in the black mining hills of Dakota”> BTW this lyric is often misheard as “black mountain hills of Dakota”
“The White Album”
“Yellow Submarine”
so far away
I think it’s today
“Eight Days A Week”

Roger Answers Your Questions, Gordon, Tom, Demeur, and Uthaclena

When I’ve just written something difficult, the meme serves as a sort of intellectual “palate cleaners”, as it were.

Gordon of Blog This, Pal!, who had a birthday this month, the day before mine actually, asks:
With all the rampant de-funding that seems to be happening (NPR, Americorps), do you think it’s being done out of partisan motivations? Or simply (as I like to think of it) a case of relatively new legislators playing hack and slash without really considering the consequences?

Gordon, you attribute to these legislators a level of naivete that I just don’t find at all convincing. An opportunity to get rid of Planned Parenthood funding, for instance, is like a dream come true for the GOP, at least since 1994; maybe since 1973. Never mind the facts that 1) the funding, per the Hyde Amendment, cannot be used for abortions and 2) the services that are provided are often the only medical treatment some women get. I find it incredibly cynical that they want to, symbolically at least, support the unborn, while at the same time, imperil the born by cutting programs such as WIC (Women, Infants, Children.)

Getting rid of those damn liberals at NPR will be saving, at a cost, especially in some rural communities, of having any local radio at all. And speaking of NPR, it distresses me that a faux journalist with a microphone and video camera can help besmirch the network by clever editing, the same way Shirley Sherrod can be forced out of the Department of Agriculture based on the same clever manipulation.

Let’s be realistic, though: if cuts are to be made to the federal budget, it’ll have to come from somewhere. A good 88% of the budget has been deemed by pundits as non-discretionary. As much as I hate agreeing with columnist George Will, that’s nonsense. Most of the budget, save for payment on the debt, is discretionary; it may require Congressional action, but it’s not untouchable. But which jobs program is one to cut: a factory making weapons that the Department of Defense doesn’t even want, which employs a number of folks in the district of a powerful member of Congress, or Americorps, whose only native constituency are not-for-profits and some smaller governments?

There are choices as to what to “hack and slash”, and they seem to be quite targeted, while other programs, even within the 12% of the budget that everyone considers discretionary, have been considered off-limits by House GOP leaders.
***
Tom the Mayor, with whom I worked at FantaCo, wonders:
Do you think State budget cuts will affect your librarian job? How about your wife’s job? I know Medicaid cuts have already cost me one job and might cost me my present one.

Well, indirectly, yes. My job gets some state money, so that’s a possibility. But if the US Small Business Administration gets a 45% cut, as proposed in the Obama budget, that’d be even worse for the Small Business Development Centers, which do the hands-on counseling, and therefore, that’s not great for my colleagues and me if there are fewer centers and counselors. So it’s the federal budget I’m more worried about.

My wife’s job is with BOCES. If the district she works in decides to hire their own ESL teacher, my wife has been with BOCES longer, and with good evaluations, than any other ESL teacher in the area. So probably not.
***
Demeur, who I read regularly, relates:
Thomas, I feel for you I’m in the same boat that might sink any time now. I retrained for a different job only to have funding cut. I was lucky enough to get tied into a temp job with a government agency. I now hear that this program may be cut…

My question: Have you considered what you’d do if you had to change careers?

It’s difficult to think of my life as having a “career”. Besides being a librarian, the kind of jobs I’d like and for which I could make the case for which I’m currently qualified are writing, editing, customer service, retail sales, and some sort of instruction.
***
My good friend Uthaclena asked me – well it was more that he indicated that he didn’t understand me doing those meme things such as Sunday Stealing.

Well, here’s why I do them.

1. The process of answering predetermined questions I find as an interesting exercise for me. Moreover, I often find out things about me that I didn’t know before. It’s a controlled reveal.
2. Sometimes, when I need to write something that is difficult and/or time-consuming, it starts the writing juices going.
3. Related: when I’ve just written something difficult, the meme serves as a sort of intellectual “palate cleaners”, as it were.

And in writing this, I realize that I do pretty much the same thing at work.

We librarians generally take the next question in the queue. Sometimes, the query is a bear, requiring a certain learning curve before even attempting to respond to it. Occasionally, I get stuck, waiting for someone from a government agency or an association to call or write me back. While I’m waiting, I might take another question down the list that I know is answerable. Perhaps it’s Census data I know exists, or regulations for a type of business I’ve helped before, or a business list. After struggling with something difficult, I want a “win”, something I KNOW I can answer without great difficulty.

J is for Justices

The only way a Supreme Court Justice can be removed is through impeachment (indictment) by the House of Representatives, and conviction by the Senate.

On the United States Supreme Court, the nine judges are called justices. There have been 110 justices since 1789, with 17 of them having served as Chief Justice, not counting some in temporary positions due to the death or retirement of the Chief Justice.

Someone nominated by the President, and ratified by the U.S. Senate by a majority vote, can serve for life. The idea was that the judiciary not be affected by the whims of pedestrian politics. Not that that hasn’t happened on occasion.

Here’s a list of Supreme Court members. I can tell that this picture was taken after the 2006 retirement of Sandra Day O’Connor, the first woman ever to serve on the high court, replaced by Samuel Alito, and before the 2009 retirement of David Souter. There is a particular order in these pictures. The Chief Justice, in this case, John Roberts, is always front and center, literally. To his left, from your point of view, is the justice with the most seniority, in this case, 2010 retiree John Paul Stevens. To the right of the CJ is the next person in terms of seniority, Antonin Scalia, followed by (far left front) Anthony Kennedy, (far right front) Souter, (near left back) Clarence Thomas, (near right back) Ruth Bader Ginsburg, (far left back) Stephen Breyer and (far right back) Alito.

Here are the biographies of the current Court members, plus recent retirees.

Only four Presidents have never gotten a nomination confirmed: William Henry Harrison, Zachary Taylor, Andrew Johnson (who did try), and Jimmy Carter. Of those, only Carter served a full term as President, though Johnson, who was impeached, nearly did.

And speaking of impeachment, the only way a Supreme Court Justice can be removed is through impeachment (indictment) by the House of Representatives, and conviction by the Senate. And only one justice, Samuel Chase has ever been impeached, though not convicted.

The first Roman Catholic on the bench was Roger Taney (1836), the chief justice who delivered the dreadful Dred Scott decision (1857). The first Jewish person was Louis Brandeis in 1916. So it is interesting that the current court consists of six Catholics, three Jews, and none of the Protestants who had dominated the courts for centuries.

The first black on the bench was Thurgood Marshall (1967), who appeared before the court in the landmark Brown v. Board of Education (1954) anti-discrimination case; Clarence Thomas is the second. Marshall is not the only justice to move from lawyer before the court to justice on the court; e.g., Abe Fortas was the lead attorney in Gideon v. Wainwright (1962), which ruled that state courts are required under the Sixth Amendment to provide counsel in criminal cases for defendants unable to afford their own attorneys.

The first woman, as noted, was Sandra Day O’Connor (1981). There are now three women on the court, and there have been four in total. In the current picture, Thomas and Bader Ginsburg have made it to the front row. The newbies are Sonia Sotomayor, the first Hispanic on the Court (2009), and Elena Kagan.

ABC Wednesday – Round 8