August 2011 - Page 6 of 7 - Ramblin' with Roger

Summer Song: Summer Breeze

I had a LOT of Seals and Crofts albums for a while. My college girlfriend even got me to see the duo live in New York City, on the birthday of Bahá’u’lláh, in 1971.

Summer Breeze entered the charts on 9/9/1972, spent 16 weeks on the charts, getting to #6. (S&C had three songs get to #6, including 1973’s Diamond Girl and 1976’s Get Closer), which is as high as they ever charted on Billboard.

Anyway, here’s the record and here’s a live version, with narrative on the scroll which could have been put in the notes.

Part of the info was that the Isley Brothers had a UK hit with the same song in 1976, which you can hear HERE.

Peace, Peace, There Is No Peace

Obama’s not a yahoo, he’s a Constitutional scholar, and his defense of his actions is disingenous.

My great disappointment with the Obama administration is not merely the fact that he has maintained indefinite detention of terrorists, rendition, and [so-called] Patriot Act surveillance. It is that, by his previous statements, the public had reason to believe that his actions would end those practices. Except for waterboarding, I’m not seeing the CHANGE I expected.

While the Iraq war is seemingly winding down, the Afghanistan war is ramping up. I must say, I’m not sure to what end.

But I’m most disappointed about our war in Libya. There is this peculiar thing in the Constitution that says that Congress declares war. The War Powers Act gives the President 90 days to submit a request to Congress after fighting begins. Yet he claims it’s not a “real” war, even though we have a “real” military there, and we’re spending “real” money to stay there.

I’m not saying one couldn’t make the case for going into Libya. I AM saying that if another President acted that way, and he was, say, a US Senator, he might complain about the incursion without Congressional authority; wait, wait, he DID do that, and rightly so, re GWB’s war in Iraq. Obama’s not a yahoo, he’s a Constitutional scholar, and the defense of his actions is disingenuous.

Is there any way he can give BACK his Nobel Peace Prize?
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Find out about BlogBlast For Peace aka The Peace Globe movement, launched in 2006, a movement built by bloggers, and perhaps become a peace blogger yourself, by reading the group’s Facebook page.

Blood. Gross.

Allow gay men to donate blood.

The next time I donate blood, which is scheduled to be the end of August, it will be the 144th time. I will get my 18-gallon pin. Let me explain how I got there.

Time #1 – I was working at IBM, after high school, and before I went to college. It was an OK, not a great job. When management said I could take off to donate for an hour to donate blood AND GET PAID my normal wage, that was enough.
I donated a handful of times in college.
But I didn’t get regular, like five or six times a year regular, until the 1980s. I’d go to the well-named Clara Barton Drive, off Hackett Blvd in Albany, on my way to work.
When I started working downtown, I switched to the location in the Empire State Plaza, again giving on the way to work, or occasionally at lunchtime.
since I’ve started working at Corporate (frickin’) Woods, I’ve still donated at ESP or on Everett Road, but it just takes longer.

There have been very few times I was unable to give. Once or twice because I was a little anemic by Red Cross standards. Ate a lot of spinach and I was fine. I got some sun rash from being in Barbados in May 1999 and had to wait a month. But the longest time off was for 13 months in 2002-2003, when I had a series of rabies shots and had to wait a year.

I should note that it’s not all altruism. I’m convinced that there are real health benefits for the donor.

One of the things in the Red Cross mantra is that only about five percent of the eligible donors actually give. One suggestion I’ve made in this blog before, though I now see it was nearly five years ago.

It is this: allow gay men to donate blood. The question I have to answer for every donation is if I have ever had sex, even once with another male since 1977. If the answer had been yes, I would have been disqualified. Since I last mentioned this topic, I have donated an average of 5.6 times per year. I’m told that I may have saved the lives of three or four dozen people since then.

It seems the argument against gay males donating is that they may have a communicable disease. I find the assumption quite absurd, discriminatory, and worse, not in the best interest of the American Red Cross. Of course one doesn’t want someone with HIV AIDS, any more than one would want someone with hepatitis, active cancer, or a bleeding disease. But that is screened in the questions, and double-checked in the lab. Still makes no sense to me.

Barack Obama is 50

“Yeah. Yeah. The decision was made.
“I made the decision Thursday night, informed my team Friday morning, and then we flew off to look at the tornado damage. To go to Cape Canaveral, to make a speech, a commencement speech.”

I suppose it’s true of a lot of Americans: Barack Obama is the first President to be born after I was. And by a lot, over eight years. He’s had some successes, and he’s surely had his failures. But today I’ll focus on the positive aspects. (The negative will come soon enough.)

First, I thought he was working very hard on trying to come to grips with the financial crisis, even before he was inaugurated, and I admired that. (The guy who was ostensibly still in charge kept a low profile, for sure.)

One can argue about the speed of progress regarding gay rights, but the end of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell would NOT have taken place in a John McCain administration. This administration has done more for gay rights than any other.

The overhaul of financial regulations, consumer protection, and health care, while fraught with disappointments along the way, is arguably better than it was.

But I thought his most significant period was the days leading up to the killing of Osama bin Laden. Not so much the action itself as much as his clear ability to multitask.

From his interview on CBS News’ 60 Minutes:
“Yeah. Yeah. The decision was made.
“I made the decision Thursday night, informed my team Friday morning, and then we flew off to look at the tornado damage. To go to Cape Canaveral, to make a speech, a commencement speech. And then we had the White House Correspondents’ Dinner on Saturday night. So this was in the back of my mind all weekend.” watch Obama’s part of the dinner from about 24:30.

So he had some successes…

Happy birthday, Mr. President.

I’m Walkin’ This Way

Run-D.M.C.’s Walk This Way was a gateway to an explosion of commercial success…for Aerosmith.

The Boston-based group Aerosmith had a hit with the song Walk This Way in the winter of 1976-1977 getting to #10 on the charts.

Then the rap trio from Queens, NYC, Run-D.M.C., covered Walk This Way, significantly including Aerosmith’s Steve Tyler on vocals and Joe Perry on guitar. That version got to #4 in 1986 on the pop charts and #8 on the black charts.

What I loved about the latter version is probably anathema to librarian types. I HATE categories in music. I find it at least as divisive as I find it informative. It seems to create the mindset of “I don’t like THAT kind of music,” when I believe there is a basic commonality of music that defies boundaries.

After the latter version hit, Run-D.M.C. continued to have success on the black or R&B charts and even had some minor hits on the pop charts.

After having only two Top 20 hits, the other being the longer version of Dream On (#6 in 1976), and not even a Top 100 on the US pop charts since 1979’s “Remember (Walking in the Sand)” which only got to #67, Aerosmith exploded commercially in the late 1980s, including “Dude (Looks Like a Lady)” (#14 in 1987); “Angel” (#3 in 1988), “Rag Doll” (#17 in 1988); “Love in an Elevator” (#5 in 1989), “Janie’s Got a Gun” (#4 in 1989); then more hits into the 1990s.
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Incidentally, the name of the charts of music generally associated with African-Americans has changed several times, from rhythm & blues (or R&B) to soul to black, back to R&B to R&B/hip-hop. At least they stopped using the term “race records” back in the 1940s.