February 2012 - Ramblin' with Roger

February Rambling: Military Draft, Muppets and Graceland

“’Soul Train’ was the first and only television show to showcase and put a spotlight on black artists at a time when there were few African-Americans on television at all, and that was the great vision of Don.”

When I mentioned the military draft earlier in the month, I may not have been very clear. Think of a large goldfish bowl with 365 or 366 balls with every date for the year represented. The first date for a particular year pulled would be the first selected for military service, the second date pulled the second selected, etc. There would be a cutoff number, based on the need for the war effort. Check out this article and then this one.

The food stamp President; note that Arthur had this BEFORE MoveOn.com helped propel it viral. He also remembers the first anniversary of the Christchurch, New Zealand earthquake, the 50th anniversary of John Glenn’s flight aboard Friendship 7, and the 200th anniversary of the birth of Charles Dickens.

Rosa Parks Did Much More than Sit on a Bus

The Stories I Tell: “Like most of us I was raised to tell the truth and be honest. This can present a minor dilemma for resellers.”

How a mom used Star Wars to answer life’s questions

Marvel/Disney wages petty, vicious war against Ghost Rider creator. Yeah, there are two sides to this story, but Disney’s treatment of writer Gary Friedrich is still most unfortunate. Here’s a more nuanced piece that links to a donate to Gary site. Incidentally, in the comments to the former piece, someone was complaining that Friedrich was selling the art of Mike Ploog, penciler of Ghost Rider. I don’t know about the specifics of this case, but as former Marvel editor-in-chief Jim Shooter explained here and here, art pages, which previous to the 1970s were rarely returned at all by comic book companies, were distributed to various participants of the story; this included the writer, though they usually got last dibs. Shooter does explain Marvel’s likely point of view, and here’s a Marvel rebuttal.

I swear I had the same problem as Mitch O’Connell.

I read in Entertainment Weekly about this website that has the feature If 2012’s Oscar-nominated movie posters told the truth. This one riffing on The Help is funny, but so are several others.

I was saddened by the death of “Soul Train” host Don Cornelius of a self-inflicted gunshot wound. From the LA Times: “Don Cornelius’ legacy to music, especially black music, will be forever cemented in history,” said Clarence Avant, former chairman of Motown Records. “’Soul Train’ was the first and only television show to showcase and put a spotlight on black artists at a time when there were few African-Americans on television at all, and that was the great vision of Don.”
But I also remember tuning in when unlikely guests would show up, such as David Bowie performing Fame and Golden Years.

Read about comic book legend John Severin, who died at the age of 90, here and here and here.

The Wicker Muppet and A Muppet phenomenon and REALLY early Muppets.

The film trailer for “Under African Skies,” “the documentary from award-winning filmmaker Joe Berlinger. Paul Simon travels back to South Africa 25 years after his first visit, chronicling the creation and lasting influence of his groundbreaking album, Graceland. Simon revisits the making of the record, surveying from the vantage of history the turbulence and controversy surrounding the album’s genesis.”

HOW TO mix a grody-looking Alien Brain Hemorrhage cocktail
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ROGER AT OTHER BLOGS

Interestingly, on most of these, I don’t get many comments. But I DO get an occasional LIKE on Facebook or retweet on Twitter, so it’s all good. Oh, and speaking of Facebook, I now have but one Facebook account. So if you want to “friend” me, it needs to be this account, the one with the duck logo.

Obviously, we’re still working on that “change the world” thing – also noting Graham Nash’s 70th birthday.

The GIANTS WIN THE PENNANT! The GIANTS WIN THE PENNANT!

Secrets of the public bathroom

Caring about Multiple Things Simultaneously, which is less about Whitney Houston, and more about people who think other folks shouldn’t care about Whitney Houston’s death

Alan Moore’s Twilight Proposal. Flashmob Fridays’ final outing.

Even a Megaphone Might Have Helped: Albany’s Black History Month bit

Scott Ritter is…complicated

In the spirit of Woody Guthrie. Well, maybe funnier.

The City of Albany didn’t even know the sign was missing until someone – OK, I – pointed it out.

G is for Gerrymander

The US Supreme Court ruled that Congressional and state legislative districts had to be roughly equal in population, consistent with the “one man (later, one person), one vote” doctrine.

Gerrymandering is a word that means “a practice that attempts to establish [in the process of setting electoral districts] a political advantage for a particular party or group by manipulating geographic boundaries to create partisan, incumbent-protected districts. Gerrymandering may be used to achieve desired electoral results for a particular party, or may be used to help or hinder a particular demographic, such as a political, racial, linguistic, religious or class group.”

The term was created way back in the early 19th century concerning the redrawing of the “Massachusetts state senate election districts under the then-governor Elbridge Gerry…to benefit his Democratic-Republican Party. When mapped, one of the contorted districts in the Boston area was said to resemble the shape of a salamander.”

Thus GERRY+SALAMANDER=GERYYMANDER. Oddly, though, the first syllable in gerrymander sounds like JERRY, Gerry’s name sounds like Gary. Gerry, incidentally was the second Vice President of the US to die in office, after George Clinton, both under James Madison.

The US Supreme Court ruled, in Baker v. Carr (1962) and Reynolds v. Sims (1964), that Congressional and state legislative districts had to be roughly equal in population, consistent with the “one man (later, one person), one vote” doctrine. This was a good thing: some districts had 10 or 14 times as many people as other districts. Invariably, though, the lines drawn shortly after each decennial Census become fraught with controversy.

The 2012 tentative New York State Senate redistricting was described as being in its gerrymandered glory. The Los Angeles Redistricting Commission released its proposed boundary lines for 15 City Council seats in 2012, which led one councilman to call it an “outrageous case of gerrymandering” against his coastal district.

Not all gerrymandering is done with nefarious intent, to keep a political party safe. Some was done to try to create fairness. For decades, concentrations of black voters were parceled into various predominately white districts to minimize the possibility of a “majority-minority district”. That behavior too has been deemed unconstitutional as well.

But sometimes the solution is as bad as the disease. Look at North Carolina congressional district 12 (in purple), which is long and narrow and practically bisects the state. I’m sure that it was designed to give a better chance for a black candidate to win. But it runs along the interstate without any sort of community cohesiveness. Similar maps have been struck down for that very reason.

Another big issue in New York is so-called prison-based gerrymandering. Most prisons are in upstate New York; many prisoners are from downstate New York. Critics say the census should count prisoners in the district where they lived BEFORE they were incarcerated, which would lessen the power of the most rural districts where prisons tend to be situated.

There has been a move toward “non-partisan” reapportionment. For most places, though, that is easier said than done.

ABC Wednesday – Round 10

Black History Month and Segregation Denialism

“America struggles with ‘denialism,’ i.e., a refusal to face its grim past of racial crimes and human rights violations. ‘Other countries that have tried to recover from severe human rights problems that have lasted for decades…have always recognized that you have to commit yourself to truth and reconciliation: South Africa, Rwanda. In the United States we never did that. We had legal reforms that were imposed on some populations against their will and then we just carried on.’…

Every year for the past several, I have become the point person for the Black History Month celebration at my church. It is not a position I’ve ever sought, but it has obviously sought me. I had called a meeting of potentially interested parties in early December so that I might offload some of the responsibility. But I was so sick, not only did I not go to church, I had forgotten that I had called the meeting until after the fact. Opportunity missed; so it goes.

At the end of the first adult education hour, which featured a guest speaker, I recommended that people view Slavery by Another Name, a new PBS documentary based on Douglas A. Blackmon’s Pulitzer Prize-winning book, narrated by Laurence Fishburne (pictured) before the following session. Some folks did watch, and it is interesting to note that it was a piece of American history that most in the room were oblivious to. My wife and I had seen the film at an advanced showing at UAlbany a couple of weeks earlier.

From a description of the book:
Tens of thousands of African Americans were arbitrarily arrested, hit with outrageous fines, and charged for the costs of their own arrests. With no means to pay these ostensible ‘debts,’ prisoners were sold as forced laborers to coal mines, lumber camps, brickyards, railroads, quarries, and farm plantations. Thousands of other African Americans were simply seized by southern landowners and compelled into years of involuntary servitude.

As it turns out prison officials in Alabama have “banned inmate Mark Melvin from reading” the book, as they, “says attorney Bryan Stevenson, felt it was ‘too provocative, they didn’t like the title, they didn’t like the idea that the title conveyed.'”

Stevenson made some cogent points as he filed suit. “America struggles with ‘denialism,’ i.e., a refusal to face its grim past of racial crimes and human rights violations. ‘Other countries that have tried to recover from severe human rights problems that have lasted for decades…have always recognized that you have to commit yourself to truth and reconciliation: South Africa, Rwanda. In the United States, we never did that. We had legal reforms that were imposed on some populations against their will and then we just carried on.’…

“Stevenson feels it’s ‘just a matter of time’ before the nation begins to minimize ‘what segregation really was,’ like a black version of Holocaust denial. That’s already happening. In 2010, former Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour claimed integration in his state was ‘a very pleasant experience.’ Actually, integration in his state was marked by, among other atrocities, a firebombing, a fatal riot, the assassination of Medgar Evers, and the murders of three voting rights workers.

“The only effective weapon against such lies is to learn the truth and tell it, shout it in the face of untruth, equivocation, and denial. Bear witness.”

I also addressed issues of popular culture. I wanted to show a TEDx video by Jay Smooth, but it proved to be too technologically daunting. So I suggested that people look at his …Stop Worrying and Love Discussing Race, and its predecessor, on my Times Union blog. Ah, a good use for it.

The Lydster, Part 95: A Good Heart, for Jamaica

Donations to the project came from all different sources including a generous, heartfelt gift from Lydia who had saved several months of her spending money because she felt ‘all children should have a safe school’

The Moses Baker Basic School in Golden Grove, Jamaica is in one of the poorest communities in a poor country. My mother-in-law writes: “The previous building was a wooden structure which was in bad condition, made even worse each time it was blown apart by hurricanes.” Her church in Oneonta, NY “had been sending teams down each summer [since 2000] to do projects in the community,” first working on getting the health center up to snuff, then repairing the preschool for about 80 kids. “No sooner were the repairs completed each year a storm blew through more than undoing all of the work. The residents picked up the pieces and put them back on as best they could.

Finally, the church decided to postpone the annual trips to save up some money to build a school strong enough to withstand severe storms, made of “rebar reinforced concrete… The old ‘building’ was torn down as soon as school ended in June 2011.

“The new construction started immediately in order to be completed in time for school in September 2011.” Info about the construction can be seen here. The Oneonta church pastor and her husband, an RN, went down last month to dedicate the building. The church had “raised about $70,000 for the project and, as the community wanted, built a strong building which could have a second story added at some time in the future if needed. The people were ecstatic, not only for the building but that the [pastor] had come since they have no pastor at present. But there is more to the story.

“Donations to the project came from all different sources including a generous, heartfelt gift from [her granddaughter, my daughter] Lydia who had saved several months of her spending money because she felt ‘all children should have a safe school’….” When she and my wife went to a clothing consignment shop to sell some clothes, Lydia was told that the money gleaned from the sale of her clothes could be spent by her. But she opted to donate this money to the Jamaica project as well.

Then, “the sugar company which has a monopoly on selling the area’s sugar had to return [some] money to Jamaica, and the decision-making group heard about this school. The company is giving $65,000 to build a needed retaining wall around the school and to further finish the school construction. In addition, they plan to give about $75,000 to the health center for community needs. Amazing! “

The “experiment in retaliatory manners” QUESTION

This way-too-cheerful guy walking up the street says, “Good morning!”

I was reading this review of a new book on manners when I stopped short:

“Would It Kill You to Stop Doing That?” is that rare consideration of courtesy that admits you can carry the crusade too far. Take, for instance, Alford’s one-man “experiment in retaliatory manners,” a period during which he apologized elaborately to people who had failed to say they were sorry for such minor transgressions as bumping into him on the street. “I’m saying what you should be saying,” he’d then invariably have to explain to these oblivious souls. Eventually, and ruefully, he realized that “reverse apologizing is usually as rude if not ruder than the incident that inspires it.”

I recognized that, in all likelihood, I might have done this at some point in my life. Moreover, I have a very specific recollection of this happening to me, back in the mid-1990s. It is dark in the morning when I usually go to vote in the November general election near the beginning of polling hours at 6 a.m.; I like to vote early whenever possible, minimizing the calls I’d get from candidates “reminding” me.

So I’m walking down the street around 5:45 a.m. and this way-too-cheerful guy walking up the street says, “Good morning!” I, who am still waking up, respond weakly in kind. Then the guy says, “I said, ‘GOOD MORNING!'” And I found myself acknowledging that I DID say “good morning”, but that he was the very first person I had spoken to that day, which was true. His second greeting was an “experiment in retaliatory manners.”

Do you do that? (If so, please stop.) Do others do that to you?
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When I read that the 29-year-old babysitter, the ex-boyfriend of the child’s mother, suffocated 21-month-old Avery Cahn “when he placed his hand over the child’s mouth…[acting] recklessly in a frustrated attempt to quiet the youngster,” I said, over and over, to the sky, “You are an idiot.” I may have said more than that. Coincidentally, I was listening to Green Day’s American Idiot at the time.