May 2012 - Page 4 of 7 - Ramblin' with Roger

Blogoversary answers

What about all those OTHER blogs you do?

Let’s milk this seventh blogoversary gig: in response to questions I get about blogging all of the time, both in person and online, I decided to answer some of them.

Why do you blog?

I’ve noted that I was inspired by my friend Fred Hembeck. Beyond that, though, there was stuff happening in the world and in my life that seemed to be worthy of noting, if only because they were important to me.

Some people write letters to the editor. I have, but I’m not very diligent about it. Some people write to members of Congress. Ditto. What I realized that I can do is write something in a blog, then send THAT to a member of Congress. And I have, a few times. Plus the piece stays out there is in the blogoverse.

But mostly, it was so I could maintain a modicum of sanity.

What was your goal in blogging?

Initially, I had only two.

When my daughter was born in March of 2004, I said that I would keep a journal about/for her. But early on, that fell apart. So having the blog would be my public commitment to fulfill my promise. And I have written about her EVERY MONTH without fail, on the 26th, since I started this.

The other was to write the JEOPARDY! story so I didn’t have to repeat it all the time. The folks at J!-ARCHIVE have linked to those.

Why do you blog about THAT?

Because it interests me. I’ve said before that I write the blog, first and foremost, for me.

There’s a noted TV writer named Ken Levine (MASH, Frasier). Some people complain when he blogs about baseball; Ken’s an announcer for the Seattle Mariners and has served in the same capacity for other teams. What he (or his followers) usually say is something snarky such as, “For what you’re paying, you shouldn’t complain.”

I’m not one who does snark well. It’s not that I don’t feel snarky sometimes, but rather it seems to come off as mean-spirited. But my sentiment’s about the same.

If I write about sports or TV or politics or do a quiz, and you’re not interested, that’s fine; almost certainly, tomorrow will be something else. If I altered the eclectic balance and listen to other voices, my self-censoring would probably paralyze me from scribing anything at all. And writing this, as much as anything, is inertia. It is better FOR ME to write a quiz that you don’t like – but I do, because I usually learn something about me – than not to.

Quizzes are also quicker and easier. If I have written a blog post that’s taken two hours to put together, then I need something to cleanse my intellectual palate that I can do in 20 minutes or so.

Why don’t you link to anyone else?

Well, it had something to do with visual clutter. But I kind of do anyway. My old blog, which I stopped posting to when I got this one, is the place where I keep track of all the blogs I follow or want to refer to, and still update occasionally when I have time.

What about all those OTHER blogs you do?

They’ve all, directly or indirectly, evolved from the first. When my then-work colleague came back from a conference and said, “We need to have a blog!”, I was her firmest supporter because I had started my own only three weeks earlier; it became so. Subsequently, everyone was going to do a post once a week each, but that’s devolved to me writing something thrice a week unless I have an intern to do so. The good thing is that it’s become part of the job description.

I’m on the board of the Friends of the Albany Public Library, and since I can’t get to most of the midday events, I started that blog. I’m our office’s representative to the NY State Data Center, and at the spring meeting in 2007, someone suggested a blog, and I began Data Detectives in May of that year, probably the second favorite of my own blogs. Michael Huber of the Times Union, the Albany newspaper, I’d known for years, and he started nagging me to blog there; after blowing him off for about a year, I started Information without the Bun in January 2008.

I also participate in other people’s blogs. ABC Wednesday, which Denise Nesbitt, started about five years ago, I stumbled upon only sometime in 2009; seems longer. Huber invited me to participate in Getting There, about local transportation, in October 2011. Finally, I was doing the Flashmob Fridays comic book thing, but that, alas, is defunct.

How do you keep up with so many blogs?

Forced labor.

So there it is. 2,570 straight days of blogging. I’ve pretty much decided that when I get to 10 years, I’ll back off to thrice a week. But that’ll be 2015, and if all those apocalyptic forecasts come true, I won’t have to worry about that anyway.

Lucky 13 Years of Marriage

I am lousy remembering people, but she’s much better at it.

Carol and I have been married 13 years today. I’m surprised; I figured I’d have driven her crazy long ago. (And maybe I have.)

That’s not to say she doesn’t have a few quirks of her own. To wit:

If I am reading a newspaper or a magazine, and set it down to get something, I’ll come back to find that she is almost always reading it. And it doesn’t matter what it is: Newsweek, Rolling Stone, Sports Illustrated, it will have moved from where I was sitting to her locale. I can’t very well be upset about it because she’s keeping up with the world. When I met her nearly 20 years ago, I noted that there were current events she was oblivious to; not so anymore.

When she tidies up, I really CAN’T find anything. More than that, she can’t tell me either. Whereas when I clean up after her – the kitchen counter is a magnet for her stuff – I have about a 98% retrieval rate.

She’s often late. She HATES that I say that, but it’s true. If she says she’ll pick me up at 5:25, I’ll turn off my office computer at 5:26 and be downstairs before she arrives. I recognize that she’s always squeezing in one more thing.

On the other hand:

She’s amazingly gifted at financial stuff. I have no personal debt. The first mortgage on the house is almost paid off. My sisters both want to marry her.

She’s a decent cook, but a great baker.

She’s way more handy with tools than I ever will be.

I am lousy remembering people’s names, but she’s much better at it. And when there’s someone I feel that I should recall, but don’t, she’ll introduce herself to the mystery person.

Did I mention, a couple days ago, that she’s a great mom?

But more than the particulars, we seem to have reached a certain degree of being in synch that I wouldn’t have thought possible. I don’t want to say we finish each other’s sentences – that’s only a sometimes thing – but we seem to find a way to empathize with our partner’s stuff.

Since we’ve been together, I’ve become a bit more patient and tolerant. She, in part from reading the news more, is more ~~cynical~~ realistic about the ways of the world.

Love you, lovey in the middle. (Mysterious family code)

R for A Raisin in the Sun

I sensed that my father really related to Walter Lee, frustrated by living in a house owned by his mother-in-law for the first two decades of his marriage to my mother, always looking for the big score.

A Raisin in the Sun is a play by Lorraine Hansberry that debuted on Broadway in 1959, which portrays a few weeks in the life of the Youngers, an African-American family living in Chicago’s Southside sometime between World War II and the 1950s…the Youngers are about to receive…$10,000 from the deceased Mr. Younger’s life insurance policy… The matriarch of the family, Lena, wants to buy a house to fulfill a dream she shared with her husband. Her son, Walter Lee, would rather use the money to invest in a liquor store with his friends. He believes that the investment will solve the family’s financial problems forever. Walter’s wife Ruth agrees with Mama, however, and hopes that she and Walter can provide more space and opportunity for their son, Travis…”

The play was nominated for four Tony awards in 1960, though winning none: Sidney Poitier (as Walter Lee), Claudia McNeil (as his mother), plus Lloyd Richards (for director), and for best play.

“In 1961, a film version of A Raisin in the Sun was released featuring its original Broadway cast of Sidney Poitier, Ruby Dee, Claudia McNeil, Diana Sands, Ivan Dixon, Louis Gossett, Jr., and John Fiedler. Hansberry wrote the screenplay, and the film was directed by Daniel Petrie.” I saw this film more than once on TV.

Later that decade, there was a civic theater group that did at least one production of the play in Binghamton, NY. My father was very involved in this. Not as a performer, for he never wanted to act in another person’s role. But he did set design and a lot of technical stuff.

Considering my distance from New York City, I have seen relatively few Broadway musicals. One I DID see in 1973 or 1974, though, was Raisin, “based on the play, and starring Joe Morton (Walter Lee), Virginia Capers (Lena), Ernestine Jackson (Ruth), Debbie Allen (Beneatha), and Ralph Carter (Travis). The show won the Tony Award for Best Musical.”

I have only a vague recollection of the 1989 TV film with Danny Glover (Walter Lee), Starletta DuPois (Ruth), Esther Rolle (Lena), and Kim Yancey (Beneatha).

Never saw the 2004 Tony-nominated play revival with Sean Combs as Walter Lee, Audra McDonald as Ruth (Tony winner for best actress in a featured role), Phylicia Rashad as Lena (won a Tony as best actress), and Sanaa Lathan as sister Beneatha (nominated in McDonald’s category). I did see the 2008 TV movie based on it, however, with the same core cast.

I wonder why I’ve been always drawn to the story. Maybe it’s idle speculation, but I sensed that my father really related to Walter Lee, frustrated by living in a house owned by his mother-in-law for the first two decades of his marriage to my mother, always looking for the big score.

The title of the play came from a poem, A Dream Deferred by Langston Hughes

What happens to a dream deferred?

Does it dry up
like a raisin in the sun?
Or fester like a sore–
And then run?
Does it stink like rotten meat?
Or crust and sugar over–
like a syrupy sweet?

Maybe it just sags
like a heavy load.

Or does it explode?

ABC Wednesday – Round 10

Mother’s Day: The name’s the same

Kudos to my mother-in-law, who likes to point out that I am her favorite son-in-law.

Before my wife and I got married, I was quite neutral about whether my bride-to-be would change her last name to mine. I wasn’t planning to change my name to hers, and it was HER name, and she had had it for a while, so whatever she decided was fine. (Although I was REALLY hoping she wouldn’t opt for the hyphenated choice; after a while, when Mary Smith-Wesson marries John Smith-Jones, and she -or they – become the Smith-Wesson=Smith-Jones family, it can get cumbersome.)

In fact, it was my future mother-in-law who counseled that her daughter take my last name. It wasn’t out of any sense of traditionalism, but more out of practicality. We were/are a mixed-race couple and she thought it would be better for the outside world to know that we were a married couple, especially if we were to have children. I didn’t get this at the time.

Fast forward to filling out all of these forms for the Daughter’s school registration each year. It is NOT assumed that the father and the mother are married, or live at the same address, or even share joint custodial arrangements. It makes me oddly happy that my daughter has two parents that, to the world, are unambiguously hers. I’m not sure why, but I do.

Maybe it’s because I know couples in my life who sometimes get static. “Is that YOUR son, YOUR daughter?” Usually, it involves the adoption of a child of a different race and/or culture.

So kudos to my mother-in-law, who likes to point out that I am her favorite son-in-law. Of course, I’m her ONLY son-in-law.
***
Of course, I still miss my mom, who died 15 months ago. My wife, I should mention more often, is a great mom to the Daughter.

Yes, there was a real Vidal Sassoon

The elimination of the ACS would mean the loss of all the data Census used to collect on the long form. A voluntary ACS would actually cost MORE to operate than it does presently.

I was on Facebook recently, and someone, who I believe considers herself a bit of a fashionista, wrote: “Did you have ANY idea Vidal Sassoon was a real person? I did not.” She must be even younger than I thought because that means she never saw this commercial and others like it. This made me feel rather old but also puzzled. I found this list of companies named after people, and Sassoon was not on it; maybe it seemed too obvious.

At a conference last week, I was talking to some folks about movies. I mentioned how cinematic offerings so often come from another source, such as The Avengers (a couple of no-spoiler reviews here and here, BTW) I said I didn’t know why they bothered to slap the name Dark Shadows on it, since it has such a different feel than the TV show. Both of them expressed shock. I said, “Look it up!” at which point one pulled out his smartphone. “Go to IMBD.com,” I directed. He exclaimed, “Dark Shadows 1966-1971, 30-minute gothic soap opera. I didn’t know they had goth back then!” I just walked away. They must have missed Jonathan Frid’s obit; he originated the character Barnabas Collins in 1967 that Johnny Depp will play in the film.

All the obits for Maurice Sendak mentioned first Where The Wild Things Are; I don’t think I’ve ever read it! Yet I immediately recognize the artwork. I DID watch Really Rosie and saw some of his other work, such as in The New Yorker.

A guy who’s my sister’s friend, and my Facebook friend and real-life acquaintance, lives in the San Diego area. He wrote of Junior Seau, the San Diego Chargers linebacker who committed suicide: “There’s an outpouring of sadness in this city. He was much more than an athlete: his charitable contributions were well-respected. We won’t know what demons were in his life; we’d rather remember the goodness that he radiated, at least in public.” What Jaquandor said, I would echo.
***

From the Association of Public Data Users:
“The U.S. House of Representatives voted on May 9th to eliminate the American Community Survey. This amendment to the FY2013 Commerce, Justice, Science appropriations bill passed by a vote of 232 to 190. Right before this vote, the House passed the Webster amendment, approved by voice vote and sponsored by Rep. Ted Poe (R-TX), to make a response to the ACS voluntary by prohibiting both the Census Bureau and the Justice Department from using funds to enforce penalties in the Census Act that make survey response mandatory. (The amendment had to be written as a limit on the expenditure of funds in order for it to be ruled “in order” on an appropriations bill.) The outcome of this vote demonstrates the importance of proactivity among data users in conveying their support for the ACS and other surveys to all members of the House and Senate. The Senate is expected to take up the FY2013 Commerce, Justice, and Science Appropriations bill next week.”

The elimination of the ACS, for those who don’t deal with Census data, would mean the loss of all the data Census used to collect on the long-form, discontinued after Census 2000 to make way for the ACS, at Congress’ urging! The ACS has provided data more regularly. A voluntary ACS, because it would involve contacting more households, would actually cost MORE to operate than it does presently, and because of participant bias – i.e., people who like to fill out surveys – would lose its statistical validity. Governments, businesses, and individuals use these data daily, I know from experience.
***
Evanier notes that on a recent trip how much of it was made possible by technology that didn’t exist a decade or two ago.