Month: June 2013

Ask Roger Anything and he’s likely to answer

Carrier pigeon is NOT recommended form of communication, due to the high cost negotiated by the Carrier Pigeons Union.

 

Welcome, ladies and germs. We come once again to that ENORMOUSLY exciting and popular game show, Ask Roger Anything, in which YOU, yes you, get to ask Roger… wait, let me check the rules again…oh, yeah, ANYTHING. And, here’s the good part, for you: he HAS to answer, more or less, truthfully.

This is not to say that he might not find a way to obfuscate the issue, but that’s his JOB. YOURS is to try to take him out of his comfort zone. That potential for tension, perhaps utter embarrassment, is why the game has continued for so long.

Why, oh why, would he – oh, we started in third person, might as well stay there – intentionally put himself in that position?
1. It’s tradition.
2. It’s fun.
3. Because he can.
4. He’s totally run out of usable ideas for his blog.
The answer is: ALL OF THE ABOVE! Well, except for maybe 4, but “usable” is in the eye of the beholder.

Any questions asked will be answered in the next 30 days in this here blog. You can leave comments at the end of this post, or e-mail RogerOGreen [at] gmail [dot] com, or Facebook. He will use your name unless you ask him otherwise. Anonymous folks will get nothing but snark, he suggests. Carrier pigeon is NOT recommended form of communication, due to the high cost negotiated by the CPU, i.e., the Carrier Pigeons Union.

You can always tell that he writes these things late at night when he’s sleepy, because he’s starts to lose…

Oh, one more thing: a post he wrote a couple days ago came on with Comments Are Closed. He has NO idea how that happened, and it took him a while to figure out how to undo it. He NEVER closes comments; comments are the raison d’être for him blogging. If you see that again, please let him know at the address above. (Thanks to Carver and Uthaclena, who noted it last time.)
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Sad news about the deaths of Fantagraphics co-publisher Kim Thompson, and Tony Soprano himself, James Gandolfini, both creative forces, and both only in their 50s.

Chuck Miller’s blogging flashback, involving me

“Roger Green is like E.F. Hutton. When Roger Green speaks… people listen.” It is to laugh.

Chuck Miller, without a camera obscuring his face

Chuck Miller, a fellow blogger on the Times Union newspaper site:

“In March 2010, the Times Union hosted a blogging get-together at the College of Saint Rose. I remember being part of this event; heck, I even showed up in a little video clip that promoted the event.”

I had all but forgotten the gig, but now that he mentions it, I negotiated with The Wife for the chance to go.

“And as I looked at this video clip… I realized…

“Man, how we’ve all changed in the past three years since this conference.”

It was the first time I had met some of my fellow TU bloggers. And I’m on the video promo as well, at about the two-minute mark.

A few things come immediately to mind:

1. I hate speaking before a video camera.

2. I don’t look the way I think I look in my mind’s eye. The vitiligo, which I first discovered nine years ago, seemed terribly prominent on my face when I saw the video for the first time. Strange that it doesn’t seem SO bad now.

3. As is true with many people, not crazy about hearing my own voice either, something I notice every time I hear me on our answering machine.

4. I STILL haven’t figured out what I’m writing on my TU blog in any systemic way, whereas I know quite well what I’m writing here, which is to say, whatever strikes my fancy.

5. Chuck HAS lost weight; I haven’t but him, quite definitely.

I DID crack up with his characterization of me: “Roger Green is like E.F. Hutton. When Roger Green speaks… people listen.”

BTW, Chuck, I STILL owe you a dollar over some bet or other.

W is for Water worries

The calculus is whether the short-term economic gain is worth the long-term ecological loss.

“In December 2010, the United Nations General Assembly declared 2013 as the United Nations International Year of Water Cooperation (Resolution A/RES/65/154). In reflection of this declaration, the 2013 World Water Day, which will take place on 22 March 2013, also will be dedicated to water cooperation. Therefore, UN-Water has called upon UNESCO to lead the 2013 United Nations International Year on Water Cooperation…”

For years, I’ve been hearing that the wars of the 21st Century will be fought, not over oil or precious metals, but over H2O. I was distressed to hear from the Nestle CEO that water is not a human right and should be privatized, which is already happening in Canada. This has energized the forces calling for a boycott of Nestle products.

As the UN reports note, climate change and other human activities are messing up the planet’s “hydrological cycle,” leading to more droughts in some parts of the earth, and devastating flooding in others. The only year in the last five that the Red River did NOT flood near Fargo, ND was when there was a drought in the region; talk about all or nothing.

My concern over a process called hydrofracking, which, according to many opponents, “uses significantly more water than conventional drilling, as well as a ‘slick water’ mixture that is pumped into the shale to fracture the rock and release the [natural] gas,” is largely based on the use and potential abuse of precious water supplies. “There is an increased potential for toxicity and its long-term impacts, [as well as] the environmental impacts of the drilling: surface and subterranean damage including forestland loss… [and] groundwater and surface water contamination…” Where will the toxic fluids go is a large and seemingly unresolved question.

Fracking is a highly charged issue in New York State because the financially depressed Southern Tier region (Jamestown to Elmira to my hometown of Binghamton) is sitting on top of part of the Marcellus basin deposit which could be a boon to the area. The calculus is whether the short-term economic gain is worth the long-term ecological loss.

On a planet of about seven billion people, more than one billion are suffering from lack of ANY clean, potable water, and twice that cannot get to “any type of improved sanitation facility. About 2 million people die every year due to diarrhoeal diseases, most of them are children less than 5 years of age.”

Read more about water policy HERE.

One does NOT want to be quoting Samuel Taylor Coleridge:
Water, water, every where,
Nor any drop to drink.

ABC Wednesday – Round 12

Equality, rape culture, and the war on women

So, is there a “war on women” when women at war are being raped?

I’ve been thinking about the rights of women a LOT lately. There are so many examples of what’s wrong – and to be sure a couple that are right – that it’s overwhelmed me. (And it’s taken at least a couple of weeks to write this piece.)

In New York State, “The Women’s Equality Agenda will safeguard women’s health, extend protections against sexual harassment in the workplace, help to achieve pay equity, and increase protections against discrimination in employment, housing, credit, and lending.” Sounds wonderful, of course. The big hangup for some is over abortion rights, a huge issue.

But I think the conversation about whether there is a “war on women” had been framed too much on abortion and birth control – sometimes reframed by the talking heads, to be sure.

Though there does seem to be a sexual component in all of this. In his review about Fiona Apple’s song Criminal, MDS writes: “Let’s just admit something upfront right now: as a society, we are all pretty much terrified of girls and young women having sex. Terrified. Been that way since the beginning of time, I guess. Which is why for a while there we bottled up virginity in exchange for land before the wedding ceremony. Chastity belts and dowries are mostly archaic things that no society really trades in anymore, but that doesn’t mean we haven’t figured out new ways of badly dealing with girls and young women and their sex-having. We slut-shame. A lot.”

You’ll find gender issues in comics and other entertainment, including the suggestion that the woman of a married couple in the comic business got where she was because of him when she in fact had several credits before they even dated. Someone complains about the lack of female protagonists in video games is savaged on Twitter.

So, is there a “war on women” when women at war are being raped? Recently, and I’m quoting Senator Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY) here: “The Senate Armed Services Committee held its first full hearing on sexual assault in the military in a decade. Of the twenty witnesses, only two were there as victim advocates. The other 18 were representing the top ranks of the military and uniformly opposed our efforts to reform the military justice system.”

Meanwhile, Senator Saxby Chambliss (R-GA) suggested that the “hormone level created by nature” was to blame for rapes in the military and that all pregnant servicewomen should be investigated to make sure their condition was the result of consensual sex.

Former baseball star Jose Canseco’s defense of a rape allegation against him is that he doesn’t HAVE to rape to get women to bed, showing his sheer ignorance. Then he makes his situation worse by going on Twitter and attacks his accuser by name.

What caught my attention more recently was comedian Patton Oswalt’s reversal about rape as a source of humor. “I was secure in thinking my point of view was right. That ‘rape culture’ was an illusion, that the examples of comedians telling ‘rape jokes’ in which the victim was the punchline were exceptions that proved the rule. I’ve never wanted to rape anyone. No one I know has ever expressed a desire to rape anyone. My viewpoint must be right. Right?” It’s long (addresses two other topics) and rambling, but makes an interesting point.

A report on working moms came out. It showed that 40% of the households have moms that are either sole breadwinners or making more than their husbands; BTW, that latter category would include MY household. The men at FOX News were so histrionic: “Society dissolv[ing] around us,” said Lou Dobbs. A sign of “something going terribly wrong in American society,” said Juan Williams. Erick Erickson chimed in and said having moms as breadwinners were against “biology” and said people who defend moms are “anti-science.”

Happily, they got slammed by their female colleagues on FOX, including Megan Kelly. This particular article also disses some of the MSNBC women for not calling to task the men on their network, notably Chris Matthews, over the stupid, hateful things THEY have said. Don’t know if it’s Rachel Maddow’s job to do so, but I agree that Matthews, for one, has made vile, sexist comments, especially about Hillary Clinton.

I haven’t even scratched the surface: e.g., Texas governor Rick Perry recently vetoed an equal pay bill. Instead, I’ll hang on my great hope from the words of Jean Luc Picard himself, Patrick Stewart, which you should just watch. He speaks, among other things, about the role men must play in curbing violence against women.

Different M.O. for my father and me

I don’t think it was until I was an adult, that I realized, or that HE realized, or that he was willing to share the fact that he was proud of me for whatever intellectual prowess I had.

Another pair of pictures sent by my sister Marcia this year!

Les and Roger Green, 1953

When I was born, we lived on 5 Gaines Street in Binghamton, NY, on the second floor, a property owned by my maternal grandmother. These pictures were taken on the back porch. At some point in the next year, my parents and I moved downstairs, perhaps when my mom was pregnant with my sister Leslie, or at the latest, just after she was born.

My paternal grandparents then moved upstairs. The second-floor had only one bedroom, while downstairs had two.

I’m struck by how relaxed my dad was in these pictures, just sitting on the porch with his eldest child, who was me. I certainly knew my father to be able to relax, and I knew him to spend time with me. We did have the music connection, which WAS huge; however, outside of singing, usually with sister Leslie, the hanging out with me, and the relaxing, tended not to coexist, at least in my childhood.

He was very clever with his hands, doing floral arrangements, painting (both artistic and signage), and the like. I was not so adept, and I often felt he was frustrated and even disappointed with me.

I don’t think it was until I was an adult, and he, my mother, and my sister Marcia were living in Charlotte, NC, that I realized, or that HE realized, or that he was willing to share the fact that he was proud of me for whatever intellectual prowess I had.

I was almost in shock when he mentioned that he always told his coworkers how great it was that, when I didn’t know something, I would look it up in the dictionary or encyclopedia or World Almanac; this was before Google. (He talked about me to his co-workers? Knock me over with a feather!) I never knew until my 30s that the skills I possessed he thought were useful, even though it wasn’t his mode of operation.

Les and Roger Green, 1953

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Happy Father’s Day to all you dads, especially my father-in-law. Special shout out to my online buddies Greg and Scott, who’ve been great dads despite the travails.

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