January 2014 - Page 4 of 7 - Ramblin' with Roger

The bain of my existence: keys and locks…

That missing key chain also has my home rear door house key, the car key, the fob to get me onto the third floor of my work building, and, notably, apparently the remaining key to the shed.

Sunday, December 15, while we were cleaning off/digging out the car – we have on-street parking, and the snowplows know how to pack in vehicles – I gave my set of keys to The Daughter so that she could open the shed and get her snowboard. She says she gave the keys to The Wife, who doesn’t recall that action, but that is inconclusive. Regardless, I didn’t have any keys, except my spare key to the front door, and one other.

This was particularly annoying because I don’t really need help to lose my keys; I’m actually an expert at misplacing them on my own. I had to see here to know how I could rectify that habit. The one other “key” I did have isn’t really a key at all, but rather a swiper card to get into the rear door of my work building at Corporate (frickin’) Woods, or into the front after hours, when the security desk is closed. I had only recently rediscovered it, under my bed, after three or four months of it being MIA.

I’m not quite sure why we needed badges to get into my building. They had these signs throughout the floors that say, “Stop tailgating,” which means to avoid allowing someone behind you to get into the building on your swiper pass, but that’s PRECISELY how I had been getting in when I was still riding the bicycle into November and had to park it in the garage in the rear.

That missing key chain also has my home rear door house key, the car key (useful when we’re loading a car on a trip), the fob to get me onto the third floor of my work building (embarrassing to have to either wave at someone to get them to let me in or to call my office), and, notably, apparently the remaining key to the aforementioned shed (the Wife or the Daughter having misplaced the other.)

Finally, on Christmas Eve, I asked the administrator at work for another fob to get on the third floor. This was born of necessity. It seems inevitable that when I need to go to the bathroom on my floor, it’s being cleaned, which means I have to go down to the first floor facilities, requiring me to get someone to let me in again.

About an hour later, we got an e-mail notifying us that all the building entry cards would be deactivated and that we’d be getting new ones. In fact, the deactivation took place BEFORE the cards were distributed, so if you went out for a cigarette in mid-morning, you might not be able to get in the back door.

Of course, most people were on vacation Christmas Eve, so this necessitated our office people calling or e-mailing people at home to notify them of the change. The building people, realizing their amazingly lousy timing, came up with an inventive solution; keeping the back door UNLOCKED during business hours until January 2, 2014, thus defeating the purpose of the security system altogether. As it turns out, the unlocked doors, from 6 a.m. to 6 p.m. weekdays is the new policy, which pleases me no end.

I hate locks, and keys, and swiper entry cards, and swiper entry fobs…

Postscript: Got a call from the Bach branch of the Albany Public Library on Monday, December 27. Someone found my keys and turned them into that library because I had my daughter’s library card on my key chain. HAPPY.

Knocking at Midnight: Martin Luther King, Jr.

I like to look for less familiar text for Martin Luther King’s birthday. Unfortunately, soundbites from his I Have a Dream speech, for instance, have been so torn from its context as to make it unrecognizable.

A Knock at Midnight (found here [PDF]) was delivered on 14 September 1958. It has some Cold War references that I removed, not because there aren’t modern-day equivalents, but for clarity, and an attempt at brevity. The text was based on Luke 11:5-6, RSV: “Which of you who has a friend will go to him at midnight and say to him, “Friend, lend me three loaves; for a friend of mine has arrived on a journey, and I have nothing to set before him”? It’s all MLK until the end.

Although this parable is concerned with the power of persistent prayer, it may also serve as a basis for our thought concerning many contemporary problems and the role of the church in grappling with them. It is midnight in the parable; it is also midnight in our world, and the darkness is so deep that we can hardly see which way to turn…

Midnight is the hour when men desperately seek to obey the eleventh commandment, “Thou shalt not get caught.” According to the ethic of midnight, the cardinal sin is to be caught and the cardinal virtue is to get by. It is all right to lie, but one must lie with real finesse. It is all right to steal if one is so dignified that, if caught, the charge becomes embezzlement, not robbery. It is permissible even to hate if one so dresses his hating in the garments of love that hating appears to be loving. The Darwinian concept of the survival of the fittest has been substituted by a philosophy of the survival of the slickest. This mentality has brought a tragic breakdown of moral standards, and the midnight of moral degeneration deepens…

When the man in the parable knocked on his friend’s door and asked for the three loaves of bread, he received the impatient retort, “Do not bother me; the door is now shut, and my children are with me in bed; I cannot get up and give you anything.” How often have men experienced a similar disappointment when at midnight they knock on the door of the church…

In the terrible midnight of war, men have knocked on the door of the church to ask for the bread of peace, but the church has often disappointed them. What more pathetically reveals the irrelevancy of the church in present-day world affairs than its witness regarding war? In a world gone mad with arms buildups, chauvinistic passions, and imperialistic exploitation, the church has either endorsed these activities or remained appallingly silent. During the last two world wars, national churches even functioned as the ready lackeys of the state, sprinkling holy water upon the battleships and joining the mighty armies in singing, “Praise the Lord and pass the ammunition.” A weary world, pleading desperately for peace, has often found the church morally sanctioning war.

And those who have gone to the church to seek the bread of economic justice have been left in the frustrating midnight of economic privation. In many instances, the church has so aligned itself with the privileged classes and so defended the status quo that it has been unwilling to answer the knock at midnight. The Greek Church in Russia allied itself with the status quo and became so inextricably bound to the despotic czarist regime that it became impossible to be rid of the corrupt political and social system without being rid of the church. Such is the fate of every ecclesiastical organization that allies itself with things-as-they-are.

The church must be reminded that it is not the master or the servant of the state, but rather the conscience of the state. It must be the guide and the critic of the state, and never its tool. If the church does not recapture its prophetic zeal, it will become an irrelevant social club without moral or spiritual authority. If the church does not participate actively in the struggle for peace and for economic and racial justice, it will forfeit the loyalty of millions and cause men everywhere to say that it has atrophied its will. But if the church will free itself from the shackles of a deadening status quo, and, recovering its great historic mission, will speak and act fearlessly and insistently in terms of justice and peace, it will enkindle the imagination of mankind and fire the souls of men, imbuing them with a glowing and ardent love for truth, justice, and peace. Men far and near will know the church as a great fellowship of love that provides light and bread for lonely travelers at midnight.

Midnight is a confusing hour when it is difficult to be faithful. The most inspiring word that the church must speak is that no midnight long remains. The weary traveler by midnight who asks for bread is really seeking the dawn. Our eternal message of hope is that dawn will come…
***
Obviously, this sermon is about faith – there’s a great story about the Montgomery bus boycott near the end – but it’s also about what the role of the church should, and should NOT be in the greater society. Just as the Greek Orthodox church in czarist Russia became too tied in the mind with the government as to be ineffectual as a change agent, so too it is with the modern western church.

The church ought not to be in a role to be a cheerleader for the government when it wages war, ignores and oppresses the poor, accepts injustice, and looks the other way when inequality takes place. I can’t help but wonder that the increasing amount of agnosticism and atheism in this world is a DIRECT result of the church’s failure to follow its own mission statement, which, I will suggest, is the paragraph italicized above, even while the church wrings its hands over the increasing secularism of the society. Perhaps the church is merely reaping what has inadvertently sown. Perhaps, in the United States, a greater separation of church and state would be good for the soul of the church.

I blame Joe Biden

It’s interesting to me that a lot of people I know did not know that Joe Biden was even coming to town.

The Wife was driving me to work last Tuesday afternoon when we were rear-ended by a car. We all were a little sore, and I, more than a little irritable about it.

My spouse blamed the other driver, very rational since that person, in fact, did drive into us, fortunately, not going very fast.

My daughter blames the superintendent of the Albany school district, for she had canceled school on a day no other district in the area had done so, though there had been delays elsewhere. If the Albany district were open, The Wife wouldn’t have been driving me at that hour.

However, I blame Vice-President Joe Biden, in Albany that day to meet with Governor Andrew Cuomo about disaster preparedness in the wake of climate change.

Just before we turned northbound on Everett Road, we see a low-flying helicopter, a tipoff that the VP was on the move. One could not actually travel across the Everett Road I-90 overpass, so the eastbound cars exiting I-90 at Everett could only turn right towards Albany, or go straight, right back onto I-90. We were stuck waiting for cars to reenter I-90 when we felt that familiar sound, and moreover, feeling of the vehicle you’re in being hit from behind.

This was The Daughter’s first car accident, and while a relatively minor event, I know *I* felt achy in my head and lower back for hours. The Wife was likewise affected, and the Daughter was mostly complaining about pain in her shoulders.

Ironically, by the time phone numbers had been exchanged, the Biden contingent had passed and Everett Road was clear again.

It’s interesting to me that a lot of people I know did not know that Biden was even coming to town. I was reminded by Megan Cruz of Channel 9 ~~YNN~~ Time Warner Cable News that morning, who was out doing a stand-up in the bitter cold, for no newsworthy reason, and one could tell she was freezing; it was about zero Fahrenheit, or below. She needed a hat.

The buses were rerouted several times that morning, apparently. The police had blocked I-787 for a time, by plows and when my colleague tried to come back to work after lunch, ended up taking city streets instead.

There’s lots of speculation that Biden and Cuomo are vying for the 2016 Democratic nomination for President, but its WAY too early for me to care.

A is for Andrews Sisters

Patty left the group in 1954, which also caused a personal schism; her sisters learned about it by reading it in the newspapers.

Prelude: for this round of ABC Wednesday, I decided to do musical groups that featured family members. I actually found 24 groups, for all the letters except Q and U, though I did have to stretch some definitions. No Doobie Brothers, though.

Undoubtedly, I was inspired by writing about the Green Family Singers, and further when I watched The Sound of Music.
***
It may have been Bette Midler who introduced me to the music of the Andrews Sisters with her cover of Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy of Company B in the early 1970s – LISTEN to a version by the Andrews. But in fact, I already owned some Andrews Sisters through Bing Crosby’s classic Christmas album, which featured Jingle Bells and Mele Kalikimaka [LISTEN], though I didn’t know the singers at the time, and I don’t recall if they were credited.

Fortunately, I have a friend named Fred Hembeck who is a fairly rabid Andrews Sisters fan, so now I actually have two albums of the classic tunes by Patty (the youngest, blonde), Maxene (middle sister, a brunette), and LaVerne (the eldest, the redhead). They were quite popular from the late 1930s on. “In the 1940s the sisters found themselves in high demand, and became the most profitable stage attraction in the entire nation, earning $20,000 a week. Aside from singing, the sisters were established radio personalities and made appearances in 17 Hollywood movies. During the mid 1940s the sisters released eight new singles, six of which became bestsellers. Some of the hits include Rum and Coca Cola [LISTEN] and ‘I’ll Be with You in Apple Blossom Time.'”

Patty left the group in 1954, which also caused a personal schism; her sisters learned about it by reading it in the newspapers. They got back together, “professionally and personally,” in 1956 with a newer sound that “did not gain popularity with the public, who preferred hearing old hits.”

Laverne died in 1968 from cancer at the age of 55. Patty and Maxene continued to perform, together, but usually apart, into the 1990s. “In 1995, while on vacation in Cape Cod, Maxene had a heart attack and died. She was 79.” Patty died in January 2013, a few weeks shy of her 95th birthday.

I find that I really enjoy listening to them, more now than in my callow youth.

LISTEN to:
Don’t Sit Under the Apple Tree, the song for which I probably know them best
I Can Dream, Can’t I, which went #1 in late 1949 or early 1950
Don’t Fence Me In, with Bing Crosby, which went to #1 in 1944

WATCH
A segment of the TV show What’s My Life (1959).
***

ABC Wednesday – Round 14

MOVIE REVIEW: Frozen

I predict there will be a Broadway version of Frozen by 2018.

It was a very rainy Sunday afternoon. The Wife, The Daughter and I were supposed to travel from Albany to near Binghamton for a family dinner, but the forecast for locations in between were dodgy, with snow and ice likely. Instead, we went out to lunch, and then to Colonie Center Mall to see the newish Disney animated film Frozen.

Some bullet points:
*THIS FILM IS GORGEOUS. Continue reading “MOVIE REVIEW: Frozen”