May 2015 - Page 4 of 7 - Ramblin' with Roger

May rambling #1: Kings down

Ben E. King’s original version of Stand By Me was inducted into the National Recording Registry by the Library of Congress.

Rumsfeld: Looting is transition to freedom.

11 Stupid Reasons White People Have Rioted.

These 10 Questions Can Mean Life Behind Bars.

US cited for police violence, racism in scathing UN review on human rights.

The History of ‘Thug’: “The surprisingly ancient and global etymology of a racially charged epithet.”

Why are we celebrating the beating of a black child?

So You’re About To Become A Minority…

Part of Michelle Obama’s revealing speech at Tuskegee. The whole thing. Plus the reaction from certain parties.

The NRA’s brazen shell game with donations.

Art Spiegelman: Je Suis Charlie —But I’m Not Pamela Geller. AFDI is “the anti-matter, Bizarro World, flipside, mirror-logic version of what Charlie Hebdo is about.”

Rating Last Week’s Craziness. What should we do when debunking just isn’t enough?

The 10 biggest lies you’ve been told about the Trans-Pacific Partnership.

There is no “Blue Wall” for the Democratic Presidential nominee in 2016.

Last Week Tonight with John Oliver: American students face a ridiculous amount of testing. Oliver explains how standardized tests impact school funding, the achievement gap, how often kids are expected to throw up.

Former Homeless Teen Cyndi Lauper Testifies Before Congress On Ending LGBT Youth Homelessness.

An open letter to pastors (A non-mom speaks about Mother’s Day). And, from last year, the holiday’s centennial: Its Surprisingly Dark History.

In case you missed it, Harriet Tubman was the selection of the Women On 20s voters. Now tell the President.

Judge Rules Man Fathered Only One Twin.

L’Wren as she was.

Dustbury on the passing of the lead Kingsman, Jack Ely, of Louie, Louie fame; and the wonderful Ben E. King. I’m SO pleased that King’s original version of Stand By Me was inducted into the National Recording Registry by the Library of Congress for being “culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant”, only about a month before King’s death. As Mr. Frog noted, Ben E. King also performed Save the Last Dance for Me with the Drifters.

Then, unsurprisingly, the great bluesman Riley B. King, known as MB.B. King, died this week. From NPR: “He was inducted into the Blues Foundation Hall of Fame in 1984 and the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in ’87. He was so beloved that he received honorary degrees from the Berklee College of Music as well as Yale and Brown universities, among others.” Here’s an episode of Sanford and Son, featuring B.B. King.

SamuraiFrog remembers Michael Blake, author of Dances with Wolves.

The Mike Wallace Interview featuring Rod Serling (1959). Serling’s legacy lives on as his hometown of Binghamton, NY opens a museum exhibit in the Bundy Museum of History.

Grief is powerful. “Here are 6 lessons survivors learn from tragedy.”

There’s a Facebook graphic noting that, in the American way of writing dates, all of the days in this 10-day period are palindromes, e.g. 5/17/15, 5/18/15. It was also true in April 2014, March 2013, February 2012, January 2011. It was similarly true in 2001-2009, if you use the leading zero in the day field: 1/01/01. 2/01/02, et al.

It’ll be true next June: 6/10/16 et al., then starting 7/10/17, 8/10/18, 9/10/19, 1/20/21, 2/20/22, 3/20/23, 4/20/24, 5/20/25, 6/20/26, 7/20/27, 8/20/28, and 9/20/29. Then not again until 2101, so prepare your memes now.

Frontier Town: yeah, I visited there a long time ago.

David Kalish: The incredible adventures of my wife’s nose.

Mark Evanier’s 60th birthday, starring his mother. And Ken Levine’s mom gets him a writing gig.

Let it Beep, Apple Computers! And Beep Beep by the Playmates.

Tammy Wynette’s greatest Top Pop success. (It’s NOT Stand By Your Man.)

Omnified G and Turning the Corner and We want our nickel back.

SamuraiFrog ranks Weird Al: 90-81 and 80-71.

Paved in Robbie Williams platinum.

No, beards are no more filthy and dangerous than everything else.

The many MGM logo lions.

JEOPARDY!: Louis Virtel’s one regret after losing (and snapping) on the show. Why Ken Jennings’s Streak Is Nearly Impossible To Break; almost certainly true. Plus 6 Inside Facts; these are totally true.

Nurses from the Opening Credits of MASH, the TV show.

Muppets: a whole lot of stuff, including Orson Welles.

GOOGLE WATCH (me)

Arthur and his blog and Facebook and breaking technology. Something like that.

ADD does the A to Z. So does Monsieur Frog.

Dustbury would LIKE to wear sunscreen. Plus a Stevie Wonderesque medley.

Chuck Miller writes the Best of our TU Community Blogs every Thursday. My posts have been on the list occasionally, but for May 7, my post about Kent State was the READ FIRST.

Anniversary # four squared

The Wife is NOT the easiest person to shop for.

Some totally random stuff re: My Spouse and Myself:

The first movie we ever saw together was Speed, probably the least representative of the films we generally see together.

Our anniversary is roughly halfway between my birthday and hers.

There are relatively few pictures of us alone together. Quite a few with her and the Daughter, usually taken by me.

Every year around St. Patrick’s Day, she reminds me how she had me cook corned beef for hours, at her house, and then we didn’t even eat it.

I was overwhelmed by her extended family, especially meeting them at the Olin family reunion in 1995. Her mother had seven siblings, so my wife had about 35 first cousins. MY parents had zero siblings, and I have zero first cousins.

She does the REAL cooking, and all of the baking. I do the stuff that you can make with a mix, or things that can be cooked on a stove (eggs, e.g.) or microwave, so I usually do more of the kitchen cleanup. Though, occasionally I’ll make a ton of lasagna.

I suppose the first TV show we watched together was Gilmore Girls. The only thing we watch together now, and only occasionally, is Who Do You Think You Are. Everything else either has been canceled (Boston Public) or we gave up on it (American Idol) or both (Glee).

It’s probably my influence whereby she realizes the value of seeing the movie in the cinema, rather than on DVD.

My favorite place we visited together is probably Niagara Falls. The first time was right after her last class one semester in grad school. I went to a conference, and she went along. The only expenses were her meals and incidentals.

I used to give her a lot of grief about being unaware of current/recent events. That happens far less often, which is one part her being more aware, and one part me being less of a pain about it. She is a WHOLE lot more politically aware than when I met her, and surely is less likely to believe that right usually wins out. Oh, dear, she’s more cynical, and it’s probably my influence.

She is NOT the easiest person to shop for. She doesn’t hint, only makes lists when I beg her to do so.

It still makes me crazy when she moves something from point A to point B, making a need to “put away” stuff at the latter location. It was FINE behind the sofa…

Our single most source of disagreement has to do with lights at night. I like to keep the hall light on downstairs, in case I get up in the middle of the night, because I’m really night blind. She finds even that amount of light problematic. We had the same problem on vacation this spring, with the light in the bathroom on, but with the door closed, was too bright for her and too dark for me. (One of our church choir members recently broke a toe ramming into a dresser in the middle of the night; that could be me!) The solution was a little flashlight that the Daughter has borrowed, and I can’t find anymore.

She continues to be late more often than she’d acknowledge, usually because she squeezes in some last-minute task; I’ve learned to have reading material for such inevitability.

This is strange, even arcane. There’s a couple who got married six months before we did, and another couple who got married six months after us; we went to both weddings. All of the couples are members of our church, but NONE of the couples were members when they got betrothed.
***
Love to you, dear.

Mark Twain on war, patriotism and religion

We may not understand fully our prayers of war.

Reading Jesus for President, by Shane Claiborne and Chris Haw, I found a quote, noted by a soldier named Logan, who returned from Iraq, with a date for another deployment set.

“After six years in the military, he felt the collision of the cross and the sword and felt like he was trying to ‘serve two masters’…. Logan decided to file for conscientious status.” Because the military thought he was crazy, he got out of the service.

In a subsequent letter to the book authors, writing about his “redemptive work of reconciliation,” Logan included a quote from Mark Twain called The War Prayer, described as “a short story or prose poem… a scathing indictment of war, and particularly of blind patriotic and religious fervor as motivations for war… The piece was left unpublished by Mark Twain at his death in April 1910, largely due to pressure from his family, who feared that the story would be considered sacrilegious.” It was finally published in 1923, nearly twenty years after it was written.

It was a time of great and exalting excitement. The country was up in arms, the war was on, in every breast burned the holy fire of patriotism; the drums were beating, the bands playing, the toy pistols popping, the bunched firecrackers hissing and sputtering;… a fluttering wilderness of flags flashed in the sun… in the churches the pastors preached devotion to flag and country and invoked the God of Battles, beseeching His aid in our good cause…

Then The Stranger speaks:

“I come from the Throne — bearing a message from Almighty God!” The words smote the house with a shock; if the stranger perceived it he gave no attention. “He has heard the prayer of His servant your shepherd, and will grant it if such shall be your desire after I, His messenger, shall have explained to you its import — that is to say, its full import. For it is like unto many of the prayers of men, in that it asks for more than he who utters it is aware of — except he pause and think.

We may not understand fully our prayers for war.

You can read the whole thing HERE.

See an animated rendition HERE or HERE.

A film reenactment an epilogue to the Public Television 1981 production: A Private History of A Campaign That Failed, with Edward Herrmann as the stranger, you can view HERE. Yet another iteration can be found HERE.

One more quote from Twain, in a speech from October 1907: “We build a fire in a powder magazine, then double the fire department to put it out. We inflame wild beasts with the smell of blood, and then innocently wonder at the wave of brutal appetite that sweeps the land as a consequence.”

Armed Forces Day is Saturday, May 16.

Stevie Wonder is 65

One of the Spinners’ relatively few hits on Motown before they moved to Atlantic.

Since I’ve tried to list my favorite songs by an artist on his/her 70th birthday, and Stevie Wonder’s is five years away, what to do this year?

Fortunately, I found this nifty list of songs written, co-written, by Stevie for other artists. Occasionally (Whitney, Macca, and Jermaine, e.g.), Stevie also performs. These are listed, more or less, up to my favorite Stevie song first recorded by another artist; Stevie did subsequently cover a couple of these. LISTEN TO ALL.

First, though, a couple of cuts introduced to me by Chuck Miller recently:
1966 All I Do (Is Think About You) – Tammi Terrell (S.Wonder/C.Paul/ M.Broadnax)
1983 The Crown – Gary Byrd And The G.B. Experience (S.Wonder/G.Byrd) – also has a Stevie vocal.

1974 Perfect Angel – Minnie Riperton (S.Wonder) I had forgotten that the late Riperton was the mother of former Saturday Night Live cast member Maya Rudolph.
1990 We Didn’t Know – Whitney Houston (S.Wonder). I have only two Whitney albums and one has this song.
1974 Take A Little Trip – Minnie Riperton (S.Wonder)
1980 Let’s Get Serious -Jermaine Jackson (S.Wonder/Lee Garrett). This was the benefit of Jermaine staying with Motown when his brothers moved to Columbia/Epic. Have this on vinyl.
1975 I Can See The Sun In Late December – Roberta Flack (S.Wonder). The last six minutes of this 12-MINUTE SONG are probably extraneous, but I like it. Also, own this on vinyl.

1982 What’s That You’re Doing – Paul McCartney (S.Wonder/P.McCartney). Pauly can be pretty soulful (Lady Madonna, e.g.), but I was glad to see Stevie back in form; much of his 1980s output was disappointing.
1982 Try Jah Love – Third World (S.Wonder/M.McCully). The one song on this list I did not know was co-written by Stevie.
1970 It’s A Shame – the Spinners (S.Wonder/S.Wright/L.Garrett). One of their relatively few hits on Motown before they moved to Atlantic.
1974 Tell Me Something Good – Rufus (S.Wonder). Couldn’t find a studio version, but this pretty representative.
1967 Tears Of A Clown -Smokey Robinson & The Miracles (S.Wonder/H.Cosby/S Robinson). Also love the version by the English Beat, or The Beat.

R for Radio

I’d especially listen to WWVA, Wheeling, WV, which played country artists such as George Jones, Patsy Cline, Buck Owens, Jim Reeves, and Eddy Arnold.

I listen to so little radio these days, mostly when I wake up, or if The Wife is playing it in the car. However, growing up in Binghamton, NY, radio was what I listened to all the time. WENE in nearby Endicott is a sports station now, but in its heyday in the 1960s, it was THE place in the area to listen to the Top 40 hits.

At night, though, when I was about 9 to 13, I would listen to a wide array of stations all over the Northeast US via a clear-channel station, which “is an AM band radio station in North America that has the highest protection from interference from other stations, particularly concerning night-time skywave propagation.” This is NOT to be confused with the stations owned by the company formerly named Clear Channel, now iHeartMedia, Inc.

I’d get my portable radio and hide it under the covers to muffle the sound. I’d listen to WSM in Nashville, TN (country), WABC (Top 40, heavy on the Beatles), and especially WWVA, Wheeling, WV, which played country artists such as George Jones, Patsy Cline, Buck Owens, Jim Reeves, and Eddy Arnold.

Some songs mentioning radio:

Turn Your Radio On – Ray Stevens (1971)
You Turn Me On, I’m A Radio – Joni Mitchell (1973)
Radio, Radio – Elvis Costello (1978)
On Your Radio – Joe Jackson (1979)
Do You Remember Rock N’ Roll Radio – Ramones (1980)
This Is Radio Clash – The Clash (1981)
Mexican Radio – Wall Of Voodoo (1983)
Devil’s Radio – George Harrison (1987)

ABC Wednesday – Round 16