August 2016 - Ramblin' with Roger

The only movies I’ve seen with Gene Wilder are The Producers, Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory, Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex * But Were Afraid to Ask, Silver Streak, Stir Crazy, and one of my favorite movies ever, Young Frankenstein, which he co-wrote. They were all released between 1967 and 1980. But he was always excellent then and in a couple of episodes of Will and Grace early this century. Gene Wilder on The Truth | Blank on Blank | PBS Digital Studios, plus Evanier and Tom Straw remember.

Steven Hill, D.A. Adam Schiff on ‘Law & Order,’ Dies at 94

A Marvin Kaplan story

Jack Riley, RIP

‘I’ve had a good life’: Donna Wold, the ex-flame who inspired the Little Red-Haired Girl in ‘Peanuts,’ dies

Your Guide to the Fall Broadway Season

50 things about comics, featuring ME

The 10 most Influential Poets in History

Art is about surrender – Stop asking for it to be custom-tailored

Chuck Miller at the State Fair and Don Rittner at the county fair, and Jaquandor at the county fair

Now I Know: David’s Garden and Horse, Off-Course

Ken Levine HATES Robert Hall

The Casual Sex Project

Music

Harmonica legend Toots Thielemans, Known for ‘Sesame Street’ Theme, Dies at 94 and The Getaway – End credits – Quincy Jones – Toots; more Quincy and Toots; John Barry, Toots – Theme from “Midnight Cowboy” (mostly stolen from Steve Bissette’s Facebook)

U2 Live Albany New York – 13 November 1981

John Denver, Glen Campbell, Johnny Cash & Roger Miller – Rocky Top

Herb Alpert Foundation to donate $10.1 million to Los Angeles City College — making studies for music majors tuition-free

It’s only rock ‘n’ roll – and sometimes it’s better in mono

35 Years Ago: Violent Femmes Discovered by the Pretenders While Busking in Milwaukee

H is for handy

Reading the manual is seldom useful.

I am not what you would call handy. The old saying “Measure twice, cut once” was invented with me in mind, and yet that piece of wood is STILL too long, or worse, too short.

It’s not that I’m not curious about things work. When I was 10 or so, I took apart the deadbolt on our door at home, trying to figure out how it worked. Unfortunately, I never figured out how to put it back together properly, and we had to engage the services of a locksmith.

I tried the Cub Scouts when I was eight, but they were always requiring specific knots, and I quit that in a year. Speaking of knots, I couldn’t master tying my shoes until I was nine, and wore penny loafers until then.

“Righty tighty, lefty loosey.” Need it almost every time.

I attempted to learn to play the piano when I was 12, but it wasn’t meant to be, despite hours of practice. Meanwhile, my sister learned to play guitar in a month, something I could never master either, despite the fact that my dad played.

My father did a lot of floral arrangements, for weddings and cotillions, and the like. He often brought Leslie and me along. She had a great artistic eye, and I was good at schlepping things.

I always appreciated seeing art, but creating art was another thing altogether. Once my 7th-grade art teacher gave me a B in some now-forgotten project, and my father asked her why the grade was so high. She said that it was my best effort based on my ability.

Junior high required going to what they called shop, where I could build ill-constructed wood items, and blow up pottery in the kiln. But I actually liked 9th-grade shop, dealing with metal, maybe because the machinery was so precise that I could not screw up the project.

That was a useful lesson. If I have the right tools, and I’m shown how to do it, I can do it…sometimes. Reading the manual is seldom useful. Being told how to do it almost never works. But doing a hands-on process, and having room to screw it up without destroying it, helps.

Occasionally, I CAN hang that picture without putting a large hole in the wall.

Now my buddy Amy, she’s handy!

Have to end, of course, with Weird Al Yankovic – Handy.

ABC Wednesday – Round 19

Maine-Endwell wins LLWS, 2-1

Maine is a town (County subdivision) in Broome County, New York, where I grew up. NOT in New England!

Endwell, New York, wins Little League World Series, 2-1 over the team from East Seoul, South Korea.

“Endwell snapped a five-year championship drought for U.S. teams on Little League’s biggest stage and gave New York its first title since 1964.

Huntington Beach, California, won in 2011 and Mid Island from Staten Island won New York’s last World Series championship.”

The only other New York State victory in the LLWS was back in 1954 when the team from Schenectady beat the team from Colton, CA, 7-5, the year after Schenectady lost to Birmingham, AL, 1-0. It wasn’t the international tournament then that it has become.

BTW, Maine is a town (County subdivision) and Endwell a hamlet (Census-designated place) in Broome County, New York, where I grew up.

All things End Well Mid-Atlantic Region Wins Little League Baseball® World Series Title

I also have become more familiar with the double-elimination process than anyone needs to be.

INTERNATIONAL TEAMS
Asia Pacific: East Seoul Little League, Seoul, South Korea 4-2
Australia: Hills Little League, Sydney, Australia 2-2
Canada: Hastings Community Little League, Vancouver, British Columbia 1-2
Caribbean: Pariba Little League, Willemstad, Curacao 1-2
Europe Africa: Emilia Little League, Emilia, Italy 0-3
Japan: Chofu Little League, Tokyo, Japan 1-2
Latin America, Aguadulce Cabezera Little League, Aguadulce, Panama 4-1
Mexico: San Nicolas Little League, San Nicolas, Mexico 3-2

UNITED STATES TEAMS
Great Lakes: Bowling Green Eastern Little League, Bowling Green, Kentucky 2-2
Mid-Atlantic: Maine-Endwell Little League, Endwell, New York 5-0
Midwest: Johnston Little League, Johnston, Iowa, 2-2
New England: Warwick North Little League, Warwick, Rhode Island 1-2
Northwest: Bend North Little League, Bend, Oregon 1-2
Southeast Goodlettsville Baseball Little League, Goodlettsville, Tennessee 4-3
Southwest: McAllister Park American Little League, San Antonio, Texas 0-3
West: Park View Little League, Chula Vista, California 1-2

The M-E team had previously beaten New England 7-2, Southeast 3-1, Great Lakes 13-10, and in the United States championship game on Saturday, Southeast, again, 4-2.

Olin Family International Reunion 2016

This circular proof literally made me shake my head.

Olin Family International Reunion 2016, Saybrook, OH – July 15-17, 2016

After we left the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, we headed east on I-90 . The Wife wanted to stop in Geneva-on-the-Lake, so we did, enjoying a great view of Lake Erie and eating at a fairly new restaurant in town.

We traveled to the hotel, and then the reunion. I’d been saying we were going to Ashtabula; well, we were in that county, but actually at the Saybrook United Methodist Church. About 65 of us gathered over the period from the Friday evening ice cream social to the Sunday morning brunch, coming from California, Washington state, Minnesota, North Dakota, Ontario, and probably other states besides New York and Ohio.

In fact, at least five folks I had seen only the weekend earlier, including my parents-in-law.

Practically as I entered the door, Kay Olin Johnson corralled me. She had something to show me, an article in the Jamestown (ND) Sun titled “Talks to focus on ancestry search and Princess Diana. “There was an online posting on June 5, 2011, by Roger Green, whose wife and daughter are related to the Spenser [sic] line, and who is author of ‘Ramblin’ with Roger: a Librarian’s Life.’

“Green introduced a Fargo lady named Kay Johnson, whom he met at his wife’s family reunion of the Olins/Spensers.”

I laughed hysterically because it was clear that the reporter was vetting Kay’s bona fides through my blog when much of the information about the Spencer line I had gotten from Kay! This circular proof literally made me shake my head.

As is true with lots of organizations, recruitment of new members is key. Reaching out to people who may not know they’re Olins, through social media, is a key tactic.

On Saturday, we shared historical finds and identifying genealogical resources, including DNA testing; ate lunch; participated in a lengthy auction; had dinner; talked a lot; and watched the sunset on Lake Erie. This was a whole lot more fun than it sounds. And we talk WAY less about Diana than you might think.

I was particularly intrigued by one entrepreneurial woman who puts my ecological efforts to shame. She and her partner discover businesses that are tossing certain products, and they dumpster dive to find items that can be auctioned on eBay or sold for scrap. She was clearly brokenhearted when the stuff goes to the landfill, not primarily because she wants the revenue, but because those items will clog a landfill somewhere, not the planet she wants to leave to her young granddaughter.

We visited covered bridges, including one named for the Olins, and went to a cemetery where some Olins are buried, plus the folks in the Ashtabula Bridge Disaster of 1876.

The Daughter had a reasonably good time at the Olin Family International Reunion, assisting with the auction, playing with one of her cousins, previously unknown to her, and eating the free ice cream available all weekend, thanks to one of the tribe. That’s usually my gauge of a successful trip, how The Child fared.

Links galore: Barack, Hillary, and Donald

I’ve decided to offload the overtly political links here, not because they’re more important, but because they are more volatile.

Do you know what I hate? The political rhetoric that doesn’t inform, but merely belittles the other. Recent examples:
*Hey look, the GOP is drowning. Throw them an anvil, STAT!
*Trump Is ‘Urinating On You And Telling You To Dance In The Rain’
Really?

Oh, there are more, but I’m too tired to look. And there are equally vile, or worse, comments aimed at Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, and the Democrats.

One of the things I pride myself on is reading a wide variety of opinions, even those I disagree with vehemently. I have a particularly curious relationship with the husband of a friend of mine. He’s made some decent points on his Facebook page, particularly about Hillary Clinton.

But then he has to spoil it all, by saying something wacky, such as citing former FEMA head Michael Brown as proof that Obama’s response to the Louisiana flooding was inadequate. It’d be like Oliver North complaining about money for hostages or citing Dinesh D’Souza about much of anything.

I never look for these links, BTW; they come to me by various email subscriptions or I see them on Facebook or someone emailed to me directly. I don’t do a Google search. And as of August 24, I had some mondo list of various links, with another week to go before the usual linkage.

I’ve decided to offload the overtly political ones here, not because they’re more important, but because they are more volatile. I had some article about Trump canceling some rallies, but he’s so mercurial, they might be back on.

But first, 3 Reasons the Standing Rock Sioux Can Stop the Dakota Access Pipeline. I hope they succeed.