November 2016 - Page 4 of 7 - Ramblin' with Roger

November rambling #1: Theodosia Burr

I have a lot of Leonard Cohen songs, Hallelujah, Suzanne, and Bird on a Wire, among them, that others have covered.

Analytical Grammar: Homophone graffitil — Analytical Grammar: Homophone graffiti

Why many Americans don’t see Donald Trump as racist

1st woman elected to Congress, in 1916

John Oliver: School Segregation and Multilevel Marketing

6 Million Lost Voters: State-Level Estimates of Felony Disenfranchisement, 2016

Do You Understand the Electoral College? You should read all of AmeriNZ’s posts this past week, e.g. Fixing the Electoral College, which mentions my favorite fix, Instant Runoff Voting

Trump was unfamiliar with the scope of the president’s job when meeting Obama

Prince Ea: I JUST SUED THE SCHOOL SYSTEM and Dear Future Generations: Sorry

How Teens In The Balkans Are Duping Trump Supporters With Fake News

How Andy Borowitz explained the election to his six-year-old daughter – (NOT fake news)

A 1922 New York Times article about Adolf Hitler catastrophically misjudged the authenticity of his anti-semitism

Writer too strong to live, about sports, sexism and alcohol (HT to Jaquandor)

Deepika Padukone on depression

The men feminists left behind

A Teaching Moment on Sexual Assault and It’s hard to talk about, but it happens to so many women and Reasons So Many Guys Don’t Understand Sexual Consent

Top African American environmental leader faces racial incident in Adirondacks – Aaron Mair, who I have met, is the president of the Sierra Club

Gwen Ifill, longtime PBS news anchor, died after a battle with cancer – she was 61 – made me feel surprisingly devastated

Four-color Christ Jesus

Glenn Beck tries decency

Amy Biancolli interview in Widows and Widowers Magazine

The Dramatic Life and Mysterious Death of Theodosia Burr. The fate of Aaron Burr’s daughter remains a topic of contention

Race-Conscious Casting and the Erasure of the Black Past in Lin-Manuel Miranda’s Hamilton

This black woman rode across America in 1930. On a Harley. In spite of rampant racism, she was ‘very happy on two wheels’

Trevor Noah wasn’t expecting liberal hatred

You’ve Just Crossed Over Into … the Rod Serling Gazebo

Ira Gobler and the Star Wars Toys That Never Were

Norman Rockwell Museum Presents Hanna-Barbera: The Architects of Saturday Morning, through May 29, 2017

My Poetic Side: favorite war poets, each related to a different war and ordered chronologically, from The American Civil War to the Iraq War.

Presidential candidates in comic books

Robert Vaughn, Man from UNCLE actor, dies aged 83. I used to play the spy show with sister Marcia. I played Napoleon Solo, the Vaughn role.

Now I Know: Fool Me Twice, Plane on You and Going to Venus in Peace and May The Force Be Costumed and Smell Ya Later?

Doing the Write-In Thing (ROG reference)

Music

Jean Sibelius and the virtual national classical music work of Finland; here’s Finlandia

Mozart Requiem

K-Chuck Radio: Draw that bow, my son…

Jazz ‘Hot’: The Rare 1938 Short Film With Jazz Legend Django Reinhardt

Bohemian Rhapsody performed by excerpts from 260 different movies

An Hour of Jeopardy Think Music

16 Albums That Changed The Music Business

Master Recordings — From Abbey Road to Born to Run — Could Be Lost Forever, Without Archivists’ Help

Copland’s Fanfare: The making of a musical monument

Leonard Cohen died at the age of 82 and hugely influential singer and songwriter’s work spanned nearly 50 years; his 2008 induction to the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame; two of of my favorites are this and this

Leon Russell died – His 2011 induction to the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame

The Greatest Invention of One Thousand Years Ago

The 10 Greatest Double Albums In Rock History – you WILL guess most of these

The “432 Hz vs. 440 Hz” conspiracy theory

The Upper Crust of Music

S is for the Statue of Liberty

Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!

The Statue of Liberty Enlightening the World was dedicated on October 28, 1886, 130 years ago. It was “a gift of friendship from the people of France to the United States and is recognized as a universal symbol of freedom and democracy.”

Here are some fun facts:
Total overall height from the base of the pedestal foundation to the tip of the torch is 305 feet, 6 inches (93.1 m)
Height of the Statue from her heel to the top of her head is 111 feet, 6 inches (34 m)
The Statue has a 35-foot waistline (10.67 m)
Total weight of the Statue of Liberty is 225 tons, or 450,000 pounds (204116.567 kg)

The Statue of Liberty was “designed by sculptor Frédéric Bartholdi in collaboration with engineer Gustave Eiffel” – yes, THAT Eiffel. “Atop its pedestal (designed by American architect Richard Morris Hunt), the Statue” at the entrance to New York Harbor “has welcomed millions of immigrants to the United States.”

The New Colossus is a poem written by Emma Lazarus (1849–1887) “in 1883 to raise money for the construction of the pedestal of the Statue of Liberty. In 1903, the poem was engraved on a bronze plaque and mounted inside the pedestal’s lower level.” The most famous part is:
Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!

I have never been to the Statue of Liberty, despite living within 200 miles of it almost all my life. Now I HAVE seen it, on a ferry going from Manhattan to Staten Island several times. But I understand that actually “visiting Liberty Island is one of the most rewarding experiences” one can have. The Daughter expressed a desire to visit there, the last time we were in New York City in 2013, but it didn’t work out.

Indeed, I wish I had gone last century. “For over a decade, the National Park Service has implemented a reservation system. This is very different from the way past generations once accessed the Statue of Liberty. The National Park Service strongly recommends making advanced ticket reservations.”

And I KNOW this to be true: “There are many aggressive, unauthorized ticket sellers who will try to sell tickets to the Statue of Liberty near Battery Park in NYC. These individuals will often try to scam people through misrepresentation and over-charging… Ferries provide transportation to both Liberty Island (site of the Statue of Liberty) and Ellis Island.”

I expect we’ll go there eventually.

ABC Wednesday – Round 19

Figuring it out, post-election edition

I have to “combat authoritarianism, to call out lies, to struggle honorably and fiercely in the name of American ideals—that is what is left to do. That is all there is to do.”

I started, post-election, from the position of wanting to give Donald Trump a chance to do well, I really did. He gave a lovely, conciliatory acceptance speech, and President Obama said his meeting with the (gulp) President-elect went well.

There was a church service seeking to heal political wounds, organized by the FOCUS Churches of Albany before the elections, but taking place the day after at noontime. Since it was held at First Church, less than ten minutes away by foot from my office, I attended, and there was a lot of hugging afterward, even from strangers. it was helpful in dealing with my grief.

But so was John Scalzi’s Cinemax theory of racism. Maybe people voted for Trump to “Make America great again,” whatever the heck that means. But you get, at no additional charge, the “racism, sexism and religious and other bigotries that Trump and his people have already promised to engage in.” I read it and even shared the core message with a friend of mine I happened to run across Thursday night. Non-Trump voters can perhaps see that the Trump voter was only thinking about the HBO, as it were; if Trump supporters read it, it may explain why people are so afraid.

Especially since their fears are already proving to be justified. For instance, racist graffiti and being harassed for speaking Spanish on the phone and a transgender veteran’s truck painted ‘Trump,’ lit on fire and a gay man being brutally beaten up and women reporting strangers grabbing them below the navel, and reports of anti-Islam attacks and a whole lot more harassment, or worse.

BTW, I find Barack Obama more and more incredible. Being statesmanlike with the man who rose to power on the slander that Obama was not born in America is impressive. Especially when his accomplishments are likely to be erased by a guy who freaked out on Twitter after Obama won re-election in 2012, with Trump calling for “revolution in this country!”

Ironic, then that, four years later, he complains: “Just had a very open and successful presidential election. Now professional protesters, incited by the media, are protesting. Very unfair!” In a single tweet Thursday night, the President-Elect has threatened free speech, a free press, and freedom of assembly, though he subsequently walked that back.

And people are rightly also freaking out about Trump’s potential Cabinet of Horrors, as well as the loss of their Obamacare, and the loss of civil rights, and the further despoiling of our planet (regardless of how the Trump team spins it), and more. Oh, and with his kids running his company AND being on the transition team, “there will be no wall between the Trump administration and Trump Organization.”

(Christians voted for Trump. Meh.)

Now that Trump has won, my post-election thought is that I am getting ready to participate in the loyal opposition. Not sure what that looks like yet for me. But I’ll have to work to combat authoritarianism, to call out lies, to struggle honorably and fiercely in the name of American ideals—that is what is left to do. That is all there is to do.

It’s a tricky time. Often we are critical of each other over the tactics we are using, whether it be wearing safety pins or sending money to a right-minded charity. I myself haven’t tweeted #NotMyPresident, though I surely understand why others do. I didn’t join in the local protest because I don’t yet “get” the strategy, but this isn’t to say I wouldn’t at some point.

I seem to be drawn to the issue of voter suppression, which I think may have made a difference in some states, notably Wisconsin. I haven’t figured out what to DO about it, though.

I was planning to be a thorn in the side of a President Hillary Clinton had veered off course, but I suspect this will prove to be a greater challenge. And speaking of Hillary, I give her a lot more slack than most, I gather, at not coming out at 3 a.m. after the election and facing the crowd. Not only was she understandably devastated, she may not have decided whether to contest the election. Her losses in a few swing states were very close, and she deserved the benefit of the doubt of not making a hasty comment, but composing herself before making her speech.

Music Throwback Saturday: Then Came You

Then Came You became Warwick’s first ever single to reach number one on the Billboard Hot 100 and also became her highest-charting R&B record.

Periodically I have mentioned in this blog how irritated I was that certain black musicians were considered “not black enough” because of their genre. Charlie Pride singing country, or Jimi Hendrix doing rock and roll – and isn’t rock just blues and country mixed together? And I took some heat for listening to it.

Dionne Warwick got grief for being an MOR (middle of the road) artist, singing mostly Burt Bacharach/ Hal David tunes. So I was glad that she briefly got that particular monkey off her back when she teamed up with the legendary Spinners to sing Then Came You.

“Released during a time that Warwick’s chart fortunes were at an ebb after moving to Warner Bros. Records in 1972, the Philadelphia soul single was a rare mid-1970s success for the singer. Sung as a duet with Spinners main lead singer Bobby Smith and the Spinners, who were one of the most popular groups of the decade, the song became Warwick’s first-ever single to reach number one on the Billboard Hot 100 and also became her highest-charting R&B record reaching number two on that chart. It was also the first number-one pop hit for the Spinners. Spinners member Phillippe Wynne took over lead duties at the very end of the song.”

Dionne spelled her last name with an E at the end during this period but switched back.

Here are songs by the Spinners, who are NOT in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, and, though nominated the last couple of years, not even up for consideration this season:

I’ll Be Around -#3 for two weeks pop, #1 for five weeks soul in 1972, here or here

Could It Be I’m Falling In Love – # 4 pop, #1 soul in 1973 here or here

One of a Kind (Love Affair) #11 pop, #1 for four weeks soul in 1973 here or here

Mighty Love, Part 1 – #20 pop, #1 for two weeks soul in 1974 here or here

Then Came You – #1 pop, #2 soul in 1974 here or here

They Just Can’t Stop It (Games People Play) – #5 pop, #1 soul in 1975 here or here

The Rubberband Man – #2 for three weeks pop, #1 soul in 1976 here or here; long, album version here or here

Charities for Veterans and Military Organizations

“CharityWatch believes it is reasonable for a charity to set aside less than three year’s worth its annual budget for financial stability and possible future needs.”

I was reading this article in CharityWatch, Multiple Names + Exaggerated Programs = Two Related Charities, But Little Help for Vets or Cancer Relief. Ticked me off.

“Help the Vets (HTV) and Breast Cancer Outreach Foundation (BCOF) are two relatively new charities that share the same address and phone number, as well as the same family members in leadership positions, including the president. But of more concern to donors should be another shared trait between HTV and BCOF — the likelihood that most donations will go towards paying for-profit, professional fundraisers rather than for helping veterans or cancer sufferers.”

I found these grades of charities for veterans and military organizations in the Winter 2016/2017 Charity Rating Guide & Watchdog Report, so they theoretically have changed since then, though unlikely. The entities noted with a ? means that CharityWatch did not have enough information. Perhaps some are less than three years old.

“CharityWatch believes it is reasonable for a charity to set aside less than three year’s worth of its annual budget for financial stability and possible future needs. When a charity’s available assets in reserve exceed three year’s worth of its annual budget, CharityWatch downgrades its final letter grade rating. However, we continue to show what a charity’s efficiency rating was prior to being downgraded for those donors who do not wish to factor a charity’s high assets into their giving decisions.” (Those graded thus have two grades and a dollar sign.)

The listings in italics have a grade of B+ or better and therefore are ranked among the top-rated charities.

AdoptAPlatoon Soldier Support Effort: ?
Air Force Aid Society: A/F $
American Legion National Headquarters: D
American Studies Center: ?
AMVETS National Headquarters: D
AMVETS National Service Foundation: F
Armed Services YMCA of the USA: A
Army Emergency Relief: A+/F $

Blinded Veterans Association: D
Bob Woodruff Family Foundation: A-

Center for American Homeless Veterans: F
Circle of Friends for American Veterans: F
Coalition to Salute America’s Heroes: F

Disabled American Veterans: D
Disabled American Veterans Charitable Service Trust: ?
Disabled Veterans National Foundation: F
Disabled Veterans Services: F

Feed Our Veterans: F
Fisher House Foundation B+
Foundation for American Veterans: F
Freedom Alliance: C-/D $

Gary Sinise Foundation: A
Good Charity: ?
Guide Dog Foundation for the Blind: A

Healing Heroes Network: F
Help Hospitalized Veterans: F
Help Our Wounded: F
Help the Vets: F
Homes for Our Troops: A

Intrepid Fallen Heroes Fund: A
Iraq & Afghanistan Veterans of America: A-

Marine Corps Scholarship Foundation: B-
Military Order of the Purple Heart Service Foundation: F
Mission Continues: A
National Military Family Association: A

National Veterans Foundation: ?
National Veterans Services Fund: F
National Vietnam Veterans Foundation (DISSOLVED): F
Navy SEAL Foundation: A+/C+ $
Navy-Marine Corps Relief Society: A

Operation Homefront: A

Paralyzed Veterans of America: F
Paws for Purple Hearts: F

Semper Fi Fund: A+
Soldiers’ Angels: B
Special Operations Warrior Foundation: A/F $

Tragedy Assistance Program for Survivors: B+
TREA Memorial Foundation: ?
Troops Need You: F

United American Patriots: F
United Service Organizations: C
United Spinal Association: C-
United States Armed Forces Association: F
United States Navy Memorial Foundation: D

Veterans Assistance Foundation: C-
Veterans of Foreign Wars of the U.S. and Foundation: F
Veterans of the Vietnam War & The Veterans Coalition: ?
Veterans Support Organization: F
Vietnam Veterans Memorial Fund: D
Vietnam Veterans of America: F
VietNow National Headquarters: F

Wounded Warrior Project: C
Wounded Warriors Family Support: A

About a fifth of these received a B+ or better. Over a third received an F.