February 2019 - Page 4 of 6 - Ramblin' with Roger

Valentine’s Day rambling: NECCO

Johnny McDaniel, worked over the years as a miner and milk truck driver, married and divorced Rodger’s mother three times and he loved music

necco.conversation-hearts This being the middle of the month, I thought I’d do some linkage related to love. The first post,from Mark Evanier’s blog, he posted back in June 2018, but I saved it for this day.

Jim Brochu and Steve Schalchlin “are a splendid union of two very talented people who seem to know absolutely everyone in their profession, their profession being The Theatre. Here’s nine minutes of Jim and Steve singing about their relationship.”

Alumni couple celebrates 75 years of marriage
Dorothy Dever ’43 and Robert Dever ’43 met at SUNY New Paltz – my alma mater – as education students and were married on August 28, 1943, in East Rockaway, N.Y. They are now celebrating 75 years together.

Season 2 of the Love Letters Podcast: taking on a big, complicated, seemingly unanswerable question: How do you meet someone?

Things I loved about the Super Bowl: Gladys Knight’s performance of the national anthem. The NFL at 100 ad. The Democracy Dies in Darkness ad AND a response. What I didn’t love: the game.

Only one of the reasons I loved Frank Robinson, the first black manager in Major League Baseball, who died February 7: he was the Most Valuable Player in the National League in 1961, playing for the Cincinnati Reds. The Reds traded him away after the 1965 season. He was the Most Valuable Player in the American League in 1966, for the Baltimore Orioles.

Rent-a-sister: Coaxing Japan’s hikikomori men out of their bedrooms
Not only do these Japanese young men not date, sometimes they never leave their bedrooms.

This is about familial love: How A Long-Lost Guitar Was A Lesson In Grace And Forgiveness

“Rodger McDaniel was 21 years old when his father died. His dad, Johnny McDaniel, worked over the years as a miner and milk truck driver, married and divorced Rodger’s mother three times – and he loved music.”

As someone commented: “Those Story Corps folks have killed me almost every Friday morning for years. Don’t know why I even bother to wear mascara on Fridays.”

Finally, Chuck wrote: May as well cancel Valentine’s Day now

“The New England Confectionery Company – better known as Necco – went bankrupt last year, and their products and recipes were purchased by an Ohio-based candy company, Spangler, in the bankruptcy sale.

“And Spangler didn’t have enough time to produce enough candy hearts – with their ubiquitous messages of ‘LOVE YOU’ and ‘I DO’ and “CALL ME” and ‘BE MINE’ – in time for the 2019 Valentine’s Day season.

“Now this doesn’t mean that candy hearts won’t be around for the season – I understand two other companies, Sour Patch and Brach’s, will have candy hearts – but let’s face it. They’re not Necco hearts.”

Here’s a confession I don’t know that should make, especially living New England-adjacent. But here goes: I hate those NECCO candies. I think they taste like chalk. I’m so glad to get that off my chest.

Rev. Robert Pennock (1926 – 2019)

The funeral of Robert Pennock will be on Saturday, February 16 at our old stomping grounds, Trinity UMC.

Bob Pennock The third funeral I will sing at this calendar year is for the Rev. Robert Pennock.

At the FOCUS churches service in early February, I happened to be sitting behind Nancy, an alto at Trinity United Methodist Church in Albany. I used to sing with Nancy there until 2000 and “the troubles.”

Nancy enjoyed my familiar voice behind her. It prompted me to say that back in the 1990s, that Trinity choir was really good. And Bob Pennock was a large part of that.

I generally sat near Bob in the choir loft. When I joined the ensemble in early 1983, my choir singing skills were rusty. As the bass soloist and section leader, he was quite helpful in getting me on track.

He and his wife Holly often hosted choir functions at their home. I watched his younger kids, David and Jessica, grow up in the church.

There was a move at Trinity in 1997 or early 1998 to consider changing the organizational structure of Trinity. It was allowed by the United Methodist governing body. But it was Bob who rightly said, “Where are the checks and balances?” The proposed plan, it seemed, gave too much power to the pastor.

As a minister ordained the year I was born, he immediately recognized the potential for usurpation of congregational authority. He voiced what I, who had served as chair of the Administrative Board, had only been thinking.

Someone said, “Give [the new structure] a chance,” and it was passed. Just as predicted by Bob, the pastor achieved more control without accountability, which led to my departure and that of others less than three years later.

I would see Bob only sporadically after that, including at least twice at a small rural church he served as pastor in the early 2000s.

The funeral of Robert Pennock will be on Saturday, February 16 at our old stomping grounds, Trinity UMC. We will sing two John Rutter pieces, The Lord is My Shepherd from the Requiem, and The Lord Bless You and Keep You, music I first learned while I was singing with Bob and Holly.

Blackface + time + change = redemption?

“When a politician’s positions on current issues already raise questions about racism, then evidence of racism in his or her past ought to have increased significance.”

“I am not, nor ever have been, in favor of bringing about in any way the social and political equality of the white and black races.” That was Abraham Lincoln in 1858 during a debate with Stephen Douglas.

Seven years later, he evolved, wanting to allow black soldiers – such as my ancestors – who had fought so bravely in the Civil War the ballot. Had he lived, who knows how much he may have changed, with Frederick Douglass whispering in his ear.

The notion here is rather obvious: people change. In The Mosque Across the Street – a video shown at the FOCUS churches service I attended this month – we see one Christian parishioner at a Memphis church weep as he realizes that HE was the problem in dealing with the new Muslim neighbors.

Jeff, a Facebook friend, wrote this recently: “Bob Zellner was a civil rights hero, a white organizer of SNCC. His father was a Klansman until he went to Europe in the 1930s, met up with a group of Southern Gospel singers and traveled with them. He wrote to his wife that at some point, he ‘forgot they were black,’ and he realized how foolish and awful he had been. When he got home he resigned from the Klan, traveled the South as an anti-Klan preacher… and his wife took his Klan uniforms and made much needed shirts out of them for the kids.”

As the very first line of his Oyez bio reads, “Hugo LaFayette Black refused to let his past dictate his future.” The Alabaman joined the Ku Klux Klan in 1923, but quit two years later. As an old poli sci major could tell you, Black was sworn in as an Associate Justice in 1937, and served for 34 years, supporting many groundbreaking civil rights cases.

People change. And we WANT and EXPECT people to do so. I’ve read a number of stories from white people, especially during this Black History Month, about how they, or those around them, were radically changed by interaction with people of different backgrounds.

One fellow from my former hometown wrote: “I changed from the young guy growing up in a backward community that still appears to show the same racist, bigoted attitude. Becoming educated, and allowing others to point out most of my misconceptions helped.”

So I am having some difficulty – OK, a LOT of difficulty – judging people solely based on how they dressed up in costumes – even racist, offensive costumes – decades ago. It does not necessarily make that person a bigot for life.

If people who were ACTUAL members of the Ku Klux Klan can be redeemed, some indiscretions of the past, even blackface – which must have been the state hobby among white Virginians at some point – can be contextualized.

What we need is some sort of formula based on the severity of the offense, the recency of the offense, the level of contrition, and most importantly, their current comportment. As a guy I know wrote: “I think that this needs to be decided by the group that he has offended, not white liberals.”

To that end, the subhead of this article from a couple weeks ago intrigued me: As Calls Mount for Ralph Northam to Resign, Some Virginians Mull a Second Chance. “Seems the average black voter in VA has conflicting feelings about all this. Maybe because they have seen a lot worse?”

Florida Secretary of State Michael Ertel had to quit recently. He wore blackface to make fun of victims of Hurricane Katrina in 2005. I have no sympathy, and he needed to go.

As the Weekly Sift guy notes: “When a politician’s positions on current issues already raise questions about racism, then evidence of racism in his or her past ought to have increased significance.”

As a practical matter, I believe this is also true:

“I worry that we’re playing into Trump’s hands when we drum Ralph Northam out of the Democratic Party. As I interpret it, Trump’s message to wavering whites and men and anti-gay straights goes something like this:
“‘You’re never going to be pure enough to satisfy the liberals. So you might as well wear your MAGA hat and fly your Confederate flag, because no matter what you do, there’s never going to be a place for you on the other side'”.

Nation of Change recommends that Ralph Northam immediately resigns when the “lord of racism in the here and now” goes. THAT is a workable plan.

F is for Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus

“The first sound adaptation of the story, Frankenstein (1931), was produced by Universal Pictures, directed by James Whale, and starred Boris Karloff as the monster.”

The novel Frankenstein was written by English author Mary Shelley when she was but 20 years old. It was published with no author credit on 1 January 1818. Her name first appeared on the second edition, published in 1823.

It is a classic tale. Victor Frankenstein animates a creature. By the end, we’re left to wrestle with the question of whether it’s the man or the creature who is is truly the monster.

The recent bicentennial of Frankenstein might be reason enough to note the book. But it is the many appearances in popular culture that have sustained the story’s popularity.

The first film adaptation of the tale, Frankenstein, was made by Edison Studios in 1910. That short piece has been restored, and you can watch it right here.

“The first sound adaptation of the story, Frankenstein (1931), was produced by Universal Pictures, directed by James Whale, and starred Boris Karloff as the monster. The film has been selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry…

“In Great Britain, a long-running series by Hammer Films focused on the character of Dr. Frankenstein (usually played by Peter Cushing) rather than his monster.”

It is these portrayals that have kept Frankenstein in the popular culture. When I was growing up, two sitcoms had characters who had the “look.” Lurch (Ted Cassidy) on The Addams Family (1964-1966) was a standard creature in the Karloff tradition; “You rang?”

Whereas in The Munsters (also 1964-1966), Herman Munster (Fred Gwynne) was “the patriarch of a family of kindly monsters. The rest of the family included a grandfather resembling the Universal Dracula…, a wife that resembles ‘The Bride of Frankenstein’, and a werewolf son.”

In 1971, General Mills put out the monster cereals, chocolate-flavored Count Chocula and the strawberry-flavored Franken Berry. “Since 2010, Franken Berry, Boo Berry [first released in 1973], and Count Chocula cereals have been manufactured and sold only for a few months during the autumn/Halloween season in September and October.”

My favorite iteration has to be the movie comedy Young Frankenstein (1974) by Mel Brooks and Gene Wilder. Borrowing “heavily from the first three Universal Frankenstein films… Wilder portrays Dr. Frankenstein’s American grandson, Frederick, while Peter Boyle plays the monster.” I literally fell out of my seat with laughter – it WAS an aisle seat – when I first saw this in the cinema.

Dustbury posted this recently: “Disabled Valery Spiridonov, 33, was ready to have his neck severed by Professor Sergio Canavero — dubbed ‘Dr. Frankenstein’ — and his head reattached to a new, healthy body.”

Finally, listen to Frankenstein by the Edgar Winters Group here or here or a long version here. It went to #1 in 1973 on the Billboard charts in the US.

For ABC Wednesday

Movie review: Shoplifters (Manbiki kazoku)

the movie Shoplifters (Manbiki kazoku) will be available on DVD on February 12.

My wife and I had just seen the movie Shoplifters (Manbiki kazoku) at the Spectrum Theatre in Albany. A young woman of our acquaintance said, “I don’t know why it got such positive buzz. I thought it was meh.”

I totally understood. The film was a little slow to develop, and even at the end of the two hours, we had questions about the various relationships. Yet we thought it was very much worth seeing.

The story involved a Japanese family with the folks generally underemployed. Some of them resort to… well, see the title… to survive. There’s a code that comes with such thievery, which is that while it’s still in the store, it’s not really stealing.

Their lives get complicated when they find a young girl stuck outside in the cold. They take her in, and are surprised that, at first, no one reports her missing. She begins to learn the family “trade”.

One takeaway is the notion of what constitutes family. The father discusses the boy’s adolescent urgings in a way I’ve never seen before in cinema, precise but not too complicated.

This is a film by director Hirokazu Kor-eeda, whose work I am totally unfamiliar with. He seems well-regarded, with all of the films he wrote and/or directed as least 85% positive in Rotten Tomatoes. Shoplifters is 99% positive with the critics. The performances were strong.

The predominant description of the movie in reviews is that, in many ways it feels Dickensian, like a fresh take on Oliver Twist, as one put it. I’m not sure I would have come up with that parallel myself, but it’s not inaccurate. Why else would we be rooting for, at some level, people who are regularly breaking the law?

Shoplifters will be available on DVD on February 12. I’d be interested in the opinions of others on this movie from Japan which was nominated as Best Foreign Film for this season’s Oscars.