October 2023 - Page 2 of 7 - Ramblin' with Roger

Lydster: my daughter’s cats

Midnight and Stormy

Midnight and Stormy are my daughter’s cats. Well, sort of. Ten years ago, she wanted them. She said she’d feed them and change their litter boxes. Actually, that doesn’t happen often. I generally nourish them, and my wife usually cleans the boxes.

She did, however, have to tend to them when my wife and I were in France in May. Midnight always waited either outside of my bedroom door or my office, caterwauling at breakfast time. And at dinner time, she might be sitting on the sofa watching TV but they didn’t bug her to be fed. I worried that she might let them starve – not an issue, especially for Midnight – but she provided me photographic evidence.

My daughter does initiate tending to their other needs. She removed some fleas from Stormy. The next day, she held each cat in turn while my wife applied the salve.

Scrapping

The cats occasionally get into violent fights. Midnight usually initiates them, though Stormy will attack if she feels intimidated by him. The fur literally flies, and I have to vacuum it up. So it’s interesting that, at times, they will lie close to each other, on our bed, the floor, or the sofa.

The cats are not allowed on the dining room table. Midnight often violates the rule, whereas Stormy never does. My daughter walked over to the table, but Midnight did not react. She texted me the picture and I started walking downstairs; before I got halfway down, he abandoned the table. Apparently, he doesn’t like it when I say, in my sternest voice, “GET DOWN!”

Midnight likes to get into everything, especially anything shaped like a box.

We jokingly told her she could take Midnight back to college. No way we would inflict that feline on her new roommates.

Rebecca Jade, the first niece

A Shade of Jade

Since Rebecca Jade, the first niece, is having a significant natal day tomorrow, I figured it was time to write about her again.

She and her parents lived in Jackson Heights, Queens, NYC, for her first two years. I first visited her when she was a month old. For sure, I was at her first and second birthday parties. Then, her family moved to Puerto Rico.

Still, I’d see her on occasion. The picture above is after my Grandma Williams’ funeral at Trinity AME Zion Church in Binghamton, NY. It’s my favorite picture of us together, although the one of me walking with little Becky, when she’s wearing a red jumper, is cool too.

She, her mother, and I would converge on Charlotte, NC, for my parents’ anniversaries divisible by 5. We often had family photos taken. On one occasion, Rebecca had remnants of chicken pox on her face, which shows a bit in the photo.

I attended her high school graduation in El Cajon, CA. She played basketball for Berkeley, and I saw her play once at a road game in the NYC area; I also made it to her college graduation.

She was at both of my parents’ funerals in 2000 and 2011. My mom’s was the latter when she first met my daughter. But my daughter had seen Rebecca on television in a competition called Wipeout on ABC-TV in 2010. My niece placed second.

Rebecca attended my last wedding in 1999, and I attended hers to Rico in 2005. My family, Rebecca and Rico, spent Thanksgiving 2013 together at our cousin Anne’s house in New Rochelle, NY.

Cold Fact

The first musical recording of the first niece was a three-song demo when she was a teenager. However, one of her earliest albums was 2011’s The Jade Element, which one can find here.

There are two Rebecca Jade and The Cold Fact albums, the 2015 eponymous one and 2019’s Running Out Of Time. You can get the former here or here. The latter can be found here or here ,or on vinyl – vinyl! – here or here.

In 2018, I caught Rebecca and the Cold Fact’s gig in a San Diego club. It wasn’t the first time I’d seen her perform professionally, but it was the initial time I saw her with her band. They won a humungous $5,000 check!

Peter Sprague

I’ve seen her sing with jazz guitarist Peter Sprague and his band several times during his Liveish sessions online. Even during the height of COVID, they performed by being in separate rooms or even outside. Check out It’s For You (2021), Are You Going With Me (2021), In My Life (2022), and Guinnevere (2023).

Peter and Rebecca recorded the excellent Planet Cole Porter in 2017, which you can get here. Check out the title song, the only one not written by Porter, live.

Being a bit of an RJ completist, I also have Sparks and Seeds by Peter Sprague and Randy Phillips (2018). Rebecca sings four songs, with additional tunes by Emily Elbert, Leonard Patton, Lisa Hightower, and Allison Adams Tucker

At home

During COVID, Rebecca did about a dozen Home Made shows. Some are on Facebook. Episodes 10 and 11 11 on YouTube.

She’s put together a great new album, A Shade of Jade, which one can get at her website, along with seeing more videos, checking out her upcoming shows, and the like.

In 2023, I got to see Rebecca thrice. On July 4, she was supposed to sing backup for Sheila E. as she had in NYC in 2017 and at the New York State Fair in 2019. A thunderstorm canceled the show, but my extended family and I got to talk with her at the hotel where the band stayed.

In August, she sang in a Syracuse park. My wife, my daughter, and I saw her before the performance. Afterward, we got to hang out with her, a couple of the musicians, and promoters. Then, in late September, I saw her, for 10 seconds, in the Charlotte airport as she rushed to her connecting flight.

I would have gone to see her on the Dave Koz Christmas tour this year, as I did in 2021, when I went down to Long Island, but in 2023, they are not getting closer than Cleveland and near Pittsburgh.

Happy birthday, first niece! I love you, but you knew that, didn’t you?

Do I Understand…?

blogging about blogging

MAK, with whom I traveled to Las Vegas, has an inquiring mind.

Do I understand that you have a couple of blogs ready to go at any given time and ongoing drafts?

Well, sort of. When we left for LV on Sunday, I had 41 blog posts scheduled. On Friday, I had 36, having written one while there. But many are specific to a particular date (two about the daughter for the 26th of September and October, one regarding my mom’s birthday, one for Veterans Day, one for the 25th anniversary of my appearance on JEOPARDY, posts for November 1 and 2).

So, while they’re ready to go, it’s not at “any given time.” The great thing about writing ahead is that sometimes I change them. Indeed, my November 1 and 2 posts generated a third one. Several sooner-than-later pieces (music, movie reviews, Ask Roger Anything answers) exist. Some I could post eventually. And about five that no one will see until I die so I can haunt you after I’m gone.

Process

I’ve learned that when I have an idea for a post to write for a specific date, such as November 11, I’d better write it right then, even if it’s September 17. Otherwise, I might forget that great idea. No, not the idea, but the approach.

I don’t publish in the order that I write. Also, I often switch the order, so something urgent to write about might bump a post already in the queue. I do that a LOT. As a result, most of the time, I have no idea what’s being posted on most days, which is a lot of fun.

I saw Barbenheimer on successive days, but I didn’t post reviews of them back-to-back. My working theory is that if someone doesn’t like one type of feature, maybe the next day will be more their cuppa.

The Ask Roger Anything and Sunday Stealing features serve the same function: generate ideas to write about, but my approach is quite different. For ARA, I’ll look up things, such as the law for ADA compliance. Conversely, Sunday Stealing is essentially free association. The former might take a couple of hours, while I can usually do the latter in half an hour.

The reason for the linkage is that there are too many things I could write about, but I don’t have time for that. I don’t always agree 100% with every POV, but they interest me in some way.

Need a new shiny object.

I tend to write as fast as two-finger typing allows. While I might start a post on one day and finish it the next, posts that, for reasons of time, go on past that tend to make me cranky. The blog post I wrote in Vegas took four days, making me cranky because my brain wanted to go on to the next topic.

I once noted: My late blogger buddy Dustbury “noted that he and I have something in common: we are both magpies. As he put it: ‘The Eurasian magpie… is wicked smart, especially for a bird… I am not quite sure how ‘magpie’ became a descriptor for humans who flit from topic to topic unless it has to do with the bird’s tendency to be attracted to Shiny Things, but I’m pretty sure I fit that description, and I have several readers who seem to do likewise.’”

I seldom know what will land with the audience and what won’t. I was pretty sure Roger in a pink do-rag might resonate. But a piece I wrote in 2014 about Spaulding Krullers – think donuts – continues to generate comments in 2023.

I have – let’s see – 111 posts in drafts. The vast majority will NEVER see the light of day.

Here’s a bonus of writing it down. It’s a repository of my personal information. When DID I see that movie? What year did that cousin die? It was not the original motivation, but after nearly 18.5 years, I searched my blog at least twice a week.

Until it sucks

There is an article I came across, How To Know It’s Time To Quit Writing. “You don’t find any joy in it anymore – when you sit down to write, it feels like a struggle, you have no motivation, and even when you do manage to get words out, you don’t get that rush of satisfaction like you used to.”

It still brings me joy most of the time. When it doesn’t, I’ll probably stop. And BTW, congrats on your second post in less than a month. As I told you, quoting the late Steve Gerber: “There is only one characteristic that distinguishes writers from non-writers: writers write. (That’s why there’s no such thing as an “aspiring writer.” A writer can aspire to sell or publish, but only non-writers aspire to write.)”

Note about the photo taken from our car, my wife driving, on October 8, 2023, just north of Catskill, NY. Five minutes earlier, the rainbow was quite strong. This is Fading Rainbow from a Moving Car. I like it anyway.

I may never leave town again

US Mail (not US male)

I seem to be involved in a lot of stuff for a retired guy. I may never leave town again. The period following my trip to Las Vegas was hectic.

Fri, Sept 29: I had my annual physical., which my wife took me to. My physician’s office has moved thrice in the past few years because St. Peter’s Health Services/Trinity Health has bounced her around to Delmar, then to Slingerland, and now to Rensselaer (all in the metro but in different directions). The last move would take me an hour to get to and well over an hour to get back by bus, which is how I had gotten to her previous locations.

Taking a term created by another patient, my doctor declared me welderly, a portmanteau of well and elderly.

My wife had booked a trip to a Wyndham timeshare property in western Massachusetts well before I planned my Las Vegas sojourn. I went with her largely because I wouldn’t otherwise see her.

Sat, Sept 30: In the morning, we returned to Albany to attend the funeral of Dwight Smith, and I sang in the choir. I learn so much at a funeral, even about people I’ve known for years. Then, my wife returned to Massachusetts with a friend to see a play the next day.

Trivia!

Sun, Oct 1: I went to church. When I got home, I waded through too many emails.

Then, I went to Fort Orange Brewing for a trivia contest, a benefit for Empower Ethiopia. We started slowly, but we were in the upper half of the teams by the second round, and in second place, only two points behind the leaders, after the sixth and penultimate round.

The category of the final question was US Mail. In what decade did the price of a first-class stamp reach double digits, i.e., ten cents or more? I distinctly remember a four-cent purple Lincoln stamp when I was nine or ten, so the 1970s seemed reasonable. (It was March 2, 1974. ) The team in first place bet nothing but said the 1960s. We bet 213 of our 220 points, making sure we’d beat the third-place team if they got it right, and they had bet it all, assuming we were also correct. Janna, Annika, Chuck, and I won. Fist pump!

One thing to another

Mon, Oct 2: I went to Labcorp for fasting bloodwork at 10:30 a.m., the earliest slot I could get.

At 2 p.m., I recorded a five-minute video for the upcoming conference of the New York Genealogical and Biographical Society (NYG&BS) about my great-great-grandfather, James Archer. I hope they use it.

Finally, at 4 p.m., I went to Capital Rep to the Wizard’s Wardrobe Reader’s Theater with my wife. I helped greet the readers and escort them to the “green room,” as it were. At the risk of sounding boastful, I’m pretty good at that.

That evening, the power went off for about five minutes, then three minutes, and finally well over an hour, so I went to bed.

Tues, Oct 3: Finally, the restart of my church’s Tuesday Bible Guys on ZOOM.

Then I had to figure out an introduction of Marina Antropow Cramer, who was doing an author talk at the Albany Public Library about her historically-based fiction books Roads (“When Nazi forces occupy the beautiful coastal city of Yalta, everything changes.”) and Marfa’s River.

Wed, Oct 4: Aside from making pancakes for dinner and watching baseball, I did almost nothing, flipping back and forth between two games.

Sunday Stealing – LEP

USDA definition of a sandwich

This week’s Sunday Stealing is again via LEP, the League of Extraordinary PenPals.

1. October reading & writing goals and plans

Reading: any one of the dozen or so books I bought THIS YEAR before the end of 2023. Writing: limiting myself to one blog post per day.

2. Something I did that totally paid off

I was putting away money for retirement. To my surprise, I stayed at my last job long enough that my wife’s health insurance is paid until she hits 65 and my daughter’s until she turns 26.

3. I want to see this make a comeback

Civility in public discourse when talking/writing about politics. Not to my surprise, I noticed that one rightwing online outlet described djt lawyer Sidney Powell agreeing to a plea deal as stabbing djt in the back.

4. Generational traits I really value

It’s a cliche, but my daughter has helped me with some technology.

5. Changes I’d like to see in my daily environment

I wish some cars would not drive at 50 MPH/80 kph down my street. There’s an elementary school, the attendant school buses, parents, and kids.

6. Favorite soup dishes

I misread this as my favorite soap dish initially. I’m a New England clam chowder guy. As a kid, it was Campbell’s Cream of Mushroom soup.

7. Start with the best part, or save the best for last

I’m not sure this answers the question, but I tend to go to the farthest one first when I have a series of tasks involving travel to several stores.

8. The most chaotic part of my daily life

Waking up, feeding the cats before they caterwaul, feeding my wife and me.

What I’d eat

9. If I could only eat 10 things, I’d pick

Two of them are easy: sandwiches and pie. Sandwiches have an interesting Wikipedia page. “In the 21st century, there has been considerable debate over the precise definition of sandwich, and specifically whether a hot dog or open sandwich can be categorized as such… The USDA uses the definition ‘at least 35% cooked meat and no more than 50% bread’ for closed sandwiches, and ‘at least 50% cooked meat’ for open sandwiches.

“In Britain, the British Sandwich Association defines a sandwich as ‘any form of bread with a filling, generally assembled cold,’ a definition which includes wraps and bagels but excludes dishes assembled and served hot, such as burgers.'” My definition is quite liberal and would include tacos, tortillas, et al. Now, this is a sandwich.

Similarly, a ‘pie is a baked dish which is usually made of a pastry dough casing that contains a filling of various sweet or savoury ingredients. Sweet pies may be filled with fruit…, nuts, sweetened vegetables… Savoury pies may be filled with meat…, eggs and cheese, … or a mixture of meat and vegetables.'” I will make the case that pizza is also a pie.

Beyond that, grapes, apples, blueberries, spinach, tuna fish, salmon, oatmeal, and oatmeal raisin cookies.

10. What Autumn feels like where I live

Early October was ridiculously warm, c 82F/28C for a high. Now, it’s closer to 61F/16C. (BTW, I love the 104/40, 82/28, 61/16 connection; this is how I track the comparison between Fahrenheit and Celsius on the fly. The changing leaves’ color seems muted, though they were better in western Massachusetts last weekend.

11. The teacher who would be most proud of me

My 6th-grade teacher, the late Paul Peca.

12. My go-to Halloween snacks & treats

Mounds bar, York Peppermint patties

What is life?

13. 10 ways my life is great right now

A: I have a congenital heart issue, and every six months, I get scanned. It’s no worse this month than last time, so I won’t have open-heart surgery this year. B: The church choir is singing in person. We’re singing a significant piece next month. C: I went on two trips this year. It’s the first year since 1995 that I’ve traveled, requiring airlines twice. D: Seeing our daughter last weekend was great. E. I live in a place with excellent local bus access. I was on a CDTA bus when a woman told me only two local buses were in Middletown, NY.

F: I haven’t had COVID or the flu this year. In the past month, I received vaccines for both. G: I have no credit card debt, and I have in the past. H: I have made some genealogical breakthroughs, two of which I’ll mention in November. I: It’s great having a library, movie theater, and grocery store in my neighborhood. (RIP, my local CVS.) J: I get to listen to music almost all day.

14. A perfect day indoors looks like…

I’d read the newspaper, do my Wordle, write a blog post, have my friends come over to play hearts, and watch a recorded episode of JEOPARDY. Except for watching TV, I’d listen to music.

15. Pumpkin spice…

Meh. I don’t HATE it, but I don’t get the appeal.