This week’s Sunday Stealing continues to purloin queries from 200 Questions, so I dubbed it 200.05. The last question is about the Beetle Beat.
1. What gets you fired up?
Lots of things, but injustice is high on the list. There are lots of stories of folks spending dozens of years incarcerated for crimes they did not commit. When they are finally exonerated, they’ve already missed out on so much of their lives. When the state of Missouri decided to execute a person on death row, despite pleas from the prosecution and the victim’s family concerning his likely innocence, I was utterly outraged. So, I support the Innocence Project periodically.
2. What makes a good life?
I could overthink this, but I’ll go with FDR’s Four Freedoms speech: the freedom of speech, the freedom of worship, the freedom from want, and the freedom from fear.
3. What risks are worth taking?
Saving a life, starting a business, and getting arrested for a good cause. Life is filled with risk and whether that risk is worth taking is quite individualistic.
4. Who inspires you to be better?
There are lots and lots of people—folks doing great things in the world. People are also doing really bad things, and I say, “We are better than that.” A recent Vlogbrothers post from John Green points out that we humans have done great things, but we need to do far greater ones.
I doubt it
5. What do you have doubts about?
This blog is filled with things that make me doubt whether we can survive as a species without destroying our planet, whether democracy will survive in the United States and other parts of the world, and whether we can find an equitable distribution of food worldwide. Oh, the list goes on and on and on and on and on…
6. What fact are you resigned to?
I’m never going to win the Super Bowl, the World Series, or Wimbledon.
7. What book impacted you the most?
The Closing Circle: Nature, Man, and Technology by Barry Commoner (1971). David Wineberg wrote in Good Reads: “The insane argument over the environment seems to stem from the thought this is somehow a new fad and not established science. The timely reissue of [the book] puts the lie to that nonsense. Reading it today is stunning. Commoner carefully proves his cases in meticulous scientific fashion. He researches for facts, working around obstacles. His analyses are prescient. His worries have borne fruit. Very little has changed in the intervening 50 years. Mostly, he was right and it has gotten far worse.”
8. What irrational fear do you have?
That I’m not doing “enough.”
9. What is the hardest lesson you’ve learned?
That I can’t do everything I believe needs to be done.
Hmm…
10. What is something you’re self-conscious about?
I’m not particularly fond of, uh, speaking extemporaneously because people will be parsing every bloody, er, break that you take in the conversation. I noticed this because I was interviewed for a book once, and the author used my quotes, including every break and interruption I put in my interview with him; he had recorded it on a cassette tape. I was mortified even though nobody knew who I was in the book; I was also somewhat irritated by it.
11. What are one or two of your favorite smells?
Lilacs. Steak on a grill.
12. Have you given to charities?
Many, and often. But I am very suspicious of any entity that suddenly appears after a disaster, whether 9/11 or the flooding from former Hurricane Helene. I’m unlikely to give money to any GoFundMe or a new charity.
13. What is the best compliment you have received?
I believe it was the fact that I had been working on this blog for almost 19 1/2 years. Someone said, “How do you come up with stuff?” and I said, “I just look around.”
14. What chance encounter changed your life forever?
As I’ve noted, my mother worked outside the home when I was a child in the bookkeeping department of McLeans department store in Binghamton NY. I went to Daniel S Dickinson School in kindergarten rather than Oak Street School. We would go to my grandmother’s house at lunch and after school. If I hadn’t gone to Dickinson in kindergarten, I wouldn’t have met Carol, Karen, Bill, Lois then, and, subsequently, people like Ray and Jim until 7th grade. It has had a huge impact on my life.
Finally
15. What was the most memorable gift you’ve received?
I was likely this Beetle Beat album my father bought us, an ersatz Beatles record. Subsequently, I got a paper route, joined the Capitol Record Club, and bought my own albums. I can remember the first Beatles album I purchased that I did not get from the CRC, Yesterday and Today, which I purchased at the Rexall drug store for $2.97. Since then, I’ve bought a lot of LPs, CDs, and even a few cassettes.
