Category: Uncategorized

The U.S. Bureau of the Census projects that by 2030, 20.8 percent of upstate New York’s population will be aged 65 and over, a share still slightly higher than for the nation as a whole.

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Got a call indicating the fact that they’re interested in using an expanded version of my response. Here’s the original:

“I went back to graduate school at age 37, started working a librarian at the age of 39. I’m now 53, and I have a 2-year- old daughter, which means I’ll be 69 when she graduates from high school. And then, presumably, she will want to go to college.
Retirement just doesn’t seem to be part of my mindset right now.”

1. Informal, conversational style. I like when the author is blunt and honest. Website “articles”, written like a magazine product review, sound too clinical and leave me cold.

Well, you know, like I write, like, like a REAL HONEST-TO-GOODNESS PERSON!!! Like, don’t I? Or am I too erudite?

2. I like people who use their real names more than those who use pseudonyms, and I like pseudonyms better than pure anonymity. (The difference between the last two being mostly how long they’ve been using their pseudonym.) I’m unlikely to read something from a never-seen-before pseudonym. Nothing wrong with that. Some people are private. Just not for me.

Lessee, my name is really George Rowan and I’m a CIA operative. Nah, as hero Popeye has said several times, “I yam what I yam.”

3. No ads. Banner ads are better today than they were seven years ago. During the dot-com boom, the internet was lousy with blinking eyesores and faux-dialog box traps. Those are still around, but anyone serious about holding an audience usually goes with something a bit more subtle. Having said that, even diminutive Blogads bug me. So, I tend to gravitate towards the ad-free sites.

This Shamus fellow sounds like a Commie. No ads? Where is his sense of capitalism?

4. I prefer dark lettering on light backgrounds. This didn’t used to be a problem, but as I decay into toothless old codgerdom I find white-on-black harder and harder to read. When I look away I see the horizontal bars burned onto my vision for a while afterwards, and that just can’t be good.

Well, as much as I’d like my site to alternate between yellow on white and purple on black – VERY readable combinations, don’t you think? – I too have readability issues. In truth, there are very interesting blogs out there I just don’t read because it’s too much of a pain to SEE them.

5. I prefer to read what adults have to say, and I’m not talking about age here. I’ve found quite a few videogame blogs that are a wasteland of juvenile flames and trash talk. Yeah kid, your guild 0wnz me. Good for you. Be sure to put that on your resumé.

If you’ve been reading my blog for any time now, you KNOW I only talk about the latest videogames. Nothing else seems to interest me. Take THAT, Lefty!

6. I like one-author blogs better than group blogs, but only because I like to know who I’m reading. I’ve never seen it done, but I would actually enjoy a group blog if each author had a little icon or something at the top of the post, similar to what I do with categories. I really can’t stand blogs where I have to look to the end of a post to know who I’m reading, since that’s the first thing I want to know.

Hamilton: Eh.
Joe Frank: Double eh.
Reynolds: What they said.
Actually, I think I’ve used an anonymous contribution once, and I have another available in case I ever need a fill-in issue. (Fill-in issue – how very comic book.) Once or twice out of 720 posts is a pretty good percentage, I think.

7. I like some info about the author. I don’t need an autobiography, but I at least like to have some idea of the age and gender of the author. I hate hunting around for clues like oblique references to their spouse and children (or absence thereof) and trying to extrapolate who the author is from that.

I am very mysterious. You wouldn’t know that I have a wife and a daughter or that I’m a librarian, a Christian, or black. Well, here’s something I really DON’T think I’ve ever told you: I’m 5’11 3/8″ tall, right-handed, and I hate anchovies.

10. Sports Night: watched religiously. Would have ranked higher if it could have stuck around a little longer.

9. All in the Family: groundbreaking stuff. But it went on too long, as Logan noted.
8. Frasier: erudite humor mixed with occasional madcap fun. (Miles ironing his pants is one of the great pieces of TV, all sans dialogue.)

7. Barney Miller: the first year, they tried for Barney to have a home life, complete with a wife (Barbara Barrie), but it never jelled. After that, it found its own voice. I never was a big Fish fan (BTW, to the best of my knowledge, Abe Vigoda is still alive,) but it was the guest stars and their reaction to the cops that really worked for me.

6. Taxi: Reverend Jim was my favorite character, but it was a great ensemble, with Judd Hirsch’s Alex holding the center.

5. WKRP in Cincinnati – is this show as funny as I remember? As much as I appreciated Venus Flytrap and Johnny Fever, and, O.K., Bailey Quarters, my great appreciation was for Les Nessman, he of the imaginary walls and flying turkeys. If the rights to the great music originally associated with this show could somehow find clearance, I’d buy the season DVDs in a minute.

4. Cheers – I wasn’t quite as fond of it after Diane left, but I warmed up to Rebecca in time.

3. M*A*S*H – probably would have ranked higher, maybe even #1, if it had gone when Radar did. I watched those first seven or eight seasons even in reruns, but not the last three or four, which start repeating itself. B.J. falling off the fidelity wagon – touching. B.J. THINKING about falling off the fidelity wagon a few seasons later – boring.

2. The Mary Tyler Moore Show – it wasn’t Mary so much as Lou “I hate spunk” Grant, Murray’s savaging Ted Baxter (often without Ted knowing), full-of-moxie Rhoda, and the sweet-seeming yet savage Sue Ann Nivens, played by Betty White.

1. The Dick van Dyke Show. This is why the show is the gold standard: it lasted five years, not too short, not too long. It had a near perfect mix of work life and home life. It had Richard Deacon of Binghamton, NY, my hometown, as Mel Cooley. It had the superb Carl Reiner, the original choice for Rob, BTW, as the egotistical Alan Brady. It has segments I haven’t seen in decades I still can remember, such as son Richie’s middle name: Robert Oscar Sam Edward Benjamin Ulysses David, or ROSEBUD. It had an ottoman in the opening, which Rob either trips over or dances deftly around. And it had Mary Tyler Moore in capri pants.

Just missing the cut:

Almost anything with Dabney Coleman.

When my sisters were old enough to share a room, my father built a couple walls out of the hallway which became my bedroom, of sorts. To compensate for that tiny space, he agreed to paint, right on the ceiling, whatever I wanted. What I wanted was the solar system. The sun was the size of a large beach ball, and the other planets were done to scale. I used to “look at” this part of the galaxy every night before I went to bed for about ten years, until I went to college, and then my parents subsequently bought another house.

The initial changes that were proposed for the solar system didn’t bother me at all. Many things that I “knew” as a child have been altered with new discoveries.

The proposed definition: A planet is a celestial body that (a) has sufficient mass for its self-gravity to overcome rigid body forces so that it assumes a hydrostatic equilibrium (nearly round) shape, and (b) is in orbit around a star, and is neither a star nor a satellite of a planet.

What I Knew/What I Know Now
Mercury – had 0 moons/still has 0 moons
Venus – had 0 moons/still have 0 moons
Earth – had 1 moon/has 1 moon
Mars – had 2 moons/has 2 moons
Jupiter-had 12 moons/has 61 moons
Saturn-had 9 moons/has 31 moons
Uranus-had 5 moons/has 21 moons
Neptune-had 2 moons/has 11 moons

Yet, I do have some disappointment. Ceres, under consideration as a planet, continues to be cosmic debris in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter. The recently found 2003 UB313, which the discover, Caltech researcher Mike Brown, has dubbed Xena (yes, after the warrior princess) remains just some other heavenly body.

And Pluto, dear Pluto, once a real live planet is now – well read this:
“The [proposed but rejected] definition entirely misses the key element of a solar system object, namely its role in the formation of the solar system,” David Charbonneau, a researcher at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, said. “There are eight fully formed planets. The other objects – Ceres, Pluto, Charon [Pluto’s moon], [Xena], and hundreds of thousands of others, are the fascinating byproducts of the formation of these eight planets.” Thus, Pluto, controversial since its discovery in 1930, had its planetary status on the table again, and lost it. Pluto is merely a “fascinating byproduct”.

I suppose it’s for the best. There would have been at least 53 planets, by Mike Brown’s count, had the newdefinitionn taken hold. Imagine the learning curve in school textbooks if THAT hadoccurredd. It’ll still be complicated.

But think of all the ruined mnemonic devices:
My very exciting mother just served us nine pizzas
My Very Easy Memory Jingle Seems Useful Naming Planets
My Very Energetic Mother Just Sent Us Nine Pickles
Men Very Easily Make Jugs Serve Useful Nocturnal Purposes
My Very Elegant Mother Just Sat Upon Nine Porcupines
My Very Educated Mother Just Served Us Nine Peas
Mark’s violet eyes make Jane sit up nights pining

Still, there’s a woman in my office that I’m at least mildly jealous of. She got to see the Beatles LIVE. She got tickets through a local Catholic church group, and went with her friend, with their mothers as chaperones, on a bus to Atlantic City on August 30, 1964. Check those ticket prices!

From Jackie DeShannon’s website:
BEATLES FIRST AMERICAN TOUR (August 19 – September 20, 1964)

August 30: Convention Hall Atlantic City, New Jersey: Three days after the Democratic National Convention was held here, The Beatles played one concert here. Over 19,000 Beatles fans attended the concert which started at 8:30 p.m. After the show, the Beatles left the hall in a laundry truck, as leaving by limousine would have been impossible.

Sure, the Beatles were far away and difficult to hear over the screams, but still…

What put me in mind about that is the fact that TODAY is the 40th anniversary of the Beatles’ gig at Candlestick Park in San Francisco, which turned out to be their last concert performance. The opening act line-up included The Remains, Bobby Hebb, The Cyrkle and The Ronettes, without Ronnie Spector. The set list was:
Rock and Roll Music
She’s A Woman
If I Needed Someone
Day Tripper
Baby’s In Black
I Feel Fine
Yesterday
I Wanna Be Your Man
Nowhere Man
Paperback Writer
Long Tall Sally