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Father’s Day 2006

Lydia’s illness of over 10 days has made her very mommycentric. Seems like the same thing was happening LAST Father’s Day. Still, she DOES let me hang with her when Mommy’s not around, when we read, play with her blocks, and eat and even change her diaper. But when I try to change her when mommy’s around, she screams and thrashes about violently.

I can’t help remembering (again) how I wish MY dad could have met Lydia. Interestingly, both of my sisters send me Father’s Day cards. It surprises me, but maybe it’s a function of me being the alpha male in the family. (Heck, except for my niece’s husband of a year and a quarter, the ONLY male in the Green line.) Certainly, I seldom (or maybe never) sent THEM Mother’s Day cards, but then our Mom is still around. My friend Mark called me last night (his daughter is 10) to wish me a Happy Father’s Day. What really surprised me is that my friend Sarah Kim sent me a Father’s Day card, handmade.

I should note that my father-in-law Richard has been great. His 70th birthday was last month, and we had a surprise birthday party for him yesterday, with his kids converging in Oneonta from Albany, Catskill, and southeast Pennsylvania, along with a few dozen of his friends and relatives. He’s coming up to Albany, so he and I can go to the season opener of the New York-Penn League game Tuesday between his Oneonta Tigers and my Tri-City Valley Cats (a Houston Astros farm team). He’ll feature in the Tales of Lydia a week or so hence.

Still, there’s some fatigue-driven melancholy – I finally fall asleep around 4 a.m. yesterday morning, only to be awakened by my favorite daughter 30 minutes later, so even though I slept last night, I’m still running on fumes – and I’ve found there is only one cure for me: listening to music. Which will be a post unto itself soon. Amazon, do you still have my credit card on file? (Answer, at least at work, no, because we have a new IP address.)

But one couplet from the new Paul Simon album, seems appropriate here:
“There could never be a father
Who loves his daughter more than I love you”
Fathers of daughters everywhere, INCLUDING HERE, will claim the same.
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I haven’t had time to listen to this three minute audio (and I don’t have sound on my computer at home, but friend Sarah recommends it for Fathers Day, and that’s good enough for me.
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I’m feeling for my buddy Eddie, whose father died last year just before Father’s Day.
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Ooh, it’s Paul McCartney’s 64th birthday today. I’m SURE Mr. Hembeck will have something, ESPECIALLY since I reminded him. I’ll get to my thoughts, soon.

If I Had a Billion Dollars -Three Questions

The other song playing in my head: Money Changes Everything

I was thinking about Bill Gates, the epitome of nerdy technogeek, having donated through the Gates Foundation $10 billion in 11 years, and how he’s getting out of the rate race and, like Andrew Carnegie, another “richest man in the world”, is dedicating the rest of his life to even more philanthropic work.

Meanwhile, the technopress has been having a field day with the “Microsoft after Gates” story. One loving story was a slide show of Microsoft’s Top 10 Flops. So, the questions:

1. If you came into money, real money, maybe lottery or inheritance money, beyond taking care of the needs (and wants) of yourself, family and friends, what cause or causes would you spend the money on? There are any number of charities I’d like to give $1000 to outright, then evaluate further.

2. What WILL Microsoft look like post-Gates? To tell you how little I know about this, of the 10 flops, I remember only 2.

3. How much money would you want to have in order to say, “I’m done with working”? With a 2-year old going to college in only 16 years, and with an aging mother and an even more aging house, I’m guessing…$10 million?

Luddite

OK, I’m not quite that, but I AM not what this piece would call an Early Adopter of Technological Innovations, either:
the first 2.5% of the adopters are the “innovators”
the next 13.5% of the adopters are the “early adopters”
the next 34% of the adopters are the “early majority”
the next 34% of the adopters are the “late majority”
the last 16% of the adopters are the “laggards” (or Luddite)
I’m probably “early majority” on a few things, “late majority” on most, and a “laggard” on more than a few.

This article describes “How to identify an early adopter of the Next Big Thing”. This SO not me.

I remember kicking and screaming into the compact disc age. I mean, I had 1200 albums. Are they going to become obsolete? (Answer: largely.) My first CD purchases were new albums (Brothers in Arms by Dire Straits was definitely one), and lots of greatest hits (Elton John, Billy Joel for two) after friend Broome bought me the first four Beatles’ albums on CD and I was unable to play them.

I also had some DVDs (for free from cereal boxes), and the machines had achieved at least a 50% penetration when I finally got a player about a year and a half ago.

I still don’t own a Palm pilot (and would be afraid to do so, lest I lose it and become totally paralyzed). I’m currently without a cell phone (though that, unfortunately, will change soon), and I think Blutooth is what someone with bad dental problems suffers from. (Diffusion is the process by which a new idea or new product is accepted by the market, in case you were wondering.)

On the other hand, I never got stuck with a Betamax. I always felt sorry for Beta, which was widely considered the preferable technology, but lost out because SONY was outmaneuvered.

To my everlasting glee, I NEVER owned an eight-track. I was in someone’s car listening to The Beatles Again (that was the title), and in the middle of “Rain” , a the-minute song, the machine switches tracks. “You’re kidding!” I said out loud. “I will NEVER buy that technology. It’s stupid!” And apparently, I was right…for once.

What got me, blogger for little over a year, when seemingly half the world has been doing it forever, thinking about this, is an article in Advertising Age this week about “The Man” (their words invading My Space

http://www.myspace.com/vspink is a site for Victoria’s Secret
http://www.myspace.com/deadmanschest is the site for the new Pirates of the Caribbean movie
http://www.myspace.com/anythingbutcute is a too cute site for the Dodge Caliber
http://www.myspace.com/666, of course, is the site for the remake of The Omen. I may not know what to do with my three-month old MySpace space, but corporate America sure knows what to do with theirs.

(And I’m still having enough technological problems with Blogger that I cannot lift a comic strip into this post, one that says: “No matter how far technology advances, there will never be a better computer accessory than dot matrix printer paper.”)
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I was reading an article about net neutrality in the Wall Street Journal and was thoroughly confused. I went to the Wikipedia site and got even more confounded. Fortunately, the article in this week’s Metroland, currently here, but likely in the June 15 archives after next week, explains it in a way that even I can understand it. Oh, yeah, I’m in favor of net neutrality.

Saddam, Hitler and Margaret Hamilton

One of the wonderful thngs about being from a small city is that the folks love to own you. Jamestown, NY loves Lucille Ball, a native daughter. Binghamton loves Rod Serling, where he grew up, even though he was born in Syracuse.

Albany touts award-winning writer William Kennedy, who wrote Ironweed, among many other works. Not quite at his stature (yet) is Gregory Maguire, pictured above, who has written a number of books, some for children, others for the general reader. The most famous of these is Wicked, which was turned into a Tony-award winning musical. Wicked is the story of the Wizard of Oz from the Wicked Witch of the West’s point of view, and fairly sympathetic at that.

Gregory Maguire spoke at the Albany Public Library a couple months ago. He was very funny, engaging, witty. One of the things he discussed was the inspiration for Wicked, which was the first Gulf war in the early 1990s. He was living in Britain at the time and was reading the press reports that Saddam was as bad as Hitler. Hitler: that brought him short. For Hitler is the touchstone by which all others can be measured. (Recall, if you will, the suggestion by some that W’s policies, and the public reaction, or lack, was like Hitler in 1933 – most responses were viscerally intense.)

Well, Maguire didn’t want to write about Hitler anyway. He’s not a historian. Besides, lots of people had already documented him. Well, who else epitomized evil nearly as well?

Why, the Wicked Witch from the Wizard of Oz! As performed by Margaret Hamilton, she embodied intimidation – “I’ll get you, my pretty, and your little dog, too!” – and threats of torture – “How about a little fire, Scarecrow?” – all with that hideous laugh, and of course, green makeup. [Your Kermit the Frog reference here.]

Flag

I’ve always been fascinated by the American flag. It seems very…efficient. The 50 stars, the 13 stripes. When Vermont and Kentucky became the 14th and 15th states, the flag had 15 stripes, but soon, it became clear that adding a stripe with every state would become unworkable. A brief history can be found here. It’s good to know that if we get a 51st state, there’s already a flag designed.

But I never understood the term “red, white, and blue”. Sure, it’s the color of the flag, but it’s also the color of the British Union Jack. Look at pictures of flags of the world,
and you notice lots of them in that basic color scheme, in places like France, and our good friend, Cuba, not to mention Chile, the Czech Republic, Iceland, Norway, and, of course, Liberia.

Anyway, happy Flag Day.