Ramblin' with Roger

In fact, the law making abortion legal in New York, the most liberal law in the US at the time, was passed in the spring of 1970, but only because Assemblyman George M. Michaels changed his vote. This made New York, and especially NYC, “The Abortion Capital of America”, according to a New York magazine article.

Not that things were settled: From this article:

Between the passage of New York’s law in 1970 and the Supreme Court’s decision of January ’73, no more state legislatures voluntarily passed permissive abortion laws. In April of ’72, New York State repealed its most permissive law. Governor Nelson Rockefeller vetoed the repeal, and the law remained in force. In the November ’72 elections, however, so many pro-abortion legislators were swept out of office that the New York General Assembly had enough votes to override the governor’s veto. Plans were made to again repeal the law when that legislature reconvened in 1973. Before it could act, however, the Supreme Court
handed down the Roe v. Wade decision and nothing was done.

We visited the house several times before we bought it, but what we never noticed until the house was ours was that when it rains extensively, as it did all day yesterday, the area starts to fill up rapidly with water. We started calling it Lake 54, in honor of a NYC nightclub I never went to. It fills up to about five inches, but no more than that, not because of drainage, but because it then leaks into our next door neighbor’s yard. Fortunately, we can shut off the electricity from the house.

Then, I read in Greg’s column about Harry Belafonte, while visiting Hugo Chavez (of course) attacking the American President. Greg wasn’t pleased. (I’d disagree with the assessment that Belafonte’s only a “calypso singer”; he was a vital player in the American civil rights movement. But as usual, I digress.)

So, I got to wondering: who DO we want to speak for us? If wrestler Hulk Hogan were to go out speechifying, we’d probably laugh, but if Jesse Ventura, once in the same profession, but most recently governor of Minnesota and a model for third party politics, wants to say something, there are people would listen. Or a B-actor makes a speech at the 1964 Republican convention and becomes governor of California a couple years later.

But it can’t be politicians we want. We don’t trust politicians.

Some people seemed to have trouble with performers speaking their minds, based on the popularity of these cards.

So who gets to speak? In this age of talk radio, reality TV, and blogs, it seems EVERYONE gets to speak. So Rev. Pat, Hugo, Harry the calypso guy, Barbra Streisand, Hulk Hogan, chat away. It’s our job to try to filter out the wheat from the chaff.

Two of the show’s episodes, though, featured Ben Franklin. In the first, My Friend Ben, “Aunt Clara accidentally summons Benjamin to help Samantha fix her lamp.” In the follow-up, Samantha for the Defense, Sam defends Ben “at his trial when he is accused of stealing a fire engine.”

Truth is, I don’t remember either of these plots – I found the descriptions in a book called Television Comedy Series by Joel Eisner and David Krinsky. I don’t even know which husband Darrin was on- the late Dick York (who starred 1964-69) or the late Dick Sargeant, though it was probably the former. What I DO remember, however, was VERY important in my view of life at the time. Ben says to Sam that he is, by nature, a pessimist, because when good things happen, he is always pleasantly surprised.

I didn’t know if that quote was truly said by the real Franklin, but it seemed to make a lot of sense, so I adopted it as part of my mantra. For years. Actually, for decades. What’s really peculiar about it is that I had totally forgotten about it until fairly recently.

I did find a list of Franklin quotes. One was: “Blessed is he who expects nothing, for he shall never be disappointed.” It seemed to capture the same spirit as my guiding quote.