Ramblin' with Roger

March rambling: Trimmer

me and Maurice Ravel

Trimmer (def 1): One who adjusts beliefs, opinions, and actions to suit personal interest.

Let There Be Light by Sharp Little Pencil

Fact-checking FOTUS’ address to Congress and CPAC

ICE Detention: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver (HBO)

RFK Jr. Misleads on Vitamin A, Unsupported Therapies for Measles

‘Project 2025 in Action’: Administration Fires Half of Education Department Staff

DEI Is Disappearing In Hollywood. Was It Ever Really Here?

Musk Said No One Has Died Since Aid Was Cut. That Isn’t True.

Meet Everyone Hates Elon, the U.K.-Based Collective Attempting to Take Down Musk: “Let’s Make Billionaires Losers Again”

“One of the saddest lessons of history is this: If we’ve been bamboozled long enough, we tend to reject any evidence of the bamboozle. We’re no longer interested in finding out the truth. The bamboozle has captured us. It’s simply too painful to acknowledge, even to ourselves, that we’ve been taken. Once you give a charlatan power over you, you almost never get it back.”

― Carl Sagan, The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark

Also

The “I Am Canadian” commercial returns!

13 Minutes To The Moon, the podcast about how NASA got to the moon. Produced by the BBC World Service and hosted by Kevin Fong from NASA, with fascinating interviews. Hans Zimmer did the music.

Sports Betting: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver

Devin “Legal Eagle” Stone is not quitting

The 6668th Central Postal Battalion

Read an interview with Jim McNeal and J. Eric Smith, the authors of Crucibles: How Formidable Rites of Passage Shape the World’s Most Elite Organizations, now available for preorder

John Green reads Chapter 1 of his new book EVERYTHING IS TUBERCULOSIS and is interviewed on the CBC

We Will Eradicate Measles

Joseph Wambaugh, L.A. Cop Turned Novelist and Screenwriter, Dies at 88. I used to watch Police Story.

Kevin Drum, writer of solid political commentary, died

Carl Dean, Dolly Parton’s husband of nearly 60 years, dies at 82

A collection of the Mickey Mouse shorts from 1929, including Mickey speaking his first words in The Karnival Kid

Captain America Co-Creator Jack Kirby Getting Definitive Documentary ‘Kirbyvision’

Now I Know: Bombs Away! (Cat Version) and The Jigsaw Puzzles Worth Their Weight in Gold? and A Whopper of a Way to Pay For Your Wedding and How Homer Simpson’s Comical Gluttony Saved Lives and A Classical Way to Save the Whales and Why 19th Century Britons Lost Their Heads

Albany Public Library

Two Open Seats on APL Board. Albany voters will select two trustees for the Albany Public Library Board in the May 20 election. Both positions carry full five-year terms, which commence on July 1.

The library is hosting the following public forums:

“So, You Want to be a Library Trustee” Information Sessions

March 22 (Sat) | 10-11:30 am | Howe Branch | 105 Schuyler St.
March 26 (Wed) | 6:30-8 pm | Pine Hills Branch | 517 Western Ave.

Hear from current trustees about what it’s like serving as an APL trustee, how to get on the ballot, and tips for a successful campaign.

Meet the Trustee Candidates Forum and Library Budget Session

May 6 (Tue) | 6-7:30 pm | Washington Ave. Branch | 161 Washington Ave.

Bad news for libraries: ALA’s statement on the White House assault on the Institute of Museum and Library Services

Friends and Foundation of the Albany Public Library Author talks/book reviews in April, Tuesdays at 2 pm, 161 Washington Ave, large auditorium:

April 1 | To Be Announced

April 8 | Author Talk | C. M. Waggoner, who as a youngster ‘spent a lot of time reading fantasy novels in a swamp,’ discusses & reads from her mystery, The Village Library Demon-Hunting Society.

April 15 | Book Review | Piranesi, a novel by Susanna Clarke. Reviewer: Sarah Reiter, prolific local fiction writer & artist.

April 22 | Book Review | Tracing Homelands: Israel, Palestine, and the Claims of Belonging by Linda Dittmar. Reviewer: Jim Collins, PhD, professor emeritus, Linguistic Anthropology, U at Albany, SUNY.

April 29 | Book Review | Killed by a Traffic Engineer: Shattering the Delusion that Science Underlies Our Transportation System by Wes Marshall. Reviewer: Jackie Gonzales, PhD, environmental historian & project manager, Capital Streets.

MUSIC

Beethoven’s Opus 72 (Fidelio), Overture, which, of course, is all about me!

In February 2014, my wife and I attended the Albany Symphony Orchestra concert, which included Maurice Ravel’s Bolero. We got the tickets from friends at church who gave them up because one of them hated that piece of music, thinking it was boring. Seeing and hearing Bolero live was exquisite.

Flash forward to March 2025, and blogger buddy Kelly linked to a performance of Ravel’s Bolero despite his long-standing disdain for the piece. He wrote, “This one’s really very good, and the camera work in this video is pretty terrific.” Not incidentally, this being the 150th anniversary of Ravel’s birth this year, ASO is performing Bolero again on April 5, 2024, at the Palace Theatre in Albany. We are not going because of a conflict, but I recommend it. Incidentally, Maurice and I have the same birthday.

Lisztomania -Phoenix

Bach at Home: Brandenburg Concerto No. 2 Movement III by Orchestra of St. Luke’s

Defy Democracy – A Randy Rainbow Song Parody

Bored in the U.S.A. – Father John Misty

Hello, It’s Me – Evan Marks & Rebecca Jade. Vote in this year’s San Diego Music Awards for this song in Category 21 every day through March 27!

Personality Crisis – New York Dolls; Hot! Hot! Hot! – Buster Poindexter. David Johansen, Flamboyant New York Dolls Vocalist and Co-Founder, Dies at 75

Name of God – Mustafa

Mambo Lido – Peter Sprague

Oh! You Pretty Things – Lisa Hannigan

Lupron – Time Wharp

One O’Clock Jump – Buddy Rich

Joy, Joy! – Valerie June

Look What I Found – Lady Gaga (from A Star Is Born)

Bulletproof -La Roux

Death of Samatha – Yoko Ono

Coverville 1525: Cover Stories for Missing Persons and New Bohemians

Intro -The xx

Concern – William Tyler

Pique Dame by Franz von Suppe

Less Irish

slightly more African

In various iterations I’ve gotten from ancestry.com I seemed to “become more Irish,” starting about 23% and getting up to about 28%. And then there was a big drop in the last interpretation. It’s not that I’m less Irish; I knew this this intellectually.

Region	August 2023	July 2024: more information	% Change
Ireland	28%	20%	– 8%

“Your DNA doesn’t change, but our knowledge does. Over time, the amount of data we have increases, and we improve the ways we can analyze it. When that leads to new discoveries, we update your results.”

Iin some ways it makes a whole lot more sense I couldn’t figure how it could be more than 25% Irish given the fact that my father’s side is virtually 0 percent. Virtually all the Irish is on my mother’s side.

I’m still looking for my mom’s father’s (Clarence Williams)’s mother’s (Margaret Collins) parents, who are almost certainly from Ireland. maybe this year, I’ll be able to crack that nut.

But I haven’t spent that much time looking at my mom’s mom’s (Gertrude Yates Williams) father’s (Edward Yates, b. 1851) mother (Anna Kiser), who may be Irish.

“Same data, more detail. This chart shows the percentages of each region you inherited from your parents. Added together, the percent from each parent for a region equals your percent for that region.”

Mixing it up

The thing about doing genealogy is that I, and likely others, often try to take the easiest path. There’s been a line of my mother’s mother’s mother’s people that I’ve known all my life because they were all lived in Binghamton and there was a family Bible that gave much of the story. Oher branches are much more mysterious, in large part because families have secrets.

Parent 1 is clearly my mother, parent 2, my father. Hmm, I’m more Germanic than I used to be.

Region	Parent 1	Parent 2	You
Total: 14	50%	50%	100%
Nigeria	7%	13%	20%
Ireland	20%	<1%	20%
Benin & Togo	5%	10%	15%
England & Northwestern Europe	8%	7%	15%
Mali	1%	4%	5%
Germanic Europe	3%	2%	5%
Senegal	0%	4%	4%
Ivory Coast & Ghana	1%	2%	3%
Nigerian Woodlands	2%	1%	3%
Cameroon	1%	2%	3%
Western Bantu Peoples	1%	2%	3%
Central West Africa	<1%	2%	2%
Indigenous Americas—North	1%	0%	1%
Norway	<1%	1%	1%

Don’t Cry! It’s Only Sunday Stealing.

Frosty

moon 3/14/2025 Don’t Cry. It’s only Sunday Stealing. This week, we’re stealing from Steph, aka Cry Baby. She loves Taco Bell and asks questions like these.

1) Think about the last person you forgave. How long did it take you to forgive them?

I don’t know. I can’t remember the last time I was in a situation to forgive somebody. The last time I had a lengthy disagreement, they were upset with me much more than I was upset with them. Let’s say we had a political difference of opinion for about four years. Eventually, they decided that they wanted to see me after all.

2) Steph’s favorite fast food is Taco Bell. What’s yours?

It’s been a few years since I’ve been there, but it is probably Wendy’s. I like the burgers, and they have an ice cream-related thing called the Frosty. I saw in a segment on CBS News that they are mixing Frosties with Girl Scout Thin Mint cookies. It sounds weird; I wouldn’t mind having one to test it out.

3) Who was the last friend you hung out with? What did you do?

Over half a dozen people played hearts at my house yesterday to honor my birth month. I wrote about the tradition of the hearts game here. I wanted to have a hearts game at my house at least once a year, and, for the most part, since I turned 60, it’s happened.

Lunar eclipse

4) Did you do anything this past week that will still seem important a year from now?

“Important” might be a strong word, but significant, I would say yes. Going to see the solar eclipse in April 2024 was fun, but visually disappointing. Others, even in my area, have seen the Northern Lights in 2024, but I could never find them.

I stayed up until 3 a.m. on March 14th to look at the moon, which was primarily orange during the lunar eclipse. Unfortunately, I don’t have a very good camera—in fact, I don’t have a real camera at all. I took a picture with my phone, which is unimpressive, to say the least, but I blew it up, and it appears in this post. It doesn’t look like the moon, but it’s cool or at least interesting.

5) Will this coming week be better than last week? How so?

I keep making a list of things I need to do next week, and the items remain on the list as I go through the week. Will next week be better? I thought last week would be better, so next week COULD be better, but there are no guarantees. Other things pop up and take me off in another direction.

The writer who reviewed every album

Rolling Stone’s ‘500 Greatest Albums of All Time’ list

Every album? On January 28, Medium writer Harris Sockel noted: “Last weekend, I spent several hours digging into a majestic 138-minute read by Tom Morton-Collings (it’s more of a book, to be honest). He began the project last year, inspired by Rolling Stone magazine’s 500 Greatest Albums of All Time…

“He decided to listen to all 6,800 songs on all 500 albums. It took him over six months. He writes:

“’I grew up as a music fan believing in the medium of the album as sacred. Somewhere along the way, I’d lost sight of that. I ditched all my physical media a long time ago. I only used streaming services and, more and more, was only listening to playlists curated… based on my listening habits. […] I wasn’t expanding my musical horizons at all. If anything, they were narrowing.’”

As you likely know, I’m enough of a dinosaur to play CDs still. And I received a record player for Christmas!

“What follows is the most detailed, exhaustive journey through the last 70 years of music that I’ve ever seen… While reading, I kept pausing to revisit albums I hadn’t heard in decades… I made a few new discoveries, like Laura Nyro’s Eli and the 13th Confession (1968) [LISTEN!]. And I learned that Rolling Stone really needs to listen to its own list, because Morton-Collings points out a few (what he perceives as) lazy choices — like including a five-hour Merle Haggard compilation as one of its ‘top albums of all time.’ A more discerning curator would’ve picked just one of the artist’s 66 studio albums.”

Suffice it to say, I LOVED reading these reviews. Albums he thought he should like but didn’t. Artists he’d heard of but had never listened to: Carole King’s Tapestry! [LISTEN] (He Loved/Liked it.)

How to

Morton-Colling’s process: “I made the decision to listen to every single one of these 500 albums, in full — in reverse order, from number 500 down to number 1 — to provide a short summation on each (5 words at first, but this was changed to 10 for the top 100) along with an arbitrary rating of my own (Loved/Liked/Maybe/Nah, or a combination of those). Also to give more elaborate feedback on selected highlights. Generally, I just wanted to open myself up to it all.”

And he owns his biases. Regarding Brothers In Arms by Dire Straits [LISTEN]. “Now then. At some point, I was always going to have to ditch my attempt to not include albums I was already familiar with as highlights. But this is with good reason. This isn’t just an album I’m familiar with, at this point it almost makes up some of the sequence of my DNA. It was released when I was 1 yr old and I feel like it has been part of my life ever since. It seeped through my skin due to constant exposure. I wouldn’t choose to be without it any more than I’d choose to be without my thumbs. It’s the sound of childhood, of endless car journeys, sat in the back seat in the middle, sandwiched between my 2 big brothers.”

More Island Records

So what albums besides these would be in my Top 25? Here are some, with links to all of them.

Not on the RS list: East/West– Butterfield Blues Band

343. Greatest Hits — Sly and the Family Stone (1970): “Funky-soul singles from improbable family. (Liked/Maybe).” This is the only greatest hits album I’d put on my list.

334. Abraxas — Santana (1970): “Relaxing, Latin-rock, guitar hero vibes. (Liked)”

I especially liked the longer piece about 3. Blue (1971) Joni Mitchell

“Overall, it made me think about how we interact with albums. How, with further listens, certain music can open up for you, but how many times those further listens won’t happen? I think sometimes, you just need that one moment to hang onto and go back. I mentioned that with this, for me, it was ‘River.. With that one moment as an anchor you can go back and find more moments that you like, and again until it all falls into place…

“With one listen, I might have dismissed this album. With repeated listens, it might become one of my all-time favourites. (Loved/Liked)”

This is why I have listened to every new album I’ve received three times before putting away.

Writer/artist Steve Bissette is 70

more than Swamp Thing

I first met writer/artist Steve Bissette in the backroom at FantaCo Enterprises, 21 Central Ave., in Albany, NY, probably in 1987. Steve had come from Vermont to talk with Tom about contributing to the comic book Gore Shriek. I worked primarily on shipping the publications and mail orders.

I tried to be cool because I didn’t want to appear like a fanboy. “Oh, I love your Swamp Thing!” even though I did love his Swamp Thing. He also does some great dinosaurs.

We developed an easy rapport, partly because of his genial nature and because I was impressed by his intellect. He has a historian’s and librarian’s mind.

Steve showed up at FantaCo maybe a half dozen times before I left the company in November 1988. He also worked on a horror magazine called Deep Red, founded by the late Chas Balun (d. 2009), who was as wonderful as Steve said.

I lost track of Steve for a bit, but I started regularly commenting on his blog around 2008. Then, I would link to posts Steve wrote in my blog. I found over 100 references to Bissette, some of which were comments on his Facebook pages.

“If you work in a brick-and-mortar retail establishment, and if you tell me when I ask if you have something that I can only get it online, then you have lost me forever as a customer at said brick-and-mortar retail establishment.” I quoted that verbatim because I agreed with the sentiment.

“I always thought Bob Marley HAD to have seen or heard the BANANA SPLITS theme. Compare Bob’s ‘Buffalo Soldiers’ riff; —c’mon, don’tcha think so, mon?” I had never given any thought before, but he may be right.

IP

His thoughts on intellectual property tended to align with mine.: digital music; Disney/Marvel, SONY, and copyright overreach; can you defend public libraries and oppose file sharing?

Likewise, “As my buddy, Steve Bissette ranted – I think it regarded a policy by Adobe or Microsoft: ‘We can afford them once, and that’s what we can afford. We want to own almost all the things we buy. With few exceptions, we don’t wish to buy or support those things that do not wish to be purchased outright. We do not need more monthly bills. We do not wish to interact with you regularly for permission to be permitted to use what we purchase to use.”

His comments on boycotting Marvel/Disney movies, such as The Avengers, because of the treatment of Jack Kirby, HERE and HERE, informed my thoughts, which is why I didn’t see the Marvel movies from 2012 to 2019.

Stephen Bissette‘s open letter to DC on Facebook about NBC’s Constantine.
“My friend Steve’s dissection of DC is so deliciously understated and addresses the issue of common courtesy.”

He solved a movie mystery for me!

FantaCo

Our overlap with FantaCo is important. Even though Steve stopped working with Tom in the early 1990s, Steve and I need to ensure the record is straight. We spent some time trying to fix the FantaCo Wikipedia page, which contained much egregious misinformation, some of which has been rectified.

When I wrote about FantaCo, Steve would link to me, and vice versa, such as here.

Steve drew the cover of a book called Xerox Ferox, which debuted at the FantaCon 2013 in Albany. I got him, Tom, and several others to sign the book. Maybe I am a fanboy.

Bio

You can read his frankly meager Wikipedia page, but he worked on much more than is noted, some of which I own.

Steve attended the Kubert School and wrote the lovely To Joe, With Love: A Sad Farewell to the Man Who Opened All the Doors. He taught at the Center for Cartoon Studies in White River Junction, VT, for about a decade and a half.

There are several Steve Bissette interviews I linked to:

You can NOW hear him blather [his word] with Robin at Inkstuds: PART 1 and PART 2.

Stephen R. Bissette: comics pioneer & evangelist from Radio New Zealand

Deconstructing Comics Podcast: #500 – Stephen Bissette: Comics, Movies, and Creator Credits.

The Stephen Bissette Shoot Interview! A Career-Spanning Chronicle!

Interview with Swamp Thing Comic Artist Stephen Bissette.

Stephen R Bissette – CCS instructor, monster-maker for Next Up Vermont.

Steve is one of 21 individuals selected to be inducted into the Will Eisner Comic Awards Hall of Fame for 2025.

He’s written a LOT of pieces, particularly in the past several years, some of which are catalogued here. However, this Facebook page is a better source of his recent work.

On his Facebook page, he’s mentioned life difficulties, such as the devastation caused by the Vermont flooding in 2011, HERE, HERE, and HERE, and other stuff, which I won’t go into.

For some birthday of mine, I swiped this from Steve’s Facebook page at least a decade ago – he’s a fellow March Piscean, of course – and I thought it both appropriate and true, though I’ve never seen the film:

“You think grown-ups have it all figured out? That’s just a hustle, kid. Grown-ups are making it up as they go along, just like you. You remember that, and you’ll do fine.”
– Lawrence Woolsey (John Goodman), MATINEE (1993)

Peace and joy and love to my friend Steve Bissette.