July rambling: Do you remember America?

V-Discs

From https://xkcd.com/2633/

Do you remember America?

Science shows US Supreme Court abortion, guns, and environmental rulings will have devastating consequences

Dark Money Fuels the Anti-Abortion Movement’s Push to Control State Legislatures

 How Much Do Health Disparities Actually Cost?

One Big Reason Hollywood Hasn’t Begun Boycotting States Over Abortion Access

An immature notion of Freedom

The Highland Park Shooting Is a Stark Symbol of a Uniquely American Crisis

White Replacement Theory is Nothing New

Last Week Tonight with John Oliver: Water and Rent

As of July 16, 2022, dialing 988 will connect all landline and cell phone users with the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline. Call 988 if you or someone you know is in danger of suicide or experiencing a mental health crisis.

STILL: History is not a feel-good story.

Giuliani: ‘She was NEVER present when I asked for a pardon

What Happened to Michael Flynn?

Ted Cruz feuds with Elmo’s dad

674 times 3

The State of Local News: The 2022 Report

14-year-old’s “I Voted” sticker submission goes viral

James Webb Space Telescope has returned its first imagery,

Walking the World: Hanoi (part 1); more Walking The World if you subscribe

Gettysburg National Military Park: 2022 Road Trip

Safety Town

Bill Finger Awards 2022

Harrison Ford is 80; he was pretty good in Call Of The Wild

Larry Storch, Corporal Randolph Agarn on ‘F Troop,’ Dies at 99

James Caan Dies at 82. I only saw him in The Godfather, Brian’s Song, and Misery

Joel Whitman, Legendary Chart Historian, and Reference Book Author, Died at 82. I’ve owned several iterations of his Billboard charts books.

Larry Wilmore interview

Chuck Miller:  Empire State Plaza Fireworks Photos, 2022 Edition

Confessions of a Delaware Park, Buffalo, First-timer

Now I Know: The Center of the Universe, Oklahoma Edition and  How My Search for Strawberry Jam Led to Pigs in Las Vegas and The Swine of Sin City and Frosted Flakes? Or a Bright Idea? and The Banned Fashion Accessory You Wore on Your Head and The Silver Miners That Left Behind Blue GoldBlue Gold

John Oliver: Beach dolls

MUSIC
Jazz Vocalist Rebecca Jade has earned San Diego Music Awards in 2022 (two), 2021, and “Artist of the Year” for 2020. Join her for her CD release party in Live and Up Close Theater on Friday, July 22 at 8 PM where she’ll be showcasing songs from her new record, A Shade of Jade.
Tickets are only $15! Sycuan Casino Resort, 5469 Casino Way, El Cajon, CA 92019. Sycuan.com | 619.445.6002

Sunrise Mass by Norwegian composer Ola Gjeilo

V-Discs: World War II at 78 RPM

Don Juan by Richard Strauss

  Ain’t Misbehavin’ – Fats Waller from Stormy Weather (1943)

The Godfather orchestral suite by composer Nino Rota

Coverville 1405: The 50th Anniversary of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars

Dances of Galanta by Zoltan Kodaly

Wing Ding from The Lucy Show (1965)

Street Symphony plays in harmony with Skid Row’s ‘sacred spaces’

Theater!

Sweeney Todd if Lin-Manuel Miranda had written it and
the company of Hamilton played the parts

1968 Tony Awards, is the one, the only…Groucho!

Fourteen-minute deconstruction of the five-minute number Ariana DeBose and friends performed to kick off the 2022 Tony Awards ceremony.

Broadway in Yiddish? with Joel Grey

June rambling: Until Proven Otherwise

green sneakers

Back In My Day
From https://wronghands1.com/2022/06/03/back-in-my-day-millennial-edition/

Assume Every Child Has PTSD These Days Until Proven Otherwise

Chaos in John Roberts’s Court

Dobbs Decision Punctures the Supreme Court’s Sacred Mythology

The 1883 Civil Rights Cases, the 14th Amendment, and Jim Crow New York?

Gov. Ron DeSantis begins recruiting for his own Florida army

How Diversity Became a Bad Word at One State’s Public Colleges

How Milton Friedman Fought Segregation through the American Economic Association

I miss our old futurists

New York’s Redistricting Chaos Is Part of Andrew Cuomo’s Legacy

Insinuendo

New York Passes Nation’s First Electronics Right-To-Repair Law cf  malicious compliance

Rocks: John Oliver

It’s Time to Bring Back the AIM Away Message

Measure Twice, Cut Once by Norm Abram

City Lights was the greatest film ever made

Samuel L. Jackson, Michael Keaton, Oscar Isaac, and the THR Drama Actor  Roundtable

THR Tony Nominees Roundtable: Hugh Jackman, Ruth Negga, Jesse Williams, Mary-Louise Parker, and Sam Rockwell on Broadway in the Time of COVID

Now I Know: The Town That Keeps Tooting Its Own Horn and Here’s Something About Gary and I Guess You Could Say He Was Too Sharp and When North Dakota (Briefly) Tried to Secede From the United States and
How to Turn Donuts into Dough?

Four days in the Finger Lakes

The Crooked Forest: A Mystery Worth Exploring

A backyard train layout

GUNS

America’s guns have changed in my lifetime. “Comparing the United States to other countries is one of the most powerful arguments for gun control. Recurring mass shootings are a problem unique to the US, requiring an equally unique explanation. Other industrialized countries also have… all the other factors NRA-sponsored politicians and pundits raise to divert attention from guns. “

Cruz’s suggestion of one door entrance to schools for safety is problematic. But having one EXIT to a building is a fire hazard. (See any number of factory and nightclub infernos.)

Cruz says, if we limit guns, it wouldn’t have changed the outcome in Uvalde or Buffalo and that we need to do more about mental health. What if we raised the age to 21 to buy these AK-15-type weapons? 18 y.o.’s brains are not developed. The shooters in Uvalde, Buffalo, Newtown, and too many others were under 21. New York State just passed such a law.

If banning them outright seems like too extreme a solution to be politically palatable – and the US even banned at least some assault weapons for ten years, from 1994 to 2004 – here’s another option: Reclassify semi-automatic rifles as Class 3 firearms. Still, The AR-15 Has No Business Being in the Hands of Civilians.

These weapons exist for exactly one reason — to kill multiple people as quickly and violently as possible. 60 Minutes reran a story about high-velocity guns such as the AR-15. Its use in the Uvalde, TX school massacre is why families needed to offer up their DNA and why one girl was identified only by her green sneakers.

Hit the fan

Yet the Congressional talks appear to be unserious, as though mass shootings are just “Something We Have to Accept”

Do we need an Emmett Till moment, or more likely, a variation on it?

What drives mass shooters? Grievance, despair, and anger are more likely triggers than mental health, experts say.

“Mass shooters’ desire for death and destruction, experts have found, stems from a variety of circumstances and is rooted in an entrenched grievance, despair, and anger, regardless of whether they experience symptoms of mental illness.”

School Police: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver. NOT the end-all

MUSIC

Kate Bush’s 1985 classic Running Up That Hill has re-entered the chart at No. 8. The revival of the track is from the new fourth season of Netflix’s Stranger Things.

Returning Waves by Mieczysław Karłowicz.

Subterranean Homesick Blues – Bob Dylan (2022 Remake)

Le boeuf sur le toi by French composer Darius Milhaud.

Oye Como Va ft. Carlos Santana, Cindy Blackman Santana, and Becky G

Beethoven-Liszt Symphony No. 9, Op. 125 (Sheet Music) (Piano Reduction)

The Kids Are Alright – MonaLisa Twins

Coverville 1402: Cover Stories for Oasis, Fine Young Cannibals and Siouxsie and the Banshees and 1403: The Three Dog Night Cover Story II

Jungle Boogie – Muppets

Forty years of Come On Eileen – Dexys Midnight Runners

Themes from the Flintstones TV show with Lego stop motion animation

A Chinese reed instrument called the Sheng 

Pink Glasses – Randy Rainbow

Love theme Splash by Lee Holdridge

March rambling: quotation marks

Support the Albany High School robotics team!

tractor_beam_2x
From https://xkcd.com/2579/

In a world-historic first, microplastics were detected in human blood

The Our World in Data COVID vaccination data

 How American conservatives turned against the vaccine

The Lancet: Paul Farmer

Cameroonians fleeing conflict are in dire need of Temporary Protected Status – cf.  Inside “the most diverse square mile in America”

What Caused the War? Ukraine and Russia in Historical Context

The Race to Archive the Ukrainian Internet

Ukrainian Actress Oksana Shvets Killed in Russian Rocket Attack

Non-war conflict

Hate and extremism

How did Christianity become so toxic?

The Interactive Theater of Ketanji Brown Jackson’s Confirmation Hearing

Addressing racial inequality in paid leave policy

Sara Jacobs, one of the youngest members of Congress, talks about sexism and ageism in politics. 

Writing Women into History

Women in medicine are running up the wrong side of the escalator

Where Does the Religious Right Go After Roe?

Sojourner Truth’s Battle to Free Her Son from Slavery

Actor Tim Reid on addressing racial issues on WKRP in Cincinnati

Texas’ New Voting Law Disenfranchised Thousands Of Otherwise Eligible Voters

The Tangled, Messy Roots of Fake News, long before it became djt’s favorite term

Ginni Thomas demanded Congressional Republicans take the fight to overturn the 2020 election to the streets

John Bolton admits that ‘it’s hard to describe how little [djt] knows’

I Know There’s An Answer

Climate Change Brings Uncontrollable Wildfires

 The Illinois town that got up and left

The 1950 Census is Coming: What You Need to Know

Timbuctoo Institute would build opportunities in the Adirondacks 

About Those Gas Prices

Concert  Tickets: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver

2021 County and Economic Development Regions Population Estimates for NYS

Luka’s mural

Jobfished: the con that tricked dozens into working for a fake design agency

“They’re called ‘quotation marks’.”

Phobias. Aibohphobia is the (unofficial) fear of palindromes. Hippopotomonstrosesquipedaliophobia is used to describe the fear of very long words.

The official Girl Scout cookie power rankings

The Result of a Rabbit Hole

Audience participation

GoFundMe page for the Albany High School Robotics Team to compete at the FIRST Robotics World Championship in Houston, TX on April 20-23. They placed 2nd in the New York Tech Valley Regional Competition.

Four Open Seats on Albany Public Library Board in May 17 Election. Nominations are due to the Clerk of the City School District of Albany by Wednesday, April 27, at 5 pm.

New York Bike Census

Now I Know

The Biggest Bread Soup in the World and Why Are My Baby Carrots Always Wet? and The First Computer Bug and The Phone Booth in the Middle of Nowhere and Beware the Ire of Caesar and Which Came First, The Algorithm or the Pi? and World War II’s Pre-Email E-Mail

MUSIC

Livinliv – Aleksandr Shymko

Irish tunes

K-Chuck Radio: The musical tree of Ida Red  and green songs

Holiday at Ferghana -Reinhold Gliere

Lullabye of Broadway from 42nd Street

Coverville: 1393 – John Cale and Velvet Underground Cover Story and 1394 – The Blink-182 Cover Story II and 1395 – The Smashing Pumpkins Cover Story II

March rambling: Believe in Freedom

Have a little heart.

Thanks for all of the birthday wishes!

h/t to Dan VR

Wrongful Convictions: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver

Clarence Thomas and his ‘Shady Ties to Sprawling Network of Dark Money’

Ku Klux Klan on Long Island

Alice Green: We Who Believe In Freedom

Finally, Congress Passes Emmett Till Bill Making Lynching A Hate Crime

Pixar Employees Say Disney’s Statement on Commitment to LGBTQ Community Rang Hollow

Why Human Ancestry Matters: Crash Course Big History 205

North Korea Hacked Him. So He Took Down Its Internet

The Rise and Fall of a Prison Town Queen

How 25 Years of ‘Arthur’ Reflects the Legacy and Future of PBS Kids

Why do we still love The Dick Van Dyke Show? Celebrate the 60th anniversary of our favorite sitcom! by David Van Deusen

Yes, it’s settled, but don’t call the MLB lockout millionaires vs. billionaires; there were far bigger stakes and The 100 Best Baseball Books Ever Written

America’s fastest-growing sport is pickleball

The glee over the March 1 Wheel Of Fortune, er, misfortune irritated me. The contestants were harrassed, not only on social media but even by phone and in person. As host Pat Sajak said, “Have a little heart.” And as someone recently reminded me, “common knowledge” is less true now than it used to be.

*ABA – The Goodest Language Universal

How to find your lost gadget

Kelly Sedinger, fka Jaquandor, has been blogging for 20 years!

Wordle cartoon
Wordle 263 4/6

⬜⬜🟨⬜⬜
🟨⬜⬜⬜⬜
⬜🟩⬜🟩🟩
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩

Infinity cartoon

RIP

William Hurt (Broadcast News,  The Big Chill, The Accidental Tourist, Altered States, The Incredible Hulk)

Tim Considine (My Three Sons, Spin and Marty)

Johnny Brown (Good Times, Laugh-In)

Alan Ladd Jr. (greenlit Star Wars, produced Braveheart)

Conrad Janis (Mork and Mindy, trombonist

Farrah Forke (Wings)

Sally Kellerman (Hot Lips Houlihan in MAS*H movie)

Emilio Delgado (Luis on Sesame Street)

50 years ago, 17 died when a plane crashed into an Albany home

Ukraine

Weekly Sift (March 7): Notes on the War

Fighting its War of Independence

Teaching About the Russian Invasion

Tucker Carlson wants his audience to forget about what he had said after “pivot”

KyivNotKiev

A Beautiful Resistance

Boston Globe culture columnist, Jeneé Osterheldt, created this to celebrate and center Black Joy and Black lives and the lives of other folks of color, too. Mental health resources compiled by Jeneé:

Good Grief – grief resources

Unmute – match with the right therapist for you

National Suicide Prevention Lifeline

The Boris Lawrence Henson Foundation -Mental Wellness Support Program

The Trevor Project – Supporting Transgender and Nonbinary Youth

Invitation
Friends & Foundation of APL National Library Week Luncheon
 April 5, 2022, at 12pm
The Kitchen Table | 300 Delaware Ave | Albany, NY

Join us on Tuesday, April 5th to gather with friends old and new. 
We will celebrate our past president, Holly McKenna, and wish her the best of luck in her next endeavors.
And we will remember our dear Friends, Paul Hacker and David Colchamiro, who passed away last year.

Now I Know

The Bad Reason It’s Not Treason

The Not So Stupid History of Dunce Caps

The Man With Dolphin Karma

The Golden Boxes of Cheerios

The Crappiest Way to Scare People?

MUSIC

Prayer for Ukraine from Clare College, Cambridge

Beyond Context by Svitlana Azarova

Telnyuk Sisters

Luminescent (new song!) and Sign Of The Times – Petula Clark

Coverville 1392: Green Day Cover Story II

Rock The Boat – Hues Corporation

The Circle of Life from The Lion King

February rambling: Candice Bergen

the nominated Rebecca Jade; the death of Dr. Paul Farmer

chorded_keyboard_
From https://xkcd.com/2583/

$778 Billion for the Pentagon and Still Counting

Who Should You Back in the Midterm Elections?

When Discussion and Compromise Don’t Work

Clarence and Ginni Thomas show why the Supreme Court is a problem that can’t be ignored

What if public schools were the target all along? and How the Super Rich Buy Elections to Undermine Public Schools

Walking America: Jacksonville. Community among the expressways, interstates, and boulevards

Nurses’ stories from the front lines of COVID

When Facebook Doesn’t Believe You

In Canada, the Conservative Members of Parliament chose deputy leader Candice Bergen as interim leader on 2 February 2022. This was after the caucus voted to remove Erin O’Toole as party leader by a vote of 73 to 45. Not that one, the performer Candice Bergen. THIS one.

Photographer Nancie Battaglia has captured iconic images at nearly every Winter Games since 1980

Partners In Health announced that its founder, Dr. Paul Farmer, unexpectedly passed away in Rwanda from an acute cardiac event while he was sleeping. Dr. Farmer was 62 years old. John Green on The Death of My Hero. 

He Donated His Kidney and Received a $13,064 Bill in Return

The value of obituaries
An Arizona priest used one wrong word in baptisms for decades. They’re all invalid (May I say this is REALLY inane?)

Ivan Reitman, ‘Animal House’ Producer and ‘Ghostbusters’ Director, Dies at 75. My favorite of his movies was Dave.

It was the most successful Jewish ad campaign of all time — but who was the model?

Did the pandemic change our viewing habits?

Super Bowl commercials 2022

Does the Australian Capital Territory have a coastline? It’s complicated!

A historic townhouse is also a secret subway exit

Should You Use Snow to Water Your Houseplants?

New comic about paper.

BHM

Malverne: The Incomplete Struggle for School Integration on Long Island

Don’t Ban Black History, Teach It

Advancing Antiracist Efforts to Improve an Unequal Health System

How UPN Ushered in a Golden Decade of Black TV — and Then Was Merged Out of Existence

Slave-holding New York State Congressional Representatives

Critical Race Theory: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver

The Problem With Jon Stewart Podcast with Bryan Stevenson 

Now I Know

The Judge Who Intentionally Sent an Innocent Man to Jail and The Checks That Saved 75 Christmases and  The Fake Witch Who Saved Dozens of Lives and The Very Short Flight You Couldn’t Even Take and The History of Being On Hold and The Boo Racket

Music

National anthem of Ukraine

San Diego Music Awards sets 2022 performers; top nominees include Rebecca Jade

Piano Quintet in A minor by Florence Price

Playing for Change: When The Levee Breaks, feat. John Paul Jones

Seven O’Clock Shout by Valerie Coleman

The Lucky One – Peter Sprague,  Pam Pendrell — vocals

Chariots by Ulysses Kay

Cappriccio italien, Op. 45, TH 47. Mr. Bernstein conducting Mr. Tchaikovsky

Questionable – MonaLisa Twins

Coverville: 1390 – Cover Stories for Melanie, Guns N’Roses and John Williams and 1391 – Cover Stories for Sheryl Crow and Roberta Flack

No, John Williams did NOT rip off Dvorak

Everybody Loves A Lover – Arlene Silver and The Vantastix (feat Dick Van Dyke)

The Great Pretender – The Platters

Shimmy Shimmy Ko Ko Bop – Little Anthony and The Imperials 

Zoot Suit Riot   – Cherry Poppin’ Daddies 

Douglas Trumbull

Vivian Carter: Introducing The Beatles To America

Nina Simone

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