Tag: news

The grumpy post

more alike

Every once in a while, I need to write a grumpy post. This is a piece about things that make me irritable. The parameters are not directly related to politics. However, I will argue that everything is politics.

ITEM: When there’s a health disaster of some sort,  such as the E. coli outbreak in some McDonald’s in Colorado and surrounding areas, or Boeing having a series of mechanical difficulties, such as a door blowing off, there’s always that language. Lawyers probably wrote it.  “We take safety seriously” or “Safety is our utmost concern.” I give McDonald’s a pass on their bad supply chain onions. But when Boeing says that, I laugh. Oh, please.

ITEM: I have heard the mantra, “We are more alike than we are different ” a lot this season, so much so that it has become a cliche. Nora O’Donnell says it frequently on the CBS Evening News. I suppose this saying is a dilution of a Maya Angelou quote: “We can learn to see each other and see ourselves in each other and recognize that human beings are more alike than we are unlike.”

The first version is a platitude that allows one to say we’re all the same under the skin while ignoring or denying the notion of racism, sexism, homophobia, and the like. The other says we can work at it; we must learn to see each other. These are not the same sentiments at all.

Related: James Baldwin noted, “We can disagree and still love each other unless your disagreement is rooted in my oppression and denial of my humanity and right to exist.”

Not So Great

ITEM: A Facebook buddy wrote: “‘That’s a great question’ has become the de facto preamble to every response, in every interview, everywhere.” It’s not just interviews. It appears in a commercial for house gutter products in a faux Q&A situation.

Somebody told me a long time ago that when you say to one party, “That’s a great question,” and you don’t say that every single time, it suggests that those other people’s questions aren’t all that good. The truth is that generally speaking, almost none of these questions are all that particularly good, let alone great.

ITEM: My wife drove us through a grocery store parking lot in the proper lane. Somebody within a parking space started pulling out in front of us or into us, so my wife beeped her horn, ensuring we didn’t have a collision. The face of the other driver looked infuriated. After we went by, they came out behind us and lay on the horn. I don’t know why this bothers me, because bad drivers.

ITEM: I got this pin: “Young people are the solution, not the problem.” The former may be partly true, but it seems that the people who created the problem should help fix it. 

When I went to Chautauqua in July 2024, environmentalist Bill McKibben talked about how old people can afford to get arrested more than young people because the consequences are less for them. They also have more money and political power.

This is JEOPARDY!

ITEM: In JEOPARDY! news: “The 2025 ToC will consist of 21 players, the top 20 champs from last April until December, and the winner of a 15-contestant Champions Wildcard. Also, like in past years, the ToC will immediately follow a Second Chance Competition for non-winners and a Wildcard for brief winners who didn’t make the cusp.”

Another Second-Chance thing? I got it when they did this during the writer’s strike. Now, it allows fewer people to get their chance on the Alex Trebek Stage. 

ITEM: This sign is in front of 110 State St. in downtown Albany, NY, and I don’t see its purpose. If you carry many packages, does this mean you can’t use it because you’re not disabled? If I am using it, does this mean that I have to identify myself as disabled? It’s weird.

Lydster: two decades

cleaning the wound

This is the second part of the daughter at two decades extravaganza. 

One of the mild life frustrations I’ve had is that my daughter didn’t get to know my birth family nearly as well as she related to my wife’s family. My father died in 2000 before she was born. While she did meet my mother a few times, most recently in 2009, she didn’t get to know her well. She had seen her cousin Rebecca on the TV show Wipeout but never in person until my mother’s funeral in 2011.  In part, that’s why she and I went to Carnegie Hall in 2022 to see my sister Leslie sing, before which we experienced an … interesting… taxi ride.

But it’s nice that she has seen my wife’s family regularly. Though my wife’s brother John died in 2002, my daughter has gotten to know her grandparents before her grandpa Richard Powell died in 2020. I think my daughter “supported” John McCain in 2008 for President because he vaguely looked like Richard. Her grandmother now lives in Albany County.

She knows her mother’s other two brothers, their wives, and their three daughters. One family, with twin girls, lives in Catskill, about an hour away, though one of the daughters is now in NYC. The other family lived in Massachusetts, but now in southeastern Pennsylvania, a fair distance but a lot closer than Charlotte, NC, and San Diego, CA. She’s attended several Olin family reunions.

Self-advocating

She became more confident in many areas. It used to be that when we went to a restaurant, she wanted one of her parents to tell the server that she had a peanut and tree nut allergy. Then, about five years ago, she insisted on doing it herself. 

During COVID, she would spend hours in her room. It was difficult to ascertain whether this was a function of the pandemic, the phase of being a teenager, or both. This eventually passed.

Early on, I wondered how to introduce issues of national and world events to her. As it turned out when she was about nine, I’d be watching the TV news in the living room; she was paying attention while in the dining room.

Her parents talk with her a LOT about whatever she asks, including issues of race. It’s impossible to protect one’s child from bigotry. When there were vigils after George Floyd’s murder in 2020, she organized a regular event in our neighborhood for about two months; as it was her gig, I only went once or twice.

Column A or Column B

There is a loose demarcation of what she will ask which parent. Her mother tends to get questions about cooking, cleaning, and first aid. Indeed, when one of her friends was mildly injured at college, she used tips her mother taught her to clean the wound.

I tend to get the music, movies, and politics questions. Also, because I am a librarian, she asks me college-related questions about finding citations, attribution, and the like. Both of us might field questions, such as relationship issues and money, though I tend to be more available as a retiree.

In her first year in college, she’d call or text now and then. This year, she phones more often. She called just to talk recently, and we were on the phone for an hour and a half.

We tell her we love her, and she reciprocates, which is very nice. 

I would have served on the djt jury

volunteers of America

One of the things I do with some regularity is to try to put myself in others’ shoes. I concluded that I believe I would have served on the djt jury if I had lived in New York County (Manhattan). In spite of my… antipathy for the man, I think I could have looked at the facts in this particular case.

And I am specifying the “hush money” case, not the election interference case or the overthrow of the government case, about which I just can’t shake the overwhelming evidence that I’ve seen and heard.

Maybe it’s because I watched a LOT of lawyer shows growing up. They included Perry Mason, of course, but also The Defenders with E.G. Marshall and a pre-Brady Bunch Robert Reed (I have the first season on DVD); Judd For The Defense, starring a post-Donna Reed Show Carl Betz ; and The Bold Ones: The Lawyers with Burl Ives, Joseph Campanella, and James Farentino.

In fact, I watch so much of them that, for a good while, I thought I would become a lawyer until I didn’t.

Often, I imagine how I would respond  to certain circumstances. In the 1980s, there was high-profile murder case, the details I’ve largely forgotten. A lawyer who came into FantaCo regularly was attending the trial daily, and he was convinced the person would surely be convicted of second-degree murder. All I knew was from television and newspaper reporting, but I became convinced that the alleged perpetrator would be found guilty of the lesser charge of first-degree manslaughter. Much to the shock of the attorney, it was precisely how the trial was decided.

Picking the jury

After watching about how they chose a jury in this case, I realized that, if I had lived in Manhattan, I could have been questioned in voir dire, somewhat differently than I experienced in 2014. I’d get to indicate my disdain for almost all of his policies – with him listening, which seems like that could be enjoyable – but that I would promise to treat his case fairly.

Ultimately, though, I would have served because it’s important. Yes, I would have to weigh the appeal of civic duty with time considerations: The trial is expected to last six to eight weeks.

Personal safety, I suppose, would also have been a concern. CNN, among others, essentially outed some jurors. “Juror five is a young Black woman who teaches English in a public charter school system. She has a Master’s degree in education, is not married and doesn’t have any kids.” When her friends and relatives note she’s largely unavailable for a couple of months, they will surely figure it out.

American values

The Weekly Sift guy called trial by jury as defending American values. Trial by jury is fundamental to the American ethic. He notes: “The central mission of a rising authoritarian movement is to destroy public trust in any institution that can stand in its way.”

Specifically, the movement tells us:

  • We can’t trust historians to recount the story of American racism, or librarians to make sound decisions about books that discuss either race or sex. So we have to push back against ignorance.
  • We can’t trust our secretaries of state and local election officials to count votes. This is why I was a poll watcher in the past and should do so more often going forward.

Interestingly, I haven’t been called for jury duty in a decade. Only recently, I discovered I could volunteer to be included in the jury pool in the state of New York if I can understand and communicate in English, am a citizen of the US, am over 18, haven’t been a juror in state federal court in the last six years, and a couple of other factors. Frankly, I think it’s a little weird.

Do I want to volunteer? Maybe, after I check some items off my Must Do list.

Lydster: messages from my daughter

homework

Lucy comic booksSometime between 2016 and 2020, my daughter gave me several strips of paper with messages on them. I rediscovered them when I was in the (lengthy) process of straightening my office.

They reminded me of a similar present I received from my friends for – I believe – my 16th birthday. I think they’re still in this house somewhere.

My daughter wrote:

We watch the news. I think the watching, but also conversing about both the stories and the coverage choices, helped inform her social conscience.

You help me leave for school. First, I made sure she was awake. I used to take her on the bus to preschool before I went to work. Later, I made sure she had food, money, and homework, especially in the lower grades.

When she first went to middle school, I helped her navigate how to take alternate buses so she could avoid the rowdies on the designated buses. But by eighth grade, she decided that the loud bus was more tolerable than spending the extra time to take two buses.

You help me with my homework. In particular, history and math. As I recall, math was complicated even in fourth grade because of the wording of some of the questions. While I remembered a lot of AP American history, there were details that I had never heard. I tried to help her with AP Statistics, but I couldn’t recall it well enough, so I got her a tutor.

Hey, Ricky!

You and I Love Lucy. In 2016, my wife, my daughter, and I went to the Lucy-Desi Museum in Jamestown, NY. She took a bunch of photos, a few of which showed up in my blog post. She got a Lucy cup. Subsequently, we bought the box set of I Love Lucy episodes, which she watched for several months.

You tolerate your life. I’m not positive what this meant. It’s true that I was unhappy and dissatisfied at work in the latter years but needed to get to retirement age so that I could quit. I didn’t often directly tell her, I don’t think, but indeed she overheard conversations I had with her mother.

I was delighted to come across these messages.

February rambling: Rock Hall 2023

Empower Ethiopia

Journalistic integrity requires a reckoning with how news media covers the criminal legal system

The People Onscreen Are Fake. The Disinformation Is Real.

Are AI Chatbots in Healthcare Ethical?

How did we get $32 trillion in debt?

Massive Inequality Is a “Concerted Elite Class Project

I was given a house – but it already belonged to a Detroit family

U.S. Employee Engagement Needs a Rebound in 2023

Here is the publisher’s link to the book titled Side by Side in Eternity: The Lives Behind Adjacent American Military Graves. The book is co-authored by J. Eric Smith, my old blogging buddy. It is currently available for pre-order from the publisher and also from all of the significant book-selling platforms.

From the Books: NO NAME IN THE STREET by James Baldwin

What I Think About LeBron Breaking My NBA Scoring Record by Kareem Abdul-Jabbar

Mike Roach, a SABR report of a baseball player who played in Binghamton more than a century ago.

Charles Kimbrough, Anchor Jim Dial on ‘Murphy Brown,’ Dies at 86#

Nathan Lane reminiscing about a few of the 25 starring roles he’s played on Broadway

From 2005:  Periodical comics face many issues

TB12

Now I Know: The Man Who Did Well By Himself and The Radio Station for People Who are Blind and The $35 Mailbox That Cost $33,000 and Ten Thousand Reasons to Read Before Hitting “I Accept”

On Monday, February 6, my wife and I, with a couple who got married six months after we did, were on a Trivia for a Cause team at Fort Orange Brewing in Albany. The cause was Empower Ethiopia. We started slow but ended up in third place, thanks to our teamwork. I was the one who knew there was only one member of the Gilligan’s Island cast, Tina Louise, who was still alive.
Most of the questions were reasonable. But one bugged me. It was about the six ORIGINAL Disney characters on the Hollywood Walk of Fame besides Mickey Mouse? We guessed Minnie Mouse and Donald Duck, which were right, and Goofy, Pluto, and someone else (Daisy Duck?), which were incorrect.
The other answers were  Tinkerbell, Snow White, and Winnie the Pooh.  Tinkerbell? She was in the J.M. Barrie books. Snow White was in the Grimm books, and Pooh was created by A.A. Milne. The good news is that NO team got more than three of the five.
The final question was about the first filmed sporting event in 1894, produced by Thomas Edison. What was the sport? Look here. BTW, NO team got it correct.
Rock Hall

The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame is again offering a Fans’ Ballot. You can select up to 5 Nominees daily and submit your vote until April 28th.

Yes, they should have nominated your favorite band, and it doesn’t matter. I still vote.

My ballot includes: 1. Warren Zevon- eligible since 1994, yet nominated for the first time in 2023. Other musicians are pulling for the late singer-songwriter, and so am I. He might get in as a songwriter.

2. The Spinners – I’ve had them in my head since I wrote about Thom Bell, and I’m writing about them again this month. Will the 4th time be the charm?

3. Joy Division/New Order -does this synth-pop group have a chance at its first nomination? I doubt it.

4. Willie Nelson. He’ll be 90 in April, he’s sung with half of everyone, and he just got a Grammy.

The fifth slot I’ve bounced among Rage Against The Machine, ” a legitimately game-changing rap-rock group with critical respect, popular endurance, and contemporary relevance,” on their fifth try; and Sheryl Crow, who I’d been playing a lot during her birth month.

Lately, I’ve been voting for Cyndi Lauper, not just for her 1980s output but for creating the music and lyrics for Kinky Boots, for which she won a Tony.

But I could have easily voted for A Tribe Called Quest, Kate Bush, or the late George Michael. I’m not a big White Stripes fan, but I like Jack White, from his soundtrack for Cold Mountain to his work with Loretta Lynn. Missy Elliot and Soundgarden are worthy. I’m just not that familiar with Iron Maiden.

Yet again, I hope they put, in the non-performer category, Estelle Axton, co-founder of STAX Records!

MUSIC

Playing For Change BHM playlist

Spark Catchers – Hannah Kendall

Redemption Song – Sheku Kanneh-Mason and siblings

Coverville 1431: The Barrett Strong Tribute

Night on Mount Triglav – Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov

K-Chuck Radio: What’s that in the air?

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